Introduction
This story can barely be referred to as such. It is true that it is fiction, but it also lacks a strong hold or pursuit of many of the basic conventions of story. It is an immature piece written about love and loss – a kind of loss that is completely foreign to me – and it is fragmented into sorts of post-cards sent from pivotal moments in a relationship whose reality is always bent to some degree. It was written in the spring of 2006 for a Fiction 1 class at Ithaca College and the titled sections are directly taken from the list of vague exercise prompts our professor gave us. This draft is the first I had written, touched only slightly since.
There were other versions of this story now lost. One such draft included additional sections not written from the class prompts, the only one I can really remember having something to do with cavemen fenced off in the backyard and how one of the characters saw some sort of beauty in watching these troglodytes “fighting and fucking one another.” The draft that contained some facsimile of that line seems so utterly lost now that I have very little ambition in attempting to either recreate it or add anything to this piece to fill it out a little more, which is why I decided to no longer sit on this and put it up.
I rather liked that section and I mourn its passing, so to sloppily honor it I’ll henceforth be calling this slap-shod, incomplete, confused and previously untitled “story”, The Cavemen in the Backyard, which makes very little sense without this preface. I just thought it would be respectful to let you know that there is no hidden meaning behind the title, no deep digging to do on your part; it’s not a bullshit metaphor or an obscure intertextual reference. It’s just this thing, you see.
The Reluctant I
The face is so innocent: no motives behind the expressions. No expressions at all, unless something interesting happens inside your dream. What is it you are dreaming of, anyway? Who is hiding inside your head? And what is he doing? Is he rubbing your back? Kissing your hands? Does he buy you whole cities for you to drive around in fancy-free? Do his hands turn to talking fish with British accents just to make you laugh?
“Your gills are most attractive, young lady trout!”
“Bite your tongue, sir! Such talk is prohibited on my father’s estate.”
It would be nice to know that you are dreaming pure color. It would be nice if patterns would mesh and merge and darken and brighten as your mind and body rest. It would be nice if you could be given back all the beauty you exude to the world. That would be nice.
When the sun was still awake you danced about the streets and rolled around in the grass and laughter was born and it was sweet to hear. When the moon took over, a shy invitation was sent out and was eagerly accepted. Before you fell so deep inside the gentle jungle of your dream, your eyes sang sonnets and your lips and tongue painted a sunrise with brush strokes that tickled and comforted. Tiny hands caressed lonely skin, putting smiles on so many blood cells living underneath. Then the yawns, then slowed motions. When your eyes closed, the room dimmed.
Your chest will rise and fall, making blue swirls of sweet-smelling breath pour out of your nostrils. Hands hang open, by your side, cradled by the canyons in the blankets. Another hand would sit atop yours if there weren’t the fear of disturbing the dream.
Your hair is a light brown waterfall stopped in time, flowing off pillows and onto your shoulders.
Your left foot is moving. Tapping. Up and down, fast. It sends itty-bitty waves through the bed. You had said that you do that. That your mother does that, and so did your grandmother.
Your hand goes to itch your nose and before you place it on your stomach, it moves across freckles here and there on your cheek, on your neck. They sit on your skin, a white tinted with peach by just a drop. The eyes now move under their lids. Hopefully that doesn’t mean your dream has taken a wrong turn. Oh good. Your lips curve to a half-smile.
A flicker of light – your eyes open. A startled confusion for a short while before your brain makes sense of what it is seeing. You smile and I don’t deserve it.
True Feelings
The wallpaper sings soft symphonies to two turtles on a bed of pillows. Barbara’s shell is purple and Kenneth’s shell is speckled red and black. The bed sleeps, snoring quietly. Up and down, the turtles rise and fall on the breath of the mattress. They search in one another’s eyes. But for what?
I wish I knew what it was like to be inside your shell. I wish the secrets you keep inside there could slip out and into mine, where I would keep them safe and warm, wrapped tight (but not too tight) in tiny boxes lined with cotton. I wish lots and lots.
I wish too, you know. I wish your mouth were a button I could push to inflate your body with notes belonging to violins. I’d tie a string to your tail before you could float away and I’d carry you around at the carnival.
Kenneth opens his mouth and out tumbles innumerable blueberries to be licked up by Barbara. Yum. Yum. Yummy. She moans happiness that settles itself around Kenneth and causes him to rustle and rumble till he shakes and shivers into a fuzzy teddy bear.
