HER:

There was this boy at school who kept giving me awkward glances or always looking at my way. I would see all his friends poke him at the side, and I would pass by and he'd just stare after me. 

It was just a little after New Year, just before Valentine's Day. And as you know, every Valentine's, all the beautiful girls in the school get either flowers or chocolates or both, from the boys that adore them. I never got anything on Valentine's by the way. I went by my day as usual, then I went home in the afternoon. 

Around 5:40 in the late afternoon, I heard the doorbell rang. I came to get the door, see who it was. 

It was him. The boy. He had a bouquet of flowers in hand. Dark red roses. 

"Must be expensive," I said, pointing to the bouquet. He did not say a word, he only extended them out to me.

"Oh, they're for me?" I sniffed the roses and sneezed. "I'm sorry. Is that all?"

He turned and walked away; again, without saying a word.

I immediately dropped the flowers into the garbage can in the kitchen.

Going to the living room to watch television; by this time, I heard my mother come into the kitchen and say, remorse in her voice, "Poor flowers. Anna, do you know who sent these flowers?" 

I saw her appear in the TV room with the flowers in her hand. Which I immediately grabbed away from her hand and binned them again. I sneezed. "Mom, you know I'm allergic to these." 

HIM:

I finally gathered up courage to talk to Anna. That was last week, when I gave her flowers. I bought the bouquet of pretty red roses using the money I saved up from my part-time job as a cook. 

I didn't really talk though, I didn't say anything, I was too nervous. But I did hand over the flowers to her, nicely and neatly. Did I need to speak anything? I heard it was said that, sometimes, silence speaks it all. That in place of words, silence fills in for everything void. All the things you wanted to say, spoken in silence.

I just wanted to drop by her place, today, to say goodbye. I was going away for good, to go to college. Make my dreams come true. You know, I always wanted to be a musician. 

When I arrived at her place, it was early in the morning and the garbage truck was there. I saw a garbage man emptying out the Stoner family garbage can, that is, Anna's. I watched as the bouquet of red roses tumbled out and into the black garbage bag.

"Nooooooo!" 

Like a movie in a  slow-mo I came to the rescue.

The garbage man had an odd look on his face. "You got any problems, son?"

Back to earth.

 I stopped, and flattened out an invisible crease on my shirt. "No, sir."

"Don't get too serious, though. It might kill you." He laughed, showing a set of yellow teeth and red gums. "Them girls." At that instant, he was talking about Anna, who was standing in front of their door, flirting with another boy. She didn't seem to notice me.

I watched her flip her hair, heard her titillated voice giggling. Things she didn't do when she was with me. 

I looked at her, for the longest time maybe. I knew I had to walk away. 

I walked away, my eyes steady on the ground.

I didn't know that Anna knew, that Anna watched, I only knew, I had to forget her soon.

I’m a firm dreamer of things people don’t know happen, I’m a firm believer of things people can’t see.

I respect those who have individual goals and I respect those who follow their dreams

She has all this qualities but she’s scared

Not scared to be free, but scared to discover her-self

She has this fire that burns, but she tames it when she runs

She loves to feel but is too scared to trust

She wants to love but doesn’t want to entertain the idea of getting hurt  

She’s as beautiful as dawn, and as valuable as the morning sun

She smiles for fun and laughs with everyone

She has a mind of her own but her heart is been controlled

Not by anyone but her mind

She thinks but she doesn’t know how to express herself

She’s scared of what others might say and not anything else

How can you prove to such a person you’d gift wrap the glob just to give her the world?

Or rather sing the Michael Jackson song to let her know she rocks your world

How do you let her know your understand her and her intelligence leaves u speechless

Or be like Shayne word and sing for her you leave me breathless

I think about her all time

I want to talk to her when I rhyme  

I love to play with words, but I want her to play my cords

I want to write with a free mind, then express in poetry my words and emotions towards her to the whole man kind

I want to be the best at what I do, I also what to be the best at loving you

You light up a dark room like sun

When you get closer my desire begins to burn

How can I let you know it’s true!

How else can I write how I feel about you!

She smiled impishly at me, then took the strawberry lollipop out of her mouth. The last of the warm August sun glinted on the tendril of saliva bowing between the pink head of the sweet and her slightly open mouth. It parted deliciously. A tiny swarm of shadows flitted across her tanned skin as insects intersected the space between her and the sky.

