flared a taunting challenge, and her lips puckered red at my gaze. Her once beautiful snowy wings were ruined; two blackened, spiny limbs were all that remained. My Angel shook her head once, twice, and then her ivory legs pumped hard and she ran, ran, ran away from me to hide deep in the caverns of the Grey Lands. But no matter how fast she ran, I knew that she could never outrace my love. And at the same time, I knew that my love could never offer her the solace of heaven.
I hurried to meet her burning soul.
The end was…
The beginning.
— | — | —
Letting Go
She was newly born; her face gave it away. The shadows of death hadn’t marked her yet. The smudgepot glow of the stagelight flickered bloodily on lily pure cheeks as she gaped, aghast at the spectacle. I moved to intercept before some other eater caught the scent of her naiveté. She was angelfood. Pure vanilla-spun sugar.
“Just another Saturday night,” I said, slipping an arm wreathed in the ink of demons and skulls around her shoulders. She didn’t shrug me away, as I’d expected. I chalked her acceptance down to shock, not invitation.
“I don’t understand,” she said. Her voice was a whisper of sadness. The lovers before us mortified her. I didn’t know how she had ended up here. Maybe she was reborn right there, in that spot, and opened her eyes to see the depraved sex show as the first vision in her new home; it happens. Regardless, she remained utterly disconnected.
Angelfood indeed. Innocent and clueless.
“It’s just sex.” I squeezed her bird-thin shoulders. I hesitated in pulling her closer, worried I would snap her in half unintentionally. Death was like that. A land of unintended consequences.
“But they’re…they’re…”
“Bloody?”
She nodded, unable to verbalize the horror that coupled in front of us as the entertainment for an audience of shadowed thousands all around.
On the stage, a man and a woman did, indeed, rut without regard to the spectators. But unlike an underground sex show hidden just off the Times Square police beat, this couple were not, in any way, pretty to see. The woman was thick in the waist and long of burnished bronze hair. It was impossible to tell her age, not that age meant anything here anyway. But if she had wrinkles or grey hair or sagging breasts…it was all moot now. The scroll of her life had been skinned off, leaving only her true self. A skein of veins and slippery muscle leavening shape atop ligaments and bone.
The man, gangly with silver hair and an odd, spastic jerk in his lovemaking rhythm was in the same, blood-slick state. His teeth were bared from the loss of his lips, making him appear apish, inhuman. He had mounted her missionary style on the bare stage, and the floor around them was slick with their sweat and semen and mostly, blood. The scent of their bodies bled from the stage like the perfume of the slaughterhouse—warm, rich, and redolent of iron. Both screamed with every thrust of penetration, as their stripped, shining muscles shivered and shimmered together. He took her close, wrapping bloody, meaty arms around her. Their raw muscles slapped together wetly, unencumbered by hair or skin, an abomination. They flowed together into a single large, writhing travesty of exposed, twisted sinew and shrieking pleasure. My new friend turned away and buried her face in my chest.
“Why do they keep doing it?” she cried. “Who skinned them?”
I shrugged. “It just happens. The exaggeration of balance. With ultimate pleasure comes the ultimate pain of scourge.”
“But they’re screaming! Where is the pleasure in that?”
“Look at their fingers grasping at each other,” I said, pushing her gaze back to the stage. “It’s as if they want to climb inside each other; with their skin gone, they almost can. They can also feel every touch a thousand times more intensely. Look at their tongues. Watch the urgency of their fucking, the desperate way
I hurried to meet her burning soul.
The end was…
The beginning.
— | — | —
Letting Go
She was newly born; her face gave it away. The shadows of death hadn’t marked her yet. The smudgepot glow of the stagelight flickered bloodily on lily pure cheeks as she gaped, aghast at the spectacle. I moved to intercept before some other eater caught the scent of her naiveté. She was angelfood. Pure vanilla-spun sugar.
“Just another Saturday night,” I said, slipping an arm wreathed in the ink of demons and skulls around her shoulders. She didn’t shrug me away, as I’d expected. I chalked her acceptance down to shock, not invitation.
“I don’t understand,” she said. Her voice was a whisper of sadness. The lovers before us mortified her. I didn’t know how she had ended up here. Maybe she was reborn right there, in that spot, and opened her eyes to see the depraved sex show as the first vision in her new home; it happens. Regardless, she remained utterly disconnected.
Angelfood indeed. Innocent and clueless.
“It’s just sex.” I squeezed her bird-thin shoulders. I hesitated in pulling her closer, worried I would snap her in half unintentionally. Death was like that. A land of unintended consequences.
“But they’re…they’re…”
“Bloody?”
She nodded, unable to verbalize the horror that coupled in front of us as the entertainment for an audience of shadowed thousands all around.
On the stage, a man and a woman did, indeed, rut without regard to the spectators. But unlike an underground sex show hidden just off the Times Square police beat, this couple were not, in any way, pretty to see. The woman was thick in the waist and long of burnished bronze hair. It was impossible to tell her age, not that age meant anything here anyway. But if she had wrinkles or grey hair or sagging breasts…it was all moot now. The scroll of her life had been skinned off, leaving only her true self. A skein of veins and slippery muscle leavening shape atop ligaments and bone.
The man, gangly with silver hair and an odd, spastic jerk in his lovemaking rhythm was in the same, blood-slick state. His teeth were bared from the loss of his lips, making him appear apish, inhuman. He had mounted her missionary style on the bare stage, and the floor around them was slick with their sweat and semen and mostly, blood. The scent of their bodies bled from the stage like the perfume of the slaughterhouse—warm, rich, and redolent of iron. Both screamed with every thrust of penetration, as their stripped, shining muscles shivered and shimmered together. He took her close, wrapping bloody, meaty arms around her. Their raw muscles slapped together wetly, unencumbered by hair or skin, an abomination. They flowed together into a single large, writhing travesty of exposed, twisted sinew and shrieking pleasure. My new friend turned away and buried her face in my chest.
“Why do they keep doing it?” she cried. “Who skinned them?”
I shrugged. “It just happens. The exaggeration of balance. With ultimate pleasure comes the ultimate pain of scourge.”
“But they’re screaming! Where is the pleasure in that?”
“Look at their fingers grasping at each other,” I said, pushing her gaze back to the stage. “It’s as if they want to climb inside each other; with their skin gone, they almost can. They can also feel every touch a thousand times more intensely. Look at their tongues. Watch the urgency of their fucking, the desperate way
Similar Books
