Why Can’t It Smell Like Rose Petals in the Rain?
Jeff Watson AI Threat Level: Green - The reader may proceed without danger of reading anything related to American Idol.
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With our fifth wedding anniversary coming up in May, La Raymunda and I are trying to decide if we should stay home and have a weekend of wild monkey sex where we should go for our second honeymoon.
We spent Sunday morning in bed. I brewed a pot of coffee and brought a cup to The Debra, who was propped up on the Throne of Pillows with her laptop fired up and her reading glasses on. I handed her the cup and crawled into bed and read “The River at the Center of the World” while she surfed and drank her coffee.
“Ooh, look at these photos from Mesa Verde,” she said. I leaned over to look at the laptop screen and rested my head on her shoulder. The screen was full of images of ancient Pueblo ruins: homes built into the cliffs, the sandstone glowing in the sun. “Beautiful,” I said.
Debra turned her head so her lips were inches from my face. Looking down at me over the tops of her glasses, she said, “Where do you want to go most? We need to decide if we’re going to Mesa Verde for one week or to London for four days.”
Blistering red-hot flames erupted from her mouth as she spoke, followed by the scorched potpourri scent of hellfire and brimstone. It was a direct blast of coffee breath from point-blank range. I felt my face melt and the unnerving sensation of flesh sliding off the bone. My nose drooped down onto my chin like melted Silly Putty and the flames wrapped around my head sucked the water from my eyes.
Behold the cataclysm of eternal damnation, the Lake of Fire, the charred and smoking pit of Hell that I had been warned about all those years ago in Sunday School. All my sins had finally come home to roost, and payback was snuggled beside me in my bed in northern Virginia.
Finally, the searing heat died and as the pall of heavy black smoke and the lingering tang of sulfur lifted, I reached up with my flame-withered hand and took Debra’s chin and gently turned her head away from me and back toward the laptop.
“That’s pretty strong coffee you’re drinking this morning,” I said.