Author S. K. Nicholas

Making love on a sheet of thin ice that covers our favourite lake, we lie on our backs soon after looking at shooting stars so breathless and cold to touch. As a young man, I witnessed a thief having his hands cut off for stealing a loaf of bread. Lead into a courtyard by those just as unruly but in a position of power, they held him down on some hay and fastened a strip of cloth over his mouth to stifle the subsequent screams. Raining down blows on his prone frame, they produced two knives and heated them over hot coals. Glowing something devilish, they cut through flesh and bone as if they were butter. There wasn’t much blood as the wounds were cauterised quite well, but the sight of it still made me feel sick. Pulling me towards her, she buried my head in her bosom and said it would be okay, but it wasn’t- not by a long shot. This was around the time she posed for me while topless and wearing the clip-on ears of a fox. She had a bushy tail to match as well, but the ears were the main attraction, and whenever she danced I could never go more than five minutes before having her. Smearing oil paints all over her body, I would create shapes on her belly that spoke to me of what it meant to be alive in a time of indifference. Holding hands and fantasising about the end of the world, I light a cigarette as she swallows a mouthful of vodka. She says it’s to keep her warm, but I know the dreams that plague her sleep, for they’re the same that plague mine. Pulling her close, we talk about things that can’t be undone, and although I keep back so much, she knows what worries me most. Admiring her sullen beauty, she sings the lyrics of her favourite song; ‘Calendar Girl’ by Stars. She cries, but I don’t judge, for I’m just as weak and unbecoming as she is. There’s something about these moments that render me numb. It’s not that I can’t see the tenderness of them, or that they don’t move me emotionally, it’s just that they’re so meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Despite our love, and the pain we endure, we’re just flesh and bone. We’re nothing more than chance, and the unconscious will of evolution. I don’t tell her this, though. I don’t need to. She knows it better than anyone.