Why is it that kids cannot wake you up mornings in a civil manner? They become these creepy little midgets who hover over you in your sleep. Seven out of seven days of the week, I’m forced awake by the feeling that someone is staring at me. I crack one eyelid open ever so slightly and am face to face with my son, who has been standing there for God only knows how long, breathing on me.

After a nice long scream, groggily beating my comforter to death and making sure I’ve not wet myself, I officially come awake. I don’t have to drink coffee in the mornings. I have a nice cup-o’ adrenaline. It saves me a fortune in caffeine, but I end up having to use what I’ve saved to dye the grey from my hair each month.

After settling myself down and allowing my brain a moment to register that no, I am not about to be murdered, the talking begins. I’m never greeted with “Good Morning! How did you sleep?” It’s always, “Hey, I’m hungry!” or “If I accidentally ate a plastic dinosaur, would that be bad?”

“You’ll have to wait until Mommy’s stroke is over, then we can talk about food.” I’ll tell him, hoping he’ll leave me to it and come back an hour later. This never happens.

“I’ll starve to death. I will starve and you’ll just be sitting there looking like that lady down the road that my friend Joey says looks like her cat. Joey also told me that he saw her in real life once and she smelled like soup. Can I have soup for breakfast? Moooommmmmmm…get up!” he says, using his little hands to create earthquake sized aftershocks on my mattress. His lack of concern over having compared his mother to a cat lady who smells like soup disturbs me.

Not wanting to allow my poor child to wither away, up I get, onward with the formal morning routine.

Rising and shining is not my strong suit. I’m more of a rolling out of bed and groaning like a rabid animal kind of gal. My hair looks like it’s been styled by a nice long ride on the hood of an airplane. And, if it’s any indication, I’ve been made fun of for my taste in tacky sleepwear for years. If you’ve ever wondered who would buy the way-to-big-for-normal-people sized pajama pants, decorated with miniature watermelon slices, look no further. I’m right here.

Something happens in the morning that makes time speed up and people slow down. You just can’t move fast enough to keep up. Your kids take three hours to get dressed. You go to put on your socks, pleased you were able to find two that matched in under two minutes, only to look at the clock and realize that, indeed, an hour has gone by.

I’m waiting for scientists to study this phenomena. Until then I’ll keep hoping that I’m able to adapt to this oddity and get where I’m going on time.

Once we’re ready, it takes, at the very least, six hours to get from the house to the car. I’ve tried explaining to my son that we don’t need to pick up every stick in the yard, nor do we have the time to go hunting for four leaf clovers.

“But, mom. I need the stick to find the four leaf clovers that will give me luck for school. You can’t send me to school without luck, I might never get to 4^th grade!” He says, looking at me like I’m some abusive parent who cares nothing for his education.

“Don’t but mom me, mister. Move it. Mommy needs to go to work so she can make sure nobody comes and reposesses your Playstation.” I tell him, knowing that I’ll spend the whole ride to school explaining what reposess means. Then assuring him that “Mommy was just being a dramatic.”

Once the morning is done and you’re at work, time slows to a snails pace. It is something that I can never hope to comprehend. I find myself with the urge to call Doc Brown from Back to the Future, just so I can find some peace of mind. Knowing that I can skip back and forth through time would be a priceless comfort.

I would, however, request that my time machine be something a little more stylish then a DeLorean.

M.H Spencer

Man of happiness

Morgan sat in front of the Safeway for an hour before her mother called. Her Support our Troops sign still stood and her donation box was half-full. Pure devious genius, that’s how her father described it when he pulled her closer to whisper the idea, his breath moistening her lobe.

She brushed her hair back behind an ear and smiled as a smirking man placed a can of Green Giant, cream-style corn in her box.

He stared from behind a set of dim blue eyes. His lips quivered as if he wanted to say something.

She looked away and raised an eyebrow, leaving the smile on her face to be polite, but praying he didn’t ask for her number. The guy puffed a disappointed laugh through his nose before he walked off into the parking lot.

Her smile faded to a frown as the man left, and she picked up the can of food. Ugh, I hate cream corn. Couldn’t he give something better?

She tossed the corn back in her box and it clonked against another metal can. She took out her cell phone to check the time, but just holding the device caused her mother’s sobbing words to echo in her head.

A lump swelled the back of her throat and she almost felt guilty. Maybe if she hadn’t made that promise, she’d still have a perfect life.

She knew she had to go see her mother, but she didn’t know how to solve the issue. She wasn’t God or a witch, so resurrecting the dead was out of the question, but there was still a solution to every problem. She had solved her lack-of-money dilemma by suing a fast food restaurant for traumatizing her life with a cockroach chicken nugget, a nugget that took her three hours to craft; she had solved her eating problem with a believable sign and a cardboard box, and it had been two years since she’d purchased her own meal; and now she would solve this new crisis as well.

“Hello there young lady,” said a woman with a cigarette-scarred larynx. “It really warms my heart to see people like you out here doing what you’re doing.”

As she looked up at the woman, a breeze carried Morgan’s hair to the side of her head. The cool air made her sniff and wipe her eyes as she forced a smile for the lady. Despite the look and sound of the woman, her sincerity was obvious. It was people like her that made Morgan wish she didn’t do what she did. They made her want to be a better person.

The woman dropped an entire bag of groceries into the box.

Though she was tricking her, the woman’s generosity still made Morgan happy. She said thank you, and the woman nodded, walking away as she pulled out a pack of cigarettes from her purse.

Morgan looked to the horizon. The sun sat high in his blue throne, but did not serve much of a purpose aside from illuminating his kingdom.

