Dark Lust

November 11, 2014November 10, 2014 ~ blazemcrob ~ 20 Comments

Droplets of water, impure at best, having been defiled by the pollutants above my present sanctuary, drip annoyingly around me. I bounce around like a child trying to avoid becoming ‘it’ in a game of tag. What is this annoying sport I am forced to play? Me, the Dark Angel, ruler of the sky above.

A ruler – that was yesterday, one so seemingly far back that mere remnants of recollection scratch at my mind. We live in the present, no better off for what once was. The future means naught either. The now; the manifestation of what is… that is what we are left with.

Listen to me, pandering on like a pathetic whiner instead of the glorious creature I am. Control! I need to take control of what surrounds me: seize it from the one who is depriving me of my birthright.

The ceiling of my inglorious cave refuses to cease its watery supplication to one who could be ruler of the sky above and of the land below. Yes, I could have ruled alongside him, but that would have meant a denigration of my status. I would have been a mere titular ornament.

Truth be known, I would have been nothing more than a slut at his beck and call. A woman of my superior stature, a Dark Angel born to rule, need not accept that.

Fresh air blows in through the cave opening, carrying with it the scent of love in the making, an aroma I have waited for far too long. If nothing else, I need to leave this place and get ready for my new now. I need to find this sensation for myself and carve out my kingdom.

Walking towards the opening of my cave, I find the sky to be dark when I venture outside. Ah, the perfect time of day for me. I stand bare naked. When I escaped his arms, I was left with nothing, forced to retreat with none of my former entourage either. How I long for their groveling at my feet, hoping to please me and curry my favor.

Pain strikes me as I unfold my wings. Too many years of not being used have relegated them to the arthritic state that the miscreant humans suffer as they age.

This is my time of rebirth – the pain means nothing.

One by one, my Dark feathers unfurl, telling me of their desire to fulfill their obligation to my wants and needs. Yes, individually they remember, and collectively they rejoice at my decision to take back what is mine. Like a tiger stretching in anticipation of the hunt, they become one force and ready themselves for what I expect of them.

My wings spread far as a smile crosses my face. Power… the power is being restored to me once more. My mind has wakened from its dormancy and is fully aware, and with it my body, that of a Queen preparing to ascend her throne once again. I shake off the inactivity of the past years.

Walking to the edge of the abyss wherein the valley lies before me, I jump out over the edge, feeling the rush as I fall, before allowing my wings to take flight. I soar, reveling in the slowly building majesty of the power my physicality adds to the ever-increasing strength of my mind, one that mere mortals could never hope to achieve.

I fly for hours, gaining strength and wisdom with each passing moment. The now. I exist for the moment. I have discarded the tarnished memories that would cling to me. Yesterday is slop for the sow; today is freedom.

Daybreak is approaching and with it, I will now be visible to the rabble below. It matters not to me – clothed or bare – I wish to bathe and remove the repugnant desecration coating my body.

A bubbling spring presents itself to me. Upon reaching it, I dip my right wing in and then my left, allowing the ebony appendages to warm the water to a soothing level. Ah, the majestic rising bubbles act like cleansing sponges, working their magic on every inch of my body.

Feelings and desires long forgotten rush back to me. They tug from every direction. My thighs twitch in anticipation of being satisfied by a playmate of my choice. My breasts rise to the top of the water; nipples harden and scream out in supplication. Yes, a lover is needed, one who will do as I wish by want for the sheer delight of pleasing me. A lust born of devotion; one devoid of all control.

But, there is much to do before the moment comes for me to sate my desires.

Foot falls approach as I am enjoying my prolonged bath to the fullest. Every step and pause relayed to my hyper-senses; my wing tips bristle in anticipation of what is to come. Another approaches from the opposite direction. Tsk, tsk…stupid vermin. A trick such as this will gain them nothing.

I wait until they have almost approached my position before I open my eyes. Both of them have a look of evil intent, a look not hidden from me as I see through to their souls.

“I did not invite you two to share my bath,” I say, making sure my lips are luscious and full as I leer at them mischievously.

One of them disrobes, steps into the spring. Faster than either of them can comprehend, my wing reaches him and slices his torso from the lower extremities of his body. A parody of the jester, both halves acting independently of each other, arms and legs working to achieve escape: a wish not to be granted. Before his worthless soul departs his body, I reach out as my right wing plucks out an eyeball. Popping it into my mouth, I enjoy the luscious tidbit as his other eye watches in horror.

His companion defecates his pants as he reaches the brush to add a coating of vile vomit to them.

“Would you like to join your friend?” I ask. “Or perhaps you might like to leave.”

