“My wife,” he gestured. “She found these
things. Perversions, she called them, threatened to tell
everyone. Like Eve, she took a bite out of knowledge
when she shouldn’t have. But you. You understand.
You’re like me—you understand?”
I took careful, slow steps toward him to
administer a feeling of camaraderie. “Yes, my lord.”
He laughed. “I think we are past the
pleasantries and titles.”
“Indeed.”
“I didn’t mean to, you know. She found these things
and would have told. But you—you understand.”
“I do.”
“And do you think—do you think it can be
forgiven?” He held out his hands, those giant, warm
hands, outstretched to embrace or end me.
I couldn’t tell which would hold more power in
this moment—the desire we felt for each other, or the
knowledge of what he had done and locked away in the
coldest chambers of his heart.
Mike Zimmerman is a writer of short stories and poetry, as well as a
middle school writing teacher in East Brooklyn. His work has been
published in Cutbank, A & U Magazine, The Painted Bride, Wilde
Magazine—to name a few. He is the 2015 recipient of the Oscar Wilde
Award from Gival Press, a finalist for the Hewitt Award in 2016, and
was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart Prize for his story “Doppelganger” in
Two Cities Review. Mike lives in Brooklyn with his husband and their cat.
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