Cover art for a short story I wrote! You can read it below the read more if you’re curious!
It’s a short... romance story... between two ladies!
He began to bore me.
Another night he spent with his fellow men, bowling, drinking beer and ogling women was all they did. As for myself, I couldn’t remember the last he and I went out together. Sure, he kissed my lips every day he came home, and he told me I was beautiful in all my own special ways. My fringe hanging over my face in long loose strands as I did his dishes. Taking his plate off the table, my once white sleeves stained and threadbare. In the morning, when I begged him to stay with me, skip work for just once. His words of praise was ever so repetitive and empty. But sure, he was a kind man at heart, I knew that much. Otherwise I wouldn’t have married him.
But I itched, I longed for something outside these pale walls. Something to rekindle my passion for him, for life, maybe even for myself. The days passed, each longer than the other, until I couldn’t tell them apart anymore. When I thought about it, I couldn’t even remember the last time I went out with one of my friends. Not that I particularly wished to. They were too alike myself; they only knew their men, their wedding pictures identical spare for the perfect frames, their white wedding dresses a copy of my own.
In a bar, I found myself lust for new adventure. Maybe get drunk on white wine and see where that took me. Maybe return the looks that longed for me, despite my discomfort. The men reeked of alcohol, the air thick with smoke. This is ridiculous, I thought. I ought to return home, to the life I had made for myself.
She caught my gaze between her lips, painted red by the lipstick in her pocket, and she didn’t let it go. Should I be jealous of her beauty? No, I was enamoured by her silky black hair, her olive skin. I don’t know for how long our gaze held, or for how long we spoke. She heard me like no other ever had, drank my sorrow, my boredom, my disappointment. Was it all my fault, for marrying a man so predictable and bland?
”No,” she told me, ”they’re all like that. No matter what man you marry, you’ll face the same end.”
She told me about the freedom of drinking red wine at bars just like this, tasting, touching but not claiming. I never wanted her black eyes to leave mine. Every word she spoke resonated with me, cradled me into the sweet feeling of comfort and longing. She was right, I thought, my man is just as boring as the spouses of my associates. It was a wonder that we could tell them apart.
”I feel trapped,” I told her a month later, sitting on the couch in my living-room, a glass of rosé in my hand, barely tasted. ”I feel stuck within these walls, like a fly in a spiders nest, without any escape.” She took my hand, then, and pressed her red lips onto each of my fingers, sending warmth into every corner of my body.
”I could set you free,” she warned me, but I didn’t care for caution anymore.
Every faint pink mark of lipstick on my body was a reminder of the life I wished to live. Every rosy bruise from her hands ached deliciously, reminding me of what I so dearly yearned for. But every morning I woke up by the side of my man, his scruffy chin against my forehead as he bid me farewell. Oh, couldn’t you bid your last goodbye, and never come back?
She told me I was passionate and intriguing, that she enjoyed hearing my voice. She tickled my senses with excitement and joy, luring me deeper into my own curiosity with danger. She was murderous, I could tell. I loved it. Every night we went out, and she pulled my body snug into hers, I felt the knife in her pocket.
”Would you protect me with this knife?” I asked her, my fingers dancing over the hem of her blouse, barely hiding the contour of the weapon she carried.
”Yes,” she took my hand into hers, my crimson nails looked like candy in her palm. ”I’d kill anyone for you.” She sealed the promise in a kiss. A year ago I’d fear for such words. I would’ve shaken in my heels, beg for her to take her words back. But I shuddered in her embrace, because I knew she meant it, and I knew she would do it if I asked.
My husband became irritated with me, wondering where I had been and who I had been with, despite the fact that I had given him the same liberty that I now claimed for myself. The bar, I would tell him. A friend, I would lie. Why wasn’t there food on the table for my precious husband, who had worked so hard all day copying papers and pointing fingers? Why wasn’t the bed made for my dear spouse, who had been out all night with his friends with aching feet? Tragic, how much he missed me, when I didn’t play his game of maid and master. Little kisses and little ’I love you’s couldn’t salvage what was by now so broken. Besides, the truth was so much more satisfying than the white vail I had been living behind.
I asked her if she could kill my husband, half a joke, half a plea. She saw the fire that burned deep in my eyes, a deepening hue, and told me she could for a coin or two, with that devilish smile on her face. I happily complied. All the money that would fall into my lap after his death, all the freedom, the life this woman before me was living, everything would open up for me. Why didn’t I think of this any sooner, I wondered.
When he was asleep beside me, I felt no pity for him. It was so easy. The pull off the trigger from her gun, the blood slowly staining the perfect white sheets of a broken marriage a dark deep red was a work of art on its own. She kissed me farewell as I called the police, tears rolled down my face as I stepped into liberty.
She came to his funeral, her red heels as vibrant as the single red rose she offered me for comfort in these trying times. Yet nothing could compare to the colour of her lips, the shade of red that had become my new favorite colour.
