Free The Death of Small Creatures by Trisha Cull

Thus, my duplicitous relationship with men begins, desire and aversion at once: desire because I want them to fill the void that is me, and aversion because they can’t fill the void after all.

    It’s a perfect evening: blue July sky, Garry oaks through the window, twinkle lights strung around the banisters and trees outside.
    Leigh asks the waitress for a quiet table for two, but it’s a busy night and there are no tables available.
    Leigh insists. “Can’t something be done?”
    The waitress says, “Let me see what I can do,” then dashes away, only to return a moment later with good news. “We don’t have any regular tables for two,” she says, “but we can offer you one of our private dining suites.”
    The waitress leads us through the sea of beautifully adorned tables spread with white linen tablecloths and fine flatware and silver. People smile as we make our way through, escorted like VIPs, and I flush with embarrassment at this special attention.
    The private dining suite is a gorgeous little enclave with dark wood walls, soft lighting and a heavy decadent curtain on each side.
    These kinds of embellishments tend to frighten me, the lavishness of it all; I attribute this to my blue-collar upbringing, dinners of meat and potatoes, meatloaf, meatballs and anything else having anything to do with grade-A beef served conservatively next to potatoes or rice. I grew up eating in front of the TV.
    â€œIt’s like a little kingdom,” I say.
    The special tonight is skate wing. A fish shaped like a skate: my initial analysis leaves me confounded. Later I will learn the truth about the skate, a species of fish resembling the stingray that has been overfished and whose population is steadily decreasing. I imagine the skate like a stingray willowing through the water with its wings expanded, the lovely caress of water flowing over and under the wings, the small face of the fish in the middle and the long deadly stinger a wisp, a live wire trailing behind.
    Endangered.
    I think of the wings of the skate sliced off and the remaining middle part of the fish, that face of it, drifting off to sea.

    In the 1400s in England, a gentleman sent a pair of gloves to the woman he wished to marry; if she wore these gloves to church on Sunday, it signalled her acceptance of the proposal.
    In Wales, a lovesick man would carve a spoon of wood and send it to the woman he wished to marry; if she wore the spoon on a ribbon around her neck, it meant she accepted his proposal.
    I know it’s coming, my marriage proposal. I asked for this, harassed Leigh into doing it, said time and again, “Are you ever going to marry me?”
    So now I look at him sitting over there across the table from me, smiling, thrilled with how the evening is unfolding. He loves our special room, the special attention. The pretence of good service seems to please him more than the occasion at hand, more than the pending marriage proposal. I sense this intuitively.
    The implications of acceptance are vague but profound. To say, “Yes,” or better yet, “Yes, I will.” I will what? I will spend the rest of my life with you, I promise? Preposterous. I will never leave you, I know it? Ridiculous. I believe in this absurdity no more than I believe in the tooth fairy. And yet…
    I maintain a pleasant demeanour.
    We’re having a wonderful time.
    It’s as if the universe has set the stage for something divine to transpire between us, or the universe has set this beautiful stage as a test, to see if I can decipher the truth beyond the beauty, to see if I can make the right decision despite the trinkets of stars hanging above the treetops, and the summer breeze drifting through the restaurant, lifting the hems of tablecloths and rousing my senses. Or do I mean lulling my senses?
    It’s intoxicating.
    I smile.
    I feel sick.

    We’re living in the top portion of an old heritage house