I. Crumbling“Caution, approaching platform.”A gum bubble pops and my body seizes up, bandaged hand smearing charcoal detailing across the page.“Gross. He had his dick inside her butt?”“And a dick up his ass. Some tattooed pretty boy he’d introduced as his wedding suit tailor. Fucking humiliating, Jess. My own fiancée. Having… ugh. I can’t even say it.”“Just be glad you didn’t marry into that sleazy lifestyle. I mean really. I’m exit only. So, what did you do?”“Played Frisbee with his Springsteen vinyl at the park. Titus liked it more than his tennis ball. Snapped him everything.”There’s a choked gasp. “You what? It wasn’t that ‘Spirit in the Night’ album he always gloats about was it?”“Yea. The one he’d never let me touch. Why?”“Like… You know how rare that vinyl is, right? Holy shit, Tiffany. Even I know you could have pawned that thing to pay for that new Gucci bag you’ve been salivating over.”A pause. Grinding of teeth.“Whatever, Jess. Totally worth the look on his face. I don’t even care about the… other thing. That rat bastard traded up for a younger model. Jesus. She even looks like me. What was I s’posed to do? It makes my skin crawl knowing they fucked in MY goddamn bed! You know how hard those sheets are to replace?” There’s a choked sob, followed by a rant about needing to burn it all in a dumpster.Then silence.My body relaxes. It isn’t her. Just another mindless high-society girl that probably thinks she’s hot enough to avoid giving head. All style, no substance. Vapid. Pretty to look at but a bore in bed. Not at all like the strange woman my brain keeps denying my heart.I pick my pencil back up and wince, hand still raw and throbbing.The two women continue jabbering, trading material what-ifs and missed opportunities and whether or not it’d be too much to fuck the brother of the recently dumped fiancée. I tune them out and try to draw, to repair the damage done to the page, to your smudged face. Nothing comes. I’m exhausted. Run dry. I’m that smoking beater in the desert running on fumes. Mad Max with the engine light in red, rumbling toward something, but all prepped to explode into a black cloud of garish smoke and blinding flame. Fuckin’ out with a bang and a glorious scream about oh what a day it is. Except it’s no fucking day at all. It’s no fucking life at all if you burn straight to the sad fucking truth of it.But at least my monster is silent, beat down from a month long binge of talented pussy and slutty white ass topped off by a final reunion with Jasmyn I wish I’d never had.I can’t remember names. Can barely recall faces and locations. Part of me wishes I could. But it’s just blinding lights and blurred shapes and tight wet holes bleedin’ the cum from my dick more efficiently than the Twomps bleeds light from the fucked up souls just tryin’ to survive.Truth is, it feels good to stop fighting Granny Teague’s biblical demons. Better to embrace that shit, man. At least, that’s how it started out… until visions of bohemian beauty and pink fucking hair started multiplying. Taunting. Can’t say if it was the drugs. Or just a prison broke mind. I’d need years of therapy to figure that one out. All I know is that I can’t even say if she really does exist, that it isn’t just Ana hell-bent on torturing me. That illusory stuff crazy people swear is true.I shake my head.The page in my lap is filled with a giant black blob now. I flip back a few pages. More blobs of varying shapes and sizes, each one more horrifying in nature, snapshots of that inky chaos inside my head. Rorschachs. My own thought prison given pictorial form.* * *“Caution, approaching platform.”My eyes are blood shot and heavy.I’m blazed outta my mind and hung the fuck over.Tried to fill the void of losing Jasmyn for good this time the only way I know how.I can still feel the clawed lines from ruby red nails on my back. I slipped again. Fucked up. Let him out the cage. Or maybe I just forgot to lock it? Doesn’t matter. It was the redhead, my little red fire engine with the flaming cunt and the easy smile. Can’t even remember her name. I’m surprised how much that sticks me in the gut. She wanted to be wanted for real. Wanted by me. Imagine that. Another woman that desperately wanted the kinda bullshit I’d bring into her life.And you know what? Maybe a piece of me wanted her, my very Escort Gölbaşı