Kasper Story

The Long Heartbreak


She sat there on his bed feeling nervous, her ratty orange hair illuminated by the streaks of sunlight passing through the dirty blinds of Marc’s NYC apartment bedroom. She’d come all this way, she thought. Hundreds of miles on a crowded greyhound bus, to escape everything. Her family, friends, her job; she’d abandoned all of it on impulse for a taste of excitement in the big city.
Marc had lit a cigarette and stood at the window, slowly exhaling while gazing down on the dirty city streets below. He had his shirt off and his wild black hair partially covered his eyes. His muscular brown chest and arms were natural; he’d never visited a gym in his life. He was a man of the streets; hed been brought up rough and had a love affair with petty theft and heroin. He was the kind of man who had to fight for everything he had. He projected danger, and women loved that.
“Kasper…” he said, letting out a coy half smile. “Why are you so nervous? This is what you wanted, remember? We’re together now…you came all this way so we could be together and I could show you a different life.”
“I know, “ she said in a meek, mousey voice that had fear in it. “Ive just never been out of Tennessee before. This is so out of character for me…god, just wait till discord finds out,” she nervously laughed.
“Yeah, well you’re going to be trying a lot of new things this weekend, I promise you that babe.” He walked over to her and put his hand on her face and slowly moved it down her cheek, all the while she looked down at the floor. “Hey,” he put his hand under her chin and raised her face up level to his, “always look me in the eyes, ok? Don’t be afraid of me. Im not going to hurt you. Not ever.”
“I know, Marc”.
Marc knew. He knew that soon he would take her virginity, and she would lay naked in his arms for hours afterward, trembling and nuzzling her head in his chest. She would say “I love you, Marc” like dozens of other girls had. She would lay in bed and smile at the thought that he was her first boyfriend.
“Oh, wait!” he hurried over and grabbed his phone off the table and turned on the camera. “come over here and let me kiss you. Lets give your orbiters something to seethe over.”
She got up and came over to him, and they embraced for a passionate kiss. She felt his lips forcefully meet hers and she let him pull her close, his strong hands overpowering her. She felt entirely under his control and at his mercy, and she liked it that way. She was intoxicated by the raw energy of him.
Click.


Seymour sat staring at his computer monitor, trying to make sense of the picture. He saw it, but it didn’t register as being real. He couldn’t accept it. He felt pieces of himself dying inside, he felt it in is bones and his heart. His reality was melting away, dissolving.
It was her. The hair was hers, and the pale skin looked like hers.
Marc was kissing her, there in the daylight. His hands wrapped around her , their bodies together, embracing. It didn’t make sense. He felt a stinging confusion inside that made him lose his breath, the kind of shock a man felt when his most dreaded nightmare came into being. It was like seeing a loved one being murdered in front of you and not being able to stop it.
Why, K? WHY. What drove you to this? Seymour got up from his computer chair and walked to the kitchen. He picked up his coffee mug and hurled it against the wall and watched the shattering glass scatter in a thousand pieces on the floor.
	Kasper had become more than an e girl to him, she was a real person that he cared about . They were friends. They’d bonded over being jehovahs witnesses as children,  being sheltered, having no friends. Many nights he’d stayed up until the late hours approaching dawn, talking about life and love and the future with her, both of them taking comfort in each other’s familiar voice . She was a reprieve from the loneliness .
She was GOOD. She was different. He KNEW her, or so he thought. Perhaps that’s what was killing him…The feeling that he knew her, only to realize suddenly one day that he didn’t know her at all....
	No matter now, Seymour thought . Situations change and people change. Even so... he couldn’t let this go. She wasn’t well, she was being taken advantage of by a monster. She was going to end up badly hurt or worse, dead. Would a real friend let that happen? Absolutely not. Her innocence may be gone, but I can still save her from ruin, he thought.
“I know exactly what I have to do,” seymour said out loud.
He walked to his bedroom closet, reached high onto the top shelf, and pulled down a large box containing that which he’d swore he’d never use again. The gleaming instruments of death .... Sunny’s scalpels.
	It was going on 4 days now that kasper had been staying with Marc . Truth be told, he was getting tired of her. He’d gotten what he wanted. He’d taken her virginity . He’d gotten her to spend all the money she had on him . They’d eaten in nice places , he’d gotten her to smoke weed with him (she refused to do heroin though). It was nice for a few days, he thought, but now it was getting old.
	As they lay in bed together in the cold darkness , her body draped over his, her bare thigh curled up over his hips, he thought of how he would end it. He’d have to let her down easily and ship her back to Tennessee on a bus…but with what money? He hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. He could imagine it all unfolding: her crying hysterically at the bus station , the make up running down her cheeks as she begged him to let her stay a while longer. He’d be cold, emotionless , and send her away. He had to. The life he led was easier if he avoided attachment. He’d learned this with Bianca.
	 Kasper reached over and pulled a blanket over herself and noticed marc lying awake , smiling and staring off in the distance. “What are you thinking about marc? Why can’t you sleep?”
	“just a lot on my mind. Probation hearing in a few days, you know? I gotta come back clean, babe. I can’t go back to jail, I just can’t.”
	Kasper kissed his neck and put her hand on his chest. “That’s why I’m here, Marc. To be a good influence on you , so you stay off the hard stuff. I won’t let you go to jail…I won’t let them take you from me…” she wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could , as though her need for him was greater than life itself, and for a moment marc felt a heavy guilt for what lay ahead in the coming days. He knew things she didn’t…and it was better if it stayed that way.
	Suddenly kasper heard a rustling noise. It sounded like a shuffling of feet coming from the next room, near the front door . “Marc…did you hear that? I think someone’s outside.. I think I heard someone .“
	Marc sat up in his boxers. “It’s like 3am, the fuck would be hanging out front right now? The crack heads know to stay away from my place. Jesus Christ ,” marc got up and walked into the next room and headed for the front door. For a moment he thought he heard the sound of feet running away. He opened the front door quickly and looked out. Not a person in sight .
	As he closed the door and turned to go back to bed, that’s when he saw it. A white piece of paper. A note had been slipped under the door. He picked it up and unfolded it.

		Marc,
			Tomorrow at midnight , we dance
			To the death
			For Kasper’s honor
			My blades thirst for your spilled blood
			Every cut on your flesh will remind you
			Of the innocence you destroyed
			Vengeance will be mine, in her sweet name
			Say your last goodbyes tonight
For tomorrow, a chad will DIE at the hands of an incel
			and the world will rejoice
			so it is written


