[You saved my life he says. I owe you, I owe you everything.]
___________________________________________________________________________________

It started six months ago.
And you knew, didnt you? You saw?
The way my clothes got looser and my hair got longer because I stopped caring, let it grow wild and curly into a devils halo.
The way I walked bent forward and limping, so changed from peacock-proud and buoyant.
He was never like this before. We started all sweet smiles and gentle caresses, Let me get that for you and You deserve a night off, we should go out. And I let him touch me and he let me believe it mattered, that I mattered. He gave me his home, made space for my things and bought extra hangers for the closet to turn his and mine into ours. For two years I let myself believe that Id found my future, that I was living it, that Id scoured my name into the skin of my new life, ready to pour the ink into the wounds and make it permanent. Make it stick.
It lasted six months.
And you saw me on campus every day. I felt you watching me, but you never spoke to me and you never looked at me, but you watched me, and every time the words pressed against the back of my throat, Hes hurting me, please help me, please, youd already walked away.
But you watched me. You knew, didnt you?
How sometimes I almost couldnt bear to sit in the hard plastic chairs, and how, sometimes, I had to wear makeup on my neck or cheeks because he liked to bruise me. Some days I had to sit forward in the chair because my back bore splotchy constellations of ink-dark stars.
He liked to whisper, sugar-sweet, in my ear, tell me I was his everything, his only good thing, and that he would never let me go.
He liked to feed me adoration and attention, then punch me in the stomach until I puked it all up.
And you knew.
Didnt you?
__________________________________________________________________________________

[You dont, I say, you dont owe me squat, lets just get going, lets just
get gone, but hes relentless,
keeps saying I owe you, says Your shoes are filling with your own damn blood, you must want something, just tell me, and its yours.]
__________________________________________________________________________

You look like someone whos never had to wonder whether or not they are loved.
I look like someone whos never been loved in a way that made sense.
He screws up and I save his neck and suddenly Im the hero. Im the one who rides on shoulders, picking flowers out of the sky and weaving them into hopeful crowns.
But then I screw up and he abandons me and Im the one lying in the dirt, waiting for the crowds to stop stamping on my fingers and knocking me down just as soon as I get a leg up under me.
Hed buy me things when he liked me, come home with a little stuffed toy, cute and smiling, all for me, and Id put it with the others, say to myself, See, its better now. Its going to get better.
And when he didnt like me, hed bleed it from me, draw it all out of me until I couldnt stand up anymore and then hed keep going while I stained the hardwood floors.
__________________________________________________________________________________

[But I cant look at him, can hardly speak.
I took the bullet for all the wrong reasons, Id just as soon kill you myself, I say.
You keep saying I owe you, I owe... but you say the same thing
every time. Lets not talk about it, lets just not talk.]
__________________________________________________________________________

Three months ago, you got to class early and sat beside me.
You didnt say anything, but you watched me.
And then, at the end of class, you knew that Id wait until everyone else had gone and you waited with me, slowly packed your bag until the room stood empty and, before you left, you looked at me.
And I hated you for it.
I felt like I had a gun in my pocket and you were daring me to pull the trigger without telling me the target, Who is it, then? Is it me or him? You were giving me a bullet that I couldnt use. It wasnt the right one. It didnt fit the gun.
I left you sitting there with your bullets, left you sitting there while I went home and- No, I swear, it wasnt like that- he shot me with the gun I couldnt fathom how to use. He shot me- I dont know what you think you saw, I dont know him, he doesnt know me- and I felt the bullets go in but they never came out.
___________________________________________________________________________________

[Not because I dont believe it, not because I want it any different, but Im always saving
and youre always owing and Im tired of asking to settle the debt.
Dont bother.
You never mean it anyway, not really, and it only makes me that much more ashamed.]
__________________________________________________________________________

Ive lost count of them.
The bullets.
Each one, right after the other, fired and followed by his tearful Im sorry, Im so sorry, but you cant keep doing things like this, you know it makes me mad. Im full of sorrowful lead, heavy and aching with it, I feel them in my veins, knocking together and filling up my lungs until Im breathing their dust and his words, his Its your fault, just stop, thats all you have to do, just stop making me mad and Ill stop hurting you.
And its always the same. It never stops. He keeps hurting and I keep breathing and I still havent figured out how to work the gun.
When you saw me the next day you sat on the other side of the room. You kept your back to me, fiddled with your scarf and your brooch, and you didnt watch me.
You knew, didnt you?
How he saw you sitting next to me. How the bleeding still hadnt stopped, and I had to sit with one leg underneath me on the chair to keep from staining the plastic.
__________________________________________________________________________________

