She Number One and She Number Two

She Number One said Won't you write a story about us? And She Number Two clapped her hands with excitement and said Oh Yes, Please Do, Please carve our names in stone to be captured in immortality.

And I said to She Number One and She Number Two, Immortality is a tricky thing, little girls. An uncarved block cannot be restored once the whittling of stone begins, and even though it too will eventually be worn away into dust to be carried in the wind, it will take about a million years for that to happen. But She Number One and She Number Two shook their heads defiantly and said A writer's pen is a one-way street and we understand. Write what you will and we will have no complaints.

And so I wrote. I wrote about how She Number Two cried like a newborn baby the night she was arrested, the night I was a witness to the relacing of her shoes. I wrote about how She Number One almost made a porn film one night, the night I was a witness to a woman out of control of herself. I wrote of little girls flinging themselves out of windows, little girls slashing their wrists and letting the blood soak into the pages of blank notebooks to be licked and eaten by angry, hungry dogs roaming the countryside of Southport Avenue.

And She Number One and She Number Two read the story and frowned and said This Isn't What We Meant. We're not so sure we like this story. And I said, sshhhhh, quiet, little girls, we've only just begun.

I placed She Number One and She Number Two on a flat and round stone in my hut and I grinded them into a fine powder with another flat, round stone and then baked them into taco shells and ate them. I took the little girls home and had sex with them at the same time, making them scream in ecstasy so loudly that the neighbors started complaining. We collected pennies to buy gas to drive to Evanston, and once we got there we stole credit cards so we could get drunk on Monday nights. A homeless man playing a flute gave us a videocamera and I taped the girls urinating into large silver bowls then pouring them into the neighbor's yard to kill all their plants.

And She Number One and She Number Two looked up from a dirty mattress at the corner of Fullerton and Western and said We Don't Like This Story. This story is scary and violent and it's not silly and fun like we thought it would be. Please, they said, We don't want to be immortal any more. You can take us out of the story now.

And I said ssshhhhh, quiet, little girls. You have made your bed and now you will die by the sword. I told you immortality is a tricky thing. I am immortal several times over and I don't like it one damn bit. And She Number One and She Number Two cried and said Yes, You're Right, We Don't Want To Be Immortal Anymore but it was too late by then. I hypnotized the little girls and made them fight each other to the death for my amusement. The two clawed each other's eyes out and simultaneously choked each other to death with their bare hands. And I looked at the corpses on the ground and chuckled, then climbed to the top of the highest mountain in the land and I carved their names in the stone, She Number One and She Number Two, in 500-foot-high letters and perpetually doused in gasoline so that the burning words traveled across the miles and al the people of the land knew of the two heroic martyrs.

And She Number One and She Number Two became immortal. Their ghostly spirits roamed the countryside for the rest of time and if you listen carefully, between the whispers of the wind through the trees you can hear them, the little girls, thanking me and cursing me for the gift I have bestowed upon them.

Copyright 1999, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved.