It was so cold.

But she had to go. She packed her things in the dark; reaching blindly for whatever felt important. Phone, brush, makeup bag, and a few random outfits selected based on how well they would fit in her backpack. Everything else he could have, or pawn. She really didn't care at this point.

The only noise in the room came from the rain beating against the windows and the soft sound of his snoring from the bed.

She pulled the zipper closed with a little too much enthusiasm and he grunted, flipping over onto his left side to face her.

His eyes were closed and his mouth was open; a lock of his long black hair hovering dangerously close to his mouth. She thought about reaching over and tucking it behind his ear, gently running her thumb over his cheekbone, pressing a soft kiss against his furrowed brow. But she did none of these things.

She clutched her backpack to her chest and stepped out into the rain; closing the door quietly behind her and sprinting across thier yard in an attempt to reach her car before she got soaked. She was unsuccessful.

She was only in the car for about 5 minutes before her phone dinged. She glanced down at the screen, already knowing who it was.

"Where'd you go?"

She thought about texting him back, asking him to come with, but she didn't.

The door to her apartment was jammed so she had to push with her shoulder; sending her stumbling for a few steps once she finally managed to get it open.

It was deathly quiet, the buzzing silence filling the tiny apartment like helium filling a balloon. It made her head feel tight, her thoughts so numerous they oozed out from her eyes. She hadn't gotten a computer or TV yet, so she turned on the microwave for 15 minutes to create some ambient noise while she got ready for work.

She went running later that night, through the residential areas near her apartment. She passed by his house, but kept up her pace. She didn't look to see, but she swore she heard him call after her.

"Where did you go!"

When she got home she made herself a fried egg, and ignored his texts.

'When are you coming back?'

She felt somewhat obligated to answer that one.

'I'm not.'

'You dont jog, since when do you jog??'

'I do a lot of things I didn't used to, people change.'

'But you just left, where did you go?'

'Places you couldn't go. I'm sorry.'

He tried calling her three times, she just watched her phone vibrate across the table and drew shapes in the remaining yolk on the plate with her fork.

'We were so good, is it really better being alone?'

She looked at her empty living room and felt tears rolling down her face before she knew she was crying. It wasn't better. It wasn't.

She spent the night back at his house; made scrambled eggs because that was his favorite, missed her run the next morning because he wanted to hold her longer, and she didn't need to go for a run so early anyway.

That night she went back to her apartment and laid on the carpet, staring up at the ceiling. She wanted to stare up at the stars, but it was raining again.

She had 6 unopened texts from him, but she couldn't bring herself to look. She thought about the way he held her, the way he laughed, the way he smirked when he knew she was right but wouldn't admit it.

Her phone dinged and she looked at the most recent text.

'Where did you go?'

'I'm just not there. I'm sorry.'

'Why are you mad?'

'I'm not.'

'I was waiting for you all day, where did you go? Where are you?'

'I just wanted to go home.'

'But its better over at my place, do you even have furniture'

She ran her hands through the carpet, thinking about the beanbag chair she had ordered this morning. She smiled, letting the silence buzz around her ears.

'No, but its mine.'

 "I don't want to eat it! It's gross," I said, eyeing the thick slab of chest meat that was still so hot that I could see the fat under the skin bubbling. The slice of lemon on top was like a sunflower growing in the center of a charred field. My mom sighed, daintily cutting into the hunk of thigh sitting on her plate. 

  "It's good for you," she said, taking a bite. A single trickle of  blood dribbled down her chin and she licked it away, "Don't you want to be big and strong like your dad?"

I looked over at dad and he gave me a thumbs up,"Yeah look at me, I'm the best."

 "But...his name was Joe," I said quietly, moving the green beans around on my plate. 

 Mom shot Dad a look and he sighed, getting up from his seat to come over and crouch beside me.

"Does it bother you that it used to have the same name as your friend?" He said, resting his hand on my shoulder. 

I nodded, not looking at him.

"This isn't Joe. Yes this used to be someone named Joe, but that person died when it was his time and now we're putting his body to good use. The Joe you know is eating dinner with his family right now... I don't know what's come over you all of a sudden, yesterday you were asking for extra tongue."

   Outside the supermarket that morning there was an old woman protesting by herself, her long kinky hair swirling around her like a copper colored cloud. She was wearing a long paisley nightgown and pink flip flops, standing in front of the entrance with a sign that said 'You Ate My Son'.

