maddsuscript

[maddsuscript]

The GPS knows what Hitchhikers want to take

She sits behind me in the car I barely know 

how to drive like a GPS that was programmed to hate me

She watches each microadjustment

of the steering wheel like she knows

I don't know what I’m doing

But she says nothing until I am 4 years down 

the road and too many miles away from home to do anything but 

Recalculate 

Recalculate

Return my mom’s phone calls after I dodged them in favor of passenger punches and tell her about the girl in my back seat 

that sighs each time I turn left

She’s not real, of course

My mom says

She’s just another made up excuse of a daughter that proves I am certified crazy

But crazy isn’t a distinction on a license so that’s made up too 

so I should just follow directions and pretend I don’t hear her

drown out my mother's sobbing about other drivers who made me up into road rage and fear of going down tunnels with no end as the girl says 

“wrong turn” despite the fact that I have been 

speeding straight down this road for miles and miles

I ask her when and all there is is 

Recalculating 

Recalculating 

Recall all the times I sat in the back and watched the world zip by in my parents’ car and promised myself I wouldn’t drive through here ever again and would never listen to a station of arguments and false promises that 

I'd get out. I'd drive fast. I’d keep going and going and going

But I didn’t know how to drive when I left and I didn’t know where to keep going once I was in the front seat and someone else was in the car

Recalculating 

Recalculating 

Recalculating every decision I had made until this mile marker and 

Remembering all the passengers who had yelled so loudly before that I couldn’t hear the girl in my back seat telling me to turn off

the radio and just listen to what was happening until it was too late

Remembering all the stops I made where my brakes didn’t work despite pressing on them so hard I could feel the bones in my feet meet the pleas in my brain halfway down my body in the pit in my stomach as I looked in the side view mirrors as they walked off 

and my mouth moved before my mind and I begged them to get back in the car despite the slashes

they had put in the tires with bent rims of all the self-worth I had curbed when they buckled their seatbelts to secure themselves in my mind forever as I kept

Recalculating

Recalculating

Recalibrating everything I had already learned when I learned how to drive

Turning me into someone who couldn’t figure out left from right anymore without looking over and making sure

the direction I was going was the direction that benefitted them the most

Heat on to the level that made them comfortable as sweat mingled with other liquids covering me as the car shook and sputtered forward on the little drops of gas I was permitted to stop and add

I’d peer into the backseat each time I’d stand by the gas tank and she’d stare back and shake her head slowly

But the fumes of gasoline and the match threatening to drop if I took any second to think about where I was going 

made the station start to spin and all I could see was her mouth moving through yields and stops and 

Recalculate 

Recalculate

Recognize that enough is enough and the ride is over

But it's the passengers pulling the emergency brake when they feel my hand clenching claws in their thighs now

I’ve decided a journey alone is much more haunting than the ever present horror track playing over the radio that everyone is singing along to but me

They slam the door behind them as they leave but I leave the doors unlocked and windows down despite the shattered glass they left in their wake 

Up and 

Recalculate

Recalculate

Remember that there was a girl in the back seat and check the review mirror 

But I’m looking past her to catch a glimpse of those who ran off but she keeps staring forward

and at least one of us knows that they will never be behind me because I am always the one behind as 

They move on and move forward and move up in life while I am left 

with trash in the floorboards and a new cd in the slot that repeats my deepest flaws over and over again telling me that it will always be just me

my pessimistic grip on the wheel with a detrimental smile on the dash and

her and the road I never stopped on to

Recalculate 

Recalculate

Recall her voice again when months have past and the windshield wipers do their best 

to erase the mark that was left on me but everyone knows that they can only reach the center and leave a mistake shaped sludge on the edges of your vision

She tells me to pull over and take a rag to it 

To clean up the mess

But it's like my laces have tied around the gas pedal and all I can do is keep speeding past where we both know I need to go 

And she screams from the back seat now that it's just the two of us 

Recalculate

Recalculate

Redo it all and try to remember that it was always me 

in the backseat figuring out not to turn down the same roads I was forced down but all the road signs pass and I pretend 

I can't read them when I finally turn around in my seat and look at the girl in the back and suddenly I’m 

Recalculating

Recalculating

Recognizing that she was me all along

Trapped in the child-locked seats and forced to watch me crash the car to the point where everyone is surprised it isn’t in an impound lot yet because I'm too stubborn 

to admit I should have never been the one behind the wheel and no one should ever pick up hitchhikers 

that look like their dad because suddenly you are 4 years into a road trip you insisted on and no one is calling you anymore because you 

left your phone on silent and ignored every stop light that sounded like your best friends because what does anything mean 

when you figured you'd have sent the car off the cliff months ago anyway 

But it's still driving 

into oncoming traffic and the GPS and the roadmaps and your mom on the phone and the exit signs and the hazard lights and the common sense and the horns from other cars and all the sirens and the girl in the back keep screaming 

to take a U-turn but 

You always learned that U-turns are illegal so all you can do is

Recalculate 

Recalculate

Resign to a drive where no one is behind the wheel anymore and we are both curled up 

in the back seat and she looks just like me before the dorm room that took everything and I look

like everything she never wanted and the wiper fluid is eerily salty and the scap metal heap around us digs deep and all the carnage seems unsalvageable but at least there's still time

before our eta to 

Recalculate

[maddsuscript]

Aunts and murders and memories, oh my!

Written as a creative non-fiction practice

Word count: 917

At a glance: Every have a memory so strong you've gotta white knuckle the bathroom counter and then the keyboard of your laptop?

When I was too young to remember my age but old enough for the memory to hit me in the face each time my boyfriend tried to kill me, I remember watching my aunt's boyfriend put a necklace on her for her graduation. I had never met him before and worshiped the ground my aunt walked on, so I watched how they interacted every step of the way that day.

We had all gathered in my grandma’s small kitchen for her graduation, and he was so excited to celebrate her that he jumped up, small box in hand before anyone could begin. I don’t remember what the necklace looked like because in its place in my mind is just the beam of light that radiated from her face when she saw it. She twirled around and lifted her hair up for him, and he lifted it from its box, gently pulling it over her neck, looping them together without an exchange of words. He shifted, leaning closer to her and looking over her shoulder to perfectly align the pendant in the center of her tiger graphic tee, her signature item, right between the eyes. He latched the necklace on the first try and then kissed the back of her neck right where it linked, right were it connected the two of them together. 

