Read Online The Death of Small Creatures by Trisha Cull - Free Book Online Page B

that wayward fringe of fabric, the untidiness of it, its potential to twist around an ankle, decrease a man’s equilibrium in his own home, 7 am, after his wife has returned home from an evening out with platonic friends, an evening which he adamantly refused to partake in, as he did Christmas this year with my family.
    He has just demanded to see my Facebook, all of it. I complied. I have nothing to hide. He spent some time scrolling through it all, the notes and wall messages and links and photographs and personal messages. He found nothing, declared aristocratically, “Thank you,” and resumed his position reading the morning newspaper in the green chair a few feet from where I sit now.
    It’s the unravelled, unkempt, unknotted length of belt on his blue bathrobe upon which I focus.
    Everything is so loose.
    January 1, 2009
    Leigh has left for the day, went to the boat to work on the engine. I have taken a bunch of the clonazepam and Seroquel, and some other shit I found in the cabinet. Leigh’s allergy pills I think. I was popping the clonazepam all night at my sister’s on New Year’s Eve too, because I wanted to feel some sense of levity, some kind of high, to sort of match the glee of drunkenness surrounding me. And then there was the pot.
    Turns out I took a lot of clonazepam and Seroquel over the course of the evening on New Year’s Eve. Now there are the pills of today. I am compounding drugs upon drugs.
    I feel weird.
    When I do this I am flirting with the idea that I will take enough and go to sleep and maybe, just maybe, not wake up.
    I went out to go to the hospital earlier today after Leigh left, made it halfway there, turned back thinking,
Shit, do I really want to sit in an emergency room on New Year’s Day?
    So I sit here instead, typing to you, feeling high and weird, waiting for it to pass or not pass. I’m going back to sleep now, 3:30 pm, in the bunny room, about to cuddle Marcello.
    This is going nowhere.
    January 11, 2009
    Yesterday I fell asleep on the couch with Leigh at about 11 pm while watching a movie. He tried to coax me into bed, get me off the couch. I was so out of it he actually helped me to my feet, but I laid back down again and fell asleep until 5 am this morning. At some point I rose from the couch and rolled into bed. Leigh says that at about 7 am I was giving him the most amazing blowjob, then he says I fell asleep with his cock in my mouth, fully erect. He says he felt my teeth settle onto the shaft, which he thought was sweet and erotic. He slid himself carefully off my teeth.
    I have absolutely no memory of this whatsoever.
    I gave my husband an unconscious blowjob.
    Why do I feel slightly violated?
    January 20, 2009
    Counselling appointment with Fiona tomorrow. Issues I will bring up, to discuss:
Inability to settle into my own skin and thus a relationship with any man, or at least with my husband… and all the anguish and conflicting feelings therein, the guilt one moment, the total love the next, and then numbness.
Self-loathing
I seem to either be totally insomniac or nodding off all over the place. I literally fell asleep while sitting in the upright position on the bus ride home tonight, out completely, twice. Then I’ll stay up all night on the weekend, get more or less high on something or other, entrance myself, flirt with death, hug my rabbits, fall asleep so drugged sometimes I’m not sure I’ll wake up. But of course I always do.

Four
    Skate Wing (July 2006)
    My desire to be loved and kept by a man begins at age ten. My fifth grade teacher, Mr. L, holds out his arms to me. He is smiling, delighted. I have just given him a hot pink pin that says,
Being sexy is a hard job, but somebody has to do it.
“Thank you!” he says, even though the pin is inappropriate, especially for a Catholic schoolgirl.
    As he moves toward me to give me a hug, I laugh and run away, leave him standing there with his arms extended.