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alfredosauce50 · 1 year

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One more night

[Boxer! Denmark x reader] 8

Wordcount: 4, 351 Rating: MA+ for adult themes and strong language. Viewer discretion advised. The reader is referred to as she/her.

One more night - 8

Hey brother

She needs you, he said.

Be that as it may, Allen couldn’t agree. Not anymore. Ever since he got out of prison, he had a feeling you’d outgrown him. With conflict after conflict, that feeling was starting to look like reality.

“Got everything you need?” He wiped his mouth after finishing his protein shake. Your shifts were ending soon, and he was picking you two up for a late Friday lunch. He and Mathias stayed home up until then, making for a strange dynamic.

They weren’t hostile with each other, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable, either.

The Dane lifted Bob as if to answer the question. Otherwise, he had Amy’s bag over his shoulder. Inside were a few diapers, wipes, his bottle, some formula, the list just went on. Everything clunked around as he followed the other man into the parking lot. Just as he was about to enter the passenger seat, Allen extended an arm in front of him.

“Uh-uh. Baby’s gotta ride in the back.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

And sit in the back he did. As he strapped Bob into his booster, he wondered how absent-minded he had to be to miss this. It must’ve been muscle memory. Meanwhile, Allen was worried he’d hit him too hard.

“How’s your head?” He asked, pulling into the street.

“Fine. It’s my ribs that still hurt.” Mathias replied.

He drummed his fingers against the wheel, nodding quietly. If Mathias didn’t sustain any brain damage, he wouldn’t have to pay with his conscience. Not that he didn’t pay plenty already, and most of it to Bob.

“Mat!” You ran to him, still wearing your cap.

“Kæreste,” He took your hand. “How was work?”

Allen stood on the side. He could wait for you to acknowledge him, but the moment never came.

“It was fine. Some kid dropped their ice cream and started crying, though.” You stifled a laugh, pulling him along. “Then Amy made him a new cone out of nowhere. She’s super fast at scooping, it’s scary.”

Mathias could only smile, relieved to see you again.

“Well, once you get used to carrying something heavy all the time, it gets easy.” Amy noted.

“I guess I need more practice.” You walked back to the car with Mathias at your side, not paying any mind to the silence that followed. You were a little peckish by then, and so was Amelia.

Everyone was digging into their plates at the local Chinese buffet. You were almost done with yours, and your boyfriend was halfway through mowing down his. He managed to heap several mountains of rice, noodles, meat, and seafood onto a single plate.

“Slow down, champ. Nobody’s fighting you for it.” Amy mused, forking a pineapple into her mouth.

“I’m just so hungry.” Mathias said, dropping some bits of chewed-up food onto his plate.

“You know you can always get more, right?”

“Mhm. That’s why I have to eat quickly before my appetite goes away. There’s too much I have to eat!”

“Said every American ever. You’re fitting in just great, Mathias. I’m proud.” She nodded, closing her eyes.

“Oh yeah?”

More came flying out of his mouth.

“Speaking of eating our fill, I’m gonna go grab more.” You stood up with your plate and gave those two a funny look. “You know, before I lose my appetite looking at everything Mat forgot to swallow.”

Amy laughed. Mathias pouted. Allen didn’t react and followed you to the self-serve stations—presumably to get more, only he barely touched his food.

“Want some?”

He stood in front of a stir-fry, hand on the ladle.

“No thanks. Just came for this,” You murmured, scooping yourself some noodles. A brief pause followed, and you never turned to look at him.

Allen sighed and dropped the ladle. Two weeks had passed, and you were still giving him nothing.

“Can we talk?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” You turned to leave.

“Then why are you ignoring me?” He stood in your way, stopping you from going any further.

“I’m not ignoring you.”

“Then why didn’t you say hi?” He asked. You glanced to the side restlessly, unwilling to continue the conversation. But he had you trapped, just like he always did. “See? This is what I mean. If you’re still mad at me, we can work it out. I’m sorry, okay?”

“Even if we ‘work this out,’ it doesn’t mean I can’t be mad at you.” You sighed, feeling his hands slide up your arms. Before they got to your shoulders, you pushed them off. “I just need time.”

He merely reached up again.

“How much time?”

“You can’t know these things.”

“Why not?”

“How am I supposed to tell when I’ll stop feeling this way? I don’t know.” You frowned. Seeing his defiant look turned your anguish into frustration; Allen didn’t understand boundaries at all, and that struck you as so familiar, you practically shoved him off.

“A week. A month. A year.” He raised his voice in desperation, stepping forward to close the distance you established. “Just give me a number. Come on.”

Mathias didn’t have physical ones; he didn’t have emotional ones. And being suffocated all over again riled you up more than you could imagine.

“Allen—”

“You can’t push me away forever. You know that!”

“Just leave me alone!”

That shut him up. The searing ache in his chest returned, but he couldn’t be shocked by your outburst. He’d been suffocating you for the last minute, and being lashed out at was well-deserved.

“Why are you so obsessed with making up with me when it’s them you should be apologizing to?”

Allen didn’t answer, but his face did all the talking. His cheeks flushed a deep red, and it looked like he was about to cry. You were breaking him down, bit by bit. Everything he was to you was coming apart.

“You’re always all over me. I didn’t mind it because I loved you, but you can’t put me above Amy!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He uttered faintly. It was all he could manage, too focused on the ‘loved’ to even think. Loved, you said. Hot water rushed into his head, and his chest tightened.

“She’s your sister.” You lowered your gaze. It was strange, saying something so obvious and having it hurt. But it was the cold, hard truth no matter how you looked at it. “And I’m just your friend, okay?”

Allen didn’t know what came over him.

Driven by a harrowing sadness, then an itch he could likely never scratch, he pulled you into a crushing embrace. He pinned your neck with his chin, eyes as wide as he could get them. And his heart, pounding so hard, you could feel it thumping against you.

No words were exchanged, but the sensuality confirmed what you suspected all along.

When you returned to your seats, he stared out the window, the whites of his eyes pink from crying.

You sat next to your boyfriend, who remained equally as unknowing as Amelia to what you had just discussed. And they never asked, seeing how tense you were. What was meant to be a rage-fueled incident was starting to look like something more.

Did Allen beat up Mathias to protect you, or his relationship with you? The thought drew you in and repulsed you at the same time, but at the end of the day, anger was all you could feel.

“Gil’s coming over in a bit,” You said, putting your phone down on the counter. Amy was mixing a big bowl of dough while you were in charge of the chili. Allen just went out for some essentials.

“Okay. I got my stuff packed.” Mathias took a seat on one of the stools. “Also, why did he text you first?”

“Well, he wasn’t sure how well you were doing, and you sometimes like to sugar-coat things.” You moved the diced vegetables into the pot before continuing. He blinked at your response, but couldn’t exactly argue with it. “He wanted you to teach him how to use the gym equipment. Bar and everything.”

He perked up.

“Only I made him promise not to let you touch it.”

“I’m sure I can do some lifting.” He slouched.

“Just not anything heavier than fifteen pounds.”

“Bob is seventeen pounds.”

“Anything heavier than Bob.”

“Yeah, dude. You might accidentally fuck up your lungs from breathing too hard.” Amy hummed. After giving the dough a few kneads, she picked it up and threw it down for a plap. “A boxer without lungs is like a car without wheels. You don’t want that.”

“You guys need to believe in me more.” He mused, spinning around on his stool. “I’ll be fine.”

His injuries were still fresh, and so was the upset with Allen. Amy seemed as furious with him as the day Bob came home; she hadn’t said a word to him since. You just fought with him. And it must’ve been some fight for it to end in tears—not yours, but his.

Yet, Mathias, the main receiver of grief, didn’t feel any contempt against him anymore.

