The Plan

They had been friends for some time and in that time they had kept a steady flow of contact. The suspension of loneliness was no longer the primary motivation behind their connection. They enjoyed each other’s company. It was mutual and amicable between them, except when it wasn’t.

He was a capricious man. An aesthete. He cared more for beauty than for sentiment. She wanted only to be loved. Sometimes he loved her in all ways. Sometimes he did not love her at all. He had his life figured out by the time she entered it. He knew just what he wanted. He’d wasted too much time on detours and broken promises already. He was not prepared to love her. She didn’t figure into his future. He was a very practical sort of man. Paper meant more to him than promises. She could unravel him. She could make him lose sight of his goals. He might be the better for her love but he did not want love. Love was messy and complicated. He wanted a legacy. He wanted to leave his mark on the world.

Sometimes he loved her anyways but whenever she noticed it he denied her outright. They lived in a kind of limbo until one day he decided to give up on love entirely. He thought it the humane course of action to tell her that he didn’t love her and he took from her all the love he had ever declared to her in moments of vulnerability. He was very convincing and she was much too wounded to comprehend her value to him. There were moments when he truly believed he’d gotten her out of his system. Moments when he felt himself superior to her, a gift to all women, a man entitled to pleasures of all kinds.

Time passed and he was not as warm as he had been. She missed his heart, the tone of his voice when he gave chase. He thought he could have her whenever he wanted. She believed now more than before that he did not love her. All that he’d said previously had simply been her imagination. She moved on by painstaking degrees. He told himself that he had done a very good thing for them both. He had done the logical thing. He’d spared them the future pain of breaking up. Friendship endures. As friends they could last a lifetime together.

He pursued the most beautiful girls he could find. Sometimes they rejected him. She comforted him and he resumed his quest. He could love anyone but her. Never her he told himself. She is too good for my base, human love.

Even when he managed to win the attention of a beautiful woman he quickly lost interest. He thought I could do better! There are more beautiful women in this world. Only the most beautiful women can hold my interest. Maybe it would be better if I had several so that I could rotate them as one rotates a wardrobe according to the seasons. This was not as easy as he hoped. Everytime he found another woman he risked losing the first. Worse he missed her so much he could hardly breathe. When someone suggested he loved her and that he could not be satisfied with another woman he went to her and told her more firmly than before I don’t love you! He wanted to punish her for being lovable, for making him feel. She answered I know! She knew it all too well. She trusted him.

Despite some misunderstandings they grew closer together. She was in many ways a wife to him, the primary woman in his life with whom he shared his troubles and dreams. His desire for her grew and he knew not what to do with it. He continually found fault with her. A single hair out of place he exaggerated to excess. When these faults gained no transaction he made up faults. He put words in her mouth and assigned beliefs to her that positively appalled him. That she had never said or thought these things was not important to him. He needed to subdue his love. He was annoyed with her for being beautiful, for becoming more so with each passing day. Why was she making it so hard for him?

One day she met a wonderful man. He was both happy and miserable. With each day he felt more restless inside. He picked fights with her for no reason. She told him I am in love! He said I am very happy for you as friends do but he was not at all happy for himself. He thought what have I done pushing her into the arms of another man? How could I not see the creative power driving the universe is love? That the only legacy, the only way to immortalize oneself is to love as fully as possible? He anguished night and day. He’d stuck to his plans, to his logic so why hadn’t it worked to his advantage?

She moved in with her new man. His apartment felt empty. He missed her terribly. He hated that she slept with another man every night. A man other than him. Loved a man other than him. He might yet find a woman but it would not be her. Never her. She was taken. He had robbed himself of her.

She got married. It should have been me! He cried. She had a beautiful son. That child should have been ours! He cried. He’d told her several times before that her life prior to him was a mistake. She should have chosen him. Waited for him. He hated that she had loved someone before him. Yet when he had her within the realm of possibility he had only been able to think of the past he’d been denied and of the future still uncertain. While he toiled endlessly with his beautiful distractions the present, by which all futures are formed, gave way like wet paper.

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Stolen 2 (again)

I had an inkling as to the location of the door but I would have to wait until my father was at work to begin my investigation. I left the library using an alternate exit to avoid confrontation. I would have to hide the key when time afforded but at the moment I had no alternative but to rejoin the celebration.

