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Josslyn’s Milk

Michael Greeley

    I am flunking all of my classes and I no longer care in the least. I’ve given up on everything that makes any kind of logical sense. I used to believe that things happen for a reason, that there are signs in nature that lead us to happiness, that God, herself, wishes the very best things for her children. But this is untrue, unfortunately, for, mentally, I have devoted every last drop of my energy toward reuniting with some fundamental Source principal. But it has become lost and I am now poor as death and estranged from lucidity.
    I see faces in the trees. Do you ever see them? They are mostly demons, old men with long whiskers and eyeglasses. But nature grants them a holographic appeal, a grainy cadence that makes them appear more as apparitions than reality. I once was sitting with an old friend, perhaps it was a boyfriend, in one of those broken-down automobiles teenagers drive, while he smoked pot from a gutted cigar. I guess I had a few drags of the thing, myself, now that I think about it, but I really wasn’t all that high - just high enough to begin seeing faces in the trees, I suppose.
    On this specific night, however, I saw an old man quite succinctly in the outline of the branches, in the shadows that were cast upon its leaves in the neon streetlights. It was just a face, really, but the artwork of nature, herself, was whimsically cartoonish, ‘childlike’ even. I asked my boyfriend, Demetrius I believe his name was, if he saw anything in that specific tree – anything out of the ordinary. After sucking down some more marijuana smoke and blowing it in my face, he gave it a good look through those circular, dorky-looking, plain-jane bifocals of his. I abhorred those glasses, and always told him as much. He was half-black, half-white. I told him he’d look more mature in a sleeker pair, but he never listened to anything I had to say. It was true, though. That I am sure of it, because I oftentimes overheard others whispering advices to him to that same effect. He shrugged them all off, and afterward would look to me with a soft scowl, partly because I am white, which I’d then return with a nice, big smile.
    But, through those same, goofy glasses, he was able to see the very same thing that I did in the leaves of the trees. “It’s an old man wit’ glasses,” he said, half-asleep it seemed.
    I went wild with zeal, as you can imagine, flabbergasted by the fact that he saw the same exact thing I did inside the illness of nature’s embrace. But he shrugged off the significance of the event as nothing more than a coincidence, an anomaly, which deflated my enthusiasm in a swift, calculated ‘once and for all’.
    But he was right, was he not? Little things like that hold no concrete significance. If they did, then I would be rich and powerful, a mighty queen upon her throne, for they, these meaningless coincidences, follow me like the plague.
    But I look much too deeply into such matters. Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you the same thing. I am overly intuitive, to the point of fault, for no one understands me, and it has left my practical sensibilities all but non-existent. I can hardly hold a job, which is somewhat unfortunate, because my mind works well enough and my intellect is, in all honesty, sharper than most. I went to college, received good marks in classes that don’t mean a God-damned thing in the real world, and I have been a floundering toadstool, stumbling from job to job, ever since.
    I enjoy reading. I like books. I enjoy religious topics, especially when in relation to a historical context, but, of course, interests in things such as these will get you absolutely no where when it comes to the nitty-gritty of paying the man his share. But, nobody really seems to mind the fact that I wasted my education in studying things that do not matter.
    I still live with my father, and I’m 29 years old. He teases me, but he understands me more than most. He knows that I am eccentric, that I’m sort of waiting for that ‘perfect fit’ to come along and swoop me off my feet. Too bad it does not exist, which, in all honesty, causes me to become depressed to the point that I sleep for 13 hours 4 of 7 days out of the week.
    I work at a small bookshop right now, doing clerkship duties, stocking shelves, ringing up sales, simple things of that nature, and it holds me over. But I’ve been finding myself making my way ever-more-frequently out to the bars after work, and to any number of fast food joints thereafter. I am getting fat, and I do not like to feel flubbery goo about my midsection. My friends tell me that there is nothing abnormal going on with me, that it can merely be attributed to the changing of the seasons, but I am beginning to worry, for there is a dreadful ache to all of it, this changing of mine, as well. Damned autumn! It is without a doubt my least favorite time of year. Something in the leaves falling from their cozy, nesting places magnifies this uncomfortable, unfounded intensity within me. I wish to leave, to go anywhere but here. But where?
    I haven’t mentioned a word of this to father, for assuredly he would laugh at any endeavor of mine which implies any hint of independent swagger, but I feel I must do so if for nothing but my own, mental health.
    I have begun to see omens in numbers, faces, the speed at which cars drive, to the point of lunacy. I have begun to lose grip on reality, and, though I tell no one as much, at least I am able to recognize this fact for myself, which indicates that things aren’t that bad. I’ve begun to see bulls in my head, vagrant sounds that cascade all over me symbiotically. I can’t trust anyone and I can’t let go of anything. I clutch at the books I carry at the store as if they were my children, and scratch at my fingernails when no one is looking, half-desiring to pull them off, the other to polish them until they dissolve, for I have become filthy.
