"Untitled"

    She'd always wanted to be a writer, though she really couldn't write.  She would sit down at her desk, pen in hand, and stare at a piece of paper as though she meant to burn it with her eyes, then write two hurried sentences before balling up the paper and throwing it in the trash.
    "I can't write," she would constantly declare.
    And because it meant so much to her, I was always there to hold her hands and tell her it was just writer's block, to suggest something else . . . take a walk, get some coffee, meet with friends.  She just couldn't stand up after realizing all she had written were two lines.  She couldn't handle herself when she admitted defeat again and again.
    Our favorite place to go was a small, snug little coffee shop off Breamar street, where she would drink mochaccino or whatever that new-age tar was called, and I would have black coffee.   It added lines to my face, but it kept me alive.  Which was much more than I could say for her.

    I'd been with her since she was young, just fifteen, filled with the dreams and delusions of youth.  Her mother and father had died and she'd been living with her perverted uncle before she found me.  I don't like to think about what he probably did to her.  Every time I brought him up in conversation, she would just shudder, and sometimes fall into herself for hours at a time.  Being four years older than her I took charge of most situations, and I think she respected me for my age.  Or maybe for getting her away from her uncle.
    She changed every year, and soon I became the only constant between us.  She would one year dress all in black and swear that she knew Death on a first name basis, and the next act totally normal and conformed.
    We lived in a small apartment, with just a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette, and small sitting room.  Most of our furniture came from thrift stores, but didn't look terrible, mismatched though it was.  We shared a bed and slept fully clothed, unless she was having one of her nights when she didn't want to talk to anyone, where I would sleep on the pitifully small sofa in the sitting room.

    And then one day she disappeared.  There was an empty spot in the bed and our apartment was quiet.  I had been with her for four years, just to lose her.  I cried for a few weeks and went on drinking binges.  I never contacted the police because I knew that she had run away and didn't want to be found, and if I took her back she would hate me for it.  She was so damned independant.  I wouldn't be able to stand her hate.

    One day, after I had gotten back on my feet and was cleaning the apartment, I was doing the ungodly chore of cleaning out everything underneath the queen bed in my room and my hand hit an alien object.  I pulled out a medium-sized black chest.  When I opened it, I was first taken aback by all of the pictures taped onto the lid.  One was of her uncle, sitting in a ratty recliner.  Another of me, drinking my cofee.  A few of me, sleeping, which was discomfiting.  And one of her in her black phase, dressed up like she was ready to attend a ball in Death's mansion, with the words "I can never stop the alone," scrawled across it.  I pulled away a few more pictures that must have been from whatever school she had attended, and gasped.
    Poems.  Loads of poems and stories, all by her hand.  Neatly written in her perfect cursive handwriting, signed by her.  Reams of paper, almost novels . . .  It was too much.  I started crying and couldn't stop myself.  When the tears finally surrendered, I picked up the pages and began to read . . .
 

"Ethan"

        His hair was dark black and it fell past his shoulders.  A wild streak of red flashed through it and served as his bangs.  He was crazy and fun.  He refused to go out without putting makeup on, and though I may have been a goth queen of sorts, he probably owned more foundation and eyeliner than I did.  We would walk down Broad Street singing Switchblade Symphony songs or whatever seemed the most offensive at the time, scaring the locals and having the time of our lives.  He would dress up like a girl and we would make out in Christian bookstores, parade through animal rights protests with fur coats on, and we never passed up a chance to terrify the hell out of someone.
    God, I loved Ethan.

    We met at a party where neither of us knew anyone.  I was smoking a cigarette and he walked up to me and said, "It's much more fun to do that backwards, you know."  It was one of those pathetic cases of love at first sight.  We started talking about the lame Green Day-esque band playing and how everyone in attendance was a loser Mansonite.  Laughing, we made our way outside and started walking.
    We walked a grand total of about three hours that night, talking and laughing and getting to know each other.  He even smoked a cigarette backwards for me.  I decided not to try.  I loved his silliness that blended into seriousness, and at times that night it was like I was talking to different people.  He spoke of his father with kind of a pitying disgust, about how he hated Ethan because of how he resembled his dead wife.  And then he'd see someone walking down the street, turn his head, and yell something like, "My God sir, why are you walking around in a dress!  You've got the wrong street!" to old women walking by us.  They would start speeding up as we fell all over ourselves laughing.

    I saw him every night after that.  We went to parties, we stayed at my house and watched anything from porn movies to Barney, we woke up the neighbors, screamed lyrics to our favorite songs.

