Category Archives: Him
I used to tease her–“Your skin is so soft,” I’d say, “I want to peel it off you and wrap myself in it.” She would smile in reply, but her eyes were now cautious and alert as though I might actually do that.
When she invited me under her skin, I figured she was joking–all things considered. But she grabbed at the tattoo on her wrist and pulled up, revealing a small cavern.
I stuck a finger in. Then two. Then my left hand.
“Well,” she said blankly.
“Sorry,” I replied and climbed into the opening in her wrist. It was claustrophobic, and everything was tinted red.
I met a guy named “K” there. He was nice enough. “How long have you been here,” I asked this “K.” A long time, he said. He spoke of her fondly and of her wrist tattoo. I grew suspicious–because I was with her when she got that tattoo.
I attacked him in masculine rage. Then I felt myself being pulled from her skin.
“Look,” she said with disappointment. “I think we should see other people. Jealousy is so unattractive.”
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For the rest of her life, she would blame herself for the death of all that could have been because she decided that the risks, whatever they were (she didn’t know), were too great. She said nothing on the phone, really, the first time they had spoken in months, while he tried to convince her (bless his heart) that the risks, whatever they were (he didn’t know), were not insurmountable.
They were both dissatisfied by the course their relationship had taken, and were equally frustrated in their inability to right things. They had been the best couple: fashionable, catty, glamorous. (They could only be those things independently now.) They loved each other deeply. She felt that she should have done more to alleviate the stress that built over the years. She felt she should have said I love you more.
Now was her chance to do that, to turn over a new leaf or whatever. But she didn’t, and instead told him that she would do nothing to fix what seemed so, so broken.
“I just want to put things back how they were,” she said, before hanging up.
So did he. But she meant it in a different way.
2 Comments | tags: affect, crying, fiction, flash fiction, glamour, love, relationships, risk, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Him, Short Fiction
Lying in the dark, a thought dances along the edges of his mind, carefully gliding over the puddles of vodka and sidestepping the scattered SSRIs.
He had always been careful to turn music on; it was the only way he could get her to sleep. He preferred a tomb-like enclosure. She was the opposite, but she was also loved by him. So he cued up gentle piano music and let it lull her to sleep. During the early days of their relationship, he slept very little, distracted by the sound and unable to settle down because of the presence of someone in his bed. He grew accustomed and eventually dependent on her body being next to his. But he never trained himself to sleep through the music, faint though it was.
When he woke to find her gone, he recalls now, there had been a power outage, or else he had been too wasted. Either way there was no music. There was, instead, silence. But it wasn’t the silence he wanted. It claimed her, unjustly.
He feels her in the silence. But he can’t sleep. So he turns her piano sounds back on. But he can’t sleep that way either.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, body, darkness, fiction, flash fiction, insomnia, loss, love, music, piano, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, silence, sleep, tomb | posted in Him, Short Fiction
In her dreams, he was elusive and distant, staring at her with grave eyes. How she longed for his words, his words, once so sweet but now – when he did bother to open his mouth – unruly and hardened. But he said nothing, in her dreams, while she murmured something over and over again, inaudible to them both. Even she didn’t know their contents or intent.
Her dreams were her reality’s inverse. During her waking hours it was she who refused to speak, drifting through the long, masculine corridors of their home like a ghost ship. Her last words to him, spat from the foyer on her way to exercise class: “It is what it is.”
It was one of her favorite sayings. It made him cringe; he considered that turn of phrase a worthless tautology. In the days since she decided to stop speaking (thirteen and counting), he gradually forgot why she said that anyway.
He still tried, mildly and with condescension, to engage her in conversation. But to no real end. He, too, dreamed. He dreamed not of her words, or even his, but rather of an implicitly understood and forever sweet silence that needed no words at all.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, dreams, fiction, love, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, silence, sleep, words | posted in Her, Him, Short Fiction
Even the cruelest and most random moments of the turbulent past year and a half failed to upset the fragile stability they found that snowy night, exactly 729 days ago, in some shabby Italian restaurant in some equally shabby track mall. She was in rare form, babbling sweetly – in hushed tones; for all its dilapidation, the restaurant was undulating with working-class Christmas Eve romance – into his ear.
