^{Originally published in The Lyndon Review.}

The purpose to her moving my computer into the bedroom was twofold. First of all, that meant that she didn’t have to go into the living room, which by then had become the victim of a hostile takeover led by spilled ashtrays, moldy bread, dusty furniture, and several roaches, each of whom I had jokingly named Fred. Secondly, it meant that she could keep an eye on me and make sure that I didn’t spend too much time at the keyboard. She made the move while I was working the night shift at the gas station down the street. By the time that I got home I had been up for seventy-two hours straight and I didn’t care enough to make a complaint. Thus I became shackled to the bedroom, leaving only to work and to make my occasional and vain attempts at putting the house back into a state that remotely resembled clean.

^{Originally published in The Lyndon Review}

Lil and I had been fighting for about two months. Even if one of us did win an individual battle, it proved to be only a cosmetic victory, patching our relationship for a few hours or maybe even a day at a time before the well-stocked armies of our tempers clashed again. In the realm of the purely physical she outmatched me every time, beating her fists against my torso and sinking her nails into my arms while I stood motionless, unwilling to retaliate. My best bet was to make her cry early on, to hurt her with words so quickly that her temper would overload like an exploding boiler and send her running out of the room wailing. When I managed this feat I could always wait to the count of sixty before following her and apologizing, making for a teary-eyed and blissfully quiet session of makeup sex and a nap before the next battle. When I didn’t manage to avoid the attack I had to wait for her to exhaust herself, which could take some time because throwing a punch required remarkably little energy from her. When she left the house in a rage I would take my defeat out on whatever inanimate object presented itself. Through this post-loss ritual I managed to throw a portable phone through the thinly plastered wall and blind myself by crumbling the metal frames of my glasses into a ball and tossing them into the pile of uncollected debris next to the brooms.

^{Originally published in The Lyndon Review}

There’s a monster in my room. He didn’t used to be a monster; none of us are to begin with.

_{^{Originally published in character i.}}

The police officer is worried less about my green dress and more about the blood smeared across my face.