Set Me As A Seal Upon Your Heart

Solomon sat on his bed without a feeling in his heart at all. Beside him was an atomic clock, a letter and crumpled pair of women's panties as at that moment, down his legs, there poured two parallel streams of blood--red and unceasing. He watched as it spurted and fell and puddled the floor. He watched until he couldn't and fell back to see the plain blankness of the hotel ceiling spinning slightly as he began to dream.

In and then out.

The ugly tapestry and the phony paintings. He hated gold trim and watercolors. He hated frames. There were those panties, which he held tightly in his right hand, saturating them with blood. "What is my name?" He asked himself, as he could know longer remember. People were smiling and calling out to him; some yelling at him, crying. Memories of friends and beer and fat pedestrians. The face of a woman he loved. Her body wrapped around his in the dark and him filling her. Feeling full because of her.

He shuddered. The phone rang.

But for Solomon there was no longer sound. He had exhaled and in that moment, was gone forever.