Lilies Know A Ghostly Birth *NC17* 3/3
AUTHOR: Rachel Anton
EMAIL: Ranton1013@aol.com
xxxxxx
In his dream he is a carny, working the roller coaster at a traveling fair on the moon. He has become grizzled and ancient and every time he coughs, black oil bubbles up through his mouth and nostrils. The moon is ugly, rocky and gray. The carnival provides the only color and light on the desolate landscape.
Doggett and Skinner and James Joyce are on the roller coaster. They have been for as long as he can remember. In the beginning they screamed and begged him to stop, but now they don't move or make noise. He thinks they might be dead.
He looks up from the controls and sees Scully waddling towards him. She's the size of a small aircraft. He's not sure if she's been pregnant for ten years or eleven.
"You need to give it to me," he tells her. There should be passion in his voice, desperation, but there is only weariness- the monotonous drone of a man who's said the same thing to the same person every day for his entire life. They've had this conversation a hundred and one times, and her answer never changes.
"You can't have it!" she insists, trying to cross her arms over her elephantized abdomen. They won't reach.
He moves towards her, extends his prosthetic arm which, for some reason, is bionic on the moon. It grows, spanning the space between them, and the fingers spawn steely Freddy Krueger style blades. He rips into her stomach, feeling no remorse, and pulls a bloated, gray corpse from inside her.
She is crying and there is blood, red and black and green, spraying in every direction.
"I'm sorry," he says, even though he isn't. "I have to do this. If I don't, the carnival will never end."
He wakes up, feeling the spiny finger of death poking at his shoulder. He opens an eye cautiously.
Oh. It's just Marita.
"Alex, what are you doing?" she asks, laughter in her voice.
He's on a couch, by a fire. Still at that stupid Starbucks. There were people here before, but now he's alone. Except for Marita.
"What happened to the book club?" he asks.
"I suppose they went home."
"Huh," he shrugs. "Just as well I guess. They bored me to sleep."
He stands up, stretching his arm and yawning. She looks up at him, a gentle smile on her lips.
"I finished the story," she tells him, holding up the infernal notebook. Ah yes, the story. He wonders what kind of nonsense she'll try to pass off as truth this time. Doesn't matter, he figures. If she wants to remember him as a doomed martyr, so much the better for him. Certainly makes him look better than the truth would. Who knows, maybe her faulty memory is the reason she hasn't given up on him yet.
Still, he can't believe she doesn't realize that Spender would have found a way no matter what. The bastard had always believed Alex owed him for his life, for not having him killed with the rest of his family. He would have tracked Alex to the ends of the Earth.
"Is it dirty?" he asks, flipping a few strands of yellow hair over her shoulder.
She shrugs. "I don't know. Not really."
Her eyes wander, from his forehead to his nose, then down to his mouth. She lifts her hand, runs her index finger over his lower lip. It hurts. He realizes it's bleeding again. Must have re-opened it with his teeth as he slept.
"Alex, is everything all right? Did you run into any trouble?"
Finally she's interested, but somehow he's lost all desire to talk about it. It seems so meaningless now, and boring. All he wants to do is kiss her.
"Nothing serious," he says. "There was an...unexpected confrontation. I had to destroy one of the vials."
"You had to?"
He sighs, not prepared or motivated to justify his actions to her. The argument might have been stimulating an hour ago. Now it would be tiresome and annoying.
"Yes, I had to. Can we leave it at that?"
She nods, her fingers lingering on his mouth. "Yes, we can. I'm sure you made the right decision."
That surprises him. He doesn't think he's ever heard her say such a thing.
"I do have something to ask you though, Alex. It's rather important."
"What is it?"
Her hand roams around his face, to his upper lip and then down to his chin.
"You're not growing a goatee are you? Because I think that would look really stupid."
He smiles, relieved that it's not something serious and depressing. Although, he is a little wounded that she doesn't care for his new look.
"I'll shave when we get home."
"Good." She puts her hands on his shoulders and raises herself up on her toes to give him a kiss on his stubbly cheek.
"So are you gonna let me read that?" he asks, reaching between them for the journal. She holds it to her chest protectively, and shakes her head.
"Not here, Alex. Let's go home."
She turns and starts walking. He reaches for her shoulder, stopping her. There is something that can't wait until they get home, something that's been knawing a hole in his stomach for the past two hours.
"Marita..."
"What?"
He looks at her face for a long time, wondering if he should even bother.
"What is it, Alex?"
He takes a deep breath, touches her cheek. She looks suddenly vulnerable, suddenly afraid. Yes, he should definitely bother. "I've never regretted the decision I made," he says. "Never."
He leads her out to the sidewalk before she can react. He's not sure what made him say it; guilt can be a powerful weapon. Maybe he's just tired of using his arsenal on her.
