“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.

I stumble through the streets, stuttering automatic-weapons-fire like I’m screaming obscenities at a crowd. I think I am screaming; my voice is tearing through my throat like I’m screaming fire. Spitting fire as I hurl little lead stones the size of death, all through the air. 

You have to take a moment, to try to savour those perfect moments.

Sirens screaming, fires blazing, the sewer system exploding beneath our feet. Everything burns if you apply enough want. You could set a whole town on fire, just for laughs. Brutal simplicity; me + you = nothing.

I take a moment to smell the air, as it catches on fire. Yeah, take a sniff of the morning air, catch a beam of the morning sun, and then just walk away, leaving streets full of broken corpses, crying to their false gods. False fucking gods. No false gods have I, mind you. I worship only the kinetic bliss of the bullet, and the sting of stab to the face.

She wanted a love-note, so I sent her graphic sexual descriptions, written in blood.

I saw her take it, take the love, take the note. She put it in her mouth, like she likes to do, and she chewed it up, like bubble-gum, and she spit it out on the floor, like a used-up boy-toy. 

She wanted me to single her out, to seduce her. So I brought a hammer and a fistful of nails, and I showed her what I thought of romance. 

When the cops came, we’d already ascended to a higher level of being, leaving behind our flawed bodies to serve the time in prison. The flesh took the weight, while we took flight, like little lights that flicker out, and are free. Candle-flames free of wicks. 

I wrote:

Fuck. I wish I could think of something sensible to tell you. I wish you’d just get naked; your nipples inspire as does the way you blush when I give you instructions. I wish I had better words to make you hear the ways I want you, how you drive me wild. How you crush my fucking soul with desire.

She read:

Hey yo, how’s it going. It’s another boring day in my life, where I think about the things I want to eat and how cool I am, basically all the time. Yeah, it’s pretty fucking cool, or rather, I’m pretty fucking cool, but you never seem to notice that.

She said, write me something honest, and I’ll fuck you under an assumed name.

I took her at her word. Every word a lie.

Do you, do you, do you still wanna drink my blood?

I know you’re out there; out late, playing with your toys. They’re such playful toys, aren’t they?

And I; I don’t really need anything new from you. I don’t need any fan mail, I don’t require love notes stuck under my door. If I really want to be loved, all I need is a mirror, or an animal to feed. If I really want to be appreciated, I can start at home, where they know all my names and call on me simply by looking in my direction. 

Are you still out there? Are you reading yourself, writing yourself, wishing I’d read or write to you? Do you want to be penpals - lovers - zombies - bestest friends forever - vampires - lesbians - gayly in love with each other? 

Do you still wanna drink my blood?

Because I… I want… I want all that, and all that more. I want you and your roommate and your mom and dad and the snacks, the leftovers at the back of the fridge, the spare change under the couch cushions. The spare karmic change left over under the cushions of the casting couch where young wannabe-starlets suck stock roles in exchange for a dream or two.

But do you still want to notice me, what I’m doing here, why I came back here for you?

Sure I came back for you. Sure I did.

Because, I, I wanna drink your soul.

She thought we were something special, magical, something unique and special, something not like anything else. 

As it turned out, that was just me, and she riding on what you might call my coattails. Yeah, she was riding on those, and she was also abiding on my cocktails; all those tasty little drinks I mixed up for her to drink down.

Well, her or somebody like her. 

She was a fickle little bitch, but she was certain that she was certain about me. She held onto me like she was afraid I might slip away. Yeah, she was so lustful that her lovers could slip right on out of her, if you follow me. If you follow me, you’ll probably just wind up at her again. I try to break way, but maybe I’m too broken to escape, already. 

God, how long have we been watching this movie? Is this a date, or a prison sentence? 

Okay, so I woke up early this morning, with a girl I didn’t recognize, dying in bed next to me, dying from boredom and disappointment.

I rolled off the mattress quoting song lyrics like I was in a music video nobody else could see. You were my camera, you were what I was walking and talking into.

I walked into the bathroom and I urinated and pretended to comb my hair when I was really just admiring myself in the mirror. My face reminds me of a book of love poems; I don’t really know why, but it just does. I stick out my tongue and I stick out in a crowd. 

I want to spit in the camera, I want break my face on the fourth wall. 

I want come, willingly, along with you, into the next chapter. 

