We threw fireworks down storm drains on the Fourth of July and watched them come to life in the darkness. You called me your boyfriend all night, and I pretended you weren’t joking even as you chuckled at the words. I kissed you, calling it a joke, and you were too drunk to notice it was the happiest night of my life.

I feel like I’m capable of anything with you by my side. I mean, they’re all going to keep doing what I say if you are standing here with my gun to your head.

So many things wrong with our house. The leaky roof. The latch on the gate I never get around to fixing. That suspicious smell in the basement. Our outdated kitchen. The way whispers drift down from the attic at night while we try to fall asleep to no avail. There is something wrong with our house, and I’m afraid we don’t have enough money to not stay here anymore.

When we ran out of room under the subfloor, we ripped the insulation out of the walls. We kept track of how many bodies were packed inside the walls by how cold it got in our house in the winter. By our skyrocketing heating bills. By the stench that started to ooze through the vents in the oppressive summer heat.

We were drinking in the morning, and we were late for work. It didn’t matter. We knew the world was going to end soon — at least relative to the always stretching idea of infinity. We waited for the end to come. Maybe that day. Maybe the next. Maybe not within our increasingly shortening lifespans, but we’d be ready regardless. Drinks in hand.

To answer your question, no I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin. I feel much better when I’m wearing someone else’s. I did mention in my dating profile that I skin people alive and wear them like costumes, right? Must have slipped my mind.

I only listen to songs with your name in it now, so I don’t listen to music at all anymore. And when I’m in the car with my wife, she always turns on her favorite radio station and hums along. I zone the noise out until your name sprawls across the airwaves, and I visibly panic and shut the radio off. It won’t be hard for her to figure me out someday as heartbroken and pathetic as I am.

What if this isn’t real? What if this is all a dream? You’d be missing an opportunity for us to totally do it without your husband ever finding out.

I watched my house burn down, and I knew I would go to prison for this. I knew I just lost everything material and monetary I owned. I also knew I couldn’t live with myself if I merely sold this house of nightmares to some other poor sap and let the terrors inside destroy him.

If we ever get caught, I hope you will be true to me, but I’m sure I will rat you out. Unbutton that shirt and hope we won’t find out. Let’s pretend to be faithful until they finally catch us. (at Home)