BunnyisLovy888 is rewriting the fragments of stesichorus, and she says it is like a song of all those old times passed away old days of reckoning when
Athens was a hope in the sky before words like hope turned dirty before paper rained ripped
Down the middle of her before milk dropped on top of her blonde head
Before leaving, disappointment would not leave.
Back then I say BunnyisLOVELY888 rewrote the fragments of STESICHORUS from Greek into George’s story, who lived before Christ was born. And so it shall be.

As she says:

BunnyisLovy888: what are u doing?
Georges_Circle_: nothing
BunnyisLovy888: noting boredboredbored
Georges_Circle_: i know
BunnyisLovy888: no loli ts so BAD everyone here fucking sucks
Georges_Circle_: do you want to vc?
BunnyisLovy888: idk maybe. do u like photos I sent?
Georges_Circle_: yeah i miss you
BunnyisLovy888: 🙂❤️💖
Georges_Circle_: come out tonight i have an idea
BunnyisLovy888: 😈🎉
Georges_Circle_: please

She’s sitting there watching him move from door to door
she’s going to famous one day
do you think every little girl
thinks she’s going to be famous?
she asks her little dog
but for her it’s different
THE DOG REGARDS HER JOYFULLY

She’s been telling herself it will be different this time because George is an artist. He invites her over every Thursday after school he tells her she’s going to be his MUSE. Which sounds so incredible the first time she heard it said out loud she couldn’t breathe. MYU- Z. Just the sound of it. People didn’t use words like MUSE anymore unless they’re incredibly stupid faggots or unless they’re George. George is a great artist, a really great one. His paintings are fantastic. He paints canvases of these wide open rooms with no one in them. You can hear the loneliness on the page. Sometimes he does portraits too, always of her, because he says that when he saw her in Mrs. Andrews English 11 he thought that he had no thoughts at all that he had went completely blank down to his toes that he felt himself dying right there like the sky had parted and he knew God wanted him to be an artist otherwise what would be the point of her existing at all? SO he had to paint HER. Her. No one has ever had to have her do anything. His portraits have wide open mouths, smiling, not crying. But like it hurts them too.

She had been born with a bright red mask that no one seemed to see and eleven wings six wings on her back. Her Father put her hand inside the grill and held the burnt pieces up to her head and told her not to cry. She watched big fat droplets of shame cascade down her own face from far away.
Her mother put it later beside her pillow in her bed and told her she must pray to be better. She slid her fingers on the grooves and let the feel of tin come inside of her.
Her Mother, come to Her, and then just alone, always whispering she was a monster like the stars in the sky pushing her into rooms. Tripping over her own legs. George did the same, but did it with something less than love, as if he knew the feeling made her suffocate.

Her body always lays on the floor when George paints her
always on the floor.
She lies on the ground for him and stares at the ceiling and he paints her and when she looks later at the canvas everything inside her grows quiet. Everything falls into place.

Her mask drenched in hate. Done in black, and red, and pale pale blue. Her face with mask
Mask no one but George sees. Mask everyone likes.

Lying on the ceiling mouth open wide with thick polymer and clay teeth the mask loves it breathes
the red mask that hides the cracks the skin underneath the six wings.
Bunny is LOVELY. It’s true.
That’s the worst thing you can be.

Everything falling into place all the people go away inside her brain all the people on the street with masks in their hands holding them out for her to take for her to place change in their palms.

Isn’t that the worst of all? Everyone wants to fuck something lovely everyone wants to stick their fingers their dick into her dark tooth filled holes of her paper mache mask. The eyeholes of mask are not ever crying.
Instead they lay bare open blue for George who in a circle paces the room.

“Do you want to come out tonight?”

Of course, maybe. It doesn’t really matter does it? It’s always bad when they go out at night, but for some reason she keeps coming back. No. Not for some reason. It wakes something up inside of her, the things they do. Like looking at the front side of the morning sun, shining with blindness into her, cleaning out all the rooms, cleaning out everything sick and dusty that’s been lying around. Lighting everything up with fire. The things inside of her that were gray and dead throughout the day. It’s like living. The feeling of her body being held down on the burning carpet beneath her. George is very beautiful too, which makes it better when he moves her arms and legs about. It doesn’t really matter what happens to the skin does it? Red peeling flesh can decorate the back of an ivory tusk just the same as anything else.