own firecracker to keep in my hand. But… here’s another truth. She was just another stranger with a tight hole providing the sort of non-judgmental warmth I can’t seem to keep in my bones.My head throbs and I see her coppery body climbing on top of a spray tanned shit head in a VIP room. Tribal tats up and down his arms. Surfer hair.His prick is dusted white like those real fancy donuts at a pastry shop in the well-off part of Oakland. And she’s giggling. I’m giggling. Everyone’s giggling. It’s a freak show of fucking giggling VIPs, naked dicks jumping with fucked up laughter as men circle and females tease their gushing pussies against her nose.A real laugher alright… I helped turn her into sex-starved gutter trash. A girl who’d do anything for a kind word and a never ending supply of weed. Even agree to get plugged by hood dick all night. And the monster is pretty damn proud of that fact.“Stand clear, doors opening.”The blurred memory vaporizes and the train fills up like sardines in a tin can, bodies bundled up against the colder than normal winter wind of Oakland. Everyone’s wearing Raider’s gear and smiling, chattering excitedly. A long playoff drought will do that to a city desperate for another championship. I can taste their hopeful delight and it makes me nauseous.I need something to occupy my rattled thoughts so I try to sketch my way out. Moonlight glowing around the edges of the windows as the train breezes along. Ruddy hues of pink and red on cheeks. Bumping of bodies and innocent smiles. Life. I wish I could join them, but after a certain point, something becomes very clear to me. Some places aren’t meant for you, no matter how much you want them.“Caution, approaching platform.”Some of the passengers catch me staring numbly with reefer eyes and I pull back nervously. Then they get to chit-chatin’ again, real hushed like, like my first ride outside a now nostalgic prison of steel and concrete and guilt.Someone next to me suddenly grabs my arm. “I can still feel it,” a voice moans softly, tugging my hand to the junction of her thighs. “Stretching me. Filling me. Completing me. Fuck. I need it again. I want you to get me pregnant, baby. He’d just looooose his shit to know I got knocked up by big black dick.”My skin prickles and I freeze up. Her hair is blue now, though I still recognize her. The girl I left in a BART Station restroom, cum leaking from her puckered hole. Her eyes are crazed, like she’s finally murdered someone and wants to tell me all about it in macabre detail while sucking my dick. The monster rumbles, sensing her, wanting her, this tiny little Asian doll with murderously obsessive eyes. I can feel a disturbing erection starting to form. Images draw themselves in the air between the too few inches that separate us. She’s bent over a seat, naked ass in my hands. I’m bouncing her off my dick for all to see, laughin’ like a ten-year vet in a psych ward.“Stand clear, doors opening.”“I want you to choke me next time,” the girl husks in my ear. “Bring me to the edge and fuck the life out of me. Then bring me back and do it all over again. Gawd I’m wet. Feel it, baby? That’s because of you.”I yank my arm away, but she flows with me, hand shifting to my crotch.“The fuck’s wrong with you?” I hiss, trying to ignore our growing audience of Raider fans.“I’m fucking wet for you, that’s what. Shit. I want your dick back up my ass. Right now. Right here.” I swear her eyes bleed black tar. “Put a needle in my arm. Fuck me till I die, killer.”I reel back, stomach turning. I don’t want to bleed onto the tracks this time. I want to jump off. Bang. Crack. Splat. Hit the ground. Bright train lights. Crunch. Click. Clack. Crunch. Click. Clack. Crunch. End this nightmare for good.“Where the fuck is Kim?” a frustrated voice calls. “We’re gonna be late for kickoff.”Kim groans. Licks my ear. “You don’t want me to leave do’ya, baby? Take me hope. Fuck me all night long. I don’t even care if daddy hears us.”“Kimiko!” A frazzle haired pair of teenagers in Raider’s sweaters appear, eyes worried. