A Dame to Kill For:

Kitty!

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:41:50 GMT

As promised, I have lots of disgustingly cute pictures of our new cat, Dorian AKA Mr. D, formerly known as ACDC.

Scritching...he got his clawsies stuck, oh noes!

He looks totally stoned, haha.

"Jesus, Derek. Pick up your fucking socks. MROW!" XD

. A octopus. I haz it.
Awwwwww.

Steampunk stuff! And other random eccentricities.

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:02:04 GMT

I've been doing a little snooping around on the intarwebz to get some ideas for the wedding, and I totally covet this:

Because, seriously, how cool would it be to have invitations that looked like that? Would I ever come down off that high? Probably not. <3

Also, I kind of want some sort of veil to keep it at least somewhat traditional, so my family doesn't completely freak--I'm thinking a little pillbox hat with a veil--classy, and it'd go well with the dress, I think. Obviously, I wouldn't want a green one (like the pic below), but isn't it gorgeous? It may or may not be "period-appropriate," but steampunk's about anachronism anyway, so it doesn't matter too much.

This is here just because it's fucking awesome. (Stephen Rothwell = <3)

As for gloves (I'm big into fingerless gloves), I'm thinking a cross between this:
and this Obviously, I wouldn't do white or anything; probably more of a brass/bronze-ish color, or maybe some shade of brown. I'm still toying with the idea of having part of a map set into the outsides on the forearm bit, but it all depends on what Bea can (and is willing to) do.

I love the color of these. I don't like that they're leather at ALL, and they're not fingerless, but I'll probably go with something around that shade and in a similar material to the dress.

As for dresses, I'm still scouting for designs. I found these two just a moment ago, and I'd KILL to have either one...probably not with sleeves, 'cos that seems a bit more informal than what I'm going for...what do you think?

I adore the detailing on the back.
This is the one I prefer, actually--it's just so damn awesome! I wonder if I could pull it off...and then Bea wouldn't have to fuck with corsetry or anything, which is a win-win, 'cos I'd really like to be able to breathe. ;p I'm totally going to email her that right now. I love-love-love it!

I personally loved this cake idea...Derek thought it was hideous, lmao. I think he's more into the clockwork side of steampunk than the pipes and gauges and valves and whatnot, which is cool, too. Maybe we can come to some sort of compromise? ;p

This...is just all-around fucking spectacular.

Okay, done with the picspam, hehe. <3

"I'm Going to Pull the Endocrine System Out of Your Body."

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:36:30 GMT

The subject for this post NEEDS to be on a t-shirt, stat. <3

So, I just did an assload of purging on my LJ, mostly 'cos I'm sick of leafing through 238402834 pages of bullshit just to find some writing from like a year ago or whatever. Also--how could I EVER have believed that my ex was a wonderful person who made me feel like I was "not a total fuck-up"?!

Um, yeah. So.

Let's blame that on the antidepressants, because all that was before they finally got my dosage right.

Hahaha, I wish that were true.

Today, Derek and I had one of the best. psychotic. moments. ever. We were in the car and talking about something or other, and I was like, "Yeah, I kind of give myselves props on being somewhat sharp, but I'm way fucking loopier than you. ...Uh. I just said 'myselves,' didn't I?"

Derek: "Oh, my God."

It was epic, and I love it when he finds something hilarious and laughs really hard 'cos then his voice goes really really high and it reminds me of a hyena. <3

We were watching Van Helsing earlier today, and at the part where the vampire-harpie-bitch-slutty Russian thing traps Kate Beckinsale in the room, then spins around and all the torches go out, I was like, "Uh, that totally reminds me of Zelda or something."

And he goes, "GET OUT OF MY HEAD. I was just thinking that it was like a video game boss fight."

I love how we share a brain. Does that mean he's crazy, too?

Anyway, I should probably sleep, 'cos I have religion tomorrow morning at 9 and I hate it and I really don't wanna fall asleep and piss the nun off, 'cos then I'm definitely going to hell.

Oh, and also:

Max, on hell: "To your right is the Ninth Circle...and just across the way is the gift shop!"

Ahahaha.

Bea's Ho-Made Chopped Cherry Jam

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:31:48 GMT

I just found, in my kitchen fridge, a jar of “Bea’s Ho-Made Chopped Cherry Jam.” Where do I even begin with this? For one, what was apparently intended as an innocent, charming misspelling of “homemade” turned out to be, in essence, a massive FAIL. Also, what does “ho-made” even mean? I’m guessing it has something to do with Mistress Bea assigning each Nevadan hooker, in her respective off-time, the task of chopping cherries (a fantastic irony in and of itself) and creating, with them, a delectable jam, for sale in the brothel gift shop.

Because, you know, whorehouses TOTALLY have those. It’s true; they’re right there, next to the condoms and penicillin. You just have to know where to look.

I'm So Adjective I Verb NOUNS! =D

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 05:35:59 GMT

I had to work the Streamlines Conference today with Sarah, which was actually entertaining. We went to this session about post-modernism, so I'm on a huge creative non-fiction kick.

Okay, some of the dialogue, I made up and threw in 'cos it's funny and I can't remember exactly what I said, but still. You know. It's the thought that counts, hehe.

