We sat on a grassy island, wrapped by a cold stream.

Keith stretched his legs until his heels almost skimmed the water. “Yeah, a little.”

I drew my legs up to my chest, wrapping my arms around my knees. “I keep taking it out on every one else, and when I’m not, I’m at my own throat.”

He smiled that lazy smile, rolling over onto his back and propping his head up with the palm of his hand. “You know there’s only one person who can judge you. You don’t keep having to weigh your own sins and kindness against one another.”

I rested my face against my forearms, nose tucked into the space of my left elbow. “I haven’t heard Him in a long time. All he does is reach down to earth and pull me away from disaster. Then He’s gone. I’m still without any answer to where I’m supposed to go.”

Keith reached out and wrapped his hand around my golden brown braid. He stroked it down until it ended at the small of my back. “You’re standing in front of yourself.”

The affection only pushed me towards a quiet weeping, tear drops dusting the fine blonde hairs on my arms. “I can’t see beyond myself.”

“Bingo, kiddo. You know you can. Maybe one day you won’t need me anymore. Maybe you won’t need any of us anymore.”

I looked at him, horrified. “I can’t live without you. I can’t live without any of you. When everything goes wrong, you all fix it. You make the hurt go away. You make the loneliness bearable.”

Keigh sighed and released my braid. “Listen kid. The reason you’re brave is because of Violet. That ability to fight from your life is Jaha reaching through your arms. Galiena is your childhood. And well, you know who I am. The big brother you never had, the guy who makes sure your love doesn’t scatter like feathers.”

Tears surged again and I wiped my face on my wet arms, the skin slicker than ever. “That’s why I can’t–”

He moved to sit beside me and put an arm around my hunched shoulders, “You keep missing the most important thing. The thing you won’t acknowledge.”

I kept silent and pressed my palms against my ears, the cold metal of my earrings raising goosebumps on my flesh. “Please don’t.”

“You created us. You had all the ingredients. You were just afraid of what you would become if you didn’t compartmentalize. It’s like what you do with people. You always see them compassionately, but at the same time you’re repulsed by the selfishness of humanity.”

I objected, “I’m not any better than anyone else.”

Keith held up one hand, “I know, I know. I’m not saying that. Remember that one dream you had? That one emotion you can’t stop revering? It’s love and you know it. You’re afraid you’re not good enough to protect it. Well, let me tell you. If you keep up this way, you’ll never be able to protect the ones you want. You’ll ruin your one dream.”

I pulled my braid over one shoulder and let it coil into my hand. I squeezed my fingers around it. “I’m not strong enough.”

“Because you’re broken into pieces. You have to accept that every one of us is you. That your creations are yourself. I won’t go away, darling. I’ll never leave you. You have me, and because of that, you are who you are. Just like I am the way you are.”

My legs curled to the side as I slid into his lap and rested my head on his thigh. I closed my eyes. “Just … just let me rest awhile.”

Keith pulled my bangs back from my brow, winding one of the longer strands around his pinky. “You’ve rested enough. Get up and go. You can beat this, I know you can.”

“Why do you have so much damn faith in me?”

Keith smiled and rested his hand on my shoulder, “Because, whether you want to admit it or not, you have faith in yourself. Because of that, you have hope. If you have hope, you have a future. I’m telling you again, look beyond yourself. Fight for the ones you love. Live your curious life well, because He’ll always be watching and we’ll always be here with our fists in the air rooting you to keep running for the finish line.”

I was getting tired. The sort of tired that sinks into your bones and spreads in an ebbing tide through the rest of you. “What’s past the finish line?” I murmured.

He brushed his knuckles along my jaw bone. “Who knows.”

Keith tipped his head back, lidding his eyes against the sun as he watched thick blotches of clouds roll through the sky.

Jasmine scrunched her fingers into her dress and leveled her gaze forward. “I wish there was something I could do.”

The fan snapped shut and touched Pearl’s throat, her smile indulging. “I don’t. This is how you’re meant to be.”

Jasmine felt her cheeks burning and worried the fabric in her hands, “I wish you had warned me about how love is. You gave me so many books with knights, princesses and pleasant endings. Each of them contained a little piece of a dream I wanted.”

Pearl arched her brows and eased back into her chair, folding one long length of her leg over the other. “My dear, there’s nothing I could have taught you about love outside of fiction and fairy tales. You talk to me like I should have warned you, prepared you, or given you instructions on how to experience it.”