Dinner was painful. I watched my mother cut her food into progressively smaller pieces. She rearranged her food, now thoroughly dimensionless, into careful piles. She created illusions of absence. She ate nothing but air. My mother did most of the talking. She talked on behalf of everyone. I could feel her voice tearing at the back of my throat every time I opened my mouth. I could feel her eyes in my skull, like two hooks. ‘Shut up. Shut up. You’ll ruin everything.’ She spoke to me with her hands. She tugged my sleeve under the table. I spoke only when addressed. I spoke in monosyllables and euphemisms. After dinner there was a short recess. I spent my recess in the shadow of my classmates. “Your mother is very thin. Is she sick?” One of the girls remarked off-handedly. “Oh no, she just can’t put on weight. She has a high…” I trailed off a high what? What was I meant to say? The girl waited impatiently. “Standard…” I had heard the words high and standard linked frequently in conversation.

“Well alright then…” The girl shrugged. She didn’t care enough to press me. I searched my mind in vain for the word.

//

When I entered the kitchen I could tell by my mother’s expression that she had noted, if only just, my presence. Her hand alighted on my shoulder like a frightened bird and she took, what I imagined was, the last breath of the evening. I had prepared an excuse for my unexpected intrusion but it proved unnecessary.

“There you are Eli! Come now it’s time to cut the cake…” She maneuvered me toward the large banquet table in the center of the dining hall. She had tears in her voice.

There were three cakes, one vanilla, one strawberry, and one chocolate presented precisely in that order. It had been determined, after much consideration, that vanilla was my favorite. Strawberry suggested vanity. Chocolate suggested avarice. Vanilla was prudent and therefore the only acceptable choice, I would not even be permitted to sample the other flavors.  If it really was that easy to alter a man’s nature then why hadn’t my parents taken more care with their own diets? Why did my father drink? Why did my mother refuse to eat?

My mother pressed the handle of the knife into my outstretched hand, but she was not permitted to guide the blade. I watched her take her seat, her knitted brows drawing out the terror in her smile. For this occasion I was permitted to sit at the head of the table, a designation I neither deserved nor desired. The guests, which existed purely for their own benefit, appeared sewn into their chairs. I stood motionless above the cake. The cake might well have been a body of flesh and blood and I might well have been a recruit in service to an unprincipled war. I swallowed but the lump in my throat could not be dislodged. “Well don’t just stand there Elijah.” My father barked. I slid the blade shakily through the cake. When it was my mother’s turn, I watched her delicately shave away a slice. Paper-thin. Borderline transparent.

///

I buried the key beneath my mother’s favorite rose bush. She was in the kitchen, embroiled in a war which offered no hope of formal resolution. She would scrub each dish until her fingers were raw from heat and persistence. Once clean she would drop them into the trash one by one, like the shells of discarded eggs. No one dared intercept her pathos and no one dared name it but the cause was obvious. My father retired to his study, drink in hand, he would not speak again until breakfast.

I had been careful not to kneel in the dirt and with my sleeves rolled up past the elbows I believed myself impervious to filth. Against my naked forearms the air was as sharp as a briefly applied cigarette. Not for an external chill but such was the shock of my violation. I had wanted for very little in my short life and had asked for far less but this key held the culmination of all those secret leanings. I patted the earth carefully knowing that my mother would detect the slightest disturbance. If she were for some reason vexed by the sight of the topsoil she might extract the entire plant. The thought that she could kill something she loved to appease her illness frightened me and though I’d never voiced my fear I often worried that my own eccentricities might invite a similar fate.

A universe unto themselves 18+

She woke in a half-lit room, semi-coherent, liquid-comfortable. The shadows were unfamiliar to her. The position of the objects within the room. The objects themselves. Not simply altered but altogether different. There was something compelling about the warm figure sprawled at her side, about the scent enveloping her cocooned body, about the malleability of her senses as she lay disoriented and half-awake in someone else’s bed. 

She sat up with her knees folded underneath her and peered down at the bed’s other occupant. She was not sure if she saw him or merely sensed him. He slept. He pretended to sleep. She could read in the tilt of his mouth the beginnings of a smile or did she only feel him smiling inside of her? He was perfectly gorgeous lying there exposed to the pelvis. She could see the outline of a prominent erection, the way the sheets strained and tented under the pressure of him. In her heart too there was a pressure, a tightness which she could only describe as sentient. He possessed her even now. He possessed her on every level and she in turn possessed him. She inhaled shakily. ‘Is it okay to touch him?’ She could have simply asked but that would have spoiled the reveal. He wanted her to take initiative. He was anything but defenseless. He was completely defenseless against her but he’d never quite managed to convey that to her.