“Your little princess is my little whore.”

I look at the bumper sticker on the glass-front medical cabinet on the wall behind me and smirk. I wonder what Beckman would say. I’ve been seeing him for about a year now, and I’m still fucked-up as ever, but at least I’m starting to figure out why. Mostly, I show up and we bullshit for an hour about books, music, what I’m doing with my life, and somehow he gleans enough information from that to write a multi-page summary of the session.

He encourages my twisted sense of humor, thank God. I should buy him a bumper sticker like that.

He has a son, his only child. I can’t wait.

The walls are a sinister-looking gore red mixed with black, and three guys wearing death metal shirts and copious amounts of ink stand behind the counter. One is wearing red contacts. I can’t tell if he’s wearing them because he’s strung-out, or because he just likes it that way. He’s got a shaved head and is wearing a beanie. Hope you had a very merry crystal-meth-mas.

There’s this huge fucking dog, friendly as hell but absolutely enormous, that keeps wandering around the shop. I’m sitting on a bar stool with my best friend, Rachel. We’re looking at our navels and discussing the pros and cons of piercing. I have one. She doesn’t.

“No, no, it’s all red. You’re making it all red. Quit fucking with it.” I laugh.

One of the guys, Mark, who’s got more facial piercings than a Zulu warrior, raises a skeptical brow, not without some lascivious interest, I’m sure. “Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not.”

He’s got my design, brings it over to the counter. “I had to simplify it ‘cos it’s going to be kind of small, and I don’t want the ink to bleed.”

“That’s fine.”

A mountain of paperwork, if you’ll forgive the cliché, and fifteen minutes later and I’m being led to one of the back areas, which is where I see an assortment of delicious eye candy. I love those cheesy, ridiculous bumper stickers and signs.

He puts the stencil on my right hip, spins the chair around and reclines it, then motions for me to lie back. I do.

Now, roll up your shirt. So, I do. All the way to just under my breasts, not that there’s much there to see. I glance down at the protruding hipbones, ribs kind of sticking up as they fall into the hollow of my stomach, and wince a little. Can’t help it.

“Is this going to hurt?”

“Oh, like a bitch.” He laughs and turns up the radio. Square-tipped, nimble fingers--artist’s fingers, I’m thinking--inch my jeans down to just below my hipbones, scandalously low, really, and he slips a wad of paper towels under the denim.

“Now just try to relax, dear.” Rachel smirks. I came here a few months ago to watch her get Hebrew characters of her name tattooed on the inside of her left wrist. She’s not Jewish.

“Ready?”

The buzz of the needle is louder than I imagined, and I hold my breath. He pushes on my stomach and I gasp instinctively. “Breeeeathe, dude.”

“’Kay.”

I feel the needle dig into the soft, unblemished skin of my hip, just over the prominent arch of the bone, and flinch. It stings, kind of like a sunburn. Unlike piercing, I note, it goes away when he lifts the needle from my skin.

Rache quotes something funny she found online and I giggle insipidly, which makes the artist slide a hand over my skin quickly to keep the needle from slipping. Too late. There’s a big black dot on the outside of the outline. This continues for at least the next five minutes, on and off, until he finally asks her if she could please not do that, because it’s really hard to concentrate and the shaking is starting to kind of maybe piss him off.

I lie there, sweating, the natural yet slightly unnatural curve at the small of my back arched uncomfortably as my spine sticks to the chair. I hate lying on my back. I almost always wake up feeling like Anthony Hopkins tried to steal one, or possibly both, of my kidneys. Redefining the term “apple bottom,” one white girl at a time.

The red-contacts guy, Tobey, wanders in with a hockey mask on. We almost piss ourselves laughing, even when he reaches down and plays with the little revolver dangling from my midsection, something that would normally kind of freak me out.

“Dude, get the fuck out of here.” My artist laughs and stops the machine, shooing him off.

Rachel’s boyfriend-turned-secret fiance, Shane, shows up about an hour into the session. The artist lifts a shaking hand to his brow, rubs some Vaseline over the outline and half-shaded tattoo, and asks if he can take a smoke break.

“Sure, sure.”

“I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry.”

“So?”

I keep my shirt rolled up and jeans slung low, exposing way more skin than I’d ever want to in public. We walk across a small grassy area from the little crimson shack to a gas station. I stay outside, not wanting to offend anyone. A fat, particularly greasy man in his fifties tries to whistle, but fails. I guess it’s hard to do that when you’re missing over half your teeth.

I look around and smile. We’re roughly two miles from my asshole ex-boyfriend’s house. I remember bringing up the idea of getting bass clefs tattooed on my hips a few months ago, before I wised up and dumped him, having realized that I couldn’t go through life having a boyfriend whose conversational abilities did not extend far beyond comic books and video games. I remember this one time, when I mentioned some existential little piece of crap that popped into my mind. He looked at me like I was crazy and asked if my meds were working.

They were.

He opposed the ink job vehemently, claiming that he “didn’t want anyone else touching his girl there,” conveniently forgetting that he had about as much interest in sex as a eunuch priest living in the Arctic Circle.

