I squeezed this from my writer’s block. ;-; Gar. Rag. Muffins. Food. Dinner’s ready… I must go eat.

Anyway. So… I kind of like it because the style I used is kind of…funky. Maybe someone else will like it too.

“Do you ever wonder how hard it would be to kill yourself?” I asked. “Or how easy?” I turned my head to stare at Adam. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes spinning in circles in his head as his foot twitched in time to the music crackling out of the stereo in the corner of his bedroom. “Adam, did you hear me?” I reached out and placed a hand over his, careful not to dislodge the burning cigarette from his long, trembling fingers.

“Yeah.”

I propped myself up onto my elbow and stared down at him, at the crepe paper crinkles at the corner of his grey eyes and the sparse stubble speckling his chin. He infuriated me. He fascinated me.

“What was that a yes to?” I prodded and probed, not quite making it into the folds and confines and shadows of the labyrinth of his mind, slightly glad for this because I knew how easy it would be to get lost in there.

I listened to seconds tick by on the watch that hung limply from my thin wrist. The CD player switched to the CD’s next track. It was a loud one filled with shrieking guitars and booming drums and I was glad that it drowned out the sound of time passing.

“I heard you, Mason,” Adam finally replied, reaching out past my head to flick the ashes of his cigarette onto my geometry book. He coughed and his hot, smoke-filled breath barreled into my face. I wondered if the breath of the devil felt and smelled like that. I breathed through my mouth. Did it taste like that?

“So do you?” I asked again. My hands smoothed down wrinkles in the sheets of Adam’s bed as my eyes glanced at him and then away again as he still didn’t look at me but continued the twirling and twisting of his eyeballs.

Another song played from the stereo. Slow and slurring out piano. My track on the mixed CD.

“No.” His words were harsh against the andante, legato, pianissimo music that was now swirling around the room. My hope fell. It failed. It withered up and curled up and so did I.

I’d been expecting him to say yes to my question since I knew no one else I knew would. Then again, when did we agree on something? The only thing we agreed on was that we would unquestionably go to his house on Thursdays every week during lunch to spend two sometimes silent, sometimes wildly, unbearably passionate hours together.

We disagreed about music and clothes styles and the importance of doing schoolwork and making something of and for one’s self. We disagreed about each other and what this strange, delicate, intangible thing was that we had between us. Was it love, was it hate, was it nothing? We couldn’t decide or come to terms with it.

But that one thing…that one, single thing I was hoping he would agree with.

I jumped when my song ended and Adam spoke once more.

“Sometimes though…sometimes I wonder how easy or hard it’d be to kill somebody else,” he slowly said.

His eyes stopped rolling and his foot began to twitch again as his cigarette burnt down to the filter and he stubbed it out on my book. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t.

“I mean…” A long pause. Seconds ticked. “I mean, bodies... It’s hard to decide if they’re weak or not, you know? They can take a lot of pain, but how much? And minds? How hard or easy would it be to break that down? And then people’s will to live… The strength varies on everyone…”

I took a breath that shook three times for the four seconds it took for me to suck it in. It worried me to know he’d been thinking about it this much, but did it worry him to learn that I’d been wondering how easy suicide would be? I doubted it.

“I mean you…” he continued, stretching one arm straight out in front of him. I watched his fingers flex and quiver. “You for example.” I did not want to be an example, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak up despite the ball of worry tangling and twisting in my belly. “Your body’s taken a lot from me… You have marks to prove that…but I think it could break easily. Your mind, though, would be a lot harder…and from the sounds of it, you’re questioning your will to live… It would be so easy to kill you, I think.” He turned his head and studied me, dropping his hand to scratch his cheek. “Yeah… Just grab a pillow…shove it against those lips for the kiss of death.”

He hissed death into my face and I greedily inhaled the devil’s breath that he offered. His words scared me a little, but I almost wished he would do it… Grab the pillow and do it. It would be a nice way to go… Comfortable in his upstairs bedroom with a familiar song playing and the mattress that my hands and knees had become so acquainted with beneath me… Scared, seduced and sated with the one I’d come to fear and love and hate and nothing. Yes, I thought it would be the perfect way for me to go.

“So…” He sat up and scooted to the corner, sitting up against it, propped there like a broken doll on a dusty shelf. “Give me my lighter.” I obeyed, fishing it out of the pocket of his jeans that were rumpled beside the bed. “You want to kill yourself.”

“I didn’t say that…” The CD came to a stop and I glared at it, not believing that I’d forgotten to put it on repeat. I hated the silence that we had between us. Not talking was fine, but the pure, unadulterated silence around our stained adultery was too much for me. At least the CD was a comfortable meshed mess of our tastes to fill the gaps and spaces we always left between our breath and bodies.

“Yeah. You didn’t. You never say anything.” Adam lit another cigarette. I coughed. He blew tainted air into my face and so I coughed again.

“I…I just asked a question…” I never said anything? It seemed like I could never stop saying things when I was around him and needed to speak. Or did I just say nothing worth listening to?

“No one brings up suicide without a reason.”

“I just think about it sometimes is all,” I slowly replied, staring across the room and out his window where someone jogged by below. “I can’t imagine doing it.”

“Because you’re a coward.”

I turn back to Adam and glare at him. “Killing oneself is cowardly.” Did I really believe that? Yes, I did… Then why was I having this conversation? I was lost for thought, just lost in words.

