down in me

and this one she can lately only write at night, with the lights and the ghosts flicking in and out of the frame like moths in the dark dying, hungry. i see the lights and i think my god, that sounds nothing like me, what is this voice they call sweetly. me i don’t know about you, but me, i’m fucking petrified, i see things at night, i talk to people who don’t understand, i hear noises, i hear the whirring of my own machinery and i freak the fuck out man, because i don’t fucking know what’s out there you know. but fuck it, sometimes i’m like dead outside, like a coiled snake not poised just sitting waiting and i hear that voice and i think goddamn girl, who bade you speak that way. i don’ fucking know but i promise you once i find that fucker i’ll fucking kill him.

Once me and daddy were outside in the dust by the pack of trees (you know the one that sat huddled like cigarettes in a packet in the middle of a quiet expanse of dirt) and i said daddy listen. Can you hear ‘em? And daddy said no youngin’, I ain’t heard a thing out here in this motherfuckin’ pitch dark and I’m like daddy what are you talking about it’s fucking daytime. Daddy hand me that flashlight, cain’t you see. Daddy was always very suspicious in those days, he thought me and you and mama had been sent by god knows who to do god knows what to him.

Eventually I felt as though the voice that got inside me, i.e. me, my own voice, would swell then dissipate and be subsumed by the rest of the voices and form one coherent chorus, but no. wherever i looked, i saw - whenever i typed, there it was. it was him, he’d come for me, i was sure of it. i typed now blindly, listening to the clicking of my nails on the keyboard i used to type a lot faster than this a lot faster i’m feeling sleepy now but this is the first time in such a long time that i’ve typed so much an dit just seems like a waste to stop right in the middle of this paragraph it’s obscene. i never took no writing advice from nobody, least of all my daddy.

i was a fine if shaky girl, i ate my meals and listened to what my mother said and did it, mostly. i was quiet and calm and had the patience of a million gods. it took a lot to make me angry and even though my blood was always at a low simmer, you could never really tell. You wouldn’t really tell until it was time for the pot to boil over. i think touch typing blindly and not proofreading is better for everyone involved.

i think a lot about things that will never be. i think a lot about a boy for example, a white boy from atlanta or mississisisissippi. he lsitens to southern rock and he has a big dumb name like bob or jim and i think about his calloused hand often gripping my throat until i stop laughing because that shit ain’t funny anymore. But jim he don’t listen because he’s a big strong guy and he’s used to getting his way and jim, he kinda wants to fuck me and well i don’t mean just fuck me i mean fuck me up. because jim he hates the way i all the time sound like i sort of know what i’m talking about and jim he can’t stand for that. jim knows he’s bigger, i mean he knows he can take me, that much is obvious but jim knows i’m going to put up one hell of a fight and he loves that as much as he hates it because it spurs him to be just who he is, a cruel sadistic little fucker who likes hurting women. i mean yes, somewhere in that big ole head of jim’s there’s the voice telling him beating the women folk is wrong, even jim knows that. but how can jim fight his baser instincts? he can’t. and i’m there to make sure he doesn’t.

See what you have to do to write a story in someone else’s voice is to hate yourself deeply. first you work a shitty job all day then you come home and eat something terrible and drink a few beers. then you watch porn and masturbate and the mix of endorphins and shame will put you in the right mood to release. and then you guiltily do. you sit down in the most uncomfortable position and you take the low level pain maybe in your back or your wrists like you know you deserve it. you look around you in a way that suggests you are looking to ensure no one’s looking but of course no one’s fucking looking, you’re home alone. any tortured soul worth its salt knows you live alone. you can’t have communion with communion, that’s like eating the wafers, drinking the wine and ass-fucking the priest. you just don’t do it. well, i don’t.

But look they will say, this automatic shit this isn’t writing and everyone knows it and everyone in the schools they talked about it years ago and you, you don’t know nothing. we know you like to feel loved and we know you like to pretend. don’t laugh, we know how you like to escape into other people’s stories and become them. you’re a vampire and we know how that flatters your teenage goth kid sensibilities, but listen. this is stupid. and will never amount to a pile of shit. We told you not to laugh. You think this is funny you thinking this is a game is that what you think this is? should we have you strapped down and removed from the fantasy and shown how to show a little courtesy?

Because it would be jim’s pleasure to fuck you in your tight little ass and by god if we don’t bet you’d love it.