Misschelseabun
10-01-2011, 12:16 PM
this is quite a long short story (3000 words) but I'd love to know your thoughts on it!
Beautiful Dance Whore
My name is Michael Corby, and I am an average man. If you were to dissect my physical and mental attributes, I would hazard a guess that my intellect would register far above the girl at the supermarket, but my facial beauty would float under the radar at any given social convention. I am a little taller than most, with a whisker more hair, but with a great deal more shyness. And the sum of these parts creates, in my humble opinion, a fairly average man.
I live an average life, bordering on the mundane, which consists of my five times a week trip to the office, my once a fortnight grocery run, a sprinkling of visits to the local library and the occasional promenade before nightfall. Asides from these perfunctory endeavours, I like to sit in my flat and think. I’m not a big television fan and I don’t really fit into the demographic for any of Britain’s fine radio stations, but thinking is a pastime that can easily be moulded into the shape of any mood or any personality, of which my inner self has many.
Perhaps my propensity for thought is derived from my circumstances; as an only child I was forced to invent playmates for school holiday amusement. I would like to say that these figments were replaced with actual boys and girls when the new term began, but that would be a lie. I’ve never been one for friends, though not through lack of inner desire.
I often wondered as a child, and sometimes for a fleeting moment in adulthood, whether I could concentrate my efforts over the six hot weeks of summer break into the rebirth of Michael Corby. Whether, after a month and a half hiatus, I could stride triumphantly through the school gates as Mike.
Mike is a name for a man with charisma. Mike answers back to teachers and smokes behind the bike sheds. Mike grows into a confident and charming adult, who enters the pub and scans the bar for the most beautiful woman available, assured that she will accept his offer of a large glass of Chardonnay.
Michael sits in the darkest corner, staring at his beer mat and cursing himself for not possessing the guile to flirt with the buck-toothed receptionist nursing a lone shandy on her lunch break.
What you forget in childhood though, is that a nickname is not something you can bestow upon yourself; it is given to you as a badge of honour by a sparring partner in the playground and, if you are extremely lucky, your new pseudonym will spread like wildfire around your social network until you are henceforth known by your surname, middle name, most outstanding feature or most embarrassing encounter. Michael could never become Mike without his friends deeming him so, but Michael was incapable of forming these friendships without harnessing his inner Mike.
Friendships seem to matter less in adulthood. The swathes of people that wander Britain’s streets pass off functional working relationships and nostalgic alliances from the past as a mark of their social popularity. It seems in this day and age that you can spend entire weeks arriving home to an empty house and a solitary dinner, seeking comfort in the fact that you have more than 200 ‘friends’ on Facebook, and believing that they care whether you opt for chicken chasseur or beef bourgignon. Never fear, though; I’m sure you’ll tell them in your status update.
The older you become, the easier it seems to hide behind a constant cycle of business deals, weekly pints and casual sex. Or in my case, the more willingly it facilitates a retreat into the social unknown. Even my own mother has my old mobile phone number.
And whilst I am normality’s outcast, am I not braver than the rest of you for admitting my sad predicament? In naked truth, does Michael’s honesty make him a greater man than Mike?
I don’t want you to think, however, that I am a pariah of life; a man who has failed to taste the sweetness of companionship and the steel girders with which it reinforces your self esteem. I know the buoyancy in your step en route to meet a friend in a bar. I felt the slap on the back in the office canteen. I even tasted the agonising electricity of encountering the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth, and the momentary failure of your heart when you realise her gaze has settled on yours above all others. And for that alone, I know I have lived.
It may even surprise you to know that I am not a virgin. I have fumbled deliciously under the covers of darkness, exploring the soft mounds of the female form with nervous anticipation, and I have penetrated her intimately until the world pauses; if only for a second, and only in my eyes.
The perpetrator of my defloralisation, the angelic being that was bestowed upon my life, was an incredible creature called Cher. Before I laid eyes on her, and for some time after, I had resigned to myself that the greatest sexual relationship I would have in my life would be the clasp of my right hand. Michael does not have Mike’s seductive techniques.
I should, perhaps, have mentioned before that I am a data configurator. A job for a man with no personality and a fondness for the orderly. However, it was this desperate decision as my schooling came to an end that ultimately to led me to my romantic destiny.
You see, each day for three years I sidled into the computer software company that had deemed me fit for employment, and everything remained the same. People came and went, but the company stone remained unturned. That was, until Cher breezed into the building.
