She uses a plastic knife that came with her Chinese food.  She

            hates

            using

            chopsticks.

            And the serrated plastic edge is dull.  So when she pulls the stupid pie out of its bright plastic cradle stickered with “reduced fat” and “may help reduce the risk of heart disease” and such.  And the crust is chewy and the top isn’t coloured golden graham-cracker and honey but greyish brown and too stiff and rubbery beneath the thin plastic wrapping, and she pulls that off too—or tries but ends up having to get a pair of scissors almost as dull as the knife but at least with the life and vibrancies of metal.

            And the stupid bright red orbs like deflated Christmas ornaments in their thick syrupy sauce like the pie crust is bleeding when the knife finally breaks the surface—

            “and now to perform the operation”

            she snickers almost

            “scalpel” she orders.

            Giggles.  Stop the giggles.  She didn’t really want to giggle, hated the word giggle, turned the giggle into a snicker which is more malicious but less juvenile.

            And she saws through the top of the pie and laughing at those stupid artificial cherries.  They’re funnier than anything.  And better—they taste better than real cherries.  Surely, surely they aren’t made of real fruit they look nothing like it.

            And she reaches the cherries and their sticky preserve and here the world is uncertain and there’s no firm support and no set path through the sea of red and she tries her best to guide her dull but pure messiah through the water and to the firm sea-bottom—

            And she realizes that the sea bottom is like the horizon and the beginning is so similar to the end and “déjà vu”—she finds herself sawing through stupid crust again—

            And she realizes that she’s coming to the end—

            But now she has accepted it and she realizes as she sees the silver aluminum that it wasn’t “the journey matters more than the destination”, but rather at some point whether you’ve made a journey to discover that everything ends and eventually you’re done slicing the pie or not, just some point at seventy or so when you’re just that age you suddenly get a hankering for the taste of the artificial cherries and chewy grey crust.  So the slicing holds no appeal.  And you want pie so badly and realize that the pie needs to be eaten and there’s no need to delay the slicing anymore.

            But she is still scared because she realizes she doesn’t want pie yet—

            And—delightedly—she discovers that she can’t get a slice of life without cutting another slit.  So she cleans the plastic knife and forgets about Chinese takeout and focuses on pie and making her slit straight and beautiful and refusing to make the mistakes she made on the first—

            --the inevitable mistakes—

            --but less so, now—

            And when she looked down at her wrists and saw the twin slices she felt something salty and hot carving a course down her cheek and wished that it really had been pie.

He wondered if she was the simple machine type or the complex machine type.

Watching her run the cash register, fill the grocery bags, impatiently blow her thick brown bangs out of her face, he wondered if she was the type to see "grungy-haired punk buying groceries" or even "jobless punk buying groceries," or, if she was the particularly assuming simple machine type, she might see "jobless punk buying groceries that will go home to play his stupid guitar with his stupid friends that are just like him--going nowhere and doing nothing".

Or maybe she was the complex machine type, the one that said "I wonder" when she started making guesses at what his life was like. Maybe she said "I wonder if he writes songs about unrequited love, or journal-like songs, or philosophical songs with shakespeare sprinkled on for garnish, or energetic, revolutionary punk songs", or, " I wonder if he butters his toast with a spoon sometimes or has to use a butterknife, always, no matter what."

"Hi," he said to her as she checked out his last item, a box of band-aids.

"Hey," she said politely, and "cash, check, credit, or debit?"

"Cash," he said, handing her a twenty. "Just out of curiosity... what do you think I do? As a living, I mean."

She gave him an odd look. "Well, I guess I figured you didn't have a job, since your groceries are mostly basic necessities. You might play guitar, since you've got a pick sticking out of your pocket."

He picked up the bags and said, "Cool. See ya." Well. Just another simple-machine type. A bold simple machine type, though.

---

That night when she got home she tossed her keys onto the table, liking the angle they made with the edge of the table when they landed, and the overall careless tone they gave off.

 A million poems had popped into her head when that guy asked her what she thought he did for a living. Half a million story ideas also popped into her head, but when she tried to write them down, she kept re-writing and re-writing and never being satisfied. She sat down at her piano and tried to write a song about it, but she couldn't make it sound the way she wanted. She tried to draw a picture, but it didn't capture the moment enough and already his face was fading away into her memory.

