It got him off.

Maybe she knew it - probably she didn't, but that grin was for the tightness in his pants when she punched the guy in the face, for when she clipped the cuffs on him and hauled him off. That smile was for the time he spent at home curled up in a ball on his mattress and biting his thumb like a five year old as he thought his demented thoughts about her. The laugh was for the moments when he remembered that he had cheerfully defiled everything that he held sacred when he had chosen her.

What was faith in a world so blatantly godless? What was loyalty when men stabbed each other for nickels and pennies? So he justified himself, standing as closely by her grave as he could bear, falling to his knees because he knew it made no odds because she was dead. Why should he honor her with his celibacy? What better way to uphold her memory than by moving on? Yes, and what better way to destroy himself once again than by presenting Him with so similar a target?

No, he said. Yes, he said. He screamed no as the word yes passed his lips. No meant yes, and yes meant yes. Yes was the only choice. He had no control. What was control? A semblance of calm while the emotions boiled below. He could not endanger her like this, he could not endanger him like this, what about his wife? What about Him? It was inevitably about Him, and it was inevitably about Pain. What was the point, if not this?

And that. Was. The point. He had come to the conclusion that this feeling was a fabrication designed to cause himself as much Pain as possible, and this helped to ease the Pain. Except for those excruciating moments when he thought it might be real, especially when she was dancing around her room in that jersey and pouring herself drinks and all he wanted was to be down there and twirl her around just once, that's all he wanted, and it hurt so bad because he was giggling so hard but he had to be silent, silent. And at that moment it was real, so very real, and it wasn't until he could stand in front of that barbaric painting on his wall and take deep, deep breaths that he could convince himself that nothing should ever be real again.

And his heart lay writhing on the floor under the torrent.


Jane is afraid. Mostly of everything, but especially of identifying. He's afraid of defining people and of defining himself. The two women in his life (and there are only two) - his mind can't distinguish one from the other. They're both simply "her". He assigns pronouns to the people he's afraid of because he doesn't want to define them by giving them a name. As a result things tend to get a little mixed up when he's talking to himself. Of course, I think we can all guess who He is. Because He's not God.