Yoghurt

“I’ma eat some motherfuckin’ YOGHURT up in this bitch!!!!”

My roommate, Chris, half-shouted this while bent at the waist, head inches from the top shelf in our fridge, left hand resting on the open french door as he peered around to the bottom right hand corner where the yogurt was usually kept. I don’t know how he managed to pronounce “yogurt” with an “h”, but he did.

“Wow, man...congratulations. I mean, seriously. I think you managed to speak a completely original sentence right there, you know, one that no one ever in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD had ever spoken before.”

He already had the foil cap off and was now rooting around for a clean spoon. “What?”

“I’m serious! Do you know how rare that probably is? I mean, just think about it...there are billions of people all over the world, talking about god knows what 24 hours a day, and it’s pretty likely that no one in the world had ever said that before you did, and might not ever again! I mean, even if you get strict about it and discount anyone who might have said the equivalent in a language other than English, that’s still a pretty cool thing.”

We had been living together for almost a year, which was the longest I had ever lived with anyone besides my mom and dad, at that point. He put up with my total lack of interest in housekeeping, and I put up with his total being a stupid fucking asshole. It was, as we say in the corporate world these days, a “win-win”.

I wasn’t being sarcastic, though, with the original sentence thing. Milan Kundera had this idea that there are so many people in the world, there aren’t enough gestures to go around. So every time you see your little cousin hold his head cocked slightly to one side when he’s confused, it’s not that he looks just like his grandpa when he does that, it’s that he looks like thousands, perhaps millions, of people; people scattered all over the globe that have stumbled, through some combination of nature and nurture, into that same gesture.

At least, that’s an idea that’s in one of Kundera’s books. I don’t have any idea whether he believed it or not. But I have to think that language works the same way. There’s a spectrum, I know; if you text someone “OMG LOL!”, that’s gonna be the high end of the spectrum, right, and if you say to someone at a party, “Yeah, my Aunt Gertrude’s dog Mr. Sniffles died of bone cancer too...it sucked,” then you’re pretty much pegging the other side, but still. The chance exists...there are a lot of fucking people out there.

Chris sat heavily on the couch and kicked his feet up onto the coffee table. “Deep, man. Deep.”

“It wasn’t my idea, really.” I ran my right hand through my hair, a few millimeters to the left of where I parted it, starting about an inch and a half above the top of my nose and continuing until my fingers cleared about three-fourths of the length of my hair as it swept backward, in a gesture that I knew, intellectually, belonged to millions, but that felt as intimate, as peculiar, as UNIQUE to me as anything I could imagine, and then I grabbed the remote before he could watch Springer “ironically” at me again, because I fucking hate that more than anything.

I could have...

had a fucking BABY, in nine months...but instead, I just made an episode of The Robert and Dave Show. Which, if you really think about it, is WAY better than a baby!

You Know What...

Don't think of it as, "Oh, how weird...I guess Spencer's too cheap to pay $70 a year now that Xtranormal is out of beta, so he switched over to these new even DUMBER looking Robert and Dave characters." Think of it instead as, "Wow! Spencer is totally REBOOTING the Robert and Dave franchise, just like that TV guy is doing with Star Trek! This should be TOTALLY cool! Plus, now maybe one of the episodes will be Kirk and Spock having sex! With each other!!!!"

Wow...

It's amazing how fast 3 weeks can go by when you're working 10 hours a day, every day...but that doesn't mean there aren't a few extra minutes left in there somewhere to crank out a NEW ROBERT AND DAVE!!!!!! Because...there are...I mean, I did one today, that's where I was going with that whole thing. Oh, just shut up and watch it. : )

You know...

I think I need to make an intro theme for Robert and Dave. I bet The Rembrandts are available by now, dontcha think?

Doing a Facebook Quiz That's Mistakenly Been Left in Beta

Let's see...what's up over at Facebook this morning...

Welcome to Facebook! You have 1 new Friend Request.

Hmmm...better check that out...hey, HotTania_7337_HAXXORZ...I think I went to high school with her! Approved, bay-bee!

HotTania_7337_HAXXORZ has taken the "Which Famous Book Are You?" Quiz!

Wow, cool! It WOULD be kind of interesting to have a random piece of poorly written software on the internet give me a pandering, broad strokes assessment of my personality based on a few completely meaningless questions! Where do I click?