Time to go, she thought as a gust of wind picked up her hair and moved it like a flag on a car antenna.

The plastic lawn chair scraped against the pavement when she scooted back to grab the cardboard box of goodies. She took down her Support Our Troops sign and placed it on the table. She mumbled the names of various items as she rummaged through her box, and couldn’t hold back the smile when she realized that the day’s gatherings would last her at least another week.

She folded up the table and went inside the Safeway store. The plump manager took it and stashed it in the back room, running back to habitually ask her out to dinner before she left. As he stood before her, his rotund cheeks sprinkled light red with embarrassment, she pressed her lips together and routinely said no, thanking him again for allowing her to use the table and the space in front of the store.

“Anything for the troops,” he yelled to her back as she walked out the door. “See you next time.”

Her shoes clip clopped as she walked down the crowded city sidewalk and she was reminded of why she missed her mother. Her mother’s house was a few miles away and placed in a perfect suburban oasis. The streets were rarely filled with cars; the walkways were barely used for walking; and the green of nature still had prevalence over the concrete. But it had been two years since she visited.

She made it back to her apartment and set her box in the kitchen. She tossed the sign on the sofa and started going through her bounty. After she was finished restocking her supplies, she went to the refrigerator and grabbed a half-empty can of turkey.

When she was situated, she pulled out her phone to check the time again. Memories of her mother’s conversation dripped back into her ears and she started thinking of solutions.

Since the death of her father two years ago, Morgan’s mother had clutched onto every living attachment like a leech. Her husband had been the family’s everything, and no one blamed her for how hard she took it, especially not Morgan. Her mother was never a strong woman, and she knew that even the tiniest bit of negativity could bury her in a muck of depression.

When Morgan’s mother called and said the family cat was pawing on death’s door, Morgan knew that disaster was as sure as the ebb and flow of the sea. The cat had replaced Morgan’s father, and if it died too Morgan didn’t know what would happen to her.

As Morgan finished the last lump of turkey, the idea sailed into her skull. She rinsed the fork off in the sink as she tried to think of nearby pet shelters. As she thought, she realized that she hadn’t been to an actual pet shelter and needed to look up one.

After a few confused discoveries about the differences between pet stores and pet shelters, she found what she was looking for. The closest shelter was only 30 minutes away from her mother’s house.

She changed her clothes, grabbed her Gucci purse, and hopped into her leased car. As the leather seats embraced her, she realized that the lease was almost up and she would need a job if she wanted to get around. Her Give Money to the Children in Africa trick would only last for so long before people caught on and stopped making donations.

As she rode to the pet shelter, holding her Mapquest directions against the steering wheel and listening to a Polka CD that someone had thrown in her Support Our Troops box, she tried to figure out a way to switch the soon-to-be adopted cat for the soon-to-be deceased one. She couldn’t just waltz into her mother’s house with a new pussy and expect her mother not to be sad about the old one. She had to be sneaky. If she could switch the cats without her mother knowing, then maybe the distress would leave her mother’s heart. Mom would be happy and would live for a bit longer.

On the way to a pet shelter, Morgan noticed an easier path. A sign that read Cheap Pets dangled out the side of a barn-like structure. The brick-red building had a one-space parking lot, and looked a little shady, but Morgan needed quick results. A pet shelter might make her wait a day or two, and she didn’t have the time.

An ominous tree was rooted beside the barn, but aside from this there was a 50-foot gap between it and other trees. The grass around the barn bent away from the structure, and the trees on the 50-foot line were bare. It was as if life was fleeing from the place.

She pulled into the only space, grabbed her purse, locked her car, and walked inside. She stopped at the front desk. The grey countertop was cold, and a sticky film stuck to Morgan’s elbows as she rested on it. A teenage or early twenties girl was at the register, and she eyed the Gucci purse for a while before she spoke.

“Hello. How can I help you?” said employee.

“Do you have any cats?”

“Why wouldn’t we? We have a sign that clearly says cheap pets, how could we not have cats?”

“Can I see them?” she said, pursing her lips together, slowly blinking and trying to calm her heart.

“Do you want to take one home?”

Morgan couldn’t help but smirk, but she was in no way amused. She lowered her head and raised an eyebrow at the employee as she folded her arms across her chest. She looked down at her name tag. “Look, Sally, why do you think I’m asking about the cats?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a mind reader.”

Morgan held up her hands and raised both eyebrows. “Yes, I want to take a cat home,” she said, gritting her teeth and barely opening her lips.

“Follow me.”

Morgan rolled her eyes when the employee turned her back to open a metal gate. She started walking and Morgan followed. They maneuvered down a dark hallway with wood walls. Cobwebs clung to corners and where the ceiling and walls met. Black goo oozed down the walls, and the further they walked, the stronger the smell of animal feces became.

When they actually got into the room that housed the hopeful pets, Morgan could see an automated air freshener dispenser on the corner of the far wall.

“At least they try to keep the smell down,” she said to Sally’s back.

The walls in the animal room were brown and oozed the black substance as well. Sordid newspapers were littered across the floor, and a blanket of warmth lingered in the room. A few scattered, half-burned out lights provided a sorry excuse for illumination, and the constant groaning of the assorted animals drifted about in the air like ghosts.

“What type of cat you looking for?” said Sally, rolling her neck and placing her hands on her hips. She brushed a strand of blond hair back onto the top of her head as she waited for Morgan to answer.

“Do you have any all-black cats?”

Sally puckered up her lips and moved them to the side of her face. “I think we have a couple of those. Follow me.”

