My quirk was a mix of sexual pleasure and depression. I could go all day masturbating to decapitated heads of French women and not blink, yet there was something always there that make make even an adult cry. Some girls had similar life stories to my own, and I fall asleep as I cried. I wanted a day when friends didn''t wander off alone into the dark, on a suicidal bent to destruction. I wanted at least some girl I knew from my hometown that would survive long enough to have a family with.


    Then they could take her head off if they must.


    I was inherently against the idea of capital punishment, suicide even more so. Except for myself, whom I had never tried to prevent. I was left wondering what could have made a sixteen year old girl all those years ago, choose to poison her famille. Go on a hell bent penchant for destruction, a path that she knew would eventually end her life. I wandered around wondering what her life was like. It wasn''t every day you found a girl threatened by beheading, as I stood in the crowd letting it happen. But I was inherently against the idea of rescuing people that could not rescue themselves. If she wanted to die, that was her business; I certainly had no interest in stopping it.


    I used to want to court girls who I wanted to rescue, but would would prefer being shot in the back of the neck with a guillotine gun than court me. It developed the habit of generally avoiding French girls as a rule. And I developed the idea in my head that any of them were actually nice to me, they would stab me in the back. So it was just as well this was happening, as she would betray me later on. For Anna-Marie La Mort, it was assumption that she would have shot herself with her own Guillotine Gun. And as her neck was slipped into the stock, after being lowered on the board, I was more preoccupied by how sensitive I was to the sounds of the drum roll.


    The angular blade sliced through neck in three seconds. The head dropping into the wicker basket, the blood dripping onto her face. As her head was picked up for all to see, I could see her fading expression on her face.


    The face of Anna-Marie La Mort.


    Between this lifetime and the next, in artificial heaven, one may meet their true love again. I met Anna-Marie Boeglin under different circumstances. It''s funny how the circumstances of your life don''t change one lifetime to the next.


    She is the only girl I''ve ever truly loved.


    There is nothing like having a spoiled beef with somebody. It was the year 2133 A.D., and I still haven''t gotten a digital television. My family might as well ride on horse and buggies.


    The thing about family holidays, is that I very rarely ever actually got to enjoy them, as I would so often have to catch up on schoolwork. Why bother catch up on work, if you''re only going to get half credit for it, it''s really more of a teacher''s benefit than it is to the student''s benefit. Christmas and Thanksgiving were the only holidays besides traditionally Irish ones I got to celebrate with any regularity.


    If you''ve ever seen a slab of corned beef, you''ll know exactly what corned beef and cabbage looks like. My mom used to make this for dinner from time to time on Irish/Scottish holidays although her own family was Welsh. Usually it would come in the form of a soup, I suppose as that is what is considered traditional. Can you blame me for initially expecting it to be my dad who would poke his fork sometimes, and just saying I just got less than I was expecting? The corn beef in the bowl would eventually go completely missing, and dad would just keep saying he wasn''t doing anything. Obviously I was to docile at that point to really say anything.


    So one night I checked the inside of the fridge, as it turned out the corn beef was seemingly dissolving. So that''s what they put in that meat these days, I thought. Once again, as docile as I was I never made a sound about it. Well it turned out a few years later it turned out that studies would show that with some cows in a specific date, had almost an immortality gene. And so the beef would choose to eat itself rather have humans eat upon it.


    So next time you get beef at the grocery, check the label.


    You may have just eaten an immortal cow.


    Now I once knew a girl who claimed to visit the arcades, however at times she would get locked inside those buildings when she was in to late and the staff had went on home. Her parents didn''t seem to care whether she went missing. So her life was largely doomed from the start. She would tell me how at times various tap dancing ghost girls would haunt the facility, and that was part of the reason the staff would often leave early. So there would be her and these girls that would hang out. Unfortunately none of the girls seemed to like to much, at least initially that she would go into their home at night and try to continue playing those girls.


    She told one night, how she wanted to play this game, that she had heard was taken off the available game list. The game involved pillories and guillotines. Heads up, you''ll need to avoid sharp pains. Well eventually she managed to score some pink Teddy bears, she would give this to her little sister when she returned home. She would always arrive at home by bedtime, and so her parents never made a comment. They assumed as long as she got good grades then all was well. However one night, a particular girl wanted to challenge her.


    So she tried to play this game.


    Well lets put it this way, that''s how I know ghosts can kill you. The blade humanely cut through her neck, and her head gently rolled off her falling body to the ground as she bled profusely remaining conscious for the next thirty or so seconds, mouthing words of something related to "tell me sister I love her."


    But nobody would get the message. I found this out from scoring a job there once, and shaking my head is dismay watching a security camera. It wasn''t like I didn''t feel sorry for her, honestly if you didn''t you were human. But there is something bizarrely amusing about watching a runaway die so young in a "OMG I want to bleed my eyes out" sort of way.


    Her parents dropped her severed head in the grave. It was unmarked by their house, which they say her spirit still roams around looking for her parents.


    So I thought I''d go visit her.


    Maybe offer a bit of some corn beef.


    I went to visit her grave-sight, and her mother came out with a shotgun, shouting specific curses in a language that sounded a little like French. Her family was marked by a particular matriarchal structure, so I politely raised my hands up.


    "Sorry miss, just paying my respects."


    "You were one of her friends right. Why weren''t you there when she died. We were so worried about her." She was able to fall down, pushed herself up, heaved, and had a hard time not restraining tears. "Sorry, I know you didn''t know she went missing. Here take her pocket watch, she wanted you to have it."