Welcome to the "Which Famous [Book? Tyler, do you know if anyone has done books yet? If so, what other stupid shit could we pick? Replace this in the final version LOL] Are You?" Quiz!

Would you rather be:
A sparrow or a snail?

Hmmm, wow, that's a toughie! I mean, sparrows are all cute, but snails are all like, "Don't be coming up in my snail house with all that stuff!" LOL. I think I'll take the snail.


Would you rather be:
A hammer or a nail?

Eh...hammer.

*singing*
if Leonard Nimoy had a hammer...he'd hammer your head in...he'd hammer your face off...all over this land!


Would you rather sail away, like a swan that's here and gone?


Well, sure! I wouldn't mind sailing away from some of these BILLS, I'll tell you that LOL j/k! :>P Maybe the kids, too! o_O

When a man gets tied up to the ground, does he give the world its saddest sound...its saddest sound?

Whoa, is this thing reading my mind? I'm going with "YES!!!"

Would you rather be:
A forest or a street?

OK already, blah blah blah, just give me what book I am already. A street, I guess.

Would you rather feel the earth beneath your feet?

Jesus...what is this, the hippy quiz all of a sudden? Yes, I'd like to feel the earth beneath my feet, while I stand there eating a hamburger!

Congratulations! We have determined What Famous Book you are!

To find out what famous book you are, click here to authorize the Famous Book application to access the entire contents of your FriendList, including (but not limited to): your friends' email addresses, social security numbers, home addresses, bank routing numbers, dates of birth, and mothers' maiden names.

Yeah, yeah... *click*

To continue, please acknowledge that the makers of the Famous Book application are hereby granted the right to email notices to any and all members of your FriendsList with attachments including (but not limited to): spam, viruses, worms, trojan horses, keystroke loggers, virtual anthrax powder, ACTUAL anthrax powder, and chain mail letters that will result in their horrific deaths and/or dismemberments if they do not forward them on to seven other people within three days.

Hmmmmmmm... *click*

Congratulations! You are The Harry Potter Series! Everyone likes you, but only because it's been quite a while since they've actually been around you, so they don't really remember what you're like at all. Either that, or it's because their kids told them how great you are, and we all know what morons kids are, am I right?

What the...? Hey, come on now! Let's try this again...

*answers questions again, slightly differently*

Congratulations! You are The DaVinci Code! Back in the day you used to be really popular, but then everyone figured out that you weren't really as cool as they had thought, and they turned on you viciously, until now the mere mention of your name brings the most bitter recriminations from the mouths of those that were once closest to you!

God damn it! Stupid quiz...

*answers questions for tenth time*

Congratulations! Look, I know that you think if you keep answering these questions that eventually you're going to get something cool, like Ulysses or Lolita, but it's not going to happen, OK pal? You're going to have to live with The Bible or Letters to Penthouse or whatever you've gotten so far. Loser.

*answers questions for eleventh time*

Congratulations! OK, you win. You are The Catcher in the Rye! You are the perfect mix of charm, style, smarts, sass, and rumpled unconventional good looks! You are funny, witty, likeable, and ultra-cool, yet simultaneously soulful and poignant! You are pretty much the apex of western goddam civilization, if you want to know the truth!

All right! I can't wait to post this to Facebook! HotTania, you are all but mine...

Heh. Heh heh.

WHOOOOOOOO. *wipes away tear* Heh.

Man, I love making new R&D episodes.

Late Nite Cubicle

It has come to this...I get through the night with Sour Skittles and Mmmbop on repeat.

Didja hear the news?

The Robert and Dave Show has been picked up by Comedy Central! It's going to run right after South Park.

In other (completely related) news, I am high on crack cocaine.

ANOTHER new Robert and Dave?

Why not? In this economy, we're blowing 'em out the doors! 2 for 1 special! Double your money back guarantee if not satisfied! May cause itching, rash, irritability, increased frequency in urinating, or explosive decompression (in space only).

New Robert and Dave?

New Robert and Dave! With Academy Awards pseudo-timeliness action!

Cell Phone Update

The rain falls slowly but steadily across Austin...revenge exacted by the ghost of Charles Bronson, perhaps?

The Iceman Cometh

It was cold outside, the hard cold of shotgun steel against your cheek, with wind like a broad, flat knife that...had been laying next to the shotgun, wherever it had been, you know, to get so cold. Charles Bronson was sitting on the stoop of one of the rowhouses on the set, lost in a fog of fatigue, steam from his coffee, and the smoke of the day's first cigarette...these 4 a.m. shoots were getting to be too much; he made a mental note to look for scripts that mostly took place in the daytime from now on, or inside maybe.

