Dead Inside

by Chandler Morrison

Consider this your goddamn trigger warning.

Something has been set in motion. I don’t know what it is, or how I know it, but I am afraid.

The audience doesn’t get it, but that’s what laugh tracks are for.

The Hallmark Channel has my condolences.

I’m relating to another human being. Hold the phone and shoot me in the fucking face.

Some nights I go to the graveyard because it’s always been the only place where I can truly relate to people. Morgues are great and all, but none of those people have been dead more than a couple of days. I’ve been dead inside for a long time.

When I dream of camaraderie, I’m surrounded by skeletons, flesh barely clinging to their ancient bones.

He’s here to make dying easy. To make it attractive. And me? I just fuck dead girls.

“Listen,” she says, “you’ll have your chance at death. You’ll have a whole eternity of chances. But you only get one chance at life, and it’s a very small window.”

I am fortified by that which makes me different.

“Your problem,” I say, “is that you spend too much time running from your own darkness. You should accept it. Embrace it. Hide in it, instead of hiding from it.”

Everything is just a means to an inevitable end that never comes soon enough.

“Helen,” I say, “what the fuck has happened to you.” She looks deeply at me with an expression that’s far too affectionate and says, “You, darling. You happened to me.”

Bear with me, it’s almost over.

I smirk as I smoke. I hope he likes sloppy seconds.