[JeesumCrowe]: 145.Untitled Short Story

I stood there in the middle of a barren wasteland, and I was dressed in a black tunic with black pants stretching down and elegantly kissing the dry, cracked earth beneath my bare feet. It was cold, though the sun shone from above me, playing upon my hair to create amber and gold. I looked up to see a grey sky but no clouds, and protecting my eyes from the light was a figure I could barely see. Long, flowing, black robes fell around her, blown by some wind I was unaware of. Just as I was noticing her straight black hair, she was suddenly very close to me, and I stepped back in shock. She lay there on the ground, digging her nails into the unquenched sand. She stared up at me through long, shining black hair. Her eyes were a very light blue and filled with rage and loss. Her nose was long and straight, her lips as pale as her skin, which was paler than the moon itself. Her dress of silk billowed behind her as she pulled herself up and stood, sizing up to only about my chin, but seeming more powerful than I could imagine.

She continued to loath me with her eyes, circling me with long, calculated footsteps. Her feet were also bare. Her finger and toe nails painted black. I was hit by her silk and her hair, and though the touch was light, I bled, and could not move. When she had again reached the front of me she pulled her hands up in an exquisite dance-like manner, she pulled the hair away from her chest and revealed around her neck a necklace bearing on it a black key. She turned around again, twisting her hair in one hand and pulling it from the back of her neck, revealing the necklace’s clasp. I moved forward and after a few, humbly awkward moments, finally the necklace was removed. She turned back to me and held it out, her pale arm slipping from a wide sleeve and I could see her velvet blue veins.

Holding out my own hand, I received the key from her, and she moved in slowly, a dead cold hand on my chin, and kissed me swiftly. I closed my eyes and she felt for my hand. When she had it, she took it in her own small hands and used it to shove the key within her stomach. I could feel her contrastingly warm blood on my hand as she twisted it, and then with a gasp, released the kiss. Staring at me with the same loss and hate as before, she wordlessly fell back into the earth, arms spread, silk following, and became twenty ravens, which were joined by hundreds more. They came in from the horizon and all flew at me. Crouched with my head in my bloodied hands I wait as the black mass passed me and when the thundering of wings was gone into the sun I gently looked up.

Floating above me, her body parallel to the ground, was a woman with sun kissed skin and wavy, chestnut brown hair that fell to one side of her face and down toward the floor. She was studying me with a pensive and curious look, hazel eyes barely grazing the surface of the soul displayed in my own. Her nose was Roman, her lips were full and naturally a deep pink. She had a classic beauty to her, draped in striking red robes that didn’t cover her shoulders. Her body moved slowly to become perpendicular to the ground, her red silk skimming her thighs, revealing her beautiful legs and outlining her soft figure. Her pointed, red painted toes reached down for something to stand on, and they touched water. I looked down.

I was sitting on water, but I wasn’t wet. She was standing there, barely rippling the surface. my first instinct was that none of this was possible, and then I plunged into the deep. Surrounded by Caribbean blue, I looked up but found not only could I not breath, but I was chained to the bottom. I saw the woman’s face look down at me in the one circle of clearness in the water’s surface. Behind her was the night sky. She reached a hand down into the water, and it swam it’s way gently to me. I reached out and took it, and with a firm grasp it pulled me back to the air, where I took a large breath, and opened my eyes.

Breathing heavily, I noticed where I was it was all white. I was dry, dressed in white cotton, and I stood up, my bare feet touching the warm pureness below me. I looked around for the woman with the key, or the woman who stood on water, and find nothing but mystical moths. I walked toward them and through a flurry of them I found a woman sitting peacefully, two hands on her swollen, fertilised stomach. She smiled at me sweetly as though she understood every dark, disgusting corner in my mind, and was willing to love it. Her hair was curled and fell down around her, falling mid-chest, red like the fire that lives within us all. She was pale but dew like, with a faint glow to her skin. Her eyes were pure green and her lips were plump and welcoming. Moving her hands, she held them out to me. She took my hand in one of hers and removed a vile from her neck. She had me drink the nectar from it, and then she replaced it as she led me through blinding white into a most beautiful garden. She sat down at the base of a fruit tree, inviting me silently to sit with her. I heard beautiful music in the wind, and sat on the soft, warm earth.

As though I were her most beloved child, she led me into her arms, and I laid down. She placed my ear gently on her stomach and I heard a soft beating, like tribal drums in the distance. She wrapped her arms around my head and the last I saw was the white of her sleeves before I fell asleep there in the comfort of her caress. There was a blissful stillness. And I never awoke.

Ah, heaven.