… solipsubmissive …

Been a busy girl with all the little things that invade one’s life.  This week found me shopping for a car.  The car I have been driving since my nearly twenty-year-old daughter was in 7th grade has been a very good car.  215,000 miles good … and it’s still running fairly well with only some minor maintenance issues.  But … you know.   It was time to put her to rest.  She was gasping and coughing and being generally un-nice to the environment, and that’s just not good.

So, because the dear thing was still chugging along, I wasn’t in a terrible rush, and had time to play around with possibilities.  I knew I wanted something incredibly gas efficient, something under $10K, and something not ugly.  Hondas were high on my list, for obvious reasons.  I found a couple, but there were little issues that just had me holding off.  Until Wednesday.  (Hm, sensing a little theme there.  Snap snap.)

I found the first car with which I have ever fallen in love.

It is a  2004 Civic Hybrid in opal silver blue metallic.  Yup, that’s the actual color … it can look sky blue in the sunlight, silver in the moonlight, and it has this opal effect that just makes it shimmer.  It’s like fairy tale magic on a car.  The ad said “light blue,” which had me cringing, and i might have just passed it by, but the Hybrid part sucked me in, the test drive enchanted me, and the color just sealed the deal.  Color me happy.  Drove it off the lot with a 1 year warranty for under 9K, and am all set to enjoy an average of 40mpg.  Zip zip!

Suck it, SUV lovers.  ~beaming~

Now, with that out of the way, I can get back to the writing with a vengeance.  Be very afraid.

Stephen and Elizabeth have been on my mind, occupying space that should be used on my professional work, especially with a deadline looming.  i’ve tried to work around it, but it appears they are going to be stubborn.  i’m afraid it’s out of my hands … i’m going to have to toss another piece of the story out into the world.

i’m going to sleep on it.  Perhaps when i wake, the installment will have coalesced into a viable continuation.  In the meantime, if you’ve followed me for any length of time, you might want to brush up.  If you’re new, perhaps you’d like to bring yourself up to date.  Either way, look for part fourteen in the coming days.

the lesson, part one

This is a continuation.  You might want to go back to the beginning by clicking on this link: Part one.

“Hush.”

Her heart was pounding in her ears, the blood rushing to keep up with the adrenaline, to keep pace with the rapid pulse, as Zoe struggled against the hands that held her down.  She opened her mouth to scream, but before she could make a sound, his mouth descended on hers, stealing her breath with a kiss more cruel than caressing.  Still it shocked her into momentary immobility as she felt herself begin to respond.

An instant later, she realized what she’d done.  Zoe recoiled in horror and began struggling again, kicking and bucking against the body that pinned her, pulling with all the strength she had against the large hand that held both of her wrists in a single, strong grip above her head.  She turned her head to the side, finally wrenching her lips from his.  ”Who are you?” she managed on a choked gasp.

He chuckled softly, close to her ear, and pulled back.  She lifted her eyes, allowed them to rove up the front of the black broadcloth, to follow the glittering row of obsidian buttons, past the stark white square at his throat to his chin, strong and set and stubbled with a day’s growth of beard …

Zoe sat bolt upright with a gasp and clutched the covers to her chest with shaking hands.  Beside the bed, her cell phone rang with steady insistence, but she didn’t reach for it.  After the sixth ring, it stopped.  A moment later, the alert sounded that let her know the caller had left a voice mail.  She dropped her head into her hands.  ”Jesus Christ,” she muttered and looked at the window.  From the position and color of the rays slanting in through the small space between her curtains, she guessed it to be about 3pm.

She sighed, pushed back the covers and got out of bed, pieces of the dream still floating about.  No less than she deserved, she thought with a silent snort, after her nocturnal conversation with that priest.  Without bothering to pull up the sheets and make the bed, Zoe headed for the shower.  If she didn’t get to the market before it closed, she’d have no fresh produce for dinner.  Quite forgetting the message on her cell phone, she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.

Twenty minutes later she emerged, her dark hair piled on her head and wrapped in a towel, her skin flushed a becoming shade of pink from the heat of her shower.  She flipped upside down and unwound the towel, gave her head a cursory rub, then straightened and began gathering it into a knot at her crown, knowing she hadn’t time to let it dry.  She stabbed a couple chopsticks into the mass, then hurriedly pulled on a pair of sweats and her sports bra.  She was just reaching for her t-shirt when the cell phone rang again.  Tugging it over her head, she walked over to the nightstand, glanced at the display and winced.  Her agent.  She jabbed a finger at the button to answer it.  ”Hi, Gracie.”

“Finally!  I’ve been calling all day.”  The older woman launched into a rant about the many times she’d called, her voice rising and falling as she described the worry, the anguish, the despair, the need to know exactly where she was on the novel, and did she realize her deadline was approaching at an astonishing rate.