    My father has noticed the deterioration of my abilities, the strangeness of my mannerisms, but he says nothing about them or me. He is content to watch me watch the television, as long as I am there, safe at home with him. He does not like me going to the bars, though he does not mind me going out on dates. Sometimes he even lets my boyfriends sleep over. He will fall asleep early, and leave me and my partner, who now is named Teddy, alone to partake in our pleasures, sex namely, without a peep of condescension. He has a vaporizer in his room, which is quite loud, so he cannot hear the moans of pleasure emitted from the living room as my beaux and I fornicate, for it is not love. And, when it is not love, it is fornication, for fornication is copulation without strong, emotional ties. This is not to say that Teddy and I are not magnanimous, or at least that he is when it comes to me. It is just that we are not ‘in love’. Do I love him? Yes. But I love the physical sensations he provides me more than the words and ideas that escape those cute, little lips of his. Is this wrong? Probably.
    My dad is a retired firefighter. He is home often, if not all the time. Ours is a small, tinkering house trapped inside a quaint, darkened street inhabited by various local, brick-laying types. It is nothing fancy. Nothing of mine is fancy, for I am a firefighter’s daughter, and plain. I am plain. I cannot stop scratching at my fingernails.
    Our living room points out toward the street, where a wide window draped in see-through white linen overlooks our somewhat healthy, somewhat crab-grass encrusted front yard, which is encompassed by symmetrical, square-shaped bushes that my father likes to trim with his electric hedge cutters as if he were some kind of professional gardener. But, he’s not.
    There are stains all over our carpet. Not big ones, but they are all there – crusty and thick, browned. The carpet itself is a yellow-ochre, old-looking, drab. I enjoy looking at our drapes, the ones I picked out, because they are flowing, soft and delicate. During spring we open the windows so as to let the wind flow through them. Big deal. I could sit there for hours and watch this simple phenomenon, witch that I am, just the wind going through the drapes. Our brown-orange kitchen with the old, wood cabinets and the sickly-looking, fake plastic, tile floor makes me want to vomit. There is always a big gallon of whole milk in our fridge. I cannot stand drinking it, but I always do, often times with hunks of meat. I’ve asked my father to stop buying it, but he does so anyway, which I find incredibly strange, because he does not even drink it. He might put some of it in his coffee, but that’s about it. I am the one who drinks the majority of it, and I hate myself for this because it upsets my stomach. I drink it anyway. I need to leave so I can get away from it – the milk. I need to move somewhere else so I don’t have to drink it anymore.
    My father always sits on the couch that faces the front window, which is pointed at our box television that gets every station in the whole world. The couch is made of an indifferent material. It is yellow-brown and cradles a set of kneaded pillows. Everything is brown. A right-angled, wooden frame holds it all together – nothing fancy. I find it comfortable, but he sits on it for hours without complaint. He never complains, for there is nothing to complain about. He is a stoic male, mustached and thin – a man’s man, yet quiet. If I were not his daughter, I would find him quite attractive, and my girlfriends have made comment to that effect, how handsome he is, though I do not notice his appearance all too often. He is quiet, and he just sits on that couch and watches his one sports channel without end. There are 1000 channels and he just watches the one. That is his life, and he is content with it. When it is I who is in control of the channel, I cannot make up my mind of what to watch. I flip through every station without ever stopping for air. I will find something that I like, leave it on for a split second, then turn it off in search of something better. My father laughs at my inability to commit to a single show, then he tells me to turn it to a quiz show, which is a program we can both appreciate. I am smarter than him, and often times I defeat him when it comes to those useless information quiz programs, but he is better at fill-in-the-blank shows, and, kind person that he is, he watches both with me with an equal frequency, so as to keep things fair. It is almost as if we are married. My stomach is churning from all of this milk he feeds me. It gives me the runs. I am disgusting and weak.
    But at least I have a job, right? I have saved up a decent amount of money, about $7000. That would go a long way in any city town, right?
    The same people keep walking into my work, the place where I put the books away, one by one, and place orders on computers so as to get people the publications they desire. What else do I need, right? Why should I need anything else? Aren’t I supposed to live simply? That is the right thing to do.
    The same faces.
    I see the same faces all of the time. One resembles my little cousin, Annie. She’s always drinking coffee at the bookstore, the stranger, that is, not Annie, herself. The stranger always smiles even though she is ugly. Annie is merely 6 years old, and she is cute, and lively, but also somewhat bossy for her age. The stranger is an uglier version of her. She comes into the store everyday, grabs a cup of coffee from our small café, and reads the newspaper. I think she’s crazy. I don’t even know if she really knows how to read. Ha! I think she looks through that paper looking for signs of what she is supposed to do with her life. I would if I was her. She always talks to everyone and throws together sentences that don’t make any sense. She keeps talking, though, about just about anything. Most people shun her, push her away so they don’t have to deal with her oddness, while others welcome the opportunity to chat with a psychopath. I say ‘hi’ to her, then pretend that I’m busy so I don’t have to fake interest in her endeavors.
     The bookstore itself smells fantastic: brewing coffee and the ancient, worn wisdom of rotting leather and paper. It is loft-esque in its complexion, with thousands of books held upright by bright, wooden shelves that look like they are about to break with age. They are splintering, wooden bones. There are hidden coves that extend off of the main strip of shelves that lead to secret spaces adorned with elderly, red-plush cushion chairs made of rich mahogany. If only there was a fireplace, the place would be heaven. But there’s not. So it isn’t. I’ve told the manager, Turk, to have one installed, and he’s considering it, but still has not harnessed the masculine aggression necessary so as to make things happen.
