Dark Places

by Gillian Flynn

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

I was not a lovable child, and I’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs.

But I was born bent out of shape. I could picture myself coming out of the womb crooked and wrong. It never takes much for me to lose patience.

It is always consoling to think of suicide; it’s what gets one through many a bad night.

I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way.

“Sure. You gotta believe in something, right? Everyone has their thing.”

Sometimes he felt like he’d been gone his whole life—in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he’d never been.