fxn
crot narrative
it's huge, but i need some feedback. i've never tried something like this.
“I was quite bruised mentally and physically, but I’ve never been so happy to be alive. Burroughs best sums up my state: the taste is so overpoweringly delicious, and at the same time, quite nauseating.”
Driving. Always driving, the thumping rhythm of overpasses and how the rain just stops, if only for a second, before drumming on the windshield again. I fell in love with Laurie because she wanted to drive, too. We linked fingers on granite rock faces, young and sunburned, promised that one day we’d just go. That cliché sunset-bound, happy ending, Vegas kind of picking up and going. She used to want to be a writer, and I liked her better in knit tights and one of my Aran sweaters, curled on the white wicker chair under the window in the early mornings when she said her brain worked best. Chewing on pens, brow crinkled, fingers tapping. Now she wears skinny skirts and her hair straight, never stops to look at the sunshine on her way out the door. Go figure.
Carolina Hayes watched a drop of water gather on the underside of the faucet, grow swollen, and fall into the sink below. She’d stopped hearing the sound two hours ago, so she focused on the individual droplets instead. Falling, always falling. Toothpaste stains on the countertop. She’d grown too big for bathtubs years ago and the rope burns on her arms started to feel less like an ache and more like an afterthought.
“You drive too fast.”
I what?
“You drive too fast.”
It’s raining.
“Exactly.”
What?
“Are you suicidal or just stupid?”
Carolina was absolutely sure she wasn’t named for either state; her mother swore the South was all dogs and lonely things, heat. Never went back. Carolina wondered if she was named after an aunt, an actress, even a cat. She wondered why her mother never told her. She also wondered why she thought of her mother whenever her hands were tied.
Sissy saw Ruby Red from across the warehouse floor and through a lurching crowd and he knew. She stood like an obelisk by the far wall; they were split by fists and broken bottles, the smell of piss. Her lip was bleeding, and she was fucking beautiful.
Second Redacted Email: “heroin addicted, bisexual atheist. my kinda comrad. he sighed and pulled out an agonized tale of being young in Edinburgh . . . so young man took young boy (luke) to empty hotel room, tied him to bed, straddled his ass, knife to throat, no protection . . . I perked up all the time thinking snuff film snuff film snuff film murder plot presence. luke said sure, then told me more, about his boyfriend gillian, what he taught him, and about ginger and this one dominatrix who lives on the 10th floor.”
Round brown and studded chairs, a man with glasses and crossed arms. Friendly, satisfied crossed arms. “Well I’m an attorney at law, and Paul is going nowhere.”
I’m an artist, I-
“See? Nothing.” She crosses her arms. Unfriendly. Dissatisfied. “He never leaves the house. Probably wouldn’t get out of bed if it weren’t to occasionally walk the goddamned dogs. Which really means packing the dogs in the car and driving up to God knows where . . . and yes, this is our first time doing this kind of thing.”
Sissy summoned courage, remembered that he had none, and settled for the sweat and spit in the pit. He twisted, wrenching knees to chest, raucous fists. He could feel her eyes on the quick side-to-side shift of the muscles in his back and felt his face grow warm from either the heat or the adrenaline or the four lines of coke his nostrils had vacuumed from the top of the toilet tank in the one stall bathroom.
Ruby Red saw Sissy, liked what she saw, but didn’t let on.
Carolina flexed the muscles in her fingers, testing circulation. She thought that if walls have ears, then mirrors must have eyes. Sometimes she was afraid that her bedroom mirror recorded everything and one day she would look in it and it would play it all back to her: prodding raised nipples at twelve (wondering), hairbrush-singing, leaning in for fogged-up kisses, leaving lipstick stains, stares of self-loathing when drunk or tripping, twisting limbs.
Thick wood desk. Not oak, something darker.
“You see, Dr. Ross . . . can I call you Harold? We just hate each other.”
I never said I hated you.
“. . . Oh.”
Testimony set to start in Columbia “cyberfriend” trial: The prosecution claims Jovanovic, a brilliant Columbia doctoral candidate, tied his alleged victim to a chair in his apartment in Washington Heights, dripped hot wax on her body and sodomized her repeatedly with a baton in November 1996. Defense Lawyer Jack Litman says none of that happened and that what did occur between the two was consensual and nonviolent.
