Chapter Seven

Electro-cute! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

  I stand in front of the market kiosk glancing up at the ancient television set disinterestedly. Melodramatic news statements are captioned in Cantonese I can't hope to understand. The owner, a familiar woman with a face crumpled inwards like a drawstring purse asks me if I’m buying. I slam down a few toonies to pay for the bag of rice, assorted vegetables and a sordid looking fish I’ve selected. This woman always sells them to me a week old on a discount.

  I pause at a crosswalk to adjust my surgical mask enough to let my coppery spit run out the bottom. My tongue runs over the folds on the roof of my mouth, tasting the sores. I think of him.

  Suddenly I feel rough hands on the back of my leg creeping under my skirt.“Well what do we have here? Kon’nichiwa my little oriental delight.” The speaker's appearance is no surprise. Early middle age male. White and sagging.“What? No english?” It slurs.

  I tilt my head sweetly. If it could see through the mask it'd notice my molars grinding in tight circles. “Bet you understand this.” A wad of bills are drawn from it’s windbreaker. It escorts me boorishly to the privacy of an ally and instructs me to call it senpai while unzipping it’s shorts.

  Being groped behind a dumpster doesn't bother me anymore. Something about watching your own death announcement on TV surpasses surreal and verges on comedic. All that can annoy me is it’s relentless breathing. Smells like sake and French fries.

  I don't bother to set down my groceries. I know how long this will take.

  It continues to feel me bluntly. I try to decrypt the clouds, but it seems they too have adopted a language foreign to me. Soon it mistakes my frustrated, shallow, mewling for moans and, f**k now it's speaking. Thankfully I can't hear much, I’m too high up. But if I were to guess, sounds like it's braying kill me. Over and over.

  Before it can find it's courage or my genitals it’s unconscious, propped up against the fire escape. I've been drooling bloody stains all over its Naruto T-shirt. Realizing myself I ensure the violet fringe of my wig is covering the Lichtenberg patterned fractal scars across my temples and find it’s pulse, just in case. Don't turn your John's into Doe’s, that's my motto.

  I take all the cash from its pockets, stuff it into my hollow bra. “See ya next week George.” I mutter, sulking off.

  The door to my apartment would probably vanish if you were to take a bar of soap to it. The building stands vacant, its owner going bankrupt during construction. There's more garbage than furniture and more vandalism than garbage. Inside, I shove the fish into my mouth and toss the rest to Harry.

   Harry Nagi is the closest thing you can compare a pouch of disease to a room mate. Somehow it's managed to keep a remarkably high body mass index despite the fact it'd been eating teabags and blow for a year we met. It keeps calling me Riham which is fine, it’s name is the one on the social security cheques after all. Still the old fella warns me to stay away from those gangster boys and gives me a big toothless grin whenever I come in and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a soft spot for it.

  In our bedroom the shag rug is crusted with blood and grease. Discarded fingers litter the peeling flooring in couplets. A rat scampers across the dresser, gnawing in time to the throbbing of the spleen it finds. The buzz of cockroach wings crescendos, underscored by the swirling arpeggios of blow flies. A symphony of infestation.

  The ceiling spirals with heavy indigo clouds. Tendrils of mist crawl down the walls. Moisture clinging to every surface. The room is wet and alive.

  I peel off my thigh high socks and garters, chucking them over my shoulder where one lands in the bucket of lye in which a nosy postman lays decomposing.

   I am the novelization of a movie that was adapted from a Stephen King book that no one asked for. Think Maximum Overdrive.

  Harry stumbles in, nearly blind with cataracts.

“We're on our way out, aren't we bucko?” I sigh loudly.

A grunt in response.

“Oh I wouldn't say armageddon is a construct to justify the inevitability of oblivion. I'd say it's a societal self destruction nurtured into people like me. Why do we exist? Makes no sense in evolutionary logic. We kill even the strongest of the pack and that makes us a cannibalistic outlier.”

Another grunt.

“Wouldn’t surprise me. An overbred predatory instinct is very possible. Only reason we don't have four legs is because we call two of them arms.” I pick a lone toenail off a putrefied severed foot and study it. “Or perhaps humanity has become such a plague on the earth that nature has devised its own genetic antibodies to fight them.”

Harry collapses on the threadbare mattress, the springs groaning in protest.

“Born evil? Most definitely. I’ll have you meet my Romanian.”

Loud throaty snoring.

“No no, now that's where you're wrong my good man. I don’t think I really believe in that s**t anymore. In fact I don't know what to believe in…” I long to talk to my parents, but there's no way I could go home, not yet. Who knows who’s watching. I’ve lain low in Chinatown for the past couple weeks, shaking my underage a*s for depraved businessmen and women. Trying to look more cartoon than human; easier for them that way. Painfully aware of my three-dimensionality as I smear myself with glitter until I'm not sure what itches, my skin or my bones. Pigtails and duct tape became my new best friends.

