Trapped Eyes
Feb. 19th, 2009 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadows_galleryI woke up gently, the soft light of early morning dancing across the surface of my eyelids. The memory of last night seeped into my bones, and my stomach gave a little flutter as I turned my head to look beside me, though past experience told me what I would find. He always meticulously made up his side of the bed before he left, pillows plumped under the flowered bedspread which was folded back with its cotton sheet to accommodate my own slight form. He left no trace, ever. I had stopped questioning it long ago.
I rolled onto my back, fluffing the pillow under my head and reaching up to grasp the small median posts that lined the cherrywood headboard, and suddenly a flash of last night filled the space behind my eyes. Stretching, back arching, grasping the headboard posts with clawing fingers as he brought me to climax for the second time. His dark head had been between my legs, raven silk spilling over my hips and clenched stomach. He always knew, every movement in sync with each flash of desire that overcame me.
It was Saturday. I could sleep in. Perhaps I should—my nightly forays were taking a toll on me. But the sunlight glanced cheerily off the lavendar paint on the walls, and I found that all tiredness had slipped away. Perhaps I could take a short power nap later if I needed to.
I rolled from the bed, dragging my satin bathrobe from the chair that was pulled halfhazardly from the desk it was supposed to be paired with. I slipped the soft material over my shoulders, pulling my long brown hair loose, and moved into the bathroom.
I was not beautiful, and I was not exactly young (thirty-eight this May), but I was successful. I looked pretty good for my age, I surmised, though I could never be too certain. Fine lines were starting to appear around my eyes, my mouth, my forehead, and even I had to acknowledge a certain degree of coldness in the gaze. I had a job that could take a lot out of a person, if they're not careful. I had to learn to stop caring so much a long time ago, sacrificing the fresh, idealistic, newly graduated enthusiasm for a bit of cynicism. This case had been especially trying. Some of our clients were innocent. This was not one of them. But I won. I was made partner two years ago for a reason.
I looked into my green-brown eyes, and thought they looked tired. I wondered if my nameless lover would come to my bed again tonight.
I washed my face and brushed my teeth, then put on some coffee, not bothering to put on anything but the bathrobe. I scrambled myself some eggs and made toast, realizing that I was much hungrier than I had been aware. I sat at my little glass-top dinette table with my breakfast and the morning paper, and read a few headlines. My client's story was front page news. I skipped it.
I finished my breakfast and took the dishes to the sink to wash them immediately. I didn't always do that, but when your (ex) husband throws them in the sink half a minute after you walk out of the dining room, muttering, "Lazy bitch…" under his breath, it tends to change a person's ways. I scrubbed the frying pan a little harder than I needed to as my mind wandered to him, scratching the finish a little bit.
He looked at me once, during the long months of divorce proceedings, his eyes brimming with contempt and malice. "Diane, you used to be beautiful, but you are ugly as ugly gets inside. Better look in the mirror. Your outside is catching up with your inside."
He got our twelve year old son Mark. He had a good lawyer. The irony is not lost on me, believe me.
The day passed in a blur. I didn't do much, really. Cleaned the apartment and read a book. Then my friend Sandy called. Actually, she was more of a colleague. A co-worker. We went shopping, then got a drink. The bar was dimly lit and smokey, and fast jazz played in the background. Sandy kept looking at me oddly, and I wondered when she was going to ask some probing question or another, a Sandy trademark. I didn't usually like to spend time outside of work with her for that reason, but I had been restless today so took the excuse to get out.
"You look… unsettled… about something," Sandy said. I glanced up at her over my cosmopolitan, and she smiled reassuringly.
"Just a lot on my mind," I said.
"Are you getting enough sleep? You look so tired these days."
"I'm fine, Sandy. Better than fine. We just won the Trenton case, and things are going well. I'm even seeing someone now." As soon as I said it, I wondered why. Yes, Sandy, I'm seeing someone who comes in the night and disappears like a wraith before the morning light. And the sex is spectacular. But I don't know his name, where he comes from, how he found me. I don't even remember meeting him. The memory of him is vague and fleeting sometimes, like a dream, and then sharp and vivid at others, at the drop of a hat. I will recall details I had previously forgotten days after an encounter, and it will be like reliving it all over again with this dark god, dark angel in the flesh.
I smiled blandly as she inquired eagerly for more details. "He's a stock broker, recently divorced. We're probably each others' rebound relationships." She laughed and said it was good that I was seeing people again, but her voice faded in my mind as I saw his image dance behind my eyes again. His solid body, golden, silken flesh stretched over sleek muscle, hair so black it seemed to reflect every color in the room, eyes as black as the hair, but for the pupils, which reflected red, not a bright cherry red, but a deep, dark velvet red like blood.