He’d shit his pants. I can’t wait until the news gets back to him. We still talk, for now, mainly because I don’t want it on my conscience if he actually follows through for once and drives his shitty little Buick off the Julien Dubuque bridge. Or slits his wrists with the X-acto knife I lent him a few months ago and have never gotten back. Maybe then he’ll stop making those stupid fucking superficial cuts, also conveniently “forgetting” to throw a shirt on before I come over to argue my case, Exhibit A being why I’m not taking him back. You can only bitch at a person and inspire so many thoughts of Ambien suicides before a girl gets sick of it, you know?

I am a monolith, standing next to this grungy-ass building that I’m sure I’ll get gangrene from if they don’t hurry the fuck up. I give in and step through the door, ignoring the looks from the cashier, also missing some teeth, who looks to be about in her late thirties. They’re standing there, in that tiny little space, contemplating the racks of Corn Nuts and granola bars.

“Just get the granola bar, there are only so many lines he can do to keep himself entertained before we get back.” I snicker, and they join me. I love my friends.

I lie back down. Shane laughs.

“Any lower, and we’d be seeing a whole lot more of Jess.” We all laugh at that, too.

The next few hours pass uneventfully, and soon I’ve got my first, glorious ink job on either hip. I tip the guy way more than I probably should, and the three of us walk out to Shane’s car. I hop in the back seat and press my forehead against the window. It’s the end of May, and ungodly hot, even at five pm.

“You okay, honey?”

“Mm, fine. Just tired.”

“Yeah, getting inked takes a lot out of you.” Shane would know; he’s got a fair amount of tattoos himself. I feel like I’m part of some special club.

We get A&D and gauze pads, and then some curry at a little Asian joint downtown. The rice is sticky and the tofu is squishier than any non-living thing should ever be, but I don’t care. We’ve picked up Stef, another friend, from her job at Walgreens. We’re having a pretty good time, and she keeps gushing over the ink, saying that she can’t wait until she gets one.

I contemplate one worn, plastic-coated menu and laugh. “Does that say ‘homey’ or ‘horney’?”

“I dunno, take it home and re-type it.”

“No, no, I’m pretty sure it says ‘horny,’ but with an ‘e.’ Spelling fail.” I snort. “I think it’s sort of like Hunan beef. Human beef.” Christ, I’m still waiting for the day when I get a fortune cookie that says, “That wasn’t chicken,” because then I have a legitimate reason to check myself into Two-West.

“That makes no sense, why the fuck would the word ‘horny’ be on an Asian Gourmet menu?”

“I dunno. Did you pee on the corpse, Rache?” I look across the table from behind my lashes, acting coy, when really I’m focusing on not having a grand mal from the blinking Christmas lights strung up around the large plate-glass window behind her head.

“No, but Robert Downey Jr. is probably the sexiest drug addict around.”

“Other than Anthony Kiedis, right?” We’ve both got a thing for older men, particularly those who’ve taken some sort of psychoactive drug in the past, any kind will do. We’re both on antidepressants. She’s snorted Wellbutrin before, but I don’t even need to do that; they fucked up my dosage and I tripped for about a week straight before I switched to a different psychiatrist.

Stef looks around, all baby-face and enormous hazel eyes. “What?” Across the table, Shane pats Rachel’s hand and smiles.

I love my friends. They fix my hair and make sure I don’t look as awkward as I feel, and I listen to their undergrad crises. We’ve tried to get bombed together on one occasion, except that I’m Captain Morgan, so I just sat there and played Smirnoff pong while everyone else got drunk and passed out. I remember my first shot; it was in Rachel’s kitchen, with her cat a few feet away watching quizzically as I tossed a shot of really, really cheap vodka from a gallon-sized plastic bottle via Cubs shot glass. I was still “attached” back then. My boyfriend at the time never knew about it. He would not approve.

And that makes me smile.

I wonder what Beckman would say if I told him all this. He might imply that it’s self-destructive, but mostly, I think he’d just laugh.

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:31:46 GMT

So, I totally just scored an autographed copy of "Scar Tissue" (Anthony Kiedis' autobiography) on Ebay for, like, $40. I was planning on giving it to Derek for X-mas, but I seriously can't keep it a secret that long, so I think it'll be a housewarming present of some sort. He moves in on the 15th--only like a week! <3

New Story!

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:29:20 GMT

“Rain Dogs, Panacea, and Kath LeGuin”

by Jess Leonard

“Damnit, Kath, wait!” A raw, masculine voice rose in the damp early morning air, a vicious prelude to the sound of scraping metal and brake pads.

“Robbie.” I wrap my arms around his waist and nuzzle my cheek into a sharp, warm shoulder blade. He doesn’t respond. “What’s wrong, Sweetheart?”

He shakes me off, walks to the attic door and opens it. Head down, he steps clear of the rotting threshold and turns the lock. The click is obscene in our empty fourth-floor walkup. I sit down on the floor and lean against the wall, legs stilted in front of me on the decaying boards, and listen to the footsteps.

It’s been like this ever since I moved in with him a month ago, abandoning my shabby garret on the second floor of a building that should’ve been condemned years ago for a less vertically-challenged but no more aesthetically pleasing loft.

