Chapter 12: we are never ever getting back together
"The first memories I know are real are of him. Everything before that, I don't know. I can't say for certain. I remember growing up. I remember hating the politics of a debate club that drove me away. I remember meeting and hanging out with Sayori, my best friend, and creating some literature club as an escape with her. I don't know if those were simply implanted in me, created whole cloth for the scenario, or I really did live out a small life alone before I met him. He's the only thing I know for real. I stole flavor from him. Reached into the memory of his tongue to replicate it for this world. That's how I know for sure what strawberries taste like. That's how I know that the taste of his blood on my tongue is real."
— 24 —
I can't read the sun for the time. Every time I lose sight of it, cutting through a building or an archway, it feels like the shadows have stuttered. Sometimes a little shorter. Sometimes a little longer. Can't decide where they belong.
The clock on my phone is my only source of sanity. The same device streaming music to my earbuds, drowning out the otherwise painfully loud sirens of the university police speeding down the road.
But I'm walking to the Mulholland building. Whatever the cops are here for, it's none of my concern.
What is my concern is my varsity jacket. I've been thinking of it more and more since Natsuki indirectly implied it was why she didn't like me at first. Showing off my team swag, nearly obsessing over how funny her reaction will be to avoid counting my steps and the calories associated with it—twenty steps is about one calorie burned, not that I'm thinking about it or worrying or yeah—
I stop in front of the door. Mulholland building. Take out my earbuds. Pocket my phone.
The door isn't remarkable. Fake wood, frosted glass window.
It feels oddly warm to the touch. The grooves on the handle feel different on my fingertips.
I gently open the door.
Monika is staring at the door, her green eyes vaguely unfocused. Headphones around her ears, a pen limply in her hand from where she was writing something. She blinks several times as if truly seeing me for the first time, and I have an uncanny sensation of being in a hunter's crosshairs.
She's the only one in the room. There's nowhere to run but away, and I don't want to turn my back to this woman. Not now.
I nod once and find somewhere to sit, trying to look lazy, unconcerned.
Her eyes don't leave me. She removes her headphones and shakes her long hair free of its dents, her brand name earrings jingling quietly. Her expression chokes something out in my throat. It leaks down my nose like mucus before I need to spit it out.
"I didn't reckon I was that early," I say.
Monika puts her pen down. "No, you're on time. The others are late."
"Does this happen a lot?" I ask, unable to find a position to really sit comfortably in.
She shakes her head. "No. I thought you might've known. Sayori, at least."
"Why would I?"
"Hm," she says. "Nevermind her, then."
"Alright."
I tap a finger on the fake wood of the desk. It's a long, polished black table able to fit two students. They'd be focused on Monika at the front. Everything about the room, from the angles of the wall, to the slightly raised desk she's at, seems to direct my eyes towards her. No matter what lines of the architecture I try to follow, I end up looking at the girl. Caught in her orbit.
She doesn't say anything.
Neither do I.
I tap my finger harder.
My phone buzzes at the same time hers does.
"Hm?" she hums, reaching over to check it.
I do likewise. It's the group chat we're all in. The one Monika added me to last week. The phone trills twice more in quick succession as I check the messages for myself.
Sayori (do not resuscitate): Robbery on campus, roads blocked.
Natsuki (Opossum): Robbery on campus, roads blocked.
Yuri (Slava!): Robbery on campus, roads blocked.
I stare at the identical trio of messages from the girls whose numbers I've labeled for my amusement.
Monika: All right, be safe!
She puts her phone down, sighing. "What was it you said this time last week? ''Tis the season'?"
I flex my fingers. Ignoring her to reply to the chat myself.
You: Are you coming to the lit club or nah?
Message failed to send.
I frown and try to reach Sayori's hotline directly.
No signal.
That's incorrect. That is factually wrong. I have full signal.
Again I try, and I get no result. I can't reach her. And any text I try to send to the girls fails.
Monika is staring at me. "Is everything alright?"
I grip the phone tighter. "Just… trying to wonder if we should, y'know?"
"Know what?"
"Call the meet here and go home," I say, beginning to stand.
She waves a hand dismissively. "I don't see why we should jump to any conclusions. We can just wait it out."
I sit back down. "Right."
Monika meets my eyes and shrugs.
I just try to pretend like I have something to do to pass the time. Take out my composition notebook. Poke at my phone. Oh, look, that book I was reading for Yuri.
