Slice Up Your Face, but Leave Those Ribbons Hanging
You know, when that man said ‘beef curtains’, the first thing I thought of was Francis Bacon. I told him “I don’t think those are curtains at all.” What he said was “Fag.”
So I didn’t expect to be fast friends or friendly even. I didn’t expect him to repeatedly ask me to pound his fist, which means to push my own against his. Well, apparently the interlocking of knuckles is some kind of magic.
We pursued our own ends in the same closed space. The lighting was poor. We pounded hard, repeatedly. We failed in our goals. Maybe not him, but I certainly did.
So I came home and saw she’d sent me the bouquet of razors, neatly tied. The card is what said it, “Slice up your face, but leave those ribbons hanging. I want to come over and tie your wrists and ankles with them.” Twenty minutes later my face looks like bloody tentacles, venetian skin blinds, pale beef curtains. I think about the pounding man and his euphemisms, his smooth skin, the naturalness of his graphic t-shirt.
I tell her she ought to come quickly, which of course she does. I recline on the divan. She makes a few scissor snips and gathers her ribbons. They tie damp and warm on my skin. We aren’t wearing clothes. Well, it’s a mess here, and other reasons.
After, she sits on my chest and sews me back up. She asks me about last night and I tell her about pounding. She’d stayed in and watched a movie. After all, there’s something to be said for domesticity.
Before Bed
Our house is covered in tentacles.
It grew them from its doors and windows. It grew them overnight, on the hot wet night last summer. You know, the night when we (she and I) went to bed (together) and pretended the touching of skin during sleep was accidental.
They, those long clammy tentacles, they snake from the house and thicken.
She thought it was (is) my fault. She tells me she wishes she could blame someone else.
Outside, the weather is notable. Those tentacles languish there; we here.
There’s something else that is wrong and unnerving.
So I’m cutting them. I’m mowing those tentacles. I’m bagging them and selling them to the school lunch program.
She’s retiring, tired, inviting.
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Ben Segal
is the author of 78 Stories (No Record Press). His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in various publication including Gigantic, The Collagist, Eyeshot, and elimae, and the collection Tell: An Anthology of Expository Narrative (Flatmancrooked). He is also the co-editor of the Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature (Willows Wept Press, online arm at www.potentialbooksbook.com) and is a founding contributor at the blog Ghost Island.
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