“You should have! Maybe then, I wouldn’t have-” she holds a gloved hand just under her mouth, preparing to cover it at any moment. “If I had known I would have run away.”

Pearl closed her eyes.

Jasmine felt a sob building in her throat and swallowed it with a painful grimace. “Now I’m consumed. All I think about is the moment I see him again. I cannot even pin my hair without thinking of how he …”

“Unpinned it.” Pearl finishes.

Jasmine put both hands over her face, her fingers tight together as she covered her eyes, feeling her own breath rolling back against her cheeks. “Please don’t say such vulgar things.”

The chair creaked as Pearl took leave of it, kneeling in front of Jasmine. She began to smooth the wrinkles from the gauzy fabric. “You won’t think of it that way, in time. You’ll learn to appreciate those feelings, regardless of how they seem to have your heart in rough seas.”

Tears ran down Jasmine’s face until they stopped and soaked into her covered palms. “I don’t know what to do next.”

Pearl laid her head against the girl’s trembling knees, “That’s how you know it’s right.”

In her mouth was pandora’s box, a miniature sliver of a coffin beneath her tongue.

It was all honey when she was untouched. She did so much good. But that didn’t matter now, not in this lonely bathroom. For as much good as she did, the bad always found her. She didn’t know how to do bad. So the box opened and swallowed the vile. The tiger would always eat her, for she was too fearful to crush even an ant in her flight. The coffin swelled when the bad men came.

But it was sealed tight. The poison, now, was so great inside that she felt it blackening the sides of her teeth.

She raised her eyes through her bangs and watched herself under the stuttering glare of the light. There was a languid sway at her shoulders, even though she was fighting to hold still. If she moved, it blurred the lattice work of bruises and scars over her ribs and breasts. She got tired of looking, the coffin was close to trapping her tongue to the roof of her mouth.

Her bra was unclipped and dropped, revealing small breasts marred with inky fingerprints. Robotically, she stripped the rest of her clothing and then kicked it into a dirty corner far away from her. One sock lagged behind, sprawled in a half hunch like an inchworm.

She had waited too late to say it to them. Waited too long to fight. Now the poison was making the coffin groan, bloated. She hunched forward and crossed her skinny arms across her chest and lifted her eyes to the dusty mirror one last time. Her dry, cracked lips parted:

“No.”

The coffin exploded, driving broken splinters into the soft flesh of her tongue. A black, oily liquid as thick as syrup oozed from the corners of her mouth, wiggled between the small gaps between her teeth. It scorched the flesh of her throat until it was white ash.

Her legs buckled first, eyes bulging from behind her unwashed hair. As she fell, one hand clawed desperately at the rounded edge of the sink. The poison swirled like a tide, clogging her nostrils and eating away at the soft tissue.

She thought, as her mind grew misty and slow, I should’ve used this before.

Her fingers ticked off the sink, one by one, leaving a wet trail as her arm joined her crooked body on the floor.

With considerable grace she slides from the table, her heels arching high into the air. “They hate you for your strength. Your unpredictability. Everything that you can do and undo. You don’t disappear well. Every box you outgrow.”

Now her fingers slide against calloused palms. “They resent your courage when they cannot move. They fear you because you are fearless.”

Carefully she pushed forward, tipping weight between two bodies. One slid forward. One slid back. “And here you want to shed your wings? You’re mad. Will you cut your talons and file your teeth? You can change everything ahead of you, you can conquer the universe.”

She felt resistance now, knowing that she could never break that balance. So instead, she fell forward into a chest that rose and fell ever so evenly. “Don’t let them tar and feather you. Don’t let their hateful labels stick. No one that loves you would want to push you to the ground. No one that cares for you would cut you just to see you bleed.”

“Run as hard and as fast as you can into the light. Let the water split beneath your feet and leave a hot mist behind you so they can never see where you go. Stop looking at them, their eyes are ivy around your feet. Don’t give up. You’re good. Please don’t ever give up.”

Water cut her across the face as she fell backward, shielding her eyes as the splash scattered blue gems. She felt a great wake in the air and stared over her shoulder.

“Keep moving, dear one, I’ve passed the torch to you.”

“Oof.” He adjusted his balance and shuffled through the tightly packed audience. “Quit grabbing my hair.”

Mary grinned wildly and squeezed her legs until her heels nipped in at his ribs, “Ya!”

Luke pursed his lips and drew them to the left. “I am not a horse.”

“You’re right. You’re more like a bull. Charge!” she rocked with impatience, the movement jarring her short hair along her jaw.

