You got what you wanted! He thought. Fucking pretty, perfect, immortal. So was Medusa, and she turned the world to crumbling stone. The thought made him feel better as he watched her disappear between thin silver trees. He moved to turn away, but she was murderously cunning and she let her eyes catch his for a moment. From so far away he felt his lungs tighten and something brave inside him ran off like a squirrel in the road. She was suddenly all the rapids in the world and he became so many dead leaves and lost himself in her thundering crush. "You're fucked," she reminded him, because he'd forgotten. The bed came back to him and the woman beside him was not who he had imagined she was, and there was no air in the room. It was only the stench of cheap cigarettes and something else...something shameful and afraid. He let his eyes roll wildly and tried to feel the rapids again, or see Medusa in the trees. He wished life had stopped at that moment...he wished he had been turned to stone by that beautiful never-dying bitch. But he was only stoned, and though a thin body clung to his and she would stay with him until he asked her to leave, she didn't feel real. He could feel her decaying slowly beside him. He was stoned and alone, because real women die. They rot like fallen leaves.
"Want to fuck then?" What's it like to kill someone, is a better question. Outside the street lights were untrusting and shyly flickered in and out. This was unusual for the area, because he lived well. He thought of it as a sign and stood up and the girl beside him took this as a cue to writhe in the bed like a snake on crack. He walked to the window, the cigarette in his hand burning so low that it's smoulder kissed his finger-tips. Another forgettable night in a tragic city on the edge of going insane and yet he wouldn't leave because he was waiting. The girl said something that didn't make it to him and then sulked and popped a pill of something that was on the nightstand. He had lost track of what pills he kept lying around, probably a fucking perk to boost her self esteem because he actually didn't care what she had to say from that bed. It didn't exist and neither did she. Silver trees existed. A woman who was a river was real, who flowed in and out of his future and moved the sand pit inside him. "You're so close to where I am, you're breathing it. Open your eyes and fucking look for it." She had said that Friday while pulling the guts out of a rabbit and smearing them on one of the shining trunks beside her. The rabbit had no blood, it's insides were dry and dusty and unbelievably gold. I wonder why, "why is there no blood?" It's not real, she had said. Rip apart anyone you know and you'll find sparkling dust. They're pretend, they're all fairy tales. You're real though. You'll bleed. You and I are the only two here that will bleed when you cut us. And we'll bleed forever because we live forever.
The girl on the bed was only a sack of sand. Outside, a man in the street was drunk. He tripped on the curb and tumbled first onto his knees and then sideways onto his back like a tossed turtle. He wanted to rip a hole in this world and all it's unbearable mediocrity. What the fuck was there to wait for? It only made sense to start stabbing the moment in the heart and tear it open by the sternum to see inside. Where was the place he wanted, where were the woods? He's a crazy, crazy man and the girl on the bed doesn't even know. She's high and vulnerable and very oblivious as she sits only feet from someone who is dangerously insane. Or at least, that's what someone would think if they could read his thoughts. But he's not crazy because he's right. It's all pretend. We write stories and we write legends but really, were the tales. There are others who write us. And the Medusa in the woods is one of them and he is too. Give him time, he'll find the paper.