One of the caterers wandered over and shyly asked him for an autograph. She handed over a Sharpie and an 8X10" glossy that turned out to be a promotional still from "Big House, U.S.A."...Bronson gazed at the youthful face in the picture for a long minute, idly wondering both how this woman had come to be in possession of the print, and what his character's name had been in the picture. He gave up both pursuits at roughly the same instant and signed (as he always did) only his name, in a quaintly elegant and readable script that clashed more grotesquely every day with his craggy and careworn face.

He was tired...tired of being typecast, tired of everyone thinking of him as this old tough bastard who was too famous to be approached, too self-important to be funny. His mind spun back briefly to some of the times they had had on the set of "Big House"...he had always kept most of the crew in stitches, back then; what the hell had happened to him? When was the last time he had done something really CRAZY like that, something that made people realize that he wasn't someone they could just stick labels on?

Bronson stood and stretched his arms above his head, slowly, but inside his emotions were completely awhirl. He let his eyes play around the set, not searching for anything in particular, just sort of casting about. They fell on a prop shovel (leaning in the alley across the street for all the world as if left there by accident) that he would be using in one of the fight scenes this morning against some of the bad guy's henchmen. Jesus, this script...he made a mental note to talk to his agent about this whole macho man bullshit, then abandoned it as inspiration suddenly struck.

Within fifteen seconds, Charles Bronson emerged from the alley with the prop shovel whirling impressively at arms' length. whoosh...whoosh - it sure sounded like a real shovel, and it was definitely having the desired effect on all the nearby members of the crew. Most were standing completely still now, with their mouths agape; a few spoke with a noticeable degree of panic into walkie-talkies or started moving his direction uncertainly.

"I AM THE GREAT CHARLES BRONSON, AND I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS CRUEL, CRUEL WORLD!!!!!! ROLL FILM, YOU DEMON GODS OF HOLLYWOOD, AND RECORD THE END OF YET ANOTHER LIFE YOU HAVE DESTROYED!" The words just came to him, he wasn't sure from where, but the glee coursing through his veins intensified as the eyes only got wider, the jaws only further dropped open. He stopped the shovel's arc directly in front of his body, lowered its spoonlike end to the ground, and, amidst cries of, "Chuck, for God's sake!!!", hammered it upward with all of his might into a seemingly devastating arc that ended at his own forehead.

Later, in the hospital, the phrase, "That's NOT the prop shovel!!!" slowly wormed its way into his consciousness.

Splat

It was just like thousands of other videos on the web...a gangly teenage boy surfing on the front of what could only be his parents' car. As the car approaches the cameraman, you can see the boy realize in an instant that he has irretrievably lost his balance, his eyes seeming to preemptively glass over as his body anticipates the shock that awaits it.

For the next second is all too predictable. As the boy attempts to launch himself into the grass of the front yard he's currently passing, as he braces for the impact to his torso with both elbows and forearms drawn up instinctively, as one lower leg fails to clear the curb with a sound that can scarcely be tolerated even when heard at such a low bitrate and having been recorded on a camera phone; you can't look, but it's far too late to look away.

Then, of course, the camera swings wildly for a moment (also instinctive), and shocked snorts turn to aborted hysterical barks turn to "holy SHIT, dude!" and the running toward the figure that at last lies still, perhaps still conscious to scream or perhaps face down and motionless in the grass that still looks so impossibly soft for a landing.

One presumes that the boy has become inured to the horror of the video, watching it again and again until it's just Joe Theisman being hit by Lawrence Taylor...failing to align in pixellated form with the sensory overload that (if he is lucky) his brain failed to record with any clarity as the moment itself took place. Even on YouTube, it seems, there is never one single version of the truth.

poetry corner

wOOt!!! More poetry from Stacey? She must be ON FIRE or really bored and dragging out old stuff. Enjoy?




Paths and Furrows


Going into winter I have nothing.
Nothing has been dried, stored, salted away
in any way made safe.
Autumn's sun takes on a paler light
The golden fields will be plowed under, soon
grey under the grey moon.
One could easily die in winter.

