Eileen

by Ottessa Moshfegh

the most dangerous individuals in a prison are not the criminals but the very people who work there.

I’d packed a lunch consisting of two squares of Wonderbread, buttered and packaged in tinfoil, and a can of tuna fish. It was Friday and I didn’t want to go to hell, after all.

He had a way of sitting with one flank on the stool, one off, a foot hanging midair, a posture which presented his crotch as though on a platter for me to gaze at.

Oh, those poor nether regions of mine, swaddled like a baby in a diaper in thick cotton underpants and my mother’s old strangulating girdle. I wore lipstick not to be fashionable, but because my bare lips were the same color as my nipples.

A grown woman is like a coyote—she can get by on very little. Men are more like house cats. Leave them alone for too long and they’ll die of sadness.

In the end, she was a coward. Idealism without consequences is the pathetic dream of every spoiled brat, I suppose.