Foot falls on pavement. Heavy. I am wearing boots, and the balls of my feet roll me in my socks to the alley behind The Crane's Landing Inn. I should be kissing your burning mouth - the sting of your vodka caressing my chapped lips - in a cloudy bar. The smog of a thousand wasted lives masking my green eyes; you will not see this before it's too late. A tragedy; pain never fails to make you feel better. Consider it a gift. You will be waiting. Diligently. You have never expected punctuality from meetings such as ours. It would mean that I cared enough for you to keep my promises. And I do not. I hate you. You and your mysteries; your complications; the superstitions that you hold on to so dearly. Desperately.

I am sick. Guts so hollow with anticipation that I feel weightless. I can not bring myself to eat; you will taste my hunger later tonight and you will savor it. That's the way of you, empty and haggard, the massive void of your existence gives you an allure. Starving for the abyss, you are among the nebulous malcontents drinking. Not for drunkenness. Not for relief. To be. You detest the taste of your words; wash them down with the acidic heat of Absinthe. The feel of lime green cooling your adjectives; your bitter dialogue with vagrants; satisfies you enough. Anonymity suits you well; compliments your slurred speech and dilated pupils. Sober, you are too rigid.

I take a swig of my water bottle, open the door to the room I have rented; that you have requested that I rent; have been renting for the past five years. We are obvious, but you have more to gain by their loose tongues. To spite you, their jaws are set firmly together. They only think you are impenetrable.

Not to me. I enter you whenever and however I so choose and you are helpless to stop me. The alternative is feeling, so you permit it. I have become shallow; wanting only to hear you tell me that you would die without me.

This is your doing. Blame makes your sallow cheeks flush with indignation; guilt gives you color. You are almost beautiful , but I can not allow your radiance long, lest I fall in love with it. Don't think I haven't seen the wreckage you've left in the wake of your lust.

Artist, you tell me. Muse, they chant. It is a whore that inspires the weak of groin, and dim of wit; the emaciated idealists abandoning their soap boxes for you; blinded by their own creative luminescence. They will learn, as I have learned.

There will be pain in this. You will suffer. I will see to it.

Unpacking the camera, I fidget with the tripod. You will think it is some new kinky fixation of mine. Cameras amuse you. Anything that can capture a person and hold them there, suspended in their own unrequited misery for eternity, is worth the intrigue. Immortality is a hobby of yours that you will soon come to regret. What will you become once the image of your malnourished arms, legs, broken bones and dying face are forever burned into the merciless retinas of lenses that will not save you? When you stare into the face of your only witness, I want your terror to be palpable.

Placing the knife on the table; blade and handle like open arms waiting to embrace the boiling scorn of your thick blood; I survey the room with meticulous scrutiny. One lampshade out of place and my cover is blown. You will not notice until after you have exhaled every last living piece of yourself that this is precisely the way it looked our first time. Sentimentality is irrelevant to you; you have nothing to gain in spreading out your passions. It has always been all or nothing. Nothing seems to have won.

Distance is relative, I was told. Centuries away from me, you hover betwixt old news papers and newborn angst. All I want is to touch you; to soil you. Fingerprints would depreciate your value. I want you as I am. Naked. Alone. At the mercy of a voracious will that you do not control.

I do not intend to get away with this. Hero, they will call me. Just you all come and gaze upon the beast I vanquished. I will be a martyr.

PART 2:

The room next to ours is filled with writhing bodies. Petite things, with halter tops and glitter brushed onto supple, young skin. There is raucous music, and manic giggling, and I smile for the first time all night. Do you remember, my love?

But you must.

We were so very foolish then. We had life. A funny thing to lose, and yet it seems to have vanished. Gone with it are the brightly colored drinks; the red lipstick smears on white shirt collars; the peevish motions of our bodies on top, beneath, inside, and entranced with each others’. In lieu of our compulsive touching, we have condoms and HIV screenings; hand sanitizer, wet naps, and Maybalene foundation. Now, you politely excuse yourself to the bathroom, where you will scrub your hands raw in a vain attempt at ridding yourself of my cells. You should know better than to think I do not realize.

It is one in the morning. Tuesday is fresh in the air. It will not take you long to foul it with the stale liquor on your breath, howling hopelessly at the world and all the misery you secretly revel in. I can hear you; the faint clicking of your high heels on the cold, stone gray of the side streets; your labored breathing; purse slapping against your bare thighs, white as marble, clammy and on the prowl. I can even pick up the dim vibrations of your terror, getting stronger the closer you come to my threshold; running from the morning. Savor it. There will not be another.

