Silence

Softly, quietly, silently I sit

in darkness at the end of May.

Happy Birthday

"What's wrong?" she asked, nuzzling his scratchy face.

"Nothing," he said, turning away from her to concentrate on his work.

"Something's wrong," she persisted. "I can tell. You know that I always know when something's wrong."

"I just need to work," he said. "I'm so far behind. I don't think I'll be able to catch up for months."

"Don't work," she said, pushing her way into his lap. "Work is stupid." She dragged her long nails across his chin, her crooked pinky catching on the corner of his mouth, and then kissed him on the lips. "Let's do something fun," she said. "Let's do something we both like."

"I can't," he said, avoiding her eyes.

"Why?" she said with a mock whine. "Nobody's here. All you do is work. You never pay attention to me. And today is my special day. It's my birthday. Did you forget? Today you should give all your attention to me. You love me and I know you want me. Stop fighting it and just love me."

He sank into his chair, letting out a heavy sigh. The ache, the pain, the hurt welled up inside him, crushing in all around his heart like a burning fist until it felt like his chest was caving in on itself. He closed his eyes, screwing up his face, emptying his mind, but it didn't help. Nothing ever did. It never stopped. It never let up. It never went away. It was always there; that fucking pain, invisible, intangible, incurable. If he had the guts, he would have cut it out himself, years ago. But...

When he opened his eyes, she was there, patient and unaging, her dark eyes fixed on him. "I'm here," she said softly.

He reached out to touch her face and she grinned eagerly, her tawny cheeks flushed with excitement. He felt his own heart begin racing frenetically, his guts twisting with anticipation, his fingertips buzzing with longing.

But as his fingers felt for her face, there was nothing but empty air and he leaned forward over his desk, alone. "No," he said to himself. "No, you're not."

Gray Eden

“I thought you were applying to grad school this semester?” she asked. “What happened? What changed?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” he said, running his thumb along the side of his nose. “I’ve got too much going on. I don’t need to pile on more junk. It’ll weigh me down.” Somewhere outside, in the deep blue distance of the skyline, zipping above the horizon, the sound of a jet ripped through the air, rattling the windows of the building like the tail of a coiled snake. He let his mind race along the cliffs, out into the ocean, into the frothy, churning vastness of the water. 

“But you’ve been wanting to get back into school for so long, ever since I first met you. Remember when we first met and you were starting that program? You were so excited. Why didn’t you finish it?”

He looked past her for a moment, thinking back on how different things had been back then, back when they had first met. It felt like it had been a lifetime ago. Some things he could remember so clearly. Other things were floating just on the periphery of his memory, just out of reach. “I got distracted,” he said at last. “I had too much going on. I was working too much. I was burning the candle at both ends. It was a recipe for failure. I was bound to fail, actually, given what I had going on. Who could have succeeded with all that on their plate? I don’t want to do that again. I’m not going to make that same mistake.” He stopped and looked at her for a moment. “Besides, I have so much more going on, now. I have the kids. I have to think about the kids. I’d rather spend my time with the kids than in a classroom, listening to someone drone on about whatever.”

“Was I the reason that you dropped out of school the first time? Was I a distraction?” She smiled as she spoke, her red lips and white teeth grinning, her black hair hanging like a sheet of silk across her shoulders, down her back.

He hated her. He told this to her every day. “I hate you,” he would say, “please leave me alone. Please get out of my life.” But she never left. She was always with him, everywhere he went. Sometimes she would disappear for a few minutes and he would take a deep breath and feel a profound sense of relief, but then she would be back again, staring at him with her dark, unblinking eyes, clicking the stud in her mouth against her teeth.

“Yes,” he said, at last. “And no. I can’t blame you totally. It was just too hard to work full time and take classes, especially those classes. I suck at math. I’ve always sucked at math.”

“But you’re an accountant,” she teased. “You’re so good at math. You always help me when I’m stuck on something.”

“I am not an accountant,” he said, shaking his head. “I still don’t understand how I got into this field.” He thought back to when he had been hired, to that very first day and the interview that had landed him the job. He had just moved back from the Bay Area and had been struggling to find work as a programmer, like what he had been doing in Oakland. He had applied to hundreds of jobs, but had had no luck in even landing an interview when this call for a position as an accountant had come out of the blue. Desperate for an income, he has accepted the position, even though he had no formal training as an accountant. Now, six years later, he was still working that same job, even after everything that had happened. His job was a prison. He would never get out.

“You can get out of it, just go back to school!” she said, encouragingly. 

“I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t. I’m not going to spend all that time, when the kids are so young, away from them. I’d rather be with them. I’d rather spend my time with them and raise them and give them as much of myself as I can. They’re the only thing I care about in the world.”

“What about me?” she asked. She looked genuinely hurt, but he knew that it wasn’t real. Nothing about her was real. Everything she had ever told him had been a lie.

He turned and walked away, toward the floor to ceiling glass windows in the conference room. The windows faced west, overlooking a golf course that stretched off toward sheer cliffs that dropped into the churning Pacific hundreds of feet below.

“I won’t do it,” he said out loud, to himself. “I’m not going to be away from them.”

When he turned around, she was gone.

He stepped out of the small conference room and walked past a large C-shaped couch, and then down a short hall. The hall opened into an intersection of other hallways. One led straight ahead, one to the left, and one to the right. He turned right and followed the hall past the men’s restroom, past an elevator, and then to the office that he worked in.

The office was full of small cubicles and the tiny sounds of clicking keyboards. Everything was gray, from the floors to the ceilings. The southern face of the office was lined with floor to ceiling windows that looked out on a small lawn studded with large trees and hedges. Across the lawn, there was another office building with a red brick facade and black mirrored windows. He meandered through the maze of identical gray cubicles with small gray nameplates on them.

