I'm going to kill him.

Will you help me? Help me make it a little bit of hell. The way you've been talking to me, I know you know what it feels like, to be empty, now. And I've wanted that back for so long.

I know exactly who broke it, the night under the stars, by the water, when Blue Eyes told me I wasn't happy. The night that things took a turn for the strangers in my life. And I've just been walking on since then, moving forward the way forward motions moves.

Sideways, always.

So, here's an invitation, doll.

Come with me; help me kill a little reminder of past. You know the way I feel about memories--or you should by now, if I had remembered to tell you. (Which I know I haven't. Maybe I'll recall it tonight. Maybe I'll remember that I wanted to forget. We'll see.)

You can hold him down, let's say.

You have the willpower, I think. But not enough anger inside to do what I want to do.

I'd never seen him cry, before, only heard the tears in his words. I want to see what it takes to unleash the flood.

He told me, doll, that once upon a time, he cried always. I never had a chance to see it; it was always me, standing out in the rain, with his arms pretending to shelter. I've had enough.

I want blood.

I want to hear him sob. Not beg--fuck any begging. I just want to see the changes inside, the way you can see when you look into their eyes for the first time. Like crimes are happening, all at once. I'm too tired to be thinking clearly, but I still have the urge in my fingers to make him beg for his life when he's on his knees.

I want to make him bleed. Just fingernails, first. Abrasive, callous. Anger tastes like sawdust, when your mouth has gone dry. Just a little more, poison, hollow inside. Choked.

He wouldn't cry, not with my hands around his neck, twisting. Not with knives against his skin. But, doll, I know what would make him give in.

Listen, now. Here's the plan. You find a way to be in two places at once. Hold him down and get with me, and make me bleed. He can't stand it when people hurt, which is why he's been so good at forgetting. But living in the moment is a curse--make it worse by coupling the stranger with an old friend. In the end, I'll have him dead inside, the way I died.

You can help me, doll.

We can bring the madness down, again.

It's been weeks and I still can't forget.

Let me paint a picture in your mind. She's sitting at the corner table, alone, holding a cup of tea to her lips. She's wearing that pink coat, the one with the brown band that runs across the chest and back, around the upper arms. She's in her glasses, and behind them, her eyes are vacant. She's dead.

You walk by and time slows down. The table has all her books, her food, her stuff. her backpack is by her twined ankles. She's there. So present in physical form.

And you want to hurt her for it.

But you don't. Not this time. Because you're older now. Older, slower. Wiser, maybe, and more treacherous certainly.

But what really stops you from doing anything is the pain on your palm. Ghost pain because it doesn't even hurt now when you touch it. You've begun to forget. Pain doesn't matter anymore when you can't feel it.

If you gave your palm to a nonbeliever, he'd never find proof. It's all healed, even to you, who knows what to look for. Where to look. The only difference is texture. Scar tissue so well disguised as to be invisible.

One day you want to see him again and hold out your hand. Maybe smile. And ask, where's the proof we knew each other? You don't know me.

Maybe you never did.

Laugh, because in that moment, you want the past eight months to have never been. You want to close your eyes and wish it all away so the things that have changed you don't exist anymore. You want to be unbroken, again.

You want your life back, and all the self-hatred to just go the fuck away. You want to dance again, alone in the darkness and not feel the hands of some stranger like waking nightmares against your skin.

You want to kiss again where the taste of ash does not invade your mouth like a burned down house. You want to be free again, of your skin and the constraints of reality. You want to go back in time where The Outside was the most beautiful aspect of the world. When people where magical creatures. Where belief and faith could move mountains and passing doubt only made grassy hills.

When he touches your hand and looks, with fingers that trace the palm, you'll dissociate for an instant, long enough to see the sky black again, long enough to protect yourself because hands mean hurt. And when he lets go of your hand, asks what's wrong, you'll step back, step away and wish you had it in yourself to ask for help and healing but you won't, because he didn't want you dependent on him at all.

He wanted you free when all you wanted was chains. And now that the chains have been forcibly attached by another memory, you won't ask him to help you escape. You've learned. You know you can't trust him.

You gave up the wrong bits of yourself, until you were warped beyond recognition, and he called it flattery to his ego. Said he was insecure. You believed him, back then. Over time, though, you've come to realize that steel has no insecurities. Just many forms, no feelings. None compatible with your own.

You learned too late, maybe.

