a fictional shortie.

Sleep swallowed me, like a pill. In those two hours I was stable, firm in myself. Put together. If I had a choice in this scenario, I would have chosen forever. But I am a human; I'm here but for a reason bigger than myself. And so I woke, forcefully, emerged from a darkness in me I had no previous knowledge of. My mouth felt bitter and my throat dry from all the gin I had consumed the night before. Gin is a married woman's drink, my best man Jay would say, and it's true - sometimes I feel like I have her heart.

An awkwardly misplaced organ in a foreign male body; my ribs ached. Last night had been fucked up, and I was physically hurting from the sexual escapade. If you could even call it that. It meant absolutely nothing, if not one thing: I had been trying to get back at her, in true good form.

Not that she'd care. She would never care save for those brief and slightly awkward moments in which him and I would have interacted in her presence. He was a handsome boy, with an emphasis on both the adjective and the noun. A pretty creature, a young pretty limb. A man in the works; intelligent, legitimate, honest, kind.

Affectionate.

I forgot affectionate also. I guess because this part hurts the most, if not it being the entirety of all this self-inflicted agony. I could be wrong. I could be blaming myself for insane things; things that don't exist. I could be imagining all of this. But the truth of the matter is, I saw him hold her forearm while she ordered a drink. I saw them hold each other, and I heard the smack of their kiss. Thinking about it made me sick in the stomach. I lurched out of bed and proceeded to the showering duties of the early morning.

I forget that loving is an open wound. She hasn't been my first, and she certainly won't be my last. I am not about to stop; I can't ever stop doing something once these things become me. I am terrible at breaking habits. I started smoking at fifteen and it has been nine years since. A cat only has nine lives. Well, it must be time for an epiphany soon.

When we first met it was by pure occasion. My clothes were wet, my face soaked with rain. The hairdo impression made me look every crawling inch my brother. He is a slicked back version of me. Bianca knew him from his whorish music enterprises, and I should have known better from that fact alone and kept the fuck away from her. Instead she called me Steve all night and made silly references to movies I hadn't even heard of.

I guess I should have quit my job and bought all these movies the very next day. Maybe that would have guaranteed eternal friendship.

But after that things were a continuous uphill. I never knew mountains could climb so high, really. I forgot who she was for a long time; if I had a radar as some allude to, like we're made of rusty machinery, then she had barely even registered. Sure, I thought she was nice, and kind of cute in a strangely deceptive way, as she is such a tomboy I considered her sexual inclinations. It's funny, really. Her face is tiny and her features so gamine, yet she looks like a fourteen-year- old boy sometimes. My feminine traits contribute to this hilarity. It's like we were made to complement one another; a strange design of salt and pepper shakes.

So I hardly knew of her save Jay's younger brother Ted, who has been completely and utterly obsessed with her since he was twelve. I made no point to understand this because frankly, I had better things to do. No fictitious turn here either, I had just begun occupying myself socially so my plate was full. And so I went about my business and constructed this kind of perfected mask of who my brother thought he was. I took what Steve had made for himself and put my touch in it.

And I guess, this was my second mistake.

I began to be noticed and hyped about. Hype and allure apart, I used Steve's growing success as my own personal media box. It worked. "This is Josh, Steve's younger brother." Yeah, whatever. Young by like two minutes and fifty seconds. No one ever believed me when I said Steve was my twin. Like I was trying to mop up some family glory. So I let him do all the relative talk. I never mentioned it again, and put it down to a plain nod every time someone asked if I was Steve Harrison's youngie band clan.

Clearly still drunk, I hopped off the shower and tried to find my towel in the dimly lit light. I live in a share house now. Long were the days where I would bear my belongings with people I care for. My mind racing furiously, the anger building into bile; so much I had to spit it out. I stared at myself in the mirror, trying to understand something, even if it was just my faintly upset expression. Still trying to pinpoint in my mind where it had all gone so wrong, or if it had been wrong from the very start.

