Hi. Wrote another short story, interesting one this – left my usual format a bit and strayed into the more explicit content, which this site isn’t used to seeing.
‘One That Got Away’ is a short little thing about mind over matter, men trying to last longer, and girls with little else to give. It’s about sex and messed-up mental images. It’s graphic and it’s gory.
Beyond that, though, it’s about obsession and pride, the need to have what we don’t possess.
It’s… an interesting piece. It didn’t feel like myself writing it, which, when it coems to character writing, is probably good. But I didn’t feel safe around this narrator. In all honesty, I’m pretty creeped out now that I’ve had time to absorb what I’ve just written
Click read more if you’re an adult in both mind, body and experience.
I repeat, if you’re going to be offended, stop reading now.
One That Got Away
I’m thinking about genetic mutation again. Of people with sagging skin that stretches down past their bodies in useless folds and leaves their bones exposed, their eyes pulled wide and staring. Of a pet, tame, adorable and stupid, getting hit by a truck and splattered across the tarmac. Of obese woman floating upwards like balloons before they burst in a shower of swollen, fat-clogged organs.
It keeps me. I’ve given in unconsciousness to the motion and I’m ignoring the white skin on top of me, and especially ignoring the slight creases in the flesh when she curves. I’m ignoring the reflections of us and I’m thinking about dead things, of how a suicide jump ends up when it hits the ground.
My reputations spreading, and during the daylight hours I have to listen to every poor twat’s silent plea for more, for longer. I could tell them where they’re wrong –that instead of focussing on beauty and the way she/he/it looks in the throes of passion, instead of giving into the feelings and riding the waves, they should think of dead things and gore.
But I think that might be giving too much away.
There’s death and destruction strewn bloody and graphic across the rhythm of harsh breaths and calculation thrusting.
And then there’s her.
And I’m gone.
*
There’s plenty of time for philosophising in that aftermath, where she’s asleep and I’m forgotten. Sometimes, it’s the time for sneaking out the door and hailing the nearest taxi, and some nights, it’s time for thought.
I look blankly down at the sleeping face that has, doubtless, been screaming my name for the past hour and pouring her heart out the rest – all the words have been lost somewhere in the horror of the moment.
Yet all I need is a moment, a glimpse of her face, the fall of her hair, the shape under the sheets, and the visualisation is instant – moulded around the memory, all cinematic angles and quick cuts. I’m sure in-head directing talent must be rare among men, or the videos wouldn’t sell, but for this it all comes easily. I run through a couple of girls in quick succession. No problem.
Then I pull up her face in my head and let it play. Like a worn-out video tape from too long ago, it’s faded and fuzzy, skipping and jumping, all cliché dialogue and stilted movements.
Never for her. Try all I like, I could never do it – the girl seemed to exist somewhere above all the others on their knees and on their backs. She watched my false fantasies, my dreams, and grinned the same wicked, vengeful grin.
The one that got away. Literally, the one.
After a thousand rejected passes and failed chap-up lines that marked the learning curve of life, only one had gotten in my grasp and left again – recovering only to extract that vengeance upon me in the intimacy we never shared.
I would curse her name, but someone might here, and know her, and tell her – then all my chances would be ruined. Not that I had any, really.
Accepting this, I cursed her name – one harsh, hiss of a curseword that somehow summed her up without even bothering with her name in itself.
“Bitch.”
The woman in the bedsheets turned her eyes to me – wide and deep – certainly unlike her one-track mind, but I could draw better comparisons. She heard the name and rolled back over, before succumbing to snores in a peaceful acceptance.
I yanked on my jeans and took the next taxi home, making plans to find her and take her, and with it take back all that I had lost since her – never woman, never again, but something deeper. Something wordless that had been forgotten in the hunt for the carnal. That one, nameless need – something better than sex.
Without anything else to do, my mind continued the faded, cliché show went on, and the one that got away turned to show that victorious grin.