  "Don't make eye contact with her Sam," my mom whispered, pushing me to stand behind her as she grabbed her cart and fast walked past the lady. 

   "Please! It's rotting us from the inside, no mother should eat a son, no son should eat a brother! Please!" The lady howled, waving her sign back and forth. Despite the warning not to, I looked back at the lady as we passed, and our eyes locked.

  They were a foggy brown, like two old pennies embedded deep in her wrinkled face, "Please child, don't eat my son." 

  I could feel chills run up and down my spine as I quickly turned away, my heart beating in my ears. 

I almost cried when mom picked out the meat named 'Joe; Pennsylvania', but I didn't say anything. I kept my eyes fixed on the ground when we left, too afraid of meeting the lady's eyes.

  I knew this hunk of meat wasn't really Joe, but I couldn't stop thinking about that lady's hard copper eyes, full of more sorrow than I had ever known.

  My parents eventually wore me down and I ate Joe that night, but every night after I fed the meat to the dog under the table. 

  Joe had been my best friend since we were eight. Every day after school he either went over to my house or I went to his, and now that we were thirteen we had started to walk into town every night instead. 

  "Do you think Jenny likes me?" He said, kicking a rock every few steps. "She's bent over in front of me at least twice in the last few weeks. I got a full view."

  "She's probably just airing out her boobs," I replied, laughing. "Forget girls man, focus on your strategy for the arcade." 

   He nodded, adjusting his backpack, "I have a good feeling about today, one of us will definitely get high score."

  "Hopefully, I really want that free pizza."

We weren't the only ones with that idea, when we reached the arcade it was completely packed.

  "I think I see a free machine," Joe said, standing on his tiptoes to peer over the crowd from the door. We made our way through, elbowing other kids out of the way and shouting 'Dragon Knight!' so nobody would take the game. 

   Joe got to the machine first and slipped his quarter in. First level, second level, third, he made it all the way to level 20 on one quarter. I had never seen him play so good.

   "Woah!" I shouted, punching the air as he destroyed the Dragon King on level 22. People had started gathering around at this point, Joe was dripping in sweat and I could see him shaking.

   "Pour soda into my mouth," He said, licking his lips. I tried to oblige but when he tried to swallow he choked and spit it out on the floor to his right, simultaneously falling to his death in the game.

   Everyone groaned and I slipped another quarter in so he could have another go. I expected him to yell at me for spilling soda all over him but he just said "It's fine," and went back to playing. 

   But it wasn't the same after that. Every time he tried to fight the Dragon Boss his hands would twitch and he'd die either by falling off a ledge or getting burnt by the Dragon. Everyone had wandered off by that point and I could tell Joe was getting frustrated, popping in quarter after quarter. 

  "Hey, do you want me to play?" I asked delicately. 

   "No! I can do this," He snarled, his face pale and sweaty. And then, he stopped.

    "Joe?"

 "I..." He gasped, trying to swallow back the saliva gathering in his mouth. He took a step away from the machine and his legs buckled underneath him. I tried to catch his fall but he was all dead weight and I couldn't keep him up.

  His whole body started shaking uncontrollably, heaving with dry gasps, his back leaning against the front of the machine. He looked up at me, his eyes wide with fear and I felt more helpless than I had ever felt in my life.

 Three employees in green jackets ran over, two helped him to his feet while the third called 911. 

  I stood outside with everyone else as the ambulance took him away, my mind blank. 

  "He's probably fine."

I turned and saw the manager standing behind me, his face warm and cheerful with square glasses and a gray ponytail.

  "...H-how do you know?" I replied, my voice shaking with unshed tears. 

"Oh I've seen this kind of thing a hundred times, he'll be fine." 

I bit my lip and looked away. Something about that bothered me. 

I tried visiting  Joe every day after school, like I always had, but his mother always turned me away after that.

  "Oh Joe's not feeling well today."

  "I don't think Joe wants to play Sam."

  "He's trying to focus on his schoolwork right now Sam, please don't bother him."

And then eventually, "Joe's been sent to live with his uncle in Canada, I'm sure he'll write you."

The night after Joe moved to Canada, I dreamed about the woman outside the store. But this time instead of holding a sign she was cradling Joe's immobile body in her arms, rocking him gently back and forth.