					Midnight . Astoria park. By the duck pond

						Seymour


Mark went back to the bedroom holding the note, trying to contain his laughter.
Kasper was sitting up in bed, alert and waiting. “Marc? What was it?”
“Holy shit, babe, youre not going to believe this. Here, you’ve got to see this.” He handed it to Kasper and watched her eyes widen as she read the note, a serious look coming over her face.
“Oh my god” , she muttered quietly.
“I know, right? Hahahahahaha. What a fucking freak! This guy is insane.”
“Marc, youre not going to go, right? Please don’t. He’s a delusional, mentally unstable old man. He needs help. I feel sad for him. Don’t go, ok? He belongs in a psych ward or something.”
“Oh, im going alright,” marc had lit a cigarette and was running his hand through his hair as if he were already thinking and planning for tomorrow. “How could I not go? This is fucking hilarious. This is gold. I want to see what hes going to try and do next. This guy actually thinks hes a superhero trying to rescue his sweet princess who’s in danger. Can you imagine how mentally ill the guy is?”
Kaspers look of concern was growing. She knew Marc was short tempered and impulsive himself. He gravitated toward trouble when he should’ve been smarter. “Please don’t hurt him, Marc. Please? He really is a sweet guy, hes just disturbed. He had a lot of trauma as a kid, I remember him telling me on discord. It was really sad.”
	“Yeah? Don’t worry…I won’t kill him. I’ll just rough him up some. I’ll make sure he remembers that he was in a fight. He won’t bother us again after tomorrow. Believe that.”
	Marc walked over to a set of drawers along the far wall and opened the bottom one, sifted through some old socks and t shirts, and pulled out a gun. It was a shiny Smith and Wesson. He’d gotten it through a break-in he and a few guys pulled off about three months ago. Some nice house on the other side of town whose occupants were on vacation at the time. It was an easy score; he and his friends cleaned the place out quickly and ended up with mostly jewelry , some expensive tools,  a bit of cash, and the gun. He kept the gun. It had a clean history. One owner. He knew he’d need it at some point.
	He faced kasper and held it up for her to see. “You like it? What do you think? Seymour brings his scalpels, I bring this bad boy. Who do you think has the better chances?”
	“Marc, stop! Put it away.” She was feeling afraid again and didn’t want to look him in the eyes. She could feel herself starting to tremble. She hated when he got like this, explosive and unpredictable.
	“Oh, come on Kasper!” he yelled suddenly. “THIS is what you came to New York for! THIS is why you left your shitty, pointless small-town life! You like this excitement….you like it, and you know it! This gun… the thought of me putting a bullet in seymours head with it…it turns you on.. it makes your mousey little cunt wet, doesn’t it?! Yeah!?”
	Kasper was horrified and put her hands over her ears. “Marc, stop saying things like that! Shut up! Don’t talk like that!”
	Marc stormed over to her sitting on the bed and grabbed a fistful of her long orange hair and yanked it hard; he pulled her onto the ground and dragged her out of bed by her hair. “you fucking stupid e girl bitch! You think I don’t know how fucking fake you are!?” he brought the gun to her face and, letting go of her hair, used his other hand to pry her mouth open.
	She was white with shock; she did as he wanted and did not resist.
	“Yeah… open that fucking whore mouth , “ he said. “youll deep throat this gun, that’s exactly what youre going to do!…if you gag, im slamming your ugly monkey face into the floor, and things are going to get real bloody… you got that?!”
	She nodded. She was on autopilot now; not thinking, not wanting anything at all, just existing.
	Marc inserted the gun deeply into her mouth to back of her throat and watched her eyes begin to water. Tears began streaming down her cheeks.
	Marc began gently caressing the back of her head as he talked, toying with her hair. “You damaged e girls, you’re all the same. You get off to the same fucked up kinks, every last one of you... You enjoy being abused. You fucking love it when I raise my hand to your face and paste you one. You need me to do what your dad never had the balls to.”
	She nodded, still trying not to choke on the gun.
	Marc took the gun out of her mouth and tossed it on the floor. He quickly raised his hand and slapped her across the face, the sound echoing off their tiny bedroom walls. He looked at her with disgust, then grabbed the collar of her shirt and ripped at it, tearing her shirt off , buttons flying, fabric tearing.
	“disgusting little bitch. Look at your cutesy, innocent little angel face, in your ripped shirt. Just look at it. Guys walk past you on the street and think, ‘theres a sweet , pure little angel!’ . I bet they do. I bet that’s what Seymour thinks, isn’t it? poor fucking guy. He thought you were an innocent little princess who just watched anime, played Minecraft, and drank capri sun. I bet he’d cut his own throat if he knew what you REALLY were. “
	Kasper’s blank eyes didn’t seem to register what he was saying. She simply nodded in agreement.
	He lifted her onto her feet, then slammed her hard into the wall, making a picture fall down.  She stood there shaking, her knees almost ready to collapse.
	“Take that bra off. Let me see those ugly tits. Those granny panties, too. Slide them off. Take it all off, NOW, you useless slut. You make me so sick. How you lead orbiters on and break their fragile little hearts. And you enjoy it, too!”
	Kasper did as she was told, and stood there awkwardly, her pale naked body in full view. She looked down at the ground as if she were deeply ashamed.
	“Look at you,” Marc said in a disappointing tone. “Did I ever tell you that Bianca had the cutest , tightest, sexiest little body? Nice small perky tits. Perfect round ass.” He could see tears were dropping from kaspers face again and onto the floor, and she stared downward.
	“You’re certainly a step down from Bianca. And that’s the fucking truth. Like, just look at your pale, awkward body. Look how insecure you are. Look at your flabby ass. And your massive monkey ears, holy shit. Youre not worthy of a guy like me. I could have almost any girl I want, you know that right?”
	She slowly nodded without making any eye contact.
	He stared at her light pink nipples and at the moistness between her thighs. “God, you really are pitiful. Youre aroused as hell right now. Your nipples are hard, your pussy is dripping wet. What am I going to do with you?”
	Marc slowly walked over to her and unzipped his pants and took his dick out. Kasper raised her head and opened her mouth, almost on instinct, as her glazed over eyes seemed to look right through him.
	“Now be a good slave and get to sucking. And be enthusiastic when you suck it. Suck it like you love it and cant live without it. Don’t you dare stop before I say so.”
	She nodded and started to suck, as tears began to well up in her eyes again.