Say she breathes between us
you and I
the morning as her blanket
her body a bridge connecting two distant sides
her small warmth thawing this cold bed.

or her body a wedge
widening this distance
as with every needy belly cry
I mark the difference between you and I
scarred and husk-hollow
I will still give her more
tethered in this relentless bond
while you could decide, any day
to walk away.

if I could see our future
read our image in the stars
if I could lay out the cards
(empress tower lovers fool)
if I knew I could do this thing I would

but I can only see our past
the cooling, always cooling
the icing over
the slow march into the fading sunlight
and the long, brutal winter coming on.



How's that for depressing? I love me some depressing poetry w/a semi-feminist bent! I had a hard time not titling this "Hollah!" because I was thinking "hollow"... and I have a terrible time being serious w/ my titles. I actually got docked from an A to a B one time on a history/politics paper for my goofy title, I swear. It's hard for me to restrain myself.

poetry corner

Hey! It's been way too long since I've posted anything so I decided to stop messing w/ this poem and just post it already!




CAT

Once worshiped, you have fallen a step below
these clumsy gods of hairless flesh and aching bones.
Stolen from the desert lands, the burning sands
you ran with perfect grace
captured to the traps, the laps of men.

The song of your purr is a siren call
that holds the promise of softness
but there lies a certain anger in your eyes
your eyes reflect the light you salvage from the night
even in the darkness shining.

Into this darkness you have always slipped away
into the shadow beyond the campfire's glow
into the cobbled streets of rotting cities
between the rafters of countless barns you slide
slide into the suburban night
sliding so quickly, so surely, with a flick of the tail
into wildness.

You should go see "Synecdoche, New York"

Seriously, you should. I know that I am given to hyperbole on occasion, but this just might be the most real, most human movie ever made by an American director. I don't want to overreach myself since I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of movies from all over the world, but if this movie doesn't speak to you about life in a way that makes you hurt, I would be greatly, greatly surprised.

If anyone has seen it and wants to post their thoughts as comments, and we could have sort of a book club style discussion of it, I would love to, because I have tons of thoughts about it rolling around in my head after having seen it, but I can't sit and formulate them right now, and I don't know that anyone would be interested in reading them without having seen the movie.

So, in conclusion, go see it. You won't be sorry, or if you are sorry it will be for all of the right reasons, I think.

Pecan Trees

She liked best to kiss me under the pecan trees that bordered the east side of her parents' property, when the long winter was just starting to blow in with the evenings. She'd put her hands around inside my jacket, beneath my shirt, leaning in to get out of the wind (if there was some) and sometimes tucking her hands in just below my belt in the back, making the ache I was already feeling for her just a little bit harder to bear.

We'd walk out most nights that I came over for dinner, or to study, or just to hang out and watch bad movies with her younger brother or something. I don't know why he always got to pick; maybe it was just that he was far more interested in the movies once they started than we were, and I guess it was in our best interest for him to be as engrossed as possible...I still can't flip past a scene from the Police Academy series on a Saturday afternoon without feeling a twinge, without missing her just a little bit.

We'd watch for as long as we could stand it, hands moving softly and slowly as we could manage so as not to call attention to where they were and what they were doing. Then she'd excuse herself for a moment-just to find her folks and let them know that we were going to "take a walk"-and we'd head out to cover the quarter mile or so, fooling no one who had even the faintest memory of their teenage years about what we wanted to be alone to do, but unable to be bothered about caring. It was innocent, after all; that's why her folks never objected, why my mom would have a smile in her voice as I called for the fourth afternoon in a row to let her know that I was going to abandon her for the evening once again.

All of this is in retrospect, of course; at the time we felt that we had the wool over everyone's eyes, that our time together was somehow stolen right from under the noses of everyone that we imagined would disapprove for some reason. The saying is that youth is wasted on the young, but that's not quite right...I'd say that a lack of excess introspection is happily granted to young people, that they may neither analyze every urge nor feel the need to rationalize every decision. The phrase "romanticizing one's biology" would never even have occurred to me as I held her head against my frantically pounding chest, there in that orchard, and I'm thankful for that small kindness every time I think back on it.

It seemed like an eternity, back then, but really it was just the fall of my junior year into the spring, and then she left in the summer to go to college while I fell briefly and passionately for a succession of other girls at my high school. She didn't come back that first winter break; I think her parents were more surprised than I was, but I was the most deeply hurt. I'd find myself staring at pecan trees whenever I ran across them, lost not in thinking about her, but in feeling the things I had felt about her, about myself when I was with her, about how good life was, about how beautiful the leaves were on the ground at her feet.