As soon as his lips connected with her skin, a pain shot through my head so bad I had to leave the kitchen. I fled to the porch and sat with the barn cats where no one could see me, but the image wouldn’t stop playing over and over again. I decided instantly that’s what love was while my skull pulsated. Over the years, the image slowly drifted from the forefront of my mind, but the feeling always hovered in my skull. Something about necklaces. Something about pain.

Something about my Aunt’s boyfriend frowning at me as I felt the headache and panic again underneath who I thought was my equivalent to him. He watched as my boyfriend choked me. He started yanking, twisting at the two necklaces I had worn every single day after my aunt’s graduation, unaware of our audience. I grabbed his hand, a gentle gesture just as I had seen in my grandma's kitchen, easing him away from them, but he didn’t get what this wordless exchange was saying. 

Over his shoulder, I could see my aunt’s boyfriend turn to leave. I began to thrash, demanding he stop. 

As the words left my lips, he kept leaving while my boyfriend shifted his grasp from my necklaces to my windpipe. He pressed down, crushing the cartilage and the memory of my aunt’s boyfriend. He left enough air in my lungs for me to vaguely hear everything else he had to say. Something about me. Something about pessimism. 

Something about it kept me docile enough for him to come back and try to finish the job in early October. I suppose the chilled air had made the cold metal of my adorning chains too painful to touch because he elected for a new method this time.

The final time my boyfriend tried to kill me, my aunt’s boyfriend was long gone, not returning to watch the months of blade sharpening I had chosen to pretend I didn’t see myself. When the time came, my killer leaned in close, admiring my necklaces as a rouse for the blade he’d sink into my skull. A stab right between the eyes, a final blow I had always seen coming but allowed him to make his forever mark anyways. 

The door swung as he fled, and before it and the lid of my casket could close, my aunt’s boyfriend slid through the crack and into my memory again. Something about eyes. Something about pain. 

Something stitched me up that day. I am unsure if it was the memory of him or the false idea that appearing better would bring my killer back, but the wound was closed and my aunt’s boyfriend was gone again. 

For weeks to come, I couldn’t stand not having either of them in my life. I’d tear open the wound over and over, searching for the headache and hoping the blood that would leak would bring it back to me. Killers had the tendency to come back to the victims to take a trophy, and I still had my necklaces. 

I kept them polished and proper in hopes either the metallic shine or smell of the silver or my blood would serve as the bait for bringing the predator and the pretense back to me. 

One night as I was untangling the conglomerate of where they’d always connect behind me, I grazed the skin at the base of my neck so gently that I saw my aunt’s boyfriend behind me in the mirror again. He pulled a small box out of his pocket and opened it. No necklace crossed my sight, but my aunt’s face did. 

I touched the infected, oozing cesspool between my eyes as I stared in the bright shine of hers. I put my hand over the bruising on my neck as I watched hers reflect the shimmer of her necklace perfectly. My aunt’s boyfriend said something back to me in the mirror, but I could only hear him faintly as I began to rapidly disinfect the wound and wrap it up. Something about worth. Something about moving. 

Something about me always wanting to be my aunt when I grew up. 

[maddsuscript]

And now, a kaleidoscope!

Written as a journal entry after being told I see what I want to see

Word Count: 463

At a glance: Extended metaphor about kaleidoscope improv and becoming aware that everyone is seeing what you're seeing as a choice

I think my eyes were shaped as some weird, convoluted kaleidoscope into what could be when I was born. I live where the cones connect to the brain more than I live an objective life, looking through the refractiles of different ways things should, could, would have been.

Each sharp shape is something it isn't.

A sign. A calling. An inspiration. A warning.

I explore everything for its potential, what it can be, what it'll make me, what I want its shape to morph into. I switch the lens as I desire, flipping the corners around, turning the reds to greens, anything to look at what I want to see.

I rarely take the time to see something for what it is, what is actually standing right in front of me. Everyone else sees it with their eyes, staring right at it, confused on how I don't see the mold growing on the fruit when I go on and on about the seeds it'll make and the trees that'll grow and the paper and the stories and and and.

I always see the ands while the others are seeing the yes, a kaleidoscope induced game of improv that is never fun. But I keep playing it over and over, shifting the lens to hold on to my ands like a vice grip while everyone else can see the suffocation of the yes.

Eventually, when the yes, the reality of what everyone but me sees is happening, dies out, all you're left with is and. Too many ands without a yes eventually will become a no, no possibilities left when you've given yourself motion sickness dancing around the moving shapes and colors of all the ands.

So the ands becomes nos and the shapes flip upside down because you have no angles left, and you claw your way around the colors to try to get back to the and, though all you can manage is but.

But what if it comes back? But what if everything was a sign? But what if I can change it? But what if when I finally break the glass in front of my face and look at things how everyone else does, I miss the meanings in the crack? But what if this cycle is exactly what was intended for me, a prison of shapes and interjections and conjunctions and mind-numbing circles of nothing but a self-constructed glass maze I'll run through for fruit that has always had mold on it?

And everyone says no because they can see the yes, and you think yourself all the way back to the and until there's nothing left but maggots and shrapnel. And everyone tells you no, leave it alone, but it looks just like companionship and stained glass and.

[maddsuscript]

Expiration Date

Written after I had convinced myself my subway gift card was expired, so instead of going to subway I came home and wrote this (and not have been back to subway since. This is three years old)

Word Count: 857

At a glace: the innerworkings of how anxiety responds to "what's the worst that could happen?"

Your gift card is expired. 

The bright piece of plastic mocks me from its new-found home in the speaking cashier’s palm. It stares. It sits perfectly still in front of me before it is even swiped, apparently expired. 

What?

He sighs. The gift card sighs. I sigh too, but it's more of my lungs and less of me, shaky and forced. 

Your gift card. 

Yes, I say to the gift card that is both mine and apparently expired.

It’s expired, the card chimes in now with the cashier, loving her new third person approach to speech but unsure if it likes being both expired and being it. They are both annoyed, which my brain is sure to inform me of before my eyes or ears can chime in. 

Yes, the gift card is expired, even my lungs say. It echoes in my brain, which, of course, repeats it back to me. My gift card. It is expired. Do gift cards even expire? 

I don’t know, the cashier who doesn’t know about the expiration status of gift cards that aren’t mine but knows what I’m thinking, says, but your gift card is expired. 

