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Ian Kirkpatrick Biography

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“And this is how it happens. Someone does something shit to you, makes you suffer, maybe you die, and you get tunnel vision for the revenge you want to feel in your hands—The punishment you believe you deserve to dole out. You come back to find the fucker that ruined your life and you’ll do anything you can to get them back. You can’t see anything else and everyone becomes collateral damage to the pain you have to cause or the justice you have to find. It hurts too much to think of what someone else took from you, that you can’t see anything outside of the future you can’t grasp anymore. Then, when you hurt someone else because your focus is on whoever fucked you up, they come back feeling the same pain, same anger, their future taken from them too and it just keeps going, again and again, over and over, until everyone’s been promised mutual destruction by proximity and nothing else matters. No one cares about any story that’s not their own. The pain caused is invisible to everyone else until it becomes personal and everyone’s reaching for the thing that blew their lives to pieces. Regret and rage are toxic seeds, planted to consume the heart.”

“I hadn’t thought of myself as a kid for a long time, but I guess I never really knew what I was. When you drop out of high school and go about things the way KC and I did, you’re not really following the normal milestones, you know? Like what everyone expects of you. Graduate middle school and high school and have a couple of friends and have at least one girlfriend and maybe have sex at sixteen and it’s really awkward and then you go to college, get a career, get married. Accident or otherwise, it didn’t matter. At least with these milestones, you know if you’re doing something right. Without those, how do you know if you’re making it? You know, things can look pretty bright before they burn out. Though, I guess there are plenty of people who may say KC and I never lit up. We were just embers, fighting against wind, trying to keep lit against the elements.”

“Doc never pictured herself as a private physician with one patient. Generally, she hated people and getting to know anyone too well only affirmed her prejudices. She often questioned why she became a doctor in the first place, but she enjoyed the feeling of power that came with the tools she knew how to wield and the complete control of emotions her words had. “You’re dying,” could shift a mood or change the course of a life. “You need this surgery or you will die,” was all she needed to convince her patients to line her pockets.”

“He saw into me, but still smiled and felt warm without the pity or anger or desire to pull away that’s common when people find out how really busted up you are. For as much as people say they care, you really find out how much of it’s a lie when you show someone the wounds you carry. They think they understand because they were disappointed once, but I’ve learned that those who brag about charity are usually the least charitable.”

“I walked out just like her, you bitch. If I walked out, it would be my condemnation of him. I would be the reason he gave up and put a gun to his head and fed the blood-lusting mud of Bodymore. I don’t know what it is about this place that makes people desperate. Desperate for a future. Desperate for money. Desperate for someone else. It’s always everything we don’t have that’s going to solve that desperation.”

“Sweetie – look, I get it. I’ve read those books too. You have Stockholm Syndrome. He’s an asshole and you refuse to leave him. We can fix that mindset of yours though, first by giving you a haircut. That’s how all girls find their identities again after a really bad relationship. Haven’t you seen the movies? You’re not doomed, just a little frumpy.”

“America isn’t the picture of barbecues, guns, freedom, and hot girls eating hamburgers you probably saw on TV. That’s the old America and one I’m not even sure ever existed. The glowies parade that picture around every time they want to put people at ease and push them back into place. DC is especially made of glowies. You can’t talk to anyone because maybe they’re gonna send you to the dungeon or maybe they know someone who can.”

“The stains of so many years of misery make the chair look like it’s a bleeding, rotting corpse all its own. The spot that stands out the most is where his head was when he ate lead the first time. I take another hit from the cigarette, wiping at my eyes. A laugh bubbles out. I thought stains were supposed to fade with age, just like the bad stuff that happens to you, but they don’t. Fifteen years isn’t enough to make blood blend into brown carpets with every other mess? Bullshit.”