He gripped her calves and edged closer still to the railing. Luke took the annoyed stares of the jostled in stride. A crazy woman was driving him, what could he do?

Mary released his hair and drew deeply of the night air, the delightful smell of spent fireworks heavy in the July heat. “Oh wow. We’re gonna be able to see everything.” when Luke didn’t answer, she continued on. “I’ve always wanted to see this. The last time we were in the back of a truck, remember? It was so weird. We were all crushed together but ..”

Luke twisted his head, trying his best to see her expression above him.

“But we couldn’t even hold hands. It was tough back then, wasn’t it? All those people looking at the sky and we still didn’t have the nerve.”

He spread his feet a little wider. “You know, you could stand. We’re at the edge. There’s no one in our way.”

Mary’s knuckles rapped on his head. “But I wanted to see everything. I want to see the stars fade to black when the big fireworks start. I want to see that moment where they both exist. It means something to me, seeing man’s creation blooming beneath God’s.”

Luke raised his arms and hooked them into her armpits. Mary protested, “Don’t put me down yet! It hasn’t even started.” Regardless, he steadily plucked her from his shoulders and rested her down beside him.

Her lip trembled and she looked at him as if she had been betrayed by being unseated. “It doesn’t feel as real down here.”

He brushed his arm up along side her own and wound them together until their hands became entangled. “It’s real.” he said quietly, having felt hushed in the sudden silence around them. The crowd had collectively ceased their jubilation, anticipating the renown finale.

“But if I can’t see both, what’s the point. I want back up there.” she pointed to above his head.

Luke reached for her other hand and held it with the same tenderness.

“You can see both.”

Mary looked at him inquisitively, “How?”

Luke lowered his head until his forehead pressed against her own. “You could look at me.”

The shower of fireworks went off in a series of rapid fire shots, creating a waterfall of white light that poured towards the dark river below. It illuminated everything and turned the glow between their lips to gold.

Dessie, the sulky room-mate, flicked a spent butt at a clay ashtray. Another miss. It only added to the dozens of other misses. For all practical purposes, her ashtray was the entire planet earth. She dug her tongue into the gap between her teeth, mumbling around the awkward twist of her tongue. “Of courf you can.”

“Really?”

Dessie spit free the food lucky enough not to get ground to digestible quality against those nicotine stained choppers. “Can’t. You can’t.”

Keith snapped back around and pretended to focus on the spread of notes on his desk. Lyrics, poems, stories and letters. The summary of a man’s desperation.

“You know why y’ can’t? Because you’re fucking lazy.” It sounded remotely like a compliment, coming from her. “You think once you rode off into the sunset with her that’s all it was gonna take for a happy life?”

Keith searched for a pencil. To stab. To write. Both actions were achingly similar in their goal.

Dessie continued, “Fuck, you little bitch, I even gotta work at my addiction– remind myself I always need it. Sometimes I get real better, you know? I can think straight and my eyes are wide open. Then you know what I gotta do? I gotta tell myself, the world is real great in full color surround sound .. but it also blows. You know why? I’m gonna ask you a lot of questions, you prick. So don’t interrupt me. When I see the world in that full spectrum, I know I ain’t ever going to fucking belong to it. I’m never going to enjoy some candle lit dinner. I don’t wanna ride on a motherfucking boat. I don’t want to do any of it. You know what that’s like, kid? Knowing that the world is fucking fantastic? Then you realize, fuck, I’m not even interested. I don’t wanna pet dolphins. I don’t wanna rock climb. I don’t want a job. This beautiful gorgeous world can just kiss my ass. So I dim it. I dim it down. I pop anything I’ve got to knock the color down, so I won’t be tempted by what I’m missing. What’s missing is inside me. The world is full of beauty and I’m not even fucking interested. What does that make me? Why are the most profound fucking things in this universe so boring? So I jack my brain. I scramble my insides. I make my body the adventure land. I make my veins a roller coaster and my lungs home to thick curls of dazzling violet smoke.”

He was silent, his pen bleeding pregnant drops of ink, the liquid blossoming and unfurling in impossibly intricate snowflakes.

Another cigarette received the communion of fire and she put it between her lips with the relish of a fanatic. She was a woman far from faith, but she thrived on ritual. Pills were the numbers on the clock, dropping down her throat as the short hand dispensed them upon the hour. Ironic, really. Even when man believed they had harnessed time, they still insisted on the final insult of calling the watchers of the hours ‘hands’.