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” they chime together. Then they see me, tracing the now familiar tattoo slowing down my cheek. And they follow it right Keçiören escort down to my lap, and her lap, and her fingers rubbing the spot between her legs. “What the fuck are doing?” they scream, followed by, “get away from her, you damn pervert!”They grab the girl and yank her up and out of the door right before it closes, her eyes trained on me the whole way. They’re dark. Like his. Mine. Prison mirror, blood on our hands. Empty eyes.I look back down at my sketchpad and the black blobs. They tell a different story about what I am this time and what I should do.II. Flesh and Bone“Caution, approaching platform.”“Caution, approaching platform.”“Caution, approaching platform.”“Caution, approaching platform.”“Caution, approaching platform.”“Caution, approaching platform.”The stations blur by and my mind speeds up so fast it’s like the train never slows down, never stops, just one stop after the next in an endless cycle. Like poetic beats dropped to machine gun fire. Rata-tat-tat till blood splats on the mat. Nine round KO.The last fucking stop.End of the line.Seem so innocuous at first, right? It’s just a phrase after all. That simple concept the inner city prisoners of the ghetto experience on the daily. The warning the metro-line pilot announces before the “Not In Service” light flickers on, leavin’ dead tired mommas cry’n on dangerous street corners after workin’ a double for shit pay and shittier respect.Thanks for riding. Thanks for flying.Last stop.The line screamed from gangbanger to gangbangerUnder indiscriminate hailsOf cheap bullets and cheaper hate.Leavin’ shattered windows, screamin’ women,Sirens ringing.Stolen by Oaktown tragedy.Like a girl with a rubber hose,And a needle in her arm, smile on her lips.Last stop.Different recipes in rusted tin cansCount em all up all till they numberTen by fucking tenAll windin’ up with the same noxious flavorsOf misery and death and rotted hope.Life as misanthrope woulda been a helluva lot easier.Which gets me thinking of a different sorta path. A poor little black kid in the Twomps ends up like that white comic hero, Bruce Wayne. Straight up vigilante in the streets. Fight that crime. Fuck all the pussy. A brooding mind with the black-hearted fists bloodying the fuck outta the evil life’s bitch ass shits out.But nah. Those are just dreams within dreams. A never was mother hit by a bus while high as a kite. Split splat. Single father. Couldn’t cope. Bam. Bam. From Golden State to murky abyss. Granny Teague’s doorstep. Ring-a-ding-ding. The last stop before a parade through run down orphanages and life as the villain. Bam. Don’t be chasing them little white devils. Bam. Needle in the dark. Bam. Broke heart. Bam. Heart attack at seventy. Bam. Dropped cold before grandson gets released.Last stop.There’s finality to it isn’t there? Once you pass it, then what? What happens? You don’t collect free parking. Not us anyway. You chase your way back to the beginning before the light fades to black, before the curtain drops. You do it all over, even if it’s all the same, cuz you don’t want it to end. You don’t want to end. But you know some day it’s gotta. Like I said. Irrational. No rhyme or reason. It’s all inevitable. Shouldn’t complain. Drives you insane that unknowable end.“Caution, approaching platform.”“Caution, approaching platform.”“Caution, doors opening. This is the last service of the night. Stay safe.”Safe. What does that even mean anymore?I stuff my pencils and my sketchbooks into my bag and step off.And there you are on a bench, knees drawn up. Even bundled in a long ratty sweatshirt with the hood pulled over your head, I know it’s you. Can’t even describe the feeling that confirms it. It’s one of those things, like viewing a Rembrandt in a museum. You don’t need the card telling you who painter is. You just know. That’s how that shit works, right?I tap your shoulder and you jump, springing off the bench into a low crouch like you’re readying to fight tooth and nail, to the death, green eyes feral, angry. Sad. My monster growls, trying to synchronize and harmonize with that rage. I push it down and step slowly forward. And under the station lights I see your hands shaking, fingers clenching and unclenching. But what worries me is the dry rusty red they’re coated in, like Kızılay escort bayan you’ve been playing with finger paint. Which makes no damn sense at all.You stuff them in your front pocket when you see me staring, when you recognize just who I am.Your shoulders slump and you fall to your ass.