Maeve Fly

by C.J. Leede

Men are insipid, stupid creatures.

You do not need a moral and noble story to do what you want. You do not first need to be a victim to become a monster. Your loved ones need not be taken from you so that you might drink and brutalize and chase the sublime. Life is fleeting and meaningless and crying to be seized from behind and fucked into obscurity.

Liz is, in every way and above all else, the worst and most basic thing anyone can choose to be. A victim.

Where I am from is not important, as where I am meant to be is here, and backstory is generally entirely overrated. Designed merely to sate our need to understand why someone is the way they are, to categorize and pathologize instead of simply accepting.

The Marquis de Sade’s words tumble through my mind. “In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.” The night stretches out before me, a great gaping maw.

On the east end of the Strip, between the Velvet Taco lingerie store and Pink Taco Mexican restaurant, there sits a giant pirate ship.

At first I was drawn to illicit, banned, or subversive books because they were just that. But after a time, and especially since my grandmother’s illness set in, I’ve been using them as sort of instructional guides. How to Exist, as told by misanthropes throughout the ages.

It’s incredible the diversity of creature produced from a single womb.