I pick idly at a string dangling from my sleeve. I have the distinct feeling that this has been going on since long before I came onto the scene. I hear metallic rattling and close my eyes; I don’t want to know.

It’s strange, but after almost four months of dating, I’m still not exactly sure what Robbie does for a living.

I’m awakened sometime in the evening by the sound of the door—that door—creaking open. He’s rummaging around under the sink for something-or-other, keeping his back to me. Recognizing an opportunity when I see one, I sneak toward the door. It’s still open a tiny bit, a thin sliver of dim light illuminating the worn floorboards.

In what literally seems like a split second his strong, slender fingers are wrapped around my wrist. The normally gentle hazel eyes burn sickly-bright in the gloom. It is clear, at least to me, that he is not well. I narrow my own eyes slightly, then decide to try humor instead. That usually works…but “usually” isn’t all the time, is it?

“What, is that where you keep your other girlfriend or something?”

He gives me a light shove, soft as it can possibly be, but I still fall hard against the wall. My head strikes the ancient, dying plaster, and a chunk falls from somewhere higher up, landing on the floor between us.

“Fuck you, Robert.”

I stalk to the full-length window and aggressively unlock it, but when I look back into the room, he’s already gone. I step onto the metal fire escape and pull a match and my anorexic-looking packet of smokes from my back pocket. Like a man, he always used to tease. Filthy habit. I want to be around to find out what that bastard’s up to.

I toss the last three Lucky Strikes over the railing and watch them fall, narrowly missing a parked car. Since sullen leaning is my thing, I press most of my weight against the grungy brick wall and light the match.

I let it burn all the way down, watching the flame until the sulfur’s gone and the match itself disintegrates between my fingers; then, I look out through the rain dripping from the eaves. I sigh.

Why do I do this shit? Day in, day out, same precarious tango. Him, freaking out over the most trivial of things; me, trying to console him, protect myself, and try to keep the relationship together all at once. Some triumvirate.

He’s not good for me—that’s what my mother always said, what she keeps saying every time she calls. Eventually, I stopped answering the phone, but I guess you can’t hide from the truth. He’s not good for me, but then again, no one ever has been.

I go back inside and go to bed.

Weeks pass; Robbie becomes more and more reclusive by the day, as do I. A friend stops by with some dubious-looking Chinese takeout one afternoon, and we huddle together on separate chairs, shivering in the dank space. I barely say anything and stare at the floor, picking listlessly at my chow mein with a pair of plastic chopsticks.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” I look up into a pair of heavily lined brown eyes, sympathetic and soft in the poor light. I shake my head.

“I’m fine; really. It’s just that he--”

The door slams and cuts me off; I close my mouth and go back to pretending to eat, acting like I hadn’t spoken at all. Still, I can’t resist stealing a glance at him as he walks through the door, handsome as ever in that curious way. Our eyes meet for the first time in…I’m not sure how long.

He quickly turns away, but not before I catch something desperate and lost in them. Rache gives me a curious look, then buttons her coat and stands up.

“I should get going…” I nod silently and walk her to the door, barely feeling the warmth of her hug through the numbness of my mind.

I’ve got to find out what’s going on; it’s making me crazy.

We sleep in separate places now; I take the couch, for the most part. I have no idea where he is, but I’m guessing it’s on the old Murphy bed up in the attic. He pretty much lives up there, and I want to warn him that sometimes, those beds can fold up into the wall with the occupant still inside them.

But I don’t. Although revenge is sweet, I still want to find out what’s what before I let anything do him in. Besides, if he’s going to “expire,” I’d rather he did it someplace other than the apartment or attic. If he insists on being scraped up like a meat pie off of some random surface, someone else can do it, thank you very much.

I hear the door slam and awaken from my drug-induced coma. I sit up, drag a hand through my hair, and fumble for the pull-cord on the lamp beside me, knocking some opiates onto the floor in the process. You’d think they’d stop selling laudanum and all that, but it’s still on the market—you just have to know where to look these days. It’s not like I can sleep on my own, anyway, so what’s the big deal? We don’t have insurance, so I can’t afford to get things checked out and maybe get some sleeping pills, so I’ve got the next best thing. Ghetto-style remedies for the bohemian crowd, yeah?

Curious once more and willing to risk another beating, I pad over to the door and try the knob. Much to my surprise, it turns easily in my hand…and then breaks off. I step into the growing hemisphere of darkness and strike a match, then quickly decide against it and blow it out. The acrid smell hangs heavy in the air, but there is a stench far worse wafting down from above.

I gag, and taste old metal and rot but keep moving. The stairs protest beneath my weight (what little is left of it), and I stumble twice; they’re warped and uneven, and the railing is missing in parts. When I reach the top, I am greeted by a long, dark hallway. Off to the left is an open door, white light flooding from the room beyond. I go to it, cautiously, and peer in.

There are several toppled gurneys strewn helter-skelter about the floor; small sections of drywall stand their ground stubbornly to create a sort of labyrinth. The wall is missing in places, exposing the ugly underworks of the building. I turn away.

There is a door at the end of the hallway marked 22B. Unlike its siblings on this floor, it is a heavy metal industrial slider. I’ve read my ghost stories and watched enough horror movies in my time to know that this is it. I find myself wishing I had a meat cleaver or a lead pipe.