“Pretty out huh?” you mumble, nodding up to a full yellow moon. Damn if it isn’t a broken sound.I drop my bag and squat down in front of you. I reach out to pull your hood back and you flinch, but allow me to continue. Your pink locks are mostly gone, faded back to the blonde you’re known for.“Blondie,” I say, pushing frazzled strands of hair from your face and tilting your chin up. It’s the first time I’ve called you this and you know it. So you smile through a busted lip, wincing all the way. You wink and a small cut above your eye oozes blood.“Fancy seeing you here, jitterbug. Last stop n’all that.”* * *In an area this run down, with a motel starving for cash, there aren’t many questions asked. But when it’s mostly just a front to sell sex and drugs, questions are never really on the menu, even when you’ve got an infamous black man whose face consumed the daily news for an entire year, clutching a tiny hooded white girl in his arms.“Room sixty-nine,” the greasy looking manager grins as he hands over a key. He smells like Bud Light, Marlboro’s, and sweat. “Last door on the left.”You’d have grinned and laughed and made a cheesy, dirty joke about our room assignment. You don’t though. You’ve gone mute. Which, surprisingly, has the monster in me seeing red.“Have fun,” the fat man leers while the monster rages.I grit my teeth and take the key.-The pungent odor of sex, stale traces of marijuana, and Pine-Sol slap me in the face like a Mike Tyson jab. I lost my white-girl virginity in a shit hole like this while still running drugs for Ray. Had the real romantic ghetto soundtrack of bullets fired in alleys, spitting mufflers, screeching tires, and hellish shrieks to serenade Anastasia and me as we fucked like awkward rabbits, fueled by adrenaline, the taste of Molly, and the fear that a stray bullet may sneak its way between us, ending two lives during the act that created it. Fucking twisted ironic reality of that fear just got her wetter. Melted that lily-white fear of dying in the hood into a puddle of desperate, gluttonous humping.But no… Actually, the weird truth of it is that I was never really scared that night. Never. Not of what her father would do to me if he found out a poor black kid from the Twomps was fucking his little princess in a dank motel room. Not of what Ray would do if he found me spurting inside the girl was that still ‘his.’ Not that Ana ever belonged to anyway.And I sure as hell wasn’t scared when a bullet danced through the window and buried itself into the empty bed we’d just rolled off of. The light tinkling of shattered glass. A soft pillowed whoomp. It all happened right as I nutted inside her for the first time. Shit just got us hornier.And here I am now, scared shitless and still tweaked out of my mind, try’n to play the black knight for a tiny little white girl when I can barely play hero for myself.I set you down on a rickety bed that at least boasts clean sheets. You curl in around a lumpy pillow, leaving smeared red handprints everywhere.I don’t need to ask, though I don’t know how to anyway. Splotchy bruises on your neck are already turning dark. Lines of rainbow eye shadow smears down your cheeks like war paint. Whatever happened, you got the better of it and someone else got the worst of it. That knowledge doesn’t make me feel any better. I want to let the monster out. I want to let it out and remain conscious.‘And what, Jalen?’ my monster purrs. ‘You finally want to feel it this time?’He’s right, I’m right. I do. I want to feel a body break in my hands, create a certain kind of art with bone and gristle and hot rod red to serve as a sort of symbol against the kind of cruelty inflicted on a tiny little blonde that has such a capacity for love and compassion and tenderness that a piece of shit like me would rip his own fucking heart to shreds. Use the pieces to stitch hers back together.Maybe be some kind of a hero instead of a drugged up fuckup.The monster laughs. ‘That need to kill finally bubbling to the surface, Jalen? Once a felon always a felon. Killers aren’t heroes. But shit, man. We don’t need to be no hero. That derivative Hollywood bullshit is for the brain dead masses. How bout we be something grade A original? Set your little white hood rat up with some money and a castle. I’ll show you how to really make a living.’