This room will never be the same again. I brood over the thought of the pieces of ourselves we have stashed here throughout the years. Like a vault, we have invested more of ourselves in a dingy hotel room than we ever have in each other. Suddenly I am sick, considering all of the places I will make whole with your fingers, lips, glassy stare, and crimson severity.

The right side of the bed, where you sat the second night, contemplating the consequences of your misdeeds. I have never troubled myself with your shame, but I wonder now if he knew. He will by tomorrow. Look at what you have done. Has he ever loved you? I hope, for his sake, that he has not.

The cracked surface of the linoleum in the bathroom, where you lay on your back for hours, unconscious. That night you came to me in a stupor. Always, your excuse was you’d seen a black cat; had some dream about your long dead father. I never believed you, but I never argued. With your head tilted to the left, so that you would not choke on your own vomit, I sketched the lean contour of your deft body. Your frailty was still fascinating then.

The mirror. Oh yes, the mirror. Streaked and long unpolished; you watched me, through one swollen eye, take you the way I had imagined he took you. Coarsely, and without tact, I dug into you, desperate to find something, in that empty chasm you gave me, that was still alive. 

Drawers that had once been filled with pages of your revelations, sheets that have held your scent;  Gideon’s Bible, where you drew your cartoons, waiting for my key in the latch; thinning carpet where you paced, up and down, until I would tenderly undress you, and temporarily release you from the existence you just could not seem to escape.

These places, I will bury your memory in, and people will thank me.

As I lay on our old mattress; the hotel’s mattress, that has become our mattress; I hear you scratching at the door. I do not get up. You know full well how to get in.

“Bloody hell Alex, let me the fuck in!” You shout through the cheaply processed wood of the door. I have just now come to understand how thin it has been, and I reflect on the many vagrants that have undoubtedly heard our lives played out, and what they must think.

“Have you forgotten your key again, my dear?” I ask, rising from the bed and striding towards your voice.

“Nothing so dramatic,” you admit sarcastically “I am far too drunk to be fumbling for keys in this huge purse this late. I am going to get mugged in this godforsaken shit hole!”  You slur in aggravation.

I open the door listlessly. You stumble in, tossing your sparse belongings on the floor, and falling into the bed; into the cold impression I made of myself just moments earlier. Strange, I had always considered you my shadow.

“What are you staring at?” you ask, appraising me in disgust. You have never looked so malevolent in your life, and I reach for the knife.

“Look at what you have made me!” I bellow, surprised at the tone in my voice I shrink back from you, clutching the handle in my trembling palm.

“Don’t be so damned melodramatic. I only came for the Bible. It has my best work in it.” I hear you scold, then reach for the drawer; the rustle of your jacket gives you away too easily. Before I have time to move the blade however, you have scooped up the runes of your genius and are moving swifter than your inebriation gives you credit for, back towards the outside.

“Just where do you think you are going? Or did you forget who you are dealing with, here?” I protest vehemently, in rage. I will never understand your uncanny ability to toss people out of your life so nonchalantly, but you do it well.

“I beg your pardon?” You stop, momentarily, in shock, turning to me with what looks like a hint of pity playing at the corners of your exhausted eyes.

“Don’t leave.” I nearly beg. You have seen what you have made me the whole time; I did not. “I have something for you.” The knife is smoother and more solid than it has ever felt in my palm as you quietly close the door and inch toward me.

“What is it?” you inquire, softly.  You could almost be angelic, if it weren’t for the fact that I know you too much. Reaching your arms out, I watch you step nearer. What have you been expecting?

The heat resonating from your angular body scorches me from the inside out, and before you have a chance to see the pains I have gone to for you tonight, I plunge my blade into your neck. Deep.

Gazing at me in understanding, you sink into the floor; engulfed in a pool of our own blood. As I have watched you live, I watch you die. It is then that I notice the torn page of the Gideon’s that you have been clutching. Wrenching your fingers open, the way I had once your legs, I unfurl the document with ravenous fingers.

“Alex; Forgive God for not having all of the answers.”

It is then that I look up to see the drapes open, the taxi cab outside, and the distant whine of sirens.

No one will be thanking me tonight, tomorrow, next week, in a decade. No one will praise my strength, or my convictions. I will have no glory.

PART 3:

This morning’s news paper does not mention me. It does, however, hold a rather extensive story on the brutal murder of a Nobel Prize winning author, and mother of three, by the name of Serendipity Johnson. I know this because somebody left it in my cell this afternoon, while I was writing my statement; my harrowing saga that no one will appreciate. I had always called her Sira.

