Lust Demented

{VIII}

BLACK RAIN. WRITING IS A race against death. The only difference that the present moment had over the day to day was the assassin slicing up the competition and leaving my calling card behind in torn from the binding. Usually when I left a room of writers, a suspicion lingered that my delusions were justifiable.

Cloud sweat pounded my armor chest. I could only march on unashamed to ruin or fame. Delivery guys in their makeshift ponchos chugged forward through the honks. The city was mad with hunger and willing to pay dearly for her secret fetish. It had been a long time since I’d seen or been seen. Seasons had passed since the public success of my pilfered novel. It was no mystery to any of them that I was sitting around chanting obsessed curses of vengeance.

Nude in the dim lighting, Missy moved in a trance of summoned passion. The music was loud enough that she didn’t notice me at first. When she did catch my eye, it was with a gas chamber stare. A metaphoric blade at my throat.

“Practicing for the old man?”

I was staring lost into the East River. I didn’t remember exactly how I got there, but I could remember other things. Spend enough time in this town and every corner becomes stage for a memory. There was a bench at my side that I just couldn’t sit on. Last time I sat on that bench, Missy stood behind me with searing eyes.

“You’re not a man.” Her words were forever etched.

“You don’t even know what a man is.”

“You’re not a man, Farrow.”

“A man survives.”

“What?”

“A man survives. That’s all.”

Missy’s reasoning at the time was based on nothing more than what she wanted me to decide for her. I had already made my decision before I met her. Just the same, she had already made her decision before she met me.

“You’re no writer.” Engorged, her breasts shook as we waited on line at the supermarket. She was pregnant. Hormonal.

“What do you want?”

“I have no idea. I only know what I don’t want.”

“Then what don’t you want?”

“I don’t want you here. I don’t want your baby living inside me.”

“It’s our baby. Not only mine.”

“It’s nothing.”

Missy had room for a dozen razors under her tongue. She explained how she had no choice. We weren’t ready. She had to kill it. Now ghosts of dead publishers and overly ambitious writers were at my sides. I wondered if anything changed. The bench was still there. I wanted to rip it out of the ground and throw it in the fucking river. That’s just what I needed to do, so I did it.