She reminds me that I’ve got an unquenchable appetite. 

I could take her on. I could fall in love with her. I could send her little letters at the dawn. 

We’ve got nothing in common but bad ideas and an urge to use them. To set them loose and free like little animals that’re going to tear their ways out of our hearts, and rip into our upholstery. 

Yeah, she loves like a needle going in. She pricks me, posions me, makes me ache and writhe and smile like I’ve got something tasty caught between my teeth. 

She soothes me, sucks me, surrounds me with a near-suffocation of idealized beauty. I act like I’m coming onto her, when really I’m just trying to open up. Spread my legs and push me down like a cheap whore in a cheap video game about violence and want. 

She makes me think of lewd personal advertisements. A list of fetishes, followed by an email address. A close-up picture of a pair of lips, or legs in fishnets just slightly crossed. 

There’s a moment, a perfect little moment, where we stare each other down, and feel all full of stupid levels of want. I could tell her what I’m thinking, but I’d rather that she dug in and discovered it all for herself.

She bites down on the blade and jumps out the window; heads out down the street; winds up on the dance-floor. 

She’s moving like she’s ready to fuck and she’s slick with lube ‘cause that’s the only way she can get away with wearing something so goddamn tight. So tight it makes your tongue twist in your mouth like, Pretty Polly Perfection practices pestering professional penises. 

She’s shot through with metal and bad ideas. She’s got piercings that go through the bone.

Okay: enough about her. Where were we? What were we doing?

Drinking on the dance-floor. Trying to talk. Lying about obvious truths. Y’know. And then fuckin’ gunfire and regular fire? All breaking out at once? Sure, why not. And fuckin’ bears on motorcycles while we’re at it. Let’s have it all.

Ah, she broke me like a cheap candy bar. I wanted to love her, but she was too fast, too fly. Too much for a guy like me. I needed to be edgier, richer more fantabulous. 

And instead, here I am with you.

Just think about that for a moment, would you?

He’s somewhere in his late-teens and his early-twenties.

I saw him, picking up the remnants of a pizza slice. It’d been wrapped in a paper plate, and left on the bus-stop.

I saw him, as he dropped a bit on the ground. Then he bent down, picked it back up, and ate that bit first.

He didn’t see me. Man, he was ramblin’. Not on the nod, but on the go. Places to locate. People to perceive.

Street pizza, man. Like real street pizza, as in off the street. Tomato sauce and cheese on concrete, served with a side of bus exhaust.

He keeps moving. He can’t stay still. He’s hungry, but then, who isn’t? We’re all hungry, eventually. We all walk these streets, looking for a way to get filled.

We eat love, we eat our friends, we eat our family, we eat strangers in the street, we eat their dogs and their cats, we eat our histories and our lies, and eventually, we devour ourselves, soul-first.

Down on the street, where the pizza slices sell for cheap. 

She breaks into my home and rearranges all of my books. She spells out dirty words with the first letters on the covers. She places strange authors next to each other like she’s hoping they’ll fuck.

Dirty little footprints on my carpeting. She pads around, naked like a wild animal that found itself indoors by accident. She spills my drink, and eats off my plate when I’m distracted. 

I think of her as a dragon; something rare and mythical that must be conquered to be ridden. Something that’d turn on you and devour you up in one big glorious bite.

She moves through the shower, using up all the hot water and dripping messily across the floor. She licks at my earlobes when I’m watching TV, and she scurries into my bed a moment before I can there myself. She lays in wait, naked and unassuming. 

I kiss her, slowly, like she’s an expensive whore I bought just for the evening. Like she’s the last glass of a very nice bottle of wine, and I want to taste every drop as it goes down.

If you could tear out your heart and hand it to me, maybe then I’d be happy, maybe then I’d reach some subtle level of satisfaction. If you could rip yourself to pieces, and just offer me a mouthful.

She sends me emails and forgets to sign them. She just sighs, and hits send. 

I just sigh, and hit the streets. 

Now, I’m not a violent man, but I’ve never found a problem I couldn’t solve with my hands. I’ve never had an argument that couldn’t be concluded with something strong and hard. I’ve never been as afraid of the dark as I am when I’m alone.

Here she comes, watching her walking, watch her talking. She’s just like a real-live person, isn’t she? You could almost get fooled, even as you get up close. You could almost fall right in love with her, like a bullet falls in love with meat.

Me, I wish I could still feel love for anything, for any body, for any cause. All I got now is hunger and want and need. I make it sound like affection, when it’s really an affliction. 

If you really cared about me,
You’d strip naked and show me your throat.

She had loose morals, and wore a tight collar around her neck. She reminded me of a slave, or a whore, but one with dignity. It was like she was able to keep her head held high, even while she was going down.

We met in a dirty part of the city. If it’d been a computer-mainframe, the bar would’ve been on one of the tail ends of some degrading code, where binary fell to bit and static snuck in around the edges. Blurs of blacks and whites making endless greys to fall into.

She was drinking poison, because she wanted to kiss a man so hard he’d die. It was a goal she’d come up with. It was something she wanted to try.