	Seymour was crouched behind a tree at the edge of the clearing, surveying his surroundings. Three minutes to midnight. The park was enveloped in a thick veil of darkness; there were no brief flashes of light from the headlights of approaching cars, no street lamps in the vicinity that could expose a man’s crimes. Not at this hour. It was pitch black, with only the faint light of a partially covered moon to save you from tripping and falling over yourself.  all the better to hide and maneuver in, to stalk your prey in.  He would use the trees to his advantage, the wind, the dense mist that hung in the air. They would  act as camoflauge while he zeroed in on the kill. It was the perfect night for a showdown.
	A low blanket of fog hung over the field of grass beyond the cluster of trees. His gaze could make out a few paved walkways winding off into the distance, some benches scattered here and there, barely visible, and then the pond in the background, stretching out beyond .
	Likely Marc would come from the northeast side, if he came at all. There was only one pond in Astoria park, so there couldn’t be any confusion. Seymour knew in his gut that he’d come; Marc would never back away from a fight, even if it was the smart decision.
	There! Seymour caught a glimpse of a dark shape moving in the distance toward the bench area, near the bank of the pond. He stayed at the edge of the trees until he was sure the outline was him. The figure sat and lit a cigarette, his legs relaxed, semi-spread. Seymour could make out the hair…the bushy mop of thick hair… it was Marc.
	He picked up a small rock and hurled it toward Marc, then ducked again out of sight.
	“Seymour? “ Marc had gotten up from the bench and started walking toward the tree line. “Are you hiding in there, you fuck? Come out already, Im not wasting my Friday night on this. I have to make a drug run in a few minutes, so lets get it over with”, he continued until he was in the dark thicket of trees. He felt a sudden thud and a stinging in his upper arm, and stumbled backward a few steps. He reached and pulled out a small Throwing star from his arm. He grimaced as he yanked it out, and saw a round blood stain forming beneath his flannel shirt.
“God dammit, Seymour, that hurt. Are you seriously throwing Chinese stars at me? Do you think youre some 50 year old ninja assassin or something? Come out already and stop hiding. Youre just annoying me more, and that’s bad for you.”
“Do you smell the scent of death in the air, Marc ?” Seymours voice called out. “You won’t ruin any more egirls lives, not after I send you to hell tonight, you demon. You could’ve taken advantage of any other stupid generic discord thot… but you had to pick kasper! You had to ruin the one last innocent girl.”
Marc laughed as he tried to detect exactly where Seymour was. “Keep talking Seymour, so I can find you. You cant hide in this grove all night.”
Marc leaned back against a tree and lit another cigarette. “you know what? Im going to take my time with you, actually. I’m going to slow down and enjoy this. I guess I should break the news to you, Seymour, while you’re here…Kaspers not what you think, pal. Shes a wild one, let me tell you. She was a virgin, but man shes an animal. You should see the bruises on my neck and the fingernail marks she left on my back. Do you want me to tell you how she moaned and screamed my name seymour? Would you like to hear about that?”
“Shut your face!”  Seymour screamed. “On God, I am going to cut your tongue out! Don’t talk about her that way while Im around. I swear you’ll pay for every nasty thing you say about her!”
“ What is this weird obsession you have with her being pure and innocent, seymour? Shes not that, bruh. No girl is. Shes probably in my bed right now, fingerblasting herself, waiting for me to come back home and choke her and slap her around. She likes that, you know.”
“she doesn’t fingerblast!” Seymour cried from the shadows. “she doesn’t do that! She told me in DM’s. shes not that kind of girl, you piece of shit!”
“AHAHAHAHAHA”, Marc Laughed. “Do you honestly believe that dude? Shes 19 bro. do you think shes at home coloring in her coloring books and playing with her my little pony toys? Fuck, get a grip. Shes a teenage girl. She wants to fuck. She wants to have fun, do drugs, go to parties. That’s what girls do you moron”
“God dammit Marc, you make me sick!” seymour shouted back. “You encourage these shy autistic girls to become fucking degenerates and you act like its no big deal. Well it is a big deal! Kasper was special. You just see her as a piece of meat. But shes someones daughter! Someones sister! Shes someones best friend….you don’t even love her, Marc.”
“Yep. Guilty as charged, Seymour. I don’t give a fuck about her. I just wanted some pussy, dude. Hahahaha.”
“NO! NO NO NO!!” Seymour charged from the trees wielding scalpels in each hand. He swung wildly at marc with frantic swipes , trying to slash him with all of his strength. He lunged at him in the darkness but lost his balance, and Marc was able to grab one of his arms, come under it and deliver a crushing blow with his fist to seymours ribs.
Seymour buckled and dropped to his knees. Marc kicked his other arm so that the scalpel flew out, leaving him with only one. Seymour struggled desperately to get to his feet. “You took the only girl who mattered to me !” He yelled. “She was all I cared about in this miserable life!” He leaped towards Marc again , hoping to surprise him and slash at his neck, but he was too slow. Marc dodged and slugged Seymour in the back of the head, and he tumbled forward onto the ground. Marc quickly kicked him several times in the gut  , and connected with a hard right hand into seymours jaw, and he fell face down on the grass.
It is finished, Seymour thought, as he drifted in and out of consciousness. I failed , kasper. I was too old and stupid and slow, and marc is better than me. I wasn’t good enough to save you, kasper. I came all this way and tried so hard, only to die face down in the mud like a loser.
Marc turned him over and got on top of him and started punching his face. Blood was trickling out of seymours nose, mouth, and he had a large gash over his eye. Seymour was helpless to defend himself.
Marc stood up and lit a cigarette, then kicked him one more time in the stomach. “Don’t give up yet seymour, come on! You almost had me there . Come on, get up! I could see the fight in you, how jealous and possessed you were, so angry,  wanting to defend  your e girlfriend’s honor. You have the mind of an immature child and the body of an old man, seymour.  It’s really sad. It’s a shame you’re going to die a failure tonight .”
 Seymour was  grimacing in pain, trying to just move or crawl away. His body felt broken and on fire . “I think my ribs are shattered , marc. I can’t fucking breath. Just kill me, Dammit. End my life. Do it!”
“Oh I’m going to, don’t worry. “ Marc replied. “I’m not quite done having fun with you yet, though.” He grabbed Seymour’s arm and began dragging him over to the pond.  Once he reached the edge of the water, he reached over and grabbed the back of his head and dunked it in the murky water, holding him down as he struggled.
Marc released him finally, and Seymour came up gasping for air.
“How’s the water taste, seymour? Pretty sure I pissed in there a few weeks ago. Be careful not to gulp down any duck shit either. That water is filthy”
“Marc,” seymour whispered out of breath “I swear I’ll haunt you from the depths of hell, I’ll protect her from the grave if I have to.”
Marc sighed and reached into his pants and pulled out his Smith and Wesson. “Kinda sad it came to this,” he said. “Some delusional 40 year old ,sad excuse for a man , is about to get killed because he couldn’t stop obsessing over one stupid teenage e-whore.”
	Seymour woke up in a hospital bed wearing a light blue paper gown. How he’d gotten there was still a blur.  The curtain on his side of the room was drawn and he couldn’t make out much other than a few big machines, his pulse monitor, the IV next to his bed, and the tv in the upper corner of his room. An old episode of criminal minds was on.
	He heard someone enter the room, and moments later the curtain was pulled back revealing two people: a nurse and a police officer. “Ah, you’re awake mr. seymour!” the nurse observed. “The doctor will be joining us soon, but I just came in to take your vitals and make sure you were still among the living.”
	The nurse was an older woman, probably in her 60’s,  wearing too much make-up and with puffy black hair that had gray patches in it. She looked like she could’ve been a cast member on ‘The Golden Girls”.
	“How long have I been here?” Seymour asked, immediately feeling a sharp wave of pain emanate through his body just from attempting to speak. “Have I been here for days?”
	“Well,” the nurse said “it’s been two days. Doctors said you took quite a beating, from the looks of it.”
	The policeman intervened now, stepping in front of the nurse. “Seymour, I’m officer Barnett. Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”
	“I was laying there…ready to die. Marc had a gun..and then… wait… I think…there were flashlights? Lights in the distance coming closer. Marc cursed , threw the gun down and took off running . That’s it, then I just blacked out I guess.”
	“That’s right, that’s  good,” said officer Barnett. He was a lanky, stone-faced man who showed little emotion when he talked. He was very ‘by the book’.  He jotted a few notes in his small memo pad, then looked up at seymour again. “You’re lucky to be alive Seymour. Someone called the police and tipped us off as to what was going on. Fortunately we got there just in time. Otherwise you’d have a few bullet holes to go along with your broken bones,” he said matter of factly. “Marc didn’t get far. We were able to apprehend him after a foot chase of about four blocks. He was on probation and had heroin on him also, so he’s going to be spending at least two weeks in jail, possibly more.”
	Seymour had made a realization and  tried to sit up. “Oh my god…but wait… who called the police? No one could have known.…just me, marc, and…her. Oh my god, was it her? She called the police didn’t she ? She didn’t want me to die . She wanted to save my life! She loves me, doesn’t she!? Hahahaha! She LOVES me! Otherwise she wouldn’t have saved me!”
	Both the officer and the nurse began to restrain him. “Mister, you’ve been through a hell of a lot the past few days i’d say and..well, your mental state seems a bit off,” said officer Barnett.
 	“Now You lay there and rest for the time being. Whatever you want to do, it can wait. Plus we have more questions we need you to answer about..uh.. how you got involved in all this.”
	Seymour protested and started trying to remove the ECG and EKG pads from his arms and chest, but the nurse objected. “Mr Seymour , don’t make us put you in restraints!”
	“damn you people! She’s by herself! Marc is gone, and she has no one here!” He cried. “She has no money, and doesn’t have a way back home . She’s trapped here. She needs me to help her right now! I have to go . Officer, hand me my clothes. I have to leave, I have to go to her!”
	“No.”

