Category Archives: Woman
“Tell me a story or I’ll shoot her.” He raised his gun. The pretty brunette made indistinct noises from behind the bandana in her mouth.
So I did. I told him about this aspiring writer who decides to do something crazy because he only knows how to write about “what actually happens.” He decides to rob a bank but falls for the bank teller. While he intended to write a note demanding all the money, he ends up writing her a poem. They go on a date a few days later. They go back to his place for a nightcap. There’s a knock on the door. The aspiring writer opens it and finds a man holding a gun. The man barges in and, for reasons unknown, ties up the aspiring writer and the bank teller.
“What happens then?” The man with the gun asked.
I told him how, in the story, the man with the gun forces the aspiring writer tell him a story.
“And then?” The man with the gun asked.
I told him how the aspiring writer doesn’t know how to finish the story and how the brunette begins to fear, more than ever before, for her life.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bank, date, fiction, flash fiction, gun, hostage, relationships, robber, story, thief, writer | posted in Her, Man, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“She likes you,” her little dog said. “But here’s what’s going to happen: sometime soon she’s going to offer to make you soup. She’ll ask your favorite kind. You’ll tell her. Then she’ll show up with groceries and wine and you guys will cook your favorite soup and drink nice wine. You’ll sit down to eat but you’ll die. I’ve seen her do it countless times.”
“Why? You said she likes me.”
“She does. But like will turn to love which will eventually turn to hate. Kind of makes sense if you think about it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I like you too…. She’ll be back soon. So just act normal.”
I did.
“Know what,” her voice was sincere. “Let’s make dinner tomorrow. Why not soup?”
I glanced down at her little dog, which was avoiding eye contact.
“What’s your favorite kind?”
“Clam chowder,” I said confidently, knowing that clam chowder takes all day.
“Great. I’ll take the day off. Clam chowder takes all day, you know?”
I was somehow okay with such an extended death ritual. Her previous boyfriends probably hadn’t received such preferential treatment.
We smiled at each other. Her little dog probably rolled its eyes.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, boyfriends, chef, cooking, death, dinner, dog, flash fiction, girlfriends, hate, love, murder, relationships, soup | posted in Me, Short Fiction, Woman
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
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
Thus he woke to find that the woman’s name he gleefully got tattooed on his arm was now a different woman’s name. (I love you, he had said gazing into her eyes as the needle pierced his skin. He grimaced. But not because he loved her.)
Did you do this? He woke her up. It was of course impossible to alter something as permanent as a tattoo. But she was understanding as she absorbed his accusation. I didn’t. She rubbed her eyes and tamed her hair.
He studied the name. Then he kicked her out, proclaiming undying love for the woman whose name now inexplicably graced his arm.
That night he went to a karaoke bar. What’s your name he asked a lot of women. Then he went home.
Several weeks later he was at a steak house when a woman touched his arm saying that’s my name. She was fat, but it was probably a life lesson he told himself. He invited her to sit down. They talked. He found her pleasant but she was still fat. So when she politely excused herself “for a moment” he grabbed a steak knife and began digging at his tattoo.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, body, fat, inscription, karaoke, knife, love, relationships, steak, tattoos | posted in Man, Woman
K was convinced that she was the one hurting him during the night, that she was the one leaving knives in his body while he slept.
“She’s going to kill me,” he said to a friend once, refusing to elaborate.
She didn’t kill him. But one day she woke to find K dead, his head thoroughly severed from his body and covered in lipstick. She sighed. You men, you have no self control.
K had gone to the Isle of Women again.
He never told her of his dreamscape philandering. But he didn’t need to. Every night he went to the Isle of Women and every night from within her own dreamworld she watched him go.
The police told her he died by his own hand. Which would make since: those marks on his body he attributed to her were also self inflicted. One night she woke to find him pummeling his own face, shouting remorseful things about “the nature of men.” She never brought it up.
So she believed the police. She also kinda believed he killed himself out of guilt. But she also kinda believed he killed himself so he could stay on the Isle of Women forever.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, dream, love, men, relationships, sleep, suicide, women | posted in Her, Him, Man, Woman
For my birthday, my girlfriend gave me something she made. Last year it was something she constructed from forks and spoons.