I met Paul in college and he was such a dreamer and I did love that, but you’re supposed to grow out of that kind of thing. You can’t really just pick up and go whenever you want to, it takes planning. Money. And you need a job to make money, and you don’t get a job by waiting around the house for someone to see some degree of beauty in your paintings. Van Gogh never sold a painting in his life; they call them pipe dreams for a reason. It was cute when we were twenty. Romantic, even. But we’re not twenty anymore.
Ruby Red watched Sissy as he propelled himself up towards where the band played at eye-level with the rest of them. She admired the way sweat seemed to gather in just a few beads by his temples, the spit from his teeth as he turned and shouted; admired the strain of his calves in too-tight jeans. He had long legs, knotted knuckles, dark hair, and a crooked-toothed grin that she wanted to slap off his face. He stumbled towards her, smell of hairspray, cheap whisky and cheaper cologne. She shook her head, a smile pulling at her lips.
Carolina stretched and turned on the water with one cramped foot, settling her shoulder against the side of the tub. She flushed as she felt the warmth of her own urine sliding over the insides of her thighs.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall - you see everything.
Sissy couldn’t believe it; he was so close he could have touched her if he dared, if he was drunk enough or maybe stupid enough. Something about her crossed arms over her bird-narrow chest told him not to even think about it. She shook her head at him slowly, an upward twist in one side of her cut-up lip. She lifted one arm to run long fingers through her lank honey-colored hair and he saw a quick and promising glimpse of one hardened nipple pressed against her thin tee shirt.
She walked into the house ahead of me: long, crisp strides. I knew we wouldn’t be talking tonight. I pressed the car door shut, locked it, checked the mail. Laurie Feldman, Laurie Feldman, Resident, Laurie Feldman.
“an agonized tale of being young in Edinburgh”
Sissy wasn’t surprised when she asked him if he wanted to go out behind the warehouse building’s fire escape stairs, or maybe up in one of the old factory rooms on the 3rd and 4th floors. He was surprised, however, when she grabbed onto his wrist, the pressure of her fingers. She pulled him into the hypothermic 7pm streets.
Third Redacted Email: “no duh, there’s more, more interesting than sex, yes he did catch me, no sex, but he was a sadomasochist and now I’m his slave and it’s [sic] painful but the fun of telling my friends “hey I’m a sadomasochist” more than outweighs the torment.”
Ruby Red lowered her tangled head to catch the short-lived match flame with the tip of her hand-rolled cigarette. Sissy watched as the lightly twisted tip singed away into smoke that she waved away with one hand, her palm rust-branded by the chain-link fence she’d parted to get in here in the first place. He fished a crumpled cigarette cellophane out of his jeans with a diagonal jerk of his hips, feeling the friction of his pinched-tight pocket against the bones of his wrist. Ruby Red grabbed hold of one of his belt loops and pulled him towards her, winding her fingers fast in the hair at the base of his skull. She jerked his head back and tasted the sweat that slicked the skin just below his ear. He let out a sigh that caught in his throat; the hum of her laughter between their beating chests.
Laurie settled into the bathroom and most likely the bathtub, smell of lilacs and mentholated cigarettes. I looked at the dogs, Roger and Porcupine. Two solid collie mixes, their sharp pointed features. I jangled keys in my hand and watched their tails wag faster.
Carolina thought of Him and the skin spread taut over the rigid muscles in his stomach, the curls at the very front of his forehead. She felt a heat rise clean from between her tingling legs and relished it, squeezing her knees together.
I heard Paul slam the door and I sunk to my neck in the warm, scented water, extinguishing my cigarette in the soap scum by the faucet. My neck ached and I heard dogs barking.
Ruby Red extracted the cellophane from Sissy’s fingers and sat heavily on the bottommost rung of the fire escape. She rifled through the pockets of her jacket, clamping the now limp cigarette between her teeth. She pulled out a dollar bill and carefully captured the last of the powder from the bottom of the bag with one long, slow sniff. It started to rain.
Driving, always driving. The mountains slung closer, evergreens crowding around the curves on the interstate. The dogs were quiet.
“Shouldn’t we go someplace else?” Sissy said. Their eyes met. Ruby Red looked, and most likely tasted, dangerous.
“Burroughs best sums up my state: the taste is so overpoweringly delicious, and at the same time, quite nauseating.”
