by: Ashley Cunningham

My biggest fear is being alone. Delaney Jenkins feels the same way; although, she has yet to tell me. I know so not based on the things she says but on the things she does. She would not share her stupid secrets with me, she wouldn’t invest so much in my escapes, if she didn’t feel the mutual trust and understanding that sits stalemate between us. I know her like the back of my hand. She knows me like her middle finger, ready and willing to pull out everything she has against me at any point she feels threatened by my close proximity to her truthfulness.

Honestly, these are only my opinions. Sometimes when I’m thinking myself to death in my cordial darkness of a room, I tell myself to face the facts. The shit is flying out of the window we sit by every day. I know she says she came clean, but part of me wants to doubt her still. I can’t point any fingers, though, because my hands are roughed up with the same calloused dirt.

I walk in to Doc Hall’s office. He is ready for my sand-paper guilt to wear me down to a nice finish. I feel myself in Delaney Jenkins’ lies. She bleeds through me and into this room where Doc tries to bandage me with anything on hand.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” he asks. I don’t know where I see myself tonight, right now, this morning, let alone five years.

“That’s asking me where do I want to be, not where I will be. You can’t expect me to know that,” I answer.

“All right. We’ll try this: Who do you see yourself being in five years?” he asks, driven by the relieving excitement that I am actually responding.

“Someone different,” I answer.

“In what ways do you want to be different then?”

“It’s not a matter of how I want to be different, it’s more the fact that I will be. I’ll be an entirely different person with only the debris of past lives, flash reminders that fade color but stay in tact.” I tell the best truth I know.

“Do you think Laura would like the person you are now?” he asks. This room smells with faint dampness. Kelp crawls in my nostrils and krill bite my toes, taking my mind off the question, choking off oxygen to my brain.

“I don’t care what Laura thinks of me now.” I finally cough up.

“So what do you think of you right now?” that prodding prick Doc Hall asks. I try to distract myself from the question so I don’t have to answer it out loud or under my breath. I think lots of things. I think there is no way in hell I’m telling this stuff to someone who is virtually a stranger. I think most strangers are more familiar with me than I am. I think I want to drink, and hear the right song, and have morning sex, and play Uno with flashlights again.

I want to be 10 again and pretend robbers are breaking into my room so I can hide behind my bed with my most valuable possessions. I want to wake up to the sound of my mother in the shower and my father thumping loudly through the kitchen. I want to be able to sleep without something to put me out. I want to be able to breathe without pills or vodka. I want to leave this interrogation chamber—so I stand up to walk toward the door.

“There is no Delaney Jenkins on file anywhere in this facility,” he says, and I stop dead in the water. “No one on the staff has ever heard of her. What do you make of that?”

“I think it’s awfully stupid.” I say.

I walk out.

Between Doc and D-lay, I can’t decide who is fucking with my head more. She tells me the truth, he asks for the truth, and I can’t decide whether I like or dislike both. I should have known not to let anyone inside this place get close enough to confuse me more than I already am. Maybe I am the only one with the answers, and everyone else is just subject to my reaction.

I go outside to chat with death for a while and lose myself in its eloquent, slurring speech. It talks to me one blunt phrase at a time, like an old man who isn’t big on words but has the right ones most every time he cares to share. I look around and feel smothered by the evening and the way it curves around me like watchful eyes. I am careful with each movement, staging motions like choreography so the camera lens of the outside world might take interest in what it sees. These motions become robotic, and by nature I enjoy pretending that I don’t notice how calculated this dance is.

When the scene ends, I am just a crazy person playing dress up for an imaginary audience. I feel saturated by stupidity now that I have to return back inside to real faces. My consciousness visits me like a fair-weather friend, and where I am standing is not any place I would like for it to come back to play catch up.

I want it all to go away. I want to be alone in my room with no hint of interruption, not even my own. Making my way down the hall, I thank my sock feet for not giving me away to anyone listening for my arrival. Once I close the door, I strip down to my bones, and I lie in bed naked, counting the demons that are chasing the sheep.

Laura would think I’m better off without anyone. She would think I am doing the right thing, and if I hadn’t killed her, she would tell me she loves me now more than ever.