    "But it''s a family moment." I said.


    "Just take it, ... we were going to burn it anyway." she said.


    Her family, other than her sister, was only emotionally involved in her loss, only as much as mourning the loss of any other beheaded human being, although her mother really did seemed to be bothered I wasn''t there to rescue her. But believe me, I had my own reasons for this.


    But I hugged her gently.


    I didn''t want to see anyone cry.


    "Here, have my corn beef."


    How was I suppose to know it was mildly offensive to share food between an Irish family and an French family. But that''s exactly how it is with my body language, as I ... roll my eyes, roll my tongue, and do everything else in a nuanced and personal way that makes things hard to communicate.


    But I was human to, I drunk out my own sorrows.


    And then finished a pack of cigars.


    My quirk was a mix of sexual pleasure and complete depression. I could go all day masturbating to decapitated girl heads and not blink, and there was something always there that would make me regret that decision. Some girls I knew had similar life stories to my own, and at night I would cry till I fall asleep. I dream of a day when friends didn''t wander off alone into the dark on a suicidal bent to destruction. I wanted at least some girl I knew from my hometown that would survive long enough to have a kid with.


    Then they can take her head off if they must.


    But I was inherently against the idea of capital punishment, and suicide even more so. And I was left wondering what could have made a sixteen year old girl those years ago, choose to eventually go somewhere she knew would end her life.


    I wondered what her life was like.


    It wasn''t every day you found another girl threatened by beheading, and as usual I kind of just sort of let it happen. That''s how things tend to be with me these days. I used to court girls who I would want to rescue, but they would slap my face. Others would stab me in the back, and then decapitate themselves with their own guillotine gun. And she only was the exception, because she found some interest in me beyond romance. She had read my autobiography about having originally having the desire to masturbate to girls having their heads cut off. And she wondered what could possibly motivate a change in me.


    Well as usual, I didn''t have an answer to that.


    It wasn''t like I tended to not give answers to French girls anyway, as they were the ones that introduced beheading into the family that took away my cousin, who I had fallen in love with at the time. It was her people that threatened Anna-Marie, who would go on to briefly meet my presence. I never spoke to her before, but from my understanding she was never completely the same after being initially sentenced to death in her home country. But here out here, where the zones are always decentralized and anonymous, she could be anyone.


    She could be a tap-dancing ghost girl in a dark arcade. She could anyone at all. So from time to time I still visit her. I think she was the only girl I''ve ever met that didn''t die on me, and she had a figure that made me ignore my mommy issues. So after walked over to visit her standing in the pillory after visiting the black smith, I took a lock of her hair, and then kept it in my pocket watch I remember my first girlfriend by.


    "So what brings you to the US."


    "I have no family, nobody. Who the hell are you?"


    "I am Hemato Tomato, nice to meet. Will be seeing you later." I tried walking away after saying this, then found her shudder. "You OK, those things are fun."


    "Shut up, I don''t trust you."


    "Perfect English, they taught you well."


    My sex life was like a deflated air balloon, constantly being reminded of my mother. And the thing about my mother is, I could even consider doing her unless I didn''t see her face. As if her head were removed. Girls reminded me of my mother, and girls who reminded me of my mother needed to have their heads removed. I certainly wasn''t going to do it, that would absolutely kill me inside and out. So I walked to the dock, to board a faerie. She fluttered away along the lake like a miniature cruise ship of the human girl variety. I heard faerie girls give free tit grabs. Not that I was going to go around doing that either mind you.


    So then went I got off, Anna-Marie caught up with me. She purchased herself a shot gun, and a few rounds of ammo.


    "Why didn''t you rape me?" she asked.


    "Well loaded question, was I suppose to rape you?" I asked.


    She had that long yard tear, "They always rape me. My father, my brothers, everyone I ever knew. And yet, you stood beside me."


    "I didn''t want to see you cry." I said.


    "But I''m a criminal in my home country."


    "Sweet heart, we''re all criminals here."


    I took a few week to get her to completely trust me completely. It took some work to make her understand what being trans is, because ... well she is French. But for once in my life, I found someone ... I could trust.


    She would tell me how her father would sometime touch her, I refused to tell her how they brought back memories of when my father did, but I was there only for her. And you just don''t talk about your own problems when trying to console someone. I may have a thing for decapitated heads, but it wasn''t like I didn''t have a heart.


    I just wondered, how long would she poison me.


    "Anna sweetheart?"


    "What do you want."


    "I''d like to do the cooking."


    "I''m just glad I have a home."


    In a way I could finally love again, even if someday she may poison me. I found that, despite my refusal to admit feeling sorry her on that night all those years ago, I found myself crying true tears of joy. I no longer failed my first best friend.


    If only Anna-Marie knew.


    The thing about dating a parent killer, particularly a young one younger than your own at nineteen, you need to treat them with kid gloves. After all they aren''t fully adult; you don''t want to piss them off, and you also got to be firmly gentle with them. Being someone who had been part of a slightly upper crust family, I came with a certain level of an ability to read. On the hand with her, her family was poor. She only managed to avoid decapitation by matter of luck, the jury in that nation was so awestruck about the case they had to spare her life. A few centuries earlier and she would have hung by the neck instead.


    Unfortunately other girls her age were not so lucky.


    Most of them got the chop. There was one lady who was just a little older, twenty two a the most. She was unfaithful to her husband (well considered Anna-Marie''s experience with men, I couldn''t possibly imagine why), but eventually she would eventually go on to stab her husband to death. Unfortunately that country didn''t seem to make the distinction between serial killers and crimes out of petty spousal revenge.


