One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi … proposed the one whom we ask to provide writing prompts. I’m too old for hide and seek games so once home I Googled ‘sip-pi, hoping it might be a shortened version of a woman’s name, or something else I could work on.
What I got was; A loud, beautiful, crazy, hyperactive person with a smile that will make your day. She is always there to make you laugh when you need it. She will also stand her ground in any situation and will punch you in the throat if necessary.
The beautiful, sexy Cecelia! I thought I’d erased her from my memory bank. Obviously not. In the days when I loved her I called her Cessi, which isn’t too far from Sippi.
We dated in the mid-eighties and, for a while, had a great time. Trouble was that the more she got to know me the more she slighted me – especially in the bedroom. They say familiarity breeds contempt and Cessi was living proof of those words. Despite that, I loved her (even when she called me Shrimp). When I was reluctant to perform certain sex acts she became a tad testy.
I once relented after she said she’d never known a man who couldn’t stand a little pain. I never relented again and spitefulness raged. I said we should split; she should go find a man with tastes that matched hers. She flounced out and resolved never to return. You’ll be sorry you let me go, Shrimp, she said.
A week or so later she returned with her I’m-ever-so-sorry smiles and a bottle of de-cent Italian plonk. And, fool that I was, I welcomed her back.
It didn’t take long before she suggested we play some little games just to add humour to our lives – only fun games – nothing too radical. God forbid I should redefine your con-servative morals, she said. I did as bid for the first few romps but when she looked to esca-late, I flinched and called a halt.
That break lasted just over two weeks during which time I cogitated on our relation-ship and happily concluded I was the normal one. It had been her deceptively sweet cajoling and comparisons to other real and/or make-believe men that put a rein on my passion.
On a weekend in Queensland she asked, aren’t you ever going to lighten up?
‘Not your kind of lighten up,’ I said.
She made an ‘urghhhh’ sound and locked herself in the bathroom for an hour.
Over dinner she probed. Why don’t we invite another man into our games? A stranger. No-one we know.
No, I said.
You’re such a cold fish, she replied. How about another woman?
Nope.
Look, if we’re going to progress you need to broaden your sexual horizons.
Perhaps we shouldn’t progress, I said.
We have to! I love you and I’m not about to lose you, despite my history. If you try to leave me, I hunt you down and love you. We’ll be together until the end of time, believe me. I’ll try to tone down my desires but don’t you see you have to meet me half way?
‘I’m sorry, Cessi, but I just can’t persuade myself to indulge your outlandish games. I’ve tried, believe me, but I find most of them a complete turn-off. You have to have no-ticed.’
Most of them! She almost screamed through her laughing leer. So there’s wriggle room here? She wriggled fetchingly in her seat and beamed her sexy smile on me. Which ones don’t turn you off?
That night, I allowed myself to indulge her desire to be strangled – that is to say, I strangled her, but not to death. She enjoyed herself immensely; loudly and exhaustingly.
That was fantastic, she later said. I want to go somewhere where my cries of love and joy won’t be heard by those of your mindset.
‘We could romp in the bush,’ I suggested.
‘I don’t think so’, she said.’ I’m not keen on spiders and snakes and things. No. I’m going to hire a boat so we can cavort at sea, rise and fall like dolphins.’
It was a smallish boat, but we didn’t need a great deal of room. We went far enough from land that buildings looked like specks on the horizon. When the sun sank, little twin-kling lights appeared in their stead. We drank wine and feasted on fish eggs, cheese and fruit, and then our other activities started. After a while Cessi wanted to be strangled again and she had a whale of a time.
As she enjoyed every moment until she expired I didn’t feel too remorseful. I used the cheese knife to cut her leg, then bundled her overboard and hoped sharks would sense her blood in the water.
I headed to shore, beached the boat away from any lights and walked away.
If I’d left my finger prints or DNA anywhere, nobody found them or identified them. Cessi’s mother reported her missing and the police interviewed me. I told them she’d hurtful-ly said she’d found a more malleable partner and I’d told her not to contact me again. Who was the more malleable man? No idea, I told them. They said they’d probably want to talk to me again, but they never did. As far as I know, Cessi’s body was never found, nor that of her lover. Sharks must have been ravenous that night.
I’ll have to be careful with writing prompts in the future. I don’t want other awkward memories to surface.
About the author
Peter Lingard, born a Brit, served in the Royal Marines, was an accountant, a barman and a farm worker. He once lived in the US where he owned a freight forwarding business. An Aussie now because the sun frequently shines and the natives communicate in English.
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