She was, he reasoned, still high on the adrenaline that washed over the two of them when his new Lexus spun off the road and into a snowbank – where it was fated to remain until the roads were properly cleared and salted. They wanted to interpret every extraordinary thing as fate drawing them (back) together, as some force telling them that everything would be okay. If only they would only almost die whenever their relationship seemed beyond resuscitation.
She ordered french fries (somewhere near the end of the menu with stuff like friend chicken, just in case) and a glass of red wine. He ordered red wine, too, but spent the next several hours, until the only other patrons were two drunkards attempting courtship, watching her and worrying that the snow would eventually stop.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, flash fiction, french fries, italian, italian food, lexus, red wine, relationships, restaurant, romance, Short Fiction, short story, snow, wine, winter | posted in Him, Short Fiction
The photographer called again. “Just checking in. Are you okay?”
He had been calling everyday for the past week, leaving the same message: “It’s terrible. Just terrible.” I answered today, figuring that if he hadn’t caught his error by now, he never would.
“Are you sure you have the right number?”
“I’m sure. How are you holding up?”
“Um. Excuse me?”
“And this close to the wedding,” he continued to himself. “I’ll return your deposit. You’re dealing with enough.”
“We got married in December of last year.”
He paused: “I don’t think so…” His voice trailed off into confusion.
“I’m positive. You took our photos. My favorite one is on my desk.” Her head on my shoulder, my hand creeping up her dress; we looked like models in a perfume advertisement. The me in the picture stared back at me. Was he as confused as I was?
“Look, K,” the photographer whined. “It was on the news.”
I hung up and read on the internet about my wife’s death. I read, too, about our imminent vows.
I looked back at our picture. The me in the photo looked upset now, his hand continuing it ascent up my wife’s wedding dress.
Leave a comment | tags: accident, affect, death, December, fiction, flash fiction, love, marriage, news, photo, photographer, photography, picture, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, vows, wedding | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction
Overcome with self-loathing, K nevertheless continued to coax the girl. He sighed to himself, wondering what he got out of these rituals. He sighed again, then ordered her another martini.
A practiced man in this regard, K already knew what she would look like underneath her top. Her breasts would be decent, her stomach would be tight. She would have a tattoo decorating some body part. This did not excite K. But he pressed on. He had already determined that she was wearing a thong and made inferences about her grooming customs that were probably correct.
He knew what it would feel like. The bodies of women are always the same on the inside. He knew that she would thrash and moan and that he would respond accordingly. She would say amazing things under his spell. He would do the same in kind.
The charade bored K. It even disgusted him. Yet after tonight, he would do it again. He was probably already thinking about it.
“Be rough with me,” said the girl. K sighed and retrieved a knife from the kitchen, eliciting a frown from the girl – not that rough!
K handed her the knife and closed his eyes.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, body, boredom, flash fiction, knife, martini, masochism, sadism, sadomasochism, sex, sexuality, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Him, Short Fiction
K designed a high rise in the likeness of his favorite girlfriend. She wasn’t actually his girlfriend, however – more of a fetish object, a “girlfriend.” In fact, he had gone out with her only once.
She had agreed to a second date and then proceeded to stand him up. He waited for two hours at the fanciest rooftop lounge in the city.
That’s when, staring absently at the skyline over a double shot of something expensive, he decided to design a building in her image. Every Tuesday at 9 pm – the day and time of the second date that never was – he ascended to the rooftop lounge to watch poorly paid workers labor over the construction of his favorite girlfriend.
But one night, after too much expensive alcohol, he got angry at her and ordered her demolition.
He watched with coldness in his eyes as the wrecking ball tore holes in her half-completed body. He thought he heard her cry out – from somewhere under all that concrete, glass, and metal.
He was sad to see her fall. He knew he would miss her. But he was also sad because he knew that, next Tuesday at 9, he would have nothing to do.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, architect, bar, body, City, death, demolition, flash fiction, love, relationships, romance, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Him, Man, The Woman
“I feel her perfume on me still,” K said, fidgeting and gasping. “I don’t know, it’s just…on me.”
