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[owlizthe5 at xxx.com]

this is a short fictional piece. i wrote in an hour after i woke from a nightmare.

distant shadows of long ago memories crawl out to leave welts on my already bruised heart. she takes up the knife once more, just to plunge it deeper into my chest. hands covered in dried blood. hours pass and the gaping wound is still spurting blood out onto the floor. like a fountain of fire. "this is where is ends." she whispers softly into my ear like honey dripping off a stick. i begin to shiver on the concrete floor. "wake up. joseph is a killer." a killer of hearts. blood starts to flood around me. soon even that will be cold. i start to think back to where it all started...

it was four years ago. on the night before saint patricks day. we meet at a movie theater. her hair was black like a starless night. and shimmered under every light on the street that night. "hi. one ticket....." i stared at her until paul nudged me and said" two for stigmata." through the whole movie, i thought about the girl with the black hair. the hands that seemed cold. eyes like glass, i could see right through her smile. her soft movements like a deer in a field. i watched her look at me like a wolf. the nervously still neck. her trembling hand hanging over the register. waiting. waiting for this retarted movie to end so i could get one last glimpse at her soft white skin. but she was gone. days later, i saw her again. i took my time. arranged my words like a script in my head. "hello. i am joseph." i said. she looked back and giggled. "hi." i looked at her name tag. "Welcome to Lowes JESSICA." i asked if she would come out for a cup of coffee at a dinner with me. she!
 lifts her face and eyes bright with glistening new hope shrugged her shoulders, "sure." we talked. i talked more. i tried to sell myself to her. using sarcastic remarks, asking questions that i could lead into a story. i offered her fries. and paid for her soda. she hated that. and i knew she did. i noticed  her car, a bumper sticker from peta. i asked "are you a vegetarian?", "no. are you?" "yes. ive been one for aboutidontknow a year and a half." she started asking all these questions. about being a vegetarian why i became one. what to eat. where to eat. like i turned on a switch. it was bafaling. the whole night in the dinner she said two words to me, "oh..." and "ahhh..." and those arent even real words.

the next night, i saw her car at the theater. i left a rose and a note under her windsheild whiper blade:

"your soul is unique in the universe."

and my phone number and email address.

some time would pass before i heard anything from her. everyday, i would wait by the phone. hoping she would call. desprete to know why i was longing for this girl, i would disect her in my head. using logic and math to plot a line that made more sence then the fact that i had fallen for a ghost. little did i know that it was me that would turn out to be one.

a year passed and i still thought about her every so often. i got a new job. i was a security guard on the night shift at prinston college. guarding exams. one night, while in my bouth checking my email in my laptop, i noticed a message from an address i had never seen before. in the subject line read, "your soul is unique in the universe". before i could read it, i heard a noise over by the shrubs near the second building. i radioed in to jeff, "i just heard a noise, im going to go check it out. it came from the north side of building two. meet me over there." jeff replied, "copy. ill come around the east side and you take the west." it was dark. hard to tell if the shadows where from the trees bending in the wind or some staking killer, dying to get his hands on the exams. i got to the north side before jeff got there. with flashlight in hand, i scanned the tiny circle of light for any movement. "there!" jeff came around and we both went into the bushes. instead of a kille!
r, something that destroys life, we found a fox. "oh shit!" jeff jumped back. ready to kill it if it made a move at him. i whispered, "hold on, jeff. look." "i aint lookin at that thing. what if it fuckin jumps at me." "LOOK" i wanted him to look because the fox was giving birth. "look, jeff, its giving birth." it was so surreal. the fox just lay there, calm and silent. watching us the whole time. like she knew we where harmless security guards. we left her to finish. jeff went back to his post as did i. we acted like it was the most natural thing. to see a fox giving birth.

i sat down in front of my laptop and opened the message. it was short. just her phone number. the next day, i called her. and left a message. "hey, its me joe. you sent me that email with your phone number. um.. i dont know if you remember me. the kid you met at the theater, we went to the dinner and talked about being a vegetarian? um.. oh..just ..call me back i guess. bye." i felt like such an idiot. like i was being set up for the kill. soon the floor would open up under my feet and i would drop down into a chamber of spikes. i was waiting for something bad to happen. then it did. i was laid off from my job at princeton after weeks of job hunting, my friend tim set me up with a night job waxing floors. and in those weeks, the girl called me back and we became close. i would say things like"you look beautiful in the moonlight." and "you smell so sweet like after it rains." this went on for a year. bliss. i thought it would be like this forever. perfect. i was happy for the!
 first and possibly the last time in my life.

after the death of my grandparents, i became a shadow of what i was before. i had to watch them die over and over in my dreams. as if it wasnt enough that i was there when they both died. watching the cancer eat away at there bodies. trying to get to there minds. watching the awful faces they would make in there sleep. i wanted to cut the tubes that where holding there souls to such pain. doctors telling me, the cancer is in her spin now. the cancer is in his lungs. the cancer has spread to her breast. bones. brain. i became...numb. the forest that was in full bloom, now froze over into a wasteland. there was nothing. soon it was funeral after funeral dead uncles, aunts, cousins. she didnt stay around. i became intolerable we had a big fight i remember. and i told her i cant feel anything right now. i wanted to know that she still loved me. she couldnt give me an answer. she couldnt say yes. she just stood there and cried. i got up and left. it took another year for it to hi!
t me. by then it was too late. she was gone again moved to florida or something with some guy she met on an internet chat. later that year, i spoke to her. i asked what it was that made her so unsure that i didnt love her. she said it was because i never wanted to have sex with her. she thought i didnt love her becuase i never had sex with her. but she was glad we didnt.i thought"how rediculus." i made a promise to myself, before i met her, to never have sex again. i never thought of sex as being a personal thing. more of an act of lust. and more times then i can count, a misguided passion.

...finally, the nightmare ends and i awake to my mother saying, "wake up. wake up joseph." only to have to go to the funeral i have to see her family. her friends. kieth, the guy she ran off with to florida with. i woke up only to fall into another nightmare. loneliness sleeps with me tonight. and everynight here after.



if only this wasnt a dream. i know this is a dream. because it is all so black and white. because i woke up.

joseph.
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