Stomachache

She sat facing an old love. They sat across a small black wooden table which was placed against a white wall in a room with a black matte tile floor. If she had fully extended her arms, she could have grabbed his shoulders. Before her was an empty plate. Beyond the plate, the table was cluttered with tiny broken figurines made from fragile materials. Her mother, who wasn't her real mother, but a dream mother, had approached and told the tales of the visiting artists who had come to their house and sculpted these scenes, and then, with ardor, how the girl had accidentally destroyed each one.

The first story of destruction the mother told was that of a tin foil girl in a long tin foil dress atop a cardboard turret, peeking out from an embrasure between the battlements.
"Long ago," her mother told the couple siting at the table, "my daughter tripped near this sculpture and pulled it down. The girl stood with a bow and arrow and there was a stairway leading away from the turret if she wanted to retreat. But when my daughter tripped, the tin foil girl lost her arm, lost her weapon, and the stairwell was crushed."

The second story of a wax paper man in a newspaper boat. "Before my daughter sat on this," the mother said, "the man held oars and there whole scene suggested the promise of land. Now it is as if the man is forever marooned."

Description after description floated down upon the couple. Among them: an old woman made of bark who lost her eyes in a game of catch; the scrap metal Father Christmas whose sled was split in two by a swinging ice skate; and a pipe cleaner warrior whose legs had been mangled beyond recognition in an entanglement with a hairbrush.

"I'm sorry," the girl said. "I didn't mean to break these things." Her mother receded into a part of the room the girl could no longer see.

"Sometimes, sorry isn't good enough," the old love said with a cruel smile. He started to squash the already damaged figurines with this thumb. The girl watched. She tried to say stop, but her words were not there.

She reached across and grabbed his shoulders. When she touched him, he began shrinking rapidly. She picked him up, and held him until he was the size of her hand. She put him in the turret with the tin foil girl, but he pushed her from the battlements. The girl picked him up again and held him, like a kitten, by the scruff of his neck. He swung furious arms.

On the plate before her appeared two slices of walnut bread. She placed the old lover between the slices. His legs protruded and flailed wildly and she squeezed the bread together. She brought the sandwich to her lips and ate it, relishing the different consistencies of each part of his body. When she was finished, her mother appeared again with a large glass of milk, and she drank it all in one gulp.