Stigmata

What a surprise! A girl? A girl, had he said? Each of them had so wanted, indeed, so expected a boy, that to learn the thin wails belonged to a little girl--a little helpless girl--brought shock. They had even picked the name. He was to have been Michael, after the Archangel and Protector, the bearer of sword, and the emissary of great things. He would also have been named after the child's father, but that was secondary. She had wanted a boy--boy to break the monotony of repetition. One woman passed down from generation to generation. A woman you called Mother until you grew into her wrinkling gray skin and took over her roles, began speaking with her words and her wisdoms. She had wanted a boy--a boy to break the cycle and a boy to be a man.

"Yes," she agreed, "Michele is a fine name."

And why not a surprise? Wouldn't that be just grand? She knew his thoughts, though. Even though he smiled sweetly, his arm twined around her daughter. His motivations swirled in a blank mind, a mind that did not know what it was to be practical. What Jake didn't realize is that life simply left to itself--without any engineered surprise--is always the biggest and most nasty of surprises. Life did not understand the meaning of fair play, justice, or second chances. Her own life was clear enough proof of that. Life was vicious, unforgiving, relentless and had the most twisted sense of humor.

What if he can't afford it? Of course he can't. And, in a way, he knows it. He knows his irresponsibility, and therefore elects the ignorance that will leave him incapable of living up to his actions. Who then will pay the bill? Who will answer when debt comes knocking? These cruises are expensive. And long.

She would foot the expense--the real expense, and not just the money--for his little surprise. She would be the one to offer aid. She would be the one to keep all of the anger and tension in check and inside of her. She would be the one to take the brunt, to take the blame when the boy realized that he couldn't swing it. So why not a nice little surprise?

Granted, it would be nice, a nice getaway, a nice "vacation." Or, perhaps more accurately, an escape when stripped of all its glitter and the shine of articulate agents and glossy pamphlets. It seemed a nice gesture, but she knew why he extended such grand pleasures their way. An escape, indeed--for him as well as for them. He would be over every night, spending time with her daughter, working his will on the girl and driving the wedge further in, deeper between. It infuriated her. Why couldn't he just leave them all alone? Why couldn't he just admit that he was no good? Not for her family, himself, or anyone? But her daughter didn't think so. Her daughter thought she loved him. Not even done with high school yet and the girl fancied herself enmeshed in a cosmic joining of souls, or some such nonsense.

She shook her head and saw her surroundings come back to focus. Her husband approached. Better to stop the brooding over coffee and cigarette and put on a happy face, a vacation face, a surprised face.

Back and forth. Forward and back. Side to side, up and down, around and around. Infinity swirled inside her half-awake skull; a very large and dark, vaguely empty space swimming and bobbing to the beat of soft music--breath, heart, sea.

Faintly awake in the half-light of a child's tiny bulb in the wall socket and the everseeing orb of the world--the moon--she nestled into a mattress too thin, blankets too few, and a husband. He was silent beside her. Alone. The dream hadn't come this night. Good. Don't want to disturb him.

He was asleep. That much she knew almost by instinct now, by the warmth and regularity of his breath, by his smell, his feel, his presence or lack thereof. He was asleep, and would remain so until half of her day lay gray in memory. Why couldn't he realize, all swathed in comfort and softness, that she needed him?
She both rose and bedded down early by others' standards. She would be out of bed a full four to six hours before him, and would return to her rest long before he considered turning in.

It was not yet time to rise. They were on vacation, so perhaps it was a bit uptight to think of having a definite time to get up. It would seem so to most people. But not to her. She had grown up in a huge wilderness carved into man-made regions given names like Athens, Caratunk, Anson, Norridgewock, Moscow and Kingsbury. They were a collection of hamlets where one always had a specific time to get up. There were always plenty of chores to do in the little amount of daylight between dawn and dusk. One of her chores had been wiping and polishing all of the silverware from the day before. Her father had settled the family like weary nomads, out in the middle of Nowhere. This rugged, borderless land the map called Brighton.

She had done the first part of her growing up--the part that matters to a kid growing up, the part that is supposed to be carefree--in Brighton. She and her mother had moved away when she was only eight, and after that there were monthly visits. One weekend a month. These required forays were her reluctant gift to her father, the vendor of the finest greasy victuals in the woods of central Maine. Her mother had told her that he wouldn't last without the visits, that he would perish. She remembered wondering, as a kid, what that meant. Milk, bread, eggs and cheese--simple things, basic things, important things--didn't "last" and were "perishable."