    So they put her head on a stick, waved it across in the air, and then burned that body to toast in an oven that can burn metal. So Anna-Marie was once again in a state of shock from losing her personal friends.


    I guess killers make great bed mates.


    Now you possibly wonder why it is I''m not killer, and yet seem to manage to avoid being murdered by one. Well I''ll tell you a little story, I was riding on a electronic train going faster than sound. I was riding on a sleeper train, running away from my family back down in NashChat, Tennessee. I remembered the feeling of panic I had having attacked my father with a knife, and almost would have gotten him if my mom didn''t put sense into me.


    She wasn''t exactly immune to being pushed into walls either by me, and I suppose in her mind she wasn''t sure how far I would go. But keep in mind they were the ones belting me if I ran away from home, not the other way around. I wanted some other place to be, some place that was not home. Some place that wasn''t there.


    So me and Anna-Marie formed our own family.


    The Marie-Tomatos.


    At night I would have dreams of blood on Anna''s face, I would here her crying faint tears. I would snuggle in her arms, and try to console her. After all it was the least I could do. It wasn''t easy finding someone you thought was a man at first you could trust, and then only find out later that what you know about the relationship was a lie-insofar as what gender she thought I was. But eventually it became a normal family.


    I could have a family again.


    She could have a family again. And there was love to go around.


    At nights we would go to the water parks, shoot at things at the fare, and eventually console her from time to time to assure her father wasn''t there.


    Because at the end of the day, she''s just a bad girl.


    She is a child at heart. A broken child, a girl who was never treated as a child, except insofar as being spared from execution by a single thread.


    On some level she felt she already lost her head.


    So give her this country song.


    The thing about relationships, whether it''s with French girls, American, Japanese, or the great nation of the beer brew festival. Sometimes you build an image in your head of someone you would like to know, though from time to time those images in your mind can turn out to be right. At other times they turn out differently in the real life and be ... dog ugly. And yet when you stand by trying to comfort someone as long as I have, there isn''t anything turning back. Your heart is to invested in their well-being your needs being trumped by the desire for only them that you are willing to forgive a little bit of homeliness.


    And yet there is a kind of inner beauty in masculine girls. One not often seen by more shallow suitors, there is a heart of gold not often given a chance. Sometimes they build trust issues with others, finding images in people they hate. I know I was there once myself, I would shamefully lump everyone who was blond under the same brush. Yet now whenever I see a blond girl be beheaded, it weighs down on my soul. It is this great indescribable feeling.


    On some level I find myself scared to lose Anna-Marie, and yet I write my stories imagining some other kind of Anna-Marie. For a long time this was why I tended to avoid dates, as I didn''t trust whatever girlfriend I would date that I still loved them no matter what, and no matter what version of them I created in story in a book I would love them more than the artificial life. And so I never chose to even entertain crushes.


    I feared being alone.


    And yet now as I join hands with her at the local cart stop, I simply think of all the thoughts I used to have imagining creepy men admiring me as a bearded lady when I forgot to shave, with that Irish red. And think...


    I''d rather live my life with her instead.


    It''s my new life.


    The thing about the nature of my sexuality, I''ve always tended to prefer girls from a long distance relationship.


    This was part of the reason I was initially reluctant to befriend Anna-Marie. The thing about the word befriend, is all to often I tended to confuse the words behead and befriend. Do to to the nature of the relationship with my mother, and the fact that my illustrations tended to involve girls in captivity or with their necks on a headsman''s block, the general association I made for friendship with other girls tended to also include sex.


    I was beginning to draw those illustrations in a time I was beginning to sexually develop. It wasn''t like I wanted to actually behead them, it was more a case of wanting to die with my beloved that was in a case of strong denial for the longest time. And so most of my fear for the longest time had been that they would assume I wanted to kill them. When that wasn''t the case at all. No at all.


    I wanted to die right beside them and never leave their side as I''m caught by dream-scanners who are able to spot our locations, finding out exactly where we live and our daily living habits. Things in the town would be tailored for our least convenience. So the fact that Anna-Marie would even consider giving me a chance was an idea I wasn''t completely used to. So when we went to shooting matches, and then rode horses under flying cars, it made broaching any conversation about sex a difficult topic to approach. Especially knowing her parents were dead.


    So whenever I have thoughts of a warm embrace by a bad girl, my mind immediately switches to them stabbing me with a knife, and then licking the blood off my corpse.


    And for Anna-Marie, I wasn''t sure if she''d die by my side.


    And yet, she was just so cute.


    Unfortunately I''ve never been one to voice things, and yet on some level I think she knew my feelings for her. And if there was a single common thing about abuse survivors, often one has a hard time sorting out their feelings for other people. I''m one to assume even poisoners have feelings for other people. Almost to an exaggerated degree. You find yourself growing gradual disdain for the guardian that was suppose to take care of and protect you. Remember, I was there once. I just got out of the house in time, and never had those desires since. And so while I don''t exactly approve of slipping cyanide in someone''s coffee, it is an understandable feeling to me when someone continuously spanks you and never letting up.


    And yet, despite my insistence on cooking, and her more strongly insisting I haven''t died so far, although I might give it weeks at the most.


    Yet whenever I am home she is happy to see me now.


