The Curer

Dirty fluorescence on eyes, mouths, ears. Pudgy hands stuck in mid-fiddle. The patient’s eyes come up for reassurance, and the curer grants it. The curer’s what she’s taken to calling herself on the nights when it all seems just a little too much to handle. Lowercase c, though.

The fingers explode from hands engorged to lamb chops, uncooked and sloppy. He has tits, pendulous ones, ones that threaten hers in size and heave whenever he cries, which is often during these Friday night visits. And he’ll Tell, and he’ll do his tit heave and his tit cry, and she’ll cross and uncross skirted hams and check watch and picture stockinged feet dampening midnight tracks and open her mouth very wide during these crying sessions when the patient’s eyes are shut tight against tears, open her mouth incredibly wide and swallow him whole, eat him up and explode stomach-first like some human slitherer, her skirted hams vestigial and waiting to fall away.

Maybe she’ll bring a gun to their next session. She’ll pull out a pistol while he’s doing his inevitable Tell and she’ll put it in his hand and say Okay. And he’ll look at her with tit heave paused and see her and maybe even stop crying. She’ll grab him by exploded finger and guide him past the trigger guard and say Okay then do it.

But she leaves the Tell and the tit heave and the sweat that glitters in mucoidal droplets at nose’s tip. Shifts face into pretty concern or pretty shock or pretty authority. Always pretty something and attentive, with eyes bright and idealistic, practiced looks of attention she studies in lighted mirrors at home, mirrors that open up pores to moon craters, where she can open her mouth incredibly wide and eat herself whole. And she’ll tweeze and pluck and squeeze and smile her authority and give pretty solemnity and even crack at pupils’ hollow a little bit.

And the sessions will end after a big climactic Tell, with blubber and hitchy sobs, and he’ll cry and say he needed it (as if there’s any other way) and she’ll give pretty authority with just a touch of pretty pity, and that’ll give him all he needs until next week, and she’ll pretend not to notice his tic-like way of staring at her ass as she gets up and leaves before him, almost bolting and leaving dirty fluorescence for dirty lamplight with feet still in heels and not yet wobbly but almost psychosomatically so as she walks from one session to the next, this in graffitied bathroom with bassy beat pounding and the revelers all Outside as she’s now Inside the stall, as some anonym is Inside her and giving her a different kind of Tell and she’s making all the noises she practises and keeps to herself and even records for playback to check pitch and timbre and maximum sex appeal and maybe adjust for the next time.

The tracks are set impossibly close. They are, all of them, twisting and tracing lines made mapbound in some indeterminate time. Trainlight runs and remains unheeded in inebriation. Stockinged feet collect moisture in the fog and transmute it down on fickle train tracks. Pretty tracks from pretty feet. Nimble steps through the buzz and anonym soreness. Heels held up and out in balance compensation. Wobble, tip, adjust. Wobble, tip, adjust. Wobble, tip,

Nicholas Olson is a fiction/screen writer with a BA in Cinema Art + Science from Columbia College Chicago. A triple finalist in the 2013 Written Image Screenwriting Competition, he currently resides in the Chicagoland area where he’s crafting a novel and wrangling a cat. He has work published or forthcoming in Apocrypha and Abstractions, The Open End, and Flash Fiction Magazine. He can be stalked at http://nicksfics.com.