Sam’s Reviews > We Are Always Tender With Our Dead > Status Update
Sam
is starting
“How’s your nose?’ Finn asks me, probably realizing he was a little more forceful than usual this time. ‘Does it hurt?’ “I respond by merely shaking my head ‘no,’ my throat clogged with the blood still pooling there. “‘Trent, would you undo your vertebrae for me again?’ he asks, his voice brittle thin and pathetic sounding—as if he already knows that he’s asking too much.”
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— Sep 15, 2025 11:51AM
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Sam
is starting
“In that sacred moment, I am his God, his Creator. He answers only to me.”
3/3
— Sep 15, 2025 11:52AM
3/3
Sam
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“But how could I possibly reject him? How could I ever deny him what he lusts after, what he so desperately craves? “I reach behind my back, across my shoulder, peeling back curtains of flesh, and before I’m fully healed, I pluck the ivory jewel from my spine and present it to him with such care, such reverence—a holy relic that I know he will worship.”
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— Sep 15, 2025 11:52AM
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Sam
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“I find such pleasure in the moments when I’m pinned underneath him, the firmness of our bodies rubbing together when his fist heats my cheek red with a new welt—another souvenir to be displayed in the museum of affection, our private gallery of living carnage.”
2/2
— Sep 15, 2025 11:50AM
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Sam
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“I enjoy hurting him. I know for certain that he finds such divine pleasure in hurting me. “I delight in the way it feels when my hand smashes into the crook of his nose, red and wet spraying my face all at once.”
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— Sep 15, 2025 11:50AM
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Sam
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“I fall in love with Finn Kitrick the day after my seventeenth birthday, and I tell him that I would gleefully undo my vertebrae for him if he ever asked,” Rupert tells Mrs. Esherwood.”
— Sep 15, 2025 11:49AM
Sam
is starting
“Perhaps they should mourn their trespassers. All kinds of transgressions form and remake a person. Abuse and violence shape all human identity. But does such a meaningful act deserve grief?”
— Sep 15, 2025 11:49AM
Sam
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“When people realize that they cannot use you as they had intended, they want nothing to do with you. It’s almost like your very existence is an insult to their invention, their grand design. “If only I had met you sooner,” they might say. “I would have delighted in being the owner of your destruction; in the carnage I could charm from you.”
— Sep 15, 2025 11:49AM
Sam
is starting
“I resemble something tattered, almost threadbare, but not quite completely broken yet. Perhaps still salvageable. Perhaps still redeemable. That’s why I’m used again and again.”
— Sep 15, 2025 11:48AM
Sam
is starting
“I wish I could bury my brother—the tender memory of his scent, his gentle touch, his lovemaking—in the deepest grave I can dig inside my mind. But instead, I ladle him into the shallower pastures of my thoughts.”
— Sep 15, 2025 11:47AM
Sam
is starting
“It’s normal for brothers to do these kinds of things with each other,” he whispers to me, cupping my testicles the same way your hands form a small bowl to drink water from a mountain spring. Is that what I am? I wonder to myself. A sacred mountain spring? Something to keep him from becoming parched?”
— Sep 15, 2025 11:47AM