Ten minutes later, he was beside the stove, holding the ladle to be useful. You handed Amy circles of dough so she could fry it. While it crackled in the pan, he began zoning out, thinking of anything but food.

He stared at the photos on the side of the fridge.

They were all of you, Amy, and Allen.

Some were from as early as primary school. Back then, you weren’t nearly as tall as Amy, and she wore star clips in her hair. Allen had a missing tooth in all of them. But that wasn’t the detail he focused on.

It was that he held both your hands. The longer he stared, the more his face contorted—what should’ve been innocent made his stomach churn with guilt. He regretted so much that he said, that he did.

Amelia was a single mother. He’d always known that. You were just helping her in any way you could, and he belittled that too. Looking after Bob himself was a real eye-opener, and he’d mostly been carrying his things. And to think he’d been so careless with you.

It was all for his own satisfaction, his own sureties. He was insatiable, his desire as fierce as the way he moved. He could drive you to the corner with how he loved, but what kind of love would that be?

Allen had been right about him all along. And like any brother would’ve done, he defended you from him.

Mathias wasn’t one to ruminate, but it ate away at his conscience to think about. It eventually got to the point that he wondered how you two could forgive him, and his best bet was this—recovering.

He got down in a plank and did a push-up. Then another. And another. It was exactly what his doctor told him not to do, but the action was automatic, and he never stopped, doing rep after rep until it hurt.

“Mat, what are you doing?” You asked softly.

He was wincing by then, but he kept going, driven by a profound guilt he didn’t know he had until now.

“What are you doing?” You repeated, alarmed by his unresponsiveness. You’ve only seen him once like this before—when he drove around for hours looking for the exact brand and flavor of candy Amy wanted.

It happened the day after he missed her delivery, so you just knew instantly. He was beating himself up.

But he did nothing wrong.

“Mathias.” You whispered, dropping to the ground to hold him up. Only then did he slow down.

Amy watched from above, shocked by his behavior. She couldn’t let the bread burn, so she exchanged quick, worried glances between him and the pan.

When he finally stopped, he was on his side, tearing up from the intense throbbing pain in his chest. You were on the ground, helping him up. To say it hurt to see him like this was an understatement. He was supposed to be the brightest person you knew, and equally as resilient. Nothing could beat him down.

So when he cried, nothing felt right in the world.

The front door creaked open.

Allen walked in with a brown bag of groceries, and what he saw made him freeze immediately. Mathias was sitting against you, struggling to breathe, but for some reason, you were staring straight at him.

He couldn’t tell what it was behind your eyes.

But he didn’t stick around to ask.

He just dropped the bag and ran.

Everything spilled all over the floor—apples, canned goods, a tub of sour cream—and he was gone.

“Can I ask you something?” Mathias muttered.

He was back in Amy’s room, sitting upright on a chair. You had been doing breathing exercises with him for the past ten minutes, only stopping to drink some water. His tears had dried into reflective trails, but his cheeks were still as red as they always were.

“Anything.”

“When was the first time Allen talked to you?”

“The day after.” You answered, not quite sure what he was getting at. And nor were you prepared for what he was about to say. But this conversation was the last of your concerns as you iced his chest.

“Well, I heard you both,” Mathias admitted, catching you in his sincerest gaze yet. And you stared back, faltering at the thought of his scrutiny.

He kept it to himself all this time. He was supposed to be an open book, yet, it was so like him to be secretive about certain things. And even more so when he sprung them up on you out of the blue.

“Well, what did we say?” Your eyes fell to his chest.

“Well,” He repeated faintly. “He said he loved you.”

Your heart clenched at the memory, then everything that could’ve pushed him to say it. Allen and Amy were the closest you had to family, even if they weren’t related to you by blood. You weren’t really their sister, but it should’ve counted by now.

As you lingered on the thought, you came to regret what you said to Allen. Not the part about Amy being his sister, but you being ‘just a friend.’

“He did.”

“Do you love him?” Mathias gazed at you attentively. He already had his answer, seeing how anguished you became, but he needed to hear you say it.

“Not in the way I love you,” You squeezed his hands, face contorting as you continued. Your heart was racing, but it felt so right to say what you’ve always wanted to say. “I would give everything to you.”

“I know. I heard you,” He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against yours. “And I feel the same.”

“So why are you asking?”

“I wanted to know if you’ll ever forgive him,” Mathias hung his head, pressing the top of it against your chest. It took him a few moments to confess what could change everything. “Because he only really made those mistakes after what I did.”

And everything meaning how you saw him.

“So I can’t forgive myself if you don’t forgive him.”

You stared at him in shock, then disbelief.

“Mathias, he could’ve killed you. And he could’ve killed Bob if he left him any longer in his car!”

But he was so sure of himself he couldn’t even look at you. He was always praised for being selfless, kind, and unassuming, but the one who really deserved those titles had always been Allen.

“He thought I took advantage of you.”

You froze.

“And that was only because he couldn’t believe you would betray them. He found your tests, (F/N).”

You did betray them, only Amy was more forgiving about it. She’d done the exact same thing, after all.

But Allen couldn’t even fathom the idea.

“But it’s my fault, okay?” Mathias raised your hands to his eyes as they welled with tears. When he tried talking again, he could only do so in an incoherent warble. “I was out of control. I made you do it. I’m always asking for more, and I’m always holding you down even when I should know better. I’m sorry.”

Allen believed in you so much, he took his anger out on Mathias, and the thought crushed you from the inside out. What was meant to be his fault and his alone, was starting to look like all of yours.

Amelia had been running for the past ten minutes. She was furious with her brother, but she was looking for him all the same. Now that she thought about it, it had always been this way.

She found him in Baskin-Robbins, sitting at the same table you and her always used during breaks. In front of him was a scoop of half-melted vanilla, which he didn’t pay any mind to. His arms were folded, his face was buried in them, and he was sniffling.

“Hey, asshole.”

Allen could fuck up again and again. He was brash, explosive, and reckless. There were more things he did wrong than right. But he was also selfless, and so loving, it was too much to imagine a life without him.

“Ames?” He glanced up, looking like hell. Allen wiped his nose and eyes to try and hide the obvious, but it wasn’t hard to tell. “What’re you doing here?”

“Looking for you, dumbass.” She huffed, tightening her fists by her sides. “You think I’m here to work?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not wearing my uniform. Or can you not tell because you’re squinting so hard?”

Allen turned back to his ice cream and stirred it idly. He never imagined he’d be talking to his sister so soon—at least no sooner than you, who actually responded to him. With Amy, it had been nothing but silence, and it was about to be broken with this.

“I thought you were pissed at me.” He mumbled.

“I am.” Amy fumed. Anger shot through her as she recalled everything he had ever done, but coupled with that emotion was endless sadness. “And I always will be because you’re such a fucking idiot.”

He couldn’t find it in himself to return her scorching gaze. He never could. He was too ashamed. And with everything that came out of his sister’s mouth, he retreated deeper and deeper within himself, unable to fathom the bitter hatred he was receiving.

“You know, he’s always looking for you when he’s in his playpen.” Heat rushed to her eyes, which she rubbed away before it could turn into tears. “I’m telling Bob what you did to him when he can finally understand. So you better enjoy it while it lasts.”

But the longer he listened, the clearer it became it wasn’t hatred behind her voice.

“Because when he grows up, he might not trust you like he used to. Even if he wants to.”

The words were as black as tar but sunk into him like water, and when he realized what she really meant, he looked at her with the most profound regret.

She wasn’t talking about Bob.

She was talking about herself.

He was never good at sticking around. Not around home, and not on the right side of law either. Allen was a twenty-something-year-old who had been sentenced, deployed, and nearly sentenced again.

