Best.

We once cut our palms in the moonlight, climbing to the top of her roof at midnight to swear our allegiance as “blood sisters.” This was before Cassy got braces, and I got contacts, before her parents decided to separate, and mine decided to forget about me completely. She and I defined a good friend as someone who bailed you out of jail in the middle of the night, and a best friend as someone sitting in the cell right next to you, just as guilty, laughing and saying, “Damn, that was fun.”

Things have changed. Gone are the days of thinking that two a.m. was past our bedtime, that love was something easy to fall into, that kisses are contracts, and that school is a place for socialization. A best friend is more than a partner in crime. No matter how many times we watch Peter Pan together, order the coloring menu at fancy restaurants, or wish upon a star to take us to Neverland, the truth is that we are growing up. Cassy and I cried together on each of our thirteenth birthdays, desperate to remain in childhood just a little longer. We had no idea how it would feel two months before my twentieth birthday, as I found myself four states away at Baylor University, talking to her on the phone about her college visit to UC Berkeley.

“Why do you want to go there?” I ask, fiddling with my car keys and dreading cracking open my geology textbook.

“Well,” she tells me, and I can almost see her sitting straight in her chair, her Betsey Johnson bangs falling into her eyes. “It has the best psychology program I’ve looked at, much better than UCLA. Their department is better designed for medicine, and Berkeley’s is aimed more towards cognitive psychology.”

I tell her that it’s so great, that Berkeley is a lovely school, that she’s so smart and I’m so proud of her. In reality, my heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach, as I try not to think about how how the girl who once asked me how to spell "nose" in the sixth grade is actually ready to go away to college. We are on the brink of adulthood. I cannot stand to think about the circumstances that have led us both here, not because I am ungrateful, but because I am terrified of what comes next.

We say I love you, and good night. I feel a little better. I try to think instead about all of the other things we have lived through together, and the images and dialogue come easily. She sat with me on the dingy floor of our poorly-lit middle school bathroom, our windbreaker jackets making shushing sounds when she leans over to wipe the tears off of the frames of my nerdy blue glasses, telling me that I made the right decision about never again having contact with my father. She picked me first for volleyball and kickball every single time she was captain, even though I was the worst in our seventh grade physical education class, and she stayed home from the eighth grade Halloween dance for me when I got suspended. I didn’t know she had a date that night. Cassy stood up Bradley Huth to watch School of Rock with me in our costumes instead. The first time I got dumped, I was at her father’s first apartment off Topanga Canyon. I hung up the phone, and collapsed into a sobbing mess on the floor. She stroked my hair and let me eat a whole bag of M&M’s before drifting off to sleep in my bathing suit and sweatpants on her couch, exhausted from crying. We walked two miles to meet each other every day after school in high school, often stealing bread from restaurants and sneaking into movie theatres. When my first serious, adult relationship ended, she pretended we were still in grade school, cooking me a bowl of pasta and feeding me cookie dough in her neighbor’s Jacuzzi. Cassy has lied for me, held my hand when I was in the hospital, and brought me laughter during the times when I thought I had forgotten how.

My best friend’s greatest gift is unconditional love; her second greatest, empathy and compassion. I love that we have known each other long enough that we never have to explain a single thought to one another; at this point in our friendship, we simply already know.

“What do you think we’re going to be like at 60?” I ask her, and she laughs.

“Probably sitting in wicker chairs on our front porch, planning our next trip to Disneyland,” she assures me.

I realize then that even though we are no longer the same girls we were eight years ago, somehow, we have managed to maintain the best parts of our friendship throughout time and distance apart. I fall asleep singing lines from our favorite song, “This is the first day of my life. I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you. But now I don’t care, I could go anywhere with you, and I’d probably be happy.” Our lives as adults are beginning. It is terrifying and I want nothing more than to grab Cassy by the hand and only stop running when we reach the nearest Chuck E. Cheese. But I know that we must take this next step in order to begin our adventures in the great, wide, anywhere.

