The More You Ignore Me by Travis Nichols

it black.
    Why? Lord knows!
    A flap of this foil poked out from under the door by the child’s knee, where he had bent down to get the best acoustics on the alleged “hunchin’.”
    I leaned down to where he was and put my ear to the door.
    Hunchin’!
    It was true and the noise, dear readers, was indescribable.
    It staggered me.
    I’m sure I went white as a ghost.
    The child saw the confirmation in my eyes and a grin slowly spread across his face until it reached psychotic proportions.
    â€œThey in there hunchin’!” he yelled and began jerking the doorknob furiously.
    Corn—who had outside the Boiler Room heard Rico ardently profess he would not have sex with Rachil until he was married, who had been up until this point seemingly vanquished in his quest for love—was in there hunchin’ with Rachil!
    My first love.
    MFL !!!!!
    How did this happen?
    Where was Rico?
    How had the triangle been violated so effortlessly, and without a scintilla of awareness on my part?
    The child wanted to see.
    I did not.
    I felt faint.
    I left the child pulling on the doorknob and walked out the big double doors at the front of the church into the yard, where I collapsed in a fever.

CHAPTER 7
    I awoke in the shrubbery, mercifully undiscovered.
    I saw the window of the church lit up and the three of them inside, laughing, as if reality were still intact.
    Had I dreamed the hunchin’?
    Was it simply one of my visions, which, already twenty-five years ago, had begun?
    I had to know, and so here, at this time, I vowed to renew my observations in earnest as soon as I made it back to the dormitory to clean myself of the blood and vomit on my shirt.
    I prayed my roommate would not be home, and, for once, my prayers were answered.
    Thoroughly scrubbed with peppermint soap and a stiff washcloth, I breathed as best I could, and I plotted my course.
    After a further week of observation, I reached a conclusion: that night I had indeed simply let my imagination run too free, for whatever “relationship” Corn and Rachil seemed to have secretly embarked upon, it was awkward and bumbling and, at first it seemed, free of penetration.
    I noted many “inside” jokes and episodes of shrill, repressed laughter, but nothing more.
    I admit, there was still cause for concern: Rico was noticeably more and more absent from the church, leaving Corn and Rachil alone.
    Where was he?
    At class?
    At work?
    No longer the sober Christian, he only appeared to sulk and drink at the church, then shuffle off to who knowswhere with his hippy friends, who were always stooped over some baggie of powder.
    One night, Rachil cried to Corn about this distance and depression of Rico’s, and there at the church, in the gluey yellow light, they kissed—I saw it, outraged—but then, rather than sprinting off to the bedroom to hunch, their amour disintegrated.
    â€œWe shouldn’t,” Rachil said.
    â€œYou’re right,” Corn said.
    â€œWhat about Rico?” she said.
    â€œOh, yes. Rico,” he said. “I worry about him so much.”
    (Liar!)
    She embraced him, snuffling and leaking everywhere. I thought I could detect a sly grin on his face as he patted her shoulder a bit too much.
    Regardless, it was clear that Rachil felt sorry for Rico and Corn, and Corn clearly thought this pity would be enough to allow him to work his dark magic on her.
    I longed for him to try to play her one of his ballads, for surely that would allow her to see the sad bastard in his true light, but he had evidently accepted her pity as enough of a kind of love, one that earned him a victory over Rico, and so, a few nights later, he tried to kiss her ears, to put his hands on her little thighs.
    She squirmed, sighed, equivocated, made fun of his prim clothes.
    Drank.
    Corn was thwarted!
    But then, weeks later still, I came to the window late after an altercation at the bus station (not worth going into). I saw her