Fiction: Untitled or Dinner Over Death

Fun fact about me: I'm really bad about having multiple copies of this. I had to harass both Sister and Ryan (neither of who had it) then finally dug through my email for about ten minutes. Here is the opening of my entire comic series. This one is about two months older than Deal. Inspired by something in the Writer's Block. Something I forgot about each issue, one story will have Death as a character, the other as a theme. I may end up switching this up but 'tis how it is for now.

“I can one-up you,” Derek says, pointing the cigarette in his hand in my face. Natalie is sitting next to him, her dark hair in a bridal bun wearing a glamorous trench coat, the timeless palette of red lips and smoky eyes, one hand between Derek’s legs, but she is looking at me. Next to me is a blonde, and I can’t remember her name but I can remember what she looks like under the little black cocktail dress.

“Please, can we change the subject?” Natalie says, tugging Derek closer to her. Now he’s the one looking at me. “I’m bored with these rumors.” Blondie nods in agreement, and I can’t help but notice how objectively attractive she is.

“Get this,” Derek ignores his date, putting out the cigarette in the ash tray. “There is a website, I think from Thailand, and for a million dollars, you can kill a man.”

"No,” Blondie gasps, and leans towards me. “He’s not serious, is he?”

“Oh, I’m serious,” Derek looks at me. “One million. How about that?”

“It’s a lot of money,” I reply. “Most people don’t have that.”

“Most people don’t want to kill a man, though.” Blondie and Natalie are silent. Derek just keeps looking at me. “Stare into another man’s eyes. You must look like God to him. In fact, you are God to him. You have the power to give him a greater appreciation of life by letting him go, or you could take that life away for no reason other than the pure…”

“Derek,” Natalie whimpers.

“No reason other than the pure pleasure of it. Imagine what it must be like. I mean, you have nothing against him. You’ve never met him, never seen him. You have absolutely no motivation. And afterwards, you just go home, go to work, go the rest of your life knowing that to one person, one dead person, you are God.” Derek takes a sip of the red wine, as if pausing for dramatic effect. “Be God for a million dollars. Doesn’t seem like such a high price.”

“It’s an innocent person’s life, you’re talking about,” Blondie says harshly, and I can tell she wants to leave. “That’s unforgivable.”

“Who’s to say they’re innocent? What if it’s a child molester, a bank robber, a murderer? I mean, you support the death penalty, don’t you?”

“For a million dollars, you could feed millions of starving children, help find a cure for AIDS, fight global epidemics…” Natalie starts, and I can tell it’s just the charity bullshit she reads about in the gossip magazines.

“So that’s what you’d do with a million dollars? Fight AIDS?” Derek says cruelly, before turning on Blondie. “What about you? Start up a charity to give breast implants to A- cups in need?” The girls are quiet, and Derek looks at me. “What about you? What would you do with a million dollars?”

“I’d kill a man.”

Fiction: Deal With Death

More fiction! Yay? Yay! People have been on my ass about reading this one. It's my most recent, though I came up with the story almost two years ago. And now I'm mildly depressed it's been that long since I was in a writing mood. Damn you grown up life! So anyway, this is part of the first issue of my Stories of Death (and all his friends) comics. The first part, which is Untitled or Dinner Over Death, you may have read already and I'll be posting it probably later tonight. Just to warn you, I'll be posting most of my stories tonight. Anyway, my idea for Stories is kinda based on these Time Life books I would read when I was a kid. I don't know how familiar you, anonymous reader, are with the Time Life series but each book was beautifully illustrated and had a theme, and the way each story was written was timeless like you'd have heard it a thousand times but just then learned the meaning. With my Stories series, I'm trying to evoke that style. Each of the 12 issues will contain two tales, a shorter one and a longer one. While Untitled or Dinner is the shorter story, this is the longer one. God this preface is long. Uhh the comic itself is going to be slightly different, since I only have the first draft in short story format while the other drafts are in graphic novel format. So yeah, this is the first draft and that does explain a lot.


One day I was dying. I miss that feeling.

A man came to visit me, maybe in a dream. He asked me if I was afraid. I told him I was.

"Of dying?"

"Of dying alone. This can't be how it ends. My best friend is the woman in the bed next to mine, whose face I've never seen but whose screams keep me awake in the night. My family is the doctors who check on me, who all look the same but distinguish themselves by the bad news they deliver. My lover is the old nurse who changes my sheet every day but won't look me in the eye. This is what I'm afraid of. That this is how it ends. I don't want to die alone."

"Done," he said, the dim light in my mind illuminating his face like a skeleton. I woke up to my best friend's final scream. The next day my family told me I was free to go.