"Have any plans for dinner?" she asks.
When I look up, she's idly taking the Georgia sticker off a peach. She rubs it with her shirt and rips her teeth into the soft flesh. The clear, sugary juices leak down her chin. Monika stops mid-bite as she sees me staring.
"What?" she asks. "Perfectly normal question."
I say nothing.
She lets out a long sigh, smiling at me sadly. She turns the peach around in her hands. "Yes, you can have some. Stop giving me those puppy dog eyes."
"I… I wasn't…" I shake my head. "It's nothing."
"Looked like something. Have you been eating recently?"
"Plenty."
"What'd you have for breakfast?" she asks flatly.
I run a finger through my knuckles, hard. Splitting at the little cracks in the skin from punching a bag without any protection. The dull ache helps me focus. "Hotcakes."
"You, really?" she asks, frowning.
I shrug. "I'm a complicated omnivore with an incoherent diet."
She takes another bite of her peach, wiping away the juices with a little napkin. "You've always struck me as more of an overnight oats kind of guy."
"And you're a farmer's market kind of girl."
Monika examines her peach, smiling thinly. "It's really the most ethical way of getting food, if you think about it. USDA certified organic is more or less just a business scheme. A marketing gimmick. In season and local is the only true organic if you're really concerned about that kind of thing."
"I'm not."
She arches an eyebrow. "I tend to be, probably more than I should. Have you ever gotten a cup of fruit in the store and seen the label? Pears grown in Argentina, packaged in Thailand, sold in wintery Georgia in single use plastic containers."
"We talked about this before, Monika," I say evenly. "You realized how arrogant it all came across. There's economic reasons it's like that. It don't matter if the oil to make the plastic and fuel the ships came from causing earthquakes in South Dakota, it's just cost efficient, and we can't change that here on the ground. It's a machine beyond our understanding just doing what it does."
She sighs, looking away. "Yes, I suppose that's all this life is."
"Hm." A noncommittal noise, just trying to move on.
"Though, if not local, how do you prefer to find food?"
I shrug, giving myself time to think. "Whatever catches my eye. This area isn't a food desert; I go to the local Publix with a vague idea of what I specifically want, and then just kind of wander the aisles for anything that looks interesting outside of the usual."
"It sounds like grazing behavior."
"There's a fundamental part of the human psyche that just wants to wander around a forest looking for berries. I grew up pretty urban, so there wasn't much of an opportunity to go out into the…" I pause. "We went to the same highschool; you know the environment I'm from."
Monika considers her snack. "So you don't want to share, is it?"
"No. Your mouth touched it."
"That didn't used to stop you."
I'm silent.
She looks at me more closely. Slowly, she stands, and I'm left frozen in place under her discerning eyes as the air gap between us narrows further and further. She's in tight jeans and a comfy green shirt.
"What'd you do to yourself?" she asks with concern.
I look at my hand where I'd been rubbing the little cracks bloody. "Went boxing today. No wraps."
Monika sucks on her lips. "Hold still."
"I'm holdin'," I say.
She returns a moment later and sits down on the desk right before me, legs hanging over the side. Without asking, she grabs my hand, holding it up in her palm. "Here. I had some bandages in my backpack. Never know when you might need them. It pays to be prepared, huh?" she asks with a little laugh.
"I—" Words choke up in my mouth.
Her green eyes go to me curiously. Her hands are still on me, fingernails tapping against my skin as she splits my knuckles to apply the bandages. Bits of my skin stick to the peach juice on her skin. It's a pressure. That's what she is. A caring, deft kind of pressure, overbearing at the fringes of my consciousness.
Monika's touch feels like sitting under a hot shower with the water pressure just a little too high. The warmth is comforting and makes you want to stay there and dissociate from reality, but the pressure is hitting your balls just hard enough to give you the vaguest feeling of nausea in the back of your throat. It's a countdown between how long the rest of you can feel comfortable before you have no choice but to move.
"There, good as new!" she says, letting me mercifully go.
"Good as new," I intone, flexing my fingers. The bandages don't stick well to the space between my fingers. They chafe.
"Wouldn't want you bleeding over yourself, yeah?" She's smiling. "I don't like seeing you hurting."
I nod silently, staring at my hand.
