Amongst it all was the cold, hard guilt of love, undeniable in the way it held you, entranced you, threatened to control you. If not for the like of sadism, then what else? What else drove you to protect the one that burned you, expended you, the one that ate away at your insides with both anger and worry? Even disappointment could never defeat the distasteful emotion that pitted and filled you day and night. You could never let it go. You could never let him go. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

　　But you could pretend to.

　　And his last memoir, souvenir, smoke, to remind you that it was true, that he, the evoker of such raw pain, once existed:

　　would be that rotting, stinging sensation forever in the back of your throat.