"Here's to you and here's to me, if we should ever disagree, fuck you, here's to me." Cassidy lifted his sixth round, clashing it against my second. I closed my eyes and tightened my throat, wincing at the burning as it went down. Cassidy slammed his down. "Have you ever been in love?"

"I guess."

"No, really in love. Not just with someone you like or whatever, not infatuation, love. Where you would jujmp off a cliff if they just asked, where every moment you spend with them stretches on forever and goes by too quickly. That kind of love."

"I guess not."

"I'm telling you, this girl is like no one I've ever met. I can't see how someone wouldn't love her. And she picked me, you believe that? Of all the fucking people..." he motions for another round.

"Let me get this one."

"No, I insist. I have a tab." The bartender looked at him expectantly. "Which I fully intend to pay tonight." Cassidy dowsed his next shot, as I sipped mine. "I should stop talking," he slurred, grabbing my shoulder. "Tell me about you. You're my new best friend and I don't so much as know your name."

"There's nothing really to tell." I looked back at my new best friend in time to watch him fall off the stool. I left the bartender a generous tip in exchange for Cassidy's address.

She was beautiful, I'd give Cassidy that. She was polite and made conversation with me, talking about mundane subjects like all strangers do, but every now and then when she thought you weren't paying attention, she'd look at Cassidy and smile. When she smiled, you could see all her teeth and you just wanted to smile back. Lizzy- that was her name, and Cassidy took me in. While less touchy-feely sober, he still called me his friend, and after time I realized I was.

I got a job where no one knew my name. I went on dates with pretty girls and went home where Cassidy would get drunk and Lizzy would call him an alcoholic and Cassidy would call her a bitch. Then they'd go to his room and in the morning she was cooking and she smiled. Everything felt better when she smiled.

"A little formal for work today," she said. Cassidy was at the table and wearing sunglasses, holding a paper to look busy which meant he was probably still sleeping.

"My coworker died. We have the day off to attend his funeral," I responded.

"That's terrible. Did you know him well?"

"No, but I was there when it happened."

"Do you want company?"

"Would Cass be up for it?" I asked as he let out a snore.

"I'll go with you."

"Oh. Okay," I was taken aback. She kissed Cassidy on the forehead, then disappeared to their room.

"She loves funerals," Cassidy said, putting down the paper. "She even circles obituaries that have a public memorial service.

"I almost died once."

"Shame they don't throw services for that. I'll take any excuse to see her in... that dress..." I followed his eyes to Lizzy and she smiled and for a moment I thought I was dying again.

It was raining, the women wore long black dressed and black hats and grabbed the arms of the men wearing suits and holding umbrellas. Lizzy stood next to me, her wet hair clinging to her forehead and her smeared makeup dripping down her face and she looked almost like all the women crying, except with this perfect stillness. As a preacher spoke the same words of comfort he said a thousand times, an older woman fell on her knees and begged to God to bring the dead back.

"It's not God she should be asking," Lizzy muttered, watching the woman with a strange indifference.

"Then who?"

"Death. Ultimately, it's up to him. God stopped caring about individuals."

"You're a lot darker than you seem." She smiled.

"Let's go."

As we started to walk away, a man with a face like in a dream muttered, "It should have been you."

"Why do you love funerals?" I asked her. The cafe was warm and dry and the waitress was my type.

"Do you remember his mother?" she said, sipping her tea.

"Yes."

"The way she reacted. It doesn't matter who you are, how you were raised, what you believe. In the end, you need to grasp on to some hope that this isn't the end. You hope, at the very least you'll be remembered by those you love. But as time passes and they pass... All that's left of a life is a name on a grave."

"Are you religious?"

"I believe in Death and all his friends. But God, heaven, hell, reincarnation, bullshit. If there's a God, eternity has made him bored and apathetic, and heaven and hell and after lives are fairy tales to tell the dead. Are you going to get her name?"

"Who?"

"The waitress you've been eying."

"No. She thinks you're mine."

"Like you'd ever have interest in me. I'm too dark for you," she said with a quick smile.

On the contrary, I see everything in you that Cassidy does.

Work had gotten worse. My coworkers all seemed to echo that statement; "it should have been you." He had a wife and a family, he was likable. I kept to myself. My wife was the Lizzy in my mind, separate from Cassidy and loving me the way I was growing to love her. My family was Cassidy, a brother I resented who'd never done me any harm.

Lizzy would come to my work sometimes and we'd walk home together. When she smiled it took all I had not to grab her hand. Then we'd get home and she'd melt into his arms. Cassidy and I would go to the bar. I'd find a girl who looked my type and fuck her, drowning out the noise from the other room. If I was too tired to make her leave afterward, in the morning, Lizzy wouldn't make breakfast.

