raindrops on my coat. sliding off slick black leather. plip plap plip plap, rythmic orchestral deluge pattering the asphalt with ink. sloshing against the steel in my boots as i walk through.

an alley. or rather, a cropping of two towering apartments, cut into to give space for waste- as if there isn’t enough of that already. it’s mundane, like any other, bleak and worthless. would be skipped past and left condemned like any other.

but the noise isn’t like any other.

a crashing and rummaging noise, not unlike a raccoon or possum. we get a lot of those here in fall, so it could be considered normal, if not for the ryhmicity to it. crashing, stop, crashing, stop, crashing. i dont think racoons make muffled vocalizations either, usually.

the lid to the dumpster is heavy, but i easily pop it open. it smells like copper and death. blobs of dirt and and trash squish together, never-emptied. black and yellow bags of trash and organic waste smush together and pop open in a mass grave of ichor, bleeding out rotten human paste. and halfway inside that death, held up like a shining bright pearl in a river of dull plastic, lies her.

a small, pale girl. wrapped in sheer yellow plastic like discarded organics. my heart races. my tremors come back. she looks broken, and not in the mental way, like a toy thrown into a wall by a temperative child. like a plush doll with its limbs ripped in tatters, stuffing overflowing and bleeding out. spring open and loose. she looks like a well-used human cutting board. cuts open up in every place to show crying bones inside. i can’t figure out how she even managed to thrash in this condition, let alone live. i’d think she was dead if not for the incessant quaking shivers. yet despite her gore and despite the maggots, she is radiant- a fallen angel. i can see the halo in the six-pack plastic rings above her head.

her eyes glaze over, drugged out of her mind. i want to believe i know the high she’s feeling right now, so she might be dulled from this. i reach a hand down to touch her, against all better judgement, and her eyes jolt to me with sudden life. her eyes stare deep, ashen yellow. i stare back. she opens her mouth and its more of a hole than a mouth. most of her teeth are gone, the rest chipped and drilled, and her small slender tongue hides coated in blood and grey bile, deep in the back of her mouth. the ultimate cavity. she tries to speak and all that comes out is pained creaking. a dying machination left for scrap, using up the last of it’s residual battery.

scoop it in my arms, drag it from those dark recesses. let it see the light it never has. well, later.

its hard to carry a corpse (adjacent) from place to place. they tell you that a lot, its like serial killer 101. but you can’t just imagine what a corpse feels like in your head. luckily the girl’s frail, but dead weight is still dead weight. bridal carry will hold her for a while, but by the time im at the stairs to my house i’m dragging her by the arms. feels bad having to scrape her eviscerated legs even more, but i dont have much choice.

having to figure out what to do with her is even harder, what’s a girl on the brink of death need most? hospital. no, i could help more than the american healthcare system with my bare hands alone. my first aid kit’s barebones, but there’s still some gauze and rubbing alcohol left that i can use to patch up her legs. blood pours down the couch cushions. i don’t know how she’s even alive, but while she is i have to try. we have just enough for the uncountable cuts on her legs. not that it’ll do much, cuts like that don’t heal.

i didn’t get a good look at her in the trash, under the light its even worse than before. strips of skin are completely absent from parts of her arms, flayed like string cheese. between them in her chest lies a sinking foundation, concave. she might be younger than i thought- could be like a baby with that little soft spot in their heads, only everywhere instead.

old shirts and lots of duct tape make do as casts for her arms, and i make sure to not touch her chest, who knows what could crawl out of that pit. i wrap up her hair, grey and singed and frayed like a curly mass of wires. pray it doesn’t rip off any more.

i try to talk to her. feed her water to lubricate her mangled throat, but it doesn’t help. she just stares into me, statuesque.

chipped paint and bleeding ceramic, a tub full of water subsumed with strings of red, muddled with a contiguous sea of skin. the girl finally starts to make noise, even if it’s just whinging. it’s progress. progress shows hope, a reason for it all- not that i need one to help, but i can’t stop thinking, what if i’m just piecing together a corpse? reviving my own frankenstein with each stitch i pierce through her worn collagen, each thread piecing her back together into something that better resembles humanity, that cannot even be known to be her. but then she shakes as i strike a needle around her joint, whimpering decay, but life simultaneously. and i dont worry about it anymore.



