Never Give Up!

Lover in the Nobody: Chapter 020 [Final Chapter]

Waking Up with Mr. Clean

He wakes up in a world of white, soft white glow.

He tries to roll over, but can't move his arms.

For a moment he panics, yanking at his arms. He can't breathe. A small cry escapes him.

Then he understands the white room, and the thing binding him.

It is a cell.

It is a straightjacket.

A man about Georgie's age taps on the small window in the door. Georgie looks up. The man smiles and opens the door.

“I see that you're up,” the man says. He lifts a clipboard and props it on his forearm. “How are you doing today?”

“Wh-what?” Georgie says.

The man squints at him.

“Do you know where you are?” he asks.

Georgie shakes his head.

The man inhales deeply. “This is still Mercyhurst Hospital,” he says. “The mental ward.”

“Oh.” Georgie tries to shake the cobwebs from his head. “So she didn't ... I'm not dead?”

The doctor looks at him with a slight smile. “Alive as ever,” he says. Georgie detects the slightly ironic tone, but doesn't understand it. He decides that it's nothing.

“Where's Claudia?” Georgie demands.

“Who?”

“Claudia. My girlfriend.”

The man frowns slightly. He notes something on his iPad.

“There is no Claudia,” he says.

Georgie stares at the man. Georgie's arms go limp, and then a smile spreads over his features.

He feels relieved, suddenly, to find that Claudia never existed, that he never hurt her and she never hurt him, that he is still alive. And yet, it feels like someone has just punched him in the gut. The pain of Claudia's nonexistence is almost stronger than sitting on a hot frying pan. Almost.

Georgie wonders how much of his life has been real and how much has been a hallucination. He wonders if Claudia does exist, somewhere. Maybe they were even neighbors, somewhere....

And then a truly horrible thought occurs to him.

“How long have I been in here?” Georgie asks, whispering.

The doctor leans forward to hear. He looks at the chart, although he probably doesn't need to. His face is blank. Georgie assumes it is an attempt at sympathy.

“Your whole life, nearly,” the doctor says. “Since you were five.”

Georgie reels back from the man, struggling to free his arms. An entire lifetime in the nuthouse? An entire lifetime imagined...? He stumbles and loses his balance-falls to his knees. Claudia. Margaret. A dream. A dream. A dream....

Something wets his cheeks, rolling to his chin.

Tears. Georgie is crying.

He sobs, feeling the loss and the terror of it rise up in him.

Then it subsides. Leaving him ... empty.

Clean.

Some time passes as Georgie tries desperately to comprehend a situation that seems impossible.

The doctor watches him, absentmindedly dancing his fingers on the autolocked iPad and nodding slightly.

Then he turns and leaves.

No. No. No!

Georgie gasps out loud, staring around at the blank padded walls of his personal hell. This can't be happening. This isn't me ... it's not real....

It comes to him, then. This is not the reality. It is just a dream.

“I beg, I demand that all my angels, spirit guides, self-help books-all of you who only want what's in my best interests ... Claudia? ... Touch my head if you're here so that I know. Wake me up from this nightmare....”

He breaks into sobs once more.

And then he feels the hand on his head.

He looks up from where he kneels.

The hand is real. It is Ben's.

“You?!” Georgie gasps. “Just you?”

Ben nods slowly.

“I can see you,” Georgie says wonderingly.

(Yes) says the voice in Georgie's head; the voice that has always been in Georgie's head, ever since (Don't think about that)....

Ok.

“You're not too bad-looking,” Georgie decides. He looks closely at Ben's face, taking in his eyes, a true mirror of his own soul, and his whole self.

“Your face is the face I should have had,” Georgie says.

(It's impossible to say. Neither of us turned out quite the way we thought we would.)

“Why can I see you now?”

(Why couldn't you see me before?)

“I don't know.”

(You don't have to talk, you know. You can just think.)

You're always listening, aren't you?

(Yup.)

Georgie rests for awhile. He stares at the white, white walls, thinking nothing. Ben disappears. But that does not matter. Georgie knows that Ben is still there, even though he can't see him. Ben has always been there. Ben will always be there.

Are we dead? Georgie asks, finally.

Ben gives a mental shrug. (How should I know?)

You're not good for much, are you?

(Fuck you.)

Georgie longs to pick at his fingernails, but his arms are still trapped in the straightjacket. He can't even scratch himself, except with his teeth. And there are certain places where even teeth will not reach....