In the cab, she kisses him. She kisses him long and wet, and he starts to forget about the journal. Who cares about the past when he's got her in the present? He untucks her blouse and slides his hand up, feeling the expensive silk covering her breast.
He doesn't notice that the car has stopped moving until the driver shouts "Eighteen dollar! Eighteen dollar!" and starts tapping irately on the glass divider.
Alex reluctantly removes his hand from Marita's chest, and reaches into his wallet. He pulls out a fifty and tosses it into the front seat.
"Keep the change," he says. "I'm gonna get laid."
By the time they get to the elevator, he's got her shirt unbuttoned and her skin bright red. Once inside the relative safety of their apartment, he pulls her to the ground and pushes his entire body against her, grinding her into the floor.
"God, Rita," he moans, unashamed. "My dick hurts. You're so fucking hot."
And she is. The hottest woman he's ever known, and he's known quite a few. She may be difficult, infuriating at times, but she is also delicate and graceful, soft and warm and wounded and careful, smarter than anyone, with cast iron balls bigger than his own.
And she wants him. She wanted him then and she wants him still.
She spreads her legs wide for him and he shoves his hand down her pants, grabbing at her clumsily. She feels like fire and she's soaking wet, gasping and thrusting. Yeah, she wants him bad. Even with distasteful facial hair, she wants him. Even with one arm and no sense, she wants him.
He looks down at her, flushed and spread, and thinks of how many times they've been apart. Two weeks isn't very long, but God, it felt like two years.
"Just fuck me, Alex," she begs, and he does. He fucks her hard and fast, barely bringing her to completion before he explodes inside her in an unbearably sweet release.
Afterwards, he lies on top of her, wondering where his need for her comes from, where it originated. Has it always been like this? Since they were born?
He wonders about God and soulmates and other stupid things that he only thinks about after she makes him come.
And then he remembers the journal.
"Are you gonna let me read now?" he asks her.
She looks up at him, panting and sweaty, her eyes suddenly wide and nervous. "You really wanna read it?"
She doesn't want him to see it. Why did she even write it? Just so he'd show her the letters? He would have done that anyway.
"I really wanna read it, Rita."
He rolls off her, letting her move to retrieve the book from the corner she'd tossed it to when they stumbled into the apartment. He lies on the floor, watching as she slowly and warily carries it towards him. He wonders if she kissed him in the cab so that he would forget. He feels a flash of anger at the thought, but it dissipates quickly. That was no distraction fuck. Their coupling might not have been tender and sweet, but her desire had been evident. Maybe whatever she wrote brought it to the surface, and that thought makes him more curious than ever.
He begins working through his own memories, the vision he has of the night she'd been recalling in her journal, and then he feels another wet tongue on his face. The stupid dog is licking him.
"She missed you," Marita tells him. "We both did."
Then she places the notebook gently on his chest and walks into the bedroom, Anastasia trotting behind her.
Alex moves to the couch and kicks his dirty pants off and onto the floor, wondering why he can't ever seem to manage to get out of his pants *before* he fucks her. He puts his feet on the coffee table and begins to read.
When he's done he joins her in the bedroom, finishes undressing, and begins the arduous task of removing his plastic limb. She's lying under the covers, watching him.
He doesn't know what to say, what to do. He doesn't know if she wants a response, if he's capable of responding in anything resembling an adequate manner. He wants her again, looking at her and thinking of what she's written- perhaps her final love letter to him. His heart shatters in a million places when he realizes that he can't give her any kind of sex that will truly show her what her words have done to him. He knows she enjoyed his frantic screw on the floor, but he feels clumsy and oafish thinking of it now. Would she ever recall that moment with the kind of affection she displayed in her journal?
It hurt to read it, and it hurts him to think of it. It's a phantom pain, similar to the ache of his missing arm: the sting of something that once was, but is no more. He remembers the weeks after he lost the limb and the way she salved his pain. He'd expected her to be disgusted when she saw him, but if she was she didn't let him see it. She was passionate and kind. Truly perfect. She healed him.
It was only a year later when she stabbed him in the back.
When he's done with the prosthetic, he lies down next to her and turns on the television.
"Look," he tells her. "It's Crippled Masters." He can't think of anything else to say to her.
"They're showing that on television?" she asks. She doesn't sound upset. Maybe she doesn't want to know what he thinks of her journal.
"I think it's USA or something."
He enjoys a guilt-free, distracting laugh, watching the legless Kung-Fu guy riding on the shoulders of the armless Kung-Fu guy, unleashing much Kung-Fu mayhem.
"Alex, this movie is sick."
Whatever. She's just jealous she can't make fun of it like he can. Aside from upping his creepy factor by about two hundred percent, it's the only benefit of being crippled himself, and he's determined to milk it for all it's worth.
Besides, it's noise. If it wasn't on, they'd be sitting in silence, listening to the unspoken thoughts bouncing around in his brain.