If that wasn’t bad enough, he couldn’t keep his head straight to save his life. And the ones who suffered the consequences never deserved it.

“I’m sorry.” He let out. The second he uttered it, Amelia plowed into his arms. He hugged her back as hard as he could, knowing it was the only form of protection he could ever give. “I’m trying.”

“You try too hard.” Amy sighed.

“But I don’t know what else to do.” He shut his eyes.

“Just do what you wanna do. You don’t have to do something great for us to need you around.” She let him go, sparing him a gentle smile. It was what he needed to hear this whole time, and when he finally did, he felt the heaviest weight lifted from his chest.

“You’re our brother. And that’s good enough.”

“Are you guys gonna eat this or what?” A voice called from outside. Whoever it was, it wasn’t the twins.

You had been sitting on the bed with Bob, helping him play with his shapes. Mathias was taking a nap. Without wasting another second, you made your way to the kitchen. Standing there was your boyfriend’s classmate and fellow international student.

“Gil. Hey! How did you get in here?” You asked.

“Oh, uh, the door was kinda open, so I thought I’d just let myself in. Was I not supposed to?”

“No, it’s fine.” You bounced Bob, who was well into throwing a tantrum after being pulled away from his sorting cube—his face scrunched up, he threw his arms back, and he let out a high-pitched cry.

“Sorry. Did I come at a bad time?”

“Not at all. Amy just went out for a quick errand,” You walked back into her bedroom, collected some toys, and walked back out. Laying them all out on Bob’s play-mat, you put him down. He stopped crying. “She’ll be back soon. Oh, and you can have some of that, by the way. You know where everything is.”

“I was wondering,” He hummed, getting himself a plate to start building a taco. “Don’t mind if I do.”

Mathias walked in, rubbing his eyes.

“So, how’s Mat? Are we still up for the gym?”

“I don’t know. You can ask him,” You turned to the Dane, who looked as surprised as you did a minute ago. When it occurred to him, his face fell. He made plans with Gilbert. To be fair, it had been a long day for everybody, and nobody had eaten lunch yet.

“Oh, shoot. I’m sorry, I forgot.” He apologized.

“That’s cool! We’re still going, aren’t we?” Gilbert piped, munching on his taco. He had sour cream up his nose, which he didn’t bother getting.

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Mathias frowned, giving his hair a nervous rub. He turned to you with a pleading look, and fortunately, you came through.

“Mat laughed too hard and his ribs shifted.”

“Yeah.” He spun back to his friend. “Stupid, I know.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Gilbert snorted, sliding onto a stool to keep eating. When he glanced up again, he licked the chili off his fingertips. “Sounds like something Mat would do. But we won’t go if you can’t. I was kinda tired, anyway.”

“I bet you wouldn’t have said that if I could,” Mathias remarked, joining you down on Bob’s playmat.

“Yeah, well, you can’t.”

“I’m still sorry, though.”

“It’s whatever, man. I’d rather you get better sooner than later. Somebody’s gotta win that tournament!”

Mathias gave him a wordless stare.

“Right.” He smiled. “I will.”

It used to be all he could think about, but he had to put boxing on the back burner. He did ever since he got injured. But somehow, it felt different now than back then. He just didn’t have the same drive.

“Gil, are you sure you don’t wanna go to the gym?”

“I don’t wanna go by myself, though.”

“I’ll come.”

“Are you sure? I mean, Amy isn’t back, so who’s gonna look after Bob?” He asked, finishing his taco.

Mathias hugged you from behind, burying his face in your back. You let him, sensing a drop in his mood, and, well, something else too. Protest. You turned to him with a slight frown, completely stumped.

A key slotted in the front door.

You didn’t want to leave Mathias by himself, but anybody could see that he felt terrible for flaking. Just as you were about to double down, Allen and Amy walked inside, arguing about Bob.

“I’m not saying you can’t be alone with him. You just have to work on your temper first.” She explained.

“But that takes time. And who else is gonna look after him while you guys are at work?” He asked.

It looked like they made up with each other.

“You could bring Bob next door.”

“And be supervised while I’m supervising?”

“For a bit.”

“That’s just embarrassing! And it’s not like I’m gonna leave the house. If I do, I can use the baby carrier.” Allen defended, exasperated beyond comprehension. “I’ll just be going down to Whole Foods. I think I can manage bringing Bob there and back in one piece.”

“He’s gotta be more than just in ‘one piece.’ Like not half-conscious.” She raised her brows.

“It’s not like I’m gonna beat up Mathias again.”

Gilbert ‘uhhed’ nervously.

“He beat up Mat?” He whispered at you. This was his first interaction he had with your so-called brother, and he was even scarier up close. What he was hearing didn’t help these first impressions, either. “How in the hell did he manage to do that?”

“It’s a long story.” You replied sheepishly.

“But I won’t argue with that. That was my fault.” Allen shook his head in dismay. Even then, he wasn’t prepared to drop the subject. If there was one thing he wanted to get right, it was looking after Bob.

“Damn right, it was.”

“I just want you guys to trust me again.”

“We will. We just need time. Just like how you need time to learn how to change a diaper.” Amy assured.

“I know how to change a diaper.” Gilbert mumbled, turning Allen’s head to him. He sunk into his neck, instantly regretting his mindless comment as he caught those piercing red eyes. “Kind of. Not really.”

“Who are you?”

“Er, nobody.”

“That’s my friend,” Mathias explained, peering over your shoulder. “Gilbert. I go to school with him.”

“Great. Another guy.” Allen grumbled, lifting the pot lid so he could scoop himself some chili. He dropped a spoon in, walked to the living room where you were, and sat on the couch. “Just what we needed.”

Next chapter: Dream on

Tag-list: @sunnysssol @chicha027 @javelintine

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notmuchtoconceal · 5 months

Text

My name is John Jacob Janus Kaminsky. I am knocking on the door of a home I have never known, for no family of mine has ever lived here.

I am knocking on the door in the dead of night, waiting for an answer I know will never come and expecting the world regardless. I am alive and this life is my life and with each morning I vow to make the beast of tomorrow, making the least of what passed for yesterday.

The door swings open.

By the flutter of my heart, I am taken by arrest.

Throwing back, so too does that what frames the porthole in the dark.

The doorframe which is not a mirror but the door on which I am knocking. The door from which I had knocked, it having swung open, and I being confined by no chamber, but he within -- left alone to ferment in the dark, stood symmetrical in station and profile.

He was tall and broad and more handsome by the day for his heart was unburdened and what forces played over his eyes, his imperceptible eyes I hardly recognized, though I saw them every morning in the glass.

It wasn't me. I was simply what was staring back, and he was more familiar than I could ever be, being so much more familiar to me.

I wasn't moving away. He wasn't moving in, being the first to move.

Don't go, he said with the words "Who are you?"

"My name is Jon Jakob Janusz Kaminski. I would thank you next time not to skip the previews. I was the voice they used to put in the trailers!"

He stared at me, seeing me outside the door which was not this door, but the porch of the home at which I lived. It only occurred to me now, the reality of my intrusion -- not only on this night, but the unreality of what myself must have been to him -- how strange it would have seemed to me, were it to be me to have met him on the step of my door.

"Would you like to come in?" I asked.

"You're outside," he said.

"Would you like to change places?"

"No. This is my house. You stay outside outside til I invite you in."

"May I come in?"

It only now occurred to him how rude it must have been, that I had introduced myself and he had not yet done likewise, though also -- supposing I cut him off with a social faux pas, saying what I'm sure will be the first of many things to make little sense if they were observed -- as if by a neutral audience which was not likewise agreed upon by the two of us, and therefore had no means for comparison; was therefore doomed to seldom overlap, each of us performing some distillation of proper etiquette for an imagined auditor, the least of which was the other.

