8Fold: Weird Romance #1 [1/2] "The Heart Death of the Universe"

[Jamie Rosen]

Their love was timeless... her time, loveless!

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In the 18th century she lived as a settler's wife in the West. She
loved her husband very much, with his rough exterior for show and the
rare tenderness that it concealed within. But she knew that it wasn't
real, their life together and their happiness. She had come to marry
him before they had even met, and the love that she felt for him was
the love of someone who has no one else. The love of the abandoned and
the alone.

- - -

In 19th-century France she had a torrid affair with a minor artist who
fancied himself a philosopher. He would expound for hours on the most
inconsequential subjects while she listened, feigning rapt attention,
waiting for the moment when they would make love again and she could
forget who she was and all the burdens of being. But it would always
come too late, and it would be over so soon that the joy of forgetting
would be outweighed by the pain of being plunged back into memory,
into self.

- - -

In 1917 she watched the man she truly loved go off to fight in a war
that might as well have been on another planet. He never came home to
her, and all of her friends and relatives gathered around her to lend
support in what they knew to be a troubled time for her. But they
didn't know the truth about it. They didn't know her secrets, that for
a brief but shameful moment she had felt joy at the news of his death,
at the freedom that it granted her from his stifling possessiveness.
However fleeting, that moment had etched itself forever in her memory,
and the shame she felt lingered, hidden from view, until the day of
her death.

- - -

In 1952 she was a waitress on roller-skates at a drive-in, lying on
her back in the back seat of her boyfriend's car while he fumbled and
groped about hurriedly. There was no forgetting, only a sort of
boredom punctuated by feelings of regret and guilt at not feeling more
for him, or because of him. But there was no changing the facts, and
the facts all told her what she did not want to hear. So she ignored
them the way she ignored the occasional discomfort he caused her.

- - -

In 1988 she loved a stock broker named Kevin Stark. She had curly hair
this time, strawberry blonde, the kind that tumbled over her shoulders
and down her back to her ass and brought a man's gaze with it. But she
was unhappy. Unhappy because Maynard didn't love her, not the real her
but rather the shell she wore, the ivory skin and sparkling laugh. He
loved the cliché of beauty she clothed herself in, and it ate at her
soul to know this.

- - -

In the year beyond counting she correlates her data, gathers it in
subgroups and cross-references it. Her findings are irrefutable no
matter how the information is arranged. But still there is resistance
from the others, and so the matter is put before the computer for
deliberation. The computer passes verdict with its rainbow smile, and
the matter is resolved in the affirmative. With the agreement of her
peers she chooses the only logical course of action, and sets out to
eliminate love.

-END-