Tag Archives: pain
“Anything at any price,” read the inside of the card, which featured a cat sleeping in a martini glass.
The attending package – displaying no return address – contained a cylindrical fish tank, complex instructions, and laudatory remarks:
Congratulations! Your new jellyfish will arrive tomorrow. Make sure your tank is calibrated to the appropriate temperature. Jellyfish are temperamental creatures, so handle your new friend with care!
I assembled the tank, placed it on my dining room table. I filled it with water and spent my evening hours envisioning various scenarios occurring within its narrow walls. In my mind, I saw her treading water, face creased with deceit, anger, and hatred. I saw her puff her cheeks up before descending toward the bottom of the tank for no reason in particular. I saw her begin to convulse and spasm, unable to ascend to the surface. I saw myself jump into the tank to retrieve her from the bottom.
The creature arrived the next day. It was dead already. I placed it in the tank and watched its tentacles gently keep it afloat. Then, thinking I could revive it, I jumped into the tank and pressed my lips to the top of its hood.
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She sent herself to me, in a box wrapped with celebratory wrapping paper. By the time she arrived on my doorstep, a day late, the wrapping paper was badly tattered and you could see that the box she stuffed herself into was a shoe box that had contained men’s shoes, size 8.
She had a bow in her hair that was, in spite of the rough journey, relatively still in tact. Probably at one point positioned just so atop her head – like a halo – the bow barely clung to her forelocks.
She smiled at me when I opened the box and something unintelligible leaked from her badly distressed lips.
“That’s from stress you know,” I said, falling immediately back into my long neglected role.
“Fuck off,” she whispered playfully. Her makeup was smeared against the insides of the box and missing from her face almost entirely.
I picked her up from the box and kissed her, bristling against her dry lips.
Then I frowned, peered into the empty box. “Where’s the rest of you?”
It was her turn to frown. “It’s not important.”
I tucked her under my arm and marched inside. “I wish you would have told me you were coming,” I said. “I would have tidied up.”
“Happy birthday,” she said, changing the subject. She uncoiled her tongue to offer me a shiny tungsten ring. It was the one I wanted.
“How long are you staying?”
“Until I bleed to death.”
Then she sunk her teeth into her tongue.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, body, capitalism, death, fiction, flash fiction, love, marriage, pain, relationships, romance, shoes, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
I lost the needle I used to sew her mouth shut. That also meant that I couldn’t sew her hands back onto her arms, or reattach my tongue – which I bit off, impulsively, after I swore I’d never speak to her.
Some time later, she asked me to cut her hands off and sew her lips together so she wouldn’t be tempted to sing me songs or write me poetry. I obliged, though her voice and her words sustained me.
I kept the needle on a chain, which I wore around my neck. When she was ready, I promised, I would unsew everything – when she was ready to nourish me again.
But I was mugged one day, coming home from the store. During the struggle the chain came off my neck and the needle disappeared. The eggs in my shopping bag also cracked and yolk got everywhere.
She smiled at me when I got home, but all I could do was cry and hide my bruises. When I opened my mouth, incomprehensible consonants tumbled out. She only gestured and flailed in return. I took a pen and wrote everything down: the mugging, the eggs, the needle. She shrugged, accepting the forever silence.
All I could do was write. All she could do was read.
But we discovered solace in each other’s gaze – and love, compassion, understanding. The silence would heal us.
Until I found her in the kitchen, her left eye dangerously close to the flame of her favorite candle.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, body, candle, death, eggs, fiction, flash fiction, love, needle, pain, reading, relationships, romance, Short Fiction, short story, writing | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
Never did I think I would love, for love was a ridiculous, childish concept.
But I loved, finally, in spite of myself. I loved, I knew, because I thought only of her, always. Because she was my default, my origin.
She says, “Fuck you, K,” in a voice that craves verbal violence, disappearing from view even though I can see her, touch her. I reach, she recoils – a perverse dance. She looks at me with the eyes a stranger, yanking her engagement ring from her finger, throwing it out the window.
I go outside and sift through the bushes. I find her ring floating in a dog’s water dish.
I pretend I am not relieved and go back inside. She is dead, having swallowed my pain killers.
I put her ring on her lithe, cold finger. I press her lithe, cold finger to my lips.
Then I go to sleep, taking the same pain killers. I dream of our wedding. Our families are present. We are happy.
I wake up, see her dead body at the kitchen table, coax myself back to sleep. Again our wedding, our families, our happiness.
I wake, finish my pain killers, kiss my phantom bride.
1 Comment | tags: affect, death, dog, drugs, flash fiction, love, marriage, pain, relationship, Short Fiction, short story, sleep, water, wedding | 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
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
“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
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
