Will you still love me?
by
Brian Campo ( bcampo@hotmail.com )

Warning: This story contains frank sexual dialogue and harsh language. If it's gonna hurt your ears, don't read it. The Crow is owned by James O'barr and Pressman films and I have no problem with it. This is a work of fan fiction and is not intended to be official.

It was hot in the loft, a humid, sticky heat that the oscillating fan sitting in the window did little to alleviate. This was the way it always was with Eric and Shelly's apartment, hot and muggy as hell during the summer, frigidly cold during the winter. The windows were open but there was no breeze blowing, so the heat just hung in the air. It was late evening and the sky outside was turning from golden to darkening shades of red..
Eric laid at the end of the couch, an acoustic guitar across his bare chest. His fingers picked idly at the strings while his left hand found chords. His mind was on other things and he was unaware of what song he was playing. The music was gentle and rhythmic and the plucking of the strings sounded like rain on a rooftop.
He was looking at Shelly, who was stretched out at the other end of the sofa. She was wearing only a pair of cotton panties, white with blue flowers. She had slipped them back on earlier, after they had finished making love. The scent of their passion still hung in the air, a pleasant smell, a mixture of sweat, lust and the apple cinnamon shampoo that she used when she bathed. She was laying on her back and was hanging her head and shoulders over the far end of the sofa, letting the meager breeze from the fan blow over her. A small trickle of sweat had run down between her breasts and into her naval, leaving a glistening line down her belly. The dim light from the setting sun flattered the curves, the convexs, and the concaves of her body.
He was enamored with her. Enchanted by her. He knew how bad that sounded, how cheesy, but he could find no other words to describe the way he felt for her. She was beautiful, she was kind, caring, loving. He felt he must be the luckiest man in the world. How a normal guy like him had wound up with a woman like her he would never know Soon, they would be married. He had no qualms about the approaching wedding. Just a calm serenity, an assuredness that spending the rest of his life with her was what he was supposed to do.
"I love you." he said to her.
She sniffed through her nose, inhaling quickly. He suspected that she had been so relaxed that she had started to drop off to sleep. She confirmed it when she sat up batting sleep from her eyes and stretching. She looked at him quizzically.
"Did you say something?"
"I said, 'I love you.' "
She smiled as she sat up and pulled her knees up to her chest. "Oh yeah? How much?"
"More than anything."
This was a game they'd played before. He knew what she would ask next before she asked.
"How long will you love me?"
"Forever." he replied, as he always did.
"Only forever?" she asked, like it was such a small thing he was promising.
"Forever and ever."
"Even when I'm old and have to wear depends??"
He chuckled. That was new. "Even then." he said. "I'll probably have to wear them, too."
"Even if my hair goes gray, my breasts sag and my legs look like a chickens? Will you still love me then?"
"I told you, I will always love you. We'll be old farts together."
She rested her chin on her knees and thought about what he had said. There was an odd look on her face, like she wanted to ask something, but wasn't sure if she should. "What if I changed? Would you still love me then?"
He was about to say, "Of course." but that look on her face made him stop and consider what she had said. "Changed how?" he asked.
"Not so sure now?" she raised an eyebrow in mild surprise.
"I'm sure." he told her. "I just don't know what you mean by 'changed' "
She shrugged. "Oh, let's say we have kids one day and I gain weight. I get a belly and I have stretch marks all over it. Maybe I don't look so hot in lingerie anymore. Those tight jeans you like so much don't fit so good. What about then, will you still love me?"
"Why would that be any different? It's you I love, not just the way you look." He stopped for a second and then smiled. "There'd just be more of you to love, that's all." He couldn't help but wonder where all this was coming from. Their lover's game had strayed far from where it usually went.
"What did you think I meant when I said 'Changed' ?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"Cause it seemed like you were thinking of a way I could change that would make you stop loving me."
"No." he said. "I just wanted to make sure I understood what you were saying. That's all." His fingers started picking another tune. What was that song he wondered? Something by Pink Floyd?
"What's there to understand?" asked Shelly. "Either you could stop loving me or you couldn't. Why would how I change matter?"
"It doesn't." he said. "I'll love you forever, no matter what." She was acting strangely. It would almost like she was trying to bait him into an argument or something.
"You never know what might happen in life, Eric. How can you be so sure? What if I had an accident? Say I was paralyzed, stuck in a wheel chair for the rest of my life? You could spend the rest of your life bathing me, feeding me, changing leg bags. What if I got breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy or what if I had to have a hysterectomy? These kind of things happen to people just like you and me all the time. What if they did happen to us? Would you love me then?"
He stared at her intently, trying to figure out just what it was she was wanting to hear him say. There was no way to tell. "I love you and I will never stop loving you. Which part do you not understand?" He didn't want to argue with her. He kicked himself for asking her to define 'changed' earlier.
"I don't understand how you can be so sure." she said. "How could your love be so blind that you're telling me that no matter what I do you'll never stop loving me."
