FicWad

Firstly,
The house, which was guarded by a man and his dog, seemed as though it was as cold as we were, staring at it in awe. I didn’t know what to think as the house looked up at me, it looked at me like the stranger that I was, sitting there, barely dressed in the cold, two naïve girls beside me. They didn’t look as scared as I did but I knew that they did not know what was in store for them and the guilt was a bit too heavy for me, so I contemplated running. I couldn’t do it though, my legs stayed in the same position, there in the mud, my eyes planted on the dog and that house. I felt paralyzed in guilt and love two emotions that I had never felt so strongly, for the two girls beside me were a huge fraction of my life, 33.5% of it, in fact, and the other 66.5% of it was waiting in that house.
See, in the beginning, things are too simple; they are too beautiful, like a painter with amazing natural talent. It was an after school special, it was the thing I was missing in my life and it was waiting on that couch, in that house, smirking that smirk. I could see my happiness there, on that couch, and I knew that he was waiting for results, that he felt as though he deserved all of which I was about to give him, all of which that was important to me. Marriage never seemed as important.
His promises to me never went broken so I believed him, maybe in a naïve way but who is to say what is naïve when it comes to one in love? I think that every single act under the influence of passionate love are naïve acts to show some sort of affection, even when arguing, even when angry or tired, they’re all acts to show affection. I have tried and tried to analyze love before this month, tried to comprehend it before I felt it and now that I do feel it I don’t remember what it was like not to have felt it. Of course there were the small crushes that always meant absolutely nothing, the cute boy that all the girls liked, even the girl having a crush on another girl growing up meant nothing. It was almost as if every other hint of romance has been erased from my mind and focused on the man inside that house. The man that wants me to do the unthinkable and the man who I will willingly do the unthinkable for, the man I am about to do the unthinkable for, the man who is truly insane, but to me…he is the sky, he is the stars, he is the midnight moonlight baths and all of the best adjectives in this universe.
“Ow, shit. Can we get out of here, please?” I could tell that it was Romy; she was always the whinier one, the one that just wanted to take off her high heels and sleep when times got shaky.
“Not yet, Romy. Please, just stay for a little while longer? I know that Josh is here. I know that that man…that attractive man… stole Josh for some reason and I need your guy’s help. Please?” I didn’t feel bad anymore; these words coming out of my mouth were for him, not for some stupid dog.
“Attractive man? Do you have a crush on the creep that stole your dog? You are so weird sometimes.” Arrie was the one that always had something humorous to say, or something or someone to make fun of mercilessly, of course I didn’t mind anymore, I was used to her behavior, this behavior that no one else at our rather largely populated school could relate to or handle.
“Of course not, I was just saying that he was attractive. I can’t help it, I do have fucking eyes, you know.” I tried to give them some laughter, I tried to make it seem as though nothing was going to happen, nothing was going on in my mind and I was trying to make it seem as though there was no particular reason for my heart racing as fast as it was.
We sat in our confused silence as I checked my silver, cheep razor cell phone. The time was cutting short to spend with my best friends in the whole world, so I savored the moment. I looked at Arrie’s beautiful face, her blue eyes that only seemed to skim the surface of an ocean of boys and men who wanted her, her porcelain doll skin that shimmered in the moonlight, her black hair which would slap a goddess in the face, it was silky in the way that milk was silky, even now as cold as she was she looked gorgeous as ever. I examined Romy’s flawed face, her oily skin and acne couldn’t compare in beauty to Arrie’s or even mine this is why she never found friends like us, I guess, her boring plain brown eyes, not hazel or grey, just brown, her mousy hair the color of yellow was always left unbrushed and never hassled with, like most girls who spent more than twenty minutes on their hair. I will miss these faces that I’ve grown up with, and I miss this fact more, that I have stopped growing up at the age where I guess everyone else is still growing up and I’ve somehow matured to a level that they couldn’t comprehend. Not many people could, the age never really mattered, I have learned this over the years: age is really an illusion, a state of mind, a way of propaganda; I will never let age hold me back.
I checked the phone again and I knew that he was waiting in there. The image came again and I nearly panicked with the thought that he was waiting and the thought that he was beginning to grow impatient. I looked at Romy and Arrie and nodded my head at them, they looked at each other, confused and I stood up, waiting for them to join me into that dark house that I loved so much. We ran to the porch and Romy, I could tell, did not want to be there, that in fact she was getting quite pissed off, while Arrie was just getting a kick out of all of this fuss. I wanted to hug them both, love them as I have always done for their weird traits and even the things I hated about them seemed sacred looking back.
