Lucy

She sits awake some nights and wonders. But not in the bedroom, for it is small and occupied and not conducive to wondering. She lies there for the allotted amount of time, staring at the hairline crack in the ceiling, the one that unsettles her when it's dark. It's never been filled. No one minds it in the daytime, when worries are less useful. Then, when his breathing is steady and his hands are still, she shifts slowly off of the mattress and onto the floor, dodging squeaky boards and walking on the outside of her feet, like an Indian, like she's seven again. That's how she knows it's alright to slip away. Because she feels seven and not seventeen.

Outside, on the small balcony attached to their kitchen, she lights incense and plays with the smoke. It tangles when left alone, but she sorts it with a few waves of her fingers, like a small child's hair. The night-bugs, cicadas and moths and big, green beetles, buzz around her as she closes her eyes and wonders again if she's a bad person.

It's such a subjective term, 'bad person,' she tells herself, even though she knows that this argument is crap. I mean, when you say bad, you could mean anything from your Irish Catholic grandmother's idea of bad to Charles Manson bad. But that's the worst thing about having a conversation with herself. She can't use (or rather, utilize) her dual degree in English and 20th century literature (or rather, wordy bullshit). She can't dodge the question and go of on a tangent. Well, she can, but it's not particularly effective, because there is only one of her, and she knows what she means by bad (and that people who are Charles Manson bad are typically referred to as "murderers" to do away with the need for distinction).

Well, she revs up warily, if you asked most people, I would probably get a fairly positive response. I mean, they'd have their complaints, of course. Everybody has complaints about everybody. But I think that the consensus would be, yes, good.

But then she has to wonder how much of what they know is real and how much of it, exactly, is layering and creative placement. Because there's always something. No matter what she does. There are always so many little failures, especially with him. She tells him her feelings, that she loves him, like she's supposed to, but no matter how true it is, she can't kill that tiny, persistant animal that squirms uncomfortably in her chest every time she does. She tries to be as kind to him as he is to her, but moments still exist in which she wants to wound him. She goes to sleep next to him and wakes up there, too, but she finds herself screwing someone else in the middle of the night. Her control only goes so deep, and it kills her.

So what is she, really? Kind and loving, or a decent approximation of the two? Committed, or just well-trained? Does consensus matter when what they see is just a white sheet, draped over the ugly crime scene to appease and comfort?

She can't decide anymore. So she stops moving. She stops breathing. Uninterrupted, the smoke wraps around her, caressing her shoulders. She closes her eyes and listens. But the promised realization never comes.

If You Could Call It That

I've spent a week trying to describe it. I say "I", because I'm brave (or at least trying to be). But it defies description, and I'm starting to suspect it's because it all worked out so well. It wasn't like real life, where plot is sparse and erratic. It wasn't like writing stories, when you can add the exact right amount of conflict to make it believable. It wasn't like plays or movies or conversations, when you can feel the push and the pull between two people, sense the tides, the gives, the tells. At first, it was more like a dance between two willing and knowledgeable partners, except neither person wanted to admit to dancing, so they pretended that they really only came here to enjoy the music and wander about the room in an organized manner. It was more like we were circling, arms outstretched, refusing to touch. We knew the pieces would fit, but we were wary to construct. So I seduced the moment, slipping one block perfectly onto the next, everything working so hard so we wouldn't have to.

It was almost effortless, but only because we needed it to be. I did not have to push or be pulled. We floated aimlessly until we met in the middle, and then suddenly it was only that, only us, only breathing, until we retracted and waited for the next collision, detached in the presence of intimacy.

Demetrius

Because when he was there, it was like catching a drizzle, and when he was gone, it was something worse. Emptiness, the kind in a house after the last box has been packed and loaded; emptiness harder than emptiness alone, because it was not truly empty but a quarter full of a dull, achy hurt, just enough to slosh around at the bottom and make some noise. She didn't want it to be that way, but it was. There was something possessing about him, about the way he would not be possessed. Or, at least, not by her. Not that she would give him the satisfaction of open pursuit. She wasn't that far into the forest yet. But the want was undeniable, so she let it sit there, as undisturbed and untended as it was unintended.

Because she doesn't know how to understand him. He's like starting a story in the middle, the first hundred or so pages ripped out or blacked out, redacted, redacted, redacted. His open book is no good to her. She doesn't speak that damn language, anyhow.

Honesty

Sometimes I want to take my reasons and throw them on the ground in front of all of them, everyone. I want to tell them that they're all there, every last explanation, every last why. Count. I dare you, you sick bastards. Count these small things, the ones that matter so much that you'll throw them away at a moment's notice. Excuse. Justification. Unsatisfactory. Just plain damn not good enough. But they are there. And that is the one thing that you cannot deny.

Don't Jump, Part 2

HONOR
No! Of course not! Why, do I seem...I mean, do I give off the appearance of someone who--

John
Hold on. Have you?

HONOR
Have I what?

JOHN
Done this before.

Honor
...maybe.

JOHN
Before as in, one crazy night in the boy's dorm at college twenty years ago? Or before as in...more than once?

Honor
Ten years ago, thanks. And no, you're my first...

JOHN
Okay.

HONOR
...this year. I've done...well, four others.

JOHN
Four?! And you've chickened out every time?

HONOR
"Chickened out"? Really nice. What is this, the third grade?

JOHN
Four times?

HONOR
You're really not what I expected. Your tactics aren't normal at all.

JOHN

I'm not normal.

HONOR
They usually ask nice, harmless questions. What's your name is the first one.

Beat.

HONOR
Oh, come on. I'm feeding it to you. Just ask me.

JOHN
What's your name?

HONOR
It's Honor.

JOHN
Anna?

