Thirteen Specimens by Jeffrey Thomas Page A

up closer to my sister and put my arm around her shoulders and rested my head against her head. She smiled when I did that. But when I reached up very, very gently, very tenderly, and ran my fingers along the outer curve of her breast she pulled away very sharply.
         She looked at me darkly, her eyes so huge, so black, could mine possibly be so black, and Indian women have this kind of pouty sneer which I don’t quite have, and she said come on, don’t do that. It really repulsed her. I could see if she wasn’t into it, fine...I wasn’t even going to go far with it, though I did want to kiss her, but it wasn’t like I tried going down on her. We did this before. It wasn’t like we hadn’t. Did she forget? Or want to forget?
         Right away she got up to use the bathroom; I think just to get away from me for a minute. So I sat there watching the movie alone for that minute, and although it continued being sexy, or because it continued being sexy, I couldn’t enjoy it any more. I got up and went to the kitchen and stood between the fridge and the counter wondering if I wanted another beer. My face was so hot, like a balloon full of blood, all the blood in my body, which made my body feel emptied and weak. I clung to the counter for support. I slid open the drawer by my hand and I took out the bread knife and I walked to the bathroom with it.
         The door wasn’t fully closed so I pushed it open. I saw the strip of a sanitary napkin poking up from the little waste basket by the toilet. Parina was done and washing her hands but when she looked up she seemed angry again that I had come right in without knocking so before she could say anything about it I cocked the knife back and jammed it downward into the hollow at the front of her throat. It went in deep, about half of the blade’s nine wide inches, nine inches like a good sized cock in her throat. I felt like a man, suddenly. She fell back against the side of the tub with her beautiful eyes no longer angry, just more huge, and I loved her then all over again, so I had to stop her right there, before either of us could change again, to seal this moment in time, so I knelt down over her and I took hold of the handle which I had let go of after I stuck the knife in her. I curled both fists around the handle and leaned my breastbone right on the end of it, pushing it the rest of the way in and working it to the side like a stuck lever. For a few moments her hands tried to hold mine but they grew light and faded away. When I removed my slippery palms from the knife, they were red with her blood and looked like they’d been tattooed with mehndi.
         I stood over her, just looking down at her for a while, and one big fat tear plopped right on her foot with its frosted pink toe nails which still had a strong chemical smell.
         After going to the living room, watching a few more minutes of the movie while I toweled off my hands, I shut the thing off, stopped it in the middle of a very romantic scene, froze it right in that perfect moment of love and ecstasy. I returned to the bathroom. The blood was spreading from beneath her like big butterfly wings so I shut myself in with her as if the door would contain it. I bent down over her, close to Parina. I kissed her full, open lips. I sucked her entire lower lip in my mouth and it tasted of salty buttery popcorn and there was still a faint smell of beer on her breath. I bit her lip. I tried to bite it off, it was so full and succulent, I wanted it in me, I wanted her in me so we would be joined forever but it wouldn’t bite off, so I worked the knife out of her brown neck, wiped it a little so it was less slippery, and stuck it through her lip in the middle, sort of sawing off to one side so that it hung half off her chin. Now I could bite the rest of it off...more like tearing it off to one side.
         I chewed it. It was soft but rubbery. I choked because I had to swallow it whole like a raw