As long as I have her, I will probably be happy.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Foolish

Falling out of love is quite enough to make a person sick, to ruin their liver, to shrink their waistband and interrupt any chance of a sleep pattern. It is a horrible, wretched feeling that begins in your stomach before it can creep all the way up to your heart. The absence of happy butterflies flitting about above your abdomen causes a sort of concaving to occur around your middle. Most mistake this feeling for common anxiety, but it is far more powerful than that. It squeezes the life out of your internal organs, until you feel oddly lopsided and deflated, as well as shockingly empty. Your heart will not break until much later, when you are eating un-purchased chocolates in aisle thirteen of Vons, casually gorging yourself while telling your best friend that you are absolutely fine. It is in that moment that you realize that you want your mother and your drug dealer in the same room for the first time in your life, as both perform their nurturing duties for you simultaneously.

There are far too many things in life that you become incapable of handling the moment you are told that you are no longer loved or wanted by someone you care about very much. Bathing regularly quickly becomes one of them, and touching up your roots completely falls to the wayside. Shoes that match your panty hose are another problem, as is remembering to do your Calculus homework for summer school. You seem to forget quite frequently that you are no longer supposed to send your ex charming text messages in the morning, quirky jokes and pictures mid-afternoon, and drunken fragments of sentences when the bars get out at two am. All of the weight you swore up and down that you would lose for him suddenly slips off of your frame effortlessly, if you consider spending hours bent retching and coughing in front of the liquor store “effortless.”

Hearing his voice on the other end of the phone becomes a maddening chore, where it was once a pleasant ritual. Never do you come out on top of a conversation with someone who has just broken your heart. These talks always start off well, crescendo, and dive, crashing into the earth and shattering all hopes of any future un-screened phone calls.

“Oh, uh, hi, hey what’s up, how have you been?”

“Whitney, its been five days.”

“I know. I was just calling because I um, you know, was in your neighborhood, I mean, the neighborhood, not necessarily yours, I’m not like, stalking you or anything, I just, um, well, you live a few freeway exits away from my brother and…”

“Your brother lives six exits away. How did you get this number?”

“Well, anyways, I just wanted to see if maybe we could, you know, grab a coffee, and talk, maybe, say, Wednesday?”

“Whitney, I’ve told you eleven times. We are not dating anymore. Please move on. You’re starting to embarrass yourself.”

“Ah...I can see that I’ve caught you at a bad time. I should probably let you go. Its just that I miss you and we were in love two weeks ago and I’m really not sure how this all happened, and...oh, god, please don’t hang up on me…”

Click.

“Dammit.”

You hang up the phone feeling like a complete loser, a failure of life, the universe, love, and everything else. It seems you cannot sink much lower into the abyss of shamefulness and depravity that seems to be cradling your fragile soul. Buying a cat and living the rest of your life as an imitation of Holly Golightly seems quite attainable, so you slip into that black dress that now hangs loosely off your emaciated ribcage, pour yourself another glass of whiskey, and tell yourself that you are a wild thing who cannot be tamed for love. In reality, you are simply another fool who fell, and now, you must face the consequences.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Deity

Feared and loved by the people of Ancient Greece, the deities of the time controlled society and culture. Their power, as well as their frailty, attracted the Greeks to a complex, polytheistic religion that changed generations of human life for centuries. Offerings of love and sacrifice were given to these hallowed beings in exchange for blessings and guidance, and monumental houses of worship were constructed out of celebration and reverence for each god and goddess: The Acropolis, the Pantheon, the Temple of Athena Nike.

We fill that need to devote our love and adoration to a greater being by following a new generation of idols. Replacing images of Poseidon in the stain glass windows of Roman cathedrals are the rock-stars featured on the massive billboards that crowd Sunset Boulevard, the posters that litter adolescent bedrooms, and the t-shirts worn by tired concert goers after a show, as they stumble blearily to their cars in the early morning moonlight. Those truly devoted to rock and roll make love to the concrete floors of venues with their high-tops and assault the pervading air around them with their voices. They understand what it means to be part of a unified whole, to be part of something universally larger than themselves, to be part of the music and the night and the adventure. Our concepts of Zeus and Hera have been replaced by Kurt and Courtney, Sid and Nancy, John and Yoko. Offerings of panties and merchandise money are given in exchange for guitar rifts and drum solos.

