idle hands are the devil's art

Short Story Pt 1

Lita put her ring on the table slowly, not for uncertainty’s sake but quite the opposite. Her dramatics were un-relentless and at this point they had somehow incorporated themselves into our daily routine of pettiness and self loathing. At last the soap opera life was coming to a close with no resolution, but that was mainly my fault anyway. The platinum band made a small scraping noise as Lita slid it across the table to me. The noise made my teeth hurt. I shoved it into my shirt pocket, making sure to look her square in the eye. She was sitting in front of the huge glass windows we had installed three years earlier, the kind that stretched from floor to ceiling. All the light rushing in from behind her made her look old and pale and undesirable. I certainly didn’t desire her in that moment and it had been about three days since I was last able to look her in the face. I guess in that short span of time all the stress of living a lie caught up to her.

 It was at this point that I reminded her how much I had loved her and how much we had shared. Now all we had in common were two children who hated us both, probably her more than me, thankfully. From the corner of my eye I saw Merlo, our cat, her cat, attempt to leap onto a horse fly that had somehow found its way into the house. For a moment more I watched him, again and again Merlo pounced and again as pests often do, the fly buzzed on. Merlo chased him stupidly into the living room. I turned my attention back to Lita, whose throat now bulged and contracted as if she was trying to keep herself from vomiting. Her glassy eyes slid over my face onto the floor, staring at some invisible object near the refrigerator.