Tag Archives: Short Fiction
“Another one is dead,” she said flatly. I rolled my eyes: “Well, go get a new one.”
“If you neglect them, they’ll die.”
I wasn’t listening. Her engagement ring caught the light and cast her every word in doubt. Despite my harsh tone, she grabbed her Burberry and left for the pet store.
I approached the birdcage. The remaining birds had pecked the third one to death. It was new, a replacement for my first bird, which died of old age. The birds were huddled together keeping warm in the winter air. I nudged the birdcage with my hip and made my way to the coffee table.
She came home empty handed. “Sorry, K. They’re out of birds.” She wasn’t sorry. She didn’t understand my affection for things that die easily. “It’s fine,” I murmured, pressing my chai to my lips. “Get in the cage.”
She went to the closet and fished out last year’s Halloween costume.
I reminisced fondly of ripping the parrot head off in lusty urgency, pulling the zipper the length of her body. She opened the birdcage and crawled in.
She and I used to be like those birds. I closed the cage and locked it.
Leave a comment | tags: affair, affect, bird, birdcage, death, flash fiction, parrot, pet, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
“If I had anywhere better to be, I’d be there. Believe me.”
The bartender shrugged. “Get yourself a girlfriend or something. You’ve been here every day this week. It’s getting pathetic.”
It was my turn to shrug: “I’m too narcissistic. I wouldn’t know what to do with a girlfriend. I mean, I’d have to stop thinking about myself so much.”
She scoffed. Then she took her arm off and put it on the countertop. “Problem solved.”
I was amazed by her insight. With her arm, I was free to indulge my deepest narcissistic desires and find comfort in a woman’s touch without giving anything in return. I snatched her arm up and left a bigger tip than usual.
Back in my apartment I caressed the arm and pressed it to my face. I kissed the back of its hand. I put its fingers in my mouth.
“Fuck me,” it moaned. Instinctually, I ripped my right arm off and threw it to the floor.
……….
“What’s wrong,” it asked disappointedly.
……….
“I don’t want this.” I put her arm back on the countertop. “It wanted to have sex.”
“And?”
“Sex leads to complications,” I huffed, proud that my ego was still in tact.
3 Comments | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, bartender, body, ego, flash fiction, narcissism, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Me
The first time I saw her sunbathing was during high summer: a nearly naked body prostrate and baking on a frayed beach blanket.
Through autumn and winter, everyday she was out there on her blanket. Even under the oppressive winter sky she darkened. Over time I memorized her skin—its gradations, flaws, and changes.
One evening I saw her out at a restaurant. Winter was lifting but it was still cold. I was sitting alone at a table when a woman appeared in my periphery. I didn’t know her face, but I didn’t need to. The hue of her skin betrayed her identity.
“Excuse me,” I called from my seat. She turned.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t mean to startle you, but I see you sunbathing everyday. Won’t you sit with me?”
She slid her face into a smile and sank into the offered chair. I extended my hand, hoping she would allow me just one touch of her bronzed hand. She obliged.
It was an exquisite appendage—soft, smooth, slightly toned—and in spite of myself I grew excited.
Unfortunately, with her other exquisite appendage she pulled pepper spray from her coat and wasted no time in shooting me with it.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, autumn, body, flash fiction, love, pepper spray, relationships, restaurant, seasons, Short Fiction, short story, skin, summer, sun tan, tan, violence, winter | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
She was certain that we would either get caught and arrested or piss off the spirits of all the people in the ground.
“Look,” I implored, arms spread wide, “this place is so big nobody will ever find us if we choose the right spot.”
“And the ghosts?”
“The spirits aren’t going to be here—unless all these people were buried alive.”
She offered a strained smile of defeat. I took her hand, leading her away from the sunlight, tour busses, and plots of important people.
“Over there.” I gestured toward a gloomy stone that had the rejected air of being cast off by the other stones.
She bent over and gripped the top with both hands while I yanked her pants down.
“Um, wait.”
“Why?”
“This stone has your name on it.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious. Look.”
I leaned over her, my now flaccid penis brushing against her bare ass. I rolled my eyes and scoffed.
“That doesn’t concern you?”
“Why would it?”
“It says you die today.”
Just before my gruesome death, I felt a figure lurch in my periphery and heard her scream—“K! Stop it!”—as the jealous knife of her husband sank repeatedly into my flesh.
