Ginger

There’s something very peculiar about making love to a corpse.
I remember the first one I ever had. How she’d came into the mortuary under the name of
Wendy, from an overdose of oxycontin.
I remember how I’d felt when I’d first seen her, and the idea had first entered my head. I
remember the stick of butter from the work fridge; the way she had looked at me, as she’d
slowly shifted up and down on the stainless steel table in the preparation room, with her long
black hair sprawled out behind her and her pretty pallid lifeless face.
‘Thoughtless...’ I remember having thought to myself at the time, ‘pretty, thoughtless, oblivious
to what is capable of doing to man and beast’
There’ve been three in total. With six months spanning from first to last.
There was one curvaceous pretty black young lady who’d had an aneurism, and another thirty
something lady who had also passed from an overdose.
Up until then I had never been with a living girl.
And I still frequently wonder what all three might’ve been like before their passing.
And I liked to pretend that they were actually my girlfriends and that I actually had had
relationships with each of them.
My days at work went on, we had to prepare for funereal people who’d passed in various
fashions; of overdoses, cancers, failed operations, from suicide and road traffic accidents. And I
would often order honey chicken noodle for lunch from the Chinese takeaway place down the
road from the home on my break, and drinking soluble coffee in the staff room from my mug
which read LIFE’S A BEACH on it, which I’d order off of Zazzle.com quite awhile ago and had had
for years by then. And then I’d go back to work with David, my co-worker, and it’d be all the
paper work to check, to make sure the body on the preperation table was the one we were
meant to be embalming that day, and then the various steps of preparing a body for funeral,
disinfecting the body, and the rest, which I won’t detail here.
And while I was working I would often wonder who the person on the table before us might’ve
been in life. And the suprisingly large amount of people who’d succumb to smoking related
complications often made me feel especially conscious of my own habbit.
Then at the end of the day I’d drive home and play video games on my own in my small second
story apartment; Far Cry 3 and Crysis, and whatever else, and watch video clips of women
making love to other men online, and pretend that they were really making love to me.
And I still remember the day when we got an eleven year old girl in who’d hung herself, Scarlett
her name had been; pretty, fair-haired little Scarlett with the bruise around her neck that we’d
later had to cover in foundation.
And I too remember being on many medications at the time; anti-depressants, which I’d been
on since college and diazepam for anxiety, and ambien to help me sleep and whatever else. And
some mornings I would wake up and not even be able to remember who I was.
And thru the day, I would feel as if all of the pills had turned me into some form of robot,

devoid of emotion and independent thought, amidst a world filled with other robots, non-
playable characters, whatever they might’ve, perhaps scripts in some computer program which
was running entirely for me, if a Matrix-esque scenario happened to be taking place, as I
sometimes thought it might’ve been.
And I would think often of ending my life. And I would think that if some form of after life did
exist, then perhaps in it the spirits of the ladies whose bodies I’d interfered with would wish to
punish and torture me, as well as a God might. I just, I wanted to let them know though, that I
meant them no harm, that infact I wished with all my heart that God could have given them
more, even if it meant giving me less.
And while I played the video games on my computer back in my flat after work I would often
pretend that I was actually the character in them, that I was really there fighting the other
soldiers, or rebels or aliens or whatever they happened to be, and it was really me hiding
amongst the ferns, and the buildings and trees, and that if I died in the game, that time, then I’d
have died in real life.
And sometimes as I played I would picture myself as some jaded infantry man in Vietnam, who,
as he hid amongst the overgrowth, would think to himself things like, ‘Warfare isn’t about right
or wrong...
No, I don’t believe any man is entirely evil or deserving of death. Politics, all of that shit doesn’t
enter into it, and I believe quite simply all it comes down to is that one must kill, or be killed…’
‘…Yeah some great soldier’ I remember once adding to a familiar monologue, ‘sitting here in
your armchair, pontificating about all these things you could never understand. You think all of
that death would—you’re going insane, you’re going stir crazy in here. Fuck’
Sometimes I would think about doing it again, a fourth time. And I would worry that that time
might prove my last, and that I’d be caught, by someone who’d came back into the place after
it’d closed, as they’d forgotten something or for whatever other reason.