I didn't exactly "grow up" after that, I guess, but I grew to be different (like we all do) and I moved on (like the lucky ones get to) and now I am where I am, and my life is what it is; and if I have some moments in an orchard to become lost in when I need to remember the times when I could truly forget about the world, instead of a new sitcom or the bottom of a bottle, then I count myself among the truly lucky...to have known such a girl, and to have walked with her under the pecan trees, when I was young.

Myrna

I hadn't seen her since eighth grade graduation, but it would have been impossible for me not to recognize her. I was on Microsoft's site getting stock photos of office workers, then using GIMP to put them into photos of historical disasters...it was Thursday, that's what I do on Thursdays. Fucking Thursdays.

Anyway, it wasn't that she looked the same, because her face clearly showed every second of the twenty plus years that had passed. It was the expression on her face; I suppose she was aiming for "caught while glancing up from my laptop as I ponder some really important business decision" or something like that, but what I saw was "purposefully looking as though I don't know that you're looking at me", simply because that was the expression she had been wearing for, oh, I don't know, a year and a half STRAIGHT every time I looked at her in junior high.

I was never sure whether she managed to keep that look 24/7, or if she had some kind of freakish radar that allowed her to assume it just before my eyes moved her direction, hiding whatever she had been thinking behind the perpetual cool of put-on indifference.

I guess it doesn't really matter in the long run; we all create our own reality, and thus we have to live in it, no matter the cost. If you're too scared to let someone know you're vulnerable to them, you're safe...but safety can be very, very overrated.

I put her in the Whitman tower shooting; I guess the lighting matched the best on some of those photos, and I wasn't really up for a challenging night after the shock of having run across her again after all of those years. Her facial expression didn't really fit in, I guess, but it didn't matter very much in the finished product. I didn't have her taking a bullet or anything, after all, and there may have been people at that scene so lost in themselves that they still managed to maintain an assumed expression in the face of the chaos and the panic, who can say.

I put it up on my blog, and it got some of the most positive comments yet, actually. Maybe she'll run across it some day on the web, some random cross posting when she becomes famous as a model where some total noob posts it and asks, "WTF??? How old is thsi chick anywai???? lol" or something like that. Or maybe it will just take its place among all the other lost memories in the ether, random thoughts and moments from lives that don't even exist anymore (given enough time) in our new collective virtual eternity where we all get starring roles.

And, yes, I have done myself in a picture, but you'll just have to stumble across that one yourself.

Eyes

I didn't know how long I'd been looking into her eyes, then...in my apartment, with her in the middle of the living room and me in what passed for a formal dining room, I guess. I shook my head (it felt like I had been shaking it for a while, like windshield wipers for early morning fog), and it seemed as though she had just said something, or was waiting for me to say something, which is mostly the same thing, right?

They were black, and flat, her eyes, and her voice too when I guess she got tired of waiting for me to talk. "Why are you so obsessed with pictures?" she said, and I looked down at my digital camera then, pointed it at her and pressed the button again. "You won't find anything that you couldn't find right here, right now, that you couldn't remember yourself if you could just keep yourself here in the moment, you know..."

The eyes were the same flat black, but the voice was now coming from an impossibly low register, and I felt it wind its way up the long bones of my legs and into my stomach, my back...I was hearing Morse code now, reading her lips and interpreting seismographic scribblings instead of listening. It was easier, more intuitive...more intimate.

She didn't step forward but somehow she was in front of me now with her hand around the back of my neck, sending short electric shocks down to amplify the dying echoes of her voice below. I still couldn't put a word together as she pulled my head forward and burned the side of my face with her hair; I still can't remember whether I was even afraid.

-------

"So...you moving or something? Documenting stuff for your landlord?"

Nathan was sitting on the couch, paging through the shots on my camera again without asking, of course. There was football on the TV--college, I think--maybe USC or something like that.

"All these empty shots of the living room?" he continued, in the face of my blank silence. "Aren't you supposed to do that before you move in, though? Like on rental cars?"

"No...that's the girl I was telling you about, you know, that I've been going out with? That I met at the show?"

"What, that girl Veronica?"

"No, man, that was forever ago...I met this girl at the...well...shit, I can't remember who was playing, but it was down at Antone's, Thursday night?"

"Dude, that was two nights ago! You're not 'going out' with her...so she came back to your place that night?"

"It couldn't have...I mean...yeah, she...but it's been longer than...I mean, you met her the other day, right?"

