If I were to tell you some sort of story about bodies and the color white, would you promise to believe me?
If this story had a predetermined beginning, a thing that repeats, would you still listen?
If I were to tell you that monsters are not under the bed, but are instead the bed, would you believe that? And if I said to you that the fabric on the bed soaks up more than the blood, but the intention of blood—the idea of blood that you have and only you have.
What if I said: go ahead and think about blood. Think about it as a color, a texture, a fall from grace.
What if I said: I am going to tell you this fucked up story.
What if I said: You have no choice in this.
This is the beginning; this is spring leading into summer, and your mouth watering at the smell. This is you; this is your best friend with an arm around you saying that you need to have fun. You need to have fun—because they tell you—you don’t have fun anymore. For the moments that this is you, you say: okay, fine.
For the moments that this is not you, you are in the shower and the water is hot enough to welt you red.
Your best friend lives at the dead end of some cul-de-sac, not well-to-do, but well enough that railroad tracks are words and not a concept. Your best friend has these ways of viewing the world, and you stare at the message on your phone that says—
How long has it been since you’ve laughed? There is a hand on your wrist. There is drum and bass pounding. This friend drags you behind them. They say, let’s get fucked up. They say, work today was shit and I don’t want to think about it.
Right now, I want you to say out loud: there’s only one way this ends. Say it to yourself in a tone that makes you believe that one day you can love yourself.
If you cannot say it, turn to your most trusted friend and have them say it. Tell them to say it like they know how this ends.
Everyone is talking and Uno cards are strewn haphazardly, like pillows on a bed. They’re all talking shit and laughing. And you think, this is what it’s like in all those movies. This is what living is like.
The music playing is something that maybe one day you might enjoy. You won’t. They make sure.
I need you to understand that strawberry lemonade Svedka smells like laundry detergent.
There is a message on your phone.
Your friend still has an arm around you and they ask you, isn’t it better like this? This is not a question but their absolute. You should know that by now.
Someone is using a vegetable knife to cut up a lemon into rounds.
Your friend leans their elbow on the table and the lights make you forget how this starts. They say to the people around, there’s a ghost haunting this house, you know?
Shut the hell up, they all say. You’re full of shit, is what they all say.
You don’t have to believe me, but I swear to god, I hear someone crying at night.
You play a wild card.
Close your eyes and imagine whispering: I just wanted to have fun.
There is a message on your phone that says maybe if you’d loved me.
By this point you should know there is a you that’s still in the shower. The water has gone cold, but you are still in the shower.
The Lay’s sour cream and onion chip bag crinkles in their hand as they push it towards you. I don’t want any, is what you say. And they say, have some. Come on.
Just have some.
Your phone is pressed warm and close against your cheek.
Turn to your trusted friend and have them say: I’m sorry. Have them say it like they don’t mean it.
The person next to you is next to you.
The part that’s fucked up about this is that you knew them. You didn’t know them like a language, but something harder—they made you earn it.
We should go before it gets too late, everyone says. You can all stay here, your friend says. You haven’t drank enough. Not enough to save you from tonight. And it’s too late now.
At this point in the story I’d like you to go to the bathroom and cover the mirror with anything large enough to fit.
You can’t leave the shower because you can’t make it go away. You can’t look in the mirror because you can’t make them go away.
Water purification is the process of removing harmful chemicals—
You have this other friend and she has one of those families that made it too easy. It makes it easy to love her and to hate her, and you can’t deny that you did. You sit in her living room and all she has to offer you is White Claw or orange juice, and so she gives you White Claw in orange juice.
There’s a message on your phone that says can’t we talk about this?
Everybody leaves that night except for you. You are in orbit and when you close your eyes, you imagine you can see clearer. You imagine you are still the you with a reason to be here.
—biological contaminants, suspended solids—
So, your other friend says, what’s the matter, in the same voice she’d use for her dog. A little white thing with goopy eye stains that pisses in the hall sometimes. She says, what’d you want to talk about.
Wasn’t this just to get fucked up, you say; and they say, yeah, it was—The wall is smooth under the pads of your fingers and you walk down that hall. Wouldn’t it be fucked if that ghost was here, you laugh and their hand is at the small of your back.
Do you think I like telling you about this? Do you think this is easy for me?
The bed gives under you just as much as it takes. As you lie there you don’t know who you are—what you are. Because the room is just light enough to see and you wish that it wasn’t. You wish the ceiling had any kind of texture so at least the pictures you make would be something to pull you further from the delicate floss of your brain stem.
It comes as a whisper. Think about someone you know like a language and imagine them saying I’ve always wondered what you’d be like—like this.
I’m telling you this story because I’m the one that believes you.
There’s a message on your phone that says, seriously? It says, This is how it’s going to be?
You were both drunk, she says. She puts an arm around your shoulders like she isn’t crashing into you like an asteroid. Jeez, was it that bad? I guess it makes sense why it’s been so awkward with you two. We were all wondering when you’d finally—she laughs and squeezes your shoulder and her red nails, in need of a fill-in, indent the fabric of your turtleneck.
They’re your best friend. You’ve known them. You know them—
And how they smell and the weight of the world and the thing you once thought of as—
Kei Oni Garcia is a senior at SOU in the creative writing program. They write for the screen, literary and genre fiction, as well as poetry.
Main Squeeze Literary Journal 