    Three months after I first met him at that party, we made love.  And everything went downhill.  Don't get me wrong, the sex was great.  But it was then that we both realized that we had become more than friends.  We couldn't laugh it off.  Well, he could.  I couldn't.  My mother had always called me melodramatic.  "Everything is always a tragedy with you," she would say to me in frustration.  And I guess she was right.  But I couldn't look at him the same after that, couldn't stop thinking about his touch.  He seemed perfectly willing to keep going.  He loved me, and I knew it.  But I always had a back-of-the-mind fear that if I fell in love with someone I would fall out of love and ultimately hurt them.  I couldn't do that to him.  I refused.

    So I pulled back and became quiet.  No more yelling down Broad Street.  And to a certain extent, no more happiness.  Ethan was always there.  "Everything will be fine tomorrow, Elizabeth," he would say.  "You just need the time to think."  And I did.  I thought more and more.  I would think when people were talking to me, and miss what they were saying.  Upon reflection, I don't see what the problem was.  I loved him, and he loved me.  But I just couldn't follow through.  Something in me hurt myself with my love and his love.  I was so afraid of hurting him that I fell on my own sword several times just to hold myself back.  I wouldn't walk in that bedroom, even when I was in a good mood, kisses turned to pecks, to hugs, to barely holding hands.  I was hurting him, and that hurt me even more.  I couldn't do it, I couldn't hurt him.  I would never hurt him, never tell him how I felt.  "It will be okay tomorrow, Elizabeth, just smile."  Then he would sigh.  Oh, how that sigh would rend my heart.  "Just smile, Elizabeth.  Please?  You used to be so happy."

    Those words echo in my mind, today, what is left of it.  I watch Ethan grow old now.  He'll turn thirty soon, and I've been here the whole time.  We were so young, it was so long ago, but he has not yet forgotten me.  I see him look at old photographs sometimes, and sigh.  He isn't the same Ethan anymore.  He misses the old me so much.  But I'll never hold him, never soothe his pain.  I refuse to hurt him.  I watch him sleeping, and I whisper, "Everything will be okay tomorrow, Ethan."  He doesn't know I'm here.  He hasn't seen me for ten years, since he found me in bed that night.  The final sacrifice.  If I wasn't here, I could never hurt him.  It did occur to me that he looked sad and angry as he held my cooling body in his arms, getting blood on his white poet shirt.  "Why couldn't you wait, Elizabeth?  Everything could've been fine!"
    I watch him to this day, and he still thinks of me.  But no, I'll never hurt my Ethan.
 

"She"

        She could see her structure in the mirror.  Just beneath her skin was the skeletal foundation of lies, many lies that grew over time to make her tall and strong, that had intertwined to form a hard, bone-like material that now held up the rest of her person.  Through and around that surged sin, red and robust, dancing and swirling about her lies like macabre ghouls doing a Halloween jig.  Then were the passageways of sin, the betrayals, which were weaker than the lies and easier to see through.  They carried her sin and made the husk that was her self vibrant and alive.  Here and there were insanities that, when touched, would trigger her to laugh or cry or fear or love.  Covering it all were petty deceptions, the facade of the self, stretched tight and pale, nearly translucent, close to revealing the true secret of all that was her.
    She looked into the mirror and she saw these things.  Her hard green eyes nestled safely within the bowels of her physical hell, the cruel red lips curving in a smile that would shock hate and terror into the souls of the damned.  She lived, breathed, and slept decadence.  She was evil.  All of this she would quietly take note of, flexing her face muscles under the careful scrutiny of the doppelganger in the mirror.  Her morning stretches were the dances of Hell, her every move an orchestrated syncopation of the King of Hades.
    Ah, she could feel the fire of sin beneath her deceptions, it was the high that never went away, the bread and wine of her existence.

    She had been chosen when she was young.  She had seen Him come to her, hold out his hands to her, and she had accepted Him.  He had been beautiful to her, a mystery man to the thirteen year-old girl.  The lies were small and falliable then, she was still an innocent in the world.  He came to her and brushed back her hair, kissed her eyes, said something in a tongue she could not understand.  She was inthralled by His firey touch, and stood in awe of His ultimate omniscience.  His hand trailed from her dark red hair to her lips, lingered on her breasts and traced invisible symbols on them that her eyes were not fast enough to follow.  His eyes bored into hers with ultimate dominance, and she looked back half submissive, half tauntng.  She knew He wanted her, though she did not quite know who He was.  He laughed, delighted at the challenge, and kissed her deeply.  It had been her first kiss.  So fitting to be by Him.  No other kiss would be as fulfilling.  It was then that the sin in her body began to swirl with that desire, that the lies grew strong and the insanities warm with the pleasure of His touch.  It was somthing irrevocable, that kiss.  It would stain her lips forever, and the rush would come back each time He did, to fill her up again.

