I used to date this girl, let’s call her Amy. She was bald when we met; she was manically happy, and I thought she looked like Tank Girl. She had a face like Winona Ryder, and way nicer tits, though her teeth looked like she used her mouth for opening old tin cans. 

I told my friends she was the first girl I ever slept with, even though she was really the second, because my friends weren’t allowed to know about the first. 

Amy wanted to date me; she wanted to sleep with me right away. On our first real date, she took me into her room and stripped off her clothing, to reveal a bunch of crazy tattoos she’d drawn on herself with marker. I remember there was a big long snake, coming out of the dense bush of pubic hair that she refused to trim back. The snake ran up along the inside of her back.

She hated to fuck. She had a bunch of illnesses, mental or otherwise, living up in her head. She was always sick in some way or another. She always wanted me around, always wanted me to touch her, to hold her, but she was uncomfortable with having it go further. She wished she had a surrogate who could fuck me, so she could just watch, and be with me. I was nineteen, so fucking was all I wanted. If we’d found the surrogate, I’d probably have just dated that girl instead.

Amy was interesting. She read good books and she got all my jokes. She had an ex-boyfriend for a roommate for a while; he’s one of the few people I truly regret not kicking the shit out of. He raped her one night, and claimed he was sleepwalking. He was scared of me, with very good reason. 

But Amy and I, we couldn’t maintain, so I let her slip away. I took a pretty girl’s virginity Amy’s bathroom floor a year later, and I fucked Amy behind her boyfriend’s back the year after that.

Some time later, years later, I got a call from her. She was in an institution, between sessions of electro-shock treatment. She sounded like she was barely there at all, just this little lost confused ghost of the girl I knew. She couldn’t remember anything, and she sounded so sad and alone. 

But then, Amy had always sounded sad and alone.

She’s out there still, somewhere. 
And I guess, so am I. 

Kecia was outfitted in hot-pink vinyl that looked like it’d been sprayed onto her body; a second-skin that stood in stark contrast to the darkness of her epidermal layer.  It was legless, like a swimsuit, cutting up sharply around her crotch, and reaching up over her shoulders; her breasts pushed hard against the material, keeping the surface taut. The glove, boots, and bunny-ears, were all the same shade of electrical-accident pink; pink like something lewd, something suggestive. Her smile was lewd, and suggestive.

Noelle’s costume wasn’t really a costume; it was more a uniform. It looked like a bikini cast out of black iron, the rough, dark metal aggravating her skin in a way that she found strangely satisfying, like in the same way shooting some pig-fucker with her AK47 was strangely satisfying. She liked the warm rush of blood, the hot gun-metal in her hands; she liked the heat, the motion, the fury. Her sunglasses were bullet-proof mirrors. Affixed to the outer shell of the bikini top, where the nipples would be, were gaudy happy-faces, suggesting of the madness of unbalanced brain chemistry.

Kecia carried a whip, at her hip – it was eighteen feet long, and zapped like an industrial cattle-prod when it contacted. It made her look like Dominatrix Queen of Dimension Nine. She liked to lace the whip around the necks of her victims, and watch the men spasm hot ejaculate in their pants as they died.

Noelle was addicted to the weight of her gun, to the kinetic rage it generated within itself. She spat bullets at world like she was writing love notes, or blowing kisses. She liked the way the men seemed to throw themselves on her fire; the sacrifices, willing or un, never went unnoticed. No, she loved to watch them twitch; the slow dance of blood loss made her lick her lips like a hungry cat. 

She backhanded me with her kiss, battered me with a smattering of affection. 

I said, “I really don’t think I deserve this sort of treatment,” and she just laughed. She laughed and put her heel down on my karma. 

I wish, sometimes, that I had a more heroic stature, that I wasn’t so small and petty minded. But you have to work with what you’ve got, and I’ve got a mind built for tearing apart smaller things, like a mad dog on a chain. 

She made love to me until it ended me, until I was left, dead and spent, ready to be black-bagged and hauled away to the morgue.  

She’s more than a girl. More than a toy.

I play rough with her, but I do not wish to break her. I want to keep her, and be able to play with her always. She’s my special doll; she seems lifeless and cold to others, but I know where to flick the switch.

She’s a slave, a partner, a lover. She takes abuse and does what she’s told because she likes it. She likes the way my hand feels on her leash.

She sleeps in my bed, and steals food from off my plate. She steals kisses from my lovers. Hell, she’d steal the sprinkles off my donuts, if I let her out of my sight long enough. 

We talk about the important things, like food, and romance. She holds my hand during scary movies, and washes my back in the shower.

Whenever we sleep together, she always winds up on my side of the bed.

Why aren’t we making out? Why aren’t we sitting together, telling lies, exchanging fantasies, figuring each other out? Why aren’t you sucking on my tongue? Why are we still both wearing clothes? Why haven’t you sent me all those photos I asked for? Why are you pretending to resist? Why aren’t we staying up late together, talking quietly in a corner of the couch about very little as we mostly just put hands all over each other’s bodies into the early hours of the morning?

