Gallows Eve Mantra:

Apparently, there were no other ways to rearrange the alphabet. He couldn’t help but be a latch key kid that summer night. Melissa thought they were babies having a bonfire and so rapidly she got burned. He smelled like cigarette stains on animal fur. He was passively obsessive, she a bit more overt. She used to think she saw God in rainbows, but that night she wished it not to rain. We seek sunshine and end up with less. It’s quite a dichotomy, the sons and the rain. She picked seashells alone remembering to be cautious with each step for fear of what she might drag with her along the way.

She passed out on East Sandwich beach, numb, dripping with alchemy and slicing shivers. She should have known better. She marveled at the fact that the human consequences of various forms of aggression correlate with the tenacity of the aggressee. He lurked around her with all of his demons as she buried herself inside the sand. Granulated and small was the only way she could love, or so at least she thought.

She woke up back inside the cabin in a vague blur. Protectively and without haste she pushed her body through the floor. She was only trying to be supportive in the first place. His dad had popped oxycodone like candy, but no one from Boston Latin ever talked about it out loud. We all assumed he overdosed and it was guised as a heart-attack. It happened a week ago Sunday. She knew he didn’t want to talk about it, so they awkwardly walked around lobster tails, hard seltzers, and lines of cocaine. Selfishness and dishonesty permeated the pine knots in the moldy walls.

We thought we were staying at Abigail’s house only to discover it was her parents’ place. After all these years why did she still feel the need to tell stories? It made all of us a bit prickly and temperamental. Abby was a florist of dead flowers. The sprigs rose up in cabin planters like water fountains. In moments of bitterness and anger, Melissa thought to herself that being overweight must be difficult for her. She had to come up with some rationale for Abby’s jealous reactivity. Melissa should have noticed the dark cobwebs in the ceiling fan rotating overhead.

Melissa peaked in moments of drowsiness, yet still cowering inside of her tenderness. He pretended to sleep. The tension of homicidal aftermath was palpable. That night a demon stole her voice. In her intermittent dreams, she remembered that she was a chameleon. He whispered to her that there was a fire inside her which she could always use to metamorphosize. She wasn’t sure if she believed it yet. Moments of mutual pain led to reminiscing the wet of each other’s mouths across waves of heat haunted by ghosts of Christmas past. One of them surely was a lying king.

Charlotte woke up with shell shock and diarrhea. Her hair was fried. She walked with a slant and almost tripped over her own words from the night before. She stuttered, “Good morning”, with one eye open. She peeked into Melissa’s bedroom as he packed his things. Charlotte put on the Allman Brothers while Melissa made morning coffee. No one really knew what to say. Melissa was no longer so sweet. If awkward silence were a bus, Charlotte would have been relegated to the back. Everyone wished they felt bad about it, but for someone seemingly so brash, she looked mousey. The worst horrors in the world were the consequence of the silence of many. In the games of Clue and life, did they kill someone, or was it metaphorical? It was mass suicide by a different name.