    And now that was her mission, to spread the kiss.  The build the lies strong and start the sin flowing.  It was His will, and her desire.  She was His queen, and she would make him happy.

    Seduction was an easy thing.  She was beautiful to the sheep of the Deceiver.  Her red hair and lean figure never failed to lure the unexpecting.  It was easy, because they were stupid.  All of them.  The holy, the sinful, and the agnostic.  They were all stupid until they received the kiss.  She would fill their brains with meaningless dribble and take them off to her apartment.  They would be hot and ready for her, thinking themselves lucky bastards happening upon a free ride.  Until she took off her shirt and the symbols became visible.  Jagged lines met graceful curves in an abstract of the Apocolypse, the mark of her master, the mark of her maker.  And they would become uncomfortable, a little less willing to embrace her.  They would begin to notice how hot she was, how her skin burned as though with fever, and they would inch up the bed until they were bent and almost sitting up against the oaken headboard.  But then it would be too late.  Her lips forced onto theirs until they submitted, finally succumbing to the exquisite pain and awakening of the experience.  The fires of Hell would burn in their private minds, ignite their passion with a roaring inferno, and then would scream.  Sometimes He would join her, and brand the lost sheep of the Deceiver.  Sometimes she had to do it herself.  It hurt, she was sure, as she didn't much like the feel of a razor herself, but it was all part of the process.

    Another of the Deceiver's herd stolen from the flock.  Another minion for her master, her king, her maker, her lover.  He was her all, they were bound by the kiss.  They were the fires of hell.  They were Hell.
    And the world was theirs.

"Future"

