101 Creepy Stories

The Letter

Jonah,

It's been fifteen days, since I last saw you, and believe me when I say that staying away from you has been harder than staying away from cocaine. I know. I know. Terrible you are going to say, with a puckered brow and hard, cold eyes as the muscle in the bottom of your jaw will flex.

Terrible what cocaine, and prescription pills have done to me, to us, and I am still up with my corny drug jokes, and even worse, clichéd cocaine-pick-up lines. But Jonah, I am tired. I am tired of hiding away this monster inside me from you.

I wanted to call you. It has been days since I had heard your voice, seen you, touched you, and God knows, wanking has lost its appeal now that I know how the touch of your hands, and the smell of your aftershave.

But I didn't think you would have liked hearing me. Liked having my voice penetrate your thoughts, and interrupt your solitude. It's too soon-the wounds are still raw, and we both have bridges to rebuild and scars to stitch. And if I am being honest, I was scared I would lose it all, this precocious balance that I had maintained, if you hung up on me. I am coward, Jonah, and I have always known it.

So I thought I would write to you instead. You had once said, I have a way with words. And writing your fears down is less terrible than enunciating them. It makes them feel less real somehow, and I have never been a great fan of reality.

You see, my father was a strange man. And my mother didn't want to be a mother. She had dreams. Big dreams and I was a product of passing drunk night in a lowly lit room in her autobiography.

A lowly lit room that wasn't of my father. You'd think a terrible divorce would follow. But Jonah, I have told you, my father was a strange man. And so was my mother. Years, later when she would tell me this story, she would tell it between laughs. Like having a child with a man who is not your husband is the most hilarious thing that would happen.

My mother and father were selfish people who liked familiarity more than love. And an illegitimate child was not a force strong enough to destroy that familiarity.

So what they did was maths.

My share of love was calculated and divided with precision. Between my father, my mother, and the other man. One third to each of them. And when the other man bailed out, before I was even born, my parents decided it was not their responsibility to fill the void.

So it would stay there.

A One-Third hole in-universe.

And when I would tell them, 'Mother, I am gay', my voice bold and my heart shaking with trepidation, my mother would shrug, and say, 'That's sad.'

And, I am not kidding when I say, getting disowned would have been better. Disdain has always felt better than apathy to me.

"Some children just get unlucky," my father would remark casually one day when I would confront him about his indifference.

And then gradually, their share of love would shrivel and die too, and the vacuum inside my heart would keep expanding. I needed something to fill it with Jo. Anything.

And marijuana always did it better than art, despite what my school counsellor said.

I am not defending myself. I am not. I knew what I was getting into. I knew what I was playing with was fire. That one day it is going to engulf me whole-- faster than I could scream. But I didn't care. Because I had nothing to care for. And then, you came crashing into that gay bar, outside the awfully homophobic town in Oklahoma, and suddenly I had so much to care for.

And on September 24th, a month after I had met you, as we sat in your car, with Paul singing Yesterday, I knew.

I knew I didn't want to play with this fire anymore. I wanted to go home with you, where you would cook half burned lentils for me, and destroy all the iconic Queen songs with your horrible off-key voice.