Are you sure?

The card speaks for itself now when it replies to my question, No, but I’m expired.

I want to ask the cashier to actually try the card at least, to see if the machine agrees with the cashier, my allegedly expired gift card, my lungs, and my brain, but I pause for a second and just stare at the blank expression the cashier gives me. In this grocery store with the same song and the same chorus and the same line and the same thing happening, I have already taken so much time and do not want to be another same for him, the same people who make his life harder by asking him to actually check to see if my gift card is expired. 

But it's my gift card, and gift cards don’t expire. I’m sure of it, I’m sure. I looked it up when my brain suggested the potential conundrum me, the gift card, me and my gift card could have and now were creating in this same grocery store we come to and use the same non-expired gift card for every Friday. 

My heart chimes in and suggests the obvious, that I should just ask.

She says, He either swipes it or doesn’t. It’s not like he’s going to hit us. 

He does. I feel the sweat of his hand connect with my warm cheeks. The cold plastic makes contact too, a quick slice into the innocent cheek that stays on my face pouring panicking blood down it, quickly finding refuge on the counter and on the gift card, expired and bloody. 

Oh. All I can manage.

My heart screams in response, audible to just me and my brain and just about every cell in my body that wasn’t currently on an expired gift card. She has no words, and neither do I, she just inflects her voice in an up and down pattern, the same she did before I pulled out the blood-free expired-but-not gift card.

So are you going to pay? asks the cashier holding my payment method, expired or not, in his hand that has hit me.

My ego scoffs before I do. Of course we are going to pay. Do you all take cash?

They have an entire register; of course they take cash, my brain tells my lungs who are dancing in and out to the tune of my heart.

Of course we take cash. The register, not the cashier, but he does take cash too. 

Reaching into my purse to grab my gift-cardless wallet, there is a brief second in which I, via the commentary of my brain, consider that there may not be cash in the wallet that I put cash in this morning, right behind the gift card.

Oh. All I can manage. 

It appears as if we have no cash. Lyrics my heart adds to her siren song and my lungs hum along to. 

Yeah, the cashier says. My ears catch it from behind us, so my feet turn to see that he is now behind both me and the counter, however that works. But it does. 

I actually robbed you. You do not have enough cash. 

He actually robbed me, it seems. He, in front of me, holds the cash from my wallet while he, behind me and behind the counter, holds my gift card. Neither of which are expired. Both of which can pay. One of which is silent while the other snickers amongst their green, papery peers, siding with the cashier and my brain. 

The betrayal makes my blood heat up. My heart switches tracks to a more base heavy tune and ensures that all of the blood gets the memo. My brain snores, tired of both me and itself. 

Just use the gift card, says I. Not even my mouth assists, just me. 

Oh. We all manage as the register beeps and the only man in the store hands me back my clean, unexpired gift card. 

[maddsuscript]

The Boyfriend I Keep

Written in my freshman year fiction writing class for our flash fiction unit but this is creative nonfiction, so I guess I always was pushing the boundaries of what it meant to practice, like this piece gets in to

Word Count: 486

At a glance: One day my mom told me that I needed to get a practice boyfriend before I left high school or I'd never be good at it (yikes!) and I didn't realize I was listening to her until it was too late

My boyfriend doesn’t know he’s a cop out. He doesn’t know that his basketball number is the only true thing my parents know about him. He doesn't know that he’s the nicest boy I’ve ever met, eye-opening, tall, dark and nerdy. He doesn't know about the pit in my stomach when I see a glimpse of it in the halls. He doesn't know about the back hallway I take to avoid seeing the rest, the causal way I walk down the tile with a book in my hand so everyone can see that that’s why I’m not checking my phone, the twist and turns I dash down to see the girl in my history class faster. 

He doesn’t know that I smile as soon as I walk through the door. He doesn’t know how badly I want to hold the hand that waves at me from her desk, how I talk to her about the texts she sent me last night while I was avoiding his, how it’s her face I see on the other side of the phone when he calls me after class. He doesn’t know that she’s the nicest girl I’ve ever met, eye-opening, tall, dark, and nerdy. He doesn’t know that she knows everything he doesn’t.

My boyfriend doesn’t know that I wasn’t his choice. He doesn’t know that I orchestrated us behind the scenes, that my mom orchestrated me through off handed comments about grandkids and grooms, each of us our own marinette trio who knows but doesn’t know what string is being pulled why. He doesn’t know how I can make him laugh so hard over a plate of spaghetti at dinner that night, how I’m exactly what he wanted.  He doesn’t know I say exactly what he wants to hear. He doesn’t know that I know I look like his ex-girlfriend, that I know he’s talking to another me under the table, that I’m thankful for her. He doesn’t know I wish I was him. 

He doesn’t know that I’ve had the breakup text sitting in my notes since I decided he was going to be my solution. He doesn’t know he’s being clingy, because he isn’t, he’s just being a boyfriend, so he doesn’t know why I’m being distant, why the only text I sent all weekend is a novel long. He does know I’m lying when I say it’s not him, it’s me, but he doesn’t know why it’s a lie. He doesn’t know that when I say I hope he understands, I don’t, that I want him to be mad, to be pissed like I was, to call me and scream, to fight me, not for me, to demand an answer, to tell me that what I’ve done to him is unforgivable, that I’m unforgivable, but he doesn’t know that. My boyfriend doesn’t know that his “I do understand” is the biggest thing he doesn’t know.  

[maddsuscript]

Rihanna writes songs for tools that need 2 people

Written in the margins of a short story I was supposed to be analyzing in my methods for literature class sophomore year after I self-sabotaged a relationship and then noticed two people sharing an umbrella outside

Word Count: 374

At a glance: Umbrella by Rihanna if you had just told someone you actually really wanted to be with that you needed to be just friends because you were too scared to let someone in

I will never acquire the safety and comfort of two women sharing an umbrella with no rain, arms linked and giggling under the roof of their own content smiles, raised by their interlocked hands and knowledge that they’re both right under the canopy. 

My umbrella has an easy to press button to expand and contract with one singular finger and is built to flip inside out with the slightest gust of wind to prevent snapping its fragile spokes. 

It sits in my backpack as I watch them walk from my place behind the screenless window. I wonder if it’d catch my fall on the way down like theirs catches the sun and my attention. 

How do you end stories about feelings that just don’t end? I guess you repeat it just like a chorus of a song you use to drown it out?