This year it was a flower pot, out of which a hand was growing. I recognized the hand; I had bought it for her to hang jewelry from.
“You don’t have to water this kind of plant.” She laughed.
I watered it everyday after she left for work. It didn’t take long before the hand grew a wrist.
Under some pretense, I took my potted hand from her apartment, claiming it would look good in my house, which I hardly called home at all these days.
There I watered it dutifully, spoke to it, played it pleasant music. The wrist grew a slender arm, which grew a graceful shoulder.
A woman! I grew excited and pulled on the arm. A beautiful woman emerged from the soil. Our eyes met. We embraced. Then she pulled me back into the soil.
Later that day my girlfriend came by. She didn’t find me. But she found a flower pot with two hands in it. Presuming I had made it for her, she took it back to her apartment. Her birthday is tomorrow.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, birthday, gardening, gift, hand-made, jewelry, plant, relationships | posted in Me, Short Fiction, Woman
The clerk leaned across his counter and whispered: “Did you know that if you send the US Treasury a $2 bill, they’ll send you back $2.15?” He went on to whisper related information, but I stopped paying attention.
……….
When I was a kid my father stockpiled $2 bills in the basement of our house, sure that one day $2 bills would be the only viable currency. After he disappeared, I took his cache of $2 bills and folded things out of them.
I folded boyhood things: submarines, rocket ships, best friends. After boyhood, I folded my father’s $2 bills into weapons and electric guitars. Most recently I folded a woman and fell in love with her.
I promised to provide for my origami woman. She dismissed my masculine posturing, however, and asked only that I never unfold her, echoing a promise I had already made to myself.
………
I unfolded her that night, the clerk’s whispers of “profit” ringing in my ears. But not before taking her out to an extravagant dinner–like, candlelight and oysters flown in from faraway. It was out of my price range, but, envisioning the money I would get for my origami woman, I wasn’t too concerned.
I ordered us another round of martinis.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, candlelight, capitalism, family, martini, money, origami, oysters, relationships, shopping | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
K enjoyed the night shift because it was quiet. You’d think suicidals (as they called them) would be most active at night when you’re alone with your thoughts. You’d be wrong, though. The serious suicidals do it during the day when everyone else is busy.
K enjoyed the nightshift because at 11:45 PM every night a woman would call. The first time she called, she was patched through at random. “Hello, my name is K.” etc.
Every night thereafter, she would ask for K, telling whoever might answer her call that she felt most comfortable talking to K and, do you really want to risk not letting her talk to him?
K anticipated her call even if he was otherwise preoccupied. Her life being at stake and all, he looked forward to talking her down from the ledge every night.
One night, she didn’t call. K should have presumed the worst. Instead, he presumed that she was mad at him or that she didn’t “need” him in that way anymore. He tracked down her phone number and called her, not finding anything ironic.
She answered after one ring, an unfamiliar cheer in her voice. K hung up immediately, his worst fears confirmed.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, emotions, fear, intimacy, phone, suicide | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
The woman got stranded in Iceland once, after following a guy she “loved” onto a raft.
She went to a casino in the capital and shoved what little money she had down the throat of a slot machine. Finding that she had a knack for that kind of thing, she won big: she bought a ticket back to the US and even had enough money left over to try and get her life back together after love fucked everything up for her. She moved to Las Vegas.
She had this favorite slot machine in the corner of her favorite casino. It was always good to her. They first met on a whim; she had a feeling about it, that’s all. They liked each other immediately and spent evenings and weekends together. She told the slot machine about being stranded in Iceland. She told the slot machine about other bad stuff, too. The slot machine was extra generous at times like those.
One day she told the slot machine about this friend that was worried about “[her] gambling addiction or whatever.” The slot machine was silent for a moment. Then it smiled a big smile and offered her more money than usual.
2 Comments | tags: addiction, affect, casino, desire, gambling, Iceland, Las Vegas, money, relationships, slot machine | posted in Short Fiction, Woman
He orders a Kyoto cold brew because, served as it is in a snifter, he thought it was a cocktail of some sort.
……….
