Split Up
a short love story
by Rewired.
Scene One: The Apartment.
By the time I walked in the door, she was right there, in my face, waiting for me. “You bring the milk, dear? I made dinner. Spaghetti.”
“Cool,” I said, “No, I didn’t know we needed any milk.” I turned to put my coat on the rack, and looked back to see her glaring dead at me. I held up my hands. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said, “can’t I just look at you once in awhile?”
“Yeah, but you can sit down and relax every once in awhile, too. Sit down and take a breather, you’ve been on your feet all day at work. Don’t be all jumpy and up in my face.”
“It’s been a long day at work, honey -- I haven’t seen you.”
“You should be tired,” I said, “Be tired. Relax already. Don’t try so damned hard.”
“I don’t have to relax, dammit -- why are you always telling me to relax? It’s my life, and you’re always for personal freedom and personal space and this is freedom to talk to you and we have different jobs and I think that would be enough space if.... “
I’m sure she went on with her speech, but over my years of knowing her I’d learned to tune out certain things -- namely, her voice. Dr. Impauler called it `selective ignorance'. It was nice to have my will trained enough to tune out annoying sensory input. How else would I have lived with her for two years? Sometimes I believed this ignorance was the only thing that sustained my sanity – and consequently, and perhaps unfortunately, kept her alive.
You know how most of us men, when our wives or girlfriends are in a crabby mood, tend to explain it away to other people as `that time of the month’? She’s used that excuse with me more often than logic dictated it should be a justified reason.
“... it’s been a long day for me as well, and my period just amplifies it all, so give me a break and have some sympathy -- Geezus Christ, Rob, will you listen to me?”
“I always listen.” I told her, as I sat on the couch and grabbed a bottle of Aspirin. As often as I’d used these damned things -- daily, as should by now be understandable -- I never got better at opening these damned childproof caps.
“You might hear me, but you don’t listen. Like the wood for the fire place... “
No. No more Aspirin left in the bottle.
“And that damned sledgehammer -- dammit Rob, it’s been in here since we moved here... “
I looked at the clock. It was five o’clock. I liked that clock, I’d bought it a few weeks ago when she’d hit the last one with the broom, and it tumbled on the chair and fell to pieces. That clocked stopped. The one inside my head was winding down. It wasn’t a clock, though, it was a time bomb.
“And why does that slut coworker of yours keep asking if you’d come to the bar? All our drunk ex-friends want to see you but not me, and that fucking slut probably just wants to get down your-- “
“What?” I said, giving her an eye. She had called a good friend of mine a slut and the rest of my friends drunks, friends that I hadn’t seen in two years because of her. I got up off the sofa.
“What are you doing?” She said. “Oh, something worthwhile for once. It’s about time you moved that damned sledge hammer. Put it in the garage, dammit, so we can eat --”
Scene Two: The Pub.
It was nice to pull into the bar again, the old hangout that I’d come to every evening for years after work. At that time I’d been working at the old factory, Gates Mills, were I’d worked molding toilets. A good metaphor for the totality of my life at the time, and where it was leading, I suppose.
It was nice to see my old friends, and play some pool. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d played pool, and I certainly couldn’t recall the last time I’d played pool and kicked Rick’s ass.
“You’ve gotten better,” he said.
“I know, it’s strange,” I said, running my fingers through my hair, “I haven’t picked up a pool cue in ages.”
“No,” he said, “Not just that. You’re whole persona.”
“Yeah,” Tracey said, “you seem much happier tonight than I’ve ever seen you.”
Rick turned to look at her. “Since this morning when you saw him at work?”
“Yeah. So Rob,” she said, “what happened exactly, anyway? Never, in all my years of knowing you -- even in high school -- have I ever seen you so fucking... I dunno, `lively', I guess. What's the story?”
“Yeah. Tell us man,” Rick said, laughing, “was it mutual, or was she on her knees begging you not to go?”
“Well... it just sort of happened, you know. She split up.”
“You mean you guys split up.” She corrected. “Anyway, there’s got to be more to it than that.”
“C’mon, we’re your friends, and we haven’t seen you in two years because of this bitch,” he replied, “your vagueness is disturbing. What can you hurt by telling us exactly what happened between you two?”
Scene Three: The Trunk.
I put the keys in the trunk, and the light from the porch light of the bar highlighted the features of her crumbled, battered corpse atop an old blanket I’d found in the closet.
“A little extreme, doncha think?” Rick stated, his face distorting. “Geez, man... you bashed her brains in...”
