Convenience, Store

“When did you kill her?”

“I didn’t.”

“And why did you kill her?”

“I didn’t.”

“What did you use to kill her?”

“ ”

“Okay. Okay, okay, alright - I get it. You, you’re not someone who likes questions. Or you’re not someone who likes giving answers. Okay.”

“Correct. Fuck you.”

“Hu, wha, hey, fuck you, man. Fuck you. Like, I’m not the one who did this shit, I’m not the one I’m not the reason why we’re here right now you—”

“Not me. Not me, either.”

“You ”

I saw him. We all did, like, I and we and I saw him, sitting next to the body; knees-tucked, elbows wrapped, head down and leaning against the wall and sitting next to her body. No one knows this girl’s name. We don’t know her age - although she’s young. We don’t know whether she was at school or working somewhere - although there was loose stationery in her handbag; different pens, different block colors, with different company logos on them like you know - and her handbag was a fake Louis Vuitton, one of us could tell by the frayed stitching inside, and she had her throat sliced open, gaping and wide-angled, wide-angled and open, her neck muscles were pink and fibrey and thin and tightly taut and the blood had latched dry, puckered, around her collarbone. He had sat there for a while.

“You… what?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Know, what?”

“The words I’m thinking about you.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong. I’d love to. I’d really really love to. I’d love to know every word you’re thinking; how you’re thinking it; I’d love to hear them slip from your brain to your tongue and into my—”

“Oh my God shut the fuck up.”

“ ”

“Thank fuck.”

“But you won’t get the answers you want, if you want me to oh my God shut the fuck up.”

“I, sure, okay. But I, I just need a break, from, like, answer-seeking, just for one moment.”

And I punch him in the face. On the cheekbone. I aim for the cheekbone nearest to me. Before arriving here, I, no, I’d never like hit anyone before. I still don’t like how my shoulder feels foreign, when I do, punch. But I’m getting better. Slightly. The hit makes him gaze down, before he returns his eyes up to me.

“Do you want to fight? We can fight.”

“ ”

“If you want to, just untie me.”

“Obviously fucking not.”

“Well, fine, fine. I won’t fight back. You can just hit me - again - and again - and again and again again and again and, would that make you feel better? About her?”

“Probably. Yeah.”

“There’s a poem I like, called ‘The Lost Hotels of Paris’. Have you heard of it?”

“ No. No, I haven’t.”

“Would you like me to tell you about it?”

“Not really.”

“Well… that’s, that’s disappointing. You’ll have to, well, indulge my poem anyway. You’ll have to listen to what I want to say.”

“Eh, not really.”

“Really? I think that’s how conversation works.”

“This is an interview; an interrogation.”

“Both of those are adjectives without the adjectives for a conversation.”

“Fuck you, dude. What does Paris have to do with her?”

I point to her body. We dragged her into the nearby shop, into this nearby storage room. She slumps against a metal rack full of instant ramen bowls. Her ripped navy jeans, her stained indigo top; they don’t blur into her every-colored background. She watches me talk to him. He flicks his eyes over to her, and breaks a quarter-smile back to me, like he’s given the wrong answer in the lecture hall so oh, hm, oh well.

“I can make it have something to do with her.”

“Fine. Fuck. Tell me about your stupid fucking poem.”

“It talks about how the Lord gives everything and takes it back. Even with stars - when we look at the sky, we see what’s not there anymore, just a memory of where those stars once were. But the poem says that's okay.

You see - I think you see - I trust you see - because you seem smart, well, ish, and while the poem also claims that poetry lies, that words deceive, well, I think that’s the one thing it doesn’t get quite true. The images I chose for you; the stars; the inherent bargain of this all; well it tells you about her—”

I hit him, again, on the lip, which splits, yet despite the blood and the cut he doesn’t flinch away this time. He just smiles this time.

“Ha you you asked me why I killed her?”

“ ”

“But isn’t it obvious? Isn’t that a stupid stupid fucking question?”

“ ”

“Tell me, please, indulge me and tell me how long you’ve been here?”

“ ”

“Oh, fucking tell me. Fucking tell me how long you’ve been here, in this fucked up world of ours?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard, to keep track.”

“Fucking guess.”

“Two weeks. Just over, maybe.”

“Ha, ha, hahahahathen, then you’ve killed, too. You’re still here, and so you must’ve killed, too.”

“To survive.”

“Why can’t that be the reason? She’s dead because I need to survive; because we all want to survive - you know, maybe instead of hitting me, you should be thanking me, since since—”

“You’re lying: no one needed to die that game. You heard the rules.”

“Yes. Yes, and I played within them, as is my right, and—”

“Don’t talk to me about fucking rights. Don’t you see? Don’t you see - let your poems and your words go and let your brain fucking see. You called this a fucked up world, and it’s true. You’re tied to a plastic chair by a group of fucking twenty-year-olds in the backroom of a convenience store and we’ll do whatever we want to you and then when you go if you go you’ll play in another game tomorrow, and maybe you’ll win, maybe you’ll live, but maybe you won’t. Your tomorrow isn’t a guaranteed right anymore. Neither is mine. But shit, fuck, fuck we finally had a game where everyone could’ve walked out and slept one more sleep and you decided, no, not for her.”

“To sleep one more sleep?”

The overhead ceiling lights flicker, on, off, on; they burst across his face as he laughs.

“What is the point of one more sleep? To see more dreadful dreadful starlight? To lie in the park in the humid humid park and mourn the bedroom you’ll never see again? You should thank me; your friends should thank me; she should thank me. These games are not worth one more night of sleep.”

“Then why did you play tonight?”

“To lose. I want so desperately to lose.”

There’s a knock on the door; a voice calling me out. Before I leave, I reach down and grip his face, pinch down the flesh of his cheeks until my fingers and thumb slide towards his bloody lower lip. He takes the opportunity to bite my thumb, down, delicate, a moth landing on a stem.

I leave both him and the girl, sitting slouched in the backroom.

We find the store-owner’s keys. We lock the fucking door.