Little Snapshots

Sometimes he would sit on the park bench and steal little snapshots in his mind eye.  The crowds did not hesitate to ignore as he blinked one eye closed and froze the image of a young woman's throat in his mind.  So tender, so smooth, he thought, and filed the picture away.  This woman's neck was not so young, so tender looking, it was bruised by her overzealous lover who had pulled the blood to the surface, and the little veins had exploded leaving the tiny dots of red that formed together.  Sometimes they'd catch him looking, and he'd turn away embarrassed, but he always managed to snap that last picture for the collection in his mind.

Sometimes he'd lie in the bathtub putting the pictures in a particular order, only to rearrange them again -- first by age, then by beauty, and then by character.  This old woman's throat, for example, hung with a thick wattle, the sensual folds like the hidden places he dared not even imagine.  He'd lay in the bathtub until the water turned cold and his twitching fingers would pucker at the tips.

Sometimes when he slept he would dream he was only six inches tall.  He would creep into the apartment next door, and find the woman of the house asleep with her head on the pillow and her own dreams in her head . . . he would climb up her bosom and nuzzle his tiny face next to her throat, and run his tiny fingers down the veins as her warm breath would roll from her nose down her chin onto him.  The scent of garlic and toothpaste enveloped him as he wrapped his body in a lock of hair and fell asleep again, a dream within a dream . . .

Sometimes when he was at work he would see Shelia with the dark mole just above where her shoulder met her neck, and he would become mesmerized.  She would pull up her shirt obviously uncomfortable, but he didn't care.  He would snap the picture and move on, and who next?  Crystal, who sometimes wore the maddening turtle necks?  What was she hiding today?  Perhaps a fine golden chain with a diamond hanging from the end? Once Summer had come in to the office with dark bruises poorly covered with beige makeup around her once delicious throat . . . she caught him looking, and there was no mistake.  She had raged at him -- this was the last time her husband was ever going to touch her.  He cowered, ran off, finally hiding in the restroom.  He never spoke to Summer again.

Sometimes he would tie and untie a hangman's noose for hours, as he went over the pictures in his mind, and when his fingers got tired he'd go into the bathroom and look at his own stubbled throat and he would lather soap and shave it clean with a fresh razor so the ugly little bumps wouldn't form.  He'd rub the stinging lotion into his flesh after that and shudder at its cool rendering of his flesh, made alive for a few seconds.

Sometimes he'd pay one of the women who stood outside on the corner to come up to his apartment.  He'd rub his knuckles against the softness, feeling the hollowness of her throat, and he'd ask her to tell him what the warm splattering felt like around her neck.  Her coy words would somehow satisfy him, and make him more excited.  Sometimes she'd leave in a hurry once the time was up, but sometimes she would want to stay and sleep a little bit.  He would wait until their soft snores made him feel safe, and he would take more snapshots with his mind and file them away.

Sometimes he'd wake up, a scream muffled in his own throat, and he would cry a little bit.  His fingers would find their way to his neck and he would squeeze with one hand and the other would find itself busy, and he would go until he was exhausted, and he'd see grains of rice glowing in the air and lightening fly across his brain, until he only saw blackness, and he'd follow it away.

Sometimes he'd see his doctor and he'd try to talk about all the snapshots he had stored away in his head.  But the doctor would drink sips of water as she listened, and he'd become distracted by the lump of her throat extending and then retracting.  He'd take another snapshot and file it away.  He told her once about a dream he had where rats were eating holes in his throat.  Even after he had torn them away, he couldn't speak -- the words would leak out in little gasps.

Sometimes he thought his mind was so full of the pictures he'd have to throw some away to make room.  But then he'd get lost in the stacks.  He'd pin them to the wall and take a snapshot of the snapshots and file that away.

Sometimes at dawn on the fire escape, he would watch the sky paint itself a bloody red, like a murder, like a miscarriage, like something that was never supposed to be, and his fingers would braid the noose, and unbraid as he watched the sky turn blue.

Just once he strung the rope around the rail of the fire escape, and hung his naked body for the world to see -- on the side of gray building as the smog rolled across the alley and the garbage trucks loaded up the previous day's refuse and carted it away.

THE END

Note: Little Snapshots first appeared in Thirteen Human Souls ezine.