Leave a comment | tags: affair, affect, cemetery, death, flash fiction, ghosts, grave yard, graves, husband, jealousy, knife, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, spirits | posted in Her, Me
She had a constellation of shitty stars tattooed on her body. They were cartoonish and lumpy, the shape of holiday cookies. I followed them down her spine and around the bottom of her left torso, where they then descended and coiled loosely the length of her left leg.
“These are awful,” I said. She shrugged and rolled out of my bed, complaining about needing to “wash [my] scent” off. That was our first and last conversation. I closed my eyes and when I opened them—evidently much later—she had left. My wallet was gone and I found a syringe in my bathroom.
I drove to the crumbling neighborhood where I first saw her only a few hours prior. But now I saw only drug addicts milling around and a woman bobbing her head to an inaudible rhythm. I called from my vehicle, interrupting the woman. She swore at me and displayed something sharp. I drove off, fretting.
At a loss, I slithered into a tattoo shop and demanded my own constellation from the worst artist on staff. He readied his inkwells. “I’ll give you an extra thousand if you tattoo me with this,” I said, offering him the syringe.
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K, though dying, was in the best shape of his life. “The TSA agent asked if I was a gymnast,” he boasted the other day. “I told him I was just a narcissist.”
K wasn’t just a narcissist. I don’t remember the name of his illness, but it was fatal. Still full of vigor, he paraded around in his Under Armour, revealing every crevice and striation in his torso, like an aspiring Mister Universe. In another several months, he would become hollow, like a drug addict. What would the TSA agent say then?
When he took too much medication, K would rant about “beauty in decay.” Then he would hit the gym extra hard. K read too much philosophy—chubby men expounding on a reality they know nothing about. Have you ever watched somebody die, I hissed once, angrily. We disagreed a lot these days.
But K was right. He had more girlfriends than I could count. “Do they know you’ll be dead soon,” I asked after he regaled me with a story of a hefty blonde.
“Of course. They wouldn’t be interested in me otherwise.”
For the first time in a long while, I found myself agreeing with him.
Leave a comment | tags: addict, addiction, affect, death, drugs, flash fiction, gymnast, illness, Mister Universe, narcissism, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, TSA, women | posted in Him, Me, Short Fiction
“We don’t know what happened to the dinosaurs,” she said. She was too attractive to be a paleontologist. I nevertheless listened to her lecture. But I didn’t believe her.
I whispered to K: “Bullshit. She knows exactly what happened to them.”
K brushed me aside and marched toward the paleontologist, much swagger in his step. “She wants to have sex with the two of us,” he reported back, smiling as though he were staring in his own porn. I would have fucked her, but the idea of three bodies heaving and groaning together was off-putting.
K left the museum with the paleontologist. “I’ll find out what happened to them,” he said in my ear on his way out.
I visited K in prison six months later. He was wan and sickly. “What the fuck,” I said.
“I cut her head off.”
“Why?”
“She would’t tell me what happened to the dinosaurs, so I killed her.”
I couldn’t say anything, so he kept talking.
“But the weird thing was,” he said with piercing eyes from behind plexiglass, “I looked down her neck after I cut her head off. I saw a bunch of dinosaurs grazing.”
“On what,” I asked, genuinely curious.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, dinosaurs, eating, flash fiction, museum, orgy, paleontologist, prison, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Him, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
When K told me that he was going to kill himself if I stole his girlfriend, I didn’t believe him. I didn’t think that I could steal his girlfriend.
K was wealthy and educated, and what girl would refuse such a man? I was the opposite in every respect; had I found myself on the Titanic or an equal vessel I would have had to steal my way aboard. I began flirting with her simply out of spite, as if to insinuate to K that although he could have whatever he wanted, I could take it from him with ease (rich men have large egos, which is a huge turnoff).
I didn’t enjoy fucking her. Indeed, I courted her out of spite. And she, the caged bird of a wealthy birdist, allowed me to court her for the same reason.
She and I were upstairs when K’s telegram arrived, announcing his imminent demise—“…by the time you read this I will be dead.”
“Shit. K’s dead,” I said after reading the telegram. She, still in my bed, feigned sadness.
“I guess you’ll have to marry me now.” She coiled my blanket snuggly around her.
K, from somewhere safe, probably smiled.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, ego, flash fiction, marriage, money, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, spite, telegram, wealth | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
“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.
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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
“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’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
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
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
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