Sally walked through the rowed stacks of cages and Morgan followed. As she walked, she noticed how small the holding cells were. They were tiny coops that would be the equivalent to a person living inside of an apartment-sized bathroom.

“Here we are. How about this one? We call her Buttercup,” said the girl, opening up the cage as she spoke. “We found her lying on the side of the road a couple of days ago.”

Morgan cringed when she saw the beast before her. Buttercup was all black, just like she requested, but she wasn’t sure if it was a cat or a giant wad of fat that had been painted.

Buttercup had a bulging, circular body that made her look like running would be as painful as holding her up by the tail. Her knees were bent inward, and her head was the same size and general shape of a soccer ball. Folds of blubber folded at the base of her ears. Her paws looked swollen shut, and it didn’t look like her claws could still squeeze out their sheaths. Even her tail was overweight and mashed against the ground like a sunbathing hippopotamus. There wasn’t much empty space in the tiny pen.

Buttercup made a noise that Morgan assumed was a hiss when Sally tried to take her out of her cage, but the noise sounded more like a fat man’s snore. A lazy string of spittle dripped out of Buttercup’s mouth and joined a foamy discharge around her collar as she snored again.

Sally thrust the cage closed when the odd noise reached her ears. The two girls were silent for a few seconds, and Morgan realized that the snoring was just how Buttercup sounded when she breathed.

“Can I see a different cat?”

“Sure…right this way.”

Sally started walking again and Morgan followed. Buttercup’s snore-breathing could still barely be heard, and Morgan wondered if there was such a thing as treadmills for cats. The two girls made it to the second eligible cage and stopped.

“Here we are. Maybe you’ll like this one. His name is Musket.” The girl opened the cage but Musket tried to run to the back. She finally nabbed the feline, and brought him out so Morgan could see. “What do you think? He’s been here for a while, and if he doesn’t find an owner soon, he’ll be put down.”

Morgan watched Musket as he squirmed against the girl’s grip. She had a sadistic desire to see the cat scratch Sally, but Musket simply squirmed and stared. He meowed and Morgan instantly knew he was not the cat for her.

“What happened to all of Musket’s teeth?”

“Oh, well we got him from a cat-abuser that apparently forced the poor kitty to chew rocks. There’s still a few in his stomach. That’s why he’s so skinny.”

Morgan’s heart sank and her eyes squinted. “As moving and sad as that is, I don’t think this is the right one for me.”

The girl shook her head and let Musket back into its cage. “We’ve got one more all-black cat. Hope it’s what you’re looking for.”

They continued on, stopping in the back of the room and Morgan crossed her fingers.

“Here we go. Hope you can appreciate this one. We call him Cleandro.”

“Cleandro?”

“Yup. It means man of happiness or something in Spanish, I think. We got him from a Mexican family that was deported about a week ago.”

Morgan looked at the cat and felt a warm feeling bubble up against her heart. “He’ll have to do.”

The cat meowed and Sally smiled. She went to find her boss and came back with the necessary paperwork. The boss was friendly, though he reeked of rotting meat, and Morgan was soon able to buy Cleandro for a small fee.

Sally’s boss placed the newly-purchased cat in a white and blue cardboard container. It was closed at the top and holes were poked in the upper areas for ventilation.

Morgan held it in one hand and her purse in the other as she exited the store. She said goodbye to Sally.

She put the container that the cat was in on the seat of her car and wished she could keep his name, but her mother named the family cat Frisky. Morgan tried convincing her mother that Frisky was a dog’s name, but she could not be swayed.

“Alright, Cleandro, you’re going to have to get used to being called Frisky, okay?”

Morgan glanced over at the box and only got a pleasant meow as a reply. “Even if this whole thing doesn’t work out and my mom figures out you’re not her cat, I think I’ll keep you.” Cleandro kept quiet. “Maybe I’ll even get a job so I can buy you some food. I don’t think there are military cats, so no one would believe me if I told them I needed cat food to support the troops.” Cleandro let out a string of meows and Morgan laughed. “You think that’s a good idea, huh?” She glanced over at the box again. “Well I just might have to do that then.”

There was something familiar about that cat that made her want to go against her promise. Something that reminded her about the time before her father passed.

She made it to her mother’s house and told Cleandro to wait in the car as she stepped out. An autumn breeze kicked a few dying leaves about in the air. The grass was splattered with browns, oranges, and reds as decaying leaves made their graves in patches across the yard.

She went to the front door and rang the doorbell. When her mother opened the door, the look on her face let Morgan know she was ecstatic to see her. They embraced for a few minutes, grasping each other and breathing deeply, almost crying, before going inside.

“I’m glad you finally decided to come see me?” said Morgan’s mom, the bulk of her hips causing her to waddle into the kitchen. “I was really getting tired of just talking to you on the phone.”

She watched as her mother went over to a pot and stirred the contents briefly before going to the fridge and reaching inside.

“I missed you so I thought I’d pay you a visit,” she said.

Morgan’s mother smiled and walked over to her with a bottle of Texas Pete hot sauce in one hand. She pinched Morgan’s cheeks with her free fingers before going back to the stove and shaking in the seasoning.

“That’s really sweet, baby.”

“Whatcha’ cookin’?”

“My famous chicken and dumplings. Can you stay and eat with me?”

“Of course. I didn’t drive all this way to leave on an empty stomach.” Her mother chuckled. “Where’s Frisky?”