.
.
.

	Kasper was coming out of Marc’s apartment that morning to walk to the store when she saw it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a man across the street in a hospital gown limping towards her hurriedly. “Oh good lord…no… just NO.” She quickly turned around and started to retreat back inside her apartment gate.
	“Kasper! Kasper please! Don’t run away!” Seymour yelled. He was stumbling across the street and nearly got hit by a car. He limped to the apartment gate. “Please, I need to talk to you. You have no idea what I’ve been through for you. You owe me that much, just to listen to me for a few minutes.”
	Kasper hesitantly opened the gate and slowly came out. “What the hell happened to you?” she asked.
	“I had to sneak out of the hospital window to come here. They wouldn’t let me go. They wanted to keep me. I feel fine, though.” He was clearly fighting through pain. “oh wait,” Seymour turned around and began fishing inside of his hospital gown and came out with his wallet. He pulled out a wad of bills. “Theres no pockets in these gowns, haha! I had to stash my wallet and keys inside my undies. Here…this is enough money for you to take the bus home.”
	“Im not touching that,” she said. “Youre scaring me. Please go away”.
	“Look, your family is worried about you. They don’t even know where you are! Your friends, theyre worried sick as well. Please, take this and go back home. You owe it to your mom and dad to at least tell them where the hell you are! They miss you.”
	He tried to force the money into her hand but she slapped his hand away. “Seymour, im an adult. I don’t need your help! I’m not going home.. im staying here with marc’s sister until he gets out. Hes my boyfriend. I love him.”
	“NO!” Seymour reeled back as if hed had the wind knocked out of him. “you cant really mean that! You have to know by now what kind of person he is… an addict, a woman beater…he broke his last gf’s ribs! Hes just using you. Hes taking advantage of you! God, I just want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you until you come to your senses!”
	“If you touch me, I scream,” said kasper matter-of-factly.
	“what is wrong with you?” he pleaded. “im not going to hurt you; I came here to save you. I fucking love you! And….you called the police when marc came to fight me…because you didn’t want me to die. So, you must care about me too, at least a little bit…”
	“Seymour, I called the police because I was hoping they would get there before Marc did anything stupid…so he wouldn’t go to jail. I didn’t want him to go to jail and violate his parole. That’s why I called. Whether you live or die, I don’t care…”
	“Oh my god…” Seymour looked visibly wounded. His hands were twitching and tears were forming in his eyes. “No…youre fucking brainwashed right now! Youre not in your right mind. The kasper I know would never say that.”
	“I have to walk to the store now.” She said coldly.
	“Let me walk with you. Then I’ll leave you alone, I promise.”
	She started up the street and he walked beside her, not knowing where to begin with his questions.
	“Kasper, we used to VC all the time, we talked for hours…every night. Remember? We were friends. We laughed together. I mean, you made me feel like I mattered. Like I was an important person in your life. Was any of that real? Or was it just….an act?”
	She sighed and turned to him. “Seymour, do you know how many ppl I am in dm’s with at all times? Like dozens at a time. I VC with tons of people. You weren’t special. You are just some discord guy. Im sorry.”
	“Jesus…”
	“Yeah,” she continued. “its mostly an act. I play up the ‘cute, naïve , autistic girl’ stereotype. That’s what guys on discord like. That’s what gets me attention. Im pretty good at it.” She smiled.
	“What the fuck…” he stared off in disbelief. “that’s not you. You’re a good person. Youre not like Maxie or Kirby or those other generic e-girls trying to use simps. You were genuine and special and different!”
	“No. You THOUGHT I was different. Because of some warped idea you dreamed up in your head. you created some weird fantasy in your mind of this pure and innocent egirl in distress who needed rescuing But its NOT real. You can’t accept the person I actually am, Seymour. You wouldn’t,” she said plainly.
	“Try me, then. Tell me who you really are.”


	She stopped walking and turned to face him. “Alright then, Seymour. Ok.  If this will help you to stop being obsessed with me and move on with your life, fine.  If that’s what you need, then I guess we can have this conversation. This is how it is: I’m that innocent girl that likes to watch ‘dangaropa’ with my best girl friends and eat gummy worms , and buy cute mlp stickers, and doodle unicorns and flowers, and cuddle with my kittens.  That’s the cute, innocent me. I also like to fantasize about rough sex, and want my bf to enslave me and hit me when ive behaved badly. I like to fingerblast myself to maxies nudes. I sometimes pick the lint out of my bellybutton and eat it. I like to eat my snot, too.”
	“No! That’s a lie. You don’t fingerblast!” He shouted.
	“I do. I just did it like 2 hours ago you dumbass. It’s the truth. You wanted to know the truth, so I’m telling you it. Do you understand the point I’m trying to make right now? I’m not a good girl or a bad girl, I’m not a whore and I’m not some pure virgin church girl. I am a mix of all those things. Most normal people are. We aren’t simple, black and white cardboard cut-outs, and you should realize this at your age. Im good and bad. I can be nice and I can be cruel. Can you accept that Seymour? The person I REALLY am and not what you’ve built me up in your mind to be? And if you can accept that, maybe you can also see that YOU are the same way.”
	“Im not like you,” Seymour replied. “I understand that we all have good and bad qualities, but what you are is fake! You mislead people. You hurt people. You lead guys like me on who become infatuated with you and you make us feel special and then you take it all away. You ghost us, you disappear from our lives. Do you know what that does to a person!? No, you wouldn’t know.”
	“You’re not a saint yourself, Seymour! I know you have a good heart and you like to help others; you care too much. People take advantage of that. You’re good-hearted and caring, to a fault. But you also bought 700 dollars worth of benzos for 14 yr old Sunny!…and you’ve looked at underage girls nudes before…. You’ve given egirls money and enabled their drug addiction and their scamming! Actually, ciara’s probably DEAD right now in part because of money that YOU gave her!”
	“No. no that’s not true,” he said. “You shut your mouth! You don’t even know who I am or what my life’s about. You never cared enough to get to know me.”
	“But you know mine?” she snapped back.
	She started walking faster, speeding up her pace due to being annoyed. Seymour sped up and continued along next to her.
	“Look I can accept all the bizarre and gross things about you. That’s why I like you! You’re…perfectly imperfect, flaws and all. God, can’t you understand that? I just want you to be my friend again. My life is better when you’re in it, and I want to make yours better too! Im not asking to be your boyfriend or anything. I want things to be the way they were. Why won’t you give me another chance, when you’ve given pieces of shit like Rene countless chances? People who threaten you and terrorize you and treat you like trash get to be your friend, but not me. Do you know how much that hurts?”
	They had reached the corner market. “I’m going inside, Seymour. I need to get some tortilla chips, some salsa, Cookie Crisp…milk, toilet paper. I think that’s it. You can come in or wait outside I guess,” she said.
	“Are you buying tampons?” Seymour asked.
	“What? No. Why would you ask that? Fucking creep. Actually , just wait outside. Don’t come in. I don’t want to be seen with you.”
	“I’m sorry,” he pleaded. “I just… what do you think are better, pads or tampons? I hear wearing a pad is like wearing a diaper sort of.”
	She ignored him and went into the store. Seymour paced around outside, waiting. It was a small, family owned store. Several Arab men, likely the owners,  were keeping a watchful eye on him. There were apples in a wooden crate outside, a rack of potted plants, a few shelves of various flowers. “What!?” Seymour yelled. “Why are you looking at me? Yes I’m wearing a gown. I just came home from the hospital. My wife needs to grab a few things for dinner. Stop staring!”
	Kasper came out several minutes later with two plastic bags in hand. She had put her sunglasses on, ready for the sunny walk back home.
	“WHY do you want to be my friend so bad?” She asked as he stood there. “ Just let it go. Find another girl to be friends with,” she insisted.
	“No. All my life I’ve been told I’m unlovable and worthless! And you came along and made me feel like there was hope that I could be a normal person. You made me look forward to getting out of bed every day because I knew at the end of it, I would be able to come home and talk to you. And when we talked, nothing else in the world mattered anymore.  No one’s ever made me feel the way you did,” his eyes were starting to tear up. “you cant just take that away!”
	She didn’t want to look at him for fear that she might start feeling sad, too. She didnt want to cry. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him either. “Marc wouldn’t want me talking to you. I’m going to go.”
	Seymour reached for her hand and she grabbed it away. “kasper please…let me hold your hand just for a minute. I know that sounds pathetic, but…”
	“No! God Seymour, you’re making this really awkward! Stop doing this. Just, go away now . We talked like you wanted. I’m finished talking now. I’m walking back to marc’s apartment and YOU are going to walk in the other direction. Go home. Go back to California. You should never have come here. It was a stupid mistake.”  she gripped her plastic grocery bags, turned her back  and started walking off, leaving Seymour behind.
	“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fucking child!” he cried.
	Seymour saw a large potted plant on display outside the store on a metal rack. He reached for it quickly and hoisted it in the air at her with all his might. It just missed and shattered on the sidewalk a few feet from her legs, leaving clumps of soil and orange clay pot pieces littered everywhere. “Do you know how many hours I’ve spent watching your tik toks, your youtube, your insta!? Do you know how many nights you creep into my dreams and wont leave!?I get it, you don’t care , im nothing to you, but what about me!? How am I supposed to go on now!? God, I hate you! I hate what you’ve done to my life!”
	She didn’t turn around, she just kept walking.


