Susan and Susan and Marcus

Susan and Susan and Marcus: One night

when her husband didn’t come home, Susan decided to drink fifteen cans of beer.

Sitting on the sofa crying tears and drinking beers, her thoughts spun like my head keeps spinning round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and I don’t think I can sit upright, I’m like falling in the couch, yes, I’m falling in the couch can you hear me? and I can do whatever the fuck I want because I don’t belong to anybody. You fuck-

ing liar, you’re a liar, I hate you. Then like sirens ringing Susan heard the telephone (ring) and ripped it from the wall where she wrapped the cord around a ring and got on a step stool “cool, high, and collected” above nothing nothingness existence is nothingand kicked the stool flat and firm and once and for all. She choked to death.

Marcus got back from fucking at three in the morning. He creaked the door open and entered… and entered… and slipped on blood… dog’s blood (?).

Shadows lifted. Rover was suspended feet first from the ceiling and leaking entrails from a neck wound the size of a human fist which Marcus, dazed, confused, plunged into the neck feely freely feeling blood and rubbery tubes and creamy soles and used his other hand to start masturbating because the pain was getting a bit much but he couldn’t could NOT get his belt, his pants off with just one hand so he was stumbling around for five hours trying to get them off when suddenly he slipped and cracked his head open on the white tile floor. For reasons undisclosed, Marcus’s mind began to run to his childhood and he tried hard to grab it, to hold it, to feel it moisten between his fingers, but no matter what he tried (and he tried so hard), it wouldn’t stop running

to his mother who looked younger and happier and singing while he slept in his bed dreaming of trains and racecars and military men that jumped from helicopters

Eventually, though, the mind which was Marcus’s reached the floor leading to the bathroom where Susan lay slumped over a toilet, passed out. For three days, she remained in that position.

THREE DAYS LATER…

she got up and tore her clothes off and got in the car and didn’t wear a seatbelt and drove on a road and drove off a large ditch where she crashed through the windshield and was impaled on a giant, jagged piece of metal where her entire blood supply poured from her torso in thick red sheets and fed families of birds, beavers, and squirrels until finally, finally the police came and slid her grey body off. Lump on the floor. The rookie cop puked.

Susan: I was standing in line at the grocery store. I was standing in line at the grocery store. I was standing in line at the grocery store. I was standing in line at the grocery store. I was standing in line at the grocery store and the lady talked to me and said you have to pay for your things and I told her I'm sorry I spaced out I just drifted away for a second just give me a second to get my money out and I’ll pay you, I’ll leave here with the groceries and I’ll drive home with the groceries and I'll put them in the fridge and maybe occupy myself a few hours watching television or reading a book or talking to my mother in California or um, lying on the couch in despair at what I’ve become and then sometime later I’ll take the steaks and cook them real nice real good for you my husband but you won’t come home to eat them, probably you’ll be out drinking with your friends and fucking fucking fucking fucking and you won’t have called me fuck but I won’t have answered even if you did because you’re a fake you’re an ungrateful bastard I never should have married you and I know that sounds a cliché now but I say it because I’m dying here don’t you see that I’m dying? don’t you understand? how I want to know how can you judge me when sickness clouds over my eyes and I can barely see for all the hate in me all the rage in me that makes me boil and cry and cut myself deep long strokes you can’t see in the bathtub in the blood that mixes with bathwater that swirls round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round in a crimson cocktail

dress still I love you in my dreams in my dreams I love you you’re still

Marcus: Tears fell from tearducts. There was a clarity in her eyes, then. I told her to hush. Lie down. Hush. Let the waves wash over you. You’re still here, but you’re somewhere else, too. You’re still somewhere else, and you’re no longer here. See the black turn to red and white and blue and green and yellow. You see everything in perfect color, lush fields. But when you look down, there’s just air. You never existed, silly.

Susan: Hush. Do you remember when we married? People laughed and cried and danced and cried. He was, she was, all was flowing from the tops of champagne bottles emptied, absorbed, emptied, absorbed. Later, the moon rose, and we woke when it fell.

Marcus: I hated you then. I wanted to smother you with my hands. I wanted to leave that place and never come back.

Susan: We were in the field, we were in the field, we were in the field. It was beautiful, then. The mist clung to everything. There was nothing but shapes and outlines. I kissed your outline.

Marcus: You are nothing. I am nothing. We exist nowhere. We were written.

Could you just put your hand in mine? It’s cold now.

I love you.