Blood Sport

by Tod Connor

Someone's here, I can feel him, I can smell him.

Emerging from the bedroom, she's shining in the aftermath of mystery.

She's composed, this proud lioness, as she savors her kill.

"You didn't have to do this right here where I live," I tell her.

"Why not?" she says. "I live here, too."

I can tell by the droop of her mouth that pain is on its way. This gesture is like the click of a Smith & Wesson, the hammer poised to launch the exploding missile aimed at my heart.

"Maybe it's time for you to move out," she says dismissively, her mouth in slow motion, full of white stones. Her look is rampantly vulgar, salivating with the prospect of consuming her prey.

When he walks out of the bedroom, my head bursts, earth-shattering, bone-rattling, red hot flash.

"Is he bothering you?" he asks, staring at me like a high school wrestler.

She's pissed. This is her scene, not his.

"Well, is he?" her slow-witted paramour repeats, like a monkey on steroids.

"I told you to wait, Jimmy."

Jimmy? His name is Jimmy? It sounds like the murmur of a subway station or the taunt of a feral cat. The room melts as he jimmies his way into my world.

My speech erupts from the stranger within. "You want a piece of me, you fucking Neanderthal?" My juices are in overdrive, a wild-eyed maniac, ready for annihilation.

The pause . . . The sacred acknowledgement . . . Jimmy staring, dumb, frozen by the emergence of this sudden suicide attack.

"I thought not. Now get the fuck out of my house."

"I'll call you later, Jimmy."

He leaves, confused.

Our world pants desperately, a train-wreck tableau, a thudding scene of carnage.

She laughs. "You were good." She laughs again, my sweet love artist. "You were alive."

Tod Connor lives with his wife in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.  He has published fiction, non-fiction and commercial music. His work has appeared in various publications, including Talon Magazine; Ohio Views; Raphael’s Village; Apropos Literary Journal; Ink, Sweat and Tears; Out of the Gutter; Christianity Today; and others.