East

Fuck, a house can’t kill me. Please. Some fucking timber? Not even on fire? Not going to do it. Take my shoes, I’ll take my socks and I’m going to do some laundry. You know why? Because the shoes aren’t shit.

Enough people have already pointed out, so I don’t have to do it again, that when you’re casting about for bad witches, look for the smiling asshole who let a little girl wander around with three degenerates the whole time getting the shit scared out of her, getting loaded up on opium, and finally getting put in a hot air balloon with a con artist, before she’s all “Oh, you could have gone home whenever you wanted.”

That’s the good witch?

Fuck that shit.

I wish I had died. You know what it’s like to sit in your house, listening to it creak and settle, thinking every step is your sister, come back to you? Try having a motherfucking secret—like, oh, hey, I’m alive—burning a hole in your chest and all you want is to pick up the phone and share it with the person who you’ve been closest to your whole life and no place to call. No one to answer.

Maybe she was a monster, but she was my monster.

I’ve been dreaming about water— vast clear oceans, shimmering lakes, deep brown rivers. And in my dreams, I’m running toward it, that water, and I’m throwing my hat aside, peeling off my dress, kicking off those ruby slippers, the sun warm on my emerald skin. And when I leap in, I go out like a match thrown in a toilet. No pain, just fhht. And I’m over. Flush me down, get ready for the next ass.

I’m too afraid to try it in real life. Fuck. All I can think about is her screaming, “I’m melting, I’m melting.” And I don’t want to go out like that.

Do I blame the girl? No. I mean, I wish. Blame the girl, you just hunt her down, rip her arm off, and eat it while she watches. Hell, I wouldn’t even have to find her to kill her damn dog. I could get even so fucking easily. I’d be the Courtney Love of getting even, all pissed and a fucking mess and somehow still setting the world on fire.

But shit happens. People get lied to. People get hurt. And sometimes the truth is worse. Sometimes the people you love most are terrible and wicked and probably got what was coming to them. If everyone had to be an angel to be loved, we’d all be in trouble.

Still, just because the world is better off without her doesn’t mean I am, you know?