 I curl up beside Harry and as usual it holds me while we sleep, in a fashion so tender I forgot it existed. Never trying to do anything but keep me safe and calm.

  The next morning I dress in my best. Nylons with the least runs. A pleated black dress with a coffee stained neckline and torn sleeves, hidden by my patterned raincoat. I am the other eleven songs off the album of a one hit wonder band.

  The schoolgirl uniform lays fermenting at my feet, I’m glad to be rid of it for a day.

The bus takes me out of the city; I’ll walk the rest of the way, lugging my cello case along. My heels are a relentless force, snapping and grinding at the pavement below. Pounding arrhythmic in the limp he gave me. Oh gunshot wound how do I describe thou. Slow burst. Explosion. Transference from gunpowder and bullet into flesh and pain. Blooming flower.

Finally, at the cemetery just within the GTA I see her memorial service. It’s ostentatiously blonde and sad, but I suppose that’s fitting. I spot Lupei entering the church, blondest and saddest of them all.

Creeping up to the sacred building I use my case as a stool to peer in through the stain glass windows. To my right I hear a woman's voice clearing it's throat pointedly. I hop down quickly, looking relieved. Before it can open it’s pursed lips, I quickly sign out a bunch of gibberish in American sign language. Pretty sure it was the lyrics to Frere Jacques. To it's puzzled look I gesture from the cello to the church and mime playing the instrument. It sighs in exasperation and shakes it’s head stiffly, mouthing no condescendingly.

I want to pull it’s eyes out of it’s skull. See how long I can go until the optic nerve snaps.

But something stops me. Through the open doors I can hear the overzealous, sermon of some minister. Spouting generic, judgemental, bullshit about a girl he'd never met.

Snowflakes form along my arms sloughing off like dead skin. Quicky I hide them under my sleeves, but their cold prickle creeps up my spine and face. I spin away from the scene, skirt flaring around my frosted legs.

Behind me I hear the woman mumble to an unknown, “Don't worry, just some harmless scammer looking to make a quick buck. I would have hired her but I mean -no offense- how could she even play that well? Sad really...”

Sometimes I don't which I'm better at manipulating, the weather or people. Seems like neither...

For cover I try to summon a fog, nice simple fog. Of course this sends a reeling gust of wind whipping across the graveyard. The headstones closest to me crack to pieces. I sling my arm around one as I collapse.

  “Hey sorry, -” I pick up a shattered chunk of granite. “Wahlberg. It's not like it matters much, being all equal in death and whatnot. The f**k do we have headstones for? If you're gonna be sad about meat go to a burger king. Now that's a desecration bud...”  At this moment, in the cusp of evening the minister walks by in the direction of the parking lot. I sprint over before it can react and tackle the robed man to the ground, wrapping my hands around his throat. “Whoah, this is like a fetish sandwich we have going on eh? Anyway anyway, those were some real pretty things you said about my friend back there. Except, y’see I've come to a critical revelation father. Now this might sound strange coming from something like me but god is dead, believe it or not. Now, how’d it happen? Oh right, auto-erotic asphyxiation.”  

  Although my cello case holds not much more than my shovel and a holy man, it feels massive as I haul it to his gravesite. Luckily we’re secluded, curtained by overhanging willow trees where I can dig without interruption.  

By the time the sun has set the sturdy oak sheen of his coffin lid lies beneath me. I fix my hair. Heart fluttering. Knees weak. Should I knock?

No, there’s not another second I can stand without him. I throw back the lid laboriously, hinges scraping and there he is… Bloodcurdling beautiful, divine as the day we first collided.

He's in a suit. I never saw him in a suit. Guess it's a special occasion. “You didn't have to dress up for me baby.” I murmur. “I mean I look like s**t right now. Well, some pretty cute s**t that is. Don’t say kawaii, if you say kawaii I’ll cut you. I never want to hear that word from another white boys -”

I tumble forwards and crash land right in front of his “-mouth...”

He's cold and tense to my touch but that's nothing new. Blushing I turn my head away. “Damn it Mark, we have work to do. Focus. Focus. F**k.”

Even now I can feel our attraction. It’s a cosmic one. I believe in opposites. That in order for the universe to form something as ideal as Mark Chance it had to make me. The price of perfection; complete atrocity. Innate purity countered with innate evil. He was soft where I was loud. Modest where I was obscene. Gentle where I was cruel. Sweet when I was bitter. Kept things balanced. That's why we belong together. We were once one. I am all the flaws cleaved from his soul in it’s creation. I am his shadow as he is my reflection in the mirror.

  With my new prize in hand I sit at the edge of his grave. “I hate living in the real world Markie… it sucks majorly. I hate what I know now. I hate how it feels. I hate growing up. At least I’ll have you though-”

The click of a heel on stone forces me to pause, I twist around to the source of the noise.

A woman in black who somehow snuck up on me. I recognize her as one of the funeral attendants, but her veil is gone now.

A slow grin stretches across my face, “What the f**k have you done to your hair?”