###########################



i wake up in my armchair, catch myself picking off more of the cheap outer layer in my sleep. can practically see the springs poking out of it now. girl doesn’t look much different. still laying on the couch right where i left her after her bath, layers of skin peeling away in patches on her legs, threatening to break open even more holes. my stomach growls. i stifle it and refix her bandages tighter. her eyes twinge as isopropyl seaps into the caverns. mine do too. the lights in my house flicker dead as i leave the girl. i feel a shiver of remembrance, an omen. but i don’t have time for it, money needs to be made if any progress is to hoped. i pray as i turn on the kettle.

i leave her a bowl of oatmeal on the coffee table in case by some miracle she regains motor function while i’m at work. in my garage i tinker on my truck some, a regular part of my routine. but something about it just feels, wrong. no longer giving the same relief it always does, like the loss of a long-running hyperfixation or when a hobby becomes a job. she’s always been my baby. my pet project. i’ve never eagerly left to start work, before now.



#################################



the food lies cold on the table. flies swarm and i can see them moving from the bowl to the girl, inspecting her for death and disease so they can feast on a bigger meal. i’ve tried to get pest control for the flies but they say they don’t come to my area of town. too “rough”, supposedly. fucking cunts. on the bright side, no semblance of care seems to scratch the girl’s surface. she looks like sleeping beauty. or a comatose car crash victim.

i can picture her splayed out on the pavement, body mangled and misshapen by the sheer force of fiberglass, demarcated by bloody and gut-strewn metal debris, blood streaming out of the same holes that lay before me. ropes of intestines and giblets of metal-soaked gore. and a glowing halo standing tall above it all, burning in a ring of fiery death. her eyes close into a permanent sleep, waiting for an ambulance that could never save her.

a minefield of black holes, ashy circles envelops most of her tongue. it wriggles intensely at the slightest touch, confirming her life again, at least. her body complains, but it needs the sustenance i provide, forcing helpings of cereal down her small throat inbetween bites for myself. like she’s my little fetile baby bird.



##################################



keeping her on an operating table feels wrong. i know what it’s like to have cop doctors force you into something you don’t want- but what other choice does she got? it’s not a doctors visit it’s an emt scraping your spilling brains back into your curb-stomped skull.

she takes a scalpel so good anyway.

i think it’s what she was made for.

situs inversus. a rare genetic condition where internal organs develop positioned in a mirror image of typical human anatomy. just an endless little matryoshka doll of wonders, aint she? i doubt it ends there, its tempting to travel down the rabbit hole, but for now this remains a simple repair job. the eye-shaped ripples in her skin stare back at me judgmentally as i stitch her chest back together, hiding my invasion beneath thread. then i finally get to the rest of her.



##################################



raining again. water reminds me of her ever since our meeting, but rain especially. i wonder if she feels the same. i prop her up on the armchair by the window now, so she can get sun and air, perhaps for the first times ever. im just going off of advice from my heart at this point, its not like theres any wikihow for “how to handle a mutilated dumpster girl”.

i give her a hug and feel her chest heave, her eyes opening against my chest. i jump back to give her space and she

speaks?

“please,

kill me”



##############################



the stitches’ve finally begun to take, and old wounds can finally begin to heal. parts had to be improvised, but the plates fit well between the cracks in her armour. for the bigger gashes in her knees where rigid metal wouldn’t cut it, plush fabric stitched over blanket her. if- when, she gets moving she wont have to worry about falls nearly as much. star treament for the starry-eyed girl.

doesn’t stop her from just lying there though. must still be in shock, or dealing from some extreme trauma- i can’t imagine the horrors. she hasn’t been speaking much since the operation either, the most she gave being a ragged ‘don’t know’ when i asked her for her name.

i’ve started calling her angel.



#############################



wind on my back, soft snow tickling my ankles bearing the first tips of winters approaching clutches. she’s wearing a baggy black hoodie and some of my old jeans. i make her keep the hood up and pulled, just in case. it’s her first walk, after all. its surreal being upright with her, in the wilds away from the workshop for the first time all season. she looks at home with the cold, her pale corpse-porcelain face melding with the falling snowflakes.

i got her to look in the mirror for the first time before we left. i keep playing it back in my head. she fit perfectly in a mirror that isn’t tall enough to fit my head. my jacket bleeds in leather, glinting off the mirror’s refraction, my black cargo pants, all in all covering more skin than she has in entirety. driving gloves wrapped around her shoulder, pulling her into my side. she stared at herself and us in silence, like she was seeing a ghost. and then winced away from me again. i black out that part of the memory until it never happened, and clutch her close at my side in present-time. people stare as we walk. there’s not even that many people in my area, and yet they all appear when their presence is least desired, like a blanket hive of filthy cockroaches. save for the narcissism. im used to the type of stares, at least. i keep wishing i could just envelop her in my jacket and swaddle her. but that’s not how rehabitalition works, Bishop. i know. she needs to spread her wings.