But she could still feel him there inside her mind, a youth thinking he's deeper than the world (maybe he is in a way), a musician trapped inside a jobless-punk's shell, an artist inside a coat of pretenses. Someone who thinks he can tell all about people just by looking at them, a simple type that refuseses to admit it.

Guitar pick sticking out of his pocket.

She had meant to ask him if he'd ever used a spoon to butter his toast, but she was too afraid that he'd be what she was thought he was to ask.

Running round and round the bases and cones, she was beginning to feel exhausted. She hadn't had a break in God knows how long, and she thought that if she didn't stop soon, she might pass out. She felt like a gladiatorial animal imprisoned by so many chain-linked fences, forced to die at the hands of an evil Roman or work herself to death. Tired did not begin to describe...

Finally, the coach called time. She numbly made her way back into the locker room to change, feeling as though she was being watched, but that was nothing new. She always felt as though she was being watched, even if she was all alone. That was what she got for reading 1984.

The hollowness threatened again. She had been walking around in a daze for the past few weeks, in a permanent dream state. She no longer really felt anything anymore. She reacted the way she thought she should. She floated aimlessly like an empty bubble, searching for meaning that wasn't there.

As she pulled her shirt on over the many scars on her back, girls whispered and tittered. She was used to it. No one had ever seen such strange and ghastly wounds. They couldn't begin to guess where they had come from, and she wasn't about to tell them.

She finished getting dressed without a word, and walked out of the locker room despite the protests from her coach. She didn't care. She could scream at her and she wouldn't stop.

She walked out the door of thr gym, just to run into him. He stopped her, looked at her with glacial green eyes, cold and flawless as gems, yet also just as hard.

"Why won't you talk to me anymore?" His question was whispered. He didn't like talking to her around people because he didn't want them to hear what he had to say. He preferred being alone with her, but she knew what that would lead to, so she didn't do it often.

"I have nothing to say," she answered coldly. She was tired of his bullshit, and she was going to tell him so. "You've strung me along and teased me long enough. I'm tired of being there and caring with no result. I don't want any more of your bullshit."

"My bullshit?" he whispered tensely. "I've told you things that I haven't ever told anyone else. I've trusted you, and you call that bullshit?"

"You're such a liar. You never trusted me. Those things you told me weren't anything but petty nothings, secrets about someone that you can't have. I'm tired of it." When he opened his mouth to speak, she cut him off. "And if you don't like what I have to say, you can go to her. I'm sure she'll welcome you with open arms." She paused. "Oh wait, nevermind, that won't ever happen again, because of what you did to her, the way you violated her. You're such an animal, you can't even control yourself."

He raised his hand as if to strike her, but she didn't flinch. She took this opportunity to hit him as hard as she possibly could. "I'm tired of holding out for you. I love you, but that just doesn't seem to be enough, does it?" His eyes shone like polished rocks from a riverbed at her words. Obviously he hadn't noticed.

I hate you, yet I love you, I hold out for you, I listen to you, I comfort you...but you were never truly there. What is so wrong with me...? Her thoughts were nothing but anger and melancholy. That was simply the way she was nowadays.

As she walked away, she felt like Sylvia Plath in her infamous bell jar, stewing in her own sour air. She looked out of her bell jar at the world around her, and she felt nothing but hate for everyone, at everything that she couldn't have. Normalcy was out of the question. She might as well forget it.

She sat in silence and solitude on the bus ride home. She spoke to no one. She avoided all eye contact.

Her mother met her at the door. "Is there something wrong?" she asks. Yes, everything is wrong, nothing could be more wrong, I want to die it's so wrong. "No," she numbly replies. "I'm only a little tired."

She went and laid on her bed, not wanting to get up for anything in the world. Sweet silence, sweet solitude, that's all she needed. Just let me alone with my darkness. 

And then she was home, alone in her box.

“Hey, Candice, you got it together tonight?”

“No.”

“Got it perfect?”

“No.”