Going to visit her father had always scared her. Whenever she thought of him back then, he just seemed hard, inadequate, and desperate, weighed down with regret and reconstruction of resolve. How many different "quittings" had there been for him? Hard, desperate, inadequate, and unsolvable. So to leave was, perhaps, necessary; a last ditch redemption.

But now, waking to the promise of a dim sky and solitary sun, seen through a tiny window of some supposedly fantastic ship assail upon some supposedly fantastic ocean, he appeared, in her mind, as simply and sadly alone.

Who did you have? Your father missed you. And didn't you, at first and finally, miss him, too? Of course. So easy to miss and lose and be lost in Nod. Life in a land of placeless and directionless nomads. People without homes, though houses were there, few and far between. A placeless, yet yearningly permanent people in a place which shunned the intrusion of permanence.

So what are you now? Who do you have?

She rolled over on her side, thoughts of her father like spoiled cream, thick and yellow, and opened her eyes to the sight of her husband, also named Mike: his mouth agape, stale breath oozing, pot-belly covered with a thin sheen of glitter from sweat.

He hadn't said anything at all to Jake about the weight of debt. Mike did not admonish. Mike did not attempt to instruct. He hadn't mentioned the responsibility that the boy, with his "gift" undertook. And why would he? Mike did not understand what responsibility was. Not real responsibility--the kind faced by a real adult when bills are due and budgets need a makeover, and the money coming in always apologizes to the money going out for the lack of muscle, the lack of presence. Sure, Mike earned the money, punched his card, followed his directions from Voc./Tech. He earned his pay, such as it was. And then he brought it home to her. He knew nothing of the responsibility. He offered often, but she knew that it would all be far beyond him. She would then be responsible for training him and seeing that he did everything right. It would all be far beyond him.

Her mother had told her that her father had been the same sort of man, the kind of man who did and did and did without ever stopping to consider all of the what ifs, all the possibilities of failure and of success. That had been why she had left him. That is what she had said. He had not seen that the life he had chosen for the three of them--him, his wife, and their daughter--was not fitting, was not life. They existed only, subsisting, clinging and wandering without a place for weary heads and itchy roots. Transience in a land not malleable, where your nearest friend lived in your mind and your nearest neighbor, thirty miles away, lived in a trailer with a twenty-foot satellite dish, and seven snowmobiles in the driveway next to the four dirt bikes and the two three wheelers.

Mother, to what am I fated? But you've hidden well, and now you can't answer me. Not from wherever it is that we go. And, Father, you also have disappeared into the mist and swirl of the land east of the garden, or, perhaps, beyond. You've both left me with such a lacking, indeed, indebted, inheritance. How much of you, Mother lurks in me? And, Father, how much of you sits passive in Mike?

What had he really been like? She had owned only ten years when last she had seen her father, and they really hadn't talked all that much. Her experiences had not yet taught her that despite the divorce she had the power to be both a daughter and, more importantly, a friend.

Mother, how big a hand did you play? And how much did you spend? And what have you left for me?

She thought about leaning over and planting a small kiss like a delicate flower, a violet, on her husband's cheek and then decided against it. How would it live there without any food, amidst all of that sweat, amidst all of that past, blighted and bloated with misgivings.

She pulled the covers off of herself and slid from the bed, deciding to let him sleep as long as possible.

When next she saw him, she was sitting and reading a book, reclined in one of the deck chairs on the upper deck. She had already showered, eaten, and taken her walk around the ship. Now she was filling the hours before lunch. He was wearing his swimming trunks, the ones that didn't really fit all that well and had a slight rip along the seam of the right thigh. They were white, and she could see his skivvies underneath.

Add that into the budget. Can't have him swimming around in a pool with other people like that. In a pond, maybe, but not in public.

"This is pretty great, huh, Tawny," he said and plopped down in the chair to her right. Her real name was Tonya, but he insisted on the foolish pet name. She did not answer. She had given up foolish pet names long ago. She watched him fold his towel behind his head and lean back. "I mean, that was real nice of Jake to do this for our anniversary. I don't even think it was Michele's idea." Michele was their daughter and Jake was the boy she was seeing, the boy who had seemingly moved right into their home and taken the mind right out of the girl's head. Tonya did not--could not--like or approve of him, but felt powerless to intercede on her daughter's behalf. Michele would simply leave with the boy.