The date he went on went poorly. The woman sat politey in her chair and drank the expensive drink K dutifully purchased. Then she went home while he was busy paying the tab. He never touched her – the goal of any date, unachieved. Not even a handshake.
Later, not entirely sure what happened and not necessarily upset about it, he began to feel the effects of her perfume. It was pleasant to the nose (expensive, K could tell), but heavy on the skin, like a flak jacket or the lead thing you wear at the dentist during x-rays.
K spent an agonizing evening on the floor of his modest apartment, air seeping in fits from the holes in his body. She was beautiful and K would have pleasured himself over the toilet, making up for intimate contact denied. But the weight was crippling. So he left even himself untouched.
Sitting in front of me, K’s body leaned like a dying flower.
“Can I have her number,” I asked.
“Fuck off,” he replied with his last breath. “I think she likes me.”
1 Comment | tags: affect, alcohol, body, death, dentist, flash fiction, masturbation, perfume, relationships, romance, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction
“What are you reading,” I inquired in my best disinterested voice.
Silently, she held her book to her face to reveal its title: An Exegesis on Repressed Masculinity.
I suppressed an eye roll. “Is it interesting?”
“Interesting enough,” she shrugged. “It’s probably the story of your life: sex and anguish, sex and decay, sex and self.”
“That sums it up.”
She smiled.
“May I?” I extended a hand across the bar top.
My name, in elegant font, was printed along the book’s spine. And my photo – an old one, taken with my now dead dog – was on the back.
“Where did you get this?”
“That guy over there. He’s the author. And” – she raised her ring finger – “my husband.”
He kissed her on the cheek and drank the rest of her martini. “Ready,” he asked in my voice.
She nodded, and then addressed me: “Keep it. I’ve read it eighteen times.” She had written her number on the first page.
We had sex two days later.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she breathed heavily afterward, “but my husband would like to join us now. Come on out, K.”
I watched in terror as I stepped out of her bedroom closet.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, book, dog, flash fiction, martini, masculinity, picture, relationships, sex, Short Fiction | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“May I please have my eyes back,” asked the angel. I wasn’t sure how she knew I had them (I found them in the gutter; the dazzling green of the iris caught the sun and blinded me), but her voice was stern. I reached into the breast pocket of my jacket and handed over her eyes. The angel and I had sex and I fell in love.
Sometime later the devil came to my door, offering a cure for my heartache. “Take this,” the devil offered, extending a hand that gripped a small pill. “She will leave your mind as will the sorrow she has caused.”
I retrieved the pill from the devil’s outstretched palm. “It’s a special compound just for you,” the devil said. Small and rectangular in shape, the pill had a “K” in its center.
The devil saw me hesitate. “Or take this” – the devil produced another pill – “and be haunted by her memory until you die.”
I retrieved the additional pill and placed it on my palm next to the first pill. They were identical.
“But you may not have them both,” said the devil impatiently, glaring at me with eyes a penetrating shade of green.
2 Comments | tags: addiction, death, devil, drugs, eyes, green, love, relationships, romance, satan, sex | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction
We hadn’t seen each other since college. Our friendship ended abruptly because we were in love with the same woman. He wanted to fight over her. I politely declined and wished him well.
I wasn’t surprised when he told me of their breakup. Everybody knew that this particular woman had been adamant about remaining a virgin until marriage.
“You lucked out, K,” he said with a mouthful of vodka. “She never caved.”
The way he described their sexless courtship – hours of cuddling and making out – was rather charming.
His eyes lit up. “I saw her last week. She called and told me that she’s married now. Then she invited me over. Before we broke up, she promised to have sex with me once she was married – even if she wasn’t married to me. I guess she was serious.”
“Did you?”
“Of course.”
“And her husband?”
“She told me that you’re her husband and that you’ll probably kill me. She said you’ll have a sharp knife with you.”