I remember the exact date, minute and moment that my life was fused with this most enchanting siren. February 16th 2004 at 10.36am. She was a summer intern keen to expand her software engineering horizons and the head of IT had been tasked with parading her around the building; reeling off an endless ream of names that she could never hope to remember.
The first time I looked up from my desk and encountered Cher, I remember it being somewhat ethereal. The backlit window marred the details of her face, so that all I could notice were the sugarspun split ends of her auburn hair, framing her crest like cobwebs. But even from her hair alone, I knew she was magnificent.
The details of the ensuing few months are somewhat insignificant. I expect it will come as no surprise to you that Michael was unable to do much except bow his head in awe whenever she blustered through. I suppose the first clue of her intentions towards me was that she remembered my name, singing it out to me as she passed my desk. I expect she thought it inexcusably rude that I could never muster the confidence to answer her back.
On August 23rd 2004, everything changed. Maybe it’s fate, or just serendipity, but that evening I decided to enjoy a particularly sweltering day with a nice cold beer on the walk home from the office; a midweek treat. Sitting in the corner of the pub caressing my pint glass, a panicking realisation crept over me that the object of my greatest desires was also drinking alone in the same joint.
After an increasingly flirtatious game of eye tennis, garnering momentum with the light-headedness of my inebriation, she scooped up her handbag and wended her way towards me: one of those truly filmic moments of life that you never believe will happen to you.
Without asking permission, she placed her belongings opposite me and disappeared again. Even to be handbag bodyguard was a matter of intense pride. And then, in an unthinkable instant, she returned and proclaimed that she had chosen a song for me on the jukebox.
I had never heard of Franz Ferdinand before, but Cher animatedly explained that they had released a song called Michael, which always made her think of me. It’s irrelevant to the chronology of the story, but I went out the following lunchtime and purchased the CD single, listening to it repeatedly until the song’s lyrics were burnt on my brain.
Gradually I comprehended their meaning - empowered by the way in which Cher, through Franz Ferdinand, saw Michael. I was heavenly. I was sexy. I was the beautiful dance whore.
Anyway, back to the pub. Spurred by the quickly sunken pint, I summoned every molecule of my inner Mike and tried to woo her as best as possible. I asked her questions, desperate to know the intimate details of her history and how this magnanimous being had dissected my life path.
She was a postgraduate student, anxious to make her mark in a male dominated industry. She was an entrancing concoction of sweet tenacity and gumption, perfectly straddling the balance of intelligence and emotion. She talked fondly of her mother and her trio of ginger tomcats, of her secret longing to marry and have children. And in between listening, my mind wandered into the imaginary stratosphere, crying out that I would give her that family a hundred times over.
The rest of it is much of a blur to me, and I don’t just mean that evening. Our whole relationship is a memorial menagerie of unsurpassable memories: the moment when she missed the last bus home and asked to stay at mine; the delectable smoothness of her naked shoulders; the absolute ecstasy of her cries in the bedroom; the pride on her face when she introduced me to her cats; the way the silver necklace I bought for her birthday hung on her collar bones; the tears that fell down my cheeks as I watched her sleep and realised I was in love; the tears I then shed when, a few weeks later, she uttered those three insurmountable words back at me.; the hangover after our wine tasting weekend; the smell of her fabric softener; the joy of celebrating our first anniversary; the unbridled happiness of marking our second and third; the epiphany that swept over me on New Year’s eve when I realised that I needed to spend the rest of my life with her.
For an orderly man, my proposal was ultimate spontaneity. I held the idea for hours, goading Cher to pace her drinking and remain awake so we could walk to the park as sunrise came around. Like a child waiting for Christmas, each minute slowed until I was desperately shrieking for daylight inside my head. I needed her to realise that she was my Helen of Troy, my Wallace Simpson, for which I would abdicate my throne. She was my Juliet, for which I would give up my life.
As we walked to the park, my heart swelled in anticipation of the greatest moment of our lives. When we reached the bench on which we always sat, eating our fish and chips and discussing our unformed future together, I cradled her hands and sank to my knees, completely and utterly unveiling my heart.
I never expected her to say no.
Like the growth of our relationship, its unravelling is much of a blur to me. I recall fragments of the death knell conversation - it was her problem, she had many career ambitions to achieve and wifely duties were not within those plans. She would always love me and I would always be dear to her heart.
I wish I could have reciprocated those sentiments, but it’s hard to be honourable when the contents of your insides have been torn out and thrown across the grass.