[Theres only one thing I want, dont make me say it, just get me bandages, Im bleeding,
Im not just making conversation.]
__________________________________________________________________________

Hes hurting me, please help me, please.
Im holding an empty gun the wrong way around, and the barrels warm like its just been fired.
__________________________________________________________________________________

[Theres smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars. Its a Western, Henry,
its a downright shoot-em-up. Weve made a graveyard out of the bone white afternoon.
Its another wrong-man-dies scenario
and we keep doing it, Henry, keep saying until we get it right...
but we always win and we never quit, see, weve won again, here we are at the place
where I get to beg for it
where I get to say Please, for just one night, will you lay down next to me, we can leave our
clothes on, we can stay all buttoned up...]
__________________________________________________________________________

You made me dream about it.
About princes and fairy tales. About falling in love like fire and oil, passionate and painful and fever-bright, until it slows down, simmers, but never goes out.
You made me dream that the script was different, that for once instead of Dont make me chain you to the bed, dont make me get the scissors and dig the bullets out one by one so that I can wipe them off and shoot you with them like theyre something new, it would be Dont make me the good guy, Im not, but you are, you have to be, youre so much better than me.
And it hurt.
I dreamed and I dreamed and I always woke up and it hurt.
___________________________________________________________________________________

[...but we both know how it goes. I say I want you inside me
and you hold my head underwater, I say I want you inside me
and you split me open with a knife. Im battling monsters, Im pulling you out of the burning buildings and you say Ill give you anything. But you never come through.]
__________________________________________________________________________

I wanted love like movies.
Where the mother coddles her baby and promises moons and stars and whispers against new skin and swears on her life, on her soul, that nothing in the world will ever hurt, will ever harm.
I wanted love like books.
Where the protagonist is whole and happy and sure in himself and he may not be popular, but he has friends, and he doesnt need, doesnt seek out, doesnt want for anything because he has everything that matters.
I found love like dragons.
Like stones and arrows, Death, take me now, like drowning and breathing at the same time, hauling things around that arent mine to carry, Please, I dont want them anymore, theyre yours, you killed them, theyre yours to bury, not mine.
Love like government, handed out like food stamps, only so much at a time, Dont spoil him, dearest, hell get stronger, just leave him be, let me drag my boots through the mud and blood, watched me fall down, give in, stand up, and over again.
Love like nails through my palms.
Love like a kiss on the cheek in a garden.
__________________________________________________________________________________

[Even when youre standing up
you look like youre lying down, but will you let me kiss your neck, baby? Do I have to tie your arms down? Do I have to stick my tongue in your
mouth like the hand of a thief,
like a burglary, like its just another petty theft?]
__________________________________________________________________________

I am his but he is not mine.
I am his to wreck and to ruin, to shape and mold from clay and to fire and dash against the kitchen tiles, You stupid whore, cant you do anything right?
It happened so slowly, so gradually, until he was standing there with all the bits of me I cherished, lit like kindling under the fire of him, and I was standing with all the parts of me I hated. He let me keep those, let me nurture them on my own until they filled all the empty spaces, and he kept those nice bits for special occasions, to wave them out at me, to say Remember this? This was you and now its mine, and I will change it so completely, destroy it so utterly, that it will never fit back the way it used to.
And you could see them, I know you could, all those black little bits that I was made of growing bigger and blacker, ready to spill out, consume, obliterate...
You were scared. I could tell.
You got me hurt, and you knew it, but I would let myself get hurt again and again, I just needed the gun back, please, youre the only one who knows how to use it, teach me how, and I promise Ill do it properly this time.
__________________________________________________________________________________

[It makes me tired, Henry. Do you see what I mean? Do you see what Im getting at?]
__________________________________________________________________________