He shrugged and smirked. “Depends on which way you look at it. You’re taking the easy way out of life, but if you can’t do it it’s because you’re too much of a sissy.”

“And what about you?” He was making me angry. I thought that we could have a civil conversation but he had to turn it into an argument. He turned everything into an argument. I once accidentally told him I loved him and he turned that into an argument too, until I finally took it back just to shut up him and get the smug expression from his hard, sharp face. “You’re saying all this stuff about killing people, but I think you’d be too much of a coward to do it.”

He shrugged again and shook his dull brown hair from his face. “We could prove it… You’re talking about giving up on life. I’m talking about making people give up their lives. Two birds with one stone. I murder you. You’re dead without having to run away.” His smirk grew wider as he blew more smoke into my face.

“You’re sick,” I informed him, quickly turning away and sliding off the bed. I stepped over his dirty clothes that littered his bedroom floor and turned off the stereo. “That’s seriously all you are. Sick, sick, sick.” I glanced down at my watch as the sudden flood of silence allowed the ticking to grow unbearably loud. “Adam, we should head back to schoo-”

I turned around to find him standing with his hands on his hips in front of me. “And what exactly does that make you, Mason?” he asked, smiling down at me.

I glared. I glowered. I clutched onto my stomach that was churning and whirling inside me. “Fuck you. I’m going back to school.” I stood and edged around him, treading over his clothes on the way to his door, but before my fingers could close around the doorknob, his fingers closed around my wrist.

Fear bubbled up from the churning mass that was my stomach and I stared at Adam over my shoulder. His face was calm, his cigarette tucked between red, full lips. His face stayed calm as he gave my wrist a yank and spun me so I faced him. The fear boiled and bubbled more. Adam gave me a shove and I fell against the door, the doorknob jabbing into my lower back painfully.

I twisted my body and edged closer into the corner, cursing myself as I did so, realizing that I was now trapped by the wall, the door, and Adam’s bed.

“What’re you doing?” I demanded, my eyes searching for a good way to escape. If I could get around him where would I go, anyway? Out the window…and in just my underwear? Not likely.

“When I first brought up killing you, your eyes lit up. Why the sudden change of heart, Mason? Hmm?” He reached out and stroked my cheek with the side of his thumb. I jerked away, my breath coming out in short, sob-like bursts.

“I didn’t think you’d do it… You’re not going to do it…?” I couldn’t keep the question out of my voice and once again I swore at myself for making a mistake. You’re never supposed to show fear, but I think I showed it all along…from the first day I met Adam, I was afraid of him and that’s how he got me home into bed with him. That’s how he got me to come back week after week.

“But you want to die.” He stepped closer to me and his hand traveled up to lightly tug on a lock of my light hair.

Fear gave way to tears that began to sluice down my cheeks. “No… I’m sorry… I was just wondering… My parents…they expect so much…but they just don’t see me and I thought if it was hard to do I could try and fail and they’d see me and no one at school talks to me and all I have is you and I thought that I didn’t have you because I don’t have you because you won’t let me and I thought then that it would be easy… I just wasn’t sure…” The tears wouldn’t stop and neither would the words and soon I was sliding down to the floor, resting my head on my knees as my body shook and my watch flicked through seconds. “Please don’t…please don’t do it…”

There was nothing but the ticking and my wild breathing for a few long minutes until I finally found the strength to raise my head. Adam was sitting now too, his back against the foot of his bed, his bare feet pressed against the door, toes splayed.

“You’re an idiot,” he muttered. “A bumbling, blithering idiot. You think I’d kill you?” He snorted out some laughter. “An idiot.”

“So you just wanted to scare me?” I asked. “Hear me beg for my life so you could laugh? Well, congratulations! Laugh!”

His eyes flicked to me and he rolled his eyes, just once this time. “You’re the one who brought this whole thing up. I just went along with it.” He reached out a hand and placed it on one of my feet. I closed my eyes and tried not to jerk away.

“So you could have a laugh. What would you care anyway, if I died? You’d lose someone to fuck and tease, but that space can easily be filled, right? Fuck you… I’m leaving and I’m never going to come back.” I stood and stepped over him, searching for my clothes.

“Mason, wait…” Adam sighed, glancing back at me. “Knock it off…” He crawled over to me and I glared, sitting down on the edge of his bed as I pulled on my pants and socks. “I’m sorry, okay?” He rested his chin on my knee, reaching out to trace his finger around my belly button. “I just wanted to scare the death out of you.”

I raised an eyebrow, slightly confused at his sudden burst of niceness. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him act that way before. “That’s stupid and it makes no sense. You’re just sick,” I said anyway.

He sat up more, pushing his torso between my knees and bringing his hands behind me to gently stroke my lower back. “I don’t know what would happen to me if you decided to just give up… You know? You put up with me…you listen to me…” His cheeks flooded red. “Not many people do.”

I shivered and shook, not able to meet his eyes. What was he saying? He was acting too out of character for me to know what to say or do. Seconds blotted my silence and I finally looked down to him, bending to kiss his forehead, my breath catching in my throat when I heard a sniffle come from him.

After a few more of those marked seconds passed, I opened my mouth and whispered, “I…I think that suicide would be a very hard thing to do…”

Fin…

Rawr. If you’re reading this Jordan, remember day 4s:sniffles: I miss you, ho.

Title snagged from a line in the book Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite...

"Death is easy" is chanted by two creepy twins...