Her long sharp fingernails terrify me. They flash in the light like a surgeon’s scalpel.
For three days I hid in the closet, came out at night, never turned the lights on and drank cold soup straight from the can. Knowing what those fingernails can do kept me a prisoner in my own home, creeping through the dark like a cat burglar filled with the fear of being trapped on the second floor of a madman’s mansion.
I didn’t answer my phone when it rang at midnight, at two in the morning or when the sun was coming up. She left a voice mail on the third day, four short sentences that froze my blood; “I know you are in there. I am coming over. You are going to let me in. We are going to talk.”
We are going to talk.
Words uttered without a shred of warmth. What was there to discuss? Anything I said now could never erase what I had done to her, to us.
To escape, I crept out the back door, walked three miles in the dark to Jeff’s Pub, slid onto a barstool and stared at my gaunt image in the bar’s back mirror.
Amos the bartender brought a cold beer. “You got that look,” he said, plopped the bottle down, leaned toward me and put both hands on the edge of the bar, as if bracing himself for my response.
“She’s going to kill me,” I said, “after she slices my balls off with those fingernails.”
“I know,” Amos the bartender said, then laughed. “At least you’ll die for love, you lucky bastard.
For three days I hid in the closet, came out at night, never turned the lights on and drank cold soup straight from the can. Knowing what those fingernails can do kept me a prisoner in my own home, creeping through the dark like a cat burglar filled with the fear of being trapped on the second floor of a madman’s mansion.
I didn’t answer my phone when it rang at midnight, at two in the morning or when the sun was coming up. She left a voice mail on the third day, four short sentences that froze my blood; “I know you are in there. I am coming over. You are going to let me in. We are going to talk.”
We are going to talk.
Words uttered without a shred of warmth. What was there to discuss? Anything I said now could never erase what I had done to her, to us.
To escape, I crept out the back door, walked three miles in the dark to Jeff’s Pub, slid onto a barstool and stared at my gaunt image in the bar’s back mirror.
Amos the bartender brought a cold beer. “You got that look,” he said, plopped the bottle down, leaned toward me and put both hands on the edge of the bar, as if bracing himself for my response.
“She’s going to kill me,” I said, “after she slices my balls off with those fingernails.”
“I know,” Amos the bartender said, then laughed. “At least you’ll die for love, you lucky bastard.