	He took off running in the opposite direction as her like an animal unleashed, wild and unstoppable, needing to escape everything: her, himself, this terrifying new reality that maybe she was, in fact, never going to be a part of his life again. He ran as hard as he could, into the bowels of a city unknown to him, toward some new semblance of a life that he still refused to accept . If he never slowed down, never stopped running, could he escape the memory of her? Would the hunger buried deep inside him eventually subside?
	He passed alleyways, oil stained  streets, parked cars, buses, hostile looking faces. He couldn’t stop going. His lungs were burning and his face was drenched in sweat. Finally his legs surrendered and he stopped along the front of an Italian deli and coffee shop. He lowered his hands to his knees and breathed hard for a few minutes, fiercely drawing in breaths as his heart pounded violently . It was time to stop. It was time to think.
Did I really come all this way for nothing?
Did I endure these days of pure hell, only to be cast off into these rotten and decaying streets like some dejected child ?
“I won’t give up until I’m DEAD,” he repeated to himself over and over, his hospital gown flapping in the light breeze of mid day New York.
He marched down the avenue, every step his anger and determination growing. His feelings would not be extinguished so easily. His love would not fade quietly into nothing, not so long as this all-consuming blaze of emotion filled him.
He glanced up and saw a sign hanging above: The Hope Chest Community Thrift Store. He could at least buy a change of clothes here, he thought.
He wandered inside the dusty shop and walked back to the men’s clothing section, perusing the aisles, looking for something halfway wearable that didn’t appear too soiled. He settled on a light blue oxford shirt that was missing a button and a pair of beige khakis that appeared to have semen stains near the crotch area. They were his size, so he didn’t care.
He was in no hurry so he decided to browse other sections. It was a reprieve from his thoughts, if only for a little while, and he felt himself beginning to calm down as he flipped through old well-worn books and journals, maps, antiques, lots of old obscure vhs tapes as well. He looked briefly  through the art and music sections, then he arrived at the toys.
Immediately he saw her. She was propped up, wedged between some old spongebob plushie and a cheap Korean looking robot toy. It was HER. The radiant orange hair and the freckles, and the smile that could melt the most frigid heart… she was sitting politely and staring right at him. He picked her up and examined her closely. She was hardly used at all. Nearly new. No scuffs. No holes. Just a beautiful orange haired princess who was lonely and needed a new owner. She felt good in his hands, she felt sturdy and well-made. “It’s really you , isnt it?” He said quietly under his breath.
He quickly took her, along with the clothes which he no longer cared about, up to the register. “My daughter just loves Disney princesses,” he told the cashier. He happily paid and walked out,  a sudden feeling of joy overcoming him. He held her up to the sky and admired the sunlight delicately caressing her porcelain skin.  “You…. You were waiting just for me , weren’t you? Hoping  I’d notice you …hoping I’d  take you home with me.” He laughed to himself at the craziness of life, the beauty and the poetry of it all.
He carried her down the street and turned a corner, then spotted a well-lit alleyway where he could sit for a while. He sat in a clean spot next to a dumpster, and propped her up next to him. He turned to her with a serious look. “Your name…I’m sure you already have a beautiful princess name. You’re a Disney princess , after all, arent you? I was wondering… I don’t want this to be awkward at all of course…but you remind me of someone I care about a lot. May I call you “K” from now on, for Kas? Will you allow it?”
“It is alright, Seymour”, the doll replied. “You purchased me, after all. I belong to you now. If you wish to re-name me, it is your right to do so!”
“Ha! You talk! I knew it,” Seymour laughed. He hadn’t eaten or taken his meds in many days now, and he realized that this likely wasn’t real, but he didn’t care anymore. He would just ride this out .
“K,” he continued “We are going to be best of friends, aren’t we? I feel like I know you, like I’ve always known you, but there’s so much more I want to learn about you!”
K smiled. “The early days of  a friendship are always the most exciting, arent they seymour?”
He agreed.



