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| Meal Ticket | |
| By alastair79 | ||||||||||||
| 02 June 2006 | ||||||||||||
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Just a random story. It's about love, hate and ants. Please leave comments, as I don't offend easily. Alastair. Time is a monster; it stalks you through the tall grass like a great cat after a tasty morsel to sharpen its teeth on, only it never stops or gets tired and it never makes judgment calls. Matthew now felt this as certainly as if they had been introduced at a black tie reception for dignitaries. He felt its icy hand moving ever closer to his dirty and torn collar, he knew at any moment that his life was over and he would be ant food. A few hours previous his only issue was his quick temper and wondering eye. As the young doctor staggered through the blazing heat of the outback his mind wandered back to the reason for being out here, creating such vivid images he had to blink and refocus to keep a grip on reality. He recalled her scent that night and the dress that embraced her body as if it always had and that tang of excitement that zipped through his brain as if he were sixteen again. “Oh God”, he crocked out through cracked and broken lips as it all flooded back. They had sat in the small drab Italian restaurant around the corner from his penthouse apartment sharing a bottle of expensive Claret. “So what changed your mind”, Matthew asked gazing soulfully into her porcelain blue eyes. “Well I didn’t have anyone else to have diner with tonight”, Her voice smiled and her sumptuous lips rounded every word and Matthew beamed despite himself. She was lying of course, Alice, the most attractive nurse in the hospital had no shortage of offers and Matthew knew that idiot in radiology had asked her to diner everyday for the last two months solid. She would let him down every time but with just enough flirt to bring him back the next day. “I think we better order before they start charging us rent”, She glanced at the menu but took none of it in and placed it back on the table. “Order for both of us, I just can’t decide”, Matthew nodded and signalled the waiter over. “Can we start with…” he looked from the waiter to Alice and just gazed into her eyes. After a few moments she blushed and looked away, a smile played around her mouth. “…the check please”, the waiter frowned then turned on his heals to find the price of the wine they had demolished. “That’s very forward”, she said, her face giving nothing away. “Too forward?” “I don’t know, ask me later”, her eyes glinted playfully and Matthew felt that familiar surge of excitement rush through his body. He paid and they left, strolling unhurried through the warm scented evening towards his apartment. Their arms interlocked as they went, making them look almost like an elderly couple out for walk by the sea. Matthew, starting to feel impatient, sped up, hurrying her along and by the time they reached his front door it had almost broken into a trot. She laughed extravagantly and took his face in her hands. “Poor boy, has it been that long”, he slid his arms around her waist and grinned ridiculously back at her. “You just wouldn’t believe how long”, he lent forward and mashed his lips to hers, for a moment he was gone as his mind popped and fizzed somewhere far above. They came smiling and breathing hard from their lustful moment as the door to his apartment block swung open as if by magic. He started to move Alice backwards to the open door, not taking his arms from around her, as if she would fall and be lost if he did. Then he noticed the silhouette blocking the doorway; one hand on the heavy door and the other on an equally weighty cast-iron skillet pan, black and ready. His stomach tightened and dropped, the realisation of who this was hit him as hard as the pan that clattered into the side of his head. The world tilted and faded to black. Sound came back first, feet running, women screaming blue murder and the irregular clank of iron on masonry. Vision, blurred around the edges and painful, followed. Matthew could make out two people moving at a pace away from him, the tall curvaceous blonde figure of Alice trying to run in ridiculously tall heels and the more compact shape of his wife, Maggie. With the skillet raised high like Excalibur she was mouthing obscenities that would make the devil blush. With a final swing and a miss, she turned on her heels and started purposefully back toward Matthew. He got unsteadily to his feet, put a hand to his cheek and found early swelling. He spat large globs of blood and spittle onto the pavement so he could speak. “I… I thought you were at your sisters in…” He got no further as the pan slammed home again and then again. Prolonged Blackout. He came to with a start, sucking in large lungfuls of air as the cold water she had tipped on him dripped off his face and ran down his back. She watched him squirm with a look of total commitment but the streaked mascara told a different story. “Baby”, he pleaded. “It meant nothing, she means nothing, its you and me, always” He was just realising his surroundings and the fact that it was morning, he’d been spark out for about eight hours and she’d driven him out of the city, down a long stretch of dirt track to the middle of nowhere, the outback. She opened her mouth to speak but her throat was closed up, swallowing hard she tried again. “I love you”, her voice wavered on the brink of collapse but stayed strong. “And if you love something you have to set it free”. “What are you talking about, aren’t we good together, haven’t I given you everything you ever wanted. A home, car and money, everything you needed”. “I needed love, that’s all. Your love and affection, but you can’t keep it in your pants can you, always looking for ways to hurt me, make me feel stupid and small”. A tear ran down her face and she quickly wiped it away with the back of her hand. “I do love you”, he said as convincingly as he could, eyes wide pleading for her forgiveness. His mouth opened to say something else but his mind had dried out like sand under him, he said nothing, just sat and gawped. “You don’t know what to say do you, even now you just don’t understand what I’m talking about. How many this year, huh? Five or six at least, all tall and all blonde and all with big tits just the way you like. Everything I’m not, so I have to look at myself and realise that you married me for respectability, a ticket to the right parties with the right people for you to suck up to” She turned and walked to her dust-covered car, sending a scorpion scuttling for cover. Opening the door she turned and looked at him. “I’m your meal ticket”, the words were spat out with venom. “Well guess what, know your theirs”. She said pointing at the ants ambling around her feet. With this she got into the car and sped off, leaving Matthew choking and blinking in her dusk cloud.
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I just enjoy writing and so far it has all taken me to places I didn’t realise it would go.
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