I haven't felt like writing in days, weeks, maybe a month or more. I suppose it's writers block. But while it's keeping my fingers still, I thought instead I'd reach back in time and publish here something I wrote a few years ago. This is my version of a true story, an incident a former boyfriend relayed to me in which he was involved. He is the man in the tale. This happened, he said, when he was in a period of depression, rarely leaving his home except to go to the occasional movie, otherwise holed up in his darkened apartment smoking pot, playing his guitar, speaking to almost no one.

He admits it was a horrible thing to do, admits he wasn't quite in his right mind. I could relate to the latter; perhaps that's why this didn't alarm me more than it did.

I wrote this shortly before we broke up, and let him read it. He did so without comment.

Should I have known after he told me this story that our relationship was doomed? Should I have walked away when he did? Or should I count myself lucky that we didn't end up together, bad as our breakup was? I asked myself all those things many times in the year or two after our breakup. Regardless, it is I think, a gripping short story. I hope you agree. Feedback always appreciated. -- JR

10-8-00 Losing Control
Jeanna touched the counter with one finger, running it along the length of its stainless steel surface, past the tomatos, the banana peppers, the chopped onions, noodled strands of Swiss, American and cheddar, the glass bottles of oil and vinegar, plastic containers of mustard and mayo.
No stray bits of lettuce littered the counter, the glass bottles shone from her recent ministrations, the mustard top was free of the hardened, dried tip it inevitably gained in the course of a day.
The yellow booths beyond the counter sat empty, their surfaces bare of even a crumb, no hint there of the three customers who’d sat at them during the past hour.
The mop leaned wearily against the corner between the kitchen and the hallway, its graying tentacles still bearing traces of suds from their recent journey across the Subway floor.
Jeanna sighed. It was all disappointingly spotless.
She glanced at her watch again, peered out through her plastic-framed glasses into the too-quiet, moonless night, flipped open the dog-eared People in a vain search for some bit of celebrity news she had not yet read.
She had barely ducked her head to the page when the door sucked open.
“Hey,” grunted a masculine voice.
Jeanna grinned, tugged hard on the hem of her yellow Subway shirt, making a vain attempt to cover her ample hips. She shoved her glasses, which had slipped a good quarter-inch down her nose while she bent to study the magazine, roughly back up to the bridge of her nose.
“Hi,” she chirped. “How ya been?”
He did not look up, only stared through the glass at the sandwich ingredients.
He was always dressed the same – black boots, blue jeans, black leather jacket. That and his height – which was somewhere well beyond six feet – and a frame that appeared to Jeanna to be extremely well-defined, lent him a slightly sinister aura she wanted to fear, but was drawn to nevertheless. She studied his thick, brown hair as he stared, with an unusual intensity, at the food. Then his eyes shifted gears, never stopping at Jeanna but sweeping up to the menu board. She didn’t stop her perusal – he appeared oblivious to her anyway – and let herself gaze at his face: the big, green eyes, the day’s growth of hair. It was a face she had never seen smile.
She blushed, feeling him take her in as she stared at his stubble. She had been wondering what it would feel like against her palm.
“Huh?” he asked, in a gravely tone that suggested his vocal chords had been forced into use after a long period of rest.
She cleared her throat. “I said, ‘How ya been?’ What cha been up to?”
Jeanna looked directly into his eyes then, and almost gasped aloud. The pupils were dilated wide, a thin line of green separating them from the bloodshot whites of his eyes.
He stared, unblinking, back at her, standing utterly still. Then, abruptly, he reached an arm toward his back pocket and his wallet, and dropped his eyes. “Movie.”
“Movie, huh?” she queried.
But he didn’t look up. He was tugging on his wallet, trying to free it from his blue-jeaned back pocket, a task that appeared inordinately difficult.
“I saw ‘Pulp Fiction’ the other night. God, it was so violent, I’m still having nightmares. I just hate movies like that, ya know. What’d you see?”
She waited anxiously, hoping this time he would utter more than a monosyllable, daring to think he would even smile. She suspected he had a wildly sexy smile.
He looked at her again, but this time he seemed to see her, Jeanna thought. Determined to ignore the eyes that cried of a sickness she could not identify, she smiled nervously.
“That wasn’t real violence,” he said, forehead crinkling with annoyance. “It was just a movie. Don’t you know it’s not real?”
She blushed again, pleased that he was talking – uttering what was for him a veritable speech – but taken aback by his words.
“Well, it was real enough for me. I mean, have you seen real violence?”
“You want real violence?” He looked up at her, and this time she could not avoid the eyes. They caught her so all-consumingly that she did not see the large hand swooping toward her temple. She felt something firm and barrel-shaped against her brow, and drew in a breath of air so suddenly that her stomach lurched.
“I’ll show you real violence,” he growled.
In her terror, Jeanna felt a wash of utmost shame because even now, she still felt a thrill at the sound of his voice, now so near her ear he could have been a lover.
“Real violence is when I say, ‘Open the cash register and give me the money, bitch, or you die.’”
Jeanna cried out, fumbling for the “open” button on the cash register, her mind torn away from thoughts of flirtation to the most basic of instincts – the will to survive.
The door sucked open again, and her eyes flew to it, her mouth opening to scream for ‘Help,’ to say, ‘Oh, thank, God.’
But all she saw there was him, his broad shoulders and frame filling the doorway for a second before he melted into the night. The last thing she noticed were his hands, hanging at his side. His finger, she realized with a sickening sense of equal parts relief and humiliation, had been the “gun” she’d felt at her head.
Jeanna’s hands flew to her face, knocking her glasses askew. She slid to the floor, sobbing.