A writing exercise

I recently joined an online writing community which had an exercise to start a story with the sentence..."All men are slime" said the...This is my entry


"All men are slime," said the little voice in my head.
"I repeat all men are slime!" it went on and on getting louder and louder.

"No!No!NO! He is not...."

I screamed out and got up with a start. I was sweating profusely. I might have fallen asleep. Surely, it was all a bad dream. Surely, he had not said what I think I had heard him say – that he did not love me anymore. He could not. How could he? It had to be a dream. There was no way he could have said that he was leaving me. It was a dream. I was sure of it. I was wrong.

He had said all those hurtful things and more. I had kept staring at him not quite knowing what to say as word after hurtful word had tumbled out his mouth, as if he had been holding them in for a long time and could not wait to spit them out. He had kept on talking and I had kept on staring. He kept on asking me to say something but I had not idea what to say. What do you say to a man you had loved for the better part of your life when he claims that he was mistaken to think that he was ever in love with you? What do you say to a man who tells you that what had been sacred to you all your adult life was a noose around his neck? He walked out with a “I can't bear to be around you anymore!” I kept looking at his receding back - kept hoping that he would turn back, break into a smile and tell me it was all a joke – a bad one, but nevertheless a joke. He did not.

I sat there staring at the door all day, waiting for it to open, waiting for his big frame to burst through and crush me with his embrace while whispering in my ear how wrong he had been in thinking that he could live without me, asking me for forgiveness, begging me for another chance. Like he had done so many other times when he had left in a huff for such trivial things like the food being too salty or the room not being clean enough. In a minute the door would open and he would walk in. The door stayed closed.

I don't know when I fell back asleep, but the next time I got up it was to the ringing of the telephone. I lunged for it, about a 100% sure that he was calling. How stupid I had been to think that he had actually walked out of my life. Of course not! He loved me far too much to hurt me like that. Something must have possessed him to act so out of character. Something that allowed him to forget how much we had been through to be together. How I had gone against my whole family to be with him. How I had ignored their warnings, that he was after my money and nothing else. I had looked my parents straight in the eye and declared that they could neither stop me from getting married to him nor could they stop me from claiming my inheritance. I had walked out of 'their' home to 'ours', one hand in his hand and the other holding the inheritance documents. Surely he could not forget what all I had given up. He was calling to tell me just that. I picked up the receiver ready to give him another chance. "Hello" It was not him.

I found myself staring at the phone after that - willing it to ring again, willing it to be him telling me that he had made a huge mistake and that he was heading back home. A home we had made for so many years. Just him and me. He did not want any children. I aborted my first child after he told me how he did not think he could be a good father. I never broached the topic again - I did not want to pressure him into doing anything he did not want to. Yes, I loved children, but I loved him above everything else, loved my life with him. There was no way he could have ended it all with a few words. Surely, one 2-minute monologue could not end all that, could it? Of course, not. The phone would ring any time now. It did not.

I sat up bolt upright as a brilliant idea hit me. Why should I wait for his call? What was stopping me from calling him? Maybe he was feeling too ashamed to talk to me after what he had said, too embarrassed to apologize. He must be waiting for my call. Waiting for me to set things right like I always had in the past. Of course, that was it. He was just waiting for me to take the first step. How could I have been such an idiot after knowing him so well. Didn't I know that he was the kind of man who wanted his woman to take charge? Like I had taken charge of almost everything in the years we had been together. Taken charge of running the household after he had time and again failed to keep a job, taken charge of bailing him out of the innumerable brawls he would get himself into with alarming regularity, taking charge of everything when he had gone to pieces when his parents had perished in an accident, taken charge of nursing him back to health when he had taken a drug overdose and had almost died, taken charge of making sure that he felt like a king after he had driven himself into a depression...the list was endless. I called him.

"Hello?" I heard a small girl's voice at the other end.
"Who...Who's this?" I whimpered, my heartbeat almost as loud as my voice.
"Dad...I think it's for you!"
"How many times do I need to tell you not to pick my phone...!" I heard his voice as the phone switched off with a click.

Maybe I had dialed a wrong number...surely I had...but that was his voice. Maybe I am imagining things...maybe he's at a friend's place...surely he is.


*The End*