the wrath of a saint

small foxes

jesus.

i need a drink. i need twenty drinks. i need to drink, drink, drink until it all stops. i need to drink until i black out, and then i need to wake up and drink again and black out again, again, again. i need to still be awake at 4 a.m. with my head in the toilet or the sink or something. i need to be coughing and sweating and puking. i need to be retching and dry heaving and vomiting so much that my teeth fall out. i need to have hot eyes and rough hands and a sailor’s tongue. i need my liver to be as black as black can be. i need my lungs to be on fire. i need my insides to rot and my brain to lose function.

i need to throw this key away.

they’re getting married, you know. and i still have her key. i want to take it and go over and write notes on her bathroom mirror. i want to lie in her bed and keep it warm. i want to see if any of my old clothes are still in the closet. i bet at least one shirt is still in there somewhere.

god, i need a drink. what time is it?

i light a cigarette and take a long draw. i close my eyes and keep them closed for a good thirty seconds. this is good. i needed this. maybe this will clear my head.

but it doesn’t.

and i want to drive to her house and knock on the door and grab her and shake her and scream, “what the hell are you doing with your life? what is wrong with you?” but i’m afraid i would just keep shaking her even when i didn’t have anything left to say.

i finish my cigarette with another long draw then flick it into the mulch. there are probably about a thousand cigarette butts to the left of my stoop. i’ve only lived here two weeks.

i go back inside. everything is still in boxes. well, almost everything. the only thing i really cared to unpack was sitting on the kitchen counter. two unopened half-gallon bottles of vodka and an entire case of whiskey. and five cartons of cigarettes.

i don’t even bother looking for a glass. i just twist off the plastic cap from the vodka and start drinking and my nerves begin to calm instantly. i take it to the couch and sit down.

they’re getting married. i still can’t believe it. she can’t be happy. she’s doing it just to make things worse. and it’s working. i’m sick of breaking mirrors and screaming anathemas to a blank television set. show me your worth, vodka.

let me just point it out that we were engaged at one point. that tells me that we were either happy or she was really good at lying. we were together, what, five years? that’s a long time. and she starts dating this guy a month after she breaks up with me. a month.

and then it hit me like a heart attack.

she is afraid to be alone.

and i’m alone.

but i’m not afraid.

i have my cigarettes.

and alcohol.

and i know that whenever i want, i can drink until i can’t remember who i loved in the first place.

but you’ll still be afraid.

and i won’t remember you.

monster.

a heavy sigh.

you fucking said it, man.

he says he doesn’t drink any more because it hurts. i say fuck that, i’ll drink twice as much to make up for his loss.

he shifts in his chair and leans slightly forward. i just keep looking at him like he’s on fire.

“what do you mean it hurts to drink? like, physically hurts? something wrong with your liver?”

i hope to god there is actually something physically or medically wrong with him because i just can not, absolutely can not comprehend any other reason that could stop someone from drinking.

“i started drinking to forget.”

“join the fucking club.”

“but the more i drank, the more i remembered.”

silence.

“remembered what?”

“her.”

“who?”

“this girl i used to love.”

oh fucking good.

he sighs again. i can feel, see, taste the sorrow slowly smoking from his lungs and out of his lips.

“what happened?”

i knew what happened. well, not any kind of fucking detailed version, but i’d heard it all, seen it all before.

“i loved her, but i was so vile, so venomous. i was full of anger and bitterness for no good reason at all.”

he shifts in his chair again and pulls out a cigarette. he holds it between his thumb and forefinger and just stares at it like it’s the first time he’s ever seen a cigarette.

“i kept everything inside. the only identifiable emotions i had were lust and anger, both of which i took out on her. i was so fucking stupid. i just, i didn’t care at all what i said to her, you know? i swear to god, i just said things to see if i could get her to cry.”

“why the fuck would you do something like that?”

he spins the cigarette into its death-locked position and brings it between his lips. he pulls out his green lighter and breathes life into it. he takes a long draw, exhales and looks down.