    I’ve fornicated with a number of boyfriends in the storage area. Turk has entrusted me with some keys to the shop and I have closed the store, locked up, countless evenings with no one there but myself. Often times I’ve had a boyfriend come to pick me up after the hours on my daily schedule have concluded, and so I’ll treat them to my body within the store as a ‘thank you’ for giving me a ride home, though the exchange is mutual, for I enjoy fornicating in public places where I might get caught.
    The milk inside my stomach sticks to the lining. I can feel it. It is like a glue and it leaks from my intestines. I should be wearing diapers if I am to continue drinking it. I should just leave. But where would I go?
    I have told Teddy that I wish to exit this place, and he is adverse to the idea, but not to a dying degree. He brings over 6 packs of beer or takes me out to one of the local dives so as to buy me drinks. Everyone is always buying me things. I swear, I do not ask them to do it. They do it of their own volition. I try to stop them, but they do it anyway, for I am their little child, their baby that drinks too much milk all of the time and needs a diaper because it leaks out of her ass.
    Sometimes I feel this drunken darkness inside of me. It heaves in scrambling seas along lonesome, gray waves that are not meant for anyone to witness but myself. I see myself, or what I think to be myself, alone on a tiny row boat amid the enormous, toppling ocean; only that I am a man in a hooded garb, rough-faced with baby skin, and I remain in a single spot, expecting the boat to capsize as the tide washes below me in violent gusts. I am oblivious as to which way to turn, for there is no land in sight. I surrender to the disposition, pull my hood over my head, and bear the deluge of the sea in a cold, wet, misery. I even have dreams about this image, and I’ll awake in a cold sweat inside the room that looks exactly as it did when I was 15 years old. I must exit this place. But where shall I go?
    I scrape at the paint on the walls in my room for enjoyment, to ease my tension. I enjoy the shrill twinges of pain that shriek through my skin as I grind them across the rigid surface. My boyfriend should be coming shortly. Like I said, he knows of my plans. He laughs and says that there is nothing he can do about it. Part of me wishes he would say ‘don’t go, stay here with me. Don’t ever leave, just stay, and we can be married, have children, and live forever in a white-laced malaise,’ but this never occurs. Nothing good ever happens.
    I listen to the same, tired radio I’ve been listening to since I was 17, the one which my father gave me a few years after my mother died. It used to be hers, box-shaped and old, with one of those multiple-CD players, probably the first one ever in existence.
    I listen to some classic rock station that plays nothing but the same, lousy tunes they’ve been playing for the past 20 years or so, but I am too lazy to get up and turn it off. I’d rather scrape the wall with my fingernails, one stroke after the next, as though it were sex, and I was the one doing the penetrating. I catch myself in the middle of these thoughts and realize that my mental faculties are deteriorating. But what else is there for me to do? My room is a rectangular box, caked in white paint and old posters of bands I used to like when I was a girl. I am so God-damned old. A fluffy, puke green carpet rests under my feet. I sit on the same bed I’ve had my entire life, that now has begun to emit a moldy, shit fragrance that I attribute to the waste that leaks from my person. The length of the bed is just small enough so as to fit the width of the room, so that it is lodged between the walls like tightly packed, tin cars parked along a busy, urban street.
    I am drowsy. So, incredibly, drowsy. I guess I’ll pour myself some coffee before he comes. Coffee eases my nerves to an exceeding degree, even though it makes me race after everything, as if life itself was something to be won. I just wish there was something for me to race after, to win, that there was something to give my all to. But, there’s not – just the bookstore and this old, tired room. I fiddle the strands of carpet between my toes. I twist the crust that has solidified along their threads, the goop that has amassed after countless years of being tread on by myself and God knows who else. Too much milk. I put too much milk in the coffee again, and now I feel it line my bowels, immersing them, drowning them in thick, foaming fat. I drink the rest of it down as the doorbell rings. There is Teddy. I shall be leaving now, probably to go see a movie, which he will pay for, and I will let him. I’ll let him play with my breasts as we watch it. We will kiss during it and he will ask me to perform felatio on him as the movie progresses, but I will refuse him. But I will fornicate with him when we return to my father’s house, and then I will go to sleep.
    Teddy is a mechanic – nothing fancy. There is nothing fancy about my life, for I am merely a fireman’s daughter. My father is pleased by Teddy’s line of work, for it is masculine, and Teddy is somewhat known throughout town for his quality of work. My father wishes for me to settle down with him, to attain some stability, but I am unsure Teddy really wants that. He might even be cheating on me behind my back. What is more is that I do not even care, really. If he asked me to marry him, I would say yes, mostly to appease my boredom, my father, and to have a safe life, which could forever be filled with books and milk and coffee. That doesn’t sound so bad.
    Teddy is somewhat handsome. All the girls in town think so anyway, particularly my friends. We always talk about sex, penis size, that sort of thing, which is kind of inappropriate if you ask me. I’ve been fornicating with men who I don’t really love for ages, it seems, without any deep connection, and the sentiment of meeting that person has become a trivial fairytale inside of my heart, though it is also one of the only things I can hold on to that keeps me somewhat sane. Otherwise, I am just a 29-year-old loser who lives with her father. If there was someone who understood me, though, I might not be so savagely bent inside of my own skin. I would now be something to be considered, I guess. But I don’t even know what that person would look like, how they would behave, because that person does not exist.