I’m so sorry! I never meant to change you.
Don’t be sorry. To be a turtle is not what I need to be happy in this life. At the moment, you are. You could change me into water, as long as you promised to lap me up and hold me within you.
But did it hurt?
It was easy to find the beauty in the pain.
Kenneth touches his synthetic fur to the tough, leathery skin of Barbara’s head. The pleasure fills her shell with pink mosquitoes that tickle her to tears that smile. She lets them out and they whiz up to dance their wings about the room, high above the electricity buzzing between his fur and her shell.
Warmth. Oxygen. Endorphins.
You make my chest feel dizzy.
I fell in love with your brown eyes.
The mosquitoes cling to the walls and suck the music out till they fall to the floor, fat and dead. The room sits still and quiet as Kenneth puts his arm around Barbara, waiting for her eyes to shut, so he can do the same.
Kenneth dreams of a water slide leading to a pool where Barbara waits for him. He can never reach the pool. He just slides over and over and over again, hoping next time he might crash into her.
Barbara dreams of a birthday cake the size of a castle. She chases after Kenneth on different layers, trenching through frosting of blue and white and gold. She giggles as Kenneth cries out, Catch me, catch me, catch me if you can!
Their dreams snuggle in close with one another – dreams that hold hands and press lips against cheeks. When the dreams fall asleep, the teddy bear and the turtle will awake in one another’s arms.
Walking
I had to get out of the house. Driving wouldn’t work. I need to be moving. I need my body to do some talking. And I really need to listen. My shoes squeak and clap on the sidewalk and then eventually on the sizzling black tar of the street. The sun is twenty feet above and there are no shadows in sight. I sweat until all my clothes are a solid shade darker. An army of kids is out here absorbing the light, using it as fuel. They are running around and riding bikes and climbing trees – all that shit.
My legs speed up and take me away to Main Street. The kids here are not as many, but the one’s that are present are all holding their mothers’ hands. Going in and out of stores. Some of them perfect angels that tighten my lungs with their faces; others are awful little shits that scream horror stories into my heart so loud that it makes it beat harder. A man smokes a cigarette as he passes by and I want so badly to ask him for one. I want to calm my nerves with nicotine. I want to chain-smoke whole cartons and corrupt every last cell of my body with cancer.
But I don’t.
My breathing quickens and my feet gain weight. I begin walking in slow motion. A child zips by me from behind and his foot reaches the curb as the white figure changes to an orange hand. The core of me lets out of a shriek for help that echoes for miles and shakes the sky. I sprint to the street, grab the boy by his waist and swing him around. I shove his chocolate covered fact into my chest, staining my shirt, and I let out huge sobs.
I shout, “Don’t you ever do that again! Do you hear me? Don’t you ever scare me like that.”
The boy claws his way out of my stranger’s arms and runs away to his real mother.
The world has paused with its fierce eyes on me and I start walking home with my mind made up. I am keeping this baby.
Déjà vu
Barbara sits naked on one of the two chairs at the small kitchen table. Her belly is a skin-colored beach ball waiting to pop. She fingers her bellybutton and says, “Is it ready?”
Kenneth screams without screaming, “If they were ready I wouldn’t still be standing here, would I?” His eyes don’t move to her, instead they keep watch on the scrambled eggs in the frying pan as he pokes at them with a red spatula.
Barbara says, “Fuck you, smart ass” with her eyes and spits black acid on the floor near Kenneth’s feet, burning holes in the wood, and to her disappointment, not in his flesh.
Kenneth turns the knob to “Off” and the burner goes from orange to black. It’s a slow fade. He tilts the pan so the eggs fall to the plate. Slow steps to reach the table before Kenneth drops the plate on the surface when it would have been just as easy to set it down, but had he done it that way it wouldn’t have been loud and jarring – the not-so-subtle things people do to avoid an altogether different shade of overtness, directness.
He turns away and walks to the fridge.
The sound of glass breaking steals Kenneth’s strolling attention. Yellow fluffs of scrambled eggs and white triangles of glass on the floor.
Silence. Anger. Confusion.
“I asked for eggs over easy.”
“No. You demanded eggs. You specified nothing.”
