Eulogy. (Fiction fragment.)

Look there. Do you see the place you called home? There are things in it, the little comforts and comforting items laden with memories. The indescribably ugly afghan your aunt crocheted for you when you graduated high school with big plans to live happily ever after with your sweetheart.

The coffee table is overflowing with pizza boxes, disposable food containers, empty cans and bottles. A few have emptied out on the floor, where a thread of ants is practicing thrift on your behalf. They're steadily carrying every morsel out, working their way through the crack under the door you created when you passed out last Hallowe'en and the devil's tail on your costume hung in the door sill. You never fixed it, though you cursed the rat that managed to squeeze inside through it to escape winter snow.

It seems so minor now. There was that party, and someone who wasn't passed out stole your high school sweetheart. They left you facedown in a spill of mud on their way home, because you wanted to fight so much you dared sucker punch the senior quarterback. When you got up, you drank from the lawn hose, sprayed yourself off, and took the wooded route home, staggering through blackberry thickets and ditches reeking of leaky sewage, hoping to elude your parents long enough to get a shower.

You were so proud of yourself for putting a half pound of sugar in the gas tanks of both your sweetie's date and the infamous nice guy quarterback at the next party. No one caught you, though you were the top suspect. You left no proof.