And I remember one morning on my way back from getting lunch in town I passed a particularly
pretty girl as I was going over the main bridge over the expressway in town. I turned to look
back at the girl after I’d passed her and to my surprise she’d turned her head to look back at me
too and our eyes met. The girl had a pretty round face. She was kind of short with orange hair
which she was wearing back in a ponytail, and she had orange freckles too and was wearing a
black overcoat for the cold and a tight blue pair of jeans.
‘Fuck it’ I thought to myself, then called out, ‘hey!’ to the girl.
‘Hey’ she replied, stopping walking and I then walked up to her and said,
‘Hey man, what’s your name?’
‘Ginger’ she replied.
‘Max’ I replied, offering her my hand which she shook.
‘You uh, work around here or something then?’ I then asked her.
‘Uh huh, yeah, and you?’
‘Yeah man’
We were both silent for a moment, then Ginger said to me, ‘I’m gonna light myself a cigarette.
You want one?’
‘Yeah, that’d actually be really nice, thanks’

Ginger offered me her packet of cigarettes, then lit my cigarette for me, before lighting her
own. ‘Thanks’ I told her.
‘Yeah, sure, no problem’ she replied.
‘So where do you work?’ Ginger asked me over our cigarettes.
‘I uh, I work in the funereal home in town, not far from here actually, Park Lawn Funeral Home’
I then shrugged.
‘How do you like that?’
‘It’s work, I guess’
‘That’s a, pretty weird gig. How’d you get into that?’
‘Uh, an old friend of my father’s runs the joint’
‘Ah yeah’
‘Mm. Yeah. And you, how about you, where do you work?’
‘In the public library, the main one on 14 th and 10 th with the big pillars and…’
‘I think I know the one.
…And how’s that?’
‘Not too good. I fucking hate books’
I laughed slightly at this then said, ‘you don’t like books?’
Ginger shook her head.
‘Not a big literature fan then?’
Ginger pretended to be a man masturbating here.
I laughed slightly at this then said, ‘yeah. Yeah a lot of books can be like that’
‘It’s work. Usually everyone’s always like, ‘if you hate books so much then why do you work in a
library for?’ You’re pretty much one of the first people who hasn’t said that to me, so thank
you’
‘Yeah. Sure. No problem. I get it. It’s a job. I mean, different people like and dislike different
things so… I ain’t judging you.
…Honestly, I don’t love books either.
I think a lot of them are really, over-rated, especially like the ‘must read classic books’ y’know?
…Herman Melville and Murakami; ‘Oh you haven’t read a Murakami book? He really is the best’
And I can’t stand him’
‘He’s the worst’
‘Isn’t he? I mean; I looked at the table. There was a magazine on it and a flower pot and a bowl
with three grains of rice on it, and a carton of cigarettes. It’s like reading a long endless fucking
ingredients list’ I took another pull on my cigarette then added, ‘alright well, here’s one for you,
if you didn’t, let’s say, if you didn’t have to work in the library and could do anything, what
would you do?’
‘I don’t know, anything, get abducted by aliens or something maybe, have them take me to an
entirely new planet’
‘Yeah, that’d be nice’
‘I don’t know.
…but that’s probably not going to happen so, here I am. Gotta do something. I’d feel miserable
if I just sat around doing nothing all day’
‘You weren’t going to school or anything then?’

‘I was but I dropped out’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Journalism’
‘Ah yeah’
‘Yeah’
We were silent for a shortwhile then I said to Ginger, ‘Anyway how long you been working
there for?’
‘At the library?’
‘Yeah’
‘Too long’
‘How long’s that?’
‘2 years’
‘Shit.
…Hey I’d really love to keep talking to you, but I gotta head back to work eh? Otherwise it’ll be
my ass. But have you got like a phone number or something?’
‘Ok, sure, why not?’
‘Ok, cool’
I then got my old iphone with the cracked screen out of my pocket and keyed Ginger’s number
into it as she dictated it to me.