Who are you? Georgie thinks. The million dollar question.

(I am you. You are me.)

Georgie thinks about jumping up, about slamming himself into the wall. He has the sense that he has already done this many, many times. That it is a useless pursuit that should not be tried anymore.

Why is my driver named Ben? he asks as the thought occurs to him.

(Why does everyone want to know that? Ben is a common-enough name. Maybe it is just a coincidence.)

Nothing is a coincidence, with us.

Ben seems to be laughing. (Dr. C says it's because I'm driving you around-I'm the vehicle and you're the passenger. Or some bullshit.)

What vehicle?

(Nonsense, isn't it? I mean, obviously that's not the case. Things have turned around.)

Georgie stops, rubbing his eyebrow against his shoulder for a moment.

Huh?

(You're not my alter ego any longer. Obviously, I'm your alter ego.)

Georgie's mind whirrs and pops. He begins to stand, but stumbles instead.

What? But that means....

(You're not real. You've never been real.)

“Obviously,” Georgie breathes with relief. Everything is so simple ... why didn't he figure it out sooner?

(All that love crap, that pain and torture, that topsy turvy drama you've been making in your mind-all that shit gets in the way.)

Georgie nods his agreement.

It's no wonder I was distracted, he decides.

So, if I'm not real... he ponders slowly, thinking it through.

(And I'm your alter ego-so I'm not real either. Which means....)

“Holy shit!”

(Neither of us is real.)

The clock on the wall melts away. So does everything else.

Well then, let's go bum a smoke…

 

“I don’t want to do anything.”

“Hmm.”

“I want to do nothing.”

“You want to do nothing because there is nothing.”

 

“I don’t want to love anybody either.”

“Hmm.”

“I am nobody. I’m in no body.”

“Then along with the doing nothing, love nobody.”

 

“Be a Lover in the Nobody?”

 “Make sense?”

“Hmm?” 

“Oh, nothing...”

The End

Lover in the Nobody: Chapter 019

Claudia Moves Out

Georgie slumps through the halls of his old style country home, hating every wall of it. Each beam reminds him of Claudia.

Here she strung him up, there she burned him with cig butts. Over in the chair she cut him. In the bathroom she drowned him. On the porch, she humiliated him, time and again.

Numb now, Georgie wonders how he ever thought he was bored with Claudia. With her, life was a tortuous show, a jagged-toothed adventure. Without her, he is back to making thermoses of ten-shot espresso....

It hardly even jumps him anymore. It's a load of shit, is what it is.

Nothing jumps him anymore. He wants his Claudia back....

Georgie roams the aisles of the grocery store, searching and searching for Margaret and the perfect snack food and a sale on cigarettes. Cigarettes are never on sale. But maybe tomorrow ... he could stalk through the aisles all night and they would never know. Maybe there will be a sale tomorrow. A sale tomorrow, and Margaret, too.

Eventually they do start to notice him wandering around (it has been seven hours by now-shift's over, about time to go home, don't you think?) and follow him, eyeing him suspiciously.

Maybe I should have changed, Georgie thinks. Maybe wearing my robe to the store wasn't such a great idea....

Because, of course, it makes him noticeable.

“Can I help you?” one of the grocery staff asks him for the twelfth time in the last hour. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

The short little bitch grins, knowing that he is not. Or knowing that he is not so much looking, but waiting. The girl has the tiniest freckles Georgie has ever seen ... they remind him of Claudia somehow. (Don't think about that.)

Twenty minutes later, Georgie lets the grocery store checkers usher him out the door. It slides shut behind him with a groan, clipping the tail end of his robe.

Fuck you, he thinks groggily. And then, more espresso....

When Georgie gets home, his message light is blinking. He presses the “Play Message” button.

“Hey Georgie,” Claudia purrs. “I was just thinking of you ... I was downstairs at one of the lectures. It's soooo boring-I wish I was with you, instead....”

Georgie blinks. For just a moment, he wonders if all the torture was in his mind, if really Claudia is his, all his, and she has not moved out and they did not break up. She is just at a conference for work, and everything is as it was, should be, should have been. Maybe, maybe ... maybe, baby....

But no, Georgie is quickly proved wrong as the real message begins to play. He realizes that other one was just an old message, from way back when. The real message goes on:

“Hi Georgie!” It is Claudia again. “Just wanted to check in with you to see how you've been and what's going on ... what you're going to do for the holidays and all that....

