She had too many piercings in one ear and a voice like a peeling scab.  Her legs stubby and bowed, but well shaven.  The woman who stole her identity was longer.  Stretched almost to the point of being flat and translucent.  To disguise her flimsy frame, she wore flowing silk and sunglasses that sat like a welder’s mask on her face.  Her nails were painted, nibbled, and repainted.  She came with a musk.  It didn’t originate from her person, but from some object, a purse, a sock, something dead in her long tangled hair.

The last page was torn out of the book.  The door bell rang.  He threw the book at the wall.  It bounced and knocked over a vase holding his mother’s ashes.  There was a moment of disgusted silence.  The doorbell rang again.

“I don’t know, man.  There was something off about her.  You could see it in her eyes…In the good eye at least.  She tried to suck my dick through my pants.  No.  It’s not funny.  I wasn’t sure at first.  I thought maybe there was a medical issue.  Maybe she was having a seizure.  But no.  She put her head in my lap.  Yes.  AT DINNER.  She tried to suck my cock through my pants.  I can’t go out with her again, man.  I won’t.  Help me come up with a good excuse.”

“Stop that phone vibrating or I’ll smash it with a hammer.”

“Okay, phone police.”

“Dale, why do you have to be so aggressive at the dinner table?”

“I bought this goddam dinner table.  And I fucked you to make him.  I can smash the phone, the table, and the boy if I want to.  That’s my right as the man of the house.”

It wasn’t a rash.  It was more of a soggy spot on the skin where bacteria or parasites or fungus had began eating.  There were no showers.  At best, they’d open the window in the afternoon and a little fresh air would come in and mix with the funk.

One by one he started peeling away keys off the keyboard and popping them into his mouth like candy.  They made tremendous crunching sounds.  His beady eyes squinted hard when he swallowed.  He made it through most of the letters and finally choked on the spacebar.  

To him, they were all rats.  Vermin with little or no right to go on living.  He spat at them.  His blood pressure redlined when he knew they were around.  At night he had violent dreams about them.  He’d wake up sweaty and out of breath.  It wasn’t the consequence of prison that stopped him, it was his pathetic physical shape.  He lacked the strength to hurt any of them.  Even with a weapon he’d have a hard time.  

They held hands, but they might as well have been holding opposite ends of a two headed snake.  They were wrong for each other.  The relationship was toxic.  They screamed and got red in the face.  The neighbors called the police.  Late at night, after they were exhausted from arguing, the tried to make love.  

One bird flapped its wings twice and stuck like a dart in the stain-glass window.  

There was praying.  Then there were sirens.  An ambulance arrived.  They began praying.  Then more sirens.  A priest showed up.  He prayed.  Then he fell over.  The paramedics helped him up.  Then they all prayed again.  All the praying didn’t seem to be helping.