“Watch your fucking attitude,” Barbara snaps. “When you have a heavy hunk of life in your body, I’ll make you eggs however you want…” The volume of her words lowers to pure silence but her lips continue moving. A white figure materializes behind her. His tired eyes spew little streams of exhaust and his voice lacks the appropriate effort as he says, “Boo.”
It’s the family ghost.
In a blink, Barbara becomes Kenneth’s father and Kenneth becomes his own mother, but only in spatial terms. Really, Barbara has vanished and Kenneth is standing behind his father who sits at the table. Really, Kenneth has become the family ghost.
Mr. Father reads the paper and says, “Are you done?”
Mrs. Mother says under her breath, “If I were done, I wouldn’t still be standing here, would I?”
Mr. Father spits fire with his eyes and says, “Fuck you, smart ass” with his mouth before turning back to the paper.
Mrs. Mother sniffles, keeping her eyes intently on the eggs, poking at them with the same red spatula. A black tear rolls down her cheek before it disappears under her chin and stains a bruise at the top of her throat. She turns the knob to “Off” and the burner goes from orange to black. It’s a slow fade.
Her feet move slowly across the floor until she reaches the table. She is careful when setting the plate so it touches neither Mr. Father’s arm, nor his newspaper.
Mr. Father looks down at the plate and grabs her arm before she can turn around. He stands up with the plate in one hand and Mrs. Mother’s thin arm glowing white in his other.
“I said sunny side up, didn’t I?”
“Um, I…”
An explosion of white and yellow against the wall that crashes to the floor.
“Didn’t I?”
Mr. Father’s recently vacant hand grabs Mrs. Mother by the throat, tight. He says, “Well. Clean it up,” as he drags her body through Kenneth’s transparent existence. Kenneth loses his breath for an instant. He can see two little wet eyes and a mop of brown hair peeking through the open doorway. Kenneth makes eye contact with himself and – destroyed – he says, “Boo.”
In a blink, Barbara is back and she is shouting, “Are you even listening to me?”
Kenneth’s eyes are wet, his throat is dry, and his mouth is open, incapable of forming words. He falls to the floor, his knees and hands trembling amidst the broken glass and eggs.
The paint on the kitchen walls melt away to reveal an empty whiteness – a contradiction of light.
“Oh no, baby,” Barbara says quiet, placing her warm hand on Kenneth’s back. Her other hand touches under his chin to guides his eyes up into her view. Her face contorts with concern.
Hushed: “What is it?”
Kenneth’s hands cry blood from where the small shards of white stick in his palms. He chokes, swallows, and asks in a thin voice, “How many eggs did you want?”
Silent Partner
Rob is there. So is Suzy. Beth made it as well. Frank showed up late, but he showed. These are Kenneth and Barbara’s closest friends. The ones they would go on double dates with. The ones they would run to during fights. The ones they were cry and scream to when they were scared, felt alone.
There are the five of them sitting in red velvet theater chairs that fold at the seat. Rob and Suzy to Kenneth’s left. Frank and Beth to his right. And, obviously, Kenneth is sitting dead center.
Frank: Sorry I didn’t show up earlier. Had to pick up these bad mamma-jammas.
Frank passes around cigars to the others. Kenneth has his eyes fixed on the giant screen in front of him, his elbows on his knees, his fists pushing up under his chin. Frank sticks one of the cigars in Kenneth’s shirt pocket and gives him a pat on the back. Flashing on the screen are images of Barbara on a bed in a white room filled with doctors and nurses. A close-up shot of Barbara sweating and screaming, but there is no sound to the image, just the rattling of the projector against the conversation of the others in the theater.
Beth: Oh, this guy is never on time.
Frank: Yeah, but you love me anyway.
Beth: Well… I like you a lot anyway.
(Canned Laughter)
Suzy: At least yours shows up at all.
Rob: What exactly is that supposed to mean?
Suzy: You stood me up for lunch on Tuesday!
Rob: I told you I had to cancel.
Suzy: You did not!
Rob: Next time I’ll stick a post-it note on your forehead.
(Canned Laughter)
A wide-angle shot of a doctor speckled in blood. Cut to a medium-close shot. His mouth moves fiercely under his mask, and then the frame pans to follow a nurse who runs out of the room. She comes back in with another doctor.