Me, I wanted to try her. I wanted to take her out for a spin, for a ride. I wanted to see how she handled at high speeds and low depths. I wanted to see how she functioned under pressure. I wanted to hold her hand and whisper obscenities into her ear while she played video games. 

We were together, as some people are. We got to know each other, our styles and fashions, and then we fell in love, like thieves love an object before they take it.

Now she’s just my favourite excuse. She’s why I stay in bed so long. She’s why I’ve put on weight. She’s what’s turning my blue hairs grey. 

I love her, but I’d love to destroy her. 
To devour her in a single bite.

We fucking marched right into that ice cream parlour, and we went to work. 

She had a pick-ax, dirty with grime and miner’s sweat, and she knew how to use it: quickly, and with purpose. Up and down like a metaphor for emotions or sex, she raised and lowered the thing. Glass shattered, and spurts of iced creams dotted the walls like sex crimes turned to graffiti.

I had handguns, one settled snuggly into each of my palms. I felt the recoil sting my flesh as the guns went off in tandem bursts. If you don’t aim right, the bullets just go straight through stuff. You have to direct the bullets to the target, if you want to see things blow up.

The cash register exploded in an ugly eruption of small metal bits and loose change. Dollar bills on the floor, keypad digits on the far wall.

A siren was going off, or maybe that was just the noise inside my head. They make drugs for that sort of thing, you know? Good drugs. Drugs that come in shiny clean bottles. Drugs that taste like candy. I love drugs. I’d love to have some drugs. But I cannot. My mind may be aching, but my body is a temple. And it craves only ice cream.

Yeah, big handfuls of the stuff, gone gooey from the heat of exposure to the world. I put down a gun so I can cup a mouthful up to my face, chocolate hazelnuts running down the sides of my face. It’s like I’m smeared with the ambrosia of the gods, like I was eating out the crotch of some great chocolate bitch-goddess from on high. I feel charged. Full of life, and light. Yeah, I’m all lit up from the inside, like how serial killers get with they snuff their prey. 

I know she’s killing spectators, somewhere in the background. I can hear them screaming, and I know the sound that pick-ax makes when it tears a person’s stomach out through a hole that was carved in their ribs. 

I know. Times like this, I feel like I know everything. I feel like my brain is as big as the sky, and that it holds all the stars you can see above you, and stuff on beyond from there, too.

I know stuff. So much stuff.

I just don’t know much more time we have before the cops show up.
Then, things are gonna get ugly.

I wish we were vampires.

We could live out by the park, and wear leather jackets, with the collars turned up. We’d wear sunglasses all day and all night, so nobody could see how dark and sexy our eyes were.

We’d look like a band, some strange new alt-rock band the normals at the mall had never heard of. They’d see us from afar, and they’d protect their children from our shadows.

You could pump something like cold lime Kool-Aid through your heart. I’d drive an antique cadillac, as long and deadly as the night itself. We’d race down back roads and dine on orphans and strays. 

I wish we were lovers, and vampires. We’d stay in bed all day, our cool naked flesh pushed up close to each other. We’d watch cartoons and eat sugary cereals and never put on weight or get tired of each other’s conversation. 

We’d go out dancing, and all the goth kids would swarm around us like scared bees craving the pollen of a venus-flytrap. We’d just ignore ‘em all, and look for some scared tourist to take home to make love with.

We’d fuck beautiful strangers, and toss them like empty soda cans from the windows of our speeding cars.

I wish we could just date, or hang out.
I think it’d be cool.

Fire burns forever upwards. It’s optimistic that way. 

Flames climb the walls of the apartment like they’re so bored they’re going insane. They want out. They want to climb, up high, into the sky, like brightly-feathered birds, or starry-eyed angels forever drifting towards a city in the clouds.

Smoke fills every nook and cranny, like love filling up a heart. Thick black smokes that chokes the lungs. Suffocates you. Smothers you, like somebody loves you so much, that they can’t let you live your own life. Thick black smoke fills your lungs. Everything tastes like burning.

The heat is intense in here. You’re sweating, but the sweat evaporates up off your skin faster than it can appear. You’re scorching. You’re turning to steam. You’re fading into a heat so intense that it makes you feel like its coming from inside yourself.

Yeah, it’s hot in here. Hot like you’re stripping down for a stranger you want to please. Hot like you feel guilty for making the mistake you wanted to. Hot like a lover, pressed up close, so close, that you can feel the blood in their veins, pressing hard against your own.

The room turns to charcoal and ash. Black and grey.

Fade to neutral shades, and then crumble to dust.

And then, be gone.

I’m floating up in her sky. I’m in motion, all around her life. 

“He’s an orbiting obituary,” I hear her tell her dearest friend over warm coffee, alone in a strange café. “He’s the back pages of a newspaper, strewn with advertisements for whores and lost property.”

I’m forever two steps behind her. I’m a song that’s caught in her subconscious. I’m there in the rhythmic ways she dances, and fucks.

Together we’re a pair of bullets, looking for a body to sleep in. We’re like criminals looking for a hotel room to stash ourselves within.

