When she opened her eyes in the dark, the room was
silent enough. But if her eyes were open
it meant surely the attic people were back again.
She lay in the dark, on her back. Ronnie the cat lay with his heavy weight across her thighs. He woke her sometimes with his
neediness but after years of marriage, now widowhood, she needed the presence
of a warm body in her bed to sleep well.
They could not be ghosts, the sounds that came from
the attic. How could the cozy two story townhouse built in 2009 be haunted when
no one had had the opportunity to die here?
Yet? Bert had died wrapped around a guard rail on Interstate 20. So it had to be something less
exotic. Foundations settling. Mild earthquakes. Maybe frakking. A sink hole about to swallow the house.
A groan of wood overhead. The silhouette of Ronnie’s peaked ears and
head lifted to the sound, alert. A
whisper off the far edge of hearing.
She didn't believe that life went on after
death. It smelled of human wishfulness
and she suspected wishfulness. Like the
old expression, she believed in the sound of the wind in the grass blowing over
her grave, no more.
But Ronnie was hearing something. The wood in the dark overhead creaked under ethereal
weight.
What a stupid place to be a ghost. Why haunt a place as lonely and dreary as an
attic? Why not a brothel, a Honeymoon
Suite, or a night club, someplace where things were happening?
But now she was awake. Sleep was gone. Gone always means gone.
She shifted her knees. Ronnie jumped down with a thump as his padded
paws reached the floor. She listened to
the dark, felt the absence of Ronnie in the room without knowing how she knew
or how the dark could whisper in voices out of hearing.
If she asked them of Bert and they whispered and she
did hear, then what? Would she have to
believe then?
I just want to sleep. A dead person wants to be dead. A sleeping person wants to sleep. She turned over on her side to take the ache off
her lower back, and her breasts spread warmly over her arms as she looked into
the edge of the pillow.
If this had been Saturday morning, only a month ago,
even now Bert would be shifting to his side with her, throwing an unwashed arm
around her belly, fingertips wandering up to her breasts to cop a feel,
snugging his groin up tight to her so she could feel his morning boner knocking
solicitously at her rump, offered without preliminary kisses. Morning sex was
always charity sex, something to get out of the way like making the
coffee. When she wanted something she
wanted it all. Proper.
Would she ever want it again? Wasn't it better to let the whole business
weaken and subside; let age and hormones fade all that hot and bother away?
She looked at the clock. Four thirty seven. Any other day it would be the abyss of an
hour to cross before getting up for work anyway, but this was still Saturday
and nowhere to go.
Either way, she wasn't sleeping.
Wood creaked above.
Whispers, over there. But not
there. Shapes of sounds that seemed like
they wanted to manage to become words and could not. At the edge of knowing so that you strained
harder to know and could not.
Stupid way to spend eternity. No wonder ghosts make themselves
annoying. They're probably bored as hell
is all.
Ronnie was at the door, yowling to be fed.
For a moment she thought of staying where she was
and masturbating. Maybe with release she
would sleep.
But Ronnie was yowling to be fed.
It bothered her that she would rather feed Ronnie
than masturbate. That was a bad
sign. She had read a book on Taoist yoga
advocating masturbation as a meditation practice to keep the Yin female energy
force alive and active as a secret of immortality in women. A virtuous practice to take up like eating whole
foods and jogging. Maybe people died and
became ghosts because of insufficient masturbation.
She threw aside the blanket and swung her legs
over. Ronnie turned and padded down the
hall. Barefoot she followed him down the
stairs to the kitchen. She flipped on
the light and noticed his tail was fluffed out thick. Something had upset him. The old cat turned in the light, ignoring his
dish and looking around furtively.
Entering a kitchen in the early morning was like
stepping into the memories and karmic debris of the day before. The dishes in the sink. The empty wine bottle in the trash. Food dried out on a plate.
There used to be a flurry of cockroaches also. When Bert had been killed, she took to
slaughtering roaches with a murderous rage.
Poisoned, swatted and sprayed them by the bushel basket. A Buddhist friend told her to forgive the
roaches. Stop killing them. Let them go.
She forgave them and stopped killing them. The roaches went away by themselves. Which made no sense.
She shook some cat chow from a bag into his
dish. Ronnie stopped scanning the room
and went over to eat, his tail still fat and tense.
Whispers. She
feared. Her mother had suffered from
schizophrenia. She dreaded the signs of
madness would appear like blood smeared on a door step.
She heated water on the stove and spooned coffee
into a French press and sat at the table waiting.
And did the wood boards of the kitchen floor creak
just then? Just now?
Yes, Ronnie looked like he thought so.
The floor.
And a thickness in the air as though she could float
and swim in it.
The kettle whistled.
She went to the stove and filled the French press with water. She brought it to the table with a cup. She went to the fridge and brought out the
plastic bottle of cream.
Cream. She
didn't use cream. She always drank it
black. She pushed down the plunger of
the French press. Sugar. A bowl of sugar. Like the old song. I need a man to put some sugar in my bowl.
She felt it between her legs. Maybe she would go back to bed after all,
entertain herself a while and fall asleep.
I want to find the goddess who invented sex and ask
her what she’s working on now, she thought.
Sugar in my bowl.
And was the air around her heavy and full? And were her breasts heavy and full?
Sugar in my bowl.
And was the other chair which had been tucked into
the table, now pulled out?
Pour it, whispered the cool and heavy air.
Cream.
I want to watch you pour it. Slow.
Her nightgown was open. Her left nipple, ripened by the cool night
air was escaping. She drew the nightgown
closed, felt the air shiver and poured some coffee into the cup.
And why be modest?
And for whom? She unfastened the
nightgown, lifted it open and tucked it open under her arms letting her nipples
feel the air and jut.