a passing dog and its owner makes angel stop in her tracks. her shivering turns to shaking and her violet jaw trembles. if her vocal cords werent torn i’m sure she would scream. i shelter her behind me, away from its blatant claws and fangs. i give her the words of a mother comforting its kin, but in reality all i feel is joy to see an emotion pass through her.

i sit her down on a nearby bench, the lone booth on the entire block. spikes keep us separated except for the lifeline of my glove. she puffs clouds of angeldust, chasing god’s breath. she stares at me lazy-eyed, sunny irises mirroring the star watching overhead. she raises a boney hand out and lets the sleeve covering it slip down to her elbows, revealing peeling bandages popping open chained eyes. she mouths something i cant make out and slumps into my shoulder, dead white hair pouring over me.

i have to carry her back the same way i did during our first meeting. arms wrapped under her back. feeling for the grooves in the behinds of her legs so i dont slip inside. my nails are like jagged blackened rocks ripping through the coastline, they would cut through her delicate hull like butter.

new bandages come tighter and stricter. the cardboard husk of a roll of tape lies in the corner, securing the new strips completely, sure to endure anything short of a knife.

i just can’t risk another attack like that again, angel.

it nods.

i lay a platter of chinese on the table. hopefully no one looks in my trash and sees the 3 person’s worth of food ive been wasting. luckily for us, angels are creatures of miracle. because by some miracle, tonight is the night that she eats.

two stryofoam cups splattered with a deadly battlefield of noodle-guts and sweet and sour blood. i haven’t been so proud since when my robot won high school nationals. it doesn’t even compare.

good job, i say.

“for what?”

her voice steams a low hiss like the beginning of a kettle’s squeal. quick and sharp, a whisper of fire. the question rots in the air as i watch her lips. for what?

“for eating.

for surviving.”

her lips parse like she has more to say but they fall back shut as quick as the breath she breathed. she falls back into the cushions, inert. the ability to flip your off switch at a moments notice, oh how i wish i could see where you go, angel. is it a void, or are there still symphonies sailing through the waves inside your head?

im staring into a hole, holes, a canvas, a cryptid and a rodent, a doll an automaton. the fetus of an angel. a pubescent peeling pupa of prionic psychosis. a weed in the concrete, photosynthesis makes pangs for the soul.

a mirror shattered, blood dripping down my knuckles, sliding through the grooves. glass shards reflecting something unreal and unseen. skin is a barrier for the heart. the body is a blockage for the potential of being. and so it must be remade. the ideas of what it is must be torn to the foundations and shaken until the remains may be used to build new bodies from the metal and the blood. two red dots gleam. snipers, watchers, stalkers, i cant see myself from all sides at once. i settle for the blood.

an ocean of crimson fills a bathtub with sorrows. thin white squiggles and streaks of acid spill across the porcelain surface, protecting the most important passenger ever.

“wounds must bleed into the water, so evil may escape the confines of the flesh. water is the all-purifying. the sole moral consumer. she will save you.” she nods numbly along to it all. good girl.

tonight was supposed to be another day with her on the table. but a day of worry hangs heavy, and what kind of engineer would i be if i didnt give my machinations love? i set her up in my bed atop the covers and turn on my noise machine to keep the rain in her dreams.

on the couch that still smells like the remnants of her dumpster coffin i dream of a deluge. biblical waves wash everything away, wiping the slate utterly clean. our bodies are lost to the mass grave in the mariana’s trench. clenched into a fleshy pearl, together. buried by a world’s worth of concrete.



##############################



i drop the book on the nightstand where she lies half-asleep. i realize i forgot to take off the dollar store brand sticker. actually, does she even know what money is?

“i think this might help you.”

i still don’t know how to talk to her. it’s like talking to myself, kind of. the amount of body language she gives has been steadily increasing but still the only face she has is that look of coma half-death.

“writing’s good for the brain. pencil’s there. if you need my help you can just ask, ok?”

something swirls in my thoughts. one of those bubbles of an idea that you just can’t pop open. i want to tell her everything.

the yellow in her shirt pops in neon. it looks like the waste bag i found her in. i can’t take my eyes off it. her eyes blaze biohazard warnings.