His own cubicle opened to the south, so that his back was toward the windows when he sat at his desk. He would often peer over his shoulder while pretending to work, turning his head so that he could see through a narrow path between cubicles to the world outside the office, to the sun and the sky, the grass and the trees, the wind and the birds. He had spent time in jail before, in solitary confinement, locked away for months straight, never being allowed to go outside and smell the fresh air or feel the sun on his face. Being in the office, being at work, reminded him of that confinement, only here it was worse, because he could see freedom anytime he wanted by simply turning in his chair, but it was always just out of reach, always there but never accessible. He spent his days trying to imagine a way out of the prison that was a “successful” career, but all of the things he came up with fell flat. At the end of the day, he needed the money, and he needed the benefits. He had two small children. He would make any sacrifice to provide for them, even if it meant trading away his happiness for the security of an office job.

He sat at his desk, staring blankly at the computer monitors in front of him. The walls of his cubicle were lined with pictures of his wife and his children, notes with account numbers for write-offs, interest, and bank fees; drawings his kids had made, and other miscellaneous printouts. Two cubicles over, he could hear the jolly voice of the office manager, Maria, chatting loudly with one of his co-workers.

“Did you love it? Was it great? How did she like it?” Maria asked in rapid fire succession. Maria was in her early sixties. She was overweight and quite homely, with a mannish face and short, thinning hair, but she was the kindest, most jovial person in the office.

“Oh, she just loved it,” the co-worker, Nicole, said. “It was great, really just amazing. It was different than when you and I went, just different. But the man who played Mufasa was the same. We met him after, outside; we stayed after to go and meet up with him outside. But all the children were different. They had different children. It was just so good.” Nicole was incredibly fat and very short. She was in her mid fifties but acted like she was in her teens. The world revolved around her and her opinions and she had no time for anyone that didn’t agree with her or at least submit to her point of view. Her moods would swing wildly from moment to moment. She hated fish and was allergic to coconut.

“It must have been great,” Maria said. “We didn’t have that drive - I mean you didn’t have it. It was right here in town. You know, they say that it’s the best musical of all time.”

“It really is,” Nicole said. “I just love that soundtrack. It’s so good.”

Meanwhile, in the cubicles adjacent to his, the four people in his team, the small group that handled cash and compliance in the office, were discussing Diana’s dinner plans for the weekend.

“I don’t want anything sushi,” she said. “After Tuesday, I was sick. Tuesday night and Monday morning were not good for me. It was not good. No good.” Diana was in her late fifties. She owned a motorcycle and fantasized about living off the grid. She had no children and her elderly mother was still alive, so Diana had never grown out of being a selfish teenager, interested in nothing but her own gratification. She was deeply conservative and believed wholeheartedly that there was a vast liberal conspiracy aimed at depriving her of her freedom and her liberty. She kept her hair in a short perm and wore long flowing outfits that hid her wide hips and de-accentuated her short stature. Diana hated all things ethnic or un-American.

“But you had the chicken,” Natasha told her, “even the chicken made you sick?” Natasha was in her early thirties. She had the body of a ten-year-old boy, if a ten-year-old boy were capable of growing basketball-sized breasts.  Natasha’s job in the office was to scan documents and then index them in the convoluted electronic document management system that stored all of the office's digital files and correspondence. She owned a camera in addition to her cell phone and this fact made her the unofficial office photographer.

“I know I had the chicken,” Diana said, “but it must have been something… It was something at that place…” She let the implication hang in the air without explicitly telling everyone that the reason she had become sick was the inferior quality of the food, inferior because it was Asian, and that it had been prepared by people of an inferior race. All of this had conspired to guarantee that she would become ill. In fact, she hadn’t been sick at all. But now that she had told everyone that she had been sick so emphatically, she herself already believed the lie so sincerely that it had become a truth.

“What exactly are you interested in eating?” asked Kate, whose cubicle opened towards Diana’s so that their backs faced each other while they were working. Kate’s cubicle used to be Diana’s, but Diana moved to her current cubicle nearly five years ago because the light coming in from the floor to ceiling windows on the south side of the office was too bright and was giving her headaches. Kate had taken a promotion about three years ago and had moved into Diana’s old cubicle, which had been vacant up until that point. Kate had a two year old son that looked like a tiny doppelganger of Mao Zedong. Her husband was most definitely a closeted homosexual.

“You know,” Diana teased, “salad… steak… normal stuff like that.”

“So you want American food?” Kate asked, laughing.

“Yes!” Diana said, exuberantly. “And if it’s gluten free, of course.”

At this moment, Ryan, the newest member of the cash and compliance team, chimed into the conversation. His cubicle was on the other side of a wall from Kate’s, caddy corner to Diana’s. Ryan had only worked in the office for about three months, but he enjoyed injecting himself into every conversation that he overheard, no matter the topic. He was secretly in love with Kate and every action he took in the office was in fact part of a plan he had devised to impress her and win her affection. Ryan was in his mid thirties.

“Y-y-y-ou know, D-d-d-iana,” he said, his voice building in volume as he stuttered over his words, “if you’re looking for American, because t-t-that’s what you’re looking for, American, and you’ll be Downtown, you know, like that’s what you said, American and Downtown, then there’s this place.” As he spoke, he lost his stutter. Diana, chirped her acknowledgement of what he was saying in all the appropriate places to show that she was listening attentively. “Well, like, you know, there’s like this place,” he continued. “It’s, uhm, well, like, it’s this American place, Downtown. Like, it’s so good. Like, it’s really good. So, like, well, y-y-y-ou want to go there, okay - if you aren’t going anywhere else, you know? Like, if you don’t have any other plans. Because, like, if you have something else, then whatever, you know? But, like, if not, then totally do this, okay? Like it’s so good. It’s called Sully’s. It’s American, Downtown, and, well, like, it’s great. You have to try the fries. That’s it. If you go. Like, if you have no other plans. Like, if this is the place you go to, because you can’t choose or something, like, then, like this is the place you should go. And go to the menu and choose the ‘Sully’s Fries’.”

“I will, thank you!” Diana said after a moment of uneasy silence following Ryan’s verbal outburst. “I really will, that sounds so good.”