She bit her lower lip and reached out a trembling hand to the figure. This was the first time they’d met in the corporeal sense. Their first “real” encounter. The means by which she had arrived, the “unrealness” of the situation heightened her senses. Waves of endorphins scattered her thoughts and by degrees eroded whatever might have remained of her inhibitions. Her entire being called out to him. She ran her fingers along the length of his torso. She could not hear him inhale for the violent recoil of her pulse but she saw the exaggerated rise of his chest. His eyes remained closed. He waited. She straddled him, lowering herself on his erection lengthwise, the sheet still between them. She rubbed herself against him. His thick shaft sliding between her thighs. She laid herself out on top of him. Their bodies warm with arousal, almost hot. She kissed him open-mouthed across the collarbones and across his chest. He could feel her wetness soaking through the sheet. He could feel her heat and the throb of her pussy like a second heartbeat against his eager cock. He took her face in his hands, thumbing away her tears. He looked at her as if she were the entirety of his universe, the purpose of his existence, the only person he had ever loved and would ever love. All of her feelings came rushing out at once and in the gentle captivity of his smile all of it was suddenly, inexplicably sacred to her. Her eyes widened in the instant before closing. He kissed her and her farthest reaches surfaced. They took their time filling in each other’s mouths. They tasted and caressed each other, speaking without words, devouring, devouring, devouring. The whole time they kissed she was rubbing herself to orgasm against him, getting off on friction and proximity alone. There was something devastating in their proximity, something devastatingly poignant about the way they came apart and reassembled within each other.

She moved down his body. His neck, his chest, his nipples, his stomach. He felt naked without the heat of her pussy smothering his cock. She moved the now clinging sheet out of the way and rubbed his cock against her exposed flesh. Labia, Clit, Vagina. Silky smooth, slippery, incomprehensibly soft. She sat down on him, taking him in at her own speed. Deliberate. Torture. He cupped her breasts, her ass, he branded her into his memory. The shape of her. The tension. The suppleness. His hips rocked, shook, crested. She convulsed on top of him. Fragile like a reflection in water. Her tight pussy made his cock weep, forced from his throat sounds that were not human. She filled his name with her breath. She made his name sound holy. Her voice was totally pornographic.

Once he was inside of her. She started to ride him. She rode him to please herself. She rode him and her full breasts bounced. She rode him with her eyes closed for a bit, getting used to the sensation of being full to excess. He could tell she was struggling to accommodate him and yet each time she fell down on him she was taking him deeper. He took her hips, made her ride him harder and faster, coaxed himself deeper and deeper until he had reached her end. She laid down on him again, her breasts flush against his chest. She kissed him, her moans of pleasure spilling into his mouth, mixing with his own. He was drowning in her deluge, in the currents of her body, in his own instincts. Instincts which screamed at him to fuck, fuck, fuck. She was a vice wrapped in velvet. She was sucking, sucking, sucking. She was orgasming endlessly on top of him. They were consuming each other. They were evolving and devolving. They were Gods. Infinite. Altruistic. Impalpable. They were animals. Finite. Greedy. Sensual. In those moments when their orgasm overlapped they were screaming prayers and obscenities at each other, confessions both carnal and sacred. In that moment they were more than two people could comprehend. They were one, a universe unto themselves.

Round 5 (conclusion) 18+

(This is all that I wrote for the story but I would be willing to explore various other avenues at request, including something more romantic such as a reunion with Damien and Naida. This next and final chapter is by far the most graphic and may be disturbing to some readers. Sex, monster genitalia, demons, tentacles it is all in there. Since it starts out rather mild I have used an * to denote the point when it may become too unsettling for some readers.)

 

 “You made the fight seem so effortless.” Naida commented, turning to Dread now that they were alone. The demon’s apartment was in stark contrast to the one he shared with Damien. The walls were stained and peeling, the wooden floor beneath their feet was scoffed and discolored, the overhead light cast a jaundiced pallor on the room which seemed to transmute solid matter into shadow. There was scarcely any furnishings: a wooden table with a single wooden chair, an old chest, a mattress undressed and without frame. There were no dressings on any of the windows and Naida noted, to his dismay, that the bedroom was window to window with the neighboring apartment building. To his relief, however, the apartment was clean and the only smell of any sort was that of the apples in the kitchen. There was nothing by way of entertainment, nothing save for their bodies. His first impression was not a good one but he had not come to see the fighter’s apartment. He’d come to experience something dangerous and potentially extraordinary.