Or maybe soon enough, since you learned before you saw him again. Since someone else saw fit to teach you. Miserable, dependent idiot. You let it happen. You wanted to feel again. You wanted to be important again, to anyone.

You fell in love with your own mental anguish and that's why you let yourself be destroyed. You are a useless, despicable, pathetic excuse for a human being. You wanted to be destroyed, but you forgot that there's no such thing as a serving size of agony.

When you see him again, and you're laughing, leaning out over the pier, you'll be looking into the water, wishing you didn't know how to swim. All around you, prisons. Dry land, water, air. And you will never escape.

He won't know. He won't realize, and for old time's sake, for idiotic reasons of your own, you'll let yourself become less by letting him touch you. Arm around shoulders. Hand at hip. A kiss on the lips.. Maybe you'll even let him fuck you again, since it's been that long.

Except it hasn't, and you'll close your eyes - or turn the lights out - so you can imagine being safely somewhere else in your mind. So he won't see you cry when you recall how other hands did the same when you couldn't move.

And probably it'll be different, so you won't have the burn of the carpet against your face and chest. You won't inhale the dust bunnies and the old sock smell of a different floor. You won't have to remember as vividly as you do now.

It will hurt. Maybe that'll be enough to explain when you can't hold back tears since you know "so happy to se you" won't work. Maybe "so happy for the reminder I'm no longer human" will. Maybe he'll stop long enough to kiss the back of your neck, and you can wish for the end of the world to appear.

Out on the pier, you hang onto the railing like it can save you. You wait until the silence hurts and then you turn to the boy-man you loved - still love - and you lie as hard as you can that things have changed. That you are someone else now, and things won't work. Because if you can't be dependent in a normal way, you'll turn him into a constant source of pain, until the day when you can forget everything and jump.

Revenge.

This is when the potential for destruction is the greatest. When I'm angry and when things just aren't falling into place. When it's a little too warm out and the earth tilts as blood abandons my body. This is when I want to hurt people and when I'm angry about what it means to be alive.

I want to show them what pain is to balance the pain inside. I want to see them hurt back. And then... Oh gods. I want to make them burn. Bleed. Scream in agony.

In the waiting room.

Do you know how terrifying gold on black can be? Gold lettering on black nameplates...that means fear. Feral. It's a threat. That's all. That's all.
I'd like totalk to you, but I don't know how you'll take it. Do you want to talk to me?
No.
Why not?
I'm only here for one reason. Her name isn't yours.

Welcome to the dark side. We don't take words at face value. We lie and steal and in the end we laugh because there is nothing more pathetic than a man who wants to do something and can't.
Unless it's the man who never wanted to do anything and died for lack of breathing.

This is truth in fiction.

The way your lips felt. Like smoke against my mouth. Like I couldn't even be certain I had been kissed. Like perhaps it was pure imagination. Like maybe you weren't even real. You and your smoke lips, your cigarette kisses. And your high eyes.

Are you even real? Or am I imagining again so that I won't be trapped by the real people around me? Their rock hands and accusatory looks.

Do a trick.

Prove you're worth it.

I'm not.

And they prod anyway. Demanding. Prove it. Like a mathematical solution with no way back. Prove.

I can't.

I'm not.

The Kiss.

You've never had anything like it.

You've never gone home before, so tiny inside, so hurt.

You've never been dancing where someone's come up to you, started to dance with you. You've never had a guy you didn't know that close, that...close.

You've never been under the dark lights with the press of the crowd, never laughed like you were insane as some guy pulled you closer, dug his fingernails into your hips until you bruised. You've never realized something was wrong before.

You never had to. Nothing had gone wrong before.

So you didn't realize when you started your dance with a stranger how it would end. You didn't realize that when he offered to dance a strange version of the waltz, it was a precursor to other things.

You didn't realize he meant anything when he kissed your cheek.

You didn't realize until he said, "I think I missed." Then you laughed, and he silenced you with his mouth, right over yours. Over, not on.

You tried to breathe while his tongue forced itself inside your mouth, plowing up your tongue and brushing it aside. You didn't remember that kissing could be so distasteful; you hadn't kissed anyone for too long a time, and the last boy you kissed was someone you knew, someone you liked, someone you wanted.

You smiled shakily when he pulled his tongue out of your mouth like the plunger out of a toilet. You closed your mouth and tried to forget the taste of bad beer and bologna. You laughed, and you tried to pull away, and that was when you realized he wasn't letting go.

