There he
was, arms like hanger steak padded on to bone, all gristle and muscle with
snakes of throbbing veins warning of the tempest of blood that rushes to his
hands gripping the ragged old fan belt he had hanging on his grease stained garage
filled with rotting hamburger bits and dried cum. He was pacing, forehead tight and wrought with
overworked veins, beads of sweat desperately trying to cool a mind filled with
rage. Jaw tight and flexed, hiding gnashing teeth and a tongue searching for
the answer to life’s questions in the inside of his mouth: frantic, panicked.
“Why,why,
why?” He kept asking the chair, the table, the beat up cheap plastic chandelier
and fan combo barely able to turn, much less provide ventilation, as if it too,
was cutting through the tension of the air.
He kept
pacing, playing with the plastic belt, slack and tension dancing an all too
familiar dance. His head was swiveling up and down, left to right, exploring
all three dimensions of the air around it. Incensed by this, he wraps the fan
belt around his head, from the top down to his chin, like a little oily, 5 o’clock
bearded little Bo Peep. Then he started tugging, the sharp and ragged edges of
the belt streaking red on his bare scalp and turning the sides of his head into
its own personal railway.
“Mmm… hmm…
urhmm,” was all that she could muster, lying slack at the corner of the little
apartment. Her flimsy dress worn thin by years of hand washing was now soaking
up the grime and month old piss that she sat on. She was wringing the front of
her dress to a tight little ball wet with sweat and tears. The straps were
taught with the effort of keeping the dress in one piece, digging into her shoulder
blades which were colored like a two-day old eggplant: mostly violet, with a
splash of green and mottled veins.
“You’re
making me do this, you bitch,” He whispered. “I told you to wash the dishes after
you washed the clothes, but what do I come home to?” His voice trembling,
rising like the sea, crashing in a scream, “A sink filled with filthy dishes!”
If you were
there, you would have sworn it was not a person he was castigating, but a stray
cat, too frail from countless nights in the rain, eating only what the gravel,
and other strong vermin, left for it to eat. All you could hear were quiet
whimpers and labored breathing, as if the tension in the air made it more
difficult to breathe, clawing at her trachea, drowning her in fear.
In a split
second, the fan belt was slashing through the air, like bloody thunder crashing
into her cheek, reopening a wound two weeks old that never got to heal because
of the constant kind open palm slaps. A foul smelling mix of blood and clear
fluid drained out of the wound, now two fresh channels of exposed flesh, the
new path starting as white snow, only to perspire beet colored blood.
“You’re
making me do this!” He screamed as he cocked back for another blow. “You should
listen! Everything I tell you is simple! Are you really that dumb?” He belts
out as he lashes once more. Aiming for her legs, which have countless scars in
different states of healing, making her once creamy skin look like an archipelago
of long, keloidal mountain ranges, fresh new wounds, a kaleidoscope of bruises
and smaller islands of dried, caking scabs.
Lash, after
lash, after lash. Like a familiar love song she hears on the radio when the DJ
plays old classics in the dead time of the afternoon, she knew the beat, rhythm
and rhyme of this activity. He got like this every time he felt guilty of
something, lately, it’s that whore dispatcher from the job he has on the new construction
site. His twelfth job this year.
She isn’t
stupid. In fact, when they first got together, people frowned upon her decision
to hitch her blooming office career to his down and forgotten star.
But from the
first moment they kissed, she knew, she knew deep down, that she had to have
him. That she’d face hell and high water to be with him. He needed a part of
him.
A part of
him.
Just a
little part of him.
And that’s
what she got.
As he was
lashing him, a steady, perfected process that is second nature to him, she
tripped him, and let him fall to the shearing scissors she was hiding. The
scissors were those you would normally see in sweat shops; big, solid that
makes short work of thin leather. As he fell forward, the scissors punctured
the top center part of his abdomen, piercing the lungs and heart in an upward
angle.
She held her
tight in a soft, calming embrace, running her free hand through his hair,
staring deeply into his fading eyes, listening as you would an old classic, for
his last dying breaths… and she kissed him. Deeply, as though she wanted his
life to be transferred to her body through one kiss.
“I’ve loved
you, ever since I met you. I know I never could survive without you,” she
whispered lovingly as she turned the scissors around, warm blood sputtering
from the gaping hole she’s created, the resistance of his innards a feeling in
her hands that reminded her of mixing together a nice dough for sourbread. “I
could have taken the beatings, in fact, I have. I loved the pain, and the
pleasure we share afterwards,” the life was leaving him now, fleeting
electrical impulses sent out by a panicking body the only thing keeping him
alive. “Don’t die on me, not just yet,” she said as she forced him to look at
her.
“But you
should’ve known… I never liked to share.”
And with
that, she lost the love of her life.
But she
knew, that she still couldn’t live without him. That she wanted, nay, needed a
part of him to survive… just a little part.
---
“Damn,
McGregor, I’ve seen some crimes of passion, but not like this,” said the grizzled
detective to his youngish partner.
“The perp
sure did a number on this fella, sir. Even forensics would have a hard time
piecing this guy back together.”
“Not even
the king’s men can put back this Humpty Dumpty.”
---
Far into the
forest she walked. Dazed, hungry, thirsty, her feet proving to be no match for
the terrain of the woods. But she didn’t care, she was stroking him, his best
parts, tied to a string like a necklace, like a sick pendant, his severed dick
and balls.
“I don’t
like to share, I don’t like to share,” people say they hear a woman’s voice hum
those words over and over again, hiking in the forest that ate her whole.