Cassidy got fired from whatever he did and took this as a great opportunity to avoid sobriety altogether. After only a week of this, Lizzy broke. She showed up at my work crying and for the first time, I got to hold her. We sat on a bench behind my job, her head was burrowed into my chest and I couldn't concentrate on what she was saying because I was trying to remember how to breath. Her cries grew heavier, and I held her tighter and I kissed the top of her head and she looked up.

"I hate you, I really do," she said, her eyes wet and doll-like. "I hate how disposabley you treat women, and I hate how you pay for Cass's tab, and I have how much it bothers me when you take out others girls and I wish..." she started stroking my arm and my heart forgot to beat.

"You wish what?" I was surprised I could voice the words.

"I wish that was all I felt about you." I kissed her or she kissed me and my hand was shaking as I held her waist and my heart was trying to make up for all the lost beats then she pulled away. "I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry. I've just wanted you so long..."

"Please don't,: she wouldn't look at me. She got up and started walking towards the street.

"It was bound to happen eventually. It doesn't mean things have to change," I was following. She was already halfway across the street. "Lizzy, I love you." She stopped. The car didn't.

Cassidy was the one who fell to his knees and begged a God to take him instead.

I didn't know anyone else there. My wife, the Lizzy in my head, was holding my hand and wearing that dress.

We stopped by the liquor store on the way home and by the time we got back home I realized the fifth wasn't enough.

"Tell me something," he said, his eyes red. "What was she doing at your work?"

"Sometimes we'd walk home together," I said, taking a swing to numb my own pain.

"Were you fucking her?"

"No."

"Bullshit. She was the only good thing in my life, I would have done anything for her. It should have been you."

"I know."

"I shoulda known you were fucking. She never talked about you. We live together, how could she have nothing to say about someone she lived with? She just didn't want to slip up."

"We never slept together."

"Don't FUCKING LIE TO ME," he got up and went to his room. I could hear him cussing as he slammed the door. A moment later, it swung open and his curses got louder as he came back. "It should have been you." My brother was pointing a gun at me.

"Cass, you're my only fucking friend, I'm not going to lie to you. I wanted to sleep with her, but I never did and you're right, it should have been me. I wish I could switch with her right now, but this isn't going to bring her back."

"You're right," he said, cocked the gun, and fired.

His body fell to the ground. Some of his blood got on my clothes. I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. I turned to see a man who looked familiar, maybe from a dream. He smiled and everything felt worse.

"Do you remember me?" he asked. There was a perfect stillness to his voice.

"Yes," I responded.

"Are you still afraid?"

"Is this Death?"

"If you want it to be."

"You say that like I have a choice."

"Well, that's one way to put it. You can go back, make more friends, fall in love again..."

"And watch them die."

"So you understand. You can live for a hundred years or die tomorrow but in the end..."

It will always be just you and me.

Rant: This is Why I'm Single

I've only ever gone on three first dates. The number of relationships I've had doesn't fill a single hand. Aside from drunk guys hitting on me, I'm not necessarily a guy magnet. I'm not complaining, really. I have Ryan who visits once a month and makes me delicious food and cuddles better than anyone who isn't a loveable puppy and is the best friend with benefits a girl could possibly hope for. So while I'm single, I don't feel any particular need to find someone. Despite my bursts of social activity the past few years, I'm a pretty introverted person. When I'm by myself, I'm more productive. I draw or write every day. I do chores and go to the gym. I read until I fall asleep and research things that interest me like Greek Gods and the stars of Weeds. With my monthly Ryan fix, boy-wise I'm about as high maintenance as an old dog that can't really walk anymore but you still want to take it to the beach every few weeks or so for memories sake. I'm realizing after that analogy that old dogs are probably more high maintenance than young dogs since you have to deal with medical bills and special diets and vet visits and cleaning up after it went to the bathroom in the living room so I take back all of that metaphor (simile?)

So I tell myself that my lack of need for one is the reason why, nothing to do with my mediocre looks, barely bearable personality, and complete lack of a social circle. Far more likely, though, is my high standards.

The man must be:
-Into women
-Taller than me
-Heavier than me (who am I kidding? This is a bullshit standard. Never mind.)
-Single (this is embarrassingly flexible assuming I don't know the girl and/or don't like her)
-Funny (or thinks I am)
-Over 21 or has something that says he is
-Has a car (I ain't no taxi service though I may need to use him as one in the unfortunate event of me going to a party and halfway through realize I have somewhere to be in the morning)
-Has a job (flexible. Comfortably supported by parents works, too)
-Likes horror movies (or will tolerate them. Or will not complain when I watch them. Or will only complain some of the time that I watch them but not enough to make it an actual issue)
-Puts me somewhere above drinking though somewhere below school, work, eating, sleeping, and video games
-Lives on his own (roommates are acceptable, but not preferred)
-Will bring me food at work (minimum: once every three months, term "food" refers to one or more of the following: bagel, smoothie, apple juice, steak, cake, muffin, french fries, milkshake, apple, banana bread, clementine, grilled cheese sandwich, baked potato, cookie, or frozen yogurt)
-Will not judge me for my diet that consists solely of the food listed above (if judges, will do so silently. If judges vocally, will do in a manner that shows that he finds my eating habits endearing, though unhealthy and kinda gross)
-Will play Pokemon with me at least once, or finds a suitable player for me
-Will understand that in my own list of priorities, he will be somewhere above It's Always Sunny reruns and somewhere below Coldplay
-All potential boyfriends must agree to not touch my stomach. Ever.

