an abstract understanding of anxiety

i fall for you like snow in spring. you promise to keep me safe and warm. you tell me not to talk, keep to myself, then i can be okay. no more embarrassment, no more regrets, no more anything. just us, barely existing, barely visible.

i know you like a vague memory. you tug on my heart and mind, begging to be remembered, to be heard. you suck away at my life, thriving on fear and depleting emotions. i am your puppet, your muse, and you are mWy dying breath, my failing heart.

i feel you like an itch inside my bones. you’ve always been there, at the back of my mind, whispering in my ears, stealing air out of my lungs. you want me all for yourself, no love no life no happiness only you.

i need you like life needs a heartbeat. you are my mind and you are my spirit, you break me down into nothing, you turn my face into fire and my mind into regret. you are narcissistic you are empathetic you are brave you are weak you are everything i’m not you are everything i am. you. are. everything.

Content warning: gore, violence, allusions to sexual assault right; a crude gloved hand on your shoulder; a cold hunting knife raised to your jugular; a sadistic chuckle under a grimy Fun World mask; and the unforgiving realization that you are not the final girl.

You knew you should’ve booked out the back door when you had the chance instead of running upstairs into the killer’s predictable death trap. And you sure as hell thought you weren’t intoxicated enough to trip over the beer bottle rolling on the kitchen floor, costing you a few seconds to get back up, which was a few seconds more for the killer to catch up to you. At least you had more survival instinct than Hunter Lawrence, the jock-turned-bully who was the first to be killed immediately after the electricity went out, and hey, you were still in the process of deducing who the killer was while Britney Mares, local teen stoner, was being brutally shredded to bone and tendon like paper mache and of course, you outlasted Trevor Jones who was destined to meet an early death because he happened to be black so there was just you, Frank Clemmons (who was the killer), and new-girl Delilah Jackson left. Obviously, you would’ve preferred having fewer dead meat-shields before figuring out who the murderer was, but if everything boiled down to a last-man standing kind of thing, you had pretty good odds of making it out alive—that is, if you weren’t a slutty, sleazy, good-for-nothing teenage whorebag.

So as you await your last breath—your heart palpitating as fast as that of a bunny rabbit’s in the jaws of a wolf and your saliva clotting into sanguine metal—you couldn’t help but question what had led you to this fate.

Just what had made you such an unforgivable whore?

Was it because you had sex in the backseat of Ron Murray’s car? Or was it because you lost your virginity—dubiously too—at the age of fourteen to your next-door neighbor who was five years older than you? No, it must’ve begun way earlier when your mother submitted you to those pre-pubescent beauty pageants as a trophy to be won, with you dressed in those ruffled bikini bottoms in the pattern of the American flag and caked in four pounds of sparkly makeup because your eyelashes weren’t “long enough” and your smiles lines were “ugly.” And those subsequent years when you finally brought a boy home for the first time and your father called you a “slut”, and you listened to him, letting yourself be degraded by the various men in your life for the rest of your short-lived childhood.

Even now, as your blood splatters like a macabre fountain, you’re wearing that disgustingly short skirt and skin-tight top masquerading as a cheerleader in your “cheerleading uniform”—the one specifically designed by the male principal. There really was no one else to blame for your own death except for you: the epitome of a whore that deserved no humanity. Yet, that conclusion doesn’t leave you satisfied. You can’t die yet, not without knowing the reason that sweet, innocent Delilah Jackson was to be spared instead of you.

No one’s completely good or bad, you reason, unable to grasp her alleged moral superiority. After all, Delilah had her moments, even if she never intended to be mean: unknowingly perpetuating the rumor that Scarlett Walker had an abortion when she was a freshman, sabotaging Molly Reinhardt’s chances of getting with her long-term crush by telling him that she smoked in her free time, or rejecting Frank’s confession with a simple, yet cruel “you know, you’re like a brother to me.” And who could prove that she really was a “good girl” after all? Sure, she prided herself on avoiding casual hook-ups, which led her to earn the name “Maple Grove’s Holy Virgin,” but didn’t you also see her passionately making out with Trevor the other day? And she was far more vocal than you too, delving head-first into conflict rather than backing away. Yet, it was you that drama constantly wagged its tail around, and it was you who was pegged as the antithesis of Delilah’s very own existence: “Maple Grove’s Ultimate Whore.”

And that made you angrier than anything else. Even as you shielded yourself from your attacker who wanted nothing more but to gut you like a fish, you proceeded to reason that you were better than her and thus, deserved to live. It wasn’t Delilah’s fault anyway that Frank was a crazy fucker, and to be fair, you were the one who invited her to this party that she reluctantly agreed to, but why the hell did you have to be sacrificed so that she could live? She was probably hiding in some closet with a spare pistol she oh-so “conveniently” found in the garage while you were being stabbed in the lungs, unable to do much more than drown in your own blood. Delilah Jackson didn’t have to experience the agony of broken, bruised ribs that forced you to decide when to breathe and fight for another chance at life. Delilah Jackson didn’t have to experience the atonement of your hypersexuality, which you used as a coping mechanism after getting raped. Delilah Jackson didn’t have to experience the devastating betrayal of a lifetime from your childhood best friend, as he finally found an opening to your heart within your pathetic attempts to defend yourself .

Your field of vision receding; your chest being carved inside-out; your face melting off of your skull; and somehow, you still aren’t dead. You plead to be mercifully slaughtered; it’s the least that you deserve. But you forget one key component: the horny, teenage boys in the audience aren’t going to watch your demise if there isn’t any sex appeal. So, you put on a show.

One last dreadfully slow panorama of your exposed, underage ass, and you’re finally left for dead.