Glass Boys by Nicole Lundrigan

said, taking a bottle and the two glasses. “Sit. Speak.”
    At a table, they sat side by side in a corner, and he poured her a full glass, eyes never moving from her giddy face. “I fight. When I were young boy. Strong. Boof-boof.” Pretended to assault his ear with his own fist, once, twice. “Like that. Big fight.” Then he laughed, patted his stomach, hollow sound. “Not now. Not today. Too fat. Old, now.”
    Wilda laughed along with him, touched his arm with one hand, locked her other hand around her never-empty glass. Drank. A cheers to Vincent, this time. Cheers to herself the next. Cheers to adventure, arriving this new place. Cheers to possibility. Cheers to leaving her ghosts behind. Wee, wee, mon-stur. Giggles. Wee, wee. “Non, non,” he replied, “C’est ‘mih-sieur.’”
    People emerged from the shadows, shook hands with Vincent, and she nestled in, wide awake and sleepy at the same time, felt the heat radiating out from his armpit. In a blink, the place was crowded, loud, women and men standing beside her, pressing against her, coats and jackets abandoned. Fine wool skirts and loosened ties. Ladies perched on laps, head thrown back in fits of uncontrolled laughter. She tried it herself, leaning her head back. Wide mouthed smile. Haze of smoke in the air, sweet music, and as she gazed about, eyes struggling to focus on any one thing, she began to see the movement as fluid. Slow motion. Buttons on a tight blouse, a lipstick-coated mouth, soft fawn curls, greased ducktails, a silver watch. “If ever a devil was born without horn,” Vincent sang along with the blaring record. “Ever angel fell. Was you.” His breath spiraling through her ear into her brain, made her breathe a little faster, her backside throb against the seat. She laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, pressed her mouth into the warmth of his jelly neck.
    â€œCome,” he said, and he gripped her wrist, and she floated up from the seat, struck her hip on the table, followed as he led her through the gaggle of happy socializers. Tripping over feet, smiling at backs of heads, trying to skip up a staircase like she was capable of being graceful. Like she was still a mystery, when she was drunker than she’d ever been in her entire life. He opened a door out into a pitch-dark alleyway, and she couldn’t sense the cold as it wrapped around her thighs, pushed up her skirt. One knee hoisted, hooked over his elbow, and Vincent whispered, “Ah. Ma liddle Jezebel,” and she hung onto his neck, slumped, as he fumbled with his pants, found his way, pressed against her, ground her bony wings, curve of her backbone, into the stone wall. Slipping sideways, and he wrapped a strong arm around her ribs, righted her, pressed her harder in place, grunting, grunting. Bump, bump, bump. A dirty rag doll with its legs pulled apart, stitches broken. “You love me?” she slurred, bump, bump, and inside her head she tried to crawl away from the wave of blackness that weighted her edges, shaking her down. “I keep you for this night,” he moaned, full weight shuddering against her starfish frame, and she disappeared, spiraling eddy of darkness.
    She awoke on a wooden floor, saw the wide back of Vincent bent over the open door of a woodstove, one knee on the floor. Prodding something with a metal poker. Hard to see. She stretched. A mound of gray and cream inside the stove, something dead, flames dancing around it, not wanting to consume it. What was he doing? She sat up, hands slapped on the floor to steady herself. A peculiar ache resided in her joints, her limbs. Then, she fell backwards, squeezed her eyes closed. There was dampness between down below, and she was sure she had soiled herself. Eyes open again, she watched the creature inside the stove as it gradually succumbed, began its conversion into soft ash.
    Smell like burnt remains. Reminded her of a