When we opened the door quietly I could see him, waiting there and when he heard us he turned around and smiled at me, but then looked at the other girls with a mock enraged, psychotic look. Arrie was trying not to laugh and Romy screamed when he turned his head.
“I…I…I’m sorry sir…we’ll…we’ll be on our way…nice meeting you. So…so…sorry.” Romy stammered almost running out the door before he stopped her in her tracks.
“Hey! Why don’t you all stay for a little, huh? We can have a little, you know, a little chat-”
“No, I’m sorry, sir, we have to go…so sorry…” Romy started running for the door when I heard that sound, and the metal smell that came with it. I jumped and Arrie stopped and looked at Romy lying on the ground pool of red, kind of purple actually, liquid crowding around her head.
“Wha-wha-what the fuck?” Arrie dropped to the ground and just stared and he looked at me.
“She’s kinda cute, ain’t she?” Elijah whispered at me, but I knew that Arrie heard him because she turned directly around and gave me a look; she was finally catching on and was beginning to panic.
“I can’t believe this…you knew about this? How-how could you kill her?” Arrie was nearly hysterical now, pounding her fists on the ground and looking at me like she wished that I was the one lying there in that puddle of blood, dead to us, and not yet dead to the rest of the world.
“Arrie, I had no choice. I…I…I love you.” I tried to make her see my side of this but her face wrinkled into a horrified and disgusted look.
“You…bitch! What the fuck is your problem, you freak! Don’t come near me, I am leaving and I’m taking Romy with me and you-” she pointed to him, “you are going away for a long fucking time you motherfucker! She’s…she was so damn smart and you just…killed her! She’s not breathing! Oh, God! I’ll…I’ll kill you!” Arrie was trying to look brave now, tough.
It wasn’t working.
Elijah took the gun and as she tried to dart away, he shot her. I watched as the light and the passion went out of her blue eyes, as her knees dropped to the floor and her mouth was open in a shock. I had never seen so much blood in person before and my throat wrenched, which I soon found out was really my stomach complaining, and I ran to his bathroom to throw up. My head hurt and I tried so hard to cry for my best friends, but the problem was was that I simply couldn’t produce any tears, any anger, any regret about the whole situation, was it me that was crazy, or was it him? This was like some sort of weird dream that I wanted to wake up from, but it seemed too impossible, too dense, and too complex for even my overanalyzing mind to grip to. I looked at Elijah and he was smiling that smile.
“We can be together now, baby. We can be together. I know now that you love me. We’ve gotta get out of here. Tonight. Burn the bodies and shit. I’ll call Jimmy.” Jimmy was Elijah’s best friend, he was an asshole and he hit on me every second that he got. I knew that my parents would be freaking out when they didn’t see me in my room or realized we weren’t all at Romy’s.
Elijah and I were making out on the couch when Jimmy came in. “Shit, love birds, you all got quite a little death party here, huh?” Jimmy put on his gloves and knelt down on his knee. “Hey, this one’s pretty sexy. You coulda had fun with this one. Did ya?”
“No, jerk off, that’s sick. You stupid fuck. You gonna get rid of ‘em with fire or what?” I flinched when Elijah talked like that. I hated it; you couldn’t see him at all, all you could see was him trying to be cool, trying to seem tough and you could see him being the asshole that Jimmy is.
“Hey, baby.” Now he was talking to me. “How are you? Damn, girl, this chick’s almost as hot as you.” Jimmy winked at me, and I almost laughed. Arrie, being “a chick almost as hot as me.” Give me a break. Arrie was one of the most beautiful people I ever met…past tense.
And then, like a smack in the face or a tropical rain, it hit me. Arrie and Romy were dead, my best friends in the entire world, we had pages and pages full of notebooks together, we had more memories than most people do who spend an entire lifetime together (and for Romy and Arrie, they did spend an entire lifetime with me). I killed them and my suddenly my throat started vibrating as huge, racking sobs came out of my throat, I tried swallowing them but all that happened was me, coughing and sobbing on Elijah’s shoulder.
“What…what the hell, baby? What’s going on? What’s the matter? What, what, what?” Elijah always did this in his soothing voice and looked over at Jimmy who was smirking.
“What’s up with her, is she pregnant or some shit?” Jimmy chuckled and Elijah gave him the look from hell as I tried to collect myself but failed miserably. “Fuck, man, I can’t work like this. I’ll burn the bodies and get all of this nasty shit cleaned up nice for yah, man, cause you’re like my brother and your girl is real good lookin’, but go throw her in the bath or somethin’. I’ll let it fly butcha know that no one out on them streets of New York or wherever the fuck we’re goin’ tonight ain’t gonna let you bring your seventeen year old little girl along when she keep burstin’ into those tears, man. Gonna make us look bad.”