“Just, like, check it out or something, if you have no other plans, you know, if you aren’t going somewhere else,” Ryan continued, encouraged by Diana’s positive reception.

“I really will,” Diana said. “Thank you, Ryan.”

He sat motionless, listening to the banter. Everyone here bantered. They had so much to say, so much to share. The sounds of their voices got under his skin.

“Let’s get out of here,” she chided. She was sitting on his desk, wearing a purple turtleneck dress and a pink wig with stark bangs that hung just above her eyes. “You hate being here, I hate being here; let’s just go.”

He put his earbuds in, ignoring her. He clicked around on his computer aimlessly, opening and closing windows robotically. The electronic buzz and pulse of downtempo instrumentals hummed in his ears like a digital mosquito. He felt as if there were a weight crushing down on his chest, on his hands, and on his stomach. She sat staring at him, her legs dangling from the gray desk. The sounds of clicking mouses and tapping keyboards wiggled into his ears, around his earbuds, like a thousand little chisels chinking away against his concentration.

“Come on,” she said, smiling. She put her hand on his hand. He looked down at where her fingers would have been. Her long nails. Her tanned skin. He was alone, surrounded by people who knew nothing about him, surrounded by people he couldn’t stand, surrounded by people that he felt no connection to. He was completely alone. He looked at where she had been sitting on his desk. He looked at the gray walls of the cubicle, dotted with photos, and odd notes. He felt nothing inside, nothing but weariness. A vision of falling flashed before his eyes. Falling through the sky; down, down, down. 

“Come on,” she said. She was standing behind him, wearing gray leggings and a black tank top. “Let’s go.”

As he stood, the weight that had been crushing him slid from his body and clattered to the floor with a sound like two trains slamming into each other at full speed. He took a deep breath and then walked into the sea of gray that surrounded him.

He walked through the maze of cubicles, past people melting into their chairs, fusing with their computers, evaporating into the aether of the office. She went just ahead of him, her long black hair flowing in a non-existent wind that touched only her, carrying the scent of her to him so that he was floating in her essence. As he watched her move, he thought to himself that she wasn’t real. Nothing about was real, and nothing about her ever had been. She was a figment of his imagination. She always had been. She always would be. Where was she now? What was she doing? He hated her. He felt it deep inside the core of his body. He hated her so very much for what she had done to him, how she had used him and then abandoned him. She turned to look at him over her shoulder, her teeth flashing white in the fluorescent lights, her hair framing her face like a black and purple crown, billowing in all directions like the rays of an anti-star; darkness, all consuming, all knowing.

He burst into the hallway, unable to breathe, the sun pouring in through tall windows running the length of the hallway like the luminescent ribs of a sleeping monster, pulsing with light as the dappled shadows of trees played across the panes. He walked down the hallway, his legs made of sand, melting into the gray ocean, his blonde hair hanging in his eyes like rays of the shining sun stabbing into his pupils, his lungs shriveling in the recycled air. She stood at the end of the hall eating a cookie, admiring her own reflection in a large glass door. Every step was like moving a mountain. He felt on the verge of collapse. She laughed gayly, the way she used to when she wanted to emphasize the point of what she was saying. The sound of her voice filled the hall, echoing like the laughter of a thousand Buddhas, shaking the building violently. On all sides a grim funeral procession moved past him, candles held in gaunt hands, faces covered by white shrouds, bodies draped in white robes.

Maru

It is said that a cat raised for seven years or longer would kill the one that raised it. I will have had Maru for seven years, tomorrow. I can see that her tail has begun to split. Tonight will be her last. She gives me a knowing look, staring through me with her cat eyes. Maybe tonight will be my last, also.

Cure

He woke suddenly, his face slick with sweat. "I had a dream!" he shouted. "I know how to save you, I saw it clear as day! I know how to undo this all, how to go back, how to heal you like nothing had ever happened!"

The night answered him with silence.

"Please," he said fumbling with the tangled, sweat-soaked sheets, "I know you're there! I have the answer!"

He managed to stumble from his bed and then darted through the darkness, tripping over some unseen obstacle and landing against the corner of a desk, opening a gash on his forehead and splitting his lower lip. He struggled for a moment as the night swirled around his vision, then managed to pull himself up to the desk. His hands shot out into the dark, groping desperately for something to write with.

"Fuck!" he moaned in despair, fighting to lock the dream in his memory even as it began to evaporate. At last, he found a marker and he began scrawling his thoughts out on the surface of the desk as quickly as he could, the marker slipping wildly in the blood that was pooling on the table. He dragged his forearm through the blood to clear some space but then his pen stopped moving. The dream was gone.

He slumped in his chair, his heart a dull pounding in his ears, and quietly cried. "I knew the answer," he said to the emptiness around him. "But now it's gone."

Peachy

"But what will I do?" he asked, his voice tinged with panic.

"當你想念我的時候 去找一杯南瓜拿鐵 聞著咖啡香 就像是嘗到了我的頭髮 我的唇", she told him. "Everything will be peachy, you'll see."

Tiger, Tiger

 I lay on a torn-up bean bag chair while my boyfriend grunts and spasms on top of me, the disappointing climax to about forty-five seconds of clumsy humping. After he finishes, he slumps into me for a few seconds, his fat sweaty body crushing the air out of my lungs as he pants and wheezes. When he catches his breath, he rolls off of me and charismatically pulls off the spent condom, tossing it on the bright blue shag carpet that covers the floor then pulls up his boxers so they halfway cover his hairy ass.

I watch as he makes his way insouciantly across the basement. Rays of sunlight pour in through the basement window, lighting up his pale white skin like an incandescent light bulb and smoothing out his blotchy skin, erasing the pimples on his butt so that he looks like a radiant angel of light. My eyes flutter involuntarily against the brilliance of his gleaming flesh and I have to look away because I can no longer bear the sight of him.

