Everything changes over time. Whether or not we cause these changes is another thing. I used to be different, very different. I do not remember becoming what I am today. Some days I just don't feel I'm in control. It's one of those things where you know something is wrong, yet you just can not nail down what it is.

I think that I can trace it back though. You know the 20/20 hindsight thing. It all really seemed to start when she left. She meant so much to me. I tried to pretend she didn't; but everyone knew that she did. To me she was just about everything. Sure there was the store and all my friends, but they were not enough. In the end, she was always the one on my mind when I stopped to rest, or when I needed a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Of course now, more often than not, convincing myself to get out of bed is extremely difficult.

I can never forget the way it felt waking up next to her. After a heavy deep sleep I could always count on waking up, almost always first, and then just look at her until the clock told me I had to get up.

The long silken slope of her shoulder.

The slow rise and fall of her chest under the covers.

Once in a while she would catch me doing it. Those long lashed lids would flutter open, and there I would be caught in her gaze; the gaze of the beholder. She would ask how long I had been awake. Inevitably I would lie and say "Oh just two or three minutes." It was the only thing I ever consciously lied about in any facet of my life. She just hated it so much when I stared at her.

For some reason she always thought that she looked bad. That something I found absolutely enchanting was something to despise and hide. The way that her eyes were shaped. The way those light blue veins showed through her translucent skin near her chin. The color of her hair. Nothing about her was wrong to me.

My friends, on the other hand, were less thrilled with her. I suppose that none of them were too surprised when I told them she had left.

I had awoken to find her, and most of her portable belongings cleared out. I did not want to believe it at first, I had no reason to. She never said a word about having problems with me; with us. Her clothes were still strewn across the floor where she had stripped them off the night before. I remember it clearly. It was so very hot and we were so very drunk. To cool down we had ice cold gin and cranberry juice, glass after glass after glass.

At some point she went into the bathroom to run cold water over her arms. She slicked back her hair with the icy water, and just kept complaining about the heat. As she came back towards the bed she began taking off her clothes, leaving a trail across our small apartment.

Naked on the bed we sat and drank and talked all of the night, and most of the morning. Until we fell asleep. More accurately until I fell asleep. I remember staring at her as I fell softly into the lush oblivion of my last, lush dreamless night.

When I awoke those clothes were still there; undisturbed. I pulled the purple top sheet around me and walked around, first looking into the kitchen, then the closet, and finally the bathroom. That's all there was; I said it was a small apartment

In the closet my clothes lay in a large pile, just as I always kept them. I had cleaned out all the drawers, all three of them, for her to use. I found them to be mostly empty. The bottom drawer could not open all the way due to my pile of clothes, inside were some things she had missed in her rush. A couple of her shirts, some bras, underwear, socks, and stockings lie in the back of the drawer.

The bathroom told the same type of story, all she left there was a bottle of hair spray. And in the bedroom all of her tapes were gone from where they had been scattered on top of the speakers and the turntable.

In this tiny apartment we always had to step over one anothers junk. Always squeezing past my art supplies and her shoes. The perennial disaster area of two mated slobs. It was in that squalor that, as I tripped over a stack of magazines and lost my sheet, I realized the whole of the universe. I realized that no where at any time has anyplace so full, been so empty.

****

I was asleep.

At first I thought I was dreaming.

I sleep a lot.

It began as a slow pulling, lifting up my left arm; just a bit. In my dream I raised and lowered the soft colored lilacs to my nose. They say that you don't smell things in dreams, but I swear these flowers smelled beautiful. The field around me was full of lilacs and buttercups. I could see wild strawberries growing near a patch of clover at my feet. The sky was bright. A blue stretch of forever dusted with soft clouds rolling lazily along the gentle summer breezes. In the middle of it all stood a young woman. Healthy and delicate as the flowers she was smelling. A young woman who knew not of fear.

My arms jerked violently at the wrists and elbows. The deep violet flowers arced away from me and tumbled to the ground. The wind rose, sharp and bitter. The ground turned dark, then to a black nothing. Broken and bruised flower petals seemed to be suspended on invisible glass over a deep abyss. Living purple turning to blood red, the same blood covering my hands.

Consciousness came rudely as the wires snapped taut against the rings attached at the back of my neck. I found I was hacking and coughing, doubled over in a gut wrenching attempt to breathe. The air comes slowly, it is foul. It is heat and perspiration. It is the sick sweet smell of death in the worst possible ways. The taste of torture and murder.

I am wearing the mask.

I am wearing the suit.

The master is in control.