She crossed her legs, squeezed her upper thighs a
moment and waited, feeling the tingle she had made down there. The kitchen was silent but for the tick-tock
of the kit-kat clock on the wall.
Feel my cream pour down deep in you.
She took the bottle with its nevo-eliptical spout
and popped it open.
Bert had a thick penis. Stubby, thick and ridiculous like a cigar
butt. When wanted, it expanded and
thickened miraculously. She loved to watch it happen. She had only been with three men in her life,
seen only two penises up close, and the expansion of them was fascinating. Something so small could swell to so much, so
stiff so fast, from a cigar stub to something long enough to knock at the back
of her throat, or give a good singing cunt stroke like the deep draw of a bow
over a cello. The act of this swell was
in itself a demand for action. Such a
miracle should not be wasted. Bert’s
penis was uncircumcised. On a good night
he would put tiny beads under the foreskin before diving in, to give his thick
cunt strokes an extra bang, something he had read men in Thailand did. If he stroked shallow she could feel it hitting
on her G spot. It felt enormous on a
good night even though the beads sometimes worked their way out.
Bert you are dead.
You are dead and done gone, and gone is gone and
gone stays gone. Dead as Julius Caesar
and Jesus Christ and deader than God.
So why don’t you leave me the fuck alone?
The bottle was in her hand, hovering over the
cup. And didn’t the spout hole look like
the pee hole of Bert’s very thick, very excited dick when it was held close to
her face?
She was holding it in both hands, how had it gotten
there? Holding it from the bottom with
the left hand the way she had held the bottom of his dick, and held near the
top with her right hand the way she would stroke him there on a good
night. A woman’s conjuring act, the raising
of the serpent, is that why witches were always depicted as women, riding their
dear rigid broomsticks of wood? Did men
so fear women for the powerful spell they cast which men so longed to go under?
I want to watch you pour it. Pour it for me. Don’t hurry.
Thick, white clots of cream pulsed from the little
hole into her cup, landing with hot splashes that reached the nipple of her
left breast.
She set the bottle down, looking long and long at
the drips of white that dropped from the rim of the little hole, hung and
trailed down the side of the bottle.
Dead is dead.
Surely.
She shifted her ass, barely thinking of it, opening
her legs just so, resting the weight of her body deliciously on her pudendum
centered on the pointed corner of her chair.
Without using a spoon, she lifted the sugar bowl and
shook a heaped mound into her cup where floated like an iceberg, slowly melting
at the edges.
Bert didn’t watch me fuck near the end. When we were young in marriage he used to
lift up on his hands when he was on top so he could look down and watch himself
slick sliding in and out of me down there.
It made him moan. Then he stopped
doing that. I liked it when he did that.
I felt like his private porn star.
The sugar vanished and foamed.
She lifted the cup, up to her lips, the bittersweet
steam filling her nose. Brought the rim
to her lips, let it sting her as she parted her teeth.
In the beginning she had lifted his engorged
thickness to her lips, making him wait, held it to her lips, making him feel
the waiting, his stiffened heavy prick trembling in her hands like a warm baby
bird. That left hand stroking his
vulnerable balls. Then letting in the
heat to the tip of her tongue, holding it there, brushing the salty rim of it
with her teeth. This made him flinch back endearingly, almost apologetically as
though he felt suddenly his sinking under the power of her spell over him, the
spell of women. And how she loved to
startle and bewitch him, what power there was in her generosity of strokes,
sucking hard the glans, tormenting the sensitive underside with the flat of her
tongue. At first he seemed to struggle
to resist his own joy, then surrender under it, melting and foaming, and
finally the touch of his hand on the back of her neck as he began to move with
her.
Folding her lips over the rim of the cup. The coffee coming in hot but not scalding the
roof of her mouth.
He came to expect it, that act, even after the thrill
of perversity was gone. The enemy of a woman’s magic was routine. She came to
resent his expectation of her performance now that the spell was no longer
possible or required.
The coffee’s bitter zing suffused her body. A sigh that was only a shade above a moan as
she pressed herself into the corner of the chair below and rocked herself
gently left and right.
Ronnie was staring in her direction but not at
her. His tail was fluffed and angry.
Coffee in her mouth, washing the back of her tongue,
slap stinging the back of her throat as she swallowed to keep up with it.
Too fast.
You’re doing it too fast.
The tide rising below in urgency. To a swelling
wave. Not yet, not yet.
Sweet, sweet, sweet swell rising. Swallowing it down, swallowing fire.
The wave below possessing her, squeezing her eyes
shut and a shuddering sigh.
The cup was empty but for a soggy hill of sugar in
the bottom. She let it drop and watched
the pieces fly as it exploded on the floor.
Ronnie ran from the room.
Sweaty and raw, she stood up shaking and braced her
hands on the table, her breasts swinging down in space. The corner of the seat glistened wet.
The whispers began again, painting the air only this
time closer and clear. Her name.
To bed. To
bed.
Dead is dead.
To bed. To
bed.
Dead is dead.
Disbeliefs put order in our lives just like beliefs.
I don't believe in zombies or vampires. I do believe in UFO's, alien
encounters, and time travel.(As well as the Oxford comma, which I just
demonstrated in the last sentence.) I don't believe in reincarnation, but I do
believe there is a spiritual realm beyond, or just out of reach of this one. I
do believe I have a muse. I try earnestly to disbelieve in critics-even when
they are right. I embrace conspiracy theories for the sheer thrill of it.
Unfortunately I don't believe the Masons rule the world, even though I want to.
They let my brother in. He's a shrine clown who rides around on a go-cart,
invading children's peaceful dreams. Maybe in that one sense Masons do rule the
world, the world of our childhood fears. Who really likes clowns anyway-besides
other clowns? (Sorry if offended any of you clowns, but stop scaring people
will ya.)