Most men turn to drink or women for solace when love betrays them. I turned to poetry. For weeks, months and years, I delved insatiably through the local library, devouring Kipling, Byron and Shakespeare in a deluded attempt to harness their greatness, ultimately realising that I am nobody but J Alfred Prufrock: full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse. At times, indeed, almost ridiculous. Almost, at times, the Fool.
It took me three long, painful years to recover from Cher’s rejection. Bit by bit I clawed back my dignity, desperately seeking the monotony of my five times a week trip to the office, my once a fortnight grocery run and the occasional promenade before nightfall.
So it came as a surprise to me yesterday when, out of the blue, I received a phone call from her saying she needed to drop off some old items of mine: a declaration of love if ever I heard one.
I spent three hours cleaning the house. She’s seen my living room strewn with newspapers and my hair standing on end after a bad night’s sleep, yet I must present my bachelor life as a slice of perfection. Perhaps my preened appearance and the lingering smell of Mr Sheen will tempt her back.
Cher was due at five o’clock, which found me pacing the hallway at five to. When the doorbell finally chimed at three minutes past I took a final glance in the mirror, chanting the mantra that if ever Mike needed to present himself, it was tonight. Michael had never been enough.
She looked as delicious as the first time I saw her. Although still auburn, her hair was cropped into a bob and she had replaced her glasses with contact lenses. The soft puppy fat surrounding her face had melted into a solid bone structure, and her jumper and jeans were replaced with a perfectly framing pinafore dress. She was a vision beyond my wildest dreams, of which there were many.
We smiled warmly and exchanged an awkward hug, made even more difficult by the box of old possessions under her arm. Before I had chance to formally invite her in, Cher marched through to the kitchen and recited a monologue on how pleased she was to see me and the details of her post-Michael life. She had moved to a top blue chip company and was quickly ascending the corporate ladder. Two of the three tomcats had died but she was contemplating a dog. She was renting a modest flat just big enough for her residential needs, but only until next year.
When she marries her fiancé, Joe.
She was sorry for not telling me earlier, but it was something that had to be said in person. That’s why she had hastily gathered together the box of my item stuffed into her attic three years previously; she didn’t want to give me the wrong idea by merely suggesting we met for a chat. I would always be her first love, but Joe was better suited – he had a good job in the city and his parents lived just a few miles from hers. He loved cats.
I would like to say that I behaved like the nobleman, bequeathing my love to another suitor for the sake of her happiness, but that would be a lie. After all, I am Michael.
Tears stung my eyes and I began to plead with her: had the years we spent together meant nothing? He will never love you like I do. He will never worship you. I love you. Please, don’t leave me to suffer this life alone.
Cher began to cry and she apologised repeatedly for breaking my heart, flecks of tender caring under her distress. That was the point at which she was supposed to come to her senses and realise that she loved me after all.
But she didn’t.
Instead she started for the door, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and begging me not to hate her.
In sheer desperation I ran after her and grabbed her hand, but she ripped it away. She pulled the door ajar, but I slammed it shut: I had to make her understand. I couldn’t let her leave.
Cher wailed loudly to let her go, pummelling my chest with her fingers as she failed to understand. How could she marry this Joe? I loved her more life itself.
All I wanted to do was stop her crying, I promise. I knew if we both calmed down she would see sense. So I put my right hand over her mouth. Her eyes widened and tears sprang from them like a frightened rabbit, in the only time I remember her looking ugly. Suddenly, her pupils started to roll back in her eyelids, and her body heavied.
It was then I realised that my left hand was wrapped around her neck.
Her unconscious body slid to the floor and I tried to give her the kiss of life; if anyone’s love could restore her energy it would be mine. I tried, and tried and tried. But she remained limp.
I scooped her into in my arms and carried her up the stairs, tucking her up in bed. She looked so peaceful, once I wiped away the tears. Then I staggered downstairs and opened a bottle scotch, ransacking the drawers for the strongest painkillers I could find, stuffing them hand over fist into my mouth.
As the world began to swim and my stomach began to scream, I dragged myself to the bedroom and curled under the duvet with Cher, dialling 999 and pragmatically informing them a man had murdered his girlfriend and then killed himself at 85 Forman Close.
Throwing my phone across the room, I clasped her cold skin in my arms. She was Juliet and I was Romeo, just like my proposal; see, I told you Michaels are honest.
I remember the sound of sirens, the clammy tenderness of Cher’s dead cheek as I hurtled towards unconsciousness, and my final thought:
My name is Michael Corby, and I am an average man. I just loved my girlfriend far, far too much.