Seymour woke up on the hard, dirty concrete and she was still there, beneath his shirt, laying close to him. “did you sleep alright , K?”
“Yes. Thank you for keeping me warm, Seymour. Thank you for holding me close.”
“Sorry I haven’t taken a shower in a few weeks,” he smiled. “I hope it wasn’t too unpleasant, being close to me. I’ve never…you know…had a girl next to me before.”
“It is alright. your natural man smell is pleasant.”
“That’s nice of you to say!” He stopped to ponder for a moment, as if what he was about to say was important, then continued: “I want you to know, Im going to love you and care for you really hard, K.  Have you ever seen a doll that’s coming undone at the seams and looks ragged and frayed, because a kid loved it so much? I want that to be us, K. I want us to go through everything together.”
“I’d like that Seymour.”
“Tell me a secret that nobody knows about you, K. Will you? Something you’d only tell your best friend.”
She considered it for a few moments and then said, “I remember feeling giddy inside and excited like I’d never felt before, when my greyhound bus pulled into New York station. I was so scared and nervous and happy to see Marc. It was such a mix of feelings. I remember how sweaty my hands felt. And when I first saw him, and we hugged for the first time, I remember his scent, and remember the feeling of his strong hands pressing me close to him. How warm I felt inside.”
“Oh.” Seymour said, with a tone of bitter defeat in his voice. “Well, that’s a really beautiful story, K.  I appreciate you sharing that .”
He picked her up and threw her as hard as he could against the alley wall. Then he snatched her up and walked several feet away over to a blue dumpster and placed her inside and slammed the lid. “do you see what happens when you say hurtful things to me?! You force me to be mean to you and do hurtful things back. Is that what you want?”
“Seymour please! It’s disgusting in here! Let me out.”
“No.” he crossed his arms and just stared at the dumpster.
“This is why it’s so hard to be your friend!” her muffled voice called out. “You always get this way. You are so moody. You’re like a ticking timebomb. Just like your father used to be when he beat your mother!”
He paused. Her remark cut to the bone. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bring my mother and father into this, K.  You don’t know them. You weren’t there. Also, grow up. That was really hurtful.”
“You shouldn’t have bought me from the store if you were just going to abuse me!” K cried.
“Oh no, no, no” he said. “Don’t you dare. You do NOT get to play the abuse card on me! You don’t know what abuse IS!” he opened the lid and yanked her out, then punched the doll in the face and one of her plastic eyes popped off and rolled into a sewer drain. It was gone.
“Seymour stop!” she screamed.
“Oh my god,” he gasped, realizing what he’d done. He set her on the ground gently and began crawling on the ground, peering down into the drain to see if he could somehow retrieve her eye. “Im sorry K! Im sorry! Ill find it, I get it back and ill glue it back on, I swear I will. I promise I wont ever do that to you again.”
“You will. Youre no different than the other people who have owned me.” She said matter of factly.
“Don’t say that!”
People walking along the street had begun to notice the commotion in the alley and were stopping and gathering to watch the strange events unfolding, looking at Seymour speaking to the doll and witnessing his altercation with it. It attracted the attention of several police officers as well, who approached the scene and saw what was happening.
The officers, seeing a man who looked badly beaten up, wearing a hospital gown and yelling at a Disney princess doll, began to cautiously approach him.

It had been ten days now that I’d been in the “New Life”community psych ward and all things considered, I was feeling a lot better. Sometimes a change in environment and being around new people can take your mind off things and make you forget why you lost your mind in the first place. I was thinking a lot less about Marc and Kasper, and I could feel my sense coming back to me. My head was clearing and I was  returning to normal. Well, almost.
“Yo Seymour, are you throwing in nigga?” Shouted Reggie.
Reggie was an obese, gay black guy in his early 20’s who dressed like a tech ninja and always carried his yugioh cards around with him, and he loved showing everyone in the ward his most powerful cards. He used to play in tournaments and actually made decent money, but one time he was organizing his cards at home and went to the bathroom, and when he came back his baby brother was chomping on his “blue eyed white dragon” card that was worth three grand. Reggie snapped and kicked his baby brother in the face and then fell down on him, crushing him. That’s how he ended up here.
 In between the mandatory mental health classes and tv hour, the group of us crazies got recreation time when we could hang out on the porch outside and smoke cigarettes or check out board games from the front desk.
Usually a group of five of us would sneak around the side of the building, out of view of the hospital staff, so we could throw in our dollar bills and have yugioh battles for money. We didn’t care if we lost our money though, the whole thing was just so bizarre and stupid and funny. Reggie would give us all cards and explain to us how to use them.  Most of us didn’t even understand what was going on even, but we laughed at how into it Reggie was. To him, it was a life or death matter.
“Deal me out of this one, Reg.” I was sitting away from the group and writing in my journal. What a group of characters in this place, I thought . There was Gabriel , a kid who had taken too much acid and just walked around laughing and mumbling about angels. Jason, a really muscular and brooding guy who didn’t say much but apparently beat his moms boyfriend almost to death for drinking the last Mountain Dew in the fridge.
Jason sat down next to me and had a serious look on his face. “Hey seymour, what are you going to do when you get out of here? Do you think you’ll fight that Marc guy again who took your girlfriend? Tell us that epic battle story again about how you threw a Chinese star into his shoulder and almost killed him with a magic scalpel  .”
Yeah, they’d all heard the story already . Truthfully, I liked telling it. I’d tell anyone who would listen.  “No, Jason, she wasn’t my girlfriend, I already told you guys that. She was just an internet friend who needed saving. And the scalpel wasn’t “magic”. It did have special properties though  because it belonged to a famous e-girl.”
“You came all the way from California to New York, to try and save some girl you don’t even know? Jesus..why? That’s just crazy man.”
“Well…I’m in this place aren’t I? I know I’m crazy. Trust me, I’ve known for a long time.”
“Yo Seymour listen here,” said Reggie , throwing down some cards, “If she ain’t an anime girl, she ain’t shit. Anime girls won’t ever leave you and they won’t cheat. You almost died because of some real girl who doesn’t even care about you! Think about that, homie. Stop wasting time on some 3D bitch that’s never going to give you the time of day.”
He pondered his words as he said them, as if there were true wisdom in them. He continued: “and if you HAVE to go for a real girl, at least go for a crazy asian one that will hold a knife to your throat while you sleep. That’s the dream right there.”
“Yeah, like Kumiko!” said Jason.
Kumiko was one of the girls from the female wing. There were six girls here at the ward in all. Kumiko was different from the others, not only because she was Japanese and didn’t speak a word of English, but because in the ten days I’d been in here, I hadn’t seen her say a single word to anyone. No one had. We didn’t know anything about her or why she was here. A few of the guys who’d been here over three weeks said she’d been here when they arrived. She was a mystery to us all.
Her family came to visit every day, and sometimes I’d observe them to see what I could learn about her. The process was always the same: the family (mom, dad, two brothers and one sister) would set up a board game at the table and act excited to try and make it seem fun to her. They wanted her to feel loved and involved. The mom would place a dice in Kumiko’s hand and say excitedly, “come on , roll!” (In Japanese of course) but Kumiko would just sit there looking like a dead person and let the dice fall from her hand onto the floor. They tried hard to create an atmosphere of fun and family  togetherness, but it never worked. She looked at them, blank and expressionless, tears rolling down her cheeks, wishing she could will herself back to life.
 When her family left, she would wander over to a chair on the other side of the room by a window and stare out. She was the most traumatized person I’d ever seen. Every night when I laid in my tiny hospital bed , staring at the ceiling, I wondered what she’d been through to make her that way.
 “Time to come in fellas, its class time!” Someone yelled from the back door. We all got up and made our way back inside. We headed to the small classroom and sat down. The guys sat on one side and the girls on the other. We always segregated ourselves for some reason; maybe we were all so socially inept and insecure that we didn’t even bother trying to talk to the girls. Things seemed safer that way.
The class was about coping techniques. How we can use deep breathing, exercise and setting boundaries to overcome our emotional defects. Right. Some of us looked at each other and rolled our eyes as we did the workbook exercises and had class discussion. I think deep down we all knew it was bullshit, but we didn’t really have a choice in the matter. We had to appease the people in charge so we could have our tv time and smoke our cigarettes.
When it was finished, the head counselor said we were doing something special tonight instead of watching tv: we were going to move the tables and chairs into the corner and have dance night, since three of us were graduating the following day (me being one) and being sent back out into the real world.


