He chews his bottom lip, as he looks hesitantly into the camera. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, it’s not like I don’t deserve it,” he says as he lets a stuttered breath out, and closes his eyes as he takes a deep breath in.

“I wasn’t who I wanted to be anyway, not that it ever stopped me from being who I was. It was inevitable in the end. I pushed, not hard, but enough to separate me from them. It was subtle at first, then over time it increased. Resentment and hate flowed from both sides of the equation, from everywhere. My attitude of course didn’t help, it just fostered the hate I felt, and the same in them. Maybe it could’ve just been me, and not everyone else. But you know what, I didn’t care to know, I just did what I did, and everything else fell around me regardless.” he says as he playfully bites down on his bottom lip once more, this time drawing blood. He lets out a grimace of pain, then looks back the camera and smiles uneasily.

“What is it about this, that doesn’t work?” he asks as he presses an open hand against his chest. “What is it about who we become that connects us to who we were? You see, I kinda remember me, but not the me I think is me, it’s more of a version that’s been made out of all the stories I’ve been told, and not really the true memory of am, or who I was.” he says as he picks up a knife that sits before him, and studies the blade with wide wonderous eyes, before looking back at the camera once more.

“The opportunity to venture somewhere else entices me to no end, to know if the embrace is cold, if others that have gone before are there waiting, or if it’s nothing, if there is just an end without whatever this is.” he says with a nervous laugh as he gestures with a finger to himself. “Did I think I would be sitting here tonight, of all nights, thinking this while contemplating so many other things to do with a life lost in the endless cycle of WHAT THE FUCK? And then as I start thinking about that, I start wondering who would say that they weren’t surprised I did it? Or who would say all the signs were there, why didn’t someone act? Why didn’t someone reach out? But what would’ve that changed? What would’ve that done? Would I change? Would I still be sitting here with this camera in my face capturing what could be my last words, with this knife in my hands contemplating who I am, and why I am still alive when I am clearly destined to be a memory for others than I am to be someone.”

A sea of tears tumbles down his cheek, and he takes another deep breath in. “Every day I wake, and I see that man in the mirror, and I HATE him. Each day I try to hold on to who I am, while the world pulls itself away, and I wonder why I’m here, if it is not for me to be me, if no one else wants me to be here. So, instead of a new year, new me, I’ve decided not to be part of it anymore. I’ve decided to end the year with whatever is next!”

He looks down at the knife again, and smiles before looking at the camera one final time. “I just feel sorry for whoever finds me.” he says through teeth clenched as he drags the knife across his wrists and a spray of red slaps itself against the camera’s lens.

***

Follow the below link to purchase A Twisted Kiss On New Year’s Eve 2022 and read all 31 five minute short stories.

Before you lies a piece of a puzzle far grander than you could ever know or imagine. For scrawled in blood upon the pages hidden within the above tome is stories twisted thirty-one in all, soaked in the embers of my insanity. Five minutes to glimpse inside the eyes of someone new, five minutes to answer, five minutes to sin, five minutes to do almost anything. A god, a demon, a harlot, a whore. A fascist, a killer, a sinner, a door. Death and division, humanity askew. A belfry of bats, a sea of black cats, so many moments out there to see, so many things you could see with me. So take a seat beside me and call it voodoo, because now you ride with me too…

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