a bad man

She married a bad man. She did not mind that he was a bad man. That he was a bad man excited her.

He never complained or moaned like a baby so long as he could be bad and she enjoyed his badness and his myriad of bad sides. She enjoyed the hard integument that cut her to the core. She enjoyed the terse and taciturn tete-a-tetes that were never verbose. When he shouted it showed that he really cared.

He did care.

And that is why he built a wall around her.

And planted trees that formed a canopy.

When she protested he called her his Madonna.

And the unicorn and the rabbits and ewes made her very happy. And then one day the bad man decided to be a magician. The best magicians are the fakes, the fabricators, the cheats, the ones with the white even teeth, the fake tans, the cat’s eyes, the ones in the white jump suits and undulating capes, the best magicians finally end up in prison or in the mouth of the roaring lion. He made her disappear into a thousand pieces and alphabetically labeled each piece A for arteries B for bladder C for cunt D for diaphragm…

and when the police arrested him, they said, he was a very bad man.

Carl Van Detta