Repo

The man climaxes and I whisper in his ear: "My mother taught me to always wash just your lower body after sex."

He smells like the ashtray he's been living in, his wedding band pressing into my arm as his spasmodic hand clamps onto the nearest part of me. The motel I've rented is cleaner than either of us could ever be. He nudges me off him and sits up on one of those beds that you can make vibrate for only a quarter.

"Her mother taught her that if a condom tears, try to pee and wash externally with water. No soap or cleaning products."

The man is belting his pants in the way all men trying to hit-and-run do. I go to the bathroom to rinse, and as the shower washes away remnant guilt, I shout through the curtain: "And her mother taught her to always take clients to places where they felt safe."

The sounds of the man's laces moving over each other stop for a second. I hear him scuttle towards the door and try the handle, which is no match for the padlock I put above it.

I bask in the steam, gargling soft water as I mumble: "I don't remember what her mother taught her, though. Likely something else about survival." He comes in and rips the curtain aside, but I'm ready with the knife conveniently hanging from the loofah. It goes cleanly into his still-bare chest.

"The thing is," I say as he sinks down, patting myself dry as he’s getting wetter and wetter, "It doesn't really matter exactly what they said. Their advice only serves these circumstances, which each generation made sure we stayed stuck in."

I step out onto the floor and his blood seeps between my toes. He's as quiet dead as he was alive, and men never feel more alive than when a woman moans their name.

"What matters is, eventually," I say, wiping the mirror to watch myself wrap my hair into a towel, "Eventually one of us would see the pattern, and break free from it."

I fish his keys from his pants, keeping my dead eyes fixed on his. I dress and flee to his truck, if a casual saunter can still be considered fleeing, and roll out of the motel lot. It's hard to tell from so far away, but I think I can see another motel’s sign down the road.

One will inevitably crest the horizon before long. This sea of man beckons, and for my mother, and her mother, and all our mothers before them, I intend to answer their call.