When my boyfriend gets to the couch, he fishes a joint out from between the couch cushions. He sits down unceremoniously and lights up, his eyes crossed and his lips pursed around the fat little thing in his mouth, a look of utter concentration on his face like he’s performing fellatio on a king or a minor god. Once he gets his joint going, he unpauses his Xbox and picks up his game where he had left off. Instantly the room is filled with the sounds of video game violence and excitement and my boyfriend forgets that I’m even in the room.

I close my eyes and my mind wanders off so that I’m not in the basement of my boyfriend’s parent’s house. I’m a thousand miles away. I’m with Him. I come without even touching myself and melt into the bean bag chair, the sounds of headshots and explosions and teabagging fading to nothing in the background. As I fade out of consciousness, I feel his fingertips running across my collarbones and up the curve of my neck, sending warm tingles down my spine and into my panties. I doze off soon after I come and dream of Him and our happy life together on the other side of the country.

* * *

“Sil!”

The sound of my name creeps into my head like a slow-burning fire.

“Sil, did you call in for the pizzas? Sil, are you awake? Sil, when will the pizza be here?” The questions are shot at me rapid-fire like hot slugs blasting from the barrel of a machine gun in a video game but I’m still asleep and while I hear the words I don’t really understand what’s being said. I shift in the bean bag chair and let my head flop over so that I can see the couch where my boyfriend is sitting but he isn’t alone anymore, now he’s there with three other guys.

David, John, and Peter are all crowded onto the couch with my boyfriend, cursing and yelling at the television as they crush the buttons on their game controllers with sausage-like fingers. They’re all like my boyfriend, unemployed part-time students who spend most of their days smoking weed and playing video games.

“Sil,” my boyfriend calls to me again, his voice rising in agitation, “did you call for those pizzas or what?”

I roll out of the bean bag chair and run my fingers through my close-cropped hair, rub my nose with my palm. “Sure, I’ll order them now,” I say, and then I walk upstairs, leaving them to their games and their pot.

In the kitchen, I slump against the wall and pick up the phone to dial for some pizza but my fingers are like wild animals completely out of my control and they begin attacking the number pad like it’s a piece of raw meat, my nails click-click-clicking on the numbers, dialing an exotic area code far, far from here and then pecking out seven more digits in quick succession. The numbers run through my head, clogging my better judgment. I run my fingers through my hair and tug at my ear and slump against the wall and then the silence in the earpiece is broken by the drone of a ringback tone followed by two seconds of silence, followed by another drone, followed by another two seconds. My heart sinks into my stomach as I think to myself that He won’t answer. He’s busy. He’s out.

Click. “Hello?” His voice is icy velvet, dark and luxurious and I feel myself come a little just from the way these two syllables roll out of his mouth, across a million miles of telephone lines, and into my ear. I hold the receiver against my ear in silence, sweaty-palmed and jello-legged.

“Hello?” I can sense the slightest loss of patience in His voice. I love how He sounds when He gets angry. Something in me wants to blurt out that I love him but I also want to extend the silence until he becomes angry and hangs up on me. Then I’ll call him back and soothe his temper and let his voice wash over me and carry me away like a flower petal floating on top of a fast-moving current. These two desires battle inside me while my fingers grasp the phone in a death grip. Finally, I manage to whisper, “Daddy.”

“Tiger,” he says, his deep voice suddenly soft and tender. I slide down the wall until I’m sitting with my knees under my chin. I open my mouth to say something but as I breathe in I catch a whiff of my own scent, of the smell of fresh sex, and I feel suddenly ashamed at what I’ve done, at having had someone else inside of me and not having asked his permission. Tears begin to well up in my eyes and by the time I open my mouth again to speak, no words come out, only a dry rasp like the sound of a small animal dying.

“It’s OK,” He says to me over the phone.

My cheeks flush and my eyes lock on my toes. I wiggle them a few times before asking softly, “how did you know?”

“I can hear it in your voice. Don’t worry, Tiger. It’ll be over soon.”

The ice broken, we settle into an easy conversation about what I did this morning. Our conversations are always about me. He loves hearing about me, about what I want and like, about what I think and care about. Before I realize it, forty minutes have passed and I cut myself off mid-sentence: “I’m sorry, I need to go! I was supposed to order a pizza for my boyfriend and his friends.”

“That’s fine, Tiger,” his voice is so fucking sexy. I think about asking him to tell me how much he loves me while I masturbate but I’m too shy to ask.

“Daddy,” I purr, “I can’t wait to see you!”

“And I can’t wait to see you,” he says, “do you have all your things packed? Is all your paperwork in order?”

“Yes,” I lie. I haven’t packed a single thing. I was going to show up in nothing but the jeans and t-shirt that I’ve been wearing since yesterday morning. I don’t even have a pair of clean panties. I feel suddenly childish and petty, realizing that I’d expected him to buy me an entire new wardrobe; new clothes for a new life. But I don’t care. I run my fingers through my short hair, massaging my scalp as he goes over the details of our plan. He recounts times and places and makes sure I’ve memorized his number and address. He deposited $500 into my Wells Fargo checking account yesterday so I’d have more than enough money for any sort of emergency that might pop up, including a ticket home if I got cold feet.

I can feel a little angry bubble rise up in my throat when he says this. I won’t get cold feet. I want him. I want him more than anything.

“Daddy,” I say, cutting Him off mid-sentence, “tell me.”

“Tell you what, Tiger?”

“Tell me what I want to hear.”

He laughs throatily then says, “You’re mine, Tiger.”

“I’m your what, Daddy?”

“You’re my lovely boy. My plaything. My toy. Mine. My beautiful boy.”

I shudder involuntarily and have to sit down as my legs turn to jelly. I fucking love it when he says this to me. I’m His. His beautiful boy. I don’t know why. It isn’t that I don’t like being a girl. I love being a girl. I love my vagina. I love my body. But I identify as a boy. I am a boy. And He is the only person who knows this. He’s the only person who understands me.

“I love you, Daddy,” I whisper.

“I love you too, Tiger.”

I hang up and look again at the time. “Fuck,” I sigh.

