Years in which fresh torn earth never healed, only turned to permanent ruts, caked with blood, and yet you still use him, tell your deceptive admirers, so sacrosanct in their own hypocrisies, tell them of him and the insanity you invented to score pity points. He sees them, when they come to spy for you, when they seek to play your protectors, soon to turn abusers, telling you what you want to hear to con you. You tell them he is obsessed. But it is you who use your cruelty and lack of honesty to keep it alive, though you pretend you don’t, pretend that you’ve moved on. Yet he lives in your head, but really in your dysfunctional heart, from which you tried to exorcise him when he was never a devil like those in whom you confide. You pretend his presence there is fear, but you fear nothing. No, he is not obsessed with you. You are obsessed with your own lies, lies you never plan to admit. To think, once you were everything in his eyes, but, now, you are nothing but an archetype for selfishness, as insignificant a soul as the diapered nepo-babies and sick assholes you call your own, useful only as inspiration for horrific tales, and, with that, he’s turned your own game on you. And you created all that yourself, for no earthly reason. No, if it were not for those cemented ruts, you would never be a passing memory to him, having never actually existed as a real person. And you created that as well. You could have healed it all long ago, made some concession, let mutual apology take it away, but you regret nothing and could not use it then and he would not talk to you anyway, coward who only speaks when there will be no record, no chance of a trace to expose you, even when there is nothing left for you to worry about … because he was kind when you were not. They told you no, and you always obey.