My umbrella has an easy to press button to expand and contract with one singular finger, leaving the rest free to wipe away the rain inside it and wave to the girls outside the window and press repeat on the same song again.

My umbrella has an easy to press button to expand and contract with one singular finger while I fold in on myself to hide from anyone who could link arms with me under it to keep them from ever joining me under the fragility of the spokes with their built-to-bend hinges. 

My umbrella has an easy to press button, so easy that it’s hit every time I see them. Closing in, closing down, contracting like the cardiovascular organ inside my chest and the pull-down mechanism on the recycled-plastic center pole.

Press, open. Press, close. Close. Close. Slam the button down despite its easy give, its familiar simplicity much more comforting than the unapproachable, overwhelming concept of taking my hands into another’s and wrapping all my fingers around the center heart of the umbrella, the center heart of something that isn’t my own. 

Two people will never press the easy to press button of my built-to-close, built-to-break, built-to-be-mine umbrella, for it was built to function with only one. It will close, and it will always be me at the button.

[maddsuscript]

Business

Written freshman year of college creative writing class

Word Count: 6.5K

Warnings: gore, domestic violence, implied homophobia, death

At a glance: I got a comment in my workshop for this piece that said "I have never really seen two women be so crazy in their codependency" and "I am sensing extreme levels of psychopathy" and I think that is better than any summary I could have every come up for this piece

Enjoy!

Jenny heard the sound of the loafers hitting the driveway before she saw her. Through the smudged glass of her second-story bedroom window that had withstood its fair share of pebbles, she watched as Whitney paced back and forth in front of the door below. The green summer dress she wore fluttered in the fall wind, but not a single hair from her low bun budged from their smoothed back spots she had spent half an hour taming. The sunlight bounced from the pearls of her necklace as she bobbed her head to check her watch.

Jenny slid the window open, but she paused before she spoke as Whitney finally approached the front door. The choice to stand at the door and the choice to knock were two different obstacles, however, so Jenny watched her gear up for her newest mental hurdle. 

“Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Talone. Always great to see you,” Whitney muttered under her breath, sticking her hand out into the air, entire arm stiff as she mimed shaking hands with people she knew would only do so out of formality but would huff if not offered. 

With a snort at her ever-calculated efforts, Jenny leaned her upper body out of the window.

“They aren’t home, dork.”

The affectionate tone of her voice dropped Whitney’s nerves and hand in an instant. She craned her neck up to see her, the twitch in the corner of her eye morphing into crescents as she smiled. The sun made it hard to make out Jenny’s face with the halo it hung around her, but she wished she still had a few more seconds to watch her wave down before she pulled herself back in the window.

As soon as Jenny whipped open the door, their arms were around each other in a hug that would have sent Jenny’s parents through the roof. Whitney backed them both into the modern foyer, the sounds of her dress shoes clicking on the always-polished marble floors as Jenny's socked ones shuffled back to accommodate. 

They swayed together in the foyer as the intricately posed family portraits watched from their places on the bright white walls. Jenny saw the fake smiles of herself in one over Whitney’s shoulder while Whitney suppressed a scowl at the sight of a man she didn’t know with his arm around Jenny over hers. Neither of them bothered to look for one of them both.

Jenny chose to focus on the feeling of the girl against her and not the lack of her smiling face amongst the fake ones on the wall. She soaked in the feeling of her cheek against the fabric of Whitney’s dress. It was softer than the regular well-loved cotton of her t-shirts and smelled faintly of the boutique she told Whitney her mother always made her go to before business dinners, but the scent of the perfume she had gotten her for their anniversary a few months ago worked well to drown out the smell of the anxious need to impress someone who would never see her effort. Jenny almost wanted to chastise her for spending her own money on something so nice just for her parents, but she held it back and focused on the perfume, knowing the words would fall on deaf, stubborn ears. 

“They really left you here on your birthday?” Whitney asked, pulling away from their hug and shooting glances down each of the many hallways off the foyer.

“Business, you know?” Jenny said. She trailed off, more in disappointment of how jumpy Whitney was in her home and less of the familial absence on a day meant to be about her.

Whitney frowned. As much as she did not want the Talone’s to be in the house, she wanted even less for Jenny to not have them there on yet another important day. She rubbed her freshly manicured hands down Jenny’s arms and admired the black, chipped polish that reached up to meet hers. 

“You didn’t have to dress up for them, Whitney,” Jenny caved, the dollar signs adding up in her head with each pink fingernail. 

She cocked her head to the side in response, quickly disregarding Jenny’s unnecessary concern with a smirk.

“What? I can’t get all dolled up for my girlfriend’s birthday dinner?”

Jenny shoved her playfully and walked away to grab a coat from one of the numerous doors around them. Whitney’s snickers followed her and she felt her fingers at the base of her back. 

At the sight of the heavy coat in her hand, Whitney chimed in.

“The restaurant is going to be warm. I called ahead and checked.” 

And she had. Once when she booked the reservation at the fancy Italian place Jenny had mentioned was her favorite of all the places her parents had dragged her to for boring business dinners, twice after Jenny complained about how cold the movie theater two towns over was on their date last week, and three times as she cranked the heat on the car ride over here to make sure it was warm when Jenny got in. 

The chipped polished hands stopped as she spoke, one holding the coat half on its hanger and the other tightly gripping the closet door, preventing Whitney from seeing the side of her face. 

“About that,” she started, fiddling with the designer fur and pulling the door closer, refusing to turn around and see the immediate drop of Whitney’s features.

“I need you to help me with something at Patt’s.”

Whitney’s hand dropped from the base of her back and neither of them knew how a space could fill with cold air so fast. She placed her hand on top of Jenny’s on the door and pulled it back gently to see if there was any evidence that this was some sick pre-dinner comedy act.

“You want me to take you to your ex-boyfriend’s lake house?”

She had said it cautiously, withholding any hint of hurt at the suggestion in her voice, but Jenny still recoiled at the words.

She turned from the coats at the hint of panic, cupping Whitney’s face and brushing her thumb against the lightly applied bronzer on her clenched jaw. 

“It’ll be quick, I promise,” she continued before she could be rightfully told that seeing him wasn’t a good decision, “and then we can be right off to dinner. Just some business to take care of first.”

“Get your shoes. I’ll make sure your seat warmer is still on.”

Before she could turn away, Jenny grabbed her upper arm with a sigh.