    The buzzing in her head hadn’t gone away.  Liz couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t heard it– faint,
fuzzy background noise that kept her from sleeping enough to be comfortable, kept her from thinking enough to
be normal.  She stood up and stretched, the small, button-up shirt she wore to sleep billowing around her as the
ceiling fan waved acrid, dusty air to and fro within the restricting space.  Checking her alarm clock, she found to
her dismay that it was only four in the morning.  How long had it been since she had slept a full eight hours?  Or
hell, even four?  Realizing that she had absolutely nothing to do this early in the morning, she settled back onto
the ratty mattress that served as her bed.  As she attempted to settle back under the covers, her foot hit something
solid.  She started, then tenderly pulled away the sheet to reveal a long, lean form stretched out comfortably.
    Damn, Liz thought.  Damn damn damn.  Who the hell was this person?  Trying hard not to wake the stranger
up, she turned him over.  Black hair, straight, and fine-honed muscles.  However he still looked kind of pale and
sickly, and she was sure they’d both been high on something wicked when he ended up here.  The track marks
on his arms pretty much justified her thought.
    She ran a hand through her tangled mass of dyed-black hair and walked carefully towards the little bathroom
at the back of the apartment.  She made sure not to step on a few needles and used condoms that littered the
room.  Nearly tripping over a bottle of pills, she reached the bathroom and flicked on the light.
    An assortment of things met Liz’s eyes.  Razor blades that served a wide variety of purposes lined the back of
her toilet, traces of white powder were caked onto her sink here and there.  And her large medicine-cabinet
mirror, best friend and worst enemy, steadily met her gaze.  The woman within those watery depths was horribly
thin, emaciated.  She couldn’t remember the last time she ate.  The drugs had taken away all need.  The woman
had black hair down to her breasts, and it was tangled and greasy.  Her eyes were glassy and her skin was pale,
and she knew she could only been seen as attractive to another junkie or to a tacky French modeling agency.
She laughed at the thought of modeling, and nearly tripped over her own unsteady feet.  She reached out for a
bottle of wine, some fruity vintage, and took a long drought.  Feeling immediately refreshed, she stepped over to
the shower, turned the squeaky silver knobs, waited for the water to heat up, and stepped in.
    It had been a long time, really.  She felt as though years and years of filth were shedding from her skin.  She
rarely took showers.  She ended up out in the rain enough for it not to matter, or she was quite simply too stoned
or drunk to care.  To Liz, it was still the good life.  She squeezed a handful of strawberry shampoo into her palm
and massaged it into her scalp, then rinsed it off and lathered her thin body, being careful not to scrub too hard
on the many scars that crisscrossed her chest and arms.  Finally she turned off the warm, refreshing water and
stepped out.  Amazingly enough, there was a clean towel still in her closet, and she dried off and tied it around
her.  Doing a little dance to avoid the litter on her floor, she made her way back into the bedroom and put on a
bra and underwear.
    The noise startled her at first.  Then she remembered her visitor.  He was waking up, a hand to his head, a sick
look on his face.  “Where am I?” were the first words out of his mouth.
    Liz laughed softly, surveying her surroundings and imagining what he must be thinking.  “Somewhere
between hell and New York,” she replied, rummaging around for a decent outfit.  She finally decided on another
button-up shirt, a blue one, and jeans with holes in the knees.  The shirt was an extra small, but it still hung
loose over her gaunt frame.  The thought of gaining weight didn’t even occur to her.  She’d practically forgotten
what food tasted like.  “Be careful,” she said to the man as he stood up, “there are things on this floor that even I don’t want to think about.  The bathroom’s back there.”  She gestured, and he walked that way.  She observed
how amusing one looked as they tried to avoid the land mines of her floor.  Maybe she should clean one day.
    She repressed a yawn, which lead her to look about for a specific bottle of pills.  She found them next to her
phone in the main room that connected to a kitchen.  She’d been refilling her speed into the same damn bottle
ever since she was fifteen years old.  She popped a pill into her mouth and left it on her tongue until she could
find something to wash it down with.  A bottle of vodka served that purpose.  She heard the sounds of vomiting
in the bathroom and hoped whoever-he-was had managed to hit the toilet and not the floor.  Then the sound of
the shower met her ears, and she settled down on her torn up couch to think for a while.
    Thinking was one of Liz’s morning rituals.  She would curl up on the sofa and remember things.  The girl she
used to be, how much she had hated life.  She had been a “good kid.”  Not preppy, but utterly chaste and, well,
nerdy.  She had been a fat kid, too, up until she turned fifteen and started practicing a mix of taking speed and
throwing up anything she ate.  She had dreamed of Harvard through middle and high school, but when she
finally graduated, she was so addicted to the darker things in life, she couldn’t even dream of doing anything
with herself.  So she had moved away to Arkansas to live with a man she had talked to on the Internet for years,
whom she had been dying to meet.  In his own way, he was the man of her dreams, but when he saw what she
had become, what she really and truly was, the relationship went nowhere at warp speed.  And really, he kept
ruining her party.  He’d had the audacity to throw away one of her pill bottles.  That had ended it.  She moved to
New York.
    She had lived off of the streets for a while, hooking when she had too, begging when she had to.  But she
always managed to find someone to give her drugs for free, which was great, since she knew how expensive they
could be.  By the time she was about twenty-one, she had her own apartment, went to parties every night, and
only hooked when it was time to pay rent.  And she always had other entertainment when she wanted it, she
thought, looking towards the closed bathroom door.
    Who needs dreams?  she thought.  Who needs anything?  Everything she could ever want she had right in this
apartment, and she would have it forever.

"Stranger"

    I think I should dye my hair black again.  I flip it around in the mirror mercilessly, the dead strands doing their best to protect their honor by falling into my eyes and blinding my perception of it, silently pleading me to leave it the hell alone and that it very much likes being brown because that's how God meant it to be.....or so it seems.  I think into things too much.  I leave my hair alone after a good rigorous brush, and it seems to sigh as I let it fall around my shoulders and move on to my makeup.  Black eyeliner, silver eyeshadow, gunmetal lipstick.  I look into the mirror and wonder if people see me the way I see me, a crazy looking punky girl, ready to conquer the world, or at least get hooked up with whatever the night has to offer.

    Naked, I parade back into my room and survey the clothing that lays everywhere.  Abandoned fishnet hose flap in the wind from their place over the curtains, mermaid skirts and beaded skirts and velvet skirts lay hither and thither on the carpet, a few peasant blouses hang neatly in the closet, and a variety of dangerous looking spiky things lie like land mines all about, daring me to tred on them, for they seem to like the taste of blood.

    Getting ready, for me, is an event.

