This is the thrilling conclusion to the saga of Mr. Marsh Mallow, introduced here.
The man made of marshmallows had a terrible morphia habit he said from all the pain administered him but also from having no choice in the matter. Whatever overseer'd placed him (and'd administered him the condition of life presaging such pain) here'd also placed morphine inconsistently about the kitchen otherwise bare of cupboards, all the better to encourage a habit of morphia in Mr. Mallow.
Never a lethal dose, of course, and always in oddly-shaped grottos of the kitchen counters, grottos fully-formed during a occasional nightmarish siesta by the man made of marshmallows. And he'd wake up always in unbearable pain and after a few occasions had learned the drill: Placing his arm or leg or finger into the perfectly-molded-to-that-specific-limb-or-extremity grotto (for nothing else would fit), the man made of marshmallows would wait for the hypodermic, could only wait as the morphia was plunged subcutaneously.
And then the morphia's relief, of course. And then and then, the psychotic absence as it wore off (symptom: marshmallow fists pounding the lone table in the man's lone room), and the return of pain, and the painful, lasting impressions of the thick needles promising eternal fissures in the mallow. The fissure could never be quite healed by simply squeezing the skin together and spitting on it, a fact you at home could readily verify with a toothpick and an ordinary pack of jumbo marshmallows. And spit-and-squeeze is about the only medical technology the Midwest nightmare-kitchen actually has when you can hardly move and each movement will in the long game cost you food and your only food is your own tissue.
A short note: The overseer would sometimes rig the needle so that, shortly after hypodermic injection, the injection would leave the tip of the needle in the marshmallow tissue, leaving countless fragments of needle around bones and veins and occasionally sticking out through the marshmallow flesh. The needles left in this manner would hurt always fiercely with trauma and occasionally threaten (but unmercifully, never quite destroy) circulation to extremities. And eventually the needle-pain would blend in with the organ-pain and the skin-pain and the living-pain and the tooth-pain and the hunger-pain and it would blend together in a dull pain that throbbed with his still-human heart, and he would forget about where the needles were lodged, that is until the man made of marshmallows would get an uncomfortable accidental chomp of a needle once every 50 meals or so of his self-cannibalizing diet.
One day, after six months of morphia, the overseer stopped the administration of opiods abruptly, and withdrawal soon set in. It's a good thing so little of the bones had not been displaced in Mr. Mallow, or the kitchen would have suffered far more from his withdrawal than to have its every surface from floor to ceiling be covered in the sticky residue of marshmallow seeking purchase and escape and, in the end, only morphia. The withdrawal almost killed Mr. Mallow, and certainly if not his body, then his spirit. The overseer had stepped into the room for a moment to intervene against death. And Mr. Mallow had seen the overseer, but only for a moment. It was enough. Knife's-edge feet, scarcely humanoid. Mr. Mallow mentally described eye contact with the overseer as being first impossible, as eyes didn't even begin to describe it, but second that looking into his... face... was exactly like looking into space from the round window of a doomed shuttle, the death sentence of seeing vast infinity right in front of you punctuated only once by merciful panes to affirm place and purpose and structure. The room, already dimly-lit and smoky, seemed to darken slightly to accommodate the overseer.
Whatever the case, the dosage of morphia had returned, and, today, Mr. Mallow took his newly-reinstituted dosage with almost indifference - the tolerance at this point made it almost useless for pain. Now his tissue receives a broken-off needle-tip nearly every dose, and it's a surprise when he doesn't. He gets a thought in his head he's never gotten before - that there was nothing left to break any more in him; even his sanity is inconsistent, finding purchase only in moments brief and spare of pain like this.
Mr. Mallow realizes that there's nothing left to break and that all the overseer knows is breaking. So putting the pieces together, Mr Mallow figures time is, at least he hopes, in short supply.
Yes. Mr. Mallow hears his own still-human vocal chords producing this still-human word "Yes." in his own still-human head. But he also knows it's not from him, because he can think elsewise and hear it at the same time, and he's never inflected "Yes." quite like that. A foreign thought from within his head, but not normative, which Mr. Mallow could at least respect. No brainwashing, just the facts, man. His voice continued.
Yes. One more day left, Mr. Mallow.
Mr. Mallow stands at great effort and puts his long-nibbled hands into his jeans-pockets and looks down at the ensemble with its red flannel button-down T-shirt, sort of stocky like John Goodman, though it's a gut he didn't used to have, a gut completely composed of sheets of marshmallows, within and without him. He puts his hands in his back pockets, surveys his kitchen, and smiles in a way that is real, for the first time since he'd wound up in this kitchen.
He carefully chose the words in his next thought. Any chance you could get here sooner?
At once the barren refrigerator twelve feet away started to hum, like it was processing a lot of crunchy ice. As a cruel touch the overseer had always kept pictures of homework and to-do lists on the face of the refrigerator, knowing that all he'd left the man made of marshmallows to do was to suffer. But the magnets and the papers started to slide down the refrigerator, finally falling completely. Then they started to slide slightly towards Mr. Mallow. They slid faster and faster by degrees and he started to notice little irregularities with respect to random metal objects in the room. It dawned on Mr. Mallow that the refrigerator had a gigantic electromagnet in its belly, and its only purpose had ever been as a magnet.
Sure. His voice responds in his head. A thousand needles, having been embedded over the last few months, start to move through Mr. Mallow in unpleasant ways, and he knows what's coming. Instead of waiting, he plunges himself towards the refrigerator to hasten demise. Through his human organs come and go needles of various malicious sizes. And the man made of marshmallows is finally consummated in a hail of needle-bullets moving away from him along two opposite vectors. And, with one final flail, he serves himself up a small chunk of arm with that marshmallow flavor that Mr. Mallow - despite it all - had actually come to relish.
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