There is a single chair that sits in front of a table, you can see that it is intended for you, it always is at this time of the year, when reviews are done and explanations demanded for the failures of the quarter. Failures. They sound as if each person lost and gained are like dollars, lost and gained. The beast is what it is, you remark in your head just before you open the door and feel the weight of their gaze upon you. It hasn’t changed since long before you came, and it isn’t likely to change despite your interference and objections.
The cold comparison bothers you, and you remind yourself, again, that you are not entirely damned for feeling something for strangers. They are names to you also, most of them you could never set apart from the person behind you in line at the store, or the clerk behind the counter at that coffee shop you favor. Somehow, with their lives tucked neatly in the manila folders clasped between your fingers, you feel closer to them. Their spirit, however forgotten in their life, has, with death, been cleansed of stains - and you think perhaps God does listen.
It takes hours to go through each one, case by case and you find yourself rubbing your closed eyes. Your answers are becoming clipped, crisp and there is the briefest of realizations that you are about to lose your temper with this part of the process. Your teeth are grinding against one another as they as for clarification - again - on the final subject. As you glance back down at the picture, fastened to the page by a paper clip, you note just how young she appears before your eyes move to the mug shot, and the age is added back 100 fold.
Her eyes look helpless as she stands there, the tips of her fingertips appearing below the black sign holding up her number. They are sunken, surrounded by dark circles which you hope are makeup, but somehow know are not. Her skin seems loose, sagging over cheek bones and you can’t help but stare. Your eyes seem to focus, you feel it happening, but don’t turn your gaze away.
An irritated voice says your name, and you look up knowing somehow that it wasn’t the first time they spoke to you.
It is over. You close the folders and stack them into straight piles on the table before shoving back your chair. The walls feel as if they are closing around you - that muted green color, hollow halls and cold flooring are abrasive, shadowless and soulless. You nearly shove someone aside getting out of the door and you don’t apologize.
As you take the quickest route home, you loosen the tie that strangles your neck in formality and leave it to dangle, drunkenly. Opening the compartment to pay the toll, your eyes dart down to the razors and your fingers flip through and pull out three, closing your hands around them as you use the other hand to toss the change into the mesh bucket.
Home is only a short distance away.
The door opens as you step out of the car and it is her, wrapped in a robe, her hair piled on top of her head. The smell of ginger hits you and you inhale sharply. God you love her scent.
She doesn’t say anything as you enter, perhaps because you are silent, or she can read the aura coming off of you in waves. Silence is greeting enough sometimes. You feel the razors, each in their sheath, biting into the fist of your right hand. The briefcase you carry is dropped unceremoniously onto the floor and as she moves to pass you, your free hand wraps around her upper arm.
A moment later, she is shoved into the wall with a razor blade held against the pulse in her neck. It is a challenge, an ugly one that only precipitates the movement that nicks her skin and draws the faintest line of blood.
She sucks in her breath and you feel the aggression start to boil. Her eyes carry that startled look of prey, you’ve seen it before when you went hunting as a child. It is a look that calls out silently for the predator.
When you feel her fingers move from your back, you tense and dig the sharp edge of the blade in further. Yet even as the liquid finally gathers enough of itself to trail down from the wound, her fingers slide into the hair of your head and she moans, turning her head to give you better access.
The warmth of her response seems to throw cold water on you and you drop the blade as if it burns you.
You realize then that it was the fight you wanted.
And you wonder what kind of person that it makes you.
What I love about you, Daemon, is how very introspective you are. It cuts through all your writing, this need to understand, and makes you seem vulnerable despite your tendency to cruelty.
You even manage to make cutting her with a razor, something that completely scares the crap out of me, sound damn sexy. Maybe it’s your urgency in doing it, her acquiesence, I’m not sure.
I am sure that you make me scare myself when I think that.
—– —– —– —– —– —– —–
Introspection helps remind me of my humanity, despite my enormous ego. In truth, were I to lack that quality, I don’t believe I would be capable of retaining control over myself, yet alone someone else. Even still, the line I walk is worn and faded. We play with fire, N and I.
It was sexy. She yields so beautifully, so graciously, it makes me seem even more the beast for consuming it so greedily.
Fear? Perhaps just uncertainty, unease, Gypsy. Read this (New Browser) if you haven’t already to better understand my fascination.
-D
Comment by T in NYC — 10/27/2005 @ 11:12 am
Oh most definitely uncertainty and unease, D. But maybe fear as well.
Your writing is so evocative, I feel you on top of me as you push N to that marble counter, oil her ass and impale her.
It frightens me that I can see myself in her place. And another part of me worries for you and N, that one day that line could fade and blur just a bit too much (but I am a worrier by nature).
The unease grows when I realize that as introspective as I am, I still have so much I don’t know about myself. What might I be capable of - submitting to or demanding from?
Comment by T in NYC — 10/29/2005 @ 10:27 am