Paring Down

The words snag on each other, tripping over one another as they make
their hastened escape from the flooded chamber. The result is
misunderstood, as incoherent as daybreak when heavy eyelids struggle to
make amends. His voice box would gargle and creak as his mouth would
open to speak, yet no one knew quite what he meant. The look in his
eyes should have said it all, but all it did was make everything else
that much more complicated.

It was nights like these that really made him think about death. The
television was on in the background and he was thumbing the blade of a
paring knife. They say that when you check for the sharpness of a
knife-edge, you should always run across the blade, not along it. If
you ran along it, you were just stepping right into the merry bandwagon
of self-mutilators. He ran his thumb along it.

The carmine solution trickled over the silver stainless steel,
effortlessly. Each teardrop of sanguine bliss kissed its way off the
tip of the blade. A puddle formed at the toe of his dirty leather work
boots. A Cimmerian simulacrum of the boot was attached like so many fat
housewives, but Daddy wasn't coming home again. And there was a mess to
clean up.

The paring knife was slippery from the blood and rather than wipe the
handle, he just let it fall inert to the floor. It landed in the puddle
and a crimson slow motion ripple shot up into the air. Spatters of red
married brown and integrated themselves into the dirt. We all return to
dirt anyway, so it came as no surprise. All it does is make us wonder
why we bothered listening to anyone in the first place, if the words
become nothing but specks in the wind, pollen on our windshields, dust
on the exercise bike. The housewives never used them - they had nowhere
to go.

So he was there, knifeless, bikeless, hopeless. One hand hung limp by
his side over the arm of the chair while the other clutched at his
eyes, fingers pressing into the sockets, massaging his eyelids and the
eyeballs beneath. He called out her name for help, but she never
answered anymore. She was swept away by brooms and bluster, lost in
herself. He began to cry. He wiped his eyes with a bloody thumb and
looked like a stigmata. But not even the Pope could hear his heart
breaking.

He shifted his body. His head hung with his shoulders, hunched over his
knees. His hands hugged each other behind his head, hair intertwined.
What had happened so long ago that left the words so hard to come by?
Where was his dictionary when he really needed it, his diction, his
dick? She took them all with her that splendidly fateful evening, when
the calm storm had passed and the air felt like rayon without a
wrinkle. She left the paring knife, but now even that was gone. There
was nothing left but death and a puddle.

But he could not die. His will would not allow it. He ached for more.
He ached for life, for ever. He wanted what ever he could find. But
ever was a night away, and he was a day behind. Always a day behind.
Time plays cruel tricks on the impatient, dangles the cheese in front
of their noses and the smell is impeccable.

That is her favorite word, he thought. Impeccable. She always walked
around the house naked, exuding impeccable. Her eyes are. Her face is.
Her nipples can be. They all stood up for something that no one wanted.
It was all an impeccable romance of one, an orgy of self-indulged
necessity. We need to feel perfect.

He ran the toe of his boot across the film that began to form on the
puddle. The coagulated skin frowned and collaborated. A streak of red
creased across the cedar wood floor. The cut on his thumb from the
paring knife ached. He looked away. Pain like this is only bearable
when he allows himself to be lost in it. So he loses.

He only lost at cards when he ever lost at all, when she used to answer
his calls. "She is not dead, just in transition," he thinks to himself.
Pride would not let him believe anything else. Money and pride were the
only consequences of losing. Now, the stakes raise and what's left is
sanity. Life as we know it is gone as the ones we love are. Moving on
is running along the blade.

The cards are shuffled that evening and are discarded into the puddle
of life. The ace of spades is surfaced with a thin coat of blood, the
suit indistinguishable. As it sinks into gory obscurity, he moans. That
was his card.

Our cards are lost in an abysmal obscurity, impeccable. Our hands are
dealt, as is his, as is hers, as is theirs. She lost her hand reaching
for a cause. He rises from his consistent pose and wafts across the
floor. His old dirty boots leave trails of red clay dirt mixed with
brown wood stain mixed with red liquid fury. His grief becomes anger.
He stoops and retrieves the ace of spades from the puddle, holds it by
the corner and watches the ensuing drizzle. The plastic coating on the
card repels the advances of ensanguined invasion. The cards are made by
Bicycle.

He moves to the kitchen and opens a drawer. In the drawer is a lighter
and a knife. He reaches in and pulls out one. With it, he sets the card
ablaze. He holds it while the flames flicker and dance in harmonic
resonance of kinetic proportions. The fiery zeal moves up the card and
consumes the large black spade in the center. The smell of plastic and
paper and blood all burning fill the room. A smoke alarm screams, but
he does not hear it. He just feels the warm pain of flame tickle his
fingertips as ash floats to the floor like silt at the bottom of the
lagoon.

When it is all over, he will pick up the ashes and let them sift
through his fingers and wonder what could have been. He will put them
into an empty matchbox and save them for a day less kind. He
remembers.

The first night they made love, the sky was ablaze. Green and purple
and red sparks showered their bodies that glistened next to the shiny
1965 Chevelle he cherished so dearly. Their erratic motion and
irrational emotion drenched the blanket beneath them with saline
rapture. Everytime he moved into her, he could feel the cutting
indulgence, the burning shudder. The next day, they re-enacted.
Impeccable.

When the impeccable delivery came at noon to the clinic, she signed for
it. She was at the clinic because she believed it was her choice to do
so. She was not dead, just in transition, she thought. She carried the
package through the waiting room. Thirty seconds passed. The package
exploded.

"How much can happen in thirty seconds?" he asked himself. In thirty
seconds, a first breath can be taken. A new dream can be bought. A
quivering, sensual joyance can be realized. A love that was once true
can be falsified. A woman can die.

The room was engulfed in flames by the mail bomb when he arrived. He
was supposed to be there at noon, but was running late. He had brought
her favorite lunch, a ham sandwich and a fresh apple. She liked her
fruit peeled so he brought her paring knife.

"What cuts more than a knife?" he asked himself. Is it knowing that you
can never cut the same way again? And as the fire trucks emblazoned the
hot asphalt, racing towards the clinic, her body slowly turned to
dust.