I didn’t bother correcting his age or retorting something like a bitch because I knew that he was only telling the truth for once and at that moment he almost seemed tolerable, but I’d have to learn to live with him, I was going to live with him until Elijah could work enough to get us our own flat in New York. As Elijah held me around the waist and undressed me, throwing me into the bath he talked to me as the water was running.
“Baby, that looks real suspicious, it don’t look like no girls who didn’t pay me back my money. Now you gotta keep it under control-” at this moment, ironically enough, his hands were not under control- “like Jimmy said, he trusts me or he try to trust me, but those boys up in the city ain’t gonna.”
“I…I know.” I sniffled and he kissed the top of my head and turned the water off. “Are we gonna be okay? Should I get a job…or whatever?” I didn’t really know if Elijah had the same job that I had in mind, but at that point I would do anything to make it work with him, sometimes love is such a weird term.
“Baby, baby. I’m gonna be makin’ quite a lot. No need, no need. I love you. Lemme get in with ya.” Elijah joined me in the cramped tub, resulting in me on top of him and he, trying to be a gentleman, had his hands on my stomach. “Now look how nice this is, huh, baby? Look how nice. We can do this every night that I’m not workin’. Together everyday. Every second of the day. You’ll be all mine.”
“Will you be all mine?” I wanted to know the honest answer to this question and the trust that I shared with him made me believe almost anything that he said.
“I already am all yours. Shit, baby, let’s face it, me or you could get anybody we fuckin’ wanted because we just those kindas people, but we was meant for each other, baby, we was meant for each other. I’ll do anything so that you stay with me. I’m never gonna hurt chu. Now, c’mon, let’s go help Jimmy.” Elijah tickled my stomach lightly and I giggled as we got out of the shower, Elijah only put on his boxers and it took some persuasion for me to go out there in just my underwear.
“Woah, look at chu, girl. Look at chu.” I knew this would happen and my cheeks turned fuchsia with embarrassment.
“Knock it the fuck off, Jim. You take care of business?”
“Fire’s already down.”
They did their little hand shake that whenever anyone would try and do with me I would look so ridiculous to try and do, Arrie was the only one out of our little group that could half way do it. Tears were going to come again soon, but I had to be strong. For Elijah.
Jimmy kept staring at me and in the darkness when we had grabbed our bags he was walking suspiciously slow as I soon saw that he was walking behind me so that he could grab on me, my boobs and my ass. This wasn’t uncommon, he did this almost every time I saw him, but whenever I mentioned it to Elijah he would just roll his eyes and tell me I was over reacting.
I got into the back seat of the car, Elijah followed me and I rested my head on his shoulder, his nice, manly smell was amazing, and I completely am covered in his smell now. I was hoping that his smell was enough for me to forget.


Arrie and I were at the peak of our adolescence and after smoking cigarettes on the back porch at two in the morning, we would lie in her bed, usually smoke more cigarettes or chew tobacco and talk about shit that had happened to us.
The first time we did this was the most vivid in my head.
“So, I Johnny just bought me this ten pack of cigarettes, he musta gotten them at like, hell I dunno, Costco or some shit. Anyway, he wants me to smoke em with him but I don’t really wanna. Wanna smoke some with me?” Arrie always was on and off with her boyfriend who happened to be five years older than her, but she claimed it was love. It was always love with Arrie.
“Sure. How are you and Johnny doing, by the way?”
“No, no, we get into the deep talk after the cigarettes. Haven’t you ever watched a damn movie before?” Arrie and I laughed for a second before retreating to the outside porch where she lit my cigarette.
I coughed a little, I was trying to suppress it because I knew that Arrie, being way more experienced that I was at life in general had smoked a lot more than cigarettes.
After the cigarette was the part that I had always couldn’t wait for. Spilling every single detail of your life to someone who actually wanted to hear it made living worthwhile. Made going through the experiences that you couldn’t stop thinking about but you didn’t want to annoy people who didn’t want to hear about it even feel better because you know there will always be that person that will sit and here every thought in your mind, even if it’s something so vulgar you wouldn’t dare tell your fucking therapist, every corner in your mind.
We lay on Arrie’s bed, in the little light that was next to her bed on her end table her face lit up in the darkness. That was how beautiful she was, people would look at her and just stares but she was used to it, what with getting boobs at age eight.
Past tense, past tense.