Almost immediately, Morgan’s mother’s face drooped. Morgan lowered her eyebrows as she detected the anxiety in her mother. She almost regretted asking, but she remembered her little man of happiness waiting to make the situation better.

“I don’t really know. He’s somewhere around here. I took him to the vet the other day and they say he’s got heartworms,” she said as she paused to wipe her moistening eyes. “I really don’t understand it. I fed him his heartworm pills every day, so how did he get them?”

“I don’t know. I guess some things are just meant to be.”

“It just seems like all the bad meant-to-be things are meant to be for me. Why do you think that is?”

Morgan felt a guilty wave of darkness glaze over her heart. She knew there was no way to prove what she felt, but she couldn’t help feeling it anyway. She couldn’t help feeling like she played some sort of role in her mother’s despair. Maybe if she hadn’t done some of the things she had done. Maybe if she hadn’t made that promise.

“I don’t know, Mom,” she said, as she hung her head. Her dark brown hair fell in front of her face like a funeral veil. A spark of determination jolted down her spine and she brushed her hair back. “I’m going to look for Frisky. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

Her mother didn’t respond; she just remained bent over the pot of chicken and bread, letting her graying hair shield the wrinkles in her face like a mask. Morgan got up and started searching the house. She checked her own bedroom first. The pink walls reminded her of a time when her innocence was still with her.

She didn’t find Frisky under her sheets, in her closet, or anywhere else in her room, so she left and went back into the hallway. She made her way through the bathroom, the living room, and the family room with no luck. That left the basement and the master bedroom unchecked, but Frisky hated the basement so she decided to enter her mother’s room first.

The stale air in the room was like it would be if her mother had been sleeping on the couch or at the kitchen table instead of in her bed. There were no scents, and everything was just as she remembered it was from her last visit. The visit before her father died.

She made her way around and stopped at the bed. The dark-green comforter was rolled back on top of the mint-green sheets. The three green pillows rested against the headboard and tempted her to take a nap. She reached out and slid her fingers over the comforter. It was cold and still like the room.

Morgan turned her back on the bed and went over to the dresser. A forest of pictures covered the top of the dresser, and her eyes were instantly drawn to a picture of her and her father. The short brown hair of her dad rested against her chubby, five-year old cheeks. A shiver went up her spine and she could almost feel the coarseness of his face against hers.

A lump forced its way into the back of her throat and tears distorted the photograph. She continued staring, and the longer she stared, the more emotions she endured. The black coat of guilt squeezed around her heart like a hand. She felt lightheaded as her thoughts moved from guilty to angry.

If her father had never passed away, she would never have lost her job; if her father had never passed away she would never have had to trick all of those people out of their money; if her father had never passed away, she would still be living happily in the house, and she wouldn’t have had to take on the burden of his career.

She didn’t know why she promised to use the signs he had made. He was always a proud man, and the cancer was aggressive enough to take away any dreams he had of creating a legacy. Morgan knew that she was all he had besides her mom, but her mother would not agree with his choice of profession. If she had never agreed to carry on his legacy, she would never have had to move. Living at home after graduation from college isn’t everyone’s dream, but for Morgan it made her happy.

A shutter jerked her spine as she realized that she didn’t owe her father anything. She let go of the picture and it fell away from her face, away from her tears, away from the memories. The only room left to check was the basement, but after she checked the lower level, Frisky was still nowhere to be found. She decided to look outside before giving up, and she went back to the kitchen to tell her mom.

“I’m running out to my car real quick, I’ll be back in a few.”

“Okay, honey, dinner’s almost ready.”

Morgan exited the house and jogged over to one of the bushes that fenced the front. She didn’t see anything unusual, so she went to the tree by the side of the home.

The smell crashed into her nose. Buzzing flies and gnats tickled her ears, and she brought her hand to her mouth.

Sprawled in a patch of dirt and pebbles lay Frisky. His mouth was parted and his tongue hung out as if he wanted to taste the soil. His black fur was matted with brown streaks, and it looked like Frisky had rolled around on the ground before keeling over.

Morgan’s eyes narrowed and sagged at the edges. She swallowed a large glob of saliva that formed in her mouth, and started shoveling dirt atop the family cat with her foot.

A sigh pushed out from within her chest and she went over to her car. She opened the door, pulled apart the top of the blue and white box, and reached in. Cleandro meowed when she grabbed him and pulled him out.

“Alright Cleandro, you’re up. Don’t disappoint me,” she said after reaching into the back and taking out the Frisky lookalike.

Morgan made it back into the house. Her mother was placing a tossed salad by her place and setting the table when she walked into the kitchen. “Look who I found.”

“Frisky,” said Morgan’s mother with a smile. Cleandro stared at Morgan’s mother and meowed. “He sounds a little different today.”

“I think I saw him eating something outside,” Morgan said, setting Cleandro on the ground and trying to hide her shaking hands. “Go ahead Cl…Frisky, go back to whatever you were doing.”

Cleandro rubbed his side against Morgan’s leg and she smirked. She gently shoved him away with her foot, but the cat came back and continued to rub against her leg. She looked at her mother and shrugged her shoulders.

“He really does like you today.”

Morgan laughed nervously. “I guess he really wanted to come in.”

“Come to Mama, Frisky,” Morgan’s mother said, holding out her hands and raising both of her eyebrows. Cleandro blinked but didn’t leave Morgan’s side. She shrugged her shoulders again as her mother shook her head. “Cats really can be moody sometimes.”

“Yeah, when I found him he almost ran away from me. Now he wants to replace my socks. Funny, huh?”

Morgan’s mother smirked and went back over to the table. She finished setting it and served her daughter. They ate and their laughter filled the air with happiness.

