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the rules

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First rule of life: Live.

Second rule of life: Stop fucking it up.

That's it. That's all.

You can go home now.

-

You are two men - choose one and run with it. Run with him.

You don't want to choose? Fine. Fine. We can choose for you.

You choose the first man - the man whose bones tear at his skin, the man whose eyes are sunk so far into his skull you wonder if he's already dead - you choose the first man. Remember this. Remember the way you feel. Remember the taste of anger and salt on his skin, remember the rules, recall the nerves that ache and burn when you touch his hands, his and yours and everybody's -

Remember that you are disgusted, and save that feeling deep down in the cavity of your chest for later on. You'll need it.

Trust us.

You don't choose the first man after all. He's too much. It's too much. You choose the second man (with his hatred and his blond hair and his too-wide smile) and don't feel any better at all.

-

You think maybe he hates you. He hates your hands and the way you talk and the look you get on your face when he doesn't listen, and he hates you. In a good way. In a way that makes your heart beat too fast, that makes you want to die and kiss him until he's bruised under your fingers, makes you want to take a knife to your sensibilities and cut out all the logic from the holes in your mouth.

You think maybe you don't know what love feels like. You think maybe you don't know how to feel. You think maybe you don't know what hate feels like after all, and if you don't know, then he doesn't hate you after all, unless he does, but maybe he loves you.

You think maybe he loves you.

You think maybe you love him.

You decide to believe it.

-

Ten minutes, he reminds you, gun pressed to the inside of your cheek like it's a sacred thing, ten minutes.

Ten minutes until what?

Until.

Until.

Click.

Ten minutes until you die?

Death is cheap, and you don't mind.

(I am Jack's raging indifference.)

You run your tongue over the edge of the gun and hope for the best, or maybe the worst.

(You are Jack's raging indifference.)

Consider the way he looks at you - go on, consider it, really take it in. Look into his face. Look into the lines under his eyes and the way his jaw is set, the terrible wonderful horrible way he looks at you like you're dirt under his feet. You like that. You deserve that.

(You don't deserve that, and you know it.)

Click.

Consider the way his hand shakes. Maybe he doesn't love you that much after all.

-

Let's destroy something, let's burn a house down, or a convenience store, let's ruin something that everyone loves. Let's try too hard and not hard enough.

Let's kill somebody and bring them back to life.

It wouldn't be that hard, right, you've come back from the dead before, you've brought people back and it wasn't hard at all. You built worlds out of bottle caps and paperclips and knocked them down and had them back up on your desk by Monday afternoon and never once did you stop to think about where it all went until it was back together again.

Let's tear down the paperclip town hall and put the mayor in prison. He never did anything wrong, but someone has to pay for your sins and it isn't going to be you.

-

Blood. You taste blood. It calms you down and you realize you were panicking -

Not now. Not anymore.

There's nothing to panic about.

There's a sky full of fireworks and a mouth full of copper and a head full of pounding and something is missing.

In a good way.

(Maybe he doesn't hate you that much after all.)

-

First rule of life: Die, eventually.

Second rule of life: Death is cheap. Don't pretend you care.

That's it. That's all.

You can go home now.