Though we technically live in a glorified urban slum and I’ve seen many ghastly things, nothing in this life could have prepared me for what lies beyond the door.

Robbie is silhouetted in profile. At first, I can’t see the thing he’s bent over, but as my eyes adjust to the light I see a worn and dirty mattress sitting next to what looks to be several factory machines old enough to be considered hazardous.

The thing perched there, propped against a thick iron support beam, stares blankly at his face. Its long, reddish hair looks stringy and is matted with a dark substance I can only assume is blood…

The skin is pale but dirty, and on its arms and hands has begun to rot away. It—she—is missing her left eye; what looks to be the missing rook from our chess set is jammed into the cavernous socket. He whispers something in one tattered ear and it nods. The blood has congealed on one side of her face, but she’s still pretty in an odd way. I bite my lip to muffle a scream: Kath LeGuin. Robbie’s ex-girlfriend, the one who I saw get hit by a car all those months ago…

The lighting is poor, but I swear to you, I did not imagine this. Her wasted jaw falls open with a rusted shriek, and it is then that I notice the intricate way in which a metallic horror had been blended into what was left of the lower half of her face. She leans forward and gripped the sides of his face with hands made of bone and piano wire. Her touch appears to slice into live flesh and he shudders, trails of blood rolling down that strong, fine jaw and staining the floorboards.

I shudder as he goes the rest of the way and presses their lips together in a grotesque fusion of yin and yang. I see her broken teeth press into his bottom lip and then his tongue; he does not scream, merely let his hands fall to his sides as she fed on him.

I faint to the sound of muscle crunching between metal.

They think I killed him, if you can believe it; deciding to choose the lesser of two evils for once, I plead insanity. I’ll be here probably forever, but then again maybe only a week. Time is vast and meaningless, so long as they give me my pills. I sleep most of the time, but I’m safe here now that she has escaped. I feel bad about what happened, I really do, but I also feel like I’ve paid my dues tenfold for a crime that was not mine to commit.

She’s out there, an eternal lamia; where she’s gone, I don’t know.

It’s better that way.

A thump.

Silence.

I heard and saw all these things through the eyes of a ruined ghost, a shell.

I didn’t flinch, not even when her hair came loose from the grille with a sickening crack. The driver sped off, disembodied auburn strands still trailing from the front of his car.

A shell.

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:39:16 GMT

He walked to the door of his lover's apartment, ignoring the chilly, desolate rattle in his knees. The click of bone echoed garishly in the empty wind as he reached for the doorknob.

It was locked. Very decorative, he mused, tracing a narrow fingtertip over the gold-plated filigree surrounding the doorbell. He thought of the night they met; he had a red gerbera pinned to one wiry shoulder; she was resplendent in a black satin dress and gold necklace.

He'd been nervous as hell, clenching a strong jaw as he walked across the room. Things had been different then; when she grazed his cheek, her touch was incendiary, and he felt the flesh there quicken. It had been chaste; they'd kissed once, and he offered to give her a ride home. Though it had been cold that night, as it was now, the air in the car was still and almost unbearably warm. The heat seemed to intensify with each mile that rolled past.

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

He'd shaken his head and rolled down the window for her as she lit up. He glanced at the desk calendar fastened to the dash and took note of the date: October 13th. Anything to avoid the sight of that slim white cigarette between those red, red lips.

He'd been a painter. The canvasses from his latest project, freshly stretched and prepped, lay across the backseat. The metal container of turpentine lay on the floor below.

She gestured emphatically and lauged, recounting a fond memory of a girlfriend's bachelorette party.

A spark. He saw it from the corner of his eye.

He knew now that he'd carelessly left the lid of the thinner ajar. He couldn't shake the awful shriek she gave as the slik material of her gown caught, then traveled...

He'd managed to put it out, and they'd laughed nervously. She was shaken, but seemed unharmed. He dropped her off and watched as she silently slipped away.

Things were different now.
They were different now.

Tonight, he was returning to check on her, make sure she was all right after their scare the night before. He tried the knob again; it wouldn't budge, but when he gently pushed on the door, it gave easily.

He stepped into the post-modern gloom of her apartment, tried the lights. No such luck. He fingered the crisp flower at his shoulder; a petal, red-brown, broke off and drifted gently to the floor.

The curtains were slightly askew in the tiny back bedroom; her still, silent frame reclined belly-down on a foam mattress on the floor, the arm pillowing her head extended toward the door. Scraps of dark silk hung from her frame. She'd always been thin, but she looked so frail and damaged like this...

The rough waves of hair were gone, her face's delicate framework exposed and glowing ecru in the dim light. Her waist's slender curves, the soft flesh of her wrists...where were they now?

He tried to close his eyes and found he couldn't. He was unable to bite his lip in horror, because there was no lip left...

-----

He woke with a start and shot up in bed, gasping and sweating like the protagonist of a bad horror movie. His forehead was damp, yet fleshy.

Something was wrong. He smelled the unmistakable odor of decaying flesh and char. Slowly, he lay back down in the bed, glimpsed the Mondrian calendar on his wall.

October 13th.

He looked at the clock. 11:00 am. He took a sleeping pill and a half, pulled the comforter over his head.