“i don’t know. i honestly do not know.”

“so then what?”

he chuckles and forces a crooked half smile. the kind of smile that you see when there is absolutely no reason to smile. another drag of the cigarette. another expulsion of the grayest sorrow. another heavy sigh that bears the cross of the world.

“so then, she left. she said she couldn’t fucking take this any more. she said that i should go be someone else’s problem and just get the fuck out of her life. i can’t say i blame her. if someone had treated me like that, i would have been gone long before it got to that point.”

he blinks hard and long like he is in prison and he is trying to send morse code messages through his blinks to someone that can possibly, maybe save him.

“after she left, i started drinking. i needed to make her go away, and i needed to make her go away fast. but it didn’t work. the more i fucking drank, the more i fucking remembered.”

“that’s the opposite of what happens to most people, you know.”

“i know. and i hate it. i swear to god, i hate it with everything in me. i just want to drink. i want a hundred drinks. i want to drink until i can’t fucking feel anything, and then i want to drink some more. i want to black out every day. then i want to wake up and drink some more.”

he finishes off his cigarette and rubs it out in the glass ashtray on the scratched and chipped coffee table. he breathes out the remaining smoke through his nostrils and passes his hands through his short, brown hair, bringing them to a rest with interlocked fingers on the back of his neck.

“i. i was so terrible for so long, i started to think that was actually who i was, you know? i thought i was this vile person filled with acid and bile and venom and hate. i started to believe that’s who i had always been, and that was the real me. but it’s not. it’s not.”

“then who are you?”

he laughs and smiles, and i can see his crooked front teeth, slightly yellow from only a few months of smoking religiously.

he brings his hands back down to earth and rests them on the arms of the chair.

“i’m just someone who was so afraid to love that he let that fear destroy something genuine.”

we’re all vile and fake, and we can’t stand the sound of our own voice when it calls out to someone other than ourselves. we’re all afraid to love. we’re all fucking afraid. we’re all monsters hiding in the deepest darkest depths of depravity just waiting to jump and leech onto anything that we think could possibly, maybe, just maybe be something that resembles love. and when it passes by our dark alley, we jump, we fucking jump it like it’s the last ship to shore and we suck it fucking dry. we suck it fucking dry. we’re all afraid to love, so we cover it up with bitterness and contempt and smoke-filled lungs and dead livers. we cover it up with anger and fighting and we close ourselves off and hope to god that no one gets in deep enough to sever the strings we tied ourselves off with. but sometimes, sometimes it hurts so much to not love that you just have to let it take control, take over, take you, take me, take her, take him, take it all and just let that love be enough. and sometimes that overcomes that fear. and sometimes that’s the best fucking thing in the world.

but me, i’ll just fucking drink for me, i’ll drink for him, i’ll drink enough to make us both forget love ever existed in the first place.

sink or sink.

he coughed and coughed and churned his insides with inhaled cigarette smoke. his throat was a chimney. his lungs were a vacuum. he lied on the couch, an island surrounded by a sea of crumpled tissues with bits and pieces of dried out lung buried inside.

“you don’t want to live like me,” he said with a sigh that turned every color gray.

i nodded and looked up and scanned the room. the once white wallpaper was now the color of week-old coffee grounds, and it was peeling from the ceiling. the walls were knotted like the trunk of a tree. the furniture looked like it had half-heartedly been salvaged from a fire. he was right. i didn’t want to live like him. i didn’t want my furniture to be gutted like a hunted animal.

another sigh.

“i spent so many years in regret. you don’t know what that does to a man until it’s too late.”

there was nothing i could really say. i felt like i needed to say something, anything, to, i don’t know, maybe make him feel like he hadn’t wasted his life, but i couldn’t. i couldn’t lie like that. i couldn’t. think. of. a. thing.