That's when you first began to think things might not work out, and when you started trying to find a way out. But his hand was on your waist, and his arm pinned your body too tightly to his for you to draw anything on him.

You felt afraid.

How long has it been since you've felt afraid like that?

Felt like you were going to stop breathing, like your heart was going to run away and hide under the chairs lining the walls. Felt like you were going to start seeing black dots dancing along the edges of your vision, like your limbs were going leaden. Dizzy and shaken, and suddenly the only thing holding you up was his arms around you.

Tell me, how did that feel?

The last time you felt it that strong, you were twelve years old and cowering in a corner in the pantry while your mother screamed at your father. You should have been asleep. You heard the crack of skin hitting skin, and a disbelieving grunt from your father. You heard your mother's triumphant shriek, and she kept screaming until you could hear your sister crying upstairs.

And your father walked out the door, took the car and drove away while your mother stood on the back deck screaming "Fuck you!" after him.

You felt like you couldn't breathe, hidden away in the pantry, and when her footsteps came closer to where you were hiding, you started to shake and go hot and cold, like being alternately doused with ice and boiling water. She didn't come into the pantry though; she wandered up the stairs, and your sister started crying louder.

Do you remember now?

And when this boy on the dance floor put his mouth over yours again and again, ramming his tongue against the back of your throat, you gagged, you teared-up, you tried to pull away. But panicking bodies don't listen to minds. And girls with bright red lipstick smeared across their faces don't get sympathy.

Do they.

Word of the Day - Lucky

I'm lucky to be alive that's all you needed to know about that. I'm still breathing, still moving, still talking, even if I can't walk anymore. I'm still sure that I know more about the universe than you, and I know that God loves her children the same way ill-fitted lovers do - one at a time and in pieces. It's something I've learned by being lucky. I'm still alive because I'm faster than you, and maybe because you were slow so that I'd be lucky. And the building that should have fallen on me fell on you instead, so I guess man, thanks.

Word of the Day - Mythology

I took a class on Roman myth, on Greek myth and I wanted to know what it would be like to be a myth. To be so outstanding, so strange that people would open books one day and read about me, and say that science proved that I was impossible.
Like Icarus.
Like Daedalus.
I wanted to be that kind of human being, one who made wings with which to fly and leave all human cares behind, one who had the hubris to go up against the gods that human kind invented and tell them to suck it.
That I was going my own way.
That I was going to be my own god.

Word of the Day - Altar

I stand to worship, and the light falls down from the windows. Above the altar is a golden bubble, shining like a bauble that I might have sold a year or two ago to pay for this new habit. This thing called worship. It intrigues me. And the others watch me as I do. They believe in gods; I just like to act like it’s possible. Humans are so interesting. They are so very…very interesting…
I want to be a god next. I want to have my own altar where they might sacrifice oxen and burn incense.

word of the Day - Paperclips

They are sitting on the desk. Silver and gold. And there are pliers there too.
“Hey,” Jillian says. “Pass the paperclips.” She holds out a hand.
I have to hand one over to her.
She takes it and begins to bend it with the pliers. It twists until it doesn’t hold itself any more. Until it’s useless as a paper holding clip.
Until it’s some thing brilliant and beautiful, like all the other fucked up pieces of metal she’s putting together to make a neck lace with.
“Hey,” Jillian says, “thanks.”

Word of the Day - Rejection

I.
I’ve been sitting on the front porch with the knowledge that you’ve been gone for the past few weeks. It’s been that way for a while now, hasn’t it? You said you’d come out. You either have really bad luck or really good lies.
I think it’s the latter.
I think you never meant to come out to me.
You were gone away, weren’t you? Just away, far enough to for get that you promised -
Why do I bother believing any more?
You’ve made it clear.
You want no part.
But I keep putting myself in the way.





II.
It’s nice to sit in the front row.
You get called on.
And ever answer you give, is wrong.
Rejected.
In favor of the girl who sits two seats behind you, because she always has the right answer.
The benefit of sleeping with the teacher.
And having a pretty face.
Maybe a nice body.
But not an intelligent mind.
It’s just that the prof seems to be a little too distracted by her…
Features, say.
To notice that what she actually says
makes
no
fucking
sense.
I reject your logic, and substitute my own.