Zoe waited for an appropriate pause, then said again, “Hi, Gracie.”

The woman on the other end signed in exasperation.  ”Could you at least tell me when you’re going to go off the grid for weeks at a time?”

Zoe scooped her keys from the counter, grabbed her purse and nodded, then realized Gracie couldn’t hear her head move.  ”I’ll try to remember,” she said as she stepped into the hallway.

“Where are you going now?”

“To the market.  If I don’t get food, I won’t be able to write, and you’d have to find a new writer about whom you can worry.”

Gracie paused.  ”All right.  But call me tomorrow so we can discuss where you are on this project.  I need to narrow down the release date so I can start the promotional projects.”

“I promise,” said Zoe.  ”Bye, now.”  She found the off button with her thumb without waiting to hear a return good-bye and slipped the phone into her handbag.  She skipped down the stairs and popped out the access door, almost running into a rough-looking red-headed boy in the process.  She gave him a distracted smile of apology, and headed down the street, her mind already slipping into the scene she was currently writing.

As she’d feared, the fruit was dreadfully picked over, but she managed to find enough to make up a quick fruit salad.  She picked out some zucchini and eggplant for roasting, slipped them into her mesh bag, and paid for them.  The little old lady behind the register gave her a reproachful look, and Zoe realized it was a few minutes past the time they usually closed.  Sheepishly, she smiled, took her bag and slung it over her shoulder.   She left the market and headed for home at a jaunty pace.

She’d paid little attention to her surroundings on the walk to the market, but she’d managed to work out the scene she’d write that night, and now she looked around with interest.  Her daily walk to the market normally took place in the late morning or early afternoon.  The neighborhood was a different place at this hour.  The buildings and pedestrians cast long shadows, and everyone seemed in a hurry to end their day, to get home, no doubt to their families and evening meals.  Zoe looked wistfully at the whizzing cars as they passed, wondering if they all had someone to whom they were going home.

No sense revisiting her melancholy of the night before.  She fixed her eyes on the sidewalk in front of her, watching the way her elongated shadow stretched before her.  She felt the warmth of the setting sun on  her back, and realized it would likely dry her hair by the time she got home if she released it from the sticks that confined it.  She reached up and plucked them out, one at a time, then stopped to slip them into her handbag.  As she let them go, she realized there was another shadow next to hers, it’s head even with her feet, that had stopped as well.

Instant alarm hit her, but she forced herself to remain calm.  She took another dozen steps, watching as the shadow kept pace, then stopped again.  It stopped, too.  The cars continued to speed by, and there were no other pedestrians on this street.  Zoe bit her lip, then decided that if she was going to be a victim, she wouldn’t be a willing one.  Without warning she whirled around to face her pursuer.

The boy she’d bumped into outside her building stood there, his hands shoved into his pockets, his face in shadow because of the setting sun behind him.  For a moment, they stared at one another.  Zoe opened her mouth to ask why he was following her, but he didn’t wait for her question.  One moment he was standing a dozen feet away, and the next he’d taken off running down an alley between the buildings.

Perplexed, she watched him go, then turned and headed home.  With a little shudder, she picked up the pace a bit.

Continue to:  Part five

There are times my fingertips fairly ache to stroke the keys, when the words are tumbling and churning and reeling inside me, when emotion crowds upon emotion, when those feelings fight over the dancing words, each wishing to claim the best for itself.

It is physical, this need to capture this whatever it is, to cage the right descriptive phrases that will convey to you and you and you my anguish, my sorrow, my joy, or my bliss.  i can feel my tummy flipping and this steady gripping tightness in my chest, almost an anxiety, because one never knows if the words will be friendly, if i can lightly link them and properly twist them until you can feel it, feel what i feel, when you read.

i think of you when i write, as i will forever … even when i feel my resolve begin to crumble.

You make my words beautiful.

i’m not one to repeatedly hurl myself at walls, but that’s precisely what i’ve been doing for 3 years.

Oh.  Wow.  i just realized this blog was 3 years old yesterday.

i suppose it’s not really fair to say i’ve been slamming against that wall for three whole years.  i spent most of the first year at a distance.  An admiring distance, to be sure, but the buffer was there.  So let’s call it two years and some change.

The way things ended tonight would have left me in tears a few months ago, but now i just meet it with resignation.  There comes a time when a woman wants to know her relative value.  (i say relative because i know my worth … my relative value to you is something far different.)

You know where to reach me.  Por siempre.

“You’ve been a very good girl, elise.”  He leaned down and tilted his head so that he could look into her eyes.

