Ex-Wife, Ex-Life
by Daniel Beadle - Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Dylan stares at her with deadened eyes. For a man who doesn’t believe in souls, it shows. He keeps his gaze as he sips his cognac.“Dylan, I’m sorry things didn’t…”
Dylan grunts. “Didn’t evolve? That our time together, as brief as it was, was trite and entirely meaningless?” Dylan sighs as Jane hangs her head.
“I didn’t want it to be this way…”
“There is no other way it could’ve been. Love sustains nothing. Love is a mere mental orgasm that fades as quickly as it begins. I don’t doubt that I could ever find it again; I could convince myself that I love any whore on the street, but to what end?
"Happiness takes many forms, and love is only one player in that pursuit. My love for you was in vain. I never really loved you in any real sense. I was in love with the idea of you; the idea of your weak feminine mind being infatuated with me boosted my ego in a manner that can only be described as pure satisfaction.
"But when you fell out of your enamored state, I saw the lie for what it really was. Love is as meaningless as it is useless, as fleeting as it is intense.” Dylan turns his back on her. He finishes his drink in one gulp, and grits his teeth.
“I take solace in the fact that your life will be spent in the endless and fruitless pursuit of satisfying yourself with that… emotion. And that this… Ted is it? …That your newfound love with Ted will crumble and expire like the rotting carcass of a dead mule.
"I used to believe in souls once… until I lost mine…” He trails off as he stars vacantly out the window.
“Dylan…”
“Quiet. There is no part of you that I respect, and certainly no part of you that I would crave after the breadth of two and a half minutes. Your life, and all your beliefs, all your hopes, and your wasted prayers are forfeit. Your purpose on this earth, and in my life, has been served. You have made me who I was always meant to be.”
Dylan looks at her with eyes that would strike fear into the blackened heart of Satan himself. “I existed before you, and I will exist after you. You are a footnote in my evolution, but I am the end of yours.”
Dylan walks toward her, and before Jane can escape, he clasps his hands on her face. “How easily your love can be reallocated to another. How easily my love for you can turn to hate.” His words turn to a whisper. “Of all the meaningless lives on this planet, yours supercedes them all.
"You are the only one who I’ve ever loved who still lives.” He moves his face in closer, as if a kiss were immanent. “That can be remedied.”
* * *
Dylan watches the janitor take out the garbage. He stares vacantly at the process. “There is no one in this world who has ever taken me to such dizzying heights, or such abysmal lows as that woman.”
Images of his ex-wife bleed through his mind. “An acquaintance of mine once told me that the lessons we learn from pain make us the strongest. Indeed, happiness teaches us nothing. Happiness is fiction and fantasy. Pain is this world’s only reality.”