"Yes," she said. "It was nice of him." Mike didn't answer and when she looked at him again, she saw that he was once more sleeping, stretched out like a fish, all pale-bellied and drying in the sun.

The only reason Mike was able now to sit peacefully on the deck of the ship, soaking up rays and complimentary drinks and music and atmosphere and poison from her glaring eyes was that the reptilian boy--at home, moving on Michele--was smart. He knew how things stood: Mike would not know enough to say anything; she herself was powerless to do anything, and Michele thought she wanted it all. Jake was ruthless, brilliant in his own way, and a sociopath.

Admirable qualities, there, yes? He was all of that and more, and Tonya's daughter thought she loved him for it.

Foolish, silly child.

But Tonya's mother had been the same, as had Tonya.

She glanced again at her husband. The sight of him weighed in her belly. His balding head, looking too big for his neck, had slumped over to the side, and he now showed her the pink glare of his scalp. Probably forgot sunscreen. I'll have to listen to him whimper later when I put on the aloe.

Not that Mike was an evil man; he wasn't. But a man? Was he, really? A real man? He just did not seem to have the backbone of a man the likes of which she had imagined herself settling with and being championed by.

Christ, is that how it goes? We dress ourselves up. We imagine perfection all dressed in the clothing of machismo? We see only image, and never realize that there is some substance there as well. A man is a man is flesh is human is fallible, yes? So why so down? Why so-

Mike stirred and then grunted before whimpering, shuddering, and then falling, promptly, back into a state of listless unconsciousness.
Tonya almost laughed, but stifled, instead, the little sob that threw itself from her trembling lip. It was just a little bit of sob, really, a dribble, a mist, even, at the corner of the eyes. Everyone is on vacation, after all. Can't go about upsetting all the nice people. Perhaps that's where--or, at least, one of the areas where--they were different. If he were upset, everyone would know it. He would show it and feel it and live it and, yes, shed it.

Tonya carried her worries, complaints, misgivings, grievances and desires like a secret trunk, packed with memories and dust and rubbish upon her broken back and asked for, as well as received, help from no one.

Passion, arms flung out to sides, eyes upturned. Offer it. Keep it. Take it.

When you had lived the life of a "well-to-do" peon's daughter, you asked no questions and simply survived as best you could.

Oh, but she made no sense.

Cycle. Re-run. Pattern. Becoming what she saw and feared.

She did not hate her mother. Quite the contrary, she felt the deepest kinship.

She looked over again at Mike and let a soft hand light on his shoulder.

"I do love you, you know," she said.

She let her timid hand slide down along his sluggish arm. He stirred a bit and then shuffled aside, moving out of her reach with another whimper.
And of what horrors do you dream, my dearest?

And when she entered the cabin, skin draped in coconut and comfort, she cast from her jittery hand her door key toward the low table in the center of the room. The key arched, flashing silver promise. Tonya watched it sink slowly, nick the edge of the table with a clink, and then clunk to the floor, unseen, unowned and accusing amidst ambiguity and his dirty laundry. Mike, at least, did not inherit any excesses like drinking from his father. Neither of them drank, often.

"Tawny?" Mike said from the bathroom. "Hey, Tawny, come look at this."

When the need arose, she would find the key. Answer now, lest he know by your stumbling, and by your fuzzy bumbling, figure.

She walked to the flimsy door, ajar in the halo of light from the lamp over the bed, unmade, and saw him in the full-length mirror on the door. He was glistening and bare, shining and smiling at his doughy man breasts in the medicine cabinet mirror.

He must have heard her coming or suspected by the feel she felt in the air, by the stutter in her step, the catch in her breathe as he came into view.
"They told me that I'd feel a difference. And I do. Told me that you'd feel it too. That we'd feel different." He smiled a fractured smile through two mirrors and brought his hands up to knead and stroke his stripped flesh. Stripped for what? For whom? "They had a special, so it didn't cost that-"

"What did you-"

"Free with a haircut." She was stuck in space. Motionless just outside the bathroom where her husband stood like some fuzzy-headed, overgrown, naked baby all smoothed of hair and manhood. "It really didn't hurt that much." He continued. "Not as much as I thought it would, considering how you always complain in the spring when you get yourself done. The guys at work, though--Oh ho! If they ever find out! So I hope you appreciate this. I know girls don't like all that hair."

"Wax," she said, reaching toward his left shoulder. He looked down at the spot and frowned.

