Chapter Four

Drunkenly I find myself creeping closer and closer to the bus stop, clad in the bottom layer of clothes I had because of the amount of blood I just dealt with. "You wouldn't believe how long it takes a body to drain upside down in a cellar." The exhilarating high I was coming down from made the world seem a pipedream in the scope of everything around me. A fantasy to escape the macabre within, the inescapable crimson horror. I felt elucidated, disillusioned. Like I had curled up in the center of this all, untouched and unchanged by the shifting scape around the walls of my mind. Apart, while within.

I creep onto the bus at a slow pace, eyes watching the shapes and creatures around that make up the ambience. The sickly smell of stale piss and soda stained floors, shoes sticking with each step, with a thick and unimpeachable bottom layer of dirt sprawling the whole of the bus. I sat down at the back and stared aimlessly as it took off. Figures meander darkly across the neon washed pavement, shadows cast like mountains against brick. Soulless buildings littered each tenement and ghetto. The weariness had started to work down on me now, while physically exhausted and mentally drained I stare vacantly outward, eyes fixing on everything and nothing all at once.

The bus stops in that almost abrupt fashion that nearly knocks you to the ground, before I make my way to the front and thank the bus driver as I get off. The walk was sobering, dazzling lights in the sky hung like diamonds staring down on this smog-snuffed city, cold still nipping at every bit of exposed skin. My face felt raw and tender, like an open wound. "Though I don't think he cared too much..." I could see him following from behind now, pathetically hunched while clasping at something under his coat. With any luck, it'd be a gun, without l'd make do. I notice the second figure as they get closer and my reality became more and more clear. Long hair, small jacket, ripped jeans and dyed hair with peircings; I was getting fucked by two teenagers.

"Have you got the time, mister?" He asks, before shakily ripping the gun out from his under his coat. With this movement I could see the girls eyes light up, excitement dancing around the pinpoint pupils as the gun swayed shakily in the general direction of my head. I glance at his underwear waistband resting a solid three inches above his belt and felt an irrational urge to laugh hysterically.

"Now gimme all your money or I'll blow your fucking brains out faggot!" I count his steps, the gun coming closer and closer with each inch he gives. Five. The girl was swooning, eye-fucking him the whole way through, trusting in their own lethality. Four. I couldn't fight the urge anymore, so with a stammer and a cough, I exploded into laughter. Though only confusion washed over the gunman.

"Is that gun loaded?" I ask, still chuckling to myself. He stares at me for a few seconds before waving the gun closer to my head. Three.

"Didn't you hear me, shithead? I said gimme yo--"

"Give you my money, yeah I caught that but you still didn't answer my question..." I say dragging a cigarette to my lip, scanning their eyes as I chose my words, "Is the gun loaded?" I ask. Her brows were beginning to knit with his, confusion washing over them both.

"Yeah it fucking is, so you better--" She starts.

"Who loaded it?" As I interrupt, her voice stops in its tracks. They look back at one another like seeking some kind of confirmation, some reassurance as to why they hadn't pulled the trigger yet.

"Me--" He and the girl say in unison. I start chuckling more aggressively, I couldn't really help it.

"And what would you say, it's got about twelve rounds?" I ask.

"Yeah!" He barks back.

"Good," I say before stepping closer to press the gun against my forehead, "then shoot." Two.

He looks back at me with an air of terror and uncertainty, I'd worked over him to a fine powder and all that remained was fear behind bewildered eyes. I watched as he puzzled over the request, searching himself for the will to complete the act, I felt. I could see it, but he couldn't. As the flicker of doubt washed over his unready mind, balance was not his friend.

"I'm really sorry about this, but I lose all respect for any moron with his ass out, " I start as I light my smoke, "How you like the breeze?" I say before snatching the gun out of his hand. He stifles back as I draw it, before flopping violently on the ground as I blow out his knee. As the girl starts to flee in terror, I grab her hair and fling her on the ground too. Starting up again I bash the butt of the gun against her face, watching her drop against the curb.