Dessie pursed her lips and sucked so deeply that the cherry of her cigarette galloped towards the stained filter. “Course, this isn’t bout me. But maybe it is. If you were in a better mood, I wouldn’t be your room-mate. You’d have that air head in here trying to put fucking lisa frank stickers all over your pussy love letters.”

Keith lurched forward and twisted round, his hands curling, gripping and thickening with battle blood. “I want her! I want her more then anything in my whole life! And I fucking screw it up! I didn’t work. I brought her back. I brought her into my city. I saved her. She saved me! We did ride off into the sunset. We ran into the sunlight .. and .. and..”

“And you lost her.” Dessie murmured, her dark eyes rolling upward as streams of smoke poured from her nostrils.

He slammed his hands down on to the table and knocked the cup of pencils away. They clattered to the floor like hail. He remained there for many heartbeats, his body still, his muscles taunt. The only movement came from the paper beneath him, as it swelled and distorted beneath the fall of his tears. “I want her.” he whispered hoarsely.

“I wanted her my whole life. I wanted her even before she came to my city. I felt her out there, spinning off into space, waiting for me to have the strength to lasso her down. I thought it was enough. It wasn’t. I failed her. I failed her so terribly. I thought the strength of my love was enough. It was me that wasn’t enough. My pride and my fucking arrogance. And now ..”

Keith shoved the drafting board forward. It swung high and crashed with the typical result of any furniture made of particle board. Therefore: It broke into several pieces, all of which undoubtedly would only be fixed by shipping it in from Singapore. The paper did not follow, no. It floated down like disappointed angels, reaching upward, begging to be saved. Dessie watched from her position, her bony butt settled firmly on the arm of a ratty couch.

“And now she’s gone. She’s gone. I can’t even say those words and have them reach my heart. Everyone keeps asking. Everyone keeps asking if I’m okay, if I’m gonna make it, if I’m going to move on. But I can’t. I can’t move on without her, I can’t live without her! I have a purpose. I know it, Dessie. I know my fucking purpose. It’s to be that guy that never gives up. It’s to be that man that would face any shame or humiliation to get her back. I know I love her, why should I doubt that? Without her, my head is sick. My heart is sick. Maybe this is self preservation, I don’t know. But I’m going to find her. I’m going to do whatever it takes.”

Dessie expertly rolled the sodden filter over her lower lip to the far left corner of her mouth. “Whatever it takes? You sure you’re up for that, cowboy?”

Keith turned way from the calamity of art supplies at his feet and faced Dessie head on, his jaw strung as tight as street light stabilizers. “You don’t know me. You don’t know us. She’s somewhere in someone else’s city, and I’m going to find her. I’m going to either bring her back or come to her! I have never loved another woman this way. She moves me, she moves me to be better. She challenges me. She pushes me. For all the wrong I’ve done in my life, she still loves me. I don’t care that she’s not here right now. I don’t care about the fights. What I care about is finding my soulmate. I will go to the very heavens and push those ancient stars through the universe until they align for us. I want to look up at the sky and know that big guy up there couldn’t, even in his glory and infinite power, stop me from finding her. I will make this right.”

The cigarette tipped and its burden of ash floated towards the floor. Dessie was watching him carefully.

“You know it’s going to be hard.”

Keith reached for his coat and shrugged it on.

“She saved me when I was in the darkest place of my life. She came for me.”

The girl stretched out one leg on the couch, the rips in her hosiery widening. “This is different. You know what’s happened since then. The rules have changed.”

Keith pockets his wallet. “I know.”

Dessie cut her eyes towards the door. “You’re still going, aren’t you?”

He shoved his feet into his boots and laced them with military efficiency. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Keith stood and placed his hand on the knob of the door. “Because she, out of all the dreams that float up to God during the nighttime, she’s the only one that blinds His eyes with her radiance.”

“She’s a perfect dream. Because she is the only dream that can come true.”

Her companion sunk deeper into the half egg-shell chair, “Why can’t you just say how you feel?”

She smiled, an ivory flash showing between two fingers that framed her lips in a horizontal peace sign. “But that is how I feel.”

“You’re a human being, not a time of day. Though with how weird you are, I’m starting to doubt the former part of my observation.”

The hundred year old seat bottom creaked beneath her as she rose to her feet and then stretched onto the balls of her feet. “That’s how I got here you know.” Two fingers came up and tapped on the shallow dent of her right temple.

“How?”

She closed one eye, grinned, and arched her thumb to resemble the hammer of a gun.

“Doubt.”