Bianca had approached me. I never threw her the slightest bone, she had just found me. Added me on social networking rigs and persuaded me to trade phone numbers. Even still I was not interested. If Ted Parish was obsessed with some chick, well, who am I to judge, but I was not even going to debunk myself to that category. I had bigger fish to fry, better looking girls; girls with amazing style, girls with amazing hair, girls who were fake and girls who were overbearingly real, girls who threw themselves at me, girls who didn't wear bras, girls who lied to me and girls who said they loved me.

I was in no position to care. I don't know how I even got to that position. That was my third mistake. To thaw out my heart. And so Bianca started writing me messages, searching me, joking with me, being aloof and kind of cool.

I thought it was slightly insane. First she is not the type of girl I would go for; secondly, she is so socially exuberant it makes me nauseous. She used to be in a band, whatever, I couldn't really give a shit at the time. Posers are statues at heart. But that got her this ridiculously big reputation in a town dominated by male musicians and my brother, who runs the entire circus. But there she was, flirting with me, or at least what I perceived as such.

I think all this time, she had just wanted to find someone like me to educate.

And so I went along with this joke; because deep down I don't ever think I'm game enough to be a part of this. "It's all an elaborate joke by a musician mafia under a lot of coke", Bianca said once, or twice, I can't remember. She repeats herself a lot. I thought she must be screwed wrong in the head, or that I must be way too hot not to be noticed at this stage. And so there I am in that picture, and that one, and the one after, having beers and cigarettes with this chick whom I never even heard of. This chick who is never even in my circle of friends. But what is a circle of friends but fighting out fiends that don't actually exist?

And for the next month we hung out in a solely friendship schedule. I learnt more about myself than I did about her - she was great at reflecting me, and giving me pointers on just being, and living, and breathing. We fucked eventually, but I was already hooked then. And I still have the piece of paper in which she wrote all her stupid punk loves; music her ultimate passion. All these bands I ought to listen to; Motorhead, Big Black, Lightning Bolt, Venom, and scribbled at the bottom, her band, Grafite.

I blinked out of this memory in a moment of revelation, a glass of water unfinished in my shaky hand. Maybe it had been the fact she had given me so much, and I had had little to enrich her with. Her name a stated joke: Bianca Rich. Maybe this was why. Maybe I am just an empty cunt, and my void is always filled by other persons.

But no, it is the fact I could never give as much as I received. She gave and I took and I tried SO HARD to give back, maybe I should have not tried at all.

I want to see this truth so badly, that I don't care if it hurts me. I just want to understand why she left me. I need to comprehend. God, have some fucking honest mercy. My brother is Steve Harrison. He can throw a kick-ass party up there. And no, I'm not just saying that because I'm related. It's the truth; ask the circus clowns.

Slipping into my jeans, carefully as my legs throbbed, this revelation remained strong. There is something about him which I can't possibly offer. One of those things is affection. I could never be that honest. It's like unbuttoning your shirt, carving out your muscles and tendons with a knife, and exposing your bare chest, heart thumping and all, fucking scared at you for taking out the knife in the first place.

So this is one of his evolutionary traits I obviously missed, or rather, that my upbringing suppressed. It's all environmental, man. And so he's actually a pretty sweet warm person, and I'm happy she found him, I guess, because she deserves it.

Last night she told me she was quitting smoking because of his asthma.

Well, fuck you, pussy. He smokes too. This is a prime example of eternal Birdseye bullshit.

And so I guess she's too much, and her mind is too incredible, and I could never supply her with the affection she fuels herself off with, and yet there's something else. And so tomorrow when I wake up from a heavy dose of drinks or smokes with the boys, my body either sore with sex or sore with this stupid heartbreak - as it is right now as I sit in my car, ready to swerve into the first tree I see - then I will know more about this unravelling puzzle, this unravelling mystery. Right now things are so hazy.

I still have so many questions, Bianca.