Reading Remonda

story: T. Remington, image: aleXander hirka

     They begged, wept, threatened, cajoled and bribed through the night but still, in the morning, Remonda was gone. Without her placid buffering, they went at each other again. Soon territories were staked out, trespasses committed and violence was always a simmering possibility. Bliss had hastily barricaded himself upstairs and had to run Gristle’s gauntlet every time he needed to leave the house. Gristle claimed the bathroom and kitchen. She was sure she’d bring Bliss to his knees in a week, tops.

      Remonda went to Paris just like she’d always promised herself she would. It was  beautiful and many men fell in love with her. Over absinthe in the long summer evenings, she found herself telling each new lover about Gristle and Bliss. Each feigned interest, hoping to make it to the other side of her stories. None did. Not one. Ever.

      Word about the scandalous memoir penetrated even Bliss’s fortified second story. Gristle ignored the stories, but Bliss plotted. He’d spent the entire winter mapping Remonda’s arc out on the hallway walls. This memoir was certainly a message meant for him, something that Gristle would never figure out. With the cunning of the hunted, he made his move under cover of night.

      Safe, back in his lair, he turned the shrink wrapped treasure over and over in his hands. Gristle snatched it away, sending him sprawling. She had used his rope ladder to come in the window behind him and now stood over him, ripping the plastic from the book. By the time he’d righted himself, she’d flung it down in fury. He heard her dismantling his carefully constructed fortifications. Who cared? He had his answers now.

      He cradled the book, opened it and howled in anguish. It was written in French.

                                                                 click on image to enlarge
    story © T. Remington