Alice Williams and her unhappy life.

This story is about a girl named Alice Williams.

Alice Williams was what one would call "needy." She was also what one would call a whore. She slept around a lot. A lot. One cannot emphasize enough how much she slept around. There was a news story recently about a grandmother who had sex with 200 men in only two years. Now there are two things that need to be said about that. First off, it says a lot about how the standards of men have fallen far enough to be grinding against the pavement to stick their penises into a woman for a sexual experience that also lends itself to the previous metaphor. Secondly, that was the kind of grandmother Alice Williams would be if she lived to be 62 if the myriad of STDs she would've accumulated over the years hadn't killed her at that point. But that was the beauty of three-stooges syndrome on the immune system, so with all those corruptors laying siege on her body all at once, they might somehow kill each other or cancel one another out and avoid striking her with death.
But we wasn't always like this. She used to be such a sweet girl, honestly. It really is a pity. See, Alice Williams was what one would call "a mistake". Her family never had much money, and they already had a son by the time she was born. There wasn't a place for her in the family. She was an outsider to them, and they concentrated their efforts on their intended offspring, Peter. But as time went on, it became more and more apparent to her parents that Peter was a candy-ass and for a lack of a more elegant word, a failure. Oh boy howdy was Peter a failure. Of course so were the parents, as the father was a drop-out who drunkenly knocked his kids from room to room, and the mother was stuck in neurotic blissful wonderland from a staggering amount of antidepressants. But little Alice never stopped trying so hard to please the family that was hardly even aware of her existence. She kept her grades up, was a model student, and despite all the agony she was enduring, a smile hid all of it and people hardly knew. At least they didn't, at first.

"Oy."
"..."
"Hey."
"..."
"Fucking Christ, I'm talking to you." The boy started snapping his fingers.
"...Oh, whoopsie."
"What the Hell are you staring at? The crosswalk's been blinking for a few seconds already, move your ass."
"...Right, thank you."
'What an odd girl,' he thought. Alice had a blank stare on her face as she just looked ahead. She was the kind of girl that while talking to somebody, she'd nod and respond and smile, but simply put, she was not there. It was the kind of blank and empty stare where the gears inside her head were moving and thinking too much to bother reflecting anything on the surface. When the stared at her, he was about 13 or 14 from how she looked. Of course the boy didn't stare long, as it was 110 degrees out and he simply wanted to speed home as quickly as possible. This changed because before he could continue back on his way, he heard a horn blaring behind him. Alice didn't move, she simply stood in the middle of the crosswalk in a daze.
"Oh for the love of..." He ran out into the street, grabbed her hand, and pulled the girl with him onto the street. "Jesus, what the fuck's wrong with you?" She didn't snap from her daze. She just sort of stared at the gangly boy blankly. Alice's complexion was like a mannequin; pale, sterile, but chiseled perfectly. There was almost a falseness about her face that the boy couldn't quite put his finger on. The only real part of her appeared to be a bruise on her temple, one of origin the boy cared not to inquiry. Also like a mannequin, he wouldn't mind seeing her with her clothes being removed like most of us saw in our youths while standing around in the women's department at Sears.
"HEY." he yelled.
"......I dozed off again, didn't I?" Alice snapped back to reality.
"You sure did." The boy pointed at a red car going through the intersection while the driver gave the two children the finger. She trembled a bit while she continued to stand there on the other side of the crosswalk, slowly coming back to herself. The late August heat wasn't being kind to either of them, blowing a stale, hot wind while the dust in the air stuck to their sweat-soaked skin.
"...I don't want to go home." she said, her lifeless glare steadfast.
"Hmm." he grunted. The boy didn't care. His dad just recently abandoned his family while he himself recently took up alcoholic consumption as a pastime. One could assume that patience for somebody else's problems let alone his own wasn't expansive. Maybe his significant other at that point in time, but otherwise nothing.
"Let's go get something to eat." he muttered. Okay, so maybe the boy cared a little. Somebody just zoned out in the middle of the crosswalk and almost got pegged by a car, and as shamelessly apathetic as the boy was, he couldn't simply do nothing. He probably should've, but he didn't because he was a dumb bastard. And so they went to Carl's Junior because it was either that or the Weinerschnizel, and if the boy wanted Alice dead, it would've been a swifter more painless death getting hit by a car than to eat at the Weinerschnizel.
