#fr!!!!!!

1. 

"There has to be something wrong with you." Your mother looks at him across the kitchen table. He brought tulips. You can't tell if she's wearing her face or someone else's. 

"There's something wrong with everybody, mama." You've never called her that. Is that your mother? Is that his? You don't remember her hair being that shade, but your memory isn't what it used to be. 

"I hurt her on purpose." Sometimes it seems like he's grown more teeth and they're crowding into his mouth. They've gone sharp again. Wait, look at the flowers on the table. Carnation now. 

"So, you got a brother?"

He has two. Two and you've kissed both of them. You'll do it again. They know what your cunt tastes like. He doesn’t, he tells you. He never will. Because that's a place of rot, of death. But you wake up with a tongue inside you because he's between your legs again, practicing penance.

He must not mind blood. He must not mind decay on his tongue. He must taste his brothers. Maybe he misses them. 

“Where have you been, my love? My sweet girl. You left one day and you never came back.”

And you say 

Mama, I'm sorry, I've just been real busy. 

Busy doing what? Getting hurt? You're growing up, baby. I can't stop you from getting big. No matter what I do, I can’t. 

And you know, you know, because suddenly you're sitting on her side of the table wearing her skin and your son is holding some girl's hand. And she's looking at you and telling you that she hurts him on purpose sometimes. Because he asked her to, he begged her like a slut, and he’s so pretty when he takes himself apart in front of her. She knows what his blood tastes like. She wants more. 

Do you love my baby? Do you have any siblings? Will he leave one day and never come back? 

Do you love me on purpose sometimes or is it always an accident?

2. 

His cum tastes like mercury from a broken thermometer. Oranges with sugar sprinkled over them. Home. Wait. Wrong boy, same face. You got a little confused. It's understandable. You can't help yourself. You want to scoop out your insides and give them to him to eat. He'd do it nicely, if you ask politely. 

There are rules here, gorgeous. We weren’t raised by wolves.

3.

You’re leaning on the pool cue. You look like you did the first day, in your pretty little clothes, the flush of health in your cheeks. In this dream, you reached Baton Rouge. He meets you here. He’ll always meet you here. This is his favorite bar. He’s always here, he’s a regular.

“Need a partner?”

“Don’t know.” You wink at him. “Are you okay with losing?”

“Feisty.”

“This time, yeah.” You smile at him. You’ve got lipstick on. He wants to smear it down your chin. 

4.

“Why did you do that?” Your voice is small, gurgled around the blood on your teeth. He likes the way the crown of your head is wet with blood. 

“Why you think?” He stands in the doorway to the basement. You’re in the chair and you’re dead, but so is he. 

“Tell me, please. Tell me.” You hiss. “I love your voice.”

“I missed ya’.” He hears the words echo in his head, fifty feet high in neon. 

“I thought I would give it a try again, you know.” Your voice is a dirty croak. “Just to see.”

“And whatchu find out?”

“We always end up back here.” You smile at him. “You took a different road this time. I haven’t been there in a while.”

“Didn’t notice.”

“You know, we got a hotel room up in the city once. I made you buy me wine.”

“Sounds nice.”

“I was hoping this was the one where we walked on the boardwalk. Before.” His initials trickle down your arm. “I don’t know why.”

“How many times we been down here?”

“Couple times." You hiccup out a laugh. "I like your shirt. You look good.”

“Night, baby.”

5.

He's fucked you or you've fucked him. He's not sure where the ache is coming from or where it's all supposed to go but someone can't sit down. There's a bag of peas in the fridge. 

6.

You’re a tableau of gore, blood soaked through your nightgown. Your head sloshes unevenly on your shoulders. He can see the window through the shotgun blast in your eye. It’s dark out there. You clasp your hands and hum, busying yourself with the stove. You leave muddy footprints on the floor, the bottom of your nightgown sodden. 

He sinks to his knees in the kitchen. You thread a hand through his hair, tugging his head up to look at you. Dripping with murky water, leaving parts of you everywhere. 

“Where are we?”

“Heaven.” You smile at him. Blood drips onto his face. 

“How long we been here?”

“I’m not sure.”

Are you cooking tonight, baby? Are we having peas, am I having you, down my throat and inside me and in my blood? Are we going to bed again or are we going to church? There’s a hole in your head and I’ll fuck it. I’ll fill you up because you love me. Because we’re having a baby, mama. We’re having a baby! I’m gonna be a daddy. You’re sitting in the waiting room and you’ve had the baby and I’m showing you pictures of him at baseball practice. What are you making? Let me help. Please. 

“You ain’t never gonna get tired of this?”

“Of course not. Never. I love you.”

7. 