We have built new houses of worship: The Roxy, CBGB, The Astoria, The Whiskey-A-Go-Go. Bars and clubs house these modern saints and their obedient followers, while the musical performances provide sanctuary for the masses without the heartache of religion.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Fairytale

It began, and ended with, a simple story. I was nineteen years old, and a fool to fall in love, but then, we all were. The half-masticated remains of our high-school battered hearts yearned for something deeper than second base on prom night. I watched in amazement as the girls I once knew slipped lazily into the silky deceit of what they believed to be true love, wearing its lies like a pretty negligee. I followed them blindly, led by the smooth, deep voice of a man called James.

“Once upon a time,” he began, and I saw his eyes smile brightly, across four states, and through the web-camera we had been using to stay in contact with one another. The tears streaming down the left side of my nose made soft plicking sounds as they hit my keyboard. I heard my roommate roll over, coughing, but I did not care. I held onto his worlds, the night, and this magic like a thread I could not see, allowing it to lead me wherever he wanted me to go.

“We’re going to be so happy together,” he explained, his voice cracking slightly, his lips barely moving, his teeth shaking hard. “Honestly sweetheart, I think about marrying you when I’m lying awake, looking at the glow in the dark stars on my ceiling. I think about the love we’re going to have, and how someday you’re going to be such a wonderful mother, such a lovely wife.” I listened to him speak, and I pretended that I was not two thousand miles away, shivering in the moonlight of a tile-floored dorm during my first semester of college, frightened of the distance between us. I imagine that it is the year nineteen forty-four, and that it is perfectly acceptable to marry your first love. It is expected that you will write letters to your beau as he fights battles in unknown places very far away, and life is absolutely splendid when he finally returns home to the charming young lady with long, white gloves who has been waiting for him all this time. I allow James to tell me that we will live happily ever after, and I fade into a calming sleep, filled to bursting with his stars.

That is why, half a lifetime, and several thousand dreams, plans, and hopes later, I stand shielding my eyes from the afternoon sun, ruining the front of my polka dot dress with my fat, sloppy tears, trying to make sense of why he is leaving.

“Please,” I choke, “Don’t go.” How many times have I said these pitiful words, these pathetic, last syllables, to which I know the reply?

“Once upon a time,” he begins, but his face is the controlled, barren side of the Berlin Wall. Ach du. “There was a beautiful princess, and a handsome prince named James. James fell in love with the princess, who although quite lovely, was badly broken. He loved her so much that he wanted nothing more than to put her back together again. Little by little, he helped her heart heal, placing pieces of his own heart into hers. One day, James did not love her any more. He wanted his pieces back, but they were a part of her, and she held on to them.”

“You can have them back,” I whisper. “But promise me that you wont leave me. Promise me that all the plans we made will still come true.”

He drives away, my bare feet burning on the asphalt, trying to keep up with his car as it fades into the distance. I had been a foolish girl, becoming drunk off the false photographs of the future he had planted in my mind. James was a fairytale himself, a broken promise, a misleading story with a surprise ending. He was not the Prince Charming I had assumed him to be, but simply the actor who had memorized Charming’s dialogue, mannerisms, and lifestyle with astounding accuracy.

Darling, I truly believed that you were a man made of flesh and blood and bone, but you, my love, were nothing more than a fascinating story written with fading ink on yellowing paper.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Simple

Cocaine. It is white, simple. Searing holes in the nasal cavity on its way to the central nervous system, it makes its way to these fragile areas in the brain from the leaves of coca plants, and into the pockets of dealers. From there, it is purchased, stolen, or transferred by men with needles, men with slim, red straws, men with pipes, men with rolled dollar bills. Men like my father.

Elisia. She is Cuban, simple, with bird-like features; a hawk’s nose, a sparrow’s bones. Her fingers are long and spindly, the brown skin stretched tightly over the knuckles, her fingernails filed into points. She is the kind of woman who accepts tickets to the ball game from charming, married men. Men like my father.