* * *

I’m in Michael’s room, looking through all of my stuff that has ended up at his place over the course of our relationship. There’s a picture of us from last summer, his hand cupped over my boob, pinned on the wall. I kick a pile of dirty clothes then look through his closet for a hoody that I know I left here and I want back. Mellow electronic music drones on soothingly as I wait on hold. I pick through Michael’s hockey jerseys and worn-out polo shirts, humming along absentmindedly to the music.

My brain slowly starts to unravel and I feel like a kitten chasing threads of yarn dancing in the wind. I wonder what His hands will feel like against my skin. Should I wear socks? I imagine how his lips will taste. I scratch at the inside of my thigh.

There’s a click-pop followed by a raspy near silence. Then: “What are you wearing,” a voice says with unnerving intensity. I feel my skin prickle with annoyance but I don’t say anything. I can’t find my hoody so I leave Michael’s room and walk across the hall into his mom’s room. It always smells so good in here. I rifle through her panty drawer and find her vibrator. After a long and awkward silence, the voice finally says, “would you like me to take your order?”

“You’re a stupid bitch, Randy,” I say flatly, flopping down on Michael’s mom’s cushy pink comforter. Her room is decorated like she’s a spoiled sixteen-year-old girl.

“I bet you’re in your panties,” Randy replies. I can hear his tongue flopping around dryly in his mouth like a dying fish.

“I bet you’re in your mom’s panties,” I say, my annoyance growing.

“Actually I’m in my sister’s panties,” he says. I know he’s got his dick in his hand. I just want to punch him in the neck. I click the vibrator on and off, on and off. Three more hours, I say to myself.

“I want two pizzas,” I say, not playing into his little fantasy, “pepperoni and sausage on one, pepperoni and olives on the other.”

“How bad do you want this sausage,” Randy says, “how bad do you want this sausage in you?”

“I’m going to tell Michael and he’s going to kick your stupid pimply ass, Randy.”

“Aww, come on Silvia, don’t do that.” I can’t help but smile at how quickly his facade cracks. Michael is a pudgy mama’s boy. He wouldn’t protect my honor, not even from a little ginger scarecrow-like Randy. But something about crushing Randy’s ego has thawed my annoyance into a mildly horny playfulness so I say to him: “I’m going to tell him everything.”

Earlier in the summer I was really drunk and let Randy touch my bare breast. Ever since then he’s lived on a knife’s edge; on the one side a deathly fear that my limp dick boyfriend will find out and kick his ass, on the other side an almost self-destructive craving for more. I don’t know what it is but boys love me. Boys love me but I love men. I press the vibrator against my clit and let this irony buzz away.

His voice cracks as he pleads with me, “No, please don’t do that, I was just kidding.” I stifle a giggle. He’s so pathetic. My Daddy isn’t pathetic. An involuntary shiver runs down my spine and I let myself collapse on the bed. I can hear His voice in my head: Don’t play with your food, Tiger. I sigh and say to Randy, “Give me some free breadsticks.”

“Ok Silvia, anything you want. Pick up or delivery?”

“Deliver it.”

“Ok.”

“I’ll be in my panties when I answer the door.” He gulps audibly and I can’t keep from laughing. “See you soon, Randy.”

“Bye.” There’s a click and then a dial tone.

“Oh, Daddy,” I say out loud as I grind the vibrator against the moist cotton of my panties.

* * *

“I’m going to the store,” I say to Michael’s back, “I’ll be back later.”

“What do you need,” he mumbles around a mouth stuffed full of pizza.

“Woman things,” I lie, “... for my vagina,” I add loudly. David giggles and Peter gags. Michael turns and looks at me with a disgusted look on his face.

“Gross, Sil,” he says, as if he wasn’t inside me just a couple hours earlier. Boys are stupid; this is why you need a man, I remind myself.

I head up the stairs, through the kitchen and stop in the living room, admiring myself in the tall mirror near the front door. I’m wearing a pair of jeans with a crop top and a cardigan. My ass looks amazing. I run my fingers through my short hair and really look into my own eyes. Well, I say to myself, this is it.

In my car there’s an empty canvas bag packed with absolutely nothing. Despite months of buildup and planning, I still waited until the absolute last minute to pack anything and didn’t even do that. Part of me is sure that He’ll just buy me whatever I want. Another part of me is afraid and didn’t want to pack. The third part of me is just a lazy bum. All three of these parts all conspired together and left me with little more than a canvas bag and the shirt on my back.

I stand beside my car, take a deep breath, then say to myself: “Fuck it.”

I drive to the airport, but stop at the cell phone lot a few hundred yards from the terminal. I pull in robotically, not really knowing what I’m doing. I park and turn off the engine, then pull out my phone. My hands are shaking. I unlock my phone and try to text Him but I can’t do it. I get out of the car and walk in a circle around it three times, then I lean against the driver’s side door and feel myself start to tear up a little. I check my phone: two hours until my flight. Why did I leave so early? I kick the dirt and swear at myself for being an idiot.

Overhead, planes are circling and taking off and landing. Parked next to me, some guy is reading a Game of Thrones novel. On the other side, there’s a lady talking on her phone. I look around guiltily to see if there’s anyone I recognize, then get back in my car, pull out of the lot, and drive back to Michael’s. My phone buzzes as I’m driving. I check the message and it’s from Him. I can’t bring myself to read it and throw my phone in the back of the car. I push on the gas and speed down the road while my stomach twists into a tight knot.

When I get back to Michael’s, I sit in my car for a few minutes, sobbing to myself like a little girl whose kitty just died. I can hear my phone buzzing in the backseat of the car, but I ignore it. I blow my nose and wipe my eyes, and take a deep breath, then I get out of the car and walk back into the house. I can hear the sounds of Michael and his cronies swearing at their video games, all the way down in the basement. I smile weakly to myself and whisper to myself, “home.”