Kenneth’s face cringes at the screen and it forms permanent wrinkles on his face. He watches another close-up of Barbara. Tears and sweat ride her face, down and into her mouth where her teeth clench. Cut to a shot of a nurse with her hand on Barbara’s shoulder. She mouths the word, “Push.”
Frank: Sorry, I’m so late! I had to roll these sweet stogies.
Beth: Oh, he’s never on time.
Frank: Yeah, except in bed!
(Canned Laughter)
Suzy: At least yours still wants to touch you.
Rob: What exactly is that supposed to mean?
Suzy: You haven’t gone down on me in a year!
Rob: That’s because you don’t clean your vagina properly!
(Canned Laughter)
An aerial shot looks down on the entire delivery room. It slowly pushes in as the top of a small head emerges from between Barbara’s bloodied legs.
Kenneth shakes as he watches. He holds himself tight, trying hard to keep looking.
Frank: Sorry guys! I would have been here sooner if I didn’t fly to Cuba for these primo smokes!
Beth: Ah, this faggot’s never on time.
Frank: Bitch, you best watch the lip!
(Canned Laughter)
This same shot pushes in tighter so you can only see from Barbara’s stomach to the doctor’s hands, holding the head as an arm comes out.
Kenneth’s hair goes from black to gray to white and his lips fatten as they tremble.
Suzy: At least your man isn’t fucking around on you!
Rob: If I didn’t sleep with younger girls, I’d probably beat you twice as often!
(Canned Laughter)
The shot stops pushing in when the small female child is born, wet in the doctor’s arms. Cut to a close-up of Barbara’s face and she doesn’t smile. She doesn’t move. Her eyes are open but they are not awake.
Kenneth makes a fist of his face and his eyes blur with moisture until they overflow and trickle down his weathered skin.
A close-up of a heart monitor. Predictably, the green line is flat.
Kenneth: Guys.
Kenneth sits in an empty theater.
Kenneth: I’m a father.
Letters From Inside The Story
Dear Mommy,
My name is Barbara and that is your name too. That is what daddy says. He says you never got to meet me but you loved me anyways. I like purple and tractors. And I like cats and my stuffed cat and her name is Bubble. I wish I could meet you now but daddy says I can’t do it. I think daddy is sad a lot because you are gone and it makes me sad when he is sad. I think maybe if you come back so daddy is happy and then I am happy and we would all be happy together. Will you come back and be my mommy for me? Daddy said we would like each other because we both like Uno. I am real good at Uno. I win daddy every time. Come back and we will play Uno with daddy and Bubble.
Bye Bye
Barbara
—
Dear Mommy,
I know you can’t come back and I know you can’t read this, but I want to write it anyway. I feel dumb because of my last letter. My teacher made me write it for my 1st grade class and my teacher made dad come talk to her about it. He came to my class when the other kids were gone and I asked him to send it for me and he started crying and it made me hate myself for making him sadder so I’m not gonna show him my letters anymore.
I didn’t want to write another letter for a while either because my last one so I didn’t. But I’m in 3rd grade now and dad started showing me his old photo albums and he tells me about you and then it made me really miss you a lot. I really love you even if you are dead.
Love,
Barbara
—
Dear Mom,
I kissed a boy today! I didn’t tell dad because he would embarrass me. I know he does it because he loves me, but it’s nice to know I can tell you things and not worry about anyone knowing.
The boy’s name is Calvin and he is really nice and so cute. He wanted to walk me home after school a week ago. I said okay but I told him I was walking to the cemetery to deliver you a letter. He asked me who you were and I said, “She was my mommy.”
He said he was sorry and then he put his hand on my shoulder. He kept walking me home after school after that and some days we went and got donuts at the Roth’s Bakery and he bought them for me. What a gentleman! And then today when we were outside the house I said goodbye and he said “Wait, wait! I have something important to tell you.” And then he kissed me!
I’ll tell you more about him next week.
Love,
Barbara
—
Dear Mom,
Dad had a stroke. He is in the hospital for a while. The doctor said he would be okay, but he will need to use a respirator when he sleeps. Don’t worry though. I’ll take care of him for you. I got to visit him yesterday he said he would find someone to help him and to keep up the house. I wish I could take some time off school and do it myself but he doesn’t want me to graduate a year late.
I don’t know. We’ll figure something out.
I’ll write more soon.
Love,
Barbara
—
Dear Mom,
Guess what?
