Cauldron Anthology Issue 9: They Who Were Spurned cauldron9finalproof | Page 17

taste of the meat she never dreamed of before. I was going to sell her what she already knew. Lure
her. Make her fall in love with me with my knowledge. Overall I had stripes, black and white. How
tempting I would be to her…
I know about the days she gets out of bed without the will to shower.
My reality, is when the top of her lip touches my cheek.
Once again I got the lazy linger of death that I see when I sit by myself, though not its desire,
stuck in my head. I dreamed of her hands flying to my neck on yellow grass, and my death of it. I
stopped drinking after this vision. I passed the last stool between us, and stood right next to her. I
fixed my eyes at the iron pipe she rested her feet on. My insides ached with every movement of her
feet. I twisted.

Her body turned and she looked at me. The moon died. Although we couldn’t see clearly from
the filthy windows, I felt its blast in my temple. I moved past men, castrations. But I couldn’t kneel
before her strength that brought down women. It would look weird. So I desperately pressed my
hands together, and put my head on my arm. I hoped she would understand. Her face took the old
shaman’s form, stuck in her spirit, wrinkly and already broken. She got bigger. Her hand found my
head, and her neck laid back. She came close and smelled, nothing suspicious.

I was scared when she carried me out of the wine-house whose tables swiped over again
with dirty cloths with her teeth grabbing the nerveless spot of my neck. My lungs stuck my heart, I
thought I couldn’t breath. She dropped me on the sidewalk and I quickly got back on my feet. The
night could spread her legs and swallow me. I would be eaten, digested in seconds, then the streets
would defecate me. But I just stood there, pushed around so much so that I couldn’t be anymore.
Lifeless, no blood running.

She grabbed me again. I let loose in the warmth of her saliva. I was struggling to heal rather
than to die. Stand and watch the horizon where the life washes ashore, or just rest without a clue,
silent… Was I going to be better, or deteriorate and end? Was I to dissolve my sick parts in filthier
pots, kill the moon and nest on the sun, or the other way around strangle the sun and lay on the
unbeaten craters of the moon? Not a victim, not a hero… Did not lick a wound nor himself. What he
lacked he dragged his whole existence. Bashed around. Neither pulled a carriage, nor left the herd.
He couldn’t reach to taste the sweetest branches of a tree, leave bruises on thighs, shrink and stand up
again, get in bed with women and their hairy armpits, find the guts to show his underpants to any-
one. Couldn’t sit naked on the couch, reach for his drink on the center table. Couldn’t have his head
shaved, he buried himself in the uncertainty of whatever-you-dos on barber chairs, took the first bus
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Cauldron Anthology