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Some people just can’t survive a pandemic when all the bailout money goes to greedy banks and corporate shitboxes. You can thank covid-19 and our corrupt government for the foreclosed homes that sit nearby.
Some things break when you put too much pressure on them, but those shards they break into can be twice as deadly.
It isn’t easy to be someone else’s everything. It’s a terrible burden, one that sits crouched inside your heart for eternity. You will always know that your actions, no matter how necessary, are like ripples in somebody else’s pond.
“Don’t forget: I’m the son of a serial killer. Might be best not to piss me off.”
All five Havoc Boys are standing at the end of the bed, shirtless and wearing skeleton masks.
My voice is dark and gritty, like I’m falling apart on the inside. Put me back together again, it says, begging Vic to do what he does best. He owns me. He clears my numbness. He wakes me up inside.
At least now I know for sure: hiring Havoc was the only way I could ever be whole. Because I’m in love in a strange and endless sort of way. That, and I was never capable of hurting the people that hurt me. Not by myself.
Fucked by my dark gods, claimed by their inked hands, my soul destroyed.
She said that some balls are made of glass and some of plastic; you have to decide which ones to drop and when.
I like that his ruined flesh can show me something pretty.
If you agree to hate yourself because the world tells you to do so, then it’s already won. Don’t let them do that to you, make you despise yourself even as they lust and drool after everything it is that you already have.
“Bernie,” Vic says, and his voice is as soft as it ever is, just for me. I can feel down to my bones that this voice, this sound, is reserved for me and me alone. It’s mine. I don’t ever have to share it, and I know for a fact that not a single other woman on this earth has ever heard it.
People are not born hating themselves. It’s something that comes with time, with careful conditioning and spiteful words, with fingernails dug into your arm until you bleed. It’s a special sort of skill, to hurt someone so badly that they don’t love themselves anymore.
The most important story that it tells, however, is the one about Hael himself. Just as I find myself wishing I could believe in impossible things, things like justice and peace and goodness, so does he.
“I’m looking at you like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver,” he tells me, standing up and then using his shirt to swipe some of the sweat and grease from his face. Luckily, he isn’t too fussy about it. I don’t want him clean; I want him dirty. I want his greasy handprints all over my naked body. “You have no idea what it means to me to have you here.”
“It’s because you’re a writer, a poet. You see into people’s souls.”
Possibility, Blackbird. That’s what you are to me, what you have been since we snuggled up together in a homeless shelter on a shitty, stormy night.”
“You’re not alone, Bernadette. You never were. If you need to fall, let your knees go and I’ll catch you.”
We are beautiful poison, not perfume.”
My wife. The only woman I would ever marry—inheritance be damned.
“I never thought you’d consider Ophelia’s offer. Never. Your love for me … it goes beyond pride and common sense. At least, I thought it did.” Bernadette stares me down with eyes the color of emeralds. Does she have any idea how fucking fierce she looks? Regardless of what happened with Kali, she’s the strongest woman I know in so many ways. “And I liked it that way, Vic. We’re not supposed to be rational, me and you.”
But then, the reason those same horrors didn’t work the way they were supposed to is because my girl is strong. My wife is queen. She’s the only person that can’t see that yet. Maybe she needs to? Most people, you lock their ass in a dark closet for an entire week with a bucket to piss in, some water bottles, and a handful of granola bars, and they’re gonna lose their shit. But not Bernie. She came out fierce-eyed and determined, mouth pinched, hands curled into fists.
I look down at Bernadette and I know then why the universe created me. And that was to take care of her—whether she likes it or not.
From the schoolyard to the wedding, she’s always been mine.
You are living proof that the world can try its hardest to crush a person’s soul and still fail. You are second chances and beautiful beginnings, Bernadette. You hesitated because you wanted to make sure you gave that girl every chance in the world. If you have to believe a lie, believing that other people are inherently good is one you might as well stick with.”
When you accept a person for who they are, you don’t choose bits and pieces. You accept every part of them, right down to the rotten bits. Because everybody wants somebody to love their rottenness.
Because she might not know it, but she’s the final name on her own list. Every mistake she’s ever made, every bad memory, every misstep, she lets those things haunt her. She’s that now, in the form of Kali Rose.
Forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, learn from them, and take my hand so we can move onto the next big thing. If life isn’t always moving forward, then it’s stuck in place and sinking.
“You’re my queen, my family. And that’s what family does: we take turns cleaning up each other’s messes.”
Kali hisses, but I ignore her. She’s just a plot, a storytelling device to throw back my pain in my own damn face. She is nothing. She never really was. As soon as I accept that truth, as soon as I let it settle into my heart, I blink and she’s gone.
Sometimes, the right thing feels so wrong that it hurts.