It lasted six months.
Im so tired.
Im dragging around the corpse of myself, lifting it into my chair and pretending I still have a life of my own. Its heavy and unwieldy, grotesquely distorted like a photograph after a hurricane, warped and ugly, but too delicate to touch, see, the corners just torn, Stop trying, youll only ruin it more.
This is my fairytale come-to-life, only Im not the prince, or the king, or the knight on his white steed. Im not even the princess. I dont get the happy ending. I get the sleeping on rocks and dodging fire and starving to death in the tower because no one believed I was still there, still worth it, still alive.
Except you.
But you dont know where my tower is, and you dont know how to rescue me, either, and neither do I, really. I dont have the hair to let down to you, or the magic potion for you to drink. There is no map, no lantern in the sky, no star to guide you there, or to give any indication that you wont be too late when you arrive. Maybe it is. Maybe it isnt. See, I dont even know anymore, because I look into the mirror and I see one whole person just a bit stretched at the seams, but then I look into his eyes and I see my own grinning corpse-face laughing back at me as if to say, Isnt that cute? Isnt it adorable? I used to be that, and now I am this, but he still believes it hasnt happened yet, that he hasnt died completely yet, that he still has hope for love left.
The storys been written, I have the book, its here, all filled in, but I cant look at the ending.
I dont want to know what Ill look like.
__________________________________________________________________________________

[I swear, I end up feeling empty, like youve taken something out of me, and I have to search my body for the scars, thinking Did he find that one last tender place to
sink his teeth in?]
__________________________________________________________________________

What do you do?
Your life has been taken from you, mashed up and spit out and run over so many times, and each time it gets put back together one of the pieces turns up missing, and the tape gets a little thinner, and the glue stops sticking as well.
What do you do?
Theres a boy who could help you, who wants to help you, but he could just as easily hurt you and he knows it, and you realize that your only chance at getting out of this is to do it yourself, but youre not quite sure how to wake up anymore, it just keeps happening, and you cant shake the feeling that one day soon it just wont.
What do you do, when youre not sure if youd mind?
When youre so tired, so riddled through with it all, that you can longer think of a reason to?
I look at my life and I wonder if I could have made it any different, if I could have changed some of the words, given myself scales instead of thoughts and made myself twelve stories high and invincible.
I look at my life and I wonder if this is all Im worth.
__________________________________________________________________________________

[I know you want me to say it, Henry, its in the script, you want me to say Lie down on the bed, youre all I ever wanted and worth dying for too...]
__________________________________________________________________________

I know how the story goes.
This is the part where something changes. Something breaks or something mends, and the hero becomes the villain or the villain becomes the dragon or the dragon kills the hero, but in any case, it changes. It bends and turns until the perspective is different, until the lesson is learned and life goes on for better or worse.
The point is that it changes.
Every day you make sure to smile at me. Youll turn around in your seat and grin a little, or youll nod at me as if to say I can still see you, I promise. See? Im looking right at you. Every day. Even when the semester ended and the courses changed and I thought Id never see you again, you showed up in three of my classes and I couldnt decide if I should be terrified or elated or horrified at how badly I had come to rely on just seeing you.
Or how much you had already changed.
Im tired.
I am aching and see-through and hollowed out, and its time to rewrite the story.
___________________________________________________________________________________

[...but I think Id rather keep the bullet.
Its mine, see, Im not giving it up.This way you still owe me, and thats as good as anything.]
__________________________________________________________________________

The gun is empty again, warm and angry, but this time its pointing away from me.
Hes looking at his chest like hes confused, like he couldnt see this coming, like hes never seen his own blood before, or a bullet lodged in bone.
Its not the bullet that you gave me, and its not one of his, either.
I made it myself.
I made it out of six months, a compression of time into a lead sphere struck right through his ribs where his heart should be, but its just blood. Either way, its killing him. And hes so angry about it, like its my fault that hes dying, like its my fault that its his bullets inside me, and his hands on my throat, and his, his, his...

Im sitting in the library with the computer on and the phone to my ear, and the lady on the other end is speaking slowly and calmly, and Im grateful for it. Hell just be getting home, I tell her, Theres a key under the mat and an album under the bed. He liked to take pictures and make me look at them. She asks if theres anything else, and I say, Theres a switch in the closet and scars on my back, but I cant go back, I cant I cant, I want to show you, but I cant....

