text: You’re walking down a dirt road. You can hear the shore in the dark distance. Somewhere, in the back of your mind you know the ex boyfriend of your newly estranged wife is realizing you’ve disappeared from the rager he invited you to. The thought of his concern for your safety sends you into a fit. He’s trying to be your friend. To help you through a hard time because he’s a Marine and so are you. You’ve all fucked each other’s wives and sisters and mothers and gods. It’s all the same. It’s all so ridiculous. This world. Your life. There’s nothing special about any of the things you have built or destroyed. You wonder if Rett will be able to find you. You wonder if he’ll be able to find you before you find the ocean. Because this is the first time. The first time you got in your head to kill yourself. It’s pretty special in a way. First times always are. The dreadful amount of rum in your blood must have left you open to possession by some pirate spirit still lingering on the Carolina coasts. His spiced whispers thread their way through some cortex or another, inspiring you to leave the festival of pity that drinking marines are wont to host. Crashing waves in the distance sing the lyrics of a siren song, beckoning to the black of night. And something, perhaps, a bit darker. In any case, the urge to run has narrowly saved you from receiving an ill-advised tattoo of a Mayan calendar on the whole of your back. In the apartment you just left behind, a perplexed marine is sitting with a homemade tattoo gun buzzing in one hand a handle of vodka in the other. He’s wondering if you’ll forget to come back for the hundred dollars of cash in the morning. As you traverse the road, you discover there’s lightning in your chest so you tear your shirt a bit to let it out. The sound of the fabric ripping sounds like electricity in your hands, so you continue to conjure imaginary sparks as you flex every muscle you’ve had worked into you over the last few years. Laughter sounds from atop a grassy knoll. Three men holding beers in their hands are watching with eager eyes as you devolve into human litter. “Behold!” you shout at them, stepping into the glow of a streetlight. You let out a howl, envisioning Frankenstein’s monster discovering fire. You feel hot tears on your cheeks. The laughter stops. The men retreat. You scratch at your chest and cry out more, curiously satisfied by the sensation it leaves in your throat. You smell drunken cliche on your skin. It’s all so predictable. So mundane. So unoriginal. Beyond the knoll the laughing men had just been standing upon, you find the beach you were quested to find by the ghost of The Pirate King . There is no moon this night. You are too pathetic for its company. And yet, like a fool you mutter, “Goodnight moon,” to yourself, hiccuping hot liquor into the back of your throat. You are a romantic to the end. A fool through and through. The tattered shreds of your shirt fall to the sand as you begin to make your way. You feel strong. Ready to fight the tide until it overpowers you like everything else in this world has been able. Every feeling. Every desire. Every impulse. Losing yourself to a force of nature should be easy. You’ve been practicing all your life. Dutifully, you continue your fateful march, considering how fortunate it is to be one of the few Marines in the world who has somehow managed not to learn how to swim. Then your phone vibrates in the pocket of your denim and you realize how unfortunate it is you are one of the most consistently lucky people in the world. You answer the phone and things start to move fast. “Where are you?” she asks. “Rett is looking for you.” “No.” You’re looking at the sea. “I’m looking for you, asshole! Where are you?” “No.” You’re so very tired. “Do not make me drive around aimlessly all night. Let me bring you home.” “Okay.” You hate the ocean anyway. Now you are balled up in the passenger seat with your arms wrapped around your legs, sullen as a child caught sneaking treats. The pirate spirit has abandoned you, disgusted with your lack of commitment. He seems to have taken the rum with him. This plotline is overwrought and you would like the show to wrap up. The characters have no teeth. Elizabeth’s shitty car climbs the highway like she knows where she’s going. But you’ve been living in this town for a couple of years now and have yet to meet a soul who knows a goddamn thing about it. It shifts and moves and hates its inhabitants. This swamp is Purgatory. This swamp is Tarturas. This swamp is Jacksonville. Behold! “What the fuck were you doing out there? And since when do you hang out with Rettidal?!” You give her questions good thought and decide to be as forthcoming as possible: “Everything hurts.” You hear her baptist lips mutter “Jesus Christ” under her breath and spring into action, pounding your fist into the window. There are no worse days than when that fucker sticks his nose in your marriage. The impact of your knuckles on the tempered glass feels like the sort of pain you’ve come to find particularly attractive since puberty and 80’s action flicks wrought havoc on your physiology. You wonder if you can break it. You wonder how mighty you’ll feel as you complete the tableau of the “The Last Cowboy” you’ve always envisioned for yourself. Which ballad will play over your tragic denouement? You hit it again, smiling. Maybe the pirate left you some of his bloody rum, after all. “Hey! Hey, Motherfucker! What are you doing?!” “I’ll pay for it,” you whisper as you hit the window again. “I WILL LEAVE YOU ON THE SIDE OF THIS ROAD!” she bellows, almost losing control of the car. “I JUST WANT TO BE LOVED!” you scream as you recoil back into a ball. The car sits idle on the highway and it occurs to you she might be waiting for you to get out. Just before you reach for the door handle, the car slowly begins to continue on down the highway in silence. You squeeze your eyes shut and wonder if she can still see you. “I should’ve gone to college,” you say, eyes still closed. “This is too much for a nineteen year old.” “You’re twenty-two, Miles.” “Exactly.” A silence follows. Then a reluctant chuckle escapes her throat in search of your quiet smile. Then another. You both fill the car with laugher and suddenly the roads drop all labyrinthian pretenses. She’s got teeth after all, whispers The Pirate God. “Aye, Cap’n!” you say, talking with the ghosts in your head like you have since childhood. Elizabeth is asking you to repeat yourself but you’re already feeling yourself sinking into a slumber that will leave all the high tides of the night behind. All the better. You’re pretty sure if you made it into her apartment conscious you’d make a good show of rummaging through the kitchen for a steak knife to dig into your arm. You’d never done such a thing before but tonight feels like a night for dying, so long as everything is forgiven in the morning.