Escape

The whirring of the fan in the background weaves a hynoptic cast on him as he lies supine on the bed. The ceiling light seems a tad too bright tonight, he thinks to himself. His eyes hurt in the glare, and he can feel the gentle kneading of Migraine's fingers. He has tossed, turned and turmoiled in his sleep the last few nights. Lying on his bed, trying to force sleep to absorb him into its maw; he had thought of himself like a seasick sailor on the uncertain and rocking vessel that is his thousand over dollars King Koil bed. Like a sailor from one of Conrad's tomes, he had wondered whether he should heave-to and escape from this sinking boat. Cast wide adrift in the turbulent seas of this marriage heading nowhere, the vessel of his faith is rocking and wavering bit by bit. Very soon, it will be torn asunder.

She had been so nice the last few days, whispering sweet nothings in his ears, and gently nuzzling his neck whenever their heads met whilst turning on the bed. Ah, the bed - it is like a metaphor for their unravelling marriage, like a turbulent-wracked vessel on uncertain seas. So it was kind of ironic that those gentle and more pacifist moments should come while he was contemplating the toughest decision of his life.

To end this marriage once and for all. To abruptly tear off the page of this opus that they are writing with no end in sight, and getting all out of point. To jump ship. And yet, he can't find the courage to come to that decision. How could he when she had threatened suicide, when she had poured forth those threats - he, a weakling, a hostage to emotional blackmail....

As the thoughts swish and swirl around in his reverie, the bedroom door opens gently. She enters - a sylph in her diaphanous negligee - whitish and eerily ghostly. Two crimson balls seem to have sprouted on her cheeks as she crawls up onto the bed.

She whispers Honey to him, and her tongue makes its incipient foray down his stubbly chin, onto his neck. He can feel a bulge in his shorts and a frisson runs through him. It has been a while since he feels this way, and it makes him think of the halcyon days when they had just got married, and found sex to be a pivotal part in their gradual fortification of the institution that is marriage. However, since then, the walls have been crumbling, and sex has become as infrequent, in a counterpoint to the increasing bouts of insomnia assailing him. For a moment, he thinks of taking her....

Then, she drops the bombshell. She is proposing divorce. She has fallen in love with her colleague.

She has carved an escape chute for him.

His tumescent penis gradually deflates, and in the storm of his earlier emotional introspections, an abeyance signals. Like Conrad's sailor, the seas have quietened down and he lies down content on the bed.

He says yes. Let's get it done.

And they kiss - content in knowing that each has found his/her escape.