Author S. K. Nicholas

When the words come, I imagine taking her from behind. When I come, I picture her open-mouthed to the empty heavens with a silent sigh escaping her tightened throat. The city so dark and dangerous, she looks out the window as I drink beer wishing I was dead. Living is so limiting, and the longer I go on, the more death seems so appealing. To be at one with the stars. To become like God, and to be free of the insects I share this damned globe with. She says I don’t mean it, but I do, I mean it from the bottom of my drowned guts. Beauty and sex. More awful than a hangover spent in the company of others. Her body interests me for a while, but it’s just a body, and beyond what it appears to mean, there’s only bones and muscle and the cheapness of repetition. There’s no such thing as love. We cling through the fear of being alone, through the need to be seen as not being weak, but not through love. The same always the same as she curses me for being a bore, yet it’s the rest who are bores, not me. Their disguises appal me, as do their finely tuned lies. As I light a smoke, shadows are cast on the ceiling from the lights of a passing car. As rain steadily falls, the mirror on the wall reflects her body, and although only minutes ago it was what I craved, it now makes me avert my gaze. Too many wires. Too much death as I flick ash from my belly onto the rug on the floor. She goes into the bathroom leaving me alone, but I’m always alone, even when I’m with others. There will never be a happy outcome. I can feel it in my bones. Words and alcohol give me a way to escape, but if love can’t save me, then nothing can. Getting up and watching the lights on the darkened horizon shimmer, she sings while taking her shower. Sitting on the windowsill, I imagine all the galaxies out there, unseen and unknown and shining invisibly. All those planets, those landscapes of untouched perfection I long to pervert. When she comes back to the bedroom, I push her face first on the bed and take her again. Her body shivering beneath mine, I imagine all those gas giants and dead seas of memory I’ll never get to see, and as I shoot my seed deep inside of her, somewhere nearby comes the sound of shattered glass.