Woom

by Duncan Ralston

Some places hold the pain in their walls, in the carpet snags, in the cracks of the ceiling and chinks in the baseboards.

He examined her body with clinical detachment: a gynecologist's gaze. He was neither aroused, nor repulsed. She was merely a vessel. A thing to be filled and then discarded.

"Back to my original point," he said, "I don't believe in ghosts. But I do think places, like this motel room, I think they hold on to bad things, the way people hold on to memories. Grief. Pain. Disease. Addiction. I think when you enter a place that's absorbed enough bad things, it pukes them out at you. It drenches you in them. So a relatively innocuous room, like this one, will appear evil. Because bad things happened here."

the Lord worked through her digestive system via Immaculate Defecation.

when the love is unbalanced, when someone loves the other one more... that puts a lot of pressure on the one holding the power."

"Don't get all smug about trigger warnings. I know they're bullshit, but can't a woman just not want to hear about rape without it being a goddamn thing? Every time you turn on the TV there's another woman getting raped and murdered. Every time you flick past the news it's 'rape culture on campus' and celebrity sex assaults and some new moral fucking panic. Enough already."

He suddenly realized the similarity between the words womb and tomb wasn't a coincidence.

"That doesn't invalidate it," Angel said. "There's no statute of limitations on pain."

You should always listen to that voice when something doesn't feel right. Always look out for the red flags. Stop worrying about being nice, about making a scene.