I ordered another cosmo and pretended to listen to Sandy's chatter. The shadows of the room swirled, flickering gently, teasingly against the light, and the frenzied jazz trumpet solo being pumped through the bar's speaker system began to echo and splinter like a prism of sound, dancing frenetically, dizzyingly on the smoky air. I wasn't drunk. I hadn't been able to get drunk since my mysterious lover came into my life, though I'd tried. This had been happening to me whether I had been drinking or no. I stood up, realizing after the fact that I had caught Sandy mid-babble, and I smiled apologetically. "I'm feeling a little woozy. Going to the lady's room." She nodded, concern flickering across her blue eyes.
I closed and locked the door behind me, grateful it was a single-unit bathroom. I stood before the mirror for a long moment, leaning on the sink with heavy hands, willing things to return back to normal. I looked into my eyes and saw black iris like reflective obsidian, pierced by blood red pupil. I blinked and looked again, into my green-brown eyes.
I am here, I heard whispered to my mind, as clearly as if my ears had heard it. I whipped around and looked behind me. I was alone.
I wondered if this was like the vampire stories I used to read when I was younger, the ones where the beautiful and deadly denzien of the night visited the delicate, innocent, exquisite virgin in her bedchamber, slowly turning her into his own kind, battling his tortured soul even as he took her in his thrall and tasted of her pure blood. I was not innocent, young, or beautiful, and I didn't think I was experiencing blood loss, though I found myself checking to be sure. Would real vampires leave teeth marks on the neck? I realized that I had just mentally combined the word "real" with the word "vampires" and broke into a sudden laugh.
Tonight, I would ask him all my questions. I would remember. I would stay awake.
I got home around eleven and changed into a purple silk-and-lace shift that tickled the tops of my thighs, donning the satin robe over it. I curled up on my sofa, feet bare, and turned on the television, idly flipping channels, then watching a rerun of Friends before getting bored. I'd never been much of a t.v. watcher. I walked to my bookshelf and dug around until I found something suitable to read, then curled back up on the couch.
I woke with the morning light streaming through the blinds on the balcony door. My shift was gone, but my robe was draped across my body, which was sprawled back along the sofa. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, as the memories flooded back, the warmth of his hands, his mouth, as they caressed in all the right places. "Look me in the eyes, Diane," he'd whispered into my neck, then turned his face to mine, so that his breath flickered hot and spiced across my cheek. I'd looked into his eyes, and I'd felt him move inside me, inside all of me. I remembered the warmth spreading throughout my body, intensifying until almost unbearable, the spasms beginning at the base of my stomach and spreading like fire even to the tips of my fingers until I was screaming, my legs wrapping around his hips because it was too much but never enough. I tried to remember him coming in the night, tried to remember him waking me, speaking to me, anything, but all I saw was the lovemaking. First, I was relaxing on the couch, waiting for him, reading a book, and then… I woke up. But the memories were there. They seemed to be in their own dimension of time, separate from the linear, logical, second-to-second time that we all are accustomed to. They… just were.
I hadn't asked him the questions.
I went to church the next day, because it was expected and it looked good to the community and to the law firm. If I was a hypocrite, I fit right in. I didn't pay any attention to the sermon. I wasn't there to save my soul. The shadows in the rafters glided lusciously around the multicolored reflections from the stained glass windows. I stood when the congregation stood, knelt when they knelt, prayed when they prayed, and sang when they sang. It seemed as though my body had been set to automatic pilot. The music swirled around me, breaking apart and laughing like wind chimes.
"Look me in the eyes, Diane," he'd said, and for the briefest instant, his eyes had been the same green as my own. Then, they melded back into their black bleeding into red.
The service ended, and I walked out of the sanctuary. I managed to avoid talking to anyone. The angels in the stained glass windows stretched their wings and followed me with mournful eyes.
The shadows seemed to wrap themselves around me as I walked to my car, caressing. I saw my eyes in the rear view mirror, and was not surprised to see them flash red-on-black again before returning to normal. I started the car and drove home. Somehow, I felt nothing at all, but at the same time, full and brilliant emotion. If I had cared, I would have wondered if I was going mad. I didn't care.
He came the next night, and the night after, and the night after, weeks and weeks of silken movements spreading warmth and ecstasy throughout my body. I never learned his name, who he was, why he came to me. He never spoke to me beyond the whispered vocal caress. I stopped wanting him to after awhile. He just was. He was inside me, a part of me. If he was real, or fantasy, I did not know, and I did not care.
