Longing

I wanted you to be alive. I woke at that dangerous hour when you feel part of your broken soul making off with the last bit of the night before the dawn breaks with its unforgiving brightness. The sun rose before I was ready to face the unforgiving glare of another day without you.

The light invaded my room, its fingers stretching and reaching for me, cocooned in my stale sheets. I had wrapped them so tightly around me in the slumber that they had become a second skin of tear-streaked, sweat-soaked fabric. I ached all over. I wanted you to be alive but of course you were gone, ripped from the scenery of my life by the fickle hand of ill-tempered fate.

It took hours to pull myself up. By the time I managed to find my feet, the room was flooded with the day. They would be coming soon. I could already hear the approach of their steel chariots, feel their predatory breathe on the back of my neck. Fuck them. I wasn’t ready. I dropped back to the bed, closed my eyes and allowed myself to remember…

…feeling wanted and warm.

“Laentina, let me show you something,” you say, and I smile and give you my hand.

The foliage here is thick, scented like exotic perfume. The humidity has already made my flesh slick and shiny in the afternoon light. The cotton dress is plastered to my curves, your eyes rake over my body and I am charged by the hunger in those hazel pools. You lead me through the palms and long grass, ducking under heavy boughs of pink and orange bougainvilleas. We move deeper into the forest, away from the rows of shotgun houses toward the river.

The Falls. I know that is where you are taking me. You can’t know how often I have gone there before on my own. Water was always my best conductor and the Falls have been my safe haven, my laboratory, my church...for longer than I have known you. You can’t know this so I smile and try to look surprised and delighted when the path ends at the base of their beautiful torrents. The power of their tumults sends a fine mist raining down over our heated bodies and I close my eyes and pull the coolness down over me. Then you are slipping the dress over my head, kissing my neck and shedding your own clothes all at once. We are naked, pressing hot flesh and panting with desire.

You draw me forward into the pool at the base of the Falls. The cold water slips up my calves, rising higher up my thighs, licking at my sex with its frigid tongue. Then your fingers are there, sliding inside me, easing my legs apart to make room for your urgent erection. I kiss you, grabbing your face in both hands so I can feel the roughness of your cheeks against my palms. You lift me into your arms, and bring my body down, impaling me as our feet sink deeper into the silt. We move together in the shafts of sunlight that paint the surface of the water with shimmering diamonds. Your kisses move down, tracing the taunt lines of my neck, the slope of my shoulder – soft lips giving way to biting teeth that tear my skin with exquisite violence, just enough rage and pain to make me see sparks and scream for release.

Our bodies buck and writhe against each other. The water is churning around us now, blackened and rough, no longer refreshing as if the heat from our fucking has set it to boil. There is a fire in my stomach, rolling and pitching and I feel my body tighten around you. Your hands are talons on my breasts, your mouth white hot on my swollen nipples. There are other sounds now, night sounds, mingled with our moans. The woods have come alive around us. I can sense the shadows of creatures drawing closer, their watchful eyes glowing in the forested gloom and their claws raking the sand at the river’s edge.

It is so hot now, as if we are trapped in the furnace of the earth. You are keening, a feral sound that tears at my heart and spikes my need. You are evolving. It is starting, even with your beautiful cock still buried deep in my folds. The change is starting to overtake you. There is only this moment, only you and I. I feel my soul reach out and meld with yours. This coupling, so longed for, is the most important moment of both our lives. Your orgasm rockets through your body, travels like a white hot light up your shaft and explodes inside me. I scream with the fury of it. I let myself go, feel the burning thing inside me rise up like a terrible phoenix. We are reduced to clawing, howling beings of lust and I am suddenly unsure that even you can survive this.

Then, its leaves us like the tide, quaking and soft in its wake. Your kisses become the tender ones I have come to love so dearly. I cling to you and I can feel you slipping from me.

“No, no...Fight it. Fight for me”. I plead, clutching your limp body to mine. Please, not this one. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear this. The prayer starts in my mind, then its raging louder until it tears from my throat in ragged screams, every word like a razor ripping skin. Your face is soft, your eyes closed, your lips flushed and slightly parted, almost smiling. Delicate rivulets of bright red blood escape from the corners of both your eyes and run thinly down your cheeks. Gone. I let you slip out my arms, watch you sink down to where the deep currents will cradle you until you are found.

I stand, my body streaked with river mud and the grief spilling from my every pore. I stumble back, alone, letting the vines and thorns whip and pull at my flesh. By the time I get back home, I am sore and bloodied and black inside with loss. Cursed. I know now that I am a vile abomination, a black widow, a sucker of souls.

I can hear the crowds now, their feet pounding the ground. I can hear the chanting getting stronger, more urgent. They have found my lover and will be coming for me. I know what they will call me...Enchantress, Witch and worse. They will punish me. Kill me, most certainly. I get to my feet and throw off the sheets. I will go to my death willingly now. I will go out and meet them, reeking of the river, bruised and broken. There is nothing else left for me now. There is no one left I want to survive me.

The crowd rounds the bend and makes for the little white house covered in wisteria where Laentina Truman lives. She has defiled and murdered a good, god-fearing man. She seduced him away from his friends and family and lured him to die in the shadows. The town will not tolerate her kind for one moment longer. They will extinguish her cursed bloodline once and for all.

Suddenly, a figure steps from the porch and into the street. Laentina turns to greet them, her dark hair wild around her shoulders and her perfect breasts and slender hips dirty and crisscrossed with ruddy red scrapes and welts. Her face is swollen and streaked with tear tracks. She swipes at her eyes, raises her chin defiantly. . The crowd rushes toward her, consumed by self-righteous rage and bloodlust. As they fall upon her, the ones closest hear a rush of words, spoken with an eerie calm, ”I loved him, and I wanted him alive.”