At five o’clock in the morning, I roll out of bed, tugging the hem of my nightgown over the goose bumps on my knees. This is my favorite time of the morning, when the daylight shining in through my venetian blinds casts an eerie, royal blue light over my bedroom. Imagining that I am Princess Irenie from my favorite fairy tale, following her magic red ball of string into the sunlight, I pursue the sounds of scraping, of rolling, of bumping, into the hallway, down the staircase, and into the entryway.

“Daddy, where are you going?”

My father glances up at me, startled. His red-handed guilt makes me feel afraid to look at him. I hide my face, but he crosses the foyer in three, neat strides and lifts my tiny body effortlessly. With my head resting on his shoulder, my eye-glasses drooping off the tip of my nose, and my heart silently wilting, he paces the entryway, whispering soothingly into my ear. I memorize the steps he takes on the tiled floor, the way his shoes sound, heel, toe, scuff, when he turns. I am ten years old, but I pretend that I am three, burying my face in his neck and holding tightly to his tie, begging in my smallest voice for him not to go.

The bedroom door opens, and my mother fills the space with her voice, with her sadness. Our two-story house with high ceilings cannot contain her anguish, as she wails, screams, sobs, and crumples on the floor. My feet touch the tile and I become sharply aware that my father has let me go. From my place on the floor, one hand in my mother’s hair, I watch his suitcases file out of the front door one by one until the entry way is empty. His tall, wide frame fills the doorway for a brief moment, and I lift my eyes, fully aware that this will be the last time I see my father entering the front door of our home. He opens his mouth, and there is deep sorrow and a kind of gasping in his voice. My mind jumps to the last scene in Return of the Jedi when Darth Vadar takes his last dying breaths with his son at his side, admitting fault, and saying good-bye.

“Angel,” he whispers, stooping to reach my eye level. “Be brave for me, okay?

I glance behind me, where my mother has collapsed, her sobs becoming a more inaudible, torturous tremor throughout her body. The front door seems much more inviting, but before I can ask my father to take me with him, I feel his lips touch the crown of my head. He is gone before I can open my eyes.

My mother shifts, her skin imprinted with angry, raised lines by the grout. She lifts herself with ragdoll grace and curses my father on the way to the shower. I think about crawling back into bed, but I remember that the serene, morning blue will have lifted from my walls. I choose instead to remain on the hard, smooth, surface of the last place my father loved me.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Full.

I sit in the driver’s seat of my first car, affectionately named Walter after my grandfather, who had passed away and left the vehicle in my name. One leg is bent, my knee mashed against the doorframe, my foot falling asleep beneath my right thigh. The steering wheel feels hot in the warm, Texas moonlight. I grip it tightly, trying to stay awake, Ryan Adam’s voice carrying through the stereo as I drive through the vast wastelands of the south. Fourteen hours of driving west from Waco will land you in Las Cruces New Mexico, a small border town with excellent Hispanic dining. The town right before it, El Paso, provides you with a clear view south of the border from the freeway, displaying Mexico as a dingy mirage that wavers in and out of focus in the distance. I have absolutely no idea what town I am currently roving through. There are no signs welcoming me to this unfamiliar territory, nor do there seem to be any gas stations or rest stops. In abundance, however, are the yellow-green bugs that smash and die against my windshield every six seconds, their miniscule lives ending in a matter of painful, blurry moments. I curse, and turn on the wipers, which only smear the entrails of my road trip companions even further across my line of vision.

For the first time in my life, I feel a tiny glimpse of what it must be like to be free. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, save for miles and miles of stretching, unpaved road ahead of me, and, as far as I can see with my car stuffed to bursting with suitcases and hanging bags, even less behind me in my rearview mirror. The road is never unkind to a traveler seeking answers. It is soothing to spend hours of the day spinning by farmland and cloud formations, watching the changing climate around you while you maintain homeostasis within the microcosmic world of your vehicle.

