C41
Public Record
Excerpt from novel: Best Cellar

Faye bit it after just about the most boring conversation you could have.

We were in bed talking about
mood lighting and lampshades or something just as stupid,
and she went to the tub to wash off my stink.
I swear to god as I was lying there

I was thinking about how beautiful her voice was.
The way she said ‘ambiance’ could get me hard.
Even ‘lampshade’ was just the greatest:
the breathy draw, the pursed-lipped hum,
the ‘sh’ hushed through the edges of her perfectly almost-straight teeth,
and that tender tongue of hers making a
“
come here”
motion all throughout.
She leaned against the doorpost with this sinister smile
and those black curls bouncing just above her breasts.
With that red-licorice tongue she said just above a moan,
‘Care to join me?’ and I could have come again.
Instead I rolled over and let contentment and a talk show lull me to sleep.

As I rocked in the warm womb of Faye’s voice and the sloshing bathwater,
I was all of a sudden yanked from my peace
by that high pitched squeal of skin-against-tub,
along with a scream and water thrashing every which way.
Then a distinct Smack!
like bone-against-metal,
if you can imagine that,
and an awfully unattractive voice gurgled up
from the bottom of Faye’s throat as I ran in to see her.
Pink water spilled out over the whole floor,
the sink,
the mirror,
and blood was running down her chin and cleavage
and mixing in with the bath.
She was thrashing in the water and yelling
with an obnoxious new speech impediment,
pointing and saying something about her tongue.
The stopper had come out when she slid
so it was draining fast and the water was too much blood to see anything.
I threw my arms in up to my elbows and dug around at the bottom,
but didn't feel a thing.
She scooped pink water backwards against the wall
and yelled the way I’d imagine a deaf person might.
Soon the little whirlpool slurped and exhaled and left no bits of tongue.
A laugh track came in from the TV.

Thresher Charles