Beautiful Dance Whore
My name is Michael Corby, and I am an average man. If you were to dissect my physical and mental attributes, I would hazard a guess that my intellect would register far above the girl at the supermarket, but my facial beauty would float under the radar at any given social convention. I am a little taller than most, with a whisker more hair, but with a great deal more shyness. And the sum of these parts creates, in my humble opinion, a fairly average man.
I live an average life, bordering on the mundane, which consists of my five times a week trip to the office, my once a fortnight grocery run, a sprinkling of visits to the local library and the occasional promenade before nightfall. Asides from these perfunctory endeavours, I like to sit in my flat and think. I’m not a big television fan and I don’t really fit into the demographic for any of Britain’s fine radio stations, but thinking is a pastime that can easily be moulded into the shape of any mood or any personality, of which my inner self has many.
Perhaps my propensity for thought is derived from my circumstances; as an only child I was forced to invent playmates for school holiday amusement. I would like to say that these figments were replaced with actual boys and girls when the new term began, but that would be a lie. I’ve never been one for friends, though not through lack of inner desire.
I often wondered as a child, and sometimes for a fleeting moment in adulthood, whether I could concentrate my efforts over the six hot weeks of summer break into the rebirth of Michael Corby. Whether, after a month and a half hiatus, I could stride triumphantly through the school gates as Mike.
Mike is a name for a man with charisma. Mike answers back to teachers and smokes behind the bike sheds. Mike grows into a confident and charming adult, who enters the pub and scans the bar for the most beautiful woman available, assured that she will accept his offer of a large glass of Chardonnay.
Michael sits in the darkest corner, staring at his beer mat and cursing himself for not possessing the guile to flirt with the buck-toothed receptionist nursing a lone shandy on her lunch break.
What you forget in childhood though, is that a nickname is not something you can bestow upon yourself; it is given to you as a badge of honour by a sparring partner in the playground and, if you are extremely lucky, your new pseudonym will spread like wildfire around your social network until you are henceforth known by your surname, middle name, most outstanding feature or most embarrassing encounter. Michael could never become Mike without his friends deeming him so, but Michael was incapable of forming these friendships without harnessing his inner Mike.
Friendships seem to matter less in adulthood. The swathes of people that wander Britain’s streets pass off functional working relationships and nostalgic alliances from the past as a mark of their social popularity. It seems in this day and age that you can spend entire weeks arriving home to an empty house and a solitary dinner, seeking comfort in the fact that you have more than 200 ‘friends’ on Facebook, and believing that they care whether you opt for chicken chasseur or beef bourgignon. Never fear, though; I’m sure you’ll tell them in your status update.
The older you become, the easier it seems to hide behind a constant cycle of business deals, weekly pints and casual sex. Or in my case, the more willingly it facilitates a retreat into the social unknown. Even my own mother has my old mobile phone number.
And whilst I am normality’s outcast, am I not braver than the rest of you for admitting my sad predicament? In naked truth, does Michael’s honesty make him a greater man than Mike?
I don’t want you to think, however, that I am a pariah of life; a man who has failed to taste the sweetness of companionship and the steel girders with which it reinforces your self esteem. I know the buoyancy in your step en route to meet a friend in a bar. I felt the slap on the back in the office canteen. I even tasted the agonising electricity of encountering the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth, and the momentary failure of your heart when you realise her gaze has settled on yours above all others. And for that alone, I know I have lived.
It may even surprise you to know that I am not a virgin. I have fumbled deliciously under the covers of darkness, exploring the soft mounds of the female form with nervous anticipation, and I have penetrated her intimately until the world pauses; if only for a second, and only in my eyes.
The perpetrator of my defloralisation, the angelic being that was bestowed upon my life, was an incredible creature called Cher. Before I laid eyes on her, and for some time after, I had resigned to myself that the greatest sexual relationship I would have in my life would be the clasp of my right hand. Michael does not have Mike’s seductive techniques.
I should, perhaps, have mentioned before that I am a data configurator. A job for a man with no personality and a fondness for the orderly. However, it was this desperate decision as my schooling came to an end that ultimately to led me to my romantic destiny.
You see, each day for three years I sidled into the computer software company that had deemed me fit for employment, and everything remained the same. People came and went, but the company stone remained unturned. That was, until Cher breezed into the building.