    And so I slip downstairs, wide-eyed due to the coffee and the extremeness of my ever-wandering, current predicament. I snatch at the grooves in the shaky, wooden banister so as to appease the instability of my own mind, and am greeted by the two men, father and lover, chatting selflessly at the opened, wood-engraved door with the tiny window at its heightened center. “Yeah, Chuck Mercy came in to the shop the other day with a ’57 Roadster he’s been working on, looking to get some work done on the interior – the upholstery I guess...” says Teddy.
    “Chuck Mercy? He’s still putting together old cars? Well, I’ll be. I haven’t seen him in ages. Does he still sport that same haircut? The shag?” says father, while mimicking some imaginary hair on the sides of his face.
    “With the cap still on, right?” says lover.
    “Yeah, with the some stupid cap on...the same one everyday – of some little league team he coaches – G&M I think? Fallon’s company? Something like that?” says father.
    I approach the pair lovingly, like good daughters do. I let them talk while making my presence felt, but am in no rush to interrupt. I’d rather be quiet forever, to tell you the God’s honest truth. But we must speak to others, and I am somewhat good at it, though I secretly despise it and lie with an unfaltering passion.
    “Yep! He wears that same one,” says boyfriend.
    “Well, I’ll be. Some things never do change, do they?” says father with that whimsical smile of his. “And what about you, little lady?’
    “How are you doing, sweetheart?” says my lover, and dives in for a kiss on the cheek. I allow it, as does father, radiantly. I am beginning to think he likes Teddy more than I do. Maybe that is why I am with him in the first place. My mind races to illogical conclusions.
    “Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that. Nothing special or out of the ordinary,” I say blandly, though with a certain, endearing sense of gaiety.
    “That’s my girl, alright. You’ve been trapped upstairs in that room of yours all day as far as I can tell,” says father while turning toward my mate. “That’s all she does all day is just sit up there and listen to music. I’m beginning to wonder if she’ll ever grow up and get on out of here. Maybe you can help her with that, Teddy.”
    I smirk mildly, sarcastically, as always. People know me as being heavily sarcastic. It’s who I am. I am sarcastic in a luring fashion, so as to maintain an edge of some sort while maintaining my likeability. Teddy puts his arm around me playfully, as if I am one of the buddies he plays tackle football with every Sunday at Brookdale Park. He should have noogied me in jest, but refrained.
    “I’ll make a woman out of her, yet, Mr. Kirk,” says Teddy.
    That is my last name, my father’s name: Kirk. Josslyn Kirk. It isn’t so bad. I’ve heard worse. There are worse lives than mine, and those that are infinitely more gratifying.
    “I hope you do, son,” says my father, somewhat sheepishly due to the forcefulness of Teddy’s mannerisms. “Now, if you two don’t mind, I’m going to return to my programs – big game tonight...”
    “Ohio State versus Arkansas,” says Teddy.
    “That’s the one,” says father. He picks up an old newspaper off of an ornate cabinet that is plastered against the front wall, one which is caked in an embarrassing amount of dust, though neither male seems to notice or mind this reality in the very least. “What are you all up to?” says Mr. Kirk as he plops comfortably onto his favorite sofa.
    “Just a movie...” I say, trying to force some words outward so no one thinks I am a mute. It does not sound contrived, like I am dwindling inside of myself, swimming round a pole with neck attached to a tethered rope in a lake that has no bottom. For that is how I feel always and everywhere for whatever reason. Dad takes a seat on his favorite sofa, picks up the remote control with all the yellow buttons on it and clicks on the dial. It makes that dull, clicking noise, the one you get excited at when you hear it because you know it’s time to watch TV for a couple of hours, to sift through other people’s problems so as to escape the insanity of your own life. The high from the coffee really begins to kick in and I start to fiddle my thumbs against my pockets. If I could, I’d tear the deadened flesh from them in order to rub the smooth skin underneath. I don’t know why I think of such things, I honestly don’t wish to. I just do. Teddy places his arm about my hip, and I flinch at the touch, enough so that I wonder if he noticed the movement, if he thought it odd and if my father noticed him noticing me, for it is a sexual rub, so I take it to be anyway, and, though I am sure my father knows that we fornicate, I have never been remotely intimate with anyone in front of him. Teddy now places his arm about my person while Daddy shifts in his chair.
    “Just a movie, huh?” he says, though the diction of his voice reveals that it is obvious that he wishes for us to leave so he can continue into his evening in relative peace and quiet. “And what movie would that be?”
    Teddy has now wrapped himself about me with great masculinity, an action that that reflects his intent of staying until a somewhat formidable exchange has been surmised. His open display of affection causes my words to drawl forth in lumpy puddles of discomfort – stringy porridge: “Um, I think – I think we’re...”
    “‘Lincoln’. We’re going to see ‘Lincoln’,” Teddy says gratuitously, thus rescuing me from any abysmal response I might have currently mustered.