I daydream about these candy-coloured(-coated) girls… Hair like clouds of cotton candy or storm clouds threatening lightning, eyes that say so clearly, “I’m so demure, I’d never eat you alive and spit your soul out on the side of the road.”

But they would.

So, we’re driving and we’re driving and we’re driving, and the road is breaking up beneath our wheels like a bad marriage. Yeah, the road’s coming apart like a bitter divorcee you’re going to run into in some smoky bar. You’ll use all your best lines, and she’ll ignore them. She’ll decide if she wants you by the slope of your genitals through your clothes. She’s got an eye for details, this metaphoric woman who represent the cracked pavement of the endless long road we’re drifting down so long as there’s gas in the tank and hands on the wheel.

One hand on the wheel, one hand on her thigh. She smiles, the pin of the grenade still between her teeth, as the device itself tumbles backwards over the rear of the car, exploding one of those idiots following so close behind us.

“I want to make out with you, so bad,” I yell over the rush of the wind, but she thinks I’m quoting song lyrics again.

Her fingernails are painted with holographic skulls, that twist and bend as the daylight hits them. Her hair is on fire, on fucking fire, or maybe that’s just a trick of the light.

I’m texting her poetry and getting off to her profile pics; she has no idea how bad it’s gotten, this crush, this obsession, this never-ending car-crash of a relationship. She’s sitting right there across the seat from me, more than half naked, half baked, half drunk, half in love with the moon…

She licks her lips, and I wish, for the third time today, that I was the lipstick upon them. 

“How’s the addiction coming?” she asks me, straddling my chest and sinking her fangs into the meat of my soul.

I cough weakly. Is that blood on my lips, or strawberry syrup?

“You taste like you’re getting stronger,” she tells me, licking her lips as I spill out onto the floor. “Healthier, I dunno quite yet. But stronger, sure.”

Like my bond to her. Stronger, sure, but healthier? I don’t know. Maybe I was healthier when I was alone. Maybe I shouldn’t have mixed our works like this. Maybe I shouldn’t have let her get her teeth into my needles. 

She might as well have hypodermic needles for teeth. I might as well burst into a bloody haze when she hits me. For all the good it’ll do.

She straps me down. She covers my eyes so I can’t see.
She turns fingers into knives and she goes looking for hidden prizes I might have up inside my heart.

I cough weakly. Is that strawberry syrup on my lips, or is all my goodness leaking out onto her? 

I ask her how she’d define her ability to survive. 

I get nervous up high, on the edge, on the ledge of these great long beasts of cement that reach up into the sky like never-ending tombstones. Sky-scrapers, scraping the sky. 

I stand on the edge, and I feel a sensation take me over, a little like my heart is about to puke up my resolve and most of my legs. 

I stand on the edge, and look a billion moments down the side, at the street down below. She bites her lip and smiles and says something that I can’t make out over the roar of the wind. How am I even standing here? What part of this isn’t madness and suicide? A quick trip the exit at the bottom. The All Exit. 

Yeah, the All Exit. Where everybody gets off.

She takes me up high so we can look down at the clouds that frost the windows of the hundred and sixty-eighth floor. We drink a slow breath of cold air together.

And then we set loose our mechanical hearts.
And we fly. 

A perfect man, in a perfect suit. He puts his gun to the back of his victim’s head. 

Our perfect man, I call him X. He’s got clear eyes and a clear conscious and a lifeline of karma that looks like a car accident a mile wide. He’s got a black suit, with a black tie.

His victim, I call him Steven. Steven’s in an expensive tuxedo, the kind Jame Bond might wear to a casino. Steven looks nice. He’s clean-cut, and well-shaven. 

X puts a gun to the back of Steven’s head, and pulls a trigger, releases a flock of butterflies from Steven’s forehead. The butterflies are red and blue and green, the colour of blood and brains. The butterflies spray out in a burst of light and life.

X puts his gun to the back of Steven’s head. Steven feels the bullet parting his hair, and entering his skull. Steven doesn’t feel the butterflies swarming out of skull. 

The butterflies are semi-reflective, sparkling in sunlight, reflective like crystal-clear waters. The butterflies are caught in an updraft, swept away on the breeze.

I liked you more when you bled more often, when you had an obvious, open wound, that gushed your innards out, like a jelly donut when I gave you a squeeze. 