    A very different girl from the one I met. She was a lot dirtier then, but now if I describe her appearance her skin tone is paradox of tan and pale, she looks as if someone who could be more dark skinned like a Spaniard, and yet do to lack of exposure from sunlight she is so pale. And her hair is as dark as a black rose. Her body was a petite skinny hour glass shape, with the larger end around the bottom and smaller on top. Her hair the gently trimmed shoulder length darkness one associates with a guillotine cut having grown out over the last six months. I asked her why she kept her hair at that length. "It reminds me of how close I came to losing it all." And I knew exactly what she meant, teenage girl there really did.


    Even their heads.


    Hey don''t look at me like that, I tend to pay attention to what I like. Even if they aren''t a good person. Especially guillotine cuts. We embrace for the midnight bed, under the glow of the lunar light shining over the mountains.


    You know how it is when you date an ex poisoner without the ability to poison.


    I hear her loading up a shotgun, so I wake up. But instead of pointing that gun at me like I was expecting (I will not kill in most cases, but will out of self defense), she is instead putting the shotgun in her mouth.


    So for the first time in my life I was forced into the situation of having to talk somebody down from suicide, not exactly something I was experienced with. I had poisoned myself about three times before meeting her, and I was barely in a mental state to help. And yet the adrenaline rush made me take the shotgun from her hands, and she fired it to the ceiling.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    "Why were you going to do that, I was going to miss you." I said.


    "Nobody misses me, I have nobody." And then she passes out onto the floor, convulsing and hoping that I wouldn''t spank her. And I didn''t, that''s just not how you treat anyone in that kind of a mental state.


    And then I hugged her gently.


    I allowed her to cry in my shoulders.


    There were things she finally confessed, when I promised my beloved that I was not the type to judge someone based on their past.


    Anna-Marie remembered when she had first took an airplane to the US. She had just barely been acquitted for her serial murder of her two brothers and her father. Her father would try to reserve sexual favors for himself, her becoming a kind of surrogate mother after Elizabeth died.


    Her brothers tried to hide the fact that they threatened to hit her after she refused to get a sickle for their farming. "I''m not your servant girl, no you fuck yourself. Your smile penis does not compare to dad''s." Her brother Jacques was not happy about this, and would eventually, with the help of his and Anna-Marie''s younger brother, stalk her and drug her with wine. Then they did was many disorderly brothers would do, that for sake of good taste shall be left to your imagination. So it was a simple solution, after she woke up in her bedroom she shared with her two sisters.


    She would poison her brothers. She murdered her first brother with rice soup, and her youngest brother and her father by a fight they challenged others in order to try to win sexual favors. They both died in the fights. Her sisters felt guilty about turning her sister in to authorities, so she tried to be super nice to her after she was acquitted.


    Anna-Marie only cried for what she did to her sisters whom she had always loved, but did not cry for her brothers and father.


    She cried in my shoulder, partly out of joy and partly out of regret.


    I was simply happy I could give her the shoulder to cry on.


    Anna-Marie dropped off contact with her family, leaving a suicide letter and a farewell with an I love you and an apology for the stress of almost having lost another family member. "Don''t forget me, I want to come with you." Ursula said, but Anna-Marie insisted she preferred to be alone. She could never go back to her old society, not with the crimes that she had done.


    So coming to US was a mix of fear and emotional triggers from her old life. She wondered if she would see her sisters again.


    Anna-Marie wore a cowboy hat, got herself a shotgun, and headed for the new digital frontier of the North West. Things had changed in the US after the French take over, and she wondered if she would be known her. But society had changed considerably since the former half of the twenty first century.


    Perhaps she could start a new life. There was only one certainty.


    She missed her mother Elizabeth.


    She would tell me of difficulties she had adjusting to the new life here in the United States. Things were never really the same.


    Anna-Marie had difficulty sleeping. She had constant memories of the guillotine that never came to be. She would at time wonder what it would have been like if she had her neck placed into a loop, and then it was all o''er. Her last remaining vision being the the crowd of the new twenty first, who became increasingly vicious for blood after the election of "The Ink Pen" who resigned the Guillotine back into law after the rest of Europe was dealing with the Post Nazi Restoration Party''s advance. Japan always renewed their imperialist fervor.


    The Guillotine Gun. The new national razor. The second widow. It was all part of the new right wing''s game.


    And poor Anna, the girl who trusted no man, almost died.


    She could have been lost in the game.


    I had heard about a similar criminal case who, while she was not exactly the contemporary of Anna-Marie, she was of similar type of criminal case. She would eventually come to poison members of her own family.


    Really more of an Irish-American friend I knew, they called her Betty even though her real name was Bette. In case the daughter they adopted turned out to be completely psychotic in later years, they did not want their beloved classic to end up being libeled and never read again. Betty would at times deliberately change the name of the house name board on houses along the coast of the North West, out of a sense of mischief and to see whether this would manipulation local fire trucks from coming to her family, that would occasionally be called because of accidental fires her brother would cause in the kitchen.


    "How many times have I told you boys to be careful in there?" said their mother, who said it in a more playful way than she would have if Betty had done so. Betty had always been the outsider of the family, and so she would often receive generally harsher treatment overall than her older male siblings.


    "Sorry mom, it won''t happen again." one brother said.


    "Make sure of that guy." Betty said, being slapped in the face by mother.


    "Only natural born MacCuffins can lecture them." her mother lectured. And this became something that Betty would come to take for granted.


    Whenever they would have the local seafood, she would always hate to offend them and their cooking, and would at times find some excuse to avoid eating whatever it was they offered do to their mom refuses to cook. So eventually Betty moved beyond merely changing the name of title board of the beach house. Part of must have hoped that changing the name of the board would make them confuse houses, and so she would make her escape to a kind her family.


