Category Archives: Me
“Nervous much? Or do you always never look a girl in the eye?”
Her grammar—not necessarily incorrect—bugged me. It reminded me of the way a graduate student would address some pressing social concern.
“Sorry, habit I guess.” I attempted to elaborate on a study some sociologist conducted that proves men are poor at maintaining eye contact.
She rolled her eyes. “Here,” she said, grabbing the expensive vodka from my bar cart without asking. I had upset her. Moments earlier she had gone on a rant about how women shouldn’t wear underwear when they wear tight dresses. I, naturally, hadn’t minded the conversation, though I did wonder about sanitation.
But now she sat before me with her head cocked way back like you do when you catch the rain in your mouth. She filled her mouth with vodka and waited for me to drink from it.
I didn’t want to, having the day prior watch a documentary about birds feeding their young. I made a joke about liking “my martinis dirty.”
She displayed two fingers, reached under her dress, and then used them to stir the vodka in her mouth.
She tried to meet my gaze. I looked away.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, dress, eye contact, flash fiction, gaze, gin, martini, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, underwear | posted in Her, Me, Woman
As she choked me, I wondered if she had murdered anyone before. Her grip was confident. She showed no concern that she might take things too far–as though she knew the right moment to stop.
Had she not been so attractive, I may not have followed her home that night–out of curiosity, I assure you. She may not have approached me: “Why are you following me?” She may not have invited me to her home to debase and fuck me. But the intensity of her presence was hypnotic. I was truly under her spell.
Get the fuck out of here. I was used to the way she spoke to me. It chilled me but kept me alive. I balled up my clothes and headed toward the door. Catching a glimpse of myself in the reflection of her glass liquor cabinet, I rubbed at the red striations on my throat. Anybody would be able to guess what happened.
Use that. She nodded to a purple Armani draped across the sofa.
“Madam, have you ever killed anyone?”
All the men who come here. And with that scarf, in fact. Now, come here and let me tie it for you before you go.
1 Comment | tags: affect, Armani, death, fashion, flash fiction, masochism, relationships, sadomasochism, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, 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
“Here, give this woman a call. She seems to have your”–she paused–“aesthetic sensibilities.”
Spinning her interior design book toward me, she pointed at a woman cradling a bronzed human skull the way you might show off your newborn. Below the photo, a caption:
I just like body parts. I use them all the time. People ask why. I don’t know why. I just like body parts.
I looked her up and sent an email detailing my own fondness for body parts: disembodied limbs, torsos of in-shape women, etc. I moved into a new apartment, my email continued, and would she be available for consultation?
……….
The woman had on the same brand of perfume my girlfriend wears, which I found off-putting. She padded across the floor (I have a no shoes rule) and my girlfriend’s scent followed, like a pet.
“I can do a lot with this space,” she said to my ceiling. “In fact,” she turned toward me, “I brought you a housewarming gift.” She pulled a lacquered head from her oversized shoulder bag. She held it toward me, gripping it by its long, brown hair.
“Is it real,” I asked?
She smiled and the scent of perfume overtook me.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, artist, body, body parts, book, death, decoration, designer, interior design, murder, perfume, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, skull | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
Six months had passed since I put her portrait in the trunk of my car.
“Why is this still in here,” she asked not long after, her hands full of groceries. “So I always have you in my trunk,” I replied.
But her portrait–all glamour and heavy eye make-up–soon became covered in dust and the fine wood frame in which she was encased became scuffed.
Still, I was so used to her back there that the thought of hanging her on the wall was mildly unnerving.
We had a fight two days ago. She accused me of stealing her old wedding ring to finance my cocaine habit.
I called her three times. I sent twelve text messages.
Silence.
I opened the trunk yesterday morning to fetch my umbrella. I gave her portrait a knowing look, thinking, “What the fuck is your problem?” That’s when I noticed that her previously immaculate smile was now twisted into a scream.
“Well if she’s dead,” I said to myself, “now’s the time to steal her wedding ring.”
When she was found this afternoon in the trunk of a new Mercedes I felt mildly guilty, though I didn’t really know why: Fucking rich people.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, car, drugs, fight, flash fiction, mercedes, picture, portrait, rain, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, wealth | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
For my birthday, she took me to a fancy restaurant. “Here,” she said, sliding a package across the table during the intermezzo course. The rectangular shape of the package betrayed its contents.
She knew I knew.
“So you can carry it with you,” she continued without invitation. “And so you can stop writing on bar napkins.”