I put the knife on the table and shrugged. “I’m not going to kill you with this.” I nodded toward his empty martini glass and watched his throat tighten. “Thanks for the drink.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, body, death, flash fiction, love, marriage, martini, murder, relationships, romance, sex, Short Fiction, short story, virgin, virginity, vodka | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction, Uncategorized
I know this artist who is also a taxidermist. Naturally gifted in art, he found that he could only accurately sketch living creatures if he killed them, stuffed them, and manipulated their bodies into wildlife scenarios.
In his home, which I borrowed for the first time in high school to rob my girlfriend of her virginity, are lots of taxidermied creatures and accompanying artistic renderings. They’re perfect renderings and also that girl and I broke up shortly after because the dead animals, which seemed very alive, made her uncomfortable.
I had the opposite reaction and haven’t been able to have sex not surrounded by dead animals ever since.
“K, I need your house,” I implore a little less often than I like. With each visit, I find that his home is a little more overrun by his animals and his art. Last week, I had sex with a girl inside the mouth of a large shark. She cut her hand on one of its teeth and won’t return my calls.
I kinda want him to kill and stuff her. But he would probably want to sketch her and that would make me uncomfortable because I like her a little bit.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, animals, art, artist, body, death, flash fiction, love, murder, relationships, sex, shark, Short Fiction, short story, sketch, taxidermy, virgin, virginity, wildlife | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction
K, though dying, was in the best shape of his life. “The TSA agent asked if I was a gymnast,” he boasted the other day. “I told him I was just a narcissist.”
K wasn’t just a narcissist. I don’t remember the name of his illness, but it was fatal. Still full of vigor, he paraded around in his Under Armour, revealing every crevice and striation in his torso, like an aspiring Mister Universe. In another several months, he would become hollow, like a drug addict. What would the TSA agent say then?
When he took too much medication, K would rant about “beauty in decay.” Then he would hit the gym extra hard. K read too much philosophy—chubby men expounding on a reality they know nothing about. Have you ever watched somebody die, I hissed once, angrily. We disagreed a lot these days.
But K was right. He had more girlfriends than I could count. “Do they know you’ll be dead soon,” I asked after he regaled me with a story of a hefty blonde.
“Of course. They wouldn’t be interested in me otherwise.”
For the first time in a long while, I found myself agreeing with him.
Leave a comment | tags: addict, addiction, affect, death, drugs, flash fiction, gymnast, illness, Mister Universe, narcissism, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, TSA, women | posted in Him, Me, Short Fiction
“We don’t know what happened to the dinosaurs,” she said. She was too attractive to be a paleontologist. I nevertheless listened to her lecture. But I didn’t believe her.
I whispered to K: “Bullshit. She knows exactly what happened to them.”
K brushed me aside and marched toward the paleontologist, much swagger in his step. “She wants to have sex with the two of us,” he reported back, smiling as though he were staring in his own porn. I would have fucked her, but the idea of three bodies heaving and groaning together was off-putting.
K left the museum with the paleontologist. “I’ll find out what happened to them,” he said in my ear on his way out.
I visited K in prison six months later. He was wan and sickly. “What the fuck,” I said.
“I cut her head off.”
“Why?”
“She would’t tell me what happened to the dinosaurs, so I killed her.”
I couldn’t say anything, so he kept talking.
“But the weird thing was,” he said with piercing eyes from behind plexiglass, “I looked down her neck after I cut her head off. I saw a bunch of dinosaurs grazing.”
“On what,” I asked, genuinely curious.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, dinosaurs, eating, flash fiction, museum, orgy, paleontologist, prison, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Him, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
K couldn’t stop talking about his new painting. “She does whatever I ask,” he boasted, tracing the cut on his cheek.
When he showed me the painting, I was greatly underwhelmed. The way he spoke of her, I was expecting a hot woman in leather or something. Instead, I saw a lumpy pale creature gazing into the distance. She belonged in the boring wing of a museum.
K greeted her graciously, introduced me, and then scuttled us away, claiming that he was extra demanding last night and she needed rest. He was genuinely concerned.
“Where can I get one,” I teased.
“What do you have in mind?”
“Prettier and skinnier than yours. Maybe a little bitchy.” K eyed me suspiciously.
……….