"Fuck!" Screams the gunman as he starts trying to drag himself towards her. I crooked my head in a psychotic kind of way before making towards him. "You motherfucker,-- Don't fucking-- Don't fucking touch me!!" He shouts as I step in front of him. I stand over him silently as he shouts, watching---like her. He reaches out at me, and as I snatch his arm I slug him in the face. Dazed, he stares at me blankly, so I slug him again, knocking him on the ground. I grab his chin, raising his head I force the gun in his mouth.

"Don't worry pal, you're going to be just fine. What's your name?" I start ask.

"Michael!" The girl shouts from the ground, "Michael, michael, michael..." She continues, growing quieter with each begging word.

"Michael?!" I shout.

"Mi-gall!" He shouts with the barrel resting at the back of his throat. I look down at him and smile.

"Michael it is. Michael, everything is going to be just fine," Though the panic on his face made it clear this was of no comfort to him, and gears needed to switch, "Just look at your girl and stay calm." I start, meeting her eyes as I spoke.

"I uvh ou!" He cries out miserably through the barrel in his mouth, "I uvh ou! I uvh ou! I uvh ou---" He repeated over and over again, more and more pleadingly as time went on. She reaches out to him in vain, incapicated by the concussion dizzying her thoughts and racing her mind. Hot tears raced down her cheek, as did his. And where he couldn't scream at all, she was doing so hysterically. I lower down to rest my head on his shoulder, gun still protruding into the back of his throat, and I lean into his ear.

"Now have you ever considered," I say meeting the girls eyes as she lies just out of reach of her partner-in-crime, "that this business may just not be cut out for you?" Bam. The gunshot rings out as his body falls back limply, dead. She shrieks in horror, but as I pull the gun on her, she's washed over with silence. I smirk at her, and after one last look into her pitiful hazel eyes, I knew there was nothing left. Just a petrified husk now. So I left.

· · ·

"--a shooting today on Finch and Steeles leaving one dead and none injured. We've got Arianna Kipp on the scene," the TV blared, I guess I'd found myself daydreaming again. The look on her face was haunting, it'd been on my mind all day. I didn't realize I'd even made it back to work until I was deep in thought about her. Or rather, not her but the terror she possessed. To feel so strongly about anything was too jarring a concept, with no end in sight for this eternal numb.

"Hey, I'm here to return some movies," burps a fairly overweight middle-aged man from in front of the counter. I could smell his stink from a mile away, but I couldn't tell if it was his body or the sweat he was accumulating in the journey over. I toyed with the idea of gauging out his eyes with the pen I was holding firmly in my fist, but decided against it. I smile and he burps again to my dismay. Backalley Beauty Vol. 9, The Cunning Linguist, Soaking Wet Canadian Beavers Vol. 4... the excitement in his cold dead eyes alone could've put the fear of god into an atheist. "Now there's a great deal of people I loathe in this world. But lustful, conniving, egregious trash like this is a special kind of wretched filth. In his flabby face you can see every wasted opportunity he's watched pass by unflinchingly." I start ringing him up, register loudly slamming open with the force of god. "It's nothing he's done that's really garnered my hatred, but rather the waste of life he is. The putrid malcontent waste of space that any creature half his size could've made an empire from, has been reduced to an oversized husk whose strongest conviction is his shortest member. This isn't some kind of superficial prejudice or loathing towards the overweight, I loathe his wasted life and everything wasted breath he flaunts." I turn to smile to the man as I hand him his receipt.

"Have a nice day," I say smugly with a shit-eating grin. He walks away in careful awkward steps, like a eunuch at a party, heaving and breathing heavy with each one. I watch him make it out the door and feel unease creep into the back of my mind. "What was this feeling?" An uncertainty that I'd never had before seemed fog around my thoughts. A miserable droning feeling of empty and unproductiveness washed over me in waves, with needles of apathy sticking into my back and balling up the feelings deep down, and inside. "This feeling is what most would describe as, boredom."

The feeling hit quick and from all directions, and the need to leave hit just as suddenly. Doubling back behind myself, I pull open the back door to reveal Jimmy barely hanging onto his 'bed' in the backroom. I flick on the only light, a swaying incandescent bulb hanging by a chewed up wire, and watch as his stiff, motionless body came to life. He shot upright in an uneven slant like always, staring through me with exhausted eyes.

