"Love me tender..."
Skip
"Love me tender... "
Skip
"Love me tender... "
Skip
The record skipped over and over.
She lay on the couch with her arm over her eyes. That was all she had left: the couch, a few bucks to her name, and a crappy, skipping record.
She'd lost everything in the divorce, while her husband... ex-husband... was living it up.
She hated him. She hated him so much. She hated that he'd taken it all. She hated all the crap he'd put her though. She hated that he'd made her love him. She hated that she loved him still. So angry, so heartbroken, still so in love. She wanted to tear her hair out, to destroy something, to do something.
But she didn't. She just lay there, with her arm over her eyes, listening to the skipping record.
"Love me tender... "
Skip.
"Love me tender... "
Skip.
"Love me tender... "
Skip.
Drowning. She was drowning in such strong emotions. All connected to one person. Her husba... ex-husband.
She needed to clear her head and breathe in sweet normalcy, but as long as she know that her hus... ex-husband was still around her mind would never rest.
At that moment, between the seventieth "Love me tender... " her mind skipped with the record. She stood up and walked towards the door, knocking the record player over as she went, her mind gyrating in time with Elvis's hips.
His doorbell rang. Standing on the threshold was his ex-wife.
"Jane? What are you doing here?"
"You have something of mine, is all." She smiled, detached from the situation, and walked without invitation.
"Jane, go home. You don't live here anymore. And you have all your stuff."
"Not all, Honey." She made her way to the kitchen.
"Stop calling me Honey. We're not married anymore." He followed her in.
"I know, Honey." She found the biggest knife in the set. Smiling at her refection in it, she remembered all he good times she had had with that knife. All the Christmas, Thanksgiving, everyday dinners she had prepared. All gone now. Nothing but a faded smell of cooking food and a bit of dried meat on the blade. She turned to her hu... ex-husband.
"Now time to take what's mine." She moved forward and he backed up. Against the wall now, with a few dried flakes of her blood still on it fro the time he'd driven her there.
"Jane. Put the knife down. Right now." He was stern, warning her. But she would not be warded off. Not now. Not after he'd loved her so tender that she felt like a well-prepared slab of meat. Not after he'd left her a cold-cut in the freezer to rot away while he tenderized some new, juicy slab.
"What do you mean, honey? I'm only here for what's mine. Remember your promise?"
Quicker than he had thought her capable of, she plunged the knife into his chest just as easily as she had the Thanksgiving turkey. He was louder than the turkey, that much was certain.
"You promised me your heart."
She twisted the knife and carved over to the left side of his chest. Cutting and cutting. Deeper and deeper. He was drowning now, choking on the very liquid meant to keep him alive. All over his nice shirt, all over his nice walls, all over his nice ex-wife.
She plunged her hand in and pulled out her possession. It gave one last feeble beat before falling still forever. She held it close to her chest.
"Forever and ever." He slid to the floor, falling still as his heart, the blood pooling like the juice from the meat she'd cooked him night after night. He made a very handsome turkey, if she did say so herself.
She walked past her ex-husband and out his door.
"Love me tender,
Love me long,
Take me to your heart.
For it's there that I belong,
And we'll never part." DSS
(Song from Elvis Presley)
Melanie Doweiko, 19, of Evergreen Park, Ilinois, is a student at Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in creative writing.
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