I remember the exact date, minute and moment that my life was fused with this most enchanting siren. February 16th 2004 at 10.36am. She was a summer intern keen to expand her software engineering horizons and the head of IT had been tasked with parading her around the building; reeling off an endless ream of names that she could never hope to remember.
The first time I looked up from my desk and encountered Cher, I remember it being somewhat ethereal. The backlit window marred the details of her face, so that all I could notice were the sugarspun split ends of her auburn hair, framing her crest like cobwebs. But even from her hair alone, I knew she was magnificent.
The details of the ensuing few months are somewhat insignificant. I expect it will come as no surprise to you that Michael was unable to do much except bow his head in awe whenever she blustered through. I suppose the first clue of her intentions towards me was that she remembered my name, singing it out to me as she passed my desk. I expect she thought it inexcusably rude that I could never muster the confidence to answer her back.
On August 23rd 2004, everything changed. Maybe it’s fate, or just serendipity, but that evening I decided to enjoy a particularly sweltering day with a nice cold beer on the walk home from the office; a midweek treat. Sitting in the corner of the pub caressing my pint glass, a panicking realisation crept over me that the object of my greatest desires was also drinking alone in the same joint.
After an increasingly flirtatious game of eye tennis, garnering momentum with the light-headedness of my inebriation, she scooped up her handbag and wended her way towards me: one of those truly filmic moments of life that you never believe will happen to you.
Without asking permission, she placed her belongings opposite me and disappeared again. Even to be handbag bodyguard was a matter of intense pride. And then, in an unthinkable instant, she returned and proclaimed that she had chosen a song for me on the jukebox.
I had never heard of Franz Ferdinand before, but Cher animatedly explained that they had released a song called Michael, which always made her think of me. It’s irrelevant to the chronology of the story, but I went out the following lunchtime and purchased the CD single, listening to it repeatedly until the song’s lyrics were burnt on my brain.
Gradually I comprehended their meaning - empowered by the way in which Cher, through Franz Ferdinand, saw Michael. I was heavenly. I was sexy. I was the beautiful dance whore.
Anyway, back to the pub. Spurred by the quickly sunken pint, I summoned every molecule of my inner Mike and tried to woo her as best as possible. I asked her questions, desperate to know the intimate details of her history and how this magnanimous being had dissected my life path.
She was a postgraduate student, anxious to make her mark in a male dominated industry. She was an entrancing concoction of sweet tenacity and gumption, perfectly straddling the balance of intelligence and emotion. She talked fondly of her mother and her trio of ginger tomcats, of her secret longing to marry and have children. And in between listening, my mind wandered into the imaginary stratosphere, crying out that I would give her that family a hundred times over.
The rest of it is much of a blur to me, and I don’t just mean that evening. Our whole relationship is a memorial menagerie of unsurpassable memories: the moment when she missed the last bus home and asked to stay at mine; the delectable smoothness of her naked shoulders; the absolute ecstasy of her cries in the bedroom; the pride on her face when she introduced me to her cats; the way the silver necklace I bought for her birthday hung on her collar bones; the tears that fell down my cheeks as I watched her sleep and realised I was in love; the tears I then shed when, a few weeks later, she uttered those three insurmountable words back at me.; the hangover after our wine tasting weekend; the smell of her fabric softener; the joy of celebrating our first anniversary; the unbridled happiness of marking our second and third; the epiphany that swept over me on New Year’s eve when I realised that I needed to spend the rest of my life with her.
For an orderly man, my proposal was ultimate spontaneity. I held the idea for hours, goading Cher to pace her drinking and remain awake so we could walk to the park as sunrise came around. Like a child waiting for Christmas, each minute slowed until I was desperately shrieking for daylight inside my head. I needed her to realise that she was my Helen of Troy, my Wallace Simpson, for which I would abdicate my throne. She was my Juliet, for which I would give up my life.
As we walked to the park, my heart swelled in anticipation of the greatest moment of our lives. When we reached the bench on which we always sat, eating our fish and chips and discussing our unformed future together, I cradled her hands and sank to my knees, completely and utterly unveiling my heart.
I never expected her to say no.
Like the growth of our relationship, its unravelling is much of a blur to me. I recall fragments of the death knell conversation - it was her problem, she had many career ambitions to achieve and wifely duties were not within those plans. She would always love me and I would always be dear to her heart.
I wish I could have reciprocated those sentiments, but it’s hard to be honourable when the contents of your insides have been torn out and thrown across the grass.