“Sledgehammer,” I told him grimly, but then killed the shred of guilt with a shrug. “She had it coming.”
“It’s a shame,” John said from the back of Tracey, peering over her shoulder. “I was hoping that after you guys broke it off I could maybe get a shot at her.”
“Shoot away,” Tracey said with a grin.
“Oh, wow,” Rick said, laughing, then backhanding me lightly in the stomach in order to bring my attention to his suddenly enlightened features. He pointed at his chest, nudging me. “Is that the sledgehammer I got you for the wedding?”
I felt a smile creeping on my face. “Yeah.”
“Cool,” he said, nodding, “kinda poetic, in a way.”
She wriggled in the trunk, and her eyes opened and looked dead at me.
I shut the trunk.
I absolutely hate it when corpses do that.
Scene Four: The Pub again.
“Do corpses usually do that?” John asked, over a twenty-three ounce glass of beer back inside the pub.
Rick raised an eyebrow and looked at him like he had just said the most perverse thing in all the world. “You still really want a shot at her, don’t you? Dude, she’s dead. Unless your into that kind of thing.”
“Shuddup,” he said, his face blushing.
“So Rob,” Tracey whispered to me in a teasing kind of tone, “me and Rick were wondering -- what exactly were you planning to do with the body?”
I shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
She held up her hands. “You can’t exactly just leave a decaying corpse in the trunk of your car, pal.”
“Yeah, man, bloodstains can be a bitch, and it's bound to be a little stinkey-pooh after awhile.” John said.
I raised an eye brow. "Stinkey-pooh?"
Rick snickered. “John will take her.”
He scowled. “Rick, shut the fuck up. And Rob, don’t forget about the claw marks in your back trunk if she’s still alive. And any dents, depending on how strong she is.”
“Dammit, John, she’s dead. She didn’t move.”
I looked around the pub. It was fairly empty, with only a few indifferent faces lounging around. One such face was that of an old, bearded, pipe-smoking drunk old guy at the other end of the bar. I pointed in that general direction and whispered to my friends.
“Let’s go ask that guy.”
At my request, we all got up and moved in his direction. I sat next to him, interlocking my fingers and placing them before me at the table.
“Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“Certainly not,” he said, sipping his brew. “Is this is regard to the female corpse in the trunk of your car that you and your friends have been speaking so fluently and at such a high volume about over there in the corner of the bar?”
“Indeed,” I responded.
“Is this the body of a female that has caused you great annoyance and personal insult over the years, to which you’ve expressed your aggression and which you now seek to dispose of once and for all?”
“Yes,” I spoke, in complete honesty, “Now that her biological processes have ceased to function, I merely desire emotional or psychological closure -- to ensure that the freedom and confidence I now find myself filled with is permanent and that she will never again rise from the dead and constipate my life, metaphorically speaking, of course.”
"Ah, in need of a laxative."
"Metaphorically-speaking, of course."
"Of course, of course," he said. He scratched his chin for a moment, staring at the array of bottles before him, as if drawing grand wisdom from them through some type of telepathy.
He finally spoke again. “Elliminate her body in a meaningful way. Symbolic, perhaps. See it as a change, a type of transition, not death -- for her thought will always linger, and you will have to find ways of dealing with that in time. Look back on your times with her as a learning experience, and banish her bodily remains using your creativity and all your passion. And good luck.”
It wasn't exactly what I had been looking for, but it would do. I offered my hand, and we shook. “Thank you much, sir,” I told him, “and enjoy your brewski -- you only live once.”
“No, no,” he said, grabbing my shirt and dragging me down to the seat I’d just gotten up from, “let this be a lesson to you, son. I disagree with the philosophy that says you only live once – but I can agree with a philosophy that says you should live like you do. And drink like you do. Don’t be in a rush as you suddenly seem to be, but don’t lag too much either as it seems evident that you have in the past. Live life to it’s fullest, enjoy the scenery, watch were you step; be daring, not stupid. And watch out for women: they can be beautiful, but also malicious. They’re damned tempting though, aren’t they?”
“Very much so,” I said, “and now I know to shoot higher.”
“No, no,” he said, “no more shooting. No more killing. And make this be the last woman you store in your trunk, okay?”
“Figure of speech, man,” I said, patting him on the back, “thanks for the talk, though.”
He grumbled as we got out of the bar, taking his glass of beer to his lips. I think I heard him mumble as we walked out the door: “Damned kids.”
Scene Five: The Apartment.
“You know,” I said, trying to talk over the sound of the blender I was using, “this whole episode raises important questions of morality.”