Soft and white, squeezing out something thick and runny and red when I squeeze you, just like a jelly donut. Just like a snack I could eat late at night, all by myself. Or maybe the sort of treat I’d like to flaunt; let the whole world see as I sunk my teeth into you.

I like the bashful way you obey me when I tell you to get naked, when I tell you strip off your metaphors and just say what’s on your mind. I like the way you avoid me, evade me, switch the topic of the conversation, just when things are getting a little too good.

I’m giving you my literary criticisms as I reach for your tits. Distracting you with prose as a hand goes up your skirt. I’m sure I’ve got you convinced, but I’m also painfully aware that what attracts me to you is my suspicion that you’re a bit smarter than me, so I don’t push my luck any further than I think you’d like it to be shoved.

You ask me really personal questions like, “what do you want to know?” and “what would you like me to show you?” You expose yourself in a way that makes me want to feel exploited, makes me want to feel guilty and used, like you’re wiping yourself off on me when you’re done fucking your hands. 

She’s just flirting with me now; making conversation and looking deeply into my eyes. She feels so safe and at ease. She’s forgotten that I came here just to get something to eat. She’s convinced herself that she’s cool with how it can all go down.

I don’t need anything, except when I do. I don’t need anything, ever at all, but my wants are a pack of snarling dogs with heroin-junky eyes and always-empty bellies. 

What could I want? I could want everything, all day, without taking much time out for the rest of the world. I want her to follow up on that thought, I want her to admit the facts of flesh that she’s trying so hard to be so coy about. 

She puts it in a letter, she puts herself between the letters of her sentences.
She sentences herself to be locked away with in sentiments.
And - see now?
Her sentence is up.

She’s watching me hesitate. She’s watching me come closer to her, like I think I’m invisible and hunting her. 

Just ‘cause she can see through me, doesn’t mean she doesn’t know I’m not there.

I came to her searching out sanctuary, looking for a place to hide. I was hoping she could help me with some issues I’d been repressing for a while, I was hoping she could expose my secret side and give my alternate identities a chance to get out in the sun for a while. 

Now she’s got me in her eyes like a loose piece of glass; no peace there. Now she’s got me in her eyes like something a doctor would have to take out with tweezers and a bright light. Now she’s got me in her mouth like a password she doesn’t want to say. 

Now she’s got me in her heart mouth like something she doesn’t want to spit out. 

Crawling away on broken legs, crawling away on a highway built of shards of broken glass, crawling away with nowhere to run, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. No salvation to be bought, borrowed, begged or stolen. 

Discomfort is a word for it. The rhythm of chaos being written with gunfire up above our heads. She shrugs off a world of sand from her shoulders, a little cloud of the past echoing off of her as she walks away. She trails a dust cloud, a smoke shield, a sense of personal freedom that supersedes any intrusions. 

I am trying to believe her when she tells me all that shit she feels it necessary to tell me so much of the time. Where she was with, and what it felt like. What she stole from them, and who she set on fire. Why she did it.

Me, I’m all out of why. I don’t know my motivations for doing anything any more. If I required reason to move, I’d just sit here on the side of the road and turn to rust.

But so long as nobody asks me why its all happening, I can keep going. 
Just don’t ask me why.  

I tune in her frequency, I tune her in, and I tune her up. I go after the knobs and dials of the machine, and then I go past that, reaching to go wild with the wiring. 

She’s spitting sparks now, she’s jacked up on the threat of threats, and the chance to hurl about a few of her own. She’s chewing a mouthful of potential abuse and outrage. 

There’s a taste in the air like burning; something acidic, right on the tip of my tongue. She just sits there, twitching nervously. She comes hard, like an epileptic fit in screaming neon shades. She comes like she’s coming loose, like she’s coming apart at the seams. 

Seems like, it anyway. Seems like she’s coming for me, like an inevitability, like death or taxes. She’s coming for me, on the edge of my finger, on the edge of my consciousness, as something I never quite forget or get tired of pushing away. 

I tune myself in to her frequency, I turn myself into her idea of something to want. I shape-shift into something that slides into her just a little too tightly. I find out what her wavelength is, and then I get on it.

I ride her frequency all night, a transonic signal ringing in my ears, strange radiations glowing from off my skin.