Member-only story
Red.
A short story.
He drank red wine with Diet Coke. He said it was a thing back in the day. Younger people wrinkled their nose at it. But what did they know? They drank just to get drunk. They didn’t enjoy it the same way.
He had once been handsome. He still had all the same features, but no hair. This made a huge difference, somehow.
That, and his nose and ears didn’t seem to stop growing.
He was fine with that.
He watched his girlfriend cook for him. They were never going to get married. She kept hoping. She kept doing things for him. But the more she did for him, the more he resented it.
It felt like he owed her. Like he owed her something he had never wanted to give her, never intended to give her. And she just kept staying and hoping.
He hated the hope. It turned into something else. Expectation.
And, for some reason, he always had a problem with that. With being expected to do something.
He sat on his hammock. He took a nap.
He woke up in pain. He had slept on his neck all wrong.
His girlfriend was gone.
On the floor, where she had been cooking, was just a black puddle.