“I just wanted to keep in touch. I know I've amputated myself from your life (yet again ... ). It's just, it's just been really.... I needed to put 100% into my family, and I'm glad I'm the type of person who can do that with her family.”

Georgie reels. Who is this Claudia, this self-assured family woman with such quiet grace...? What is this family?

Then Georgie remembers that Claudia took the baby-she took the baby and raised it with her lesbian lover, that bitch....

His baby. His sperm-child.

But then the real message plays, and Georgie realizes that (don't think about that)....

That must have been a different Georgie, a different Claudia. As far as Georgie is concerned, that never happened.

The real message is from Margaret.

“Hey Georgie it's me,” she says quietly, a little scared. “I just wanted to check in with you, see if you got in touch of your nanny yet. I think it's really important. I care about you a lot, you know.... I ... well, anyway. Just go see her. I'm thinking about you. I want you to feel better.”

A pause for a moment-just dead silence. Then-

“Bye,” and a click.

Georgie has not heard at all from Claudia. Only Margaret. Margaret, who says she cares for him. Margaret, who wants him to get better.

Claudia never wanted him to get better. Claudia just wanted to hurt him ... make him worse. She was happy to take his money and use his healthy mind, and then warp it into sick pulp.

Georgie forgets that he asked her to, that he used to want to be sick, that healthy was just too damn dull. He forgets all that.

He just thinks, with relief, of the possibility of that happy dream-couple he could be, if he only applied himself....

Georgie digs frantically through his closet until he finds the jeans with the slip of paper in them. He unfolds it, looks at the address in amazement.

The house is close. It is in his neighborhood, practically.

What kind of sick fuck moves into the same neighborhood where his old nanny used to torture him?

Then again, his parents bought him the house....

Georgie looks at the front lawn for a long moment.

Then he is out the door, jogging sluggishly across the grass.

Claudia drags herself out of her old, beat-down station wagon and leans back against it, staring at the dull, gray building before her. The parking lot seems to stretch in front of her like the fields of some twisted eternity. Her tender nipples talk to her through her shirt.

She bends carefully down to pick up her purse from the passenger's seat and is overcome with another bout of nausea. She retches silently (wretchedly) on the floor, but nothing comes out.

Whatever is inside her must be pure evil. It is eating her alive.

This is what Claudia tells herself as she staggers slowly towards the clinic.

Georgie rises up out of his black limo. Ben slams the door behind him as he takes his first steps.

The house is old, and rotten-eighty years old, at least. It is gray-wooded, and sorely needs paint.

The small lawn in front is a jungle, a forest of weeds, and landscaping runs amuck. Tall grasses and shrubs tower over Georgie's head. Dead vines crawl over the porch railing; winding honeysuckle drip over the gutter. All around him is the sound of bees and leaves decomposing as he walks the overgrown path to the front porch.

In a rocking chair out front she sits, glaring at him with a self-satisfied smirk.

“So you found me, finally?” she asks, leering at him. The wisps of her white nest of hair blow forward over her face.

“Wha-what?” Georgie stammers, wondering how she knew....

“Through all that mess in my front yard,” she stretches out a skinny arm, cackling. Her sagging skin quivers.

Georgie realizes that her leer is a smile, her cackle a laugh. He shudders.

“Do you remember me?” he says finally. He peers at her through the dark shadows of honeysuckle trees and dead vines. How could his nanny, that woman who had such power over him as a child ... had made him tremble with terror, had pinched him, tormented him, swung him from his dick ... how could she have become this scrawny, pathetic old woman? Was it the ultimate justice, that she who had once towered over him, almighty, now struggled to stand from her old, creaking chair? Or just a cruel twist of fate....

Georgie briefly wonders what fate has in store for him, after all that he has done.

“Remember you?” the woman cackles again. Harsh, dry heaves of ancient air escape from her lungs. “Who in good God damn would bother to remember a pudgy little vermin like you?”

Georgie gapes at her, his foot pauses in mid-air on the first step.

“Aw, 'course I remember you, Georgie Gust.” The woman cackles again. “I never forget a pretty face.”

Georgie shudders again. He tries to remember what he is doing here. Is he supposed to confront this old woman? Beat her, torment her, now that she is the weak one? Or beg her ... for what?

Forgiveness?

He looks at her again, pure evil in a rocking chair. Maybe she is not so weak, after all ... age is not everything....