Fiction: Perfect

I thought it was about time I started to put up some fiction. This is four years old now, but remains the most popular thing I've written. I hope you enjoy.

Everyone wants to live forever. No one can look me in the eye and say that they aren't afraid of death. No one knows what comes after that last breath. Sure, you can claim you believe in a God and heaven, you believe your soul will be reincarnated, you will lie rotting in the ground for the rest of eternity. But you don't know. You can't, not until you actually reach the light at the end of the tunnel. If there is a light. It's okay to admit that you're afraid. Everyone is.

Even I am, as I sit here, a mere twenty four hours away from my death. I keep trying to tell myself that it won't be bad, that it will be over quickly. But that scares me even more.

Before you ask, I'm not one of those crazy suicidal teenagers who stick their head in the oven like Sylvia Plath did. I'm not a copy cat. If I was, sleeping pills like Marilyn Monroe. Keep people wondering if it was an accident or the Kennedy administration. But, like I said, I'm not a copy cat.

Four years ago seems like a lifetime, I barely remember sitting cross legged on my mother's bed, reading Thomas Harris, talking to my best friend on the phone about America's Next Top Model. She said Tyra Bank's weight gain is beautiful. I disagreed. It's a weird combination.

Tyra Banks eating his liver with fava beans. While strutting across a catwalk.

Good luck getting that image out of my head.

"I wonder what she'll look like in 20 years," the best friend said.

"Exactly the same," I replied. They all looked the same. Clones of each other, no matter how old, thanks to Dr. Breast-Implant we no longer age.

God I wish I looked like them.

The best friend let out a laugh, and continued to munch on probably some vegan cookie. That week she was a vegan. Last week, so only ate pink food.

It didn't matter what she ate, she had that disease where you can't gain weight. At 15, food was a preoccupation for her. She wanted to be on America's Next Top Model. I wanted to be the next Stephen King.

It was my parent's anniversary. They never come home on their anniversary. This was the first year they didn't hire a babysitter. Last year, Kristen was my age. She went to my school. We were in Biology together. She spent the evening yammering on the phone with her boyfriend. Tried to get me in bed by 9. I responded by telling her how I was going to kill her. She spent the rest of the night in the bathroom with the phone.

At 15, I was a copy cat. All my writing sounded like something out of "how to write depressing fiction" book. Stories about girls who killed themselves, poems about how much life sucked, the usual. I wanted to write horror, I really did, but none of my stuff was really scary. It was laughable. Here is the ghost of a girl who slit her wrists, who convinces a prettier girl to slit her own wrists. Bad.

The first sentence from my story about the ghost went like this: "Even after I died, I still felt like ending my own life."

My best friend liked my writing. Or, at least, she said she did. I'd say she's the prettiest girl in school, of course you'll be a model, and she'd tell me how I'd win a Pulitzer, except she pronounced it "Pull-lit-zeer". The prettiest girl in the school was Mindy Wells, but I don't want to spend my last day talking about Mindy Wells, because she was also the best writer. I'd kill for her metaphors and bangs.

Reena, the best friend, was still talking about Tyra Banks when the call waiting beeped. "Just a sec," I said into the receiver, then hit the talk button.

"Hello?" I said to 'Private Number'.

"Hi, sweetie, it's me." Me being Mom. Must be calling from the restaurant. "I just wanted to remind you to feed Bates."

The great thing about naming your cat Bates is it can be either Norman Bates or Kathy Bates in 'Misery depending on its gender. Our Bates was a Kathy.

"Will do," I said, and then switched back to the other line. "You still there?"

"Yep. This cookie tastes like shit."

"That's because there's no dairy."

Reena paused for a moment, as if thinking it over. "I don't think I want to be a vegan anymore. Top Model ended. Now it's some special on celebs." I looked up at the television, as Brangelina's smiling, perfect faces appeared on the screen, and turned it off.

Grahams visited me last week. He's still attractive. I've thought it over a lot, and I think attractive is the right word for him. He put me, here, you know. But he was always very polite about it. I think he feels sorry for me, as if I'm just another victim of the media. I'm not a victim. Reena Thomas, Heather Collier, Mindy Wells, they're victims.