"They were supposed to get all of it. Peel away every last bit of the old man. You know, leave no trace." He smiled as he flicked the pasty spot from his skin, disposed of the evidence, dismissed the action. He smiled at her. And he nodded, giving her the look, the sofa look, the hungry look with the crooked smile. But she had been starving so long, the pangs had long since gone mute.

She turned from his bobbing head, lolling on crooked neck, and paced steadily back into the center of the cabin.

"What?" He said. "What?" Then he said, "I did this for you." She was sure that he was motioning to himself, all bare, body envious of Spartan coif. "They said that without all the hair it would feel..."

The key. But where the hell was the key?

She had to leave and lock the door.

But she couldn't without-

And she stood, trapped, scanning the filth-ridden floor, unable to continue, unable to part without her key. How, then, would the door be locked behind her? How could she lock it?

And how could she?

A voice. Something about the cold and how the pool was closed, should, by all things natural, be devoid of patrons, alone or otherwise.

And was she? Yes. He had not found her, or had not bothered to look. Most likely the latter of the two. How could a man go out in public all naked like that? Either that, or he just didn't care enough.

But she knew that wasn't true. Cared, but cared not to know about the reality of things.

She sat up in the deck chair and noticed the cold pinching her softly in a million different places all at once. Nerve endings stood up and held their breathe, puffed up and shivered. Up and around, all bound and curled. She looked about the upper deck, her puckered eyes cutting through the dark of a cloudy and smooth sky--rich. Like chocolate, warm and running. Or fudge, even. Fudge so sweet, like marshmallow. And strawberries.

Would be nice, that. A sundae. And some pizza first. The booze always makes you want junk food. Haven't eaten like that since Michele was born.

The voice--Officer? Or maybe he was just a simply pimple-faced deck hand working his summer job ass off in a world of ignorant and surprised people--asked again, "Are you feeling okay, Ma'am?"

No older than Jake, this one. Couldn't be an officer. Just a cabin boy, maybe. All bad and no good, them. The young ones. Even has that ridiculous boy-beard cowering about the mouth and chin, like a blanket frightened of its fate.

"Because," he said, "the upper deck is closed. And, you see, well, you really can't be up here."

Can't. Ma'am? Cant! All articulation and no substance. Talking one thing and meaning another. Is his hand on my knee out of concern or--Distance!

Though she could not say that she did not like nor appreciate the delicate hand placed just so on her knee, she said to the pseudo-lupus, be-uniformed in cheap rayon/cotton blend and disguised in the false intent of masculine youth, "Excuse me, young man, but I think you mistake yourself."

The boy left his hand placed where it was and took a short little breath before tilting his shaggéd chin to one side and relaxing a mouth that now oozed confused anxiety rather than smiling, confident claim.

"I say, young deck-man," she said, "remove your hand from my person." She said it rather more calmly, much more alluringly than she had intended.

And he did it! The trembling hand, which had a moment before been--could it have been?--caressing her knee, dropped immediately away. And he spoke. To fill the silence, to fill her with his attempts at swoon, to hear the sound of his own young voice, fighting with hormones and nature to be adult. But mostly, she thought, he spoke simply to fill her.

"Well, it's just that it's rather late. And here you are all alone. And with all of these," he flourished at the empty glasses littered about, "beside you, and most of them mostly empty--well, I just worry about the guests, that's all."

"Do you then care, my young one?" She asked, and tilted her head to the side with a smile. "I am a grown woman." Her smile faded. She neglected to tell him how grown, neglected to tell him about the ebb and flow--and mostly the ebb. She did not mention how the spring, the source, and the purpose were gone. They were gone with no deposit. She was a desert.

Rather bitter, yes? And now dry, with nothing to wash away the bitterness. Now dried and useless. Just as well with nothing to suck away the moisture.

She shuddered in some air and then sighed it out again.

She looked at the child. He looked tired and startled and angry and aroused, as she began again.

She said, "Do you know how I've waited to hear someone tell me about how dangerously cold it is? Or that I shouldn't do so much? Or that too much, though never enough, is sometimes just too much for me? Or about how I sometimes venture into somewhere I should not be? And do you know, my young one, that I-"

Was she making any sense? Was he listening? He was looking at the deck, scrutinizing the glimmer of his buttons, glancing over at the railing and life-boats, preparing for inspection or something. "Sit down," (on my lap--cover me) she said, "here, my young one." She patted the over-soft cushions insistently. With a sigh and final glance around, he sank slowly, warily to her side.