    Father is unimpressed at our banter. “Oh, that movie with Daniel Day Louis, right? Tell me how it ends,” he says while placing his feet upon the wooden table in front of him. He does not look at us. Either he cannot or he won’t. I am unsure which it is, and all of a sudden a rich anger is livened within me. It dies as suddenly as it has arisen, for the most adamant layer of my psychological defense system is quick to shove the reaction solemnly into some twisting tendons wrapped about my right hip. But this is not the first time I’ve noticed it, the anger, the hidden rage that I feel toward him and toward all the men in my life in general. It is at this point in time that I wish to fuck, not fornicate, or make love, but to fuck coldly and with no other emotion than raw anger, for that is what I feel toward him.
    “Yes. Will do, daddy. Enjoy that little football game of yours,” I say in a demeaning tone, though he hardly flinches at my advances toward him.
    “I will, honey. Be careful out there, would you?” he says coolly, hardly looking at me. The coward. The thing is that I can feel, deep down, that Teddy’s advances are making him as uncomfortable as I am. I grab the frilly lapel of Teddy whatever-his-name-is’s bomber jacket and push him out the screen door with not just a little gusto.
    “Whoa-ho! Watch it there, little girl!” he says to me gaily, though with pursed lips I follow through with the movement so as to acquire the desired effect; namely, he and I leaving the house.
    “So long, Mr. Kirk,” says my stoolie jerk of a boyfriend, my pea-coat puppet, as he flops his ugly arm languidly about at my father while stumbling past the white-paint-chipped, rectangular doorframe.
    “Take care, Ted,” is all he can say. “And be sure to tell Chuck Mercy that I said ‘hello’”.
    I have shoved him completely out of the door at this point, but he still manages to stammer out some drivel past me toward my keeper. “Uh, sure thing, Mr. Kirk.”
    “Good bye, daddy dearest,” I interject.
    “So long sweetheart,” says father, without the least bit of feeling or care. I suppose I should be grateful for his aloofness with regard to the machinations of my life. At least he is not some sort of control freak, though, if he was, though, I’d probably have left by now. Instead, his coldness drives me onward into the night toward something I am passionless about – except, of course, for the sex.
    We reach Teddy’s pickup truck, which is so exponentially masculine that one needs to place his or her boot on the raised pedestal wrapped about its circumference so as to boost oneself inside, a trait which I find wholly ridiculous and am sure to point out whenever my sarcastic levels are high enough to assuage the crimson words from spilling out of my loose lips. .
    “What was that about?” he says, as we both slam our respective doors to their designated resting points. We post ourselves tightly against the leathered backs of the truck’s pleated, dark-gray interior.
    “What was what about, Teddy?” I say smoothly, darkly. I do not know whether I should reach for him or not. The desire to fornicate has left me, and I do not know how to relate physically to another unless the act of sex is implied. Still, I reach over the plastic, rubbery divider that is dotted with various cup holders filled with loose change, pennies mostly, that have been drizzled with the sugary sap of overflowing fast food beverages over the course of time, immaculate. I dip my hand into the one filled with the most change, and I begin to flick my fingers through his hair while twiddling the cold metal coins between my fingers, a most unnatural act, through he does not seem to notice. He remains silent for some, strange reason, like something is bothering him. “What was what about? Hm? Answer me,” I say again, my voice somewhat bedeviled in silvery strands of lust. My hands caress each strand of his curly, bronzed skull, fucking them as deeply as possible with each stroke, an act which is sure to initiate arousal on his part. His countenance softens at my touch, his tension becomes putty between my fingers, and I have him entranced.
    “That! You just shoved me out the door while I was trying – while I was trying to talk to your dad! You always do weird shit like that, like you don’t want me talking to anyone you know or of getting a closer understanding of who you are...” he yells.
    “Aw. I’m sorry. Did I hurt your feelings?” I say in a half-serious, half-condescending manner. It is a tone which I’ve found myself using with an ever-increasing level of succinct tact, as it muddles the mind in porous layers of confusion that leaves the intended recipient open to calculated influence, namely, that which I choose for them and to which they will succumb.
    “Fuck you,” he says, brushing my hand away in the process so he can start the engine of his big, tough, macho monster truck.
    I sit back in my seat with a pout, like I don’t know what’s going on. “Why, what’s wrong with you? What did I do?”
    “You’re a fucking slut. That’s what you do...” he says underneath his breath.
    I guffaw at the obligatory remark, and am somewhat stifled by the sobriety of its boldness. “I’m – I’m a what?” I say with the utmost surprise. I stop my hand from retracting toward my chest, my heart specifically. It is an act that signifies victim-hood, a disposition I most wholeheartedly abhor and embrace with the totality of my being. The coffee races through my veins, and I lick the long-dissolved sugar from the chapped, upper portion of my lips. Teddy turns the wheel slightly to the left and pulls forward slowly. The orange leaves of the overhanging maples that line either side of the street flutter organically, wonderfully over and past the front windshield as we swoosh away them.
    “I said you’re a fucking slut, Josslyn, and you know it,” he says. He’s begun to grind his back teeth somewhat, an act I’ve never seen him do before. It lends his complexion a gross quality, somewhat deranged it might be said. It is at this moment in time I notice the darkened circles beneath his eyes. They are without humor and riddled with a solemnity unbeknownst to me. I become afraid to the point of excitement.
    “Teddy, I’ve – I’ve never seen you in such a state. I – why are you calling me a slut? Did I do something? This is a...you...you’re never –“
    “Shut up, Josslyn,” he says with judicious gravity. It is getting dark. The grayness of autumn illuminates the evening in a resolute shade of death. I feel his shoulders brighten. His anger is severe. He knows something that I do not.
