MCM has pledged to write 1,000 short stories this summer. Send him a line, an idea, a concept, and he will write a story. My request was "The truth is, I don't want to die alone." His story follows.
4:30 AM on a Tuesday
He saw her by the fading light of the old refrigerator, standing against the door frame, light t-shirt clinging her to moist skin. She was watching him, the quietest thing in the room, bare feet soaking up the cold from the tile floor.
“You’re up,” he said, voice croaking, but left the door open. He needed the cool air.
“I heard you leave,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
He smiled, swung the fridge open more to get a better look at his options. Nothing seemed right. Milk, beer, yoghurt.
“I was,” he said. “Until I got here. Now, not so much. How about you? Are you hungry at all? Help me choose?”
“I’m okay,” she said, and slid up beside him, wrapping an arm around his waist, resting her head on his shoulder. “Come back to bed?”
“I’m not tired yet,” he sighed.
“You don’t need to be tired,” she smiled, and pulled herself closer. It caught him by surprise, and he almost missed her mouth, probing at his chin, his neck. He returned the kiss, and she wrapped herself around him, arms locked over his shoulders, legs pulling herself up.
“I’ve never done this before,” he said between breaths, hands running down her hips, under the shirt, up again.
“Done what?” she purred.
“A one-night stand,” he said, turning her around and setting her on the edge of the counter.
“It doesn’t have to be just the one night,” she said. “Good things have… oh… good things have strange beginnings…”
He laughed, pulled her shirt over her head, kissed her neck, down to the scar in the middle of her chest. He’d seen it earlier, but the booze and the passion and the excitement had made him forget it. Long and clean, lit up by the fridge. He traced it with his finger and she moaned.
“What happened?” he asked softly, and she took his hand and put it over her left breast, whispered in his ear.
“A hole in my heart,” she said. He felt the beating beneath his fingers, racing with every breath. Her blue eyes, half-open and delirious with want, kept locked with his. “Unfixable, like the rest of me.”
He kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around him, helped him forget for a moment, but then she shuddered, and he drew back, thumb brushing the hair from her face.
“Is it dangerous?” he asked.
She smiled, half-shrugged, and tugged at his shorts, an effort that trailed off when she realized his hesitation.
“It’ll kill me,” she admitted. “Some day.”
“How?” he asked, stepping back.
“I’ll tell you when I get there,” she smiled, and tried to carry on. He didn’t move.
“What is this?” he asked, picking her shirt off the ground. Her heels wrapped around his waist and pulled him back, but he didn’t accept her embrace. He pushed the shirt to her chest. “What are we doing?”
“Forgetting fate for a bit,” she said, dropping the shirt back on the ground. “One night at a time. There’s a hole in my heart, and one day, a beat will go wrong and I’ll die. But I’m not going to live in fear of that day. I’m not afraid of dying. Dying is easy.”
He shook his head, unlocked her legs, stepped back, closed the fridge door. It was cold, suddenly. He needed his shirt. He felt exposed.
“I won’t help you kill yourself.”
She caught his arm as he tried to leave. He tried not to look at her, but the moonlight on her back drew him in. Her eyes were shimmering with tears.
“You can’t kill me,” she said. “My heart’s on its own schedule. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m really not. The truth is, I don’t want to die alone. I’m deathly afraid of dying alone.”
She let go of his arm, her hand brushing his cheek, pulling away. She slumped, staring at the floor, suddenly frail.
“What do you want from me?” he said, a gulf between them, filled with hated desires and unspoken thoughts.
“Keep me company until you can’t anymore,” she whispered. “One night or a thousand. And when I go, just carry on, because I was happy.”
He looked at her, said nothing for a moment. He took her hand in his, and their fingers entwined, and he stepped into her embrace, her face resting on his chest.
“How can I know that?” he asked. “How can I know you were happy?”
“Because,” she said softly, “I have nothing else to feel.”