After the meal, Morgan’s mother said she was glad her daughter stopped by. She couldn’t stop talking about Frisky’s seemingly newfound energy as she watched the cat prance around in his home like he had never seen a house before.

Morgan kissed her mother goodbye and went back to her car. She hopped in, started the white sedan and drove back to her apartment.

The full moon shimmered as she went inside. As she passed the threshold of her home a heavy sensation tugged on her heart.

Walking past her couch, she noticed her Support our Troops sign propped up against the pillows. She clenched her jaw and knitted her brow together. She tightened her fists until her forearms hurt, and her breathing was in drawn out intervals.

Morgan went to the kitchen and her unhappiness continued growing. Yanking open a drawer, she searched the contents until she found what she wanted: a kitchen lighter. She shoved the drawer shut and turned the safety off before going back to the couch. She grabbed the sign and almost ran outside.

The parking lot was too big for the complex, and she didn’t have a problem finding a space that wasn’t close enough to anyone’s automobile to cause any damage. She tossed the sign on the ground. She hadn’t noticed, but her shoulders were heaving up and down and tears warmed rivers down her face. A small flame danced at the tip of the lighter when she pressed the button. She bent over and brought fire to sign and it started to crackle as the flame ate away its integrity.

She dropped the sign and watched the fire as it danced on the concrete. Taking a step back, she plopped down on her butt.

The sheet of cardboard wrinkled and crumpled into itself. Plumes of blackness fumed up from the parking lot and disappeared into the night sky. She sat there on her backside and stared at the flame until nothing remained but a smoldering pile of embers and blackened past.

When the cold from the night grew too great for her to handle, she stood up and wrapped her arms around herself. A breeze invaded her embrace and she shivered.

A section from the daily newspaper bounced over, carried by the wind, and smacked into the side of her ankle. She bent down and picked up the paper as she turned away from the pile of ashes in the parking lot. She felt warm and thought of Cleandro’s face as her eyes rested on the classified section of the newspaper.

The end.  Exeunt his seed to the fanfare of horns and a choir of angels—his angels, his angel, crooning louder and louder with every thrust of his hips.  Shrink the iris to a thin band as the pupils swell to black saucers; dig those claws into the fleshy pads of her shoulders and drag them down her length.  Winch the brow’s musculature high and taut, skin pulled into ridges like bunched cloth—sweaty, oily cloth, hung above a ridiculous face.   The fact is, he doesn’t care how his face looks right now, not one bit.  His back arcs, moonlight shadows splayed on the sun-mottled skin of middle age, and Abel thinks for a second, as his life flashes before his eyes, does she feel it?  Because it’s not a sunset and it’s not William Butler Yeats; it’s animal simplicity like feeling cold or hot or hungry, but she’s not an animal and she really doesn’t eat.  And while he’s and engineer by trade, while he’d built her from scratch with the sweat of his back and calloused fingertips, he just couldn’t concentrate on her workings as he shuddered with fulfillment.

An utterance of affirmation as the prostate spasms, how romantic; she even knew to cradle him gently to her breast, without even knowing why.

And at the end, he glowed.  They both glowed, incandescent, except for his toes clenched in tiny white fists, sweaty and slimy and salty like raw fish.  Hers were just curled, smooth glowing in slight heat like the rest of her; there’s no sense in mimicking such a detail as sweaty toes, Abel thought—that’s just disgusting.  Organic, perhaps, but disgusting.  As ingrown hairs bowed festering into sores; as flesh scored with the stretch marks and furrows of a mature woman, of wisdom, of fertility; as upper lips clouded by dark tufts of hair.  Nipples askew like autistic eyes.  If that is what makes them human, than “human” is anything but beautiful, and so it’s got no place on this one.   None of it.  For she’s a Rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley, and she would undoubtedly displace Solomon’s favorite concubines if ever he’d laid eyes upon her.  After all, she displaced Abel’s.  And she didn’t need to be given human imperfections to do it.

But now that it’s over, he can just hold still for a moment, just hold still; bask in the blush aura, let the brain push the plunger on its hedonic syringe.  Sparks jump synapses like lightning across the sagging thunderheads he’d watch with his girl back when he had a real one of his own.  But that was a long time ago, back when Abel needed the company of someone who wasn’t rightfully afraid of being drenched by a thunderstorm, and as he listened to the staccato of his breath like gears churning in his own guts he knew that this was close enough for him, for now.

Her hair was spilled over her face and into his.  He felt her breath, and it smelled lovely, that always bothered him like how silk flowers don’t wilt, her breath shouldn’t smell lovely and he meant to fix that.  This was the first sign it was over and gone.  He’d notice the sweet of her breath and feel his heart sink; when his eyes turned upward to the mirror on the ceiling and their silver-rimmed silhouette in the post-coital miasma, he couldn’t help but frown.  He felt the coquettish curve of her lips brush against his ear, how was it, baby?

It was lovely, dear, lovely, and he inverted his frown for her.

Exeunt his softening member as he readjusts himself, because he just can’t get comfortable.  He feels that he is alone now; though she’s curled about him like a trellis, he feels alone as he’s ever been and the air is still.  She hasn’t so much as twitched in an eternity.  He doesn’t like how the sheets are bunched up on the small of his back.

Could you excuse me for a sec, baby?