“she left me 17 years ago. i’ve been on this couch for 16 of those.”

i could tell.

“i can’t say that i blame her,” he continued. “i drank and i drank until i could tell her i loved her. that was the only way that i could.”

it was hard for him to complete a sentence without stopping between words to expell some more lungs or some other piece of his god-awful, blackened insides.

“why didn’t you love her when you were sober?” i asked.

“why does man drink?” he replied.

i was surprised, to say the least, at his off-putting reply. i thought, “this is not a lesson on the socratic method.” i really had no idea how to answer that.

“why does man drink?” i just repeated his question, only with different emphasis. “to escape reality?”

“no,” he said. “man drinks to forget.”

“then why did you have to drink to love?”

“i had to forget who i was, the things i’d done, just to be able to love,” he said, heaving and coughing into a new tissue.

i didn’t understand. maybe because i had no comprehension of his life. maybe because i had no idea what it was like to spend 17 years killing myself from the inside out.

i only knew what it was like to spend two years killing myself from the inside out.

we sat in silence for what seemed like an entire year. i kept my hands clasped with my elbows on my knees and my eyes staring down at the floor.

“we’re not too different,” i said. “you had to drink to love. i have to be under the covers to love.”

“that isn’t the same,” he said. “you can still feel something. feeling something is better than not feeling anything at all.”

he was right. i guess i was just trying to placate him.

he repeated himself in a groaning, spitting sentence. “you don’t want to live like me.”

i looked at him in agreement, but we both knew that i already was and there was nothing either of us could do to stop.

neither of us cared enough to fix anything.

ghost.

she clung to his clothes as she fell to her knees, sobbing into his oxfords and polos. all color-coordinated, all neatly hung, all ironed and pressed to perfection, all never to be worn again.

she bawled and grabbed and pulled on every shirt in the world just trying to bring the rack down, trying to tear the earth from its axis. she pulled and pulled and soaked the unbuttoned sleeves with sweat and tears and spit and makeup. her lipstick had smeared so bad that the shirts were starting to look like they were splattered with the afterbirth of a gunshot wound. she fell into a pattern of screaming and sighing and screaming and sighing and screaming and screaming and screaming. her heart pulsed with the weight of eternity and her knuckles were white like the crest of a wave. fingernails ripped into ralph lauren. contempt drowned marc jacobs. her lungs wanted to give up and collapse. her muscle wanted to atrophy and rip and tear. her throat was on fire and her eyes were like burnt flesh. her hair wildly plastered her face and neck like a thousand snakes striving to strangle. everything became too fast and she thrashed and kicked and pulled and screamed nothing that resembled words. she pulled and pulled and pulled and her heart was racing, racing, racing, like the wings of a hummingbird. the clock ticked way too fast. every lifetime was a second as she kept convulsing and spitting and crying uncontrollably. in a flash, everything froze and time did not exist.

there was nothing.

her body gave up, and she fell to her side, bits of blue and plaid cotton stuck underneath her fingernails.

her breathing came to a heartless crawl. there was nothing in the air. nothing to get caught in her lungs. no more crying. no more polos or khakis or oxfords or rolex watches or men’s journal magazines or ping g10 golf clubs or CAO cigars tucked away in a humidor.

the only thing left was lying on the bed. a body with an empty bottle of prescription pills in the left hand and a sealed envelope in the right hand that simply read, “for my love.”

and i had to watch as she made a terrible mess of herself over my body.

without a sound, she tried to raise her body from the depths. she was like a lamb trying to stand on its own for the first time. slowly, she hoisted herself up by clinging tightly to designer clothing. her knees were wobbly and sick, buckling in and almost collapsing on themselves. she looked like a victim in a terrible horror movie – eyes stamped with black rings of running mascara, dried sweat in her bangs, smeared lipstick that made her look like she were bleeding at the mouth. it was pitiful, really. at that moment, i felt slightly sorry for what i had done. not the bad kind of sorry like when you know deep down inside that oh, god, i’ve done something wrong. it was more like the sorry you feel when you are overwhelmed by apathy and simply just do not care.

