DATE: 7/9/20XX

LISTENING TO: The Wingless: One Girl In All the World

WATCHING: SLC Punk 

READING: Highlights for Kids!

MOOD: Blank ‘_’

Trying my damnedest to avoid this feeling of isolation. My days begin and end in my less-than-regulation-sized studio apartment, a cramped rhombus with a half-bath and a kitchenette tacked on to appease legal standards. The landlord proudly tells new tenants that these rentals used to be slaves’ quarters. I hear her repeating that factoid over and over to prospective tenants in her sing-songy soprano through the halls at least once a week. She always talks like these rooms are some novel part of history and not the homes to the most inconvenient of truths.

I don’t get out unless I’m going to work. I don’t go to places to meet people. Whenever I find myself talking to a stranger, it feels like they’re speaking gibberish. Like, I hear and understand the words being spoken to me, but my brain discards the message as incomprehensible. Their words have no meaning.

I can never relate to anyone. I believe I have the ability to feel empathy. I can feel the emotions of the characters in my books and movies. But when it comes to real people whom I could create a real, human connection? They’re mannequins. They’re faceless, thoughtless, walking beacons of disinterest and miscomprehension. They’re zombies.

My oversensitivity to cliche is my greatest weapon against these thoughts. Even right then, as I typed “zombie,” I felt myself cringe. I loathe how my writing tends to distill down into the embarrassing mope and edge of my youth. I’m not some scrawny kid, clad in black with my nails painted in oh-so-rebellious colors, headphones around my neck blaring Underoath while I pour my tortured soul into my journal.

Granted, I am in fact wearing all black as I write this.

But that is beside the point.

Imir’s brother has stopped texting me back with updates. I don’t know if the situation has gotten worse or if he is simply tired of me dumping my trauma via SMS. It is hard to talk about Imir without talking about the things he did to me and the way he made me feel. His brother understands this and, for a while, he was an open ear (or I guess an open phone screen?) The fact of the matter is, Imir was such an influence on me and it changed me forever.

He was abusive, through and through. He treated me with an overwhelming kindness when we first became friends and, when he had his hooks in me, he took advantage of me. It started with little digs at my character, little half-insults at the decisions I made. I thought to myself at the time that he was ribbing at me in the ways that close friends rib at each other. We were so close and he was so kind that he couldn’t have meant the words he said.

Of course, the truth was far more cruel and Imir understood early on that he had to lure people in before he could take from them. Maybe it wasn’t a conscious decision on his part or maybe it wasn’t on purpose. Maybe he wanted to try his hardest to be a kind person to me. But time and time again, he realized he could weaponize his kindness.

This is what I texted his brother and it was obvious he had heard it all before.

Our social circle collapsed pretty spectacularly as the erotic highs of youth rotted into the realities of true adulthood. Drama and breakups and “taking sides” eroded what we once believed to be strong bonds. At the other end of that circle’s collapse was a burning, putrid fire named Imir. He fucked and finagled his way to the hierarchy of friends and spared no moment to knock any one of us down a peg.

I would watch him yell and berate another among us and I would chuckle to myself. “You idiot,” I’d say, “how could you wrong my best friend like that? He never treats me that way. What did you do to piss him off?” Of course I was ignoring our indiscretions, our arguments in private, our moments where he made me feel less than human.

Jeremy was the first to leave the group after Sophia died. He and Imir were room mates and spent almost every day together, much to my jealousy. So it came as a surprise to everyone when he text Imir’s family that he was breaking all contact and that he expected money for his trouble. Apparently, the night before, Imir had tried to make a pass at Morgan and was rejected. So, he spent the night drinking two handles of whiskey and holding a lit zippo under everything in Jeremy’s room, flammable or not. It was a miracle the house didn’t burn down. Then, he slit his wrists for the first time.

I was at work when Imir sent me the pictures. He told me he was making beautiful angel wings. I called his mom but by the time I got ahold of her, the family had already gotten him to the hospital.

One by one, in one way or another, we dropped out of his life. Each time, we would alert his family that we couldn’t take it any more. I was one of the last, and I tried to leave as amicably as possible. There was always that evil. wriggling thought in the back of my head that I could have fixed him or healed him in some way. I only needed some time to myself.

I was woken up late last night, around 3 AM, by someone banging on my front door. Like an idiot, I answered without any hesitation. I was drowsy, or maybe I thought my landlord needed something (at 3 in the morning?) Instead, two of the hugest men I had ever seen in person waited in my hallway. I could not give a better description to these men other than to call them thugs. They were both over six feet tall with musculatures like MMA fighters, a white guy and a black guy. They wore matching, tight white t-shirts and high waisted jeans.

When I realized I may actually be in some sort of trouble, it was too late. They pushed me back and moved into my apartment. Adrenaline and fear had me frozen in half-defiance, half-panic. I asked them if I could help them in some pathetic display of politeness. “We’re here for Kalen,” one of them said and when I didn’t answer, they slammed the front door against the wall and asked again.

I didn’t know a Kalen and I told them that. They told me to “sit the fuck down” and I got on my ratty mattress on the floor, on top of the pile of comic books I had been reading when I passed out. They said, “no, the floor” and I awkwardly scooted to sit on the cold hardwood of the apartment. They made a small circle around my space, there wasn’t much to explore. One of them went into my bathroom and carefully peaked behind my shower curtain into my bath.

“Who are you?” One of them asked and I answered. He rolled his eyes at my name and then the both of them just left. They slammed the door shut on the way out. I bet I’ll get a complaint in my mail box tomorrow from my landlord for loud noises.

What the fuck was that?