An open letter to the lone ass hole that has accused me of being fake (twice now) on this website:

There are not many fights that I'm willing to bother with on here, but I felt like my identity was a crusade worth my time.

You're "give me nude pictures of yourself so I can masturbate, alone, in my mom's basement" tactic is pretty fucking transparent. I thought you'd want to know that. Being a femal sub on this site does not presuppose that we're mentally retarded, and its really sort of distressing that you'd even consider, for a second, that accusing us of being men would even remotely motivate us to send you "proof". The more disgruntled part of mysef wants to send you a labia in the mail.

On that note, I have nothing more to say to you other than A.) I'm more of a woman than you'll ever have; and B.) Suck my dick.

Best regards,

Sarah

Prattling a la The Castle:

I have looked at you through the retinas of transience wondering when the better you would come along. Impacient and akward, I watch with a certain level of understanding and something like regret.

You - at the bar, drinking sullenly. I walk to the red room and find a love seat where I can guzzle the bass lines in peace and you can worry about me.

I have been whole. Not seperate, nor multiple, nor divdend. I want to be the entirety and duality of a life that you do not deserve. I want you to realize that I am composing this drunken bilge because of you and I crave your apologies almost as much as I would die for some fucking inspiration.

You should dance with me. It's trivial, but I do not care. As per habit, another pivitol moment spent alone; another pivitol moment less wasted and more understood. I never expected you to care, I just thought that maybe you had gotten tired of me calling it. Never the less, I chose to leave you unattended; without supervision. I expected nothing short of the repressed indignation that you will vow to yourself no one knows of, and I will keep your secret diligently because I know the sting of betrayal much more than I care to tell you. You'll be safe here, but it's going to cost you.

I know what it's like to feel seconds like centuries and minutes like miles, and I should tell you that I just don't have the fuel to meet you that far out.

It is sultry here, and I take comfort in being uncomfortable as I consider the ramifications of leaving you to fend for yourself, the way you did me. I weigh the consequences of jumping ship now versus bothering to be hurt later every time you make me aware of how niave it is of me to feel.

The bass fades in and out, as do the people, and I am not sure if you've started looking for me yet but hope that you have not. I am not ready to be found.... or at least, not by you.

It's the void that I keep evading only almost. It's that I think stacato when I drink. It's that I like to see how lost I can get myself before somebody finds me. It's that everyone looks too much like everyone else now, and locating the seam between you and last year is getting harder by the day. It's that I have ceased thinking that I am different and replaced the thought with cynical bemusement. It's that I love being conscious more than I really ought. It's that I am comforted better by the soothing vibration of infidelic percussion, resonating inside my ribcage, than arms or hands or fingers brushed over my supple skin. It's that confessions have lost thier charm some time ago, and truth just doesn't taste as good as it used to. It's that what you fail to realize is you are not doing anything that everyone hasn't tried before. It's that I let you get away with it because loving you takes too much energy, but leaving you takes too much time. I settle for the former, then pray for wind.

It's that disengaging has become imperative to survival, and I do so too much to recognize my own sincerity.

To my Girlthing
What I know:

I have never felt more comfortable in my own imperfect skin than when I am in your car; the two of us guzzling coffee like fiends. We are apparently not nuerotic enough without the aid of synthetic energy.

I know that I love you. Without reservation, and with reticent caution.

I know that you will read this and giggle because it's nothing either of us didn't already understand.

I know that our words are delicate and terrified, because each has witnessed, first hand, the wreckage the other has left in her wake.

I know that it has always been the unspoken that we mean the most.
 
I know that we will break down to rebuild ourselves in cycles of men and diets and pretending to be indestructable much too well. We will cry in public restrooms, silently, expertly; in cities where we have lost ourselves on purpose; in the arms of boys who will deftly pet the tops of our heads and kiss us on our burning cheeks. Alone always, not for lack of audience (we know how to draw a crowd) but understanding.

I know that truth does not require confessions.

I know that being damaged is just another name for creation; that our cells are too restless not to go searching for wounds; that every scar is just another notch in our bed posts representing another conquest that we simply could not resist.

I know that being broken is merely a clever outlet for our rebellion because inaction makes us feel useless.

I know that secrets are imperative to sanity, and that losing your mind is crucial to immortality.

I know that the above are not mutually exclusive.

I know too much to write about your red hair or your green eyes.

And, of all the things I know - with a certain amount of relish, and a good deal of sorrow - I will never tell you that I know you.

What I will tell you is that I will be your side kick, your partner in crime, your cover story, your scapegoat, your excuse, your Zumba buddy, your sister, your mother, your lover and your best friend.