When I was small, the only thing I ever dreamed of doing with my future was to get out of my hometown, get out on my own, and go someplace far, far, away. I wanted to run away to a better life in a place where I could be lawless, unabashed, and uninhibited. I would watch the Wizard of Oz and shake my head at Dorothy for wanting to go back to Kansas to live with her hick, un-tornado-proofed family when she could have easily sparkled in the Emerald City for the rest of her life. “If it was me”, I whispered to myself, as I watched in horror while she clicked those gorgeous ruby slippers together once, twice, three times, and was transformed into a feverish, black-and-white version of her once beautiful, Technicolor self, “I would keep the heels, run away with the Scarecrow, and find myself a happily ever after somewhere over the rainbow.”

Today, I find myself hypocritically whispering, “There’s no place like home,” as I make my way through four states towards the house I grew up in. My eyes fill up with tears, and I can taste the Pacific. I shiver. Another burst of freedom overwhelms me, and I stare ahead at the glowing horizon, my heart set on California, my gas tank marked full.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Ma'i

The first coyote to be born into the world was given the name Ma’i. Guiltless and prowling, he stalked the nights without conscience. Ma’i was nervous, hungry. So was the man I fell in love with when I was not quite sixteen. On all fours, he encircled my silent,trembling frame, observing my every angle before pouncing. I saw his eyes flash yellow before his lips collided with mine, enveloping any and all words I could have gasped. My heart raced, my breathing grew shallow, jagged.

It had been nearly a year since I had last slept. He came to me in the time of the Santa Anas, born to Los Angeles Octobers like Ma’i to the desert. Existing to lick through my long, dry fingers and begin fires in the California hillsides, the Santa Anas blew ashy breath onto the dry sprigs of fall, blew newspapers out of stands and into the streets, blew something dangerous and dirty into the season. They were the mile marker of new history to begin. The Santa Anas have devastated thousands of lives. I should not have listened to the winds. My mind and body have always been overcome by the sensation that the dry, desert winds are pushing me around at fifty, sixty-five, eighty miles an hour. I cannot think of the last time I have taken something slow. Forgetting how to tip toe has become a problem; where others step cautiously, I jump, I dance, I fall, I fall, I fall.

“So, are we dating now?” I ask.

The boy looks up at me hungrily, pants, nods yes, the green in his irises showing his human side, saliva contained within his mouth for now. I pat him on the head, and fall asleep. I do not dream, but I wake up and he is still behind me, his head nodding into the back of my neck. I try to get off the couch to make myself some breakfast; it is past five o’clock, the fading orange sun is shining through the blinds. He snarls, his hands gripping my waist. I gently move them, finger by finger, until he is relaxing alone on his back; one arm flopped over his head, shielding his eyes from the evening sun. I pace my kitchen alone, searching for crackers, thinking about the coming Monday at school. My stomach is in knots. His girlfriend will be there, and I do not want to spend the rest of my sophomore year labeled as the rat, the gutter-trash-nobody, Whitney-Who? I peek over the edge of the sofa. He is breathing through his mouth now, sighing softly and kicking his socked-feet. Smiling, I pat his head again. He is sort of cute, despite the large nose taking up half his face, his wide forehead, his bad skin, his lopsided haircut, a Mohawk-gone-wrong. Ignoring the warning signs—his current relationship, his lack of self-confidence, the Santa Ana winds—I like him. I shake off the feeling that Monday is going to be a disaster, and work on getting this kid on my couch a ride home.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Twice

I’m with a person who makes me wish I had a different life. With the movement of his lips, his steady hands, his careful words, his protective hold, he makes me wish I deserved a fraction of what he gracefully gives me. We drive out toward Los Angeles at night, his hands on the steering wheel, my skin on fire from the burn of the lights reflecting off the freeway.

“Where do you want to go?”

In the rearview mirror, my eyes are black like a doll’s. He sees me as something better than what I am, as a girl who didn’t give her freedom away in exchange for shameful love. But I have. I wish I could tell him how pathetic I used to be, like a baby spider, clinging, swaying, wanting constantly. If I had a scarlet letter, I would wear it, I would let him know. Instead, I tell James to keep driving, and we wind down Mulholland onto Sunset Boulevard.

