I like to have a task that keeps me busy. If I’m doing things then my mind doesn’t have any time to wander. When it does, it gets lost. It really scares me.

I worry like the mother of a 4-year old who just got lost in the city. When I finally find my mind, I scream at it, smack it around. Any security turns the other way.

A blind glaze comes over my eyes.

I am paranoid blood will drip out my ears.

He came to my house at nine in the morning asking for his winter hat. I grabbed his ass and kissed him. He grabbed the hat and stated he was going to Canada.

“With who?” I asked. My heart froze.

“Brandy,” his face warped.

I managed to say, “Who the fuck is Brandy?” before he slammed the door.

I could hear his footsteps slapping as I frantically searched the kitchen for a steak knife or fillet knife or any kind of knife. There was nothing but burnt and hash-tarnished butter knives. Fucking hippies, I thought.

I ran out the door in time to see a new-looking SUV peeling out backwards onto the gravel road, then it was thrown into drive. A gravel rock hit my shin as white dust filled the air and coated my nose.

When I daydream I often think of committing the perfect murder. In this episode of insanity, I am out to kill the bitch who ran off for three days to Canada with my man, where they fucked and did touristy things.

In my mind, she is employed as a waitress at a classic Italian restaurant, where she reaches and bends and ladles out spaghetti sauce every in a way which makes her butt stick out and her cleavage spill over. In my mind she is shapely. A table of businessmen, a family of six, and a couple on their first date – the men all stare as she bends and reaches to place garlic bread at the far end of the table, her push-up bra causing a scene as she smirks and pretends not to notice.

It is very late, I imagine, when she finally clocks out and muscles open the smudged back door. The back parking lot is in a small, dirty, unlit alley. I’m leaning on a flowering pear tree, which has just started to bloom and smells awful. She doesn’t see me and starts walking to the end of the small lot. Her SUV isn’t there.

It’s warm for a windy night. I silently creep from the dark shadows of the tree. I practice my Pocahontas walk while creeping up behind Brandy. I produce the knife. She stops.

I don’t give her the chance. My left arm is wrapped around her forehead, and in a burning second, she is on the ground with a clean stroke. My adrenaline runs out of me. It feels good. Our eyes connect, and her horror matches my relief. She recognizes me from stories, photographs, I imagine. Nothing comes out but blood.

I lift up her shirt and cut her bra straps so I can remove the push-up. Her heart is barely beating as I dangle the bra over her body and cut the gel-filled balloons with two stabs. Chemical liquid leaks out, and I drip it in her mouth– the places, knowing my man, where he touched.

Disgusted by the terror of my own imagination, I come back to reality in the passenger seat of another man’s car. We are on a long drive from my apartment to a party where everyone is going to be real drunk real soon. I wonder where in Canada they are.

“Hey,” he says, in a voice I don’t really recognize, “You haven’t said anything for a long time. What are you thinking about?”