The Art of Self-Destruction Read Free Page A

tighten
around him as she unravels her arms and slips a hand between their
bodies. She begins to murmur, a low sound, repeated over and over,
"Please, just once; please, just once before...; please..."
    Her fingers search out his belt. She begins
to unfasten it. "Just once just once, please, please I'm so tired
of existing as this as, just once please, this place these I want
and just once is it nice? is it nice? is it nice? I'm so tired and
you I know you I know you I know you I know..."
    The click of the metal flange connecting with
the rectangular buckle seems to echo loudly in the room; he grips
her shoulders suddenly and fiercely, forcing her down onto the bed,
pinning her arms with his elbows. Then, with her legs squeezing
tighter, her nails scraping harder across his back, and her manic
babblings, Matthew manages to choke out the word "end."
    The room ripples, waves of heat refracting the sepia tone, blurring
her vision and sending her into vertigo. A screeching comes from
the window, someone pulling fingernails across a slate board. The
sound increases exponentially, becoming louder with each second.
Still hovering over her, painfully holding her arms down with his
elbows, he begins to shudder violently, his body gripped in a manic
palsy.
    His image doubles, triples, her eyes unable
to focus on the singular form in front of her. Instead, he exists
in Doppler, blurred images of his body shuddering back and forth.
His mouth is open in a silent scream and his eyes are rolled up
into the back of his head, the whites exposed.
    The bed begins to shake with his movements,
the springs squeaking and the headboard hitting the wall. Sounds
engulf her, the screeching, the bed, the creaking fan, the sizzling
sock; his elbows grind into her arms leaving painful white tattoos
in her flesh.
    She fails to notice the burning in her neck
until her blood stains the sheet.
    Then it is over, the rippling, the
screeching, his manic shuddering. The room has returned to its
original color, the fan creaking slowly above.
    She feels an immense lightness take over her,
a glimpse of memory and nostalgia. End, the single syllable erupts
in her head. End, over and over. Above, in her blurred vision, she
can see pulsating red lights; dark red, watching her, never
wavering or moving. Right above her.
    She has been here before, done this before,
countless times. Only there was never a sock baking in sunlight,
never the smell of sweat and dirt. This is new.
    She can see a figure hovering at the side of
the bed, her peripheral vision exposing a dark mass blocking the
light. He is standing over her, his body a silhouette, looking at
her as she lies prone, naked, open to him.
    Then she feels the stickiness on her
shoulder. She tries to turn her head but finds that it is rooted
solidly in one position, unable to turn or lift. Her body becomes
something separate than herself, a shell of empty importance.
    However, her eyes are still functioning, her
brain still computing the immense visual information it is
currently receiving. And she sees red, a great pool of red. Red
lights, red fluid, red anger pulsating, hatred, emotions that have
seeped into her through the ages.
    She wraps herself around the color, finding
comfort in it, a familiar friend that is always there at the end,
always watching over her.
    The sheets have become saturated in red, the
tiny fibers and threads absorbing all that is possible, forcing the
excess color to pool and flow. She becomes aware of the pumping in
her neck, the steady and continual spurts of arterial motion. And
it comes to her in a moment of clarity that although she is,
indeed, bleeding heavily from the neck, she feels no pain. She
can't see the cause of her injury, the screw embedded deeply in her
flesh, but she can sense the door handle-its tarnished gold knob
refracting the faded light from the window, casting wavering ghosts
on the wall. Her blood spurts across metal, dripping like syrup
from the cylinder, greasing the