##########################################################



when i was a kid, i always wanted to be able to program rats. mind control seems so far and away and magical. but coding has a logic that i felt confirmed its possibility. the way metal and wires mesh with the human body and the advancement in such sciences in recent years is beautiful, but is limited. the brain has so many connections and wires, sockets to be plugged and masses of data storage. it’s ripe, pliable. they already do it, anyway. just with big machines transmitting a humans desired actions. but true control lies deeper, it needs space to fill your desires, you need to take their old brainpower out and replace with your pure, good energy. but like how they use the rats movements with leaps in prosthetic advancements, it has to have use for better good.

the sockets in her brain don’t take. sparks and flickers of life jolt from her unconcious body but chips do nothing, barely fit inside.

while i’m deep inside the skull, i notice why.

holes in the bottom, the size of the chips and wires i’m holding in my gloved jaws. old and raw, they make her wrinkles and worms tremor. they pump out continous woudnds. a harvesting rig.

i havent cried in months. of course it's only when in regards to myself.



##################################



my doctor gives me these pills for radiation poisoning. he tells me working around all these “new-fangled engines and e-lectron-ics” is giving me subtle traces of radiation that’s been slowly building up in my system. if i was better, i’d have a chassis to protect me from such a little thing. but meat is weak on it’s own, so we commune with the gods of nature and science to make a subsitute for a better answer. i feel the same tingle i get when i forget to take them being here.

a buzz and a shiver and a shock to the bones. like driving the shitty hatchback you got from your dead mother up a hill into the wilderness and feeling every inch of gravel up your ass and the cold wind fwipping at you through the windows because the crank broke years ago and in order to roll it up you have to dig into the inside of the door

like i’ve let a little reactor into my home.

i mean, maybe there’s some truth to that.

it sure as hell fuels me.



####c##a#n###y##o#u#####f#e##e##l#####i#t###?###



burning foil stench cries out for me to leave my desk. a spill of crimson fills the kitchen, and a body splits the red sea. a gash cuts its way down her skull, splitting flesh wide, barely missing its vitals. it doesnt move when i touch the cut, but its eyes follow mine unblinking as i pull it out of the murk. the head bandages suit her. like a glove. though i wish she didnt have to look like a hospital patient.

we sit on the couch together this time. she’s taken up my habit of scratching up the furniture. like a good little house pet. she flips between staring at me and staring at the tv and whenever i look at her back, staring into herself.

i pulled out a bunch of fabric from the garage, the old shit my grandma used to sew with, every single day until the day she became too weak to move her hands. i push the table aside and throw them on the floor, angel’s eyes fly between all the different colours and textures lying before her. with a gentle tug she slips onto the carpet beside me. with needle in hand, and my hand on her wrist, she slides it up and through and down and through. she soars through the ripples so elegantly, stitching colours with colours in so many shapes and sizes. warm colours fill the room, splitting reality with our drab white framing. hanging it on the wall would give this place so much life on its own- but she’s already curled up in the quilt before i can even get a look at its complete beauty.

she falls asleep the quickest i’ve ever seen. i scoop her back onto the futon and leave her for the night. i listen to her whispered snores as a replacement for the patter of the rain.



####################################



we read together. we cook together. we walk together. we rot together. i feel our intangible threads tighten with every day, with every step in her direction of growth. divine yarn twirls like the exposed nerves i first noted her by. her hair’s grown fuller than i could’ve ever imagined. my hand gets lost inside it, it bobs into powdered snow, flowing with her every slumped step. when i cut behind it, i have to be more careful than anything else. beneath the poofy curls stands soft, pliable ground. easy to operate with when you can parse the delicates and peel back the panels.

ship of thesues but girl, ship of angel, girl of thesues, scraped away board by board. was she the same when she came here? or was there a different girl underneath the death, once upon a time? as i take out the old protections and fill her with more sophisticated padding, i feel something exit her. a heaviness in her chest, ectoplasmic residue in the soul. once it left, she could be anointed new.



##########################



cold seeps through, and i do not know where from. i know the abyss before i see it. stars swing on all sides, nebulae in the distances glow in red and blue and ultraviolet. rings made of debris and gold hum a celestial harp, wrap in on themselves, scream with omni-sensed existence. it coils into shape and flies into the cosmos, singing the song of the angels. i never see it again.