"Miss, uh--Ma'am, I really have to ask you to return to your cabin for the night. If the captain comes up and sees us here-"

"Enough," quoth she, "of your can't and your cant. Just you sit and listen to me."

His head sank to his chest, and he sighed, yet again. Tonya continued as the music began:

"And why have I so chosen to be
All that I knew my mother to be?
And though he dress in bones of 'nother,
Why know I now my farce-of-father?

A daughter bore I, though have I not,
Since by the eye of Wolf she was caught.
Lost is she, lost and all gone from I,
And next hopes die in my well, all dry.

Then there is he, all naked and weak,
And what now, for we don't really speak.
Think shaven he that I am to swoon
'Neath clichéd light of surpriséd moon?

Forget not he, the Wolf that is snake,
For hate he I, who though he would take
My life, my daughter, the hope of I.
Next hopes in me wither, die and dry.

So what hope now? Could ever fate see
Its fat way clear to benefact me?
None, there is none, my boy can't you see?
I am hopeless because of She by two and He times three."

Tonya finished with a shudder and was torn between cackling and sobbing. The young one, frightened beard and sparkling uniform, stood and, though no hat liked his head for seat, made a grand, hat-removing flourish, bending at the waist and sweeping his hand to the side. Upon straightening, the boy began his reply--yearning and also rather shy.

"And why doubt you, lady my true can't?
Calmly spake I, without hint of rant.
The pool is closed; now to bed must you.
The eve is dead; your drink hath it slew.

So why doubt you, Angel, my true cant?
Ever hath it won, with failure scant.
Yet here you perch , 'mid dark and 'mid mood,
And wait sad for what? For light? For food?

Here stand I, if not Man, man enough,
To ease the ever-drought, dry and rough.
Thought you, knew not I the signs of drought?
Next hopes wither. The young one is out.

Who could know the pleasure? Two for one.
Young one is here, is ready for fun.
Mind not, He by three and She times two
For here I stand, hard and new to you.

Rise from thy bower of hazéd bliss
And take from me now this crazéd kiss.
Forget next hopes, two She's and He's three.
Enjoy. Enjoy now. Now enjoy me.

Tonya stood as he finished and put shaky hands on his shoulders. The deck-boy flinched, stuttering, afraid, unprepared for what he had done.

Her lips, they brushed his chin and danced lightly across his cheek before coming to a soft rest on his slightly parted mouth. He tensed, and she tasted him.

His lips, they suckled. They formed an "O" and tried to pull her from herself. Oh, but to wean was pain, and pain she did not need. But the tenderness, the warmth was so welcome.

Though a simple boy, he held her like a man--soft and caring and protecting and new.

They sank to her deck chair as the moon burned from behind a fat cloud. And the captain never did come.

Daylight and the sight of an unconscious, waxy-smooth Mike greeted her upon her entrance. Her keys, she kept, but her hair, pulled back in a knot, she released. The alcohol had begun to leave her, and the vacuum left nothing but a fuzziness and confusion and pain, and the pain wracked her. Her middle felt like it twisted, like it danced all cramped and worn. Her bowels felt like the water upon which they rode toward nowhere. And nothing, she knew, was a sail. Her abdomen sloshed inside her.

Familiar, that. But the source had been dead and dry for almost a year now. Old. So done and old. How could any ship--hope--sail? At her age, the drying, cracking pain in her guy could mean only drought.

He stirred but slightly as she slipped into bed, and he rolled away, taking the blankets with him as he shrank. She felt open and cold and alone as sleep came to take. She closed her eyes and allowed nothing to enter her.

she is preparing dinner for mike--he will be home soon--must hurry--must surprise him--there is a mixing bowl on the counter top--immaculate and white save a few splatters--in front of her a large, cold lump of red meat sits patiently within--waiting to be noticed--she cracks two eggs onto the pile of flesh--she reaches over to the scrap bag next to the sink for a moment to discard the shells--when she turns back again to the mixing bowl on the counter he is there--just like all the other times only now he is more developed--the sight of blood and flesh does not frighten her--but this blood and flesh--his blood and flesh--she can see his half formed eyes like cold and dead gems gleaming at her through the thick wall of her jellified uterus--calmly she reaches into the bowl and with both hands begins to knead the meat and eggs together--michael does not cry, the brave boy-

tawny--she can hear her name being spoken--no--he is home too soon--tawny love--darling are you awake-

The first words she heard were these: "Tawny-Love? Darling, are you awake?" She barely heard him for all of the ache; in her head, in her lips, from the--in her--curtains, used to being drawn, and in her hips so used to the still of familiarity, she ached, she peeled. She felt a bolt of nausea strike in her stomach as the images of the dream began to fade and wash into gray.

