Author's
Note: I was stupid enough to delete my first post, so I'm posting these stories
again. These are my (hopeless) attempt to write love stories without murderous
mermaids. I don't believe I did a good job, but here we go. The last story is a
repost from my other blog. It was inspired by a guy named Axle Cano (who
deleted his FB account, ), who dared me to write a story in under 500
words.
Here
you go, dear reader. I hope I don't break your heart too much.
ONE: Tenderness
He
just has to break his heart by asking the question, but the tenderness and the
beauty get the better of him:
“Do
you love me?” he asks, his voice soft, so soft that it almost gets lost in the
sound of the television’s static. Had his lover not been paying attention as
usual, had his lover’s mind been elsewhere - wishing, perhaps, that it was someone else asking instead, someone who
could be given a happier answer- the question would have been missed.
His
lover would do that when they fuck. When they come, the name whispered was not
his. His lover thinks he does not notice. But he does. He notices everything –
the reluctant touches, the cold, uncaring way his lover would take him to bed,
the blank, faraway looks.
He
knows the answer. It is evident by the way the eyes narrowed, the lips pursed.
The expression is harsh in the glaring red light but he thinks of beauty and
tenderness still. He thinks of delusions and pain.
He
hears something inside him break.
And
so Nathan smiles in response to the unspoken things that leave his heart
shattered, then he kisses Adrian’s hand. Between breaths to stem the flow of
tears, Nathan tells him it is alright.
TWO: Transition
When
his heart broke five summers ago, he kept the pieces in a jar and hid it beneath
his bed, away from the light and away from the world. The shards were so sharp
and so small that it will take many comings and goings of the moon to put it
back together.
I
will never love again, he told himself as he accepts the blessed numbness of
apathy.
***
When
he met her four summers ago, she was standing beneath the rain, her long hair
plastered to her pale, upturned face, her hands clasped to her breast. Her eyes
were closed and her pink umbrella lay forgotten on the pavement, together with
the canvas bag she took to school.
He
stepped forward and covered them both with his umbrella. She opened her eyes
and looked at him. The emptiness between his chest, mirrored by the emptiness
of her eyes, stirred like a dark cloud. Somewhere insignificant, he heard
thunder rip through the torrential rain
It
didn’t matter, because he could swear there was blood running down her legs and
that she was weeping in the downpour.
***
When
they first slept together three summers ago, it was after she had graduated as
a student and he had left as a professor. He had forgotten her as a student,
but he had not forgotten the way she looked in the rain. Nor can he forget her expression
when he penetrated her, again and again, until they fell asleep, exhausted. He
could never forget waking up with his arms around her and the fleeting hope
that, perhaps, he could keep her there. It felt right to have her there.
But
he also had not forgotten the pain of a shattered heart.
When
she woke up, smiling at him radiantly, he told her, gently and vaguely, that he
can never love her. She looked at him with an expression that betrayed nothing
of what she felt. Her only response was to kiss his hand and tell him it was
alright, before wiggling out of his grasp and cleaning up. She was out the door
fifteen minutes later.
He
remembered the bed turning cold in her absence.
***
When
she first slept in his apartment two summers ago, she assured him it meant
nothing. They had started seeing each other casually, which would almost always
end up in sex. She would always wait for him to fall asleep and leave before
day break.
One
night she asked if she could stay.
I’m
just tired, she told him, I’d like to rest a little. She adds with a teasing
smile, don’t worry, this means nothing.
She
fell asleep with her back to him, looking small and fragile beneath his
blanket. He remembered the tears and the blood and the rain and after a
moment’s hesitation, he put his arms around her. This means nothing, he
repeated.
As
always, she was gone the next day.
And
then the wounds started.
***
There
were band aids on three of her fingers. She told him, almost cheerfully, of how
she had mishandled a knife while peeling an apple. He reached for her, perhaps
to take her hand so he can kiss the fingers, but the dark cloud was back, the
blessed emptiness, the coldness that reminded him of pain, and so he stepped
back and turned away from her, mumbling something
He
saw her smile slip.
***
How
do you fix something that keeps breaking, she asked him like she did so many
years ago when she was a student. They walked beneath the stars. It was late
and the moon was bright and the night was cool. The cuts on her hand had
healed, but there were new cuts.
If
it keeps breaking then it is really broken, he remembered saying. Replace
it.
She
stopped walking and turned to him, her young face breaking into a smile so
trusting that he had to remind himself, like many times before, to be gentle
with her, to not hurt her because she was so very young.
***
When
he looked under his bed, in that jar where, three summers ago, kept his broken
heart. The dust was covered with dust and the shards which had several times
made him bleed were difficult to see. He opened the jar.