"Y-y-yeah boss?" He asks. My eyes fix on his hand clinging tightly to his arm, as he rocked in a shaky and unstable posture. I drag a smoke to my lip and hold one out to him, though he took much longer to respond to the movement.

"Hey Jimmy, didja want somethin' to eat?" I ask as he shakily reaches for the cigarette in my palm. He looks up to meet my eyes from his hunch, searching for something neither I or he could rightly place. Just a look of sincere acknowledgment as opposed to simple spatial awareness, he was making sure he was still actually here. Then his eyes darted down.

"No boss. A-a-anything else?" He asks, rocking back and forth.

"You okay, Jimmy?" I ask before inhaling sharply and sparking my smoke.

"Y-y-y---," He starts answering, but I realize his hands were shaking pretty violently. Reaching out I hold them still and meet his eyes.

"Hey Jimmy, I got somewhere I want to show you. I can close up now, do you want to go?" His brows knit and the look of concern washed over his face, his voice was faltering still with shaky breaths. I smile and simply start filing the sparse population of the store out.

The bus ride was long and cold, but staring at the rows of chicken coops in the day time was rather sobering. Jimmy couldn't go very long before we stopped off at the liquor store, but that hadn't stopped our journey. Laying barely conscious in a stolen shopping cart manned by myself, was the sleepy husk of Jimmy wrapped clasping a bag of bottles. Holding himself tight with the liquor bag in the center for warmth, his unconscious face pressed against the side and hair sticking through in all directions. Loading him into the house would be rather hard, but the neighbours' hearts would likely warm to see tenants had changed from a violent drug addict to an enfeebled alcoholic, though only time would tell.

"I'd spent all that remained of last night pulling down boards on windows, bleaching floors, and rewiring fried circuits. My advice to someone who is in need of a functioning base for habitation, crackdens rarely have even the bare minimum. Now the real danger was the blood leading into the basement, but then again I find my solution much more elegant and---"

"W-w-where are w-we?" Jimmy asks while rolling his head from side to side in the cart, as consciousness took it's hold. I had the cart by the back, and was trying to force open the newly waxed glass sliding door. He sat upwards while reaching into the bag for a mickey of gin, eyes bug-eyed and bulging with excitement.

"Just hold on a sec, once I get this working you should have two working doors---hopefully," I say haphazardly, yanking the door on its track to force it open. I feel a hand on my shoulder, with a strength and steadiness that was bordering on impossible. Jimmy was looking at me with eyes wide; a look of utter confusion and concern, "Come on, I'm trying to getcha into your new place." I say with a smirk.

A smile dances across his face before I watch it turn pale and sickly, and then vomit sprayed over the side in a flood. I wanted to comfort him but really the only thing I could do was slump him over my shoulder and carry him inside. I laid him out on the only mattress that I salvaged, and wrapped him in all the clean blankets I could find. He passed out the second I handed him the bottle in bed, clinging tight to a mountain of covers for warmth. I didn't stay to comfort him though, I didn't leave him any food. I didn't fix the running water, or pay for cable, I didn't do any of it, nor a word spared. "The words we choose are rarely things we ourselves spend time pondering. Our words aren't even really for ourselves, but for others to hold onto until the lonely moments of the night when the only sound is silence for comfort."

These thoughts littered my mind as I made my way to the basement. A white, weathered door with three locks lining down to the handle, stood tall as the entrance to the basement. Standing out like a torture chamber in a battered women's shelter. I fidget with the keys before disappearing into the basement. Darkness was the only greeting I received at first, waiting mentally to turn the corner of the stairs and flick on the last remaining light. I'd grope for the walls but every inch felt known and measured leading into the open-floored earthen basement. I pulled up my stool to the edge of the basin, unsheathing the blade I'd left on the work bench below the basement window.

