Life's Tough

"Where you been?"

"Um, nowhere-"

"I mean, I haven't seen you in, like, weeks-"

"Yes, you have. At school-"

"Yeah, and all you do is-"

"I've been really busy-"

"Why don't you want to hang out anymore-"

"since we got back from vacation-"

"How was that?"

"Okay. Just me and my parents-"

"Cool-"

"Yeah, listen, I gots to go-"

"Who's that?"

"Who's that?"

"Who fucking is it?" Mark squeezed the cordless till he could no longer hear it cracking and creaking in his numb fingers.

"Dude, it's Maggie-"

"Maggie? Who?"

"Maggie Lolley-"

"What's she doing there?"

"Um, we're going out-"

"Where?"

"I mean, we're going with each other-"

"Where?"

"Like boyfriend and girlfriend-"

"Oh-" Mark's grip on the cordless loosened. So much that he almost dropped it. A pressure, like that of a vise on a delinquent druggie's fingers, formed behind his eyes, forcing them to swell. "Fuck-" His voice broke.

"Mark-"

"What?"

"Don't be like this, man-"

"Like what?"

"You know-"

"Fuck-"

"Come on, Mark-"

"Fuck, man-"

"You knew-"

"Fuck-" Mark pushed the OFF button and threw the phone on his New York Giants-clad bed. He wiped his eyes and sat down at his desk, vacuuming a wad of thick, salty snot down the back of his throat as he snatched the stained straight razor out of the drawer. Slowly, he pulled it across the paper-thin skin of his veiny forearm until he couldn't feel anything but a familiar tightening in his groin-

Fucking Maggie Lolley, the whore. Walking down the hallway, her ass an upside-down heart pillow stuffed in a pair of jeans meant for a girl half her size, her floppy breasts two shivering ghosts of the woman she thought she was but would never be. All he'd ever wanted to do was hold her down and force sex on her. But now. "Fuck-"

He licked the razor, then bent down and put his mouth over the welcome gash in his forearm, a close facsimile of the one on his other arm. And his thigh. And his ass. And his neck. And his other thigh. And his-

As he slurped in silence, he stared at the spots on the carpet under him, lonely red raindrops in a desert of beige shag carpet. From under his brow, he glanced up at the picture of Claude on his desk, framed in a piece of cheap, plastic wood engraved with the words 'In Memoriam,' and began to laugh, his lips pasted with his own warm, sticky blood, his underwear absorbing the pre-ejaculate slipping out of the hole in his penis.