confined ;; phan

chapt. two

PLAYLIST
toes by glass animals
hoops by the rubens
isle of flightless birds by twenty one pilots

the moon.

"the first time i killed someone?" dan tastes the words, licking them from his teeth like salt. they taste foreign and bitter. it seems like so long ago since the first time he put a bullet in someones skull.

"yeah," elon agrees, nudging him with his bony tattooed elbow.

"i was seventeen." dan is almost twenty five and seventeen feels like a lifetime ago. "my friend bought a hand gun to my house. it had one bullet. we decided to play russian roulette. instead of firing up, i shot him in the head."

the story is a stretch. dan didn't purposefully shoot anyone. him and his little brother were playing with their dads six canister hand gun. it was loaded. one bullet. one shot. he kept firing blanks and the gun clicked slowly towards the killing shot. dan pointed it at the thirteen year old boy in front of him and fired.

"hot," elon grins, kissing dan's jaw. dan shudders and feels bile rise in his throat. guilt and pain flood his chest.

"hmm," dan chokes out in agreement, hands shaking uncontrollably.

dan met elon during his first month in prison. elon was a bipolar crack dealer and had only ever killed one person; his ex wife. strangled her to death or something. dan didn't care because elon fucked him good and made sure other prisoners respected him. he was practically a top dog and everyone knew it. dan would definitely not say him and elon were a couple. it was mutualism; they both got something out of it and remained satisfied.

dan continues to eat his cardboard sandwich in the day room. he looks out at the sea of orange jumpsuits and sighs, forcing down his mouthful.

"who was your first love?"

the sentence makes dan choke, retching the mouthful back up onto the tray. the table of criminals laughs at his outburst but dan wants to crawl up and die. dan could usually handle jail questions. but life questions were a different story.

what are you in for? was something he was asked everyday for almost a year. (by the way, 'numerous first degree murders and prostitution' becomes less and less impressive the more you say it.)

who was your first love? made him want to choke to death on a hotdog roll.

"his name was pj, but i killed him." dan rips the crusts off the last of his sandwich. "and then there was phil, but i killed him too."

a/n
interpret that last bit as you wish