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  \ /             "Thanks For Nothin'"            `.              ,  \ \ /  |
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  /                   by Infernal                 (            ; mEoW!@/|   '
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   |____________________ Anada is cat-friendly! __)  |__\  `.___________|/
                                                  `--'   `--'

        [The curtain rises on a man in a nondescript room.   An unseen voice 
        narrates.]

        He tore down the bookshelves, tore up the photo albums.  He tore out
        the phone, tore out his hair.

 (That didn't take long, at least, a shrewd and cynical observer kibitzes.)

        Shut up, you, there's a point to this.

        He tore things off the wall, threw them out windows left agape,
        curtains flapping like hands waving goodbye.

 (That explains all the flies in the place, the observer snickers.  Is he 
 planning to clean the cat box while he's on this melodramatic purge?)

        Look, didn't your mother tell you anything about if you don't have 
        anything nice to say...?

        He tore out his heart, made a big loud show of it.  Everyone knew for
        miles around.  He knew it would kill him, didn't care.

        Then he tore out the ceiling, exposing a collected lifetime of 
        accumulation to the vagaries of the stars and the wind.

 (Not to mention the pigeon that just took a healthy shit on his Queensryche
 CDs.)

        Look, are you gonna let even a SHRED of mood enter this file, or do I
        have to ask you to leave?!

 ( )

        Okay, then.

        After he'd torn out the ceiling (wailing like a siren or a hungry
        kitten the whole time), he began to tear at the walls, like Samson
        knocking down the temple, only with the methodical fingers of an
        archaeologist, sifting the rubble to find that one answer, the thing
        that would make it all make sense.

 (Sounds like a waste of good plaster to me.  He coulda put those magic 
 methodical fingers to better use and maybe kept her satisfied, or 
 failing that, taken his own mind off all this senseless destruction.)

        Will you get your mind out of the gutter?  And who said this had
        anything to do with a "her"?

 (Doesn't it always, in some way or another?)

        .

 (Hah.  Anyway, you were saying?)

        Well, now that you've taken all the drama out of it...

 (You mean all the meaningless martyrdom.  Fucking waah, I'm so sad. 
 Tell the rest of the story, you're boring us.)

        Anyway, weakened by the removal of his heart, cleansed somehow by his 
        destruction of everything he had maintained inside his walls...

 (Remind me never to give this guy renter's insurance!)

        For Christ's sake, will you...

 (Sorry!  I was cracking up, I had to say it.)

        He was down to the bare floorboards, and those were spattered with
        his own blood, which he had wantonly spilled in anger and misplaced 
        aggression.  He tore at them with slicked, raw fingers, the skin of 
        which shredded and peeled on the rough-hewn wood, as his vision
        doubled and fuzzed and his will grew weaker.  Still he would have
        it... an answer...

 (Christ, we don't have all day.  Here, let me pry up a floorboard for this
 poor deluded sack of shit, so we can get to the ending and all go home.)

        He reached into the dark recess under the floor, where his pooling
        blood had begun to drip down in a steady rivulet, and his pale clammy
        fingers pulled out a scrap of notebook paper, wide-ruled, with a
        quotation on it written in the handwriting of himself at age
        eighteen.

 (And how long ago was that?  Like sands through the hourglass...)

        Show some respect to the dying.  Anyway, he smoothed out the piece of
        paper, leaving rusty streaks across it, and in sloppy block letters,
        leaning to the right as if being assaulted by some lexicographical
        wind storm, it read:

        LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE

        He spoke through a bubble of blood on his lips.  "Shit.  I wish I'd 
        thought of that."  And he died.

 (What?  That's it?  But if he wrote the note to himself, why didn't he 
 take his own advice?  Was he that retarded?  You can't possibly tell me 
 you dragged me here to see this.  That's not an ending!  What a shmuck! 
 What a lousy story!  Where are the heroes!  Where's the happy ending? 
 I want my money back!  This is an outrage!  I demand...)

        [The voice continues as the curtain falls.]

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 \ -.- /                                                              \ -.- /
 `-.^.-' (c) 2001 Anada e'zine                            by Infernal `-.^.-'
   /"\ ________________________________________________________________ /"\