Nodding up and down like the coward he is, he begins to run away. I land in his path and hand him the useless arm of his dead co-conspirator. He stutter-steps to a complete halt, shaking as if he were caught in a freezing blizzard.

“Don’t lose this,” I intone. “Deliver it to the one who dares usurp my power. Tell him the Dark Angel is back.”

Stepping aside, I allow him to scuttle by, relishing the lopsided motion of his movements caused by his self-defecation.

I return to the spring and stare at the remaining eye in the bobbing head. “See what my soul is like,” I say as I pluck it out and hold it before my face, then I place it in my mouth and chew it as if it were a grape.

Thirsty, I tear his head from his neck and sate my needs from the trickling blood. When I have finished, I toss the remnants of his body out of the blood bath and seek a fresh area of the spring in which to cleanse myself.

This magical valley has many springs, and it is only a matter of time before I find another one, one I remember well.

My adversary will not allow my mere return to his fiefdom. As much as he desires me for the pleasure I could reward him, my homecoming will show him I have no desire to keep the status quo as is. For all his faults, he is not stupid.

Patience, unlike before, is now a virtue of mine. I know he will come. My guess is it will not be long.

From all sides, they peasants gather. Yes, they stare, wanting to see who dares attempt to usurp the power of Kirsten. Their fear of him dictates that they come to display their support. I laugh at them, not feeling threatened in the least by the cowardly rabble. As for my nudity, what does it matter? The men and women both will lust after me once having seen me in my total splendor. I am not ashamed of who or what I am.

When a worthy garment can be sewn for me, then I will clothe myself, not before. I refuse to wear the rags of peasants.

An old woman, one whose ancestor I remember well, stands there, bearing a gold embroidered gown. She kneels and presents it to me as though it were a crown. I smile. Yes, this garment I will wear, but not before Kirsten and I settle things. I will allow no droplet of blood to taint it.

As I knew he would, he arrives in his usual grand manner. His wings, if anything, are even darker than mine, and they shine like precious stones in the light. But that smile, and his overly plump red lips give him a near feminine appearance. He circles, clad entirely in black, and any misconceptions about his sex are gone. The huge bulge in his trousers assures me of that. I provocatively move around under the water, displaying my charms to their best advantage.

He lands next to me, the audience around us waiting with bated breath. Kirsten may appear to be calm at the moment, but that could rapidly change. Many of the residents in the valley have fallen prey to his vicious mood swings. Perhaps I am not exactly a benevolent being myself, but my demands of obedience are not repaid with the sway of a child’s tantrum.

“Ah, my Dark Angel, I see you have returned,” he says. “You look the same as when you left, maybe even more of a spark in your eyes. And your charms are still lovely.”

“Not that you’ll ever get to take advantage of them, Kirsten. I pick and choose my lovers carefully. You don’t pass the test.”

One of those nasty mood swings is about to happen. My wings are like sensors, probing my surroundings at all times, warning me when I should take greater care. This is one of those times.

Or is it?

Throwing caution to the wind, my feathers reach out to him in an instant, wrapping themselves around his head and pulling him into the water. He struggles, but the advantage is mine. I tease him, allowing him to come up every now and again for a gulp of air. I want to stare into those eyes of his when he realizes what I have in store for him.

He reaches for me but is dragged backward. Confusion colors his face; chaos colors his world. Both of them evident in those black orbs as he stares at me in fright. I laugh as he is pulled around the spring; the water marks his bloodied trail. His blood…yes, the blood of a Dark Angel. We do bleed.

He returns to where I wait for him, a remnant of what he once was; pieces of jagged flesh jut down from his once haughty features. Hardly any skin is left on his desecrated body.

Ah… my lovelies. They cling to him yet, even above the surface of the water: trusted fish with teeth so sharp they could cut a metal rod in half. His shaking is not enough to disengage them. But those eyes, they must remain as I do what I need to do. My soul must be seen by my would be assailant.

Through what remains of his chest, I plunge my hand, using my nails when I must to part the sinew, and pull out his heart. I hold it high in the sky for the audience to view before I calmly take bite after bite out of it, teasing him with it; at one point even allowing the still beating life force to graze against his destroyed lips. When the last bite is taken and swallowed, what is left of him falls back into the water.

“Eat your fill,” I tell my pets, as they cleanse even the water of blood, and I wash one last time before standing up and motioning for the woman with my gown to come forward.

She smiles as she proudly carries it over to me and helps me put it on. I smile back. Not my usual style, but loyalty must be rewarded.

The rest of the onlookers watch me in fear, not knowing what to expect. They can find out another day. I need to go back to my old home. Kirsten has no use for it now.

