so damn contagious..

Zoe has short hair and a name that's shorter. She has skin the same color as paper and eyes the same color as dirt. Zoe has a family and a bedroom and a journal. Zoe has a life and a body and a smile.

But Zoe is lying on pavement and her heart is lying four feet away from her. A few seconds before, she said, 'this won't hurt.' She said, 'this can't hurt worse than anything we've felt before.' And Zoe, she walked across the street but only a couple of her bones made it to the other side.

Alice is watching and her brain is telling her to run and it's telling her hands to shake and it's telling her eyes to close but she's frozen and Zoe is lying there and Alice sees the blood but she doesn't move. She wants to say: I bet it hurt, Zoe. You fucking deserved it.

Instead she just whispers, 'oh my god.'

Zoe's dirt eyes are still closed exactly like they were right before she stepped off the curb. She's thinking: I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. But her body is saying: You're dead. You're dead. You're dead. And that's what she wanted right? That's what everyone wanted.

Alice has an ambulance light smile and she's laughing because Zoe had this planned and Zoe, she finally got what she wanted. Alice, she's laughing because she's standing there alone on the sidewalk and because she's not the one the paramedics are peeling off the road. She's laughing because she's imaging Zoe laughing from where ever she is and not where her body is now.

Zoe has bones in a million little pieces and that's nothing new. She's always been held together by the last drop of glue or the last strand of string. The paramedics, they're lifting what's left of Zoe into the ambulance. They're saying, 'She was such a beautiful girl.'

And Alice, she's screaming and she says, 'She's still fucking beautiful. Don't you see? That's what she's always wanted.'

The paramedics nod their heads and try not to think about how they'll find Alice next week. They'll say, 'suicides are contagious, you know.'

Zoe, she's dead and dead and dead but she's okay. She swears she's okay even though no one is listening and no one can hear her over the sirens.

Alice, she's walking into the road and she says, 'This won't hurt.' She says, 'This can't hurt worse than anything I've felt before.'

He was a..

I don't know how it started. I don't even know really when it started. It just did. His love is like hydrogen cyanide; toxic and lethal. I'm surprised it hasn't killed me yet…Wait, I keep forgetting. It already has.

His darkness is like the deepest shadows of a chasm; one that will suck you in if you aren't careful. His torment is like pins and needles, digging deeper and deeper under the skin; pins and needles laced with atropine, making me dizzy and weak. His coldness could freeze you with a single look. His eyes pierce the flesh like knives, cutting down into internal organs, destroying everything in their path. He is the Phantom of my Opera, and I am not sure if I would either love him for eternity or leak carbon monoxide into his room at night.

I remember a time when he used to not be so bitter. When he did not hide behind a mask, when he did not pretend to be someone else. But that was long ago. So, so long ago. His secrets are rotted skeletons in the darkest of closets and his memories are hanging on meat hooks in the coldest of refrigerators. He does not like speaking of his past, it haunts him, torments him. It makes him want to cut long ribbons of crimson into his pale flesh, spelling hateful words in neat cursive, as if his flesh were icing on a cake. He hides behind many a facade, pretending to be someone else. His whole life is a stage, and he is the only actor. He makes up his own lines, and his own plots. Sometimes, he even makes up his own deaths.

He became feral and so did his love when he woke up one morning and the little girl down the hall was found dead in an alley. Now he mutters to himself and rocks on the floor at times, telling the spirits and demons that haunt him that he did it. He did it. He looks up at me with eyes so oceanic blue, I know for a fact that a doll maker would just love to remove them from his skull and stick them in a China doll, and maybe even with his pale skin, they would use that too. His long hair falls in his face, and sometimes I keep forgetting that he's a man at all, he looks so feminine. There is blood around his mouth, for he has chewed on his lips, and he even ripped away his lip rings, causing blood to spill down his chin, and glitter on his porcelain throat. They tell me he's crazy and that I too am going down his lane. That I will end up like him because his love is so intoxicating that I can't seem to let him go. The dead tend to do that to you.

Have you ever heard breaking glass? Maybe even the crunch of metal? Have you ever heard a car crash? That is what I woke up to this morning, and when I looked out the window that perches high above the back parking lot and alley, I can see the wreck that is his car. He rammed it into several other cars. I know he'll pay for them. I also know that he can't die. Not again. I see him sitting in the alley, rocking. I go to him, trying to ease his mind; to let him know that he did not mean to hurt anyone. He kisses me, and my head becomes fuzzy with his thoughts, with his demons. They lick the inside of my mouth, and they leak into my subconscious; feeding there, trying to worm their way into my thoughts. I push him away, and he cries. I comfort him and then I take him back to his home, where he sits in his corner, muttering to himself, beginning to chew on his hair and his lips. I know he's crazy but I still lust him.

I love you. That's what he says when we're lying together in his bed, the sheets twisted and hot. His naked flesh slides over mine, and his teeth are as sharp as razors. He cuts me with his fingernails and bites me. He fancies himself a vampire, and he is beautiful. He could easily be one. If only he wasn't so rotted on the inside. If only he wasn't so insane.

I don't know why it happened. I don't know when or how. I just know that it did. My phantom came into my life, poisoning it, seeping its darkness into my veins like a hydraulic needle. Drip. Drip. I think I just might have to leave the heater on tonight, locking the doors and windows. I'll kiss his bloody lips once more, and leave. He's already dancing a dead man's ballet; I think I'll simply finish it.