A Lesson in Vengeance

by Victoria Lee

“I don’t know why you can’t…why you don’t understand—you’re a writer, aren’t you? You know nothing’s ever that simple.”

“Aren’t you drinking any?” I ask. “I can’t stand anything decaffeinated,” she answers.

Dr. Ortega once described psychotic depression as being like a gun: my genetics loaded the chamber with bullets, my mother passed the weapon into my hand, but Alex’s death pulled the trigger.

It’s so easy for Ellis to pretend disaffection, as if our childhood traumas don’t trickle like rainwater through the bricks of our lives. As if she doesn’t care.

Alone in the church restroom, I lock the door behind me and pull out Ellis’s silver cigarette tin from my pocket. She would have wanted you to have it, Quinn had said when they gave it to me this morning. I pick out one of Ellis’s joints and light it with a struck match, inhale, exhale slow. I never really liked to smoke all that much, but this feels right. It’s appropriate, a final fuck you.