“Got it all to fit?”

“No.”
”Ready to see if everyone else gets it?”

“No.”

“That’s my girl.  Knock ‘em dead.”

 The same, everyday, wasn’t it?  Him not listening, her not caring.  Strobe lights flickering over everything, making nothing real but fixing all the tears He kept leaving every time He drove off in his fast cars closer and closer and further and further from her with every step of the wheel.

Her not speaking.

His not noticing.

And Knock-‘Em-Dead-My-Girl.

Tonight she wanted to scream into that mike instead of crooning Jenny Lind into their unappreciative ears.  She wasn’t Jenny Lind, she wanted to sing Candace but she wasn’t good enough for their ears that were trained for Jenny Lind from the moment it was typed onto the programs with lazy, apathetic fingertaps on the unforgiving keys.

The mike doesn’t fit her hand like it normally does.  She tries to wrap her fingers around it so they overlap but they don’t.

“What’s wrong with the mike?” she asks Lynn.

“It’s new, sweetie.  Clearer.  Less static.  That’s what you want, right?”
No.  I want my fingertips to touch each other while I’m singing, silent support and normalcy and regularity and something REAL, LYNN!!  LIKE NOTHING EVER IS!!
”Yeah, great.  Fabulous, Lynn.”

“Good.”  And she’s off to fix something else. 

Can’t fix this- Candice rubs away the new bruises in her shoulders.  Circles, circles, circles.

“Five minutes and you’re on!” said Lynn, like it was a news report and she was painted up pretty with a still face and grinning and posed just so.

No.  She was fifteen, a mediocre soprano, and propping up one leg with the other on her stool.  The thick smoky smell of cigars wafting on the air, dim lights, foggy, sleepy, and the most awake of all of them.

Oh.  Now’s the time to pretend to be nervous.  She shuffled a foot against the floor, picked at her fingernails.

A voice somewhere off said,

“Okay, Candice, go ahead.”

She looked out at the apathetic loungers, and breathed-

 - they broke into frantic screaming, jumping—joy of being alive, joy of being here, on her on her high stage dressed to kill and brown hair skipping tangled down her back and twirling like ropy creeks in the air conditioner’s breeze. 

The air is hot, heavy, thick with their freedom and ecstasy.  The strobe lights flash prismatic colors and everything is surreal, she’s not moving at the speed she thinks she’s moving at but in frames, and the air conditioner is ineffectual because her adrenaline is heating her up—she’s a volcano and the magma pours through the microphone on into the crowd and they scream as they char—

It lasts forever.  It lasts forever as she pours the molten material out to them and they eat it up like candy.  And they scream with happiness as they eat and supplement it and don’t care about the headache and the hangover because it’s not here yet.  All that is here is now. 

She screams and jumps with them, a part of them but somehow detached from it all, up here above them on the stage.  She towers above them all, a phoenix born on the wings of her fiery melody—

--the most beautiful pain ever inflicted.

 
She holds out the last note longer than she’s ever done it before.  Then she looked up from her guitar, half expecting the deadpan loungers to break out in screams.

Scattered applause.  A smile or two.  Nothing spectacular.

She handed the mike to Lynn as she stepped off the stage.  Her chest was swelled with the rush of adrenaline that was slowly fading away as she realized who she was again.

“Good job tonight, sweetie,” said Lynn brightly as she watched her go by.  “You got a nice little voice.”

And that’s all it’ll ever be.

She stepped out into the night air, breathing it in like there was nothing else.  She hated the thick smoky air of the lounge. 

Tomorrow she’d quit.  It was a day like any other day, but it was important nonetheless.

 

She walked up to the yawning hole that dominated her back yard. She peered inside, probing its infinite depths just as she had so many times before. The hole, or the Void as it was so appropriately called, had always been a source of fascination for Ayn. She would come as close to the edge as she dared, look inside, and walk away, wondering exactly how deep the Void was. On a few occasions, she would even throw things into it, listening to see when it hit bottom.

And the frightening thing was, there was never a sound.

Many times, she had asked if they could have the hole filled in. When she asked, her parents said, "We've tried before. It's simply too deep."  For though it held a fascination, it also held terror for Ayn. Something about how it loomed up from the ground frightened her.