She was delivered on a Monday. I removed the packaging and found a beautiful women, nearly naked, hip bones protruding confidently. She glared defiantly at me from behind her glass. “I am your master,” I demanded. I unzipped my pants.
……….
“She’s defective, K. She just stands there. Won’t do a damn thing I say.”
“Did you really expect otherwise?” He paused: “So that mark on your face…”
“She tried to kill me. I’m not into that weird shit you like.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, master, museum, painting, relationships, sadomasochism, sex, slave | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“Did you know people sell these?” K took a tablet from the orangish vial on the counter and held it between two fingers the way you inspect a small bug. “They call it ‘hillbilly heroin.'”
“Yeah, but I need those,” I said. “You know–for pain.”
K wasn’t listening. “One of these can go for, like, $20.”
I rolled my eyes: “Can’t you find something else to sell illegally?”
“No,” he retorted. He snatched my perscription and left.
I sank into despair, knowing that my doctor would never buy the story I needed to sell him.
……….
K came to my door a few days later, smiling widely.
“Can I have my medicine back now?” I asked.
“I sold them. We need more.”
“That’s not going to happen. There are rules to guard against this exact thing.”
“Yes it is.” Then I noticed the hammer in his hand.
“Wait,” I screamed. I pleaded. But K insisted it was the only way. I backed away. Then he pulled a handful of money from his pocket, thrusting it into my hands. “This is your half.”
He raised the hammer.
I closed my eyes and envisioned prostitutes and Rolexes. I don’t remember what happened after that.
Leave a comment | tags: addiction, affect, drugs, flash fiction, hammer, heroin, hillbilly, money, pain, relationships, Rolex, sex, Short Fiction, short story, women | posted in Him, Me, Short Fiction
K had heard it before, from other women less attractive than the one whose tongue was slowly constricting his neck:
“I just love your eyes. They’re so dark–I can’t even see your pupils.”
She flexed her tongue and K’s eyes bulged a little further from his face. She brought her face–eyes green, I think, but maybe they were blue–to meet his. “Amazing. Your eyes are just these black puddles.” She brought a well-manicured fingernail to his face. Then she tapped it on his left eye, creating mild undulations.
He had heard that last line before, too. As K lost consciousness he envisioned all of the women who got lost in his eyes. He thought of the woman who climbed in his left eye and drowned in the darkness. Her name was in the paper for a while and on TV. He thought of the woman who ran screaming from his apartment–underwear balled up in her fist–because she was convinced K’s eyes betrayed a darkness of a different sort.
From the depths of asphyxiation, he heard her jaw unhinge. Then he heard him being swallowed hole. “I guess I’m finally inside her,” K muttered as her digestive system pulled him down.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, asphyxiation, cannibalism, darkness, eating, eyes, food, jaw, love, murder, pupils, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, snake, tongue, TV, underwear | posted in Her, Him, I, Man, Short Fiction, Woman
K always said goodbye in the same way: detached yet sympathetic, like a vet telling a child that her dog has died.
Some cried. Others seemed relieved. The woman sitting on the edge of his new gray couch was somewhere in the middle. She muttered something obligatory about “stay[ing] friends” but she snatched up her things and left in a decidedly unfriendly manner.
K was finally convinced: No woman, regardless of beauty, charm, or material wealth, could measure up to the stunning creature that was engraved on his forearm in bold lines and colors. She understood him. She would never hurt him.
He ran his fingers across her face.
……….
K had gone to the tattoo parlor on a whim one day, taking with him an editorial spread from a men’s magazine featuring some exotic model from South America. K watched her take shape, grimacing with each thrust of the tattoo artist’s needles yet anticipating the end result. When the woman was finally complete, K just knew his lovelife would never be the same.
……….
K glanced at the woman on his arm. Then he climbed into his skin next to her. Taking her hand, “We can finally be together,” he whispered.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, beauty, body, body modification, dog, flash fiction, love, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, tattoo, tattoo parlor, tears | posted in Her, Him, Man, Short Fiction, Woman
The woman, whose heavy foreign eyes and striking hair/eye composition give her the air of a sleepy Scarlett Johansson or a strung out Courtney Love, will kill him.
Here is how:
She will go home with him.