 

Dread did not truly understand the full extent of his prize. Generally he received cash. Cash he used to purchase food and basic necessities. Occasionally he received items which could be sold for cash. Naida was, as far as prizes went, rather impractical and yet he could think of countless ways to enjoy him.

 

“My opponent was worthy…”  Sammael deserved credit for his performance, credit that Dread was willing to dispense even in the warrior’s absence.  “It is I who am flawed…”  He said pulling the elf into his chiseled body. His embrace left Naida with only enough space to breathe. Reaching back he unbound the elf’s silken hair and buried his face into it. He was not one to refuse the opportunity for sex even when presented in such an unorthodox way. 

 

“In what way flawed?” Naida asked, managing to get some space between, not too much but enough that he could look at the demon more closely. Up close he thought Dread significantly more handsome but there was something frightening in his beauty. The elf’s lungs ached, his head filled with a cacophony, and his knees buckled. Dread steadied him. The aura he’d glimpsed in the fight, those violent shades of purple mimicked by the demon’s irises, weighed heavily upon him. For the first time that evening Naida felt something akin to fear but that fear did not diminish his appetite/curiosity.

 

“My heart is artificial.” Dread answered as if one could escape with such a threadbare explanation. Naida barely heard the male’s voice over his own pulse. He squeezed the demon’s forearm to steady himself. With his other hand he reached out to touch the scars above the fighter’s heart. 

 

“Does it cause you any discomfort?” Naida asked with a mixture of curiosity and concern. The extraction of the original heart had not been performed by a surgeon, it had been performed by a butcher. It had been a fatal wound and yet here they both stood.

 

“Only the memory lingers. The scars are old.” Dread answered and then added as an afterthought. “My heart might be artificial but I am capable of feeling both pleasure and pain.” Naida nodded slowly, that was reassuring to know. “I’ve been wondering for a while now…” Dread started his hands sliding downward and around the other’s lower back. “What does my prize include exactly?”

 

Naida nuzzled against Dread’s chest, breathing in his scent, but mostly hiding his face. “Cooking, cleaning, sex whatever you need.” He responded looking up. He found that Dread’s usual grimace was replaced with another, inscrutable expression. “Though it would seem there is very little to clean. Where do you keep your clothes?” Naida asked, his tone playful.

 

“I require very little.” Dread answered combing his fingers through the elf’s wavy hair. “I can cook and clean for myself. I will accept your body as payment.” The demon continued in a voice as dark as it was cryptic.

 

Naida wrapped his arms around Dread’s neck and his legs around the other’s narrow waist. Something in the effortless manner with which the demon lifted him, alarmed him. Although Damien didn’t like to be penetrated he allowed Naida a good deal of freedom, freedom to control what happened and when. Dread seemed more the type to take what he wanted. 

 

The heat coming from the demon’s body was staggering, it was, Naida felt, as if he stood at the mouth of a great furnace. His skin flushed. His lungs tightened, each breath exacting a toll in its extraction. Naida was suddenly grateful for the low setting on the thermostat for it served to sober and relieve him from the heat of Dread’s body. For a moment they were nearly face to face and the elf used the opportunity to kiss the demon full on the mouth. He felt the fighter’s tongue against the seam of his lips, felt it press inside, tasted the other male’s sweet saliva and melted against him. As soon as the kiss began they were tearing haphazardly at each other’s bodies, clawing and groping, and ultimately collapsing into a heap on the bare mattress. Dread’s mouth scalded his own, the ferocity, the hunger, pulling the air from his lungs in a matter of moments. The demon’s mouth was full of razor sharp teeth, even the most tentative touch of his tongue was enough to prick the skin. The kiss tasted mostly of apples but there was a little bit of blood mixed in, his own blood. Dread untied his sarong, underneath the almost sheer fabric he wore only cloth strips which he’d wrapped intricately to avoid accidental exposure. They weren’t unlike the folds Dread used to bind his own genitals. It took only moments for the demon to unwrap him.

 

Dread’s mouth dropped down over his throat and shoulders, across his chest, where he lingered. Each nipple was sucked, flicked, licked, tormented into a state of throbbing rigidity. Naida rutted against the demon’s right thigh, sobbing helplessly into the stranger’s shoulder. In a matter of moments the elf was slippery with precum, clear, elastic, almost sparking pre cum. His cock echoed like a scream in an empty hall. The organ grew beyond its usual perimeters, he was, despite a very warranted fear, aroused to the point of hypersensitivity. The demon’s talons ran over his sides, leaving tiny red ribbons in his flesh that stung initially. The stinging was replaced with heat and an oddly electric tingle that made his head cloudy. Unable to focus his eyes he closed them. Clawing in the dark at whatever he could reach.