This day, she stood watching sticks and leaves being swept by the wind into the hole, and being swallowed up by the untearable darkness below. She heard the leaves rustle softly, bidding the world of light goodbye, but after a few moments she heard nothing. Nothing but the silence that was as thick and unfathomable as the miasma of darkness that seethed within the hole.

Ayn kicked in a pebble, one of countless many that had met the same fate. Never did she hear it make a sound, hit a wall, anything. It did not whisper its farewell like the leaves did. She liked the way the pebbles were silent. Silence was her element.

At last, she turned to go back inside. But something stopped her. Something as tangible as human hands gripped her and made her turn back. She could feel the Void calling to her, within her very bones and being. It wanted her. It had to have her. It was insatiably hungry...

She walked forward, calmly, quietly, as was her manner. She went to the very edge where she had stopped all the other times before. It was different this time. She went past the invisible line that she had drawn for herself. And then she stepped in.

Ayn fell, feeling a sensation of losing all consciousness of weight and time. She saw the opening of the hole above her growing smaller and smaller, retreating from her and the velvet darkness that was enveloping her. The blackness felt soft and inviting, to Ayn's mild surprise. And she found that the further she fell, the more quiet it got. This silence was different from other silences of before. It was complete. It pressed on her from all sides.

Ayn grew afraid. She opened her mouth to scream, but when she did, she heard nothing. The silence began to drip down her throat and into her lungs like thick honey, clogging her throat and stopping her breathing. The very blackness that she had so feared was killing her slowly, suffocating her and suppressing her will to live. Finally, her body grew limp and submissive. She no longer had any will of her own. Now it was only the Void that had control. The Void was pulling her in, lulling her like a mother to a child.

It felt sweet, this thing that was perhaps Death. Ayn felt she liked it. And the last thing she saw before she ceased to exist was the darkness, the darkness of the Void.

I woke up in a dream today
To the cold of the static and put my cold feet on the floor Forgot all about yesterday
Remembering I'm pretending to be where I'm not anymore

He rubs his arms. They’re covered in gooseflesh- he’s always cold. The scratching of his cat’s claws against the screen door almost makes him want to scream. Everything makes him want to scream- it’s a screaming-for-no-reason-except-that-I’m-frustrated-and why-I-can’t-understand type of day.

A little taste of hypocrisy

Everything feels dirty. The air, the keys of his piano. He rubs his hands again, killing the germs. Germs always trying to catch him off guard.

And I'm left in the wake of the mistake
slow to react
Even though you're so close to me
You're still so distant

He leans back and tries to relax, he spends most of his time just trying to relax. Relax. Relax. It sounds so easy when it’s just the word running through your head haphazardly and you’re not trying to apply it to yourself.

Tense is easier.

Tense is familiar.

And I can't bring you back

All through the basement, in ever word he speaks into the silence to shatter it again for no reason, he hears her echo.

She that never was. She that he just imagined. And wished he hadn’t because now she’s was gone.

He was supposed to be in college right now.

It's true the way I feel
Was promised by your face
The sound of your voice
Painted on my memories

He was in college right now. But he wasn’t the way he was supposed to be. He should have been the silent genius that sat in the back and looked like he wasn’t paying attention but when the teacher says and you? The one too good to pay attention? Do you know the answer? And he does. Says it not too smug but just enough so the teacher knows he’s been show up. Cocky without being cocky.

But that’s not how it was.

He was here, skipping class and not caring. Picking at his old Fender that he didn’t wanna play. Just to be strumming the keys again- it’s been awhile.

Even if you're not with me I'm with you

If she had been real, this would be so easy. So easy. Because then he’d have a name to call out into that blanketing stillness that keeps coming back. No matter what he does.

A fluttering. He knows what the fluttering is- he hates the fluttering-he tenses up and tries to turn around because he needs to be able to see that…

Roach.

He knew it was there.

You, now I see, keeping everything inside
with you
You, now I see,
Even when I close my eyes

He didn’t want to look at it. He didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to give it the satisfaction. He jumps and heads for the door. Something lands on his shoulder.

