Sex Goddess by Matthew Cook
Sex Goddess
When she discovered the affair, she started with his clothes.
She wanted to create nightmares he would stumble upon, just as he had done for her. His favorite shirt, the only thing he'd ever found to flatter his potato torso, went first. He didn’t make much noise when he found what she had written on it, but it was enough. Later she knelt on the back of his guitar until she heard the wood complain then buckle. And so it went on.
In the shower she would stare at her body, wondering what the hell she was going to do with it now. He did not want it, and neither did she. She knew these small vengeances would not protect her from the concrete impact of the rest of her life, but it was still better than making decisions. The thought of choosing what to wear each morning made her nauseous. In a pocket she found the spare keys to his car and spent an hour or so choosing objects to slip inside the petrol tank. The next day he rang her screaming from the hard shoulder.
“You could have killed me, you know that?” She suddenly realized this was true.
“You already killed me,” she said. “You know that?”
It was a slow expiration, like a balloon taking an age to wither and drift from ceiling to carpet. Marriage had made her immortal, promised her worship without end. She had been a goddess and now she was just a person dying.
She knew he would come home drunk enough to not wake when she came into his room. His hair was thin now, and her scissors made no sound. Maneuvering his head onto her lap, she felt a sickening warmth run from his scalp into her thighs. It was the remnants of love, a little gas left in the tank. Just enough to give you a fright. Bald, he looked like a little old man. Her little old man.
“I’m broken,” she said. “Why won’t you break too?”
She rolled him off her lap and onto his front, revealing the small of his back. It was the only beautiful part of his body. Not quite knowing why, she straddled the beautiful, hairless curve and sat down, easing her weight onto him. She closed her eyes, and thought about how they used to sit on each other on that bed and crush the breath and the worry from each other’s lungs and make promises that couldn’t possibly be kept. She started to rock, listening to the unfamiliar, scratchy music it made. Eventually, she opened her eyes.
“Are you finished?” His voice was muffled by the pillows, but she understood the question.
“Yes.” she said. Then she stood up, collected her things and left.
* * *
Matthew Cook's fiction has appeared in Imbroglio Magazine and Cool Dog. He reviews for PANK online and blogs sporadically at Can't Just Sit Around.
He lives in Manchester.
Fast-track your way over to some of his work at PANK Magazine by clicking the link there, or else join up with his Twitter feed by checking out this link here: Matt Cook Official Twitter Feed.