*

Dread had worked his way down to his crotch. Naida felt his thighs drop and two strong hands nudging his legs still further apart. He heard the stranger inhale slowly and felt in the whole of his being the growl that followed. The demon’s saliva was hot and cold at the same time. It felt like insects were crawling over his skin, his flesh prickled, goosebumps formed. Dread took everything into his mouth, his cock, his balls, all swallowed up in that hot, wet cavern. The demon’s tongue was mostly soft/pliable in the way that one expected a tongue to feel but there was one difference. In the center of the other’s tongue there was a nod, some extra taste receptor with a different texture. When drug across the underside of his cock or rubbed over the head his whole body broke down trembling. The male’s saliva dripped down to the base of his cock, a shock of contrasting temperatures spread across his pelvis. Naida’s body arched up sharply, mons right up against the other’s nose, the convulsions so strong that he could feel them not just in his perineum but deep inside his ass as well. He clutched Dread’s hair in both hands, raking the demon’s scalp with his nails. He shot ribbon after vicious ribbon down the back of the stranger’s throat. He heard the demon swallow, heard and felt him moan with pleasure.

 

Naida was still hard, still painfully swollen, his veins throbbing in time with his heightened pulse. Dread flipped him over on his knees. The backs of his thighs, his ass already soaked shamefully by his own fluids. He heard that Dread removed his clothes but when he tried to look the demon pushed his face into the mattress. He felt something peculiar press against him, something soft and flexible, something between a finger and a set of elongated lips. He felt it, possibly Dread’s cock, probing and suckling at his shuddering hole. He felt something almost the consistency of semen being smeared in the crevice between his legs and inside of him. He felt his legs giving out and a hand on his cock stroking him off. A hand big enough to sheath the whole of his sex, a hand calloused and strong, rubbing his nerves raw. He whimpered, mewled, begged to be fucked. He collapsed in the arm around his waist while that massive, slippery organ started to work/crawl its way inside. Pre cum or something like was spurted inside of him, filling him up, softening him. Arms, multiple slippery, suction cupped arms wrapped around his torso supporting him and forcing him back on that impossibly thick shaft. He felt it moving deeper and deeper inside, like a serpent. His body stretching, not quite tearing, but stretching to impossible dimensions to accommodate. Screams rose up in the back of Naida’s throat and for a moment he lost consciousness. 

 

When he woke a few seconds later Dread’s cock had gotten deeper, it was so deep that he felt as if it were twisted into his intestines. He could feel it writhing in his stomach, feel the bulge beneath his own tightly stretched skin. His hungry hole convulsed around the intrusion, drinking and sucking. He was forced back onto that shaft again and again with and without his consent, unable to escape the pressure. One of several tentacles let go of his waist and crept upward to his face. He grabbed hold, brought it to his mouth, and started to lick the slippery appendage with genuine hunger. The ooze it produced was sweet and delicious, strange colors swirled in front of his eyes, bending the light. He could hear the colors like music, like a violin almost. A tentacle engulfed his cock, the inner walls were covered in squishy nodules, creamy fluid seeped out from the seam, left his skin feeling like a current had passed through it. He came in the sheath, the tentacle drank it down hungrily, the suction enough to make his eyes water. He didn’t recognize his voice, the undignified whimpering, the husky repetitions of his temporary lover’s name. The projections on the head of Dread’s cock nudged at his prostate. More hot wet jets of cum were shot into the receiving tentacle. His body went limp, consciousness fading in and out, eyes rolled back, drool collecting in the corners of his slackened mouth. 

 

The fucking didn’t stop even after he lost consciousness. When he woke Dread’s massive cock was fully inside of him, he could see it moving inside of his stomach like a giant serpent. A thin, elastic tube slipped down his urethra, into his balls, following the same course his semen had taken moments before. His balls, which were emptied from multiple orgasms, were filled to bursting. He couldn’t cum while the probe was thus situated. He wanted to cum, needed to cum desperately. His body was burning up or was it freezing he couldn’t tell the difference. Dread’s pace increased, precise and unforgiving like a machine, his body shook as if in the throes of a seizure. His voice grew hoarse with the demon’s name. The serpent swelled, inches it seemed, he felt like he was being torn apart from the inside. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. He was delirious, sobbing with a mixture of fear and intense elation. Had he the luxury of thought his life might very well have flashed before his eyes. He’d felt on the verge of death. For one blinding white moment he woke up, completely. They were one, indistinguishable, pure energy. The probe in his urethra slithered its way out. Naida’s climax was immediate. All that thick, white ejaculate type substance that had been forced into his sac came bursting out of his shaft in arcs, soaking not just the mattress but the wall in front of him. In the very same moment Dread was ejecting his own load with a force that literally convulsed him. With a force that ignited all his nerves and sent him spiraling in and out of consciousness. One minute the abyss, the next nirvana. He was drooling, clawing the sheets like a mad man, riding the other dry, ass greedy and convulsive. Dread removed his still hard cock. Naida felt himself lowered to the mattress. His last distinct memory was that of Dread’s cum trickling out of his still gaping ass and the other’s calloused hand stroking his back soothingly.

