The coyotes seemed less and less threatening that last night in the desert,
scampering around chasing bunnies and howling at some far-off moon. Me, I was busy hallucinating, flickering back and forth between ice cream dreams and pirate rape. Sometimes I mixed them both up in my head like a frothy cocktail, floating off on the bubbly waves of a root beer sea. I fancied myself a feisty wench, hopping mad at the dastardly captain who won a treacherous gun battle and boarded my sinking ship.Having conquered me fair and square, he came to the cabin where he had me chained to ravage his rightful prize."I'll never be yours," I lied, spitting in his face, as he cut the laces of my bodice with the skilled flick of a gleaming blade. "You can take my body but you'll never have my soul," I lied again, since his cannon was huge and powerful, and the balls he lobbed were freaking fierce, and he had me at kaboom.
I lay there submitting to the brutal power of him, as the ship groaned and creaked beneath us. "Yes, yes, yes!" I cried, exploding into ecstasy, unbound by the lie women tell men when we demand our treasured freedom. The truth is we want someone to own us. We want to play humble slave to the deserving master who stands up like a man and earns the honor. I wish I could say this freaky clarity about the way things are renewed my will to live, but it was actually pretty depressing. "Please take me for ice cream?" I begged my big, sweaty pirate king.
Random characters came and went -- both strange and familiar at the same time. It was as though my life had been some mildly entertaining old time movie whose reels had been lost to time in a moldy Hollywood warehouse and recovered for one last showing. Once I got past the convulsions and seizures, it wasn't a bad way to go. You could bottle death by exposure and sell it in clubs. 
I obviously didn't get too excited after Rita's annoying ghost thought she saw someone coming on the horizon and took off to go be with her fancy dead friends. It felt like days before I myself spotted what seemed to be a slowly approaching caravan -- led by the captain, of all people. The big jerk looked like he was starring in some kind of traveling rodeo, with a rifle in his hand and a lasso slung over the shoulder. A mean cowboy, with plenty of rope. This one was going to be good."What took you so long?" I said when he finally got there, too weak to sit up on my own. "Can't you see I'm dying here?"
"Buck up," he said, sweeping me up in his arms into the back of a covered wagon. "Dying isn't so bad." Slipping in and out of consciousness, I managed to grab his hand. "I really killed you?" I asked, tearfully. "Nobody told me."
"I'm not actually sure," he said, shrugging it off either way. He handed me a Kleenex. "Blow your nose. You can't be taking these things so personally. I was already on borrowed time.""Rita feels the exact same way!" I told him. "She couldn't care less how she died, and here I've been killing myself trying to find out."
"Did anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?"
"We should be talking. We should be telling each other everything we never did before. Don't you get it? We're getting a second chance." I grabbed the back of his neck, whispering into his ear. "Do you ever dream about pirate rape?"
He chuckled, tucking me under a scratchy wool blanket that smelled like burlap and coffee. "I always did know how to make you laugh," I said. "That isn't nothing.""No it isn't," he said. "But it's still not enough." He handed me a sprig of wild lavender plucked from the roadside. "See you around, kid." After he tapped the back of the wagon, I felt myself rolling away along a bumpy trail and managed to sit up. "Wait! Aren't you coming?"
"Nah, I should stay here and look after things." Things? What things? "Stop!" I pounded on the back of the driver's seat and felt someone pull back on the reins to halt the horses. Somehow finding the strength, I threw off the blanket and jumped out of the wagon, running back to meet the captain half-way. "Kiss me goodbye," I said, urgently.
"You sure that's what you want?" he asked. "You'll probably wake up, and I can't make any promises after that." The two of us stood there for a second on that long, craggy road -- teetering on some shaky tightrope between life and death -- at the end of a harrowing journey I never volunteered to make. Right then it hit me that whatever came next -- however seemingly impossible, or just plain unfair -- if I wanted to live, it was time for me to become my own hero. "Yes, I said."Yes, yes, yes."Sensing we were headed in different directions along that road, I turned my face up to meet his -- and he took it in his hands. He pressed his lips against mine, parting them with his tongue. I melted into the cruel, dark promise of a sweet forever kiss I'd known all along would come to a bitter end. "Why did you love me?' I whispered, determined to keep my eyes squeezed shut as I planted tiny kisses all over the rest of his face.
"Same reason any man loves any woman," he said. "Because I could never have you." "That's not very original."
"Neither is pirate rape."
With that, I opened my eyes.
