Fiction: A woman, on her ‘fifth drink, or maybe the sixth’, struggles to make sense of her marriage
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I was at a bar. Not drinking. Not really. Just sitting there, existing in that low hum where the world felt like skin I could peel off, head buzzing with Kishore, in my father’s voice, soft and off-key, celluloid, from back when the days didn’t feel like an ambush. And I smiled (I think), wondering if I’d left the geyser on, fuck it, and I thought about my little habit then, the one that makes me feel rotten, of sketching the faces of men I want to ruin. Faces pulled out of the muck; loose-jawed, shifty-eyed, unremarkable assholes who wouldn’t hold my gaze if I stapled their eyelids open. I’d draw them quick, a flash, dirty, fast, mean lines, angles I dreamt of crushing under my thumb, the cartilage popping, wet and satisfying. The lips I’d chew into liquidy rust, blood warm in my mouth, until their teeth went soft under my tongue. The throats I’d drive into piss and prayer. Sometimes, I’d add details the world didn’t offer. A cheek sagging open like split fruit. A jaw hanging dumb and broken. Eyes gone fish-dead, slick but stupid. My sketches. My drafts. My dry run. Not a fantasy. Foreplay. A...