My science teacher had a fondness for injured wildlife — all but bunnies that is, and if you have any familiarity with trying to save baby wild rabbits, you’d know why.  A student had brought in an injured barn owl that my teacher had taken great pains to bring to full health.  I remember peeking over the tattered rim of the cardboard box, smelling the pungent scraps of trashed blankets that how now become its bedding.  It was a beautiful animal, but I was at the age where I still refused to be star struck by even the simplest of pleasures in life.

When it came time to release the owl, our class trooped out across the soccer field and around the newly steam-rolled tennis courts.  The outskirts of my campus led deep into the woods, and there honestly wasn’t a better spot to release the animal that the students could appreciate it without having to buss’em out to the wild yonder.  Frankly, we were already there.

My teacher put the box at the very edge of the woods and backed away, spreading her arms wide in an attempt to sweep the students backwards.  Most compiled, starry-eyed with curiosity, fingers itching to become tawny brown feathers.  Some, however, were all too engrossed in with the act of release itself.  That is, to explain, control when the owl ascended away from its now dew-soggy home.

I heard the first dull thunk from the back row, where I waited anxiously with my eyes on the tree line.  I didn’t care how he left the box, I just wanted to see him slip between the thick branches of oak trees and disappear within a few shutters of my eyes.  The second time I heard a thunk, it was accompanied by a pained screech.

Several of the boys had filled their pockets with large gravel stones and had set about ‘encouraging’ the barn owl to take flight.  Encouraging as in, of course, hurling rocks at it.  I remember watching them arc and roll, the bird fluttering in panic to avoid the rain of assault.  

I didn’t care too much about the owl, I’ll be honest.  I’ve never had a particular attachment to animals or humans alike.  But something about what my young classmates were doing sent me clear over the edge.  I started scrambling at the back of the throng, gathering fist-fulls of pebbles and charging through the tightening crowd. 

I let the first one go – an outfielders throw, the kind that’s almost a clear circle, and the rock snapped from my palms and fingers and struck one of the fellas dead-center in the back.  I don’t really think I gave him much of a chance to muse over the irony, because as I kept hurling stones at them – they screamed at me:

“We’re just trying to help it to fly!  It’s not going fast enough!”

I kept throwing and throwing, pelting them so hard I could hear the crack of the stones on their knobby knees and elbows.  My teacher finally managed to restrain me, more ashamed of my reaction then the prior incident of bird-assault.

In the seconds she held me, we all watched the owl struggle to emerge – box tipping over, those few hesitant wobble steps – and then, just as I imagined, it lifted itself and winged between ancient trees into brambles and kudzu.

My teacher was my box then, holding my sweaty – metal smelling body between her cold dried fingers as I lunged towards the woods.

I had more stones to throw.

Hello, have a piece of me.

It seemed to say.

I hate personalizing things.  I break into a cold sweat at personal gifts.  I’m not an ancient egyptian reborn, I assure you, but for awhile I did not think I could handle the fingers and toes of my well intentioned friends.

I left most of my journals unsigned, more than a fair lot of my poems untitled, and arguably all of them hidden for the duration of the rash that came after creation.  I made and then itched and was absolutely not well enough to deal with the repercussions to my big ol’ mouth.  

I can tell you one thing, writing the poem about the bloodied all-seeing Jesus on the cross who is severely disappointed in you and YOU and YOU was something my sixth grade teacher caught the rash on.  Maybe it was about the gore.  Or even the tender care given to the way gore-flesh flutters in a healthy downward stream of blood like watercress.  Either way, it was bad news.

Unsigned, but stamped with the markings of the yeasty-pale girl in the back row that pulled and pulled her hair around her fingers.  Damn, so it’s not only signatures that brings them back towards you?

Either way, I thought it an appropriate homage to my Lord Christ, and instead found myself sitting across the middle school counselor. 

The poem was already out, the umbilical cord cut.  All she was holding was a placental jellyfish, my little thought had already bitten its way through and gone free.

To keep the hemming and hawwing of this dialogue to a suitable degree, I’ll wrap up the exchange.

“Do you have suicidal thoughts, Miss Watson?”

Midway into solving the fucking hard game where you put all the balls in the right indents and one little movement sets them all scattering around again … I replied.

“Not until just now.”

If her expression could be summarized after my declaration, as I am so big about doing.  She would have been the lady that snipped my support rope, oxygen tube and kicked me off the shuttle to flip-float through space a hollowed out little impish monkey.  

Freeze dried monkey or not, I shook her little reindeer vest world for just a minute.