“Thank you,” she murmured.  She found his gaze with her own and tried to smile, but her lips only wobbled slightly at the corners.  A fresh wave of pain engulfed her and she gasped, then pressed her lips together.  Despite her brave attempt to hold them back, tears filled her eyes until their weight and gravity demanded they fall.  They slipped silently across the bridge of her nose to curve down her temple and soak the sheets of his bed.

He looked at her hands, palms down and fingers spread, on each side of her head.   He knelt beside the bed and laced his fingers through those of the hand nearest his.  He ached to smooth a hand through her tousled curls, but her hair had been carefully twisted up and pinned in place.  Had she reacted too strongly at any time, tossed her head, perhaps, she’d have dragged her dark dark tresses across her ruined back.  ”We’re almost finished,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes on the word “almost.”  Pain.  Not something she ever enjoyed, but something she willingly endured.  The rewards far exceeded the relative value of her suffering, though few would understand.  She felt him move, felt his humid breath wash over her face just before she felt the pointed tip of his tongue lightly trace the path left by her tears.

“Salty.”  He pulled away and found her eyes open again, open and staring at their interlocked fingers, hers small and light and fragile, tipped with delicate nails precisely filed into white half moons, his large and tan, stained with her blood.  He let go and watched as her hand fell to the sheets.  ”I’ll clean you up, petal.”

elise nodded almost imperceptibly, but her heart jumped, began pounding again in earnest as the fear rebuilt. Cleanup was far from soothing, as it involved pristine white clothes soaked in hot water.  Hot salted water.  She heard the sounds of him soaking the rag, then gentle splashing of the water as he rung it out, and she took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out slowly, hoping to be at her most relaxed when he …

… she screamed.  Her hands tightened into fists and clutched the sheets while words poured from her mouth, incoherent begging words, angry words, words that ultimately meant nothing as he continued with his ministrations, his hands moving with firm purpose as he cleaned her wounds.  Wounds he’d inflicted.

When he was finished, when the blood had stopped oozing from the furrows between the twin rows of raised, inflamed skin, he pressed his lips against the pattern he’d created, slid his hands beneath her abdomen and raised her hips until she was on her knees.  She whimpered once, then grunted when he surged inside her and began fucking her, his rhythm easy and steady.  He found her clit with his fingers and stroked it in time to each thrust until she moaned and began fucking back at him, her ass meeting his hips with a gentle slapping sound.  ”More,” she panted, and he began thrusting deeper and harder.

Almost frantic now, elise clutched at his cock with the walls of her cunt, the orgasm building quickly, as it always did on such nights, for pleasure closely follows in the footsteps of pain, and she needed this release, ached for it.  She pushed herself up on her elbows, the wound on her upper back reminding her of its existence only briefly before she dismissed it from her mind.  ”Now, please,” she cried out, then convulsed around him without waiting.

With a guttural shout, he opened his palm, released the handful of salt he’d clutched, and slapped it down on the word he’d etched into her shoulder blade, his orgasm exploding with a force he felt unfurl from his furthest extremities.  He rode the wave of her pain-soaked screams until he was empty and she was filled, and then he collapsed on the bloody sheets and pulled her against him, their bodies still connected.  He felt the muscles of her cunt contract once more.

“i love you,” she whispered.

He smiled, but didn’t return the declaration.  She’d know in the morning, when she saw the words he’d placed on her body.

So my son talked me into going to see Paranormal Activity with him.  i was resistant because scary movies are not my thing.  i haven’t actually seen one since A Nightmare on Elm Street … the first one.  But if there is anything i hate more than scary movies, it is my fears.  So, although the plan ranged from seeing two different movies to him seeing the movie i’d rather have seen, when it came time to purchase the tickets, i found myself buying two for Paranormal Activity.

My fears just piss me right the hell off.

Everyone warned me it was the scariest movie they’ve ever seen … everyone.  Now, i won’t ruin it for those of you who haven’t seen it, but i will say this:  i was startled enough to scream once.  Other than that, i was neither impressed nor frightened.  Instead, i found myself watching with a detached sort of assessment, rewriting lines of dialogue in my head as the movie progressed.

It was nice to spend an evening with the boy child, though.  ~smile~  And he was more frightened by it than me.  Sleep well, baby boy.

Go me.

“Daños?”

The voice, with that annoying tinny quality created by the speakerphone and distance, pierced his reverie.  He scowled at the triangular device on the conference room table.  ”Yes,” he replied.

“Yes, you agree?”

“No.”

Silence fell, and Daños almost quirked a smile as he envisioned the two men in a similar conference room halfway across the country glancing at one another in confusion.  ”No, you don’t agree?”