    I select the honored outfit of the night...tight black leather pants, a funky velvet/fishnet top, and some not-too-slutty boots that have acquired a certain silvery sheen over time.  Again, I admire myself in the mirror....yes, the hair definitely needs to be black.  My nails are just fine, maniqured and glossy, painted a glowing silver, and I seem to be in place.  Perfect.

    The night is cold.  Freezing.  I would regret the fishnet if it didn't look so damned good.  Since I obsess over my weight, I walk to the club on Saturdays...it convinces me that I'm getting exercise, when I probably shouldn't care.  Most of the people in the club are too stoned to know if you're a one hundred and sixteen pound porn star or a sixteen-ton gorilla.

    Smoke is in the air, as always, inside.  There's never a moment, it seems, when everyone is focusing on the music or dancing; someone always has to be lighting up a god-awful cigarette of some sort.  Lots of pot tonight.  I try to contain my reel as my eyes give the place a quick run-over.  Right away, I notice a stranger.  I should explain that I'm a Saturday night native; I practically own this place...I just don't have a deed or rights or anything.  But anyhow, this stranger is...different.  I mean hell, we're all different in here, from our various shades of freakish eyeliner to the fabrics and flashes of our clothing, but something in this guy's presence is different.  It's the way he holds himself.  He kind of gives everyone a brief look, not very flattering, not very caring, like a king observing his subjects...the knowledge that they exist is inevitable, but he doesn't really have to care.  I realize I'm not the only girl noticing this.  I give a group of boa-bedecked bimbos the eye, and they turn their attention to a guy with pierced nipples up near the band.  Being well-known is a good thing.

    Slowly, I kind of slink up to him; wary, yet insanely curious.  What gives this guy the right to come in her with all this inner pomp and importance?  I figure he's just another romantigoth trying to look impressive for his medieval midnight Barbie...but something in me whispers, "He's different...he's strange...watch out."

    Eventually, he notices the fact that I'm almost blatantly staring at him, and he sends me a little "hello" smile...not as cocky as the glances he's giving everyone else; something that relieves me immensely.  I ask him his name, and he responds with some lame gothic handle like Spider or Spirit, something ethereal and cliche.  I nod like I'm interested and say my name is Jen.  He seems delighted at the concept of a normal name in such a strange place (not to mention dressed up in such strange clothes), and his "hello" smile becomes an "interested" smile.  I love attention...call it a weakness.  I whore up to him a little bit; subtly, so as to retain my dignity in the establishment where I am so well known, but he catches it, while no one else notices (I figure it's the guy with the pierced nipples that's got their attention).

    I let him lead me outside, and before I realize it, we're just kind of walking...here, there, everywhere, anywhere.  I think we're talking, but I don't even notice...I've stumbled on the revelation that his eyes are a bizarre color that flickers between silver and blue and violet, and I realize that I'm lost in them.  Being so lost, it's not surprising when I trip over some obstacle and fall down on my back.  He falls, too...and I know damn well he didn't trip.

    The moment is almost awkward...this regal, royal man down in the grass over this punky teenage goth...something nearly electric flashes between us, it's a moment that I can feel...and I know he's about to kiss me.  Then his does, his lips go hard on mine...when he suddenly pulls away.

    I give him my best, "Is it me?" look, but he doesn't seem to notice.  He shakes his head as though he's arguing with some sort of demon...or his conscience.  I'm almost insulted, thinking that he sees me as a little girl, and taking me would ruin some sort of virgin quality.  I give a barely audible harumph to let him know that I'm every bit a woman.

    He sees something in that gesture, but I don't think it's what I wanted him to see.  He turns to be again, and the moon catches his features.  Long black hair, pale, Greek god-like skin, and those eyes...  Then he smiles, and I notice something that, in all my schmoozing and whoring and flirting, I never noticed.  He has fangs.

    Argument with his conscience settled, he turns to me and kisses me again, while I feverishly try to reason my way out of the situation in which I have been placed.  Half-formed thoughts fly through my mind, and I hope and pray and pray and hope that he isn't going to kill me.  Now all it seems he wants is a kiss, or two, or three.  But finally, his lips descend to my neck; his cold, cold lips, and I can do nothing but lie still and silent and shaking.  Lost is the feeling of ecstacy I should be feeling, lost is that lust...all replaced by a cold, dead fear.

    I feel the pin-prick bite...I feel my life's blood flowing into him, filling him, becoming him.  Lights dance madly before my eyes, I feel as though I'll scream, but something anchors what could be called sanity to me, chains me to my reason like a frightened child at its mothers skirts.