“Take one of my father’s instead. The keys to the jeep are in the bowl in the entryway.”

Whitney froze and her eyebrows shot to her hairline, more at the suggestion of using Talone property without properly informing the dictator behind the wheel and less at the implication that all-terrain was needed for whatever Jenny had in mind.

“Do you want to get me killed?”

⃟⃟⃟

Halfway up the gravel driveway Jenny had directed her to, Whitney pulled the wheel to the side and cut the engine of the jeep. She drummed her fingers against the smooth plastic of the steering wheel and tried to build up the courage to ask Jenny why the hell they were in the middle of the woods while ignoring the way Jenny kept leaning forward to look around through the windshield. Her body continued to shift in Whitney’s peripherals, but it appeared as if her eyes were fixated on the same thing with each movement. Whitney finally let her own gaze follow, pushing her own silent battle to the side to see. 

At the end of the rest of the gravel path, Whitney saw a blue wall and wooden stairs. If she squinted her eyes, she saw the siding sat looser in some places, drooping lower and revealing the deep yellowing of the once-white paint beneath. The wall was pretty tall with two sets of windows on each story, each with a layer of grime around the sides to suggest that whoever had attempted to clean them just swirled around the rag and let it be. The stairs looked as if they had seen better days, too. The planks bowed in the middle while still sporting a fresh oak staining on the top. A light flickered on and off at the top of them but a bit farther back, and Whitney assumed there was some sort of stoop or porch based on the depth. Based on the large watch and expensive clothes Patt wore in the pictures she had seen in the living room, she had expected something much bigger, but she guessed boys cared less about the size of the house and more about the cover of the trees and lack of parents. But all she could do was guess. 

On the fifth flicker, she tore her eyes away from the ugly house and hands from the steering wheel to grab Jenny’s.

“What is it you wanted me to do here?” She asked, rubbing soft circles into the back of Jenny’s hand when she didn’t return her focus. 

Jenny stopped shifting, but she did not turn from the windshield. Whitney watched as her eyes bounced, immediately knowing she was counting rocks in the gravel ahead of them, a nervous habit she had caught onto early in their relationship. In a similar act of anxious math, Whitney counted every possible way she could fix whatever was wrong. But maybe she was already done, merely the ride to whatever was supposed to be between just Patt and Jenny, like everything else between them that Jenny felt she didn’t need to know. 

“Or, I guess, what did you want to do here?” Whitney added.

Jenny finally met her eyes, noting the wrinkles gathering in the corners that could be waved off as from a smile if it was anyone else looking at her, but Jenny noticed the lack of teeth in the grin. It was the same smile Whitney gave her each time she didn’t want to do something, the same smile she gave when Jenny told her she couldn’t sneak in anymore after a close call with her parents. Just as she had that night, Jenny scrunched up her eyes and tried to find a way to say the impossible. 

As a halfway attempt, she squeezed Whitney’s hands three times, a silent “I love you” that made Whitney’s breath catch. She counted three ragged breaths before she opened her eyes. Seeing the battle to stay calm on Whitney’s ever-careful face, she let the words tumble from her mouth in quick succession. 

“I need you to help me kill Patt.”

Whitney’s hands slipped out of her own, all rigidity in the girl's body dropping as she reached back to undo the bun at the base of her neck, a small celebration that all of the other worst-case scenarios she had thought of weren’t the reality. Though she wasn’t sure a full-on murder was the best case scenario, far from it, she knew she would still have Jenny by the end, so it couldn’t be the worst. Not letting herself fully assess what that entailed, she turned back to back to Jenny.

“Like, kill him, kill him? Like gun, strangulation, not alive again, kill him?”

Jenny cocked her head to the side and nodded slowly.

“What a birthday party.”

She hoped that the disbelief didn’t make its way into her voice, but as she heard Jenny’s laugh make home in her ears, she didn’t care about anything else. Didn’t care about the logistics, didn’t care about the fact that Patt’s bicep was bigger than her head in the picture she saw on the Talone dream wall, and certainly didn’t care that she was probably going to have to pick all of the gravel out of Mr. Talone’s tires. 

⃟⃟⃟

Whitney stood at the front door of Patt’s house just as she had at the Talone’s, accompanied by the same shake of intimidation. She squinted down the gravel path where she insisted Jenny wait in the car. From her spot on the porch, she could only see the slight shine of the declining sun shine off the front grill. 

Jenny wished she could send her a reassuring smile to calm at least a little bit of the tremble she was all too familiar with when it came to the lake house, but she kept her head down like she was told, depending on the rolled-down windows to let her hear whatever Whitney’s next move was as she laid in her fully reclined chair.

On the porch, Whitney stood still as she tried to figure out how to best accomplish what Jenny wanted without any of her direct input. She was sure that Jenny would have a plan since she suggested the nonsense she was currently having to go through with, but she hadn’t shared one with Whitney, a predicament she was all too familiar with but always ready to solve. 

She ran her fingers over the round white beads sitting cold on her neck, the chill not helping in the slightest with the anxious warmth spreading through her. Without Jenny to lead the way, she was at a loss on what the best step should be, so she just picked one. 

Removing her hands from the necklace, she slammed her hands against the grimy plastic of the screen door. She banged over and over, listening for any movement inside the house but not hearing anything over the echo of her flesh against the barrier. When her knuckles began to feel sore, she finally relented, turning slightly to face the jeep in hopes Jenny would finally send some sort of clue on the plan.

When the sound of the knocking finally stopped being audible in the car, Jenny tried to glance at the porch from her position, but couldn't see anything other than the darkening sky. Not bothering to listen to the multiple times Whitney told her to stay down and out of sight “just in case”, Jenny sat up slightly to find Whitney was already looking for her.

 Whitney’s free shoulder lifted in a shrug as her other arm hovered over the door, the consistent planner confused on what the girl who led her everywhere wanted her to do, both girls waiting for some sort of sign from the other.

Finally, Jenny shrugged back, not sure what else Whitney wanted her to do, confused on why her input was necessary if Whitney was the one with the plan. 

In an instant, Whitney started screaming Patt’s name and hitting the door faster.

The door suddenly flung open. A deep creak from the hinges replaced the thuds and a deep voice Jenny really wished she didn’t have to hear slammed into her ears. 

“What the fuck do you–oh,” he began with a roar that took everything in Whitney to not flinch away from. 

