Swirl

Sometimes you should just buy a girl new carpets.

 

My mind cracks sometimes at the seams and it spills thick yellow pus and sick viscous burgundy thoughts all over my new rugs. I always needed new rugs. The stains of my bleeding heart were too much to bear. They were everywhere and my husband didn’t care. He loved the stains. He lived in the darkest messes, preening. I saw him sitting there impish and I whispered, “Please Joe, I need new carpets.”

His breath came out in smoke clouds, blue and stinking of sulfur and rain. No. He was going to say no. I hugged my head and braced myself against the silver tides. He grew to twice his size, a shadow beast against the burgundy thoughts with chartreuse emotions speckling him like an egg. “I’m tired of this s**t. You cry, you whine, you want new carpets,” he hissed the ‘s’ in carpets dragging on for hours. “The carpets are new. I just bought the freaking carpets. No more freaking carpets!”

I was on the floor by his feet. I can’t remember how I go here. All the hemorrhaging was so distracting. Things were dancing in rainbows above his head and I couldn’t look up at them. I wondered in a detached way if I should have had so much rum with my pills. My eyes were wet, another mystery and my husband’s feet were bare enough to smell of rank chicken.

My voice flowed out of me, “I’m sick. Oh honey,” I whispered and saw the words sticking to the carpet. Horrified I covered my mouth. “I have problems. I love you. I love you…” Meeting his eyes I saw vampires, dark, glittery, and sharp. His mouth fled for his chin and canyons dragged everything down. I wondered if I could love a demon. Because he was a demon with horns of hair spiking up from his boxed forehead…Everything was so confusing. The stains were spreading. A tear spilled off the bottom of my cheek and left a black smudge on the carpet. Oh God, please send new carpets. Please.

My clawed hands traced circles in the air. They hung there like sparkler trails fading slowly. In the background I could hear him in stereo. I could hear him in FM. I could… I could…I tilted my head listening, forcing my mind to take his words in and comprehend some of them. It was so hard. I had to make sure the light trails from my hands faded before they touched the carpet.

“…And what the hell is wrong with you anyway? Nothing! You got two good arms and two good legs. Why aren’t you working? Why aren’t you helping us make a better life? Huh? You’re just a lazy stupid s**t. God Anne, why the hell am I putting up with you? You just lay there during sex and cry. You’re hurting me…wah, wah. Is that part of your depression? Your Great Big Depression where you don’t have to do God damned thing? You’re a mess. I hate you.”

Grating pain was filled my ears. I think it was his voice. Things had a habit of fading in and out sometimes, especially around Joe. Reality let me loose every few weeks or every few years. Sometimes I woke up with black, purple and yellow marks all over my body. Those were the good times because I would wake up face down on the new carpets. Please God, I need new carpets. I stared at the floor and panicked. Joe’s words were stuck all over the carpet and some of them were creeping antlike up the soft fabric of the sofa. I watch as the ‘h’ from hate stuck to the fabric turning to a black smudge. Oh God no, not the furniture!

Things swirled.

He swirled.

The world swirled.

 

“…you shouldn’t,” I stammered as the ‘a’ from hate smeared itself all over the couch pillows. Reality was dropping away. It turned to my husband. His eyes were water colors bleeding out of his sockets revealing selfish black smudge holes. He was ruining the furniture. I whispered, “Shouldn’t…”

“Shouldn’t what? Expect you to stop whining and crying and yelling about how hard I hit you? I hit you because you’re stupid. All right, Anne, there I said it. You’re stupid as hell and you can’t handle nothing. I thought it was cute in the beginning because you got a nice a*s and a hot set of tits. But I ain’t buying you anything else. No dresses, no shoes, no more of those great little pills for your great little depressions and no way am I buying anymore freaking carpeting.”

I saw his soul. I saw his soul. I saw it. Black and writhing behind the sockets, leaking colors, leaking hate and it spilled all over the carpets. The pools were crimson and green…sick Christmas colors, crying angels. He couldn’t see them but the stains…the stains were everywhere. I couldn’t even see the soft beige of the carpets anymore. They were writhing, writing with stains. Oh God, the stains were creeping up onto me. I screamed, “I need new carpets! JOE!”

I clawed at him, trying to grip his blue shirt but my hands cut his skin into rainbow ribbons. He screamed. He shook me and the world swirled. My hands spread, open and grasping, the rainbows from his skin still attached to them like banners. I waved and weaved them with my fingers. They dripped onto the carpet. Amazed I watched the places they spotted come clean like God’s cleansing rain.

I had to have more. I clawed again. Joe shook and shook the droplets from my fingers and the rain cleared the burgundy away. The rainbows vanished from my fingers. More. I had to get the carpet clean. If it was clean Joe wouldn’t be mad anymore. I wouldn’t need new ones. He wouldn’t have to shake me. I grabbed for my sewing scissors to cut the rainbows free. His voice was high pitched, but the words had stopped dripping onto the furniture. I could kiss him for helping me get the stains out.

My hands touched his skin and tore into him. I had to get the rainbows out. I used the scissors to cut into him like sack cloth. I had to get the rainbows out! I could see them inside him wriggling. The world shook. The world swirled. The rainbows fell. The shaking stopped. Joe fell onto the carpet. His arms stretched wide. His eyes stretched wide and I fell to the floor beside him. A wave of clean carpet spread out from him as the rainbows escaped in a warm river. I kissed him. He didn’t kiss me back. He never did these days. He just lay there letting the rainbows leaked out of him until there were none left. I rolled around and around on the carpet.

 

The End.

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[Karen Kalbacher]

If you liked Swirl, you can own it as part of a six story anthology I have for sale on CafePress. $1 of every sale goes to a guinea pig rescue. I was going to write a blog on here but I can't find them...Did we do away with them?