Sophie's Choice

Over 20 times he'd called. More than 100 text messages he'd sent. His desperate tantrums had Sophie's phone buzzing, beeping like a cardiac patient.

Wouldn't he just go away?

She'd deleted him. But... he'd returned... A voice from her graveyard of ghosted guys... His every text message landing like kicks to the cunt... clawing... spectral hands thrusting up through the dirt...

And on this chilly fall night, he was here. Outside her apartment. In the slimy rain. Her jilted ex pacing the parking lot. His presence ghastly, cadaverous... menacing as a shark in the water...

In the gathering tempest her ex appeared ringed in a nimbus of rage. Then he froze in place, lifted his gaze, and lasered his eyes at her as she stood staring at him from between her front room's blinds. Then he thrust his phone into the air and started playing their favorite song: "Sweet but Psycho."

They'd both loved that song. They'd sung it in unison. Danced to it together. Before, the song seemed so sweet. But now, as she listened to its distant, tinny squeal, from the speakers of his smartphone, it wasn't cute. Or sweet. At all. It was frightening, sinister... To her, it sounded worse than nails scratching a blackboard... Sounded even worse than Ed Sheeran...

Mike the Mohawk Guy, he wasn't sweet, in any way.

He was a FUCKING PSYCHO!

Watching the stalker-y scene develop, Sophie pondered her options. Should she:

A) call the cops

B) go out there with a canister of mace and blast the mohawk fucker in the face

Part of her wanted to call the cops. Over 100 texts in three days must be against the law...

But part of her wanted vengeance. She'd tired of his philandering. She'd seen the girls' texts on his phone, and his friends, on social media, almost every one of them was female. Did he think she was stupid? That she wouldn't notice?

And why was he so surprised when she'd given him the boot?

He had perfect facial structure and a hard body that'd make Michelangelo proud. He could so easily find another girl.

But instead of moving on, he'd begged her to "give it another chance." He'd actually cried too. A grown man. A grown man, a grown man with a beard, crying like a baby. A 35-year-old, bearded man sniveling and high-pitched whining on the phone, his voice cracking.

To her, a grown man crying, unless extenuating circumstances were at play, might be the cringiest thing ever... God, that might be even worse than loudly farting in front of your lover...

Like, just when she heard that first crack of his voice, that squeaky "urmph" when he started to cry, just... ugh...

She thought he sounded like such a bitch...

Facts: they'd only been together for three months. Three months. She wasn't that emotionally invested. And she'd even cringed when he'd said, "I love you."

Three months in and he "loved" her? This guy with a mohawk? This guy who'd wear skinny jeans, rumpled hockey jerseys and corny T-shirts saying things like, "I'm FBI: Female Body Inspector." Or: "I'm not gay, but $20 is $20."

None of it made sense. She found him something of an enigma too. Although he always had money, he was ambiguous about his work. He'd prevaricate. Never really say what he did. He'd mentioned "crypto" and an online business, but when she'd asked for a link to his business's site, he told her the site was "under construction" and most of his work was "conducted through email."

Email? Who the fuck still emails? People still using AOL and 56K dial-up modems? No one sends emails these days, except spammers and "princes" in Nigeria.

Hmm... Maybe that was it. He could be a sketchy, dirty scammer, swindling lonely elderly out of their retirement cash. Ugh, she quivered in revulsion. Or maybe he was a drug dealer. What if he sold fentanyl? Oh, that'd be so creepy... If, like, it was him who killed Prince...

Whoever and whatever he was, his mohawk head stayed circling the parking lot... Like a bloodthirsty shark...

Fortunately, though, he'd lowered the phone. Quit the retro, 1980s movie antics. But he lingered, lowered his phone to his side, like a gun to the holster. Her heart then skipped a beat when he contorted his pale, puffy face and she saw him pull open the passenger door to his black Honda Civic, reach inside the car.

Sophie stepped back from behind the blinds, breathing heavily, terror raising goosebumps along her arms, cold fear creeping through her joints and bones. Then she started praying he wouldn't break out a machine gun, go Columbine.

Inching back, she prepared to run and dive into the bathroom. Jump in the bathtub as if a tornado were coming. But then she sighed in relief, her shoulders slumping as he produced a big, gaudy bouquet. Then he jerked the red roses into the sky. Then he put on a pathetic smile and dropped down to one knee.

Like, oh my God... Just... What the actual fuck?

Sophie thought that this might be the Colin Kaepernick of stalking.

Sophie just wanted to be done. Done with him. She quickly shuffled away from the window, scooped up her phone from the kitchenette counter and stabbed a finger at the phone's side.

She pictured her fingers as knives. Her hand like Freddy Krueger's. Her fingers slashing Mohawk Guy's throat. Sticky blasts of his warm blood splashing over her, like hot water from a showerhead. Her beaming, radiant as a smiley happy version of Carrie.

But the device didn't bleed. It just died a silent death. Went blank. And hanging her head down at its empty screen, Sophie wished she could do the same thing to Mohawk Mike. Just press a button and have him go away.

Sophie's roommate sat motionless in the living room. The girl with the pink teddy bear ear buns, rooted to their U-shaped sofa. The girl glued, as always, to her phone's phosphorescent force. Throughout the entire ordeal her roommate hadn't lifted her gaze or said a word. Probably didn't even notice. She and Sophie mostly communicated by text messages.