Prosteyshiy sputnik 2. the ship that carried an earth animal into orbit for the first time, a dog named laika.

the sputnik 2 was a cage. a strict one at that, only enough to fit the dog and its many parts inside. but it was also laika’s guardian. a steward and bodyguard carrying forth an ambassador to the stars.

it was created for her

meant for her.

and it died, alongside her.

a fitting end, for what else could there be? come back and be scrapped or propped in a museum? no, it would die for its asset, its ward, its love. it finishes the job and waits, to be with the dog.

laika was never meant to come home. neither was sputnik. they went, and they were gone. never received proper burial, proper salvaging. instead their corpses mingled together, one a coffin for the other. before they were brittled by heat from re-entry, and crushed into one under the force. their souls left together, so neither would be alone.



##################################################



time blurs no matter what. a desperate attempt at saving leads to another attempt leads to another attempt leads to another attempt leads to another attempt leads to another attempt leads to another. the circle has been bent into a line. the stasis of antistasis fills space with effluvia of ennui. but at least the time is for we, and not me.



################################



the roads in this city are crumbling. be it the lakes subsumed in oil, the poisons soaked into the soil barring anything not foreign from growing within its reaches, or the air choked with ash from neighbouring forest fires, this city is ruins. all that remains are the people, rooted in their places in a mass act of cosmic defiance. and i guess i’m no different. from my truck i can see it all, safely encased in my beautiful box of metal away from the radiated groundwater and falling telephone poles. the city shadows itself in utter blackness with it’s own buildings. an absence of clear land and lights other than dulling neon brutally dismantles those last bits of life that could’ve grown inside. it’s a land where machines reign, where the glow from my headlights are a neccesity to crack through the fog of ichor on it’s worst days. and perhaps because this is a city of the dead, no one notices the corpse in the backseat. it slumps against it’s window, it’s body held up by the door only. i can see her looking out of it with those big angel eyes. something about the dark is captivating her more than i’ve ever seen before. we drive through the twisting caverns for a long time. i catch glimpses of the sparking streetlights refracting light off of her. all i can think as i take turn after turn is, this is not the place for something like her. she shines so brightly, it doesn’t deserve to swallow her light. like it tried to already, and like it tries to now. i can shelter her within its reaches but it’d never be enough to ebb the ichor’s flow. she can only be safe where i keep her, lest she be crushed under the absoulute reality of this place.

my favourite coffee place, the factory, the thrift store i scavenge for parts and clothes at, the delapidated mall where i had my first kiss- they all pass by like nothing. grey clouds of memories indescernable from the exhaust. we pass the concrete ocean and appear on the other side of the canyon, into the fields of blood where the remnants of a once-great ecosystem lies. dirt cliffs eroded down to hills, acres of corn and wheat left to fester in the corpsewind. in the horizon past miles of this we can see the form of something greater, vitalized forests unending. but for now we trawl through the asphalt, surrounded by grassy green and dead yellows and miles and miles of marker-hung wire.

a halfway marker leads to a side-road rest stop. call it bad timing or taste, but i think we could both use a burger right now.

i pull up to the place, a quaint little mom & pop shop place, looking lost in time. i wrap angel in my jacket and it hangs down to her thighs- just perfect. the woman at the counter greets us with a surprised smile. i point at the table -- best to avoid talk as much as possible -- and have angel slide in to the booth before i do.

“hey folks! what can i get started for ya?” her voice is soft but charred.

i order two bacon cheeseburgers. angels strong enough now where i can get her to point out what drink she wants. chocolate milk- always a girl after my own heart. the lady’s nice. asks us where we came from, don’t get folk down here much anymore, etc. we’re here to go camping ma’am. my daughter here’s never been to the forest before, i think it’s long overdue. i’m really good at preparing social scripts, especially under pressure. she thinks it’s sweet. angel just keeps looking out the window, where rain washes the glass clean. her eyes follow the droplets as they race to the bottom, entranced.

she eats it even quicker than i do, somehow. ketchup drips down her lips like . i wipe it off. it feels good to act motherly for once. to not think of blood. she looks good in my jacket. my little sister used to wear my hoodies, back when she was around. it feels right. what’s mine is yours.

the truck is cold. an emptiness wieghs heavy inside. she’s mine, but she’s untended, an afterthought, poor girl. poor bea.

“i’m tired.”

can never get used to her voice. her vocal cords now healed, it sounds utterly angelic, unexpectantly so.

of course, angel.

she shuffles as i switch gears. when i look in my mirror next, she’s consumed by her blanket. her body’s ready for the road to come, i’ve made sure of it. the sleep’ll help. i don’t know what’s going on in her head but i hate to let her stew in whatever it is.

i pull off the sideroad and back onto the freeway. a sign hangs overhead.

exit 13 miles.

there’s time to kill, angel.