He will tear her gown from her body. Then he will realize that she has wooden legs.
He will not know how to proceed but he will notice that she has grown uncomfortable. He will know immediately that she has become self-conscious.
He will think back to their “dates” and her countless long dresses.
He will recall the way she hobbles about.
Briefly, he will get mad at her (“You could have told me!”).
Then he will compose himself and gaze into her eyes, uttering romantic things. They will have sex. She will stay over but vanish by dawn.
In the morning he will find a splinter in his hand. Rubbing it, he will think fondly of her until his hand becomes infected.
As the infection spreads, he will not wonder if she planned the whole thing; but he should. Then he will die.
But he will not mind. For he will have fallen in love with the woman and her wooden legs.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, body, dating, death, hands, infection, legs, love, murder, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, wood | posted in Her, Him, Man, Short Fiction, Woman
K claimed to be an author, having written famous works I had never heard of. Whenever we met he always had a package tucked under his arm, which he refused to set down or otherwise let out of his site. His latest work of brilliance, evidently.
Motherfuckers are trying to rip me off, he growled once by way of explanation. He had taken to saying “motherfucker,” or its permutations, whenever he could. I figured he was writing a novel on youth culture. I tried reasoning with him, but that made him suspicious. He said that he came home once to find his papers in disarray. Thus, he explained, his “extreme caution” was justified.
I believed him. Then I killed him. I snatched the package and tore it open: a ream of printer paper. Then I ransacked his apartment–blank pages and mounds of paper reams. But in the trash can under his desk I caught a glimpse of a scrap of paper: a phone number.
I called.
My girlfriend’s voice.
I threw my phone at the window, sending shards of glass in every direction. Then I folded the scrap of paper into a crane and sailed it into the breeze.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, blank, broken, cheating, crane, flash fiction, girlfriend, origami, package, paper, phone, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, window, writer | posted in Him, Me, Short Fiction
“That’s her,” I gestured with my chin toward a woman sitting at the end of the bar. I watched her order a martini. If she noticed me, her neighbor, she pretended otherwise.
I turned back toward K. “She brings me a cucumber every so often–she has ever since I moved in. Winter, spring, summer–whatever. And never anything else. And always just one cucumber. She leaves them in front of my door with a note attached: FOR YOUR HEALTH.”
I could tell by the way K was eyeing her that he was interested. “Don’t,” I said. “Every man she gets involved with goes missing.”
K scoffed.
“That’s the gossip, anyway,” I clarified.
K waved away my warning and marched over to her. K was good with women. She smiled at him. I finished my drink and left. I never saw him again.
……….
A few months later an article appeared in the newspaper. K’s body had been found in a shallow grave along with the remains of ten other men. Their penises had all been severed.
What a shame, I thought, still pissed at K for ignoring my advice, as I bit into my freshly delivered cucumber.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bar, cucumber, death, drink, flash fiction, food, gossip, health, love, martini, murder, newspaper, relationships, sex, vegetables | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction
“My name is K. And I’m an addict.”
He didn’t elaborate on the nature of his addiction and nobody bothered to ask. The people in the room probably presumed that his addiction was some permutation of theirs: drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, whatever. K had been attending these meetings for several weeks now, hoping that being part of a community of junkies would somehow cure his junkiness. Today was the first day he bothered to speak.
“Hello, K,” said a mass of voices. K sunk into his chair, knowing that his addiction was his alone, and that all the other addicts could never understand. Vulnerability suddenly exposed, K needed a fix. Fuck this place, he muttered to himself, as he snuck out during a coffee break.
……….
“It’s been a while,” said the voice on the other end of the phone, as though it knew K was on the brink of relapse.
K apologized and then pleaded for a fix up. “Pretty ones this time, please,” he added. As K reveled in the remorse and worthlessness of relapse, he envisioned the drug taking its effect: countless microscopic women riding his veins, soothing his pain with their kisses.
A knock at the door.
Leave a comment | tags: addiction, affect, drugs, flash fiction, pain, rehab, relapse, relationships, short story, syringe, women | posted in Him, Man, Short Fiction
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
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
