(go to) California
My name is Buffy Anne Summers and this is my confession.
I killed Faith, and I should really start at the beginning but the beginning isn't important; it's the middle that got us here, so the middle is where I'll start.
When the sun sets here, it rolls over the sand dunes like waves of spilled blood, turning the desert brilliant red and orange. The lizards and snakes and other creepy crawly hoppy things come out to wander, and sometimes I can hear the coyote packs howling and crying at the moon. The air is so arid you can almost taste it like sandpaper on your tongue. I drown it out with menthol nicotine.
I drown a lot of things out these days, mostly my own breath and every word she says. Things are different now than they ever were before. They're more complicated, like a picture without contrast. Everything is gray and dull. Faded and blurred and nothing makes sense at all anymore.
They used to, of course. Back in the beginning when everything was wonderful nicotine and tequila. The bars and the boys, the good times. Lazy days filled with curling smoke and towels snapped against taut asses and blunts and blunts for hours at a time. Spinning like disco balls on the dance floors, curling and twirling around each other. Winding, every day was a winding road and now we've slammed into a brick wall.
Sudden death. Like Pearl Harbor, the bomb hit and we were all sleeping when it happened.
Now I know what they mean when they say the silence is deafening because I've never heard a louder quiet than this. I like to sit at the canyon and flick my cigarette butts into it while I try not to think too much. Faith. Pregnant.
Part of me wants to say fuck the bitch for having what I never can.
I hear children laughing in the distance and the sound sends shivers down my spine as I finish off the last of our weed that I had stashed away in case I needed it. The night air is cold on my bare neck and I am still marvelling at the feel of my new short hair.
Faith cut it for me. Said she used to cut her brother's all the time, no problemo chickie, you want those long golden locks gone along with your whole past.. SNIP SNIP SNAP.. and I can make it disappear. To pay her back, I went down on her for an hour until she was so sore she was almost in tears.
You're pretty when you cry.
When Faith's in pain, her eyes crinkle and water and her lips pout just slightly and her chest heaves up and down.. up and down. She gets a fake smile on her face, the same one that's been pasted on for weeks, and you can tell it's fake because there's no dimple.
I pretend I don't know what's going on with her and so does he.
Sometimes I wonder if we ignore her because she's still the new girl to us, or because we want to be happy so badly and even pretending is better than miserable. Meanwhile, her belly swells every day and Xander becomes more withdrawn. Lately he can't even get it up, he's so inside his head.
So we fuck without him and he watches, massaging himself lightly to no avail. I don't think Faith even comes anymore, but who can tell a fake one from a real one anyway? It's not like I even know her that well when you get right down to it. But it doesn't really bother me because I think of her as the surrogate mother for my child.
This child that will be born into a broken, battered and bruised family. One that can't stay away from the drugs or the tequila. Faith's life was like that, maybe that's why she's so turned off these days. She's scared Xander'll start fucking our kid the way her daddy done her.
Six years old and she was already a pro cocksucker. She's so scared little whatshername's gonna end up the same cause we like to hit the blunt now and then. She doesn't know Xander. Doesn't know how pure and true he is, how sick this whole situation makes him. How he'd throw up at the very idea of fucking his own child, or anyone else's for that matter.
I flick another butt into the canyon and imagine it echoing as it falls.
Like my heart, so empty and heavy with the night air. Things were technicolor wonderful before this happened and I wonder if we made a mistake by not giving her the money for an abortion and making it out like this was a great thing. But I quickly clear that thought from my head.
This is my only chance.
And months later, when there is all that blood, my heart is weighted again, heavy with guilt and the knowledge that I caused this.
It's all my fault.