Every single fiber of his being wanted to scream. But that was just for a brief second.

It fades so quickly.

He reaches up to brush it off.

I hit you and you hit me back
We fall to the floo
r the rest of the day stands still
Fine line between this and that
When things go wrong I pretend the past isn't real

Some things just cannot be explained. Some things happen and you don’t mention them because they’re just things and its not important.

He touched the roach.

It squirms, creeps, he can feel the tiny hooks of its feet in his shoulders.

He didn’t want to, but it was just the thing at the time.

The horror sets in and in a flash he slaps his shoulder, screaming so short and so briefly it was more like a squeak.

I'm trapped in this memory
And I'm left in the wake of the mistake
slow to react
So even though you're close to me
You're still so distant

The roach is dead on the floor. He doesn’t feel any remorse, now, but he did when he thought about it before, when he touched the roach briefly and it was creeping under his fingers.

And I can't bring you back

She had never really done anything, had she?

Maybe she was supposed to live.

Or maybe the roach deserved to live more than she did.

Twiiiissted. Reelllaxxx...

well, it's true!!!

"Damn...you..."

The vampire's words were croaked in a final effort to breathe. The sword thrust firmly into his stomach prevented him from doing much else. He would die in a moment, as soon as Selene removed her sword from his gut and hacked off his head. The vampire gnashed his teeth at her in a last effort of defiance.

Selene looked coldly down at him, the once great creature pinned to the ground by her heavy boot. She mercilessly yanked her sword from his belly. The vampire cried out.

"This will teach your kind to feed upon the innocent, you disgusting worm." She spoke the words in a tone of total frostiness, and let them hang in the air before she decapitated him. Glittering blood spilled onto the ground, and she knew that he was finally dead.

Selene wiped her sword on his well-tailored garments, then swept a hand across her face. Blood was on her hand. Her blood. She needed to go.

She resheathed her sword in the small hidden scabbard that she carried with her. Then, she set off for headquarters.

As she walked down the deserted street, she got the queasy and uncomfortable feeling of being watched. She whirled around, searching the street with her eyes. As a Hunter, she had to be on her toes always. Her kind was hunted as well, but by creatures that were anything but human.

She saw nothing, only shadows fleeing from her probing and frightening gaze. She turned around and began walking again, this time more alert than ever.

She turned into a dark alleyway, seemingly random and harmless. Here was the entrance to headquarters. She needed only to speak the words and the door would open.

Selene unsheated her sword once again, thinking to herself how tiresome and old-fashioned the entrance ceremony was. Anyone could notice her there, standing with a sword in hand and speaking strange words. She held the sword in front of her face and spoke the words:

"Nosferatu e' pluriba se quan."

The stones of the wall in front of her creaked out of place, revealing a small opening through which she could just fit. She was about to step in when she once again heard the noise.

Selene spun around with her sword out in front of her, ready to fight. Never before had anyone dared to attack her at the very entrance of the Hunter's coven. Whoever it was had to be very stupid...or very strong.

Her eyes came to rest on a shadowy figure that stood about five feet away from her. She recognized the shape of the dark overcoat that the figure always wore, even in the hottest days of summer. She saw the signature hat drawn low over the eyes. She lowered her weapon, but only slightly.

"What do you want, Alucard?"

The figure stepped into the dim light that came from a streetlight outside of the alley. He had dark hair beneath the black hat and the eyes to match. They always gave him a creepy brooding look.

Alucard shook his head. "I'm here for you, Selene."

Her eyes narrowed. "This is no time to fool around. Who do you think you are coming for me right outside the door to headquarters? There are hundreds of Hunters in there that would slay you in a moment!"

Once again he shook his head. "No, there aren't."

A confused expression crossed Selene's face. "What do you mean? Of course they're there!"

"No. They are gone. There was a mole amongst you...he let a group of my kind in, and all the Hunters were slain. There is nothing you or I can do to save them. They are all dead." He said it slowly and deliberately, as if explaining some complicated matter to a small child.

Selene shook her head desperately. "No, that can't be...that can't be true. There has to be someone inside." 