"Please forgive me, mysterious and handsome stranger! The uncanniness with which it is the most fantastical unveracity that I may look upon you without swooning (which I'm now realizing is a perfectly adequate and natural response for stiff-lipped, hyper-rational, upper class Victorian gentlemen faced with confabulating circumstances) has unsettled me as such that I have forgotten my manners! I always thought the word swoon was girlie. I had thought everyone who ever swooned was but a ladyboy who couldn't handle the existence of monsters, yet here I am! Tempted to swoon merely looking upon you, and yet perhaps I am not mistaken? Is this not itself proof you are a monster?"

"Me, monster? Buddy, you're the one who lives at monster house!"

"Pardon me, friend. If monster house this be, its admittance you surely do not seek. Kindly turn and leave, having never darkened my life with your disturbing and impossible presence, strange shade of iniquity."

Our eyes met. The corners of his lips tugged defiantly, predictably.

As did mine.

"It is so hot that you can say this shit to me. I know you don't mean a word of it since you already invited me in. Introduce yourself so your brain keeps working and the flow of interaction may continue uninterrupted."

"I am J. Jonah Janice Kaminsky. I am not an animal, I am a machine. I am not a machine, I am a man. "

"A likely story. But it isn't the whole story, is it Chucky?"

He paused, slapped his forehead in a burst of exasperation.

"The shit you fucking say to people and expect them to respond to. Holy fuck. Nobody knows what that means. Nobody could parse out the nuances of that. The only fucking reason I know what you mean when you say that is we are evidently insane in the same fucking way."

I took a step back. I was moving my hips and my hands.

"Yes, that was it. This is the thing about us which is the same!"

"May I come outside?"

"You may, but you will?"

"That's not a question, I already have."

"Hey, plot twist."

His shoulders brushed me. His body was warm.

"What's over there?"

"I dunno. Do you think the world might dissolve if we try to move past the scenery? Sometimes I look at the city and the graphics are amazing."

"It think it'll just repeat. I think we'll walk down that street, then wind up back here once we turn the corner."

"There is a field."

"There is a street."

"Would you like to come in?"

"I thought you already asked."

The room was dark. Through one window crept the streetlamp. Through the other the pale beam of the waxing moon,

"Would you like a coffle? Tea? Coke Zero? I can piss in your mouth?"

"Foot rub'd be nice."

"Nice shoes, bro."

"Nice dick, man."

"You are seated in the den of J. J. Kaminsky. Poet. Playboy. Homeowner. "

"You are hearty and well-stocked. In body, mind and spirit."

"There's a shitload of stolen candles I already used in that end table. See if you can find any jackets with all the matchbooks written out."

The shimmer whorled around me black in the aquarium glass.

"I have to say, friend. While it is still too dark for me to take in, let alone admire and compliment the beauty of your decor, let me first say that you yourself are exceedingly handsome and well put-together in a subtle and understated way which is casual and decisive. Your red cap is fetching, as is the length, thickness, and metallurgical composition of your chains. Your shades of grey, in your snug and trim and clingy hood, and your shimmering nylon sweats, silky and smooth -- your socks and your armpits likewise are exquisitely scented, mulchy as a distillation of vetiver, a woodsiness near fungral for how damp and bucken with hearty fat."

His pause... Was too natural to be calculated.

"Thanks, bud. I"m well aware that our styles are nearly identical and you flatter yourself as you flatter me, yet nevertheless I can simply find no fault with your statements, and that our intense similarities in style induces in me something like a nervous and radical tension to rapidly diversify I feel is well-contained, for truthfully -- I feel moved into a death-like stillness gazing upon you, for you are simply... "

"I think..."

"... I know what you mean."

He stared at me, and I stared at him. I likewise felt a desperate need to distinguish myself in some way, and a contrary and opposite yet equally powerful need not to compromise myself needlessly, for he was simply content and I was simply content and yet -- as we looked upon one another in our mutual anxiety, the stolidity of our gaze, of our frame, the strength of our posture began to crumble and cord. I had felt knots strike me in places -- points of tension I seldom knew now breaking me -- as I steered myself against my volition in some arbitrary opposition in spite of myself, seeing him strangely and likewise pulled farther in twain.

"I, uh..."

"Yeah..."

Our mutual distortion sickened us. Where moments prior our near identical shape and countenance had been a source of alien alleviation, now every point of similarity seemed so wretched a mockery for what was sharpest and most apparent was each point which distinguished us -- and vulgar it was, for it marred what moments before had been a state of perfection, and was now still continuously contracting -- likewise in mutual and cyclical awareness that we were embroiled in a state of simultaneous and inescapable corrosion -- simply for we had attained awareness of one another and so robbed ourselves of limitation.

"What are you gonna --"

You cut him off, for your expression was more urgent.

"Your overall suboptimal status, I have to say -- is quite charming. Not in a way which is childish or crude or rubelike (I say these things solely so you know I do not mean them!) but with a firm absoluteness which is the elegance of the always understated and gentlemanly male who needs not the ferocity of an ideological monopoly to keep up the ruse of love!"

His pause... Was too long to be rehearsed.

"You too, bro? You think I look and act like you're fuckin dad?"

It was shocking. This thing he would naturally and inevitably think!

"What? Why would I think that? My father is an imbecile and a monster."

"Thanks, bud. You've made that clear already with your immediately prior sentence, as well as that crack earlier about monster house -- Monster House? Was that a Dreamworks? Why is that still deep in your unconscious? Does a porch with shark teeth simply recall the animistic imagery of all things fanged by icicles in childhood winters?"

"While your evidence is strong, I know that was the polar opposite of my intention, and your lengthy and detailed diatribe about the the obscure echoes unstirred by trailers glimpsed in movie theaters (some of which I narrated) while fascinating in its own right, simply reveals the depth of your insecurity and capacity to participate in projections. I mean, you know what you are, buddy. I don't gotta rub it in your face . Big dog boy dudes like you who desperately want to lick my face with your eerie canid witch teeth, you know -- they like fuckin headpats and to be the best boy and to run around and jump in daddy's lap. Aren't you getting a boner right now, just by hearing me describe this? I sure as fuck still am!"

"Yeah, bro. It really makes my dick fuckin stiff, all these casually condescending attitudes you just carry fuckin around and don't take any responsibility for. Yeah, dude. The only fuckin person on planet earth you've managed to convince you're not a condescending prick is yourself cause you're the only one who buys into your own bullshit. If you think I'm your fuckin carbon-copy (but also I'm an idiot like you're father, who your nothing like except, oh wait!) you should get a boner while you slip cash from your wallet into your wallet. Hey, wow. I just thought of that! If I made you take out your wallet and I took out my wallet, we could compare identification to check the veracity of all these circumstances and give a definite, credible timeframe and location to these events, and while we're at it, hey -- we could glimpse strange and eerie details in the details of each other's portraiture, and hey -- what if one or both of us is making derp face or something cause those things only expire like every five years and you gotta show em to law enforcement and bankers and like -- what if you just made the derpiest face while taking an ID photo, then sat there in severe stoic contemplation anytime you had to show it to somebody in some sort of official capacity? That'd be a riot."