"So your brother's that loser kid Peter, right?" he asked. She nodded while she slowly picked at her fries and ate them individually. "Fuck man, that kid makes me look like a socialite. He's awkward to be around, even for me. And I'm a drunk." She didn't really say anything. She was clearly preoccupied, but appeared to be listening. "Where'd you get that bruise on your head, anyway?" She didn't say anything. She clenched the side of her face and ran them up her forehead through her hair. A throbbing headache persisted in her skull. The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a prescription bottle and rolled it across the table to her. "Those will probably help." Painkillers, they were. She was getting ready to say something but was stricken with anxiety. A panicked look darted across her face, and she started to silently sob to herself a bit.
"I... I can't stop myself anymore." she whimpered. the boy sighed.
"With...?"
"Some kid at school wouldn't stop leaving me alone. He was kind of hyper and quick and pushy, but everyone thought he was nice. When I went to tell the teachers and the other students about it, they thought I was lying."
"Hmm."
"So he kept harassing me, and he eventually figured out what I did, and..." she paused a bit. It was like something just strangled her throat to cut her off.
"Did you just have a stroke or what?"
"...It's nothing." She was lying. She paused a bit and recollected her bearings. "Do... do you know what it's like to go through your entire life only to feel like nobody's ever noticed that you're even alive?"
"Nope, my life sort of kicks ass." he was lying, too.
"Oh..." her voice grew weak as her breathing got heavier. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up."
"I don't see why you would keep anything up." he said.
"What do you mean?"
"If people don't care about you, why try to keep a facade up and attempt to please them if it's killing you? Seems kind of stupid." She didn't have anything to say to that, because as embittered and poorly-intentioned and exhausted and clearly drunk as the boy might've been, he brought a valid point forth. Maybe he was just trying to shut her up and didn't care about her problems, or maybe he was half-assedly attempting to make an effort. But either way it felt nice for her. It wasn't some teacher's generic pat on the back for good grades or somebody complimenting her on a job well done. It was somebody sitting down with her, talking to her, listening to her, engaging her in conversation. Granted it was a drunken High-Schooler phasing in and out of consciousness due to heatstroke, it was a start.
"...You're a better person than people paint you." Alice said with a slight smile on her face.
"I don't pay attention to how people paint me."
"You come across as sort of an asshole according to some people."
"You don't say."
"There are also rumors where people thought you had something to do with a kid named Charles Finnigan getting set on fire."
"......You don't say." He clearly wasn't coherent any longer. Which was a good time to end the conversation, as the time was getting close to 4pm. If she couldn't beat her father home from work as a part-time manager at the local Rite-Aid, he would beat her in the more violent meaning of the word for getting home late.
"Well, thanks a lot...?" she paused, waiting for him to speak.
"You don't need to know my name." he muttered under his breath.
"Oh..." After all that, she felt honestly a bit hurt. He might've sensed it in her voice, so he slightly changed his answer and he sulkingly pulled himself to his feet.
"You'll probably see me around." After that, he left the shabby fast-food restaurant while Alice just stood there, pondering to herself. Of course she didn't ponder long because she had to make haste back home. She gave her salutations to her mother as she came into the door. Her mother didn't say anything, she simply sat at the dinner table resting her chin on her palm. Alice scampered off into her room and fell on her bed, her head still pounding. She opened up the bottle the boy gave her and saw the white capsules in there. It was like swallowing a piece of chalk when she took it. The pounding in her head started to subside, and she slumped on her bed as her mind began to race. She felt a strange kind of joy in her bleak surroundings after her conversation with the boy. She lied there in her humid room, her body tensing up as her head started to pound again. She began to sweat, and her thoughts began to get more abstract as time went on, as if reacting to the pills she took. She was in a delusional ecstasy before her mind went blank and she seized up, then suddenly became winded and passed out on her bed, the rapid pulsing of her chest acting as a rhythm to listen and fall asleep to.
The following days were not pleasant to her. At school, that creepy freshman boy continued to persist and bother her, and being the unassertive and quivering girl she was, she did nothing to stop him. He kept pushing himself on her and as he got closer and closer, it was something she frequently grew used to. She didn't like it, but having that unnerving student obsess over her was gratifying to her in an odd way. She existed to somebody, regardless of the intentions behind it. Her weak constitution didn't have the heart to bear with the negative intentions behind it, so she simply took it at face value. Of course that didn't matter, there was something else that she was talking to, somebody that seemed to help her despite the incessant, unsettling torture and stalking this creepy freshman boy put her through.

"That's... sad."
"It stinks, it what it is." the boy commented. It was a dead cat on the side of the road Alice and the young man were looking at as they walked home from school.
"...It probably was a cute cat. Just stretched outlying on the side of the road as if it was a sunny porch in the middle of the day."
"I think the stretching is probably rigor mortise." Which was besides the point, of course.
"It probably belonged to somebody. I wonder how the family must feel losing it."
