She spent the whole day cleaning, couldn’t help but, after the mess he’d made. And this was supposed to be perfect. She bought the cards, the one for him, and the one he would give to her. Because he couldn’t very well be trusted to pick out something suitable. Left to his own devices, she imagined she’d end up with something perverted, with a message inside about stockings or his hard-on.
“What did you do?” she imagined him taunting.
“What you always wanted.”
Such a fine conversationalist tonight, she thought sarcastically. Ah, it would have been a first anyway. At least he was using his ears. Shutting that big ‘ole mouth.
“We both got ours,” she added, adding another layer of lipstick to her pucker.
She set the cards on the side table, checked the locks on the door, and then turned down the lights.
Stiff, just as she always wanted him. At his age it was a wonder his equipment worked at all. She kissed him, his cold lips. She had a boyfriend once, who did that: Used to turn on his air conditioner real high before getting out to greet her for a date. Delightfully cold kisses! A woman like her appreciated such details.
“Come on baby, kiss me back,” she purred, breathlessly into his ear. “I know you’re excited.” It’s what he always wanted.
Oh how they’d once bickered. Him, calling her such a tease, vowing this would never happen. The conditions just had to be right - like tonight. “You know why,” she thought she heard him grumble, as she leaned down to start suckling at his member.
“The rigor mortis?” she hissed, with a snicker. “Come on, old man.”
It wouldn’t be long before the smell would alert someone and they’d take him away. Or the racoon would pick his way in at last to polish off the body. Ruin the plan. Just as well, love affairs were always fleeting, even the kinds that blurred into marriage making a mockery of love everlasting. No such thing as that, she knew. All good things come to an end, just like Nelly Furtado was singing. As she lay there, breathless, expired against his frigid flesh, she sighed, “They’ll come soon. Treasure this baby, I am.”
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©2010 Shaylen Maxwell
Shaylen’s short fiction has appeared in over a dozen publications in the US and overseas. She edits State of Imagination magazine. And currently resides in exile with her menagerie of wild animals: two red wolves, two deranged felines, four blood-thirsty bunnies, a Beldoe and a Sneaky.
Tags: Shaylen Maxwell
November 1st, 2010 at 12:33 am
[...] “Cold Kisses” (Flashes in the Dark, November 2010) [...]
November 1st, 2010 at 6:05 am
I really like this! It’s so twisted but I also feel there is a loneliness as well (but that might just be me). Very well written.
Allie x
November 2nd, 2010 at 1:45 am
Thanks so much, Allie! And yes, I think you can definitely read loneliness into it. : )