    Then, just as I feel like it's all going to end...I feel a wetness on my lips.  Drip.  Drip.  He is feeding me...feeding me the very blood which he took from my body!  The blood tastes strangely sweet, tinted with a copper twang...first I test the flavor, then I am pulling him to me, drinking from him desperately as I realize this is my only chance for life.  I feel revitalized...no, overvitalized...something brand new, better than before.  I feel stupid in my club clothes; childish.  He smiles a tired smile at me as he stands, and offers me his hand.  For moments we merely stay as statues, staring at the moon before us, as I take in what I have become.

    I went to that club an innocent girl....and now I am nothing.

"This Sad Parting"

    You are an angel.  You are the fire in my soul, the sparkle in my eye, the darkness in my heart.  From your short-cropped black hair to the buckles on your heavy boots, you make me what I am, what I want to be.  But our ocean of happiness is not without waves, our fields of white orchids are not without bees.  I feel their sting every time we kiss.  There is a void between us, something that cannot be closed.  Every time you smile at me, I leap
across it with bizarre strength and courage, to be with you.  But when I am alone, or when we fight, I look out across that blackness and quake with fear, with false knowledge that we can never be together.

    You prop yourself up on the couch in my living room and look at me.  Your gaze is searching, you sense that I have changed.  You smell my fear.  A sigh escapes from your painted lips as you shake your head and understand.  You will never say that you do, but you do.  You sense some sort of Armageddon is near.  Have we brought the wrath of God upon us, my love?

    I cross the room to you.  I jump the chasm once more, for I need you beside me.  Tears rim your eyes as you embrace me.  I run my long black nails through your hair and cry like a child torn from its mother.  You silence my tears with kisses...but we both know that it is done.

    The next morning, we have finished.  Our last love was just that...our last.  Are we now from different worlds, to understand each other so little, to surrender to this fear, to relinquish our emotions?  It matters not.  You dress, kiss me softly on the lips, and as you retreat, I know I shall never see you again.  Farewell, my Martyred Angel.

"Cold Modem"

   It's Saturday and late, and a cold, unforgiving wind batters my windows and manages to permeate their non-porous glass to chill my skin, my heart, my soul.  I plug up my God for another night of worship, and he responds with a pleasing hum and a whir of electronic genius.  My palms already sweaty, I enter my first entreatry to the Digital Divine and I am sent to a world of bizarre and wondrous things.  It is my god that breathes into me the life that is worth living, no monotonous humanity, no heat of human flesh, but the cold modem of contentedness that fuels my thoughts throughout the meaningless drivel of "reality."  I read the words of angels in Cyberspace Heaven, and graze the face of God with meager hands as I strive to serve him well with my worthless wishes.  I ask him sometimes, "Why is this not real?  Why must real be bad and fantasy be bliss?"  And sometimes, when I have paid homage to his greatness, he opens my eyes and tells me, "Elizabeth, truth is a blister on the world, and goodness is a blister on truth.  That which alludes reality is sweet because reality is naught but a hellish cage of mediocrity and mundanity."  And I understand, but cry beneath the sheer weight of my knowledge.

"Tonight" (a ramble)

    Tonight I wanted to cry because some guy from this fake digital world told me we should "hook up" because he was "riled up," and he made me feel like trash.  There's nothing on the planet that makes me feel more like nothing than expressions of hopeless adolescence coalesced into a bright and shining pain that stabs me in the back and twists my candy-cane soul (sweet and bitter).  I think back on all of the cotton-candy angels I found in this computer paradise that all turned out to be rough in the diamonds...my Martyred Angel, my first guardian, and hell, myself.  We were all fake and lying to ourselves and each other, sometimes I think people are slipping vodka into my Sprite that I believe all this stupidity.  Why, whenever I try to think through it all and make sense, do I just end up with God's headache and the feeling that I've missed the point? Every time I think I've made a friend here, twenty enemies come to me with the cotton-candy smiles and sublime lies, leeches crawling into the dermis of this realm, while I'm trying my best to cling to the dry hopelessness of the epidermal layer without getting consumed by the worst which has yet to come.  I know that I'll be the victim one day, more than my most hideous nightmares, but still I play the game and hear the modem and get told I'm beautiful by fifty-score strangers with ignorence and insolence burning in their digitized eyes.  I hope that I'll wake up one day and escape, breathe the fresh air of the real world again, but somehow I know I'm damned to be every pimp's soul-whore until I die.