Read Online Hi I'm a Social Disease: Horror Stories by Andersen Prunty - Free Book Online

somewhat tainted with guilt. So much guilt, in fact, that Elijah could never really bring himself to tell Maya about the previous loves of his life. Initially, he told himself he was just waiting for the right time. Eventually, he convinced himself there wasn’t a right time. He had waited too long. To tell her now would surely cost him the relationship.
    But the blue had come back—and the man with the face like a bruise—and Maya had heard him crying and whimpering names, fragments. Enough to make her suspicious. That, on top of the impotence and the despondency, was sure to ruin everything he and Maya had.
     
    Neither one of them had gotten out of bed to open the windows or turn on the air conditioner and Maya lay beside Elijah, the tears coming out of her eyes mingling with the sheen of sweat on her cheeks. She brushed the moisture off with the back of an already moist hand and reached over to the nightstand to get a cigarette. He had never seen her smoke. She seemed like a different woman as she greedily lit the cigarette. She inhaled the cigarette and coughed up a combination of tears, phlegm, and smoke. She sat up, keeping the sheet pulled to just above her breasts.
    “ I thought,” she said, “that you had found someone else. I thought those were the names you were saying. Some whore at the office you were fucking.”
    “ I would never do anything like that to you.” He put his hand on her thigh, ran it up to the crease between where her leg met her pubis.
    “ I thought that was the whole reason why you couldn’t… you know.”
    “ I would never cheat on you. You know that… don’t you?”
    She shook her head. “It happens.”
    There was a moment of awkward silence. Maya’s crying increased. Unable to finish the cigarette, she crushed it out. Elijah moved his hand onto the soft mound of her sex. “It happens,” she mumbled again through a thick mouth. He brushed his hand over her clitoris and then stopped, bringing his hand quickly away.
    “ I need to go,” he said.
    “ Don’t go,” Maya cried.
    “ I have to work. I need to go.”
    He dressed in a hurry and left the apartment, slamming the door on his way out.
     
    Once in the car, he knew he wasn’t going to work. He was too angry. He didn’t exactly know why. He sat in the hot car, sweat rolling down his face, shaking with anger. Slowly, he composed himself enough to pull away from the curb and take the twisted mess inside his head with him.
    Stopping at the liquor store, he bought a bottle of Jim Beam and continued on to the Moston Memorial Gardens. There, he would be able to sit. To contemplate. Sort some things out.
    He opened the Jim Beam as soon as he got out to the car and was nearly drunk by the time he got to the cemetery. He pulled the car up near Eileen and Cynthia’s gravesites and stumbled across the freshly manicured lawn until he reached their tombstones. Once there, he sat down in between them, the bottle between his legs.
    It was then he decided to sort some things out, to try and figure out why he was so goddamn enraged.
    The most obvious fact was that this was the two-year anniversary of their deaths. The grief and anger had never really relented since he had received the call at home to come to the hospital and identify the bodies. The grief, he knew, would have to subside on its own. It would never go away completely. He didn’t expect, didn’t even really want , that to happen. The grief was like a memory. To remove the grief, he would have to take away all the memories of them. He didn’t want that. Memories were the only things he had left.
    The rage, though. That was something different altogether. It was something he hadn’t expected and, once upon him, couldn’t figure out how to get rid of. Entangling himself in hostile relationships with virtually everyone he knew didn’t seem to do the trick. That merely rendered him isolated and friendless. It wasn’t just the world he was mad at. It was Eileen, too. If