I am not a proponent of the curtains being open.
Some people know. Of course they know.
People know.
Everyone knows. Everyone is talking. Waiting.
I have plans for them, the nosy, the inquisitive, the pitying, have developed elaborate fantasies for those who would see us as grotesque, pathetic, our situation gossip fodder. I picture strangulations – Tsk tsk, I hear she’s-gurgle! – neck-breakings – what will happen to that poor little bo-crack! – I picture kicking bodies as they lie curl and on the ground, spitting blood as they – Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking Christ, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! - beg for mercy. I lift them over my head and then bring them down, break them over my knee, their spines like dowels of balsa. Can’t you see it? I push offenders into giant vats of acid and watch them struggle, scream as the acid burns, breaks them apart. My hands fly into them, breaking their skin – I pull out hearts and intestines and toss them aside. I do head-crushings, beheadings, some work with baseball bats – the variety and degree of punishment depending on the offender and the offense. Those whom I don’t like or my mother doesn’t like in the first place get the worst – usually long, drawn-out strangulations, face of red then purple then mauve. Those I barely know, like the family that just walked by, are spared the worst – nothing personal. I’ll run them over with my car.