Zero Points

The story was shitty, he had to admit. So why not write it in blood? Nobody wants to read another gay love story where the girl’s name is Susan. God damnit, what a shitty name. I knew I shouldn’t have named her fucking Susan. Who the fuck meets the love of their life and she’s named Susan? I mean, I know there are a lot of people named Susan out there and many have fallen in love, but in the story her name has to be something else. Nobody wants to read another cliché love story about a girl named Susan.

He’d have to think of a new name, then retype the whole story. Even after that he’d still have to read it over to make sure everything sounded right. It was important to him that the words he wrote sounded good together. But even then, after all his hard work was done he would still be faced by the prospect that the name was still wrong, or that the whole story was boring. Worse yet what if it was perfect? If he managed to write the perfect story but nobody cared because for them, it wasn’t their life’s work — just some lame story they read in the New Yorker while taking a shit.

That’s when he had his moment of brilliance. In his moment of luminance he became the artist that he always wanted to be. More than love, more than anything he longed to be fulfilled as an artist.He knew that if he could just be the artist he always wanted to be he could die in peace, knowing that he’d transcended and become something greater then himself.

He would show the world that this story was everything. That it meant everything to him. This wasn’t just another faggy love story. He would write it in his own blood. Quickly he formed his brilliant plan. He would slit his wrists and use the blood to write his story. When he finished he would die. He didn’t mind at all, because he knew that he would die as a great artist.

“This is what they’ll remember me for!” he congratulated himself as he made the first cut, tracing the letter S in his blood. Wouldn’t anyone do the same? Die painfully now, but die in greatness? Dying in greatness, he reasoned was the only true immortality. If he wrote the perfect story, then only wrote shit for the next 60 years, he would fade into history even if he lived to be 200 years old. But to die now, having just finished his final masterpiece, he would be remembered forever for what he truly was: The greatest artist of all time.

Before he passed out, died, and shit his pants he managed to get the first word of his story down: “Susan” in beautiful large crimson letters. Critics agreed, it was a shitty name.