"See for yourself," Alucard said quietly.

Selene looked at him, then at the doorway. She took a few hesitant steps, then her back straightened and she went inside.

Once inside, she saw a scene of such carnage and destruction that it made even her, a seasoned Hunter, retch. The vampires had come through and dealt them all grisly deaths, then took the liberty of sucking them all dry. There was blood all over the walls and furniture. Things were overturned. Bodies lay strewn everywhere. The place was a nightmare that Selene had visited only in her most frightening dreams.

"Now do you see?" Selene jumped when she heard Alucard's voice behind her.

She turned to face him, shakily. Tears pricked at her eyes, threatening to spill over and betray her. Finally, she grew tired of holding them back, and she let them fall freely.

"Dead...they're all dead...even the children that lived here with their parents...oh my God..." Selene fell to her knees and sobbed.

Alucard stood there watching her, awkwardly. He had never seen Selene cry before, let alone show any emotion that she deemed "weak." He didn't know what to do. He eventually settled himself with crouching next to her and patting her gingerly on the back as she cried. As soon as her tears abated, he turned her so that she faced him.

"My original intention in coming here was to kill you before you went inside, to spare you the misery of seeing your fallen comrades. But now I've decided that I will take you with me."

"Where are you going?" Selene asked.

"I'm leaving this country. Since I did not take part in the rebellion against the Hunters, my coven deemed me a traitor and banished me. If I stay much longer, they will surely find and kill me. They will do the same for you, since you are the last of the Hunters here."

"But...but I can't just run away..." she began.

Alucard shook her. "No. But answer me this: do you want to live or not?"

Selene looked at him as if to say what a stupid question it was, then hesitated. There was nothing left for her, only a life of looking over her shoulder and living in constant fear. There was also the option of revenge...but however good of a Hunter she was supposed to be, she didn't stand a chance against an entire coven of angry vampires.

She gave Alucard a meaningful look. Then, she gave him her decision. "Kill me. Do it quick."

He shook his head. "I won't kill you. I don't think that I can manage that. But...I can give you the strength to fight back. I will make you one of us."

Selene stared at him in horror. "I've spent my entire life trying to kill off vampires, now you want me to become one? Are you out of your mind!"

"No, I am perfectly sane."

"But even if you did turn me into one, I will only be one vampire against many. I can't take them all on--"

"That's where you're wrong. I highly disapprove of what went on tonight. That's why I will help you."

She gave him a skeptical look. "But that's only two of us--"

"Wrong again. There are many others that have been exiled from this country along with me. They will be happy to fight back. And you forget: there was only one coven of Hunters, but there are many covens of vampires all over the world. We will gather allies. And we will win."

She thought for a moment. The plan might actually work. They could pull it off. It was then that she nodded to Alucard and said "Go ahead and do it."

And so he lowered his head to her neck and sank his fangs into her tender flesh. He drank until there was nothing left to drink, then gave her his blood in return.

Selene looked around at the bloody mess that was once her coven. She would make the vampires pay for all the blood spilled here. She would use her new life and powers to get what she had been after all along: absolution for all the terrible things she had done.

She crushed a cigarette remnant under the toe of her shoe.  Raggedy ends of dyed blond hair brushed her shoulders, freckled and spotted from the sun.  Limp skin, like lettuce.

Swung open the door of the trailer and didn't respond when a shout from the living room,  alcohol putting a sharp edge on his voice.  Waited until the voice stopped, then sprinted into the room as though it were on fire but as easier, like running after the ice cream truck.

He was 15, he was sprawled across the floor, dead to the world again.  She struck him hard on the face, and not even a flicker crossed his features.  She glanced at, then ran to the phone, after-the-ice-cream-truck pace. 

The secretary on the other end of the phone is ineffectual.  She begs, pleads, screams at her, call the doctor.  The secretary listens as though she knows the woman at the other end is a drug addict, living in a trailer, 30 pounds overweight, calling to get a doctor because her son's killing himself with alcohol.  She listens as though she doesn't know the woman is a half-Cherokee, and that she listens to Bach when her world's closing in but now her radio's smoking and she has to call the doctor-

she hates doctors

The secretary says bring him to the emergency room.  We'll take care of him.  She slams the phone down, screams at it no you wont you made him this way

doctor wont care anyway

they never care

She hears a sound from the living room and she walks in.  slow, slow, slow.

