Imaginary Friends

The internet’s deceased again. The tech-support junkie says it’ll be back up again in an hour but he’s a liar, I know he is. The green lights that usually flash blindly and keep me up when I’m sleeping are all blacked out now except for one. Power on receive blinking send off online off power on receive – this is forever, it’s not going to get up this time; the tech-support junkie says maybe I should pick up a new modem but he knows I know he’s delaying the inevitable. Falling in love is like putting a dog down.

My cousin says he’s “fucked” me. As we drive home from the burger joint that’s now called a fast-food joint we used to eat lunch at every night he tells me this and whispers into my ear. My mother who’s now fifty-nine and acting younger every year is reluctantly driving because I said I couldn’t: my milkshake would spill I’d rather listen to my cousin whisper into my ear. This town is where I grew up. We moved out when Daddy insisted on us calling him Dad; my cousin has lived with me my entire life. Outside the window there are two boys with galloping blonde hair hopping on a sewer grate and as they bounce I see the gas station behind them and the lake behind the gas station and our house behind the lake. That lake is where I’d go swimming during the winter because it was the only body of water that wouldn’t freeze over. All the fish were dead then. I don’t like fish. I don’t like eating fish. My cousin says he has “fucked” me. The buns the hamburger joint use now have poppy-seeds on them, I have to pick them off. They are stubborn.

We are residing in quintessential suburbia. It’s sunny enough to peel the skin right off the street; I can feel the flies swat at my face, the chiggers feed on my ankles. I’ve only been here for a day. We are here because father has passed away and we are here to put him down into the ground. There will be a service, and then a banquet afterwards, at night. He was a soldier. There will be a twenty-one gun salute and boys in marching bands who might stare at my make-up. There are leaves everywhere. The tech-support junkie tells me I have a beautiful voice.

We are still driving home. My cousin whispers to me that he has a leather heart. He is the kind of person who can make the inside of his back-pack a collage, pulls the last bite of dinner out of the garbage and saves it for the next morning. He peers at me searchingly with his reddened eyes. If he wasn’t so haggard, he would almost be cute. There are dead leaves everywhere.

The tech-support junkie tells me I have a beautiful voice. I hang up.

There is not much to see of this town. The residents move at a certain drawl that I’m not accustomed to and it is quite obvious that this is a place you come to when you’re going to die. It is a perfect place to die, it is quiet, it is pampered, it is secretly profane. The town whispers. My cousin whispers. I stare at the handful of poppy seeds now swimming on my lap, different colors of beige; I can feel them in the back of my throat, I can picture my cousin shoving them down my throat, I throw them off my lap. My cousin laughs. He laughs, and laughs until my mother asks him, what’s so funny? What’s so funny? Then before I can stop myself I’m giggling. He knows he’s charming.

I keep feeling that my hairline is receding. At night I run to the mirror to check, that it could be falling out, that I need to catch it before it does and put it all into a jar for safe-keeping until I can put it back on again. But my hair is still there, intact. I touch it and push it back and then remind myself if I push it back enough it could fall off. It’s got to be exceedingly fragile with all the chemicals I’ve been pouring into it. Dyes, straightening, anti-frizzing. I remember the balloon man came to me yesterday with yellow and red and blue and black balloons, near the pizzeria. The parking lot was full but the streets around it were empty. He told me that if I wanted a balloon, I’d have to get to know him. He didn’t sell balloons to strangers. He was a clown. No, a business man. His lips were whales spouting spit and I could hear them tightening together and cringing and moaning and grinding like burnt rubber.

When we were younger my cousin would mostly ignore me. He was always six years older than me, so it infringed on our interests. I would end up wearing his hand-me downs because mother was too sad to buy clothes. My cousin dated a lot of girls, he was prettier back then. They’d always bring me books to read, until the point where I had copies and copies of the same book stored in my closet. I’d read the different versions trying to find words and minor alterations between them. He’d collect the hairclips that they’d leave behind, scattered all around our house. He’d keep them in his desk in a plastic bag. I inherited all his toys when he grew out of them, his dolls, various souvenirs he had picked up from place to place. I remember watching him in the front yard dressing the dolls up, and the ambulances that would drive by. Whenever I hear sirens, it reminds me of him.

I hang up…


When we pull into the drive-way my cousin waits until my mother has walked into the house and then slips his hands around my breasts, whispering to me –
When he lets go I try to glare at him. I can still feel him throbbing against me. He laughs and dances his way to the door, swinging it open, stumbling inside. I don’t know if I should be aroused. I could feel the tension of his fingers, his breath like gravel being shoved into my ears. I watch the trees sway hypnotically around us, me. They are too green to be anything at all.

Inside, there is a foreignness, an eternal world behind every closet. I step slowly, prodding my way to the bathroom. The cracked mirror, the wailing sink, the toilet with dangling flushes and no top. My clothes float off, light and airy. I can feel the intent of his gaze through the walls, his telescope eyes burning their crater into me; I know exactly what he wants. I step into the shower and stare at the thickness of the drain, the droning blackness: I try to stick my hand through the grate, but my wrist gets stuck half-way down. I can hear the sterile humming of his heart getting closer and closer, the buzzing like that of a muffled chainsaw. The water is cold, there is no soap. Everything creaks.

Outside he is waiting for me, his darkened hair pillowing his head as he leans on the trunk of the car, tapping his fingers silently on the window-shield. He lifts his head, causing his shadow to stretch out across the uncut lawn, running into the forest that now faces us, each tree still swaying, beating us down to the ground. I can feel the terrifying belch of something hideous being brought to life, something that’s been there all along that can’t be ignored any longer, lurking around every corner ever since we were children, getting ready for this exact moment –

The view of the park is picturesque and nauseating. I can see too many people in love from here. Their faces and hands should be censored, they should stop laughing altogether for their voices scald my ears; I hope I shall never become intoxicated by my own happiness to the point where it could impair my volition. I hope I never sound good using a greater vocabulary because I don’t see myself getting used to it – the blades of grass below look like the hair stapled to the back of my cousin’s head. He draws pictures of my unclothed body that look frighteningly too similar. I’m under the impression he always had a precise imagination.