Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

Someday, Lavender hoped, her children would wade into the ocean. When they did, they would taste her. Lavender’s love, in a mouthful of salt.

You’ll know it when you feel it, her mother said then. The right kind of love will eat you alive.

Tragedy had a texture. A knot, begging to be unraveled.

When Saffy yearned now, she did not yearn for the drugs themselves or the high they provided, cheap and flimsy—she yearned instead for the freedom. The knowledge that though she walked a tightrope between life and death, it hadn’t really mattered which way she fell.

Lavender wanted to tell them what she had learned about demons. Often, they were not demons at all—only the jagged parts of herself she’d hidden from the sun.

Every brain was different in its deviance—human hurt manifested in select, mysterious ways.

She had known from a young age that everyone had darkness inside—some just controlled it better than others. Very few people believed that they were bad, and this was the scariest part. Human nature could be so hideous, but it persisted in this ugliness by insisting it was good.

She had finally solved this epic mystery—touched the place where Ansel’s hurt had congealed—only to find his pain looked just like everyone else’s. The difference lay in what he chose to do with it.