There's that girl again, the stupid girl from the school, the one that pushed him down and called him a
She's holding him, rubbing his back like small child that's sick. Hard eyes, the hardest she's ever seen, straggly black hair.  Small hands.   she didn't ask how she got in.  She just watched as she rubbed his back and over and over, humming that song, the song with the words she couldn't remember.

I'm not on drugs.

I'm sitting here trying to convince you but you never believe maybe because you never listen and never care does nobody care we're all just dust.

No silly.  I'm not under the influence of anything except my mind which can be so potent at times and my sanity is so coy!  So capricious!

And you.  Oh don't even let me begin. 

You.

I'm on drugs, you say.  But you have managed to convince yourself that a bottle can solve all your problems and make that nagging emptiness go away that's always there dwelling at the back of your mind even when you can't stand up straight you're under the influence of something other than your mind.

So which is better?  Being on a constant natural sugar rush or being under the influence of somethng that you cannot control or tame?  ALCOHOL.

You disgust me.

A sugar rush didn't kill that little girl that you hit driving down the road whene you couldn't stand up straight even though you weren't standing.  That was when you were under the influence of something that was not your mind.

Unnatural.

Oh look.  The paint on my fingernails is chipping.  See, this is why I never paint them especially not this color what-was-i-thinking.

You look uncomfortable now.  Ah.  Now i'm a doctor.  Saying his might be uncomfortable as he's about to puncture your skin with this gargantuan needle (frickin huge)

Yeah that's not uncomfortable Ii told im once.  Painful, yes.  Uncomfortable isn't the word I would have picked especially not now.

Say I would wring his neck oh yes that would be uncomfortable. 

Just the thought is making me tired.

Now the sugar rush is wearing off.  Now i have no excuse to talk to myself anymore.

Now i have no excuse to be insane.

But you see, that would be the point where i didn't need excuses.  Insanity.  Truly.  Then i wouldn't even realize it I suppose I'd think myself perfectly reasonable.

Or am I already...

No. That's silly.

As long as I can separate my DWI self and my sugar-high self I'll be fine.  Guilt isn't a problem because it wasn't me it was that stupid drunk.

WHO ASKED YOU?

I lost it!

I can't believe I lost it! Where did it go? I had it just a second a go. It was right in my hand, then I set it down, and...

Crap.

It fell into the Crack Between the Seat and Center Console (CBSCC). And you know that nothing ever comes back from that. I'm deadly serious. NOTHING ever seems to come back from that most horrid place.

It's all because of the Black Hole beneath the seat. I swear to you, there is one. You know how you drop something in the car, right? And now matter how hard you look, you can NEVER find it. You can rummage and dig beneath the seat but whatever you were looking for is long gone.

My marker wasn't the only victim that fell prey to the dreaded Black Hole. There was once a hat, a pair of shoes, some eyeglasses, perhaps a shirt or two, some socks, a book, innumerable amounts of pens and other writing utensils, and I think some wine glasses that my grandma had once set on the floor of the car. They're gone now, of course, but they were once there, believe it or not.

Every now and then, very, very rarely, some various item that you once spent hours looking for would pop up seemingly out of nowhere. And you look at it...and you laugh, because you don't need it any more.

Yeah and I almost lost a finger to the Black Hole and the CBSCC. I'm telling you, it was being pulled from my very hand...but I snatched it back! And I reclaimed my finger! It may have taken my markers, but it would not take my finger!

It's quite scary, really, knowing there's a Black Hole underneath your bottom. You can't help but get the feeling that your butt might get sucked in at any moment...

NO BUTT! That's disturbing.

As I sit here, frantically rummaging for my permanent marker, I realize that perhaps the Black Hole is there for a reason. Maybe it's trying to say that we have too much, and is trying to show us the meaninglessness of material value. Maybe there's some big lesson here...

NAH!

I'm going to keep looking, and maybe find some other useless article from the Beyond...