“Yeah, well, I was uh....” Georgie clears his throat. “I just wanted to see how you've been.”

“Oh just fine, you can see.” She gestures at the deconstruction that surrounds her. “Livin' the dream.”

Georgie comes and sits down uneasily on an empty rocker next to her. She grins at him a gap-toothed smile.

“Yeah...” Georgie says, falling easily into the casual drawl of her speech. “Just thinking about the old days, you know ... used to have a lot of fun here.”

His throat threatens to constrict and choke him on the word “fun,” but he gets it out anyway.

She smiles at him, a slight question in her eyes.

“Yeah, you used to spend hours and hours here,” she says finally. “Sometimes it was hard to get you to go home.”

“Yeah?” Georgie feels something twist in the pit of his stomach, like he is going to blow chunks. “Yeah?” he says again.

She nods sagely, then stares at him from the corner of one eye as she chomps slowly on her gums.

“That's not what I remember,” he spits out finally. A wary coyote look begins to glow in her eyes.

Georgie goes on. “What I remember is that you used to torture me.” She shakes her head, but he knows that she is lying. “What I remember is hating every minute here. I was miserable because of you!” he screams.

The coyote woman is still shaking her head no, no, no. Georgie goes on. “You ruined everything for me!” he screeches. “Ev-everything ... every re-relationship I've ever had is ruined because of the w-way you....”

Then Georgie does something he rarely does, something he has not done since boarding school.

He bursts into tears.

In that vast nothing, that horrible numbness inside me, there is boiling and gushing.

It tears out my innards, makes fries of my bones, my gentle rib cage.

Everything shatters and falls apart.

Everything gurgles up and flows out of me.

Everything.

(Ben, is that you?)

And then-

-silence.

When Georgie grows quiet, he feels a hard, bony hand resting on his knee.

He remembers that hand, how it pinched and twisted at his balls, performed unspeakable acts on him....

The woman speaks-her voice seems young, now-almost human.

“I am sorry,” she says.

Georgie hiccoughs.

“It was horrible,” she says.

Georgie nods.

“Unspeakable,” she whispers.

(But there are things that must be spoken ... isn't that right, Ben?

Ben?)

“But it wasn't all like that, you know,” the woman says. Her eyes plead with him, like Claudia's. “What about your friend Marie? You two ... you were like boyfriend and girlfriend when you were kids. So sweet to each other.”

The woman's face breaks into a smile. Georgie can see that she is remembering better days. Sunny afternoons. Two kids in crisp, clean clothing running circles on the lawn, chasing after one another....

Georgie shakes his head.

“I don't remember that,” he whispers. “Until last year, I didn't even remember you.”

She grins again her gap-toothed smile.

“Well that's a blessing, isn't it?”

Georgie steps inside her rickety front door, feeling immediately ill at ease. The doorframe is crooked from years of warping and a tainted foundation; the floor rolls away beneath his feet, slightly downhill. It is dark and cool inside-Georgie waits a moment for his eyes to adjust.

“You see 'em?” the nanny's voice calls from the front porch. “They're right in there on the wall.”

Georgie blinks and swivels around. An old sofa and sagging armchair rise out of the darkness, draped with gravity-warped afghan blankets and doilies, whose holes stretch like grinning mouths, their bottom lips drawn ever-closer to the floor.

Then he sees them. The pictures.

They line the wall beside the front door-black and white, sepia toned.... They are Georgie (mostly Georgie)-so many of him that it goes beyond nostalgic and slightly creepy to nearly unbelievable. (Is it real, Ben?

Ben?)

It is like Georgie is the only kid she ever bothered to babysit for, or that he was the only one worth remembering.

And then there is the girl-Maria. The wall is filled with pictures of her and Georgie posing in the bright sunlight, playing childish games ... in one, he is lacing up her shoelaces-in another, she is riding him like a pony. The pictures flash in front of him, alternating between photo and memory....

He remembers her-the first Claudia. She stood before him in Keds and fluffy pink dresses, stamping imperiously and ordering him about. Her moods were like storms of the ocean-quickly flashing in moments of terrifying manipulation, subsiding quickly once her wishes had been appeased.

He had been her slave-the first Georgie.

Georgie Porgy, she'd called him.

Before her, his name had been (Don't think about that, Georgie).

Ok.