When I arrive, the castle is ready for me. Servants are already there. And, when I walk into my bedroom, I find a young, muscular man, as well a petite woman with a sparkle in her eyes that says she will please me in whatever way I wish.

It is good to be back…

~ Blaze McRob

Do Not Recycle

April 29, 2014April 27, 2014 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 23 Comments

From where she sprawls in the overgrown grass the dog snarls wetly, while underneath her bulk, a litter suckles on her teats. She watches Johan as he passes the chicken-wire outside the garden, and he sees madness in her black eyes. The pups feed noisily. Clouds slide beneath the sun, turning her young into a shapeless mass of eager fur.

The house behind is grey and still. Half-light shines in the broken window panes and on the children’s toys in the garden; gaudy plastic tractors and oven sets still speckled with rainfall. There is a potting shed that does not look as though it has seen use in twenty years, flower beds filled with a mixture of daffodils and weeds, and at the front door a thin woman in a dressing gown. She sucks on a cigarette while the door frame supports her weight, and it is not difficult to associate the sounds of the feeding pups with her own lips as they pucker and twitch, milking the cancer stick for every ounce.

He is almost past the house when she catches his gaze. For a few seconds, eyes not unlike those of the bitch on the front lawn, burn into his and he sees the rest of the street reflected in their dejected depths. He does not belong here; a well-fed, clean-shaven man in his work suit, treading the pavement in shoes black not with dirt but strong polish. There is a reason he does not come here often, a reason that he has not visited his sister’s family for over a year. It shines in the woman’s yellow eyes, the yellow fingers by her mouth, the faded yellow lines beside the road; symbols hiding just beneath the surface of the street, in this place where the illusion is shattered and one does not have to strain to see life as it is.

His feet lead him down three more roads no different than the first before he comes to a signpost marked Pasture Street. The house could be any of the terraced red-bricks ahead, and he is thankful its number is committed to his head. He fancies that the street smells cleaner here, the houses newer, the sky brighter at the edges. It is not saying much.

As he walks up the garden path towards the crumbling white-plaster front of the house, his stomach squirms. It is several months since he has spoken to his sister, and they did not part on good terms. That was when she stopped taking his phone calls. He wrote; sometimes defensively, sometimes in anger, even apologetically towards the end, but his correspondence went unanswered.

It did not seem out of place to ask her to move away from here. Theirs was an idyllic childhood, on the farm in rural Sussex. He still remembers days spent running through the paddocks, their fishing lessons with Father, the seasonal festivals heralding summer and winter with wicker offerings; straw men and fruity women paying homage to the spirits of hearth and home.

This hard street is no place for a new family. They deserve better, especially little Chloe.

His finger finds the bell. A shrill sound fills the house, echoed somewhere above by the distant screech of a gull. The seconds tighten his ribs around his heart. He presses the bell again, then knocks against the door.

The windows either side of the house are obscured by curtains of the same floral design they grew up with. Dust clings to the glass. The rooms behind are black, unlit, and it is impossible to see or hear anything within. Hope mingles with concern inside his chest, and he wonders if they have moved house after all, if that is why Liz has not been writing back. Certainly, the battered Vauxhall that he had hated so much is nowhere in sight.

He knocks again, then crouches to the letterbox. His suit trousers ride up the backs of his legs. Lifting the metal sheet, he peers inside. Two wide eyes stare back at him through the slat.

“Chloe?”

His breath catches in his throat as the young girl vanishes from view. His niece would be six now, he guesses, or maybe seven. They haven’t moved, then. He realises he is shaking; nipped at by the teeth of the street, the stress, poisoned by anxiety and more than anything else a deep, underlying worry for his sister and her family. They are his only family now. Everybody needs blood-ties.

Straightening himself up, he stretches, flexes his arms and throws his weight against the door. When it does not immediately give he goes again, hurling himself into the wood. Each crash fills the street but none of the neighbours notice, or if they do, they do not seem to care. On the fifth try the lock splinters and he falls into the house.

Dust swirls on the unsettled air. It fills his eyes, his nose, the back of his mouth. He tastes ash, and the sweet tang of decay. Slowly his eyes adjust to the still dimness of the hallway. A chest-of-drawers emerges, an empty coat-stand, one small pair of child’s shoes, all covered in a grey coating of hoar-dust.

“Chloe?”

For a second he sees her in the kitchen at the end of the hallway; a small, thin shape standing beside the dinner table. Then he steps towards her and she flees from sight behind the door.

“Liz? Chloe?”

