I’m not as desperate as I probably sound, so let me explain where I’m coming from. When I was fifteen I went sledding at the “End of the World,” a hill beyond the woods bordering our neighborhood where the path going up to it seemed to lead to oblivion, or at least a very long plunge. Everybody seems to have an “End of the World” near them. You would have been disappointed by what it actually was, but it was the best we had. Anyway, a neighbor’s dog kept leaping on my shoulders, apparently mistaking me for a willing mate. It didn’t matter that I no more resembled a dog than an emu, not to my persistent canine suitor. Reality would be ignored for gratification. I’m not trying to say I’m a dog (though I guess I am), only that it’s natural enough to overlook the big picture when it suits you and ignore reality—there isn’t a long plunge after all—for gratification.
As for what killed my “date” for the night, I’d say cardiac arrest or an aneurysm. It wasn’t me, I was just lying there waiting for the end, hoping sooner than later. I don’t see why she’d get that excited since a girl her size has likely been with a multitude of guys. The American ideal of beauty is technically some bone-rack little bitch with borderline anorexia, but let’s not forget men are opportunists. Many of the bigger girls have quite a self-esteem deficit, and they’re grateful for any attention. If sex is the only way to prolong the flattery, they’ll go the distance. They’ll go all the way.
I suppose I can rest easy knowing the risk of her getting pregnant vanished. That’s always the big worry, an “End of the World” that similarly wouldn’t be the end—see above about the “morning after pill”—but a lot worse than a dog trying to brick on your parka.
Right now my breathing is so shallow you’d think I’d been trapped in an elevator for hours. My . . . struggle . . . was more exertion than I can afford. It would almost be better to die than summon help, which if I’m to live seems to be my fate. It’s too dark in here to see just how much I have to circumvent, but I feel like Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street when he melted through the mattress. I estimate three hundred pounds, at least. I recall setting a 350 pound maximum limit, and congratulated myself on finding someone well below that. She had a very small car, though, which quickly smote my satisfaction.
Either the dead weight is really just that impactful or I was wrong about her body mass index. Seems like I should be able to at least slide out from under her if not bench press her. I think there’s a dip in the mattress where the springs have collapsed. It might have happened when she started riding me, come to think of it.
I couldn’t tell you where she drove me in her ironically small car, not even if I’d been sober during the trip. Assuming there’s a phone I can strain for, I won’t even be able to tell the operator where to send the police. I guess they could trace the call, though maybe they only do that when they suspect a prank. Someone in dire need might well be ignored.
I’m not entirely convinced I want to be rescued. They’d have to deploy the jaws of life. It feels like my ribs are about to crack and crumble into bone dust. With my luck this will end up on an emergency rescue show, and everyone will think I’m loser who can’t get laid within my own weight division. Word would travel far and wide, and everywhere I went I’d be The Guy Who Almost Suffocated Under His Obese One Night Stand.
. . . Okay, what was that?
I heard something. I wasn’t expecting to, can’t tell if it happened somewhere off in the house or right underneath the bed. Maybe we’re in a bad part of town and someone broke in. Oh hell, what if she’s married? I can’t imagine a husband being offended to homicidal extremes by such a disposable woman spreading the wealth, but it’d still have to be deeply insulting. I could almost see myself blowing a guy’s brains out for that.
It’s quiet again. Everyone say it with me: Too quiet.
My heart is rapid firing, cardiac AK-47 action. If it is someone with malicious intent, he could carve on me for hours and I couldn’t do anything but bleed. My left arm has fallen asleep, and the discomfort of her elbow in my neck is taking its toll. I really should have exercised more, maybe joined a fitness program. I haven’t lifted weights since high school, and back then I was struggling to bench two hundred. You don’t have to have to a good physique when your parents buy you a Mustang, I quickly learned, and thus bid adieu to curls and presses. The game doesn’t change much when you get older, so I stuck to drinking and driving.
It’s strange to have her chest pressing on mine, but not feel her heartbeat. It was when I could no longer feel that trip-hammering that I knew she hadn’t just passed out. I never believed she was drunk to begin with, and that she had stayed sober so she could take advantage of a guy like me. The slut.
There it goes again, that noise. It definitely came from within this room. I’m reaching for the night stand now, hoping to find a phone. If the publicity gets too intense I’ll fake my own death, but I want out of here now. She dragged me in here without turning on the lights until we tripped over the bed. I don’t know what the room interior looks like. It will be daylight in a couple hours, and that will help because it’s hard to take initiative in the darkness. Even if I couldn’t reach a phone it’d help morale if I could see one. After all, a mother has to see her child trapped under that car before she gets the superhuman strength to lift it.
Wait. One. Damn. Second.
The noise again, but something else. I felt a kick. It wasn’t a heartbeat. The location of the kick was in her stomach.
Again.
Again.
Different places, but neither at her breastbone. I’m feeling them in my abdomen.
Is it just rigor mortis? Could that happen so soon, and would it feel anything like this? I don’t know anything about it; I’m not an old hand at this kind of thing.
Oh, there’s no way . . . No, I don’t buy it for a minute. If she’d been pregnant, the kid would have died with her, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t be kicking me now like this was my fault. Besides, I’d have noticed her pregnancy was really starting to show. Drunkenness is imperfect in explaining away all discrepancies.
The noise wasn’t the kicking, though, because you wouldn’t have been able to hear even Pele in the womb. This was more . . . wet, like food slipping through a soggy paper plate and clumping on the floor. Something else, too, though . . . a tearing sound. Not paper, though. It’s also something wet.
No, this isn’t rigor mortis. I can’t think of a single detached and perfectly rational scientific term for whatever the hell this could be. I know she’s dead, but I feel at least part of her quivering against me. I’ve joked with friends about gnawing my own arm off to get away from cuddling with a woman; this almost seems like a preferable option to the mystery alternative.
I need the light right now. Something like this doesn’t happen when sunlight is bleeding through the drapes, it’s an unwritten rule. I can feel the shape of bedside lamp, but the switch is beyond reach. There doesn’t seem to be anything but the lamp and her clock, which is only a clock. No radio. I’d turn that on just to drown out the noise, but all I’ve managed to do is set the alarm to go off at 9:48. If I’m still here when it goes off, I’m certain I won’t be alive to hear it.