She met George in English class. They had been reading Lord of the Flies for the third time in three years. The teacher kept going on and on, her name was Mrs. Andrews. She was ugly and fat, her hair was almost shit brown and curling badly and frizzy. If Bunny was the pretty kind of Jew that you don’t know is Jew then Mrs. Andrews was the ugly type of Christian who you THINK is Jew. Bunny had been taking loads of valium that week so she was feeling okay, feeling calm and hazy like nothing was bad. The pain in her chest had quieted down into dull aching. (‘why was i calling you wishing for you why was i longing and thirsting for you with every curve of my soul and even with my ribs?’ ‘Да ведь я тебя для чего же и звал-то, для чего и желал, для чего алкал и жаждал всеми изгибами души и даже ребрами?’)

She stole them from her Mother and it had felt super retro to take them the first few times, before it started to all feel bad again, the weight dropping the anvil on the head of the rat rat is hollow inside like a scarecrow. The fear before the high comes down the fear that it would come down, why couldn’t she be high forever? it was the scariest feeling in the world to feel the deadened nerves of her pink matter brain slipping out from between her fingers, to feel the breaking like she was inside her Mother’s body operating the levers and buttons, pressing her hands down hard onto the command controls. Trawling back in time one bar to the next one clickclack step of the boot backwards still. Back into being awake. Like they were best friends her and her mom and partying at all the best clubs. No fear at all. All fear always. It is her name. And still Mrs Andrews kept going on about how the main character was a representation of society. She was feeling very lightheaded so Bunny was trying to keep a close eye on the clock to keep herself from fainting.

And then like love she saw George for the first time. Staring at her. His mouth perfectly pursed his hair a beautiful blonde like an Aryan GOD. He looked very very Polish which he wasn’t but it was the thought of it that counted, right? He had blue prettypretty eyes and wasn’t too skinny but was so thin she couldn’t look away.

That is society, she had thought. Then the idea drifted away with everything else. But it would come to her, late at night sometimes. That. George’s lovely pursed lips. That was society. That was what everything had led towards. All those millions of years and evolution and gigantic boulders falling from the sky. All the Neanderthals dead and all the ape men dead, their lives for Nothing. All the painted walls in caves with stick figures, all the men in Renaissance Italy fucking each other in the ass. All of the hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of years all the billions of people all of society and art and science and nature and none of it mattered, because nothing before George mattered. He was IT. The culmination of it all. He was God’s final creation. And when George died, the whole entire WORLDUNIVERSE 🌍would die with him until nothing was there not even blackness. It would be over, because the point had been made. The one thing the only thing in the entire history of the universe which held any meaning.

He is taking her out tonight in her heart, the picture of a single heart emoji keeps popping up inside of her. It fills her up it presses itself against the white backdrop and won’t drop back down. That’s what love looks like!

In his car he lets her roll the windows down which is very very sweet. The sweat on the back of his neck makes her shirt stick to her skin. The whole night is filled with a dim idea of excitement. Maybe fear.

I can’t help I can’t help it.

She is heading towards some fresh new hell, some boring torture.

George has a taste for rape. He has a taste for HER rape, which is different, because it was her’s only he likes to say. So it was his too. So it’s different. Everything of hers is his. None of her rapes have mattered much before. They had belonged to her alone. George likes to put things inside of her and rip her skin open and let her bleed. They never do it on the sheets. Last Thursday they went to a hotel with his friends and she had sat there watching them all undress. And then she took the pill George gave her and she closed her eyes and when she woke up he was inside of her moving. And all his friends were watching, laughing. The important part was that none of them had touched her he said. She was his. It was nice for everyone to know it. It was nice. It is nice. George is a great artist. Which is what matters. She will die.

Today they are driving to the nice part of town. They pass the 7/11 they like to go to after school. They pass the park badbad park. They don’t think about it. They get to the gated community. The pass the gate. George maybe is a bad person, she thinks. George’s circle. Like a circle inside of hell made all for him and him alone. For his special sort of sins. Someone so pretty deserves their own personal spot in hell, for just them alone. Someone so pretty can’t sit with the demons and the sinners and the ugly babies who never knew God. The thought comes like a surprise. But it isn’t. He is a bad person, but he’s a great artist. And that’s what matters. She will stake her claim on genius and make something out of the shit red shit

the hordes of cattle
horses running
the noise which is the
scream from the flower
on fire the sound the flower’s stamen leaking
its neck bent like the head of a woman turned wrong under three hundred and fifty tons of cubic force. Please Please the horse likes to speak to her sometimes when she is especially sleepy she will lie on the smooth cliff above the edges of the beach next to her small red dog and together they will gaze on the red cattle the red leaves
The red dreams
All of it shit all of it
Absolutely
Nothing
🍂 🍁🍃🍂🍁🍃🍂🍁🍁🍂🍃🍂

She runs her hands down his thigh, but he bats them away.