    “Why I – I -...” Teddy turns right past a number of children playing basketball on the corner of the street. Their laughter concerns me. My mind begins to reel around in circles of misshapen stars.
    “Where are we going?” I ask with the voice of a child, it seems. The sound of it sickens me, for it lacks power.
    “To the movie. Do you still want to go?” he asks. His shoulders have sunken again. Sensing weakness, my spine becomes erect.
    “Yes, maybe after you tell me what’s going on,” I say, faking concern to the best of my ability.
    “Nothing,” he says. “Forget it.”

    “No. I won’t. I don’t feel like having these accusations thrown at me for no reason, without-without there being any explanation as to where they come from,” I say.
    “God, Josslyn, just shut up. I’ll take you to the Goddamn movie, pay for your goddamned ticket, get you a tub of buttered popcorn and one of those jumbo sodas you like, if you just shut up. Then, at the end of the night, we’ll go back to your place, you’ll suck my dick for 15 minutes, we’ll screw, and then we can watch some late night TV – one of the generic, studio-brand guys like Letterman that you love oh-so-much...”
    “Wow, how romantic,” I say without nerve. We begin to pull onto the highway, RT 3 West, though now all the racing in my head causes me only to see the dizzying streams of light created by our speeding past the fixated lamps that dot the path before us. “I should really stop drinking coffee,” I say aloud after recognizing how absurd his silence is.
    He keeps driving, resolute in his purpose, but not toward anything in particular. “Hey, weren’t you supposed to turn there?” I say. We’d just passed the Dunkin’ Donuts on my right hand side at the Watchung Ave. intersection. I hadn’t been paying any attention, but the flowery orange and purple insignia always does well in catching my attention, not to mention that the spot is a frequent residency concerning my before-work ritual – a large, double latte with oodles of milk and sugar. “Don’t you know where you’re going?” I continue. The agitation and overall nagging tone in which it is spoken startles even myself.
    Teddy’s brow bends downward, enough so that his baseball cap casts a somber shadow across the sharpness of his nose and eyelids. His beautiful, dark umber tufts flow in picturesque curls from under that same hat, enough so as to grab my concentration away from the swelling anger that is now causing his cheeks to redden.
    “I’m not going the usual way. I’m taking Broad. Is that alright with you?” he asks. He flits his head forward in a sharp wince with the final three words or so, enough so I can see that he is deeply troubled. I soften.
    “Jesus Teddy. What is it, already? What’s the matter with you? Why are you so angry?” My voice flirts with playfulness, but I cannot help my now overwhelming concern within me that something is deeply wrong with the situation. “Seriously, alright. What is it? Come out with it...”
    I see him veering to the right so as to enter RT 46, a busier highway in this little town of ours. “You’re not going on the highway, are you? What, are you dumb? There’s sure to be traffic,” the sting in my voice is thick with witchery. Even I am impressed by the exacerbated assiduousness, the amount of negativity that is garnered through my words.
    “There’s no traffic, Josslyn. It’s fucking Sunday.” He switches off the push-in knob to the volume-control meter on the radio. I’d hardly recognized it was on at all in the first place. My jaw locks in an awkward twitch so that my top, right incisor twists further over the bottom one. Then I bite down and feel the sharpness of my teeth with my tongue.
    “Well, are you going to have out with it and tell me what the fuck is going on with you, or are you too much of a chicken shit?” I say. The level of subliminal abuse with which I address him is becoming admittedly enjoyable. I sneer aloud, but he does not turn to face me. His anger wavers and his features become soft, vulnerable, to the point that his shoulders droop pathetically, thus implying his submission to my control.
    “Did you think that I would not find out?” he says weakly, his voice trembling like a tattering, little boy.
    “Find out what, honey?” I fake sympathy some more, and brush my aching claws across his cowering shoulder so as to feel his trembling limbs He brushes it aside with a hefty sigh and becomes erect with scornful anger once more, which strangely appeases my baser membranes.
    “That you’ve not only been seeing Bart Sempser for the past 3 months, but that you-you-you...”
    “What? Spit it out, already!”
    “...That you sucked his dick on my bed at the last party I threw...” the veins in his neck stiffen, and he cranes it forward grotesquely so as to enable him to scream with insanity. “You-you slut!”
    “What? I...That is...,” I laugh because it is funny, “...That is...absurd! I was with you the whole night, you idiot!” My voice remains taught and confident. Even through my bouts with madness, I’ve retained the knack of a professional liar’s wit.
    He turns to me slowly. The sun dips behind a row of orange trees that line the horizon. The setting sun appears pink, and paints the surrounding sky in its likeness, though the clouds that dot its concourse have given way to a darker shade of purple.
    “I passed out at the end of the night. Do you remember that, Josslyn? I’d had too many of those brandy shots you’d been feeding me all night...the ones from the bottle that Bart had brought.”
    I laugh again, fancifully, enough so that my head tilts backward grossly. I imagine my neck to look like that of a chicken, with rivers of fat folding upon one another in a disgusting mess of veins. But, most certainly, that is not how it looks at all to the poor creature to my left who I’ve cheated on.
