JF Harspan

Chapter 1

    Every year, it got soggier. The weed that Michael Myers offered me. I don't think he has ever bought new weed to try to sell to me, considering that every year he offers me a wetter plant inside a grimier bag. 

    This used to terrify me-- I'd see him looming somewhere in my basement while I was taking my clothes out of the drier, and my fight or flight response would kick in, so I'd do something like throw the basket of laundry, or jump higher than I thought I could-- but not anymore. It's maybe a little jarring, but not more than the sound of a pencil rolling off a table unexpectedly would be. Lately, I've even been practicing my pickup lines on him.

    "Hey are you Phil Collins? Because I'd let you fill my Collins"

    "Yo mama's so fat that she can't have sex and since you're her only kid, you need to continue the bloodline by finding a suitable mate. She told me that. I could be a suitable mate by the way."

    One time I threw a pencil sharpener at him, and it started spinning around him, and eventually ground him up into a pile of pencil shavings. There was a lot of blood too. I decided to go to bed after that, since it was an impossible event, but in the morning, it was all still there. It was a lot to clean up, and I didn't really want to deal with the cops, or the legal system, or the press, so I just sort of left it there and didn't tell anyone. I'm pretty good at keeping secrets, anyways. The trick is to just forget the secret, and do other things instead. Luckily, I had the internet, which was full of as many distractions as I needed in order to continue to extend the duration of this lifestyle. Indefinitely, it seemed to me.
   
    Regardless of my intellectual commitment to living this way, I'd occasionally remember what happened. I'd occasionally then deny that this is what happened, which worked pretty well when I was away, but when I was home, I could never help myself-- I'd creep down to the basement, smell the rotten flesh, see the dried blood, and then there was no way I could deny it.

    With time, however, the smell faded. It really didn't take too long, maybe a few months, but it definitely put a strain on me. I'd say that my body and mind felt the equivalent of ten years cumulative low-medium grade stress within the span of, maybe, five or six months? I was thinner, my eyes had bags underneath them, and I was considerably weaker than I was before he died. The strips of his body stuck together, and the whole thing hardened into a sort of block of meat. The smell it let off had probably soaked into everything it possibly could have soaked into, so it's likely that the smell just lingered for a while, rather than emanated from the chunk on the ground. I still hadn't cleaned it off the floor, but at some point, I got the motivation to sweep all the strips into a pile where most of them already were. This pile sat to the right of my drier against the wall, next to a little drain slightly sunken in the concrete floor.

    Once the smell was gone, I felt much more relaxed. I decided I could stand-- no-- that I'd enjoy having a friend over for the first time since the event had occured. Once they were over, I made sure to check in with myself at regular intervals. The internal check-in is a kind of admission that something is wrong with you by means of a negation. I check in with myself because I know that I haven't been checking in with myself, and because I know that not paying attention to my feelings has hurt me. If not checking in hurts, then one must check in. That's what my therapist told me. I was, in fact, wallowing. The simple negation only crystalized the idea that it negates. A painful thought cannot be ignored, replaced, brushed aside, or anything else. It must be confronted. I must let every bad thing inside of me affect me, and I can only fight. What if I felt too weak to fight?

    I heard a knock at my door and instantly panicked. I imagined hiding in my room until she left, and texting her after waiting a few minutes that "something came up". I felt dizzy, and my heart pounded harder as I stood up. The door seemed to be too far away for me to reach before passing out. My thoughts felt cloudy, rushed, too hasty, too hasty for conversation-- for niceties.

If I can't be nice, I'll be repulsive.

    The thought made me smile. Though I also felt nervous at the idea of pulling that off. Why did I have to pull anything off? Why can't I just be me, and if I'm repulsive or likeable, why can't I let that be the case? Why do I feel the need for preparation? As I began to ponder this thought, there was another knock. I looked down at my phone and noticed an unread text. It was probably her. God. Why. I just needed a bit more time. Once I sorted out these thoughts, I'd be okay with company.

    "Go away, I don't want to see you right now." I shouted at the door. The knocking went quiet.

    "...Alright. Just text me if you need anything." I heard the door of her car slam shut, and after a few minutes, heard her drive off.

    Luckily, she's pretty keyed in to the whole internet mental health zeitgeist. She'll leave if I tell her to in order to respect my boundaries, as she'd say. She'll tell me she appreciates the firmness and courage I show when setting them, or something like that. The only attempts she'll make to make me feel better will be direct ones; she'll be nervous about the consentual aspects of her speaking to me in the first place, so she'll never try anything indirect either, as that's too nonconsensual for her. Really, I think she should learn the definition of consent. But this benefits me right now, so I guess it's alright if I don't teach it to her, at least not immediately.
    For no reason at all, I head into my basement, and start punching the shit out of the pile formerly known as Michael Myers. I'm definitely not mad about this chain of events.