saw her draw on me and the lines kept running away but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel the pen. This wasn’t my arm, but it was attached to me, I must have taken someone else’s by mistake, maybe my sister’s. My sister probably didn’t cry over Anthony Drew. I haven’t seen her cry since we were kids. The pretty girl with three eyes kissed me after she finished her wheel and my head found my body again and I found her body. Her birthmark felt like silk. She smiled and went swimming.
The colours on my nails that Lie painted for me started to melt. The colours landed on the sea floor and I tried to follow them. Colours are fast. When I looked up I saw a girl covered in the glow from the windows that should have been broken but weren’t. She looked sad and she looked beautiful too. She wasn’t swimming like the rest of everything, she was still and standing and I wasn’t sure how. I tried to say hello. She was a really pretty girl, too pretty to be sad and I thought maybe if I held her hand she would be okay. I thought maybe if I held her hand my hand would be mine again. It was working my hand was her hand and her frown was spinning around. I kissed her when her mouth stopped moving. I kissed her because she was pretty, because she shouldn’t be alone and I thought maybe if I kissed her she would be she again like my hand was me again and I didn’t like her like the other girl or Lie or Kanojo-No but she was pretty. She smiled and I smiled I think. I have never seen my face, how did I know the mirrors weren’t lying? Maybe everyone lies? Do I look like my sister? Dad said I look- dad said I look- dad said I look- the girl kept smiling and re-smiling again, and I kept thinking and re-thinking again. I couldn’t take this so I found a room between the loops.
I found a room that felt dark and landed in some pillows that swallowed me whole. I was sinking because my body wasn’t my own. I watched my mind wave to me as I sank into the sound.
After a while or maybe none, I heard a voice and felt a zip on my cheek. I was in the pile of coats and Mittsu was here with me. But she wasn’t talking to me. “You’re so fucking sexy” she said breathless, I wondered if she wanted to borrow some air from me. “You knew that shirt would kill me”. Is she dead? Am I again? I moved a jacket from atop my head that smelled green and saw Mitty and Lie- their faces blurring into one and back to two and back to one. Lie had her legs wrapped around Mitty while Mitty held her up by her bum. They were tasting the colours of each other’s mouths, I could taste the wheel girl still, she had pretty colours. “I love you” Lie said. “I love you too,” Mitty said. Mitty now had her pinned to a wall. “bu-” Mitty stopped her by sucking on her bottom lip, “but nothing” she replied. “But everything Mittens, why can’t we just do this?”
“We’re about to”
“No I mean us, like properly, labelled up and shit”
“I don’t want to lose you”
“You won’t Mittens, never, I swear to you”. Mitty or Mittens or whatever her name was in that moment, went to locked the door and proceeding to have sex with Lie or Liebe or Lielo. I didn’t leave.
7
I woke up with hair tickling my face. I had my arm around something, someone, breathing so slowly in such a rhythm, it was nice, they were warm and I could faintly feel their heart in my chest. As I woke so did they, stretching and turning over I discovered it was Niche. She smiled, for the first time I noted, “Morning guy, how are you feeling?” I nodded and smiled back, “good, you seemed a little out of it still when the party was over, so I took you home, to make sure you were okay…it was cute, you didn’t want me to leave you” then she burrowed her head in my chest and let out a tired moan, “we have a late start on Fridays, lets just stay here for a while okay?” I put my arm around her again, supporting the back of her head. Her hair was so soft.
We drifted in and out of sleep, changing positions, kissing and cuddling in a dreamy haze. “What’s your favourite book?” she whispered in my ear and I shrugged, my favourite book is the last one I read but then I love the books that make me feel and I don’t want to hurt their feelings, they’re all my favourite. “Mine is Norwegian Wood, read it?” I nodded, “I think it’s so beautiful and pure, you know? Like he could have changed so much to make it a nicer read, but he didn’t. That’s what I love about books- they make you understand that you’re not alone. That at one point, at least one person understood you exactly how you are, and cared so much about you that they wrote their words down so wouldn’t have to cry alone anymore”.