Word of the Day - Optimism

I want to keep hoping, because to lose hope is to admit that I don't know where I'm going with my life. I want to keep hope, because if I keep my chin up, I can ignore the fact that I'm walking through life without knowing what I'm putting my feet in. If I keep hoping, I can ignore the fact, maybe, that at heart I'm really just a pessimist, and thinking of everything that can go wrong. Optimism is nice, see, because sometimes, I get all excited and decide that maybe there's really something possible that I didn't see before. It's a bit of light just for me.

Word of the Day - Cannon

You're a loose cannon. You're the guy who walks down the street with a knife pulled, and you threaten people with rearranging their mentalities. You smile and your dark eyes show your soul. You can make them do that, y'know. S'what scared me, the first time I really looked into them. That I realized you were capable of blowing my word to bits with a few shards of shrapnel from the cannon that was your soul. If that's not too cheesy to say. I think it might be. You're just a dark hole, a black hole, a soul-less soul. Love you.

Word of the Day - Typewriter

I remember the way the keys clickty-clacked as I sat next to the boy with the dark hair. His name was Taylor, and he had this typewriter that he brought to all the writing meetings, in a steel box like it was a secret agent's agenda hidden away. And when he unfolded it, and everyone else pulled out laptops, he looked so strange. But we adjusted to the clickty-clack, and he was just another member - one of the old timers, like me with all my fountain pens and in the end, we all worked with the same medium in our stories: words.

Word of the Day - Stick

Stick to it, and stick by him, and then you’ll realize in the end that it’s really only disappoint ment where he’s con­cerned. You’ll be disappointed in the way he doesn’t wake up when you come by in the mornings, and how slow he is to act like you’re there at all. You stick with him, by him, beside him, you’re going to end up regretting it, unlike regretting the scars just thinking about him caused. It’s a problem, y’know. It’s a real problem.

Word of the Day - Boa

It’s feathered and the way it curls around my neck reminds me of the way your arms would wind around me when we were lying in bed together. The way you curled up like you were alive, almost, and you were, but I didn’t have to know that to keep breathing next to you, and appreciating how warm your skin felt, until your dad came up the stairs and spoiled the fantasy by saying, “Nathaniel, there’s someone on the line for you.” And he looked at me like he was asking, “What are you doing in bed with my son? Again.”

Word of the Day - Sheets

They told me that once I was between the sheets with him, I’d forget about every thing else. But that’s not true. It’s mostly because we weren’t actually between the sheets — we were on top of them and he had a hand over my mouth trying to tell me to be quiet so my little sister wouldn’t hear us, as he started to move, and he pressed a kiss to my mouth. He smiled at me. It’s always that they think things will happen. And I didn’t for get about any thing — I remembered that my sister was there; she reminded us by knocking on the door.

Word of the Day - Stamps

It's kind of hard not to think about the way letters just seem to form themselves. I sit down to write to you twice a month, once every two weeks, on the weekends, and they start on Saturdays, those letter. Except the one for your birthday, because that was a week and a half letter. I send all the others on Wednesdays. And I sent you an elephant couple for your birthday, done in black ink, because I didn't have pencil. But I think you liked it. (You told me it's on your wall anyway.)

Word of the Day - Temper

I have a temper. I want to rip her to shreds. I want to hold her against the wall, and look into her eyes. They’re brown. I want to hold her there, and laugh in her face. Maybe press a kiss against her mouth the way we did when we were friends and she wanted to impress her boyfriend. I want to hold a knife to her throat, and laugh, softly in her ear. They’re extra sensitive, y’know. And I want to tell her what I really think of her now. Oh yes, I have a temper. But I keep it under control, because she’s most afraid of me when I’m… reigned in.

Word of the Day - Possibility

It’s only a pos­si­bil­ity that I might be home soon, and that you might be there when I arrive. Possible…but I know it won’t hap­pen, because I’ll end up walk­ing from the air­port to your house — an hour and a half jour­ney all told, and I’ll be alone, in the snow, with my bags, because you won’t come pick me up even though I know you want to see me too, or so you say — and then I’ll stand on the out­side steps and ring the bell, the way I did so long ago when we first met. And it’s pos­si­ble you’ll be inside, but I’m tak­ing bets that it’s your mother who answers the door. She and I got along so well dur­ing all the times you weren’t home, and maybe she’ll offer me my spot on the futon in the liv­ing room again, and I’ll pre­tend it’s like old times, except we’re both a lit­tle older, and you won’t remem­ber me anymore.