i

simply

did

not

care.

i had led her to the slaughter. i had stripped her bare of all her dignity and best of intentions and left her like this, a huddled mess of hatred and infinite regret.

regret is a still warm body.

she finally managed to slump into a somewhat stable stance as she leaned against the wall next to the closet, her knees still buckled slightly. her breathing was still heavy, and she stared at my body with a glare of contempt and sorrow. then, it was like the secne hit her all over again. it was like she was seeing me lying on the bed for the first time. her eyes widened and in an immeasurable amount of time, she was at the nightstand with the cordless phone clutched in her grip. she gripped it like a ledge that she was hanging on to for fear of falling. she stared at the key pad like she had never seen numbers before, and slowly she began dialing with a crooked index finger.

nine.

one.

one.

it rang. it rang again. it started to ring a third time when the operator picked up.

she was slow to speak as her lips stuck together. when she parted them, half-dried spit stuck and stretched and her mouth made smacking sounds. i could tell her throat was a desert and her tongue was like rotted wood. her voice was caught somewhere between her ribs. when a sound finally broke, it came out as a whisper, cracked and weathered. she had exited the womb and was learning to speak for the first time. air was hitting her lungs for the first time. she heaved and wretched as her mouth opened like a cave. she clung tightly to the phone as she fell back to her knees, heaving, heaving, heaving, inhaling in large gulps of dust and nothing. on her hands and knees, her back arched up with each exasperated gasp and her voice grew louder. i could hear the operator.

“hello? please, you have to talk to me.” then it was inaudible.

she rolled to her back. her free hand clawed into the carpeting as she expelled one last gasping yelp.

then like before, she grew silent. she slowly brought the receiver up to her ear. she pressed it there with the weight of the world. the sweat sealed it to her ear, and she began to speak in a slow whisper, surprised to hear the sound of her own voice.

“he’s gone.”

“ma’am? what happened?”

“fuck…”

“ma’am, you’ve got to talk to me. i need to know what’s happening.”

nothing registered. this was just a monologue to her.

she covered her mouth with her free hand, still pressing the phone to her ear. she was trembling as she began to cry, shaking her head in disbelief and disgust. her mouth was disfigured like she was trying to hold back every emotion any person had ever felt. short, intermittent, sobs escaped into the receiver.

“why? marcus, marcus, wake up. wake up!”

she threw the receiver down and burst to her feet. she threw herself over me and grabbed my neatly-pressed shirt and started shaking me, screaming for me to wake up.

she shook my body until the bolts rattled on the insides. her body hummed with fatigue. defeated, she slid back into a wreck on the bedroom floor. she picked the receiver back up.

“he’s gone.”

“ma’am, i’m sending help right now. i need you to stay on the line with me and answer some questions, okay?”

none of this registered with jess.

silence.

“is he breathing? can you feel a pulse?”

she was almost catatonic.

“he’s gone…”

she was in a state of shock like she was just now fully realizing that i was, in fact, dead.

the bed was a mess. the satin sheets plateaued in the middle, creating a crimson mountain range surrounded by a sea of pillows. my body laid halfway on the bed in the middle, in the valley of sheets, with my knees bent and hanging from the foot. jess crawled from the floor and laid down next to me, her arms stretching across seas and moving mountains that laid in my wake. she rested her head on my shoulder and laced her left arm over my still chest, her left leg over mine. my body was still warm.