“Not now.”

Not now he says. Stupid. Stupid idiot. She leans her head on the car window, feels the glass beneath her cheek, watches the drops of water trail down trying to come home to where it’s dark and warm. The music is loud, a man with a deep voice is speaking on top of bass notes that shake the ground beneath her feet.

George hands her a bottle. She looks at it. It’s not a word she recognizes.

“Take two.”

She takes three. She is bored. Her foot is falling asleep and it is complete agony. Even the most minute movement of it causes a sort of sharp evil pleasure that is more like pain to go through her. She starts to close her eyes.

It doesn’t matter does it the sea likes to speak it is not a place where dreams live she has dreams

In the ocean the waves come over her and drench her in pressure drench her in silence
She is fear.

Bunny closes her eyes and closes her nose and curls into a ball as the wave ten feet high crashes down and surrounds her. And does not leave. It holds her down the force of it. She can’t breathe. She can’t see anything. Close your eyes and wait to pass. The thought comes to her from somewhere on high. Close your eyes and wait for the wave to pass by, and everything will be okay. But it doesn’t feel okay. It feels scary. She curls tighter into her ball and the water does not pass. This is hell
Which is eternity
This too shall pass weeping my nose which burns
There is no salt around me. I don’t understand why is there no salt around me. Only the idea of water. Suddenly the waves are drenching the whole town, everything is torn the torrent runs rampant and everything is destroying everything is destroy she hangs on a telephone pole a man with no face, below her. He says hold on for dear life, Bunny! But he doesn’t say her name. She tries to move but her arms won’t go won’t budge she tries to move her face to speak but nothing comes out only more fear. It’s like walking underwater. And where is the salt? This is not her town. This is no town she lives in. Holding on for dear life to flag pole, the water comes again. My Mother and Father and all my horses and all my red cattle and my little red dog and all my soldiers too and all the arrows piercing inside my chest too
Oh how do I speak
Oh how

She wakes to see a man above her choking her. He is old. His face has awful wrinkles. He is ugly 🐀. Inside of her goes empty. He is inside of her. George is watching, with no look upon his face. The man inside of her moves her arm to the left, and she sees she is bleeding onto the ground beneath. She is lying on the floor, on the ceiling. Another man watches beside George who is fat and ugly. There is nothing inside of me now. Inside of her is bleeding too. She feels it. And her foot, still asleep. She closes her eyes and goes back to sleep. George will make sure she is okay.
And
RED
again in red in red

She wakes up again in bed. George is painting her. She is covered in red, her arm is wrapped in a bandage.

I am in love, she thinks, I am in love. I am making art.

This is what it’s all for. All the billions and billions of years has brought him to me. I am something. My mask on the wall everyone will one day see. She does not love him less. Could not love him less if she wanted to. She has given her body to men, before. Men who made her suffer in only boring ways. But George was real. She had given her body to him, and he had made her a painting.

George was real. Arrow in her chest she begins to think please
I have a Mother I have a Father I have a dog that loves me. I am the daughter of paper mache I am the daughter of crepe I am the daughter of draped venison and burning things I do not see anything at all only you my love please. Do not hate me. I am not crying only it does not happen to me. Do not hate me, George.

–

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE KNOW OF BUNNY:

SHE IS PRETTY SHE IS MADE OF RED PAINT❤️
HER PAINTING HANGS ON THE WALL OF GEORGE’S BEDROOM SHE IS NOT SAD SHE IS IN LOVE❤️

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE KNOW
SOMETIMES YOU ARE RAPED AND SOMETIMES YOU RAPE❤️
SOMETIMES YOU ARE KILLED AND SOMETIMES YOU KILL❤️
SOMETIMES YOU ARE PAINTED BUT YOU WILL NEVER PAINT❤️
you will never paint me.

BunnyisLovy888: what are u doing later?
Georges_Circle_: nothing. come over?
BunnyisLovy888: k leaving soon hav to do hair
Georges_Circle_: ok love you
BunnyisLovy888: luv u too 💖

---

Jessie Lifton is a college student currently living in Chicago, IL. You can find her on twitter at @jessiechrxst.