“Gosh,” she said, her cheeks going a little pink, “we really don’t know each other that well…”

I gave up on having a home, and settled into couch surfing. I made internet connections, and found my way into their homes.

Yeah, she let me stay on her couch for a while. I curled up in the corner of the couch, stealing food off her husband’s plate as they cycled through television shows in the living room. 

Another gave me space to stay, but she made me earn it. I had to sit up late, telling her stories about people who didn’t exist, as she giggled and suggested I disrobe. 

I found a bit of peace with a shy creature who shared the metal of her mouth and the crispness of her coffee with me, but both through the delicate dance of conversation. We spent hours praising each other’s hair until there was nothing else to say. 

Still another offered me a place to lay my head, but it turned out to be a tiger-trap; a long dark pit to fall into, full of sharp jagged spikes at the bottom. I thought she wanted my company, but she really wanted to mount me, which is to say, when she was done with me, my head was hanging on her wall.

There were crushes and cravings, shared secrets and the sensation of being kicked to the curve when somebody’s done with you. Yeah, when they were finished with my lovely company and conversation, they asked to me to go, and I’d pack up and move on.

On to the next one, on to the next place to stay, the next hole to hide my head in, so as to wait out the rain. 

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was so pretty that everybody thought she must be the nicest little girl, and she got sick of that, so she found a horrible old blind man who didn’t like anybody, and she got him to teach her how to knife fight

Then, whenever anybody would call her cute, she would stab them.

One day, the pretty little girl who was still quite cute but also stabbed a lot, was walking through The Forest, which was the name of the big mall downtown. She went up to the big fat ladies who ran the milkshake machines in the centre of the foodcourt, and she asked for a peanut-butter and worms milkshake.

“Oh, you don’t want that,” said the fat old lady who ran the milkshake machine. “That’s not a drink for cute little girls to have.”

So the little girl stabbed her.

“Hey, you shouldn’t do that,” said the tired old security guard. “Stabbing’s not for cute little girls to do.”

So she stabbed him.

And then finally people got the idea through their thick heads, and they kept their damn mouths shut when that cute little girl went by.

And later, she had a burrito. And it was delicious. 

We waited for the rain to stop falling.

We clung to each other in the alcove an emptied out old convenience store; one of those former 24-hour places that’d been owned and operated by some English-As-A-Second-Language immigrants who’d given their businesses such unlikely monikers as “Dave Hair Salon” and the “All Day Store Mart”. 

I put my hands low on her back, searching out a bit of skin between the top of her pants and the bottom of the rainslicked faux-leather jacket that clung to her torso. 

She reached up to me with her lips, smudging the stubble of my chin with her dark purple colouring. She blinked so close to me that I could feel her eyelids fluttering against my skin, and it made my heartbeat waver for a moment, like I was telling a lie or missing a step while falling down.

Yeah, I was missing a step, as I was falling down. I didn’t know how to get from here to there. I didn’t know what the missing part of the spell was, that turned from inert language, into living magic. 

Her body pressed up against to mine, making the most of the close quarters that we shared, struggling for cover as the rain rattled against the faded plastic awning overhead. Her body pressed close to mine, so I could feel the contours of her flesh and her bones as through her wardrobe. I could feel the honesty of her form through her material shieldings. 

She looked into my eyes, my odd hazel spheres of intrigue and tired old jokes, and I looked into her dark, dark eyes. I looked into the darkness of her eyes, and I just kinda hung out there for a while, and listend to the rain fall. 

My fingertips were cool in contrast to the warmth of the small of her back. She giggled, and I tried to think of something cool and clever to say, to make the moment last for a while ever.

Outside our precious little moment, the rest of the city burned and burned and burned against the rain and against the night. The city burned like the ruins and rubble were broken off from the surface of the sun - white hot flames that smouldered stones and turned this civilization into ash. 

Fuckin’ just look at her go. 

That girl’s so fucking hot.
That girl’s so fucking wild.
That girl’s got a fucking tapeworm.

Yeah, she told me about it once, over cheap beers. I did the buying, she did the drinking.

“Caught it while swimming through some real murky shit water,” she confessed. She’s drinking a local beer; it’s bright yellow, like wasps. The bright buzzing warning yellow colour of wasps. 

“But see, the thing is like, it’s not a parasite. It’s a symbiote. You know? Like, it helps me, and it does a bunch of useful stuff.”

“Like what?” I had to ask.

“Well like, for one thing? I sleep like, two hours a day. And it’s a deeper, more restful sleep than a normal person could get in eight hours. And that’s just like, to start.”

She grins wildly at me, and flexes her biceps through her torn black T-shirt. “Super-strong, super-fast… And not like, tearing buildings down strong, but… You know how like, in emergencies, people can become super-strong for a few moments?”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ve all heard crap like that.”

