The End is Only the End

TW: vivid depiction of blood and gore, coarse language, depression, substance abuse, self-harm, a brief scene of self-pleasure

Tuesday, March 1

Dear Diary,

25 entries in, first since the dismemberment of Julie and I that culminated in a dream where I, a feverish, molting creature, scrambled down a blank hallway that narrowed with every echo of her jittery voice. Who was I to jolt awake, guttural scream, a chorus of barking neighbors when the end was my crucifixion to carry out?

The day before, my nails I burrowed through her hands, two bloody pupils interlocked, thorny eyes inclined to search for a heavier purpose, praying fingers interlaced around a single cup of French vanilla, I muttered a continuous unholy something into the steam that rose between us. God only knows whether or not she understood what happened until her head bowed, crimson eyes, shaky tone.

Dear Diary,

26 entries in, Julie spotted me as an up-and-down gingham goddess, flipped me the bird on the corner of Derrick and Forsythe; a dreamlike declaration that mimicked the caustic kiss-away from my previous landlord plastered on my door, "get the fuck out of my place before I get the cops to do it." I couldn't un-make her bitten bottom lip that summoned a splash of blood along her teeth which accompanied her middle finger, extended through the clouds at that point. It replayed, replayed, replayed through coin-op laundry runs, cigarette jogging sessions; her auburn eyes tinted in a hellish way, no less glossy, no more screeching, makeup bolder than she or myself ever was when we held hands on uninvited inebriated waltzes around botanical gardens grounds.

Dear Diary,

27 entries in, I discovered what a julienne cut was when I peeled skin off my arm by accident except the "accident" was some Faustian deal my brain and imagination shook on where I envisioned a carrot instead of an appendage. The world emptied out under me to the unfortunate thud of my body. Somehow, some reason, some way, I prayed that she would cradle my head in her palms once everything reappeared to me. My reappraisal of the world around me, however, carried on sans her or anyone minus my sister-

"-Doctor Robertson, there's a patient bleeding out in room 204."

"Be right there. Don't be fucking stupid like that again, Mark. Imagine how Mom would have flipped on you if she was alive. I'll be back."

Dear Diary,

28 entries in, I twirled my cigarette inside my rainless bathtub without as much as a voicemail. What had I assumed to drag itself out of radio silence? A fleshy amalgam of "fuck you" and "forgive me", pulsating through my apartment, chunks of meat that detached in gory puddles, until it slammed its rank carcass against the bathroom door to claim me? "Don't be fucking stupid like that again, Mark" was not a warning or a threat, it was a telepathic understanding that, regardless of signs that should steer me right, to be "fucking stupid" was my eternal calling. I dialed, obscured by smoke, stared off into the shower head, whipped back into my corporeal form when I heard that distant "what, Markus?"

Dear Diary,

29 entries in, I was stuccoed to my bathtub for the hour she entertained me. Horns argued, enraged with the bus and passengers, inadvertent contestants in a cruel game show of glacial traffic where it sounded as if a handful of unruly drivers barreled out of their vehicles for some chest-beating. We shared nothing for those initial fifteen minutes until she exited of her own free will and amusement, shuffled down Dawson St and Scarlet Newsom Blvd where the anger of everything was far more muted or muted enough when out of earshot. I pleaded my case for another fifteen minutes as a middling romantic, a withered lounge act employed due to tenure rather than talent, skill, or genuine interest from any audience aside loyal lookers-on. She spent the subsequent fifteen minutes to elaborate on my inability to be anything more than an ass whose chameleonic nature allowed him to portray a top-tier lover from held-open doors to my jacket draped around her frigid body to which I could only agree.

The final fifteen minutes blurred by with sentences fileted by choppy reception. What I gleaned from what I could make out was that "self-pity will always be your downfall, don't take me with you" and something else about how self-awareness didn't give me an out from life; that my admission of guilt and wrongdoing didn't absolve me of the need to grow in or out of the face of any obstacle. I shuttered my eyes, pleased myself to her rebuke of my evasive behavior. Her voice was at peak rasp when she scolded me.

Dear Diary,

30 entries in, on my tenth consecutive beer today, the typical flashbang of natural light around whichever time succumbed to lightning cracks, extensive grey, rain. All I wanted was another chance to prove that I was no zero-sum game champion or that was the case a few days back when our grave was fresh. She had to have made far more headway; she was a model somewhere, model citizen, runway model, both, she knew Paris, Texas and France the way I knew the gold star logo on every beer can that gathered around me, cultists for a flimsy leader. What mattered more than the inescapable dagger of clock hands, each one stabbed a limb of its choice at an hour or minute of its choice? What mattered more than that long, dark cape over me that reminded me I was less than asphalt or feces?

Dear Diary,

30-odd entries, not as if the number is any less or more pointless than it was before. Not as if the entries were any less or more pointless than they were prior. Neighbors, neighbors masked as various animals, swans, goats, etc. sardined wall-to-wall in my apartment, powdery noses, bloodshot eyes, fractured lamps, records, hearts, if I had to guess. I hadn't left my bathtub to witness though, not as if I could have moved; the windows were duct-taped, the guests innumerable, the television dressed in streamers, my arms, vodka-scented, my entire self, stiffened.

Someone crept in, up-and-down gingham, rabbit-masked, fingers entwined with someone else, an owl-masked woman in a doctor's coat with a tag I couldn't place with my sharpest squint aside from a hazy "Rob". It was when the rabbit-masked person scurried to the bathroom that she screamed.

"Markus, what are you doing?"

"Mark? Oh God, shit."

My eyelids collapsed along with me as I hurled, face down with the rabbit and owl-masked women tending to me.

Dear Diary,

Julie visited me in rehab, her hands folded in mine, tight, unflinching, around a cup of French vanilla. She whispered something in the steam. I chuckled, misty-eyed.

"The end is only the end."