Later, she let me fuck her in the ass (my “third gift”) and then went home (my fourth gift?), complaining about the pain she would be in tomorrow.
I shook myself a martini and opened the package–a pocket-sized journal, as I had more or less expected. I grabbed a handful of pages at their lower right corners and flipped back to front. Then I noticed writing–black ink, feminine–her writing. I looked closely. Each page was full of details from my life.
I began reading about things she had no business authoring: drugs, prostitution, suicide attempts. I read further: my birthday, anal sex, a journal with its curious contents. On the last page I read about my death–prolonged and messy. I didn’t get it. “I don’t have AIDS,” I said to myself.
My cell buzzed. “Um,” she sighed, “there’s something I should have told you.”
2 Comments | tags: affect, AIDS, anal sex, birthday, death, fiction, flash fiction, journal, present, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, writing | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
I stole my neighbor’s luxury hatbox.
Repair men were in her apartment replacing the floor. They left the door open and when I walked past I saw the hatbox resting on an ugly sofa.
I walked past again. And again. The repair men were probably taking a break. I ran in and snatched the hatbox. After reaching my apartment, I took in my new acquisition. I didn’t know why I decided to steal her hatbox. Perhaps I wanted to sell it. Perhaps I just wanted something nice.
I inhaled and opened it, not really expecting to find anything inside. (Who keeps a hat in a hatbox?)
There was a note inside–something scribbled on the back of a receipt in an oval, feminine hand. It was the beginning of a love letter to me. “Dear K,” it began. She had written nice things about me, but entirely in past tense as though I were dead: “You were this, you were that.”
I had the sudden urge to return the hatbox. Then I turned her love letter over and inspected the receipt.
Rope, tape, saw, shovel, bleach, trash bags.
I decided not to return the hatbox after all. I locked the door.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, fashion, flash fiction, hat, letter, love, murder, neighbor, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, sofa, theft | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
“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
I realized halfway down that the structure from which I had jumped wasn’t tall enough.
I was going to survive. So I stopped falling–somewhere around the fifth floor–and decided not to kill myself, or rather, to kill myself a different day.
I went home and climbed into bed with my girlfriend. In her sleep she never realized I was gone. I started stroking her arm which, thanks to a devoted interest in luxurious skin products, was unnaturally soft. I’d totally skin her alive and stitch myself a blanket.
She stirred. “Where were you?”
“In the living room. I was reading.”
“When are you going to start writing your novel?” Her eyes were closed. I hated when she asked me that. It was embarrassing. Everyone is writing a “novel.”
“Just as soon as I have something interesting to write about.”
“Why don’t you write about how you like to sneak away at night and throw yourself from tall places but always change your mind before hitting the ground?”
“Maybe,” I sighed. “But that’s just so depressing.”
“Or, how you want to skin your girlfriend alive?”
Silence filled the bedroom.
Her eyes were open now: “You talk in your sleep, K.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bed, body, death, novel, relationships, skin, suicide, writer | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
She let her jeans slide down, muttering something about a Japanese myth: the pieces should fit together like a puzzle, or something.
That’s not how the myth goes, but I got the gist.
I pushed her to the bed and yanked my belt off. The buckle (an ostentatious L and V fused together like ugly conjoined twins) crashed to the floor with a thud. I disrobed the rest of her with a practiced hand.
(After fucking my fiftieth girl, I threw myself a party at a bar. Balloons and everything–HAPPY FITYITH. Bystanders congratulated me even though I “look[ed] no older than 30.”)
I dramatically pried apart her legs as though she were resisting. Then I stopped.
“What’s wrong,” she cooed, playing her role.
“I’m sorry, ” I said. “What do you want me to do with this?” I was staring at an angular opening, like the corner of a jigsaw puzzle. She recoiled on cue. “Asshole! I told you: like a puzzle piece.”
I pulled my pants up and fetched my expensive belt. “I thought you were misquoting,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Could it be, I’m not as smart as I think I am,” I wondered on my way out.
Leave a comment | tags: fashion, Japan, myth, puzzle, relationship, sex | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
“Be careful with these,” I instructed, handing the shoe cobbler a very expensive and badly scarred pair of high heels.
……….
I lit them on fire last week, after our most recent fight, but came to my senses before the damage turned irreparable. Dousing the shoes in water, I put them with her other shoes.
I fished them out, carved the letter K into the sole of the left shoe. Then I put them back again, pleased.
“Let’s go out,” she said later, apparently ready to be a loving couple again. “Somewhere fancy. I’ll wear my Louboutins.”