I go downstairs and flop down in the beanbag chair in the corner, watching Michael and his friends. I feel a warm spot swelling up in my chest for this fat, lazy chump. I watch his chubby fingers smash into his video game controller. I watch his belly jiggle as he gesticulates wildly, screaming curses at the screen, his eyes burning brightly with a passion that makes me feel more than a little envious. The warm glow of the television reflecting off his skin, he looks suddenly so very young and innocent and I feel a deep sense of longing to take care of him. I want to be there for him. I swallow hard, choking down a ball of guilt over what I almost did.

“Michael,” I say softly, though I know he can’t hear me. I get up and walk toward him where he sits on the couch. I walk in front of Peter and David and they both shout for me to move, then I stand in front of Michael. I turn slowly so that my ass is right in his face, and he lowers his controller. When I’ve made a full circle, he puts his hands on my waist and my heart skips a beat.

“Move your ass, Sil,” he grunts, then farts loudly. Peter punches him in the arm and they all laugh like a pack of mentally retarded hyenas. I feel my cheeks grow hot and I clench my fists in anger. I look down at his blotchy, fat face covered in peach fuzz like a prepubescent child. His bloodshot, smoked-out eyes look back at me from deep within his stupid face, and I see nothing. I turn and walk away. When I get to the foot of the stairs, he calls to me: “Where are you going, Sil?” But I don’t respond.

I take the stairs two at a time. When I get to the kitchen, I take a final look at this house. “What a waste of time,” I say to myself. I stomp through the house and slam the front door when I leave. In my car, I dig my cell phone out of the backseat, then start the engine. I check the time: one hour before my flight. I back down the driveway and speed toward the airport, weaving through traffic as if I’m embroidering a portrait of the Mona Lisa. I park my car in the overnight lot, then shoot a text off to my sister, telling her where it’s parked and asking her to pick it up the next day. I take a look at my old car, but don’t feel the nostalgia I had thought I would. “You’re just some old car,” I say to it.

I sprint to the terminal, which is just a little ways from the parking lot. After I’ve made it through the security check and everything, I collapse into an uncomfortable chair in the main terminal. I take out my phone and scroll through my messages. I tell Him I’m at the airport.

See you soon, Tiger, he texts back.

Xylene, Toluene, Urethane

 He sat across from her in the predawn darkness watching her drawing slender girls.

"Why do you like drawing girls?" he asked her.

"I have this idea," she said, her short eyebrows furrowed in concentration. "I want to draw myself, but I think I'm not good enough. I'm missing something. I need to practice more, so I draw these girls, because I am a girl, also."

"What are you missing?" he asked. "What do you need to practice?"

"Well," she said, putting down her pen, "see, there's this certain awareness I have of this true form of self." She looked up from her drawing, her eyes dark as ink. "I mean myself and it is not something that I could bear to live with daily, and although I am not afraid of being vulnerable to anything," she paused, fiddling with the port in her chest, "I am most afraid of someone other than myself learning my purer form of self because then I am afraid that they would be able to cripple my identity."

He nodded, settling back on the couch. Watching her made his heart hurt.

"Anyway," she continued, "I need more practice. I guess mostly with the colors. The colors aren't right."

Catharanthus Roseus

Abbey looked at herself in the hospital mirror and frowned. "Why do I lose all the hair on my head, but it still grows so thick on my legs?"

"At least you still have your eyebrows," her sister teased.

"For now," Abbey sighed. "Did you see the girl that was in my last room?"

Kat walked to were Abbey was sitting and rubbed her palm over her sister's smooth pate. "Today's the last day, then we get to go."

"You get to go," Abbey laughed darkly. "I'll be back in two days for another round of chemo before the surgery."

"And then you'll be done, and then we can go home," Kat added, ignoring Abbey's pessimism.

"No," Abbey said, looking into her own reflection. "Sometimes, I feel like it's too depressing to talk about all that. It's too much to talk about going home, about things being over, whatever."

Kat opened her mouth to speak, but then stopped herself. The two sisters shared a long silence, each lost in their own thoughts. At last, Kat bent down and kissed her older sister softly on the lips. "I love you," she told her.

"I love you, also," Abbey said, turning her head to bury her face in her sister's long black hair.

Strawberries

Tomo peeked over the low hedge of rosemary that divided the garden, screwing up his eyes as he searched for Miya among the cabbages and radish tops. She was there, somewhere, he was sure of it.

"Miya," he whispered into the garden. "Where are you?"

A plump bee buzzed past Tomo's nose, pollen falling from its fuzzy body like pixie dust, and Tomo sneezed.

"Shhhhhh!" Miya hissed from under the hedge. "You'll wake them!"

Tomo went to his hands and knees and scrambled under the hedge with Miya. "I was looking for you," he said, "why didn't you answer me?"

Miya pursed her pink lips and scowled at Tomo. "Shush!" she told him, her voice soft as rose petals.

"Why?" Tomo asked, annoyed with his friend.

Miya gestured silently toward a smallish bed near the hedge where dozens of tiny, ruby red strawberries lay in the warm sun. "Strawberries sleep all day long," she whispered.

2022

I took some time away from writing in 2021 and most of 2020. I think I'm back now and I'll be posting more or less daily, though we'll see how long that lasts. Here's to a healthy, prosperous year in 2022.

Katsu

I’m sitting in Daddy’s lap. We’re in the front seat of a stolen car, parked in the lot of a rundown Hawaiian fast food place about a mile from the ocean. It’s been just us for the past thirty-six hours, since the attack on the compound where my handlers had kept me locked up for as long as I can remember. For most of the last thirty-six hours, Daddy and I have been on the run, bouncing from safe house to safe house, always just one step ahead of what feels like a never ending stream of assassins hell bent on removing my blackened soul from my genetically engineered little body.

This is the first chance we’ve had to rest since the attack. Neither of us has slept. I’m fucking exhausted, but Daddy doesn’t appear to feel the strain of all the running and killing. He doesn’t seem tired, but neither does he seem at ease. I’m everything to him, he’s told me this a hundred million times before, but it wasn’t until just a few hours ago that this abstract concept was able to finally form itself into something that made sense to me. I really am everything to him. The things I’ve seen him do in the last day or so have been… disturbingly intense. I’ve never known anyone capable of such violence, not even myself - and I’m pretty fucking hardcore.

