007 Crop Circles

Mike likes beer and leaving a perfect imprint of his signet ring on Katarina's cheek. He likes to watch it fade, admiring his precision as it turns from vivid red to muted brown. He doesn't like it when Katarina picks at it ' then it gets patchy and runs down her cheek, spoiling his work ' forcing him to repeat it on the other side.

Katarina, his beautiful exotic Katarina ' Mike carries a picture of her in his wallet ' the one the agency sent, her cheeks smooth and rosy, her smile mischievous, beckoning. He loves to show it off.

'That's my gal.' He boasts examining their eyes, until he sees that blink ' that double take, then he says, 'Yeah I know lucky bugger aren't I.' Before they get a chance to get all embarrassed and mumble some nonsense about a foreign bride.

Sometimes Mike likes to create crop circles.

On Katarina's back ' the end of his cigarette glowing delicately, his tongue stuck out the side of his mouth in concentration. He doesn't like it when old, inferior designs bubble and scar under the surface ' nudging his hand causing him to make a mistake.

They are going to have lots of children; Mike wants at least 4, two girls and two boys. Katarina says in her fractured English, 'only one, start only one.' Mike asks, when, when? But she just shakes her pretty, slavic head and strokes his cheek.

Mike and Katarina make love everyday. Mike knows his way around a woman. He knows that 'no' means 'yes', and that women answer with their eyes.

He put Katarina's out; with his index finger of all things ' he just poked and jabbed and that was that ' they stopped answering his questions.

Katarina is barren. Mike has tried everything, he has cut back on the beer and the cigarettes, he has even taken to wearing boxer shorts. But zilch, nothing. Katarina's sightless eyes see through him ' he beats her messily ' no precision, no care. Mike is not a beast, it is her fault ' she is casting a spell over him with her magical mumbo jumbo '

Mike strangles Katarina ' with artists hands.

A pale blue nude draped delectably across the bed. Mike stands back, taking in his work ' a misalignment near the stomach irritates his aesthetic reason, he leans in closer running his hand over the curvaceous hip ' porcelain under his palm, across the cool clay stomach to¦,

her glass womb. He reaches out his fingers, its proud quivers suspended in the moonlight ' his fingers alight on its cool clear surface, it ' shatters '

still.

Mike puts Katarina's passport out with the rubbish.

'She buggered off back home¦,' he believes when asked ' 'the photo, it's all I've got left, I really loved her you know, we were going to have children¦.'