Slow Like He is Uncertain
By Tori Curtis
© 2012 Tori Curtis
Smashwords Edition.
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Inside (of him or his home or his heart or his pants, he never told me) there are six distinct monsters, each with a separate mask. He cannot explain them to anyone, he says, because they do not speak the language that normal people speak. They do not exist in the dimensions we have set for ourselves; he feels his monsters with senses we do not have.
"I feel like I'm that way, sometimes, too," I say, "but I usually blame it on hormones."
He doesn't laugh even though he's supposed to. Mostly he just raises his head in my direction, not seeing me so much as scenting me. He’s a hyena looking for a mate or prey or a lost cub, or maybe he is so starved that he doesn't know where he wants me. I don't think I can accommodate any of that, so I try instead to look fierce. Express my choices through my face, as if I get to make any choices about what I do now.
We
can't see the way he does, but he doesn't think he can feel what we
do. He says, slow like he is uncertain, that this makes it fair
somehow. And then he says, halfway between appreciative and scornful,
that maybe I do see things differently.