I. Vicious State of Mind

“Caution, approaching platform.”

The announcement drowns out the clipped whispers, but the furtive eyeballing remains. Some knew me immediately. The celebrity-like recognition flashed like fat paparazzi Nikons as they traced the familiar tattoo slopping down my cheek, burning into the path of another that peaks just above the collar of a grimy Seattle Sounders T.

Most don’t. You got the ones boycotting the news. Media war on truth, yea? Can’t trust shit. The conspiracy theorists, ya know? All tinted shades and darting eyes. Illuminati everywhere, man.

High school kids too young to know my face or past. Too absorbed what actor is currently fuckin’ the latest big thing in the music biz. Who the fuck is Taylor Swift? Sounds like all kinds of jailbait.

And then there’s my favorite group, the ones mirroring me. The ones too strung out on their own vices, too worried about bills, child support, and late night gunfire. Pip-pop drive-byes, ya know? Too big a bucket’a personal hells to care about the story of another black struggling right along side them in the Twomps.

Shit if whispered gossip ain’t the addict’s heated spoon of heroin though. You know it’s a bad idea as it shimmers and melts… shit do ya fucking know it. But the intoxicating need to have it flowing through your veins overrides rational thought and self-preservation. One taste and… haze… it feels good to drown your own pain by tasting other’s, especially if it’s good product. Good gossip. Real black and white Romeo and Juliet shit. High society and gutter trash. So pure you wouldn’t even know you were ODing until it was too late.

And yet, the kid in me notes the curious fear mixing with their gossiping greed. As a kid in the dubs, I grew up with the pip-pip-pop-pop symphony of gunfire. They grew up with clean spoons in mouths and no cans of spam. Bastards didn’t know shit about fear.

They probably think of me as just another one of those mindless gangbangers you always hear about on the 4 o’clock news. The fat, small station moneymaker: crime and death, brother, crime and death. Another scary black man let loose on their streets… again. They ain’t exactly wrong, but they sure as hell ain’t exactly right either. They don’t know me. They got no right to measure me. And yet, I can’t really blame them for their twisty predilections.

Self-doubt. Self-recrimination. Hate. And a crumpled dollar’s worth of short-changed self-pity. I’ve gone through the 12-steps of bullshit too many times to count. It’s all one big circle-jerk in plastic chairs with a plate of cookies and a dozen years of sob stories. If you’re real lucky, a few scripture verses too. What do they say though? Guilt festers and consumes when you think you deserve it.

At the same time though, when you got blood like mine… when that blood has painted back-alleys into ruby-red murals because you were just another punk-ass kid with the world to fight, there’s always that scrap of pride that can’t be beaten outta you completely.

So, about half a dozen stops ago, I abandoned my sketchbook and inks and charcoal pencils and stared right back, fingers tapping out a hip-hop beat on the handrail. That only got’em riled up, the whispers traveling through the cramped metal tube like paint in water. Not a single bit of clear liquid is spared the dirty truth of who and what I am. What I’ve done. It moves right on down the line.

A group of teens, not much younger than me when everything tumbled off axis, stare the hardest. The longest. But unlike the rest, their mouths don’t move at all. They don’t need them to, which both fascinates and disturbs me cuz it’s another reminder that the world doesn’t stop moving even when you do. It keeps on advancing, sometimes for the worst.

Their fingers, replacing the cupped hand whispering of childhood I remembered, tip-tap across shiny sleek screens, futuristic phones buzzing like angry hornets with a flurry of messages. I can almost picture little thought bubbles sprouting above their heads with tiny people in them, trading words in a language I’m cut off from.

It’s a good idea for a thematic painting so I tuck that stray idea away for later when insomnia rears its ugly head and the screams beat bongo drums against my ribs.

And yet, one of the teens is oblivious to the finger tapping communication. She’s a dark haired girl with pouty lips and bright slanted eyes. Asian maybe. Don’t know which flavor. The kind that draws eyes though.