Time became honey, sweet and slow, as I sensed my friendship with Jayne was about to change. Nerves crackled and flutters teased my guts. The thoughtful mist over my eyes sharpened immediately upon her delighted laugh, half snorted through her freckled nose. 

She was looking at me in a new way. Into me. I watched her bright eyes taking me into her mind fully for the first time then down at the daisies threaded together that I’d just pushed softly into her sticky palm, and back up through the safety of her long lashes. 

Jayne sighed so deeply it heaved her recently budded chest. My stare followed her moistened tongue as it shined her plump lips. A bee bumbled by and the river babbled to my right and her left. No one else in the world existed.

Her head lifted from the slight yellow and white reflecting off the held daisies, and with her eyes, she absorbed this shy boy that sat in front of her, with a leg either side of hers; hers which were crossed with grass stained knees peeking over sock tops.

Have you ever kissed anyone, Paul? she breathed, pretending to be the confident girl she read about in stories in her teen magazines.

My pulse took my voice, until I coughed it back into action. No. Not really. I lied. Then, realising time had paused and was waiting for me to seize the moment, I added, but I’d like to. I immediately regretted the slight question mark I’d added to the end of the sentence meant to be as cool as The Fonz.

Her delighted giggle tinkled through heated air to tickle my heart, the one she now held in her pretty hands. I could see blushes creep up her neck to join their friends on her sunkissed cheeks. 

Then let’s help you out she barely whispered and sprang forward, trapping my sharp intake of surprised breath with a soft mouth that tasted of sugar and long summers. The ice of uncertainty that held me melted and instinct tilted my head so that noses no longer clashed, tongues touched then wrestled as confidence and nature took hold. I smelled the sun on her skin, her hair’s clean shampoo scent and the slight hint of sweat from a day playing together by the river.

Moving from her kneeling position, Jayne climbed onto my lap and straddled me and my young stiffness that was more sensitive than I’d ever remembered being before now. I glanced down as she started moving against me, her summer dress hitched up her thighs, showing her white knickers, a mound of secrecy I’d yet to see outside of magazines peaked in private. I saw a vertical line of darker material and a cleft, a wetter place, and my air was held prisoner in my chest.

She broke away from our kiss and huffed in my ear, her hips moving faster, her head down. My instinct was to lift my hips higher to increase the rubbing sensation through my shorts. Hair swayed in my face as she muttered oh god, oh god, almost hurting me with the urgency of her grinding, pushing material and rough seams against my aching erection.

I felt a wave build and rise through me, different to when it was just me touching myself, entirely new, making the hairs stand up all over and the world disappear around me; tunnel vision making this beautiful girl, my past friend, all that I saw. Then her bright blue eyes locked with mine, her upper lip twitched slightly on one side and then she began to judder, pushing her hot pudendum roughly against me. I tipped over the edge, and a long moan I couldn’t hold in escaped as I pumped hot wetness into my shorts. Her shaking increased then was replaced with trembles and hot, wet kisses full of spit and gleaming smiles.

She pulled her face away and held mine in her hand, squeezing my cheeks and staring into my dilated pupils, laughing as my body spasms quieted. Then she playfully slapped me. Oh, you naughty boy, Paul, uttered through a dazzling toothy grin. We held onto each other and what we had been, our sexual scents lazily rising between our interlocked bodies, and we knew everything had changed as dusk began to fall.

An excerpt from my latest book, "Beautiful Dying"

Bars at closing time are a dreary place to be, if you happen to still be there. Either a good time is coming to an end too soon or it never showed up at all. If I believed there was a cry-in-your-beer song on the old Wurlitzer I might have fed my own quarters into the slot. Not because of my good time theory, but because I knew this would be my last Saturday night in Finnegan’s Rock.

And then a small wisp of hope landed in my life.

“I’m sorry about your wife.” She said.

“Thank you.”

“I still don’t understand, you know, the dying beautiful thing.”

I lit another cigarette and offered her one. She declined.

“It’s beautiful dying.” I said. “Not dying beautiful.”

She waited.

How much more did I want to say?

“Dying is something we can’t control. It will happen to every one of us, when we least expect it. Even when we are battling a terrible illness, flat on our backs in a hospital bed, we don’t always believe we will die. We hold onto to an unraveling thread of hope, while the caring nurse delivers our nourishment through a feeding tube. That kind of dying is not beautiful, it’s ugly.”