   "Shhh, it's ok," she whispered, brushing his dark hair away from his face.

  I took a few steps closer so get a better look. The speckled brown birthmark on his cheek was festering with tiny insects and there was a maggot burrowing into his left eye. 

    The woman was gazing lovingly into his rotting face. She leaned her head down towards his, as though to kiss him gently, and instead ripped the flesh off his forehead; her teeth breaking through the bone with ease. His brains oozed out of his open skull and dripped down onto the cement, pooling around her pink flip flops.

  I took a quick step backwards, reeling in disgust, and she looked up at me.

"Would you like a bite?"

I woke up screaming. 

   That night my parents showed me every educational video they could find on the  meat industry. 

   The show went through a tour of a meat processing plant; thousands of bodies hung, naked and skinless, on hooks in a freezer the size of a warehouse. Men with face masks and thick white jackets walked down the rows, spraying each body thoroughly with a chemical hose. 

  A man with a hooked nose and a monotone stepped onto the screen and droned on about the pursuit of safety, excellence and taste. Only humanely slaughtered criminals and intact bodies preserved after fatal accidents were selected to be processed into meat products. 

  The dog started getting sick after that; he wouldn't drink or eat, and when he tried to walk now he would stumble and slip. One day after school my parents sat me down and told me they had taken Rex to the vet, and he wasn't coming back. They told me he was bit by a mosquito, had gotten a fatal infection and I got a new puppy the next day.

  I named my new puppy Joe and began burying all the meat from dinner in the backyard instead.

When I was small, even before I opened my eyes for the first time, my mother had told me of her dreams.

   "Do not cry little one," she purred, as I shook in fear and confusion along with my brothers and sisters against her chest, "One day you shall close your eyes and become as large as a mountain, as fast as a hummingbird, as content as a still lake."

  We had hardly the knowledge to understand what she meant, but we were calmed all the same, trusting in her wisdom.

  Just as my mother fed us her milk to give our bodies strength, she fed us her dreams so one day we could have our own.

 "You will not always be with me, you will not always have your brothers and sisters by your side," she said one day, when our eyes had opened and our steps were more confident.

  "But why mama?" We mewed, almost in unison.

 She seemed to pause then, stretching her neck so that the white fur of her underbelly was bathed in the sunlight filtering in through the window. When she turned her face back towards us, her yellow eyes seemed far away.

  "It is the way of the world little ones."

 I was taken soon after that. Transported across hills and fields and rivers to live in a new place that looked the same as the old place, only, I was alone.

  I cried for two weeks, scratching at every door, biting at every unwelcome hand, refusing to eat until I was taken back to my mother.  

  One day they brought home a bell for me to wear, so they could hear every step I took. That was when I knew I would never see her again, not in this world.

   I cried for a long time that night, curled up in the dark where they couldn't hear my bell. But when I finally slept, for the first time, I dreamed.

  I was walking along the top of the couch, the paisley pattern swaying like a field of flowers bending to the wind. Below me was a vast abyss of gray mist, above me was a sky full of stars.

  I started to run. As I ran, my paws grew to a the size of two fat rats and turned deep black, the sky above me swirled and the stars dripped mercury down my back. I blinked and shook off the glistening liquid, each drip hitting the floor with a ringing sound, like a bell.

  When I opened my eyes I was in an overgrown forest, the path ahead of me the only sold gap between the foliage. 

  I ran faster than I had ever run before, and when I tried to cry out with joy a roar escaped from my lips instead. 

 "Oh no," I mumbled to myself as my new voice echoed back to me over and over. The earth began to shake, the trees vibrated, the leaves quivered. The faster I ran the louder my echo became and the more the world shook around me, until it could no longer hold itself together and disintegrated into golden sand. 

My paws reached for something to hold, to jump to, but there was nothing. 

  "If there's something you need, you can always find it here." A voice called out through the void as I fell. I had never heard the voice before, but I knew it was my mother's voice. Or at least my mother's words.

  "But who am I? Where are you?" I cried, suddenly realizing I wasn't falling through darkness, but floating through space. 

  "I am in you, and you are in me, and we are together." And I knew now that it was the stars speaking.

   I awoke to the sound of my new name and a gentle hand caressing my back. I purred and rolled onto my back.

  I would always have my dreams. 

