Deadlies and Doorknockers

I was going through my folders, trying to organize my fiction before I really get down to the work of some “proper” writing, or at the very least a more disciplined schedule. Here’s a chunk of stream of consciousness. It evolved quickly, and very messily into these scraps. Jumpy, but whenever I have a block, I read it, and part of me gets pulled back in to that sort of frenzy that came from writing it.

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Why are all my stories dark?

Why can’t they be happy?

I have to have some happy moments, right? Somewhere?

No, fuck you. Happiness isn’t the same thing as having a home, having food, having an education. I don’t care what you say. I hate you, fucking hate you. Sometimes. I love you, about 90% of the time, even if my friends think differently.

I don’t kill myself because of you. Not because you love me, or because it’d hurt you. No, it’s because you’d blame each other, instead of yourselves. You’d probably get divorced and then you’d ruin him.

Almost every time you leave the house, I wonder what it’d be like if I was dead when you got back. Not that I’d know, being dead and all. Every time we go to the Bronx, I want to fall to my knees and claw at the dirt. I wonder what it’d be like to be under that dirt, sandwiched between the sky and his box. You know what, no, you can have him and your two plots. Put me somewhere else. I’ll be one of those graves no one visits, that time erases.

If I was a dad, hell if I was a parent, I’d kill him. I would claw and tear and hurt him for hurting what’s mine. So why don’t you do that? Where’s my justice? Do I have to do it? Fly around the world and kill him? I pay particular attention to extradition laws in class.

But I’d never put you in a home. I don’t like the idea. You know what I want to do though? I want to go to India and live there all by myself. And then I’d burn the house down, and the grounds, and the rubber trees and the church. I’d light it up and watch it burn.

I wasn’t always this angry. Not as a kid. Sure, I was a whiney brat at times, but I can’t recall ever throwing a tantrum.

But now, all I have is hate. I wake up with it, I sleep with it, and it’s almost like some sadistic lover. It has cold arms that can kill and comes only when it’s convenient, but never for me.

I like this idea, of this lover. Not for me, no, ‘cause it’s miserable as shit. But oh, what a story it could be. The rooms are dark and the sheets don’t shield and oddly, she doesn’t wake up alone.

And what about that one story, his story, the boy with the red sheets. After sleeping in his room I can hear it, the silence in the city. He lies awake and his brain is screaming and his fists are clenched. But there’s no one to hit. Sometimes I wait for it, expect it, to get thrown into a wall. But it never happens. “Chris Brown’s a fucking weak bitch.”

We make no sense. I can’t explain the relationship. It makes so much sense in my head, but I know that it doesn’t at all. Marriage? Yeah, we could, and we’d be great at it. We’d love each other and love our kids and love our lives. But then night would come and we’d die, over and over again. We can’t even speak on the phone at night.

No one knows me better than him. No one knows him better than me. People aren’t like that, relationships aren’t like that. It shouldn’t be like that. It probably isn’t safe, isn’t healthy. We can break each other with a sentence. I’ve seen him cry.

And what an apartment. I wish I could just spend all my time in its center, just listening and feeling. The one boy lies awake at night, wondering and wishing. Another sleeps fitfully, colors and pictures swirling in his head. Then there are the two who sleep with their arms around each other. One is just happy to have him, to be loved and be safe. The other doesn’t know what he does, or how he can make things better, but is okay with just being there.

It would probably be best if we weren’t friends.

Fuck.

I would like to spit my story onto these pages. Just take a brush and coat it with blood, tears and sweat. There’s no violence, but at the same time, that’s all there is. Violent, jarring moments where nothing makes sense and everything hurts.

I would like…

For the story to end? It doesn’t work that way and you know it.

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