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The pen killed her. It was one of her most prized possessions through her entire life, but not the paper. That’s why her novels were pieced together from toilet paper, fast food wrappers, thick starched white napkins near the subway–her collection was endless. As long as her pen could smoothly squirt its ink on the vehicle, she was more than satisfied. The pen, however, was different. It was always black, thick and shiny. She had plenty of pens: in every pocket of her purses, in every drawer of her house, inside the trunk, the glove compartment, underneath the seat and anywhere she was sure to stop by during the week. Yes, she picked up a myriad of substandard, unsuitable, multicolor ink as spares but the loved ones were not cheap. They were the smooth dark jellies that glided rapidly through the paper like her thoughts. She would rather starve than not have her pen; there had been plenty of instances that she had. It was in this state, of dispersed underwear and broken pens, that they found her. Mainly he found her, to his great misfortune.

The only man with the key to her flat: her brother. I say unfortunately, because he was a recovered alcoholic and this was something his therapy wasn’t counting on. None the less, the neighbor had called him to please take out the garbage since there was a foul smell developing around the door. He understood the passion his sister exhausted in every word of her writings that would remove her from the ordinary world of bathing, eating or taking out the trash. As a good brother he would come in and take out the garbage whenever she needed it. After he took out the 20 or so trash bags stacked against the door, he stopped midway through the kitchen fixated on what he knew was a huge puddle of blood and grabbed his head whispering, “Oh, my God, oh my God….”

The boyfriend ran up the stairs next and walked her shaking brother over to the table. To her, the boyfriend was a saint…almost. On difficult nights when the reviews where terrible, the books didn’t sell and the writing stunk, her frustration found a soap box as dishes exploded against walls, papers flew around the apartment like a flock of frightened birds, and the furniture took cover from her fury. “Imbeciles, they all are a bunch of idiots!!” The words came out in a sound staccato of mad ranting and heated shouts. “How dare they? How many of them even write with a speck of life to them? They sound just like their damn college and then they pat themselves on the back for making mutant children among their own. Don’t they know…the time I put into this? Don’t YOU?!! It’s all my heart, all my money, all of my soul…and for what? TELL ME FOR WHAT?” She shoved the review column to his face to read, although he could pretty much guess what it said. “YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF IDOTsss,” And after 10-15 minutes of cursing the ignorant outside her window, she would collapse, every bit of her body shook with sobs and pained whimpers. That’s when her boyfriend would gently take her hand, sometimes carrying her into the shower, bathe her tears away, make sweet love to her, hug her and cradle her in his arms. Secretly, the temper tantrums turned him on and unleashed a whole new element into their love life, so he would often take his time in calming her down, but comfort her he did. She knew this but there was only so much she could hold against him.

“What was she writing?” he asked immediately. The journal underneath the collapsed head was bathed in humanly fluids of snot, saliva and tears, made the ink bleed but the poem was still legible. He softly caressed her head frowning at the beads of sweat on her forehead, why would a suicide victim be dripping in sweat? How long ago did it happen maybe… He placed two fingers on the side of her throat to check for a pulse but it was a long shot. It was puzzling to the both of them. Although they were very much familiar with her temper tantrums, self mutilation was not one of the vehicles she had ever chosen to injure herself…drinking, starvation, seclusion, but not this. Between the two gentlemen they removed the journal and the words of her last hour:

my soul hides in the ball of horse dung outside cathedral walls
Awaiting to dance to peals of 50 bells
to leap at the pitch clings of lesser size bells
and pirouette at base clangs of the grater size
I am no better than the dung or the priest
or the vagrant or Jesus
Even He was afraid of the black hole that swallowed him up
and ate him alive,
It didn’t care if Jesus was the son of God,
that resuscitated and fed the masses
it didn’t read or heard the words
it didn’t see the humility of his actions to men
The black hole IS deaf, mute, and blind, but hungry
And even Jesus was swallowed deep
Deep inside the black hole
I’ll stay inside the ball of dung until the black hole seizes me

The police were last on the scene, as usual. Officers frowned at the beaded sweat on her forehead, letting the medics decide if the heart beat was too faint to be felt as she was rolled into the silent ambulance. It came as a surprise when the autopsy came back as arsenic. She had essentially poisoned her own pen and let the ink squirt inside her veins to give back to it what she often let loose on paper. The funeral had an attendance of three, her two brothers and her boyfriend, and the mood was severely somber. The only consolation price they had to their own egotistical hold of wanting her back in their life was that she was in far less pain now than ever. Even in her passing she echoed deep their minds as the tombstone read:

Was it the weight of her ego, the disproportion of her vanity, the frustration with societal apathy, or the hunger of the black hole that made the pen do it? The rest is but a restful sleep.