I can hear her, the woman upstairs. Especially on a Friday or Saturday night when she’s entertaining a guest. The two, the woman and her guest, trade small talk. Over drinks, most likely. I only catch a line here and there, especially if I’m watching TV. Eventually the small talk dies out and the entertaining goes horizontal – I can tell by the rhythmic squeaking of her sofa-bed.
I found the blackest, blue-black woman in the world, at least in North America. When she took me between her thighs and into her heart, I reached a level of pleasure, satisfaction, and lust I had never experienced in my forty-five years of life.
Continue reading “Blackness by Frederick K. Foote – Adult Content”
The left side profile of Lang Kim’s head was square in my sight. The pull of my pointer finger only a fraction of an inch towards me would blast a 5½ inch .50 caliber round through his brain. As I was trained, I lay as a stone, forcing shallow breaths of air in and out of my lungs to minimize movement. There would be no suffering. He wouldn’t know what hit him. I often thought about that split second when life left the bodies of the victims I killed, wondering which realm of the theoretical afterlives their souls entered (heaven, hell, purgatory) – if one existed at all. It didn’t matter. I forced the thought out of my mind. Do not think with your emotions, I was trained. I was a killing machine. Through psychological regimens, I grew numb to the emotional pains that entomb most ordinary people. And as stark a confession it is, I felt free. Free from sorrow, from grief. Guilt was as far away from me about killing as a distant galaxy. I was cold. And had I any emotion in me at all, I would have recognized my state as love, the love of killing without the slightest remorse. I had no wife and no children. An orphan with no-one to experience these things called emotions with; if it were ever possible for them to dwell in me at all.
On our first date we went to a gallery of photos of sultry women from the 1960’s. You were hungover and thought the walls would collapse in on you. Afterwards we took a bus to my house where we kissed and seas of fish swam between our mouths.
“Give me a ticket or give me a bar tab,” the young soldier said.
After seven beers, the soldier had gone belligerent, but the ticket agent had nothing new to offer. The agent was a dark, square-shouldered man and he spoke with an accent that may have been African or Haitian. “I can give you nothing right now,” the agent said. “When we start boarding, I will see what I have.”
Pushing eighty, Mrs. Mattison reclines on the lounge chair on the mossy concrete patio while her husband clips the naked remnant of rose bulbs from the bushes, and I attend to distributing mulch. I live in a shed behind his house, a gift from Mr. Mattison to put a roof over my head and keep me off the homeless list.
“Everyone calls it dead-heading,” he says, “but I call if live-heading. See, the stem lives, and it is the only way the stem can produce more. Same way in life. My wife and I need to move on and let more vigorous flowers bloom. We don’t wish to die,” he says, casually continuing his work, “but our attachment to life has been robbed by this Alzheimer’s. And our children are scattered across the globe.”
It was still December, but Reggie had a bug up his ass about the high school reunion in June. He didn’t seem the type to me, to organise something so mundane. But he was on the line, breathing heavily, while I examined an ancient list of guests to our long ago graduation party. How the list came into my possession remains a mystery.
Overlooking the Staatsoper, the Rathaus, the Parlament and the Burgtheater Johann ticked his finger up and down. The lighting made a group of freshmen look as if they flickered underneath an ethereal golden waterfall. They danced and laughed on the market place, took pictures and were allowed to be free. A girl with blond hair in a white dress caught Johann’s attention. The others talked while she almost tiptoed away. He lowered his finger but stopped it from rising again. Her smile. Mesmerising. He stamped his feet on the wooden floor, watched her move around a street lamp. Graceful and delicate. She’s smiling still. And she came around to the other side, his side, the dress and the hair moved like a C Major played by a violin. Back to C, but from where? Not some place dangerous, some place of comfort and trust. Of the golden waterfall and the blend between baroque and renaissance architecture. Was she even real? Could she disappear at any moment if he just closed his eyes? He raised his finger and closed his eyes. She was gone. And so was the group of students.
Pearce soon came to realise sleeping on the beach was not as romantic as it seemed, especially when a chill breeze swept in off the sea. The moon above remained bright, piercing the unshielded eye. There was the roar of waves to contend with; the whipping wind that sent a spiral of sand into his face and the ever-present danger of discovery or robbery. A young man out at night presents a tempting target for those aiming to do harm. Not that Pearce encountered any; he was simply paranoid about the possibilities.
She had initially thought him a good enough guy, someone she could see dating, perhaps with long-term potential. Sure, they had drank too much and had sex on their first date, but it wasn’t like he drank too much and then masturbated while she watched in horror. No, she was a willing, although inebriated, partner in the act. An adult capable of her own decisions. And she thought his reply to her question of what is left if we have sex on the first night was incredible. Everything, he had said. Of course, later, when he had moved into her apartment four months into their relationship, that seemed a little fast in retrospect. But she hadn’t said no, and the decision had made at least financial sense. The rent at her apartment was a fraction of what he had been paying. Now they would be splitting her fraction. A bed monkey, and cheaper rent. She could overlook small issues, focusing instead on the big picture. Besides, she loved him. They were both adults, and could make their own adult decisions. And, importantly, he had two kids from his previous marriage, so he would understand her struggles raising her own son as a single parent. Then there was the fact that he had an actual career, a teacher in fact, he drove a new truck, and, she thought, they made a nice fit.
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