We cleared the chairs out and made space, then a counselor put a ghetto blaster in the corner and put on some cheesy 90’s songs. It was a strange scene. It was like those awkward high school movies with dance party scenes, where six nerdy  guys and six nerdy girls would sit across the room from each other ,looking at the floor. Obviously, this whole thing was a bad idea.
	A thought occurred to me then: I was walking out of here tomorrow and would never see these people again. There was nothing to lose.
	Suddenly the song “everything I do, I do it for you” by Brian Adams started playing. I looked over at the guys , my brothers in the crazy house, and they all smiled at me. I knew what I had to do. Kumiko was sitting against the wall , looking at the ground. Courage overtook me and I walked over to her, bent down, and held out my hand to her. She looked at me, horrified, almost certainly thinking “please, no.”
	I didn’t give her the chance to decline. I grabbed her arms and lifted her up, and as I brought her to the center of the room,  for the first time I saw life in her. I put my arms around her and she put hers around my waist and gripped my shirt tightly  (she was small). Everyone was amazed and simply stared at us. We didn’t say anything to each other nor did we really even dance, we just held each other close as Bryan Adams sang. It was one of those amazing moments you look back on years from now and think, WHY couldn’t my life have more of these?
	The night eventually ended, we put the tables and chairs back, and we all went to sleep in our hospital beds. When the next morning came, I was handed my things and told I was free to go. I gave a short goodbye speech and told everyone how greatful I was to have met them.
“If only the people out there were as good as the people in here,” I said. I meant it, too. The psych ward had given me a sense of belonging, as sad as that sounds. I was one of them.
	As I walked out Kumiko spoke, to everyone’s amazement. Just a word. “Taizai,” she said. No one knew what it meant, but later I learned it meant “stay”. She wanted me to stay.
	I walked through the door and out into the world. Before I booked a plane back to California and tried to start my life over again for the eight hundredth time, there was one thing I needed to do. I was going to do it the right way and go home a winner this time. I was going to make it.



Seymour got off the bus and a blistering wind was howling along the avenue, sweeping through the gutters and littering the afternoon air with a dusty haze that hurt to breathe. He crossed the street and walked slowly up to the main entrance to Marc and Kasper’s apartment building, hoping the gate would be ajar so he could slip inside and take the stairs up unnoticed . It was locked. He waited several minutes until, luckily, an older woman came down the steps and  exited the building and he was able to catch the gate door before it closed. He was inside.
He crept up the stairs to the second floor and approached a light blue, paint-chipped door with gold lettering. “Apartment 6”. He was fairly certain this was the one. He noticed, however, that the door was partially opened. He pushed it lightly and peered inside and to his amazement, the apartment was empty. Everything was gone. No furniture. No people. No sounds.
He walked in and drifted through each room, imagining what could have transpired. Where had they gone? He saw an open closet in a small bedroom with a few clothing items on hangers: Kasper’s orange/ black striped crew neck sweater that was one of her favorites which she wore often, a faded pair of ripped jeans that were likely also hers. Why would she leave these behind?
 Seymour heard footsteps coming from the front room suddenly, and he walked cautiously out to see who it was. He turned to look and saw an old man with a bicycle standing at the front door.  “Did you know them?” He looked at Seymour and asked.
“Yeah…well sort of…I hadn’t heard from them in a while and I’ve been out of town the last few weeks. Do you know what happened to them?”
“I wish I could tell you to ‘take a seat’ and brace yourself kid, but there’s no where to sit is there?” The old man leaned his bike against the wall and stepped inside. “Happened just 2 nights ago . I live two apartments down, see, and I heard a lot of yelling that night, mostly coming from the guy , and then things breaking, loud thuds, like someone hitting the floor. A girl screaming and crying . My wife says I should call the cops, so I did. Trust me, it’s not the first time I’ve ever heard a domestic dispute, I know what they sound like.”
“And then what?” Seymour asked, eager for him to continue. He needed to hear every detail.
“Well, the police came and I guess it was a pretty awful sight. I saw some paramedics go in. The girl was beaten up really badly , I guess, the boyfriend did a real number on her. She was unconscious and I saw them take her into the elevator on a gurney, down to the ambulance. The boyfriend got cuffed and put into the back of a cop car. Cop buddy of mine said supposedly the guy was insanely possessive and flew into a jealous rage when he found out she had a number of discord alts that she was using to talk to her orbiters and male friends on. He went beserk and pummeled the poor girl.”
“Tell me it’s not true…tell me it wasn’t her,” was all Seymour could say.
“Yeah, she was a real sweetie, an angel even,  said the old man shaking his head, “With that orange hair and her big ears, there’s no mistaking it was her.  I can’t say anybody was surprised though. Everyone in the building knew that guy was a hot head. Cops have been here about him a bunch of times over the years, usually because of drugs or him beating on his gf, sometimes both. Usually a different girl every time, too. It’s sad.” He placed his hand on Seymour’s arm and said, “Lemme ask you, kid, WHY do decent girls go for these kinds of fellas in the first place? It’s like they got a death wish or something. Do they wanna die?”
“I ask myself that all the time,” Seymour replied. “Sometimes I think it’s complicated and they want to be loved by a guy who will never be able to give them that love,  and they think they can fix a broken man if they try hard enough. Other times I think they just hate themselves, deep down. Let me know if you find the answer someday.”
“Nobody knows what goes through the minds of women these days!” cried the old man.
Seymour agreed.
“Hey friend, would you have any idea what hospital they took the girl to?”
“Hmm..well my guess would be the Brooklyn Presbyterian hospital, since it’s the closest one. Only a few miles down on west 6th street. That’s where I’d try.”
“Thanks a bunch. I hope to god I’m able to see her. I hope it isn’t too late.”