“marcus. christ, marcus.”

i could tell she was half-heartedly waiting for me to just start breathing again, to just come back to life like nothing had ever happened. she bent her arm and placed her open palm over my heart.

nothing.

that stopped beating long before i was dead.

she just lied there with my body. waiting. but i could feel nothing but apathy.

sirens silently cried in the distance.

alive in the wild.

motherfucker.

that’s all that i could manage to think.

mother.

fucker.

how did this happen?

they took the television. my brand new television. 50 inches of “holy shit that’s awesome” and it’s gone. and my cat’s head is wrapped up in the telephone cord. i don’t know if they did that or if my cat did that to himself. maybe he got tangled up trying to run and hide in the laundry hamper. or maybe they were trying to send a message. “fuck with us, we’ll kill your house cat.” either way, he’s dead.

but seriously. my television? come on.

i walk over to the telephone where baxter is wrapped like an egyptian mummy, only in a black telephone cord. his tongue is protruding to the right. his eyes are open and bulging and there is a small blob of cat vomit in front of him. it looks like reese’s pieces and hair. probably is. the receiver has fallen off of the hook and is lying ear end down in baxter’s oral afterbirth. i try to delicately untangle him from the cord. he is wrapped up pretty tight. i pull the cord straight and hold it slightly above my head. this lifts baxter off the ground. baxter starts spinning clockwise as the cord unwraps itself. his tail brushes against the leg of my pants. this was the best way, i thought, to untangle this mess. the cord finally frees itself of baxter and he lands on the floor, his head making a small thud against the linoleum.

i kind of poke baxter in the stomach with the tip of my shoe. nothing. damn. poor guy. poor television.

i grab the phone cord about four inches away from the end of the receiver. i hold it up, examining the cat puke covered end as it slightly twisted about. fucking gross, bax.

i pick up a red dish cloth and wipe the phone as clean as one can expect to get a vomit-covered phone. i press the hook three or four times, i don’t know, it’s insignificant, until i get a dial tone. 9-1-1. wait. do i call 9-1-1? is this an emergency? i mean, the damage has been done. i don’t think they send ambulances for cats, do they? maybe a fire truck if he’s in a tree, but i live in new york and there are a fucking million stray cats and about three trees in the whole city, so i don’t think the FDNY would appreciate that. do i just call the regular cops then? or do i call best buy about my tv? i knew i should have bought insurance on that. i still have the receipt somewhere. better reasoning prevails and i dial 9-1-1 only because best buy doesn’t have a police unit.

the phone rings about nine times before someone picks up. if this had been a real emergency, i probably would already be on fire or have a broken hip or something.

“9-1-1. what’s your emergency?”
“uh, yeah, uh, someone broke into my apartment and stole my brand new television and killed my cat with the telephone cord.”
“are you sure, sir?”
“what? wha…yes, i’m sure. i don’t think i’d kill my own cat just because he pisses in the closet every now and then.”
“is there anyone still in your apartment?”
“i don’t think so. i mean, i haven’t really checked. i’ve been too busy, you know, untangling my cat’s head.”
“okay, sir, stay on the line with me while i send help.”
sigh.
“okay.”

i wait probably two minutes before i hear anything else from the lady on the other end. i was beginning to think she hung up on me. can they do that? maybe she was taking a moment of silence to mourn for my cat. i don’t know. whatever.

“okay, sir. the police are on their way.”
“okay, great, wow, that’s fantastic.” my voice was drenched with sarcasm.
“do you need me to stay on the line? can i go? i need to do something with my cat.”
“no, sir, but it is important that…”

i hang up before she can finish. what the fuck does she know? i need a drink. i dig in my pocket for my cell phone so i can call harper because i can’t remember her phone number and i swear to god i don’t know why i have a land line. it’s late, but i know she’s still awake. i hit send and it tells me to wait while my party is being reached. fuck, she has one of those annoying ringer things that play a song while they are being dialed. i fucking hate john mayer. she picks up after half a verse.