There’s a sort of morbid curiosity in her slate grays, a dark magnetic pull that has me wishing I could bleed through the seat beneath me to the tracks below. I’ve seen that look before. Taken advantage of it. Been taken advantage by. Won’t succumb to either again.

And yet, another voice, real basic and instinctual, and fringed with the danger dad’s warn daughters about, has different ideas and seedy carnal cravings. They’re the sort prison tries to beat out of you, make you forget, make you hate. And, perhaps worst of all, designed to make a black man fear.

That voice scribbles out scenes in garish graffiti and it plays out with frightening simplicity at first: stick figures coming together as the pages they inhabit flip by at film reel speed. Soon enough they’re tearing away from the paper, jumping into a stylized, three-dimensional world of M.C. Escher’s Relativity. Their smiles, our smiles, twist, and bodies warp. We’re rutting upside down, pressing against ceilings and walls at impossible angles, the laws of gravity and reason funneled into incomprehension and dizzying madness. A bad coke trip.

I blink and it all warps, a black and white silent film, fluttering frame by horrifyingly slow frame.

She’s bent over on tiled floor, round ass pointed to the sky. Fat pearled drops of semen drip from her flared pink pussy. And just before a giant invisible eraser wipes the scene away, her slim neck cranes around, and frosted blue lips grin ear to ear.

I can’t breathe. Everything’s cold. I run my hands up my arms, looking for the raised little bumps from a needle, breathe out raspy relief when I don’t find any. The girl’s smile still remains though, taunting. I grimace and squeeze my eyes shut.

I'm crazy.

Five years. Can you really lose that much of yourself?

Rhetorical.

I know all about both prison experiments and prison realities. My boy Zimbardo showed what happens even to those claiming to be good people. And there aren’t many of those to begin with. Real ones I mean.

It doesn’t take much though. For damn sure. What? You surprised? Thought I wouldn’t know him? Oh, I know his work, have experienced it firsthand. Prison creates roles to be filled, man. And you change yourself to fit into them. And it’s real fluid-like that change. Like diving into water.

The train jolts slightly as it pulls into the platform and I’m… back… eyes opening slowly. The whispers have picked up again, louder, more frenetic.

I realize three things in that moment. Each more fucked than the last.

One. My eyes are burning a hole through the mouth of that pale, dark haired girl.

Two, there’s an uncomfortable, pulsing erection in my jeans.

Three. The atmosphere inside the compartment has shifted. I look around. And in everyone’s eyes lies accusation. Disbelief. Contempt. Fear. Disgust. Rage. They’re the same emotions I saw on the daily growing up in Ghosttown, only magnified by a thousand. Cuz, being honest, people round here always seem to know when you’re from the dirty thirties. And they judge you for it.

Except her. She doesn’t even bat an eye. Doesn’t whisper. Doesn’t smile either. Her eyes are trained on the bulge I’m trying to hide beneath a sling-bag. Those slate grays of hers make my skin crawl. Reminds me of a prison therapist. There was a dichotomous split to that freckled broad: the dead eyes of someone who’s seen too much evil in the world, was scared by it all, and yet… had a certain kind of twisted, starry-eyed lust fueled by the very criminals perpetrating that frightening evil, by dangerous men locked behind bars, a cold decadent zoo designed to fulfill fucking fantasies. Fantasies many of my fellow inmates were more than willing to help provide under the guise of research for a book on prison psychology.

I’m unashamed in saying I volunteered more than once. Tasted her sweet hellish mouth in cramped closets. Put dick to ass. Gave her all she wanted and more. Until fear and intoxication merged and she changed into something I sometimes regret helping along. Little white girl psychologist had no idea. Had her mind fucked to pieces with no puzzle master to put it all back together. But when you’re desperate, and the only other way to numb the world out is drugs, you made the hard decisions. And I wasn’t going down that trap again.

So here I am, inner voice humming at those memories as this small, not so innocent girl glides slim tan fingers up slim tan thighs, higher and higher until they drift under baby blue skirt. The tip of her red tongue pokes out as her fingers manipulate the junction between her smooth thighs, working quickly to beat the next PA blast.