She opened her eyes to what she thought must be the light of full day. He was up. Before her, he was up. If this did not bode to him ill tidings, she knew not what would. Perhaps he sensed--perhaps that is why he finally moved.

She uttered an "ummmm" before she rolled over off her back and curled into a crescent, in hopes of pushing away the pain.

"Tawny-Love?" She did not answer, though his tone pestered. "Tonya?"

"What."

"I just thought that it would be best to let you be alone last night. I--you seemed so upset, but..."

He didn't finish, and she didn't move, didn't dare with all the clench and scrape in her gut.

I'm sorry,"

For what? Do you even know?

"I guess," he said, shakily, "that I should have checked with you before I did something like that."

For chrisakes.

She rolled slowly onto her back and cracked her eyelids to take him in. He looked alone and scared, and, as per usual, in need. And he was ready to cry, clenched, useless fists knotted on bare lap, where he sat on the edge of the bed.

Offer it. Keep it. Take it.

"Don't worry about it, Mike. All women go through this. It's natural to dry up and--menopause is natural. I'm just sorry you're catching the fallout."

He didn't like that word. She tried not to use it.

It must be menopause.

He cast his gaze to the side and down, as if to hide his face, thought the efforts concealed nothing. He gnawed his lower lip with the effort of holding back. She placed a hand on his shoulder and felt the release, felt his worry and fear move into her and swirl together with the greasy pain which already dulled her own belly.

She closed her eyes as he spoke "I know you're going through a rough time, and I know that I make mistakes. I've never been through... this before either." He got up suddenly. Her hand fell, forgotten, to the damp sheets. Sweaty wrappings. The dream, so awful.

She could hear him rummaging through his travel bag in the bathroom. And then there was pain. It ripped through her gut and was gone. She imagined, sweat beading on her brow, a sapling pulled from the earth--Tender roots and rich, black soil ripped apart. Symbiosis severed.

"Tawny?" He said, still shuffling and rummaging. "Tawny, could you come here for a minute?" She blinked her eyes twice, and without thinking rose sluggishly to her feet, wincing as the thigh band of the bathing suit in which she'd slept bit into her flesh. Bloated, like a dead thing.

In the six steps that it took her to reach the bathroom door she saw, in her mind, her mother, her daughter, the young one, Jake, her father, her husband and millions of little faces yet unborn.

Before she realized that the distance had even begun to pass beneath the padding of her feet, she stood at the door of the bathroom. He was facing her and holding a small white box. He was smiling as he handed it to her. He offered it. She took it, and, with the insistence of his face as coach, opened it.

Two small silver and diamond crosses winked at her as though enjoying a good joke. She was silent, blank and numb--waiting.

"I hope you like them. I was going to wait, but I guess now is good. I'm sorry Tawny."

"You know my ears aren't pierced."

"Well," he said, leaning back against the sink and folding his arms across his chest with a smile, "I thought that now maybe you would."

She stared at the crosses for almost a silent minute, the pressure building inside. He was trying to break in. She could feel his weight.

Something inside of her split as she lifted her arms out to the sides, face passive, crosses cold and metal and stone. Before he reached her for what he thought was his embrace, the pressure boiled forth, greasy pain exploding. And she quivered--just quivered--as it leaked from her.

So long. Confused. Infused. Torn. And torn from her.

He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed as a thin red trickle snaked its dying, drying way down the inside of her right thigh.

So much to keep inside. So much to lose, so much to offer. So much to take.

Piercing, scraping. She let him squeeze it all from her. A next hope dribbling and drying.

"Oh Michael, my little Michael," she sobbed.

"What?" Her husband said, pulling away to arms' length.

"Why have you...? Save me." Mike opened his mouth to speak, realized his fallacy, and then clamped his mouth shut. He looked confused and frightened and then fuzzy for a moment before he disappeared. Her eyes fixed on the medicine cabinet mirror. The halo from the light over the bed behind her grew fat, ascended--dimming.

Oh God, but the boy would have been so beautiful!