Sophomore year, I feel like I weigh more than the rest of my class, an insecure little prick. I only have two classes with Reena. The others I sit next to Veronica, a red head who killed herself last year. Stuck her head in an oven. Veronica writes clever little poems during class, more depressing than mine. She claims her step brother fucked her when she was eleven, but I think she just says this to get attention. She has crooked teeth and wears only dark colored turtle necks.

Veronica was a victim.

Art, English 2, Geometry, and P.E. are spent with Veronica's rain cloud. World Civilizations and French 2 are spent with Reena's Urban Outfitter's wardrobe. Lunch is spent with Reena. If Veronica and Reena were to ever met, which they never do, all I'd get from both parties is "Why do you hang out with HER?" One time, Reena saw Veronica in a hallway, and told me minutes later: "That outfit only makes her complexion look pastier."

Mindy Wells was in both English and History with me. Neither of my friends liked her. They'd find her imperfections and talk about it behind her back.

"Her themes are uneven. I can't tell if she wants us to like her main character or hate him."

"Her eyebrows are too thin. It makes her look like a mannequin."

"Plots are clichéd…"

"Hair too thick…"

Two girls, exploiting their own insecurities on poor, perfect, Mindy Wells. Veronica and Reena, clones of each other. And I was a clone of them.

"Her skin looks waxy…" I'd chip in. "Her descriptions run on too long…"

Mindy Wells was the only satirist in my English class. She wrote a story once from the point of view of an unnamed pop diva, who was completely oblivious to her influence on everyone, so would do these really stupid things, and girls everywhere would follow suit. She never rubbed the irony in your face, which was what made her a great writer. Had she lived past 16, should could have been Vonnegut.

In my French class was Mr. Sixteen Candles. Gorgeous. I thought I was in love with him before I even talked to him. Unlike Grahams. It wasn't until a few times after we met that I realized how attractive he is. He said he come visit me today.

I just realized something. Will Graham was the name of the detective who caught Hannibal Leckter.

Just another thing Hannibal the Cannibal and I have in common.

Sophomore year, my mother was still a size four. She was Miss Delaware in 1984, and you could tell. She proudly proclaimed that she lost her baby weight in four weeks. My dad spent his trust fund on wooing her back in the day. I never really knew what he did for a living, even now. I shouldn't say did. He's still alive. Just not to me.

My mother did everything on the treadmill and never ate cookies. Those were her diet secrets. She'd watch the jewelry channel, ordering anything pretty through the headset, while taking the treadmill. She'd talk to her mother while on the treadmill, watch her soaps, and file her nails. This was how she maintained her weight. She could eat ice cream and pasta, but not cookies. She never really struggled with her weight. Her face was young and full of life, and she mastered applying her make up.

Several times, I tried following Reena's fad diets. I never could. I didn't have the self restraint. As a result, sophomore year I weighed more than the rest of the class combined. My limbs were tree trunks. I always told myself I could be beautiful like Reena or Mindy Wells if I just lost some weight.

"I'm so fat." These words came out of Reena's mouth, not mine. She coughed. She always had a cough.

"You're not fat." My response was as natural as breathing at this point.

"Yes I am!" she let out a whimper. "My grapefruit diet isn't working."

"That's because you don't need to lose any weight. You're a twig." So fucking sick of this conversation. "If your fat, I'm huge."

"That's not true. Your fine."

"I weigh more than you," I stepped on the scale. 140.

"That's only because you're taller and have curves."

"I'm only an inch taller, and I don't have curves. I have lumps. How much do you weigh?"

"102," she let out a groan as she said this. "No wonder he doesn't like me."

She had a crush on the foreign exchange student from Spain. He reminded her of a young Antonio Banderas. He was a senior, Reena a sophomore. A year after high school, he would sign up to be in the army. He was shot and paralyzed from the waist down.

He was a victim.

I had this conversation with Reena every night over the phone. I never went to her house anymore. I'm not allowed. In 8^th grade, I went over to her house with a light cold, and two days later her parents had to take her to the emergency room in the middle of the night because she caught it. The downside of her disease. Her parents forgot to wake and tell Reena's younger brother, Vincent, where they were going. When he woke up the next morning to find his family gone, he assumed the worst and tried to kill himself. He slit his wrists the wrong way, though, and was so embarrassed by it that he didn't tell anyone. Except me, when he saw my own wrists.

