“I have never been in this room before,” she lied to me. 

I said, “that’s cool,” and I took off my clothes. My bullet-proof underwear and the lock of hair I wore on a chain about my neck. A keepsake from a night with one of those fashionable young porn-stars who went to make it big with her own line of how-to snuff-films for up-and-coming serial-killers. 

The girl I’m with now, she’s not like that. She’s a nice girl, or at least that’s what you’d think from her underwear. Smooth cottony stuff. No obvious holes or signs of wear. 

I think I know her better than that, though. She picked me up three nights ago, like a cop picks up a body, and then turns it over to the morgue. She attracted me by being well-read, and obviously orally amicable. I think I said something like, “Hey baby, what’s your favourite planetary sign of life?”

She said something back like, “you’d look good with the barrel of a gun in your mouth.” 

We wanted to be movie script-writers, in Hollywoodland. Now we were just cheap whores, lending each other money to pay each other off. It was a love affair that would cost us our knees by the end of the night.

We weren’t held back by fear, we were held aloft by it. Fear forced us up, into the sky, off the ground, and ever onwards. Fear forced us to never look back. Fear compelled us, drove us, insisted that we go further and be more.

She was also so scared of her family, so scared of winding up back there again. She stitched together great bloody wings from sheet metal, and she kissed the cloudscape. 

He was scared of spiders, and anything else that could climb into his body through a hole in his skin, and start laying eggs up inside of him, eggs full of little beasts that would hatch out and eat his flesh to survive. He created himself a suit of armour as thin as a breeze and as solid as the mantle of the earth; he put it once, and then it never came off. He explained that he’d rather be untouchable than to live in that world of doubt. I don’t know how he slept before, but it was like a baby after his helmet got fully attached. 

Me, what was I scared of? The sound of my own voice? Alien thoughts being implanted in my head through the unexpected application of my own creativity? I was scared of the abstract, of the innately unknowable. I was forced to adapt to things I couldn’t foresee or perceive. I became more than my environment could know; I ate up the dreams that others left around, and I shot the night cold with constant levels of low hostility that burned within me like an angry hive of bees set alight. 

She’s scared of infinity.
Me, I’m just scared of everything.

“I’m scared of everything that isn’t you,” she says, loading her gun with pure bule bolt of fire. “I’m scared of my own face in the mirror, and what might be hidden underneath it.”

I lick lips. I look at hers, and I lick my own. I taste like old road dirt and bad memories. She tastes like a teenager’s bubblegum and cheap wine. She smiles like a threat and makes love like a civilization coming to an end.

She won’t look up into the sky at night. Too many stars. She doesn’t like a clear sky, she likes a dark grey coverage from horizon to horizon. She likes her world draped in neutral colours and silence.

She’s got eyes like my favourite song being turned up on a stolen stereo. She’s got eyes of pure blue and black and purple and madness.

She smiles, and I burn. They’re the roles we chose for this game we play.
She smiles, and I burn happily in sight of her.  

Today I’m going to think about you (you sit up and take notice), crossing and uncrossing your legs before me (before I what?). You clench and unclench your fists (like there’s something in your hands). 

I warn you that I’m going to come, closer to you, on to you. I’m going to spell out the words you want to hear, real slowly. I’m going to whisper in your ear. I’m going to whisper a growl in your ear, and I want you to take notice.

(She bleeds/breathes all around me. She takes me into her, and she breathes and bleeds all around me where I’m strongest for her.)

Your words are in my ears like your teeth is at my throat. I can tell you have something oh-so-important to tell me.

Everything memes something sometime. 

I’ve started to feel high enough to stop coming down. I’m starting to see the patterns everywhere I look, like a bug-eyed conspiracy freak focusing on the problems instead of all the obvious solutions. 

I feel like my arms are caught up in some larger machine, some great flesh-devouring beast of steel and rage that’s dragging me down and down and down towards the bottom of the sea. I can feel the water rushing up against my skin, I can feel the ocean pressure popping my eardrums. 

I can see everything going dark. You come to bed, but you don’t turn out the light. You get into bed, but you don’t turn out the light. You get in the covers. The light stays on.

I feel like such a broken sinner, coming crawling back to you like I do. Looking to you for healing and safety and fuck knows what else. I feel like everything I do is a stain across your clean laundry. I feel like black ink spurting on a white wedding dress.

Or something else in a similar shade.

I’ve been waiting all day for you to come and look me over. For you to find me wanting, for you to find me, here where you left me, wanting for you.

I’ve been waiting all my life for somebody to smile at me just like I think you might.

I’ve been waiting for so long to fall in love like gravity had a hold on my emotional responses. I’ve been waiting so long to look into your eyes all day long. I’ve been trying to be transformative, I’ve been trying to be something special and full of life and laughter, just so you’d want me around.

I melted in the rain like sugar and salty tears running away and forever.

I melted into your skin and became an invisible tattoo, your invisible tattoo, your undetectable alteration forever becoming more and more and more in mind, in your mind, if you don’t mind my getting in on you more and more and more.

angelatiredface replied to your post: What are you afraid of?

Do you think these are common fears to have?

I don’t think that existential dread is an uncommon thing; I think we all experience it, on  some level or another. I think all rationally-minded creatures feel a bit of ennui and desperation when forced to exam the worth and purpose of their own lives.

At the same time, I don’t know that many people who worry about writing stories, or who put all the weird thought I put into being concerned as to whether I’m a two-faced hypocrite or not. 

I wish more people were worried about that sort of thing, I guess. I wish more people were concerned about Doing The Right Thing, as Garth Ennis has put it.

I think my fears are as common as myself, as my mind. And that’s the double-edged sword right there, it is. Because on one hand, I’m just like everybody. My feelings are the same as everybody else’s. We all experience the same world.

Ah, but then, aren’t I also an individual, with unique opinions and outlooks and feelings? And shouldn’t my fears thereby also be just as singularly expressive as the rest of my personality? 

So, I dunno.

I’d like to say my fears are as individually generated as my writing is… A hackneyed and as cliché as the same. 

Where am I going with this stupid plan of mine? How am I going to get you into my arms? How can I get you as close to me as I want you to be, without giving up any of my advantages?

I get tense, and everything stops being what it is. I have to remember how to fight, with a sort of peaceful benevolence that still includes the will to kill if the moment should demand such a response. Mostly I just want louder music and sweatier bodies. More to eat and more to run from. I want a reminder that wolves are still outside. I want a reason to stand on the edge of something.

I want to stand on your edge, and I want to tumble off of it. I want to fall for a while. I want to fall for something like I fell for you. I want to keep falling. Fuck it, I wanna push you to. I want to see you tumble, take a tumble with me. I want to see what obsession and lust looks like in your eyes, rather than just reflected in your skin whenever I’m around you. 

I want to be somebody I can recognise. I want to reconnect to the source of fiction, I want to plug back into the network of mainframes. I want to stop wanting so much, I want to take my every want, my every sexual desire, and focus it into a weapon made of dead bones, and I want to fire it off like a bullet. All that want, striking you like a bullet.

I bring together little moments like birds in a flock of flights. We aim our faces at the sky, and kiss the sun with tongues. We lick up sunshine and kiss it deep into each other’s mouths. We have quiet moments of togetherness.

Me, I set my head on fire, so it matches my heart, and then I go out, looking for troubles. Other people’s troubles? My own.

I don’t want to trouble you; I just think you’re wearing too many clothes, and I’d like to see your skin shine.