In the corner of the middle room, behind some boxes of my books, I glimpsed a dead spider. It was big. Its legs thick. Somehow, it frightened me more than the sight of a living one, and even though I knew it couldn’t move, I found myself trembling. It appeared sexual. It made me think of the sex of an ex I haven’t seen for many years. I still feel her, though, nibbling at my senses in the dead of night. Taking out my phone, I took a photograph of the spider. The more I looked at it, the more it appeared vaginal. My mouth began to salivate, and although I wanted to flee, I couldn’t help but hang around, stirred as I was by what this dangerous thing was doing to me. Leaning against the doorframe, I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. Suddenly, out of nowhere, or so it seemed, all the sadness in my life washed over me, and all I wanted—all I wished—was to be gone. Like the spider. Like my ex. I wanted not to be me because to be me means I can never breathe the way I long to breathe. Briefly closing my eyes, the rain against the window picked at my ears, berating me for being this way. It sounded as loud as the blood pumping through my heart. I thought of that scene in The Shining, which in turn made me think of the woman in the bathtub, and the hairs of her vagina, and then back to my ex, and how when I first saw her sex, it seemed to contain all that was beautiful in the world, as well as all that’s evil. At the thought of this, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and the world seemed to slip from beneath my feet.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US