#sample piece

Dear Love,

Not at all. Not at all. You told me yesterday, after a long day of school and work, that you felt lonely, pathetic, like everything about you and your accomplishments were nothing but a fuck up.

Not at all.

You work and have been working so hard. I will not let the world make you feel like trash. But if it does, then let me be the one to hold onto the things that you do that are so bright and wonderful. You've been working so much, and if mistakes mean you're a fuck up then just about everyone else is a fuck up, because no one has gotten away with living without fucking up at least once. You have been working this entire year, and you weren't just fighting this twisted public high school system, you were also, and still are, fighting yourself. I don’t care that all your superiors will only ever be good at pointing out your flaws. Whether administrative or not, they are people. And if I know anything about people, they are inherently wrong.

How could they be right? How could they possibly be right for believing in their system, in their work, the work that twists kids around like Play Doh, molding them with little plastic caskets to later be stored into formal categories, then tell us that they’re helping? People like you who stand in grey areas, who cannot be counted as one or two or one-half of a whole because a whole is too vague. People like you suffer, because you took to heart the lessons that made you as you are, uniqueness. You are special, because you were told that. And now the world is threatened, because you believed that.

I swear to God, to any god out there, that if you are a fuck up, then what is everyone else? Disease? Rotten shit or arsenic in water that we drink ingest and become?

You’re a mess, sure, but you’re not a fuck up, a failure, or anything equitable to unsalvageable and or worthless.

It’s not true and it will never be true. Never ever will it be true.

And you are your own world.

And it’s wonderful.

It’s wonderful and, God, is it difficult to see people say your world is flat, like when people thought this Earth was flat.

You’re a world in this vast, vast universe.

Never forget that.

Seven years. Six since her best friend and first love had gotten himself tangled up in her mess and killed. Five since she'd reconciled herself with what she'd forced his half-alive body to become. Four since she'd stopped beating herself up for it every day. Three since she'd forgiven herself. Two since she'd promised him, in one of his rare moments of lucidity, to find a way to make him whole again. One since she'd begun to lose hope. Though her life (at least by night) was rarely uneventful, Devin had fallen into something of a routine. Wake up, lead a few tours, come home for lunch and, usually, a nap, meet with a client or two, have dinner, run the bar for a few hours, take out a target, sleep, rinse, repeat. If you didn't count the fact that she killed people on a regular basis, Devin led a relatively normal and monotonous existence. Of course, life always tends to take unexpected turns just when you believe you're in a rut. This particular day was no exception to the rule...

Groggily, Devin woke from her afternoon nap and headed out to meet with her next client. She wasn't sure exactly what the being was, but it certainly wasn't human. Growing up, Devin had never believed in the supernatural; she'd never had time to indulge in such fantastical ideas. Her energies were spent learning how to defend herself from her step-father's advances, and in attempting to protect her mother from the same. Since she'd started on this new career path, however, Devin had come to not only believe in supernatural beings and circumstances, but to also involve herself with and in them on a regular basis. After all, if not for such beings, her childhood sweetheart would be all dead instead of only partially so.

This mysterious being offered her a hefty sum - nearly twice what she usually took in - in exchange for taking out someone called simply, 'The Doctor'. "Doctor who?" she'd asked, her curiosity piqued. "Exactly," her client had replied, to which she had no adequate response. The being explained to her that the Doctor was dangerous; that he got people killed as something of a hobby, and thought nothing of it, seeming to disappear off the face of the planet after causing utter chaos. Devin was uncertain. This being didn't seem to be 100% trustworthy, and Devin wasn't in the habit of killing out of mere spite. There had to be just cause. However, not wanting to get on this creature's bad side, she agreed to take the job, subject to cancellation upon further research of The Doctor and his habits.