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The worst thing about killing people is, in fact, the people. I get asked this a lot in my workshops and, for the sake of the cliché, have to answer blood. Or the screaming. Or—if I'm in Nevada, where vegans are fucking everywhere—the dull pain of a part of my soul untethered. The tears feel very real as I recount the mauve tints of my soul turn black—as black as coal, or eyeliner, or the night sky, or the straps of the Prada bag I stole from my ninety-eight-year-old victim.

It was a regular Tuesday in school when Soul realized she wasn't human. The class was physics, but she had forgotten her notebook at home, and was scribbling away at the back of her math one. The symbols looked like hieroglyphs and magic and a bit close to the doodles her little sister had made of milk and fruit loops that morning. She had transcended the mortal plane, something that occurred often when it was maths and physics and logic. She was floating through a cloud that

We are pigeons. Grey birds with the dumb gaze of an American trying to think in miles, and an ugly coat the color of concrete at dusk....

This story begins as any good story would-- in a faraway castle of a faraway land. It has a king, a queen, a princess, the dashing love interest. It has an evil witch. Unfortunately for all the fictional involved, the narrator is a piece of shit. She is the dirt on the sole of the shoes of the janitor of the shittiest bar in hell. She does not know the king's name, or the queen's, or the princess's. She could not tell you what happens two seconds into the story, or a minute,

I am liar. I like to think a fantastic one. One who looks you in the eye and tells you the sky is blue when it is actually green. You say,"It is indeed blue today" without ever looking up, and my glee knows no bounds.             I like to lie when you say something mean to me, and I see red, and I want to hurt you so painfully in that moment but I don't. I say, “It’s fine." I laugh. My eyes sting, yet you believe me. I want to hurt you for everything you've ever said to me.

I don't remember when I changed, when the words finally left me. Even now, when the time has come to finally tell the tale, my own story...