The butter, she said, was to make her skin look healthier and younger.  She was crouched in the bathtub, ankle-deep in the milky butter, her breasts drooping, skimming the surface of the melted fat. 

It was eight o'clock a.m.  I wondered if she was high, maybe drunk.  "Are you okay?" I asked.

Her face was impassive, numb.  She said she was okay.  I asked why, why the butter in the tub?

 

"Look," she said, lathering her arms in butter, her legs, her breasts, "at how golden my skin is now.  Look how it glows."  Her skin, even before the butter, was swarthy, almost - except for her wilted breasts - infallible.  She always had that perpetual tan, that glimmer, a look of summer, of beaches and sand.

"You look fine though," I lied.  "This is absurd. You looked fine before you filled the tub with molten butter."

She smeared it across her face, smiling, her teeth glowing white behind the transparent, waxy-like mask.  "I love you," she said.  "Come in here with me."

 

But I didn't.
She'd want to have sex. 

And it was too early for sex.  Too early for her.
I just ignored her, again, and walked away knowing that I had to eat my toast dry.

All work is copyrighted property of Michael Shannon.