The man stood like nothing on the other side of the door he yanked open could ever hurt him. He held it open wide, hands free of calluses gripping the door frame as he leaned his tall frame out toward Whitney. His shirt hung loosely on his body, barely covering a dark black tattoo carefully placed on his collar bone. On his wrist sat the thick, silver watch Whitney had eyed in the pictures, the only thing she really had to go off of, but she immediately knew this was Patt. His eyebrows furrowed when he saw her and his eyes widened, pulling the faint hint of dark bags up with them. He settled back, and released his vice grip on the door. 

“You’re Jenny’s new thing, right?”

Whitney stood frozen on the porch while Jenny’s blood boiled, a deep hate permeating through both of their chests threatening to set the wood around them aflame, a fire that wanted nothing more than to meet in the middle and get the hell out of dodge. 

“Uh, yeah, she…” Whitney trailed off, shifting back away from the door to try to get a glimpse at Jenny for what to do next without looking at her, not wanting Patt to see her.

Jenny screamed silently to herself, a loud “what is she doing?” bouncing around behind her eyes as she watched her stand there, mouth dropped open mid-sentence. She motioned her hand forward frantically, hoping, pleading that Whitney and only Whitney would see her and just do something. 

“Is she here?” is what Whitney settled on. 

Was she where?

“Is she here?” Patt repeated.

Whitney paused, racking her brain for some ounce of the lying ability she had had to use on the Talones every week to grace her in this moment. She knew nothing about Patt, knew nothing about what he would want to hear, nothing about what Jenny wanted her to do with him right now, nothing about their past to use to her advantage. In that moment, she stood on the porch and realized she truly knew, nothing, really. 

But she did notice the hint of hope in Patt’s voice when he asked, a twisted version of the same hope she had when she would ask if Jenny had the house to herself during business trip weekends. And then she knew how to do what she did best––lie to keep Jenny safe.

“Yeah, she just broke up with me.” She started to tear up, both because that was her worst nightmare and the way Patt looked like that was his biggest dream. 

“She just, drove off. And then I saw her car here.”

She gestured to the jeep parked on the opposite side of the house when she no longer saw Jenny’s blonde hair. As he looked, she considered Patt for a moment. 

She loved Jenny more than anything and wondered if he had once, too. Jenny never talked about him, truly never, but she caught the way she had to tear her eyes away from the picture in her living room, but it was always there to mock Whitney the next time she had to sneak out after an early return. 

Was the feeling of losing her not close enough to death for Patt? Whitney remembered how it felt in the month Jenny said they had to “play it safe,” how her heart stopped when the text messages did. It was a fate worse than whatever she could figure out to do with him here and, amongst the other things she didn’t know, she didn’t know why that feeling of torture he had to have wasn’t satisfying enough for Jenny, why they were missing dinner, why she wouldn’t just tell her why she had to drive the car of the man she hated most in the world to take her to him. 

She looked at the way his arm flexed on the door as he peered out at the jeep, the same arm around her girlfriend in the picture. The same arm that shook the hand of Mr. Talone and didn't make him grimace afterwards. The same arm that Jenny could hold onto in public, in her own town, without having to drop it as soon as anyone looked at them. 

Though she didn’t know exactly why Jenny had decided that that arm had to die, Whitney did know that she wanted to tear it off, so when he swung it wide in a gesture to enter the house behind him, she followed.

⃟⃟⃟

Jenny watched as Whitney trailed behind the man who took everything from her into the lake house, catching her mouth something before the screen door separated them entirely, the shape of the word “How?” making her body lock up in her seat.

Her body began to shake as she realized the true implications of the word, realizing her planner had no idea how to do such an impossible task. Of course Whitney didn’t have a plan. How could she have, she didn’t even know why there had to be a plan until they had got here, moving forward until told otherwise. She cursed her girlfriend, always so trusting, and as she stared blankly, Jenny wasn’t so sure she deserved it. 

Bugs crawled over the windshield as she sat there trembling, counting each one as she did, trying to get her mind to focus on what she was supposed to do, why she thought getting Whitney involved was okay, and how she was ever going to be able to get herself to be in the same room as Patt again to go help her.

There was a ladybug for each time Jenny remembered Patt’s hands on her, a spot on their backs for each bruise he left. A spider crawled for each time he yelled so loud that it felt like the very house Whitney had thoughtlessly trailed behind that monster into was going to crumble down around her. Flies buzzed around, not quite landing but still swarming around the air like each time he promised he loved her, the buzzes almost convincing her that maybe he did with all the efforts he was going through to get her back. Two butterflies joined the crew—-one for the time he mentioned a girl throwing rocks at her window to her father at a business dinner, and another for the way he threatened to tell him again tonight if Jenny didn’t come back to him. 

As their white wings fluttered away together freely, Jenny slinked out of the car after them, shooing the flies away as she quietly trailed down the path and up the steps to help the person she knew really did love her. 

She pushed open the screen door, putting her fingers in the hinge to prevent the plastic hiss and closing it behind her, a habit she can’t seem to unlearn. She closed it softly, stopping in the entrance way and listening for the sound of their voices to locate where they had gone. 

“I’m sorry that you have to go through this,” Patt’s voice spoke from the upper level. “When we split, I was heartbroken for weeks. I couldn’t come back here for forever; it just felt so empty without her.”

The sincerity of the tone pushed her forward, inching closer through the sparse living room toward the base of the steps.

“Missing her is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

She paused as she reached the base of the step. Instead of heading up, she pressed her back against the wall and glanced around the room as she listened. He still had the rug she had picked out when he had asked her to move in with him, when things were still okay. As she counted the tassels on the end, she considered calling the whole thing off. It sounded like he did love her still, despite what everything he did suggested. Not that she cared that he did, not that she would forgive, she promised herself she never would, but maybe she could use that to convince him to call off whatever he had planned with her parents tonight. She tried time and time again, each time met with the same refusal and threat. But maybe she could convince him to leave Whitney out of this, to leave them alone. If he loved her this much, maybe he’d accept that she truly loved Whitney, and Whitney loved her, more than anyone else ever had. Maybe one final try was all it would take.

“I kept apologizing for the mistakes I made, but she wouldn’t hear me out.”

So much for that. It took everything in her not to scoff at his blatant downplay on the entire situation, but the worry of giving off her location was more powerful than her annoyance. Annoyance in his inability to realize that what he did could ever be fixed with an apology or annoyance in herself for almost letting him go like it was, she wasn’t sure. 