Two young people are sitting across from each other, he notices, conversing in strained registers. The guy has on an Interpol T-shirt and wears a barcode tattoo on his left forearm. The woman is carefully tanned and obviously out of his league. She is drinking something from a straw. She tells him about chiropractic school and drug addiction. The guy doesn’t say much. The woman continues to tell him about how intellectuals often suffer from some sort of spinal disorder because they’re hunched over “all the fucking time.” She seems nervous; it’s probably their first date, or whatever. The guy doesn’t seem like much of a swearer–despite his Interpol T-shirt and tattoo.
……….
How did these two people find each other, he wonders from the other side of his Kyoto cold brew. They’re togetherness is off-putting, he decides. Nevertheless, it’s probably interesting–whatever happened to bring them together. But of course, it is totally not happening. Silence envelops the pair.
She looks across the room and her eyes settle on a man drinking a Kyoto cold brew. She smiles.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, cafe, coffee, date, drug addiction, Interpol, Kyoto, relationships, tattoo | posted in Him, Man, Woman
“Why did you bring that thing back,” she asked, knowing the answer. “What would you have done,” K replied, reminding her that she had been present that evening at the fat man’s house; reminding her that she had been present when the fat man forced the painting on them, exclaiming, “This one is my favorite and I want you to have it.”
How the fat man could tell “this one” apart from the others was anyone’s guess: countless framed images of Nordic women in various states of ecstasy–heads cocked, hair tousled, etc.–and undress adorned the walls of his modest middle-class home.
(Although she pretended not to overhear, she had heard the fat man whisper something like, “This one reminds me of your girlfriend,” before handing K the painting that now occupied a prominent space in their alcove.)
“It’s creepy,” she huffed before marching into the bedroom.
“I’ll throw it out tomorrow,” K said meagerly.
When K woke up in the morning his girlfriend was gone from their bed. He found her in the painting next to the Nordic, face in a frozen, forced smile, eyes pleading but also seductive, body contorted erotically and unnaturally.
He decided to keep the painting.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, domesticity, erotic, fat, Man, Nordic, painting | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
There was one bottle of wine in her wine thing that was off limits. Other wines would be bought, drank, bought again; but this particular wine was not to be quaffed unless the most spectacular occasion presented itself. She waved away his contention that the opening of a nice bottle of wine was its own occasion, offering instead: “Do something deserving of recognition, and I will open this bottle. Just for you.” An obstinate sort, he committed to doing not one “…thing deserving of recognition,” but rather many:
He cured cancer. He deflected that big meteor that was projected to destroy earth. He saved poor children. He repaired her ugly relationship with her family. He was, like, totally okay with her guy friends. He fought with rebel forces.
She was impressed by the things he did and readied to open said bottle of wine, one evening, over candlelight. “Wait,” he said, touching her hand. “Everything bad is in there–poverty, jealousy, illness. If you open that bottle the world will go back to how it was.”
She set the bottle down and moved to kiss him. But she set it too close to the edge of the dining room table.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, cancer, family, poverty, romance, wine | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
The florist was clear: you needed the petals from 450 roses. Just perfect, she thought, for she had always planned on asking for K’s hand approximately 450 days after their first date–thus one rose to commemorate each day spent together. Ever the progressive sort, she forbade K to ask her to marry him: When I’m ready, I’ll ask you, she said 300 days ago.
150 days later, she did just that. At a restaurant way out of her price range. It was romantic, if financially ill-advised. They swiftly made plans to marry and she dutifully began plucking the petals from 450 roses. See, she had this grand idea of spreading the petals over the floor of the catherdral where they would claim ownership of each other; a floral walkway from entrance to alter.
She coaxed her vision to fruition, successfully scattering the petals of 450 roses like the ashes of 450 dead things the morning of their wedding. Then she customarily hid herself away until the appropriate time.
But that time never came because K slipped on her rose petal path and broke his neck in an overdetermined fall.
The florist had said something about that possibility. But she pretended not to hear.
Leave a comment | tags: church, cremation, death, florist, marriage, petals, roses, wedding | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
It took him much too long to realize that his new tufted-back chairs were eating his other pieces of furniture. In fact, it was not until the girl he, like, was totally in love with said to him one morning, K, your dresser looks sad, that he realized the ordinariness of his world was creeping toward impasse.