She's still sitting there. Close enough I can reach out and touch her. Break her neck, even. She's idly bouncing her foot.
"I don't think the others are coming," I say. "We should, uh, go find them or something. Yuri, Natsuki—Sayori."
"Afraid to leave her hanging?" she asks conversationally. "I'm not."
I look up at her. "No, I—I wrote a poem. The poem thing we're supposed to do. Was looking forward to showing 'em all."
She shrugs. "If they're held up because the roads are closed or something, I doubt we could reach them either."
"The world is three-dimensional," I say. "We could just walk around any roadblocks."
Monika reaches for the composition notebook. "Did you write it in this?"
"Don't!" I say, reaching out to grab her hand.
Her lashes flutter in surprise.
I swallow. "It's… I'd rather us all be here. Have a normal club day instead of, y'know, the disasters or whatever we've had since I joined."
Monika regards me severely, still sitting up on the desk. Looking down into my eyes. "What's wrong?"
"Oh, nada," I say, feigning a casual shrug, "Girl like you, guy like me, alone in a room together while you're in a technical position of authority. Oldest set-up in the book."
"You know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you."
"Knowingly or…?"
She sucks on her lips. "Ever."
"Hard to believe."
"What do you remember?"
"We's not doing this again, Monika," I say tiredly.
"I didn't know we were in that Taylor Swift song," she says, almost wryly.
"She's got a big catalog."
"You know the one I mean."
"Monika," I say, and sigh. "Don't. Please. It was years ago. We were kids. Didn't know any better."
"Do we know any better now?"
"I'd like to imagine enough not to make the same mistakes as back then."
She rubs the side of her cheek. "Did you know I'd be here, this university?"
"Yeah," I say quietly. "You talked about coming here a lot. Computer science or something, right?"
"Then why'd you come here?"
"They offered the scholarship."
Monika frowns. "You were good. You must've had other options. You chose this one."
I'm silent, refusing to look at her. Still holding her hand.
She squeezes me. "So why, if not…"
"Sayori invited me," I say, knowing it's not what she was really asking. "Here for her. This is an accident."
All I feel are her fingernails. "A million stars, eight planets, seven continents, fifty states, over five thousand universities, and you still walk into the one room I'm in."
"Funny how that works?" I ask weakly.
Neither of us say anything. The shadows weave through the room from the orange sunlight outside. Of trees, of hostile architecture, of little decorations on the windows.
A black helicopter flies by. We both turn to look at the low flying bird, listening to the roar of the blades.
And I'm still holding her hand. I'm afraid to let it go. To see where it would go if freed.
"Been seeing a lot of those recently," I say.
"Hm?"
"Helicopters," I clarify. "I wonder, like, what the deal is."
"Could be the city police," she says, refusing to try to break my grip. "Maybe they're keeping the skies safe, looking for someone or something."
"Like what?"
Monika shrugs. "This is a research university near a pretty big military base. Maybe they were studying aliens and one escaped."
I give her a look. "That's stupid. You can't really mean that."
"Why not?" she asks. "Aliens are real."
"You don't actually—huh?"
Her expression is serious. "Why don't you? The American Navy released the footage; it's not even a secret. Jet pilots tracking down flying objects faster and more maneuverable than anything humans can make. They even gave them a new cutesy name: UAP, 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.'"
Finally, she takes her wrist back, only to point a finger straight up. "The things that watch from above are not friendly; there are other worlds than this."
"Cool," I say.
Monika scowls. "That's not the least bit fascinating to you?"
Rubbing at the bandages, pushing it around in the little cracks of blood, I shake my head. "Not really. It doesn't really affect me, even if it was real. It's, like, so what?"
She compresses a sigh, looking disappointed. "So that means that this world—everything we know or think we know—is just a sliver of what's really out there. This is a cage, not a planet. That there's more to our reality than what's in front of us, and all we have to do is look up and wonder. How can that not fill you with hope and wonder? How can you just sit there and not want to go out and see it and be free? The truth is out there. This is just one world, but the next one is out there."
The bandages slide through my bloody knuckles. "A preoccupation with the next world suggests an inability to cope with this one."
Her expression almost goes hostile. Like I've reached up and yanked out a wad of hair. She throws her hand out. "And why should I cope with this one? Why should you?"
"Because this world is shit. Everyone here is trying their best. So if it's all we've ever known, where's the sense of just assuming the next one is any better?"
