September 5, 2012
Quick Fiction
“You’re like a god damn machete!” she screamed.
On a small table, next to a wooden chair was a tumbler filled with whiskey, sitting on a doily.
“A dirty knife, Eddie. You’re a dirty, rotten machete! You cut me!” she said.
The small table was mahogany and it matched the chair where this woman’s words were being directed. There sat Eddie, counting the lines in the wood that the furniture was made of, wondering how old the tree was when they cut it, considering what the natural color of the wood might have been before it was stained and reshaped for the function it now served.
“And when you cut me Eddie, it burns. It gets infected. You see what I’m saying. It gets all fucken infected in my brain and it doesn’t fucken heal. Evertime you fuck me over. I can’t take it. I can’t continue to get cut and infected inside my freaking head Eddie,” she said. “Are you list-en-ing?”
If Eddie tilted his weight a little, the right leg of the chair would creek. He did it a few times to figure out if it was the floor creaking or the chair.
He lifted the whiskey to take a sip and stared at his hands noticing the tiny strands of hair escaping from his fingers. They were delicate hairs for an old man. He liked the fact that his hands still displayed youth.
“You’re a piece of shit, Eddie,” she said.
She went on to verbally batter him a few more minutes that, to him, seemed like hours, while he sat and witnessed precipitation occur on his glass. He watched it drip. Then there was sixty seconds of silence.
“I’m dying inside, Eddie. I love you. Let’s go see a movie?”
