Thinker
She told her husband that she was tired of pretending to be smart. She had been undone since the surgery, her thoughts short circuiting all over the place after twenty minutes of thinking. And her brain lost focus, no matter what the subject. This was all the concentration she could expect to recover, according to the docs. That’s unfortunate, she said, because she wanted to think all the time.
Her husband sat there, head in hands. He remembered when she was actually smart and he thought she was doing a pretty good imitation of it. While he was telling her this, she was watching the vein on his temple throb. She couldn’t concentrate whenever words came out of his mouth. They were like birds winging into the sky blue walls of their bedroom.
The husband didn’t respond when she spoke once more about thinking, how exhausting it could be. He kept rubbing his forehead. He’s trying to block my complaints, she thought. He probably thinks I’m exaggerating. At least he doesn’t tell me it’s all in my head, not in so many words. Especially since it literally is.
“I have to take a nap,” she said, looking at the clock, looking for an exit. She was hit with a longing for the dreams that lay in wait, the ones that went on and on well past her twenty minute limit.
“It’s odd, this obsession with your thinking and how long you can do it,” her husband said. “if you stop to think about it.”
She said nothing. What was there to say? He leaned down to kiss her cheek as she slid under the quilt, careful to align its stripes so they didn’t vibrate. She watched him turn to go, shutting the door as quietly as if she had already fallen asleep. She closed her eyes and then the room behind her lids began to spin.
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Second Chances
They all think it’s part of Big Red’s costume, that giant butt. They don’t know it’s a quirk of nature: it’s real and it balloons when he’s had enough sex, shrinks to nothing when he hasn’t. Since his partner Matilda got sick, it’s been flat as a pancake. His willpower is strong. He doesn’t cheat. But he has noticed the new contortionist one tent over. Matilda noticed him noticing. “You fancy her,” she said. She wasn’t accusing him; she was hoping. She hated that he would be alone after she was gone, which would be very soon now. Big Red had promised to help her go. There was nothing much left for her there, and besides, she thought she heard Jesus calling her home. So Big Red helped her swallow the bottle of pills and Matilda closed her eyes. That’s that, she thought ─ but later she jerked awake and staggered out of bed right into a jumble of arms and legs: her man, with the contortionist coiling around him on the floor. His butt was hugely big. Matilda went back to bed to resume her dying.