"I've been wondering why you felt so unfulfilling and I can't seem to place it," I start tracing the blade on his side, "And now, now I have to deal with Jimmy," I slash down hard before starting again. If there wasn't a sock in his mouth he'd be screaming louder than I could manage, his eyes bulging as he hung by his feet from the ceiling, dripping blood into the basin below. Grime covered, coated in wretched filth, he stared outward in the dimly lit basement. Shadows casting over bags of body parts, the basements shape transforming with each shadow cast through the window. I crouch down next to his head, tracing the knife around his throat and watching it trail down to his chin.

"That means you're little nighttime howls aren't so cute anymore... In fact, they're pretty fucking annoying---" I say before grabbing his throat and holding the blade to his eye, "---that's why I'm going to fix that," I say before grabbing the top of his head and pulling back so his mouth opens wide, "Now stick out your tongue."

His eyes widened when he heard the words, and in a second he was spasming violently, swaying around in his suspension. I smiled before clubbing him in the face with a brick in my hand and then tossing it aside. His eyes looked delirious and spinning as I ripped his tongue out far enough to hold the dull end to the base of his tongue. Bloodshot, his eyes pierced mine and a smile crept onto my face, before slashing violently and sawing off his tongue. I toss it over in the direction of a garbage can, and then crouch down to meet his eyes.

"Now,---" I lean in and kiss him on the cheek, "---behave." I bolt up and make my way up the stairs. As I turn the corner and prepare to flick off the light, my eyes meet his one last time and my smile was secured. Dancing in my mind for hours was his flailing body, violently working to force out the words while reaching no catharsis. The sun was beginning to hang like a weary scarlet disk, and the night was beginning to creep in. "I felt---drained. The day is unbearably long and the night is unsatisfyingly short. Too long, do I have to hide myself in this filthy guise of a clerk. Thoughts of violence littering my days." The walk home was slow,---pitiful. The perfect squishing slice would continue to echo around in my head as I replay those perfect moments of slicing out his tongue in my mind again and again. Maneuvering the empty streets lined with walking corpses was even more tedious than the pedantic small talk they use to fill in the damning silence. Wasted breaths on the living dead.

I turn the corner and knew I'd be at the bus stop soon and my head already felt heavy. Eyelids hanging heavy made my weariness known faster and faster, but the source draining all the life from me was still unknown. Not an ounce of life left,---"Had I too, become the living dead?" My only yearning left was finding my head buried in the pillows on Scott's bed, and curling up comfortably in his sheets with a warm plate of his liver. Each bite even more orgasmic than the last, and drenched in the barbeque sauce he'd picked up before my unexpected arrival. I climb onto the bus and search for my seat, my eyes scanning through hoardes of meals; five high school kids talking loudly and fucking around on the bus bars, an old bitch with her withered old nose stuck up in their direction, a handfull of weathered commuters with weary and exhausted expressions... A bleak menu, to say the least.

I find myself in the back again, staring outward beside a mildly terrified girl who won't stop eyeing me. It took me a minute to realize my shirt collar was stained with nearly an ounce of blood and not a scratch on me. I just turned and smiled at her before reaching into my pocket. It was a swift motion, but one she paid stark attention once the handful of teeth was visible. I lightly place them down between us before tugging on the signal cord, half hoping she'd scream. She just sat there stunned, and as I walked off I wondered how long she'd stay there before chuckling to myself. Turning the corner and heading through the double doors at the building's entrance, I was greeted by the gentle buzz of the green-hued fluorescent lights illuminating the labyrinth of halls and stairs. A very warm welcome indeed.

"Hey, I know you---" A voice squeaks from behind me, I grab the gun in my inner jacket pocket and turn with a smile to be greeted with those soft green eyes, I feel my hand's grip loosen, "---yeah! Holy shit, you're the guy from the video store!"

"I uh,---" I stare her up and down, stunned and muttering incoherent nothings before finding my feet again, "---Yeah. You're the Thompson girl, yeah?" I say, regaining my confidence. The words that followed were soft and sweet, witty and melting... the gun was growing heavy in my pocket. And it wasn't until the realization she'd found where I lived that I realized why.