“Did you know that I think I’m bi? Not very surprising considering what happened at Jen’s party. Still... I dunno how Johnny’s gonna take it, he’s kinda a homophobe.” Arrie knew that this was a major understatement. Johnny once had swerved to try and hit two guys holding hands while she was in the car. “But…I dunno about telling Romy. She’d prolly think I was hitting on her or something like that, you know how she does that. Do you ever think that it’d be better to go out with a girl than a guy? Because girl’s a more understanding and they don’t make fun of us PMS-ing or anything. Johnny always does that.” I wasn’t surprised about the bi thing, she had always been questioning her sexuality.
“I think what you mean, it’s like guys think that they’re stronger and better sometimes…” I didn’t know what she meant, I had never been in a relationship with a guy at that time, I had only had crushes and I went with what I knew about the guys in my gym class who always claimed they could make a better time than me on the mile. I usually one and they blamed the fact that I had no weight on me. “Like, I dunno, girl’s lips would be softer or something like that. And they wouldn’t take you for granted. It almost seems like there are a shortage of guys in America or something like that. I dunno though. Maybe I’m bi, too.”
There was an awkward silence when we both new what we wanted to do. Arrie scooted closer to me, basically in my lap and giggled as our heads turned together and as we shyly kissed. We stopped for a second, giggling and then kissed harder, I found myself being extremely attracted to someone for the first time in my life. I couldn’t believe that me and Arrie were kissing, or that I, obviously, was bisexual. When I was kissing Arrie, I almost thought that I was a lesbian.
“That was fun.” Arrie murmured. “I love you, babe. Maybe one day…maybe one day this can go further. But I can’t be with you right now…” Arrie did one of those explanations that she expects to be stopped in the middle because she didn’t really have much of a point. “Maybe it’s a time for boys with us, you know? It’ll be hard.”
“Yeah, I understand.” It finally hit me, I was disappointed. I could see me and Arrie together at the mall, holding hands, laughing, I pictured how her and I kissing must have looked to the rest of the world who didn’t see it. How it would be our little secret. Arrie was more beautiful than I could ever imagine, too beautiful for anyone to ever be able to ignore her, her blue eyes pierced into me in the moonlight, waiting for an answer or reaction, something to assure her that I loved her. “I love you too.” I thought that this was the best reaction.


I was lying in Elijah’s bed when he asked me the question that I couldn’t even fathom.
“We can’t be together anymore, goddamn it! I’ve fucking had it with your immature bullshit! You can’t even…begin to realize the sacrifices I’ve made for you and you can’t stay with me on Saturday night because you have to see Romy and Arrie? What the fuck?” Elijah was throwing things in my direction, I knew he was not meaning to hit me, but one barely missed my head and he gave that fact no acknowledgement.
“E, I barely ever see them anymore. I love you more, you know that. Come on, E, calm down.” I used the soothing voice that I had to when he got like this. “Come lay down with me.”
He stomped over, like the child that he very well was, and laid down next to me. “How do I know that you love me, huh? How do I know? I don’t, because you barely even tell me anything anymore. You know? I miss talking to you. And I miss fucking you.”
“Baby, baby. Calm down.” I let Elijah play up my shirt as I calmed him down. “You know that I will do anything for us to be together, E, anything.”
“Would you kill them?”
I stopped. The world stopped. Elijah’s eyes burned electric, the obvious notion that this was not a joke. Elijah looked at me, expecting the answer, yes, of course. “E…I mean, be reasonable, they’re my only friends, I’ve know them forever, I-”
“Get the fuck out of my house. You wouldn’t kill them for me, when I would kill anyone for you. Anyone. My own fucking mother for you, if that’s what we needed, as a team, that’s what would happen. Shoot my own goddamn mother in the fucking head and you wouldn’t kill your little cunt friends so that we would be together!” Elijah yelled, grabbing my hands and throwing me against the wall.
I opened my mouth, to say words that would never be said, but should’ve. “No, E, I would…” Tears started streaming down my flushed face. “I would do anything for us. You’re being reasonable. For us I would do it.” I got off the floor slowly, trying to show him that I was in pain but he saw it anyway.
“I didn’t hurt ya, did I, sweetie?” There was the Elijah that I loved. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. You know what my Dad did to me…sometimes it’s so hard. Please, please forgive me…cause I’m so sorry. I love you. I love you so much. When are you gonna get Romy and Arrie over here?”
“What?”
“Romy and Arrie…we have to kill them now. Don’t you see? They’re what’s holding us back. I won’t let anything hold us back, don’t you love us enough?” Elijah’s eyes burned again.
“I…alright. I’ll…bring them over…if it’ll make you happy. Let’s go to sleep.”
“Your parents think you’re at one of your friends?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright.”


Was it worth it? I couldn’t tell, being in the backseat with Elijah and occasionally fighting tears of grief.