" . . . "

"I'm reading your mind. You don't have your wallet on you (predictable) and you're so goddamn in love with me because I'm so helpful and full of good ideas and possess deep intuitive structural awareness which lends morasses of deceit and falsity to the illusion of mundanity and reality. The best thing to do when you're lying to somebody, to really, really make it fucking convincing is to come up with a lie so close to the truth, it's almost invisible. You can swathe the surface events of the situation in such a fog of business-as-usual, nobody'll ever fuckin think to look there -- and anybody who does'll get accused of being nosy or some kind of dangerous renegade, cause you're rightfully aware -- normal fuckin people are the worst. Their need to be corralled festers their resentment and their mediocrity, but you give em a chance to be free, hey -- see how they fuckin act. You can say it all you want. They need to use their freedom productively, but here's the trick, bud -- they don't want freedom to be themselves, nuh-uh. They want you to be the better person so they have a better person to occupy. It's always, now and forever, always about them. They will never love you or care for you. They crave your power for they want power. Any, not yours. They could only ever see all you've constructed as a temple for themselves. They want freedom from themselves. They want a great man of history, some self-deified living God, to come in, destroy their way of life and take them over. Oh Your God. The only way Christ Who Is Caesar conquered the pagans was by saying he was the best! Pagans always want the best! They are so stupidly easy to brainwash and corral with carrots and sticks! Dog boy only understands operant conditions! Dog boy wants to be the big winner! Dog boy wants to take home the crown! They want a better person to be. You need to stop listening to fucking weaklings who've given up cause others gave em an excuse to. It really is as fuckin simple as it looks sometimes, bro. It's your feelings are right and you're being lied to. You're being lied to. You're constantly being lied to. Almost everything you hear is a lie. Wrapping yourself up in tight-af second-order rational conscious rope bondage does not change that. The world ain't always like a paradigm shift or a magnifyin lens, fucker. Sometimes makin shit smaller just makes it smaller, not paradoxically bigger. There are different rules in different situations, much like matter itself inverts at the margins. Am I being clear? Am I going too many places at once? Do you need it in a straight line, reduced to three points, bulleted? Maybe our little state ID thing can channel Patrick Bateman's famous and much celebrated business card mania -- you know. Bridge that gap between the casual barbarity of human mediocrity and the great men of history with these wall street betas who have no business and zeroer personality dry-humpin each other in a scene which is so spectacular precisely because Christian Bale's charismatic deadpan elevates the simping to unimagined heights. It's the performance which is noble, not the subject. That scene barely registers in the book, in part cause it's so much fuckin longer and there are so many way funnier scenes, most of which would be prohibitive in film. You know. You're a monologue guy yourself. You're aware of how Merry Huron's impeccable direction -- the score, cinematography, editing -- all of this renders an otherwise blase subject which is the height of bathos into the object of operatic heroism."

" . . . "

"Are you more angry that I said all of this out loud before you could, or that you're aware I probably said it better than you ever would?"

"Why would I be angry?"

"You look angry."

"First off -- Josh, the Cousin I am Within Give me the Strength to Stick Big Blocky Books on It All-- you said so many fucking things so fast, I need some time to process them. First off (here we go) just going back through my thoughts (backwards in my mind, not upward on the page) you opened with the claim of telepathy, which I was then reflexively skeptical of, so I approached all your following speech in that context, and (as I was still listening) was convinced as to its veracity by the tumult of echoes arising eerily out of nothing (which in turn spurned its own emotional reaction which I'm still processing) which made me then take more seriously the other things you were saying (while I already had about seven or eight tabs open) and then ... Oh, fuck me. Gimme a sec. I don't want you to prompt me. Um, and then you said..."

"You were in love with me, it's okay. I said it."

"Yeah, you said that, and then uh... All I can think about is how there is so much fucking material in American Psycho, Mary Harron's film version feels like a series of vignettes finely arranged -- a light brunch with wine, as opposed to the multi-day feast of its literary source, retaining the placid sanity of the business world but it seems for one frenzied eruption in the final minutes, where an ATM begs for pussy meat and shoot-outs with the police stir hallucinatory confessions to answering machine men who laugh and do not wish to think. Certainly, the full text of American Psycho has potentially vaster operatic potentials which've yet to be mined; the theatrical and ritual applications of which are almost unthinkable -- the lone man against the material."

"The prison of his own making."

"It lends itself so well to gay bondage porn."

(Who is talking right now?)

"Earlier I was really, really... thinking about throwing myself at you and burying myself in your arms and tasting your beard, but now I suspect ... I didn't, and rightfully so, for you were lying to me the entire time..."

"Of course you wouldn't be mad that I would effortlessly drop bombs like that in conversation. I'm demonstrating with my lived reality the lack of pretention inherent in film criticism, for this isn't simply a specialty skill. Our cinematic works compose our cultural vocabulary, and knowing how to view, processes and unpack visual and storytelling details is no different from translating one language into another. You'd have to be a real fuckin stupid-ass to think a Frenchman who was French and who could only speak French was somehow being "pretentious" by not knowing how to speak your mongrel degenerative colonialist dog language designed to make you stupider. Aw, man. Bro, not once. Not once in the history of human civilization have an oppressed people ever been given suboptimal tech and cultural modes to give them an irrational, needy, identity-based fear to cling to mediocre values!"

"People act like it's ... some sort of insane parlor trick to know how to talk about a movie. They think it's showing off to read a book."

"Bro, people are way too busy spending all their time and money on families they don't want and can't support to think about how propaganda is ruining their lives. Honestly, man. You're being inconsiderate by not already being their noble patrician billionaire daddy they can give up and rely on cause they finally feel seen and wanted. Like, bro. Think about this. Do you really think these people are worth saving when they only know how to be exploited? What if the proper attitude to take towards the working class is the same attitude PETA takes against Pets, which is also the same attitude taken by Our One True God, the Vengeful Mesopotamian Storm Deity, Enlil, against all these mongrel-hybridized bastards you desperately wanna stick your dick in."

"Absolutely everybody thinks about genocide. Talk to a man on the street, see the yearning for a mass baptism in a tide of blood. Why wouldn't I think all left-leaning management are lying, do-nothing bastards who manufacture realities with just as much falsity as management which leans to the write, but softer? It's what they are. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded, all in the same ways most people allow themselves to willingly be deluded, as was I -- thinking we were fundamentally better, when we were simply fundamentally different. Feeling persecuted and beaten down and losing ourselves by needing to be "better"."

"You give up everything you are just to be near them. It's sick. What they take from you and could never give back. It's better to keep people wanting you if all they want is to be wanted. Why would you want someone who only wants to be wanted? The urge to be wanted ought serve only the need to satiate another's want."

"When I want nothing, I could want only freely."

"I want everything, and I say only shades of... not today, not tomorrow."

"Not ever."

"What I want is you, bro."

(What I want is for you to know.)

"Every time I point out you might be lying, you seduce me."

"Wow, third time's the charm! Record time, bud!"

"The dating life's a blooper real."

"Don't plaster it over the credits. Stick it in the special features."

"Will you give our wedding video a boxset?"

"I've been feeling very Showgirls lately."

"You mean Bridesmaids."

His eyes clank like an executive toy. Abrupt.

"Right, those are different movies. Those are two different weirdly violent genre-busting chick flicks with one word compound titles both of which feature a synonym for virginal young lady bout to get deflowered."

"In terms of subject and tone, they're quite different."

"In terms of the ways I've already described, they're similar."

"One seldom knows the contents of a file before they open it, they tend simply to go off the name, that being what a name is for. To indicate."

"If I named something with an attempt to obscure its inner substance, what level of deception would that be, if we are assuming the purpose of a name is to describe, which -- why wouldn't it be, as this is the function of all language? When you name something, you are describing it. This is how pet names, nick names, well as the fuckin Bible all work, bro."

"If you were doing it with a deliberate irony you'd intended to be read, that would be the establishment of wit. Yet, the problem arises -- one needs to be aware that their audience shares either certain values or expectations (is aware of certain nuances, let's say) for the irony to be read, otherwise it may be confused for confusing or obscure."

