Six months pass. He'd been painting for three. One Saturday morning, he called her up.
"Hey, wanna see my new painting? It's not done yet, but I want you to see it. I'm painting it for you. That okay?"
"Okay. I'll stop by at around eleven."
Words failed her when she seen it. The woman was so... Naked. His art had surpassed the boundary of age. Everything he did rivaled the modern artists at that time. He showed no sign of slowing down either. He knew this was why he was here. Two days after he showed her the painting, he stopped by on his new dirt bike his dad bought for him.
"Can you pop a wheelie?"
"Not yet, I'm learning the gears still."
"But you can do it on a bike, right?"
"Yes, but they're different."
"Have you tried?"
"Not yet."
"Try it."
"No."
"Come on, don't be a chicken!"
"No."
"For a kiss?"
"Okay but you have to kiss me now."
"Nope. You can have it after you do it."
"Okay fine!" He took off to the end of the street and turned around. He turned his baseball cap backwards and hit the clutch. He was barely going fifteen miles an hour when he lost control. The front wheel came down too hard and turned sharply to the left, which stopped the front end. It bucked him off a good twenty feet in front of the bike. He hit face first onto the pavement. It looked as though he tried to put his hands in front, but at the speed and trajectory his body was going in, physics would not allow it. A terrible snap was heard as he landed. Then, he lay still. Morrigan thought he was joking at first, then she could see the unnatural way his head was resting. She screamed, and ran to him. It was too late. He was dead.
"You are an unusual, brilliant child who has not seen enough in life to grasp the full measure of human stupidity. I've fought it all my life. I'm very tired...' The sincerity in his voice was genuine. He walked slowly away from her. 'There was a time when I looked at the tragic mess they've made of this earth, and I wanted to cry out, to beg them to listen-I could teach them to live so much better than they did-but there was nobody to hear me, they had to hear me with...Intelligence? It is such a rare, precarious spark that flashes for a moment somewhere among men, and vanishes. One cannot tell it's nature, or it's future...Or it's death..." She stopped reading to pour some more coffee, but she was out-again.
What she usually would do is go out of her way to Jazz & Java to get it. She had told Sue what had happened. Get well cards, gifts like flowers and little teddy bears started to arrive. Sue has not charged her for the coffee since. She knew what Morrigan was trying to do, and she said she hoped the aroma would help as well. But it was after ten, and they were closed. So she got some from the hospital cafeteria and went back upstairs. They were changing his bedding, so she waited outside. She put her hands on the back of her neck and rolled her head counter-clockwise. A massage... She stopped when a presence was felt. Miri-... Her eyes opened and she stood up to face her.
"I knew it! There was something going on between you two. Couldn't he wait until the divor-"
Morrigan could not see the hospital staff or hear the voices in the background- She grabbed Miri and pushed her up against the wall. The right hand was around Miri's throat as she pointed with her left into the middle of her chest. She was easily six inches taller than she was, and she was pissed. Miri was shocked into submission just by her strength.
"Last warning bitch, I catch you around him again and it's gonna be the last breath you take. Don't say a word! I'm talking now! I tried to do this as civil as possible but I'm through! Jarod's in a coma because of you! You!" Be strong now Morrigan, "Are you satisfied now? Did you know he could be paralyzed for the rest of his life, IF he wakes up? And what do you think? Think you can just swagger on up and toss some fucking card on his bed then say 'Gee hope you get better'? ...He caressed you... Made love to you, showing what a beautiful woman he was with. Just to have you repay him by being insecure and jealous of his artwork. His art!! Now, how stupid does that sound? These were mere representations of intangible images that were created in his head! Or they were found in the snapshot of some image that he took and reshaped with his own form of originality! How can you be insecure over an image? Let me tell you how: When was the last time you looked at your nude self in the mirror and said 'I love you'? Never! You are so ashamed of your own body you cover your eyes when you see your nude reflection, you rock back and forth and plead to God to turn us into genderless creatures. You think it's your right to scream 'slut!' to women who have a confidence that surpass yours! Don't mistake that for modesty. You are not modest; you are ashamed. Ashamed of a body that was given to you as a gift from God." Her voice became a whisper and her face was right in Miri's.
"Not only in my lifetime, but throughout all of history, it's always been women like you. You open up your legs and give them the offering of yourself like that was the only sacrifice you need to make. And you use that sacrifice to destroy them, and their work, for your own selfish desire or just for the thrill of seeing them destroyed. You'd do it in an instant to serve the mad excuse that you could not mold him into the shape you desired. You boast of the victory women fought for to become independent, yet, you use every trick in the legal book to take every penny he has! In my eyes, women like you are worse than the Taliban who destroyed the ancient Buddha statues. You are sicker than the fucking Nazis, who persecuted only six million Jews. More wars were fought, and tens of millions of men died, because of stupid whims by tramps like you! Okay, straight up. You have a damn problem. You married him and made it his problem. Your fucking insecurity runs deeper than that cold block of ice that you call a heart. I know what he did for you and still, you sucked more life out of him than you cared to inspire him with. You looked for a way out when you realized he had no more to give. But you were wrong. He has so much more, that he's like a fucking fountain! You almost-almost destroyed that." Okay, a couple of tears. Not afraid of sincerity, "I'm going to make sure he does so much more than he's ever done with you. I'm going to be there every step of the way to help heal him of the shit you put him through. You see, you and me are opposite sides of the same coin. Yep, we are both female, and that's where the similarity ends. You stopped him from painting? From writing? What did you do? Don't answer that. I don't want to hear any excuse from you. I've seen women like you all over, with the 'help me! Destroy you' attitude. And you do have it. You make me sick!"
<---Previous Next--->