"So uh,--- Are you my new stalker?" I say with a glimmer of hope, if I'd known this came with the new scenery I'd have came here first. She flashes me a cute smile and a softer laugh, without an ounce of offense taken. How long do you think it'd take her to notice the blood?

"No, no, no I live here actually. Right up the stairs at 204, I'm surprised I haven't seen you here before." The uncertainty on her face sent unease all across my body, "Though I am pretty new here honestly." No better luck than a stranger to this shithole, no need for unwanted questions.

"Well I've living in 233 for the last bit honestly, I'm just very... quiet." I say assuringly, though her eyes don't seem to leave mine, fixed with a sense of purpose, "So I guess we're neighbours Ms..."

"Charlie," She says with a look of glee, "nice to meet you, uh---"

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

I watch as she puts her coat down over the side of the couch and kicks off her runners. Watching the gentle little nuances to her movements was mesmerizing, like the soft ripples in the water that grow to behemoth waves crashing on the surface, turmoil underneath and around but she sat calmly in the center. I tried to keep my eyes off her for too long, meandering towards the kitchen.

"It's comforting the burgeoning mold on cheap wallpaper is just part of the complex's aesthetic and not my room," I hear her chuckle to herself as I go round behind the bar, hands reaching out for anything sharp. I open the fridge and stare down four dozen tupperware containers and freezer bags full of assorted organs and anatomy, but the terror sets in as an ill-placed thigh hits the floor with a commanding boom, "Whatchu doin' over there?" Anxiety hits like a wall behind my eyes, boiling just over simmer beneath the surface of my cool demeanor... "Terror had truly set in."

"What?" She asks, starting towards the kitchen. My rushed mind springs for the lid and jostle pieces together in a haphazardly pathetic attempt to hide my supper. She rounds the bar and looks down with her sweet smirk before crouching down to help me. As hands reach closer, my bloodshot eyes dart to meet hers; then in an instant, I was calm. "Hey, you look a little spooked. I don't think you're gonna miss this uh,---" She stares for a moment of uncertainty and I see the glimmering rows on the knife block flicker with delight, "---chicken breasts. Especially cause it looks like you have a butcher shop crammed in there." Breath, breath was the only word I could hear echoing in my head. My trembling hands for a moment were calm, and I realized how bewildered and ravenous I seemed.

"I'm sorry, I just don't erm,---feel like myself today," I say, half hoping to wave away any concerns. However her hands on the box made my unease no more bearable, "the meat's rotten though. No point in you worrying about it." Her brows knit in uncertainty as she glances at the stockpile in the fridge. Silence only increased the anxiety, but when she met mine I felt melted by her soft green eyes. A smile broke and then a chuckle before the knife block dulled.

"It's okay, I'm a vegetarian." She says.

"Oh god no, now I'm going to have to kill you," I pipe back before helping her up to make our way to the couch. Her eyes glimmer when they meet the bottle of Jack Daniels on the bar, and without a word shared we found ourselves swigging from the bottle on the carpet next to the coffee table. A perfect moment with the seconds in between completely lost on both parties are rare to come across, even fewer and farther between than those moments alone where the seconds never return. It's like every second I wasn't hiding, I felt more alive than ever with her. Like I couldn't remember the words we shared but the melody it followed.

Words aren't hard for me, they never have been... a couple of wasted anecdotes and self-deprecation can make anyone mistake narcissism as confidence. Litter an odd-ball opinion here and there for arguments sake, then maybe, just maybe... it'll be enough. Enough false bravado to create an enigma of a man, the kind of person who garners infatuation. A cheat method for intimacy that can protect any sense of your true self from being endangered, a simple system for pure superficiality. But that felt impossible with her, hiding behind words and double entendres didn't entertain her, nor I. She looked at me, but she saw me. In my meager and shriveled form, but she saw me with her own eyes. Nowhere to hide, and nothing to be done but muster the confidence for honesty or jeopardize our conversation. Entranced by the gentle curl of her lip.

"So l-l-layne---, why'd you move to this shithole? No offense intended." She laughs off, I was uncertain even where the noise had come from.