"No idea, but it's just going to be a decomposing pile of nothing in a few weeks anyway."
"...probably. But at least the family will probably remember it."
"Hmm."
"I guess it's insignificant in the grand scheme of things, right? Most people will just see it as roadkill, anyway. Just something to walk by."
"Hmm." As they walked, the girl stopped briefly.
"You know, it's been a while since I've seen that creepy kid..." she said. "Not that I care, but I found it odd that he left me alone."
"He's dead, that's why." the young man said.
"...What?"
"It was on the news a few days ago in the evening. Poor kid burned alive in a pizzeria oven at Frank's."
"Oh good Christ that sounds horrifying."
"He probably had it coming. I didn't like him." he said. Yes, after informing somebody of a heinous murder, the best the young man could come up with was that he deserved it. Alice oddly agreed with him, a perplexedly hateful thing to agree to for her.
"...he wasn't a good person." she nodded. "Although..."
"Although...?"
"It's nothing." She couldn't say it. If she could keep one thing about that, was that as creepy as the boy who died in the tragic pizzeria accident was, she did feel special, in a twisted sort of way. And despite being a very pretty girl, she never felt particularly attractive; she felt as if she was just a piece of scenery that blended itself into the background of the school. But with the dead boy and the infrequent bouts of randomly finding her new friend, she started to feel empty again. She began warming up to the idea of people pining over her. Over time she started to assert herself more in what she wore, as if to tempt fate more than she already had at that point. Her jeans went to shorts that could mistakenly get shorter whenever you looked at them, and dress shirts went to looser-fitting tops. Her hair went from tied up and out of the way to being let down. And people started to take notice. It put a smile on her face. And with this, she decided to do something the next time she got an opportunity. That one person that was sitting on her mind frequently that reminded her of the void in her that kept growing. Perhaps he could stop it from growing any further. Which luck eventually had it in for her, and in her pounding empty head she recognized somebody on her way home after school one day.

"Um... hi." she squeaked out.
"Oh, it's you." the young man said. "It's been a while. A couple of weeks, I think?"
"Do you have a minute?" she asked, her knees swaying back and forth as they stood waiting at the crosswalk.
"Uh sort of I guess, why?" She tried to talk, but nothing came out of her mouth. She felt as if she was sweating and her face was heating up.
"Do you think we can go get something to eat?"
"Uh sure."
"Um..." she was recollecting herself. "At somewhere nicer, perhaps?" She angled a sunhat she was wearing downward a bit to avoid making eye contact. The young man was dense. And drunk. Predominantly drunk, as it took him a while to actually catch on to what she was getting at.
"...Oh. OH. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dear." He was flustered. Not angry, but flustered in an uncomfortable bashful sense. Alice was caught off guard by this. She unnerved a drunkard with a usually flat disposition and had him shuffling about awkwardly like a child who needed to use the bathroom.
"W-w-what...?" she stammered out, equally uncomfortable.
"Fucking Hell, I don't like where this is going..." he muttered to himself.
"What?"
"I err uhh well I uh..." He turned around. He sighed. "Sorry."
"What?" She couldn't hear him.
"I said I'm sorry." he muttered. Alice's chest seized up. "There's som--"
"NO!" she grabbed him and turned him around. He was looking away from her as she began to cry. "I DON'T WANT TO HEAR NO AS AN ANSWER!"
"But I'm i--"
"YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE IN THIS AWFUL PLACE THAT TREATS ME LIKE A PERSON! YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO IS ACTUALLY AWARE THAT I EXIST! YOU'RE ONE OF THE ONLY REASONS HERE THAT I HAVEN'T LOST MY MIND YET!" She was in hysterics. She felt like the one line she had tied to reality was starting to disappear.
"Fuck, can't I just be a friend?"
"I DON'T NEED A FRIEND, I NEED SOMEBODY TELL ME THAT I MEAN SOMETHING, THAT THEY'RE COMMITTED TO ME! I WANT TO BE NEEDED, DAMMIT! I WANT TO COMPLETE SOMEBODY!"
"Jesus fucking Christ." The young man was exasperated. "If you honestly want a relationship, you could probably do a Hell of a lot better than somebody like me, anyway." Of course this only infuriated her more.
"WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT MY STANDARDS, THEN? THAT THEY'RE LO--" She paused and stumbled a bit. She clenched her head and fell to her knees. Her migraines were coming back again. The boy walked over and started digging through his backpack. He pulled out another bag of pills and set it in front of her.
"There isn't much in there, but they should help for a bit." Her face grew red with anger.