“So I can totally get how you’re feeling, truly. And if she would have just listened to me in the first place, you wouldn’t have to feel like that, so I’m sorry for that too.”

She heard their footsteps begin to tap down the hall above her as he continued. She peered around the corner and looked up to see a crest of light illuminating from Patt’s bedroom onto dingy, discolored wallpaper, but she was unable to see them from her position at the bottom of the steps. The light grew bigger as she heard the door above creak open farther and the voices grew louder as the tapping got closer to the top of the steps. Their shadows casted onto the sliver of wall Jenny could see from downstairs. 

“But,” Patt’s voice continued, “You have to see how this was the best for her. I was always the better choice. Her parents knew it too, which I’m sure you knew.”

She watched as Whitney’s tiny shadow shook with sobs. The head of her shadow tilted to the floor as it spat out how she knew but she just needed to find her. Jenny’s eyes filled with tears when she couldn’t tell if the reason she couldn’t hear the lying in her voice was because it was so good or if it wasn't there at all. 

She hated him. Every ounce of sympathy gained from his little speech evaporated with the heat of her anger in an instant. True, utter, unchangeable disdain solidified not with the memories of her own tears, but with the sound of Whitney’s. She’d be happy to hear his by the end of the night, reminding herself of the choice she had made before all of the words he spewed.

Patt’s shadow squared up his shoulders as Whitney emphasized Jenny’s potential return to him, making his darkness double in size, oozing into Whitney’s and cutting off her view. Jenny shifted to get a better look, quickly tiptoeing to the other side of the stair opening to peer from a different angle.

Jenny held her breath as Patt stalked further down the hallway, muttering in a sickly sweet tone about he’ll find her no problem, to just wait there while he looked. The bile in her stomach bubbled and churned and folded her in half as all she could do was watch the shadow of his claw grip onto the shoulder of Whitney’s as it had done to her own months ago. 

“About time she made it, too,” he said. “I thought I was going to have to ruin another one of her parent’s stupid business dinners.”

Jenny’s own faded shadow met the yellowed wallpaper as she rocketed up the stairs to reach them. Her feet slammed against the steps and her hands yanked herself up the railing, propelling herself up as fast as she could.

She saw their shadows turn on the wall before she saw their faces. She saw Patt’s head quirk with confusion and turned to see his real face change to smug satisfaction as their eyes met. He quickly paced down the rest of the distance to meet her.

 His arm darted out, whether to try to pin her to the wall that her back was all too familiar with or to pull her into a hug, Jenny wasn’t sure, but the daggers of his shadowy fingers never made contact for her to find out. 

There was a softness against her arm and a shadow mingled with hers on the wall, its steady strength holding her quivering one. 

Whitney slid her body between the two of them before she could even figure out what was happening, the terrified whimpers from Jenny launching her feet into motion after Patt before her brain could. She glared into him, daring him to try again. She saw him roll his eyes and then scowl down at her and realized there was one more thing she didn’t know—-how do you kill someone twice your size?

But as his arm darted out once more and she felt Jenny’s go up to shield her face behind her, she knew exactly what “mistakes” he had been referring to. She decided he had just added the final one to the list. 

Whitney threw herself into him. She turned her shoulder to jab it into his chest. He stumbled backwards, foot catching on the edge of the top step. 

His body pitched back, ready to fall down to the first floor, but Whitney felt his vice grip at her throat instead of relief, both of their shadows thundering down the walls of the stairwell. 

Jenny watched in horror as each clunk down the steps pressed the palm of Patt’s hand harder against the pearls of Whitney’s necklace, each white ball digging deeper into her thorax at the impact. A shriek struggled out of Whitney’s compressed throat, but it did not struggle to reach Jenny’s ears. Its shrillness wrapped around her veins and turned them to ice, freezing her to the spot at the top of the steps as she saw them hit the already chipped linoleum below. 

Patt’s head slammed into the floor. Jenny bit back a hurl at the sound of his skull cracking and the guttural groan he released to match. Whitney’s white pearls pinkened as they rolled from their broken string into the red puddle oozing from below the two. 

Jenny counted them as they rolled, refusing to count the seconds it took Whitney to move. She got through half of the necklace before Whitney’s left ankle twitched. It was at an unnatural angle and had grown twice its size, but it was enough to free Jenny from the top of the steps. 

As she descended, Patt’s gurgling got louder. She tried to help Whitney to her feet, going to move her to the couch a few feet away, but she refused to let her, shoving her hands off.

“What’re you doing?” Jenny asked, moving to help her again just for Whitney to sit up on her own. 

Instead of answering, Whitney trained her eyes on the way Patt tried to sit up.

“Turn around.”

“What? I’m not going to turn around, you need to get away from all the blood and get off your ankle. Let me help you. What’re you doing?”

Whitney whipped her head around to her, but there was no anger to back the quick motion. Pure desperation, Jenny placed, but with the deep bruise forming around her neck it looked more deranged than desperate. 

“What you asked me to do,” She sighed, “Now turn around.”

Jenny hesitated for a moment, but when she stared at the wetness in Whitney’s eyes and heard her tiny “please”, she turned.

Whitney crawled up the man's body when she did. He bucked, trying to throw her off, but each movement was more of a shift, though it was a valiant effort in her book based on the fact that she could practically see his brain in the crack of his skull. She put her legs on either side of his torso, holding back tears as her ankle splashed into the blood beneath them. She leaned forward, wrapping her hands around his throat. He thrashed as she did, eyes filling with fear. 

She didn’t do anything, just holding them there, not believing she was really about to kill him. He whimpered, terrified and uncertain for what to come. A whimper like Jenny at the top of the steps mere moments ago. A whimper like Jenny when Mr. Talone came home early one night and caught them too close for his liking. A whimper like Whitney when he answered Jenny’s phone and told her to stop calling. A whimper like the three of them now, all terrified, but this time Whitney was certain what came next.

She closed her eyes and squeezed until all the whimpers stopped.  

⃟⃟⃟

Whitntey didn’t remember where they had put Patt’s body after he was no longer a threat, but she did remember to crank the heat on Jenny’s side of the jeep on the way home. She dropped her stained hand from the steering wheel and maxed the dial. 

Jenny stared at it from the passenger seat. No matter how hard she scrubbed them, the complimentary company hand sanitizer her father kept in the glove box was no match for the caked-on blood wedged between the gaps of the now-chipped acrylics.

