by Beau Johnson

Two days before I die Michael is hip deep in me from behind. I understand why this has entered my mind so I might as well go one better and say I’ve always liked sex this way, soon’s I realized there was an actual choice as to how the act could be performed. It was the same thing with deep throating: a class I mastered my sophomore year. I’d like to say these things are inconsequential, but I can’t, not after I realized it had been Linda who’d hit me from behind.

Heavy set, with all the fat pooling in places women do not like, Linda would be Michael’s wife of twenty-two years. I would like to say something nice about this woman, seeing as it was me fucking her husband, but no, I can’t, and I pretty much have to go and blame the noose around my neck as to the reason why. It doesn’t stop me from using my big girl voice to scream Bitch as loud as I can. Cunt comes into play as well, but that too remains inside, there behind whatever type of gag she has jammed inside my mouth.

“He always said he didn’t want children. The love he had, he said it was only enough for me. Both of us know better than that though, don’t we?”

I can’t even say she is talking to me. Oh she is, don’t get me wrong, but the woman’s demeanor is distracted, her appearance disheveled, and boy howdy was she willing to pace. Back and forth, cigarette after cigarette, she is on about my body, my tits, and the tightness of my ass. Yoga pants. Sport bras. The things I probably let Michael do in the soft dark hole of my mouth. Yeah, feels like she’d been saving that last one.

What is a woman to do, she says. How is one expected to compete? I understand all this, every part. But I also don’t care, not as I should. Reasonable? Depends on how you look at things. I am in life for me and only me and I can say this no other way. Sure I could play the part of a human being as well as anyone, but only if it allowed me to acquire the things that make life worth living. Sound familiar? That’s okay. I lied to myself for a long time too.

I’ve lied about other things as well. Many things. What I cannot run from is this defense mechanism going on inside my head right now. I mean, that has to be what’s going on, right? If not, just who is it I’m talking to then?

“I guess the question I really want answered is this: did you even consider what you could be destroying?”

Would I give her the answer she wanted if I were able? Hell, if I wasn’t hanging from this tree? I can’t say, not with any kind of certainty. What I could tell her was this: wasn’t me who initiated. Me who said they’d be leaving their wife whether he’d met me or not. Probably not the type of disclosure a woman in Linda’s condition needed to hear, but then again, my options had fallen somewhere between fucked and Sunday so perhaps I should cut myself some slack.

This brings tears. Blubbering, really. The woman I had become reduced to the teenager she loathed. Not a declaration I am overly proud of, no, as I consider myself as strong as I am selfish, but things are coming to an end remember, my time left upon this world now minutes at best.

And yes I do want to live. More than anything, yes. But the realist in me, she has always been strong.

Understanding as much as I think I do, I do what I believe she wants me to: I apologize. Doing so with the only tools left in my box: eyes which plead and beg to a mouth which grunts and groans as my body twists as best it can while balancing upon the birdbath beneath me. I am given a crash course in simmering rage for my troubles; Linda’s lined face a mixture of pain and despair and hate as she comes forward and slowly removes said birdbath. She does it this way so my neck will feel everything she needs it to. I am making up this last part, unable to surmise what the woman was truly thinking, but I’m pretty sure I’m not far from the mark, not from the look in her eyes.

Woman had a plan is what I see. Woman was following through.

And oh, would you look at that: rain.

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Beau Johnson has been published before, usually on the darker side of town. It’s on Tuesdays that he and his family travel back in time to correct that which once went wrong.