“True,” Tracey said, chopping with the grated meat knife at the other side of the kitchen, “but I’ve always seen morality as a purely personal view. I don’t think there’s really any collective morality that exists beyond our puny little human heads, like some being up there in the sky drawing lines between things and sticking them into categories.”
“I agree that there isn’t any real, definitive right or wrong for everyone. Yet through life the more you see the moral differences towards people, and differing views in general," I went on, as I began dumping biological sludge from the blender into a bucket on the floor, "the more I'm led to one general moral philsophy."
“Which is?”
“The only sensible moral philosophy for governing conscious existence in the universe as a whole would have to be a certain code of mutual respect between all forms of life, great and small. Essentially, do what you wish so long as no other is harmed.”
I picked up the bucket very carefully and began taking it down the hall and into the bathroom. She followed close behind.
“Yet the real question is just how far one should go in the act of punishing those who have stepped over the lines where their personal freedom ends and their intrusion on another’s personal freedom begins. It’s sensible to give warnings, and fight them to the point were they step out of your territory, but if they keep crossing back over, what then? Is destruction then acceptable, under the law of mutual respect? How do you know when you’ve gone to the extreme?”
I tipped it over the seat, after putting up the lid. I began pouring it in the toilet.
She sighed, “I guess you just have to go with what you feel deep in your heart. It’s your soul’s conscience you have to ultimately rely on: that little voice inside. We have to do what we feel as right deep within us -- as individuals, that’s all we have to go on. And how do you truly learn where the lines are drawn between the universal dualities if you live life one-sided? To know good, you must experience evil; to know what’s right, you must do the wrong. It’s a good method of reaching balance within yourself. No one’s all good, or all evil. We’ve all got a little of both, and if we suppress our darker sides they’ll eventually claw their ways out. It’s best to exercise both extremes, because experience is the best teacher.”
I nodded.
"And some problems can't be fixed. Sometimes you just need a clean slate, a fresh start -- but first you have to purge yourself."
I put the empty bucket beside me and gazed into the potty. She did as well. We gazed at the shimmering sludge in the toilet for a moment longer, taking in the moment, feeling the silence penetrate our souls.
I shrugged.
“To hell with it,” I said.
I flushed.
a short love story
by Rewired.
Scene One: The Apartment.
By the time I walked in the door, she was right there, in my face, waiting for me. “You bring the milk, dear? I made dinner. Spaghetti.”
“Cool,” I said, “No, I didn’t know we needed any milk.” I turned to put my coat on the rack, and looked back to see her glaring dead at me. I held up my hands. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said, “can’t I just look at you once in awhile?”
“Yeah, but you can sit down and relax every once in awhile, too. Sit down and take a breather, you’ve been on your feet all day at work. Don’t be all jumpy and up in my face.”
“It’s been a long day at work, honey -- I haven’t seen you.”
“You should be tired,” I said, “Be tired. Relax already. Don’t try so damned hard.”
“I don’t have to relax, dammit -- why are you always telling me to relax? It’s my life, and you’re always for personal freedom and personal space and this is freedom to talk to you and we have different jobs and I think that would be enough space if.... “
I’m sure she went on with her speech, but over my years of knowing her I’d learned to tune out certain things -- namely, her voice. Dr. Impauler called it `selective ignorance'. It was nice to have my will trained enough to tune out annoying sensory input. How else would I have lived with her for two years? Sometimes I believed this ignorance was the only thing that sustained my sanity – and consequently, and perhaps unfortunately, kept her alive.
You know how most of us men, when our wives or girlfriends are in a crabby mood, tend to explain it away to other people as `that time of the month’? She’s used that excuse with me more often than logic dictated it should be a justified reason.
“... it’s been a long day for me as well, and my period just amplifies it all, so give me a break and have some sympathy -- Geezus Christ, Rob, will you listen to me?”
“I always listen.” I told her, as I sat on the couch and grabbed a bottle of Aspirin. As often as I’d used these damned things -- daily, as should by now be understandable -- I never got better at opening these damned childproof caps.
“You might hear me, but you don’t listen. Like the wood for the fire place... “
No. No more Aspirin left in the bottle.
“And that damned sledgehammer -- dammit Rob, it’s been in here since we moved here... “
I looked at the clock. It was five o’clock. I liked that clock, I’d bought it a few weeks ago when she’d hit the last one with the broom, and it tumbled on the chair and fell to pieces. That clocked stopped. The one inside my head was winding down. It wasn’t a clock, though, it was a time bomb.
