All That Never Was
In which I pour all my worries into a suicidal lesbian and her simulated girlfriend
Sophie wakes, gasping for air. She raises her hand to shield her eyes from the harsh white light all around her. A man stands over her, watching carefully.
“Where…” Sophie manages to croak out, but the rest of the sentence doesn’t come.
“You may have some trouble forming sentences,” the man tells her. “What you’ve just been through can be quite disorientating.”
Sophie lies there for a few seconds, gathering her words. “Where… where is Alice?” she finally manages to ask.
The man’s face falls. He hesitates, thinking for a moment. “Sophie, Alice isn’t real. You’ve been in a simulation for the past two years. Don’t worry, your memories should come back soon.”
“No, that can’t-” but even as she tries to deny it, memories flood suddenly back like a freight train crashing into her skull. She stops trying to reject what the man says, because she knows it’s true. She knows that she can’t go back. She knows she’ll never speak to her fiancée again. She knows that Alice will be forever locked in the cold silence of a computer, her laugh to be heard only by flashing lights and spinning drives.
Sophie sobs quietly as two big men come to take her away. They take her to her flat and leave her with tears still streaming down her cheeks.
Later that evening, she will climb the stairs to the roof of the building. She will unlock the door and stand there, on the roof, for a while. She will walk to the edge and look down at the ant-like people below. She will want to cry, but her tears will be all spent. She will want to cry for Alice. She will want to cry for herself as well and she will feel guilty about that. Most of all, she will want to cry for all that never was.
Then, Sophie will take a step forward, off the roof, and fall down, down onto the cement below. Lying there, her limbs at odd angles on the pavement, she will be dead. She will not have written a note, because she has nobody to read it. She, like so many others before her, will die as alone as she lived.
But that is later. For now, Sophie does all she can: she lies on the floor of her flat and cries, her warm tears dropping onto the cold tiles.
That kiss
It started with a kiss
as it apparently should,
but it grew into more
as I hoped it would.
So many kisses
since that night
when you gave me that tab.
Who new that it might
become something so big,
so lovely, so great?
If I believed,
could it be fate?
Every day since Halloween
has been a day of bliss;
every day since that night
when we shared that kiss.
Every moment since you
has been a moment spent
in love