###########################################





###########################################



the void cries down on us. the stars stare and shine, while inky water rolls down the hills, the windows, the trees and the road. beautiful lush leaves shake in the wind. i light up one last joint, who cares anymore, right? there is no law when within the grasp of nature. i suck sweet nectar and let the storm take it away. i follow the trail of yellow lights for guidance. they glow like her eyes. or maybe thats just my brain trying to keep my eyes on the road.

the trees begin to enclose the road. you can only see the tops on this raised ditchroad, so it’s impossible to know how tall they truly are, or how low the earth really goes. the moon has begun to shine on us, breaking through the nest of stormclouds. i can feel the gravel again.

she’s still asleep when we get to the spot. her sleeping isnt much different than her awake, honestly. it always feels like she’s catching up on a millenia of rest, that she was never allowed. she huffs out pale air from her little mouth. she’s sweet baby jesus, born into a lamb, swaddled in the shepherds blanket.

it smells like cigarettes and blood in here. i light up another, since she can’t smell it anyway. i lean my head out the window to smell the whipping air and copper sticks to my nose like phosphorus. bandages should be better at hiding smells than this, i think.

i open the door at angel’s side and she steps out on her own. gravel dust kicks up from her sketchers. i feel so immensely proud of the changes, watching her now. my little baby bird finally learned how to use it’s wings once again, and once her last chains have fallen, she’ll finally be able to fly.

we walk -- moreso slide -- our way down the side of the dyke, catching on wet grass and landing into the mud of a half-flooded mires. oaks or douglases or whatever tall brown spike-topped trees grows here crowd everything, clearings in it are made only by sunken ground or reedy puddles. i grab onto the underside of her arm, denting her shallow emptied flesh. the lights on her sneakers glitter iridescent stardust in the mud. the sky has grown dark grey, a bright blue moon stares down on us and the white flakes of stars and sattelites begin to flicker. i keep one eye on the sky, one on the underbrush ahead. i lead her on the path, without me her thin skin would fall apart with a single cut of a branch, her flesh has the consistency of a sponge when you squeeze it. blackberries grow around vines at our sides, shining red points blocking our exits like ecologic palisades.

a clearing appears ahead of us. a large patch of death, where the absolute life that has grown over the rest of the divot, lies in a dysthimic stasis. we step onto the grass which cracks like fire under our feet. red yellow and orange, the colours of couplet, rest on the ground waiting. with the help of my guiding hand, angel kneels, soft knees falling with refurbished joints. her hair is a hurricane in the breeze. her eyes struggle to open, so she squints at me, hiding her halos beneath her eyeleashes.

steel drags heavy on my waist. it tugs on my threads like a puppet. she makes a sound like a dog that knows it’s going to get it’s balls snipped when i hook my hand in her locks. i surround her vision with my body- i need to consume her focus. her eyes follow to mine, instinct driven. i hold her face close, to my abdomen. i can’t look her in the eyes. they glow so bright and all i can see inside of them is my own vile reflection, dirtying her light. my void of black subsumes it all. my appearance praises blood.

i dont know how to do this.

“i know” it trembles.

“can you at least tell me- after everything, all of this. just- what happened to you, angel?”

silence heaves in the stale air. i hold her as tight as i possibly can. i press my lips into her forehead, i do everything i can think of but all that is is nothing. her mouth struggles, like each word drains her of life.

“i

don’t

remember”

she sinks into my hands. girl detritus scatters against me. wind clears my lungs. is there already nothing else to say? we’ve said so little, i only wish i could’ve talked more, could’ve looked into her more, could’ve-

seen. i’ve been so blind.

she can feel me grab for it but she doesn’t move an inch. she knew. she always knew. it burns in my hands. i crush the handle until it hurts. i want the grooves to dig into my skin until it cuts so anyone who finds me will know what i did. i can feel the indents from where i padded her skull. built only to protect from blunt force. everything was always stacked against her. and by extension, us.

a crack echoes through the swamp. this land’s stasis ends and flies swarm. blood sticks to my face and something sharp and cold digs into my stomach. the sky has emptied. the swarm prepares. i feel a target. bugs from the dead grass try to crawl. but i am already destitute. i am the emptied air, waiting for the current. a beautiful doll lies emptied in the dirt. the midnight void clears space. her light becomes blinding. a twin echo thunders, and white takes over.



freedom at last.