I Think of Death, It Must Be Killing Me

Can it happen like that? Bring death on. Bring it quick, bring it fast, bring it early, just by thinking about it all the time? Scientists say good thoughts can heal, placebo effect and all that. But those goth kids, all dressed in black with pale makeup and raccoon eyes, dark and twitchy, listening to that God afwul screeching music. They're all about death. Living death is what they are, but still they walk around, living their happy, healthy, miserable, grunting lives. Maybe they aren't committed enough. Maybe the real goths go quick, and the ones we see walking around are the uncommitted leftovers. Part time goths, all of them.

But where does that leave me? I'm not depressed, I know that. Or I'm just so good at faking enjoying time with my people that I've started to fool even myself. Because (I think) I do enjoy my friends. I'm pretty sure. I enjoy bars and booze and pool and hustling and driving and fucking and swearing and doing my job. But then I'll see someone dead. Mauled. Strung up. Cut up. Laced. So, so many ways I see it. Have seen it. Repeats, these are. Classic hits. Golden oldies. I saw them. I can't un-see them. I can't stop seeing. And then, instead of them, I'll see me. Mauled or strung or cut or whatever. Me dead, instead of them. I don't want to see it. I'm not willing it to happen. But so it goes. And what's worse is I'm getting used to it. Just last night I was drinking with Davis and there on the bar was me with my heart cut out. And I didn't even flinch. Just kept talking away.

Occupational stress? Or should I get worried?


Inspiration from:


Line suggested by Sara.

Out Here the Good Girls Die

she said, strapping on her hip holster. She paused and frowned.
"Except for Mo, I guess."
"Mo?"
Georgia smiled. "Mo's the best of us. Don't ever think of messing with her. You'll have every hunter in three states on your ass."
"If she needs so much help then how is she still alive?" Leonard asked.
"It's not that she needs help. She was a biologist or something, before. She knows exactly where to hit you. I've seen her drop men twice her size in one hit. But she's too...nice, I guess. She'll turn every cheek she has before she lets you get to her."
Georgia stood up and checked herself in the mirror, making sure her dress properly concealed her gun. She looked at Leonard's reflection.
"Jesus, you look like you're going to pop. Suck it up, buttercup, we got work to do."
"Why couldn't I have been stuck to Mo?"

Inspiration from:

Stop, Watch

One moment, the second hand on the clock was ticking along, and the next moment it stuck fast like gum under a table. Francine frowned and shook her wrist slightly. With one manicured nail she tapped on the face. Nothing. The second hand and the number three had fallen in love and couldn't bear to be apart every fifty-nine seconds. She made an inaudible groan. She had just bought this watch.

The conference room had grown white-wall silent and in her mind she saw everyone looking at her as she mucked with her broken watch. And when she braved glancing up Ted Donnolly from accounting was indeed staring at her across the black top table. Francine jumped slighly in her chair, actually shocked she had been right. Ignoring that Ted's stare was about a foot below her eyes she looked to her boss, sitting next to his boss who was sitting next to her boss. Well, they weren't staring at her, thank God. Actually...

"Um, hello? Ted? Mr. Leeson? Mrs. Dalton?" Francine looked down the other end of the table. "Bonnie? James? Ed?"

Nobody responded. Nobody moved, even, blinked or breathed or fidgeted or talked. Mrs. Dalton had been droning on and on about figures and then she just stopped. Mrs. Dalton never just stopped, she just prattled on towards eternity and that's why Francine had been staring at her watch.

She stood up slowly. Ted and his eyes stayed where they were. Everbody kept playing statue. Slowly Francine made her way around the table. No one responded. As though to make up for everything else, her heart started speeding up. She glanced out to the world below their high rise meeting room and froze like everyone else.

"Well, this is fucked up right here."

When Things Go Wrong I Seem To Be Bad

He said it with such stoic angst, staring deep into his beer like it stretched for miles and he could just see the bottom, his eyes wide and far away. He only looked up when he heard a muffled strangling sound. His eyes narrowed.

“Are you laughing at me?”

She shook her head slowly, mouth clamped shut, until finally she couldn’t hold it in anymore. Peals of laughter rang down on him, drawing attention from some of the other barflies. Still she laughed, gripping her bottle of beer for support. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“Okay…it’s not that funny,” he said, waiting her out. After another minute she started to collect herself. Laughter turned to hitched breaths. She wiped at her eyes.

“Babe, what do you take me for?” she asked. “I’m supposed to believe that…that for centuries bad stuff just happens to go down around you, and when it does, you just happen to make the wrong choice?”

“In a nutshell, yeah.”

“Bah!” she laughed again. “You-oh! This is too good! You’re-you’re just an innocent victim in the comedy errors that is your life!”

“If you don’t believe me-”

“I don’t!”

‘Well you damn well should! I’m cursed! It’s a fact!”

“Mm hm, okay, yes, of course. A curse that makes you sex up the waitress married to the possessive cook, or rob the convience store because you left your money in the car.”

“Yes!”

“No! It’s just you being your dumb, coyote self. You fucked the waitress in the bathroom with her armed husband in the next room and you chose to steal, I mean, you don’t even need to be supernatural to leave shit at the counter and run for your wallet.”

“Yes, but that’s what I’m saying. I’m incapable of making the good decision. I can’t do it. I must always pick the bad choice. That’s the curse.”

“Oh. Are you sure you’re not just stupid?”

“…Really?”

“Oh, okay, so, what if I give you the choice of feeling me up and getting your ass kicked, or not and keeping all your teeth?”

His eyes flicked down to her shirt and back.

“Please don’t make me do this.”


Inspiration:

Smells

She smelled it as soon as she entered the room, the door kicking one last waft of good air past her before closing her off from it for good. The people already in the room didn’t seem to notice. How could they not notice? It was not an overpowering smell. It was not like onions or mint; it did not fill the room down to each tiny crevice and crack and pore. But it was there all the same, along with other smells, garlic and leather and puffs of sulfur from tiny candles. It followed in the wake of waitresses, smartly dressed in white and black. It was drawn upwards at the behest of one steadily spinning ceiling fan and pushed down by another. It crept over everything, leaving nothing untouched.

“We should eat somewhere else,” she muttered, mostly to herself as she knew what he would say.

“We’re already here.”

“Don’t you smell that burning?”

“So they dropped something on a burner.”

She stopped trying. That was it, then. Everyone here did smell it, they just didn’t know. Unsurprising, really. How many here had ever burned themselves before? Really done so, not just on a stove or on a match but on a hot metal slide left baking in the August sun for hours until a smiling six year old girl climbed up and tossed herself down and felt her thighs fuse to the glinting silver and heard the sound of Sunday breakfast and smelled…oh!

And here was that smell, certainly coming from the kitchen. Her grip tightened on her clutch purse. A waitress with a swift gait and nothing in her hands slid by. There, on the sleeve of her crisp white button-down shirt smartly accessorized with a black tie and a red kerchief. There, there was a red stain. Wine, sauce, cranberry juice, it could have been anything, they were in a restaurant for God’s sake. But it wasn’t. She knew it like she knew that smell.

“Come on, our table’s ready.”

“We should really go.”

“No, we’re here already and I want the special.”

She choked on a groaning laugh and let herself be lead to the far corner.