I don't miss going to Reena's house, though. It gave me the creeps. The entire house was painted white with white floors. The reasoning behind this was that they could tell any mess or insects right away, and could clean them up before they spread any new diseases to Reena. The furniture was covered in plastic, and all the food they ate was prepackaged. Reena's family had a cleaner on hand that lived with them and spent all day cleaning the house. Reena's room was covered with plastic furniture and there were even plastic bags that held her clothes. She had more clothes than anyone I knew, because she had to change clothes the minute she got home. The clothes she wore during her time at school were immediately washed. Reena was suppose to home school, but her parents agreed to let her go to school if she wore an oxygen mask and gloves when she got there. She only wore the gloves. As a result, she was sick half the time. The other half, she'd cough.

Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, spoiled Reena because they had almost given her up for adoption when they found out their beautiful baby girl was not healthy.

They only wanted one child. The beautiful baby boy, who was healthy, was a mistake.

Reena was not allowed to come to my house because of Bates. Bates was, quote via Mrs. Thomas, "A disease carrying rodent". So we'd go to a mutual location, like the mall, under the condition that Reena wore an oxygen mask and gloves.

She only wore the gloves.

I thought my life was over when I saw Mr. Sixteen Candles with Heather Collier, the thin blonde with stylish big sunglasses that made her look like an insect. Sixteen Candles was too smitten to notice me wave.

"Who's that?" Reena asked, taking a sip of the cranberry-grapefruit Sobe.

"He's in my French," I responded. Reena looked him over, before focusing on the girl.

"I think those sunglasses look awful on her. It makes her chin look invisible. Cute skirt, though." Reena always analyzed people's outfits. Whenever I went out with her, I felt required to where something fashionable. It never looked as good on me as it did on Reena. I'd see her with a layered look, but when I tried it myself, it just made me look fatter.

Freshman year, I told myself that if I hadn't gotten down to 108 by the end of the year, I'd kill myself. I only lost a pound. I slit my wrists. My parents must have found me, because I woke up in the hospital. I could hear the conversation outside my room.

"I think we should put her on suicide watch," I could hear a doctor saying.

"No. It's just a call for help. If she was really serious about it, she would have used a gun," this came from my mother. "When I was her age, I'd always try stupid stuff like that to get attention."

I still don't know if I really was serious about ending my own life.

When I got back from the hospital, I spent a lot of time in my room, writing depressing poetry online. Vincent drew. He put up his artwork on the same site I put up my poems. We were friends that summer. That was my only suicide attempt. Vincent had four more before his parents finally put him away in an institution. He is the only one who writes to me now.

Vincent Thomas is a victim.

I visited him once in the mental institution. The walls there are all white. The floors there are all white.

Sophomore year, I was the elephant in the room everyone talked about. I imagined people calling me 'love handles' behind my back, even though they didn't. I imagined girls sticking out their stomach to pretend to be me. I started wearing only sweaters to cover up my body.

I found a place, biking distance, five miles out of town, really off the beaten track. It was a house that had been mostly burned down in some fire, and was now reduced to a tower of charcoal. Only the basement was unharmed, and it was hard to access. You had to use a ladder. If you fell down, it would be months before anyone found you. By then, you'd starve to death. It was a great place to write, nobody claimed the house. Sometimes, I even made a bonfire where the kitchen used to be. I used the fire to get rid of things I didn't need anymore, it was liberating.

At home, my mother was a size 4. She was serving pasta. I ate it, and then went into the bathroom to stick my finger down my throat. I couldn't throw up. So I just sat by the toilet and cried.

"I can't live, with or without you…" the stereo blasted. I turned it on so they couldn't hear me. Not like they'd come to comfort me anyway.

I couldn't do it alone.

Bates crawled into my room, and jumped up on the bed, purring a little. She had a beautiful black coat.

"I can't do this alone," I said aloud, petting her.

Junior year, a girl who went to my school went missing. They never found her body.

Sophomore year, I picture myself too big to fit in the desk. I started running in the morning. In the beginning, I couldn't get more than a couple blocks without running out of fuel.

"Did you feed Bates?" Mom asked from the treadmill, turning the volume down on Dr. Phil.

"Yes," I lied.

That week, Reena was on South Beach. She was coughing her lungs out, and the color seemed to be drained from her face. Her hair was limp. She was probably getting sick. Hopefully it wasn't the flu. Last time she got the flu, she was out for a month and a half.

Mindy Wells got a story published, about a man who started his own religion. The teacher was so proud, he read it aloud to our class, even though we had heard it when Mindy read it herself after she first wrote it. Mindy came to school with a black eye and a bruised lip, and spent most of class trying to cover it up with make up. She didn't talk much, except when she read stories aloud or was called on. We wondered if it was her father or boyfriend, but either way figured she deserved it. She gained about five pounds, but wore it well. There was a rumor she was raped, but she still came to class on time, every day.