In another life, a million miles away, I once fell into a disturbing, deviated love with the man that came before James. He was nothing like the ocean-eyed marguerite tracing the outline of my hips and waist as we drive, stuck in traffic, through Hollywood. This other man didn’t even have a name. Half hypocrite, half vampire, he led me into a haze of obsession, of love unreturned. I fell for his charm, as all young girls do. No one had bothered to tell me that a fist -fight could never be romantic, that chains were ashamed of their prisoners. To say that he took everything I am would not accurately describe what I let him do. I no longer lived through myself. My lungs only accepted the air that had passed through his first.

James lays down the back seats of his car, and holds on to me. I am not used to this. I wish I could make him leave, make him realize that he could do so much better than an infectious parasite like me. But he doesn’t let go. He whispers, “I love you,” kisses my collarbone, says it again, “I love you.” I close my eyes, and when I open them, he is still breathing next to me.

I will forget the first man, the coyote that howled and cackled in the night as I tell him that I’m finally leaving. He will not follow me; I know this well. I say goodbye for the last time, and even as his yelps continue long after I am gone, I abandon him there in the desert.

A young boy sells oranges off the west of the road as we drive back home down the Pacific Coast Highway, offering to trade the clanging silver in my pockets for the Camarillo fire softly glowing within his.

“I love you too, James, darling,” I say.

Tonight, I am not that sappy, hungry, empty girl. He will never know her. I will make sure he never does.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Original

Asphalt at any speed hurts. At thirty miles an hour, the grating sensation against your knees, palm, cheek, seems all too dull at first, until tiny springs of blood begin to pepper your skin, blooming red and bright against ashen flesh. Your heart stops, your breath stops, your legs move. Nothing seems to hit you until you find yourself gasping in front of a dirty gas station mirror, alone, thinking, “Is this what I must pay to be someone else?” Even at twelve, I knew that I wanted to make my lesser self disappear, to vanish behind a swishing cape, or down a rabbit hole, or behind a red curtain, only to emerge once again, to the audience’s surprise, entirely anew. I wanted to be a pioneer heading west, following the light of the sun to escape the Old World. I yearned to be Old Man Kangaroo, to be made different from all other animals by five this afternoon! I needed to be Lady McBeth, Sylvia Plath, and Tinkerbelle, too. Theatre was, essentially, the better half of my life. Day to day I simply existed, but on stage I truly lived. Waving goodbye to the messy divorce, physical education, and every sixth grader who mocked my glasses, I entered the building, ready to grow.

My mother eventually tired of my acting. It was quite expensive, and was turning me into an excellent liar. After throwing myself out of her car and sprinting the rest of the distance to clean myself off, I entered my new scene-building workshop, and sustained myself with the steady drip of make-believe I had forced into my veins. The teacher looked a bit like Robin Williams, only slightly more grey and sad. He was well versed in Stanislavski, Meisner, Adler, Hagen, Strasberg. His skin was puffy, presumably from wine, his eyes yellow, his complexion wan. A startled look crossed his face, as my mother’s figure appeared in the doorway.“Ma’m, you can’t just…take her,” Williams stammered. I assured him with my eyes that I would be alright just before vanishing around the corner.

It was the last time I heard my feet moving hurriedly above the black, dull, floor of a stage, felt hundreds of eyes on my trembling lips as they delivered a monologue, a poem, a line, or turned my body to the side, my senses in tune to the sets and figures around me, even in the moments of blackness before the curtains rose. I was bluntly thrown into a life lacking the art of pretending, a life short of surprises and wonder. The only characteristics I was left with were my own. There was no cast of friends surrounding me, no notebook full of the perfect words to utter in precisely the right moment. I could not remember the last time I had been truly left alone with myself, and I was utterly petrified.

