I'm so familiar with construct of a lie, I can see them from far off, before the carrier even knows it's taking form. I look over the lies of my youth, and those in the not so distance past... some of them trivial and some I'd rationalized.

More times than not - I'd lied because I was afraid. Afraid that the truth would shred what little value I had in the world, afraid that it would show a repulsive excuse of a man.

I had no idea that the lies would bring to reality - the thing I'd sought to avoid.

(This was tough to relive)

Someone kissed me tonight. I expected it to feel the way it used to after a few too many beers. Familiar, but distant, and just warm enough to get me by.

But I was wrong.

It was ice cold regret hitting the pit of my stomach, burning my lips and making me sick as I cried so hard I threw up every bit of poison that found its way into me.

It was cold, unforgiving, and wrong.

How was I to know?

I fell in love with you so quickly, and every kiss and touch was so perfect. Your lips were made for mine, your fingers designed to interlock and guide me home when I take a wrong turn.

I know things now.

I know I love you.

I know I've loved you since the moment your eyes and lips met mine,

I know how home is supposed to feel, and I know how to work through the toughest, darkest nights imaginable.

You've always been the man I knew I'd love.

I just hope I get more time.

Just one kiss, is all I need.

My skin caught on fire at the hot wing eating contest. Bright orange sauce was smeared all around my mouth, cheeks, nose, and hands. It burned a fiery, unyielding burn, but I knew I had to continue. There was no way I was going to forfeit the $200 prize for most hot wings eaten in an hour just because my skin felt like I took a match to it. The old capsaicin was doing its work. 

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man who had given up. A hot mixture of tears and snot ran down his face as one of the waiters rushed him a cold glass of milk. There was no way I was going to let that be me.

I had to keep chewing. 

The minutes ticked down like hours. One by one, more people began to forfeit. In what felt like an eternity, only two (including myself) remained. These last few moments would define the entire competition. I had to make every second; no, every millisecond count. 

I'd begun to notice a change creeping up on me. My fingers, face, mouth, and tongue had gone almost completely numb. I couldn't even taste the wings anymore. "Keep on chewing. Keep on chewing. Keep on chewing," I repeated to myself. It had become my mantra. 

Only one wing remained. I looked over at my opponent's plate to see he also had only one wing left. My heart nearly skipped a beat. It was neck in neck, or wing in wing rather. My fingers had locked into position for chicken wing holding. I struggled to pick up the last wing. My opponent glanced at me, giving me a sly grin. He knew he had this in the bag. 

All of sudden, my fingers unlocked and I grabbed the last wing like it was a dollar bill on the street. Using every tooth in my mouth I tore off the meat and the skin, leaving nothing but bone. 

"The winner of the annual chicken wing eating contest and of $200 is........................................... MISS KATHY RAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" The announcer declared. 

Wait a minute, I thought. That's my name; he called me. So that means.............. I WON?! 

"Here's your trophy m'am, along with a check for $200. Congratulations!". 

I sat there dumbfounded, staring blankly into space. This is real, this is actually happening to me.  

Cameras flashed, people came up to me to offer their congratulations, heck, I even signed a few autographs! Out of the corner of my eye I could see some of my opponents, sulking bitterly at their bad luck. 

"How in the Sam Hill does some little ol' gal like that beat all of us at something we've been doing for years?" One grumbled. 

The answer was simple. I kept chewing. 

I can't remember when you decided you didn't want to see me anymore, that you didn't want to be in my life anymore. It's probably around a decade.

Ten years without a father is a long time.

I admit, I was glad to see you go. I was sick of your angry silence; sick of only being spoken to when I'd done wrong or you needed to yell.

I was sick of the way you treated mum. She did everything for you! She fucking stood by you for nearly twenty years & gave you her all! Yet still you demanded more.

But... she also gave you children you didn't want & you resented her for that.

Yeh, I know. I heard you say it.

For years I called you every vulgar name under the sun. I hated you so much. I wished so hard that things had been different, that you had been the perfect father.

I used to make up stories in my head of fake hugs, fake picnics, fake bedtime stories; things I knew a father should do, but mine never did.

I still do.

You know you abused us, right? Maybe not physically but verbally, mentally... emotionally.

Maybe you didn't know. Your childhood wasn't perfect, far from it. I know you got demons slung across your back.

But that's no excuse.

You left us high & dry, took all the money & drove away.

But... maybe you didn't know.

Maybe anger was all you knew because that was all you saw as a kid.

So, I find myself not condoning, no, never condoning, but perhaps understanding, or at least, wanting to understand.

I find myself wanting a father.

Still, I don't know if I'm ready & I can't help but wonder, are you?

Sincerely,

Your daughter?

"May you live like a rat, with your ambitions never beyond survival, the scramble for sustenance with a look of terror writhing in your eyes."

    I heard those words hanging in the air, their pungency evoked with a thick, rumbling slur of an even voice swathed in slow confidence. When I breathed, I felt that familiar stench of nightmares foul on my body, and so went to mask it, the way each of us masks the endless machinations of our innermost fears. I tucked the night terrors behind a high collar, I knotted them with a loose tie, and hid them beneath a faded pair of trousers and waistcoat. 

    In the reflection of a straight razor, I frowned at the expression of trepidation looking back before tucking the edge against the peppered stubble on my jaw. After wiping away the shaving cream, the loose strands, and disinfecting the crisscrossed cuts on my cheeks, I left the morning ritual to fade in the same light which then began it, now burning it away.