"Oh yeah of course, no offense taken. By me or my little shithole," I laugh back. The silence between meaningful questions had finally let up, and I was forced to look inward. My eyes meet hers for a moment and she saw it, that little flicker of uncertainty dancing behind my eyes. Her look of amusement was dampered and for one awkward moment the wall was gone, and it was just me looking at her.

"I dunno honestly," I say trying to gather myself, my brain a soup of whiskey and troubled waters. I search the room to no avail before finding myself meeting her eyes again, "I just sort of got up and went." Her eyes lit up again with that fiery, passionate interest.

"So you got up on a whim, signed legal documents, and waited for the old owners of this place to move out, all in one sitting?" She asks. I knew she was joking but more or less that summed it up, "What led up to moving to this garbage heap of an apartment building?"

"Is that contempt I sense?" I pipe back, she just shrugs off a laugh, holding herself up with the bottle, "What's so wrong with this place? It seems pretty nice honestly---" Her cackle was cuter and cuter with each searching word I mustered.

"Well for starters, it smells like shit,---well, more like death honestly..."

"Well shit it's nice enough,---came with some perks," I say, "Got unlimited hot water, a couple assorted organs in tupperware, honestly lucked out pretty well," I jam my hands in my pockets, knife burning white hot while folded in my pocket, "What about you, what brought you to your corner of this shithole?" I ask as a bit of ceiling dust sprays down from the neighbours stomping overhead.

"Fuck,---can I have a smoke first?" She chuckles, I pull out my pack and flop it on the table next to the lighter. I watch her open it and carefully pick a winner, I never thought about it or even noticed it before, but she would sit and fidget with the box. Not for any real reason, I think she might have been uncomfortable taking her time picking a smoke. It's the smallest things that make you smile, but with her you never ran out of new things, "Well as it turns out moving in with your first boyfriend out of a mental institution isn't the safest bet." I choke on a cough and laugh, but she just gives an enduring smirk and takes a drag.

"Shit, I knew there had to be a catch." I start, all the while fidgeting with the knife.

"What do you mean, huh?" She puzzles.

"I mean you have great taste in movies, you're funny, and you could outdrink a wino. I was just a little worried you'd try and steal my kidney or something." I chuckle, she just keeps a straight face.

"How do you know I'm not?" She jokes. I smile as the thought of bashing her head against the coffee table stirs. Somehow though, curiosity took precedence over primal urges.

"So, if you don't mind me asking... what happened to the, uh---boyfriend?" I ask, before coughing on a long drag. My lungs feel inflamed, and the very real danger of lung cancer crept into the back of my dizzied mind. Like a smoke alarm in a deaf person's house. Uneasy eyes began to set around nearby. I only realized she couldn't meet my eyes once she started talking about him.

"Well he uh,--- burned himself alive in the bathtub of our apartment," She says grimly, staring blankly like nothing could impact this feeling of absoluteness. The inescapable definitiveness of it all just beginning to sink in as the words came out clawing.

"Jesus christ, what the fuck?"

"Yeah I know right," She says before taking a drag, "Worst part is he didn't even leave note. I just came home one day and found the fire department outside of my building, I thought maybe someone had forgotten to turn off the gas on their stove or something, I didn't even really believe it until I had to ID the body... I just wish he left something, ya know." I wanted to comfort her, or say something helpful,-- human. But my mind was wrapped up in the thought of a smoldering corpse disintegrating in a bathtub. Violent and horrible thoughts littering my mind like a feral beast with dysentery, with her soft green eyes a million miles away.

"But yeah, after that I stayed with my sister and after seeing a listing for my apartment I just sort of jumped on it. Haven't found a job yet, but lucky for me I guess that Lou already took out a life insurance plan on his ass a year or so beforehand. Yippie!" She says before another swig. I sit back with uncertainty of what there was to say, but all I could muster was lighting my smoke in silence. She looked at me with a kind of amused glee, like she'd completely forgotten the last thing she'd said and had wondered where all the energy in the room had drained to. Not a shade on her.