"What is it that you want, Shelly?" His voice was strained, like he was holding back some kind of emotion. "Do you want me to tell you that my love for you is conditional? Would that make you happy?"
"What if I was raped? Say I was working one night and some guy comes in and attacks me. Forces me. Could you still love me knowing that another man had had me?"
"Why do you even need to ask that? Of course I would still love you! How would it be your fault if you were raped? I'd want to kill the guy but I would only want to help you, to love you."
" I only ask cause I need to know how much you love me. I have to know. What if I wasn't raped? What if I cheated on you?"
The words fell between them like a grenade and they sat looking at them, waiting for them to go off. For the first time in the conversation Eric's fingers stopped picking the strings of his guitar.
"Wh-what?" was all he could manage.
"Say I gave myself to another man. Would you love me then?"
He said nothing for a few moments as he tried to carefully pick his next words. He felt like he was standing in a minefield. There was a sinking feeling in his belly that he was about to learn something he didn't want to know. "Have you?"
"Cheated on you? No."
He let out a sigh of relief and then, with just a little more anger in his voice than he intended, he said, "Then why would you ask that? Are you planning on it or something?"
"No." she said. "But in only a short while I am going to marry you. You're telling me that you will love me no matter what but the more questions I ask the less sure you seem. So, answer me. What if I did? What if I slept with another man? Would you still be able to love me?"
"I know that by asking this I am only going to bury myself deeper in whatever hole this is I have dug, but why would you cheat on me? What kind of a situation are we talking about here? Did I mistreat you? Did I do something to you to make you do this."
"No, it would be all my fault. It just happens. Say your playing at some club some night and I'm at the bar and I've had a few drinks. Some guy at the bar flirts with me. I'm a little buzzed. I flirt back. Next thing you know I've gone and done something stupid. I crawl into the back seat of his car and let him do me right there. Could you forgive me? Could you still love me?"
"It sounds like you are describing something that has already happened." He realized his hand had clenched into a fist around the neck of his guitar.
"It hasn't." she told him. "I promise. I've only been with you."
"I don't like this conversation."
"Why can't you just answer me? This is all hypothetical."
His jaw was clenched painfully. "It was just a mistake?"
"A stupid, stupid mistake. I feel like shit for what I've done and tell you I'm sorry a thousand times."
"And you would promise to never do it again?"
"Uh-huh." she nodded.
"I'm not sure what I would do." he said. "I think I would try to forgive you."
"Would you still love me?"
"I would try. I think I could."
"And if I wouldn't stop? If I did it again and again?"
He exhaled, exasperated. "Can't we just stop? I'm not enjoying this."
"I'm not enjoying it, either." she said. "But I have to know."
He sat up quickly and got to his feet. He was holding the neck of the guitar in both hands and looked he was thinking about slamming it into something. The floor, the coffee table, the wall. Instead, he stopped. gently leaned it against the wall next to the window and stepped away from it. He felt numb all over, cold. "How could I know how I would feel or react in a situation like that? There's no way. I could tell you that I could love you but there's no way to know until you're right in the middle of it. I don't know."
"You not so sure anymore?"
"I don't know."
"So, what would I have to do to make you stop loving me?"
"I want to stop this. I mean it, Shel."
"Offer myself to your friends? Blow every man on every corner? Raise my skirt for anyone who asked. Could you love me then?"
"You wouldn't do that." He was looking out the window now, watching the sun setting over the city.
"I would have changed. What if I was that different? If I changed so much that I could do those things? That I wasn't anything like the woman you loved in the first place."
"I'd ask you to stop."
"And if I ignored you?"
"I'd beg you to stop."
"And if laughed at you? If I lay down in the middle of the street and let any man or animal have his way with me? Right in front of you? Would you love me then?
Eric said nothing.
"Eric?" she asked.
Still he said nothing.
"What's wrong? Can't you answer me? Wouldn't you still love me?"
"No." His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.
"No?" she asked. "There's a limit to how much you can love me? You couldn't love me then?"
"No." he said. He couldn't bear to look at her. He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. "But I would still love the memory of you"
She looked at him for a moment, saw the streak of a tear on his cheek. "What do you mean?" asked Shelly.
Eric turned to look at her. "I would turn away from you, I'd close my eyes, put my hands over my ears and imagine you like you are right now. And I would love you."
Behind him, the sun set.


Usually I wouldn't take time to explain that this is an allegorical story but I'm afraid that people would take the story a little too literally and think that I was suggesting that Shelly was really as much of a bitch as she seems to be in this story. It's really about the way I as a fan feel about the original Crow comic and movie and how the franchise has gone downhill with each new comic and movie that is released. Simply replace Eric with us, the fans and Shelly with the people that own and control the Crow properties (O'barr, Pressman). You can agree, disagree, tell me you liked it or that you thought it sucked and I ought to be strung up by my nads, just drop me a line at bcampo@hotmail.com