Close

She always slept naked with the duvet pulled up to her shoulders. It was uncomfortably warm but she was unwilling to part with the weight against her skin. Insubstantial though it was, the pressure was reminiscent of a hug. She liked being held from every angle simultaneously. Like a gift, thoughtful and enigmatic. Like a moment, finite and eternally precious. It was early, a little before six o’clock and she was alone in bed. She slept in the middle of the mattress, at a diagonal. The early morning light had managed to push its way through the cracks in the blinds. It reminded her of the weedy gardens that sprang up intermittently on public sidewalks. She kept her eyes closed tightly but she could not totally filter out the extraneous light. Light which in the early morning seemed to her both hot and cold. She slipped in and out of consciousness with a rapidity that left her incapable of distinguishing her daydreams from her actual dreams.

 

She rolled over onto her right side and found herself pressed up against something unexpectedly solid. Something human warm. She placed her hand on top of the object cautiously, without peeking. She wanted to see if she could guess the object’s identity from touch alone. There was a pulse. Pillows didn’t have heartbeats or skin. Mattresses didn’t have bones or blood-heat. There was a scent in the air that was not her own. A scent that was deliciously human. Sucking her lower lip she continued to run her hand experimentally along the plains of the visitor’s chest and stomach. She heard him, for the figure was assuredly male, murmur. He woke by degrees. She continued to touch him with her eyes closed. Afraid that if she opened them that the foreign body of warmth would vanish. Once awake he climbed on top of her. His weight, resting partially on her pelvis. He touched her face gingerly. He touched her mouth with his fingertips. She took hold of his wrist, not wanting him to pull away from consideration. She did not want him to be overly considerate. She wanted his vulgar curiosity, the justifications and liberties that such a curiosity would afford her in turn. Had he truly been a stranger then she would have felt fear, shame at her own growing arousal, but he was not a stranger. Though none but the two of them could possibly hope to understand the ways in which they were connected. She kissed, licked, and nibbled at the pads of his fingers playfully. When he did not pull away she took his index finger partially into her mouth, sucking it, sliding up and down its length suggestively. He had done the same to her in a dream. She could feel his uneven breath, cool against her burning skin. She felt his energy above her, his gravity tugging at her from all sides. She opened her eyes and found that another pair regarded her. Half-lidded. A familiar shade of green. She released his hand and he lowered it to her cheek. The tips of his fingers were cool and damp with her saliva. He kissed her on the mouth. Smiled against her lips slightly and then kissed her again with more passion on finding her substantial and receptive. 

 

Had this been a dream the edges would have softened at intervals. For a few seconds she would have been able to taste his mouth, distinct from her own. For a few seconds she would have felt his mouth filling in the seams of her lips. She would have felt his lips working against hers and their tongues sliding together like a Stradivarius and a bow. She would retain the knowledge of what they did, the potency of arousal, but her sense of corporeality never held for very long. The act of kissing would yield to insinuation. His weight would compress and decompress according to her lucidity, which was intermittent at best. She clung to his shoulders expecting him to retreat into the ether. The mattress now cradling their combined weights remained compressed. He did not relent. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him in, corset-close. “Don’t you dare wake up…” Her tone was teasing, a reprimand without the requisite bite.  She would never detain him against his will. Her lips brushed his lips when she spoke. He smiled against her. “I’m not asleep and neither are you.” He answered her. He spoke the words into her mouth, she felt them vibrate against her lips.

–

Didn’t plan to double post.

TBC?

Choose An Antique Contined

Arius was washing dishes when I confronted him next. “Are you feeling any better? Are you ready to continue our discussion now?” He asked drying his hands. I saw that he meant to put aside his work and give me his undivided attention and I was simultaneously pleased and frightened. We sat down together at the table.

