I Love You

	"..say goodbye to romance..."  
                                                                
                                                      -Ozzy Osbourne

	" day after day our love turns gray like the skin of the dying man"
   
                                                       -Pink Floyd

I have given in. I have gasped the words she wants to hear. I have shrieked, in utter agony, the ghastly syllables.

The chair is hard against my back. My breathe fogs my spectacles in waves, condensing and disappearing from the lenses. Behind them, my eyes follow a beetle across the splintering table. I think, perhaps, it is an assassin beetle. I don't understand how it can survive in this terrible cold. The beetle vanishes in a cloud of my breathe, only to reappear, seconds later. This goes on for several minutes, or hours, as the beetle meanders around the table. I don't care. The beetle falls to the floor.

A key fumbles around in a lock. An old doorknob turns, and the door squeals open. I raise my head, not even bothering to hope. Hope does nothing to dull the pain.

As usual she is beautiful. It is something that I can feel, and I will not look. I try to forget that beauty. I've learned that to forget it is to forget suffering. It comes in waves, like my steaming breathe, a burning miasma that clouds my eyes with moisture the way my spectacles fog at exhalation. The only time to live is in the ebb.

Hers lips part, and my punishment begins. Her cooing hisses cracks, flaying my forever raw skin. Her loving gaze crawls over my oozing flesh, and my hand follows the path of her eyes, incessantly scratching at the itch and irritation they inflict. She tenderly touches my cheek, her hand burning and rasping at my face. Please, I moan, the blood, the pain.

She steps back, releasing me. Those lips(godno!) pull into a frown. She mutters something indecipherable, shooting darts of pain into my ears. She walks into the next room, and I gasp for air.

She returns, carrying a dark wooden picture frame. The frame contains only a silvered piece of glass. As she holds it before me, I see that it does indeed hold a picture. It is a pale, emaciated man. His hair is long and tangled, his spectacles bent, and he stares vacantly. Were my flesh not seared and torn, my skin not wrinkled by endless pain, we would look alike. My eyes drift to the bottom of the frame. There is a small brass plate screwed there, shining and polished. It is inscribed. My spectacles fog and I cannot read it.

I love you

I swoon.

A dream of pleasure. I am young, and holding a woman in my arms. I cannot see her face, but I can feel the warmth of her body against mine. I am content. I begin to speak, unable to hear what I am saying, but as I do, I feel claws pressing into my back and fangs sinking into my neck. I strain to hear the words I have spoken. I hear them at last.

I love you

I awake with a start, jerking my head from the blood and pus and drool that are soaking into my rough table. She is laying across the table, head resting on crossed forearms. At the ends of her graceful(no!) hands I can see the claws, dangling at the tips of her pale fingers, like spikes from the chains of a flail.

Scattered about the table, lifeless tools dully gleam. Again she has been working on my table, destroying it's simplicity and strength with delicate carvings, scraping away beautifully, scraping away my stability. Mallet, plane, file, and chisel. As I stare, they seem to come alive, and sparkle, and speak. We love you, they whisper. But as I flinch at the sound of those words, as I give in to inevitable torture, and prepare to die again, the words hit my face in a warm wave. Hold us, they whisper, hold us and tell her that you love her. One of them looks especially bright and feels especially warm. The plane. I reach out, caressing it's warmth and smoothness. Turning it over in my hands, I down the planate surface of it's base, broken only by a thin, black slit, from which rises true beauty. The blade. The razor blade extends only a fraction of an inch from the smooth base. Light gleams along it's edge. Tell her that you love her, and rid yourself of pain.

Suddenly, I am standing beside her as she sleeps. My hands, clenching the beautiful tool, reach towards her face. Touching the blade to her face, I begin to scrape away at her beauty. It comes off in gleaming red strips, like the skin of an apple. I feel wonderful. I won't stop until the last of it is peeled from her perfect body. Shivering in ecstasy, I close my eyes and scrape harder. I'm whispering. The words sound magnificent.

I love you

I love you

Morgan Apicella

Linger round the darkside...