“You’re a good kisser,” she said as she traced my lips with a finger. She was too. I don’t like how some people kiss, I don’t know if it was just the way I was taught, but most people cant kiss at all and it makes me sad. Nothing is worse than a bad kiss, with too much tongue that’s all stiff and pointy, with too open a mouth and too much movement. Kissing should be subtle. Kissing should be patient. Kissing should be kind. Like love. But now kissing and love are two different things so maybe it’s for the best that most people give you bad kisses. So you cant get confused. So you know you don’t love them. I think maybe one day in a dark room someone will kiss me like I like to be kissed and I know I will love them because they can kiss.
Eventually we decided to check the website, it was strangely tense, it was like our world was so fragile that this website could send it crumbling. Samuel Grant, the president of the celibacy society, received oral sex from Solid Snake Daniel Garfield, the president of the gaming society. There was a video, it was sad, Samuel seemed really into it, like more than Snakey, then Snakey gave him his mouth and Samuel came and then didn’t reciprocate or anything, he pulled up his pants and left. He didn’t even look him in the eyes when he said he had to go. “Now that’s a turn up for the books” Niche said with a smile “I don’t know about that blowjob technique though, what do you think?”
“I don’t know, I don’t really like them”
“What?!” she seemed more alive than all the other times I was with her, which made me laugh inside, did that mean she seemed dead those times before?
“Yeah, I dunno”
“You’ll like mine” she said as she lifted up the sheets to go under them. She started and I felt I should stop her, but I didn’t.
“It’s Sara Ludwig! It has to be, she’s a rich bitch- she has the facilities and the black heart to do this and the motives. Will Wiseman cheated on her when they were together; Noah burned her with a cigarette when she passed out at a party; she hated the pictures Ben Slater took of her from the school play last year; Sara Ludwig has never lived down the seven minutes in heaven with Robynne. I still maintain, to this day, fingers were involved; Anthony Drew- well he’s just a twat, I have nothing on record but I know he’s done something to her; Sam refused to fuck her, for obvious reasons; and Snakey, you remember the incident with the vodka bottle, peanut butter and paintball gun” Lie stood up while the rest of us sat at the table eating lunch. She had fire in her eyes and I think she set me alight when she looked at me because I felt like I was dying but beautifully. “Tonight, we end this.”
That night while everyone was asleep we broke into Sara Ludwig’s room. Lie and Snakey quickly wrapped her up in her sheets and dragged her to the groundkeepers shed where Niche said it would be ‘safe’. We blindfolded her and tied her to an old wooden chair in the centre of the ancient shed. She was sleeping in matching underwear that was a soft white with blue lace bits and tiny pink bows, she looked nice even in this lighting, she looked nice even in this situation with a tight blindfold on and a makeshift gag. Lie wore a voice-changing mask that covered the bottom half of her face, so everyone could still see the fire in her eyes; I think they added to the lighting, if I’m honest. “Tell us why?” she asked Sara calmly very close to her face. She tried to speak but obviously couldn’t, “will you scream?” Lie asked, so calmly again, Sara shook her head vigorously. “Why what?” Sara Ludwig spat out as her gag was pulled down. “Why are you unleashing these secrets?”
“I’m not! It’s not me! Why wou-” before she could finish Lie had walked behind her and pulled a tennis racket from
her bag and had hit her hard on her back with the actually frame. The sound bounced off the wooden walls, as did Sara’s shriek. “Don’t lie” she hit her again between the shoulder blades, “Will Wiseman” now her right arm “Noah Fletcher” right knee “Ben Slater” left knee “creepy Robynne” left arm “Anthony Drew and Sam and Snake” her neck, which made her gag and cough and heave, I thought she was going to throw up. The tears streamed down under the blindfold as she whimpered that it wasn’t her and she didn’t know anything, but Lie wasn’t going to let it go. I didn’t think she was capable of something like this. I looked around to everyone else, but they weren’t looking at me, or anything really. “You’re tough, I’ll give you that, you have resolve, that’s respectable, but I really don’t like someone fucking with people’s lives like this” Lie had gone into her bag again and came back, kneeling in front of Sara. “Feel this” she began to stroke Sara’s inner thighs with something “it’s a scalpel I borrowed from the science department” Sara bit her bottom lip and started shake, “all you have to do is