“You said that Zagan’s objectives were in opposition to yours. Does that mean…” I looked down at my hands it seemed too terrible a thing to say out loud. “That he kills the children who come here?” I asked my voice buckling under the weight of my words.

Arius’ face fell, each word that passed my lips seemed to fall upon him like a physical assault. He wilted in his chair. “He feeds them to the creature in the woods or so I am given to believe. I have never actually seen him commit these atrocities.” His brows knitted together and I could see that there was a conflict at work behind his eyes.

“Do you think that he can be made to understand the value of human life?” I asked trying to swallow my own revulsion and hatred lest my listener bare the brunt of that persecution. Whatever Arius and his brother were they were not human and so I could not reasonably expect them to share my values and yet Arius had demonstrated countless times his capacity for compassion. He was not like his brother and I refused to classify him as such. As for his brother I knew not wholly how to temper my feelings except in consideration for my audience.

“I don’t know…” He admitted but something in his eyes said that he was exhausted and disheartened by his previous efforts. Something told me that he had spoken to his brother and then I recalled his long, unexplained absences. At the time I had assumed those absences were for the benefit of my privacy or his but now I wondered if their meaning might be deeper.

“Can you overpower him?” I asked I had never known Arius to be a violent man and the idea seemed almost too ridiculous to propose. Even if it were so how could I ask Arius to attack his own brother, to kill him if need be? I would never ask this of him and yet my cause weighed so heavily upon me that I could not help but inquire about his power of which I knew so little. Arius did have powers of this there could be no doubt but he rarely used them and this I imagined he did for my benefit. I do not think he could live with himself if I ever came to fear him.

“We are evenly matched…” He answered. His expression was pained and I saw that his fingers had flexed inwardly stopping just short of a fist. We had lived together as the only two people in the world for so long that I had memorized all of his expressions. When it was his own discomfort he took it in stride but this was not so for the things that brought me pain, those things he felt much more deeply.

“So you have fought?” I asked gripping the front of my robe as if it might satisfy the twinge of guilt I felt then. The guilt persisted and my fingers tightened in response.

“Mostly with words but yes physically as well…it always ends in a draw.” He answered his eyes focused weightily upon me. “What do you intend? I must advise that you do not to challenge him outright.” As much as I might have wished it I had seen evidence of Arius’ strength, stamina, and speed and I could not match him in any respect. How could I hope to defeat his equal, an equal not softened by morality?

“I am not suicidal…” I rubbed the back of my head nervously. I knew very well my limitations and I had longed abandoned the idea of death as a solution. “Can I meet with him?” I asked knowing that I asked too much of my companion but banking on the fact that he would humor my selfishness.

“You will hear his words for yourself…” He nodded solemnly and then after a period of consideration he looked at me again resignedly. “I will accompany you…” He said and on this point I knew that he would suffer no objections. I patted his hand in what I hoped was a reassuring manner and tried to smile at him but in the end I only managed a strait line. “We will set off tomorrow then.”

 

Choose An Antique Con.

For a long time I was too frightened to speak about the incident. I was frightened that the dreams would return and that my soul would submit to consumption. It pained my companion to see me thus afflicted and it pained me to impose an even greater burden than the one I inherently posed (not that Arius ever referred to me as such).

I was 18 when I finally went to Arius in search of answers.

“We need to talk.” I said gravely. Arius was in the yard fixing the front wheel of his penny farthing. He sat down his tools and stood up. We were both adults now and although I was 6′ he towered over me. Though it can hardly be said that he was menacing. If were to describe him as he stood there then I would say that he looked like a willow ethereal, long-limbed, and placid.

“The creature in the forest how did you…” I didn’t know what I wanted to say because I had been unconscious through the whole ordeal and had no memories on which to tether my thoughts. “What happened? How did you rescue me?” I asked guilty for having accosted him without a pacifying prelude. If there was a way of defeating or warding off the beast why was he keeping it from me? “How did you even know where to find me?” I asked doing my best to curtail my suspicions which were rising with each inquiry.

“Opposites can repeal or attract…” He offered and what seemed so obvious to him left my head reeling. He read my confusion at once but seemed momentarily at a loss himself. “I am light…the creature is darkness…” To illustrate his point his body began to glow, white as sunlight spilling through an open door. I passed my fingers through the radiant aura cautiously and felt my flesh warm and tingle on contact. For a moment my other questions were forgotten. I had not seen the sun in years and could not but marvel at the miraculous luminescence.

“Are you an angel?” I asked not knowing what other being could emit such a celestial light. It was a childish question but it was only afterwards that I felt the sting of embarrassment.

