Young Writers Society

Cassie and Jess spent their last days in a rundown motel room. Cassie was a young and beautiful model, Jess was a fadingly pretty housewife. Between the two, they had four hundred dollars in cash and four thousand dollars worth of stolen heroin. They shot up every hour of every day for twenty days, engaging in violent sex between sessions to relieve the growing (or diminishing) tension between them. Cassie said the heroin made her feel like nobody else. Jess said she felt beautiful again, she was beautiful again, and she could make anybody love her because she was so beautiful. The fat on her legs was gone. The wrinkles on her forehead vanished. Her breasts sagged no longer but were firm and full and pale and sensitive, so sensitive when Cassie would wrap her lips around them and make her feel ecstasy like none she’d ever experienced, like she could melt and melt and melt and melt and melt and melt and the sheets would fall over her head and she’d be dead finally, happy finally, dead temporarily, then she’d wake up and see her husband in blood and stick another needle in her arm.

There was talking, certainly a lot of talking. Cassie didn’t want there to be any lies. She told Jess her life story three times. Each time her telling became a little more honest. She told Jess how she hated to be looked at, worshipped by little black machines that blinded her with strobe lights and generated pictures, giant photographs that made her feel small, like she was nothing, just paper and gloss and suggestive lighting, while all around her people stared and cheered and stared in masses until their eyes turned grey and they saw nothing but what they wanted to see. She told Jess how she hated this race of men like children that ran everywhere and got nowhere, using money and fame to buy satisfaction, gratification, sexual gratification from every little girl and boy they could find, on the streets, through the mail, the Internet, it didn’t matter whether they were eighteen or sixteen or thirteen, so long as they met their demands, their demands which were too horrible for words, could only be seen in colors red and black and purple, yet still the little girls and boys lined up, hundreds of thousands of starved bodies and freshly made faces at every agency corner, ready, happy, willing to be destroyed completely for a shot at celebrity. It was so empty, everything. It made her sad. It made her cry. And Jess held her hand, and Jess comforted her, and Jess whispered sweet nothings.

They talked about the future. What it would be like, if they lived and were married and were happy. Cassie would get a job as a secretary somewhere, Jess would go back to school and learn to teach children like she’d always wanted. They’d get a cozy apartment in the city with two cats and a modest view. In ten years, maybe less, they’d make enough money to leave the country. To France, or Spain. There would be no more fear, no more doubt, no more persecution. In France, it would be nights of red wine and cigarettes shared behind closed doors. In Spain, there would be fields and fields of bright flowers red and white and green and blue stretched further than the eye could see. They would march through them hand in hand,, smiling and laughing and crying with joy as the sun blotted their memory and showed only present.

You’re so thin, Jess told Cassie one day, you’re too thin. You should eat more. But I’m not hungry, Cassie screamed. Jess looked hurt. I just want to help you. No, no no no no no Cassie moaned, you don’t want to help me, you’re just a fucking hypocrite, you never eat anything, you sit there and put fucking needles in your arms, you’re horrible, you’re horrible, you’re horrible. She ran to the bathroom and locked the door. There she carefully uncapped a plastic motel razor and touched it to her skin while Jess leaned against the door sobbing, crying I want to stop I want to stop I wish we could stop and all the time blood ran in thin lines down Cassie’s thighs and the pain, the pain it was beautiful, it was better than everything, it was better than nothing, because that’s what they were they were nothing and all they spoke and dreamt and cared for was powder, brown powder that melted and boiled under the skin for hours and hours and the hours turned to days and still Cassie had not left the bathroom, she just kept screaming, she screamed so hard blood came out of her mouth and she collapsed to the floor just pieces of a whole just fragments of a soul dead, alive, dead again; she could hardly breathe for all the death in her. She begged Jess to fuck her, I want you to fuck me, please fuck me, fuck me fuck me fuck me I need something inside me and Jess woke up and cried and kicked the door so hard her toenails cracked and she couldn’t walk anymore, she just fell and the syringes, where were the syringes? She couldn’t find them. Please, please, please get me out of here.

I love you, she said. I love you, she said. They locked their arms together. She put fingers in her mouth, she caressed them. Their bodies were soft. She touched her breast and she sucked her breast and their bodies came together as one. Fingers, delicate fingers of fluid turned flesh pages. Every orifice glistened, every orifice tingled. The wet smell of sex was everywhere. So saliva spread thicker and blood spread thinner and the sweat soaked sheets. They could not separate anymore, they slipped in each other’s come and were joined limb to limb, together, forever. There’s no one else, she called, faraway, drifting farther away in endless folds of skin. Pink. Pink. Pink. I never loved anyone as much as I loved you, someone whispered. But what is love now? We are love itself.