By Shadygirl ed4u@hotmail.com Date: 26 July 1998
His hands were held out, feathers falling to the ground, as seemingly heavy as lead. A soft white trail of feathers came from his feet to mine, ending in a snowy hill at my ankles.
"Take them!" his rigid fingers clenched around the feathers, gently bending and squishing them into disarray.
I just looked up at him. Tears streamed in hopeless lines down my face, but my mouth was relaxed. My eyes themselves were calm. Calm but confused. "They won’t work." I told him. Straight to his eyes. What was he thinking?
He dropped the handful, reached over his head, and grabbed at another bunch,
ripping them painfully. The sound of his flesh releasing its covering made my
stomach turn. A scratching, ripping suction noise from each individual feather
root filled my ears. His tormented face filled my eyes and he brought forth
another handful. Holding them out. Veins rose high on his arms and hands. One
pulsated right above his eye. His stone carved fingers held his offering to me
again. I shook my head again. Saddened that it had come to this.
My fingers grazed the keyboard. Emotion spilled in torrential downpours onto
the screen, and before I knew it, his words were returning to me in such painful
gust of wind, like each blow brought sand and debris to sting my eyes and beat
my tender heart. A week straight the storm persisted. I rained, he blew. And
blew. I knew sooner or later my sails would catch his weakness and I’d be
drifting so far, he’d never catch me.
"What am I supposed to do with these things now?" he had gestured to the
mammoth growths on his back. He looked at me as if it had been my fault they
were there. He looked as if they were not a gift, not a blessing, but now a
backache to endure.
I guess then, then I knew I’d made the right decision.
He dropped his offering once again at my feet.
"Just stop." My breath caught in my throat as he reached for another handful. I
covered my ears. "Stop!"
I didn’t have to actually hear the sound to hear it, in my mind it was so clear. It almost seemed my mind was making the noise out of fear, every time he reached back. I hummed quietly and closed my eyes, my palms still stuck, suctioned, to my ears. "I know that I am like the rain," I say to myself, in my head, "there before the grace of you go I."
I look up. Arms at my sides. Stronger (than him).
A nightmare tore through my body and I rose, dark and damp in the center of my
bed. A moment later the ring of my phone quickened my slowing breath for a
moment.
"You ok?" I heard his voice. Soothing, as if it could have no other characteristic.
I didn’t ask how he knew. I just said "Better now." And laid back down, my nightshirt wet around my neck. I listened to his voice. His voice worked my limbs, kneading them. It threaded smoky lace through my mind. Whispered soft breath onto my brow. And he hung the phone up for me when I dozed back into the dream he had made me.
I awoke, with no recollection, until he reminded me.
I could see tiny little spots of blood, seeping through the now vacant holes he
tore at. I wanted to reach my hand to him. Soften his jaw. Form myself into a
mythical opponent of Medusa. Turn his stone hands into the tender instruments
he so often use to create (me) with. But the foot between us seemed like a
charged barrier. Thick and impenetrable with hurt and anger.
He reached behind himself again. That was it. I cracked. I lunged at him. Broke through the barrier, tackled him, and brought him down, under me, onto his back, onto his tiny little bleeding pinholes.
"Listen to me!" My face was red, furious. "They won’t work! I don’t want them! Save them!"
He let me stay a moment longer, looking down at him. I saw a brief moment, a
memory pass over his eyes.
I walked down the steps. A towel wrapped lavishly around my head, like a royal
headdress of some African tribe. My naked body clothed in only a shirt that
rested high on my thighs.
He was lying in my bed. With one of my glasses filled with a beer, a soft white mustache of foam burrowed into his mustache, and I got a glimpse of our future, as grandparents, before he licked it clean.
I walked over to him, and straddled him. I felt the rough cloth of denim against
the highest point of my inner thighs. Brushing against soft clean hair. He
pulled my head free from the towel and my hair fell around my face, and in turn
fell around his, as our lips met. Pantene and beer. His hands on my ass,
pressing my pelvis into his. And bubbling laughter similar to those of strangers
from centuries before.
He threw me off to the side, climbed on me, and glared down into my eyes.
Vicious. I wrapped my arms around him, but was cautious not to touch the
sensitive, bare areas he uncovered. He wasn’t so careful.
He bore into me. My skirt high up on my waist. I screamed with every thrust. I kept my eyes opened and watched his face. The emotions were undeniably easy to read. His anger turned to lust. His lust mounted to absolute fury and need. His hurt poked its head out a few times, whenever he opened his eyes and looked at my own fear. And then release. And his heaviness seeped into me, and his burden was unloaded. All the time, I kept watching the bloody pinholes. The same things that used to hold those feathers, that used to caress me, and hold me, harbor me. The very things that held the power of the dream maker. Now, they were disgusting. Empty. Powerless. Unfinished. Pointless. Raped. Like me.
He got up. Didn’t lend a hand down. Didn’t make sure I could get up. And he turned away from me.
And I watched.
I watched his useless wings hang on his back. His deformity, the blessing I had helped him grow. The blessing he’d grown for me. Now it was a burden.
He will always carry those useless, flightless, bared wings. And they will remain as a hurtful reminder of the feathers he lost. The power he doubted.
And all I’ll have is a soft blanket of snowy memories to sleep on, hoping to keep the nightmares at bay.