“I doubt it.” He answered eyes widening. He was obviously bewildered by my suggestion and I felt my cheeks burn. For a moment I couldn’t even continue with my interview but I knew if I did not collect myself he’d mistake my red face for a fever. Arius was impossible to embarrass and rather oblivious when it came to the ways of man. Pushing my astonishment to the side I continued.

“You doubt it? Are you telling me that you don’t know what you are?” How was that even possible? Even I remembered that I was or had been human.

“So it would seem…I suppose I could ask my brother Zagan if you’d like…” He suggested though the idea did not seem to appeal to him in the slightest. His eyes seemed to beg for pity and ordinarily I would have given in rather than see my solitary companion suffer but there was too much at stake.

“You have a brother?!”I took him by the shoulders and shook him a little too enthusiastically.

“I have…” He answered blinking in surprise at my vigor. “But we don’t get along…” He continued as if that reason were enough to explain away years of omission.

“Why not? Is there something wrong with him?” I asked hesitantly. Arius had never so much as raised his voice in all our time together, unless in laughter, so I had to assume it was the brother who was the bad guy.

“I don’t know which of us is right or wrong only that our objectives are in opposition to one another.” He said and I thought it just like him that even his grievances were considerate.

“What are your objectives?” I asked wondering if objectives were like dreams. I had my own dreams though they had morphed considerably over the years. Now that I knew I could never leave I had to think of ways to be happy in this world.

“To save the children…to starve the beast…” He answered looking at me closely afraid perhaps that he’d miss some nuance of expression if he were not careful.

“Are there other people living here?” I asked pointing to the house behind us, our house.

“Yes of course…” He answered as if it had been obvious all along.

“Then why haven’t I ever seen them!” I was angry and hurt now for as much as I loved Arius it seemed an unspeakably cruel thing to keep me from my own kind.

“The house creates a life for each child according to their innermost wishes…most of them exist in illusions of their former home. You chose the truth.” It was all too much. I shook myself free when he moved to comfort me and ran into the house searching each room I came upon with violent fervor. Why couldn’t I find the others? Why had I chosen to live in this wasteland with Arius when I could have been living in paradise (false though it might have been)? Was my imagination that stunted that I had simply been unable to come up with anything on my own? I thought of Arius as he had appeared to me all those years ago, of the sadness I had perceived in his averted gaze. Had I stayed for him? Had I sensed his loneliness? His isolation? Was I bound here by empathy? By love? Or by my own cynical, rational mind?

I spent days wallowing in my self-pity and doubts. And everyday without fail Arius brought me food and water. Sometimes he even left me puzzle boxes with little items inside, items that he thought were treasures but I recognized as pebbles, feathers, and shells. Once he even brought me a cow bell on a silver platter and I was sure it was the best thing he could think of and I couldn’t help but laugh despite my frustration. Arius didn’t quite understand what it was that made humans tick. In the end I concluded that he had nothing to do with my choice to remain. In the end I concluded that he had everything to do with my choice to remain.

It was only after the veil of self-pity had lifted that I remembered Arius’ words “Our objectives are in opposition to one another.” Arius’ had confided his dream to me. He wanted to save the children and starve the beast. Did that mean that Zagan was doing the opposite? Was Zagan responsible for Oz’s death?

Sunday Writing Prompt – Select a Heading

Alice was not a product of science but a product of hope. A hope, albeit threadbare, that held two very special people hostage for over 10 years.

Joseph and Avina had been trying for years to conceive. The strain of infertility tore at their marriage and at their faith in the universe’s benevolence. Alice was a miracle and with her birth they grew both individually and as a unit. Alice was a precocious child full of light and wonder. They spoiled her and she loved them without embarrassment as only very small children can.

Alice died when she was 6 years old, drowned in the river behind their house. She had been told never to go to the river by herself but on that particular day she decided to exercise her curiosity. It was a beautiful day, a day of invitations, spring after a long and isolating winter. She had been coloring in her room when she noticed something by the water. To an adult’s eyes it was only a trick of light but to her mind it was proof of the impossible. She crept out through a side door while her mother made lunch and down to the river’s edge. She hadn’t intended to get wet, only to investigate.

The day that Alice died the willows bowed their heads deeper and wept. Each night Avina and Joseph crept down to the star-glazed water and cried alongside them.

–

I chose When Willows Weep at Night

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2018/05/27/sunday-writing-prompt-select-a-heading/

Mad Swirl

I just wanted to let you know that my short story Midas Eye was featured at Mad Swirl on Friday =)