    At my doorstep, dozens of parcels of various size littered the path with the furthest dates reaching almost six months past. As always, or since the oldest deliveries, I strode by with the same hollow promise of opening them upon my evening's return. And, as always, the crows whom had a habit of toying with the unswept debris in my walkways, cawed in frustration as I interrupted their play.

    Low clouds and smoke from fires in the countryside covered the walkways of Rudmoore Avenue in thick exhalations of endless murk that had been rolling through for three days now. Despite the normal hour, there were no silhouettes to be seen through the haze, no clattering coaches, no shop windows hollering with bargains and fresh goods. Even the street lamps were still burning from last night.

    A hand grabbed mine. I drew back with a gasp, mistaking the hunched figure for another sack tucked between the crates crammed against the Rudmoore Bank.

    "The lamplighter," a beggar wheezed up at me with a broken nose encrusted with snot and dried blood. Her bloodshot eyes looked to me as if I could bring some divine clarity to her senseless greeting.

    "Excuse me?"

    "Lamplighter," she repeated, looking as if she might scramble to retrieve my hand once again, were it not for her apparent state of post-opiate exhaustion.

    "I'm no lamplighter. I ... good day," I replied, just as the four chapels in the city began their morning tolls. I flicked a coin onto the ground to distract her and moved on. My heart was beating too small from the nightmares this morning to have any room for sympathetic conversations with the destitute and deluded.

    When their final reverberations ended, I overheard the murmurs of a crowd up ahead, rising to their own kind of din, subdued only by what I imagined was some imposing obligation to reverence.

    "What's happened here?" I asked a passerby who had the look of someone with satiated curiosity, the look of someone who'd just seen something memorable and was prepared to go about their day without a second thought. You could say I aspired to be like him. Each of his fists were stuffed with fishlines heavy from their catch.

    He just grunted, nodded his head toward the gathered crowd, and continued on his way.

    "What a charmer," I murmured and continued toward the gaggle of citizens, now congregated in the middle of the street's intersections. Over their heads, the rounded tops of police caps bobbed with nods and shakes. And all around us, crows gated us in like black posts on eves, eyeing what everyone else was goggling at with doubled fascination.

    "Back away! Give us some room to breathe, for heaven's sakes!" one of the officers called over the murmurs.

    I politely, quietly refused and continued forward, shoving through someone whose eyes had clearly had their fill by then.

    "Oi!"

    " 'Oi' yourself."

    Circled by dusted, black boots and empty speculations was the decapitated remains of what appeared to be little else than a boy. Both his pinkie and his middle finger were missing from his hand. In the other, a rod for snuffing and lighting lamps was clutched by rigor mortis' grip.

    "How long has this been here?" I asked no one in particular.

    "I found him not half an hour ago," a woman responded, her voice recognizable from the pastry stand that typically opened on the street's corner every morning.

    "The body is fresh, but where's the blood?"

    "Blood?" She looked at the body again, her dumbfounded expression now matching the officers'.

    "There's hardly any ..." I murmured.

"May you die like a memory, faded and forgotten for what little worth it was, without comfort of innocence or a martyr's pity. A failure of expectations. A neglected trophy of refuse. A burnt page amongst millions in a raging fire."

    The voice trailed like cold acid from my ear.

    "Who said that?" I turned and stared at the bewildered gentleman behind me, whose hand went from shielding his child's eyes to instead protecting his own head. The woman beside him backed away from me, and the others followed suit. Somewhere in the throng, a baby began its best imitations of a banshee.

    I hadn't meant to shout, but now the crowd was hushed and facing me with indignant and confused stares.

    Too deep in embarrassment to stop there, I continued. "Go on then, who made that vile threat? Show yourself!"

    "Has somebody threatened you?" one of the officers asked. "Who? Was it the man who did this?"

    Some of the crowd disjoined themselves from the spectacle, to allow the dialogue between me and the officer to continue.

    "I ... I heard someone."

    "Who was it? Quickly!"

    I searched the faces of the crowd in a sudden desperation to find somebody to accuse. Shopkeepers, coachmen, a barber, a tailor, a baker, mothers and their children, and all of them with a look of unmistakable surprise and innocence. My fingers wrung themselves together before the expression of doubt reached my face. Looking back at the officer, he recognized the paranoia in my expression, that of a madman, or even a drunk, offset by an otherwise normal and clean-shaven face. When only stutters came, they shook their heads and continued investigating the body.

    Like swatting at a swarm of flies, the crowd was dispersed by my outcry, leaving only me, the lamplighter, and the officers.

    "I know who it was," someone whispered behind me. "I saw."

    Her stench, if not her voice, gave her away.

    The fog in the beggar's eyes was cleared away by eagerness and excitement. For that, I listened.

    "Who was it?" I asked.

    "Come with me. He went this way."

    And before I could question her anymore, she hurried past the body and down the street. I followed, with the air just then beginning to smell of decay. 

You are the bottomless pit, the insatiable hunger, the love that does not love, but yearns.

You grasp and howl and dig into my heart, searching always for more.

I bleed for you, but it's not enough.

I die for you, and you shake my carcass, leaving my empty shell behind.

I blow in a gentle breeze, while you frantically find another.