Veronica was trying to get published. The publisher sent her a letter of rejection, saying "Plots are clichéd, characters incoherent, themes uneven…"

I wrote a story about Vincent. The week before, his parents had found him trying to drown in his bathtub. It was the third time he had tried to kill himself, but only the first time his parents found out. I wrote about Vincent killing his parents. I called him "Victor". Reena thought it was the best thing I ever wrote.

The first sentence from my story about Vincent Thomas went like this: "The only thing my parents were concerned about was the blood stain on the living room carpet."

"I fed your cat. She seemed pretty hungry, she scarfed it down. Are you sure you fed her this morning?" Mom was on the treadmill, shopping online.

"I might have forgotten. Sorry," I apologized. At 134, I couldn't fit through the doorway.

Junior year, when two other girls went missing from my school, the media was trying to find a link. The bodies were never found. Our little town was getting famous. CNN interviewed the principal.

Everyone wants to be famous. Fame is our fountain of youth. Celebrities are our immortal gods. With your name being spoken by everyone's tongue, even after you die, you're still, in a sense, alive. Everyone wants fame. Everyone wants to live forever.

I will live forever. I sacrificed my life to be a legend. As the hour comes closer, I'm trying to stop being afraid. I will live forever. I will live forever. Yet I still fear death.

Sophomore year, at 125, I could barely fit in the classroom. I felt disgusting while I ate my one meal a day, dinner with my family. Reena was coughing, as she looked me over.

"You lost weight," she said. I was her fat security blanket, no matter what she weighed, I always weighed more.

"Just a few pounds."

"What diet are you on?" Reena was on the Zen diet.

"Just one I made up," I said this looking down. She had been sick for two weeks. Today was her first day back.

"That's cool," she said so with a cough.

Hunger is an emotion, like sadness or anger. It passes if you wait it off.

Mom was worried about the cat.

I ran two miles in the morning, non stop. Heather Collier lived on my block. She'd run in the morning, too.

Sometimes I'd see her. I'd never say hi. I didn't know her, and I hated her.

I felt the same contempt towards Mindy Wells, who gained another five pounds, she had a cast around her arm, and she said she had broken it when she fell down the stairs.

I heard her dad pushed her.

Grahams told me that Mr. Wells was one of the first suspects when the three girls went missing. Apparently, he had a thing for girls my age. Grahams is 41, but he looks a lot younger. Mr. Wells was 41 when he was a suspect, but he looked a lot older.

Sophomore year, 118, I was fat enough to be in a freak show. I still couldn't throw up the dinner, but I ate less of it. I stopped trimming my fingernails because they stopped growing. Sixteen Candles smiled at me. I nearly melted.

"You seriously have to tell me your secret," Reena said. She was getting sicker, and thinner. Her body had caught an infection, and it was no longer allowing food into the system. She was in and out of the hospital. She was wearing the oxygen mask.

Veronica was rejected two more times, and had given up on poetry. Her new thing was songs. Her songs were more depressing than her poems. I limped a little from the hunger pangs, but I was getting use to it.

It will go away if I ignore it.

Junior year, Heather Collier went missing. The last person who saw her was her mother, saying goodbye to her before she went for her morning run.

After Heather Collier disappeared, our town was making headlines. The police were trying to find a connection to the missing girls.

Junior year, 100 pounds, I was the heaviest person in the world. Reena was worried. She was paler, too. Her parents made her stop going to school, because the doctors didn't know what went wrong. I was allowed at her house again. Her parents thought I could cheer her up.

"You look deflated," Reena said through the oxygen mask. She had to wear it at home, now. "Not like you."

I was wearing a sweatshirt to hide my arms. "What do you mean?"

"You're too thin. Have you been eating?"

"Yes," I said, remembering the night before, turning on Coldplay so my parents couldn't hear me in the bathroom. I couldn't brush my hair anymore, when I did, it would fall out.

The cat's fur was falling out, too. My mother didn't know what was wrong with her. She took her to the vet, who said that the cat was dehydrated and malnutrioned, maybe the cat was throwing up the food.

Because I was putting laxatives in it.

Bates had to be hooked up to an IV. She was half bald.

"Are you throwing it up?"

"Why are you on my case? I'm fine," I said this, storming out of the room. It was night now. I didn't head home. I walked for about forty minutes, before I saw a girl that I knew. She went to my school. I didn't know her name.

"Can I borrow your cell phone?" she asked me, looking around. "My ride was s'pose to be here fifteen minutes ago."

I first met Grahams after Mindy Wells was found. He came into the classroom with a tape recorder in his hand. He talked to us one by one. Reena wasn't there. She was hooked up to an IV. Like the cat. I was 92. So huge I was falling off the planet. I was called next. I followed him into the empty classroom. He shut the door behind him, and turned on the recorder.

"So, you had classes with Mindy Wells?"

"Last year, I had English and History with her."

"Did you know her well?"

"Not really."