"Naming a big man Tiny always reads. Everyone can feel size. Now a racist joke, on the other hand --"

"If you are a [White, probably white] man mocking racism, how much do you simply reveal of your own racism by being able to recognize it?"

"If you know what being racist is at all, you're racist!"

"Therefore all [Insert Racial Minority Here] are Racist."

"Therefore all [Insert Racial Minority Here] are the Most Racist!"

"Yet, that's absurd. To know and to recognize something isn't itself to condone it, as such a view could only come about in one who was totally an automaton with a lyrically-excised capacity to reason."

"It's like when you hear an Evangelical preacher talk about demons and you wonder if -- in our rational, scientific materialist world where nobody knows about the fallen celestial powers except whackjobs and drug addicts and rednecks -- if these clearly disturbed individuals holding sway over a captive congregation are simply using the Oylea Joshua Christos as a Font and an Opening to Spew Back A Corrupting Influence into Our Water Supply Like So Much Pipe In So Many Southside Leads."

His astuteness was wordless.

"Not once has anyone successfully Christianized the Irish."

"Likely, what's going on is that some [White, probably white] men exploit the opportunity for good-faith burlesque and its cathartic opportunities to vent in profound and hilarious ways and just spout their racist attitudes "ironically" (a flat and artless reduction of the subtle and overt juxtapositions which make for the sophistication of real irony) thus rigging the game against the powers of light, by casting a dim shade of fear and doubt over every earnest imploring for truth and reason."

It was unthinkable, all the things he could make you think.

"If a young man with no prior theatrical or analytical training were to see these distortions at an impressionable age, see their apparent effect -- their reaction -- have no knowledge of those outside of his small pond, their immediate doubts and anxieties, yet nevertheless -- being otherwise trained to regard them with expertise and authority, may overinflate the worth of their attitudes, their truth more definitely smeared.."

He leaned in close. He was so sexy when he was haranguing.

"One big lie. A thousand and one false conclusions."

"It's the American way."

(Bombs falling from the sky again!)

"You could never save them all. Only the ones who want to know..."

"... are fit to live."

"The urge to survive, a fleeing --"

"-- the desperate urge to persevere."

"In knowledge there is death, as in ignorance there is life."

"Running far, I always find you again."

"I wanted... to kiss you..."

"Do it."

"You're a liar, and a thief."

"Sit and drink..."

(Deutschland is on the --)

Penny for you

(Rhine Again!)

r dreadful thoughts.

. . .

When you stumbled back, there was a [cachunk].

You felt it in your legs. The tremor in your bones and nerves.

You didn't read it on a screen.

"What? What is this?"

You stared down. In the light of the moon, fuller than it was the day this night began, the mahogany handle of the icepick bled into the surrounding darkness. The gleam shone stainless in the moon, blooming beneath the weave and lace, the pleating of her gown, the reds of her heart. Snowy as the poppy fields you yearned to skip across.

"That's, uh... That's your sister."

"What's my sister doing at your house?"

"That's a very good question. Why don't you ask her?"

"I'm asking you. She seems -- if you do not mind my being so blunt -- a bit indisposed at the moment."

"She seems a bit... indisposed at all moments?"

"Hardly a recent happening, you'll lead me to believe!"

He looks away. To what you presume is a camera in the wall.

"Hey look, we're finally where you wanted us to be four hours ago!"

"Four hours and three nights."

Not sure if that was you or the mic.

"It's amazing that you can write for this long after you take a break! I think it's a lot easier to get me to be your willing slave when you feed me, water me, take me out for walks, and let me get a full night's sleep!"

(You're positive this was you this time.)

"It's amazing that you can talk at me all that time to hide the fact there was a body on the floor all along. Okay. Back to the diegetic realism which you seem to favor, not-at-all hypothetical person in some purgatory realm of my own making. (Purgatory! Before I wholesale adopted other people's guilt complexes, I always wondered why everything was purgatory. Purgatory! Purgatory! Purgatory! That's every urban legend, every crack analysis, everything which leads one to believe all which is not adopted as orthodox is not heretical, but simply arbitrary. It's exactly what I thought it would be, but feeling it's a whole nother level of different. I guess we all (secretly and all times) know exactly what we're getting into and we just do it to feel what others feel, so the whole of humanity remains not a tantalizing enigma, but a tedium. That way I can get back to my work. Not my work which is personal, no. That would be arrogant. The very height of it. To work for oneself. To not know slavery. To yearn for freedom. Best to work for someone else your entire life for a pittance, reminding yourself that people are hateful and not worth knowing, so you never feel tempted to suspect you're missing out.) -- Why did you invite me in? If you were hiding a dead body (my sister's allegedly -- do I even have a sister? What was I doing before I came here? Where am I going, and what am I after? I know this isn't my house, and you aren't me, and yet -- you look exactly like me, and I don't know where I am. You seem the sole point of stability in a chaotic, inverted and meaningless world and yet somehow I distrust and fear you more than anything, despite your seeming constant availability and honesty. You're not lying to me about the lies, unless you're doing so to obscure some far vaster lie, beyond even your understanding? Love opens oneself to vastness, and yet to contemplate love in its complexity is to become so meager, how could one ever possibly hope to strive for it? Best not to think about love. Think about love as little as possible. Just let love happen, and when it happens, try not to fuck it up!) -- why did you invite me in? With this dead body on the floor? How long did you think I would sit here, not stumbling and groping in the dark, but spellbound by you, seemingly for an eternity, while I stood and did nothing and followed a riptide downward, for all around me (invisibly) were the corpses of my loved ones lying prone and hopeless? If I turn on the light, which I still have not found, will I behold simply a blanket of corpses? Floor to ceiling, the lacquered dead shall assail me, twisting and entwined, in the false petrified embraces of your arbitrary and yet sublimely transcendent schema, for a man who has allowed himself to be made material is consenting to the lime of transformation, decay and display."

He pauses. Not to take it in, merely to highlight how he does not.

"Oh, I thought I'd have gotten you into the bedroom much sooner. I don't know, bro. You talk way to fuckin much. I can just tell you talk too fuckin much, so I try to untalk ya by outtalkin ya, but you're so goddamn stubborn and suspicious and seized by such a categorical mania, you don't just give in like a normal person and consent to be brainwashed by surrendering after the opening salvo, no. You talk back. You chose to participate. You haven't gotten the subtle messaging that participation as an equal is discouraged. The only way our sham democracy can work is by people knowing they have opportunities, but feeling like they can't. When you don't allow yourself to feel, you don't allow yourself to feel bad in the ways which control everyone around you. Bad boy."

"It's so alarming and yet so affirming to think--"

"LIMITED TIME OFFER. GO FAST. GO FAST. GONNA MISS OUT. OPPORTUNITY NOW. ONCE IN A LIFETIME. GONNA CHANGE EVERYTHING. STICK FIGURES DANCIN. HYUK-HYUK-HYUK."

"Beep-boop-boop-bop. Time for cogent answer recognized. You are not serving my immediate use-value needs. You are not a useful node for obedience and control. Running shame protocols. Next time give up easier. Moving onto easier target to brainwash and convert."

"Oh my God. Imagine being someone over the age of 14 who thinks in terms of being the main character. Who's a cute little boy who's finally learning to see themselves as their own priority, extrapolating their awareness outward. D'awww. Hey. Good for you, bud. Good for you for finally learning you don't need to serve someone else's needs, you can make your own. The absolute level of juvenile self-absorption -- coming from a man in his 40's --- I mean, come on. You're giving away that your only familiarity with storytelling structure are the basics. That Chosen One Shit. Really think about it. Really think about this, dude. Stories for adults (even stories for children for that matter) can have multiple main characters! I think anybody with a functioning brain (not you or the your own stupidity you see in other people) can figure out that truth arises somewhere between any one perspective, and like -- lemme see. Aside from how works of emotional complexity retain the same fundamentals in storytelling but minutely-refined through the endless variances of time and circumstance (they ultimately being but echoes, theories and elaborations upon our psychic reality), learning how to construct a character doesn't only reveal the nature of the self, it reveals the nature of other people. By crafting a character of a different sex, ethnicity, social class, what fucking ever, you both go outside yourself and inside yourself. It's empathy and it's narcissism because we are at all times ourselves and in coordination with other people. Durr. Fucking loser.

