Original Fiction: i let a dinosaur eat your heart out
thinking about the end as a beginning 1 © Manfred Erjautz.
i let a dinosaur eat your heart out
and forgot its name
-
I’m going to kiss you, he grins wide.
She looks away.
-
- her name was May.
May had wide hands and stained fingertips, slept through morning and betrothed herself to books and poets at nine.
There was a song about her too, one of her mother’s, empowerment in the sixties and lazy orgies in the woods. Daddy ate Jim Morrison’s words for breakfast, a cigarette staining his fingertips at the table.
But she was little then, dancing in pasty green dresses that sighed against her thighs.
May liked to let herself pretend even then.
-
It’s a science project, seventh grade.
I like your breasts, he tells her.
(important notes about good Catholics: oh, god, do they lie; little boys and little girls curling with seven sins of curiosity because, in the end, it’s inescapable.)
May doesn’t know how to say thank you like she should, but instead, she drops her books and they clutter to her feet with the pencils last. Her fingers skim the straps of her dress and they peel off her shoulders easily.
I’m aware, she says, I’m aware.
Even then his hands are small and his nails are too clean, but she falls in love, madly in love, as his mouth buries itself between her breasts.
His lips scrape a nipple. And he hums mother mary.
(she should’ve known then)
-
She calls him Matthew one week, Mark the next, and rotates Luke and John only for masturbation, as she’s told.
Do you love me? He asks innocently, over her, between her sheets as he presses his mouth against her throat. Really, May, do you love me?
She’s seventeen now, a jump in romance. He was her first, her last (it seems), and she thinks about resignation too much. It’s a novel, the moment, and she tries to steady breathing for proper, hollow answers.
Sure- just like Mama, against Daddy’s throat, as they disappear into the woods with an army of guitars and ghosts.
She nods, her legs parting. Sure.
-
We’ll be together forever.
A needle, a thread, or staples will do- May plans to keep her mouth shut.
-
High school kids need to learn how to stop giggling.
On their very last night of hiding behind superficiality, May goes with himyou to a party in the hills. Mother and Father’s blessing falls in woes and moans, the creaking from the upstairs bedroom dissipating into a sigh.
May takes his hand, her fingers curling tightly in his.
She wonders about the rosary, the beads that he tattoos every morning between his hands because he’s a good boy.
(she also knows about the after, his hands splitting open and his cock resting between them as he rubs the beads up and down: for vibration)
We’ll be together forever, he says, his cock hard.
She shrugs up the path, branches scrapping against her new york coat. He laughs at her, silly red rose, as if it were a joke that she was never meant to get. Her lips curl because she likes that she understands and he doesn’t know that she understands.
It’s easier that way.
-
There’s going to be music, he promises.
(they’re a third too far into the woods)
-
May thinks she knows as soon as the river spits into view.
Her lashes kiss her cheeks, her eyes widening as she remember, once, baptism in flames. He stops and drops her hand as she peeks over his shoulder. A row of houses, black and blue, line in pairs with trees- all of them almost leafless.
It isn’t here, she murmurs.
She thinks: streamers, silly girls with football jacket boyfriends, and the people she never wants to see again. They’ll laugh and laugh and laugh for mourning, breathing in spaces to forget.
Matthew is the one smiling at her. He points to a house on the hill, above them all, and sighs with a shake of his head.
I wanted to, he tells her.
She blinks. Wanted?
Mark nods with a tired grin. Wanted- but she has it already.
-
Sunrise snapped her neck in June.
A girl, and then another, skips to her body. Neither laugh, but sit and sadly sigh with their fingers snipping through her hair.
Oh, May. The first.
The second: Yes, May.
There’s a giggle.
You should’ve remembered to read the front page, a third appears to sing.
e.
paperback gospels
múm| now that there’s fear again
fireflies| cherry blossom girl (air cover)
interpol| specialist
the lisps| pepper spray
joan as police woman| christobel