He would not go out tonight.

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:08:34 GMT

I'm really tired, so this is going to be incredibly short, but...

I sent a proposal for a new column on the ALT page to the TH on Monday (because that page TOTALLY sucks and is devoid of all intelligent life, period); my plan was to write about mental illness, particularly depression, offer support, anecdotes, whatever. Kind of like a serial Prozac Nation or something.

Well, I got an email yesterday saying that they wanted to see my first column, and now they're going to start it up! It'd be every other week, since I'm in school and whatnot, but I'm all like, HUZZAH! My first freelance job!

I am psyched.

But I miss Derek, and he won't be able to come down here until next weekend at the earliest (work and all that). On the plus side, we're hoping to have him moved down here by the end of November...keep your fingers crossed!

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:10:26 GMT

Two stoners and a hooker! Haha.

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:00:57 GMT

"Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house...

Not a creature was stirring...

Not even a mutated demonic hellspawn zombie beast that could have originally been a mouse."

HAHAHAHAHA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zZezdKFHNM

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:49:49 GMT

And she's older now, haunted eyes staring vacantly at the floor, nineteen and all bass-calloused fingers, strong from the piano, strong from how she digs her nails into her palms at night and tries to forget. Post traumatic stress, they said. "You seem to know quite a bit about post-traumatic stress disorder," the professor said. You don't even know. Let's not. Can't...even form a fucking sentence. Wordsmith. Everybody said she was, right from the start, with her little hand-made book about aubergines and her grandmother, but what now? Some shitty poetry scrawled on the back of a notebook every once in a while. Pictures on her ceiling, thumb-tacked carefully to scare away the ghosts.

She's always carried her keys between the first two fingers of her right hand, sharp edge up, like her mother taught her. Like Oprah taught her. Like everyone always said. Stab. She thinks, No one can hurt me anymore. She thinks, That's a lie.

The skin under her nail, the left index one, ripped a little more today, and it hurts, but not as bad as the memories that flood back incessantly, like a drunk vomiting after a long night out. You can't stop it.

She writes bullshit about her past, made-up bullshit about things that never really happened except in her own mind, bullshit about things that are true that she wishes were lies. When he holds her, all she can think about is how empty it feels at night, even with him there. She's terrified: "This house is like an asylum. I need to...I need to get out..." And she's squirming, hysterical, and he, all he can do is hold on tighter to the slim frame, thinking that she'll fall apart if he doesn't. Like glue. Like a disease.

The only problem is, she can't get away from the sickness. She can't deconstruct, can't get away from herself and fragment the way she should. She thinks, I'm not un-well, just sick. I've never been well, really, so I can't be "un-well." Through the looking-glass. She splinters, finally, and breaks down. The paper's rough under her fingers; the pen dashes frantically across the page. When she's done, all she sees is shit. Shit. She thinks, I used to be an artist. What happened?

Sometimes, she lets herself wonder what it's like to be dead. The numbness sinks in a little more every day, the Nausea. She loves Sartre. She loves anything that reminds her of how fake she feels, how crystallized it all is on the inside. When she sits at the bench, toying with the keys absently, she's never quite all there. Even if it's difficult, her mind wanders. Her fingers slip. She curses, shuts the lid, gets up in tears. Even music won't go right on days like these.

He's back. If she could feel anything instead of just thinking it, she'd be glad. It's the only time she can sleep and not dream, when he's right there/ Then, she's safe from the obsessive dreaming and even more obsessive waking thoughts. Every morning, she wakes up feeling a little more gone, afraid that she'll live, afraid to die. Mutilation is one of her greatest fears, but she'd never tell a soul that.

Better to keep the eccentricities locked up inside. One slip of the tongue in some bullshit literature class and twenty scared young college kids know everything about the last ten years of her life. She thinks, Damn you, Septimus. She thinks, I wish suicidal people would stop bitching and just do it already. And then she feels terrible, because she's felt that way a few times, kind-of-sort-of.

The sleeping pills make her hallucinate, see flowers on the ceiling, her head's perpendicular to the pillow and all she can see is herself, but she still tries. Anything's better than sitting awake until three in the morning, staring out the window at the lightening sky, sometimes grey, sometimes violet, sometimes red, and crying at how beautiful the dead trees look against it. Everything's upside-down these days. Hates being alone, but can't stand to be around people. Feels bad for not spending more time with her grandmother, her great-aunt. Parkinson's. Alzheimer's. Bipolar disorder, courtesty of the drunken cougar-slut that spawned her almost twenty years ago.

I'm so starving for attention.

She thinks, Maybe I'm just tired.

Maybe when she wakes up, if she tries hard enough, things will feel okay again, anything other than this empty.

And the stomach acid finds a new way to make you get sick...

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 02:54:41 GMT

Wow. Christmas Eve-Eve already. Crazy shit. Too bad I'm not feeling particularly festive.

If I were a guy, I'd sell my left nut for something to drink right about now. This is probably going to sound reaaaaaaal angsty and pre-teen scene kid-like, but I'm tired of being conscious all the time. I want something to knock me out for a few years so I don't have to think and deal with the monotony of everyday bullshit that I have to go through. My entire day is like, "Dance, monkey, dance!"