“Stand clear, doors opening.”

The suction seal breaks with a hissed sigh of relief and bodies flow from the metal tube and out onto the platform. I expect jostling. Impatience. A maddened collective need to push through the crowd and escape the close-knit confines of steel and aluminum and a monster they cannot stand, nor understand. But there isn’t. Just movement. Serpentine. Cold. Just warm bodies hiding cold blood moving from one place to the next before clocks tick and the cycle begins again. I’m merely the un-caged, potentially violent entertainment to get them from point A to point B without falling asleep. I imagine they’ll send messages from their strange phones. Tell a friend what they saw on the ride home. Sympathies and horrors exchanged. And move on.

Forget.

Easy as eating granny’s warm apple pie.

The bizarre nature of the moment brings forth a rage I thought buried for good, a part of me that prefers cold stone, colder iron and a pallet thinner than a deck of cards. When the company of fellow convicts feels more sociable, more natural, and less like rats scuttling mindlessly for their one bit of happiness, their one bite of cheesy goodness before death, you almost want to go back.

But then, in a six-by-eight cell neighboring another six-by-eight cell, fifteen per wall, forty-five per floor, you share something in common with those around you. You don’t trust them. You hate each other. Would kill each other to survive if you had to. But they’re like you, in certain ways, and that’s something you can trust. Can connect to. Even with a shiv in the back. You’d at least understand, in some perverse way.

The platform empties just as quickly as it filled, bodies piling in so the process can begin again at the next platform: stranger for stranger, destination for destination, until the crackling PA system crackles out that the next stop is the last stop, the end of the line.

That frightened me as a kid growing up, ya know? The last stop I mean. The kind of scared that’s wholly irrational. Makes no sense. Ain’t no rhyme or reason for it. Just is. Except there probably is both rhyme and reason and I’m not at all inclined to accept them quite yet.

The train jerks and begins its slow crawl away from the platform. I look up from my empty sketchpad to catch sight of a figure running frantically towards us, arms wind milling. But there’s no stopping now. No one cares. It’s Oaktown, man. Always gotta see to yourself first.

Even so, I capture this desperate figure with charcoal nibs on the page in my lap. Give life to a face I can’t see from this distance.

Wild pink hair.

Sleek ruddy cheeks.

Bright eyes with laughter lines.

I continue on and for reasons I wish I can’t explain, I also bring a subtle sadness into the face. Pain hidden behind below porcelain surface.

Yet, I give the face a smile. So wide it hurts. Fucking megawatt intensity. Hot enough to scorch away all the two-faced expressions and bullshit people wear throughout the day.

I stop.

Look down.

Grimace tightly.

I’ve drawn… the past, or rather, a reminiscent imagining of it, with slight changes here and there. It’s not pleasant one. I tuck the pad into my beat-up sling-bag and pull out a block of post-it notes.

“Caution. Approaching platform.”

The train creeps to a stop. Bodies pile off. Bodies pile on.

When I’m finished, I flip through the block of post-its.

Masked stick figures dance to silent beats

Over moonlit sheets,

Oblivious to the world,

To each other.

Until they press together,

Morph into one,

Bouncing over beds,

Bouncing against walls,

Down empty boulevards…

Bouncing, bouncing, bouncing…

Until they separate again

Into two distinct forms,

Silent again. Considering each other

The way I guess the Martian and the man

Might… What the shit is that?

Who are you?

What are you?

Alien dreams in

Convoluted space.

II. Bubble Gum

“Caution, approaching platform.”

The aluminum can is a boiling furnace. Sweat beads on foreheads. Heads droop. Eyes flutter. The broken A/C system spits and clunks along, adding only lukewarm air to the suffocating Oakland heat pushing through the windows.

It’s ninety-five degrees outside and hotter than hell in the tube. But it’s a hell I welcome. Two weeks released and this is the first time I don’t have to worry about the stares and the whispers.

