Joyce > Recent Status Updates

palimpsest /ˈpaləm(p)ˌsest/ I. noun 1. a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain. 2. something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form

Speed’s map was not just a representation of the land; it was a statement of ownership, of knowledge, of control. It was an attempt to impose a rational grid upon a wild and messy world.

The air here felt different, sterile. The gardens were brutally manicured, the flowerbeds arranged in joyless, geometric patterns. It was a landscape that had been disciplined into submission, stripped of all its wildness, its memory.

For all his flaws, he’s the only person other than my mother whom I ever really loved, the way you love someone because of all their flaws and broken places, not in spite of them.

“Everything dies.”

“But not everything kills.”

“I don’t want to live in this world without you in it, even if you don’t want us to be together,”

As a woman, you have to hope it never comes down to hand-to-hand combat. His weight is crushing my chest; his knees pin my arms. If it comes down to strength and weight, a woman in a fight is fucked.

You were powerless. Defenseless. That’s the condition of childhood. We’re at the mercy of our parents’ choices.

I have a go bag. It’s in the well of my trunk, where the spare should be.

SPOILER!!!

His last text: the knife and the Santa emoji. Kill Claus. Fuck.

Sometimes you have to hurt yourself to help someone else.

Bryce meets me at the door wearing a hooded cashmere sweater and a pair of tattered sweatpants torn at the knee. It’s his stealth-wealth look.

He told me that he’s never read a book, … Except the Steve Jobs biography. Read it cover to cover. Right. Because every aspirational douchebag who fancies himself an entrepreneur has read at least that.

When I was younger, I believed everything Nora said. Lately, it’s starting to sound like bullshit. Maybe that’s what she means when she says she feels like my heart isn’t in it anymore. Maybe that’s just what people say when you stop buying whatever they happen to be selling.

We’re company property, Julian told me. Never forget that. She’ll shred you like a classified document.

literal murder. They don’t call it that at the Company, of course. They refer to our jobs as solutions.

maybe that’s how you feel when you’re a rescue. Anything that’s not harm looks like love.

he taught me how to fight a man twice my size and maybe not win but at least get away.

the only things I’d killed so far were the deer on Nora’s property. It’s not that different, Nora had promised. I thought of the doe I’d held in my arms as she bled out. I couldn’t imagine anything feeling worse than that, her dark eye staring into mine, blood pooling at my knees. After all, animals are innocent. People, not so much.

Her network, eyes in unusual places, looking for unusual talent possessed by a certain type of young person. Lost girls and boys with nowhere to go and no one who looks when they disappear—or even cares.

She saved me from what I was about to become—on the pole, or addicted, or dead, like so many lost girls.

I try to breathe through the rise of emotion, the way my shrink taught me. Box breathing, she calls it. Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. Repeat until your nervous system reregulates.

For this job, I’ve chosen an ice pick. It’s fast, effective, and silent, and there’s minimal mess. Whoever finds him—probably the maid—won’t see things she can’t unsee. It does require focused speed, physical strength, and the right leverage. There will be no margin for error.

The arrogance of that amuses me. That a person could feel so safe in the world that he has no compunction about dulling all his senses to sleep. That he could make himself so vulnerable, so defenseless for eight straight hours. That, more than anything else he has, communicates his extreme privilege.

The other thing Santa and I have in common is a list. I know if you’ve been naughty or nice. In my case, if you’ve been very naughty and managed to anger the wrong people, I may be coming to see you in the night. I know when you are sleeping. I know when you’re awake.

I like to think that Santa and I have a lot in common. First, there’s the breaking and entering. At this, we both have special skills, honed over time.

tradition dating back to the fifties where every year a different province of Austria would send Vienna a tree for the season.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked. ‘You were away with the fairies.’

(I like that turn of phrase - distracted, off in La-la land, etc.)

‘The next one along is from an old friend, Moira. I thought she was dead till I got her card.’

Sophie tried not to laugh at the frank response. Some of the residents really told it like it was. Perhaps that came with age.

In the early church, midnight was not assigned as the precise time for the first Christmas mass. It was simply to be celebrated “during the night.” Later regulations said it was to be ad galli cantum (when the rooster crows), which was more toward 3 a.m. Spanish-speaking people still referred to midnight or early morning Christmas mass as the Misa de Gallo (mass of the rooster).