Im sitting in an office, white and beige and blue, until they come in and take more pictures, Can we see your back, just for a moment? and He bit you? On the shoulder? Well take some impressions, just hold on, just a bit longer...
They didnt close the blinds. I could see out into the lobby when he came in, struggling and angry until he saw me, then frothing at the mouth while I paled and trembled and Please dont let him near me, please, I dont have more bullets, that was all I had and I cant make more, if I try again it will kill me.
They gave me a pill and told me to sleep.
I dreamed and I dreamed and I woke up and it still hurt.
But theyd closed the blinds this time, and they changed the room, and I was changing my story into something that, maybe, someday, wouldnt hurt.
___________________________________________________________________________________

[You cant get out of this one, Henry, you cant get it
out of me, and with this bullet lodged in my chest,
covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because Im hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own.]
__________________________________________________________________________

Three weeks later and Im back at school, in a room of my own with a window and a bed and little bottles lined up neatly on the bathroom counter, notes on the calendar to remind me about the sessions, I think theyll really help you, to talk things through.
Im a little late to class, and Im leaning against the door, watching you doodle in your notebook for a moment before turning your head towards the far back corner where I used to sit, as if youre waiting for me to fill in the space. But I dont and you turn back around, start doodling again until you stop and turn around, and back again.
I smile, and it doesnt even hurt anymore.
Deep breath, walk inside.
Your life is your own, Blaine, and you have the words to change it, I promise.
"Is this seat taken?"�
___________________________________________________________________________________

[Ill be your
slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue
and final resting, walking around with this bullet inside me like the bullet was already there,
like its been waiting inside me the whole time.]
__________________________________________________________________________

Theres a jar on the kitchen counter full of the bullets I spent three years digging out of my own skin, pulling them from between my bones and from behind my eyes, dropping them one by one into the glass and screwing the lid shut tight. Theres just one left, stuck in a place I cant quite reach on my own. Its smaller than the others, but somehow heavier, and I know its going to be there for a long time yet, so no point getting upset about it now.
My storybook sits open on the coffee table, the penultimate page half-filled with shaky writing gone steadier over the years, the product of an unceasing pattern of hope, despair, love, hatred, and over again. There are new words getting mixed in with the others, new colors in the drawings and new names filling in the blanks.
I still havent looked at the last page.
What if its the same?
What if my story has changed, but the ending hasnt? What if Ill need that last bullet someday, find a new gun and kill the same dragon?
What then?
So I dont look at the last page.
Instead I do up my tie, pace the front hall and wait for the buzz that means youve arrived, that youre waiting downstairs to take my arm and hold my hand finally, finally, because youve been so patient for three years, content as friends, while I tried to remember how to be one whole person.
But I remember now, so when that buzzer sounds and you take my arm and, at the end of the night, when you ask, Do we get to kiss now?, Ill say, Whenever we want.
And when, a few years later, as youre sitting at your table under the bay window working ardently, your glasses slipping further and further down your nose, I kneel beside your chair and ask, Will you be my fairytale, Kurt?, youll say, I always was.
___________________________________________________________________________________

[Do you want it? Do you want anything I have?
Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands? If you love me, Henry, you dont love me
in a way I understand.]
__________________________________________________________________________

Itll get put away someday, my storybook.
Ill forget about it eventually. I wont remember whats in the box Ive carried around with me from dorm to apartment to house to second house.
But, one day, when we leave the house for the last time, when theyre clearing out the rooms and making piles of the things well take with us to the care home because We just worry about you guys, living here alone, and we cant take care of you the way youre going to need, one of our great-grandchildren will find it and pull it out and ask which fairytale it is.
And Ill remember that it wasnt a fairytale at all.
And Ill remember that I never looked at the last page, and, later that night, Ill read the story again and Ill turn to the end and...
Ill realize that is hasnt ended yet. Theres still room for a few more words, the last page left half-blank under a picture of an old man sleeping next to his husband of sixty years in the last room theyll share together, and Ill realize that this was always the ending to my story, and if I had just...
No. No use thinking like that now.
I changed it, didnt I? My ending could have been different, it could have stayed sulfur and lead, and it couldve stayed dragons and towers, but it didnt. My story was bullets so I used them. My story was dragons so I became them. My story was highway robbery and shots to the head, bleeding out in hallways while holding his hand, begging, Please, hes hurting me, please, please...
The point is that it changed.
__________________________________________________________________________

[Do you know how it ends? Do you feel lucky? Do you want to go home now? Theres a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of the Chevy and a
dead man at our feet
staring up at us like were something interesting.This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard,
and make a wish.]

A/N: Thanks for reading!