Dominion
by Martin Higareda
Nothing, and nothing.
The agony unbearable, he came to her, stopping once for a brief glance to her face, as if she might after all open her eyes and startle him, shout out some plea or curse. The fine wisps of hair over her eyes and cheek were a veil...she might be staring at him anyway. The small, delicate nose, the upturned lips, madness; he was inflamed.
He lifted shaking fingers to her nightshirt. It was clean, he could smell it. The canopy of her iron bed made a little shadow, making for him a temple. In this sacredness he bent closer, inhaled deeply, again. He looked up wonderingly at her face once more. Here, from her breast, the view of her mouth, the dark little nose, so secret she had been before; here, mysteries were made intimacies. She sighed suddenly, and the brief quickening pained him, made him impatient. He wanted, very badly, to die.
He waited some minutes more. When the room made itself timeless, when even her breathing seemed suspended, he disrobed. The inertia of the ceremony stayed him for a moment, and then, without pause, the shears.
***
"Hello."
The girl stopped slowly, her head turning to regard him. She had round, wide set eyes, a perfectly round face. Almost no mouth at all, only the miniature pale lips. He had never seen her this close before; so strange they had never met. Well, no. Hardly strange at all. He smiled quickly to make up for his frank stare.
"Hello." So calm! But why shouldn't she be. Her voice was quick and steady, like a sudden blow to his chest. What a dark gaze. It was springtime...how could one be so full of the night, so early in the day? This was the sort of morning that made one desperate to cut class, go out to a park, go for a drive, anything. He sat upon one of the benches that lined the main driveway of the campus, where he had been sure to meet her. She wore dark grey, a loose button-up blouse, what might have been Spandex - no, surely only some nylon - for leggings, and those great harsh boots. Ah. He had always wondered what he might say to her. He surprised himself.
"My name is Alain." He ran his fingers through his hair, the gesture juvenile, timid. He could hardly control his nervousness; his normally light accent became heavy, rolling. "I don't want to embarrass you, but I wanted to tell you how beautiful you look. Ah," he continued, when she had said nothing, not even moved, "pardon me. I'm a fool." And he made one of those silly gestures with his head, the one they loved in the classrooms. She allowed him a smile, and that was all he needed. His pulse quickened a little, as if he had just received his first benediction. "Now," he said briskly, "you had better get along, because you're late, and so am I, and I have…students." Another gesture, a pained rolling of the eyes. And she did laugh. At this he feigned abashment, and made to leave. He stopped, turned to see her still laughing, and smiled. He walked away then, laughing himself, and called from a distance of several yards. She answered, her voice high and thick from the distance, and from her ivory throat.
Katerina. Katerina.
God.
***
He enjoyed this intimate dominion, these moments, in the manner of a sculptor realizing a vision from indifferent, inanimate clay. Pygmalion. Worse. Beneath this shadow, beneath this silk, this was his succubus of nights without end, recalling painful and aborted shrieks in the dark, unconscious, at the mercy of visions infernal. Always, torment to wake with wide dripping eyes, to find her gone. Later, to spy her out in a dozen faces a day, suddenly gone in the crush of vicious pushing crowds, a Cheshire giggling left hanging in the air to mock him. Day after day, for years, forever. He was a man used to pain, but for this particular love he had no words.
***
The dream was this: he would wake, he would be on the floor, or a hard, low bed. Nothing to see; he could reach all around himself and feel the airy blackness clinging like webs. There would be a sort of music, nothing substantial or recognizable. It would be low and beautiful, keys of a piano or harpsichord, the melody shifting up and down wistfully, making him clench his fists in frustration. He would shuffle along, in dream-blindness, and find stairs. The stairs melt, become a room before him, lit it seemed from an uncertain dusk through drawn, yellowed shades. Here, of all things, a barber's chair, the old, old kind, ornate with the pedals and levers of modern convenience. The music shrinking, becoming as unfulfilling as radio. The urge to sit. Sitting without willing himself. Now in a bath. The water is sticky, blood or worse. The liquid is pouring from a thousand twisting wrists, now only two. In bed, in certainty, he would be sweating and gasping, his pulse driving him to exhaustion, his muscles cramping, his phallus straining. In the dream, she would be watching from the doorway, oh god oh I've missed you, he wants to tell her. He is afraid to, he fears her like a demon. She says nothing, she says come, she says, I am yours, she says be mine, she says be mine, she says be mine, SHE SAYS--
And he would wake, his throat burning, his neck on fire as if someone has ripped at him with broken fingernails, and he would wonder, as if for the first time, how long he had been screaming.
***
"I am the dreamer; you are the dream.” He did not realize he had said this aloud. When the silence rushed back to him like a wave he flinched, afraid. But he was soothed by the inexorable still, and he took heart again. The young girl seemed oblivious but murmured to herself, tossed her head gently, away from some noxious vision.
He kneeled, and bowed his head. An alien buzzing had slowly replaced the silence, but he could not notice now. She breathed a little faster as he passed the metal shears over her. He began at the bottom, working with precision and reverence, until she lay equally bare. He moaned softly at her perfection: the smooth taut stomach, the fine, muscular legs, the welcoming breasts. But this desire was only fierce burning emptiness compared to his real need. Now! Now! He bent lower, feeling lost, damned, very much afraid.