Driving, always driving. The rain had stopped, the world stuck in a hazy limbo between warm and cool. I wanted to sleep, but kept my eyes ticking between my lane and the one running so close beside me on the narrow mountain road. I tapped my thumbs to the music, but lost it in the static. I wanted to sleep, I wanted to keep driving. I wanted to keep driving away from Dr. Ross and even Laurie, from therapy and rotting bridges. Forget burning bridges. I wanted to drive away from this entire half of the state, but settled for the lupins and Queen Anne’s lace that bobbed their delicate heads along the side of the highway. The sun was setting, the dogs were quiet.
The jagged, dilapidated brick buildings with their vertical maze of fire escapes watched, elegant and silent, as Sissy and Ruby Red walked briskly through the rain. The soft settling of doc martens on ragged pavement, the heaviness in both their smokers’ breathing. They were like a pair of rats down there: ambitious, unassuming and insignificant. They scuttled over hard-bitten granite curbstones and cracks in concrete. The manholes steamed.
Carolina heard boots on the stairs. As if on puppet strings, she stretched out her neck, arched her back, pouted. She lowered her eyes, her heart rising in her throat.
Ruby Red stripped the belt from his body. One thin mattress, one warped full-length mirror, a wooden crate on cinderblocks filled with sweaters. “Winter clothes,” she’d explained. Two cans of mandarin oranges, a two liter of Dr. Pepper. Sissy’s bad knee burned through the bed sheets as he watched her hands slip beneath his shirt. She had a ring on her thumb that rubbed against one nipple, methodical.
“Dr. Ross, can I call you Harold? Those drives Paul takes? Sometimes I want to go with him, but I never let on. I can’t encourage that kind of thing, you know? It’s senseless, Harold. Immensely . . . senseless. I can’t live the way I used to, I can’t be who I used to be. Do you understand me? Am I a bad person?”
Carolina heard keys dropping on a countertop, the distant click of a remote, the hiss of the static cable programming coming to life. She wanted to yell, but knew better. The whir of the microwave, heavy footsteps, the door pouncing open.
“Jovanovic”
“Looking for a tall, dark, dismemberer?”
“Always, love, always.”
“You’re beautiful.”
Mirror, mirror on the wall - who’s the fairest of them all?
I glanced in the rear-view mirror, imagining my tires sending clods of dirt and small stones bounding down the foothills into the town I was born in, promised I’d leave, but never left, and probably never would leave. Driving, always driving. I glanced in the rear-view mirror, met both dogs’ eyes. They were still so quiet, I wondered what was wrong. I never saw the Ford 250 flying around the corner.
Ruby Red grabbed Sissy by his narrow, rounded shoulders and shoved him against the mirror. She dragged her fingernails down the sharp ridges of his stegosaurus spine, lumbar depressions, the smooth valley of his lowest back. She forced his legs apart with a dirty denim knee and pressed her teeth into the stretched skin between his shoulder blades. She hummed into his ear, his pregnant breath fogging up the already streaking glass.
“Don’t you feel beautiful?”
Charges dismissed in Columbia sexual torture case: ''I should feel like it's all over,'' [Jovanovic] said, ''but it really feels like something's just beginning.'' He said he intended to complete his Ph.D. in molecular biology. Of the woman who made the charges, he stated, ''I don't want to say I feel sorry for her, but that's probably accurate.''
The dogs were quiet.
Carolina’s head lolled against his shoulder as he carried her to bed. He set her soft body into soft sheets, and ran a warm, wet cloth over her aching limbs. He kissed the rope burns on the precious insides of her upper arms and across the skin beneath her breasts, sliding one finger slowly in and out of her.
“It’s not that I hate him, Dr. Ross. It’s just . . . hard. I’m tired of being the rock, I’m tired of being the mother ship. I want to laugh again.”
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the sane one after all?
I glanced at the digital clock on the counter, it was 10:26 pm. The phone rang downstairs. Once, twice. Paul should have been home by now. The water had grown cold, I don’t remember when. I stood and shook my wet hair, gnawing at the wrinkles in my fingers.
Ruby Red slept; Sissy watched her eyelids, knees pulled tight to his chest.
“I’ve never been so happy to be alive.”
it's framed by a court case, and the italicized bits are found language from various articles and case studies. here's a little background: wikipedia!!
it's huge, but i need some feedback. i've never tried something like this.