    Her fears of being beaten for not liking their cooking were not exactly unfounded. At one point a while ago she had been paddled by one because he was some offended by one of her remarks. So she decided there was only one certain way to stop the beatings once and for all. But her family had to be gone from the beach house, and she had to offer the cooking for the following evening.


    She made seafood like her family, and her brothers commented, surprisingly how particularly interesting and fantastic the fish was this evening. And despite feeling somewhat ill, in fact requested to their mother to perhaps let their sister help them with the cooking more often. This gave Betty some guilt.


    However by the time bedtime rolled around, bother her brothers fell gravely ill. Eventually they fade out of existence the following morning. She had strained relationships with her parents, but her parents by this point were to afraid of pissing her off that they said nothing. But Betty started to get paranoid.


    So she stabbed both her parents.


    When the neighbor heard screams, the neighbors got involved. Law enforcement did not particularly dealing with cases dealing with child abuse, but had particular disdain of the old majority that ruled this country, even if perhaps the evidence suggested that Betty''s real mother was French.


    Betty had a quick trail, some suggested judicial error.


    She was taken to the courtyard, held in confinement for a few days. And then taken out for her execution. She walked up the scaffold stairs in a nervous wreck, and almost couldn''t make it to the center. They closed the loop on the guillotine gun around her small frail neck, and then counted down.


    The trigger was pulled, the angled blade flew through her neck. Her head fell down onto the scaffold floor below. Because there was no board to hold her upright, the execution largely being rushed to avoid detection by children''s rights activists from human rights international being involved, they wanted the case to be as over quickly as they could possibly make it.


    The executioner held up her head for all to see.


    And then quickly prepared funeral arrangements. I only know so much, because I could have been an apprentice for said events, but had luckily gotten sick from the idea of killing a girl that could have been a friend.


    So they had me watch her demise instead to learn.


    And I sure did learn quite a bit. That in this country we call home, it was a vastly different from the old world where childhood was sacred.


    Kids lost their heads like anyone else.


    I cried myself to sleep that night, vowing that I would someday completely eliminate everyone from the French government in my country. That I would use the toothpicks I owned to torture them, and never let them die.


    To poke them till they leave the country.


    I was reminded again, of how much I valued meeting a girl that could have been executed. It was the first time I comprehended how opposed to capital punishment I really was.


    There was a white mug spilled on the pavement of the parking lot. The manager didn''t seem to pay attention, as he was to busy picking fights with other motel tenants.


    My sexuality was like a constantly moving train, no matter what stops you have you will always come out ahead. The lady lump was beginning to develop into a sore subject. The desire for human contact fading nightly, and yet some calling need to find out where Anna-Marie had gone. Anna-Marie was the opposite of a digital cyberspace dream girl. I had known others only briefly outside of the inter webs. I clung to the idea of some vague notion of human innocents from game console flower girls in science fantasy games. And yet some or the lack of it had become a moot point.


    I never found myself willing to hold onto relationships. They were a burden I simply did not even need. The closest I ever came to a relationship was being sucked off by a slightly homely but not altogether ugly girl. I didn''t want to break her heart as we both knew it was arranged by some other slave master.


    As I wander to find Anna-Marie, I am consumed by my inner thoughts and worries about whether she might do something stupid. I wasn''t the type to rescue girls.


    I merely wanted the entrainment.


    I hadn''t seen a beheading of someone I liked. I had mixed feelings of whether I wanted it to happen at all.


    As I allow her decapitation to happen I am in a state of shock, the angled blade cutting through flesh and bone reverberating across my junk. I have a mixture of sexual feelings and depression as I say goodbye for the last time, watching blood spill into the basket.


    My digital cyberspace dream girl was gone. Originally my feelings of Anna-Marie were that of shameful reluctance for love. She would become my Anna-Marie. Cyberspace girls cant be hurt or broken. There is only digital innocence on the web.


    I wondered when the dream scanners caught her, I just needed somewhere to be.


    Glad I wore three extra layers of jeans. A mixture of some horrible eroticism and sadness.


    Dating girls had always been a tricky prospect for me, after all I had issues with girls ever since I first came out as trans. In my mind I wanted my own cyber pet dream girl, yet I always had one girl who would always follow me around to talk me as I felt down about Anna-Marie''s death. She was a short girl, a little under five feet, yet her proportions were like that of a smaller person rather than someone who was suppose to be taller.


    I never could quite tell what region she was an immigrant from, but it almost definitely was not France or Ireland. She had the longest black curly hair, and black eyes you could stare into all night on a lunar evening under the stars. Looking back on it I should have taken the opportunity to date. Yet I was so lost in my personal sorrows without a worldly care.


    Yet she was always there.


    "So what''s your name?" I asked.


    "They call me Dog, Dog Snacks. It''s a long story."


    "Oh I love those."


    She rested on my shoulder, her bare feet dipping her toes in the artificial lake, artificial in the sense that it was a lake crafted by engineers when building this here hotel. "Well I once accidentally ate dog treats confusing them for cocoa puffs when I was a real young girl. Family hadn''t been able to let go of the idea sense."There were many aspects of Dog I didn''t know. I just saw her as some annoying cute girl that would follow me everywhere she went.


    We would go everywhere together, she would notice my boner when girls tap danced. It seemed to take a lot of will power for her not to masturbate me on stage nights. But one day she went missing. She kept hoping, hoping, and hoping I would rescue her. She got angry when she scraped by being guillotined.