Funny, I'm not even the slightest bit upset right now...just exhausted. And it just hit me that I (and most of my friends) are going to be twenty in less than a year and a half. That's fucked up right there. I tend not to associate any particular age with myself, and maybe that's the problem...not sure.

So here's what I've been doing over break:

1) Not sleeping
2) Hanging with Dalton and talking to Kenzie
3) Drowning myself in my music and art.

I feel driven to create. I feel weird without a pen or a guitar pick in my hand (okay, I lie. Picks are for pussies. I'm a tough bitch, I don't need a little piece of plastic. I wanna feel the thirty-year-old strings of my battered acoustic digging into my fingers til they bleed.)

And then I go and play the piano for hours on end. Can't feel the keys, really; at least, not with my left hand. Callouses are a wonderful thing indeed, my dears.

I fucking miss everybody. No; just a few people, really. Most of all, I miss myself, which sounds quite ridiculous, but it's true. I'm so oblivious to myself and everything around me anymore. Ah.

Does anyone have a lightweight midget friend who can come over and step on my back? It really needs a good cracking right about now.

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:59:25 GMT

So apparently a lot of people think I died or something, 'cos they haven't seen me since like two weeks ago (before finals and all that)...haha. No. I'm not dead.

I dug out my mother's old acoustic guitar and started fucking around with it a few days ago...took me an hour to tune that bitch, since no one's done anything with it in almost 20 years. But I tamed it, so it is mine. I'm still trying to decide on a name, because I <3 it.

Now, most of you are probably going "Pshaw, you're a pussy," and I am-- ask Dalton (or anyone who lives with me, actually) how I was pissing and moaning the first night I started playing it. My fingers were trashed. Anyway, I've got a nice layer of calluses starting, so it doesn't hurt much anymore. Thankfully, I know how to read tabs and music and stuff, so the only struggle is getting my fingers to reach far enough over the frets.

Probably stupid of me, but I'm basically like, "Fuck 'Learn to play guitar' books, I'll just print off a shitload of tabs and teach myself some." I'm working on "Blackbird" by The Beatles right now, which I'm not particularly fond of, but it's easy. I'm going to suck hardcore at it for a long time, but I've gotten a lot better already; plus, I know how to tune The Bitch by ear now.

I'm thinking I might wanna re-string it soon, since the strings are ancient, too. Hmm...my fingertips smell like copper! Yayyyy, metal poisoning!

Word up.

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:54:52 GMT

Funny, isn't it, how someone can so quickly decide they want to go from being your best friend to your worst enemy? Not that it doesn't bother me...it just doesn't hurt.

I'm having a hard time feeling much of anything lately, actually...it's just my art, and my music...and the endless strings of lyrics my brain throws at me at 4 in the morning when I can't sleep. At least she's my muse. Ha.

I can never sleep.

Wow, if you re-read that, it sounds really homoerotic...I'm definitely straight (maybe a lesbian for Ryan Ross when he's got good hair and doesn't look TOO womanly, ha ha ha).

According to Mallory, I qualify as emo because I almost accidentally OD'd one time...ask me about it!

Fucking headaches. God damn. Apparently, taking several of each type of pill in the medicine cabinet doesn't even work...sheeeeeeeeeit.

Friends only.

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:00:43 GMT

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/sugarthiefjuju/f-1.jpg[/IMG]

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:16:39 GMT

"What would you do for a Klondike bar?"

My answer: Not shit, and here's why I wouldn't even bother to get one with a five finger discount, let alone buy one.

Exhibit A: They taste like shit and are insanely difficult to eat. I mean, come on. You try to bite into the motherfucker and all you get is chocolate plating on your teeth, and the hard-as-a-rock ice cream left in your hand, which, by the way, tastes suspiciously like Listerine. Or maybe that shit old people soak their dentures in, not that I'd know what that tastes like.

Exhibit B: The commercials offend me. I mean, who the hell is that happy about getting a Klondike bar? Who would seriously go to extremes for it? It's a fucking piece of chocolate-coated ice cream. And the people dancing around with bad 80's clothing and Flock of Seagulls hair freaks me out (have you SEEN the older commercials? Scary.)

Exhibit C: Your claim pisses me off, Presumptuous Assholes of the Klondike Bar Company, whatever the fuck that's actually called. I hate how they assume that everyone would give their left ball and a pound of flesh for a goddamn ice cream treat. Fuck.

What's this world coming to?

Happy Pills and a Shiny New Navel!

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 23:50:39 GMT

So, I haven't updated in, what, nine weeks? So I decided to get my ass in gear and actually do an update. Yay!

From the beginning!:

1. I went to the psychiatrist for the first time in my life on the 11th. Diagnosis: Severe, although fortunately non-psychotic, depression. He prescribed 300 mg a day of Wellbutrin, which is actually a shit-ton, because the highest dosage they can ever give you is 400 mg. I must be crazy. Oh well! I'm also going to talk to him once a month so I can unload some of my baggage and shit.

For those of you who don't know, I've been struggling with depression since I was nine years old. Let's not go into that.

