The Yahara Journal 2020 edition

SERIALLY INCLINED Kevin Rault

Well, it’s Friday evening. No miracles this week, and the two tablets of cyanide sit eerily calm on my bedside table. I glance out the window of her one-bedroom apartment onto rain-glistened streets, watching cars plow through untainted turn lanes and fishtail into hazy oblivion. The floor vibrates under our feet as a subway train speeds through the bowels of the city.

“I ask myself every day why I subject myself to your burdensome love, you absolute son of a bitch.” She turns to me from the bed and calmly raises her middle finger, playing with a switchblade in her other hand. The blade used to be a stainless silver, but now she’s carving words into her arm.

“I ask myself the same thing, you insufferable whore.” Her expressionless face continues to stare at her oozing forearm. “So,” I try, “who’s going first?”

She sighs, lowers the knife, and raises her apathetic eyes to meet mine.

“Whoever feels like it.”

I stare out the window again, intending to remove her psyche from mine and become one with the outside as she mopes on the crimson-stained bedsheets.

Traffic moves the same, the bus stop in front of her place is desolate apart from a single woman holding a large coat tight to her body as unrelenting wind shreds the autumn air to pieces. She steps back and forth impatiently and fidgets with the edge of her collar; her hope in waiting in pummeling rain for a bus that may never come is oddly endearing to me. So I keep watching.

The cars grumble on, splashing immeasurable amounts of water onto sidewalks. The entire city looks like a macabre, acid rain wave pool. Across the street, a man in a brilliantly colored smock exits a paint mixing warehouse, and trips over the curb. The ensuing splash jostles loose the two buckets he’s holding, their contents blooming into the grotesque offspring of mustard yellow and navy blue that flows quickly down the street and into the mouths of nearby sewer grates.

I can’t help but laugh, hitting my forehead against the windowpane with each silent curse the dark green man lets off as he manages to retrieve the empty buckets and continue to his ride.

“What can possibly be so funny?” Torn back to reality. She is glaring at me with a capsule in her palm.

“Oh, nothing, you wouldn’t get it.”

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