Her leg lifts in an angular jerk, and he’s free.  It’s the part he can’t stand, the aftermath, the part he “puts up with” because his body tells him oh you bet it’s worth it and his mind tells him that if he’s going to objectify women, he may as well go the whole nine or ten yards.  Think about all the time and energy saved by not chasing a more organic romance, he’d think, ever the engineer, as though giving up on lofty notions of love is easy if you have an alternative.  Perhaps it is, or perhaps you’re just that shallow, in which case, more power to you, he’d tell himself as he shuffled off to the bathroom.

Exeunt Abel, ever the pragmatist.

In the silence, he could swear he heard her joints make that mechanical groan like robot joints are supposed to make, but it was probably just in his head.  He built her better than that.  It used to be with these things that they couldn’t even get the temperature right, and you’d penetrate and feel all the sensuality of a cold shower in mid-winter, or it’d be so hot you’d singe half your hair off.  On several occasions, victims filed suit against the manufacturer of the part in question, but the matter was always settled out of court as most plaintiffs were just too embarrassed to sit on the stand, head slung low and eyed welling with shame, and to tell the prim schoolmarm on the jury that yes, God as my reluctant witness, yes, a false vagina singed my loins. Scandalous!

After a while, they started putting warnings on them like paper coffee cups.  You can imagine the puns.

The air in the bathroom is dark and oppressive, a chill seeping from the walls.  He’d come to his sensibilities by this point, hunched over the washbasin, trying to carry water to his lips by cupped handfuls.  What to do now, what’s worthwhile after you consummate nothing worthwhile, and his reflection stared at him blankly waiting for another sip of water.  This was a common occurrence for Abel; not being a particularly decisive or directed man in his personal life, he spent much of his time looking into mirrors trying to find answers but only seeing his own beautiful, dignified dumbness.

I hope you’re happy, he mouthed to himself, though to his penis more than any other component.  The organ recoiled in shame, as if accosted by paparazzi.  It’s not that he didn’t enjoy himself—he wished he hadn’t, though.  Abel thought he had created a monster, but it wasn’t the machine on his bed in the comely form of gentle curves and desire; it was staring at itself in the mirror, in shame and in the gracefully aging skin of a man who should surely know better.

By now he’d passed the age where his contemporaries settled down, and without slowing.   Now his prematurely salt-and-peppered hair prematurely favored the salt ten-fold, now his eyes had retreated deep into the hollows of his gaunt face.  When he talked, you could see them glimmering like the water at the bottom of a well, faint and soft and only visible because the dark around them was so dark.  And when he talked, his voice had an odd warmth, like all those war vets softened into grandfathers as the decades sanded them down.  But Abel was soft to begin with, so it didn’t take near as long to leech the raucous ferocity of youth from him.

Or maybe life just rode him harder than most.  Surely, something made him more susceptible to fits of passion, which for him always end with sexual release.  Or with his standing in the doorway wielding a blunt instrument, walking deliberately towards the figure in his bed with wide eyes and mouth agape.

He marched out of the bathroom, told her he’d be right back, and left for the garage to grab something heavy.

Before he started building lovers (and bashing them to pieces), Abel had frequented makeshift brothels above south side bars.  It was a routine for years; it was ritual, almost sacred.  Under the glow of a full moon, he’d catch the metro around midnight, follow the red line down to its end in the shitty underbelly of town where tract-houses were digested by weather and vandalism, where you could go into a bar and ask where you could find a good time and if you weren’t too clean-shaven they’d lead you upstairs to a red velvet room with a disco ball and an air mattress.  And a girl.  Never a woman, always a girl, because even almighty Zeus chose girls over women.

Afterwards, he’d talk to them, and he was charming, and he’d tell them that he designed airplanes.

It would be cooler if you flew them, they’d say, playfully.

He’d ask them where they’d want to go if he could fly them anywhere; a lot of them wanted to go home.  One wanted to go to Fiji, but she recanted when he told her about the cannibals there.

And so he was satisfied.  Not happy, but satisfied with this arrangement, and the working girls got to know him by name, and he got to know them by their pseudonyms, and their maladies.

Candy had a mother with lymphoma.

Amber was touched by the majority of her male relatives.

Angel wanted to be a nun when she was younger, but stopped believing in god when she learned about the Holocaust.

Abel would kiss them and hold them close, and they’d spill their guts for him because he was a sympathetic ear.  Those are always nice to have, when you have none.  They were all sob stories, each one, because nobody grows up wanting to be a hooker—something had to go wrong somewhere.

Bambi started on coke because she was fat in high school.

Lexxxie wasn’t breast fed.

And then he would have his way with them, because he wasn’t really emotionally invested, and because it was just too easy.

He wanted to know them, and to shape them, to make them his own no matter how many anonymous desires they slaked beyond his.  By god they would all remember him, and surely if you found Lexxxie today and asked her about Abel she’d go on for a good half-hour about the handsome young man with the gritty look about him like a polished Ted Kaczynski.  She wouldn’t be able to put her finger on what seemed off about him (beyond the connotations of looking as a polished Ted Kaczynski), but there was something; he had a good heart though, perhaps, well, it’s hard to tell, maybe.  He wasn’t circumcised, that was kind of strange.

She knew there was something, though.

Not necessarily something frightening, not back then, nothing crazy or off-putting, not at all.  Perhaps it was his interest, his intellect; they don’t belong in a brothel but he couldn’t stand do leave them outside, as though a passer-by would steal them.  If Lexxxie was asked to picture him, she’d still see his forehead wrinkled intently like bunched cloth, like his thoughts were so big his skin didn’t fit right.

But when the sun began to set on his youth, he realized you can’t go on forever living like that.  By his early thirties he felt the need to find a girl of his own, a real girl—and within a year, Abel was sitting on his hands, legs crossed, watching her intently.