“hel-hello.”
“hey, you awake?”
“i don’t know. no? what time is it?”
at that moment, i realize i have no idea what time it is and it’s like time is this abstract concept that never really mattered.
“oh, shit. i’m sorry. it’s like 3:30.”
“what’s wrong?”
i can tell she has no clue what is going on.
“can you come over? someone broke into my apartment. i already called the cops.”
i could hear her eyes opening. wide, wide, wider.
“what? really? are you okay? what did they take?”
“yeah, i’m fine. look. can you come over?”
“yeah, i’ll be there as soon as i can.”
i don’t tell her about my television or about baxter especially, because i know she loves that cat more than me. i could tell she cared though. not because she was my girlfriend, but because she has stuff here too, and she is probably worried about whether or not they took some of her stuff like her kitchenaid mixer that she bought from williams-sonoma for like $300.

i shut my phone and lay it down on the counter top. what the fuck am i supposed to do now? i stare at my refrigerator. i stare at baxter. i stare at the faucet. i stare. i stare, hoping that silence will become something tangible that i can touch.

i quickly turn from a state of confusion to a state of vehement fury.

my face is hot and i can see my future in front of me and there is absolutely nothing there. i can feel my nails digging into the palms of my hands.

from first to last.

my fingertips graced her pale, starry skin. my breath was july and her neck was the 4th. i kept my fingers circling her hips as i slowly swept my face across hers, our lips barely touching like strangers brushing shoulders. i swear to god her lips were like the simplest pastel drawing that no one had ever seen. and that made me want to add some reds and blues just to see what it would do.

i slid my fingers upward, arching them and spreading my fingers like wildfire before resting my hand on the heart of her stomach. breathe in. breathe out. breathe in. breathe out. we opened our eyes.

“i think i love you.”

i don’t know who said it. i don’t know if it was me or her. it didn’t matter. in the dark, a reply escaped.

“i think i love you, too.”

my right arm was resting on my elbow. i lifted it, sliding my left leg over the top of hers for support, and brought my hand up to the side of her face. my fingers disappeared behind the dark blond curtain, and i let my hand fall victim to the touch of her skin.

we kissed.

and it was so i intense and bright, it hurt. it made my head hurt. it made my body ache like i had aged 50 years. it made my bones and muscles atrophy.

i clenched my jaw tight like i had a secret i wanted to forget. everything i felt began to fade away, but the light in her eyes intensified and brightened until i thought i might catch fire if i didn’t look away. i closed my eyes.

i opened my eyes in a flash and i was staring down. my hands were resting in my lap and they were covered in blood. my forehead had an extra appendage in the form of my steering wheel. i tongued around inside of my mouth and felt the pool of blood. i opened my mouth and it was like i opened the floodgates to a slaughterhouse. blood poured out along with spit and snot and vomit and teeth and chunks of i’m sure what used to be vital organs. it covered my hands and jeans. i could smell gasoline.

i couldn’t move my head from the steering wheel, but i was able to turn and look to the passenger seat. she was crumpled up on the dash with the crown of her head smashed in the windshield. her hair was all swept forward. her arms were extended down and pressed against the glove compartment. her seat had rocketed up and slammed her in the dash and windshield. her legs were still attached to her body, but that’s all that could be said for them. at that moment i realized why people called arms or legs their limbs.

i brought my drenched hands up and grabbed the steering wheel hard. i pushed against it with everything i had left inside of me, which, judging by what i threw up wasn’t much, and moved my aching body backward until it came to an involuntary rest against what was left of my seat. i lifted my right arm and brought it over to her body, hoping to god that she wasn’t stuck in the windshield too bad so that what little strength i had would be enough to pull her out and back into her seat.

and it was barely enough.

she slung back and slumped in her seat, eyes closed, mouth open, head severely bleeding. she was still wearing her seat belt. her lips were colored with reds and blues, and i didn’t like what those colors could do right then.

unfinished.

alexander hamilton.

it’s not that i’m lacking sympathy. it’s just that i just do not care. let me repeat that as to make sure it sinks in.

you.

mean.

nothing.

at.

all.

to.

me.

