I'm floundering. Really floundering. There's so much here ... There's just so much I want to say, but it's all based in hate and rage and fear. I put the words down, then strike them out. These are all the secret things. What lives in my dark hallways. I need to spell them out, but they need to remain unwritten. So hard I've tried ... so hard I've tried to build a stable home. So hard I've failed, so far I've fallen. When everything I've created lies bleeding on the kitchen floor, what will I have left? Memories. Regrets. Tales someone else has written. This is not me, this life divided. But it's the only me there is. Hiding from the bogeyman. I search for every light in the darkness, but no matter which way I turn, it's always the same. I'm lost.

-J

Define reality. Define real.

There's an itch behind my eyes. The whole house has begun to smell like something between rotten turkey and burnt hair. I don't know if that even makes sense, but it's the best I can do. There's nothing in the house that should be making that smell, but it's there anyway. The nosebleeds are getting worse. Bright arterial red drips from my upper lip onto my shirt. The red haired girl lies in my bedroom. She herself stinks of overripe meat, a different smell entirely from the one I smell now.

I didn't call the EMS because I wasn't sure what to say. I took her pulse and though she breathes from time to time, there is no beat beneath her chest. Her skin is room temperature. I'm not sure if I should call the paramedics or a coroner.

I take a sip of Dr. Pepper. There is roughly three ounces of rum in the glass, and my head begins to buzz pleasantly even as my gut spews burning acid back up my esophagus. It has a chalky, yellow, bilious taste to it, but I slam down the rum and ignore it.

In the next room, she makes a rattling sound. I screw my eyes shut, tears leaking from the corners, and try to think. I take another pull on my glass and I stare out the window over the television. A shadow passes over it. Human in shape, a clearly defined shape of head and shoulders. The window is high up, a man would have to be over seven feet tall to walk past it that way. I squeeze my hands tightly on the arm rests of the chair I'm sitting in and the urge to vomit crawls up behind the burning feeling of bile in my gut. The glass shivers in its frame.

From the next room I hear a thump and rise to check on the red head. She's standing in the doorway, a black rope of liquid hanging thickly from the corner of her mouth. Syrupy and pendulous, it swings and I am transfixed by it. She's still dressed in the jogging outfit I found her in, but the top is now stained maroon and black in places. Her eyes are unfocused but as she comes toward me her mouth twists into a grin.

She is nearly within grasping distance of me when the spell breaks and I run for the kitchen.

Speckles of maroon on the porous asphalt remind me of childhood woes. I see the spatters that remind me of my old life and I wipe my arm across my nose, leaving a red streak staining the hairs there. I don't quite smile, because the memories are too sharp, but I come close.

There's a red haired girl walking through the trees nearby and I stop to look at her. The sidewalk is empty but for me and the girl's eyes are empty and staring into nothing. I think I've seen her before, an elective class, maybe humanities. She looks like one of the girls that argued against me when I claimed the Christian god wasn't a universal truth. It's difficult to tell from here.

She stumbles to one knee, and stops where she is and I move toward her. Drunk, drugged, something, she seems helpless and though I have my questions about the origins of the world, I still know right from wrong. If she's in trouble, I want to help.

As I approach, a sound begins to escape her throat. It's a low rattling sound, a gagging, tearing noise that seems to imply she can't breathe. I begin to run, and grab her face, pulling her jaw upward opening her the air passages as best I can. A glistening rope of saliva seeps from the corner of her mouth. The sound of her suffering is beyond my capability to deal with.

I lean in, close, to listen to her breathe. Her breath is ragged, difficult to hear. I turn my mouth to hers in an effort to deliver CPR but the smell rips up out of her lungs and hits my nose with the force a week old corpse.

She's dead inside. I can't tell how I know this, but the breath from inside her has the sickly sweet smell of rotting meat. She stinks like a brisket left in the sun for a day. My nostrils wrinkle at the scent.

I draw back. Not sure what to do. Her eyes leak black, which I had assumed was her mascara running but now I am not sure. They remain closed despite whatever attempt I make at opening them. The best I can do is a sliver of bloodshot white as I struggle with the lids.

A sound from the trees, a low and slow chuckle, makes me look up. There's nothing there, only trees, elm and maple, magnolia and fir. I look back at her face and notice the orange red curl of hair that traces the line of her jaw. There's a tingle at the bottom of my gut and despite myself I scream when she coughs a spray of arterial red into my face.