She’s got her cigarettes. She’s got her magic pills, too. Those that keep her mind from cracking like a nut when things get too much. Swallowing one with a mouthful of ginger beer, she pinches her nipples and bites her tongue imagining it’s his teeth and not her fingers working their magic. If she closes her eyes, his voice drifts to her from under the bedroom door, and when it swirls around her head, she can taste him in her mouth. Perversion. Intimacy. Call it what you will. When she goes into the bathroom and balances her cigarette on the edge of the sink, she takes a razor from the medicine cabinet and begins to shave her pussy. Running her fingers over the week-old stubble, she thinks of his chin and how the feel of it on the inside of her thighs would so often set her teeth on edge. His eyes peering up at her. His hands gripped around her ankles with his tongue swimming like a fish deep inside. From the other room comes the sounds of Interpol. Some lyrics about a soul flying away. Scraping the blade over her skin, the sensation of his kiss grows until she has to take a puff on her smoke to steady her hand. The absence of his touch is felt so acutely. It bothers her more than anything, and even though she never tells anyone, whenever she lets down her guard, it’s his spirit that comes and haunts her each and every night. She invites him in, and when she’s feeling weak, she lets him have what’s left. From the other room, the singer sings words that sound Spanish. In every other room in the house, he’s waiting for her in the shadows, whispering those words of his that make her eyes flutter. Running the razor beneath the tap, she cleans herself up and spreads her fingers over the smooth, pinky flesh that’s so soft beneath her touch. She slips in a finger. And another. And then another. Calling out his name, the lightbulb sways on the end of the cable hanging from the ceiling, and as she tilts back her head, the singer’s word trail off leaving just the beat of a drum that grows louder and louder like the beat of her quickened heart.

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.co.uk

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.com