‘Thanks man’ I then told her, ‘I appreciate this. I guess I’ll see ya round then’
‘Yeah, sure’ she replied, ‘have a nice day at work’
‘Yeah, I’ll try’ I replied with a slight laugh, then added, ‘and you too man’
‘Sure’
Ginger and I texted a little over the rest of that day and agreed to meet at a bar in town in the
evening.
At the bar we took a beer each and settled with them in an otherwise abandoned booth.
Shortly after we’d both sat down Ginger said to me, ‘Yeah man, sometimes I hate that place so
much I just want to burn it to the ground...’
‘What, the Library?’
‘Yeah’
‘But it’s so big, you’d need a lot of gasoline. You’d need like, a truck filled with gasoline and a
hose to pump it all out of’
‘I don’t care I’d still do it’
‘…What do you hate about it?’
‘Just all the books’
‘Yeah?’
‘The shitty romance books and the shitty ‘must-read’ classics, Life of Pi and The Lord of the Flies
and whatever else, and none of it means anything and all of my shitty intellectual passive
aggressive co-workers’
‘Yeah?’
‘Sorry it’s just, it’s been a long day, I don’t know’
‘Hey, that’s alright, I don’t love where I work either. I get it’
I took another sip from my cold pint of beer.

‘So can you tell me any gorey details from your job?’ Ginger asked me.
‘Ah, I’d much rather not’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, please don’t make me talk about work man. Like, I really don’t like it much either’
‘Well if you hate it so much then why don’t you just quit?’
‘Because I want to fit in’
‘What? Fit in with who?’
‘Nah, it’s from a movie, American Psycho. Did you ever catch that one?’
‘Nah’
‘Ah, dude you’ve gotta watch it, it’s insane’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, this guy goes insane, hacks up a bunch of people. It’s a pretty cool movie’
‘Alright, I’ll, I’ll try to remember to check it out’
‘Sure.
…To answer your question seriously tho, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know man, I need a job,
right? I have to make loan repayments. I’m fucking 80 grand in the hole in student loans. I
mean, it’s like they say; if you think that no one gives a shit about you, wait until you miss a
loan repayment’
‘Yeah’ Ginger replied with a slight laugh.
‘A little bit of debtor humor for you there’
‘Yeah.
…80 grand that’s a lot. That’s, a lot’
‘Yeah. I’m thinking about faking my own death then running away to Mexico. You want to run
away to Mexico with me?’
‘Hmm...’
‘I don’t know’
‘What were you doing at school?’
‘Creative Writing’
‘Oh. How was that?’
I took another sip from my beer. ‘Eugh... I don’t know dude, bit of a shitshow. Just the fucking
pedantry, in this day and age, the dickheads in my course, just, this fucking age man, like
walking over eggshells, every day, and if you wrote about queer, trans or african american
issues, you were like—they were all like, ‘wow, what a stunning and brave narrative’ and if you
just wanted to write about say a soldier or a heterosexual couple everyone would just be like
‘that’s so one sided’ or ‘that’s so privileged’ and now don’t get me wrong, I’ve really got
nothing, against persons of colour, or the struggle of trans youths, I mean, I’m woke, I feel that,
I just, like, I know I’m not a racist, I know I’m not a sexist, but just so many times you’d get
accussed of being insensitive and just, I never felt so damn misunderstood. I didn’t like it, I
didn’t like it. So I quit, I dropped out. I don’t know’
‘…Yeah’
‘…And here I am, two years on, and now I’m 80k in debt in student loans and working a job I
don’t like and whenever I’m not doing that I’m just sitting behind my computer, with Windows

8 running on it, which I swear to god, must’ve been designed by some sort of team of
retards—or mentally handicapped persons, I’m sorry, whatever’
‘Yeah... Where were you going to school?’
‘Rockhurst’
‘Ah ok’
‘And what about you? How’s tricks outside of work for you?’
‘I don’t know’
‘You don’t know?’
‘Yeah, I don’t know’
‘Ok’
I took another sip from my beer.
Ginger had taken her jacket and sweater off and was just in a black singlet and jeans.
As she held her glass of beer I could see a thick dark pink scar running down her wrist.
‘I wrote a story today’ I said to her.