I GOT INTO BERKELEY!!!!
I know you would be proud of me, but dad is proud enough for everybody. Julia is working out well around the house, but I still wish someone in the family could take her place. Or maybe I should just go to U of O or OSU. I’m worried about leaving him along in a big empty house. Sometimes I feel like he is just hanging in there for me and if I leave to another state, he wouldn’t just give up, would he? I don’t want him to think I’m ready to be on my own, because then what does he have? Julia?
He doesn’t do much anymore. At least before he would pass the days by wasting time in front of bad sitcoms or in the garage building shelves for nothing to sit on. But now he just lies in bed or sits by the window. Except when I come home from school his face lights up and makes me tell him everything about what I’m learning, what my friends talk about during lunch, everything. It’s all boring stuff but he seems to find it interesting. Other than that he’s practically in a home already, but I refuse to send him to one of those places.
God, I wish you could tell me what to do. I know you wouldn’t want me to say this, but sometimes I really wish you never had me. I’m not ungrateful but I just love dad so much and I wish you could be
Jesus, I don’t know.
I love you.
Barbara
He smiles. He’s always smiling at me. It’s like he doesn’t know I’m a piece of shit. Or that he thinks pieces of shit are endearing instead of stinky and unsanitary. But seeing him smile makes me smile too. I’m smiling in my eyebrows and my nipples. Once he smiled at me after he ate a home-cooked meal made by yours truly (it was my specialty: toasted cheese sandwiches with apple juice) and he said, “Wowzers, Anna. That was a great grilled cheese.” And even though it was toasted and not grilled and you would think a smart, young, go-getting male would be able to tell such a simple difference, the compliment made me smile in my toenails and my scattered pubic hairs on my thighs that almost don’t count as pubic hairs, but more like confident leg hairs.
And he’s smiling now, of all times now, with sadness and sweetness in his eyes. He smiles all this at me while I’m secretly biting the inside of my lower lip and dabbing ink from my white jeans with a napkin because a bitch pen burst in my pocket on purpose and ruined my third favorite pair of white jeans and they are ruined and he’s smiling and I’m dabbing and I’m dabbing and I’m still dabbing even though I know it won’t come out.
The table looks distant, distorted until I become aware that I’ve stood up from my seat. To cover for it I say, “Excuse me, Clark. I must go to the public restroom now and attempt ink removal with the aid of tap water. I’ll only be a moment.” And I smile a big, ugly smile with my lips flared to show my enormous yellow teeth and then I’m walking away and I’m about to cry and I’m about to cry and I’m crying and I’m crying and I push the ladies room door open but it won’t open because it says “Pull” and I didn’t see that at first so now I pull and it lets me in and it feels like coming home late for Thanksgiving dinner and my mom saran-wrapped me a plate of turkey and stuffing which is now room temperature.
I go to the sink and look in the mirror at my face crippled with tears and I whisper to myself, “Get it together, Anna.” I take a big deep breath that tastes like stale bathroom soap and I whisper angry, “Get it together, you fucking horse-faced cunt bitch dyke whore!” And I spit blood at my reflection and it lands on the image of my forehead and looks like I got shot and now blood drips down the face and I wish I were shot and I should shoot myself to death like I deserve. I stick out my bottom lip and see the bite. I rinse it out under the tap and spit pink water back into the sink and in a moment of triumph I flip my reflection off with rigid intensity before turning to leave.
When I sit back down at the table, our food has arrived and I’m stretching smiles across my face and taking deep snoring breaths through my nose. “Oh well,” I say at an ungodly volume as if my ears were just cut off. “There are more white jeans in the sea!”
Clark chuckles one polite chuckle at my lighthearted remark then through a dreamy smile, he says, “You look gorgeous, by the way.” And, oh my god, my stomach starts smiling, but I can’t tell if its from him or from seeing the black bean burrito on the table in front of me. Then I smile with my mouth wide open so much so that it hurts my face and my cheeks are pushing against my eye lids and I squint because of it. I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say. Maybe if I didn’t drop out of college I would know what to say, but I did, so I don’t. To change the subject without speech, I pick up my burrito and take a giant bite and swallow it with minimal chewing so that I can feel the hard lump go down my throat, pushing the emotional lump farther down my throat, and through the magic of food consumption I don’t feel like crying as much anymore.