“And why does that slut coworker of yours keep asking if you’d come to the bar? All our drunk ex-friends want to see you but not me, and that fucking slut probably just wants to get down your-- “
“What?” I said, giving her an eye. She had called a good friend of mine a slut and the rest of my friends drunks, friends that I hadn’t seen in two years because of her. I got up off the sofa.
“What are you doing?” She said. “Oh, something worthwhile for once. It’s about time you moved that damned sledge hammer. Put it in the garage, dammit, so we can eat --”
Scene Two: The Pub.
It was nice to pull into the bar again, the old hangout that I’d come to every evening for years after work. At that time I’d been working at the old factory, Gates Mills, were I’d worked molding toilets. A good metaphor for the totality of my life at the time, and where it was leading, I suppose.
It was nice to see my old friends, and play some pool. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d played pool, and I certainly couldn’t recall the last time I’d played pool and kicked Rick’s ass.
“You’ve gotten better,” he said.
“I know, it’s strange,” I said, running my fingers through my hair, “I haven’t picked up a pool cue in ages.”
“No,” he said, “Not just that. You’re whole persona.”
“Yeah,” Tracey said, “you seem much happier tonight than I’ve ever seen you.”
Rick turned to look at her. “Since this morning when you saw him at work?”
“Yeah. So Rob,” she said, “what happened exactly, anyway? Never, in all my years of knowing you -- even in high school -- have I ever seen you so fucking... I dunno, `lively', I guess. What's the story?”
“Yeah. Tell us man,” Rick said, laughing, “was it mutual, or was she on her knees begging you not to go?”
“Well... it just sort of happened, you know. She split up.”
“You mean you guys split up.” She corrected. “Anyway, there’s got to be more to it than that.”
“C’mon, we’re your friends, and we haven’t seen you in two years because of this bitch,” he replied, “your vagueness is disturbing. What can you hurt by telling us exactly what happened between you two?”
Scene Three: The Trunk.
I put the keys in the trunk, and the light from the porch light of the bar highlighted the features of her crumbled, battered corpse atop an old blanket I’d found in the closet.
“A little extreme, doncha think?” Rick stated, his face distorting. “Geez, man... you bashed her brains in...”
“Sledgehammer,” I told him grimly, but then killed the shred of guilt with a shrug. “She had it coming.”
“It’s a shame,” John said from the back of Tracey, peering over her shoulder. “I was hoping that after you guys broke it off I could maybe get a shot at her.”
“Shoot away,” Tracey said with a grin.
“Oh, wow,” Rick said, laughing, then backhanding me lightly in the stomach in order to bring my attention to his suddenly enlightened features. He pointed at his chest, nudging me. “Is that the sledgehammer I got you for the wedding?”
I felt a smile creeping on my face. “Yeah.”
“Cool,” he said, nodding, “kinda poetic, in a way.”
She wriggled in the trunk, and her eyes opened and looked dead at me.
I shut the trunk.
I absolutely hate it when corpses do that.
Scene Four: The Pub again.
“Do corpses usually do that?” John asked, over a twenty-three ounce glass of beer back inside the pub.
Rick raised an eyebrow and looked at him like he had just said the most perverse thing in all the world. “You still really want a shot at her, don’t you? Dude, she’s dead. Unless your into that kind of thing.”
“Shuddup,” he said, his face blushing.
“So Rob,” Tracey whispered to me in a teasing kind of tone, “me and Rick were wondering -- what exactly were you planning to do with the body?”
I shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
She held up her hands. “You can’t exactly just leave a decaying corpse in the trunk of your car, pal.”
“Yeah, man, bloodstains can be a bitch, and it's bound to be a little stinkey-pooh after awhile.” John said.
I raised an eye brow. "Stinkey-pooh?"
Rick snickered. “John will take her.”
He scowled. “Rick, shut the fuck up. And Rob, don’t forget about the claw marks in your back trunk if she’s still alive. And any dents, depending on how strong she is.”
“Dammit, John, she’s dead. She didn’t move.”
I looked around the pub. It was fairly empty, with only a few indifferent faces lounging around. One such face was that of an old, bearded, pipe-smoking drunk old guy at the other end of the bar. I pointed in that general direction and whispered to my friends.
“Let’s go ask that guy.”
At my request, we all got up and moved in his direction. I sat next to him, interlocking my fingers and placing them before me at the table.
“Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“Certainly not,” he said, sipping his brew. “Is this is regard to the female corpse in the trunk of your car that you and your friends have been speaking so fluently and at such a high volume about over there in the corner of the bar?”
“Indeed,” I responded.
“Is this the body of a female that has caused you great annoyance and personal insult over the years, to which you’ve expressed your aggression and which you now seek to dispose of once and for all?”
“Yes,” I spoke, in complete honesty, “Now that her biological processes have ceased to function, I merely desire emotional or psychological closure -- to ensure that the freedom and confidence I now find myself filled with is permanent and that she will never again rise from the dead and constipate my life, metaphorically speaking, of course.”
"Ah, in need of a laxative."
"Metaphorically-speaking, of course."
"Of course, of course," he said. He scratched his chin for a moment, staring at the array of bottles before him, as if drawing grand wisdom from them through some type of telepathy.
He finally spoke again. “Elliminate her body in a meaningful way. Symbolic, perhaps. See it as a change, a type of transition, not death -- for her thought will always linger, and you will have to find ways of dealing with that in time. Look back on your times with her as a learning experience, and banish her bodily remains using your creativity and all your passion. And good luck.”
It wasn't exactly what I had been looking for, but it would do. I offered my hand, and we shook. “Thank you much, sir,” I told him, “and enjoy your brewski -- you only live once.”
“No, no,” he said, grabbing my shirt and dragging me down to the seat I’d just gotten up from, “let this be a lesson to you, son. I disagree with the philosophy that says you only live once – but I can agree with a philosophy that says you should live like you do. And drink like you do. Don’t be in a rush as you suddenly seem to be, but don’t lag too much either as it seems evident that you have in the past. Live life to it’s fullest, enjoy the scenery, watch were you step; be daring, not stupid. And watch out for women: they can be beautiful, but also malicious. They’re damned tempting though, aren’t they?”
“Very much so,” I said, “and now I know to shoot higher.”
“No, no,” he said, “no more shooting. No more killing. And make this be the last woman you store in your trunk, okay?”
“Figure of speech, man,” I said, patting him on the back, “thanks for the talk, though.”
He grumbled as we got out of the bar, taking his glass of beer to his lips. I think I heard him mumble as we walked out the door: “Damned kids.”
Scene Five: The Apartment.
“You know,” I said, trying to talk over the sound of the blender I was using, “this whole episode raises important questions of morality.”
“True,” Tracey said, chopping with the grated meat knife at the other side of the kitchen, “but I’ve always seen morality as a purely personal view. I don’t think there’s really any collective morality that exists beyond our puny little human heads, like some being up there in the sky drawing lines between things and sticking them into categories.”
“I agree that there isn’t any real, definitive right or wrong for everyone. Yet through life the more you see the moral differences towards people, and differing views in general," I went on, as I began dumping biological sludge from the blender into a bucket on the floor, "the more I'm led to one general moral philsophy."
“Which is?”
“The only sensible moral philosophy for governing conscious existence in the universe as a whole would have to be a certain code of mutual respect between all forms of life, great and small. Essentially, do what you wish so long as no other is harmed.”
I picked up the bucket very carefully and began taking it down the hall and into the bathroom. She followed close behind.
“Yet the real question is just how far one should go in the act of punishing those who have stepped over the lines where their personal freedom ends and their intrusion on another’s personal freedom begins. It’s sensible to give warnings, and fight them to the point were they step out of your territory, but if they keep crossing back over, what then? Is destruction then acceptable, under the law of mutual respect? How do you know when you’ve gone to the extreme?”
I tipped it over the seat, after putting up the lid. I began pouring it in the toilet.
She sighed, “I guess you just have to go with what you feel deep in your heart. It’s your soul’s conscience you have to ultimately rely on: that little voice inside. We have to do what we feel as right deep within us -- as individuals, that’s all we have to go on. And how do you truly learn where the lines are drawn between the universal dualities if you live life one-sided? To know good, you must experience evil; to know what’s right, you must do the wrong. It’s a good method of reaching balance within yourself. No one’s all good, or all evil. We’ve all got a little of both, and if we suppress our darker sides they’ll eventually claw their ways out. It’s best to exercise both extremes, because experience is the best teacher.”
I nodded.
"And some problems can't be fixed. Sometimes you just need a clean slate, a fresh start -- but first you have to purge yourself."
I put the empty bucket beside me and gazed into the potty. She did as well. We gazed at the shimmering sludge in the toilet for a moment longer, taking in the moment, feeling the silence penetrate our souls.
I shrugged.
“To hell with it,” I said.
I flushed.
