Author S. K. Nicholas

She’s an eraser with a thing for black stockings and not shaving. I say I don’t like it, but she doesn’t care. Smoking my cigarettes as she drive’s us into the night, within the hour I’m deep inside of her. She wears her mother’s curse and has her father’s eyes. I try not to think about it, but every time she digs her nails in, they’re staring into mine, wishing I was dead. Placing a pillow over her face, she wriggles beneath me then stops breathing. Thinking I’ve suffocated her, I run into the garden and throw myself onto the wet grass among all the slugs and frogs. Covered in their goo as I frantically crawl away from them, I fall into the ice-cold pond. Thrashing about, the reeds wrap around my ankles and pull me down. Imagining spending the next twenty years in jail being buggered and slashed with knives by men twice my size, I’m almost drowned when she comes to my rescue. Pulling me to safety, her smile melts my heart, and as I run my fingers through her hair, I know there can never be anyone else. Within her essence, she contains all the planets and moons, and in her touch, the sun is not hot but merely warm. Placing my right thumb on her chin, she reveals teeth so perfect they seem unreal. When she bends over, the arrows of time divide. When she removes her dress, all layers of existence melt like butter on toast in expensive hotel rooms. Somewhere in London, on a week’s worth of my wages, she parades around the room wearing the underwear I’ve bought her. I’m not in control, though, I’m never in control. She want’s us to fuck outside, but I’m worried we’ll be caught, and I don’t like the idea of strangers seeing my balls. So I throw money at her, and she accepts. I don’t want to get married, and nor does she. She doesn’t even want children. I ask her what she does want, and she responds by throwing the question back at me. Narrowing my eyes, I know what she’s getting at, and pull her close as we recline on a bench overlooking the sea. Covered by a blanket, there are no answers, only the waves that reach out to our fearful bodies with her palm so restless in mine.