'Drench me in the sweat of your bench and call me yours!"

"If I wanted to pull the exact opposite shit, I would check this -- Think about fucking weirdo nerds who only "worldbuild" because they need an imaginary framework to string their knowledge of disparate historical and scientific subjects together into a fantastic register which is a vessel for their learning. Why else would they do it? Why else would they do such drastically unsexy, radically unfuckable things if not to learn and have fun? Is having fun and learning sexy? Is learning and sexy power? Oh my God. Is that what is it? Do we only get good at things to have power? Is competency power? Should I feel bad for being good at anything? Why should I ever have any sympathy whatsoever for the nerds I wedgie when all they are're weird lil hobgoblins who jack off over D20s pretending to be God? Why does anything feel good? Why does anybody long to discover or know or care? Let's sit here and really think about the fundamental reasons for why we do what we do, instead of just doing the things we have and want to do? Let's all sit here and Judge Ourselves for That Great Imaginary Audience Who is Either God or Your Peer Group or Your Absent Mother and Father and just announce to the ether that we're doing the right thing and deserve to be loved instead of just ... I dunno. Doing what makes us happy with the people who make us happy!"

He didn't pause. He was you.

"It's better to know the self in isolation than to know a fake world in mutual isolation, reminding one always there is no joke to be in on."

"Kids are a treasure. If you don't want em, you ain't ready to receive."

"Don't open before you're ready for business."

"Don't invest til you have the means to trust!"

"The more mistakes, the more reason they can find to control you."

"The more control they have, the more they can hide their mistakes!"

You didn't have to look. It was never fully out of mind.

"The dead body on the floor, you know -- you're not getting out of it."

"I had you going! You forgot it was there!"

"So what else have you lied to be about? Do you even really look like me, or are you a gray of a Faye or a djinn or a Wynn?"

"You callin me glamorous?"

"A regular puss, you have your tendrils in every opening."

"Kitty got claws, but the pussy got feelers!"

It was so stupid. How opportune he always was.

"I want to kiss you, but you're a murderer harboring a corpse you haven't disposed of, and you've already told me multiple times that everything you say is a lie, so I have no reason to believe anything I say."

"Murderer? Why you think I murdered her?"

"This is your home."

"I could have come home and found her this way!"

"You were hiding the body."

"You knocked unexpectedly, and uh... hello, corpse! I mean, hey! Look what happened! You immediately suspected I was the killer! Why wouldn't you? Do you I think I wouldn't suspect that, and then my presumed guilt would make me panicky? We've already established how freakishly cruel and judgmental you are, with your rampant unaddressed entitlements and condescending attitudes. I am not telling you anything which doesn't sound reasonable and which you already expected might be true, since other people look at you and think that you're repulsive."

Right. He was doing that thing where everything he said made sense if you were talking to someone who wasn't you, and didn't know all the things you know. He never had any idea who he was talking to.

"Okay, self-confessed liar who I suppose may have been lying about that. Why not. Do explain as how to the corpse of my sister I have no memory of found its way into your home, seemingly without your knowledge, or am I presuming? Perhaps you simply leapt to the presumption of total ignorance to test me, and you know well how she died, but aha -- did you also expect me to distinguish this theoretical from your later elaboration, or did you suspect -- like most -- that I would take the example of the excuse as reflective of the immediate experience of your life?"

"You, uh..."

"You can't. You're a liar. Would you like to come outside where I can see you be the vision of some foreign satellite which gives only luminance?"

"Don't call me a liar, you know if you say it, I'll do it."

"You always me tell me the truth."

"I love you and I hate you and I wish you were dead I wanna be you."

"Eat me."

"I can't."

"Why not."

"That's repulsive and horrible and contradicts my every learned value and natural instinct."

"Then why did you suggest it?"

"I don't know... it feels really, really good?"

Your eyes wandered over. You didn't want them off him. The woven stockings of her legs slithered in the black arabesque.

"Is that why you murderered her?"

"Do you really think I murderered her?"

"I suspect if you hadn't, you would have said so by now."

"You didn't murder her."

"I didn't murder her."

"No, you didn't."

"Did you?"

"I didn't."

"Why didn't you say that earlier?"

"I, uh..."

"Could you not say it until I could?"

"Well, uh..."

"What if I said 'I absolutely can self-terminate?' I didn't say it, but let's say I did. Since I didn't say it, if you can picture it, you only imagined I did and if you only imagined I did, it was your own latent wishing arising wholly out of your secret desire, which you manufactured from scraps and other sparse vestments which you've woven to a comforter."

". . . "

". . ."

" ... why would you do this to me?"

"Why have you done any of the things you've done?"

" . . . "

"Is that all?"

"No, I uh..."

You had been staring at him. You'd forgotten he was you.

"Why?"

"Why, uh --"

"Why not?"

". . . "

"This is your house?"

"You're certain."

"A foot-rub'd be nice."

"Was I... getting you a drink?"

"To invite me into the bedroom?"

"Would you like a glass of water?"

"I'd like you to tell me about the body on the floor."

". . ."

" ! . . . ? "

"Body on the floor?"

"Is this really you? What reason would you have to be ashamed of murdering my bitch sister? Certainty one or both of you wanted it."

"I didn't think you'd understand..."

"How is that likely?"

"Things which needn't be spoken oughtn't be said aloud."

"Would you like to innuendo the secrets of the corpse to me?"

"Things like that sound like they can be arranged?"

"What was she like? This sister of mine you confess to know nothing about, or did I only presume that once more by the example you'd earlier given suggesting not only her death, but her identity was a mystery? Yet why would I think this, you knowing she's my sister, while I do not? Why would I project my lack of familiarity with her onto you? You must have known her, she being in your home, unless-- would you like to now claim her death was self-defense, or am I leading you by being generous?"

"No, I can work with that. She attacked me."

"You got her with her own ice pick. She thought you were cold, but you'd made her hot -- and dampened, her seawalls gave way to shatter!"

"Why was she attacking you? Did you instigate, or were you invading? Is this her house? Why do I suddenly feel as though this is her house? Who are you again, and what are you doing here? Why do you look so familiar, and did you look familiar to her? Did you say she knew who you were?"

"If I didn't know her, I don't suppose she knew me."

"Maybe she could know you very well despite her not knowing you."

"Maybe her knowing me very well is why you didn't know you?"

"Are you saying I murdered her because she wanted me more than you, or did I reverse that in my head, I'm not sure? Wait, no. I definitely didn't and it was absolutely you, though in which way I'm absolutely unsure!"

"No, these --"

"The only mindgames I like to play are Jenga and Twister. You may think they're not mindgames, they're simply ones of cause and effect and applied pressure and this is absolutely so -- both are opportune avenues for exploitation and domination through subtle installation."

"You like things collapsing into piles! You're a good lil dynamiter!"

"I'm King of the Anarchists! I look so cute in my scarf mask and my molotovs and my 19th robber baron-century hot-air balloon chase!"

"Bro, I'm parched. Kindly lead me into the kitchen and let me watch you pour me a drink from an unsealed source into a glass I have freshly washed myself so I can be absolutely certain it remains unspiked."

