Emo Scene

We continued on into the frozen lake and I slowly began to have a sinking feeling as Faulkner explained who these people were. "These are the folks who betray their friends. Fucking their pal's girlfriend or boyfriend, stealing stuff from them, spreading rumors, that kind of thing. Or those fucking assholes who become friends with someone, then suddenly try to turn it into some kind of sexual thing. After I published my first novel a bunch of my female friends pulled that shit on me and it was awful." I wasn't really responding as he talked and Faulkner stopped right when we reached the middle of the lake. He pulled out an ice pick and bag and told me to wait while he hunted around for a free patch of ice. "No more fingers and all that," Faulkner explained. I was staring at a face directly in front of me, whose mouth was frozen shut but the other half of his head was still on the surface. Most of the heads were in that situation, the lies of friendship and community ceased forever from their mouths in the ice of betrayal in Uni-Mecca. I pried around his face until a chunk of ice came up and he could speak. "Thanks man. I haven't moved my mouth for decades. What do you want?" The head asked. I told him I wanted to know why he was here. "The most beautiful girl in my village needed a friend to talk to and I just happened to be there. We hung out together for hours, talking about everything, and of course I fell madly in love with her. And she knew it! She knew the whole time what she was doing. She took advantage of my good will and abused me so that she would have someone to talk to, have a friend who was just 'platonic'. She would always tell me I was the only person she could trust because we were such good friends. Well, I didn't want to be friends. I wanted to be lovers. And I told her, again and again. Even when she became cold and told me to stop speaking with her if I wasn't satisfied with mere friendship, I kept trying. When she did end up taking a lover, I spread lies about them throughout the village." As the head kept talking, I couldn't control myself any longer and I began to whimper. Then, just slightly, I started crying. "I know how you feel," I said simply. "I know what it's like to be treated like that. And it's not fair goddamnit. It's not fair to be taken advantage of like that." The head was silent now and staring at me with a look of annoyance that I was interrupting his whining. I had sunken down to my knees and was still crying when I felt a hand touch my shoulder. "Kirk...you're talking to a head buried in ice. In Hell. You don't have to relate to a single thing anyone here is saying. You don't have to be this person. You don't have to believe in any of this crap," Faulkner said to me, the bag of ice in the other hand. "No, I just...I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, damnit. I'm sorry to everyone." I was blubbering now. I jammed the piece of ice back into the lake and covered up the head's mouth. Faulkner patted me on the shoulder and we sat there on the lake while I got myself together. When I was ready, I stood up, and Faulkner led me away from that place.