Less Than Zero

“I don’t want to care. If I care about things, it’ll just be worse, it’ll just be another thing to worry about. It’s less painful if I don’t care.”

The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children. Images of people, teenagers my own age, looking up from the asphalt and being blinded by the sun. These images stayed with me even after I left the city. Images so violent and malicious that

“But you don’t need anything. You have everything,” I tell him. Rip looks at me. “No. I don’t.” “What?” “No, I don’t.” There’s a pause and then I ask, “Oh, shit, Rip, what don’t you have?” “I don’t have anything to lose.”

“Nothing. Nothing makes me happy. I like nothing,” I tell her.

But, again, the words don’t, can’t, come out and I sit there and the need to see the worst washes over me, quickly, eagerly.

If the fish is already dead, does it even matter?

I realize that the money doesn’t matter. That all that does is that I want to see the worst.

I wait for something to happen. I sit there for close to an hour. Nothing does.

People knock on the door and I lean against it, don’t do any of the coke, and cry for around five minutes and then I leave and walk back into the club and it’s dark and crowded and nobody can see that my face is all swollen and my eyes are red