#leigh.

“Well, of course you don’t, because you haven’t written it yet. I mean, is anything real before you write it, Steve? The things you write about are real, those people are real, their feelings are real, their pain is real, but not to you, is it? Not until you chew it up and you digest it and you shit it out on a piece of paper and even then it’s a pale imitation at best. You take other people’s lives and love and loss and pain, and you eat it, Steve. You are an eater. You eat it and you shit it out and then, and only then, is it real for you. Normal people’s lives are flesh and blood and muscle and bone, but not yours, darling, oh no! Your life is plastic -- you are a plastic parasite. A plastic hack, aren’t ya, honey? So of course you don’t remember how you healed our marriage or made our baby, because you haven’t really seen it, have you? You haven’t -- shat it out in prose. I -- I was always a supporting player in your story, if we’re honest -- I would feed you and fuck you and pay the bills while you squinted over some novel that nobody was gonna read or publish, but I paid you to write them, didn’t I? I picked up the check for your dreams and I said goodbye to mine and not even that was enough. Don’t lie to me, honey, I wasn’t real. If I was real, you never would’ve walked out that door, but I wasn’t, and you did. And now this one -- this... little one... she won’t be real, either. Oh, she’s kicking. Oh, she’s hungry. She must be an eater like her dad. If she is, my love, if she eats me from the inside, and I burst like a blister, will you lose your mind? Like your mother?”