Dead Inside

by Chandler Morrison

Now, make no mistake, I have no delusions of sanity; I consider myself to be vastly intelligent and egregiously well-read, and anyone with half of a functioning intellect would know that a person with my proclivities is a few shades of fucked up.

There’s something beautiful about those three sentences. Maybe it’s the way she says it—dreamy and distant, like she’s not speaking to me but to herself, lost in a moment of introspection.

I immediately regret saying it, but after a few moments of silence passes between us, it begins to feel almost cathartic. I have now bound myself to this woman, the same way my knowledge of her secret binds her to me, and there’s something thrilling about the reckless danger of it all.

If this were a movie, I’d go after her. Real life isn’t as dramatic. Color me boring.

I can’t seem to get rid of her, nor can I seem to find myself appropriately troubled by this.

“If you were going to kill yourself,” Helen says, “how would you do it?” Now, while I am unaccustomed to all of this dating shit, I have seen movies, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t the type of question that’s usually asked. At least, not on the first date. I would assume that’s more of a third or fourth date type of question. But again, what the fuck do I know.

“I wish you were dead.” She blinks slowly, shutters swinging closed over the windows to her shuddering soul, only to be flung back open once more, piercing through to my own inner self, and she says, “Sometimes I kind of wish I were dead.”