Seymour got off the elevator on the third floor at Brooklyn Presbyterian hospital, the floor where intensive care patients were kept and treated. He approached the front desk where a friendly black woman greeted him.
“Hello, miss, I’m hoping to see someone if I can , I think she was admitted two nights ago on Sunday night. Name is Kasper. Is she here? Can you tell me which room and if it’s still visiting hours?”
“Sorry, sir, but unless you’re immediate family or her husband, I can’t tell you anything. I’m sorry. That’s the law. Patient confidentiality protocols and everything.”
“I understand that, I do, and I respect every law and protocol you have posted on your walls and your clipboards, but right now Im asking you to hear me when I say that she is one of the only people I care about in this world and I HAVE to see her. If something happens to her tonight, there won’t be any more chances.  I’ll never get to see her face or hear her voice or tell her how I feel ever again, don’t you understand that?” Seymours voice was starting to crack as he was fighting back tears. “Please, I’m asking you, if she is on this floor will you just let me talk to her, if only for a few minutes. I really need this. She doesn’t have anyone…”, he stopped to compose himself and wipe his eyes, “she doesn’t have anyone here who loves her. Her family is in Tennessee. You can’t leave her in there with no friends or family by her side. Please I am begging you.”
The woman’s face remained stone cold. “Sir, the law is the law, there ain’t nothing I can do about it.”
“Yes you can, it’s just some fucking rules on a piece of paper! No one is forcing you to obey them! You can choose to do the right thing.  This is someone’s life we are talking about. Doesn’t that mean anything to you ? Tear up your god damn rules! Don’t you have an ounce of compassion? What if it was someone you loved? Would you just give up, turn around and go home? You wouldn’t. Well neither will I, lady.”
“Now that’s enough, you,” she started to say, but a doctor with a clipboard came over and intervened.
 “Linda, let me take this gentleman aside and talk to him for a few minutes and calm him down.” He came around the desk and took Seymour by the arm and started walking him down the hallway where they could be alone.
He stood and faced him. “Your name is?” the doctor asked.
“Seymour. Kasper is an old friend of mine. If she’s back there in IC , will you please get me in to see her? I know you don’t know me , I could be any loon off the street, but I’ve been to hell and back the last two weeks to get to where I’m standing right now, and I’m asking you to understand how precious she is to me, and that this may be my last chance to see her again.”
“Somehow I can sense you’re a good person, Seymour. So I’m going to go against my better judgement here and do something I shouldn’t ,” the doctor said. “My names Doctor Brooks. This is my unit. At least at this hour, it is.” He looked at his watch and grimaced. “Long night ahead. It’s been a hell of a past few days. Why don’t we sit down for a minute in the lounge area over there so we can talk. Shouldn’t be anyone in there right now.”
Seymour walked with him over to two plastic chairs in the empty tv lounge area and took a seat.
	“Seymour,” Dr. Brooks began, “when the medics brought her in, she had suffered unbelievable trauma. Lacerations on her arms, bruises all up and down her legs, cigarette burns on her back , her esophagus was damaged from being savagely choked, a collapsed and punctured lung, ribs cracked, her eyes were swollen shut; she had major skull fractures from being beaten with a blunt force object repeatedly .” He paused and took a breath to let Seymour take it all in. “Every part of her body was in a state of shock…we had six nurses and three doctors working on her non stop , and we were able to finally stabilize her condition.”
	“She is going to live then? Shes going to pull through?”
	“At this point she is on life support machines because she cant breathe on her own. Seymour, even if she comes out of this coma…it is likely that she will have lost a lot of brain function. What im saying is, theres a high probability that she will be in a vegetative state for the rest of her life. Im sorry. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I am being as honest as I can with you.”
	Seymour turned white with shock and put his head in his hands. “she wouldn’t want to live like that, doctor. She’d want to leave this world rather than be a shell of a human being! Don’t make her go on that way. Please promise me that . You’ll unplug everything if it reaches that point, wont you?”
	The doctor put his hand on Seymour’s shoulder to show his support. “Look, I cant offer you much, I cant make any promises or give you the reassurance that she is going to live through this, but I can walk with you to her room and let you say your goodbyes, if that will help at all. I can get you a few minutes alone with her. You deserve that much. “
	“Yes…Yes! Oh Doctor please..thank you!” His eyes were flooding with tears. “I need this, more than Ive ever needed anything.”
	“Come with me,” said Dr. Brooks , rising from his chair heading down the hall. Seymour followed him until they reached a brown door at the end of the corridor, the lights turned off inside.
	“This is it seymour. You’ve probably got ten minutes until the nurses come in to check her readings, so say your peace, then go.
	He reached out to shake his hand. “Thank you doctor…I guess this is it, isn’t it? It’s time.”
	“Yes it is,” the doctor smiled.
	Seymour quietly entered the room and, choosing not to turn on the lights, walked over to her bed side and looked lovingly  at her. He could see her head and face wrapped in white bandages, wires and monitors connected to her arms, leading out to machines that kept her among the living. She was unconscious and still, and the only signs of life he saw were the brief rise and fall of her body as it took in and released oxygen in long, seamless breaths.
	“Hey Kas… it’s me…I know I’m the last person you wish was here right now,” he paused and started to choke up and fought hard not to burst into tears. He reached deep into his pants cargo pocket and pulled out a doll, a red clown doll with a white porcelain face and pointy red cap.  He held it up for her to see. “ I found this in the hospital gift shop downstairs, can you believe it? I know You love clowns. I remembered, see? . It’s a beautiful one.”  He stopped a few moments to collect himself, then carried on: “It’s a crazy thing, isn’t it K? Your whole life you tried  to make other people laugh and smile. You just wanted to make other people happy..but no one made you smile when it mattered most, did they ?”
	He laid the doll next to her in bed. “No, don’t worry, I’m not going to try to hold your hand or anything, K... I know you’d hate that.” He tried to smile and then turned and walked over to the bedroom window and sat near the ledge in the darkness, where he could let his tears go and not feel embarrassed.
	“From the first time I talked to you, I felt like you were different, like an angel that fell to the earth from the sky, and I wanted to lift you out of the rubble and place you back where you belong, in the highest place, where no one could hurt you. But I see now how stupid I was… you just wanted to be treated like a regular person, and I wasn’t able to do that .” He was clenching his fists and wanted to scream, to punch the wall,  to run to her and hug her, to unplug her and hold her; a thousand conflicting emotions wanted to come to the surface, but he held them back and focused on the few minutes he had left.
	“You inspired me…you made me want to lift my head up and look at the stars again. You were kind when nobody else was and I know what a friend is now, Kasper, because you made me understand,” he said as he wiped his eyes. “And I call you my friend, I’ll scream it out loud, today and forever, for god to witness. And I will always call you my friend until I am no longer breathing. It’s someone that looks past your faults and sees your best self; they accept the whole magical and imperfect you, and love every part of it. They cherish it . If you stumble and fall, a friend doesn’t abandon you because of your choices , they hold onto you and help you up again.”
	Seymour rose and then walked over to her bed and kneeled down at the end of it. He buried his face in the sheets and allowed himself to weep. “You can’t leave…not this way…your cats need you , your mom needs you, your sisters need you.” He had wanted to say,  ‘I need you’  but restrained himself and did not say it.
	“When I see you in the next life, and I see you standing there surrounded by light , and your orange hair is shining , I’m going to walk up to you and not be scared , and I’m going to look you in the eyes and say, ‘I’m Seymour, it’s really nice to meet you. And you’ll say it back, and the words will hang there in the air because they are filled with truth, every bit of truth you can fit into words. Then we will start over again, from the beginning.”
	Seymour could hear the voices of nurses outside in the hall, and knew he had to go. He stood up and headed for the door, but before he reached it he stopped for a moment and thought about how the best clowns are always the ones that laugh on the outside and cry on the inside.
	He walked out and headed for the stairwell exit down.







As he fell downward , his last thought before hitting the pavement was how wonderful things would be when he woke up and saw her there, surrounded by light, with her radiant orange hair and those magnificently big ears poking through her hair, standing there waiting for him in the crowd. She would see him and her eyes would be bright, then she would run up to him and take his hand like old friends do, and she would say, “We can start over now, Seymour.”



Kasper the friendly ghoster
Broke the heart of every R9k poster
She wanted to fuck and smoke some weed
Her orbiters warnings she would not heed
He broke her heart and sent her packing
Her common sense was sorely lacking
Now she is used, dirty and rotten
Her innocence and purity are long forgotten
Her angel face and monkey ears
Have filled our hearts with bitter tears