“I was quite bruised mentally and physically, but I’ve never been so happy to be alive. Burroughs best sums up my state: the taste is so overpoweringly delicious, and at the same time, quite nauseating.”
Driving. Always driving, the thumping rhythm of overpasses and how the rain just stops, if only for a second, before drumming on the windshield again. I fell in love with Laurie because she wanted to drive, too. We linked fingers on granite rock faces, young and sunburned, promised that one day we’d just go. That cliché sunset-bound, happy ending, Vegas kind of picking up and going. She used to want to be a writer, and I liked her better in knit tights and one of my Aran sweaters, curled on the white wicker chair under the window in the early mornings when she said her brain worked best. Chewing on pens, brow crinkled, fingers tapping. Now she wears skinny skirts and her hair straight, never stops to look at the sunshine on her way out the door. Go figure.
Carolina Hayes watched a drop of water gather on the underside of the faucet, grow swollen, and fall into the sink below. She’d stopped hearing the sound two hours ago, so she focused on the individual droplets instead. Falling, always falling. Toothpaste stains on the countertop. She’d grown too big for bathtubs years ago and the rope burns on her arms started to feel less like an ache and more like an afterthought.
“You drive too fast.”
I what?
“You drive too fast.”
It’s raining.
“Exactly.”
What?
“Are you suicidal or just stupid?”
Carolina was absolutely sure she wasn’t named for either state; her mother swore the South was all dogs and lonely things, heat. Never went back. Carolina wondered if she was named after an aunt, an actress, even a cat. She wondered why her mother never told her. She also wondered why she thought of her mother whenever her hands were tied.
Sissy saw Ruby Red from across the warehouse floor and through a lurching crowd and he knew. She stood like an obelisk by the far wall; they were split by fists and broken bottles, the smell of piss. Her lip was bleeding, and she was fucking beautiful.
Second Redacted Email: “heroin addicted, bisexual atheist. my kinda comrad. he sighed and pulled out an agonized tale of being young in Edinburgh . . . so young man took young boy (luke) to empty hotel room, tied him to bed, straddled his ass, knife to throat, no protection . . . I perked up all the time thinking snuff film snuff film snuff film murder plot presence. luke said sure, then told me more, about his boyfriend gillian, what he taught him, and about ginger and this one dominatrix who lives on the 10th floor.”
Round brown and studded chairs, a man with glasses and crossed arms. Friendly, satisfied crossed arms. “Well I’m an attorney at law, and Paul is going nowhere.”
I’m an artist, I-
“See? Nothing.” She crosses her arms. Unfriendly. Dissatisfied. “He never leaves the house. Probably wouldn’t get out of bed if it weren’t to occasionally walk the goddamned dogs. Which really means packing the dogs in the car and driving up to God knows where . . . and yes, this is our first time doing this kind of thing.”
Sissy summoned courage, remembered that he had none, and settled for the sweat and spit in the pit. He twisted, wrenching knees to chest, raucous fists. He could feel her eyes on the quick side-to-side shift of the muscles in his back and felt his face grow warm from either the heat or the adrenaline or the four lines of coke his nostrils had vacuumed from the top of the toilet tank in the one stall bathroom.
Ruby Red saw Sissy, liked what she saw, but didn’t let on.
Carolina flexed the muscles in her fingers, testing circulation. She thought that if walls have ears, then mirrors must have eyes. Sometimes she was afraid that her bedroom mirror recorded everything and one day she would look in it and it would play it all back to her: prodding raised nipples at twelve (wondering), hairbrush-singing, leaning in for fogged-up kisses, leaving lipstick stains, stares of self-loathing when drunk or tripping, twisting limbs.
Thick wood desk. Not oak, something darker.
“You see, Dr. Ross . . . can I call you Harold? We just hate each other.”
I never said I hated you.
“. . . Oh.”
Testimony set to start in Columbia “cyberfriend” trial: The prosecution claims Jovanovic, a brilliant Columbia doctoral candidate, tied his alleged victim to a chair in his apartment in Washington Heights, dripped hot wax on her body and sodomized her repeatedly with a baton in November 1996. Defense Lawyer Jack Litman says none of that happened and that what did occur between the two was consensual and nonviolent.