I struggle to finish a warm-up sketch, twisting a charcoal nib in sloping waves, blending with the pad of my thumb. It’s rough. Normally crisp lines are sloppy.

“Stand clear, doors opening.”

Muted sighs of relief filter around as bodies struggle up and out into the blistering afternoon sun.

I’ve drawn her again. Well, not her exactly I guess. It’s more symbol attached to an early memory. A hummingbird, wings blurred, hovering over snapdragons.

Under the oppressive heat of the sun, I struggle to relive a particular memory. It was winter I think and we were tangled beneath a quilt next to a space heater, her slick pussy radiating warmth against my leg. I remember how she used to complain about being cold all the time. Even when Oakland was a veritable sauna compared to the cold tundra she was born in. She liked to say it was the Russian blood in her, punishing her family through her for leaving the Motherland. Would mutter a few obscenities in her native tongue and raise a middle finger up to the sky.

She’d been humming that night, as she often did, while I traced that hummingbird ink at the crease of her thigh, content to watch the wings flutter each time she moved.

Then she’d stopped suddenly, lotion soft hand skimming over my groin. Little secrets and dreams spilled from her lips like fruity ambrosia. Dark secrets. Vivid dreams. Kaleidoscopic. I thought it was the shrooms talking, but it was all her. Always her. Her mind was beautifully eccentric and too fucking good for this goddamn planet. And it had my fingers itching, desperate to draw that pensive look of peace on her face. She was…

A loud pop shatters the daydream and I fight like hell to keep it going as it puffs away to black smoke.

“Whatcha drawing?” a breathy voice asks.

I look up and you’re hunched over like Auguste Rodin’s, The Thinker, green eyes working me over with surveillance-like intensity, a predator drone skimming Middle East desert for targets.

Your eyes widen when they find the tattoos.

“Damn. So… you’re him? Mhm. You don’t look like a killer to me. Tabloids sure did a number on your face. You’re actually kinda cute.”

You blow another bubble from a large wad of what’s gotta double-bubble. It’s a perfect match for the sleek strands of cotton candy like carnival hair tucked beneath a backwards As cap.

“Penny for thoughts? The dirtier the better.”

You lean forward, rolling the gum round your tongue, slender jaw rocking back and forth over your fist like a rowboat down a stream.

You repeat the question and I go slack-jawed.

For a split second, you’re someone else entirely, and it’s Tupac risen from the grave, spinning poetic beats from the other side about the truth and nature of death and life. Mystical relativity. Real Einstein shit, ZeeZee would say, as if he’d ever cracked a physics book in his life.

It’s only for that one split second though, because, beneath the electric pink hair, glossy lipstick, and thin tank top, I know you.

Well, everyone in C-Block knew you. You’d sucked off half my cellblock if you trusted the words of petty dealers, tweaked out users, and the rotating detention of the Angels of Hell.

Best vanilla ass in Oaktown. Ain’t another dirty white girl quite like her in the Dubs. Fucks like a coked-up little Aphrodite trapped in a skinny little tomboy body, desperate for some thick black snake, man. Mouth as filthy as that pussy is tight. Fuckin’ bleeds the cum from your dick like one of them vampire classics. Twilight? The fuck is this Twilight shit, ese? I’m talkin’ classic Dracula. Some Bram Stoker shit on acid. Honest to god truth. Magic pussy. I’d do five more years just to pump another load in her. Better than shooting up with Slim’s sweet coke.

From my experience, however shaky the addicts were with truth often times, they almost always had a way with words.

So yea, I knew all the stories. Even have one of my own, though I wish I didn’t. Día de Muertos: a day of the dead that still drips with its black comedic irony.

It’d been her idea to go. Said her daddy would kill her if his little princess mixed with people like me. Not only a dirt-poor artist who tagged buildings in his free time, but darker than his Lexus. Told me the fear of a backhanded slap, a private boarding school, and the loss of her credit cards just got her horny. Made her wanna get blazed and naked and maybe even pregnant. Hit every single layer of stomach churning depravity to bend daddy’s mind.

