Monthly Archives: August 2016

2016/08/30

Memorabilia

By dsholloway

K sold the ring his fiancee had given him. Some guy in the parking lot of a sandwich shop gave him $400, claiming that it was identical to the one he lost, a gift from his own fiancee.

K spent the first $100 at a strip club, folding his stack of dollars into paper airplanes and cascading them into the air, like a little squadron of warplanes, toward the pretty but malnourished stripper.

K spent the remaining $300 on a fat prostitute. He had no desire to sleep with the fat prostitute. Instead, he wanted to ride her, like she was a horse.

K used to be a skilled equestrian and won many awards. K fell in love with a pretty lady, also an equestrian, skilled. They were to marry, but things fell apart; K never rode again. K moved away and decorated his meager apartment with his awards. The urge to ride was strong, but he refused to return to horses.

K demanded the fat prostitute remove her clothes. Then he climbed atop her. He rode her vociferously, until they both collapsed into a heap of flesh.

K slept heavily. When he woke, the prostitute was gone, and so were his awards.

 

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2016/08/14

An Urgent Telegram

By dsholloway

She sent herself to me, in a box wrapped with celebratory wrapping paper. By the time she arrived on my doorstep, a day late, the wrapping paper was badly tattered and you could see that the box she stuffed herself into was a shoe box that had contained men’s shoes, size 8.

She had a bow in her hair that was, in spite of the rough journey, relatively still in tact. Probably at one point positioned just so atop her head – like a halo – the bow barely clung to her forelocks.

She smiled at me when I opened the box and something unintelligible leaked from her badly distressed lips.

“That’s from stress you know,” I said, falling immediately back into my long neglected role.

“Fuck off,” she whispered playfully. Her makeup was smeared against the insides of the box and missing from her face almost entirely.

I picked her up from the box and kissed her, bristling against her dry lips.

Then I frowned, peered into the empty box. “Where’s the rest of you?”

It was her turn to frown. “It’s not important.”

I tucked her under my arm and marched inside. “I wish you would have told me you were coming,” I said. “I would have tidied up.”

“Happy birthday,” she said, changing the subject. She uncoiled her tongue to offer me a shiny tungsten ring. It was the one I wanted.

“How long are you staying?”

“Until I bleed to death.”

Then she sunk her teeth into her tongue.

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2016/08/09

Hurt

By dsholloway

When there was no further recourse, I sent her flowers, expensive specimens hand selected by a homosexual man on the other side of the phone who liked to bind twigs around his vases – his natural signature. When there was no recourse, she would call me, thank me. Then we would renew again, our flawed courtship.

I never specified the flowers, leaving everything to the nice man on the other end of the phone, only demanding that he charge me no more than the maximum cost for purchase and delivery. She never told me, the many times I sent her flowers, what flowers she received, only that she liked them very much.

She told me always what she did with the vases, after the expensive flowers died. She broke them and chose the large shards of glass to construct a sharp, unforgiving version of myself, without my wicked tongue and unforgivingly passive personality. She looked forward to my flowers, she said, so that she could add to her jagged rendition of me. She loved it, she said, because it was nice to her and forgiving of her flaws. I am, too, I implored from my prison cell; by then she had hung up the phone.

She came to visit recently, wounds up and down both arms, also on her face. I asked what those are from. She said she fell in love with the other me, made love to the other me.

She smiled, her lips bloody. I’m lonely, she said.

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2016/08/08

The Frail

By dsholloway

I lost the needle I used to sew her mouth shut. That also meant that I couldn’t sew her hands back onto her arms, or reattach my tongue – which I bit off, impulsively, after I swore I’d never speak to her.

Some time later, she asked me to cut her hands off and sew her lips together so she wouldn’t be tempted to sing me songs or write me poetry. I obliged, though her voice and her words sustained me.

I kept the needle on a chain, which I wore around my neck. When she was ready, I promised, I would unsew everything – when she was ready to nourish me again.

But I was mugged one day, coming home from the store. During the struggle the chain came off my neck and the needle disappeared. The eggs in my shopping bag also cracked and yolk got everywhere.

She smiled at me when I got home, but all I could do was cry and hide my bruises. When I opened my mouth, incomprehensible consonants tumbled out. She only gestured and flailed in return. I took a pen and wrote everything down: the mugging, the eggs, the needle. She shrugged, accepting the forever silence.

All I could do was write. All she could do was read.

But we discovered solace in each other’s gaze – and love, compassion, understanding. The silence would heal us.

Until I found her in the kitchen, her left eye dangerously close to the flame of her favorite candle.

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2016/08/05

The Great Below

By dsholloway

He marched out to sea, leaving his luxury tennis shoes in a pile on the sand. While the other beachgoers retreated in light of the approaching storm, K surged forward.

She had returned. Now was the time.

He waded deeper into the water, felt the currents tug at his body.

She vanished into the sea during their honeymoon. Upset about something trivial, she threw herself into the water to spite K, to punish him, full of violence and rage. And it worked. He slid into cocaine addiction and ridiculous shopping sprees. He retreated into himself, blamed himself, cursed himself. He tried to kill himself. Then he bought luxury tennis shoes.

Yet rumors swirled: the sea was different now, violent, unforgiving, merciless. Ships were lost sometimes; people drowned sometimes; jellyfish and sharks and sea urchins attacked sometimes.

He dismissed the rumors at first. But love got the better of him. For he loved her still, after all this time.

One day he went to the sea, to see for himself, this violence, this rage. But the sea was calm, compassionate. He returned the day following, etc.

With each day, his desire for her violence and rage grew. And he waited – always at the edge of the water, always in his luxury tennis shoes.

It was her, today, churning the sea, tempting the weather. He ran his fingers through the seaweed, thinking of her muddy brown hair.

“All of this for you,” he muttered to nobody as the sea pulled him down.

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