The stars gleam brighter for her tonight. I watch out into the world with strings in hand as I place the humans within a scene. A black haired, love-struck girl sits on a teetering, worn beach chair looking out onto the lively skyline of some clichéd city. The place doesn’t matter.


The pencil is tracing the already written letters on her page.

“I love you Janna, and I’ll always love you.” The handwriting’s filled with sloppy curls and scribbles. She’s kept this note for the past couple of weeks and keeps it in her jean jacket pocket. It reminds her of what she longs for the most.

The visions of happiness streams through her head as vivid as when they happened. Love is a weird road to travel. It always seemed to have an dead end.

A tear slowly drops off her face and lands squarely on the word love. The word fades from existence.

She can’t take it anymore. She loves him. Love. She doesn’t say that word a lot. She brings her cell phone out and punches a few words into the screen.

“You can’t just leave me like that. I’m on the roof. Let’s talk one last time.” She sends the text message to him.

She’s one for following a lost cause. There’s nothing else that she can hold on to anymore. It’s all gone to hell.

“I can’t see myself with anyone else but you.” Her words strung a leach around his neck, and kept him following behind her like a dog. Once those words escaped from her mouth, the memory of Janna disappeared.

He’s going to come, she thinks. A star floats across the sky as the door to the roof opens.

A sleep deprived boy with brown ruffled hair walks into the picture. “Janna.” The boy spent the last couple of nights in his room, staring at his poster covered ceiling. Both of their names have been bouncing back and forth through his mind.

Janna.

Audrey.

Janna.

Audrey.

It’s anything but an easy decision. He hasn’t slept in what seems like days, but when he gets this text message it makes his perspective on things a smidge clearer.

She fights every part of her being not to turn around. She keeps her gaze into the night sky and her grip around the handwritten love note. “Yeah.” She coughs out. She wants to seem like she doesn’t give a d*mn, but it’s too late to be acting the part.

“I know what I did was wrong, but you can’t do that.” The boy walks closer to her.

“Do what?” Janna crosses her arms against her chest.

“Text me things like that.”

“It was your choice to come.” Janna climbs out of her seat. The love for him bursts through her chest. But the only thing she could manage to do was turn around.

“I know. I have a girlfriend. Don’t you know?” The boy stuffs his hands into his jean pockets, a sign of anxiety.

“I do. But you know too. And you’re here.” Janna shortens the distance between the two. They‘re close enough that she can feel his breathing pattern getting faster, deeper. He‘s getting nervous. “There’s a reason you came here. Tell me.”


“Janna, I miss you. You know I do. But what we did, it wasn’t right.” The boy pushes stray brunette hairs from her rosy cheeks. He told himself before he decided to come that he wasn’t going to touch her. Because, once they connected he knew that there wasn’t anything that was going to tear them apart. Not even his reputation.

She rips his hand from her face and takes a step back. “I know. But you’re the one that sucked me in. And now, I can’t help but feel something. You led me on and you cut me off. It’s your fault we’re in this position.”

“I didn’t lead you on. You know how I feel. I just couldn’t hurt Audrey.” Just the sound of her name made Janna’s blood boil. She hates her with a passion. Not because Audrey necessarily did anything to her, but because she had something that Janna needed. Brenden.

“Well, you’re here. That must of hurt her deep.” Audrey, hurt? Janna almost smirks from the thought of it.

“She doesn’t know.”

“She will.” Janna wraps her frail arms around him. She couldn‘t play the part of the strong-hearted Girl anymore. It didn‘t fit. “I miss you Brenden.” Her voice cracks a bit.

Brenden tightens his grip on Janna. He had let go of her once, he isn’t going to let her out of his grasp again.

“Should I be surprised?” A revenge driven girl walks through the open door. But something’s different with her. She has a game changer. Something that strikes fear into any human beings hearts.

Jenna opened her eyes to a gun pointed right at her. “Audrey.” Like an impulse, she lets go of Brenden.

“I see the way you look at her Brenden. Do you think I‘m stupid, do you think I‘m freaking stupid?!” She shakes the gun in desperation “Why can’t you look at me like that Brenden?”

“Audrey, I-I love her. I‘m-I‘m so sorry.” Brenden started to shake as rapidly as the gun. “You don’t want to do this Audrey. We care about each other.”

“But it’s nothing like the way you feel for Janna!” She switches the line of fire between Janna and Brandon. “Everything that we built together, everything that we stand for, you‘re just going to throw in away for some nobody?! You and I belong together. It‘s how it‘s supposed to be. And you‘re just going to go against the grain…just like that?”

The gun stops at Brenden and he freezes. I-I can‘t. I-I can‘t be something that I‘m not anymore Audrey. But we, we can talk about this! We can make everything right. You-you just have to put the gun down.” Brenden sees the malignant power in Aubrey‘s eyes. Audrey takes pride in always being in control of everything around her. Once something drives out of line, it drives her mad. And this wasn‘t just anything: it was Brenden. Her dream at being a part of a clichéd football/cheerleader power couple was deteriorating in the palm of her finely manicured hands. Without him, she‘s nothing. And she knows it.

“Fine, if you two want to be together forever then I’ll make it my pleasure to send you both where you belong!” She cocks the gun back, closes her eyes, and hopes for the worst.

Jenna and Brenden both try to run different ways but Audrey’s gunshots took their love from this earth. The impact of the shot sends them both flying off of the building like rag dolls. As their lifeless bodies land on the ground and the innocent witnesses crowd around them I laugh at their predicament.

These people are so emotion driven that what they don’t want to see is blurred out from their vision. Their habit of having peripheral vision usually ends in certain disaster.

As I pick up the puppets from the scene and store them away a feeling of sadness comes over me. Another duo of deaths driven by the most powerful emotion in the world, love.

These humans won’t ever learn.