Diagnosis *written on 2/1/06*

              A twisted love story for Valentine’s Day.  I wrote this as part of a writing exercise in college.  The goal was to find a way to work as many medical terms as possible into a short scene.


          Liberty was like a cancer, he thought.  A malignant growth on his ass.  But then he would reconsider.   An ass tumor was not the slightest bit pleasant to have.  Well, he wouldn’t know because he’d never suffered an ass tumor before.  But it seemed to him that she was more like a narcotic---an addictive drug; he knew she was nasty, no good for him.  His brain was an egg in a frying pan.  He understood that.  But he admitted there were times when he loved her.
         The one thing she had in common with cancer was that she had metastasized and spread throughout him, every inch of his flesh burning and curling along the edges with a bright flame of hatred and love.  It had gotten to the point where no doctor with all of their fancy surgical instruments could remove her from him.
         She was a scab that he was compelled to pick.  The whole tissue of his soul was evidence of her abuse.  His spirit didn’t scab, though, it scarred.  She’d clamp onto him like a vampire’s jaw and suck up the blood through his veins as if he was some kind of curly straw you got at theme parks.  He’d look in the mirror and see the small black bite marks, and like any good son he’d do as mother had taught him, scrubbing away at it with soap and disinfectant, out of habit or desperation more than out of the thought that he was doing any good, or that it would cleanse him of her.
         He was standing before his reflection in the bathroom, washing off the speckled spots of blood on his chin when she rang the doorbell.  He knew it was Liberty because no other person on this planet would show up at his door before 8 a.m., unless it was an emergency, and then they’d call.  Liberty didn’t believe in telephones.  It was easy to shut out another’s voice, to place the receiver down, or else hang up.  She needed to be in front of him so she could work her medicine.  She had to be where she could touch him and then the toxins would transfer from her fingers into him, his own body feeding off her as though she were an IV.
         He dropped the razor in the sink.  He wasn’t going to open the door if his prognosis depended on it.
         Five minutes must have passed with him standing in the bathroom, the sterile atmosphere of it folding around him like a white blanket covering a cadaver.  Every half minute, almost to the second, he’d hear the bell ring.  His resistance dissolved.
        Coming, he said, his voice low.  Coming.