gone

That night, I have a vision. It comes to me at three in the morning, as I’m lying awake on Carlos’ (that’s what he said his name was at the bar. It could had been Wilhelm for all I cared) anyway, I’m lying awake on his crappy pink futon, trying to figure out how to get my arm out from under his head without waking him. I see an endless string of Carloses stretching out before me, receding into the distance, getting smaller and wrinklier, saggier, until at last they shrink down to an invisible point and disappear. And when they disappear, so do I, dropping like a pebble into the black pool of eternity without making so much as a ripple.

The Carlos I just bedded snorts, coughs a spray of hot spittle onto my chest, and rolls away. New blood surges into my arm as I pull it back across my chest. Outside his window, a dog howls. I slip out of bed and dress in the darkness, silently, as if I were already a ghost. Soon enough, I’ll be gone.