i really didn’t know how else to tell natalie. i wish to god there had been a more eloquent way for me to speak, like, if my words could have been flowery and flowing and full of imagery and figurative language that expressed how i felt in a meaningful and deep way. but. there wasn’t. that wasn’t me being blunt. that wasn’t me being direct. that wasn’t me being cynical. those were my flowery, flowing, figurative words. i simply do not care. beautiful.

she couldn’t take her eyes off of me. it was like if she stopped looking or blinked, then her eyes would somehow catch on fire, and this was her only chance to keep the flame from living. i could see tears welling up in the inside corners of her eyes. maybe she wanted to look away or blink and her body was naturally preparing to fight the flame deluge. she blinked and nothing happened. tears began breaking like the ebb tide. it’s awful to only be happy when she is crying.

“how can you not care? how can you say such awful things? how can you be so…so cold?”

things. there was an s there. plural. i’d said other things, yes. awful? well. yes. i said a lot of things out of vehement anger. honest to god i think i said things just to see if i could make her cry. it worked every time, and i think that made me feel good in a terrible way.

i kept a straight face with an empty stare. if our faces were paintings, mine was a blank canvas and hers was a jackson pollock. i just kept saying things i didn’t mean because i didn’t know how to stop. and now that i look back on it, i think i secretly wanted to be miserable.

“i don’t know.”

i know that sounds like a dumb thing to say, like i should have said more. but that’s what i said. i gave no excuse or reason. i never told her anything. i wanted to keep it all hidden inside and pretend nothing ever existed. and i did. and i was good at that. i did my best to act like i had never felt any recognizable human emotions other than hate and lust. that worked too.

“russ. it hurts so bad, and i don’t understand.”
“i don’t expect you to understand, nat. just get out.”

i only meant part of that. i measured my life in fights. a day we didn’t fight was a good day. there weren’t a lot of good days. i really didn’t expect her to understand. that part was true. but when i told her to get out, i didn’t really mean it. i just wanted to say the meanest things possible and for the life of me i still to this day cannot fathom an acceptable reason why. i suppose i wanted to see how far i could push things without breaking. it doesn’t matter now, it’s irrelevant, but i really think i just hated myself so much that it seeped out in my relationship with others.

you can only do that for so long before the cracks in the ground you’ve built on become ravines.

we always made up before she or i actually left. sometimes she would leave and i would call her and ask her to come back. i’d say things like, “i’m never going to talk to you like that again.” we both knew that was a lie.

she just sat there with her knees in her chest and her head in her knees, sobbing. i said it again.

“get out.”

i didn’t mean it. my love for her was so deep, but my love for myself did not exist.

she slowly raised her head up.

“and give me my fucking key.”

when i got really mad, i’d say fuck a lot. she knew i was mad when i said fuck, because i never never never cursed. and when i said things like, “give me my fucking key back,” she never did. well, she’d run to her keys, take it off the key chain and throw it at me. so, yeah, i guess she did. but she always got it back.

she slowly raised her head and, without saying anything, she crawled from the foot of my bed, slipped her shorts back on, took off my shirt and put hers back on and went into the living room. i stayed lying in bed. i was sleepy and i had to wake up early. a few seconds of silence, and i heard keys jangling then metal meeting my coffee table. this is the part where i would stop her.

this is the part where i always called her back to the bedroom because i was never really all that mad to begin with. i think i just liked to fight because i was so unhappy with myself. and i loved sleeping next to her.

this is the part where i should have stopped her.

but i didn’t.

i heard the top lock twist, then the bottom lock. i heard the door open slowly and then shut.

this is the part where i should have stopped her.

i heard a car door open and shut.

this is the part where i should have stopped her.

i heard an engine turn over.

this is the part where i should have stopped her.

i saw brake lights through the living room window as she backed out of the parking spot next to my car and drove away.

this is the part where i should have picked up my cell phone and called her.