You sit in an apartment living room. There’s Halloween decorations still up—it’s May, isn’t it? and a collection of half-eaten takeout boxes on the coffee table. Lazy fucks. You can hear the city outside the window. Where are you again? Does it matter? You look into the bedroom. They’re playing a card game. 

“Lick your partner's boot, yay or nay?” 

“Gross. Nay.” The version of you on the bed wrinkles her nose. “Question time. Where did we meet?”

“Uh. Huh…uh.” The him on the bed screws up his brow, sticks his tongue out in mock-confusion. He looks out at the living room, grinning. “Ya’ know this one?”

“House party.” The Him you know leans into the bedroom, resting his head on the frame. He’s bleeding from the back of his head. You shot him. There’s no exit wound. That’s your blood. “It’s a fuckin’ dump in here.”

“Bingo!” The boy on the bed folds his fingers into the shape of a gun. Taps them on the girl’s forehead. She’s wearing a t-shirt they bought in some backwater town last year. 

“You can’t do that! I don’t have a phone-a-friend! She won’t even talk to me.” The you that sits on the bed has chipped nail polish. She’s pouting. And suddenly he’s kissing her, and the cards are slipping off the bed. 

“Are you ever one of them?” You ask Him. 

He shakes his head. 

“I’m always out here watchin’. I dunno who the fuck that is.”

And he asks you “Which one do you want?” while you’re reaching for the knife in the kitchen and you want to say him, because you can hear them fucking in the other room and she’s giggling. They went on vacation and he drove. He had his keys, you guess. She’s giggling and there are flies buzzing around the takeout and suddenly you guess that this might just be a dump anyway. He’s right. He’s always right, except when he’s turning down the back roads. Then he’s left. 

If you could find your fucking keys, we could get out of here. You stupid fuck. Please kiss me again. 

So you tell him “Her.” and he presses himself against your back and you ache because you aren’t full, you aren’t hurt. He hasn’t actually fucked you yet. It might be another thousand years until he does again. 

Where were you at the party? Which room did we meet in? Did you fuck me in the bathroom? Did we ever go on that trip? I’ve got questions, please, please, daddy. Haven’t I been good? Don’t I deserve to know? Why don’t we ever wake up as them? Why do I have to listen to him fuck her? Why is she laughing? 

“Don’t make us wait all fuckin’ day!” The him in the other room calls out. “The next card is voyeurism!”

“Yay or nay?” 

You eat the rest of the chow mein. The maggots taste like love. 

8.

Your son calls you by your name. You haven’t heard it in years. 

Daddy’s a photographer, baby. He takes pictures of weddings. He takes pictures of the sky.

“I found more in Pa’s drawer.” He chokes around air, his words coming out in watery gulps. He stares at you through your eyes. You see him without seeing him. You see yourself.

“What were you doing in there, baby?” You hear your voice behind you, curled beside your ear. It comes from the door and the window and the wallpaper—and then deeper still, in the core of the house, bleeding.  

“I was lookin’ for a gun.” 

The floor underneath you splinters and you bottom out. You’re in the caverns snaking under the town and the church pews. You’re not in any of those places, either. The fuzz of television static is back, crowding around you and pushing you between the jagged hopping of the lines as they jitter around your skull. 

“Baby.” You gather him into your arms, pulling him into the crook of your neck. He sobs. His grip is too tight. You’ve been here before, but never like this. The static hisses into glittering points of light. The front of your dress is soaked with tears, with the blubber of drool from his mouth as he babbles that 

he didn’t know why he did that, because daddy always keeps his guns in the living room, and he knows that, but he went in anyway because maybe he’d forgotten this time—

Your lightning bug boy with baby fat still in his cheeks, skimmed off the edges to make room for a face that began and ended with you. Half-man already, limbs too big for the space he occupied. The remnants of the boy on the roof, a bruise blooming on his cheek. Your heart walking around and growing teeth. 

—and maybe maybe mama, I could. I could. 

I know how. 

“Baby. You gotta go put all that back.” Your voice is a whisper of smoke above the treeline.

“How long you been here, mama?”

You can see yourself on the set of drawers over the top of his head. She smiles at you.

9. 

You're at the top of the ferris wheel and you ask him if you can stay here. He tells you that you're stupid, that if you stayed here you would die. You're too high up. Eventually all the air would go out of your lungs and the amusement park would fall out from underneath your feet. You stupid slut, take it, choke on it, choke on it for daddy. Keep calling me that, I'm gonna come. Fair season is ending. Everything's gotta end eventually. Except for this, right? You celebrate the harvest, you tuck a cigarette in his back pocket. For luck, for love. If you stayed here, maybe you could see past the top of the trees. Maybe you could see the smoke.

Are you trying to fucking LEAVE me, baby? 

Don't leave yet. 

Hold your breath. I like being up here with you. 

10.