Tag Archives: affect
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 said she wanted only to swim with the jellyfish. “It’ll hurt,” I said, “a lot.”
We gazed out at the ocean.
“I know,” she replied, sharply.
She had this thing about being hurt during sex–they always do at first–and was ready to make the jump to daily life.
“I’m a masochist,” she had said the first time we had sex. She didn’t understand that masochism is a complex theory of living. And I didn’t feel like explaining it to her. So I did as she asked and broke her fingers with a hammer before fucking her.
But as she eyed the ocean I became concerned. “Masochism is contractual,” I pleaded, suddenly feeling as though I were discouraging her from having an orgy with numerous men who weren’t me. “I know when to stop. Those creatures don’t.”
She sighed. “Jesus, K. Give it a rest. I know what I’m doing.” She stood and untied her bathing suit. Without looking back, she ran toward the ocean and dived in. I haven’t seen her since.
I wonder about her from time to time: did she drown, did she find her jellyfish?
I ignore rumors of a jellyfish woman with mangled fingers.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, fingers, hammer, jellyfish, love, masochism, ocean, orgy, pain, relationships, sadism, sea, sex | posted in I, Short Fiction, Woman
“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
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
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
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
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.
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
Ever since K woke up dead, or so he was convinced, he had turned into a bit of a jerk.
That won’t do at all, he said in a huff. That’s how you choose to remember me? He snatched up his eulogy and tossed it in the garbage. I tried to feel sorry for him, because whatever mental affliction he was suffering from seemed to be rather burdensome. Then I began writing a new one.
Help me, he pleaded several weeks ago. I’m dead. I could see the fear in his eyes, and though I didn’t believe him, I was sure that he at least believed he was dead. I made a joke about zombies. But that only irritated him.
As the weeks went by he lost interest in everything that used to be meaningful. The only thing that seemed to jolt him to life–so to speak–was discussing how the life that was now, according to him, over would be remembered.
But the novelty of having a dead friend was eroding quickly.
Are you done yet, he barked? I lunged from my desk and sunk my pen into his neck.
Thank you, he said, as he died a second time.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, eulogy, fear, friendship, irritation, life, murder, pen, zombie | posted in Man, Me, Short Fiction
I’m sorry, she said. I can’t help it.
I rolled off of her and looked at her in a soft way, pleading silently for a logical explanation. She looked away. Don’t be mad.
K warned me to stay away. But that only encouraged me. You know how guys are: they think they’re the exception to the rule.
She was nice enough to let me try, but it was obvious that I was too alive.
She spoke calmly, knowing I needed to be told something grand: I went to a party once and my boyfriend at the time told me to meet him in the bathroom. It was completely dark in there when I pushed the door open. I couldn’t find the light switch. I groped around until my hands landed on what I thought was his erect penis. So I got on top, fucked him, and snuck out. Very erotic. I found out later that it was actually a dead man with rigor mortis in all the right places. My boyfriend broke up with me and I haven’t been interested in the living since.
After a moment, I said: I’m going to hang myself in the bathroom.
She only smiled.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bathroom, death, life, love, party, relationships, rigor-mortis, sex | posted in Her, Man, Me, Woman
I grimaced at my reflection, fixated on the red streaks creeping down my jaw.
“Why don’t you go to the doctor,” she said, worriedly, from behind the bathroom door. “It’s too late for that,” I hissed.
She thought I blamed her for the infection. Before our relationship became serious, and even in the weeks following its serious turn, she begged me to get a tetanus shot. I refused. There was something romantic in the risk.
The first time she kissed me, she held back. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. But one night she kissed me without thinking. I remember the sound of the nails in her mouth grinding against my teeth. I remember the taste of blood running down the back of my throat and down the sides of my mouth. “Sorry,” she said. “Don’t be,” I replied, still believing in romance. She urged me to go to the hospital. “What if it gets infected,” she asked. I muttered something about fate, trying to smile with my mangled orifice.
I continued staring at myself in the mirror, convinced the red streaks were getting longer by the second, making their way to someplace vital. Probably to my heart.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, flash fiction, heart, hospital, infection, kissing, love, mirror, mouth, nails, pain, relationships, romance | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