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah on my lunch break...’
‘I suppose you’ll want to read it to me now’
‘I mean, I don’t have to…’
‘What’s it about?’
‘This guy that kills someone’
‘Alright, that sounds like it might have potential, let’s have it, you got it with you?’
‘I wrote it in my phone. That’s not very romantic is it?
Ah god, that’s probably a big halmark of my life, just this tremendous lack of romance.
Suburbia. Work. Routine. The internet. Video games. But just, I don’t know, the way I see it, I’m
not dying of anything, not in the immediate future, at least; I haven’t done some awful thing to
mar the life of another human being that I need to feel obligied to feel guilty of every waking
hour. I’m just bored. Stuck. Stuck in this dull life for however, however damn long...
I’m not suffering though, I’m just— I don’t know sometimes I’m kind of just like, ‘is this all there
is?’, ‘Is this it?’ And then I’ll go out and stand on the patio before my apartment at dusk, it’s uh,
on the second story so there’s an alright view from it, and I’ll smoke a cigarette and look at the
school down the road and look at the sky and listen to the meth heads fighting in the street and
I’ll be like ‘this is alright. This is alright. It could be worse. I’m here’ I’m just, it’s not madly
thrilling is all; I’m not Leonardo DiCaprio or Julian Casablanca or whoever else, constantly going
to parties and doing blow and making love to gorgeous young women, but ah well, ah well. It’s
still good. I mean, positive mental attitude right? You gotta just try and stay positive about
things even when they aren’t all that great’
‘That’s especially when you gotta do it. Any asshole can be positive about things when their life
is going fine’
‘Yeah’
‘…Are your folks in K.C?’
‘Nah, it’s just my Dad and he’s back in Illinois. I still go back there for Christmas and
Thanksgiving.
Had to come here for the job though, you see, like, he’d just see me sitting around the house all

day playing WoW after I’d dropped out of school, and yeah he basically set it all up for me to
come here and work for his friend, in a morturary... And yeah, yeah…’
Ginger took another sip from her beer then said, ‘any brothers or sisters?’
‘Had a younger brother but he died when he was about 13. Had cancer’
‘Shit. What type of cancer?’
‘Leukemia’
‘…And your mom?’
‘She was never around. Which is weird cause it’s usually the other way around isn’t it? But
yeah, I don’t know what her deal was, they got divorced when I was like 5 then she was just like
‘fuck it’ I guess, ‘time to start a new’. So fuck her, fuck it, it’s whatever. You don’t miss what you
never had, right?’
‘Mm’
‘How about you?’
‘Yeah my mom’s sweet. Dad’s... alright, I guess. Only child’
‘Yeah? You live with your folks?’
‘Uh huh’
‘You go to school?’
‘You asked me this this morning’
‘Shit, did I? Sorry it’s been a rather long day’
‘That’s alright. Yeah I was going in K.C but I dropped out too’
‘No debt?’
‘Nah. Parents helped me with it’
‘And what were you doing?’
‘Journalism’
‘Why journalism?’
‘Honestly, fuck knows. Just, you gotta do something right? But, I don’t know what I’m doing
here, I don’t know what I’m meant to be doing, I don’t know what I want to do.
Like you know all of those dreams and passions and ambitions other people have? To sing or to
become a lawyer or an actress or a doctor or whatever else?’
‘Yeah’
‘I don’t have ‘em. I just, I don’t have ‘em’
‘Yeah?’
‘Mm’
I watched as Ginger took another sip from her beer.
‘How is it that this girl isn’t happy?’ I thought to myself, ‘how is it that she’s sitting her talking
with some asshole like me? How is it that she’s not shacked up and happy with some loving
boyfriend some place?’
‘Weren’t you gonna read me a story or something?’ Ginger asked me.
‘Ah yeah, I could’ I replied, ‘Yeah alright, let’s do that. But, but you gotta make me some
allowances alright, like I’m not some brilliant writer I’m not Ernest Hemingway or whoever else’
‘…Alright well, let’s have your story, it’s about a murderer right?’