My first kiss was on a roller-coaster. Her name was Sandra, she had blue eyes, brown hair and a single freckle on her nose that was the only embellishment on a perfectly clear, pale face. 

 We had been dating for three weeks. After three months of clumsy flirting between classes, it was only after I was already madly in love with her that I asked her out. Not that she ever knew that.

 We held hands on all the drops, and when we were suspended upside down on the largest loop, two thirds of the way through, she leaned over and planted a kiss directly on my lips. 

"Don't be scared," She mouthed over the rush of wind and the delighted screams of the other riders.

  "I'm not." I mouthed back, grabbing her hand a little tighter, feeling the delicate bones  wrap around mine, a lock clicking into place. 

  We stepped off the ride still holding hands, and on the drive home she fell asleep in the back of my mom's white minivan, our hands clasped still. I watched her sleep all the way home.

  "Don't you have your own life? Your own dreams?" She said one morning, eating her cereal on the other side of the table from me. She tapped her spoon against the side of the bowl as she ate, tap tap tap. 

  "Of course I do," I said slowly, not knowing if this was going to be a fight or a conversation. 

  She blinked and looked up at me, her eyes blank, "Then what are you doing?"

 We had this conversation before, and I hadn't had an answer then. Now was no different.

"I'm going to work." Is all I managed to say before I bolted out the front door to my car.

 Her name was Susan and we met at work. 

She had blonde hair and brown eyes, with a splattering of freckles across her cheeks. I walked by her desk exactly once a week, to get supplies from the supply room for the rest of my department.

   The first week she smiled at me, the second week she told me her name, and for every week after that I learned something new about her. She liked cats, and water-slides.  She hated roller-coasters.

  We had our first kiss in the supply room. 

"Don't be scared," she whispered in the dark, her breath hot against my lips. 

"I'm not," I replied, reaching to hold her hand in mine.

  "When are you going to demand that raise?" Susan said, sitting across the dinner table from me, picking at her plain spinach salad with her fingers. 

  "I don't know, once I'm settled. The money doesn't really matter to me."

  "Don't you want things? Don't you have dreams? I want to live in a house someday you know."

  "Of course, I know." I replied, stepping toward the door as I spoke. 

Her name was Sara and I met her at church. 

She had black hair and olive skin, her nose had a bend in it from when she broke it falling out of a tree years before. I only ever saw her smile when she was looking at me. 

  "I had a dream that I lived in a tent on the beach in Norway," She said one day, as I walked her to her car like I had been doing for the past three months. 

  "Oh yeah?" I replied, laughing. 

  "I think I'm going to do it."

  "Do what?" I opened the car door for her as she climbed in.

  "I just told you, go live on the beach in Norway."

  "But...why?" I was sure she was joking.

 She sighed, "Well, what do you dream about?"

  Our eyes met and I felt my heart stutter.

"Mostly you," I replied impulsively, leaning in to kiss her on her pale pink lips. She frowned, pulling away.

  "Nothing else?" 

I looked her in the eyes and saw Susan and Sandra layered over her face, although they looked nothing alike. 

I couldn't think of anything to say as she drove away.

  I kissed Sheila at the bar the night I met her. I was halfway between a sentence when she drunkenly stumbled into my arms for a kiss. I felt uneasy, and maybe she could tell because she told me not to be scared as she pulled me by the hand out of the bar into the taxi.

  I told her I wasn't.

We clasped hands in the bed, and when I cried out I said Sandra's name.

"Who's Sandra?" She said, not sounding mad, but pulling away from my touch.

 "Just a dream," I slurred, leaning in to kiss her again, "Nobody who matters."

  She gave me a look, "Maybe you should find a new dream."

  "I have dreams!" I said defensively, for the first time realizing it was a lie. For the first time I realized every girl was Sandra and every roller-coaster ends after the biggest loop.

  I spent that night looking at old pictures, drinking a handle of rum to myself. I had more pictures of me and Sandra than anyone else, because we went so many places. 

  She had given me an empty scrapbook for our one year anniversary and I had kept adding pictures of us throughout our relationship. 

  The last picture in the book was only halfway through the pages. It was Sandra and I at the beach, our hands barely touching. I pulled it out of its sleeve to look at it and glimpsed some writing on the back I had never seen before.

  "The worst lies are the ones you tell yourself. -S"

And I realized for the first time I had never really had any other dreams.