    And yet she stood with me till the end. Forgiving me for not going to games.


    She became the girl that would eventually lose her head in the arcades.


    No wonder she never told me about her family.


    Her family sucked.


    And yet here I am feeling like I failed Anna-Marie and my girl named dog. My dating life would never be the same.


    "She sounded like a great friend to you." the wine glass washer said.


    "Yea she sure was." I said. She was more then a, friend.


    She a girl named dog.


    Devoted until the end.


    It was a few months since I lost Anna-Marie.


    After she died I heard about a Guillotine gun street gang. They were the most feared gang in from NashChat to Seatak, traversing across the country at the speed of an electronic train; they could ride the coat tails of corporate men, and slash the throats of ladies held for ransom. They killed close to ten thousand women, the trail of severed heads paving the road like new marbled floor.


    And yet the time I met them, they didn''t seem to pay any particular attention to me at all. They didn''t seem to care about the fact that I knew they were after a particular artifact from the old era of the US. I was minding my own business, trying merely to live my life, as I''d never been one for gun fights. After all in my opinion gun fights were things macho people did to prove their worth. But when you get to where I''m at, you''re just trying to live your life as a writer, jotting down personal journals about your experience across what the Japanese called the west--the United States as a whole. So I didn''t think I''d ever been in the situation where I''d even consider saving someone''s life. That was until I saw the Rattle Snake Insignia.


    The thing about Rattle Snakes, is they were like spiders to me. They could pop in and out of existence at their leisure. At night I would have dreams of giant spiders and rattle snakes attempting to bite me while I traversed the wild woods of the mind, scattering sanity like shattered glass. But I wondered what Anna-Marie would have wanted, certainly there was something in her eyes that trusted me like nobody else ever had before. I wanted some way to return that favor, even if I didn''t like the French girl that I was going to save and--at the time was entirely uncertain whether I''d guillotine gun her myself. After all a kink for decapitation was part of my human nature, as natural to me as for you you might consider breathing.


    And there was something in those eyes that softened my soul, and made me realized all my personal issues from that point. There is something about looking straight into someone''s face, and finding despite unconditional love they find in your eyes someone they fear greatly, and through their own trust issues have a look of total betrayal. And they continued to love you despite your faults. My first girlfriend Dog had this trait, and to some degree also Anna-Marie. With Anna-Marie it was even more special, because I finally managed to succeed at something I never thought I could before she died, as she gradually came to trust me.


    I saved her from killing herself.


    And that makes all the difference when you hate yourself. Therefore I needed to find a way to tempt the gang when they came to my town. I didn''t want to save whatever girl they captured, as that simply wasn''t my thing. But I was willing to allow that to happen if the gang were more tempted to decapitate me, so that perhaps I could be with my Anna-Marie.


    If not for her than for Anna-Marie.


    "Go on, save yourself. Don''t worry about me." I said to the dark brunette, likely of French immigrant origin.


    As she ran her bare feet glistened in the sun like manicured hands, her heels forming the shape of hairless puff balls in the wind as they bobbed up and down in her Jesus sandals. I found that my lady junk was beginning to become a lot wetter. I managed to attract the attention of the gang, and they managed to get the loop around my own neck.


    Then a bullet was fired. An actual bullet. Not a flying guillotine blade, not shrapnel. But the actual old time bullets left over from before the French take over, before they outlawed gun altogether in French controlled regions. I''m surprised the French did not take over the inter webs, but I suppose that wasn''t their thing. I may be cyber sexual, but I am romantic--almost to a fault.


    A second shot was fired.


    Everyone else besides her ran.


    "Nice to meet you, Francisca is the name." the cute girl said. Evidently she was less reluctant to save me than me to her, I hate it when I owe others my life. But I suppose that''s how it goes.


    "Why didn''t you let me die."


    "I couldn''t resist the mix of joy and sadness."


    Wow, the bitch enjoyed my sadness. We were outlaws beyond the dreamer''s edge, so I couldn''t complain. The life of me being a mix of reality and non-reality, the conceptual life bleeding into the real. I wasn''t sure how she would take my cyber sexuality, or my inability to trust her. But she didn''t mind. Not enough not to go down on me.


    I''ll fuck anyone who hot who will go down on me.


    Quand Anna-Marie was sentenced to death, everybody seemed sorry. The judge had a particular disdain for rape victims, or so she told me. She poisoned someone else. An estranged family member that came to visit. But this isn''t a Thomas Hardy tale. Instead it is a tale of a French girl who only trusted me little, yet enough to give me a chance. So it wasn''t a surprise she left me so as not to hurt me. She didn''t want to see me cry.


    But that''s how it was there, and even here for those so young to die. She was spared once, but guillotine gunned the second time. I remember the feeling of regret when saw my reaction as the blade fell through her neck, as her head tumbled away. And I am left with only the remnants of a love that could never be. We all become as obscure as Jude. A new tale of cyber sexuality unfolds.


    Life restarts all o''er again as I carry a lonely umbrella in the rain.


    The French were as ubiquitous as ants, like boogiemen. There was a young girl in tap shoes, possibly of English/French descent. Her schoolgirl outfit reminded me of penguins. Her cane matching her Steampunk goggles in black. Her taps covered in mud.


    You can''t just leave someone cold in the rain, it''s not human. I checked inside after asking where her mother is, but she was nowhere to be found. "Haha, got you. I come to save the adults." She got me there, I slapped my knee. Kids these days. I fist bumped her and went on my merry way.


