Spew

She was already awake when her alarm clock went off, cemented to the armchair by the window absorbing the ugliness of the Grey outside. Then the sun rose, muting harsh edges, making metal pipes gleam gold and smoothing the pock marked faces of the street sweepers pushing yesterdays dust and chaos into the gutters. Early morning rustling sounds came to her as the city staggered to its feet like a dazed Cockroach. Somewhere a door slammed. She rubbed her hands across her face and scratched her scalp where it itched. Time to get to work.

She moved to her "office" by the window and settled into the chair that hurt her tailbone and faced the machine that made her continued existence possible.

"It was" she typed " a terrible day. A horrifically pathetic day, a day more bereft of hope than any that had gone before. S felt confused and helpless as she faced the eleven upturned faces her worthless, jobless, philandering, pot bellied excuse of a husbands contempt for birth control had bestowed upon her. Broke, exhausted, frustrated and knowing he would beat her if she did not have food for him, she realized what she had to do. Picking up the meat cleaver she started hacking off heads, working her way from the largest to the smallest. Conditioned to obey, her children offered no response and very soon her work was done.

When her husband returned home at noon, high as a vulture and tight as drum demanding food, she served him a big plate of curry with chunks of tenderized meat floating in the aromatic gravy. He was surprised at the meat but swallowed the "teri nand kay ghar say aaya hai" story she gave him. As he stuffed himself she watched in disgust the twin rivulets of gravy that ran from each corner of his mouth and disappeared into the dense growth on his chest.

She heard herself repeating "pyaar ka zaika pyaar ka zaika" over and over and louder and louder till he heard it and looked up in annoyance, a piece of meat still clutched in his teeth as he prepared to shut her up.

He looked even more annoyed when the meat cleaver slammed into his skull. "chalo khair" she thought, "janwar ki zindagi, janwar ki mot."

The woman at the table grunted in approval as she typed out the last few words. She cracked her knuckles before starting on the cover letter.

It was addressed to…

Director of Advertising

Ministry of Contraception.

Dear Sir (it read)

Enclosed is my idea for the text ads you wish to run in the dailies. I have, as you so kindly suggested, taken into account space, clarity of thought and the delicacy of public sensibilities. I would like to suggest you run it in stark black and white, with an obituary-like border.

In conclusion I would like to wish you a Happy New Year. Forgive me for saying (innuendo intended), may you not have many more.

Yours sincerely,

………………..

Sh e stopped for a coffee and listened to the relaxing sounds of her stomach and the percolator gurgling in tandem. When she was shot full of caffeine and the omnipresent pictures in her skull were spinning crazily out of focus she returned to her office and started on her next assignment.

"The room was full of sighs and reflected candlelight cascaded off the walls like champagne waterfalls. He had her backed into a corner and held her there with his hands outstretched at shoulder length as he drank in the smoothness of her skin, the finely chiseled features and the hair black as night contrasting with the whiteness of the teeth peeping through parted lips. He felt his breath catch in his throat and remained motionless gaping like an adolescent at a peep show till the movement of her shoulder blades beneath his hands reminded him that she was alive, a marble beauty breathing life and he moved forward and kissed her neck.

She seemed to ripple like water beneath his touch and her arms came up around his neck as she threw her head back to give him better access (easy access almost: what does this say about the morals of our younger generation I ask you?). He kissed his way around her neck, licking the hollows behind her ears and drinking in the warm and earthy scent of her like a pig with his head in a swill bucket. "Oh A…" he sighed, "Oh A…"(doesn't that sound suspiciously like AA?). He drew back to look into her almond eyes and saw reflected in them a need to match his own and something else besides, fear perhaps, that flicked at her sooty eyelashes and dived like goldfish into the fathomless pools of her desire.

"My Darling", he touched her lips with his own

(Don't) be afraid.

(Don't) be very afraid.

She smiled into him and tenderly brushed a lock of his hair out of his eyes saying "How could I be after the all of eleven minutes we've known each other?" before pulling him forward and enveloping him in limbs and scent and silk whispering across his body, or was it hers? His hand moved up to her breast, her arms went up above her head, her sequined handbag still clutched in one of them, as his other hand slowly slid her skirt up her coltish legs. He was reveling at the feel of her nipple hardening beneath his fingers when his hand between her legs encountered an obstacle .He was looking into her eyes when he realized it was a jackhammer catslammer quite as hard as his own and read the smile in them as the handbag with the gun in it whacked him on the head (Bop! Goes the weasel) and he fell in a heap at her feet.

Which is perhaps how he'd intended to spend the evening anyway.

The man in the dress took his wallet and left, which just goes to show you the benefits of black spandex transcends the artificial boundaries of gender.

………… ………..

The cover letter for this one was shorter.

Dear K (it began),

Enclosed you'll find the last chapter in that series I was writing for your esteemed magazine. I've enjoyed working with you and hope you'll realize this is not a deviation from but rather the logical culmination of, the kind of love stories we feed all those other lonely people.

Yours,

……………

… ;…………………… 230;…….

Th break after this effort was longer as she had to go through all her belongings and decide the fate of each and every knicker knacker she'd ever collected. She wrote names in hungry letters on duct tape and stuck them at random on objects around the room. The clothes went in a box labeled "Charity: Open at risk of eternal damnation." The percolator went to K, he of the porno magazine, and her certificates and degrees rained into the trash can as a shower of shredded paper.

She examined herself in the mirror. The lanky hair, the pallor of weeks of sunless, companionless morbidity, the curious eyes. "I am, " she thought," as dark and shapeless as the fantasies I wish I could invent."

After another minute or two of the self-analysis her mother used to call "self indulgent nonsense" and which she was still unable to do without guilt pangs, she settled back in her chair to type the final letter.

Hey (it read)

By the time you get this I'll be gone. Don't bother looking for me, there's nothing left in my apartment though i think there's a box lying somewhere with your name on it. Don't worry its labeled.

I'd like to say "I'm speechless" but I'm obviously not. In fact, I have so much to tell you I'm not even going to start because, much as I'd like to spend the rest of my life crouched at your feet licking the weariness from your bones, I know you would only despise me.

I think what really drew me to you (and will no doubt continue to do so from light years away) is the fact that you exist so totally within yourself.

What, ultimately, is pushing me away from you is the fact that you exist so totally within yourself that even when I am clutching at you with the wetness of potential fulfillment you are, in some sense, away from me.

I feel the same about most contemporary poets.

Lest you think I'm blaming you for the collapse (like a folding chair under a fat auntie) of our almost relationship, I’d like you to know that I'm very aware of the fact that my forked tongue and the lankiness of my hair didn't help either.

The thing with being funny is, you cant stop, people stop believing you and you end up having to laugh at yourself because you're the only one left around.

'k bye

…………..

She put everything in a neat pile on her desk and hung herself from the fan with a really nice Gucci belt she'd stolen from her sister years ago.