Looking at the pictures, Georgie realizes that this girl, this demanding, tiny, terrible woman, had taught him everything he knew ... she was his first girlfriend, his model woman ... she taught him how to love-the ups and downs of it, the grim, terrified clutching and the panicked, unreasonable, pushing him away. She had taught him that love was pain and suffering ... that it was better to hate the one you love, to better blame them for all the wretchedness they caused in you....

I can do better than that, Georgie realizes suddenly. The fights, the torture ... they do not have to happen. They don't have to be a part of me.

Georgie races from the house, his mind filled with the image of the happy, American dream lover he can be. He and Claudia and ... my son ... in his sunny and charming old style country home, playing happy.... No. Being happy.

“Where you going so fast, puddin' pie?” the old woman drawls at his retreating back.

“Home!” Georgie calls mutteringly over his shoulder.

The woman cackles again, her mouth stretching into that impossible jack-o-lantern grin.

“Wouldn't be in such a hurry if I was you,” she mutters. Her cackle follows Georgie all the way to the shining black limousine.

He climbs into the waiting limo and tells Ben, “Home, please.”

Georgie is filled with an impossible delirium (just short of insanity).

Georgie knows he can be happy and perfect, if he just tries hard enough. I can make my own destiny! his mind rejoices. I can remake my own damn self.

(Just like those new age books claim, eh Georgie boy?)

Eh!

Ben pulls up in front of Georgie's old style country home, tires screeching. Georgie leaps from the backseat without waiting for the door to open. He has no way of knowing, no reason to hope, but he knows that all his happiness is waiting for him inside-his happy dream future is only just steps away....

When Georgie flings open the door to his American, dream-style, country home, he runs headlong into a noose.

The room is pitch black. Thick smoke fills his nostrils.

“Georgie,” says her voice softly out of the darkness.

It is Claudia, his dream lover, his perfect woman. She will be nice to him if he tells her to be-she said she was tired of torturing him. She said so.

He will pay her to be nice, if he has to.

Georgie thinks dreamily of his future life as the noose tightens.

“Claudia?” he says. Can't she see in his face that he doesn't want to play this game anymore? The rope begins to draw him into the air, choking off his air supply. Georgie kicks and claws at his neck with his hands. He gurgles, trying to open his larynx to the air. He draws in a hissing stream of oxygen. Not enough.

Then Georgie's mind overcomes his body's panic. She is not really killing him, after all-it is just one of those games that they are playing. She doesn't yet know that he is done with the torture game and wants to move on to something more blissful.

Ah, what the hell, Georgie thinks. One more time wouldn't hurt. For old time's sake....

His gasping, bulbous, red-turned face makes a grimace that resembles a smile.

“What do you have to smile about?” Claudia hisses from the darkness. There is some movement on the rope as she ties it off. Then she steps into the small pool of light before him. “What the fuck have you ever had to smile about, you freak!”

Georgie finds his good humor starting to fade. His face begins to shade towards purple.

“Do you see this?” She gestures to herself-her tired, purple eye circles, her pale, orangey freckles. “You did this to me! I didn't used to be this way....”

Georgie gives off a sick, rattling moan. Spots begin to dance before his eyes.

He has heard this all before. When is she going to untie the rope? Is she going to bury him again, afterward?

She stares at him in silence. For a moment, Georgie feels a stab of real fear run through him. Her eyes are haunted ... hollow. He can't see anything of Claudia in them.

Slowly, she smiles. Her curving lips fill all his vision....

“I killed your son,” Claudia whispers.

The words echo in Georgie's ears as if coming from a great distance.

“You didn't want him ... you didn't care about him, or about me. So I killed him.”

She walks slowly to Georgie. He pulls desperately at the thick rope that rings his neck. He can't see past the fireworks exploding at the backs of his eyeballs, but he can feel her. She touches his leg with her hand.

“I killed both of us,” she whispers.

She tugs down, cutting the rope deeper into his neck. She laughs.

“And now I'm killing you.”

She yanks at him with all her strength.

Georgie's world goes black.

He can't hear her breathing.

He can't feel her arms wrapped around him, or the rope around his neck.

He is nothing. Finally.

Nothing.

Lover in the Nobody: Chapter 018

Then, Unto Them...

Claudia putters around Georgie's old style country home, a mug of warm water and lemon in her hands. She sips at it slowly, squeezing her eyes shut. She tries to pretend that it is coffee.

It is not. It never was. It never could be.

(Why doesn't she just make some coffee?