Or whatever.
She was right, the girl he, like, was totally in love with: his dresser did look sad. An inquisitive sort, she pried further: Why did you get such a sad dresser? She figured it was some sort of high intellectual thing to surround oneself with negative affect–K being a high intellectual and all. The truth was that K’s dresser was less sad than afraid–fearful that today would be the day that K’s new tufted-back chairs would decide to eat him. K hadn’t really noticed that his furniture was slowly disappearing: he was in love and when one is in love, one doesn’t really notice things.
But there is one thing K will notice: tomorrow his tufted-back chairs will decide to go after the girl he, like, is totally in love with. He’ll notice, too, tears falling from his dresser’s eyes.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, chairs, dresser, fear, furniture, intellectual, love, Man, melancholy, sadness, woman | posted in Short Fiction, Woman
Know where the best chocolate is?
The fat fuck next to me leaned in.
There’s a lingerie shop on Q street, besides a Montessori school.
I didn’t know how he knew I was fond of chocolate. Perhaps rumors were starting to spread. He earned my curiosity. I’m K, I said. I don’t remember his name.
The next day I went to the lingerie shop. An appropriately pretty girl was picking out a thong for a half exposed wooden mannequin.
A fat fuck of a man suggested I come here for the chocolate.
She did not look amused. She balled up the thong she was still fiddling with and shoved it in her back pocket. She walked toward me, unimpressed by my presence. How much do you want? Not a lot, I replied.
She brought a pretty finger to her face, traced her lips, and then bit it off.
She yanked the thong from her pocket and wrapped her finger in it. Eat within three days or freeze.
………
I bet it’s delicious I said to myself later. But it’ll probably make me fat. And I was too narcissistic to let that happen.
Then my mind wandered back to the fat man.
Leave a comment | posted in Me, Woman
A sheet of paper, littered with menacing and indecipherable scrawl, plastered itself to the windshield of her luxury automobile. She should have turned around and gone back home. But she pressed on because she loves adventure and whispered threats of danger. Another sheet of paper, littered with the same scrawl, viciously wrapped itself around the hood ornament of her luxury automobile. She cursed because she curses often. It’s sexy. But that’s irrelevant to this story, probably.
The paper blew thicker and with greater force, like the churning ash left by nuclear explosion though less awful. Her phone buzzed. She ignored it. Because she already knew what happened: her 70-story office building was gone, and in its place a love letter standing 850 feet high had been left by someone obviously insane.
The first time this happened she sought to make amends with the author and convinced him to put the building back. Be reasonable, K, she had implored. That was a long time ago.
She approached the letter and lit it on fire with a fancy lighter she received from somebody not insane. She watched it burn for a moment, a flicker of satisfaction in her eye.
Leave a comment | posted in Short Fiction, Woman
She knocked on the door again–for the last time, she told herself. There had never been no answer.
She knocked again and buried her face into the lapel of her grey Calvin Klein. It was cold.
She thought back to the first time she knocked on his door, when she invited herself over to drink his vodka and snoop through his stuff and block his driveway with her luxury automobile. You left something behind, he reported the next day, referring to the scent she had worn. Stop by tonight to pick it up.
Never one to shy from playful confrontation, the woman began leaving things at his house, which guaranteed a return trip so she could forget something else: You left something behind… Stop by to pick it up. It was cute.
But the ritual took a toll on the man, who seemed to age between visits. His body grew gaunt, sick. She asked of his health always; he waved away her concern, smiling.
Last night she left a silk scarf. Tonight she was going to leave a key to something special. She placed it in front of the door and marched back to her automobile-which was blocking the driveway.
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There was something sinister waiting for K. He sensed it when he pulled up to the woman’s house. He sensed it when she greeted him at the door. She gave K a warm hug, and though he was outwardly receptive to it the way heterosexual men are always receptive to any sort of physical contact with attractive women, his insides recoiled from her touch.
He didn’t understand. While there had always been something incongruous about the woman, K had attributed it to the fact that she owned a hideous scarf that forestalled otherwise sartorial perfection. Worse, she insisted on wearing it.
