Cup of Joe
an excerpt

She closed her eyes, a vision of him putting a work-chapped finger to the side of his nose immediately popping up behind her eyelids. Then his voice inside her head: “Remember, my girl, you can never get all you need from just one. You must find more, or you will return to what you once were. Your life will become poor again. You will lose memory of what you are now, of what you have worked so hard to become.” One corner of his mouth curved up in a sort of smirk. “Then I will have to be disappointed in you, and take these gifts. Then where will you be?”

“Where I was before, Father mine.” She leaned forward, her hands on her knees, upper arms squeezing her ample breasts together so they peeked over the top of her nightgown. A victorious little grin shone forth as she watched his eyes lower to them, his cheeks flushing the slightest bit. “Alone. And doing well enough with my own endowments.” She sat back on the stool once more. “And where will you be without me to fetch your latest conquests?” She turned slightly away to poke at the fire on the grate, making it flare up, the light of the flames mirrored in the glassy eyes of the body of the nude woman next to the man’s side.

“Alone,” he whispered.

“Yes. Alone. Alone and unhappy.” She jabbed one finger at the stump that had been left beneath one of his knees. “Unable to go out and find your own, because you have no desire to be seen as only a part of a man.”

He covered his face with his hands and nodded.

“But you are so much more than a man. You’ve told me this since the beginning. You just have to prove it to yourself. And, until you do, you can be alone. You can find your own, and luck with your having more than one. I will be content with one at a time, until the end of time if need be, and I will deal with the times that they have to leave when those times come. I am done with all of… this.” One bare toe nudged at the corpse’s thigh. “You can clean up your own leavings.”