I met Paul in college and he was such a dreamer and I did love that, but you’re supposed to grow out of that kind of thing. You can’t really just pick up and go whenever you want to, it takes planning. Money. And you need a job to make money, and you don’t get a job by waiting around the house for someone to see some degree of beauty in your paintings. Van Gogh never sold a painting in his life; they call them pipe dreams for a reason. It was cute when we were twenty. Romantic, even. But we’re not twenty anymore.
Ruby Red watched Sissy as he propelled himself up towards where the band played at eye-level with the rest of them. She admired the way sweat seemed to gather in just a few beads by his temples, the spit from his teeth as he turned and shouted; admired the strain of his calves in too-tight jeans. He had long legs, knotted knuckles, dark hair, and a crooked-toothed grin that she wanted to slap off his face. He stumbled towards her, smell of hairspray, cheap whisky and cheaper cologne. She shook her head, a smile pulling at her lips.
Carolina stretched and turned on the water with one cramped foot, settling her shoulder against the side of the tub. She flushed as she felt the warmth of her own urine sliding over the insides of her thighs.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall - you see everything.
Sissy couldn’t believe it; he was so close he could have touched her if he dared, if he was drunk enough or maybe stupid enough. Something about her crossed arms over her bird-narrow chest told him not to even think about it. She shook her head at him slowly, an upward twist in one side of her cut-up lip. She lifted one arm to run long fingers through her lank honey-colored hair and he saw a quick and promising glimpse of one hardened nipple pressed against her thin tee shirt.
She walked into the house ahead of me: long, crisp strides. I knew we wouldn’t be talking tonight. I pressed the car door shut, locked it, checked the mail. Laurie Feldman, Laurie Feldman, Resident, Laurie Feldman.
“an agonized tale of being young in Edinburgh”
Sissy wasn’t surprised when she asked him if he wanted to go out behind the warehouse building’s fire escape stairs, or maybe up in one of the old factory rooms on the 3rd and 4th floors. He was surprised, however, when she grabbed onto his wrist, the pressure of her fingers. She pulled him into the hypothermic 7pm streets.
Third Redacted Email: “no duh, there’s more, more interesting than sex, yes he did catch me, no sex, but he was a sadomasochist and now I’m his slave and it’s [sic] painful but the fun of telling my friends “hey I’m a sadomasochist” more than outweighs the torment.”
Ruby Red lowered her tangled head to catch the short-lived match flame with the tip of her hand-rolled cigarette. Sissy watched as the lightly twisted tip singed away into smoke that she waved away with one hand, her palm rust-branded by the chain-link fence she’d parted to get in here in the first place. He fished a crumpled cigarette cellophane out of his jeans with a diagonal jerk of his hips, feeling the friction of his pinched-tight pocket against the bones of his wrist. Ruby Red grabbed hold of one of his belt loops and pulled him towards her, winding her fingers fast in the hair at the base of his skull. She jerked his head back and tasted the sweat that slicked the skin just below his ear. He let out a sigh that caught in his throat; the hum of her laughter between their beating chests.
Laurie settled into the bathroom and most likely the bathtub, smell of lilacs and mentholated cigarettes. I looked at the dogs, Roger and Porcupine. Two solid collie mixes, their sharp pointed features. I jangled keys in my hand and watched their tails wag faster.
Carolina thought of Him and the skin spread taut over the rigid muscles in his stomach, the curls at the very front of his forehead. She felt a heat rise clean from between her tingling legs and relished it, squeezing her knees together.
I heard Paul slam the door and I sunk to my neck in the warm, scented water, extinguishing my cigarette in the soap scum by the faucet. My neck ached and I heard dogs barking.
Ruby Red extracted the cellophane from Sissy’s fingers and sat heavily on the bottommost rung of the fire escape. She rifled through the pockets of her jacket, clamping the now limp cigarette between her teeth. She pulled out a dollar bill and carefully captured the last of the powder from the bottom of the bag with one long, slow sniff. It started to rain.
Driving, always driving. The mountains slung closer, evergreens crowding around the curves on the interstate. The dogs were quiet.
“Shouldn’t we go someplace else?” Sissy said. Their eyes met. Ruby Red looked, and most likely tasted, dangerous.
“Burroughs best sums up my state: the taste is so overpoweringly delicious, and at the same time, quite nauseating.”
