Bad Glass

As the pages pass, the words become larger and sloppier, and the last couple of handwritten pages are barely legible. Left-leaning letters spill off the rule. Lines and curves refuse to meet, as if the words are losing cohesion, breaking apart and scattering across the page.

The second half of the notebook is completely blank. It is untouched by pen or pencil. It is an empty canvas, waiting for paint.)

I’ve made mistakes. I’ve done a lot of things I shouldn’t have done. And each hole I dig buries me deeper.

There’s something wrong with me, I know. Something very, very wrong!!!

And that’s why I belong here. That’s why I’m never getting out.

Yesterday, about three, I met Johnny and Trent in front of Mama Cass’s. They were tweaking on something, bouncing up and down like ADD children on cotton candy and crack. They had these wide shit-eating grins, and they kept glancing at each other and exchanging looks, like they had some motherfucking secret and I didn’t measure up to share. I almost turned around and left right then. It was all just bullshit, bullshit I didn’t need. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

They took my arms and started guiding me east, Trent braying that ridiculous laugh of his, like it was all so fucking funny, and they wouldn’t tell me where we were going. Just Johnny saying, “It’s a surprise. It’s your motherfucking birthday party.”

I was already feeling like shit. Last night’s Jack Daniels was a rotten lump in my stomach and I wanted nothing more than another pull. On something, on anything, to keep it all down, to keep it all settled. When I asked, they both shook their heads and Trent repeated that giggling, hysterical laugh. He told me “Just wait, buddy. Fucking wait. We’ve got something better.” Then they pulled me into the building.

The place had been a high-end fashion store before the evacuation. I would have hated it, I’m sure—all gloss and empty space.

Somebody had done a half-assed job boarding up the windows before they fled, and a lot of light still flooded in through the front, between crisscrossed planks of plywood. The glass in the door had been shattered, and the place had been looted. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s how it was supposed to look. Sexy destruction, postapocalypse glamour. That type of shit.

Trent laughed and pointed back toward the rear of the store, where there was a short alcove lined with dressing rooms. His laugh faded into a manic giggle, and he started to clench and unclench his hands compulsively. He was fucked up—quite obviously fucked up on something hard—and there was a very bad energy coming from him.

I should have left right then. I should have run away. And there was a dim voice in my head telling me to do just that. But there was another voice in there, too, this one more insistent, telling me to continue on. (And maybe that was my true voice, trying to give me what I deserved. Doom. Destruction.)

There was a sound in the back of the room. A mewling. At first I thought there was a kitten back there, cowering in one of the dressing rooms. That’s what it sounded like, a sick, tiny kitten. Mewling, chewing on the air.

Fuck. A kitten. If only that had been it.

In the dressing room there was a kid. No, that’s not right. It was a thing, not a kid. Really, I don’t know what it was. The light was dim, but I could see that it was wearing ragged pants and nothing else. It was smaller than me, and it was cowering in the corner, shivering. Its skin was pasty white, almost glowing in the gloom. And that skin, it looked thin and brittle, like paper stretched over a Halloween skeleton.

Johnny pulled a syringe from his pocket, and Trent, still laughing like a fucking hyena, rushed the kid the thing and pushed it down to the ground holding his shoulders. Johnny’s syringe was nasty. The needle was fucking bent. I didn’t move, I couldn’t fucking move. And Johnny squatted down and grabbed the thing’s arm. And its mewling got worse. It was a keening, a squeal, like a pig in a slaughterhouse. It started to struggle and a stench filled the dressing room as it shit its pants.

“Help him,” Johnny said. “Hold it down.”

I moved, on autopilot, and grabbed its legs. They felt like tree branches wrapped in canvas. I held it down as it tried to kick. And Johnny

Fuck, I can’t write this. Tomorrow. I’ll try again tomorrow.

I tried to visit Taylor last night, but I didn’t make it past the sidewalk in front of the house. The front window was bright with light from a fire, and I could hear laughter from the living room. Mac’s drone. Amanda’s titter. Taylor’s voice, clear and sharp as ever.