Cotton Sheets

A Story by Julliet Sierra

A short story I wrote a while ago and havent shown anybody yet.

How can he sleep next to her but without her sharing none of the amorous grace that he may feel towards her. But his aching body cannot express these emotions and his tired body rests but his soul beats on its cage and he awakens with bruised ribs protruding through the paper-like skin that coats his body pale and greying still. and he looks at her and his tired heart can feel nought but anger at this woman who he destroyed his body to make happy and one night he decides that enough is enough. Frightened he rises pacing throughout the room already guilty of a crime he is yet to conduct and he hears the loud passionate moans of his neighbors through the paper thin walls of his apartment, that he sold his fathers watch for, that held no heat and let rain drip through and he heard it now too the drip drop moan a cacophony of sounds and emotions passed through him rage fear love hate anger peace, and he grabbed his knife and he put it down again remembering the night they lost their son. He picked it up as he concluded that she had stolen his boy from him, she had killed him through pure malice and in effect she had killed him her husband when she had killed their son and his heart. He picked up the knife. Then he remembered their little girl who was now a woman. Who's mother was the woman that he had just, or had he not yet, killed? Was his loving loyal wife? Was her face not yet white with blood loss? Had he yet done the heinous act he so indulged in fantastically every night? Well he hadn't had he he would remember something that important, or would he. What was the reality of his fantastically miraged life filled with smoke mirrors and the colored powders of the old orient, or was that flour dusted by her to bake a tray of fresh biscuits? Was she alive he pondered? He shakily pulled an old dry cigarette to his mouth and thumbed his lighter with his other hand hoping that this ceremonial herb would make his kingdom fall at peace as it had in the past. He inhaled pain and exhaled anguish, his mouth no longer taste of regret and fear but of his fathers lectures and his mothers kind words all said through a haze of smoke from tobaccos of all flavors and sizes and colors and cuts. He looked back at the knife in his hand and traced his own throat with it. Not letting it bite the succulent flesh it longed for but teasingly running it back and forth without any hesitation, each run pushing the sides of this man made valley steeper. Still rocking this blade across rivers and tributaries on his neck blue but absolutely ready to change from their placid turquoise to the black maroon heated concoction he new flooded throughout him. He was bit three times leaving a line of dots on either side of his wispy grey beard and one dot of blood became a line on his neck that bobbed when he swallowed and he stared into the flat blackness of the night and put down the knife. He walked through his home touching his daughters face in picture frames and entered their room that his wife laid her head in and climbed into paradise next to her.