I hated the man. Had one of his billboards across the street, face staring down at us, taunting as his lawyers tried to get folks evicted so he could bulldoze the few blocks left to us for uppity bastards driving sleek sports cars.

So of course I agreed, with a grunt and a swivel of hips, pumping daddy’s princess and the fucked up love of my life full up with black baby batter.

And somehow, by pure chance, she stumbled upon you after we got separated in a pulsating sea of lurid costumes and rhythmic dance… the Dubs’ favorite bottle rocket blonde.

When I’d finally found her, in a feverish daze on the streets, she smelled of sex and fruity cocktails, damp silver panties clenched tight in her fist.

We’d fucked like animals back at my place, heated confessions burning from her lips like wildfire. Tales of you writhing in a coffin, spunk painted over pale nipples, making them shine like rare silver dimes. Her pink tongue fluttering over your puckered star like butterfly wings, fingers scissoring inside your messy snatch, teasing out all the creamy arousal. And a triangular daisy chain of lust with a raven-winged beauty as cock after cock glazed your supple bodies like fresh pastries.

You made her want to feel more I think. To fly higher, transcend further. She wanted to join me in the Technicolor void I dive into during my drug-fueled hazes of creativity, splashing paint on canvas, creating images that pry open minds. She said she wanted to catch all the stars in her mouth, swallow them whole till she choked on light. So I took her there and the world around us bent.

I woke up to her cold body half on me, semen crusted between her legs, the pale rubber tubing still wrapped around her arm, a smile still on her lips. True, macabre horror I’ll never forget. Don’t deserve to.

And you…

You remind me too much of her.

You’re not her.

You’re not. Of course you’re not.

No one ever could.

And yet, you’re painfully familiar in all the ways that had ever mattered to a piece of shit, would be, murderous ‘artist’ like me.

Same mouth. Same nose. Same eyes, only, more blue than green. And that same look of feline curiosity as you measure me up for all I’m worth.

“Caution, approaching platform.”

It’s all too much. I feel dizzy. My stomach churns and I fight back the sour taste of acidic bile.

I spring to my feet as the train comes to a rest, bowling over your small frame that had been hunched over me, dropping my sketchbook at your feet.

“Stand clear, doors opening.”

“What the fuck, asshole?” you hiss from the dirty floor.

I look down at you. Wish I could rip my beating heart out and throw it in your face. Watch you eat it, teeth ripping it to bloody pulp. I didn’t survive prison for this.

“That’s what’s fucking up. You want it painted too?” I mutter hoarsely to myself as much as to you… to her.

“Wait… what?” you stutter, eyebrows furrowing confusion. “Hey, where’s my apology!”

I don’t hear you. Don’t care. I need air, space. I can’t breathe.

The doors finally hiss open and I stumble out, not caring I’ve left my sling-bag on the seat, my sketchbook at your feet.

III. Verisimilitude

“Caution, doors opening.”

They pour out like a hoard of multicolored ants from their rainbow hill: women in tight little spandex shorts and sports-bras chit-chatting at breakneck speed. Think 90s exercise videos. They’ve got the wild hair thing going, the white Adidas, and the striped socks. Fucking white people. And yea, I’m something of an expert. The guards always got a kick showing those videos on projectors to the inmates during rare movie nights. Liked to say that the hip thrusting workouts would be the closest we’d ever get to sex with a woman again so we’d better enjoy. Then they’d mime some gyrations. Thought it funny I guess. Like I said. Fucking white people. Had no idea we were getting some pussy from the prison’s psychotic psychologist.

One of the group, a redhead with an ass that’d make the women of Spanish Harlem jealous, gives me a fiery look of appraisal when my eyes linger too long. I return it and she shrinks back into her loquacious little group of giggling plastic ants. I turn around as I board and she’s got this extra rock to her ass. Tick tock. Tick tock. When she mounts the stairs, there’s a ghost of a smile on her raspberry lips. She turns, captures my eye, and winks. Takes me back. We called freckled little white girls like that Firecrackers growing up. Lose a hand if you weren’t careful. Take you to heaven in a blast of neon red light if you were lucky.

