What Does It Mean?

‘Bye-bye, I love you.’

            We’ve all said it, to our mothers, sisters, aunts, grandmas, girlfriends – but what does it mean?

            Well, I just kidnapped a seven-year-old girl, in broad daylight, from a municipal park in a small suburb of Los Angeles. I want to find out, want to know, just what being a mother means, what motherly love means. I never snapped – it’s like wondering how squid propel themselves; a mechanism of nature, the solving of which one can apply one's mind to. Only, it’s a much harder task to probe the nature of love.

            And now I have her, safe and alarmed, in a small, dark room somewhere beneath the eyelids of this city, and I can tell her little heart is fluttering like a butterfly’s wings, but she has nothing to fear.

            I shall say to the mother, ‘Meet me here, at this specific time, or else I slit her throat – and don’t even think about calling the police!’ And I shall meet her, and I shall put into her hand a gun, and I shall say, ‘Shoot me! Goddamn it, shoot me, or else I WILL kill her!’ And in my head I’ll be goading her: shoot me, you stupid bitch! Shoot me, or else I will kill her…! And, trembling, she will squeeze the trigger, unleashing all her love upon me, and my poor life would bleed out towards her feet in reciprocation.

            Yes, I’m gonna find out, all right… only, I’ve a terrible feeling she won’t have the mettle. I’ve a terrible feeling we’ll both be on the losing end.

            But it’s too late for that now.