She’s got dirty words and dirty ideas tattooed up and down her arms. She’s got a big black heart transfixed to the outside of her epidermal layer. It beats black ink, the same stuff I use for writing notes like these.

Cocaine in her nostrils and cocks in all her slots; she’s a dreamer, a fornicator, a user. She uses young bodies like they’re about to be made illegal. She uses love like it’s an ugly word that just means ADDICTION.

If I had another place to be, I’d burn this place down. I’d burn it down, and sleep across the ashes. 

But she’s all I’ve got, and all I’ve got to get off.

You could break me, with just one word.

But I’ll never tell you what it is.

She sleeps, fitfully, throughout most of the night. Raindrops rattle the windows, and ghosts chase goblins around the darkened corners of the room. Off in a corner sits a shotgun, unused and unloved.

We took our chances, and we wrapped them in tinfoil like leftovers, or crazy-brains trying to be protected from outside influences. We took our chances, and we left, on the best bus we could find heading out of town.

Out in the desert, the badlands are full of mechanized lizards; dinosaurs that evolved halfway into robots, and started to think they could rule these abandoned waste-lands. I’ve seen the glowing-green shadows those monsters cast. I’ve heard their growls and I know what they’re hungry for.

Some men call it 

Justice

But I call it a well-made meal for breakfast. 

“I want to lean up, and kiss the clouds.”

She won’t get out of bed. She’s taken all my drugs, and defaced all my favourite pieces of art. She’s naked, except for a lot of bad memories. 

I’m not here. I’m in a gilded cage. I’m in the hotel next door to my home. I’m living in the empty space where my heart should be. I moved all my worldly possessions into the hole, and now I’m just listening to the echo of the chamber. 

She calls out to me like she’s ringing a bell. I feel fidgety, and out of place. I wonder if she’s reaching for me, or through me. 

I’m hungry like it’s a punishment. I’m bored like it’s a life-sentence. I’d give anything just to get a little something, but I’ve got nothing more in me to surrender. 

I give up on surrender. I stop trying to look unconcerned. 

I wish I had something more to say, to accomplish, but it’s not in me today. I’m just a vacant place where nothing gets accomplished.

She turns me on like a TV, and tunes me in like a radio signal that’s broadcasting from inside the house. She winds me up and sets me loose like string in a blender.

When I was a kid, all I wanted was to be a shaman, but like, one of those cool shaman, that you see on TV. The kind who carries a gun and gets stuff done. I’d walk cool and talk cool and be hard as fuck. Bullets would slide off of me, and I’d exude a sort of war-time confidence that makes most men look like the weeds that grow up out of cowards’ graves.

Now, I humble myself with witticisms and narcotics. I can tell lies from the truth, but I’ve learned there’s no money in it. I can charm badgers and curse beavers, but that’s rarely as useful as one might hope. 

Now I’m hungry, but hopeful. I’m full of anger, and the motivation to change. I’ve got nowhere to go but up, or possibly somewhat lateral, in a sort of snaking motion. Serpentine running patterns. 

My mind’s adrift and out to see-no-evil. I got some big black boots and a suitcase full of shifty ideas that’ll fix you up, but good. 

I have to admit that doing drugs makes me care less about my cutlery drawer.

I get a little high, and I’m all like, “Fuck you, forks and knives. I don’t care where you wind up. Spoons, you can lay in whatever direction you want. Corkscrew, I don’t know why you’re in there, and I don’t give a damn.”

I know it’s not great, doing drugs. You have to be careful. Not to do them too much. But I do like to do them, and then, when I’m doing dishes, I’m like, “fuck the cutlery drawer. Who gives a shit? Just fucking throw the shit where it goes. Are we so vain, as to give a fuck, about what size spoons go where?”

It’s not my best quality. It’s not something I can show off to my friends, to try to be cool. “Oh yeah, check out my cutlery drawer.” I can’t like, threaten a guy in a fight with it. “Dude, if you even saw my cutlery drawer, you’d know that I don’t give a fuck about anything!” I can’t take a girl home and impress her with my “bohemian-style cutlery drawer.” She won’t care. 

But I care. I care about my cutlery drawer. I do. I wash my eating utensils on a regular basis. I use a little scrub brush, and soap that’s easy on my hands. And I care about how it all winds up. I do.

Right up until I get high.

Look there, do you see her? She’s the last of a warrior-breed, the last of the real people. And she’s walking towards her death.

Hard desert sands are crushed under her every footstep. She wears thick-soled boots, and clothing that looks weathered into armour. Sandstorms have worn her skin tough. Her eyes are narrow little slits of darkness. 

She rarely speaks. 

She carries a gun, a revolver, that holds eight bullets. Each bullet is made from the fragments of a giant’s skull. The bullets are bone white, though shine like silver when sunshine strikes them. The bullets are poisonous, and can fired by no other gun, than the one that she wears in the holster on her hip.

She’s hunting. 

Something killed us, all of us. Something came to earth and slaughtered mankind like we were a hive of insects getting up to no good. 

Now she’s the only one left.

And she hunts those that destroyed us, across the hard desert sands. 

She has never known a lover.

And her heart is as hard as iron. 

She’s a fierce thing, she is.