Granny Teague would disagree. ‘Just another typical little white bitch. Pale-skinned devils the lot of em. Flash you some uppity sass… shake her tiny white tail. Chain you down and steal your beautiful black soul. It’s what they all do. Don’t you ever let me catch you flirtin’ with them, Jalen-baby. I’ll whoop your brown ass.’

Let’s just say Granny Teague often wore herself out with all the whoopin’ soon as Wednesday hit.

I settle into my seat in a blessedly empty compartment as the train embarks and pull out a fresh sketchbook from a beat-up backpack. Your charcoal face fills the first few pages. I couldn’t stop my hand drawing you, a large pink gum bubble between pursed lips.

It's been three weeks since I saw you that first time. Could do with an eternity more, but enough was enough. I had to risk it. I couldn’t take riding the long, looping bus rides anymore. Too many stops near too many old haunts with too many temptations to restart old habits. If prison did one thing right, it got me clean. Damned if I sink low again. Granny Teague may be dead, but her spirit still lives on in Aunt Jewel. That woman may still hold some measure of love for me, but continued disappointments would be a biblical blight on my soul in her eyes, even if it was already stolen a devil with blonde hair.

“Caution, approaching platform.”

I mouth the PA system’s announcements in mock salute as I try drawing something different for a change. Something old. Something new. A superhero. The sort of hero a kid idolizes growing in the ghetto before getting reeled in by the mystique of villains, drugs, and all the pussy he can handle.

“Stand clear, doors opening.”

The sketch comes to life. I pull out an outlining pen. Add flair. Depth. A symbol. No cape. Always thought them ridiculous. Fuck. I feel young again, but it’s a nice place to retreat sometimes when you need it… a decent place. When everything isn’t so loud and awful.

“Whatcha drawing this time, big guy?”

Heart punches ribs with quick, hard-hitting jabs: one, two, one, two. Thump. Thump. Thump. I’m on the ropes against Mike Tyson, battling specters of the past I thought I’d already knocked out.

POP!

Pride and decorum fly out the window and I bolt up for the door. But the door’s already sealed shut, the train already moving.

I turn around and you’re in my seat, blowing pink bubbles of gum that match that equally pink hair. Flipping through my abandoned sketchbook, eyes widening after each page. And… my heart slows. A ray of sunshine makes your cheeks glow and your pink lips shine. You… don’t look anything like her from this angle. And as I take in your entire profile, I realize you really aren’t her at all. You’re thoroughly bohemian, like you’ve just stepped from Coachella and are still feeling the music vibrations humming in your body.

Despite all her rebellious living, flipping off her family and the world whenever we got together, she loved her designer labels and her ‘fuck me’ heels. She really did belong up there in the stars I guess. And you… organic, but no less enthralling, seem to belong here. Tethered to the ground. I think. I don’t know. My mind’s a fractured mess and I still want off this train.

“You’re hovering, dude. It’s kinda creepy.” You push a large pair of aviators back up your small nose and look up at me, then back down at my sketchbook. “You always draw strangers like this, or just tiny young white girls so you have a pretty face to tug one out to later?”

The bitter monster inside me rages. “The fuck would white girl like you know about art?”

You snort and roll your eyes hard, not at all impressed with my mouth. And neither am I if we’re being honest.

I sit down opposite you and take a few deep breaths. Granny Teague used to say anger was the devil’s work. Gave him energy as sure as the sun gave energy to her flower garden. And holding onto it made sure he’d stick around like the most stubborn of weeds, making even the prettiest collection ugly. I never cared for her bible philosophizing when she was alive. But she about had the sum of it when it came to anger. But knowing doesn’t make it any easier to control when you’ve drowned yourself in it for years.

“Hey,” you venture again.

