Terry enjoyed piping hot tea, the scalding type that scoured the roof of the mouth to the bone. Terry was a fitness freak. Enjoyed pumping dumb-bells (as many as possible) to the silent music of his own bodily rhythms. Toned his muscles to the optimum of rib and tissue. Honed his manly curves towards the Golden Mean of Grecian perfection.
He leaned forward with an imaginary discus in his hand and prepared to lob it, loft it, float it towards the heavenly heights of health. His very heart, indeed, floated, too, in the silken tides of his own breathing. He paused for a while to take another searing sip of Darjeeling tea, but it had somehow turned into a lukewarm consistency more akin to creamy curds than anything else. But he had not put any milk in it. That would have been against his religion.
Tea was to be consumed strong and hot and untarnished.
A bit like Terry.
He wiped a bead of sweat from the enticing bulge of his left bicep. Only to hear (or, rather, glimpse) an irritating attempt at attracting his attention from outside.
“Terry! Terry!”
He saw the face of his Ex. She was mouthing her own garbled version of speech at him, accompanied by a highly visible rapping on the window.
He shrugged. Shrugged inside, if not out.
Ever since his latest binge of bodily exertions, he had avoided the Call of the Wild. And, for Terry, sex was tantamount to losing self-control. His discipline was threatened whenever he allowed his defences to be corrupted by the chance cavortings of female breast or bottom.
His Ex continued to shout relentlessly through the pane.
“Didn’t you hear the doorbell?” she mimed.
He shook his head.
“Can’t hear you,” he mimed back, although he could have read her lips. And probably did.
The church across the road from Terry’s place – which possessed the biggest looking bells in the whole wide world – failed to penetrate his concentration, especially as he usually sported ear-pads which carried several layers of white noise. Even on Saint days or periods of marital ceremonial, these bells, for Terry, were as silent as the deepest grave.
“Are you bleeding deaf?” shrieked his Ex, as she tried, in vain, to pierce Terry’s studied otherworldliness.
He attempted to mount a dumb-show of innocence, mouthing nonsensical words as a diversionary tactic, as he played harder to get.
Perhaps, she’d go away of her own volition, given enough rope.
Soon, however … having grabbed an absentminded gulp of stonecold sludge from the tea-cup … he decided to open the front door to give her an unambiguous piece of his mind.
As soon as he had slipped all the bolts and trip-switched the various tumblers in a highly charged complex of locks, he allowed his draw-bridge slowly and dead-silently to lower itself. His muscles strained at the harness of fleshless cantilevered bone … and the tepid outside air met his deeply carved manhood with a creamy touch.
“We won the lottery!” screeched his Ex. “The ticket we shared has come up!”
Tears came to Terry’s eyes. How sweet of her. She needn’t have told him.
But something inside told him different. That heart of stone of his.
And, impulsively, he cut her dead … with the sharp edge of a blood-bloated artery which he meticulously uncoiled from its wrapping of bone and flesh.
Her dying eyes spoke sad volumes as the church bells pealed deafeningly across the town’s gambrels.
Touching gingerly what remained of the roof of his mouth with his tongue, he found he could actually lick the lower edge of his brain. It was soft and mushy, like cottage cheese, if not cream.
He knew Mind and Body were inextricable. His whole being evidently needed more tuning up with the dumb-bells and he returned inside, abandoning what remained of his ex Ex on the doorstep, steaming.
(published 1995?)
