Eileen

by Ottessa Moshfegh

Furthermore, as is typical for any isolated, intelligent young person, I thought I was the only one with any consciousness, any awareness of how odd it was to be alive, to be a creature on this strange planet Earth.

I had hard feelings around the holidays, the one time of year I couldn’t help but fall prey to the canned self-pity Christmas prescribes.

She was really remarkably beautiful, so beautiful I had to avert my eyes. I wanted desperately to impress her, to elicit some clear indication from her that she felt as I did—we

wherever you are buried, I hope you’ve stayed out of trouble. But if you haven’t, I’m sure you paid for it somehow. Everyone does, eventually.