By Prospero Dae
“I’m leaving you.”
“But why? Give me one more chance,” begged Jim.
She acquiesced (bad idea).
And so Jim stopped drinking and cursing (but only when she wasn’t able to earwitness the florid outpourings from his misanthropic maw or able to see for herself the empty flasks of this or that ambrosial liquor). Harriet knew what was going on, yet she was giving him another chance, again.
Jim and Harriet stayed together till death parted them—when the Jaws of Life literally separated them from a terrible car wreck on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Such is the story of unhappy lives.
I’m not sure about your concluding moral….how do we know they were unhappy?
wonderful!!! (though i shouldn’t say this, as it is so sad, unbearably sad, one should just cover one’s eyes and lower the head, silently)
i shuddered when i read that last line –
Inexorably dismal descent into oblivion; but often life is really like this. A winner.
I do hope their mangled wreck didn’t obscure the view for tourists on the trip of a lifetime.
lol @ ‘jaws of life’ – must surely be some inverted allusion to ‘thorough the iron gates of life’. Puts a nice sarcastic tinge on it.
Acquiescence is a nice word for this story. Lots of layers of meaning. It also makes me think of a new name for an ambrosial liquor made of Gooseberries.
very good! ordinary, everyday tragedy laconically narrated.