The following is an excerpt from my upcoming novella, Men as Lovers. It is part of a trio of (unrelated) novellas that will be published simultaneously. Some time soon.
He longs to be free of her. Desperately, you could say.
A vial of poison down the hatch will do. Maybe followed by a swim. But he can’t seem to go through with it. She has said that if he were ever to leave her, she would take her own life. And he does not need her following him so soon into death, traipsing right after him into the Underworld, where he has only gone to escape the torture of her endless need of him.
And even if she were to wait to follow, hesitate after losing him—how can he be so sure that being dead will be better than being in love?
It is a torment, the thought of death—so incontrovertible. He would prefer to live forever if only not to have to experience the terror of death. Eternity sounds pretty good, just not with her at his side. She, whom he can no more bear to live with than to hurt. Whenever he is cross with her, she showers him with her tears, and he immediately swallows the anger. It sinks in him like a stone, all the way to the bottom, to sleep upon mounds made of millions of other stones. And all because her tears frighten him—the way they twist her lovely face into something demonic, falling with enough abundance to drown them both in their little three-room apartment.
He has the vial of poison—we did not mean to leave you with the impression that he was too afraid to purchase it. There he stands over the great river, high up on a bridge, with the city’s nighttime skyline sprawling behind him and the vial in his fist. Fist punched down into coat pocket, trembling with restraint. A quick swallow, a quick leap: Two deaths for the price of one. While she lies in bed (her favorite place), wondering where he is and if he’s thinking of her. Sibling thoughts that chase each other relentlessly round and round in her mind. It frightens her, the idea that one night he might not come home. Either because he is sick to death of her or because something terrible has befallen him. She makes herself ill with fright, obsessing over all the different ways he could be killed. A traffic accident, a mugging, a random aneurism, mauled by an escaped zoo animal. . . . How long would it take for the news of his perishing to come home to her? Any length of time is too long, as the longer he is away from her, the more lost he could become in the Underworld. She would follow him there immediately, without pause, unterrified of death, fearing only that she will not be able to find him.
Their love is eternal, she believes. She is half-right. Her love for him is certainly eternal, whereas his greatest hope is that his love for her will end in concert with the ending of his life.