Free A Gentle Hell by Autumn Christian

of anything to say except, “did you know it takes 100,000 years to cross the galaxy at the speed of light?”
    At least, that’s the romantic version. I don’t want to tell you the truth, because it would disappoint you.
    But picture this. One night he invited me out for drinks and I felt sociable, so I went. The next thing I know I’ve downed two Long Island’s, a beer, a shot of vodka with cranberry and I’m staring at his face, which I’ve never really seen before until now. Not just staring at it, but swimming in it. I noticed his eyes for the first time, bug eyes, always telling a story. His eyebrows that can’t stay still, the gaps between his teeth. That was the first time I’d found him attractive, not just in an aesthetic way, but in that intrinsic, warm-blooded sort of way.
    “Let’s go to the cemetery,” I told him. “I’m a necrophiliac . Let’s go.”
    And so we got in his car and drove away from the bar, down into the bottomed-out woods where the trees clamp down like bear traps. We parked beside the cemetery gate and when I got out I saw the silhouette of the mountain leaning over the cemetery.
    “Have you ever been up there?” I asked.
    “No,” he said, “pick a grave so we can start digging.”
    The next thing I knew I was up in a tree, the tree of life, with his head between my knees and my underwear in the pocket of his jacket. I grasped onto the limbs above my head, or at least, I tried to; they shook with the rain, slippery, like caught birds. I slipped. He caught me and brought me down into the dirt.
    “Where did you come from?” he asked me.
    “The tree,” I said. I started to take off his jacket, then his shirt. He started to do the same to me. That’s when I remembered I was a virgin.
    “Really? You’re joking,” he said.
    “I wish,” I said.
    “Are you saving it or something?” he asked.
    “No,” I said. “I don’t know. I’ve been busy.”
    “You’re lying,” he said. “Really?”
    “What’s with all the questions?”
    He took my throat in his hand and squeezed gently, not in a sexual way, more like in the way one holds a puppy by the neck to pick her up. When he kissed me I kept my eyes open. When he took the condom out of his pocket I clasped my knees together.
    “You’re tense,” he said. “Come here.”
    Because I remembered the girl I’d seen years ago in the singing grass on the side of the mountain. Now with the mountain looming over the graves, illuminating the graves, a hazy O-ring of fog splitting the distant meadow into shades of purple haze, I thought those memories might make me never sleep again.
    Forget this. I’m not good at describing things like this. I don’t understand why these mechanical motions have to mean anything, how the aesthetics of this particular setting could mean anything. We could’ve been picnicking on the moon, drinking strychnine tea in my grandmother’s bathtub, it wouldn’t have made a damn difference.
    He told me once that love was a temporary chemical imbalance. That love turns into hate. Not that any of that is profound, so instead of talking, let’s rewrite every love scene in every cheap paperback ever written, turn it into a chemistry lesson so we can watch the violent reactions underneath a sterile glass slide. It won’t be difficult to do.
    At the end of it all I lay in the dirt underneath the tree of life with my dress hiked up over my hips and condom thrown onto the ground. And still a virgin. I couldn’t help it, I started to laugh.
    “Why are you laughing?” he asked me.
    “No reason,” I said.
    He cocked his head, raised one eyebrow.
    “I lost my nerve,” he said.
    After that he drove me out of the cemetery and to my home in town. He hugged me like we were chaste, which, I suppose we still were. He took a cigarette out of his jacket pocket. Lit it.
    “I’ll see you later,” he said, voice scratched with smoke.
    I didn’t go home that night.
    Instead, when he drove me away I went back