I awoke from a dead sleep to the sound of screams, and reached for my sword. Sheets, sweat-soaked, tangled my legs as I scrambled out of bed, hunting furiously in the dark for my weapon. I cocked my head, listening as I fumbled in the pitch black. The scream echoed, but only in my mind, as if she screamed from across a chasm that existed only in my head. In a few moments, even the echo died away and it ocurred to me that I don't have a sword. I'm not wrapped in a bedroll, sleeping beneath the stars in my boots. I'm not being pursued. I'm standing in my bedroom, naked, breathing hard, and trying to decide when the characters I created became such a part of me that I shared their nightmares.
I awoke from a dead sleep and reached for you. I don't know what roused me. The house is silent, no vivid flashes of memory assail me. Not even the foggy idea of a dream gives me indication as to why I woke. I reach for you anyway, sure that whatever startled me out of sleep threatens you. I know I placed my body between it and you, sleeping at the edge of the bed furthest from the wall, just in case. The bed beside me is empty, save for pillows I've scattered in my restless sleep, a comforter I tore off at some point to alleviate the stiffling heat of the August night. Then it ocurred to me that this is ridiculous. Why should I wake and leap to protect you? Why should that be instinctual? You've never been here, never slept beside me. We've hardly met, and yet, I'm grasping for you in the darkness to reassure myself I haven't failed to keep you safe.
Sometimes, I like to gaze at my reflection long enough that it appears to be someone else. Like a word you repeat over and over until it loses its meaning, becomes so many impotent syllables. I think there's freedom in that breif span of meaningless words, a power to make them mean whatever you wish. I like to stare at my reflection until it becomes someone else, so I can create something attractive about myself. I admire the supple, full lips, so uncharacteristically soft. The promiment tone of biceps and legs thich with corded muscle. I find myself wondering about the eyes first blue, then green, then grey and back again. I wonder what thoughts they conceal, what they might convey with a look, what I might find about the man who belongs to those eyes if I just studied them a bit longer. I want to touch him and be touched, and it occurs to me that I can finally relate to all the people that have let me capture them in little glass jars and sit them on my shelves.
Sometimes I like to stare at the world. I like to watch, for hours, as the sun creeps overhead, changing shadows in its arc, spilling golden, ambient light first here, then there. I like to watch where the sun alights, as it warms the verdant leaves and grasses of these rural towns or sends streaks of fading light dancing across waves crashing onto an empty beach. A human interaction will spoil my study, but that so rarely happens. It occurs to me that the world, on its own, is a vastly more full place when it is emptied of mankind.
It occurs to me I'm not fond of the word 'occurs'.
I've been thinking and I realize I want to feel skin against mine. I want to feel lips. Hungry, insatiable lips. I want to kiss and be kissed, to feel another body pressed into me, strategically placed. Where my hands cup her cheeks, my thumbs roving up the curve of her ears. Where her breasts are flattened against my chest, soft supple skin pushing against me, a pleasant weight, just enough to get my heart beating. Her hips, just barely grazing mine, her legs wandering up and down my own, crossing each other at the ankles, brushing at the thighs, calves, toes. I want to feel her hands on my back, each fingertip a seperate point of gentle pleasure. I have never kissed a woman without craving her fingers on my naked back, kneading the muscles between my shoulders as if those ten points of contact could somehow give her more of me.
I want to sink into her slowly, without all the tearing of flesh, the clenching of teeth, the low, rumbling rage in the throat that so often accompanies these flashes of eroticism. I can see her hips rising, just slightly, to meet me. A hint of impatience. One bare, shapely leg wrapping around my waist, pulling, just a suggestion of desire. I can see my hand, absent-mindedly holding that leg from beneath, as if supporting what she wants. A promise of an ecstasy that is as slow and deliberate in arriving as it is certain to arrive.
I can see her body, littered with kisses. The hardly visible glistening of sweat and saliva on her skin. Eyes fluttering closed. A soft, almost inaudible sigh escapes her open mouth, rolls over my lips and into mine as if a part of her is inside me at the moment before she's wrapped around me completely.
In time, I'm sure, I'll awake from this. Perhaps reaching for a sword or an absent, half-imagined lover. Perhaps with fingers turned to claws and teeth to fangs that will seek to tear flesh, shed blood, degrade and destroy. To bring pain like only the Sadist in me can imagine. But it occurs to me that this, this brief and ultimately meaningless fantasy, is more and more a reflection I've stared at long enough to make it mean anything.
Thoughtfully Yours,
-S.R.
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