THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
by Noah Cicero
eighteen
Layla is twelve-years-old walking around the local convenient store.
She looks around.
Doesn’t see anybody looking.
She grabs a pack of gum and sticks it in her pocket.
She walks slowly out the store.
A little away from the store she throws a piece of gum in her mouth.
Layla walks into the trailer where she lives and sits down on the couch.
Her father is sitting on a reclining chair in the living room.
Layla’s father looks at her and says, “What the fuck are you chewing?”
Layla, “Gum.”
“Where’d you get that gum?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, how do you not fucking know?”
“Hmm, I don’t know.”
“You stole it, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Come here Layla.”
Layla stands up and walks over to her daddy.
Her daddy stares at her.
Then he punches her right in the stomach.
Layla collapses to the floor and cries.
“Don’t fucking steal again!”
Layla is 18-years-old.
She is drunk at a party.
She is barely able to speak laying on a couch.
Drool is coming out of the side of her mouth.
A boy her age, named Jeff come over to her and says, “Hey, you wanna come upstairs with me?”
Layla looks at him drunkenly and says, “Yeah, that sounds good.”
Jeff leads her upstairs.
They go into a bedroom.
Layla falls onto the bed.
Jeff takes her shirt off.
Layla is so drunk she doesn’t even notice.
Jeff puts his face close to Layla’s.
There is sweat on their faces.
Jeff says in a tense whisper, “Now listen bitch, I am going to smash your cunt with cock. Then I’m going to jam deep into your ass. And during the whole thing I want you to call me Pumpkin. You fucking got that.”
With her eyes barely open Layla says, “All right Pumpkin.”
Jeff takes the rest of her clothes off and then throws them out the window.
Jeff flips her over.
He inserts.
He pumps for a while, then switches to her ass.
During this Layla is yelling, “Oh, Pumpkin, you dirty Pumpkin.”
Jeff tells her, “Shut up bitch!”
“Don’t tell me to shut up you piss ant!”
“What did you say bitch!”
Jeff punches her in the back of the head.
Layla did not like that.
She looks around and sees a plastic alarm clock.
She grabs it.
Jeff doesn’t notice because his eyes are closed.
She holds it tight then spins around and clocks him with it in the face.
Jeff in his drunken state falls to the floor of the bed.
Layla gets off the bed and wraps the cord of the alarm clock around Jeff’s neck and begins choking him and screaming for help.
A couple guys came in.
One of the guys says, “What he do?”
“He hit me,” says Layla.
The two guys beat the mortal shit out of Jeff.
Layla sits and watches drinking from a bottle of Bourbon.
She laughs hysterically.
Then fucks the two guys who beat up Jeff.