    It wasn''t like I didn''t think I needed saving, I just didn''t trust a kid to do it. Everything melts away in the rain.


    I needed hope.


    I needed death.


    I also needed to be by someone''s side, I just didn''t realize this at the time. My life like shattered plexi-glass into bleeding shards.


    I grabbed her hand and shouted to the sky, "Does anyone know where this girl''s mother is?"


    I tried going elsewhere away from her, but there was not escape from her net gun. She tossed me into the sky like a rodeo rope.


    "You''re not going anywhere, mommy dere." she said, doing a little tap dance. "You will not have your dance with death, I am her daughter. And I only love."


    She was older than she looked, with her being seventeen. With Steampunk having become something of a local fashion, Lisa-Marie had a thing for trans girls thinking of her as thirteen. Yet there was something in those eyes that drew her to me. It made me shudder and cry.


    It revealed all her lies. Her mother used to shame her for wanting to be a little princess. She never had many playmates, and she was always left alone. "But I want a princess dress." she said to her mom. "I want to be the beauty for my beastly girl."


    Her mother would tear off her dress, making her confess to stealing it even though she payed for it with her allowance. Made her wear rags and stockings and wooden sabots. She got her taps after mom died.


    "You will be your brothers Cinderella." her mother said.


    So the little Cinderella girl that wanted youth and to play was jerked by her wrist to hard that she wept raining tears.


    She wanted to strangle mom with her rags.


    Instead her mom was guillotined after robbing a bank.


    So I gave her the country song, and said "Why would someone tear off your dress?" It was the same shit Anna-Marie went through, why was the world so horrible?


    She held me tight, and we said goodnight.


    She wiped away my tears. "But you are mommy now. I want a hamburger."


    I laughed while crying.


    I had looked at the human race as unredeemable. Most of all I hated women. I didn''t want their genocide. I wanted them to be locked in immortal constant abyss. I hated how pretty all the girls were compared to me, and how their souls were lost in a tireless immoral void. I wanted everything in my life to end. Then for once everything can begin all o''er again. Even the total scum of the Earth is so much prettier than the world. I could be Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Vicci. Yet none of their disdain for their chosen race compared to the hate I had for Lisa-Marie''s mother.


    I could have been a necrophiliac headsman.


    At least my mother made me think so. It was all a deranged game.


    And yet I loved this girl and Anna-Marie. Because my love for them was deeper than all my hate.


    They of humanity that warmed my heart.


    And yet Anna-Marie is gone.


    "You talk in your sleep Hemato, are you OK. Something must be bothering you." Lisa-Marie said.


    "Nothing that you didn''t melt away."


    "Then lets make a new world together."


    Lisa-Marie did not know her father well. Even when he was still in the United States, he would hardly ever be home. To this day she still wondered what he would be like, if she ever went to see him. After her mom died, she turned to the streets. She was finally able to switch to wearing princess dresses again.


    She purchased herself a net-gun, that shoots out a large fishing net. She didn''t believe in killing others, but would sometimes be an occasional pest for militarized law enforcement. The remnants of a larger culture of mainstream police brutality. It was a struggle to maintain some semblance of anonymity, a think that she would eventually come to desire quite a bit. So when she had met Hemato, she had sorts of mixed feelings coming into her head at once.


    There was a kind of identity crises. On one hand her mother was a French immigrant, and on the other hand her father was British. There would be constant fights of petty political issues; she never caught a break from yelling, and it would be a struggle just to have basic medical needs followed because they would be so caught up using her a token figure for their own political gains. Her house was like a miniature version of world war three.


    So she came into the world largely unsure what to expect. She tried to maintain a semblance of friendliness. But not being used to the mean streets, the reality of it all hit her hard. Most of the people she encountered wanted to take her head, being partially of French origin. Others saw her as some kind of sexual treasure, and she became introduced from an early age the lusts of carnal desire.


    Over time she lost her fire, that innocence.


    That feeling of love.


    Instead what remained was a girl that was a shell of her former self. She wanted to search for someone who could replace her mother, someone that had been missing from her life for many years. She became psychologically broken beyond the point of complete breaking.


    She got involved with fashion cultures.


    One such culture was what would become known as Steampunk. There was a loving atmosphere among these people that was distinct from her experience with her peers in middle and high school, which was still required of people her age. Because of the family structure, people protected each other. Even if people dropped out and became homeless, there would still be a home. None of them cared where you came from. You could be British or French. Everyone was friends.


    This lasted for a while, then she stopped going. Being one that largely preferred to be alone, it made social interactions difficult to process. Everything was like multiple rows of obscure binary code, written in languages more arcane than Ruby and C++. The operating system of the social life.


    So she came to the world with new eyes.


    And net-gun to find her mother. So she could be loved again.


    The thing about immigrating from Tennessee, you still have certain baggage from the old state you left behind. Luckily I''ve never had a strong accent in any direction, but when you grow up in a culture you still have certain lingual-ism that marks you as having from a particular territory in NashChat.


    Although Lisa-Marie never seemed to notice or care about this, it was always something that I feared would mark me as being strange. Surely you figured something was off, but perhaps this all in my mind. I would have had the same fears for Anna-Marie, except she herself had come from France. If you''re from France, you can''t exactly complain about cultural markers. Especially when you''re the one from hick town who invaded the US. Part of the issues came from the fact that as someone from Tennessee living in the North West, there was still a lot of element of shame from the association, and their tendency toward being conservative.