I feel embraced behind a wall of darkness, of dancing shadows and light, of shattered sound piercing through water. He came, and he stayed. I looked into his eyes, and now he looks through mine. I don't mind, really. Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the one you love.
I rolled onto my back, fluffing the pillow under my head and reaching up to grasp the small median posts that lined the cherrywood headboard, and suddenly a flash of last night filled the space behind my eyes. Stretching, back arching, grasping the headboard posts with clawing fingers as he brought me to climax for the second time. His dark head had been between my legs, raven silk spilling over my hips and clenched stomach. He always knew, every movement in sync with each flash of desire that overcame me.
It was Saturday. I could sleep in. Perhaps I should—my nightly forays were taking a toll on me. But the sunlight glanced cheerily off the lavendar paint on the walls, and I found that all tiredness had slipped away. Perhaps I could take a short power nap later if I needed to.
I rolled from the bed, dragging my satin bathrobe from the chair that was pulled halfhazardly from the desk it was supposed to be paired with. I slipped the soft material over my shoulders, pulling my long brown hair loose, and moved into the bathroom.
I was not beautiful, and I was not exactly young (thirty-eight this May), but I was successful. I looked pretty good for my age, I surmised, though I could never be too certain. Fine lines were starting to appear around my eyes, my mouth, my forehead, and even I had to acknowledge a certain degree of coldness in the gaze. I had a job that could take a lot out of a person, if they're not careful. I had to learn to stop caring so much a long time ago, sacrificing the fresh, idealistic, newly graduated enthusiasm for a bit of cynicism. This case had been especially trying. Some of our clients were innocent. This was not one of them. But I won. I was made partner two years ago for a reason.
I looked into my green-brown eyes, and thought they looked tired. I wondered if my nameless lover would come to my bed again tonight.
I washed my face and brushed my teeth, then put on some coffee, not bothering to put on anything but the bathrobe. I scrambled myself some eggs and made toast, realizing that I was much hungrier than I had been aware. I sat at my little glass-top dinette table with my breakfast and the morning paper, and read a few headlines. My client's story was front page news. I skipped it.
I finished my breakfast and took the dishes to the sink to wash them immediately. I didn't always do that, but when your (ex) husband throws them in the sink half a minute after you walk out of the dining room, muttering, "Lazy bitch…" under his breath, it tends to change a person's ways. I scrubbed the frying pan a little harder than I needed to as my mind wandered to him, scratching the finish a little bit.
He looked at me once, during the long months of divorce proceedings, his eyes brimming with contempt and malice. "Diane, you used to be beautiful, but you are ugly as ugly gets inside. Better look in the mirror. Your outside is catching up with your inside."
He got our twelve year old son Mark. He had a good lawyer. The irony is not lost on me, believe me.
The day passed in a blur. I didn't do much, really. Cleaned the apartment and read a book. Then my friend Sandy called. Actually, she was more of a colleague. A co-worker. We went shopping, then got a drink. The bar was dimly lit and smokey, and fast jazz played in the background. Sandy kept looking at me oddly, and I wondered when she was going to ask some probing question or another, a Sandy trademark. I didn't usually like to spend time outside of work with her for that reason, but I had been restless today so took the excuse to get out.
"You look… unsettled… about something," Sandy said. I glanced up at her over my cosmopolitan, and she smiled reassuringly.
"Just a lot on my mind," I said.
"Are you getting enough sleep? You look so tired these days."
"I'm fine, Sandy. Better than fine. We just won the Trenton case, and things are going well. I'm even seeing someone now." As soon as I said it, I wondered why. Yes, Sandy, I'm seeing someone who comes in the night and disappears like a wraith before the morning light. And the sex is spectacular. But I don't know his name, where he comes from, how he found me. I don't even remember meeting him. The memory of him is vague and fleeting sometimes, like a dream, and then sharp and vivid at others, at the drop of a hat. I will recall details I had previously forgotten days after an encounter, and it will be like reliving it all over again with this dark god, dark angel in the flesh.
I smiled blandly as she inquired eagerly for more details. "He's a stock broker, recently divorced. We're probably each others' rebound relationships." She laughed and said it was good that I was seeing people again, but her voice faded in my mind as I saw his image dance behind my eyes again. His solid body, golden, silken flesh stretched over sleek muscle, hair so black it seemed to reflect every color in the room, eyes as black as the hair, but for the pupils, which reflected red, not a bright cherry red, but a deep, dark velvet red like blood.