but i didn’t. i just lied there and stared at the ceiling fan. it wasn’t on because she liked having the floor fan on better so she didn’t get so cold.

i really dont know how long i lied there, and i really don’t remember what was going on inside my head.

i just know that i closed my eyes and went to sleep.

now my key ring has two house keys on it.

saint valentine.

there are about a thousand sharks swimming inside my head right now. i keep feeding them, giving them bait in the form of blackouts and things we did when the lights were out. we were different people then. we were strangers by day, but when we lay ourselves down to sleep at night, it was like our bodies were waters that each had charted infinitely. i knew what it meant when her body got hot to the touch. i knew what it meant when her body tensed. i knew what it meant when she looked at me like that. i knew what it meant when the only time we exchanged an i-love-you was when the covers were pulled.

i remember the last thing she said to me. she said, “goodnight, dana.” when i woke up, she was gone. my chest weighed a ton. as soon as i opened my eyes and saw she wasn’t sleeping, i knew what had happened. i lied there for three days just staring at the crown on her pillow. i couldn’t bring myself to move or answer the phone or feed the cat. i should have been happy. i should have been a lot of things. but i wasn’t. my insides turned like rusty cogs with a wrench stuck in the works. my brain only worked in reverse. everything was stuck on repeat. i wanted to say terrible, awful things that no one should ever hear, but i didn’t want to be me any more. i didn’t want anyone to know that i had ever existed in such a state. i wanted to take some pills or something, anything, i didn’t care, that would just, i don’t know, erase the last six years of my life. i wanted to flip my mattress to the other side and pretend like i was the only one who’d ever slept in it. i wanted to act like i used two toothbrushes because my bottom teeth were more sensitive than my top. i wanted time to stop so that i could just figure out how the hell i could make it like i had never even loved before.

but.

i realized it takes a lot of remembering to erase what you knew to be absolutely, positively true.

and that wasn’t something i was strong enough to do.

so.

i lied there in that bed with red sheets

until

my muscles and bones and tissues and cartilige and everything i was possibly made of forgot how to function.

i thought that if i could get my body to start over, then i could starve these fucking sharks to death.

madeline.

he said he gave up a long time ago, but i’m not too sure if i believe him.

my phone rang. i knew who it was.

before i could speak, a voice trembled and crept from the other end.

“i don’t want to be awake any more.”
“mark.”

silence.

“mark?”
“i don’t want to be awake. any more.”

his voice crawled and seeped like sludge pouring through telephone wires.

“are you tired? can’t you go to bed?”

i knew that was stupid to ask. i knew what he was saying, and i knew what he was going to say next.

“i…i took some pills.”

everything froze. i pressed the receiver hard against my ear. i could feel the palm of my hand become clammy. my face was hot and for a second i thought that maybe mark had a good idea. and then i felt sick. my insides felt heavy and wet. and i felt no remorse or concern whatsoever.

“mark. what did. why. what did you take?”
“i don’t know. i…i”

i could tell mark’s mouth was dry and sticky, and he was having a difficult time forming any kind of coherent thought. i wanted to hang the phone up and pretend that he had never called in the first place.

“i took a lot. 20, 30. i don’t know. i don’t want to be awake any more.”
“you’ll never wake up, mark.”

i could hear mark sobbing, slowly and softly. he was sniffling and i could tell he was just waiting for me to say something, anything, like i had the answer.

my voice broke and became a whisper in a half-hearted attempt to try and convey some sort of care or sympathy for his plight.

“mark. mark. you’re never going to wake up.”
“tell her i’m sorry.”

before i could respond, mark let go of his end.

the receiver clicked with the weight of the world.

i loosened my grip on the phone. i pulled the it away from my ear and stared at it like maybe somehow mark’s voice would still be echoing inside.

i placed the phone back on the hook. i unplugged it from the wall and slowly wiped my sweaty palms on the front of my t-shirt.

then i went to sleep because at least i could go to sleep and not have to worry about never waking up.