Driving, always driving. The rain had stopped, the world stuck in a hazy limbo between warm and cool. I wanted to sleep, but kept my eyes ticking between my lane and the one running so close beside me on the narrow mountain road. I tapped my thumbs to the music, but lost it in the static. I wanted to sleep, I wanted to keep driving. I wanted to keep driving away from Dr. Ross and even Laurie, from therapy and rotting bridges. Forget burning bridges. I wanted to drive away from this entire half of the state, but settled for the lupins and Queen Anne’s lace that bobbed their delicate heads along the side of the highway. The sun was setting, the dogs were quiet.
The jagged, dilapidated brick buildings with their vertical maze of fire escapes watched, elegant and silent, as Sissy and Ruby Red walked briskly through the rain. The soft settling of doc martens on ragged pavement, the heaviness in both their smokers’ breathing. They were like a pair of rats down there: ambitious, unassuming and insignificant. They scuttled over hard-bitten granite curbstones and cracks in concrete. The manholes steamed.
Carolina heard boots on the stairs. As if on puppet strings, she stretched out her neck, arched her back, pouted. She lowered her eyes, her heart rising in her throat.
Ruby Red stripped the belt from his body. One thin mattress, one warped full-length mirror, a wooden crate on cinderblocks filled with sweaters. “Winter clothes,” she’d explained. Two cans of mandarin oranges, a two liter of Dr. Pepper. Sissy’s bad knee burned through the bed sheets as he watched her hands slip beneath his shirt. She had a ring on her thumb that rubbed against one nipple, methodical.
“Dr. Ross, can I call you Harold? Those drives Paul takes? Sometimes I want to go with him, but I never let on. I can’t encourage that kind of thing, you know? It’s senseless, Harold. Immensely . . . senseless. I can’t live the way I used to, I can’t be who I used to be. Do you understand me? Am I a bad person?”
Carolina heard keys dropping on a countertop, the distant click of a remote, the hiss of the static cable programming coming to life. She wanted to yell, but knew better. The whir of the microwave, heavy footsteps, the door pouncing open.
“Jovanovic”
“Looking for a tall, dark, dismemberer?”
“Always, love, always.”
“You’re beautiful.”
Mirror, mirror on the wall - who’s the fairest of them all?
I glanced in the rear-view mirror, imagining my tires sending clods of dirt and small stones bounding down the foothills into the town I was born in, promised I’d leave, but never left, and probably never would leave. Driving, always driving. I glanced in the rear-view mirror, met both dogs’ eyes. They were still so quiet, I wondered what was wrong. I never saw the Ford 250 flying around the corner.
Ruby Red grabbed Sissy by his narrow, rounded shoulders and shoved him against the mirror. She dragged her fingernails down the sharp ridges of his stegosaurus spine, lumbar depressions, the smooth valley of his lowest back. She forced his legs apart with a dirty denim knee and pressed her teeth into the stretched skin between his shoulder blades. She hummed into his ear, his pregnant breath fogging up the already streaking glass.
“Don’t you feel beautiful?”
Charges dismissed in Columbia sexual torture case: ''I should feel like it's all over,'' [Jovanovic] said, ''but it really feels like something's just beginning.'' He said he intended to complete his Ph.D. in molecular biology. Of the woman who made the charges, he stated, ''I don't want to say I feel sorry for her, but that's probably accurate.''
The dogs were quiet.
Carolina’s head lolled against his shoulder as he carried her to bed. He set her soft body into soft sheets, and ran a warm, wet cloth over her aching limbs. He kissed the rope burns on the precious insides of her upper arms and across the skin beneath her breasts, sliding one finger slowly in and out of her.
“It’s not that I hate him, Dr. Ross. It’s just . . . hard. I’m tired of being the rock, I’m tired of being the mother ship. I want to laugh again.”
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the sane one after all?
I glanced at the digital clock on the counter, it was 10:26 pm. The phone rang downstairs. Once, twice. Paul should have been home by now. The water had grown cold, I don’t remember when. I stood and shook my wet hair, gnawing at the wrinkles in my fingers.
Ruby Red slept; Sissy watched her eyelids, knees pulled tight to his chest.
“I’ve never been so happy to be alive.”
it's framed by a court case, and the italicized bits are found language from various articles and case studies. here's a little background: wikipedia!!