literature

Triangle

Deviation Actions

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Literature Text

He laid on his back, sinking into the layers of blankets on his mattress, his wiry body stretching diagonally from corner to corner, his hair sticking to the rough texture of the wall. His fingertips traced the veins of the oak headboard weakly, the feel of them not registering in his lead-heavy brain. The warm scent of fall wafted in through the open slit of the matte window mingling with that of glum, day-old sweat. He had not shifted an inch in the past eighteen hours, he had not had a single thought; he had just stared dumbly at the pristine stucco on his ceiling through a thickening haze. Three whole years and all for nothing, she had succeeded in beating him to it, ending things first and walking away victorious to someone new, leaving him to an empty bed and an unfulfilled urge. She did not even give him a good reason for her decision, just a click of the receiver and a synthetic dial tone.

She closed her eyes, concentrating on the warmth spreading across her back. Crisp sunlight spilled across the scarred planks of the classroom floor through the window streaked with last night’s rain. The pitch black of her clothing and hair pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck were grossly contradicted by her high-heeled feet swinging back and forth between the blackened spike-legs of a desk. She grinned contently to herself replaying last night’s gig one more time in her mind. The band had been surprisingly good, but it was the drummer that had kept her attention for the entire half hour of their performance. Smile turning shy, she jabbed her friend, sitting on the adjacent desk, in the side and mumbled a half-comprehensible confession of her happiness. The latter studied the girl’s face intently before turning all the way around to listen in cross-legged silence.

He noted the uncharacteristic enthusiasm of his fetish and stiffened immediately, attempting to comprehend just what had suddenly inspired her. From the darkest corner if the classroom, propped up against the filing cabinet he drilled her with his eyes, but to no avail: something else had clouded her intuitive perception. She started speaking and he attempted to listen in, but her bubbly murmur seared his ears that had been expecting the paced melody of his angel of grief. Unable to even recognize her, he turned his attention to the murals crowding the classroom walls. He hated facing the fact that the smile on her face had not been his doing: this one glowed with authentic happiness. He hated the fact that this happiness was because of someone else. He hated that there was someone else.

Her happiness guaranteed that she would not speak to him that night. It meant that at best she would grace him with a “hello”. He did not even get that much. The one that had been peeled up from his bed with the stubbornness of the voice on the other end of the line had become the unplanned recipient. Hair still wet after a pinprick shower; already beginning to feel the void at the back of his throat filling with the tight ball of the main course smoke and tasting the chocolate of the appetizer cigars on his lips, he buckled his boots with stiff fingers. The bank card burned in his pocket, spurring him on out the door, further and further away from his oak sanctum.
Following an already-tipsy crowd, he felt his grin was too broad, and voice too loud for his own liking. Someone’s sombrero perched up on top of his head made him feel twice his own height, standing out far too much from everyone else. He felt his discomfort shared by the leather biker jacket dodging back and forth between clumps of people. Paying as little mind as he did to her, he could still not make the connection between the jacket and the girl wearing it, her doll face contrasted crudely by the thick black hide.

He clicked the program window open for the last time. The metallic taste of disappointment clung to the roof of his mouth, intensified by his hunger for frustration. His whole evening routine had been thrown off course – the night had passed without any bitterness, hostility or heated debate intensified by sporadically pointless anger. She had not even logged on to her chat account to check her e-mail, and thus did not make his heart jump with the temptation of another potential fight. He rapped the surface of the computer table with his knuckles absentmindedly, this sending tremors through his arm to his chest. Inside, a muscle contracted too suddenly, a nerve got pinched and jealousy clamped the two in their place, tugging at the rest of the mechanisms inside his ribcage, forcing a grunt of pained anger to escape his lips.  

He draped his arm loosely around the girl, whose shoulders turned out to be far smaller than what they had been outlined as by the bulky jacket. With a few more drinks he could tap into the reserves of his imagination that could let him see whoever he wanted in her round face. With a few more drinks she could do whatever would be her whim, and her whim was to follow his lead. Soon enough they reclined side-by-side in a fold-out lounge chair in the end of the backyard where the porch lights could not reach, tasting one another through a thick coating of alcohol. They spoke, not hearing a single word being said. He felt the haze of the past two days start to recede when giving her his number in an attempt to reserve her. She felt a fog spread through the recesses of her mind, leaving her with little control beyond that of basic animal instinct. She grew more and more lightheaded from the broken strength radiating from him, luring her in and demanding her attention.

For days to follow, they spoke on the phone, gaining shaky footing in each others’ minds and testing out one another’s trust by bringing up their past. She knew his strength was different from that of many others in that it energized her. He knew how to keep her interested and salivating for more, while he satiated his appetite for affection and proved to himself that it had not been his lacking that had caused another to take his former place.

For days to follow, he sat staring at his monitor, silently hurling curses at her, transforming his fury into a timid electronic “bleep” on her computer through a series of cables and wires sterile of any emotion. He chose not to move on, but to await her return from the illusion of a new someone. He chose to wait, knowing that when it would all end, it would be him she would return to, to take her anger out on. Anything, to know he was still needed.
my final exam for Writer's Craft class
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