HONOR
No, HONOR. H-O--

JOHN
Oh.

Beat.

HONOR
You really suck at this, don't you? Aren't you going to ask me anything else?

JOHN
Such as?

HONOR
Everyone's approach is slightly different. Not so different, but it varies, I guess. Some get personal. They tell me their names, too.

JOHN
I'm John.

HONOR
Then they just...ask me about myself. Little details. Children. They always ask if I have children.

JOHN
Do you have children?

HONOR
God, no. Twice I lied and said I did. A girl, two years old, father left me when I was pregnant. Cute little thing with blond curls. I was just trying to help them out, because God forbid you are a woman without a child. Suicidal, fine, but never alone.

Beat.

HONOR (CONT’D)
So? Got any ideas of your own? Any other questions for me?

JOHN
When did you start faking suicide attempts as a hobby?

HONOR
Who says I'm faking? Who says I'm not one-hundred-percent serious right now and just screwing with you?

JOHN
I won't tell on you.

HONOR
It started, like, four years ago. It was real the first time. It really was. I thought it was. I was so lonely, and I guess I convinced myself that that was the only way out. I lived in Utah before that. I used to rock climb a lot. So many great outdoor cliffs. I loved it. You couldn't think about falling or you got stuck. You had to focus on getting higher without thinking about how high you were. It was so zen, just...looking around. It kept me sane. And then I lost my job and had to move to New Jersey. Have you ever been to New Jersey, John?

JOHN
I think everyone has, at some point.

HONOR
Yes. Just passing through on your way to New York or something, right? But still, you saw a good amount of the state?

JOHN
Sure.

HONOR
Then you understand where I'm coming from. Everything got so gray. So I decided to go back to Washington.

JOHN
I thought you lived in Utah.

HONOR
No, I grew up in Washington. It's kinda gray there, too, but I had started to dream about it. About fourth grade.

JOHN
Fourth grade?

HONOR
The year that we drove into the city for a field trip to the Space Needle. I got the stomach flu that week, and I never really got around to visiting it before I moved away. Anyway, once I was exiled to Jersey, I was having all these dreams about how incredibly great it would be to go there and go up high and look down again.

Don't Jump, Pt. 1.

What I did for internship. Tell me if you'd like to keep on reading/give me some feedback, plz.

Honor, a woman in her early thirties, is standing on raised platform (the roof of the building), looking down. As the lights go up, a muffled crowd can be heard below, in a general state of panic. One woman shouts, don't jump. Honor rolls her head around on her neck, basking in it.

John (an average-looking man in his mid-forties, very middle-management, with a glazed, recited look and feel to everything he says and does) enters from upstage right, like he's just come up onto the roof.

JOHN

Excuse me.

Honor jumps, puts her hand to her chest, a pantomime of what frightened should be.

HONOR

God. You scared me.

JOHN

Ah. Yeah, that probably wasn't a great idea...

They stare at each other awkwardly for a moment. John coughs.

JOHN (CONT'D)

Um, ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to get down from the ledge there. It's against building protocol for non-security employees to be up on the roof like that. So if you could just...

HONOR

Are you joking?

JOHN

No, those are the rules.

HONOR

I know those are the rules. Those are the rules everywhere. I don't care about the rules. I'm going to jump.

This had honestly not occurred to John before now. He is mildly surprised to receive this news.

JOHN

Oh. Huh. That's...don't do that.

HONOR

(theatrical)

If you've come here to stop me, you can save your breath. I'm not going to listen.

JOHN

Well, it's probably not all that--

HONOR

There's nothing you can say. My mind is made up.

JOHN

You could at least hear me out. Common courtesy being what it is.

HONOR

Why bother? I already know what you're going to say. It's just not worth it anymore. Every day is a worthless circle. Get up, brush my teeth, take a shower, go to work, get home, go to sleep, rinse, repeat. Life is not worth living.

JOHN

Then jump.

HONOR

...excuse me?

JOHN

Listen, don't take this the wrong way, but you're kind of pissing me off right now.

HONOR

I'm what?!

JOHN

You think that everyone who wears a tie and drinks coffee out of a 'Life's a Beach' mug doesn't think strikingly similar things about all of their strikingly similar lives? What the hell makes you so special? Hmm? That you get to stand up here and bitch about it to everyone? That you get to quit instead of sucking it up and typing up expense reports like the rest of us? If you want to jump, go ahead and jump. Who am I to stop you?

HONOR

(knocked off balance by his words, to herself)

But...well. This is interesting. A new technique, or something? It must be. I've never heard anything like that before.

JOHN

Before? Like you've been in this situation before?

Honor laughs awkwardly.

Dear Lady Gaga,

I think you're pretty cool. Okay? I really do. I admit that when I saw your first music video, I sort of wanted to take something very pointy to your skull, because like we need another slutty blond girl singing about how easy it is to get into her sparkly spandex American Apparel hot pants when she's drunk. But once you busted out the nipple fireworks and killed Alexander Skarsgard, I went over to the dark side. Because, let's face it, no one can pull off Muppet genocide like you do.

But when you make me go through 20 minutes of scantily clad backup dancers with bowl cuts violating each other and cigarette sunglasses and chunks of meat wrapped in barbed wire and no eyebrows and American Flag jumpsuits and rosary-eating nuns in red rubber habits and going back to normal for five seconds only to bust out a machine gun bra in the next shot and lesbian prisons and your entire face randomly dissolving and scaring the shit out of me all for no ostensible reason (considering that none of that has anything AT ALL to do with what you are talking about), only for me to excuse everything once you start singing and get Allejandro stuck in my head? NOT COOL, GAGA. REALLY NOT COOL AT ALL.



P.S. Do me.