“Wait,” I said, steeling myself for something awful…
……….
“Call me when they’re fixed,” she texted later, having left angrily.
……….
The shoe cobbler was young. She was too pretty, her nails too long and skirt too short to be someone who toiled over footwear all day. But whatever. I handed her the shoes.
……….
That night the shoe cobbler came to my door wearing only the Louboutins. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting,” she said in a voice that belonged to someone else. She moved to take the shoes off, as is customary in my house. I grabbed her hand: “You’d probably better not.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, destruction, fashion, fire, Louboutin, relationships, sex, shoes | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
“I’ll have that ‘up’ please,” I said, shooting my thumb into the air as though I were a hitchhiker. The bartender smiled. I watched her limbs labor over my cocktail.
“Would you like a garnish,” she asked, transferring my cocktail from shaker to glass.
“A woman. Blonde. Green eyes. Thin.”
Without a word, the bartender snatched my cocktail and disappeared somewhere behind the bar, leaving me with a muted TV broadcasting the finance channel and a juke box that played only Soundgarden songs.
She returned a moment later. “Here you are sir,” she said through grated teeth, slamming my glass on the bar top.
I felt her eyes on me.
I grabbed the stem of the glass and readied to swirl the liquid inside.
“Careful sir,” the bartender said. “She might drown if you do that.”
Bringing my cocktail to my face, I looked closely at the woman inside: blonde, light eyes. She was treading water and growing tired. I looked at the bartender.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” She forced the words.
I scrutinized the woman swimming in my cocktail. “Actually,” I began, “she looks a little fat. I hate to be difficult, but would you remake this?”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, bartender, body, cocktail, death, drink, flash fiction, Short Fiction, short story, Soundgarden | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
She was topless, staring at a tattoo on her right ribcage–flowery script, four lines deep. A towel was in a pile at her feet; she had been readying to take a shower.
We locked eyes in the mirror.
“This wasn’t here last night,” she said to me but probably more to herself.
I grew defensive. “What do you want me to do about it?” I left the bathroom, shutting the door behind me–shutting her in there with her new and nonconsensual tattoo.
……….
I knew that tattoo. It was the same one my ex-girlfriend got on her right ribs. A verse from some obsequious poem. “It reminds me of you, K,” she had said.
When we were breaking up she bragged of planning to have it removed: “It’ll be like taking off a dress.”
……….
The sobs from the other side of the bathroom door continued. I slid a business card under the door (tattoo removal; complements of my ex-girlfriend, who left a pile in front of my door the day she moved out) and left.
……….
Two months later a shrill scream woke me. I knew what it meant. I fished a business card from my wallet and reached for my keys.
2 Comments | tags: affect, art, bathroom, body, business card, flash fiction, flower, poem, relationships, removal, ribs, Short Fiction, tattoo, verse | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
She came back from her trip to the coast with tan legs and a long scar across her face.
We drank cocktails at midday, avoiding the obvious topic: the scar on her face. “Thank you for not getting fat,” I said in all seriousness. “You’re welcome,” she replied.
The scar told a violent story I only partially understood. I had never seen her drink more than two cocktails at a time. She finished her third–orange and pink, too much ice–and yanked her skirt down an inch. She must have caught me looking for tan lines.
“I was attacked by a shark,” she said. She had been too far out. She waved off the Coast Guard when they tried to retrieve her. She swam further. Then the attack.
“I think a bull shark attacked me,” she explained. I said nothing.
She pulled a pen from her purse and began sketching on the back of our bill.
“This is what a bull shark looks like.”
I examined the figure. “That’s my friend K,” I said.
“Well he’s dead now. The Coast Guard killed him.” She stood, yanked her skirt down again and left.
I grabbed my cellphone and punched his number in.
Voicemail.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, death, phone, scar, shark, vacation | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
She was gone, leaving only a photo of her chubby adolescent daughter wearing a Batman mask and her collection of gilded objects. A cherub, a horse head–“found objects” is what she called them even though she bought each one at the mall.
Due to her interest in “DIY” there had been a permant cloud of spray paint in our apartment and empty cans of gold spray paint next to the trashcan. After she left I opened all the windows.
I put the photo of her child on my desk and moved her “found objects” into a pile by the door. It started to rain. I closed the windows. That night I dreamed she cut my torso open and gilded my insides.
I woke to a thick haze of spray paint.
I opened the windows. Once the haze lifted I found that everything in my apartment had been gilded: chairs, desk, mirror, toothbrush. Her “found objects” were gone.