“Are you dying?” She whispered.

“No.” I smiled at her. “I’ve already done that.”

The sky is gone or at least retreated to a deepest blue that's almost the color of midnight yet nowhere near it.

I faded off reading ol Jack. Fell deep in sleep like the sky into night. Woke myself up screaming. This shit again. I hate it. I'm never sure if I just dreamed I was screaming or if it came out for real. Most likely both. It's been my experience that if I was screaming in my dreams on the inside it was coming out for real on the outside. Leaving me exposed for the true psychopath I am that can't even sleep right at night or nap even. Makes me wanta wander off in the woods each night like a "nobody knows where he sleeps.. he just goes.." kinda character.

It's embarrassing. Like just now I was wailing for my mom or my dad who in my dream where in the next room watching television. I was telling my mom about Big Sur in a conversation through the wall knowing full well either of my folks couldn't hear me in that way at all yet were probably still nodding their heads politely out of sight in the other room anyway. I was feeding their dog, the one they don't have and won't have in reality... my mother swore off dogs after my childhood dog had to be put down... then again when she fell for my dog a decade later & she died over another decade after.. so no dogs in my folks house except this imaginary one I just dreamt up and was feeding when I went to toss the torn piece from the food bag away.. that's where my dream went to hell. I opened the trash can lid to throw it in and before I could let it go even a giant black snake grabbed hold of my hand... paralyzed me instantly and weakened me to the point of taking all my energy to try to cry for help over the volume of the television in the next room... I started to give up though... I don't want either of my folks to have fall victim to this bastard snake that had already gotten me. I was a goner & done for so I figure if I died maybe it'd just move on leaving my folks alone... that was my last scream before I jarred myself awake like being hit with a brick to the forehead. Awakened into what's gotta be an Alzheimer-esque state or at least that's what I imagine it to be... constant heavy moments of not being sure anything is real at all. A mind trying to turn over like a cold flooded car engine in winter... wrrrnnn wrrnnnn wrrnnn & nothing then repeat over and over to no avail. It's agony on top of confusion for having just lost my mind piled on the embarrassing realization that I was screaming for my mom & dad in house full of people and I'm not sure if they heard or I'm gonna get some strange looks... looks that look like "hey psychopath who can't even sleep like anything but a weirdo" and say "we heard you but aren't gonna acknowledge it so you don't come kill us in our sleep too".

She fell in love after a while.

He did too, but not with her.

She watched him live a life with another girl.

He watched her from afar, the little sister he never had.

She slowly fell in love with his best friend.

He slowly became jealous.

She was left heartbroken every month.

He didn't want her to be hurt.

She was about to give up when he showed his face again.

He knelt down in front of her and pulled out a little box.

She cried and said yes.

He smiled and kissed her for the first time.

They may not have been in love the whole time, but they were there for each other through thick and thin.

That's what matters in the end.

Tentacled, it speaks:

For what end are you waiting?

It might have laughed, then.

I knew I shouldn't have fired that gun earlier, I could've just ran from Ms. Widdlen. But she kept ignoring my threats and slowly stumbling towards me, like some sort of monster straight from "Day Of The Dead". I couldn't help it, I panicked and kept shooting till she collapsed on the ground. I don't regret shooting her cause I saw what she did to Jordan and she deserved every last bullet. My problem now is that more those "things" must have heard the shots and they are swarming my house, trying to get in. I don't know if this will be my last journal entry, but to anybody who reads this after I'm gone... Good luck.

