Animals, Chapter One, Mature Audiences

It had partially dried to the table, crimson, sticky, and coagulated, and not wanting to let go of the sloppily scrawled letter. It drooped in his hands: I finished the f-----g dishes you were B----ing about you dirt bag ..don’t worry about the mess outside LEAVE ME FOR THE ANIMALS, give me a chance to be appreciated by SOMETHING!” Jeremiah’s eyelids tightened around the words. She wasn’t serious, she couldn’t have been serious. Night after night of drunken fights and carnal apologies; She always awoke the same, hungover and satisfied by the endearment of his widowed anger and forgotten misgivings. The thrust of weathered flesh sated the storm they wrought with the rainfall of liquor. They made it through, it was a promise made. That night, 15 years ago, still kids, they bore an oath that couldn’t be broken. They tore a trail across one another’s palms, clasped them together and spoke the words: “Together, Eternally, Married in this life, the next…Hell can’t stop us.” "SHE F------G PROMISED ME!" his tongue spattered the words across her own, his fear dripping lazily down the finality of her betrayal. Jeremiah’s grip slouched, rattled by the haste of grief, her letter fell upon unsteady feet as he stepped over the intoxicated goodbye of a love that could no longer stand to abide the throb of chaos. "WE WERE IN THIS TOGETHER, YOU B---H!" the crash of bone against hardwood quaked shards of brokenness on the floor; a sketchy trail, toward an open front door. The smell of bleach curdled amid stale cigarette butts strewn across a palate of remorse. He walked out, still not sure if it was a nightmare or if the pain he felt really was the echo of karma Victoria had always told him, would reach him someday. -James Kelley 2014, All rights reserved. -to be continued- This is a rough, work in progress...