Newsgroups: talk.bizarre Path: math.utah.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!caen!spool.mu.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!pad-thai.aktis.com!noc.near.net!lynx!usenet From: zonker@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu ( Regis ) Subject: pictures of you... Message-ID: Lines: 65 Sender: usenet@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu (usenet dummy) Organization: College of Engineering, Northeastern University X-My-Kill-File-Contains: "Re:" Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1993 23:40:42 GMT I have a picture of them. In the picture, they are smiling at each other. I know that they are smiling because it is a sunny beautiful day and they are in love. But sometimes i think they are smiling because they know that he is with her and not me. Sometimes I see a hint of malice in their smiles, a trace of smugness at what they have and i no longer can feel. I look at the picture i remember walking into a restaurant and seeing them laughing, leaning against each as they sat next to each other on the benches along the wall where they were waiting for their table. And i walked in and she saw me; her sudden silence made him look up. He saw me and fell silent for an awkward moment and then got up and said "Darling, what are you doing here?" The word "Darling" sounded forced and hung between the three of us like a rotting carcass on a barbed wire fence. That night he told me he loved her and not me. He took most of his belongings the next day, packing them into his car while i sat in what had been our bedroom, sullen and drunken and enraged. The day after that, i burned what he had not taken. I look at the picture and think about the first night he and i spent together. We had made love fiercely, and we had snarled at each other in an animal passion. I look at the picture and I think about the time i introduced them. She had come over for a small party we were having, to celebrate our new apartment -- our apartment together, with one bedroom and the other converted into a study/office/computer room. I introduced them. I saw him smile at her; she smiled in return and punctuated it with an arched eyebrow. I am sitting now in what had been our bedroom. It no longer smells of sex or sweat or passion. There is no longer a bed -- I burned it with the rest of his belongings, a bonfire in the backyard -- and so there are no more linens to remind me of sliding between the sheets, his warm body pressing up against mine both of us covered by the cool sheets. I had done all of this and yet he still haunted me, slipping into my dreams and taunting me with what had been. I burned his possessions and burned our bed and found her cat roaming outside of their new apartment and burned that too, fur crisping and flesh charring to the sound of feline screams. I mailed him the carcass postage due, via third class mail. But he still persisted and would not leave me alone at night when i fell asleep. But now i can sleep well. He is with me again. He will not leave me. He cannot leave me. We can no longer make love, but it is enough to share this with him. I sleep on a futon above him. The futon stand had once been a very large fish tank, but now he lays in it, preserved and sealed so that the liquid will not evaporate. (if it did, then the exposed skin would begin to rot and would turn moldy. while the preservative has leeched his skin lighter, it's still a reasonable color as opposed to, say, green.) I remember the first night we made love in this apartment. The sex was good, and afterwards we lay entwined. As his seed slowly tricked from between my legs onto his thigh, I asked him "do you think this is it? do you think we'll always be together?" And he replied, "Yeah, babe. I don't think I could ever leave you." I sighed and snuggled into his shoulder, "I don't think I could ever let you leave." --regis