I’m Not in Love by 10cc
Reg sits on the edge of the bed. Across the way, a Francesco Molon mirror reflects.
“Because that’s what fucking mirrors do, don’t they?” He throws his lead-healed Gucci slipper but misses and then throws the other slipper ever harder and it nicks the lower corner but doesn’t make a dent or even a scratch (he manages to stumble from the edge of his bed to examine) and certainly it’s a cry from what he intends — wants — which is to explode the mottled, re-fuck-tive glass into a million brilliant, shiny shards. A million brilliant, sharp, shiny shards.
“Twat. Twat twat fucking twat.”
On the edge of the bed again — his particular placeholder these days — and there’s that fucking song again, the one John looped for him. A sadistic joke? Another carefully timed kick to the prunes that screams take that you fucking codger and your fucking young blond fuckholes….?
“Fucking twat John!”
Then again, he himself could stop the loop if he chose, couldn’t he?
He throws the Arcahorn ashtray and this time the mirror shatters, but not into a million brilliant, shiny shards as he had imagined — hoped — but into four large pieces felled to the ground, irritatingly similar in size and shape.
“Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” he asks so calmly and matter-of-fact that he simply knows he must temper it with its opposite.
(He flashes, ever so, to his twat therapist saying yet again: Reg, remember, change rarely requires 180 degrees.)
He runs across the room, leaping over Gucci and Arcahorn, and stomps wildly on the Molon glass. As it splinters brilliantly under the command of his bare feet (and as if on cue, that fucking song whispers to him: Be quiet. Big boys don’t cry, big boys don’t cry, big boys….) he tells himself with stunningly convincing vibrato that he hasn’t felt so very good in a very, very long time.
J. Edward Kruft received his MFA in fiction writing from Brooklyn College. He is a multiple Best Short Fictions nominee, and his stories have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals, including Cabinet of Heed, and Jellyfish Review. He is a Virgo who finds the term Winnebago both complex and disconcerting. He lives with his husband, Mike, and their adopted Siberian Husky, Sasha, in Queens, NY and Sullivan County, NY. His recent fiction can be found on his Web site: www.jedwardkruft.com and he can be followed on twitter: @jedwardkruft.