The venomous scent of spray paint assaulted me. I clutched my stomach and fell to the floor.
“Don’t be such a jerk next time.”
I looked up. Her chubby daughter was standing above me, a disapproving look peeking from behind her Batman mask.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, Batman, daughter, DIY, gold, love, relationship, sleep, spray paint | posted in Her, Man, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
I glared at her from the other side of my martini.
Having wanted to break up with her for the past three weeks but not really knowing how, I convinced myself that she did something very malicious and harmful. That she deserved to be dumped. Bitch.
I took another drink and waited for the right moment. She prattled on about this and that. Her career. Her new tattoo. Her near death experience.
“A man threw me out of his living room window once. I fell thirteen stories.” I was suddenly intrigued. I reached across the table and took her hand. I married her two weeks later.
She tried to kill me a week after that. I pushed her in front of a bus shortly after. I dropped my wedding ring in the gutter and moved away.
Yesterday I overheard a man in a bar talking about his new girlfriend. “It dragged her for at least fifty feet. Can you believe it?”
“Sorry to interrupt, ” I said. “She’s wicked.” I offered a knife. “You’ll need this.”
There was a news report today about a man killing his girlfriend with a knife. Her picture flashed on the screen. I didn’t recognize her.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, break up, death, knife, love, marriage, news, relationships, ring | posted in Her, Me
I spoke in a paranoid manner, like someone dealing coke on a playground.
“She always wears the same pants–high-waisted, the color of mustard,” I explained.
K furrowed his forehead. “So what?”
He didn’t get it. She and I had been out six times, and while she was attractive, her sartorial choices revolved around that high-waisted, mustard-colored pair of pants.
K continued after an uncomfortable pause: “When are you seeing her next?”
“Tonight. She’s coming over for dinner.”
……….
I made her pasta and got her drunk. We groped at each other–unhooking, unzipping.
I reached for the button on her pants.
“Wait,” she gasped, clutching my hand, “we should stop.”
……….
“I’m ready” read the email. Twenty years had passed. But I knew what it meant.
She still lived at the same place. She seemed too old–a disease, she would explain later in the bedroom. She still had on the same pants. They were faded and badly worn in the knees.
“Fuck me,” she hissed. I grabbed her by the waist and yanked her pants to the ground. Her torso toppled from her hips with a thud. “Thank you,” she said before dying.
“For what,” I wondered. I hadn’t fucked her yet.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, body, clothes, dating, death, disease, fashion, mustard, pants, pasta, relationships, sex, wine | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
We got matching tattoos because that’s what you do when you run out of impermanent declarations of love and commitment. We decided on some words that, together, formed a pretty phrase.
We decided on body parts. She, reserved and corporate, chose some hidden spot safe from scrutiny. I, artistic and unstable, chose a much more public location.
Our tattoos bled together. They healed together. They started to fade together.
……….
“You’re not going to keep that, are you,” she asks as though she is talking about an ugly painting I refuse to throw out.
“Of course I am,” I say, rubbing my tattoo affectionately, trying to protect it from her ridicule.
“You aren’t?”
“No. I’ll get it covered up or removed.”
I try to imagine a design there: a chubby girl dressed as Batman, a trashy porn star sitting on a cupcake. “
You should really get rid of it,” she says, taping up the last of her boxes. “What would your next girl think?”
She pulls a knife from her back pocket and offers it. Before I begin cutting the tattoo from my skin, I briefly wonder why she had a knife in her back pocket in the first place.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, flash fiction, ink, knife, love, relationships, Short Fiction, tattoo | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
She yanked at her roots, both fists tangled in brownish/blonde hair. She had been doing it for weeks, eyes locked on herself in the bathroom mirror–tugging and pulling with all her might, until her eyes swelled with tears and her face twisted into a grimace.
“It’s not going to grow any faster,” I said in the most sympathetic way I could.
“You just don’t get it, “she spat, glaring at me in the mirror.
Everything changed the evening she came home with her new hair cut, the recommendation of an inept stylist whose theories of hair design have no place in reality. She hated me now. Not because I did anything wrong, but rather because I was part of the world in which she, now seven inches shorter, so to speak, had to live.
“Just go away.” She pulled on her hair again and slammed the bathroom door.
“You were wrong, K.” I woke in the morning to find myself floating in a sea of her hair. Her voice continued to utter ominous things, but, because of the mass of hair, I couldn’t locate the source.
I felt myself being dragged under. It was either the undertow or something else.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bathroom, death, hair, hair cut, mirror, relationships, sea, style, swimming, undertow | posted in Her, I, Me, Short Fiction
I didn’t ask–you don’t ask women about their bodies. But she obviously felt like explaining. She put her martini down.
