Gone Postal

“No, no, no, you stupid bitch. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be a mass murderer.”

“Then what happened?”

“You know what happened.”

“No, I don’t, that’s why I’ve come here. I want to know. Really.”

“You just want to see me in here. I don’t care. I’m glad.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me why.”

“Look, it’s as simple as can be. Before today, no one at that place knew my name. They didn’t even care. I was just the asshole that made copies and typed and answered phones. They didn’t know me at all. Hell, they didn’t even see me.”

“And that’s why you did it? Because they didn’t pay enough attention to you?”

“Fuck you! Pay enough attention? To them, I didn’t even exist! I was invisible. Just like I’ve been my whole life. Invisible. Nobody ever sees me. But they see me now. You see me now, don’t you? And before today, you didn’t even know my name.”

“How can you say that? I love you…”

“Oh please. Don’t even start. You never paid any attention to me. There was always something else, another kid, another job, another fucking reason why I wasn’t important. But hey, it’s cool. Things have turned around now.”

“What do you mean? Your life is ruined!”

“What the fuck do you know about it? Have you seen the news? People know my name and they know what I did!”

“What did you do?”

“Listen, don't think you can trick me. You want me to admit it. Okay, fine. I’m glad I did it. People will know my name today. All over the world they will know my name. I’m the one who got sick of that fucking job and I knew what I would do if I got the chance. As soon as they asked me to make the coffee, I was ready. Coffee and cyanide. Ha! Two whole pots of it.”

“Oh my God! Do you know how many people you killed?”

“Twenty-two so far. Right?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Really? Wow, this is turning out better than I thought.”

“Are you crazy? They are going to execute you for this!”

“So what? There are worse things than dying.”

“Like what? What is worse?”

“Being alone. Being invisible. So I’m fine with everything. People will be telling stories about me for years and years after I’m gone. And maybe, just maybe, some big shot working in some downtown office won’t think he’s too good to fucking say good morning. I made it better for the next one.”

“I have to go."

"Will you come back tomorrow?"

"Sure, if you want me to."

"Will you do something for me?"

"If I can. What is it?"

"Bring me a newspaper. The headline is gonna be kickass. Can you bring it with you when you come back? Please?"

Pouting Over Coffee

I don’t know why but his pout always made me laugh. Not in his face, but away from his gaze I crack up just thinking of his protruding bottom lip and bowed head. Like no other he played the impatient child, bouncing from one emotion to the next and I sat still.

“I’m mad because you didn’t call me once, not one time all day. You never think of me. And I think of you every minute.”

I said nothing and reached for the coffee mugs that we bought in London last fall. I never put anything on the top shelf. I stood on my toes trying to touch the handle of the blue one. Failing, I exhaled, exasperated.

“What kept you so wrapped up that you couldn’t call me once?” He stood behind me and grabbed the mugs. Smiling and feeling vindicated because I needed him for something after all, he placed them on the table, the blue one for me, the red one for himself.

“I don’t know why you take it personally. I talk to you every morning and every night.”

“So, I guess that’s enough for you.”

For me, it was more than enough. His love was at once every color of a million rainbows and every shade the mind could conjure. I always assumed he’d burn himself out with such intensity. I expected him to lose interest, like a child might lose interest in a his new train set with the arrival of a new action figure, which doesn’t seem like much fun when the new video game comes, which is great until he remembers that he hasn’t played with his train in a long while. When he didn’t lose interest, I feared I might lose myself in such ever-present and consuming passion. It felt unnatural and dangerous, like base jumping or playing in traffic. Now I know that it is just his way.

“I know what it is,” he said. “You just don’t love me the way I love you.”

I ignored the statement. It was his favorite, engineered to make himself the martyr in our love affair that in his mind was just about to end. So I said, “The coffee’s ready,” and he got the milk. I poured coffee in his cup and then my own. He poured milk in my cup and then his own. I sat down and pushed the sugar toward him and he pushed the cinnamon toward me. We performed this coffee ritual, sacred, intimate and in perfect rhythm, every evening after dinner.

“You’re right, my love.”

“About what?”

“I don’t love you the way you love me.” And there it was his sweet and disarming pout. I smiled. He looked as if I kicked him in the gut and laughed about it. Laughed as he sunk breathless to his knees.

“You love me desperately,” I said. “And I love you certainly.”

We drank our coffee and we were silent for a long time.

Remembering Rain and Chocolate

The first time I met him, he told me his name was Victor. He was watching me buy a painting from a street vender, a painting that still sits behind my sofa, covered in dust and nearly forgotten. He said he liked me before he asked my name. He scribbled his telephone number on the back of a take-out menu. I called him that same day. He was clear about it all. Nothing heavy and don’t fall in love because Victor doesn’t do love. Victor does women. It was the simplest thing I’d considered all year, maybe all my life. In his cluttered apartment over the souvenir store in Chinatown I forgot everything. I forgot all of my overdue bills, my shitty jobs, my indifferent husband and my screaming kids. He was an escape, he was my holiday and he never asked me a single question. He just knew. He knew who I was and what I needed and that I was just a little messed up at the moment. And he didn’t care.


And each time he sensed that my body was on the verge of ecstasy, he put a small piece of chocolate on my tongue before a scream could escape my lips. Each and every time he did this and each and every time it felt like he pushed me off of a cliff and sent me freefalling into abandon and oblivion. When I would get up to leave he would say not yet. Sleep for a while. Then it would start raining and I slept. I slept so perfectly.
For six months I visited his cluttered apartment to hide from the world and eat chocolate in his bed and then he was gone. I longed for him for a year, but never heard from him at all.

Until a rainy night last Spring after I’d been alone for a long time.

He told me after that his name was Drake and he missed me, so he came in through my window with the rain. He said he hadn’t intended to wake me, he thought I would believe it all to be a dream. He wasn’t wrong. I did believe it all to be a dream at first. I thought I was dreaming of Victor. I felt his hands, and his tongue and his long hair brush against my back. And I woke up expecting to see him, but I saw no one. I only heard a voice that felt like a cool breeze on my neck. And then I tasted chocolate all over my tongue. I called to him and he told me Victor was merely a prop. He said his name was Drake. I said his name was Bliss.

He told me he dwelt among mortals infrequently and I was the only one he couldn’t forget. I asked him to stay and he said no. It wasn’t where he belonged. But he stayed for a while. I slept with him playing about my body, wrapped around me like warm mist. In the morning, my skin was wet and chilled and he was gone again.
Now, I leave my window open when it rains and he comes in like a storm, overwhelming me completely and I surrender to the invisible and the real. Then he leaves just as suddenly and I return to the illusions of my life. This is what it feels like to be in love with a demon.