My only condolence is that even though her kick was a damn good one, and I was spinning in space for quite some time – I still remember her green arm-pits.

Lady, did you really think I was that interested in seeing how you stretched?

I becomes her, and soot sweeps beneath brutishly short nails.

Blood leaps from calloused platforms to the valleys beneath, sloughing off her knuckles like winter ice. When she opens her fist, he falls from her grip onto the concrete beneath her polished boots. The steam from her nostrils is bright, enough to illuminate the perplexing nature of her dark skin against the savannah gold of her scalp.

The body at her feet is of concern, and yet no concern. Dispatched, but breathing – oh, she thought she’d have plenty of time, always plenty of time when this moment came. Yet the moldering smell of the woman’s garments across the alley have pushed this drama to the finale. She did not bother to turn her head towards the smudged barrel lined up with her head. “Funny time, you pick.”

They are her last words. The bullet catches her in temple, throwing her head with the weight of a boxer’s glove. A cheek that will never bruise breaks against brick, and she slumps into a stubborn kneel at the feet of the unconscious man.

There is no parting retort, nor the emergence of the dim face of a cell phone. They are left to their deranged tableau with no further interruption.

Now he is laughing, far away, in the smooth arms of his lovers. Their warmth is the champagne in his generous mouth, and he nestles the stretch of his body between their own. Unfolding his arms like wings, he embraces both and pulls them into his chest – whispering into the looped curls of their hair. When they trill, he rejoices, the hammer to the church bell. He can make their bodies ring, their eyes shine like stained glass.

But he can’t use them to stop what’s coming.

When he looks up and through the haze of bar smoke, he sees her standing opposite of the expensively stained table. Oh Abba he knows it’s a Her because no ratted up hoodie would keep him from seeing the very bottom of a soul. It is his inattention that draws his companions eyes away from the silky undershirt their eyes sought the secrets beneath. “What–?”

“Eradication.” He whispered, his thick eyelashes becoming a half-veil of shadow over his eyes. The first bullet catches him in the throat. The irony is not lost to him, and he does not waste the few moments afforded. They were never in danger, but he throws them to each end of the couch regardless. It is their screams falling away from his ears that are the last thing that he hears, as he watches the shadowed woman take aim at his heart.

The final bullet punches into his chest, shuddering through his torso like a final breath.

She behaves as if she is underwater, and the rising calamity around her is as normal as the pounding surf to the sides of a lighthouse. “No more.”

And she sounds so tired.

The next scene bears even more witnesses. She takes to the stage like a dream, her naked feet among the many others that cross the polished floor. As she weaves through the talented throng, her impossibility shows like the slip of a gown beneath formal dress. No being, how sweet, could emit such unrestrained kindness. She is perfect, but not enough to hear the disgusted hiss of a patron disturbed by an ill attired attendee.

This is the shortest act of all. Mid-spin, when her leg is to lift so that her ankle meets her ear – the back of her neck opens up. The only act comparable would be to drive ones thumbs into the closed bud of a rose, and disregarding resistance, rend it open. She falls just off center stage, sightless eyes an empty tape in a recorder.

In the surge of panic, where dancing becomes flight, and seated pleasure becomes a mad scramble – the shooter is never found.

By the time she finds the mad one, she is limping. The night receptionist had seen death come for her residents so often, she mistook the sombre nature of the visitor for yet another peripheral spiritual being. It never occurred to her that the determined shuffle had weight to it.

She finds her in the corner, scratching the back of her head with fevered speed – as if these lice required extraordinary effort to oust. The blue, issued gown is as filthy as the hands of the being that stands in the doorway. They both watch each other with the familiarity and intensity of feuding lovers.

“It’s a rule!” she shrieks, darting from the corner she was crouched in, thin-limbs in the air like the ghostly exclamation points. “You’re b-b-breaking your BIG RULE.” the run is so hard, so desperate, that an observer would become convinced there was a door of escape that she was fleeing to.

But no bullet was wasted, even though they did not all strike vital points – none of them buried into the cushioned walls. Only the black bile of her vomit splashed there, and she thrashed brokenly just inches away from her imagined escape. “I can’t f-fight back.” her chest expands erratically, spraying blood that becomes her death’s bridal train.

The shooter lingers until she is certain of expiration. As she passes the receptionist once more, who is engaged in a frantic phone call with the authorities – their eyes meet. Even Death is above insanity, what had crossed her threshold was not Death at all.

But it could cry.

The final scene would have no witnesses.