I've been watching the world burn for a while now. For three or four or perhaps several hours at most, I think, I've planted myself right here on the warm sofa, where Ms. Kapoor has told me to stay put until I am ready to be collected for further testing in the formaldehyde-splashed rooms floors below the facility. I'm not quite fond of the testing sessions, but it is Ms. Kapoor who whispers in a hushed voice that I am to remain quiet and docile and obedient if I am to be good, that I am to speak only when spoken to if I am to resemble the sweet, rescued princesses during her surveillanced nighttime visits for bedtime stories, that I am to move as slow, as unthreatening, as unhostile as possible if I am to reassure the young interns and newer scientists that there is, really, absolutely no need for unnecessary bodily bindings and further restraints of daily comforts to keep me satiated. Ms. Kapoor repeats versions of the speech almost every night, turning dog-eared page after page of the worn book to simulate narration in order to disguise the words, reaching with one or two-fingered caresses against my palms beneath the blankets to comfort me after the more painful sessions of my routine here. The bright-eyed reporter on the television begins to scream as the shufflers of the mob behind her become quickly overwhelmed by the runners of the hungrier, thirstier type, and I absentmindedly begin to pick at the fraying seams of the sofa, humming. Ms. Kapoor is never late. My dark-haired, dark-eyed guardian, with her perfectly pressed lab coat and clacking shoes and nearly indistinguishable, nearly inaudible hum, is never late in her efforts to emulate the perfect image of punctuality and cleanliness and elegance -- perfection, I admit, is what she truly is -- and I force myself to quell the emerging anxiety and worry settling at the bottom of my stomach. Ms. Kapoor is almost never late, I correct myself. Not always. The woman previously on the screen begins to gurgle in between uncontrollable shrieks out of sight of the dropped view of the camera, and I decide to cease the picking for a moment in order to turn the television off and focus my thoughts. Ms. Kapoor is almost never late, I repeat to myself in accordance with the popping of strands on the old couch of my holding cell, so there must be a perfectly good reason for it.

I'm bored.

"Done with the shows already, I presume?"

I nearly jump at the sudden rush of her delectable scent as my guardian enters the room -- they've kept it almost completely shut off from outside sounds and smells since my last wave of hunger -- and retract the instinctual maw before she can press her curious face too close. I'd learned to be careful after the last assistant had failed to step back a second too soon. Ms. Kapoor smiles in spite of her tardiness. "And here I thought all adolescents were prone to becoming figurative zombies for hours on end," she continues, "though obviously there isn't much else to do here other than reading. You do what you must, I suppose." A sigh escapes from her lips, sanitizer-tipped fingers rubbing the edge of her nose before returning to her coat pocket. "But that doesn't matter right now. Now, sweetheart, have you watched the news lately?"

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say. A flashed smile typically indicates a nod, a quirk of the lips a refusal, a stony expression a definitive signal to remain quiet or I will be punished by the lab in some awful, uncomfortable form. But her perfect lips are pursed and patient and waiting, and I've failed to follow her glance to the security camera nestled in the corner of my cell.

I nod. Safety first.

"Wonderful!" she exclaims, clapping her hands together. "Then I can correctly assume that you've realized the new, lovely nature of our world? And you don't have to cater your responses to the cameras anymore by the way -- I've already taken care of that." A genuinely excited grin, all teeth, warps the pretty contours of her features into something I've seen for only split seconds during the long hours of injections, of pain management, of the raw, unintelligible, induced hunger caused by days and days of starvation in the beginning stages of development that she'd gleefully led me through. Into something desiring and simplistic, like the children in Christmas movies unnaturally eager to reveal to themselves their presents of the year. She levels herself with my position by crouching, hands on knees, low and animated and hushed voice saying, "I've done so, so, so much for this world and you and your place in this world, my little princess. So much. An unfathomable amount, if you'd believe so." She stops to take a breath for an unguarded moment, and then I --

I  s m e l l  i t.

The sweet stench is quite prominent, actually. So obvious that I wonder how I could've ever missed it. Ms. Kapoor had leaned in close for a fraction of a second, and then suddenly the monochromatic walls and tile floor and old, frayed couch were bathed in it, reeking of it, begging me to t a k e  a n o t h e r  w h i f f, to breathe it in, what else could it do? What harm would it cause? Ms. Kapoor had leaned in close no more than two or three inches away, and I had blinked, and suddenly she was drenched in the delightful, palatable, thick and sticky redness that had so kept me wanting in the long stretches of my allotted nighttime and daytime hours, that figment of reality that had nearly suffered itself to be considered only a dream since the incident that had caused me to be locked up and deprived of normal food for days for my disobedience. But it was here now. And it was ready. My guardian had all but bathed herself in perfume and rubbing alcohol and sanitizer in effort to hide the stench, but I know. My guardian is perfect and beautiful and takes all measures of safety in the arrogant belief that there is no possible way that I, her perhaps equally as perfect and engineered princess, will disobey her commands. I'd already suffered through a relatively small but impressionable series of consequences once during my one slip-up in all of my years of existence here.

It's all I can do to keep my maw from visibly lengthening. I force my lips into a pursed smile to disguise it.