She grabbed it from the dial, resting their conjoined hands together on the top of her thigh in the passenger seat.

“So, it’s safe to say we missed our reservation.” 

Whitney paused for laughter that did not come. 

“I’m sure something is still open, though. Where do you want to eat?”

Jenny chewed at the inside of her lip. She couldn’t think about anything without seeing the horror tax added on in her mind. Salads made of the leaves of the house plant they knocked over trying to drag Patt into the woods on plates the shape of the shovel head she watched Whitney slam into the ground as her popped blisters poured down the wood like a dressing. She swallowed back bile in her throat as she pictured the serving sizes that could have fit in the cavity in Patt’s head, biting hard enough to draw blood in her cheeks when she considered that the universe may have chosen to use Whitney's bowl instead.

“I’m not really hungry.” 

Whitney felt her hand slip as Jenny angled her legs toward the door with a sigh. She shot a glance over, knitting her brows as the new air took some from her own lungs. She focused on the mile markers passing by the windshield instead of the questions flying through her head. The green signs ticked by with the seconds, each one feeling like it was pulling her farther from not just the lake house. She clenched her jaw and rested her newly free hand on the gear shift to stop herself from turning down the heat to demand the reason for the cold shoulder. She ignored the flare of pain from pressing her fresh blisters against the handle and looked over at Jenny again. 

She was folded in on herself. Coat-covered arms wrapped around her still-shaking torso as her eyes were fixated on Whitney’s hands. Her face softened at the sight, knowing the mental count on how much money a nail repair would be for each damaged finger tallying in her head behind her glazed eyes. 

“He’s gone now, Jenn. It’s over.”

She shifted her body back over at the understanding tone of her girlfriend, smiling at her despite the fact that she knew Whitney did not really understand at all. She took Whitney’s hand from the gear shift and lifted it to her lips, pressing a light kiss across her bruised knuckles and holding it against her face.

“It was never about Patt. Not fully”

Before Whitney could ask why her green sundress was now unreturnable with its new complementary color patches if this wasn’t about the man who was the source, a shrill siren cut in over the deep humming of the air vents and confusion. 

“Is that–”

“Just keep driving.”

She quickly pulled her hand back, the purple of her knuckles turning a bright white with the pressure on the steering wheel. Jenny sat straighter in her seat. Both of their eyes flicked to the rearview and to each other in quick succession. 

“It could be for anything,” Whitney tried to reassure. 

A black car came into view behind them. It flashed its lights. Once. Twice. Three times before Whitney lifted her foot from the pedal. 

“Don’t.” Jenny darted out her hand, pressing her foot back down on the pedal by applying pressure to her thigh.

Whitney scoffed, rotating the wheel slightly to ease them into the soft shoulder. Jenny snatched the wheel, pulling the two of them back onto the road from the passenger seat.

“What are you doing? We have to pull over.”

“Yeah, Whitney. And we have to put the cuffs on ourselves too. Keep driving.”

Three hands on the wheel, the car continued to lurk forward, speedometer sitting just over the speed limit, girls sitting too far apart for the comfort they both craved. 

“We’re speeding. That’s all it is,” Whitney stared at the officer in her left side mirror. 

“A quick ticket.”

He held his badge in his windshield and the partner in the passenger seat waved to her. 

The road was blurry, the green signs mere blobs as she let Jenny take over the wheel. She heard her calling from her right, but all she could hear was the shrill sirens, a deep whining invading her psyche. She saw them behind bars, holding hands between the metal, The Talones refusing to even show their faces there once they found out they were in the same car. She wondered if they would even care about all the blood on her hands, care about the life she pressed away with them, or if they would just glare at the fact that they were interlocked with their daughter’s. 

“Whitney,” Jenny snapped her out of this daze. “You need to get us out of here.”

She took control back of the car as she blinked the tears away, but her mind was anything but clear. Instead of the bars she considered the alternative, the chase with an end she could not predict. At first, she sees them get away, speeding off together to a new town and new life. No Patt. No judgmental stares. No company logo adorning their clothing anymore. No fear. Just the two of them in the car.

 As the cop car got close enough in the rear view that she could see the officer’s mouths moving in the glass, she sees the alternative, the chase that she can’t finish, can’t escape, a car flipped over and their last dying breaths being lost in the wind outside, I love yous falling on dead ears. The newspapers would say how close they were––best friends, of course. Nothing more than two best friends who went dark. 

The heart in her chest begged her to stop, to pull over, to talk it out, to prevent that possibility entirely, but her heart in the passenger seat yelled for her to speed up, take them away from it all, one final request, one final push and they could finally be done with it all. The two muscles battled, pounding in her chest and on the dashboard as her ankle throbbed in the air between the two pedals. 

She felt Jenny slide her hands atop hers on the steering wheel, the chipped black polish of her nails nearly gone from her anxious picking. Jenny did not try to pull it from her as she had before, just laying her soft hands on the tight grip, feeling the protrusion of each vein on her palm. She leaned in close. Dipping her head to the base of Whitney’s ear, she whispered softly.

“I need you to get me out of here.”

The flashing lights perfectly illuminated the desperate look on Jenny’s face, but the way blues and reds danced off her faintly faded lip gloss was all Whitney could see as she pressed her broken ankle to the gas pedal.

[maddsuscript]

Welcome in!

Hey whoever ends up here!

Long story short, I was laying in bed one night coffin style, arms crossed eyes at the ceiling(s) by lizzy mcalpine, you know the drill, and realized I was so tired of not doing anything. I'll save you all the full existential meltdown that occurred on my olive-colored pillowcase, but basically--I love writing and I have a sort of enemies to lovers dynamic with sharing my work, and tumblr is the best place for that trope, so here I am!

Buckle in for everything I've ever written that I've liked since early high school and then a series of whatever I decide to write after that massive past works drop including but not limited to: letters to things that don't exist, poetry but not really, creative non-fiction, stream of consciousness, and creative writing that is definitely never going to have a real ending.

Sound good? Stick around! Sounds awful? Stay anyway. Open yourself up to a different human experience that is the tumblr blog equivalent of eavesdropping into a sleepover between two long distance best friends or a front seat confessional in a Walmart parking lot between people who should not be in the same lifetime anymore, let alone the same car.

From my logitech keyboard,

Maddsley