#ihatevenice

 [a/n: i’m typing this out as it is with minimal embellishments cause i believe in the kino eye. so yeah, take it as you will, here we go.]

December 11, 2019

We were kind of fucked. Or not kind of—like super fucked. Extra large with nachos kinda fucked. I still feel kind of woozy from it all, like. It was kind of wild, kind of … unbelievable like. God, I’m still not over it. Should’ve known from the start really, since Galilei bopped down the staircase at the AIO in her too-expensive Doc Martens and bedazzled skinny jeans. That sounds random, but trust me it isn’t. Galilei’s not her real name, by the by, but she calls herself that cause that’s the name of the airport in Pisa and that’s where the gang met…. It’s stupidly sentimental, but Galilei’s convinced we’re bound together by the red string of fate or some jazz. Except the red string is like, livewire she says, binding the energy of our souls together. I don’t get it, but Galilei’s a cool name anyway I guess. Not that it matters anymore—and this is just between you and me, okay?—but I think it’s highly likely that she’s dead by now. And I’m not saying I called it, though I totally called it, but it was the Doc Martens that started it. It was a chill-ass morning, middle of April, leaves crinkling on the pavement all brown and musty like a buncha paper bags. I say chill-ass not because we were on spring break or anything, but because it was literally chill-ass. My butt was frozen to a stone bench in the middle of some random park on some random street next to this statue of a naked baby cupid in the middle of fucking Venice. I’d been sitting there all night. Why? Just ’cause—well, Galilei’d told me to… (On a side-note, it’s December now. Why am I talking about April when it’s December? Because I wasn’t anywhere near fucking close to dying in April, that’s why. Slow onset trauma response. Anyway I’ll get to why I’m recording this, that really isn’t the point right now, and it’ll become obvious later on so, like, yeah. Anyway.) So I was talking about the cupid statue. Man, I remember it real well, creepy little dude it was — creepier even than you’d imagine, to be honest, and I’ll tell you why, I’ll get to that, really...

Someone’d spraypainted black goggles onto baby cupid’s face. It seemed to blink, in this real unnerving way, and I wanted almost to spit on it to see if its stone mouth would open up to cuss at me. Pff. Anyway, I swung my bag on top of its head so I wouldn’t have to look at it, but I took a picture of it, just ‘cause I thought Galilei would find it funny. Though she finds literally everything funny.

(Long pause.) 

I hate Venice. Fucking, absolutely hate it. I wouldn’t stay here willingly if i’twere the last place on this planet that was fit for human survival. It stinks. There’s so much ... water ... everywhere. And there’s nothing to do, unless you’re the sort that likes drifting on gondolas ... or is into gondoliers, I guess, which hey, you do you. I won’t judge.  Anyway ... I get sidetracked a lot, goddamn. So I was waiting on the bench for Galilei, but Galilei was a no show, and I was getting really really cold and really really hungry and this close to taking a chomp out of fucking baby cupid’s head, so I decided to walk to the AIO and wait for her, maybe grab something to drink if some store was open at this ungodly time of day. So I started walking, only problem being that I didn’t know where anything was in fucking Venice, my phone’s pretty much a busted lung, good for nothing but sending and receiving calls, and I can’t read a map to save my life. That, and I wasn’t too keen on lugging my IV pole around and getting lost. So I did a half-hearted circuit of the area around the park, then gave up and called Thor. My old roommate. He’s a jackass. Or was. Or — I mean, but I’ll get to that. Thor was asleep. Well I mean, obviously. It must’ve been five a.m. He cussed at me when he picked up, but hey, at least he picked up. He asked me what the hell I was on, then before I could answer deduced it was Galilei, and that was the reason he hadn’t seen me since yesterday afternoon and that if I was fucked I really shouldn’t be calling him and expecting a clean-up party. ‘I’m lost,’ I told him.  ‘I bought you a damn map,’ he said. ‘Not to tack onto your headboard, but to use, you dumbass.’