"I haven't seen you since the other night, and you didn't answer any texts yesterday, either. Damn, what'd you do, skip work to stay here with her? No wonder you're still so out of it!"

"No, she...well, she left sometime, I can't remember really. No, here, let me show you this one picture; you can see her eyes really clear, you'll remember her then."

But the pictures were just of the living room, like he said...no girl, no eyes, just weird distortions of the flash in some of the pictures that almost made it look like there was someone's shadow across the floor. I guess it was hard to see on the small LCD screen, but when we uploaded them to my computer it was the same thing...zoom in to 800 percent and you still got nothing but pixellated emptiness.

He wouldn't let it go, kept asking me what she looked like, what she was like. All I had to give him were the eyes, and the voice, and the way she had of asking questions that made you feel like she had just finished putting the answers inside you a few minutes ago, just to peel them back out. Because I wasn't obsessed with taking pictures of her, and I don't have trouble being 'in the moment' or whatever, but when she was asking...well, it was all different then.

-------

"Mom?"

My mother had an annoying habit of immediately starting an elaborate story about someone from the neighborhood that I only vaguely remembered as soon as she got me on the phone, and I couldn't take it this time, I really couldn't. I had felt my way out of the dark bedroom to the bar, somehow knowing that I couldn't turn on any lights, somehow remembering (for once) exactly where I had left my cell phone. I noticed then that she wasn't telling a story (she wasn't saying anything, actually), and then I saw on the microwave that it was 4 in the morning, and I was lost for a few moments trying to work out if she was an hour ahead or an hour behind--as if it would matter--and then I was spilling out the recurring dreams of the girl and Nathan and her eyes and him sitting on the couch and his endless questions and always returning to the blood, always so much blood so everywhere...

I felt my dry tongue stick to my lips, felt my parched throat working to make the sounds, and I realized that I had been whispering into the phone for hours, it had to have been hours. I took the phone from my ear and saw the dead blank screen, then the battery somehow over on the coffee table now, and her standing behind the couch as I guess I'd always known she had been, twirling Nathan's hair around her finger carelessly as she watched me again, waiting for her chance to speak.

"You didn't have to kill him, you know...there are other ways for these things to turn out. You're letting your imagination run away with you; you think you're something now that you are not yet, you feel the beginnings of hunger and you imagine that you're starving to death. You're too much inside your own head, even now, even faced with such an enormous reality as this...I think that you will overcome it with time, but for now, come to bed, it's time to sleep." Her words not a request, but not needing to be a command, her eyes showing the slightest spark of life as she took her hand from Nathan's hair and sucked half-congealed blood from her fingers.

-------

It was 1:30 before I woke up, shivering though the blankets were piled high on the bed. She lay as dead next to me, every inch of her covered by the blankets, limbs splayed out at the unnatural angles of dinosaur fossils, of the victims in mall shootings. It was hard to move now, for me...somehow there was too much light to think clearly, but I didn't have to think so clearly anymore, not for very long anyway.

I found my camping gear at the back of the closet, jumbled together in the chaos of the careless unpacking of an exhausted weekend. The silver canister of white kerosene for the cookstove sounded about half full as I shook it, but as I poured it over the bed and the girl with the eyes and Nathan pushed onto the bed beside her it seemed more like a gallon than perhaps a quart, spilling endlessly and filling the room in an instant with the smell of disaster. I had been afraid that all the activity would rouse her, but the juxtaposition with Nathan's body actually made her look more dead, somehow, not less...now that rigor mortis had passed he looked strangely peaceful under the dried blood, while her open eyes clearly spoke of an eternity of unrest, of perpetual yearning. She was right to live in every moment, I guess; it was the only option she had anyway, in the endless moments, an everlasting supply, somehow stringing together into much, much less than a life.

It took about a minute for the bed to be completely engulfed once I set it ablaze, and as I walked to the windows to open the blinds I wasn't sure if the flames were burning hotter and faster as they reached her or not...I dunno, maybe it was just my imagination again. I heard the screaming start, though...maybe it was me, maybe it was her from the fire and the sunlight in her eyes and the sudden realization of her fatal mistake; maybe it was the fire alarm. All I knew was the fire and the freedom that it promised, now, and maybe a cleansing too, and so I did the only thing that was left to me to do--I lay back down beside her, just to see if I could look one last time into her eyes, those eyes in all of that flame.