***
He'd been sitting in his car in the faculty parking lot, a compilation tape in the stereo, french fries in his lap, madly reviewing notes for the lecture in two hours. He thought better behind the wheel, whether or not he was actually moving. His colleagues thought him eccentric. Ha.
It was early March, and so every fifteen minutes he ran the motor, blasting the heat. Yet despite the cold, he could not keep himself from daydreaming, that faint hunger questing somewhere deep within him. Memories turned lazily in his head, vague phantoms of nightmares. He wrestled with his concentration, absently gazing at the monstrous line of the waiting Metrocars. They looked like great silver behemoths, each holding pathetic captives inside, disgorging them at their leisure. How grotesque.
More notes: the negative effects of educational segregation by gender. A bell, dimly, long and hollow. The research and experimental classes in Dayton, Ohio, fraught with threats and insinuations of sexual bias. A crush of students, undulating wildly from within the cloistered halls. All female, their test scores had soared temporarily, until the classes again became co-ed. All female.
A moment later his awareness was kidnapped and thrown violently to the ground, raped repeatedly by the soft curve of her shoulder, the painfully soft flesh of her neck.
***
"It's you," was all he thought to say.
***
And he bent to kiss those delicate lips. Through narrow slits he watched, a little curious now, to see if she would open her eyes. He slid his tongue between her teeth, and reached down again with the shears, over her breasts, her navel, the territory of scented flesh at once new and familiar. Her eyelids twitched, tender lashes quivering. Dreaming? It's too late, he thought. I'm already here. He squeezed, and cut.
Her eyes opened, and he kissed her harder. His violence began to spin warm liquid cobwebs around his fingers. Snick, snick. Her hands shot up to his chest, pushing, more strength than he had expected, and the kiss was broken. She appeared to see him for the first time, and the recognition in her eyes was awful to behold. Almost, he thought, as her mouth worked silently, searching for words, her eyes wide and so very round.
Snick.
"Dyavol!" she gasped finally, the word smooth and thick from sleep and accent. She screamed it, stretching the sound, writhing with pain and outrage in the ribbons of her bedclothes. Sounds now, real ones, a call of "Katya," over and over. She became weaker. Her mouth worked in little noises now.
Dyavol. Angel of death. Reaper man.
Blood, and silence, and darkness.
"No, my darling," as he bent one last time, kissing her still form. "You are."
***
Her father, a burly man near sixty, was attempting to extract sense from the doctor. He was normally the most good-natured of men, his thick accent evoking exotic, pleasant images. He stood outside her door, holding lilies. Now his voice was coarse and thick, and he shook from an impotent rage, mostly born of helpless ignorance. The young doctor, rather stout himself, would not be bullied. No, there was no sign of foul play. Yes, I’ve spoken to the police. Yes, the blood was hers, but she has no wounds, none. It’s observation, sir, we…no, the man could not be identified…yes, he was naked as well. Sir, please, your daughter is sleeping. Come downstairs? With a quick glance at the doorway, her father complied. He seemed broken, a man carrying relief and guilt on the same tired shoulders, along with desperation, and fear. The doctor would let him cry a little, would try his best to explain, but honestly, the girl was in perfect health. He would sympathize; it was all he could do. The stranger, no, he hadn't been identified…there were problems. Latent prints led to records that predated the airplane. A mistake. Certainly. The deceased could not be thirty. Nothing to worry a father about.
***
Katerina woke sharply, sweating. Her smooth, round face glistened in the lights of a useless monitor, red here, a little green here. She stared, unseeing, haunted by lingering dreams: urgent visions of an unknown, familiar love; the sensation of sexual experience before actually knowing the act; emptiness.
It seemed to be half past three. Softly, slowly, she moved. Bare feet touched the cold, antiseptic floor, soundlessly. She traveled thusly, waking no one, a pale figure wandering slowly through the dimmed hallways, eyes calm, searching. The silence and stillness were artificial, another world. She might have been a ghost; she was unseen. She entered elevators, unseen. Into a secure wing, past weary, nodding desk clerks. She stepped into the room marked Morgue, careless, unseen. She waited, listening. Presently she moved to one of the shiny metal cabinets, listening. By tugging the handle repeatedly, it opened. The metal table slid out from the wall, heavy and slow, stopping with a great noise. The dry trim card in the glass window read DEVEREAUX, A.
They were motionless, these figures. It was very cold in the room. Her voice made hesitant clouds around her lips.
"Dyavol," she whispered. "Did you think it was that easy?" She leaned over him, on tiptoes, straining, to kiss him. The feel of his flesh sent all the hairs of her body to stir, and she sighed deeply, over his lips, and then into his mouth, where it became a little moan.
***
Later she crept away, her eyes sleepy, or dazed. Back into bed, never having remembered waking, her breathing deep and even and slow.
Later, falling into a deeper slumber, never quite hearing the echoes of an endless, horrified, screaming.
copyright 2003, Byronic Eye Entertainment
Short Stories
He waited as long as he dared, and heard nothing from without. His forehead reflected the dim light in pinprick sweat as he peered at her, breathing heavily. His eyes moved over her legs, her coiled torso, the heavy swell of her chest. He remained frozen, listening: nothing from outside. Quickly he went to the door, his eyes still locked to her form, listening.
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