#wlwwriting

...when you’re having a bad day and you need her.

You’ve been having many bad days lately; bad weeks. Unhappiness in your current situationship, the overwhelming pressure of trying to keep everyone else afloat when you’re drowning.

Yet somehow, tonight was the worst of all nights. Tonight was a night where you almost wanted to throw in the towel.

She knew you needed her, because she showed up on your doorstep with a bottle of wine, a pizza, and the most beautiful breathtaking smile. Her voice was soft, her gaze warm; “Got time for a friend?”

You always have time for her.

You curl up on the couch together. You talk over pepperoni pizza and cheap yet amazing boxed red wine. You confide in her about a stressful week involving work and family shenanigans, and she too confides in you about a stressful week involving work and chaos in her own personal life.

And then you share a look. It’s the look that makes your heart race. So many unspoken words; a wish that things could be different, another confirmation that in a parallel universe you two would be together.

But in this universe, it’s just you two in this moment: two friends, sharing a pepperoni pizza and cheap boxed wine.

And then her slender ivory hand curls around your cocoa skinned fingers, thumb brushing over the chipped grey nail polish as she whispers; “Love you friend.”

You know what it means and she knows it too. It’s innocent to outside parties, but between the two of you - within your hearts - you both know.

Taking my medication, I mean, not really.

Can you even tell the difference?

Who do you like better?

Who is funnier? Smarter? Quirkier? Sweeter?

Does she laugh like I do?

......

I want to hold you, like she holds you.

I.

I just want to be her.

I want to be me.

The me that people remember.

The one I don't.

“I just wanted to protect you,” she whispers, eyes glimmering with that sort of rotten regret. 

You don’t know how to respond to it. 

She has bodies. Cut up. Lathered down the stairwell’s gaping windows. 

It’s awning dusk. The glow hollows out the mansion’s darkness. 

And then there were none. 

You’re the last one. 

You stare at her. At her cheeks. Where once there were tears. When she’d sobbed at you, in the cell-cold rooms, pleaded so deeply the fortnight it became all too much. 

Please, I don’t want to die on this island, Ri, you know I didn’t do it, didn’t kill Jeanette Hackman. This fucked-up game, I-I’m done. We don’t belong with these corrupt fucks, Judge Finley that damned proven innocents to prisons, Leo Hudson that money laundered grannies to their deaths. You shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be here. We need to go before—

Elaheh doesn’t look at you with fear. A hazy light glistens in her irises. You think it’s the dusk. 

“This isn’t protection,” you whisper. “Why? They were just like—”

“No. They weren’t like us. We would’ve died.” Elaheh says. “They would’ve gotten us. Honest to god, Ri. This—” and she waves at the dead corpses, strewn about the stairwell, “—is just a preventative measure.”

Then again. Maybe it was always there. 

“How else was I supposed to save you? They were hardly innocent.”

It’s true. You plucked them from their hells into here for a reason. Corrupt lawyer here, rapist there, fucked-up fearmonger, another and another. Loose lips sink ships; paid vacations net damnations. It was easy getting them to come. 

Getting rid of them was even easier. You relished their deaths: chopping Michael Farrell’s fingers off, hacksawing Leo Hudson’s rows of liar teeth. Pasting together newspaper letter notes like a terrorist, left under their rooms, You’re next, do this or you’re dead, darling.

Your heathens scrabbled like pit bulls in a cage fight. Slinging blame, degrading into animals in liquid retrograde. 

On your island, you are god. 

Were. God. 

You didn’t think Elaheh would do it. You didn’t think she was—

Capable. 

(You were about to spare her, too. You were convinced. Elaheh’s lips quivered with mortal fear, the night she pled her case in your bedroom. They framed me for Jeanette Hackman’s death. I shouldn’t be here. No murderer would seem so terrorised.)

(Then her lips met yours, and you tasted tears, desperation, salt and need and nectar-sweet truth.)

“Which one do you think was the killer?” Elaheh murmurs. She swishes her knife around: the dusklight arcs with it, glinting a spotlight upon the bodies. 

“My money’s on the Judge. He’s got that crazy look in his eye.”

You have a crazy look in your eye, you want to tell her. You want to tell her it makes her that much prettier. 

“Or maybe it’s Risha Auborne. Would be a nice plot twist. One of the girls killing wendigoes in business suits. How good would that be.“

You’ve cut my game short, you want to say. You want to annihilate her, rend her flesh from throat. Strip of it. Bit by bit. You want to kiss her. 

The light in her eye is manic. 

You think the dusk was always there. 

(You fell for her for a reason, after all.)

“Or none of them,” you say. “Darling.”

She stills.

You still.

“Oh, Ri…” Elaheh’s lip splits open. “Fuck, that’s funny. Fuck.” She laughs. Cracked out, hoarse— nectar-sweet truth. “I won’t say sorry.”

Her knife thunks on the floor, a wet noise. 

It’s surrender. 

“Actually,” you whisper. “I have a proposition.” 

1. we talk about how our hands look after a full day of painting. how it looks when the colors mix and dance by themselves. How it looks when chaos dances and it decorates itself.

2. we talk about the way the air fills with smoke after a fire. lays a thick blanket over the city, trying to suffocate us in a warmth. like smothering a people could solve all our problems.

3. we talk about the way a tsunami will cleanse the land from decade old architecture. how it'll wipe out all the litter and fire hazards from streets. We ignore the lives and the memories it has consequently removed. similar to ripping pages clean from a scrapbook.

4. we talk about the way a worn pair of shoes looks so pleasantly out of place along a full row of sneakers. About the way the dirt and grime reminds of the struggles from back home.

5. we talk about the way it feels to come home from a war. of dodging fire from both your enemies and your neighbor. we talk about how it feels to be free from loud warning signs that never pay off and waiting for others that never go off.

What we *dont* talk about when we talk about love

• We dont talk about coming home. About falling into bed, with a laugh bubbling from the bottom of your stomach.

• We don't talk about how you grow familiar to a certain crooked smile, and the way a body curls wrong from the cold

• we dont talk about how there's a sense of lightness that washes over us. how we sometimes we dive a little deeper, a little longer than we shouldve.

• we dont talk about how... sometimes warm feels a little like to fucking much. how sometimes we'd rather a little cold. something a little less than smothering.

& look over your shoulder every time you turn a corner at night

look ahead if you're speeding down the highway

It's never about smelling the flowers anymore.

or about watching the sunset

it's not about playing the last song in your driveway

it's about *finally* getting home.

about finally being able to buy someone a dozen roses