She was lovely, not beautiful in the traditional sense, but not so unattractive that you’d describe her as looking “unconventional”.  Her olive skin provided stark contrast with his, which, while at that time homogeneous, was decidedly pale—when they held hands, it looked as though he was palming wet clay.  She was slight of build, narrow at the shoulders, built of clean lines as though meticulously drawn in pencil.  If any word could capture her fully, that word would certainly not be robust.

The sun was sinking slowly through a sky of honey, and everything was bathed in gold and blinding.  She looked off at a stretch of horizon trimmed by low scrub, squinting; his first thought was that she kind of looked Asian.  His second was that had, perhaps, fallen for her a bit too hard.  He hadn’t meant to fall for her at all.

His eyes darted over her, sitting on her hands, legs crossed, looking off.   He knew what she was thinking, I always preferred sunrises, and it brought him comfort; he also preferred sunrises, so it worked out well, they were both unsatisfied.    In a way, it was romantic.  Unintentional, but romantic.

Tell me you love me, he said, and she looked back at him.

No.

Cheeky bitch, extending a paw to ruffle her hair.  She smirked and withdrew.  His hand came back to him with a fistful of air.  I’ll race you back to the car.

But you’ll win, she shouted as he clumsily rose to his feet.

That’s half the fun, and he took off running.

Asshole, she laughed.

He’d been seeing her for three months, which is a long time, because he usually couldn’t stand anybody but himself for that long; save the working girls, but that was different.  During the day he remained aloof and abrupt, and kept to himself.  He desired nothing of friends when he had his work, his serial monogamy, and sex, which was, to him, almost work in itself.

He was still moonlighting as a Lothario.

But such behaviors had been tempered of late.  With each successive try at romance, he learned more about himself, more about his “true love”, more about how those two were not mutually exclusive.  He’d made her something of a project, like a wood carving or any other hobby that one takes to heart and a bit too far.  He loved projects.  And he was sick of serial monogamy.

In the end, she was going to be his girl, and only then could he love her.

But from the beginning, people used to say they looked like lovebirds together.  Neither of them quite knew how to take that.  In fact, it was a discussion of that very remark that won him a second date with her, because he didn’t let on that it might actually be due to noses sharing an odd contour.

When she finally got to the car, he announced that he’d won the race and opened the door for her, all gentlemanly.

You didn’t think it was funny, he said, not laughing anymore.

It was funny. She smiled. You’re still an asshole.

He was making progress.  Before—when they’d met—she would have called him” jerk-off” for such a display, and she actually would have meant it.

Within a few months, he thought, she would just gracefully lose the race.

The car had been baking for half an hour.  It was hot inside, and smelled strongly of leather.

I had a good time today, she said, looking out the window.

I’m glad.  The car started up and the vents blasted hot air.  You know, there’s something about you I find very, he stammered, groping for a word, something in him kept mute so he sat rubbing his thumbs for a long second. Appealing. He asked himself what the hell that was, and why he couldn’t finish his sentence when he wanted to.

Well aren’t you fucking Don Juan today, she muttered, and he grabbed her head and forced his mouth onto hers.

As much as he couldn’t admit it, he was nervous, which was disconcerting for him, deep down inside.  As he carved her into his doll, his hands couldn’t waver; lest he lose his grip and she fall away.

Which is exactly what happened, eventually, because you can’t just bend someone like that.  Not if you care about them, even just a bit.  He realized it only as he passed those first few days alone, and those first few nights in a cold bed staring at the void on the pillow beside him: there was something that Pygmalion saw in his statues that he could never see in the lively eyes of a real lover.

And so Abel retreated to his garage by night, which became his workshop, and he worked with a zeal he’d scarcely seen in himself before.  His soldering was artful.  Placing wires in circuits, he was stringing his Stradivarius; suturing latex skin tight he was stretching a canvas.  He had direction for once.  He had a goal and, to look at him, a divine mandate—he could’ve been building an ark, working to save the world on orders from upstairs with all the fervor that drove him.  Evidently the chorus of his heart and penis had a more motivational voice than the Metatron.

But that was by night.

When light shone through the window and he had to dress himself and shower and head off to work, and to interact with others, he sunk a bit.  He had the posture of bent cane and disinterested eyes, people would look at him and say that something seemed off.

And not in an interesting way.  He seemed frighteningly, eerily, off-puttingly off.  Those who knew him—tangentially, of course, he had no nuclear friends anymore—said that he’d lost his edge.  His charm.  Because when you’re so involved in such a project as building a mechanical lover, it’s hard to perk up when your hands aren’t in it.  Surely it wasn’t just him.

Just imagine Victor Frankenstein being rung up at Safeway.  Nikola Tesla waiting for a prescription to be filled.  Dr. Moreau returning an unwanted gift for store credit.

But Abel had no need for charm.  The most it could get him, he thought, was a rough approximation of what he was constructing.  However fleshy an approximation it may be.  He had no need, because every night, he added another centimeter to her, and she became another centimeter closer to the dream manifested solid.  Soon, he would have something to show for it.

Something.

Though he didn’t know what.  He didn’t even know what pronoun to ascribe to his creation, because it wasn’t human enough to be labeled “she”, but she was too human to be labeled “it”.  Abel decided the choice could vary based on his mood; it’s not like he talked with anybody anybody about her, though the mailman was curious in delivering all of the parts.

In six months, every bit was there, and he poured them both a glass of champagne.  She drank it, and smiled, coquettish.  He kissed her.

