Chapter 18: The Gut Remembers, Too

A Chapter by PA1

(The Gut District �" The Citizens)

They were never given names.

Not by the system.
Not by the organs.
Not officially.

They were the gut folk�"residents of the lower districts, living in the folds of Corpus that processed what the city couldn’t name. They didn’t direct blood flow. They didn’t store memory or pump breath. They just… felt.

They were the shudders before decisions.
The nausea before truth.
The twist in the belly when something wasn’t right.

They were intuition.

And for generations, they were ignored.

The Gut District sat low in the body, nestled between the Digestive Arches and the Peristaltic Wards. Narrow corridors, winding stairwells, humid plazas heavy with steam and scent. It was a place of instincts, of lived sensation.

Here, people worked in silence.
They cleaned the overflow from the Stomach.
They swept after the filtration failures of the Liver.
They absorbed the tension when the Brain issued cold directives or the Heart overcommitted.

And they knew.
Before the signs.
Before the data.
Before the symptoms.

They always knew.

They felt the shift before anyone said a word.

The pause in the Heart’s rhythm.
The break in the Brain’s calculations.
The sudden loss of taste in the air.

It came not as a scream, but as a curl.
A collective clenching deep in their cores.

Something was wrong.

But no one asked them.

Because gut feelings weren’t facts.
Weren’t logic.
Weren’t policy.

So the Gut District stayed silent.

But not still.

When the Liver went dark, their water tasted bitter.
When the Stomach faltered, their children stopped sleeping through the night.
When the Lungs disappeared, the steam tunnels echoed strangely, like wind had lost its way.
When the Skin cracked, mirrors in their homes began to shimmer.
When the Brain broke open, the dreams changed.

And now�"now they knew they were not alone in feeling it.

For the first time in a lifetime, messages came.

Not orders.
Not corrections.
Confessions.

The Heart’s broadcast echoed through the pipes. The Brain’s admission found its way into alley projectors. The Skin’s unveiled face played on broken TVs in street markets. The Eyes flashed images�"memories the Gut had always felt but never seen.

People stopped.

Not with suspicion.

With recognition.

One woman�"Calla�"stood in the center of the Gut Plaza, clutching her stomach like it held all the secrets she hadn’t said aloud. Around her, others began to gather. There was no leader. No sermon. No ceremony.

Just a knowing.

She raised her hand. Not high. Just enough.

“I think we’ve always felt it. And I think we were trained not to trust it.”

Heads nodded.

“I think it’s time we said it out loud.”

A pause.

Then someone else: “I wake up every day with a knot in my chest and no reason for it. But maybe there is a reason. It just hasn’t had a name.”

Another: “I thought the city was sick. But maybe the sickness was silence.”

Another: “I always knew something wasn’t right. I just didn’t know it was everyone.”

In that moment, the Gut District did what it was never designed to do:

It spoke.

Not to the organs.

To each other.

They began gathering their feelings�"not shaping them into manifestos or plans, but offering them.

They cooked not for hunger, but for communion.
They danced not for escape, but for embodiment.
They shared their fears, their aches, their irrational intuitions.

It wasn’t strategy.

It was sensation.

And it was true.

The upper districts noticed.

The Heart felt a warmth rising from below.
The Brain registered a surge in unsourced coherence.
The Lungs felt a new clarity in their breath.
The Skin flushed�"not with shame, but with color.
The Spine relaxed.

The city had found its core again.

Not at the top.
Not in the center.

But in the gut.

Where knowing lives before thought.
Where survival begins before plan.
Where the truth, no matter how messy, cannot be ignored.

One child in the district�"barefoot, wide-eyed�"looked up at her mother.

“Why is everyone talking now?”

Her mother, eyes glossy, whispered:

“Because they finally realized we’ve been feeling it the whole time.”

The virus lingered still. It watched.

But it couldn’t hide in instinct.

It couldn’t mimic truth spoken without expectation.

And so, in the Gut, it shrank.

Because here, everyone felt everything.
And no one pretended not to.

prev chapter

next chapter

© 2025 PA1

Author's Note

This chapter is for the ones who feel everything—even when they don’t have the words for it.

For the people who wake up with tight chests, with tension in their bellies, with unnamed weight pressing down on their day. The people who sense when something is off, even if no one else has noticed. Who carry emotional barometers in their bodies and have been told, again and again, that what they feel isn’t real unless it can be measured, named, or justified.

The Gut District is a metaphor, but it’s also a mirror. It reflects the intuitive wisdom so often dismissed in favor of logic, data, and policy. But we forget—feeling is its own kind of knowing.

This chapter is a reclamation.

A reclaiming of instinct.
Of shared vulnerability.
Of what it means to recognize discomfort not as weakness, but as information.

Because some truths don’t arrive in words—they arrive in waves. In twists. In the deep hum of collective unease. And when we start to speak from that place—not with polished declarations but with messy, honest emotion—healing begins.

I wrote this for everyone who’s ever second-guessed their gut. For everyone who’s learned to translate sensation into silence. This is your reminder: your intuition is not only valid—it is vital.

Let this be the moment we stop asking for permission to feel. And instead, start building from the truth of our bodies.

— Oghogho Akpeli