The
shards were still there, miniscule and cruelly sharp. It reminded him of the
pain, of the bleeding of his hands while, three summers ago, he desperately
tried to put his heart back together.
A
half-formed part of the once-shattered heart lay inside the jar.
***
He
met Yvonne three days after finding the heart in the jar. Her hair was long and
flowing, reaching her lower back. Her eyes were shaped like almonds, the color
of honey. When she smiled at him, those honey-colored eyes promised wonders.
He
asked her out for coffee that afternoon.
And
much, much later, to bed.
***
And
he begins to compare while he held the fragile girl in his arms. She was much
smaller than Yvonne. Her smile had undertones of pain compared to Yvonne’s
vibrant ones. Her temper was unpredictable and her manner of expressing them
was sometimes vicious and childish, whereas he has never seen Yvonne angry.
Yvonne was eloquent and elegant, whereas the girl who slept in his arms, who
was right now snoring a little and tightly pressed against his naked chest, was
clumsy and silly. Yvonne was gorgeous, whereas the one in his arms was plain
and too thin.
He
slowly removed his arms from around the girl. As night bled into morning, he
closed his eyes and thought of the woman he shared his bed with instead of the
girl that insisted on sleeping in it.
***
When
he woke up and saw the girl putting on her underwear, the first thing he asked
her was why she never stayed. It was an insignificant question when it left his
lips, but found himself truly curious as to why she left him every morning.
The
girl put on her jacket, hiding her thin frame, and with red, red eyes, she
looked at him and forced a smile.
I
don’t belong in your mornings.
The
girl did no come to him for weeks, but he barely noticed. How can he, when
Yvonne’s lips tasted like magic and the sound of her voice were like bells in
his dreams? It was she he thought off during the cold nights and for the first
time the emptiness within his chest did not threaten to devour him.
When
he looked into his jar and found another piece of formed heart, he thought that
maybe he was falling in love.
***
And
when he told the girl two summers ago that he would be marrying Yvonne, she
neither cried nor begged for him to stay. A resigned sigh escaped her lips as
her began to unbutton her shirt. He stared, transfix at the red line that marred
the place between her breasts – a wound he never saw whenever he would fuck her
and she would make love to him. Her bandaged fingers shook as she opened her
chest and took out the last piece of her heart - the one she broken when she
had lost her love and her child so many summers ago, the one she mended just
for him.
She
took his hand and kissed it, telling him it was alright. She gently placed her
last offering on his palm before turning away and leaving without another
word.
It
was two summers ago when the girl who gave him a heart left him.
She
never did belong to his mornings.
THREE:
Mother
As
tears streamed down her face, Naomi gently touched the sleeping child’s brow.
Her son shivered beneath her fingers and moaned pitifully. A grimace formed on
his lips.
It broke her heart.
But they were safe, she tried to convince herself. She had kept him safe. She
had kept him away from the bullies who tried to hurt him, had found the
courage to finally throw out his bastard of a father when she had seen the man
attempt to hit her boy.
They were safe.
Outside,
the sun slowly slipped off the horizon, bathing the city in blood, like the
blood that ran on its abandoned streets. There was no sound except her beating
heart and her panting breath. No screams, no shuffling of feet. That was hours
and hours ago. Naomi couldn't tell how long ago anymore. It was as if
the world decided to disappear beyond the glass doors of the ransacked
convenient store she decided to hide in – as if people, as if life, had
suddenly vanished.
They
were safe,
she whispered to herself again, unmindful of the wetness and the stickiness and
the distinct copper smell that invaded her nostrils. Instead she bent down to
her sleeping son and inhaled the powdery scent that only babies could have
despite the heat and the sweat and the running.
He
smelled wonderful, her boy. She placed a kiss on his cheeks, his skin warm
against her lips, and he shivered again. Despite her fear and exhaustion, she managed
to smile. He looked perfect. She decided her son was the most beautiful thing
she had ever seen.
I
love you,
she told him, aware that in his sleep, he could never hear her, but needing to
say it anyway. I promise I will never leave you alone.
Outside, the sky
darkened, and very gently, she embraced the sleeping boy closer, his baby scent
filling her, relaxing her. They were safe, she assured herself again,
feeling her eyelids grow heavy.
She
barely registered the tearing pain on her left thigh and the blood that soaked
her jeans as she adjusted her legs to be able to hold the child better. Her
eyes fluttered close and she slipped into sleep.
It
was only when she could not fight the exhaustion that dragged her under that
she realized, with mounting horror, that they were alone.
The boy woke up, a
few hours later, held so tenderly by his mother.
‘Nay?...Nay, it’s so
cold… Nay? Nay! Don’t-!
Outside,
in the abandoned town swallowed by the night and a scream, the dead began to
rise.