That first time, he felt it may’ve been incest.  Really, it could be rationalized either way; after all she was of his labor, and did have a hint of his likeness, and that much was certainly not a coincidence.  But those thoughts were quickly tempered by an aversion to logic and rationality and morality, that aversion to logic that seems to accompany an erection; tempered also by the fact that she was rough and not a terribly convincing replica.  After all, while she was a fine accomplishment from an engineering standpoint, she was very plainly a construction of latex and chicken wire and not of his blood, unless it was motor oil that circulated in him.

None of it mattered to him then, as he shared the bed with it that first night.  But he couldn’t fall asleep.  He could never fall asleep with them; but this being first time, he just didn’t know what to expect.

Perhaps that was why he couldn’t control himself.

Because it all had such a foreign feel that he couldn’t possibly know how he should act, something welled in him, the other side of passion, and he just let go.  Unable to restrain hands that flew on their own volition, he smashed her in a fit of disgust.  But only because he couldn’t break himself instead, and certainly not out of malice or sadism or anything like that.  At most, it was catharsis, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him, standing over her, a hammer swinging in the dark bedroom.

As he dragged the broken mass to the garage, he told himself that next time would be different, but it never was.

The more real they became, the more it drove him mad, and so there he stood in the doorway tonight, hair gone gray, eyes sunken into hollows.  In his left hand, he clutched a hammer so tightly his knuckles were white around it.

An effective bludgeoning tool.

He watched the hypnotic rise and fall of her chest, but knew she wasn’t breathing.  That made it okay, or at least tolerable, and so he mouthed to himself: she’s not real; you can do better. Over and over until the words didn’t sound, she’s not real, you can do better, and he tightened his grip on the hammer.  Veins coursed over his hands, protruding from his skin, serpentine things coursing their way up to his shoulder.  She looked at him.

Are you alright? she said, staring through him.

I’m alright.

The first step towards the bed was the hardest, every time.  After that, he had momentum, and it was just a sequence of movements, one foot follows the next.  And so he hesitated for a long while, in the dark, thinking; her body lying unfurled on the bed looking so convincing.  It made him burn inside.   It welled up in his muscles, it made him tense his brow, it made him think of all the time he’d put into this habit over the years, this obsession; the calculations and the schematics and the labors of the mind to appease a drive so mindless.

It made him think of how it had come to this, standing naked in the dark like with a hammer like a crazy person.

And he took the first step.

It made him think of what the working girls had that she didn’t, and where he went wrong, where he always went wrong

By the time took his second step, he was already whaling on her.

It made him think of his girl, and how they’d sit on the porch when it rained, the thunderheads sagging and leaking like big wet gunny sacks; Abel and his girl waited for the lightning, passing a bottle of wine between them.  She had been scared of storms when she was younger, but Abel was partial to them and so such a fear had to go; he turned her onto exposure therapy.

It made him think of the one time he offered his hand and told her to tell him she loved him, but she didn’t take it.  He could do little but stare at her as she flashed a cold glance and looked back to the roiling clouds.

Baby?

You know that I don’t like that.

I’m sorry. He smiled at her sheepishly, but looking at her face, he saw that she wasn’t wearing the big grin he’d come to expect from her.  Is everything alright?

She told him yes to keep things on an even keel; he pried, and she said something about not being his fucking dog.

But I just wanted to hold her hand.

Frightened and not knowing what to say, Abel told her to calm down and not to be like this.  She said she was sharp, and she wouldn’t take it anymore; she said hated what she’d become.  He frowned, knowing what he’d made her.

That night when she walked off the porch and lightning split the sky, she jumped a bit.  And she looked back at Abel who’d taken a step forward and stopped.  His face was wet, but he told himself that was because it was raining.  Gazed fixed on her slight form, he watched her go; he told himself next time would be different.

The cycle has grown shorter, but have the lessons been learned?
The way forward is unclear not wanting to get burned

Angel-eyes opened wide to see the vicious cycle up and down
Grasping for a rip-cord to slow this spiral toward the ground

Will it be this time that it all crashes and burns?
Or be like the past, avoiding ground zero with a slight upward turn

Clouded eyes cannot see any soft place to land
No bed of feathers prepared over the harsh dessert sand

Hurt feelings are inevitable – it is the burden to be paid
Not living a precious life – a decision to be weighed

A cauldron of fire across the only path which lies ahead
Every moment of hesitation heightens the sensation of being dead

Like a phoenix rises from the ashes, the angel will eventually too
With the sun at her back and wings spread wide, aloft against a sky of deepest blue

An angel appeared before him
A figure bathed in light
Golden curls adorned her head
Eyes shining clear and bright

She was a welcome interruption
His life desperate for repair
A gift from God he knew at once
To lead him from despair

Her soul an endless repository
Full of love for the broken boy
His sense of self awakened
Overflowing with sudden joy

Before long her image haunted him
From the darkness a demon lurked
Perception no longer reliable
Convoluted delusions at work

Golden curls slithered and hissed
Eyes shifted from blue to red
The bright light that surrounded her
Transformed to flames instead

To survive he must destroy her
A battle he must not lose
Bury the angel In disguise
Or risk the right to choose

The first blow met with silent pleas
Blood dripping from his hand
He raised his sword and burrowed deep
Convinced of God’s command

A flutter of wings broke the silence
A slight breeze against his skin
To his dismay his opponent rose
And returned to her origin

His transgression fully realized
Noiseless tears began to fall
Mindful of his broken dreams
She was an angel after all

                                   -Tina Krawczyk