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Oh, I know that I'm not whole, and sometimes feel the flies swarming, like much of me is rotten.
chad abushanab / ROADKILL ODE
Don't forget. Never forget. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
They say that girls are raised similarly to farmers raising pigs for slaughter. You never know the one that is next; which chamber has the bullet and which does not. Some happen to be fortunate, maybe they never have to feel the world's jaw around their throat. It is possible. Life can spit out a few miracles here and there, but this isn't for everyone. There is a runt in every litter and when it is seen, it never lasts long. Eventually someone has to take the bullet, and the gun needs to be empty by the end of the game.
(Think of it this way: You are born, since there is no ending without the beginning, and you may even be allowed to live for a bit, because as cruel as life is, it will be sure to make you beg for it. Then it's snatched away and you're just simply gone; a greyed out piece of paper, a mere mention on the television, a dwindling memory.)
That is, until you're not. Make sure to wash, rinse, and repeat.
And so, in a Laura Palmer fashion, you are a corpse found on a beach, blue and swollen and wrinkled with death. You are limbs and flesh squashed together somewhere in a city, abandoned in a nasty dumpster in an even nastier alleyway. You are spread out somewhere in the woods, the grave shallow or six feet under but just enough for the maggots to still get to you before anybody else can.
You would think that it ends here, but it doesn't. It usually never does for girls. Things get a bit crueler after they're dead.
Society is not nice. It is never merciful. It is depraved and sickening and unrelenting. Maybe it's best to not be found. Memories left alone remain untainted and you're still a bit alive even when you are not, but every living thing leaves something behind: a trace, a crumb, a single fingerprint. Missing Girl becomes Dead Girl, and Dead Girl is no longer a person—she doesn't exist, and her body is no longer her own. Dead Girl is used, Dead Girl is fetishized, Dead Girl is just a reflection of what people want her to be.
(Justice is half assed, justice is not clean. Did you notice the documentary they put out with your killer front and center?)
Dead girl this, dead girl that. You nearly forgot to wash, rinse, and repeat.
And then you are Stokely Crowe; eighteen, head cheerleader, motherless daughter, rotten on the inside—and you learn a thing or two about dead things and small towns and women with fist sized holes in their chests. This is her first lesson, this is her first mistake, this is universal: You are supposed to throw the pig out when you're done with it. Secrets are meant to be placed somewhere like the Dead Girl, but like Dead Girl something is always left behind. The flies began to swarm, the maggots start to come, and the grave is uncovered.