With only myself behind the curtain, I feel my life is incomplete. I have always slipped into someone else’s thoughts, and it has always been acceptable. My first director, Stephanie, did not agree with me. “ Darling,” she tells me, “you came into your life just the way you are. Always have been, and always will be, an original.” With all of my heart, I wish I knew the girl standing in front of that dingy reflective surface, soaking through paper towel after paper towel with crimson stains. For now, all I can do is pass her another, and pray that she will not stay in that bathroom forever. She belongs center stage; she just has not found herself yet.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Trypanophobic

He smiles at me, laughs really, with his faded, yellowing teeth that look the exact color of the tile mold found behind a public toilet. His name is Hank, but his buttery complexion and lumpy t-shirt suggest that he could have once been a “Meredith” or a “Suzanne.” One gnarled, oil-stained finger points toward a tilt-a-whirl about two hundred yards away from the auto shop where Hank has towed my broken down car. I shake my head no, explaining wordlessly with my widening eyes and shaking hands what my voice cannot. I have the most awful, splitting migraine that threatens to tear my skull in two. I imagine it to feel akin to an ice pick being shoved repeatedly into the corner of my eyebrow by a strong man in a circus. Hank twists my arm and drags my fragile, nauseated body to the tilted, raised surface. I lie still, grateful for the chance to close my eyes and attempt to allow the stabbing and ripping in my head to subside, but it is sharply brought back into focus with a horrible metal clinking sound. My captor emerges from behind the control booth, holding two stained cloth straps with metal hooks at both ends. I try to scream, but only a low, inaudible moan escapes my lips. Hank attaches each of the metal clips to the rails on either side of me. With a terrible scraping sound, he stands back, reveling in the monomaniacal control of his most recent prey. He turns his back to me, and for a moment, I almost desire to call out for him to stop, to come back, to stay beside me. I am frightened, but I am more frightened of what he will return with if he leaves.

A loud clicking noise occurs somewhere near my left ear, and the surface of the sun in the form of carnival lights is in my face, shrinking and widening my pupils to absorb every color, to take in every ray, and to torment my aching consciousness. The machine has begun to move. I feel far more nauseated and purely petrified than I ever have in my entire life. In one swift cat-like motion, Hank lands a few inches away from my left arm, his boots resounding against the metal. There is something in his right hand, and he hides it behind his grime-stained t-shirt. With his left hand, he makes a fist around the crook of my elbow, feeling for a vein with his blackened fingernail. Every part of my body is on fire with pain and nerves. I contort my muscles away from his overbearing body, silently praying that I may snap the ropes that bind me before I sever bone from bone.

Calmly, and with nurse-like steadiness, Hank lowers the needle to my pulsing vein. I writhe to get away from his stinking flesh, his venomous stare. I cry and shake, and I can no longer breathe evenly, but he ignores my struggles. The needle pierces my skin, its tiny ribbed tip digging into me like a miniature bayonet. I look up at my keeper, terrified, but he only smiles that strange, laughing, yellowing smile. It is the last image I see before I am gone.

I wake up with a start, a shrill beeping resounding somewhere near my left ear. In symmetry, my left eye opens, then my right. My hands fly to my stomach, and I sit up, wriggling my torso this way and that to ascertain that I do not feel the need to throw up.

"Hi," Cassy says timidly. "How are you feeling?" She offers me Swedish pancakes and hands me my bra from where it has been displayed across the chair in the corner. I blink once, twice. Noticing the eleven half-eaten cups of red jello, I conclude that I must be in the hospital.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Disclaimer

Everything you see here is based on actual events, and actual people. Please do not attempt to copy it in any way. These are the stories that make up my life. Find your own place in the Universe and be happy with it. I am writing this only because I feel as though I have finally found mine. I wish the same for you, dear reader, I really do.

Silly as it sounds, I have been in the process of writing an autobiography since I was eight. Most of these stories are going to be breathing within its pages when it is finished, others will lay buried within the stacks of ink-stained diaries I have been keeping since second grade. Any and all feedback is welcome. It may not change the course of my writing, but if there is something that is unclear, or something that you love, or something that is just downright stupid, please do not hesitate to put forth your opinion.

So much love. Oh! The Places You'll Go!

Whitney.