The girl is fast. She leads him on a chase throughout the house. Twice he almost catches her, in the sitting room and the kitchen, but each time she slips away. Clouds of dust fill the air, mingling with the rotten aroma of the refuse in the kitchen. Rubbish spills out over the lino. Cupboards leak. The fruit bowl swims darkly by the sink. In the sitting room, dust rises from armchairs like ghosts from beige two-piece tombs. He notices the curtains again; lasting impressions from a different life. A small wicker doll, a remnant from his sister’s childhood, watches him from the mantelpiece. The house shifts with silent whorls in his wake.

“Liz,” he shouts as he returns to the hallway. Ankles like bone flash past the bannisters and he realises Chloe has gone upstairs.

Another smell catches in his throat as he ascends through the house. It is deeper, more sickly, cutting through the squalor from the kitchen, reminding him with numbing dread of his father’s study. He found the man four weeks ago, sitting quite cold at his desk next to the photograph of Mother. When Liz had not attended the funeral or so much as picked up his calls, he had been compelled to come back here, where he had sworn he would never come again.

The second-floor seems brighter, where light falls on the landing. Beside it, shadows pool like moisture in the recesses of the walls. He follows the scuff marks around the landing to the room at the far end. The door is already open. Inside, the curtains are drawn, and after the glimpse of sunlight, it takes his eyes a moment to readjust.

It was Liz and Mark’s bedroom, once. Gradually the furnishings emerge from the gloom: the wardrobe, the dressing table, a television mounted on one wall, the king-sized bed, and mounted atop it, propped up against the headrest, two figures, fully-dressed.

Unease sinks into horror as he glimpses limp arms, tattered clothes, heads lolling where they rest on their shoulders. Almost immediately he turns away.

The bedroom feels colder than the rest of the house. The wall in front of him is cream, speckled with damp near the skirting boards, and something else, steaming on the carpet. He realises it is vomit, and that it has come from his mouth. He wonders if it is the damp that he could smell coming upstairs. He knows it is not.

Forcing himself to turn, he looks up; not at the figures on the bed, but their murky reflection in the dressing table mirror. When he grows familiar with their vague silhouettes, he reaches for a wet-wipe from the dressing table. It has long since stopped being wet, but it proves effective all the same when he lifts it to the mirror.

Dust smears from the glass. Wipe by wipe, the couple on the bed become more visible. Realising that a lump has settled in his throat, he swallows it down. His hands are trembling, but he forces himself to address the sight on the bed.

Something is wrong. Even through his tears, through the dirt-spotted glass, he can see that. The trembles have spread to his arms and legs but he manages to turn from the mirror to the bed.

Mark’s legs are flat. Shoes filled with sticks and stones and clumps of soil sit slightly separate from his hollow trousers. The shirt above might have been white, once. Now it is mustard yellow with stains; rot and the brown juice of the fruits used to stuff it. He can see pips, and things that look like pips but wriggle with small lives of their own.

Liz’s tights are not much better; misshapen cloth-limbs stuffed with more clothes. Liquids seep from her torso and the dark gap between her legs. Something that could pass as a pillowcase fills out her form while arms made of bundled branches drape by her side.

Their faces are white polythene bags, filled with what he cannot begin to guess. Children’s paints and marker pen account for the rest; grinning expressions imbued in black ink that they might last forever. Liz’s mouth is drawn in a wide, vacant smile. Stepping closer, Johan notices more branches, moss, shredded paper, teabags and strips of plastic. Where the figures’ hands meet, black twig fingers intertwine and he realises the white-faced macabre effigies are those of motherhood and fatherhood; thin, skinless things filled with silent love of the undying sort that can only be manufactured from crude oil and recyclable waste.

Wicker-Liz shudders, pitching forward, and Johan falls back from the bed with a shout. Mark moves next, head rolling from one shoulder to regard him with wide, empty eyes. Johan flounders across the floor as a third figure climbs spider-like from behind the debris-dolls.

Chloe does not look to have eaten properly for many weeks. Breaths wheeze through small, near-translucent teeth. Her dress might have been pretty, once, but those days are long behind it. She rests on her haunches between mother and father, and even in the dimness he can see the thin bones in her legs. Long arms grope for Scrap-Mark, her skeletal face finding his squishy fruit-chest. She begins to sing.

He doesn’t know where his sister is, or why Chloe is alone. When he tries to approach her, she clings to her makeshift mother and shrieks until he backs away. Sinking cross-legged to the carpet, he stares up at his niece and smiling Wicker-Liz. Caught in her scribbled eyes, time slips away from him, until Liz as he remembers her stares back; beaming as she runs just ahead of him through warm crops of corn, laughing when she turns back to him, goading him faster through the fields, beneath blue cloudless skies. At some point he joins in Chloe’s song, and for a brief moment, in a dark room, in a house filled with dust and decay of all kinds, a broken family finds ragged peace.

~ Thomas Brown