In some ways, this knowledge, this reality that I mean so much to another human - or whatever we are - is a little intimidating. I know that I’m valuable to the government, and I know that 7713 is fond of using me as a fuck doll, but this thing with Daddy is different. There’s no judgement, there’s no expectation. It’s just me and him. There’s nothing else in all the universe. I mean everything to him. I am everything to him. It’s intimidating, but it’s also amazing. I’ve never been as happy as I am right now at this very moment as we trace the edge of oblivion together.

I take a bite of katsu chicken and remove the bandage from Daddy’s eye. The cloth is completely soaked through with blood.

“Well,” I say to him, examining the gory hole where his eye was earlier in the day, “it looks pretty fucked up. It’s still bleeding. And that was the only pair of panties that I had.” I hold up the blood soaked rag that was once my favorite lingerie. As I look at his face, I can feel his cock throbbing against my sex, like there’s a python trying to burst through the fabric of his pants. I feel my cheeks flush and turn my eyes down so that I don’t have to look him in the eye, but when I look down I see the wet spot I’ve left on Daddy’s clothes and I just blush even harder.

“Why isn’t it healing,” I mumble, trying to change the subject away from how badly I want him to fuck me.

"It takes a lot to heal up," he says. "I haven’t slept and I haven’t been eating. My body is having a harder time fixing up all the holes that they’ve been putting in me." I can feel his eye on me, caressing my skin with his desire. It feels so good I want to scream. 

I look into Daddy’s face and run my fingertips over his stubbly, scarred chin. The moment our skin makes contact, I’m suddenly riding on top of that amazing feeling that I get whenever we touch. I press my nails into his flesh and brush my thumb over his lips. It’s like someone has turned the volume knob on life up a notch. An electric serpent slithers out of the bottom of my skull, twisting itself around my spine and winding its way down into the hot space in between my legs. I give a shiver, leaning in toward Daddy’s face. The heat of his breath washes over me, making my head feel light, as if I’ve taken a hit of pure oxygen. My tenuous grip on reality is deteriorating. The temptation to just give in, to let it carry me away like a pebble in a tsunami, is so strong. I know in my heart that I’ll never be able to resist it. I start to let go.

In the moment when I’m about to give in, Daddy catches me and pulls me back from the edge. "Ride it," he tells me. "Don’t give in, don’t let it take you away. Control it, direct it and it will come back ten times as strong."

I bite my lip and do as he tells me. We’ve been working on this since the attack, mostly out of necessity. We’ve been in such close contact, we’re touching almost constantly. It’s incredibly hard to fight killer android assassins when I’m having a mental orgasm (which is almost always tied to an inconveniently strong physical one). Daddy’s instructions are simple, and I’m able to follow them - sometimes. Other times, I just want to give in. I want to be carried away. I want to die in his arms. I just want to melt into his skin, soak into his body, and be a part of him.

This is the first time that I’ve had the freedom to experiment with controlling the rush that comes whenever we touch while not dodging a hail of bullets or narrowly escaping some sort of exploding projectile. I push my fingers into the wild tangle of ecstasy that is flowing all around us. The blue-white surge tickles my fingertips and buzzes in my palms, up my forearms and into my breasts so that it feels like my tits are being licked by a god made of carbonated electricity. I straddle this thing, this primal delirious thing, and my body lights up like my veins are filled with neon. I let myself sink into the flow, let myself become a part of it so that I’m not being carried by it, but I am it.

My lips are pressed against Daddy’s. His hands are on me, all over me, hot and wonderful. My nails are ripping into his shoulders, his teeth are biting and teasing my nipples. The world has exploded into a white hot nothingness with us at the center of everything, a singularity made up of all things and all time. I cry out in pain as he enters me, then shudder uncontrollably as he begins fucking me. My body goes limp as I come, but Daddy doesn’t stop. I bury my face in his chest, my fists pressed against his body, dying over and over until I’m convinced that I’ll never ever wake up from this dream. Just then, when I’ve accepted my new life in a heaven I never believed existed, I feel Daddy thrust into me and explode.

When my vision clears, I look up to see Daddy looking at my face, his one-eyed expression soft and warm. Pookie, he whispers, caressing my hair.

“Daddy,” I mutter, pushing myself upright. My brain feels fuzzy. My hands are hot. My whole body is hot. But my hands are hot with a wet heat. 

“Oh my fuck,” I scream. I jerk my arms back, ripping the arm-length blades from Daddy’s torso. Blood gushes from the wounds, spurting out across my naked body. “Oh fuck,” I stammer. I must have lost control in the heat of the moment. That’s never happened before. I didn’t even know it could happen. “I’m sorry, oh, Daddy! I’m sorry. I… I didn’t… oh no, are you…?”

"I’m fine," he laughs unconvincingly. "But I’m losing a lot of blood. I need to sleep. Maybe something to eat. I'll just take a short nap."

“Food, ok, I can get you food,” I proclaim, though I really have no idea how I’d do that.

No, it’s fine. Just put those things away and let me sleep, he tells me.

I take a deep breath to calm my mind and the blades retract. I feel a mix of embarrassment and horror. I can’t believe I stabbed him during sex. My mind skitters down a rabbit hole and I shiver with horror as I imagine this happening while I’m with 7713. He can’t heal up like Daddy. He would die. 

I turn my attention back to Daddy, eying the wounds on his body. “I don’t know,” I say futilely. Aside from the gaping holes that I put in him, his eye still looks bad and he’s peppered with half-healed bullet holes.

"I’m fine," he tells me again, but the more he says it, the more worried it makes me. I kiss his lips, but he doesn’t kiss me back.