"You ever been to Centennial Park?" She asked, I shake my head with a dizzying force, "Never? You should see there now, Christmas lights clung to trees out of season and barrel drums flaming with the smell of burning dogshit lingering in the air. It's really the only thing keeping me here." She said that all without leaving my eyes, staring me down and giving me a hard case of opia.

"You know, I wouldn't mind going with you right now. Sounds like my kind of place." I say heaving a dry chuckle, "It'd even gimme time to dispose of some murder weapons." She just leaned her head back and rested it on the seat of the couch, back pressed with her bottom firmly on the ground.

"Fuck that, walking like this sounds like a migraine and a half, and I'm too tired to deal with that shit. I think I only have the energy for one of two things right now, and one of them is sleeping." She said. 'One of two things?' What exactly was the other? I search the room for the answer, but my uncertainty was the only thing that didn't waiver. I start chuckling in my impotent defeat, with no real clue at all. Did she know who I was? The knife block started feeling more and more like it wasn't talking to me at all... Did she know? I stare down her smile and wonder which one of us was going to strike first. Though the thought of gauging out her eyes just made my stomach queasy, whiskey doing rolls in my stomach, waves crashing hard like a gut-punch.

"What's the other thing?" I ask, as lazily as possible. My eyes searing through her head with wonder and fear.

"Oh,--- fucking." She pipes back. I dart my eyes back to her but I couldn't read a single thing off her. An enigma wrapped in a hundred and thirty pound sack full of life and neurotic excitement. Chaotic neutral. She looks back at my sheepish look, back pressed against the feet of an armchair, and smiles before taking a drag from her smoke as she leaves it in the ashtray. She leans in close, on her hands and knees, and I can feel her warm breath on my neck. Her hand sliding up my thigh as the other rests on the back of my head. I feel my hands at her side working their way up to her hips with some kind of natural gravitation. I feel her teeth sink in softly as she starts sucking my neck, and my hand reaches closer to her panties elastic, thumb resting gently underneath. She grabs at my shirt with a kind of almost frustration in her eye, a natural annoyance that it had even been there at all. I grab her waist as her legs wrap around mine, and I carry her into the bedroom before slamming the door. Scott's right leg is still sitting in the bath.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Love, marriage, family? All these things seemed so distant and impossible to grasp. Like concepts meant to sell greeting cards, just as baffling as Arbour Day. But they all hold such incomparable merit and beauty in them, such untouched perfection. Clinging to those around you to keep your grip on life tight, and waste not what precious time you have with anyone else. Creating a life to surpass your own, giving them a name that will hopefully garner more meaning than yours ever could, and watching as their first baby steps turn to long strides of adulthood. Watching yourself reap what you sow. And in the end that's all you can really do.

The antonym of death has always been life, but this observation has never really been explored. What does death truly hold? The antithesis of all that's in life? Are there no picket-fences? Or televisions? No chicken-coop houses, or big families? No blue skies, great lakes, miles of forests or the ineffable splendor of space? What could the opposite of it all really hold? Maybe that's the drive behind the race to the end, the factor that fills us all with fear... That absolute certainty in the back of all our minds, that there really isn't a cloud waiting for us. There's no heaven or hell, no fields nor skyscrapers, but rather... Nothing. Maybe that's what pushes us to live so hard, the knowledge of all the things you'll never get to do or say, to see and feel. Or maybe we're all just too scared to want to know what nothing really means.

What is life if not a long introduction to funeral attendees. Choosing the bereaved. Finding those to carry the torch, walk the mile, or just give credence to some self-fulfilling prophecy of collectivist neurosis. Surrounding yourself with people you love to wait for your timer to conk out, and hope half of them show up to see you locked in a box till judgment day. Each friend a guest at your funeral, each family member a speaker. Create stories to be shared by those who loathed you in life, make memories for those that abhorred you in animation, so they can hand out the pieces to indifferent onlookers. It all made some kind of perfect sense, even if it was bewilderingly morbid and psychotic. What a testament to the human spirit, wouldn't you say?

"That was amazing!" She says, I look over at her with a bewildered look before staring straight up. I hear the flick of a lighter as she lights her post-coital cigarette.

"Terrible writing..." I cough.

"What?" She asks back.