    “And? So what? All you can do is laugh? All you can do is...”

    *

    All was relatively calm until this point, but at this moment in time some loose wiring snapped to life inside of Teddy’s right leg. A mammoth vein now grew at the center of his forehead, a sizeable blotch from which swiveled rivers of blood extended across the duration of his brow. His hands gripped the matted wheel enough so that the sweat that had been condensing on the inside of his palms began to collect at his wrists and drip into his lap.
    “...And all you can do is...is...laugh at me?” the final words were yelled with extravagant momentum, with enough verve so as to force Josslyn back into her leather, grooved seat without the least bodily intention of doing otherwise. She knew then that she was, officially, ‘in trouble’.
    “Well, I-I...” she stammered. “That is, by far, the most ludicrous accusation anyone has ever laid at my feet, Teddy. I-I cannot even speak right now because I am so confounded at –“
    “Shut up, Josslyn. I know. Just shut up,” Teddy now bent downward so as to grope at something below his seat. Josslyn, much too agog so as to inquire about his meanderings, merely laid her gaze on the soft horizon, and did her best to imagine the warm safety of her bedroom.
    After a prolonged continuum of sordid silence, Josslyn found it best of her to prod and poke the young man for a greater understanding of this current dilemma, much to the chagrin of the heated bull to her left. “The accusation is simply preposterous, Teddy. I-I never did that! I would never do that to you. You know that!” she yelled. Her voice was childlike.
    Teddy now began to whimper solemnly to himself, almost to the point of tears, as he felt a blackened, invisible cloud begin to arch its way up into the upper right portion of his neck, directly below the jaw; in the corresponding lymph node, quite possibly. The Styrofoam, plastic walls that internalized the machinations of the mini malls to their lefts and rights flew by them in sacred confusion. “Jeremy said he saw you two...”
    “Well Jeremy is a liar! You know how stupid he is!” Josslyn returned. “Why didn’t you say anything at my father’s? Everything was hunky-dory just 10 minutes ago. What’s changed since then? Why’d you bring me out here in the first place? Just to yell at me? Some actor you are!”
    The coldness of the impending winter began to seep through the molecules of the vehicle, causing both to shiver in acquiescence toward some insurmountable fate that was upon them. “I do not believe you,” said Teddy. The way in which he ground his teeth now was forceful enough to rip them from their roots. “I do not believe that you have been faithful to me. Nor have I been faithful to you. I have cheated on you numerous times, with different girls, but never with someone you knew. I spared you that. I am pathetically hurt. I see that bastard Bart every goddamned day of my life. Everyday I have to see Bart and think about this – that image in my head. It’s been...driving me...mad. It makes my bones coil into knots.”
    He bowed his head, flicked the right-turn signal on with a flip of his wrist and roared across two lanes on his way to the nearest exit. Josslyn did not notice the sudden movement of the vehicle, as she was much too immersed in the horror that Teddy, too, had been unfaithful. The angst-ridden pain in her heart was a new phenomenon, one which she wanted to get as far away from as possible.
    “You’ve been cheating on me?” she asked.
    “Same as you,” returned Teddy.
    The road directly off the exit was relatively empty, and broad enough so as to allow the young man to pull onto its shoulder.
    “What are you doing?” asked the young woman.
    Teddy put his truck in park.
    “Get out,” he said, as plain as the woods that now surrounded them.
    Josslyn laughed some more. “What, are you joking? You brought me all the way out here just to drop me off next to the woods? Is this your way of getting back at me?”
    The sagging sun teetered in between the crevices of the autumnal foliage that surrounded them, as sober beams of sunlight illuminated both of their faces in a purposeful manner. “No. I just wanted to see your reaction. And, now that I have, I’m done with you. Get out.”
    “Are you serious?” she asked.
    “Deadly,” he replied.
    They were staring at one another now. Both appeared beautiful in the drifting light, though it was now clear that at least one of them did not wish to leave. Teddy’s face became severely grave and the countenance of his glare did not leave her. The blackness underneath his eyelids highlighted his glower to the point of causing her to falter about the handle of the door without looking at it entirely.
    “Well,” he said mockingly. “Go on ahead, slut. Get out...”
    Josslyn swiveled her head this way and that so as to have a gander at the surroundings about her. The wooded acreage about them was palpitating with the thickness of trees, but it was not of a sizable dimension. There was a mini-mall not but a mile away. She could simply walk there, call her father, and return home. There she could enjoy the comfort of her father’s soundless company, a fresh mug of coffee, and perhaps a movie by her own, lonesome accord later on that evening.
    “Fine,” she said gruffly, and, in a sudden burst of energy, exited the vehicle as sturdily as she could so as to not reflect an ounce of regret or weakness.
    The coolness of the air came as a shock to her skin, but she alleviated the duress caused by the conjoining of the two mediums by hoisting her collar about her fragile neck. The truck remained beside her as she swung to behold a small path that led through the wood, up and toward the mall on this side of the highway. While remaining consciously proud enough to not look backward, she groped toward the dirt pathway while tucking her delicate hands into the swells of her sweater pockets. A lone, sports car flew by her on the same side of the road – Briars Neck Avenue, was it? The corner of her line of sight picked up the diminishing redness of the truck’s break light, which now gave way to nothingness, as the hum of the engine now starkly announced its rejuvenation to shedding trees on either side of the road.
