I’m sharing this first story from “Through the Glass Darkly,” available on Amazon.com for download or paperback. I will share a few of the shorter pieces over the next few months, and keep them posted for only a short time. Your comments are solicited and appreciated. LSM.
O Come, Thou Knight
She allowed him to come to her every night. Willed him to on some nights. What he did was monstrous, but at the same time, exhilarating. Some might label her a victim, but she was not; she was a willing participant. She welcomed the act – reveled in its dichotomy of hell and heaven.
The night could come none too soon. The drag of day was to her tedious and tiresome, and she was all but exhausted by the time the sizzling sun finally dipped down beyond the deep wood. And the burnt day, with its moist, cottony, heavy air, cooled as it darkened; became fresh again, with the stirring of nocturnal breezes and the easy, calming night symphony of its unseen orchestra: crickets and katydids; tree frogs and night owls. Their blended melodies lifted to the brushing sound of swaying oaks and elms; mixing and stirred into a concoction so potent that even the long dead sat up fully awakened from their sleep.
More than ease from her pain and distance from her troubles, he brought her a new life; a movement towards meaningfulness she had never before experienced. He was, in a word, the Christ of her newness, and he had appeared at that precise moment that she teetered precariously between despair and oblivion, over the yawing crevices beneath her that disappeared into nothingness.
A gust of night wind, the sateen curtain billows in the breeze, and he is there, silhouetted against a harvest moon just cresting above the deep wood. Effortlessly, gracefully, he glides to her bed, where she is prone and awaiting him, barely concealed in her night clothes. He kneels and stares at her, his eyes barely visible in their deep sockets. He hums along with the night orchestra, and soothes her all the more. He touches her arm lightly, on the soft skin in her arm joint, where her veins are palpable, throbbing and pulsing to his finger tips. It tickles, it is so very light. It is so sensuous, and her long legs begin to stir and rub rhythmically, like the tide, and she feels her womanhood flow.
All is one. The night. The moon. The cool breeze. The orchestra of sounds. His touch on her arm. The throbbing in her veins, in her legs, in her mind.
She tips her head back, revealing her neck in the bathing moonlight; feeling its prickly light lightly illumining her throat; her veins stretching; her muscles stretching and tensing; the throbbing moving from her loins to her arm to her neck. His light touch circling, cooling, moistening her arm; his shadow enveloping her – the shroud of a mystical blanket – a final and simple gown.
The prick on her skin. Light. Painless. More than painless – climactic. Not fearful nor dark nor monstrous nor unwelcomed nor uninvited. A quick prick. And then both warmth and cool. Warm on her arm and cool on her face, as another spritely, turning breeze danced through the window and slipped about them both.
She closed her eyes, and then opened them one last time. She smiled genuinely at him, and softly whispered,
“Thank you!”
He said nothing, and stroked her brow gently, combing wisps of her hair with his fingers.
He stood, and returned to the window, his graceful body once again silhouetted by the big moon in the sky. And then he was gone.
Of a time she arose. No pain. No troubles. No tedium. No exhaustion. She turned and looked at the woman on the bed. Old. Tired. But resting. At peace.
She spun giddily toward the window, tears on her cheeks, the fresh breath of a breeze cupping her face. She was silhouetted against the large moon, and she spread apart the sateen curtains, and was gone.
Copyright © 2012 by Lawrence S. Marsden
