A tightness.
In my chest. I feel it most of the day. Like a pulley in the center with ropes attached to each corner of my body. Someone turns a crank and the ropes grow taught and pull towards my heart. My skin begins to stretch against the strain and my organs collapse from the pressure. My diaphragm lurches upward into my lungs and I can’t but take short agonizing breathes to keep my cursed body alive.
And then the wheel cranks again.
I feel this every day. Most of the day.
It tells me things. It guides my hand. Without this sign, I’m lost. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.
You see, I feel this pain, but it’s my navigator. It whispers in my ear. Tells me what I need. It’s a woman’s voice on most days.
Just above a shiver of a sound, she breathes honey into my ears.
“This way,” she says. And I obey.
I obey because I must. Because she tells me where the release to my pulley is. Where I can punch that bastard who turns the crank square in the face and see the sweet ebony and red run down his face.
“This way,” she licks the inside of my ear this time as the command causes my spine to shudder.
I obey.
A man sensible enough to wonder where a disembodied voice might come from might stop himself at this point. Might wonder why he obeys, why he follows her. This man would have noticed the pattern by now. Would have sought help elsewhere. Would have known there is no end, the voice will be back tomorrow.
These things never come to my mind. I know where the voice comes from.
Inside.
My eyes see where I am now.
A familiar street, the bright circles of light from the lamps overhead giving me a better view of the predictable sidewalk every ten paces. I’ve been here before and I haven’t been here before. She’s breathing, I can feel her there. Where the neck meets the skull. I feel her there.
They’re excited breaths, like mine. I see now where she’s taking me, my familiar and unfamiliar place. The alley is ahead and I see now the flame’s light lapping the concrete buildings. Devouring their shadows and releasing before returning again. I hear laughing but it’s not her. Not now.
The handle feels so comfortable in my palm. I turn it over and over again between thumb and accompanying fingers. I feel the handles mate is thirsting. It’s partner aching ever since our last adventure. Ever since she last spoke.
Glass is introduced to asphalt and the sound is delicious. I’ve always enjoyed that melody. There’s nothing more satisfying than the beautiful destruction of glass. It’s so simple and plain and overlooked. You can crush a man’s hand with a wine bottle but drop that same bottle not one foot from the ground and that potential destructive energy is obliterated into thousands of tiny yet equally pain inducing potentials.
As I turn the corner the crank is turned again. My eyes feel as though they may escape their sockets. My scalp is being tugged to my ears. My heart beats louder and louder as it drowns out her voice from my ears, it’s new home is in my throat. It needs to cease.
The man never sees me. His wine now gone, his senses are nonexistent. I walk so casually to him I laugh to myself at the absurdity of it all. He hears my chuckle but that does him no good. His half hearted turn makes my grasp that much easier to obtain.
I catch the inside of my elbow to his trachea and feel that sweet breath rush from his lungs. His mouth, diseased and abused for so long, releases a pungent odor into my nostrils I find so strangely… magnificent.
He gasps for air that won’t pass his broken wind pipe as the force of the blow knocks him briefly horizontal and then down, down, down…
I step, casually again, over his body and grab his left arm as I turn his belly to the ground. The ground littered with the hundreds of possibilities for pain. His face almost perfectly poised over the broken neck of his once favorite bottle.
I gently cradle the back of his head with my hands and snap it downwards to the glass and drag sharply to the right.
He can’t scream but he can twitch and, ‘Ohhhhh…’ does he twitch. I let out a long sigh at the motion and turn his now lacerated face to mine. I stoop lower and catch another luxurious whiff of that rancid scent before I extend my tongue to his chin and trace it up to the corner of his eye.
And I tell you now, as she cackles in my ear, that sweet bitch was right. That delicious iron flavor is rivaled by no other. It’s warmth is second to none.
My eyes roll back into my head as I breathe deep and arch my back.
In sweet ecstasy I am hers in this moment.
I feel his life empty under my weight and out of my hands.
All but the life that pools on my tongue. That attempts an escape before I slide it down my throat.
I hear that orgasmic click as the pulley’s tension is no more and the rope releases its grasp from my body. And I am whole again. I feel his warmth in my stomach. It burns so bright that I smile my red stained smile.
I have a few hours before the pulley begins to wind again and she whispers sweet nothings into my ear.
I enjoy those hours like no other man could.
—
©2009 Keith
Tags: Keith
April 7th, 2009 at 7:16 am
Very poetic;great story.