I ordered another cosmo and pretended to listen to Sandy's chatter. The shadows of the room swirled, flickering gently, teasingly against the light, and the frenzied jazz trumpet solo being pumped through the bar's speaker system began to echo and splinter like a prism of sound, dancing frenetically, dizzyingly on the smoky air. I wasn't drunk. I hadn't been able to get drunk since my mysterious lover came into my life, though I'd tried. This had been happening to me whether I had been drinking or no. I stood up, realizing after the fact that I had caught Sandy mid-babble, and I smiled apologetically. "I'm feeling a little woozy. Going to the lady's room." She nodded, concern flickering across her blue eyes.
I closed and locked the door behind me, grateful it was a single-unit bathroom. I stood before the mirror for a long moment, leaning on the sink with heavy hands, willing things to return back to normal. I looked into my eyes and saw black iris like reflective obsidian, pierced by blood red pupil. I blinked and looked again, into my green-brown eyes.
I am here, I heard whispered to my mind, as clearly as if my ears had heard it. I whipped around and looked behind me. I was alone.
I wondered if this was like the vampire stories I used to read when I was younger, the ones where the beautiful and deadly denzien of the night visited the delicate, innocent, exquisite virgin in her bedchamber, slowly turning her into his own kind, battling his tortured soul even as he took her in his thrall and tasted of her pure blood. I was not innocent, young, or beautiful, and I didn't think I was experiencing blood loss, though I found myself checking to be sure. Would real vampires leave teeth marks on the neck? I realized that I had just mentally combined the word "real" with the word "vampires" and broke into a sudden laugh.
Tonight, I would ask him all my questions. I would remember. I would stay awake.
I got home around eleven and changed into a purple silk-and-lace shift that tickled the tops of my thighs, donning the satin robe over it. I curled up on my sofa, feet bare, and turned on the television, idly flipping channels, then watching a rerun of Friends before getting bored. I'd never been much of a t.v. watcher. I walked to my bookshelf and dug around until I found something suitable to read, then curled back up on the couch.
I woke with the morning light streaming through the blinds on the balcony door. My shift was gone, but my robe was draped across my body, which was sprawled back along the sofa. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, as the memories flooded back, the warmth of his hands, his mouth, as they caressed in all the right places. "Look me in the eyes, Diane," he'd whispered into my neck, then turned his face to mine, so that his breath flickered hot and spiced across my cheek. I'd looked into his eyes, and I'd felt him move inside me, inside all of me. I remembered the warmth spreading throughout my body, intensifying until almost unbearable, the spasms beginning at the base of my stomach and spreading like fire even to the tips of my fingers until I was screaming, my legs wrapping around his hips because it was too much but never enough. I tried to remember him coming in the night, tried to remember him waking me, speaking to me, anything, but all I saw was the lovemaking. First, I was relaxing on the couch, waiting for him, reading a book, and then… I woke up. But the memories were there. They seemed to be in their own dimension of time, separate from the linear, logical, second-to-second time that we all are accustomed to. They… just were.
I hadn't asked him the questions.
I went to church the next day, because it was expected and it looked good to the community and to the law firm. If I was a hypocrite, I fit right in. I didn't pay any attention to the sermon. I wasn't there to save my soul. The shadows in the rafters glided lusciously around the multicolored reflections from the stained glass windows. I stood when the congregation stood, knelt when they knelt, prayed when they prayed, and sang when they sang. It seemed as though my body had been set to automatic pilot. The music swirled around me, breaking apart and laughing like wind chimes.
"Look me in the eyes, Diane," he'd said, and for the briefest instant, his eyes had been the same green as my own. Then, they melded back into their black bleeding into red.
The service ended, and I walked out of the sanctuary. I managed to avoid talking to anyone. The angels in the stained glass windows stretched their wings and followed me with mournful eyes.
The shadows seemed to wrap themselves around me as I walked to my car, caressing. I saw my eyes in the rear view mirror, and was not surprised to see them flash red-on-black again before returning to normal. I started the car and drove home. Somehow, I felt nothing at all, but at the same time, full and brilliant emotion. If I had cared, I would have wondered if I was going mad. I didn't care.
He came the next night, and the night after, and the night after, weeks and weeks of silken movements spreading warmth and ecstasy throughout my body. I never learned his name, who he was, why he came to me. He never spoke to me beyond the whispered vocal caress. I stopped wanting him to after awhile. He just was. He was inside me, a part of me. If he was real, or fantasy, I did not know, and I did not care.
I feel embraced behind a wall of darkness, of dancing shadows and light, of shattered sound piercing through water. He came, and he stayed. I looked into his eyes, and now he looks through mine. I don't mind, really. Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the one you love.
