HIM .. Joe Goldberg

THEM

YOU'D LIKE MY FRIENDS, JOE. They're smart, just like how we are.

Emily drinks a lot, as she walks in the door her twelve pack is already torn open, and she's guzzling down a bottle. Emily would be beautiful if she allowed herself to be, though she finds that having fun is more important than being pretty. The alcohol makes her face puffy, cigarettes staining her teeth yellow. She grins at me as she steps in, making sure to be the first one to enter. Emily's like that. "Hey, sissy."

Behind her was Mira. Anxious, mousy, insecure. She liked Master because he gave her an identity, and he liked her because she was easy to control. Even walking into my apartment, a place she has been time and time before, she was sheepish. Nervous. Did she belong, she questions. I'm sure to make specific eye contact with her and smile. She likes that, it puts her at ease, and she smiles back. "Hi, Brit. You want to smoke?" She motions to the blunt behind her left ear.

Last to enter was Hannah, and she had her phone blaring Fleetwood Mac as she stepped through the threshold. She's the hardest to like, Joe, but once you do you can't imagine life without her. "You make lovin' fun!" She sings as she approaches me before the other girls do, bumping her hip against mine. She has a book bag over her left shoulder, something she always carried because she thought purses were the creation of The Man. Meant to make you small, think you have to be fashionable even while you're carrying a pack of tampons, some cigarettes, and a bag of coke. Everything is bullshit, Joe. When you and Hannah are close, she'll be able to tell you better than I can.

These three women are my life. Beside my Master. I'm sure you'll learn to love them.

They're all wore dresses similar to mine—short, skimpy, something that would hold you attention if I wasn't in your presence first. Master encourages us to show skin, even when it's twenty below. We're rebels to the social standards, Joe. They say left, we say right. They go up, we go down. You understand the need for a bit of renegade in an already damaged society, don't you, love?

Charlie calls us his White Rabbits, considering we're the only white girls in the clan. Despite the low amount of disciples, he can get along with any woman he comes across. He reminds me a lot of you, Joe. Confident. Anyone could like you, and you don't even have to try.

I break out the pills because I know the girls like them. They haven't found happiness like I have, although in the past I was in their shoes. Desperate for artificial glee, all anyone wants is to feel okay. Constantly chasing a feeling of content. I found you. I hope they all find someone like you, Joe. I truly do.

Emily steals my prescription of Ativan before I have a chance to dump individual pills into my palm. She takes four at a time, washes them back with her beer. She blinks for a few minutes before smiling and handing me back the bottle. "Thanks, sunshine."

Mira sits in the living room. Leather brown furniture, a wooden coffee table in the middle of an arrangement of couch and recliners. On the wall is the TV, it's playing throwback R&B. It's all about remembering the past, Joe. If Catcher in the Rye taught us anything, it's that true sublime resides in childhood. The past, when things were easier and your eyes were wider. The world accepted you, you felt like things were on your side. Do you miss who you once were, Joe?

Hannah slumps on the couch beside Mira, and Emily is stumbling behind. She already feels the affect of the drug; her lazy expression, drooling smile shows. She's been drinking long before she came, and the pills acted as nothing but to put her muscles and organs to sleep. I hope her respiratory doesn't give out again, it's always a bad experience to have the cops here.

"So you saw him?" Hannah says as she watches me take out the vodka from the freezer. Ice chilled, that's the only way to drink the dangerous stuff. The extra kick makes you feel alive, Joe. Maybe I'll show you one day. "How was he? Everything you expected?"