Tag Archives: break up

2016/12/29

The Blood Reemerging

By dsholloway

The door creaked open. The bald florist on the other side offered K the same expression he offers him every year on the thirtieth of December – looking somewhat like a vet explaining to a crying child the fate of her shar-pei.

“Happy anniversary, K,” said the florist, presenting the same maudlin bouquet of half-dead flowers he presents every thirtieth of December.

“Thanks,” replied K heavily, reaching one arm through the gap in the door. “No card, I suppose?”

The florist shook his head. “I’m afraid not.” He looked at K with no expression: “Why do you keep putting yourself through this?”

K propped the rotting flowers on his hip. “I don’t know. I keep hoping that maybe this year it will be her knocking instead of” – he paused – “well, you. Not that I don’t like you.”

“It won’t, K. It’s been five years. She’s not coming back. At least she remembers your wedding day,  I guess.” The florist shrugged and took his leave.

K closed the door and set the dying flowers – her favorites – on the kitchen table.

He then marked in his calendar exactly 51 weeks into the future, when he would place his next order with the bald florist.

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2016/10/03

Blatant Self-Plagiarism

By dsholloway

“You know,” she said, curling up in the passenger seat and pressing her cheek against its red leather, “I had this dream last night. You were made of pizza and I ate you.”

She reached across the console and rested her hand on mine, concernedly.

She continued: “It was awful. I felt like calling you, but I knew you were sleeping.”

Bullshit, I thought. She hadn’t called me in months. She only agreed to go out with me tonight because I told her – to my karma’s horror – that I was dying. We drank too much wine, and, in her drunken state, she decided that her dream portended my demise. Then she asked if I thought she had gotten fat.

In our months apart she got a new boyfriend and I got a new car. I stuffed her in the passenger seat and drove her home.

My car idling in her driveway, its headlights glaring at the back of an unfamiliar vehicle, she refused to remove her hand. Her house was dark.

“If K is so great,” I huffed, “where is he tonight?”

She sighed, said nothing. Then she moved to kiss me but sank her teeth into my face instead.

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2015/05/31

Our Desperate Historical Situation

By dsholloway

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.

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2012/08/02

Events Like This

By dsholloway

The very last conversation they had went like this probably:

K: Why are you being mean to me?

Her: I’m not being mean. I’m trying to be indifferent.

K: Trying to be indifferent? Seems like a contradiction to me.

Her: [Slams door.]

The next morning, K zipped his suitcase, folded the linens, and left. He made sure to wake before dawn so she wouldn’t hear. But he knew she was awake and listening from inside the guest bedroom, where she had taken to ensconcing herself everyday since all the bad stuff happened.

By now she had monsterized K to her friends. He could do the same, you know? But who would he tell? And who would care? And wasn’t there some kind of implicit confidentiality pact, besides?

As a final menacing gesture to prove a point that was mediocre at best, K nicked her brand new Clearasil before he left. Later, he will smother his cat o’ nine tails in it before flogging himself.

Much later he will hear–through the usual outlets–that the man she met on the internet two days after they broke up kidnapped her and demanded a handsome ransom.

K will try to be indifferent.

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