Experimentally, gingerly, for the first and last time in his life, the artist known as Smithy lifted his right eyelid, placed his right forefinger near the top of his left eyeball and gently but firmly drove that sucker around the orb and smack into his brain.
Once there, he tickled the frontal cortex gently. Something somewhere in him giggled. It was painful but that was where the jokes were located.
He pushed on.


As his finger dug toward the middle of his brain, he began to loose control of his legs. He sat, suddenly, down. His finger, playing at being a brain elevator, rose to the top of his brain, his skull, pushing lightly at various stimulating gray matter as it went, replaying his many memories. His past, his present, not much of his future. Many of his past pleasures were tucked up in there and he briefly fingered their joys, disappointments and the why why whys that still echoed and generally fumed darkly in there.
He moved on, his finger making a left turn at the rear of his brain where he came into a dense layer of smut he had always kept hidden, tucked back in there, just for emergencies. It throbbed and mutated and performed a lascivious dance just for him, as it always reliably did.
But he had no time for these varied once happily anticipated stimulations, as the thrusting journey his finger was taking had made his groin unresponsive, as his dick, his anus, his flaccid sack of lazy balls lolled lackadaisical, finished for good.


He did manage, before passing out of this life and into esoteric choices he would be surprised he would have to make on the other side of this worldly existence, he bumped up against the back of his skull. His fingernail scraped here, against the skull, and, as a last treat, and as a last idea, he went in for some inner urban art.
With his fingernail he scratched letters. It was hard going as his body was now giving up major motor functions at an alarming rate. He was blind, could not speak, and the hearing was dimming—no, there, it too was now gone.
As he died, as he slumped, as his spirit floated, as required, above his body, looking down, his finger gave up its ghost and slipped out of the gray matter, falling out of his head, his eyes boggling, leaving behind, distantly, on the inner wall of his damaged, lights-out brain, the simple ego words on the inside of his skull,
“Smithy was here.”