‘Yeah, it’s kinda shit, but ah well, just I won’t introduce it to you or tell you what to think. Just
yeah, I don’t have a title for it yet, so maybe you can help me come up with a title afterwards’
‘Ok’
I took another sip from my beer then clicked on my phone, and selected the notes app from it.
I then clicked it off again and set it down on the table.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I then said to Ginger.
‘Ok’
‘But, what happened to your wrist?’
‘I cut it’
‘Fairly severly by the looks of it. And not across the street either, but down the road’
‘Mm’
‘You get stiches in it?’
‘Yeah’
‘How long ago did you do it?’
‘2 years. I could see like, this little white thing in it. I thought, ‘what if I survive and that’s one of
the nerves to my wrist and I cut thru it I and then I can’t move my hand any more?’
‘Yeah’
‘And so I stopped and called 911 and it was bleeding like fuck and yeah. My parents had gone
away for the weekend and I’d drunk pretty much a fifth of vodka to myself and I woke up in
hospital’
‘That’s a lot’
‘Mm’
‘Was that the only time you tried to kill yourself?’
‘Ate a bunch of pills once too’
‘Shit’
‘You?’
‘Yeah I mean, after my brother died I tried to cut one of my wrists open with a box cutter, my
attempt wasn’t half as good as yours though’
‘Yeah’
‘A close friend of mine once told me, that he thought that anyone who’s never tried to kill
themselves is worthless. And, sometimes I feel like I’d be inclined to agree. Like, you look at all
of these fucking great artists, poets; Ian Curtis, Vincent Van Gogh, these are desperate,
disturbed men, y’know? And they’ve created these great stirring works out of their pain. And if
you look at someone who’s just like ‘fun, fun, fun, lol, just laugh and be happy’ What is there in
that, y’know? They don’t turn out to be half the artists that the fucked up kids do. I don’t know’
‘Yeah’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know man. It’s whatever’
‘Nah’
‘I don’t know’
‘Come on, story. I want to hear it now, you’ve worked it up so much’
‘Alright, fine’ I picked my phone back up off of the table, clicked it on again, and selected the
notes icon from the homescreen, ‘but if you listen to it, you have to promise that you’ll help me
come up with a title afterwards, that’s the catch, otherwise I won’t read it’
‘Ok’

I looked at Ginger. ‘Alright here goes, story starting now’ I then said to her, then looked down
into the notes app I had open in my phone, and opened the note that had my story in it.
‘…Dr. Hofstetter hobbled his way to the back of his small dusty basement laboratory on his
austere black cane’ I then began to read from my phone, ‘he stood before his laboratory table
at the back of the room.
He looked at the condensor, the glass tubing, the alcohol lamps, the thermometer and the lab
burners. He looked at the yellowy liquid in the vacum sealed glass beaker below the condensor
and he knew from the readings he’d taken of that morning’s batch of what it was.
‘Oh christ, this is it? This is really it isn’t it?’, the old man thought to himself, ‘my great
masterpiece, my legacy..’
The doctor smiled to himself for a moment. He stopped however when he noticed his young
intern, Samuel, intently looking at him from a folded out metal chair on the side of the room.
‘Oh great, now what’s it going to be?’ the doctor then thought to himself.
‘And now just what the hell are you looking at?’ the doctor suddenly snapped at the young
man.
‘Nothing sir’ Samuel replied, ‘Nothing.
…Well I suppose I was just thinking that— ah well no, don’t worry, it’s not important’ 
‘Oh come on boy, out with it!’ 
‘No sir, really it’s nothing; I, I thought about telling you it then I realized that there’d be no way,
that it wouldn’t be feasible so, yeah...’ 
‘Hopeless’ the doctor thought to himself as he hobbled back over to the armchair on the other
side of the small room, then carefully set himself down in it, ‘Hopeless…’
The doctor then looked over at the boy, ‘the millions... The, billions of dollars...’ he thought to
himself, ‘the acclaim, and yet he is so— undeserving, and he of course would be the young face
of the break thru, on the cover of all the, Natural Geographics and Times Magazines, and
whatever else...
When will be the right time though…? And how will I make it to appear to have been the boy’s
own idea? Ricin of course would never work… They would find it in his blood in the autoposy. 
