I’m home. No place else to go. I’m walking into it because there’s not a goddamn other thing to do. I’m not driving, but I own I’m speeding towards a vicious sucker punch.

Here we come, walkin’
Down the street.
We get the funniest looks from
Ev’ry one we meet.
Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees
And people say we monkey around. -The Monkees (Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart)

I’m in the door and immediately smacked in the middle of the face with the reek of decay. Time to take out the trash. Do the dishes. Check the toilet.

A lingering smell of The Rabbit Watership. A record skips and I am melancholy. He was soft and smart. The coolest, softest and most amazing colors of brown orange and white.

Just like that I’m leaking and sobbing.

I make a drink. A convoluted recipe with only gin and ice as ingredients. Tricky. There’s a ratio.

Check E-mail. Survey dying plants. Dead plants. Feel doomed.

She calls from down the street, coming up on my cross streets she says. Looking to hang.

I can’t wait to turn around and walk out of here.

He’s been here. There’s pyramid of rolls on the toilet tank. The four ice trays represent eight points of the compass accurately on a shelf in my freezer.

I wash up, brush my teeth. Blow my nose. Put on a little lotion. Powder the boys.

Lips like pillows. Vanilla, berries and muskiness. Sweet almond eyes I can’t always see behind. Fresh fruit from orchards under a silver crescent.

She talks and I’m soothed.

She touches and I’m softer.

There’s no helping it.

I’m so raw.

It’s what I need. See.

First I saw her, she was walking in the rain talking on the phone. She smiled a lot. Not like the sun, like the moon, quitting a cloud on a gusty night.

My nose reminds me every time I walk away.

We had drinks and she ended up with a piece of me. I wasn’t giving it. She ended up with it. She took it.

She kept it for a time. Through some holidays.

She tossed it back. Casually. Unapologetic. Not in the same condition she had come to take it. Not at all. Bruised. Swollen.

I’m a nice guy. I do the best I can. I try. Didn’t take long for me to decide against having her legs broken.

A decision based more in the principles of aesthetics than morality. Just couldn’t perpetrate that kind of crippling violence on such a beautiful woman regardless of what she may have coming to her.

I’m kidding. She deserves nothing of the sort. I made a conscious decision not to be angry and to avoid the temptation to be vindicatory. I have endeavored to be her friend.

I really try to do my best. I’m always looking for early Sunday morning in a small town grocery store with a bakery.
The bouquet of sugar and cinnamon. Men with perfectly pomaded hair and perfect piles of fruit.

Fish drown in air.

Now she’s on the phone. Wanting to see me. To confide in me.

Vulnerable. She would be angry if she knew how adept I am on the subject of her.

I understand full well the apocalypse I’m courting. I whisper in my own ear about making sure she gets home. Drive her if necessary. Get her a cab. I will, I tell myself. So help me. I will see her home safely.

We meet in a dive. Across the street. Convenient for me, I’m not trying to drive at all.

As soon as I sit she is willfull and contrary. She likes to spar. Guilty of being smarter than she is.

Behind the eyes, she’s not so bad. A pain in the ass of innocence. Culpable of zealotry. Pride. Maybe from privilege. Maybe. Too much of one thing or another I’m sure.

I want inside her with my arms around her. She is the Moon. Mercury glass. Shadows and silver light.

Enough obstinance to still piss me off. What to say to someone who barely knows shit about how much they don’t know? Whatever really, why bother? All in time, hers, not mine. Smart, capable and the heat of Georgia asphalt.

She thinks she understands. Bare shoulders and there are my thumbs. Loose sweater and a funky hat. Impossible skin. Impossible color, silk beneath my fingers. Hands turn to palms, fall to hips, the most gorgeous mouth I’ve ever seen.

I hope she resists cynical.

She charms and lures me into places where she can make fun. I return fire with as light a hand as I’m able.

The North Pole may melt this summer. The Earth may have decided it’s done with us.

We’re at each others eyes and we know where we’re headed. We think we do. She drops a credit card on the bar and excuses herself to the ladies. Her heels swing her hips away from me. Her skirt dances with flawless rhythm.

I sign the tab and do the tip in cash. She grins coming from the bathroom. No smile. Grin. I hand over her card and she takes my hand. Outside we’re having a smoke. She points her face at her car and asks if it’s ok here. I shrug my shoulders. I really don’t know.

We break the law by running across five lanes.

My place is kind of a shithole. She doesn’t seem to mind. She uses my shower. She’s wearing my robe.

Lacey thong a gorgeous contrast to flawless skin. Matching bra and I’m consumed. She shines. She writhes as she responds. Quiet until she breathes. In gusts. Little tempests.

Any man, between the ages of thirteen and fifty five to ninety something, will view bare breasts with an absolutely identical mindset.

Take the breath away beautiful. Astride me she’s smiling. She brings the moon. I take her in while I’m inside her.

I look up only to gasp. She is a silhouette in three dimensions with color, sound and smell. Her head back, the moon hangs low and plump. The night blooms.

Like flowers. Just like flowers blooming and perfuming once the sun has hidden itself only to shine the moon for an entire hemisphere all night long.

The breeze is lit and lent weight with fragrance.

This is……….. Moot.

She is dead. She is dead.

Dead.

I’m a coward and a fool.

Life is odd and painful. There is no substitute.

There is no way another person could ever love me if they knew the things I’ve done. No way anyone could trust me or believe I deserve another chance. What I have just done is as bad as even I can imagine.

I’ve sacrificed a human. A woman. A human being. Another one.

A very very special human. Beautiful and innocent. Corrupted only by the circumstances of ordinary existence, no kind of evil or malice or fuckery………

He killed her of course.

First thing he does is fold her like a piece of fucking toast as soon as he has my attention. I look up as he collapses her, shattering bones with two hands. She starts to scream out of simple fright and confusion. A few seconds and she wails like a siren with pain and comprehension. Abrupt stop. She can’t expel breath, she gurgles and burps. He bursts her at her sides, makes her pop and spray as he folds her. A cacophony of snapping and rending, moist and excruciating. Her blood is black on three of four walls lighted only by a cold silver moon.

I will travel to hell, with it being the worst thing I’ve ever seen. All of it on me.

My fault. I knew. My end draws near.

I am sorry. So very sorry.

I adored her. I loved her.