"YOU FUCKING BASTARD!" And she stormed off. Then she awkwardly walked back, muttered "Thank you..." and grabbed the pills and stormed back off again. The young man let out a sigh and slumped against a fence on the street. Somebody approached him and he looked up at a blonde girl staring at him on the ground.
"...You saw the whole thing, didn't you?" he painfully asked.
"Yes."
"I think I upset her a lot."
"Probably."
"...You don't want me to do a damn thing about it, do you?"
"Seems dangerous to involve yourself any further."
"Noted." he muttered.
And the short blonde girl was right. Alice's psychosis wasn't particularly stable after that. "Loose" would be a good word to use if one were to include the vulgar context of the word at that point. She felt she wasn't good enough for the young man. The blithering drunk with a sad grip on life, she wasn't even good enough for him. The one person she managed to connect to didn't want to take her, and this played tricks on her mind. Her head never felt so bloated and painful yet so vastly empty. When she got home, in tears and stumbling to keep her composure, her family didn't notice. Her father was too busy beating the shit out of Peter for failing so much in his first trimester report card. She got straight As, on that note. She went up into her room and lied back down on her bed as she stared at the ceiling.
"I want to be good enough for somebody." were all the words that left her mouth before she passed out and went to sleep.

And now it was the start of the third trimester. It was mid February, and to Alice, nothing of note occurred between then and now. Her head still felt empty, and she couldn't remember a single thing or memorable person in the past five or six months. That was probably for the best. As the bell rang, she stood up and made her way out of fourth period and began the walk home from school. She waited at the crosswalk, and there beside her without her noticing, was the young man that she hadn't really talked to in a very long time. At least not since that last incident. He was taller. And still sort of ugly. And he still had that malaised look in his eye.
"...You're a bastard." she said.
"I thought I was a fucking bastard."
"Hmm."
"Speaking of fucking..." he continued to look forward. "There've been a lot of unsavory rumors about you going around the school, you know."
"I know."
"...You should probably fix that."
"I don't see the point."
"That's concerning."
"I. Just. Really. Don't. Care." Each pause punctuated her words.
"Hmm." He paused and waited for the crosswalk to change. "I care. If that means anything."
"...It doesn't." She was lying. That time he knew it. He noticed her looking away the moment she said it. His abuse of alcohol at this point allowed him to maintain some level of self-awareness. There was more awkward silence between the two. Until one of them made an attempt to speak up.
"So uh what have you been up to?" she inquired.
"I tried killing myself recently." the boy said.
"...Oh."
"If you asked me how it went, I might have to hit you." She didn't. Not just because she was certain that he'd follow through with a threat like that, either. For a brief moment, it gave her a glance into herself. She just assumed that the boy didn't lead a particularly happy life but she never legitimately inquired about it. It filled her with anxiety. Her mind immediately went into denial. She looked away the entire time the two crossed the street. Something her head went off while she walked. Did she snap? Did she go crazy? Did she have an epiphany. She wasn't entirely sure herself. The only thing she thought of was what to do. Alice grabbed the young man's hand.
"Follow me."
"Wait what?"
"Shut up, just follow me." She led him back to her house. It was empty save her mother, which meant it was empty. The young man felt the same way he felt back home, which was rather unpleasant for him. He didn't have time to think though, he was shoved into Alice Williams' tiny little room as she closed the door behind them. Her room was small. Almost cozy, even.
"Isn't your mother here?" the young man asked while Alice began to undress him on the bed.
"She won't even notice." she responded.
"Isn't your father a fucking nutcase?"
"He got kicked out and is staying at my uncle's across town."
"What about your brother?"
"I think he's probably going to kill himself pretty soon, he's been mumbling about Richard Tory again."
"Shouldn't you stop that? I mean I know him as a sniveling little shit, but he IS your brother."
"That's what he is. I can't do anything to stop him, he doesn't listen to anybody anymore."
"Hmm. Well, you cou--" he was cut off when Alice pressed her mouth against his. Alice didn't know why he wasn't stopping her this time. This was the first time she actually took note of this. But she frankly didn't care, because here he was. And he stayed with her for the rest of the night. Frankly it was exhausting, but for the only night in her brief life she did not listen to the vacuous woman thoughts in her head. In the back of her head,she knew this wasn't going to last, but she frankly didn't care. When she awoke the following morning, the young man was sitting at the foot of the bed. It was about 5am.
"I heard somebody pacing around a lot out the door."
"Hmm?"
"I don't sleep well with people moving about." he said.
"It's probably Peter. He probably shouldn't be up this early."
"I've heard him muttering bad things. Then he went back to bed." He stopped speaking for a bit. "You know if your dad has any guns?"