No, it will have to be with your old walther. I just… The trajectory— the round would have to go
thru his temple or into his open mouth.
Or perhaps you could simply just browbeat him into doing it himself, get him drunk one evening
in The Thirsty Crow, and then give him some spiel about how, about how—oh, I don’t know,
about how it’s the right thing to do, after breaking that poor student girl Sylvia’s heart...‘ 
The doctor then looked up at Samuel, who was still eyeing him from the other side of the room.
‘Well, this is it, my boy’ the doctor then said to the youth with a sigh, ‘We’re almost done. Soon
we shall have our answers’
‘Yes’
‘We have to be thankful in this life my boy for knowledge, true knowledge! For without
knowledge in this world there would be no clarity. Man would be no better off than the
beasts. Knowledge has bought us civilized soceity, civilzed society butressed by law,
order, respect. Society’s in which men are free to strive for the stars and beyond’ 
‘Forgive my saying sir, but…’
‘Oh, what is it now, boy? Out with it’

‘Well, is man really much better than the beasts?’
‘What’s that?’
‘I said is man really much better off than the beasts. He kills for sport, for pleasure, at an utter
eggshell, with the press of a button from an airplane.
…Beasts, to my knowledge, only kill out of necessity, never malice’
The doctor looked at the youth blankly.
‘Man’s reason has bought him endless rows of suffering poultry, cattle; it has bought him
slavery, genocide, the rifle, the atom bomb’
‘Well yes, if you want to have that conversation, it too has born the poet, and Mozart and
Beethoven, and the airplane, and now this, this!’ the Doctor gestured emphatically over to the
laboratory table.
‘…Well, it is a double edged sword, I suppose, I won’t dispute that’
‘No, reason is a fine thing; more; it is man’s hope, his salvation, his, expression!
…I should like to give you something, my boy.
I should like to—
I should like to tell you son, that I am hard on you because—
Well, I should like to tell you, that I’m only hard on you because I would like to see you reach
your full potential’
‘Yes sir’
The doctor arduously then pushed himself up from his chair on his cane, then began to hobble
over to the sideboard a shortway down the side of the room from him. He briefly remembered
how Samuel and his then girlfriend Sylvia had moved this sideboard down into the basement
for him several months back in the fall.
As the doctor stood at the sideboard, with his back to Samuel, he said, ‘My father gave this to
me after he came back from the war in Korea...’ the doctor then opened a draw in the
sideboard and took out from it a small black snub-nosed walther pistol, then discreetly slipped
it into one of the sidepockets of his blazer.
‘He would not say exactly what...’ the doctor went on as he continued to stand there with his
back to Samuel, ‘but he told me of how he’d seen horrible things over there.
And then one evening, when he’d been rather drunk, he told me of how he’d seen three men
one night; a decoy and two others, running right out into the path of enemy bren gun fire, to
try and retrieve a wounded soldier’
‘And did they get him?’ Samuel asked.
‘No, no they didn’t…
My father, never told me quite what he was award this for, I never learned that, but he...’ The
doctor turned around and looked at the boy, ‘And you, you have been with me for almost a
year now, my boy, taken me seriously when many others would have thought me mad, and I
think, I think that this very well might be it for us. And, I should like for you to have this’
‘Yes sir, if that’s what you think… What you would like…’
‘Mm’
The old man then hobbled back over to the still seated young man. He put a hand on his

shoulder and the youth looked up at him and smiled. And the Doctor then took his hand off of
the youth’s shoulder, quickly withdrew the walther from his blazer pocket and shot the boy
thru the temple with it’
I then clicked off my phone.
‘That’s it?’ Ginger asked me.
‘Mmhm’
‘Bleak dude’
‘Yeah, I don’t know…’
‘Yeah that’s really bleak man. I mean what’s the moral? What’s the point of it all? Or is it just
like random violence?’
‘Who says a story has to have a point or a moral?
A Russian pilot blasts an apartment block in Syria and half the people inside perish. To this
there is no point, yet to it’s survivors it is still a story.
…I don’t know, I mean, yeah...