Most men turn to drink or women for solace when love betrays them. I turned to poetry. For weeks, months and years, I delved insatiably through the local library, devouring Kipling, Byron and Shakespeare in a deluded attempt to harness their greatness, ultimately realising that I am nobody but J Alfred Prufrock: full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse. At times, indeed, almost ridiculous. Almost, at times, the Fool.
It took me three long, painful years to recover from Cher’s rejection. Bit by bit I clawed back my dignity, desperately seeking the monotony of my five times a week trip to the office, my once a fortnight grocery run and the occasional promenade before nightfall.
So it came as a surprise to me yesterday when, out of the blue, I received a phone call from her saying she needed to drop off some old items of mine: a declaration of love if ever I heard one.
I spent three hours cleaning the house. She’s seen my living room strewn with newspapers and my hair standing on end after a bad night’s sleep, yet I must present my bachelor life as a slice of perfection. Perhaps my preened appearance and the lingering smell of Mr Sheen will tempt her back.
Cher was due at five o’clock, which found me pacing the hallway at five to. When the doorbell finally chimed at three minutes past I took a final glance in the mirror, chanting the mantra that if ever Mike needed to present himself, it was tonight. Michael had never been enough.
She looked as delicious as the first time I saw her. Although still auburn, her hair was cropped into a bob and she had replaced her glasses with contact lenses. The soft puppy fat surrounding her face had melted into a solid bone structure, and her jumper and jeans were replaced with a perfectly framing pinafore dress. She was a vision beyond my wildest dreams, of which there were many.
We smiled warmly and exchanged an awkward hug, made even more difficult by the box of old possessions under her arm. Before I had chance to formally invite her in, Cher marched through to the kitchen and recited a monologue on how pleased she was to see me and the details of her post-Michael life. She had moved to a top blue chip company and was quickly ascending the corporate ladder. Two of the three tomcats had died but she was contemplating a dog. She was renting a modest flat just big enough for her residential needs, but only until next year.
When she marries her fiancé, Joe.
She was sorry for not telling me earlier, but it was something that had to be said in person. That’s why she had hastily gathered together the box of my item stuffed into her attic three years previously; she didn’t want to give me the wrong idea by merely suggesting we met for a chat. I would always be her first love, but Joe was better suited – he had a good job in the city and his parents lived just a few miles from hers. He loved cats.
I would like to say that I behaved like the nobleman, bequeathing my love to another suitor for the sake of her happiness, but that would be a lie. After all, I am Michael.
Tears stung my eyes and I began to plead with her: had the years we spent together meant nothing? He will never love you like I do. He will never worship you. I love you. Please, don’t leave me to suffer this life alone.
Cher began to cry and she apologised repeatedly for breaking my heart, flecks of tender caring under her distress. That was the point at which she was supposed to come to her senses and realise that she loved me after all.
But she didn’t.
Instead she started for the door, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and begging me not to hate her.
In sheer desperation I ran after her and grabbed her hand, but she ripped it away. She pulled the door ajar, but I slammed it shut: I had to make her understand. I couldn’t let her leave.
Cher wailed loudly to let her go, pummelling my chest with her fingers as she failed to understand. How could she marry this Joe? I loved her more life itself.
All I wanted to do was stop her crying, I promise. I knew if we both calmed down she would see sense. So I put my right hand over her mouth. Her eyes widened and tears sprang from them like a frightened rabbit, in the only time I remember her looking ugly. Suddenly, her pupils started to roll back in her eyelids, and her body heavied.
It was then I realised that my left hand was wrapped around her neck.
Her unconscious body slid to the floor and I tried to give her the kiss of life; if anyone’s love could restore her energy it would be mine. I tried, and tried and tried. But she remained limp.
I scooped her into in my arms and carried her up the stairs, tucking her up in bed. She looked so peaceful, once I wiped away the tears. Then I staggered downstairs and opened a bottle scotch, ransacking the drawers for the strongest painkillers I could find, stuffing them hand over fist into my mouth.
As the world began to swim and my stomach began to scream, I dragged myself to the bedroom and curled under the duvet with Cher, dialling 999 and pragmatically informing them a man had murdered his girlfriend and then killed himself at 85 Forman Close.
Throwing my phone across the room, I clasped her cold skin in my arms. She was Juliet and I was Romeo, just like my proposal; see, I told you Michaels are honest.
I remember the sound of sirens, the clammy tenderness of Cher’s dead cheek as I hurtled towards unconsciousness, and my final thought:
My name is Michael Corby, and I am an average man. I just loved my girlfriend far, far too much.