Today's writing

I don’t cut people down. Weak, Ruth. That sounded so terribly weak, especially to her own ears.

You’re kidding me, right? That’s your game. It’s what you do. Part of the reason I’m into you is because you do it well, and usually it’s amusing, but damn it, Ruth, there are times it stings like hell. Do you even know how much you can hurt someone? Do you?

That’s the thing: we can’t see the world from anything but the inside out. We have a necessarily flawed look at ourselves, a skewed take on who and what we are. It’s like listening to one’s voice on a recording. That’s what I sound like? Really? Something about how the sound bounces along the jawbone to the ear, it changes things. Ruth wasn’t sure what. She just knew there was a metaphor in the mix. She wanted to explain this to Jack, but he didn’t appear to be up for a meditation on metaphor.

I don’t, she finally choked out. I don’t know how much I hurt people. Tell me. I’m listening.

His fingers skidded lightly over the surface of her hand, landing briefly at the wrist before pulling back. How much detail do you want? How much time do you have? A joke, but was it really? Time was never on their side. It was very infrequently their friend. Today was no exception.

Time, for lovers of the secret stripe, is a controversial subject. Always there is a clock and always there is a deadline or a schedule or somewhere one of the other must be, and excuses must be made, noted, filed away so that there won’t be any confusion among the piles of lies later on. There are always piles of lies.