The Sunday Scaries
Volume 1, Number 33
Microfiction by Pat Harrigan
Content Warning: Language and Horror

I Will Kiss You with the Kisses of My Mouth

I saw you upon a morning, John, and I served you with my own hands. You sat at a table in the corner, in a ray of sunlight, and I watched it shine on your black hair, and the next morning you were back, and the sun on your hair was back again, and I knew. I followed you when you left, though the others criticized me for it. I saw you walk under the trees and beside the fountain, and your long legs strode quick. I nearly ran after you, John. I saw you enter the building where you work, and in the lobby I searched for your name on the devices, but didn’t find it there. I know your last name also, but it isn’t as simple or as lovely as your first, which needs no extension or addition, no family name required when you and I are the only family we need.
          Your shirt is blue, your eyes are blue, your skin is white as lily. Your hair is black. Your lips when I kiss them will flush red. Your eyes will look upon me as I love.
          I sit in the evenings and envision you. In the morning if you appear, I adore you with my eyes. On the days when you are absent I despair, and I move within a broken temple, among fallen gray columns and across dark earth soaked with rain and treacherous with snakes. The morning, when it comes, is frightening and brittle, and I can hardly bear to look upon you then, so enriched are you with presence and the threat of loss.
          You speak only rarely. You sit unmoving like a stone. When you stand to go it is like the outflowing of the tide. I could kneel on the shore and wail all night for your return. I could swim in you, and drown. You will arrive here, and I will see you. When you go, I will follow you again, John, wherever you travel, I will follow you all our days.
💀

Vol. 1, Nos. 1 – 13
Vol. 1, Nos. 14 – 26
Vol. 1, No. 27 – No Fare Today
Vol. 1, No. 28 – Unsecured Cargo
Vol. 1, No. 29 – The Friend Request
Vol. 1, No. 30 – Hostile Architecture
Vol. 1, No. 31 – The WorldCat
Vol. 1, No. 32 – Reception
Vol. 1, No. 33 – I Will Kiss You with the Kisses of My Mouth
Vol. 1, No. 34 – The Case of the Extended Family
Vol. 1, No. 35 – In the Weeds
Vol. 1, No. 36 – Everybody Loves Sock
Vol. 1, No. 37 – The New Normal
Vol. 1, No. 38 – Out of Mulberry Street
Vol. 1, No. 39 – The Machine Shop
Vol. 1, Nos. 40 – 52


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patrick Harrigan is the author of the novel Lost Clusters and the short story collections Thin Times and Thin Places, The Lecture Tour and On Tour Forever, and has had other work published by The MIT Press, Camden House, Fantasy Flight Games, Chaosium, Pagan Publishing, Gameplaywright, and ETC Press. In darkened unpopulated Twin Cities theaters he sometimes takes the stage to inflict his horrifying words on the mice and spiders and hostages.
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