The woman led K to the kitchen where she was readying a stilted romantic dinner. Wine? she offered, uncorking a bottle of Q.
She handed him a glass. K jostled its stem and watched the red liquid agitate. He used to drink Q regularly because it matched some girl’s lipstick. After she killed herself, he stopped drinking it for that reason. The woman offered a toast, her smile smeared with the perfect shade of red.
K put his wine on the counter and dove inside. The undertow pulled at him, as the woman brought his glass to her lips.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, date, lipstick, relationships, scarf, suicide, wine | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
Once a year I go to the bank vault. Once a year I am greeted by the woman in black and white and tell myself that next year I’m going to ask her out. We make small talk as she leads me to my lockbox. She leaves me in privacy. I open my box and let all of the memories out.
The bad ones. The ones that cause harm and hate. I deal with them, in the lockbox room; I relive them. They can’t escape; neither can I. Then after a while I put them back in my lockbox and leave. Then I go to Starbucks.
……….
I went to my lockbox yesterday. One of my memories was missing. I considered summoning the woman in black and white and demanding an explanation, but that might ruin my chances for a date next year. So I reconsidered. Plus: she’d never understand. She’d ask what was missing and what would I say? I closed my lockbox and went home, worried. Where is my memory?
At 3 this morning there was a knock on the door. A woman was on the other side. She seemed familiar though I didn’t know why. I invited her in.
Leave a comment | posted in Me, Short Fiction, Woman
He refuses to believe that the world has changed. That’s an unfortunate thing to do, really, and dangerous. He fucks recklessly, convinced that a simple dose of penicillin will disarm the worst of whatever afflictions brood inside women’s bodies.
I don’t really care about that.
What I find interesting is that he never locks his doors—car, house, whatever. He should. But he doesn’t. Because he refuses to believe that the world is a place where you kinda really should do that. I asked him about it once. He said the world is good and decent. He also said that a MARINES CORPS sticker on his windshield would garner him respect from criminals who, after seeing his patriotic sticker, would go steal someone else’s shit. I asked him what if you get ripped off will you lock your doors. He said no because I believe the world is good even when at times it isn’t.
………………..
When the new girl—made out of silicone just as I like—told me that she wasn’t in it for the money, I believed her. The old girl had said the same. But she had been lying. But the world is good. So I went to the ATM.
Leave a comment | posted in Him, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
Women claim that they wear thongs so that continuity is not disrupted (something about panty lines). But as the woman tried in vain to dislodge her thong from her ass, her continuity was disrupted in a most unanticipated way. She picked at it through her tight leather pants, and had she not been so focused on her discomfort, one would have thought she wasn’t wearing underwear at all–sublimating any presumption of propriety (which research suggests is the “real” reason women wear thongs these days). (Don’t ask me how I know that.) (I’m paid to know a lot about a lot of things.)
K nudged me. Get her to stop doing that, he said. You do it, I countered.
The woman spun around to face us, having evidently overheard our conversation. With a focused gaze, she kicked off her shoes and slithered out of her leather pants. Then she took off her thong and crammed it in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed with minimal effort.
Giving us both the finger, she marched off, leaving her shoes and leather pants behind.
I glanced at K. That was weird.
I know, he replied. I’m wearing the same exact pair.
Leave a comment | posted in Me, Short Fiction, Woman
The man who lives next door took my old girlfriend.
I had propped her up against the dumpster in the alley. But not five minutes later I saw him sauntering toward his porch with her tucked under his arm and a grin on his face.
It’s just as well, I thought with good reason, for I had thrown her out. Yet I caught myself thinking about them. (Guys get like that so it’s fine, really.) I also thought about her two dimensional curves and her icy eyes–her best feature.
I had to see her again. Under the cover of night I crept over to the man’s house and peered through a window. He was on the couch uttering things to her. She was leaning against the wall, staring at him. Those eyes used to fixate on me, I said to myself, consumed with rage probably.
The next day while the man was out, I broke into his house. She was in the bedroom. I pounced and ripped her to shreds. Then I lit her on fire. But I don’t understand fire. So the fire spread to the rest of the house.
I ran back to my house and dialed my realtor.
Leave a comment | posted in Me, Short Fiction, Woman