"She had a diary, you know. She mentioned you in it."

"Really? What did it say?"

"That she thought you were one of the best writers in the school. But she got the impression you didn't like her. Is that true?"

"I suppose."

"Why not?"

"I was jealous."

"She said you wrote horror. Did you also watch a lot of horror movies?"

"Just read it. I mean, I've seen the old Steven King adaptations, original Nightmare on Elm Street, but I really prefer the books. Thomas Harris, Ann Rice, you just can't transfer that stuff."

"Do you know anyone that might want to hurt her?"

"There were rumors of abuse, her father, her boyfriend, but I don't know anything solid. Like I said, I didn't really know her."

"That's all." He turned off the tape recorder.

"Do you have any leads?"

"I can't discuss that. Maybe you could write a story about her death."

"How did she die?"

"We don't know. We only found her head."

A few weeks later, some pictures of Mindy Wells's head were leaked to the internet. We all saw what she looked liked. Red, permanent ink covered her pale skin, outlining her lips thicker, eyebrows thicker, and cheeks thinner. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted, giving her a look of contentment. A closer look, however, showed that the red ink wasn't ink at all. It was the scars from where the incisions were made.

Three girls had disappeared. Heather Collier and Mr. Sixteen Candles had broken up. After a quick pep talk to my mirror, I asked him out. We went to the movies.

I let him choose the movie. He choose something with Jake Gyllenhaal. Heather Collier was at the movies too, with a not as handsome guy. She became somewhat possessive over him, and no drugs could amount to the high I felt. She was enveous. I was too thick to notice Sixteen Candles was behaving the same way to me.

The next day, he told me he was getting back together with her.

He was the one who would find her head. He's still in therapy.

Sixteen Candles is a victim.

It was after Mindy Wells was found. There were rumors that Heather Collier had a similar makeover.

The press called it the Botox Killings, because a homemade chemical similar to Botox was found injected into their skin, to freeze the facial expressions.

The first sentence from my story about Mindy Wells went like this: "Even after I laid, bleeding on the ground, I couldn't bring myself to hate him."

At 87 pounds, I was finally perfect. On the last day of her life, Reena, from the hospital bed, said I looked like a skeleton. I had to wear a wig, because most of my hair had fallen off. I stopped getting my period. It was the pot calling the kettle black. Reena was 50 pounds, and starving to death. She was still coughing. With each coughing fit, her entire body would curl up, and then relax again. Her skin was pulled tight across her face, and her eyes were glazed over. She already looked dead. The IV drip wasn't working. All the medicine they gave her only made her sicker.

The only class I cared about anymore was Chemistry. I was writing a story about Mindy Wells. Speculation on who beat her, who raped her, who killed her. I was even failing English, for the sake of the story.

Reena's parents entered the room, and tried to shoo me out. Reena grabbed my shirt. She didn't even have flesh on her fingers. "Don't die like me. It's not worth it."

I pulled away with no difficulty, and left the room. Her parents closed the door behind me.

They put Bates to sleep.

They put Reena to sleep.

Grahams came by my house. He was asking all the neighbors about Heather Collier. He was polite and stayed for the cat's funeral. He asked the usual: "Do you know anyone who might want to kill her…"

I volunteered the boy she went to the movies with, on my only date with Sixteen Candles. Then I offered Sixteen Candles.

"Do you know what killed her?" I asked him again.

"No, but we know the head was removed post-mortem," he replied, turning off the tape recorder. "How's the story going?"

He is asking me the same question now as he accompanies me down the long hallway. We're walking slowly.

"It's done. Will you publish it for me?"

"Yes." I think he's telling the truth, though he won't look at me.

The Botox killer, the paper said, was impatient with Heather Collier and Mindy Wells. It's believed that both girls overdosed on sleeping pills. They were forced down each girl's throat.

The common belief is that the other three girls starved to death, but the bodies were never found.

They were victims.

There was also a sixth victim. Thanks to this sixth victim, they found the Botox killer. She ran five miles into town, half starved, and collapsed in front of a man's house. He called the police, and she told them her story.

How she been kidnapped, and yes, she got a good look at the person who did it.

I declined my last meal.

I don't know how the bitch got out of the basement, my burnt down Fortress of Solitude, where the three girls I starved stayed for three weeks.

I should have worn a mask.

When Bates cheated with the IV, I had to find someone else.

I couldn't do it alone.

Grahams looks at me with sympathy as he follows me into the last room I'd ever be in.

"Why did you do it?" he asks softly, as a guard straps me in.

Everybody wants to be perfect. It doesn't matter how thin, rich, beautiful, talented you are. You always want to be thinner, richer, prettier, and more talented. Everyone has a different idea of perfection, yet no one can achieve it.

Not even me.

I guess I am a victim.