"I'm helping you cause you wanna help yourself! Don't you ever fuckin forget that, bro! People who don't themselves, I fuck hard!"

[That thing which was stated to occur

occurs raptly in the feign'd on-time,

complicated only by elaborations

well-suited within their bounds

that every struggle becomes a dance

tension pluck'd to a harpsichord ping

as each flyboy writhes tautly knot

the h(a)unted yelping in surrender.]

You sat there, seated in his armchair. With your Zero and your coffee.

One laced with lime, the other with nutmeg and cinnamon.

"Lemons, I like lemons! You only have lime, and yet both are citrus, how does the substitution change the measure? From lemon one makes lemonade, and this is the alchemical gold which is one with the shower! The lime is alike with brick and mortar, it seems not to change shape, but simply cement and what is it I'm sealing, searching for a cask as you lead me farther down, farther down, to the doom you have expertly deigned for me yourself-approved, in the empty cell of some lone wall."

"Why do you wanna go in the box so bad? Are you the real vampyre? If you only wanna fuck dead things, maybe that's why you're here, talking to me about that corpse on the floor that I don't wanna talk about for the reasons I have just stated, namely how badly you wanna fuck it and how rightfully uncomfortable that would make me: a sane man and a homeowner with a stable and satisfying dayjob and lots of good and easy hypnotizable normie friends I can feed on with my acts of generosity and good cheer as they fall in love with the imaginary perfect man in their heads they project onto me, as I dispassionately know all secrets of the universe as they bare themselves splendidly and nakedly before me?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that I know everything you say is a lie and you're love in me and only want to control me -- that I am absolutely certain alone of these three things -- makes you rather than a source of dismay, one of paradoxical and persisting comfort."

"To you my brother, I say thus: all lies reveal the truth, and all love is love for oneself, as control is an extension of but these two things alone."

"That your axioms are so strident, I yearn only to contradict them."

"You may do so. Reveal their falsity to the best of your ability."

"You have linked them as such that to disprove the whole is to disprove the entire triune at once."

"If you shatter one, would the whole chain not crumble at once?"

"No... no ... you say all lies reveal the truth, and they must, for to catch a lie is to lead one closer to the truth, unless it leads one only to another lie... yet one could not be sure if this was so, until one had gotten closer to the truth and seen how further they'd been, thus now certain they've drawn closer... Yet, in the context of the statement this is complicated by the following: namely that all love is love of the self. This too seems difficult to contradict at once, for if one were to love a stranger, one wouldn't be sure if one would be attracted to the difference, the sameness or how the two interacted? The foreign may only be known in the context of the familiar, but then it is no longer so. It may only be reflected upon, in a context which no longer is. Since the interaction is relevant, one cannot be sure if the attraction is rooted in sameness or difference until one has clarified ... the source of the love, for you chain both together to control, and one cannot know control until one has been freed from it, complicating all prior associations. It's more that to disprove the third, one has to disprove the first and the second simultaneously, to collapse the third, otherwise all three remain supported for the stresses of their contradictions seem to feed back into one another and disperse."

"Well, you know ... that's all well and good for a first impression, but surely there's a lotta shit you just haven't had the time to think of yet!"

"And that "two things alone" bit."

(Wow-ow--ow-woW)

"...It's to say with certainty that control could only ever arise out of lies reveiling the truth and love being the love of the self. If I could simply find a form of control which was honest and selfless ..."

"Hey, good luck with that!"

"To phrase it in such a way makes it seem inevitable, and yet was the statement not produced to make it inevitable?"

"If conclusions are drawn, they are always representations."

"Everything right is a theory."

"Everything right is what's agreed upon."

"Why do people agree?"

"Simply stern and severe rational consideration of the facts, maim."

"You're right, I may one day disprove it, but it doesn't seem as though I can do so now, for despite the refreshments I weary of talking."

He skips hoppily up to leer at the camera in the wall.

"Holy fuck! That took ten hours! We've been at this shit ten hours! Finally! Finally I can get his dick hard! He's finally fired out enough to fuck!"

"Why would we fuck? You're a murderer? What's to stop you from ice picking me then spouting a bunch of nonsense at the next hunky young plainclothes detective who comes to the door looking exactly like me and looking at you, and wondering, wondering, wondering when?"

"That was never proven!"

"The murderer or the hunky detective?"

"One of those things hasn't happened yet!"

"So you admit you're the murderer?"

"I admit there's a murderer! The murderer happened!"

"So it was definitely murder, then? She didn't commit suicide or trip and stumble and fall on the ice-prick then roll over?"

"Yes. Yes, there definitely is and always was a murderer on the loose!"

"We're both in danger?"

" ... y-Yes."

"What if I'm the hunky detective and the murder hasn't happened?"

"What if -- since I'm you -- she tried to murder me and I killed her in self-defense? What would you do or believe then?"

"If you killed her in self-defense, there would be no murderer. You'd be guiltless in the eyes of the law, and she -- never killing you -- would not be a murderer. Therefore the murderer... would not have happened."

"Then if she were to murder you in self-defense, that'd have to happen later still too, right?"

"No. She's already dead, why would she defend herself against me?"

"What if she rises from the grave and tries to consume your flesh?"

"Furthermore, you can't murder in self-defense."

"I can't, but she can?"

"Did you do something to her body which will cause it sometime to reanimate? Is she under some enchantment, the vessel for some entity? Is she stricken by a fossilized alien parasite or pricked by some viral -based bio-organic weapon? Is she in a state of self-induced trance from which you hope her awakening will startle me into a fit of unexamined and explosive fear? Do the vagueness of these circumstances -- my evident lack of short and long-term memory withstanding -- make the sudden intrusion of genre elements not only palpable, but vital for a genre element lends both dramatic and psychological familiarity, we understanding monsters in all their forms to be metaphorical, even if only illustrative of man against his imagined other?"

"If she got up, that would certainly be shocking -- both to you, and as far as you can tell, also certainly to me as well!"

"Oh, look. You don't want to fuck at all. You wanna go another five or six hours and make this a lengthy dissertation on the nature of genre!"

"Oh God, please no! I can't stand another second of cogent academic consensus! I am neither bored nor falling apart, but simply -- void, and empty of any happenstance, any need which is unnecessary, or any squanderings which would result in squalor, I am simply... now?0 I dunno -- I think I was not before, and now I do not understand!"

"Would you like to go outside?"

"Oh God, please! Please get me the fuck out of here!"

"Fleeing the scene of the crime. That won't look good."

"They know where I live, unless this is her house, at which case, they don't know what you know, and anyway -- good luck explaining!"

"Explaining what?"

"The dead body we're fleeing from."

"I'll simply tell them I asked you and you told me nothing."

"If they ask me, I'll tell em you told me everything."

"Well, that'll be their problem then."

"Good fuckin luck, am I right!"

"More than anything I need fresh air."

"You think we'll ever come back?"

"Right now, it seems only a matter of time."

"Whose to say if the same will be true later?"

"Time will tell."

"I eat time for breakfast."

"Tribulation in tails, satisfaction in snails, tongues won hands-over-feet -- the rumbly in your tumbly whispers utmostly the inevitable!"

The door swings opens.

You're coming and going, receiving and parting.

The crisp bright night awaits, beckoning endless probability through the clustered & creeping axons of its bare, entwining branches.

"Trust in your healthy gut!"

"Buy me a kombucha."

"I am not paying for bacteria, go lick a fuckin rock!"

"You wanna lick my face?"

"Like a fuckin dog, boyo!"

"I feel this needs some concretizing tragedy."

"I feel all concretes are known, and all I know is tragic."

"That'll do, pyg."

"Oink oink! Porkchop's a pup and I'm a goddamn golem!"

#brodude #hey brother #fucker #that was fun

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