“I adopted this bird–a macaw. Birds are really affectionate, and she loved to cuddle. But whenever I tried to set her down she’d get upset and latch on. I had to take her back.”
The blackish rings looked like railroad tracks traveling from wrist to shoulder. They were too symmetrical and evenly spaced to be the work of an animal. But her story seemed reasonable.
We went to her apartment. I saw an ugly green birdcage on the floor.
“I’m going to paint it black,” she said proudly. “Then I’ll keep my victims in it.”
I smiled.
Another martini. Her body invited me in. I turned it down. She seemed feeble, breakable, all of a sudden. She said she “like[s] it rough.” But women always say that, especially when you don’t really know them.
I went home.
At 3AM someone knocked on my door. I hoped it was her (men always hope for this). It was a gray bird. Slightly taller than I am. Probably stronger too.
We locked eyes.
“Stay the fuck away from my woman,” it said.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bird, bruises, drinking, macaw, martini, pets, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, violence | posted in Her, I, Me, Short Fiction
She opens her briefcase. “Why you keep doing this,” she asks in accented English. I can’t tell if she really wants to know.
“All I have left are fat ones. If you wanting pretty ones, you must ask early. They go first. Bitchy ones gone next for whatever reason–I don’t understand why. Then nice ones, girl next door. And so on. You wait till end of day, you stuck with fat women. Sorry. I told you before, you know?”
She readies her syringe.
I feel them flood my bloodstream. At this point it doesn’t matter what they look like, or if they’re nice or whatever. I collapse in a heap of myself, knowing that I’ll have to get off the floor momentarily. Knowing that, because the real pleasure is not in the high but in the anticipation of it, the fun is over.
“You need real woman,” she says as she collects my money.
I shrug, wondering if she’s flirting. “But what will you do without me,” I ask by way of humor.
“Don’t need you,” she replies. “All men are pathetic. Many customers.” She leaves.
I touch the hole in my arm and nod emphatically at nobody in particular.
Leave a comment | tags: accent, addiction, bitchy, disease, drugs, fat, girl next door, language, men, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, syringe, voyeurism, women | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
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
Her boyfriend sold sex toys. He was probably nice enough, though I tried not to think about him too much–all things considered.
She got out of bed and cascaded over to her closet. “Check it out,” she said, as she began chucking vibrators at me: red ones, blue ones, pink ones, grey ones. “I have tons.”
“Do you use them,” I asked, genuinely interested.
“Yes,” she said evenly. “He won’t have sex with me. He just gives me these.” She threw another on the bed. “He always has.”
“How many do you have?”
“I’ve lost count. He’ll come home, give me one, and demand I use it then and there.”
He was obviously crazy. But I kind of admired his twisted bravado.
“Have you ever had sex?” I needed to know.
“With him—no.”
She flittered back to bed and we had sex amidst her rainbow of vibrators—countless reminders of her weird relationship with her weird boyfriend. One after the other her vibrators turned on, as if controlled by some unseen being: Humming, buzzing, mocking.
“He’s here,” she whispered later on. “You need to go.”
I slipped out the back door, one of her vibrators firmly in my grasp.
4 Comments | tags: affair, affect, boyfriend, cheating, girlfriend, love, rainbow, sex, sex toys, sexuality, Short Fiction, vibrator | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
Holding my chocolate peanut butter cups in a gingerly fashion–the way you might handle an injured pigeon–, I waited patiently at the register. I was the only customer, and the cashier was nowhere in sight. Having no urgent business to tend to (except, of course, my chocolate), I felt no real need to shout for attention. I had never been in before today. But K, who already calls himself a “regular,” told me that the cashier was pretty.
I thought about just stealing my peanut butter cups; who would know? My devious train of thought was interrupted, however, by a quiet sobbing coming from somewhere toward the back of the shop, from behind a curtain that was ostensibly where employees sought refuge from their customers.
I pulled the curtain back. It was the cashier, her back toward me, her shoulders heaving. Her cellphone, still illuminated, was in her hand. Not wanting to startle her, I dutifully scurried back to my spot at the register. Moments later she emerged. Her eyes were red and vulnerable. I wanted to say something bold and heroic. I wanted to buy her a drink or offer a tissue.
Instead: “Just these peanut butter cups, please.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, candy, cashier, cell phone, chocolate, desire, love, relationships, retail, sadness, tears, thief, tissue | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“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.
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