"Uh... yeah. In his closet he has a hunting rifle and a pistol."
"...Mind if I borrow one just in case he snaps? He was saying some pretty crazy shit when he was pacing around."
"Alright." The boy got up and left Alice's room briefly and came back with the hunting rifle.
"Your mother sleeps like a sedated wildebeest. I don't even think she noticed me walking into the bedroom."
"One more time." she said.
"...We have school in a few hours, we should really go back to sleep."
"Aren't you late almost every single day?"
"...Touche."
"So......"
"I can't feel my legs already as it is."
"Please?" she asked. This felt like a dagger in the young man's heart, and he sighed.
"I'm going to be too tired to move after all of this." She smirked a bit.
They stopped briefly. They heard the clicking of a gun from the hallway. There was a bit of silence, but then they heard the front door slam.
"...That's not good." he muttered.
"My head hurts again." Alice clutched her face and pulled her covers over herself.
"You have nobody to blame but yourself." He dug into his backpack and pulled out more pills. "That's the last I can give you. My doctor's probably wondering where the Hell they're all going." He got dressed, stumbled a bit, a picked up the small hunting rifle.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"...to keep an eye on your brother. I can't guarantee that I'll be back later." With that, he nodded and left while she just sat in her bed. She didn't take the pills. She shoved them into her drawer for later and went back to sleep. When she awoke, there were police officers and such in her house, talking to her mother. She overheard what had happened at the school. Her brother was no longer alive. They said a single shot to the chest killed him while he was shooting up the school. They don't know who shot him or where he disappeared off to. They said the streets and roads were barren that morning, so there were no witnesses to the possible attacker who stopped Peter. Alice sat in bed and then proceeded to not hear a thing. When she finally got up, she knew that she probably wouldn't see him for a while.

A while turned to about 8 months. It was the end of October now. She didn't pay attention or notice anything anymore. That big empty void became larger since then. Her father finally left, and her mother simply sits at home all die while living off of money that Alice's father sends her. Nothing changed in the absence of her brother. She was still nothing more than a phantom or an object to people. She one day went into the Carls Junior and ordered something to eat. She looked in the corner of the dingy fast-food joint there he was. Nothing about his appearance had changed. Except that he was taller. Again. When he looked up, there she was, sitting down in front of him.
"Hello." she said. There was a vague bit of enthusiasm that permeated the flatness of her voice.
"You realize that this is probably the last time you'll see me again, right?" He said while eating. She paused a bit.
"...Yeah I sort of got that feeling."
"I'm moving."
"Where to?"
"Don't know, honestly."
"Why?"
"Getting evicted."
"...Oh."
"Yeah." She had nothing to say. She wanted to feel something. She couldn't, though. He then pulled out an envelope and handed it to her.
"But I still have the ones you gave me from before." she said.
"This is different." he stated. "Open it later when you need it." She took it and placed it in her coat pocket.
"...You're a good friend and a good person." Alice said.
"I'm really not." the young man muttered. "I'm really... really not."
"Maybe objectively you aren't," she began, "But I guess my standards are just low then, aren't they?" He laughed a bit.
"Alright fine, I'll settle for that." He stood up and shook his tray off into the garbage, and walked back over to her booth. She stood up to meet him. He hugged her.
"Good luck." he said. "You're going to need it." As he began to walk away, he heard her tiny voice say something.
"Don't leave." Her pitch was flat. "Who's going to help me now?"
"Learn to stand on your own. I sure as Hell know it's not easy, but it has to be done."
"...if I can't?"
"Well, that's it then, isn't it?" He laughed, and walked out. That really was the last time she saw him. Her face was cold, and like a drone she went on for the rest of the week in a lifeless daze. Her head started pounding again. She lied on her bed and she couldn't think. She eventually went into her drawer and saw the pills that the young man left her several months ago. Alice grabbed all of them and with a bottle of water washed them all down. She stumbled through her room to her door, and went outside to help clear her head. The pills weren't enough. Her head felt as if it was being lifted from her body, and her coordination faltered. She went rummaging through her coat and got out the small envelope hoping there was more. When she opened it, there wasn't anything in there except a note. She opened it and only a single word was on it.
"......Did I honestly never get his name?" she spit out, her speech starting to slur. She started to laugh a bit. Or at least she tried to, her mouth decided to stop working. Then her legs decided to stop working. When she fell over, her head smacked the side of street curb and she hit the ground. Her mind began to go blank again. The great big void inside of it seemed to have finally won. She thought for a bit about where she was and what she was doing and why, but what was left of her mind succumbed and was finally enveloped, and that was it for Alice.