DESCRIPTION
Nixon lives a quiet life, he minds his own business, keeps to himself...it�s his neighbours who are warring. The paper-thin walls of this hotel reveal everything and one night, as the battle rages next door, he hears the woman, who has never taken any notice of him before, cry out his name.
He charges in, the hero he never was, only to discover anything has to be better than this.
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Anything Has To Be Better Than This Paul Leighland MacLaine
anything has to be better than this
a short story from the collection:
the tales of socrates dancing
by
paul leighland maclaine
Because I�m in love and I don't know how long it�ll last.
Ah, but you also don�t know that it won�t last forever.
That�s why I�m sad.
They were arguing again.
He heard the sound of smashing glass and pressed his face deeper into the pillow. Her sickly-sweet perfume filled his nasal passages, making him gag.
He passed her in the hall again this afternoon.
She�d looked up at him, her eyes eating into his...
but they saw nothing worthwhile: nothing she wanted.
She opened the door to the room next to his own, and shut herself inside.
Another glass shouted a hollow cry from the next room, its death distilled by the paper-thin hotel walls. He placed his ear to the smoke-stained floral paper, heard her muffled cries and her lover�s mumbled threats, her pleas and, finally, the man�s fist cracked a reply down upon her face. And then, beyond the dirty divide, he heard her sobbing.
Anything has to be better than this, he thought, and sunk back to his still-warm pillow.
He pictured those sobs wracking her thin frame, her small, perfectly shaped breasts flattening up tight against her ribs. He pictured her beautiful spine, separating an unblemished back and remembered when his own hands were in a gentle caress down the valleys and swellings of her...
He heard a dull cracking sound and winced. Was it her cheekbone? Had next-door broken one of her pencil-thin arms? Had he broken her neck?
�Please not that,� he whispered, and placed his knuckles to his lips, straining to hear any movement that would tell him she was all right.
�Please, don�t hurt her. She�s all I have.�
Ice cubes clinked into a tumbler. Only an ice-tray�s frozen back had been snapped by the man�s powerful hands.
He wished he could save her. He lifted his fingers from his lips and placed then to his temples, rotating them in circles - softly at first then harder and harder and harder. He wasn�t solidly built like the other man. He visualized rushing the door and carrying her back to his room in his arms � just like a real man would have. Only he wasn�t a real man, neither tall, nor powerful, rich or cold like he thought men should be.
He was a gentle man, and gentle men don�t kick down doors to rescue the women they love.
He heard the renting of material.
She shrieked. Bedsprings winced under the weight of two. He threw back his covers, walked to the bathroom, and flicked the light. He stared at the hollow face in the mirror. Under bare-bulbed light his eyes were soft and gentle...pleading. A tear ran point down his cheek. He again heard the ripping of cloth, and another tear followed the path of the first. Her cries for the man to stop became desperate pleas to continue.
The bedsprings sang in time.
�Yes,� she cried.
He left the empty security of the bathroom, walked to the kitchen, and took a knife from the drawer. He rolled it over and over in his hand, then sliced the blade gently across his arm.
�Oh...Yes.� she cried.
He cut again. Her ecstasy was his pain and he wanted to feel her pleasure. The knife was placed to a fresh section of his arm. He gritted his teeth.
Suddenly, there was a scream. He looked up.
She screamed again.
He swiveled on the linoleum, facing the common wall. A loud crack echoed, making him jump. She screamed again. He pressed the blade into his arm. Now it was her pain he needed to feel and, with each belting slap against her cheeks, he cut deeper and deeper into his arm.
He wished she�d tell him why it was that existence she had chosen when there was so much more to have.
Anything had to be better than this, he thought.
Faster and faster the blows rained. Merciless and degrading. Blood syringed from his arm onto the linoleum floor. She screamed again and again and again and...
then she cried out a man�s name. He lifted the blade from his arm.
She called out for him again. Fresh tears flooded single-file down his cheeks � his head throbbed as his blood rushed to the floor. He placed his toe into the pool and drew a circle, trying to close her from his thoughts.
She was killing him. She called for him again.
He staggered to the dresser, removed a gun, moved out into the hall, and stood facing the man�s door. He reached for the knob; blood sprayed out of his arm and ran down the door. A bottle smashed. She cried out, but the plea was cut short.
He kicked the door open and, in the darkness, saw the man�s shape standing over her. He fired twice hitting him in the chest. Both men then dropped to the floor. The gentle man crawled to her and, lifting her head to his chest, saw that her final cry for him had been cut from her throat. He placed his face to her hair, lifted her scent. He pushed her body over to the man and entwined them like lovers.
That�s what she would have wanted, he thought.
How he returned to their room was a blur. He pulled the covers over his chest; he was shivering. Part of him was numb. In his last few moments he owned four more thoughts.
How he loved her more than anything.
Why anything had been better than him.
Why she could never be happy with what was gentle and kind and...
how he wished he was holding his wife.
READER'S REVIEWS (1) DISCLAIMER: STORYMANIA DOES NOT PROVIDE AND IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR REVIEWS. ALL REVIEWS ARE PROVIDED BY NON-ASSOCIATED VISITORS, REGARDLESS OF THE WAY THEY CALL THEMSELVES.
"it made me cry . the fact is true it made me ask myself a question of what people do for true love and lust. what we pt up with how we react to peopeles pain and pleasure when we care for them so much. it was very sad. and i felt this one alot!" -- rachel williams, west melbourne, vic.
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