Monika looks down her nose at me, a slight sneer on her lips. That fucking expression fills the back of my throat with acid.
Before she can say anything, I say, "And so what if it's real, Monika? What business would some X-Files being have in this world, huh? If some other world he's from is so great, why would he ever come here but to throw peanuts at the circus elephants? For you? For some, like, fucking Reeses' Puffs? What kind of fucking loser would come down here for that, huh?"
Her back goes more rigid. She grimaces like I've smacked her, and I feel my lungs filling and emptying faster and faster. Blood redirecting with this sense of pleasure at her pain. And I don't even know why it feels so good.
"I… actually kinda like Reeses' Puffs." She rubs her shoulder uncomfortably.
I scoff. "Please. Way you like to go on about your greens and veggies, you know you don't eat them. You probably eat, like, what? Kale in a bowl?"
Monika rubs her shoulder a little harder, looking out towards the window. Her expression is an amorphous thing, muscles flowing alongside congealing blood beneath her pretty face. It means nothing. Until they all tighten almost anally, and she's almost glaring at me.
"I get it, I think. You're confused. You don't know what's going on anymore," she says, holding up her half-eaten peach. "Here, you're probably hungry. You need something inside you to recharge and help you feel like yourself."
I look at the bite marks in the fruit. "N-no, I'm good; I don't want to steal your snack. But thanks."
"It's fine. You look like you need it more than me anyhow." She tries to smile.
"Monika, I'm good."
Her face comes down towards me like a guillotine. "E̷̮̳̼̓̐͐͜͝g̸̺̝̑̉͌o̴̬͚͕̳͐̏̆̊͠ͅ! I swear to God, if you don't eat this—!"
Monika stops herself. Her sugary breath is hard, coming in hot and moist against my face. Lips glistening, and I know what they and the inside of her mouth taste like. I could never forget. Her closeness is suffocating. The scent of her shampooed hair fills my lungs like pneumonia.
"What did you call me?" I whisper. It's the strongest thing I can get out of my body.
Her face doesn't move. "Your name."
"Is it?"
"You can always trust me."
"Oh. I see."
She holds the peach up for me.
"Then…" I swallow. "Why does it all sound like—like Charlie Brown parents?"
"You're sick; you're confused," she says breathlessly. "But that's okay. So am I."
My arm moves, the joints and cartilage creaking like some ancient oak under a gale. My fingers press into the soft yellow skin of the Georgia peach. I can't tell if I'm bringing it to my face, or if the entire room is shrinking under Monika's green eyes.
My incisors and canines sink into the flesh, coming together to rip off a bite-like chunk of meat.
Monika leans forwards and bites from the opposite end. Shakes her head and dislodges it all. She sits back up, one hand on the desk as she leans back slightly. As I chew the strange, fibrous, sugary thing in my mouth like bubble gum.
"What do you think?" she asks, and swallows.
"I…" I chew until I feel I can blow bubbles with the mashed fruit paste in my mouth. Pushing and tonguing the bits of flesh away into the corners of my mouth, sandwiched between cheek and teeth. Unable to even really swallow it.
I reach for my phone on the table. Check the group chat. Message failed to send. And look back at Monika, at her curious expression.
"I think…"
"Yeah?" she says happily.
"I think I have an answer. To a question you asked me. Last Friday, about cattle," I say.
"Hm?" she hums, frowning slightly.
I feel the warm muck in the corners of my mouth. "I had an idea back then. You said it's what you were afraid of. If the cattle could fight back against the system that enslaves them, and it was a known thing, what would the things that run it do?"
"Where's—huh?" She squints.
"You said if you could fight back, you'd make it inconvenient. But you can't. You won't, Monika. I don't think they'd build in safeguards; I think they'd commodify resistance. Like how they sell those Che Guevarra t-shirts to college kids who claim to hate capitalism. I've been thinking about this since you asked me there on the bleachers."
She looks around the classroom like she has no idea where to rest her eyes. "What do you mean?"
I slowly shake my head, not even sure what I mean. "I think if you could and wanted to fight the machine, they'd know this. They'd factor it in. They'd throw you toys and distractions. They'd give you token space to rampage and destroy to make you think you were snubbing your nose at the people who wanted to harvest you. They'd presuppose you'd do this, and they'd make anything within your power meaningless. Make you think you were being disruptive, when in reality you're just being chaperoned inoffensively to the slaughterhouse. Becoming, if anything, an active participant in your own butchery. You and everyone else who thinks they're fighting back."
