lefty

ALICE ARCHER

Past 8 a.m.: a lazy, luxurious work-from-home day for both of them. Luke stared down at Dawna—her coppery waves filigreeing across the pillow, her closed eyelashes resting like russet fans on her delicate cheekbones, her chest rising and falling in her thick white cotton bra.

As always, his mind wandered back to their third date. Kissing on her couch, oblivious to the acclaimed Netflix series streaming on the TV. Tentatively raising his hand and saying, “Can I…?”

“Wow, I’m so glad you asked,” Dawna had replied. And she really did sound glad—relieved, even. “I actually have kind of an important boundary there.”

She explained what it was. Luke blinked, understanding her words, but not sure she was serious. He moved his hand cautiously in the air, several inches from her chest. “So, you’re saying I can…? But, not…?”

“That’s right,” said Dawna.

Luke asked, “But…why?”

She said, “I could tell you…but then it wouldn’t really mean anything. I need you to just respect it. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Luke, “I guess.” And it didn’t really matter, he told himself, because he was a lefty, and Dawna’s right breast was more than enough.

On their wedding day, though, as she walked down the aisle toward him, cradling her bouquet of blush-tipped rosebuds before her pearl-beaded sweetheart bodice, he wondered, What if everyone here knew there’s something in there that I’ve never touched, or even seen?

On their honeymoon, they made love on the starlit beach on Maui: Dawna with her bikini top on, Luke’s left hand firmly nestled inside the right cup, his right entangled in the dark, wet, gold-tinged glimmer of her hair.

She wore her bikini top when they showered together, too. The rest of the time, she wore those virginal white cotton bras—even to bed, even when she didn’t wear panties.

A couple of times, for Luke’s birthday, or their anniversary—although she admitted, sighing, that it felt good to do so—she took her bra off. But only with her back turned, keeping her arms crossed over her chest until she slid into bed. And thereafter she kept the sheet clamped and clenched over her left breast.

Staring down at his sleeping wife, Luke wondered what he’d wondered almost every day since their relationship began. Did she have some kind of deformity or blemish? It was pretty insulting, he thought, that she didn’t trust him to love her anyway—especially after he’d watched two babies come out of her. Had she been assaulted, at some point in her past? He didn’t think he could tolerate not knowing much longer—and if he was going to do it eventually, he might as well do it now.

Awkwardly, Luke reached out his right hand. He remembered telling Dawna about his first-grade teacher forcing him to hold a neon blue squishy ball in his left hand, so he’d have to hold his pencil and write with his right—clicking her tongue severely at him if the ball hit the floor. He remembered Dawna hugging his face to her neck and murmuring, “Poor little you!”

Lightly, gently, so as not to awaken her, he cupped his hand over her left breast. It felt just like the right one: warm, softly firm, with the added sensation of her heart beating behind it. He pressed his palm just slightly against her hard nipple…then jumped back, as an alarm suddenly shrilled. Then a rhythmic beep…beep…beep…beep, as of something counting down.

Was it coming from…inside her bra? Unthinking, Luke folded down the white cotton cup—and was instantly bathed in a blinding wash of blood-bright light radiating from the glaring red nipple within.

He met his wife’s open eyes, which had mutated from sky-blue to purple by the ruddy glow. She stared back at him, without anger or panic—just an overwhelming expression of sadness and loss.

Luke opened his mouth to shout when he glimpsed the grimace of her teeth, her skull shining blackly through her face. His bones shone likewise through his raised hand, in the nanosecond before his eyes burst down his cheeks.

Then his shouting tongue was ash, and so was the rest of him. And so was Dawna, and their six-year-old son and three-year-old daughter, still dozing in nearby rooms. And their house, and their neighborhood, and the sparrows and squirrels in the park, and the museum where they’d shown their children the mounts of extinct triceratopses and tyrannosaurs and rhinoceroses and snow leopards. And the ocean where, right up until the instant it was vaporized, great white sharks and Portuguese man-o’-wars still swam. And the skyscrapers with ocean views where executives sat, quite coolly contemplating the destruction of the world, considering it a perhaps somewhat steep, but nonetheless acceptable price to pay for their continued enrichment—but, rising in alarm from their ergonomic calfhide chairs, looked out at the shockwave boiling toward them, and thought disbelievingly, then indignantly: No—not today.

Alice Archer lives in Gainesville, Florida with seven rescued cats, a variety of reptiles, and approximately three thousand books. She is neurodivergent, self-educated, and self-employed. More of her stories can be found in Dark Yonder and confetti, and are forthcoming in Streetlight Magazine and Marrow