For a second, Sophie contemplated plopping down next to her roommate, on the sofa, ranting about Mohawk Guy. But seeing the discomfiting inelasticity of her roommate's face, her unblinking gaze, the raccoon circles under her roommate's eyes, Sophie decided she'd rather rant online instead.

Sophie harrumphed, scoffed and shook her head full of purple hair. Then she stomped into her room and tried to slam her door shut. But her bedroom door was so flimsy that it didn't really slam, and flinging it to its hinges, as she did, felt thoroughly unsatisfying.

Then she looked around her room. Her meager room. Sure, it was stuffed with stuff. Amazon packages. A flat-screen TV. A tablet. A closet jampacked with clothes and shoes. For such a humble room, it sure had a wealth of possessions.

Then she thought that this... This is where, what, and who she was. This was her "lot in life."

This was her: she was 30. Single. Doing gig work. Living with a zombie roommate. In piles of debt. In and out of hookups or having a series of dysfunctional, short-lived relationships. Would it always be like this? She had no five-year plan.

Maybe, she pondered, her mind racing... Maybe... Maybe the mohawk guy wasn't a freak. Maybe he wasn't a stalker. Maybe she overreacted. Guys have friends who are girls, right? And those girls everywhere on his phone could be relatives, coworkers, or business partners. She didn't know. She didn't even ask. She'd just made assumptions.

She'd always made assumptions. She'd always catastrophized...

Her once trendy teenage angst had hardened into a type of terminal blues; the doldrums starting in high school, soon after her parents' divorce.

Her distrust of men started after her father's affair and was solidified by her dad's absence. Aside from his occasional, obligatory visits.

She hated those visits too. Her father's awkward fits and starts of small talk. His trying to be "cool," using outdated teenager slang, declaring everything to be the "bomb."

She hated her father's beer breath and sweaty brows and the width of his shoulders as he stood next to the swing set in the backyard. The way he'd speak without moving his lips; his greasy skin, distracted gaze and his bloodshot eyes and the heavy black eyebags on his tired face; his lizard-quick facial expressions and his clammy hands...

Her father's oily voice wet in her ears... His constricting suits and neckties... Her father's face wrinkling with rage. His neck veins popping like exposed pipes as he'd stop mid-sentence to yell into the Bluetooth earpiece stuck in his ear, the device limp, black and heavy as a dead beetle...

Then came her mother's catatonic alcoholism. Her mother always passed out or about to pass out on the pleather sofa. Her mother in various sleep poses. Her mother softly snoring. Her mother's mouth agape, short pink tongue stuck to the curve of her lower lip, like a pitiful dog.

Her mother's vacant stare, facing half-eaten TV dinners and rows of empty wine bottles... The whiff of puke on her mother's breath... The TV always loud and always on... The TV tuned to sitcoms from the 80s. Full House. Growing Pains. Those teleplays colored by laff-tracks, smiley hair crimes and neon clothes...

Then another surge of cold fear broke over her at the realization, the potentiality- of winding up like her mother... A lump on the couch. A big puke-breathed snoring clump of covers in front of a blaring television. A zombie... Dead but not dead. That seemed a fate worse than any other. And Sophie decided that no, no, nooooooooo! NO!!!!! She didn't want that!

And she didn't have to be that. She could act now. She could break the cycle. She could give the mohawk guy another chance.

In fact, she would.

She would do that. She'd ask him the questions she should have asked. She'd open up to him and stop being such a snowflake.

Maybe... It was her fault all along. Maybe everything she'd adduced was incorrect...

Maybe she was the asshole in all this. Maybe she shouldn't have looked down on him for crying on the phone. Maybe he was just sensitive. Like Drake. She loved Drake. A man sensitive but still strong. The more she thought about it, she could see Drake crying on the phone. Drake expressing his feelings, showing his vulnerabilities. Maybe the mohawk guy was like that. Maybe he was just sensitive, and maybe that's okay.

Maybe... Maybe he was her soulmate. Maybe they'd have kids, a happy life, a nice house... She started to picture their names, "Mike and Sophie," written in cursive...

Maybe... Maybe she could make him shave off that mohawk, that dead animal stuck to his head thing... Maybe she could make him wear better clothes... Maybe... Maybe he really was an entrepreneur and was cooking up a revolutionary app or website or online business that'd take the world by storm!

Maybe, one day, one day he'd be a famous billionaire... Maybe he'd be the next Elon Musk. Billionaires are weird and sensitive, too, right?

So, she crinkled her nose, swallowed her pride, drew in a deep yoga-like breath. Then she powered up her phone, with purpose...

When she rushed out of her room, she saw her teddy bear-hair roommate still transfixed, staring at the little blue square of light in her hands as if she was trying to remember something, and so Sophie didn't stop or say a word as she opened the front door to a wall of cool, wet evening air.

Wearing only an electric blue bathrobe and Hello Kitty socks, she realized that this could be the first time since she was 12 that she'd leave the house without make-up. And she couldn't care any less...

As if fired from a cannon, Sophie shot into the hallway, ran down three flights of stairs, two steps at a time, running frantically into the slimy rain, right into the parking lot.

Panting and wheezing, she was ready. She was ready for him. Her soulmate. She was ready to kiss and hug and to talk about the future. Their future.

But... He wasn't anywhere. His car was gone. And when she called him, he didn't answer. Nor did he reply to any of the ensuing 100 text messages.