"She's not a quack, Alex," Marita says, continuing their argument from earlier. He thinks maybe she's right, but he doesn't want to say that. He doesn't want to think that the raw, emotional honesty he read has anything to do with anyone but them.
"They're all quacks, Rita. What do they do? Just sit there and listen and take your money."
Listen to God knows what. What the hell has she been telling that woman? He hopes, prays that she won't show her psychiatrist the things she wrote tonight, that she's never said anything like that to this woman he's never even met.
"Listening is doing something, Alex."
He listens, doesn't he? He wonders if she thinks he listens enough.
"Well if that's all it is then I could do it and make two hundred bucks an hour."
"Wasn't that your plan in the first place?"
He doesn't have an answer, so he pretends to be engrossed in amputee Kung-Fu. What the hell is he supposed to say to that anyway? Yeah, I was gonna be a shrink, but then I found out that aliens from outer space were planning to take over the world and I decided that might be a little more important?
"I think I should learn Kung-Fu," he says.
"Your Kung-Fu is fine," she tells him. She kisses him on the cheek. "I love you, Alex."
He doesn't know what to say to that either and she doesn't wait for a response, just rolls onto her side as if she were going to sleep. After everything else she's given him tonight, after baring her soul to him like that, how can she say that to him and not expect anything in return?
Sometimes he thinks they don't have the time, the luxury of love. Other times he thinks they've had it all along and there's nothing to be done about it. Either way, it's an inconvenience. It slows him down, makes him weaker. She is the only thing that makes him lose his control, his discipline. Sometimes he hates her for that, but not now. How could he hate her now?
He remembers what it said in her book, that he'd only told her once. That wasn't true, though. There had been other times. She just doesn't remember. He's sure of it.
Still, how can he give her nothing now? Does he really have nothing to give, after all these years?
"Sometimes I wanna run away, too," he blurts out. It's stupid and far from the point, but maybe it's a start.
"You do?" she asks quietly. She rolls back towards him, propping her head up on her elbow to look at him.
"Sometimes I think maybe I'm proving them right by continuing their work, that maybe we're not really as free as we could be."
Sometimes he thinks about faking his death, changing his name and taking her to a strange, deserted island, building a shelter and hiding with her, eating coconuts and bananas and making love on the beach all day.
"You really believe that, Alex? You think the work is a waste?"
No, not a waste. It has to be done. But occasionally he wonders why they have to be the ones to do it.
"I dunno. I'm just talking. I just think it would be nice to get away, to just...be."
"Yes," she sighs. "It would. But we have responsibilities, Alex."
"Sometimes I wanna just disappear," he whispers, partially hoping she won't hear. She kisses his neck and rests her head on his chest, and he wraps his arm around her, runs his fingers through her hair.
She's quiet for a few moments, and he begins to think she has fallen asleep. Then, her voice heavy and tired, she murmurs, "Just don't leave me behind, Alex. I'll follow you."
He winces, the unfamiliar feel of tears itching the back of his eyelids. Does she really think he ever would? That he ever could?
"I won't, Rita," he says, gravely and thick. She looks up at him, surprise in her eyes, and he kisses her. He kisses her with the need and the adoration that's been building in him since he started reading her words, and he thinks maybe he can still give her the kind of pure love she was writing about. Maybe.
She falls asleep on his chest, but soon rolls back to her side of the bed. When he hears her snoring, he turns off the television and walks to the dull pastoral painting hanging on their wall. He takes it down and opens the safe hidden underneath. There is a box inside, one that he hasn't touched in a long time. He brings it into the living room and removes the contents.
He places the bundle of letters carefully on the coffee table and begins reading the first in the pile.
Dearest Alex,
I feel as though the world is ending...
xxxxxxx
When she wakes up Anastasia is her only companion. She feels a flicker of panic, wonders for an instant if he has decided to run away and leave her in the lurch, until she looks at the clock. It's almost ten thirty. He let her oversleep.
She's not sure if she should be annoyed or touched by the gesture.
She drags herself out of the warm cocoon of their bed, away from the dog and the blankets, and pulls on her robe. She walks into the living room, following the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Alex is gone, but he left her breakfast. And something else.
She sits on the sofa, regarding the pile of letters on top of the coffee table. Her letters. Next to the pile there's an index card. On one side, in Alex's handwriting, are the words "This is why." She turns it over and reads, of all things, a poem.
Roses, rooted warm in earth,
Bud in rhyme, another age;
Lilies know a ghostly birth
Strewn along a patterned page;
Golden lad and chimbley sweep
Die; and so their song shall keep.
Wind that in Arcadia starts
In and out a couplet plays;
And the drums of bitter hearts
Beat the measure of a phrase.
Sweets and woes but come to print
Quae cum ita sint.
Oh, Alex, she thinks. You are a sap after all.
xxxxxxx
end