Shh, doc. Give the girl a minute, would you?)

With Georgie gone, Claudia stands in front of each window and stares out at the view. After a while, she moves onto the next. There are at least twenty-four windows in Georgie's home, and each has a different view. When she has gone from the attic to the basement, Claudia starts all over again from the beginning.

She has given up on food, for today. What is the point, after all?

Claudia thinks and thinks-how? and why? She doesn't worry about Georgie as much as you might expect. She cradles her stomachcarefully, trying to hug herself in. Like something is trying to get out.

(Wait, is she ... ?)

With a jump, she brings her hand to her lips. Her eyes bulge out.

Oh no...  she thinks as she runs to the bathroom. Not again....

Claudia collapses over the toilet, retching again and again. There is nothing left in her but lemon water (and...), but she brings it all up anyway, and then some.

To the inexperienced observer, it looks like air-nothing but air. But for those in the know, Claudia is still bringing up chunks. Every bad thing she hass ever done to Georgie, every mean word ... every time she has gotten off to the thought of plucking out his eyebrows, or twisting Greg's knuckles till they broke ... all of that is coming up now, in chunks and chunks, splashing into the toilet, spilling over the edges. The blood and the horror and all the bullshit rises out of her and around her, dripping onto her toes ... lapping at her foot soles.

Claudia sobs and hiccoughs; she belches and vomits again.

You all knew it would come back to haunt her, didn't you?

Yeah ... it was only a matter of time.

When Georgie comes home she is standing there waiting for him. Her face is vomit-smeared, her eyes haunted and terribly tired. She looks like some ghoulish version of her older self.

“Georgie!” she gasps. She hiccoughs and then vomits on his shoes.

It smells like lemon.

“Georgie, I'm pregnant,” she sobs.

She falls at his feet. Her wild, tangling curls land in puke.

Claudia shakes, crying, but there is no sound....

Years from now, Georgie will wonder if he did the wrong thing ... if there was anything he could have done to make it right.

Oh, wait ... no.

He will not.

“Jesus, Claudia!” he says, staring down at his shoes, at her head on the floor. “Get up!”

She huddles at his feet still, worthless.

Georgie looks at his shoes, wondering how to take them off without touching the vomit.

Huh...  he thinks.

Maybe he is stuck in these shoes forever.

Claudia stirs, looks up at him with pleading eyes.

“Is it mine?” he asks. Claudia hangs her head.

“I don't know,” she whispers.

Georgie closes his eyes tight.

Then he remembers the hose in the front yard.

He leaves.

Georgie stands like a flamingo in the front yard, washing the vomit from his shoes. Clean, clean, clean...  is his mantra. He watches every last speck slide off into the grass. Then he washes the grass, too, pushes the chunks back and back to his neighbor's yard-Claudia's lot, with her sad, burned-down house pieces glaring at him.

Georgie trains the hose on the charred house remains, washing the ash. It washes back to more and more ash. The coal gleams at him.

He thinks about the hose. Wonders if it will clean the hall floor, and Claudia's hair. Maybe he will just wash Claudia down with the hose. Hose off all those freckles, hose down all those curls.

The spray would be so fast it would knock her senseless, push her back against the wall. Her pieces would all fly apart (clean ... so clean)-one arm in the kitchen, the other draped over the lamp in the living room. Her leg in the hall, her foot on the porch ... her head in the attic (that is where heads belong).

No, no-that is not how it works. She would stay all in one piece, and the water would dig and dig into her, cutting a hole in her belly until he could see right through her, until she was translucent, a holy creature. He snickers.

Claudia, holy?

Claudia, clean?

The water in the hose drains to a finish. With one last spurt it retreats into its dark home.

Georgie turns around. Claudia is waiting for him, her hand on the spigot.

“Well?” she demands. He walks close to her. Her eyes are still haunted, stained with tears. Her face is old and sagging, her hair has flecks of vomit still ... who could love this woman?

“What are we going to do?” she begs him finally.

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know!

(I do.)

“Do whatever you want to do,” he spits out finally. “I don't care.”

She looks at him. Slowly, oh slowly, her eyes begin to narrow. Like mountains forming, her face becomes an angry, bitter mask.

“Fuck you, Georgie Gust,” she hisses at him.

Her eyes glow red.

(How does she make them do that?)

“Fuck yourself,” she says haughtily, raising her chin. “I don't need this shit.”