Monthly Archives: October 2014
“She was my heroin,” I said gazing into the pond. “I was addicted,” I continued the metaphor, as I continued gazing into the pond. A few ducks nodded in tandem. Most swam away, bored, no doubt, with the same story told by every guy who sits alone on a bench by a pond.
One duck spoke. “Tell me more,” it said, and by the by, we got to know each other. I invited the duck over for dinner. It accepted my invitation, probably out of sympathy.
……
I told K about my unexpected friendship. “What should I serve for dinner,” I asked him.
“Duck,” K replied feigning seriousness. We laughed in that way you laugh about things like cannibalism.
I served pasta instead. The duck was a gracious guest. We ate mostly in silence, each unsure how to proceed. “You know,” the duck finally said, “I thought you invited me over so you could eat me.”
We laughed in the way K and I laughed earlier. “I’m a vegetarian,” I explained. Then I attacked and killed it.
……
I called her for the first time in a long time. “I made you duck,” I whispered to the voice on the other end.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, appetite, cuisine, death, dinner, drugs, duck, food, heroin, murder, pond, relationships, vegetarian, water | posted in Her, Me
So he ripped his heart from his chest. Thrusting it into the hands of the woman he loved, “Make me rich,” he said. She said nothing in reply–an ominous sign, potentially–but nodded slightly in implicit agreement.
[A risky investment, indeed, he had heard (though he couldn’t remember from where). But if it paid off, it really paid off, he also heard (same as above).]
Always one to never shy from opportunity and the possibilities of increased wealth, regardless of risk, K eagerly awaited payoff. Yet he wondered how long he could survive without his heart. He passed the days and nights trying not to think about the woman he loved and what she was doing with it.
As it turns out, the woman he loved was careless with his heart, squandering all of its worth in illicit ways. “Sorry,” she said over martinis one night, hands empty. “I lost it.” She showed him her empty hands.
Left with nothing, K naturally hurled himself from the top of a building, a trail of desperation following him to his death. Which is unfortunate, because a hot woman is going to find his heart tomorrow in the most unlikely of places.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, heart, investment, love, martini, opportunity, relationships, risk, romance, stock market | posted in Man, Woman
He had heard that in order to become a master perfumist you absolutely needed an advanced degree in chemistry. You absolutely needed to know how chemicals react with other chemicals, and stuff.
The secret to his masterful bottles of perfume (which retailed for $200 per bottle) was not in his knowledge of chemistry (he was actually quite inept in the sciences during college, demonstrating instead an unfortunate fondness for literature) but in the words of women who hated him.
……….
I fucking hate your guts, K. She said in a surprisingly even tone, leaving the door ajar as she left. Before her words fell to the floor and broke into sharp shards, he hurriedly bottled them. He stored the bottle among other bottles of spite and venom, spat by a variety of women over the past year, knowing that his next great scent was only another heartbreak or two away.
Two months later, amidst great praise and acclaim, he released his new perfume. Then he went home to break up with his girlfriend. His career, it seems, depended on it.
She was unfortunately very understanding about everything. So when she left, he let her words fall to the ground.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, fashion, perfume, relationships, scent, smell | posted in Her, Him, Man, Woman
I love you but I’ve chosen darkness he said to the tree as he chopped it down. He held back tears.
He used to play in the tree as a child. He used to run around it and kiss girls under it. He used to climb it and fall off of it. He used to cry under it when his parents fought. Or cry for it during thunderstorms. He lost a basketball under it. And found a human skull buried near it. He once got stuck in it. Bees built hives in it. He never got stung but his Vietnamese friends did. Birds lived in it and nursed their young in it. The neighbors were always afraid the tree would fall on their homes and expensive cars, temporarily upsetting their upper-middle class suburban dreams until their insurance agents showed up. There had even been a petition signed by half of the members of the neighborhood association demanding its immediate removal. (Two-thirds of the members were required to sign.) He carved haiku into its bark and never read them to anyone. He read them to the tree. He loved the tree. It loved him.
But the lumberjack’s daughter was irresistible.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bark, bee, dream, haiku, love, lumberjack, relationships, suburbs, thunderstorm, tree, Vietnam | posted in Man, Short Fiction
The truth she didn’t want him finding out was that she and her shadow had had a falling out some time ago. So when K asked her out, she demanded a midnight rendezvous somewhere beyond the furthest reaches of the urban phosphorescent nightscape. (K obliged because he is a gentleman and because she was totally hot.)
But that sort of thing can only sustain itself for so long. K began to question her sanity and, secretly, his own. So after yet another 1AM stroll through that park they often strolled around, he broached the subject.
She resisted the urge to lie. My shadow left me, she said. He asked why and she said because shadows by their very nature thrive on evil. And she just wasn’t evil enough–apparently it had gotten bored with her. He seemed to understand and moved to kiss her. She resisted that too. And then he really understood.
Not long after he got home, her shadow knocked on his door. They had sex and her shadow spent the night. When he woke up, accosted way too early by the morning sun, her shadow was gone. But his own shadow seemed longer than usual.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, darkness, love, morning, night, relationships, sex, shadow, urban | posted in Her, Him, Man, Woman
He had heard the rumors since childhood-the ones that circulated among day laborers and the working poor: during the blood moon at such and such landfill a womanish creature could be seen swimming in the vast reservoir of refuse, junk, and discard. There was no evidence to validate the rumor, but to a child that hardly matters.
As K got older, he constructed an elaborate fantasy around the stories he had heard as a child. He imagined falling in love with the landfill mermaid. He imagined growing fish parts of his own and swimming off somewhere with her.
During the most recent blood moon he broke into the landfill. Standing on the edge of the abyss, he waited. Soon enough he saw her.
K called to her. He shouted his undying love to her. She swam to him. She was beautiful. Join me, she said.
K shed his clothes and jumped into the landfill.
He was later pulled from the landfill, his body plagued by cuts and blood-borne diseases. I’ve seen love, he whispered to someone who cared about him. Then he died. Then things slowly went back to normal, no one ever really figuring out what he meant by that.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, disease, garbage, gossip, landfill, love, mermaid, relationships, rumor, trash | posted in Her, Him, Man, Short Fiction, Woman
K’s father was becoming annoyed with his adolescent son’s word choices. First “duvet,” then “loofah.” Until recently K’s father enjoyed their weekly Scrabble games, even though K’s vocabulary far surpassed his own. But the words that had begun to enter the young boy’s Scrabble lexicon were unsettling. K’s father thought back to K’s winning word last week: “exfoliate.”
K’s father imagined letters swirling in K’s head; he further imagined letters bumping into other letters to create effeminate words. After K’s father offered a word hardly worth mentioning, K played his next word: “chanteuse.” K’s father didn’t know what that word means.
K’s father stared at his remaining letters, feeling betrayed by the father-son time he so desperately wanted. K’s father scanned the board. If he were more of an “intellectual,” K’s father could have countered his son’s suspicious vocabulary with his own manly version: bolts, beard, fortress, chainsaw, dirt. While those words hardly count for anything in Scrabble, at least compared to “chanteuse” or “exfoliate,” they would have at least meant something to K’s father. But K’s father’s intelligence aside, it was too late for that. K’s father was going to lose.
It was just as well: he preferred Battleship.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, Battleship, bolts, chainsaw, chanteuse, dirt, exfoliate, family, father, femininity, fortress, masculinity, Scrabble, vocabulary | posted in Man, Short Fiction