He starts forking his salad into his mouth and when he swallows he looks up to me, asking, “How is the burrito?”
I purse my lips together because the question, for no good reason, makes me as nervous as a retarded fish flapping around on a cutting board. I feel my eyes bulge and the air is collecting in my cheeks until it flies out of my mouth and I breathe in and I breathe out like an ugly, stupid border terrier and I scream, “It’s so good but all the beans and cheese is gonna make me shit mud later tonight — so no butt sex for you, mister!” And then I’m petrified wood. I’m dead. I’m a pile of broken Easter eggs. I open my mouth wide so I can say I’m sorry but I can’t bring myself to speak again so I just hold my mouth open, my head gently bobbing like a dumb-fuck leaf on a dumb-fuck tree being blown by the cock-eating faggot wind.
He still smiles but he looks uncomfortable and confused. He looks to his left at another table and raises his shoulders and eyebrows at them, as if to say, “What a character, huh!” He looks down at his salad and avoids forking an olive when he gathers his next bite. Then he looks up to me with another fucking smile and he says, “Don’t you want to know how my salad is?”
I nod, yes, with my mouth still open wide, still a giant zero full of god awful teeth.
“It’s not bad,” he says and puts a few leaves of spinach between his perfect lips. Then he winks at me and I lose it. My clit smiles for the first time ever and I unzip my white jeans and violently stuff my hand down my bright pink panties but I’m so dry and I don’t know why. I take my hand back out and snort and hack up some snot and saliva and spit it on my fingers before I shove them down there again, rubbing my clit so slippery wet that I’m grunting and I’m grunting and I’m grunting so much it hurts my face and neck. I come so hard that I feel a blood-vessel burst in my eye.
Clark leans in, politely swallows his bite, and says, “You look so cute when you masturbate.” I start to feel like I’m melting chocolate, or even better melting cheddar, but the waiter comes to our table and he says, “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave. Other customers are complaining.”
“Ooh, I’m sorry,” Clark says in a hushed, innocent voice. He pulls out his wallet and I grab a fork off the table and start stabbing myself repeatedly in the thigh because I’m so stupid because I fucked everything up because everybody hates me and because God hates me and because I’m behaving like a fool and you would think that literally any human being in the world would have better table manners than me. What the hell was I thinking? What the hell was I thinking? I am going to burn in hell and get raped by Satan and he’s going to puke all over me because even Satan hasn’t fucked anything as goddamn repulsive as me. I yelp out loud when the fork breaks through both denim and skin.
He sets a fifty dollar bill on the table and he holds out his hand for me to take it and I feel like I’m Cindarella for about two seconds before I stand up to walk because my leg hurts because my leg is dribbling blood and it hurts like birth with every step but I’m holding his hand and his hand is soft and his hand is beautiful and his hand is everything I’ve ever wanted in my entire life.
The last time I held hands with a boy was in the second grade and I squeezed it so hard he started crying and the girls and boys playing four square on the breeze way started laughing at him for being a wimpy little bitch, which he probably was, and so he yelled at me, “I hate you. You’re fat and mean and I hope you die.” And then I hoped I would die and then everyone else laughed at me and I hoped they would die and I know now that they will die because they are all jealous now because I found Mr. Right and I’m holding his hand and he isn’t a gay loser like everyone, including myself, thought at first.
“Do you want to go to the hospital or to my place?” he says, and when I see that look in his eyes, that happy mechanical look in his eyes, I start to frown in my veins and I can feel it like metal in my blood and I take my hand back because I know I know I know who he is now. He’s a robot built by my rich fucking father and he’s been programmed to be Mr. Right and I’m Mrs. Wrong for everybody and even I know it. I start to cry and laugh and pee fart silently and I grab him by the throat and dig my nails in deep, shouting, “Show me the wires, you robo-homo!” And I feel wetness on my fingertips and I tear at his latex flesh until there is a huge gaping hole in his neck, but hot wet blood is spraying out and not electricity and Jesus Fucknuts, I blew it because I’m a moron because he’s not a robot and anybody who’s anybody can see that. Now Clark is dying dead on the street and it’s my fault and the cops are going to catch me literally red handed and I’m going to prison and I’m going to prison, but I’m not going to prison because I’m going to kill myself and I’m going to kill myself and I’m going to kill myself right after I give his perfect dead lips a soft, sweet kiss.