“Well, I can call that shit up, anytime I want to, thanks to the super-intelligent little worm that lives inside my belly.” She burps. “I’ve got perfect balance, my digestive system is like, I don’t know, a perfect machine from the future or something.”

“That’s pretty cool,” I said. The beer was hitting me a bit harder than her, or maybe she was just used to being louder.

“And it’s like an ipod too,” she went on. “Like, I can hear music, whenever I want. Whatever I want. It’s got recordings of everything I’ve ever heard, you know?”

That doesn’t even make sense, but I’m too far gone now. And she’s so fucking cute. That crazy head of hair, those weird bits of metal she wears in her face, those big black fucking boots that look like they could stomp my head into goo. 

She giggles, she laughs, and when the drinking’s done, she’s gone into the night like a whisper or a cat. I catch a glimpse of her, halfway up a highrise, spinning and dancing like the side of the building was her own private dancefloor. 

I want to admit something to you; I want to tell you something real.

I’ve been swallowing up my anger for a long time now. For what feels like months. I’ve been tucking it away, I’ve been putting it deep inside myself. And I’ve been getting angrier and angrier.

Angry at… Fuck. You know. That relationship that fell apart. At that fucking young men who keep brushing up against my life who I’m not actually allowed to express myself towards. 

I can’t tell that guy to go shove his head up his ass, and I can’t smash his fucking teeth down his throat. I can’t even joke about it. Or it’ll all go wrong again, like the song says.

But whatever. Whatever. So what if I’m angry. So what if I’m sick of hearing these names. So what if I just want to burn alone and alone and alone. 

Yeah. I’m mad. I’m mad and I want to hurt something, maybe just myself. Light a lighter up, burn away some karma. 

“If I’d wanted to hurt you, I’d have stuck it in deep, instead of just cutting along the surface.”

I fell in love with the girl who sells drugs, down at the beach. She’s got dark skin and intense hair and this really wild look in her eyes, like she might stab somebody, even if she really liked them, even if she didn’t have to.

Down on the shoreline, you can drop drugs and trip so hard that beach sands turn from yellow to pink, pink as cool rose-tinted lemonade. 

She’s got tattoos that seem to wiggle and breathe - a dragon that breathes nuclear fire on one arm, and a melting cone of crazy-coloured ice cream on the other. I’ve studied her inks, from time to time, from afar and up close, and let me tell you - they fucking mystify me. They shake me to my goddamn core. 

I’ve seen the sun explode in the sky, like a billion bombs bursting overhead, like fire punctured the centre of my mind.

I want her to follow me home. I want her to drag me back, drunkenly, to whatever flophouse mattress she closes her eyes upon. I want to use me for all I’m worth, and then kick me to the curb with the rest of the empties when she’s done with me.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want all kinds of things. 

Snow is falling like ash from a volcano.
Snow is falling like it’s the end of the movie and the film is all degrading and fading to a pure white light. 
Snow is falling like I’ve got nowhere better to be than here.

I wanna pierce my nose with a safety pin.
I wanna write on the back of my jacket with spray-paint.
I want to fuck a girl with green hair.
I want to get kicked out of the worst bar in town.

She’s not as cold in here as it is outside.
But she’s cold enough.
She’s cold enough to get her message across.
And I’m cool enough to get to be here to hear it. 

I rode into her life on a dragon. Y’know what I mean? 

I came in all blustering, breathing fire and burning up knights. I came in like something great and magical and ancient, with the power to blot out the sky, and drain the oceans in a single swallow. 

It was like a motorcycle made of living metals. It was like a swarm of crimson-coloured locusts, as beautiful and bloody as a red-skied sunset. It was like entering on a storm built of hurricanes and tidal waves.

I wanted to impress her, or maybe a bit more. Maybe I wanted to shake her to her core. If she wouldn’t love me, through and through and through, maybe I could still impress her, impress myself up on her, metaphorically speaking. 

Metaphorically speaking, she’d slain my dragon in a single night, with its hide pinned to the wall as a warning to others. I barely escaped with my dignity intact, though we did keep dating for a while.

If you know what I mean. 

She tells big brash lies, like a big brass band, just cranking out hit after hit.

I lie to her as well, I do it with that respectful tone of voice I always seem to slide into when I’m dealing somebody I want something from. “Oh, if only you were just a little more clever,” I think to myself as I look into her eyes, “then I could just tell you exactly what I want from you and from this and from, well, y’know.”

She stares back at me with all the dead eyes of a doll. She wants me to want to throw her across the room, to put her up on a shelf and marvel at how exquisitely well-made she is. She wants to feel my warm hands on her cold plastic shell of skin.

I don’t know. 

I could be her lover, but it’d be a lie. I could lay with her, but that’d be a lie too. I could break her knees and throw her to the curb; leave her as I found her, imitating trash low down in the gutter.

I could leave her as I found her, as hollow as an empty house, and as pretty as a perfect piece of cake. Birthday cake, you know, with thick frosty icing; big curly ribbons of the stuff. 

Yeah, she reminds me of a cake, somebody left out in the rain.