Brenda peeled her eyes open and ghosted her way into an upright position. Raymond was still asleep next her. His cold, expansive stomach lifted the blanket off of her own legs, depriving her of the warmth she so craved in the morning. She was awoken, like she was every morning, by the sound of his snoring machine.
Brenda looked at Raymond. He looked tired in the way a knotted oak stump looks tired, and like a robot in the way a snoring machine looks like a robot. It wasn't always this way. When he was eighteen, football forged Raymond's torso into hardened steel, like a steely fighter robot. His laser stare penetrated through every girl at South Neck Performing Arts High School. For Brenda, a once-young, once-talented acting student, it went straight to her loins, and caused a radiation of pure sexual energy and pregnancy that drove the two into their hasty, teenage wedding.
The two oozed out from between their polyester-blend sheets. Brenda hated them but of course, with Raymond’s job, that was all they could afford. They entered the kitchen and began their daily routine. Raymond sat at the kitchen table. Brenda lazily burned toast for him. Raymond took one bite, and crumbs jumped down his body, like Brenda’s idiot sons doing their idiot parkour. One of the crumbs landed in between Raymond’s legs, in the place where his old high school penis used to be, but Brenda hadn’t seen it in some time, and she doubted that he had either.
It was once said that a woman’s uterus floated around inside her body. While her own dusty womb was firmly in place, Brenda wondered if Raymond’s penis had been floating around in the leather skein of flesh that he called a body. Perhaps that is why she had not had sex with him in years. Perhaps they were merely waiting for the moment when Raymond’s hysterical penis would pop out of his shoulder. "Ew," Brenda shuddered.
The two lazily kissed each other “Goodbye,” and they each got into their cars. Raymond’s car screamed “I am living outside our means,” while Brenda’s simply murmured “I am sad and red.” Raymond drove off to “the office.” Brenda neither knew nor cared where Raymond worked, or even what his job was, only that he had a whore secretary, and that he wasn’t important there. Brenda was going to visit the one man who always brought her satisfaction. She pulled up to Bryan’s flower shop and walked in the door. The little bell on the door fluttered, and so did Brenda’s heart when she saw him. Bryan looked at her with that certain twinkle in his eye, that Brenda knew meant he had what could satisfy her. Brenda took Bryan’s hand and the two pranced into the back room like wicked school tots. It was there that Bryan gave Brenda what she truly needed.
Old, old drugs.