At that, he abruptly lost patience with the call, although it hadn’t at all been their fault he’d lost focus.  ”No, I’d like to give it some more thought and run a couple reports.  Email me the proposal.  We’ll pick up where we’ve left off at this time tomorrow.”  Without waiting for the inevitable protests that they were already days behind schedule and approaching the limits of the budget, Daños reached out and slapped his hand on the button to sever the connection.  He leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers and frowned.

Lack of focus had never been a problem, for him, but he hadn’t slept very long, even by his meager standards, nor had he slept well.  Dreams had haunted him for days, dreams that left him frustrated, because they danced just out of reach when he woke.  All he could recall was the echo of a woman’s voice, the musical sound of her soft laughter, and the shadowy memory of the softest, lightest mere brush of a kiss.  And then he’d wake, unable to catch even an edge of the dream. He could feel it curl away from him like the fragrant smoke of a candle just extinguished.

He leaned on an elbow, dropped his forehead into his hand and began smoothing his fingers across the skin as though he could massage his headache away.  I know you’re there.  The soft contralto echoed through his mind again.  He sat up abruptly, reached for his notes, tossed them in  his briefcase, and left the conference room, striding down the corridor to his office.

Work.  Hard, exhausting work would drive it away.  Perhaps he’d tire himself enough to sleep like a normal human being this time.

* * *

Chloe felt the air stir behind her before she actually laid eyes on him.  ”I know you’re there.”  She turned around to glare at him and found herself staring at Michael’s feet.  She crossed her arms and looked up.  ”Afraid to face me down here?”

Michael hovered just out of her reach.  ”Well, quite frankly,” he said, “yes.”

That tugged a reluctant smile from the fallen angel, but it was brief, instantly replaced with the scowl she’d so carefully cultivated while waiting for him to show.

“I wish I had a decent explanation for you,” he began, but she ruthlessly interrupted.  ”Don’t you dare try to apologize or explain things to me!”  She folded her lips and closed her eyes in a visible effort to regain control of her emotions.  When she opened them again, they were clear, twin blue pools, utterly lacking in expression.

“I blame myself,” Michael began again, then stopped as if expecting Chloe to cut him off.  When she didn’t speak, he continued, “I should have rectified the situation as soon as the error was discovered.”

“Will he go to Calliope now?”

Michael hesitated.  ”No,” he said finally, and hovered just a shade higher.

She narrowed her eyes.

“Daños will no longer have a Guardian Angel.”

The full import of that hit Chloe with the force of a rapture.  ”You leave him no opportunity to repent.  You’re dooming him to becoming a Lost Soul.”

Michael shook his head.  ”Not me, Chloe.  I made the choice to recall you, even though you’d fallen and I’ll pay dearly for that choice, but the decision to eject Daños from the program was arrived after much discussion by the group.”

Chloe’s eyes grew wide, and she abruptly lost control of the tenuous hold she’d had on her emotions.  ”Put me back,” she whispered, her face stricken and pale.  ”He’ll be alone.”  Panic began to build in her chest, and she felt as though someone had reached inside to squeeze her soul with a cruel, twisting, iron grip.  The sick feeling grew, and she took a couple steps backward, shaking her head.  ”No.  He can’t be alone.  He’ll torture himself without me there.”  She turned and ran, looking wildly about for something, anything to indicate a way out, a way back, in the endless sea of white on white on white, but there was nothing.

She stopped and whirled around to see Michael following her, a look of sorrow on his face.  She reached out a beseeching hand.  ”Put me back,” she begged, then fell to her knees, crossed her arms over her stomach and leaned forward, the tears she’d held back all this time finally winning.  She threw her head back.  ”Daños!” she cried out into the void.

* * *

Daños sat up in his bed abruptly, torn from the fitful sleep he’d only just managed to achieve.  He listened to the air, heard nothing for a moment, then registered the distant sound of heart-wrenching tears.  He shook his head, convinced he was losing his mind.  And then, astonishingly clear, he heard his name.  And he knew.

“Chloe!”

part twenty-one

It is on nights like this, though never have you warmed me, that i miss you the most.  Nights, cold and dreary, the steady dripping of the frigid rain a mournful background to the slow cadence of my heart.  Nights when the chill seeps through the windows and walls, creeps along the baseboards to gather in corners and wait, swirling softly, for the chance to invade my nest.

i wrap myself in softness, in thickness, encase my feet in socks far too large, make myself small and smaller still within the cocoon of my oversized fleece robe.  On nights like this, when i burrow into the cave of my blankets, i miss you with an intensity that chills me from within and  makes it more difficult to combat the cold.

Because, though never have you warmed me, i miss your warmth.  And no matter how hard i try to believe, the light of a single candle cannot dispel the chill of your absence.