“What?”

“These aren’t like your old ones.”

You bring out the sketchbook I’d left behind weeks ago from a Minnie Mouse bag. The familiar, worn leather cover is curled and cracked at the edges.

I grit my grit, hands clenching into fists until the knuckles turn white.

You’re unperturbed. “Hey, you’re the one who knocked me over and left it behind. Fucking hurt.”

“Don’t give a shit.”

You gesture to the newer sketchbook in your lap. “I can see that in your sketches.”

“You can’t see shit, white girl.”

You blow a few bubbles in response and I try to master the rage building up.

‘It’d be so easy,’ the monster inside me purrs. ‘Just like prison. You don’t even gotta know. Just black yourself out. Slutty little ass like hers won’t be missed. I’ll clean it all up. Real nice like. Real nice like.’

I shiver. It’s suddenly cold despite the Oakland heat warming our swaying cigar tin as it moves through the city and its boroughs. The scars all over my body come to life. Throb with a pain that actually feels good, which scares me a bit.

“Who is she?” Your voice cuts through, strong and clear.

The murderous voice and the delightful pain vanish.

You wear her narrow-eyed look of intense curiosity like a second skin. I hate the reminders.

I drop my head back against the window and stare up.

“You can read can’t you? You know exactly who she is… was. The LA Times did a nice little front-page piece on it. Crime of the decade n’shit. A real Greek Tragedy in the Twomps. Lily-white Princess of Oakland ODs. Power Family In Turmoil! May have been pregnant with child of hack street artist turned drug dealing gangbanger.” I parrot the headlines with rapid-fire intensity, one after another.

“Caution, approaching platform.”

I laugh darkly. “You know the tabloids liked to say I ran a train of my crack head buddies on her. Took some real lurid photos to send her rich daddy. Said she…”

Those stories weren’t the worst of it. I never really cared what monster I was painted as. I didn’t deserve much sympathy. I was a monster. Damn right. Maybe I was just a weak-willed, self-destructive one. But a monster’s a monster. Her? What they wrote about her. That was the tragedy.

The scent of strawberry watermelon shampoo slaps me. You’re standing right there in front of me and for a second it’s her, mirrored lenses reflecting a poor excuse of a human.

“Maybe I’m a bitch from the hood who doesn’t understand. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’re just a mean spirited asshole.”

You blow a large pink bubble till it pops loudly, pink elastic strands clinging to your lips. You peel them off slowly with a slender tongue.

“I know monsters. Anyone ever lived in the Twomps knows monsters.”

“Stand clear, doors opening.”

You drop the sketchbooks in the seat next to mine and soften your voice.

“I knew her,” you shrug, “I think. Maybe. Thought I recognized her on the news when…. Her mouth… a humming bird tattoo just here.” You point at your hip just at the bikini-line where neon green lace peeks out over a small intricate inking of a raven. “It was all a blur that night. Day of the Dead, ya know? Or night, I guess. You lose yourself. Good place to forget things.” You shrug again, hopeless.

“Why did she?” I rattle out.

You shrug, look off to nowhere in particular, eyes glazing over. “Who knows? Girls like her, like me… sometimes there’s just no explaining.”

I close my eyes, not really wanting to hear much more. Past is past, Granny Teague would say. Ain’t no use trying to keep relivin’ it. Devil wants you stuck there cryin’. Hatin’ everything. Stunted.

“They cleaned your place out when the story hit. Fought over every last scrap. Sold a lot off for a quick buck. Anything the cops left behind. Assholes trying to fund their own drug habits. Ironic, huh?”

“Ironic,” I echo, voice hollow.

You shrug. “Anyway. If you ever get done hatin’ yourself, maybe you’ll take a look.” You point to the sketchbooks. “And maybe you won’t. But if you want my gutter trash opinion, the real monsters can’t do drawings like that.”

The door light dings and you step off before the doors seal shut. You turn around as the train pulls away and give me the finger, pink hair fluttering in a bit of wind.