I could point to a million things, but I think it was the snoring that did me in. I can’t handle sleeping next to someone whose respiratory system is a lumberyard. We can move as far as we have to move. We can find the most Gothic castle on the most remote cliff in the middle of the fiercest thunderstorm, but I don’t think that’s going to change anything. It’s not like you have sleep apnea. 

The torches themselves never really bothered me. Fire is archetypal and elemental and something even I hold dear. I like marshmallows. I like coffee and tea. I know it bothered you, and maybe I would have listened to your concerns if you had given voice to them. In the words of Gene Wilder, I thought you were making yummy sounds most of the time. That was probably presumptuous of me—after all, I never saw you eat anything. EVER. Anyway, the angry mob was less than desirable, but sometimes I thought those country peasants brought us closer with their ignorant shouting and bloody pitchforks. The goddamn snoring, though, that was the final nail in the proverbial coffin. 

I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to make some sound like a masturbating grizzly bear. Then you’re going to ask, what good is a coffin around here anyway? But a coffin is all I want. If you’re not going to talk, you could at least listen. Listening really is a skill. You could learn it. Maybe learning one skill might lead to learning another. Then maybe you could get a job that doesn’t require traipsing through the woods. Maybe stop throwing girls in lakes like you’re in a lesser-known Toni Morrison novel.

Yes, I have been reading. I think it’s good for the soul, and I’m starting to wonder if you still have one. 

You’re quite literally not the man you used to be. You’re like the dick of Theseus, and I am so very, very bored.  

The last time we made it, you were quite literally screwing a corpse. But you probably couldn’t hear my snores over your own seismic groaning. Making death is perhaps something better left to the living. I also suggest you see a doctor.

No, like a REAL DOCTOR. If you had watched the effing movie, you would know that I don’t really know where I’ve been either. I think this is for the best. I don’t think either of us is truly fit for any sort of relationship right now. We’re just not compatible with other people.  

Then again, don’t see a doctor. Don’t see anyone. Be like that monk friend of yours. I really don’t care anymore. In fact, I’ve been loosening your stitches when you’re not looking and charging my phone with the bolts protruding from your neck—your abnormal brain is like the perfect battery. That is pretty much its floor and its ceiling. I do love you so.

But I plan on keeping the castle and the dungeon. What will I do with the equipment? Use it. Lease it. Sell it at auction. I’m not sure it’s any longer your business to be frank. I’m sorry. You never liked it when I called you Frankie or Franklin either. But MONSTER is a stupid effing name to call someone. That’s all past us now, though, and I do plan on claiming the rights to our likenesses. I am speaking both remotely and virtually. I am yours in the asynchronous hereafter.

That’s your response.

No, I don’t want to go fly kites. I don’t care if there’s lightning. Just let yourself go. It’s for the best.  

Leave me alone. You’re a monster.

I don’t care. 

I don’t care about Halloween—it’s one night out of the year.