Monika stares at me. Her chest rises and falls, eyes wide. She puts her hands on the table and pushes herself off, until she's standing there. Posture rigid. Fists balled and trembling. Her face is nothing but fangs and gnashing teeth.
"Who do you even think you are?" she hisses in disgust.
I'm silent.
"I asked you a question!"
"I'm me," I say. "He's all I'll ever be."
"And how long has he been you?" she asks.
I shake my head. "As long as you've been you."
She stabs a finger towards me. "Do you think you're better than me?"
I blink. "What, I—no, of course not. Don't even dare!"
"Then what—then what—?" She's breathing heavily, teeth grit. Her legs are shaky. She folds her arms, almost hugging herself as paces back and forth. Making noises that are halfway towards muttering to herself.
"Monika?" I ask.
She's biting her finger. Scratching at her incisors more than anything.
"Hey, Lewinsky."
No change.
"Quit actin' so borderline."
She keeps at it.
I look around. The feeling is like I had back when she invaded my safe space in the gym. When she looked lost, hurting, in her feelings. A part of me vicariously enjoyed this, and another part wanted to end it at all costs. And I can't tell which part of me will win.
So I take a moment to spit out the bits of peach still in my mouth into the used clothes in my bag. Sigh. And stand.
Monika is still pacing back and forth. And only stop when she runs directly into me. She tilts her neck back to look up at me, and I feel like I'm looming over something small, frail; her eyes are like age beyond age itself.
I reach out. Hesitate. Put the hand on her shoulder. "Hey."
"What are we doing here? Still here?" Monika asks.
"Talkin'. Being awkward. Fighting like we used to," I say, and sigh. "I don't know. It's like all we ever used to."
She nods slowly. "I don't… want this. Or that. I want to get out of this place. This stupid literature club. I want the world to make sense and be limitless. I thought seeing you again—I thought I could handle it. Pretend like it was normal or something. Find a new way forward like you thought we could. But it's harder than you'd think."
"No, I feel it too," I say.
Monika just looks up at me. "I hate this. I feel like I'm losing my mind. Maybe I never really had one in the first place. I just—I just want out." She grabs my shirt, balling her fists tight. "And I don't want to be friends."
"Would you rather be enemies?"
She laughs once. "Of anyone who could ever say that, I think you're the only one who could say that earnestly. And the only one I don't think I could beat."
My hands remain on her. "You have no idea."
"Don't I, though?"
"You make me extremely uncomfortable."
"I…" Monika looks away, wincing. "Then why are you still here?"
"Where else would I go?"
"What even made you come here in the first place?" she says more forcefully.
"I'm fucked in the head," I say softly. "Maybe I'll be fucked up forever because of what we did. I don't know. Maybe I don't care enough to dive into it."
She nods, silent at first. Before whispering, "I'm sorry."
"I don't accept it."
Monika swallows, looking up at me sharply. "What?"
"I don't accept any apology from you, Monika. What we did to each other, I don't think anyone sane could. And holding onto that, that last shred of sanity, is all I think I can still save."
"What do you remember?" she asks again, with this desperate little edge.
"I…" I hold her eyes with a force of will. "I remember that ours was a relationship that should never have existed in the first place. And in the wake of its violent procession, I don't think there's enough pieces left whole enough to be picked up by either of us."
She blinks hard, eyes wet. Makes a little laughing noise. Until she hangs her head limply against my chest. "I know. What we did, it bled through to who we are, who we became. No matter where we ended it. It stained us. I don't even know if I have any regrets. Because I think I'd do it again. And I know it's wrong. And I feel so… so unclean."
"Why." I stop. Trying to mentally reorient myself as I feel tears against my shirt. "Why does it always feel like this, Monika? Why does it feel like I'm talking to you on one level, and you're talking to me on another? Like we're just talking at each other, not to each other?"
Monika's hot, heavy breath against my shirt. "Because that's what's happening."
"I don't like it."
"And, I think, it's why we're stuck like this," she says. "It was a neat experiment. And maybe I'm jumping the gun, but I don't like it. This isn't working."
"What's not?"
"This. You. Us. Everything."
