Sitting

Untitled Short Fiction
(Sometimes called "Sitting")


"Have you ever played with a peach?" 

She chuckled happily and took in her hand a peach made of air. 

"Here, you take a firm, well-velveted peach," she continued showing him the invisible fruit, "and you just, very gently, brush your cheek with it."  She closed her eyes and brushed the peach on her cheek. 

"And then you just roll it, softly, down your chin, rub it on the back of your neck, behind the ear, below the hairline.  Then, down your neck, to that little cavity below the apple, and just rotate it for awhile." 

She seemed to be enjoying herself; she looked him contently in the eye.  He blinked nervously, and she giggled to herself. 

"Then, when you're ready," she said, placing his hand on top of hers, "come down to the side," she circled about her left breast, "and just gyre it on the nipple."  She sighed as though her hand indeed held the velvet globule and smiled.  And chuckled again. 

"Have I told you recently that you're beautiful?" he asked. 

The two laid half-naked in the summer grass, in the shade of a rustling emerald elm.  She caressed his face. 

"I can't be any more beautiful to you than you are to me," she reminded him.  He chuckled with quiet unbelief and she sat up. 

"No, really," she said.  The wind stirred her hair, and she brought her hand searchingly to the base of his skull.  "Your mind is like this...  four-dimentional structure made of lines and blue--complicated to impossibility, but to you, it just makes sense." 

He looked up at the sky for a moment, as though considering her words.  The clouds were like little wisps the wind hadn't smoothed out yet.  He imagined he could see the stars, and closed his eyes, laying down. 

She curled onto his body, head on his chest to hear the steady tattoo of his heart.  Steadiness--he was always steadiness and stoicness and, and unmoveable; a giant, a stone that could only be warmed by the sun, but not changed.  She smiled and shuddered at the same time. 

The wind seemed to grow colder and she shivered though he didn't notice her.  He could see the stars. 

Each one, so tiny, that they were like pinpricks in the veil of Earth's night; they shone. 

He felt them nip and bite at him with the sharpness of their silver light.  He moved the galaxy around him, spun the celestial bodies until he found the centre.  Here, here was a greater feeling of pull, a pressure that began to crush him just as much as he could bear.  But he wanted more.  So he plucked the nearest quasar and gouged himself in the arms and chest until he stained the cosmos with his pain. 

"What are you thinking?" she asked, stroking his cheeks with a fingertip. 

"Not anything, really," he blinked. 

She tightened her lips and curled up again on his chest. 

"I want to wake up now," she mumbled in half-sleep.  He couldn't hear her, he was screaming, reveled in the fury of pain.