     Teddy watched her carefully as he pulled away, ever so slowly, and became surprised at her ability to unflinchingly abandon him without a single glance of retraction. It was no matter. Things were going exactly as he had planned. He’d said what he needed to, dropped her off at the designated trail that led to the Clifton Commons, and now she ambled toward it, an unknowing fish headed for the gummy worm upon a sharpened hook.
    The young man fumbled beneath his seat once again, this time wrapping his calloused finger authoritatively about the hilt of a pistol he’d planted there the night before. The idea of killing someone had always made his blood boil with a kind of ecstatic bliss, for whatever reason, though he’d bought the gun to begin with merely for self-defense purposes. But the bitch had really done it. No one had ever cheated on him in his life, and the thought of such tortured him so abruptly that he’d even considered turning the weapon upon himself.
    “Instead,” he’d conjectured, “I shall direct this hatred outward at that which vexes me. Why is it I should harm myself and play the role of victim, when, instead, I could inflict the pain that has been given to me back to its rightful owner.”
    And so Teddy, ex-quarterback of the town’s high school football squad not but ten years prior, and a veritable local legend of sorts, decided to murder his cheating whore of a girlfriend, not but one week earlier to the day. He’d imagined the ludicrous idea would gradually leave him upon the moment of its conception, but, instead, it only grew in its readiness to be conceived, for the young man not only spoke to his nagging lover on a daily basis thereupon, but also fornicated with her twice over the course of the week while maintaining the secret’s grunt inside a black pit that had now developed inside his tummy. The weight with which he deplored her very existence bubbled along the lining of his gut with a vehemence he did not understand, nor desired to.
    The young man saw Josslyn’s visage disappear completely inside the thick of the trees before bending the wheels sharply around a course curvature in the road to his left. His eyes remained fastened on her, thus causing him to become distracted enough so as to veer into the oncoming lane slightly. A series of livid cars horns was now emitted from a black sedan traveling in the direction opposite to that of the would-be murderer. What followed was the corrosive mangling of roughened metals and fiberglass grinding into one another consistencies at intense speeds. Luckily, Teddy’s safety belt was roped about the broader expanse of his chest and waste, though shards of splintered glass, those of which the front windshield was composed, now stabbed their way through those tender layers of skin about his cheeks and neck.
    The force from the blow of the hardened, leather airbag was akin to that of being jabbed square in the nose by some mid-ranking, prize fighter, though Teddy hardly noticed as much, for the unconscious concern now resonating within the depths of his adrenal glands now focused on the skittish motion of the now out-of-control automotive, which drifted steadily backward toward the heavy trunks of the trees behind him. In another, less poignant crash, the truck’s hind sides skirted along the circumferences of a number of thinner maples until smashing its back bumper squarely against a mightier oak.
    His first thought amid such chaos was that his hands were wet. He lifted them to realize that they were drenched in voluminous amounts of blood, as was the white, sports team sweatshirt that was adorned therein. Upon further inspection, Teddy surmised that his nose had been broken due to the air bag’s insipid blast. This was the single fact that his mind rested on as the smoke from his truck’s injured engine arose through the truck’s hood and blew in weak gusts toward his face.
    Josslyn, who was now 15 yards or so inside the depth of the woods, returned backward to the street in a gallop so as to gawk at the reason for the explosion of grinding metal that she’d heard just 10 seconds earlier.

A tortured, heaving row, Of shattered cars lay at the apex of her breast. Encompassing a skinless vestige, A lone body, it now did rest, Upon the street not but 50 paces Or so from her blurred vision. Her skipping ankles did buckle in strident leaps, All but vanished was her derision. Though the man that lay before her, Was not the man she’d thunk at all, But the one with whom she’d fornicated, So as to breach her suburban droll. Bart Sempser lay there motionless, His eyes wide and white with death. His cheeks and nose were shred right off, As if he dabbled in smoking meth. Dear Teddy sat in driver’s seat, Clutching down at his plastic, baggy savior, Only to see through rising heat, Josslyn’s peculiar behavior. For through glossy eyes, she now did cry, Upon Bart Sempser’s crimson, torn up sweater, While holding his dead head in tenderly in her arms whilst screaming “Why?” Upon the sight of Josslyn’s angst, Her impassioned soliloquy, A malignant thought then filled his heart: “Why has she gone to him and not to me?” In a surging flood of daze-filled hate, The man scrambled for his gun, Then stumbled out the driver’s side, And pointed it at the sun. The blood now seeped in dying waves from his stomach, It did seem. And sure enough, a sprig of glass, Was stuck therein and far between. Amid oozing guts, his pork-filled hole, He spat, “Surely, I will die...” “...Do I truly wish my final act, To bear the heading ‘Eye for Eye’”. So it was that dear Teddy dropped the gun And fell down to his knees with dread. And watched his woman bemoan the death Of his worm-food fated friend. All went black, with a final breath, he knew it was the end... ...Instead the wise, young man awoke Inside a soft, white-lighted room. Where a tender nurse, with creamy skin Above him now did swoon. “You’re a lucky one,” the words were plain, But he understood them all too well. For this hospital bed was holy writ, Compared to the rotting vestiges of hell...

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