If/when you/we publish this, you/we should consider including my notes. I give my blessing. In fact, I insist. What you’ve written is very cool, Art, and I can’t say that strongly enough. You’re a good writer and you tried, tried like fuck, but you need me to fill in some of the holes you left.

Just look at that deliciously ironic previous sentence! The vampire who steals life/soul from you is offering to then *add* to your book. Huh? That shit is gold, Art. You know you want it included. Ah, the jagged ouroboros of life.

You don’t even have to include my name—fictitious or real—as a coauthor on the cover. I don’t mind, and not what I’m looking for. Honestly and as always, I’m here to help you.

Look, just like how we wrote your history paper on poor Mercy Brown, we’re collaborators. We always have been.

Hardly Getting Over It

HARDLY GETTING OVER IT

(2014–2017)

I know you were too despondent to leave a chapter title and summary, so I added it for you.

A chapter in which acceptance is the price of freedom. I know that’s not as good as something Art would’ve written. We should probably use what you wrote first, below.

The rest of this is an act of confession, contrition, self-flagellatory punishment, and just maybe a petty and glorious revenge. I am not and have never been above the latter. It might be all I’ve ever wanted.

* * *

At the writing of this, Mom has been dead for one year.

She had lung cancer. It was aggressive and didn’t respond to treatment. Toward the end, she developed pneumonia, which was the phrase her doctor used. I asked, “Developed, like film?” I said it like I was angry at him, so angry I could punch a hole in his chest.

The infection killed her before the cancer could. And I know it’s my fault.

I don’t think I can write about this. I’m sorry.

I hated reading these lines. I wanted to burn them gone.

* * *

After (After what? After the night I saw it sitting on Mom’s chest? After the night I didn’t try to get it off her? After I didn’t know if it had been feeding on her for part or the entirety of the time I’d been back home? After I still cowardly call it “it” and not “me”?), I threw away my blue jacket and I slept with my bedroom door closed and locked. Each morning when I woke the door was unlocked and ajar. One night I moved my dresser in front of the locked door. I had to take the drawers out first because it was too heavy to move otherwise. The dresser was back in its usual spot the next morning.

Mom’s cough got worse. She lost weight. Her diagnosis was swift and irreparable. Irreversible.

I didn’t know what to do. I tried staying awake while she slept, and I became a zombie—no, a ghoul. I became who I was.