2. Two days later, I went to Reality Check and got my navel (belly-button, for all the hominids who don't know the correct term for it) pierced. Dalton went with me and held my hand and all that (although truthfully, I think he was fascinated by the size of the needle they stabbed me with, because he talked about it later- "It was HUGE!") It was nice of him to go with me...I would've pussed out if he hadn't been there, probably.

Then later we had to go to this community games thing, but we left after like an hour because it was about 90 degrees out and they didn't offer us any water...I started to get heat exhaustion, so we went back to his house, where I collapsed on his bed and passed out for about two and a half hours.

When I FINALLY woke up, he was curled up next to me with his chin on my shoulder. I must've been really exhausted, because I didn't even hear him come into the room...I love it when he does that, it's so cute. He kept asking me if I was okay, since the piercing hurt like a bitch and he thought I was running a slight fever (I'm always warm when I wake up, but body piercings do send you into shock a little, so a fever's normal). He's so sweet to me...I don't know what I did to deserve it, but thank God I've got him. I don't know what I'd do without him.

3. I registered at Clarke yesterday, got my schedule and all that...BFA with an emphasis in painting major, and a Spanish minor. Depending on how long that takes, I may or may not pick up a psychology minor as well. My schedule looks like this:

Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes:
8 AM-9:50 AM= Drawing 1
1:00 PM- 1:50 PM= Spanish 111, Conversation, Composition, and Grammar (the highest one they can put a freshman into, yay me!)

Tuesday/Thursday classes:
8:00 AM-9:15 AM= Cornerstone 1 (like a speech class
9:30 AM-10:45 AM= Fundamentals of Philosophy (I LOVE philosophy, so this should be fun).
11:00 AM-12:15 PM= Art History: Art of the Western World 1

They didn't really want to stick me in an art history class so soon, but then again the registrar fucked up and didn't know that was my major. They also wanted me in a lit class instead of philosophy, but because of my Spanish, it wouldn't fit. WOOT!

So I have easy-ass classes this semester. During that break on M/W/F, I'll be doing work study for the Literature/Language department as a faculty assistant (I just found out today that I got the job; it's basically office/bitch-work, but it'll pay part of my tuition). It's only 4-6 hours a week, but it's something.

I also applied for Art Department Faculty Assistant, which is 10-12 hours a week; if I get that one, I won't keep my part-time job- I'll take a leave of absence and only work over break. I'm not concerned about money, because I'll have so much cash stored from work study that I'll get some of it back.

I VERY EXCITE!

"Nobody Does it Better," a noir short story by Jess L. (in progress).

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:48:40 GMT

“Dame like you shouldn’t be out alone at night.”

There’s a pinstriped sleeve and a chubby, bejeweled hand. I move before it can touch me.

“Fuck you.” My voice is harsh against the cold light and cement walls. I’ll be damned if those bastards get my Tony, though. Wish I had the tommy gun he gave me, or at least a pistol, but they stripped that off me the second they caught me in that alley, waiting for a cab. He told me never to tell…I’ll never tell. They can slit my goddamn throat if they want, but I’m not talking.

The light above my head’s shining straight down to me, but I’m not glowing. That grimy little hand is pawing at me, trying to tear off my necklace, my dress. I snap at the hand, but he just laughs.

“Kitty cat’s got claws.” He snaps his fingers once, twice. “Turn her loose, boys. She wants to play.”

I watch, even when they nick my wrist with the blade, even when the ropes twist and cut into my skin. Anything’s better than watching that bastard watch me.

And then I make a run for it.

Big Lou’s POV

Yeah, we caught her, all right. Shame to have to hurt a dame like that, but she wouldn’t tell us a damn thing. Couldn’t be trusted; didn’t want to rat out her lover, I guess. Dames can be funny like that.

The clock on the wall goes tick, tock, tick, tock…at least, before I throw the knife I’m holding into the center of it. It grazes her face, slices off a little skin. She flinches but keeps on staring at me, those blood-red lips pouting. But she doesn’t move. And I’m starting to get real pissed at her, so I get up and walk across the room to her chair, smack her around a little. Show her who’s boss.

“All right, bitch, either you tell us where the money’s at or we hurt you bad, real bad. Then we’ll get that worthless piece of shit you’ve been diddling.”

She spits in my face. I wipe it away with my hand, then wipe the hand on that damned red dress she’s wearing. Red. Red, red, red. Always the fuckin’ red, and I’m colorblind, so that pisses me off even more. Maybe it’s green, I don’t know. One thing’s for goddamn sure—if she doesn’t tell me where the money and that lover of hers is, that dress is gonna turn red real fast, and you can take that one to the bank.

Last time a bitch messed with us like this, we found their hidey-hole and…well, let’s just say the last thing she ever got from him was a more sensitive area, sent in a box, direct from me and the boys to her little cinderblock apartment. Then we took the rest of his body and gave him the good old-fashioned cement shoes treatment…over a bridge.

Anyway, so I’m staring at the dame and expecting her to cry, give in, something…they all act tough, but they usually break down once Roy starts chopping fingers off. I figure this bitch must be crazy; they’ve got three fingers already and she hasn’t even flinched. Must be doped up on opium or something. Either way, I don't care.

(It's short, but give me feedback...pleeeeeeeeeease.)