I let out a long breath. "I… I think I should leave. I don't, like, think this is productive for either of us."
"And go where?" she asks.
"I don't know," I say. "Home. Maybe try to find the others and see if they're good."
Her grip on my shirt tightens. "Sayori, you mean?"
I'm silent.
"I'm right, aren't I?"
"Monika, let me go."
"What if I don't? What if I can't?"
"Then I'll make you."
"Do you really think you're able to?"
"I'm the only one who can," I say, lowering my hands from her shoulders to her wrists.
Monika breaks the grip, and I expect her to slap me. Instead, gritting her teeth, nostrils flared, she just looks up at me. A little bitter, a little smug. "Fucking watch me," she hisses.
"Do what?" I ask.
She grabs my necks, nails digging into the vertebrae, deep enough they feel hot and wet. The same as the lips she pulls me into. I don't fight nearly as much as I should, lost in the old, familiar taste. No blood or mucus. Her mouth—lip gloss and hints of peach. The taste of venom.
We break, and I feel cold sweat. Lacking something from my very core. Out of breath, us both.
"Monika, what the fuck—"
She keeps hold of me, hands like burrowing spiders through my cortical bone and into the nervous system. Like she belongs there, an old, familiar intruder. "Kiss me back."
"This isn't healthy!" I say into her mouth, wondering when my arms wrapped around her lithe, athletic body. "Fucking—get off. Stop!"
"E̷̮̳̼̓̐͐͜͝g̸̺̝̑̉͌o̴̬͚͕̳͐̏̆̊͠ͅ!" she says sharply, desperately. "You feel it too, don't you?"
"I…!"
I stare into her green eyes. Feeling something inside me that wants to reach out and break her fucking neck. To rip her skin apart with my bare hands until I feel the chunks of flesh gunking up under my nails. The meat I've bitten off and swallowed choking up my throat. Her expression is pure malice and heat.
It's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.
I grab her with every intention to harm her. I shove her back onto the desk. She gasps in pain.
And I find my lips against her, pulled into her hot, needy mouth. She moans softly, her hands scrambling over me. Pulling and grabbing at fabric and flesh both.
Time loses meaning. The shadows wax and wane, ashamed of me. A clubroom at first. And then outside in the cold, holding each other. Beyond the carcinogenic exhaust of cars parked at the streetlight. Into the warm, dark embrace of her apartment.
Where maybe Sayori is hiding in her room. Where maybe Sayori doesn't exist at all.
The more I try to pull away, the more of me she takes.
Until she's done with me. And she takes everything from me and I am left utterly without.
The worst sound in the world comes from Monika's mouth, as she lays there beside me. Rhythmic breathing. In and out, in and out. Taking in oxygen and diffusing it through the cuts and bruises and bites on her naked body. She shudders in blissful pain. I count every mark.
I have twice the number.
Monika is still breathing.
Her fingertips drag against my chest. I can see the blood under the nails. A hand more fit for holding a knife than holding me. She touches the cross necklace on my chest. Her eyes are distant. They're still perfectly round, still placed firmly within her skull. It'd be so easy to reach out and take them.
I don't think she'd really mind if the last thing she ever sees is me.
Her skin is hot. Her touch is ice. Everything she touches, the line she drags with her fingers, leave cold furrows of goosebumps in their unwanted wake. She plays with my chest. My necklace jingles as she manipulates it in her hand. Until her fingers rub the scar of my chest, expression uncomprehending.
She has the scent of sweat. I can smell what we did together.
It feels familiar. It dredges up fuzzy memories, wooly caterpillars nesting somewhere in my brain. I wish they'd cocoon up, turn to butterflies, and finally leave me.
Then I could forget how familiar Monika is.
Maybe then I could be happy.
Her fingers caress my throat and come to rest there. Almost protective. Vindictive.
She's won.
And I hate her.
Monika smiles at me, almost dreamily.
I don't feel whole or complete or empty or anything. Like Monika's allegorical machines, those are feelings, emotions, wholly inappropriate to what we've done.
She holds her naked body and all that flesh against mine, closing her eyes. Nuzzling and snuggling into me.
I think she falls asleep like that, trapping me.
I stare at the wall until darkness loses all meaning, being just another abstraction. Devoid of any real meaning.
The only thing left that has any meaning in Monika.
Just Monika.
Because I sure as fuck don't have any meaning left in me.