“Daddy?” I slap his face, but he doesn’t respond. “Daddy? 835! Wake up!” I’m suddenly choked with fear. “Oh, Daddy! Don’t do this, wake up! You need to stay awake!” I jam my fingers against his neck and find a slow pulse. “For fuck’s sake,” I swear, climbing from Daddy’s lap. As I do so, Daddy’s seed dribbles down the inside of my thighs in a thick, sticky mess. I can’t help but feel a pang of regret that it isn’t inside me anymore, as if a really beautiful moment has come and gone. I wonder drearily if we’ll ever have another moment like this again.

Ghosts

Mila narrowed her eyes and glared across the table. "She's a baby," she said. "She's only three years old."

"I'm not!" Chloe whined. "I'm ten years old! I'm ten!"

Mila grinned sardonically, her white teeth shining. "She's a baby," she said at last.

Chloe grimaced but Mila didn't notice. She reached across the low table and snatched a small white ghost from the air, then popped it into her mouth and rolled her eyes. "She's only three," she crooned. "She's a tiny baby, I can't even understand what she's saying."

Chloe reached for a ghost but the tiny spirit wriggled between her fingers and flitted away. Mila picked another ghost from the air, effortlessly, and pushed it into her mouth, staring at Chloe as she chewed. "Baby," she muttered around a mouthful of ghosts. 

New Year 2021

 Jaime woke with a start, sweat beading on her forehead. She looked out into the darkness and screwed up her eyes as she tried to remember the dream that had woken her up. After a moment, she let her head fall back down to her pillow, then fumbled under the covers until she found her phone, hidden deep in the folds of her sheets. She squinted at the glowing screen as she held it up to her face.

January 1, 2021

2:45 AM

She dropped her phone as she felt herself teetering on the edge of sleep. "What a weird dream," she whispered to herself. "It's like a whole year passed by..." The words tumbled from her mouth slowly, falling into her pillow and then sinking away forever. After a moment, she was asleep again.

New Year 2019

"Good New Year, Brother," Camillus said as he entered the room. "May the blessings of the One True God be upon you this glorious year, the year of our Lord and Savior J. Blackshear, two thousand and nineteen."

"Good New Year," Cato replied turning from the window to greet his young friend.

"What's the matter?" Camillus asked, eyeing Cato. "You don't seem very happy for the New Year."

"I'm fine," Cato lied. "It's just early, that's all."

Camillus walked across the room to where Cato was sitting at a small window that looked out into the courtyard where other monks were beginning to gather for their morning rituals.

"Everyone's getting ready," Camillus said, nudging Cato. "Let's go out to the courtyard. I don't want to start the New Year off by being late to the first prayer of the day."

"I'll be out soon," Cato said. "You can go on without me."

"What's on your mind, Brother?" Camillus asked. "I can tell that something is weighing on your thoughts."

"It's nothing," Cato said, slouching in his chair.

"Come on," Camillus proded. "Just tell me."

Cato gave the young monk a wary glance and then let out a long sigh. "It's just... it's just that I've been thinking," he said.

"About what?" Camillus asked.
"About a lot of things," Cato said. "I mean... like the New Year, for example, and the morning rituals, and the prayers, and everything."

"It's good to think about these things, Brother," Camillus said. "It's good to think about the One True God and it's good to think about our Lord and Savior J. Blackshear. Thinking about God brings you closer to God."

"I don't feel that way," Cato said. "Like when I think about J. Blackshear, I can't help but feel this odd skepticism rising up inside me. I mean, like can all the stories about him really be true? Did he even ever really exist? He was born more than two thousand years ago. How can we be sure of anything that happened that long ago?"

"Of course he existed," Camillus scoffed. "If J. Blackshear wasn't real, then how has the Word of God been passed down through the ages? J. Blackshear is the Flesh of God, and his writings are the Word of God. If they weren't, then God wouldn't have let them spread so far and wide."

"Yeah, I get your point," Cato said, "but don't you remember what we learned last week from Brother Julius? The writings attributed to J. Blackshear weren't even put into a collection until hundreds of years after he died. How do we even know that these writings are actually his? How do we know these are his words? And then I was reading something the other night and it was about other writings that some historians think may have been written by J. Blackshear... and these writings are... well, they're vulgar. There is sex, violence, satire, and even blasphemy." He paused for a moment to catch his breath. "What I'm trying to say is, what if J. Blackshear was just some guy, like just some writer... maybe not even a particularly good writer, but then over time writings and ideas that weren't his got attributed to him and then it just sort of took on a life of its own and now, two thousand and nineteen years later, we're talking about this guy who was just a normal guy as if he's some sort of holy being."

Camillus stood staring at Cato, his mouth hanging wide open, his eyes unblinking.

"I mean, it could be true right?" Cato asked. "Two thousand years is a really long time. Who knows, maybe this has even happened before, you know? Like maybe there have been other people in the past and they were just normal people, maybe not even very godly people, or maybe they were just having delusions of grandeur, but then as time passed this whole cult grew up around them and then they end up being worshipped like a god, but they're just a normal person."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing," Camillus said, his voice a raspy whisper. "How could you even think this?"

"It's just a thought," Cato said. "I mean, I don't know, it's just that some of the things in the Good Book are so hard to believe. It's like, if all that stuff really used to happen, then why doesn't it still happen? You know what I'm talking about, right? Like all the miracles and stuff. Why don't we still have miracles? Like why doesn't J. Blackshear appear to us and do miracles and stuff?"

"I see miracles every day!" Camillus snapped. "You would see them too, if you weren't so busy saying all these horrible things!"

"When have you seen a miracle?" Cato asked, his eyes lighting up.

"Well, yesterday," Camillus replied. "I went to the Fumart with Brother Fred and there was a parking space right in the front row. It was a miracle."

"Oh," Cato said, his mouth turning to a frown. "That's not exactly a miracle."

"It was!" Camillus shouted. "It was a miracle! It was a blessing from J. Blackshear. You just don't see it because your soul has been tainted by these untruisms." He glared at Cato for a few tense moments. "Anyway, I don't want to be late for the morning prayer. I'm leaving now. I'll pray to J. Blackshear to watch over your misguided soul and bring you back to the Light."