I suppose there was no central point I was driving at with it, but it was just something that
happened, or whatever.
I’m around death a lot, so yeah… Maybe some of it rubs off on me’ I took another deep sip from
my beer, ‘I remember we once got this young man in who’d shot himself thru the temple and I
suppose I was remembering that a bit when I was writing it... I remember when we were
preping the body just thinking to myself, ‘Why?’ Y’know, ‘Why? If there’s a God’, which, I’m not
ruling out, ‘why wouldn’t he have intervened somehow to stop this handsome young man from
taking his own life like that, y’know? Just why?’
‘Perhaps there isn’t a God’
‘Mm’
‘And it’s just various things that are happening’
‘Yeah. Yeah there is that argument’
‘A bullet gets fired, if it hits someone he dies. And there’s no God inbetween the two making
sure it’s all just and fair’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. Anyway, yeah, I can still remember that, kid, that young man, and his
messy black hair with the frozen matted blood in it. I don’t know. But please don’t think of me
as a violent person though. It’s just a story. Probably not even a very good one’
‘I definitely wouldn’t say that. I wish I could write like that’
‘Well, thanks man, thanks a lot. I don’t know, it’s just a story’
‘Did you write any others?’
‘Nah, not really eh? Some in school but they were never very good. But I should like to write
more, I mean, fuck my job man. If I have to sew the lips shut on another dead body of someone
else’s loved one— but what else do you do, what else do you do? Like I’m stuck, working, then
playing video games and watching YouTube videos and reading listicals and crap on message
boards, and 6 Surprising Things You Learn in the Alt-Right Media Bubble, and Restart required to
install updates, and an unexpected error has occured, as all the people from my old college and
high school live these bright fantastic lives out on facebook and instagram, and I just, ugh.
Screen sickness, what can I say?’
‘Yeah... Well, what else would you want to write about then?’

‘I don’t know, horror maybe. Like I’m a weird guy, I’m not gonna lie, but I think I should like to
write horror stories or horror movie scripts. Like Tarentino I really like, a lot of his stuff. Maybe
not all of it, but like, Inglorious Basterds I really loved. That was a really pretty film at times…
Like if I could just write about normal people living in a violent world, without sexing it up or
glamorising it or whatever, and it was just like, these are people, trying to live, trying to find
peace and happiness and all that and this is some fucked up shit that happened to them and,
well maybe there might be something in that’
‘Then do it’
‘Like Tarentino dropped out of film school and was working in a video store in San Diego when
he wrote his first script and shot it’
‘Well why not do that?’
‘I don’t know. The interest will compound if I miss a payment, so I gotta work and I feel too
tired to do much else afterwards. I’m bitching, I shouldn’t bitch, I’ve got a fairly cushy life in
many respects, I guess’
Ginger took another sip from her beer, then said, ‘You got any other movie ideas?’
‘Had one about some guy who’d hide under people’s beds and grab them by their ankles when
they tried to get back into them. I mean obviously I’d have to flesh it out a lot more than that
but that was just the basic premise. Like I said I’m a pretty weird guy. Maybe I could add like a
romance to it, or something, a lad who tries to save his romantic interest from the killer or
whatever…’
‘Well write it then’
‘Yeah’
Ginger and I drank a few more rounds in the bar. Then as we were leaving she said to me,
‘how’d you get here man?’
‘I drove’
‘You’ve got a car?’
‘Yeah. Just my shitty old white corolla. Nah, I shouldn’t say that about her. She’s a nice car’
‘Could I see her?’
‘Sure’ I replied with a slight laugh.
I felt quite drunk by then and as we stood before my car in the carpark behind the bar, Ginger
said to me ‘Oo eer’ And I then kissed her.
And after a little while of this, Ginger said to me, ‘Maybe we should go into your car?’
‘Ok’ I replied.
Ginger had a prophylactic in her purse and we soon took to making love in the back of my car.
Midway thru our love making I took to kissing Ginger’s neck a bit.
‘Could we have less neck?’ she soon asked me.
‘Oh, oh yeah, ok’ I replied, ‘…Why, did something happen to your neck?’
‘Yeah. It’s just, my dad, yeah’