    This includes determination in maintaining an unworkable capital punishment. In many ways if you like in Tennessee, there was a good chance you would like in France as politically they were relatively similar. At least more so than Seatak and France. As much as I hated Lisa-Marie''s mother, I was also never a fan of capital punishment. To save an anti-death penalty discussion, lets leave at the fact that at lot of my vocalism against the invaders is partly from me picturing NashChat invade Seatak. Now here is the thing about NashChat.


    You might have isolated pockets of people that are against corporal punishment of kids in school, but for every Nashville in the NashChat area that was always Smyrna, Tennessee. In Smyrna, or so I heard (I was only threatened by it at Blackman High, keep that in mind) you could be paddled on your jeans for wearing something as arbitrarily incorrect open toed Jesus sandals. And when you''re a lesbian like me, well you tend to wear Jesus sandals. Though generally black. There was a certain association of paddled girls in Jesus Sandals or Potato Shoes with sex that became stronger over time, and I knew that paddling anybody was unacceptable. And yet I had that kink I could not quite explain, I suppose I was destined for cyber sexuality from the get go. I would picture in my mind little dark hair brunettes paddled to guitar tunes.


    Did I mentioned I hate country music? Yea when I give "a country song", I don''t mean a literal country song. Usually it''s a way of me visualizing smashing a guitar over someone''s head who hurt my friend.


    At times at night I find myself getting enthused all of a sudden, I can''t help but let my mind switch to Lisa-Marie that takes away all my sexual pleasures for hurting my beloved who reminds me of the kid me and Anna-Marie could have had rather than someone I''d want to give me head, even though now if Anna-Marie had lived Lisa-Marie would be about the same age. Neither did nobody any wrong, and yet in my mind


    I imagine me spanking their bottom.


    It just fucking kills me.


    With Anna it''s worse, I know exactly what she went through.


    ... I''ve been there myself.


    I think eventually I may in fact actually move out of the United States, and move to somewhere very north of Canada. I''m not sure if Lisa-Marie will go with me, and I kind of feel funny leaving Anna-Marie''s grave behind.


    I haven''t visited Anna-Marie''s grave actually. I suppose that will be the last stop before I leave the US.


    Or I may hang myself from a tree.


    I suppose I shall see.


    So after Lisa-Marie gave me a very awkward head job, because she likes giving me a head job sometimes, I pack my bags when she is away. Her Jesus sandals make my lump inflate, so I suppose that''s something I''ll have to go without. However when I arrive at the train station to visit the graveyard, I dropped my bags looking at the long line at the station. Where trains constantly whistle.


    I merely thought of Lisa-Marie.


    She had nobody. She wouldn''t have me.


    She would have nothing. But then I am shot with net from her net gun, and then things go smoothly from there, as she says "You didn''t tell me you were going on a trip sweet heart. Take me with you."


    So I bought her a ticket when I was released from the net.


    On closer inspection she was dressed particularly innocently, and I immediately felt awkward about the head and foot job she gave me before. I couldn''t believe that someone dressed so much like a Christian girl in Jesus sandals, with a yellow flower dress and a yellow flower cap. "You decided to go with me." I said.


    "You decided to abandon me." she said.


    "I didn''t want you to leave your family."


    "Fuck that, I hate my family. I have nothing here. My brother has just killed himself because of his guillotined girlfriend I had. All I have is you. You''re all I have left. Yet you felt you had nothing left to give." She covered her face in a tearful shame and regret. She got me there I suppose, I just never had a felt that was as devoted like my first girlfriend named Dog.


    "I suppose I could give you a shoulder."


    "That would be great."


    "So where are we going to go first?" she asked, as we boarded the room. The waitress gave us breakfast for the morning, and for me I had always tended to drink my coffee nice and black.


    "To the local graveyard, an old friend is buried there." I said.


    "Your executed girlfriend?"


    "How did--"


    "You really talk in your sleep. But if I could be like your Anna-Marie, that would be really great." I wasn''t sure how to respond to that, I didn''t have a conversation like that sense I had last moved to the North West. One of my friends I knew, that was my room mate briefly when I was fleeing my parents, would talk about how I would never ultimately compare to the friend she had known for fifteen years. So as you could probably imagine, I didn''t have the need to break my new friend''s heart.


    Besides, I loved her like family.


    She was me and Anna-Marie''s child. Even if she was close to our age, there was something about her innocence that made me feel very protective. She had the aura of someone you would to take care of and mother.


    But not like my mother. A mother like me.


    She kept me from ending my life.


    I was lost in a sea of digital sexuality. I would decapitate French girls without a second thought. My sex drive rivaled the armies of Genghis Khan, the ladies fallen Chinese warriors who I slammed the knife down on their necks. Yet in the endless fog of dream-time, there was a light in the forest.


    There was the sound of a innocent little girls voice, who held out her hands for me and gave me a smile I have never received in years. It was the face of the spirit of light in the dark, the face that combined Anna-Marie and Lisa-Marie both like angelic sisters after sundown. And yet there was a stitch marks on her neck, and her head wobbled as if she were beheaded by a guillotine gun. And yet there was something about her that could transcend other people''s dreams and hopes sharing ideas. I simply wanted my internal nightmare to end.


    She was almost psychic. I feared the worst for my angel. I was a demon lost in inferno. Lisa-Marie woke me up, and gently shushed me. Then offered to rub my shoulders, hoping it would take my night terrors away.


    I thought moving would change things.


    It only made things worse.


    And in the morning, she sang children''s rhymes.


    I felt no need to rhyme today.