Nobody was watching.
She was alone, in his room, topless. She wasn't waiting for him; she was done doing that. She was fine with just having a good time by herself.
She wasn't breathtakingly beautiful, and most wouldn't even qualify her as pretty. Her laugh was loud and awkward, her complexion asymmetrical. She however had the nicest smile and buttocks, which is what made him like her. At least she thought he liked her, she wasn't sure. She'd never been sure. She had grown tired of her own uncertainty. Which made her cranky. Which made her reckless. Which made her throw her pants, tee-shirt and cardigan on the floor and lie in his bed. She had promised to herself be more careless, this semester, to let her mind wander and obey to her impulses. This was a good start.
She couldn't help but smile. He was in the kitchen. Making her strawberry pancakes, unaware of what she was up to, nude skin, shivering in his cold room. When she felt the time was right, she would go downstairs and surprise him. She wouldn't wait for him to come upstairs and find her, like he had found her earlier.
This was her suicide note.
She opened his old laptop, sitting upright against the frame of his bed, and took a few pictures using the built-in webcam. Post-mortem shots. She wasn't sticking out her breasts or trying to be overly sexy. The pictures looked like awkward school photos. They felt like she was wearing a shirt, except she wasn't. She felt obnoxiously clothed, even in the nude. Her own skin was trapping her in. This is why she was here today. He would free her, even if he didn't know it.
This wasn't about desire, or lust, or love. This wasn't about sex at all. She didn't quite know what it was about herself, but she knew it was important. She hadn't made up her mind yet. She knew death was a big part of it, and she knew he had to play an important role too. He was making her strawberry pancakes and she was thinking about dying. For him, with him, because of him, whatever. Maybe the two phenomena didn't have any correlation whatsoever. She was thinking of death and she was thinking of him. He was making her strawberry pancakes and she was naked in his room. Or maybe there was a link. Maybe he was the one who drove her to this state of mind. Or maybe he was the one who was going to free her from it. The possibilities seemed endless, and she felt endless, and she hated it.
Her uncertainty was driving her crazy. Her craziness was pushing her to thoughtlessness. Her thoughtlessness made her get up and walk down the wooden staircase.
She stepped down the last stair. Turned to the right. Entered the kitchen.
He was sitting at the round dinner table. Scruffy hair. Unshaven. Unbuttoned shirt. Pleated jeans. She was still shivering, but managed to smile when he glanced at her.
"I already called 911" was all he said.
"I know" she answered. She glanced down at the pile of pancakes on the table. "These aren't strawberry pancakes."
"They're blueberry pancakes." His voice was coarse and thick. This reminded her of how much she wanted coffee. A coarse and thick coffee.
"Why not use strawberries?" She was walking towards him now, her long arms hanging down her sides. His face was expressionless, but his eyes were lost in hers. When she sat on his lap, her knees on either side of his hips, he put his hands on her waist.
"Strawberries are red," he explained, "I didn't want to use anything that was red." She was close enough to smell his breath. It smelt bad, like one of his teeth was rotting. It smelled like rotten teeth and coffee.
"But you're red."
"I'm not in these pancakes."
"But I might be."
They stayed silent for a couple of minutes, then she bent down to kiss him. Their mouths were opened and he was smiling but she wasn't. She ran her fingers through his hair and he put his on her breasts. She wasn't feeling anything. She wasn't allowing herself to. If he had made strawberry pancakes, maybe this would have turned out differently. But he hadn't, and now she was taking off his shirt and feeling the horrid taste of his breath into her own mouth. He was kissing her gently, but his hands were hurting her.
He grabbed a handful of her hair in his left hand and she felt his pelvis rise to grind against her own. He was still smiling. She was breathing hard. His hands were still hurting her, but she knew that he was hurting even more. He was red, but she was the one who felt red. She got lost in him, but he stayed in shallow waters. He stopped kissing her and began to trail kisses down her neck: she slapped him. Blood rushed to his cheek.
"Do it again" he said.
She said no, but slapped him again. His other cheek became red. Her hand didn't.
She was still on top of him, and she could could still feel his hardness through his pants, and his hands were still lost in her hair, but something had changed.
They stared into each others' eyes. He was trying to get a sense of her. She was still trying to understand what death had to do with him. Or what he had to do with death. Whatever.
"So," he began, "are you going to eat or to bend over?"
She sighed and glanced at the blueberry pancakes. They smelled good and they looked good, but they were blue. She was done waiting for him, and she was done with blue. She answered his question with another question.
"Are you going to eat?"
"I wasn't planning to, no." He scratched his beard and smiled to her. "I called 911, though."
"You already said that. Why did you do that?" She knelt down before him and unfastened his belt.
"Because you're not you right now. And you have to wake up."
She looked up, her lower lip quivering.
"You're not you," he repeated. "Wake up."
She shook her head. "I have to understand first. Then I can wake up." She took his penis out of his pants and licked its head repeatedly before mechanically putting it in her mouth. It was grotesquely small. He grabbed her hair again and pulled on it.
"If you keep doing this, then you will never understand."
She ignored him and kept sucking. They kept silent until he took his genitals out of her mouth and came in three long agonizing moans, pleasure piercing his chest.
"I'm punishing myself," she finally answered. He had been quite messy and she had cum all over her chest and face.
"Why?" He was still panting.
She didn't answer and held his gaze. She breathed in, the paramedics knocked on his front door and she started crying.
"If you want to do it, do it now."
"It's too early."
"They are here."
"They're not red."
"If you really want to, you won't care."
"I don't understand."
"I don't understand."
"Eat them with me."
"I won't."
"Please."
"Wake up."
He got up to the front door and told the paramedics there had been a suicide. She swallowed down a whole pancake drowned in syrup and fell, convulsing, still covered in sperm, on the floor.
He had used her. He was red and he was still smiling: she had learnt nothing and she had wasted herself. Not everything happens for a reason. This story was pointless, so he dies too, eventually. The only way to prevent your characters from haunting you is to kill them at the end. Now they can't fight back; there is no winner here except the author.
(She was blue on the inside.)
(She never woke up.)