Her image is swimming with crimson as she explains something to the point of her reasoning for beginning the program, her desire to create a better, purged world, her need for a daughter figure to inherit this new and improved plane of existence. I was the only result who had managed to develop the most human, logical conscience to mold into the perfect humanoid, the perfect ruler, the perfect -- didn't I see that? Didn't I know why she loved me so much? The guards and fellow intellectuals and other building workers had all been either eaten, killed, or otherwise cared for in the short few hours since the beginning of this new world, and she hadn't meant to take so long. She'd never want to keep me waiting. And then her skin is s o  so f t s o soft sosoftsosoftsosoft and warm and inviting and urging me to come take a little bite, just a little one, just so it doesn't hurt her too much. She's still speaking now, her grin as peculiarly wide and set as ever, but I can't make out the words. It's something good, I think.

She extends a blood-encrusted finger to trace the edge of my cheek, her features softening, her delicately human mouth breathing: "And I think you'll quite --"

... I hadn't meant to do that. Never in a million years and a day would I ever mean to do something like that, I reassure myself, but it had happened and there was nothing else I could do to remedy the fact. I chew lazily on the end of Ms. Kapoor's more than blood-encrusted fingers as I stroll down the ransacked, zombie-infested streets, overlooking what the world had become. Passing remnants of shattered mirrors and broken storefronts and staring back at what I had become -- the princess of Ms. Kapoor's created kingdom, the newfound ruler and dictator of things gone wrong to right. The one successful experiment. Obviously she had meant to be my rescuer, but her role doesn't matter as much as it does now, with towns and cities laid to waste by the subjects to be under my command. I gaze back into the dark eyes of young girl I would've never expected to resemble my perfect, beautiful guardian so much through the reflection of a more intact jewelry store mirror, curiously pulling at the seemingly human skin, the hidden, retractable jaws, the intricate braids that my guardian had wrapped into a bun this morning before her several hour-long departure.

I've been watching the world burn for a while now. And I think I quite like it.

Anarchal argument!

My mind ineptly ambles from answer to altruism all to often.

Adapting apples-to-apples comparisons about anything while i'm adamantly, un-apologetically arguing for anti-apathy. Audibly I allow an asshole to abruptly anger me and aerosolize my ardor for austerity and lack of ambivalence.

Barbarically I bawl, bitterly brandishing boisterous brass-knuckles of the bickering type.

"Bah!" Bucking broadly basic bartering styles for bellicose bullying

I belay brandying bombastically and bear bare bridgework for belligerent verbal boxing.

I'm cantankerous and caustic currently! Can't you care? Or more concisely choose less cretinous candor?  Candied curtsies can curtail cancerous caterwauling. Instead you choose calamitous cacophony, coercing catastrophe!  Cellphone calls crying for civil intervention comes candidly from condo caretakers.

Your daring delusion dumbfounds! Defying the daunting evidence of dastardly ne'erdowell deviance.  Deftly denying dalliances of displaced desire and devotion while demonstrating displeased demeanor.  "Dammit!" I demand dramatically "Don't disrupt our dedicated wedlock for dreamlike desire!"

Ephemeral afflictions emerge energetically in her exhausted eyes yet evacuate expeditiously.  Eventually exposing espoused evidence empirically asserting her erratic ethics were MY error!  Evading, expertly, the entrapment of expose she erupts with extreme exasperation.

"Fuck off!" she flails, our feuding feeds her fury ferociously.

Her fingers furl furtively into fists, foreshadowing a future of fisticuffs

Our fracas feels like fate, funnily enough, familiar fights flow freely here.

Goading gnashing fangs from girlfriend, un-gentlemanly, i go with grim gusto.

Gearing to generate a gap in our engagement, I gain gaudy energy

"Good Grief! You gave game gaily and gorged on ragged regard from a goddamn glib gibbon"

Heat hastened to her hairline. "How harshly you have handled my heart!"

Healing hell's harpoons was hardly her hope in this hubbub. Instead heaving harsh hackneyed hullabaloo happened.  My haughty hatred hastened losing my high hold on her heartstrings.

I indignantly ignore any inclination of improper manipulation of her infatuation.

Instead I switch and whirl into the isolation of my own intimate wishes.

"I insist we inter our inclination to invalidate our intimate iteration"

"Just... I'm jet-lagged" Jewels journey over jaded visage in teary deluge

Jealousy jellies my legs and jarringly jams my jaw junction.

Jocularity jumbles, jackknifed and jangling my jargon jerkily judders.

...To be continued.