Teaser Tuesday

I've been trying my hand at short stories lately. I've always sucked at them, so they tend to turn into something longer. This is the slightly disturbing beginning of one of them.

I never dreamed of heaven before we killed Andy McTavish.

Afterwards, do you remember, we went to that seedy motel, because I don’t think we knew where else to go? That was the first night that the dreams came.

You breezed out the door almost as soon as we got there, saying that you were starving. Your smile was so easy. Fluid. Flowing over your lips like running water.

And as the door fluttered shut behind you, I remember being struck with a sense of how wrong everything was. We’d just killed a man. How could I be sitting there, on that warm red quilted bed, watching you head out into the night for greasy food? It was too casual. Too typical Friday night.

I remember how I searched myself, looking for something different, some change in my soul. Because we killed him. We killed Andy. I remember how I couldn’t find any change. How guilt didn’t churn my stomach. I remember how, eventually, I turned on the TV and laughed at Jerry Seinfeld’s jokes.

And when you came back, nudging the green door open with your shoulder, a paper bag in your hands, I got that feeling that I always got when I saw you. I wanted to impress you. I wanted to be funny. So I tried my own joke. “Out damn spot,” I cried, scrubbing at my hand. “Not all the perfumes of Arabia…but wait, wait, wait, why didn’t I think to try deodorant before?”

You laughed, even though my joke was forced rather than funny. “I’m not guilty, just goddamn hungry,” you said.

You’d bought a roast chicken and a bottle of wine. We ate with our fingers, because we had no cutlery, and the oil slid up our hands, slicked our fingers. We didn’t have glasses either, but I pulled the water bottle I always carried with me out of my bag. And you poured the wine in straight over the water, the two mixing together.