Velvet Verbosity

Val was having nightmares. All variances on the same theme. He was there, either as himself or represented. Always charming, smiling, endearing her to him. He would draw her in, engulfing her with his voice, his flesh, his word. He pulled and pushed her along, chattering, endlessly chattering about nonsense. The landscape seemed to pass rapidly and she couldn’t focus on anything.

As the dreams unfolded, sometimes a darkness would descend, sometimes not, but she always felt an evil creeping in, a shivering cold, an unseen threat. In the dreams she would become anxious, vigilant, seeking the source, surveying the landscape, yet she couldn’t help but to feel he was the source. At first she would catch only glimpses out of the corner of her eye. His face would change, transform rapidly back and forth between bright-eyed charm to something sinister. Sometimes the change was subtle, nothing more than a flickering of facial expressions. In other dreams, the change was something out of a B-horror movie. The skin would bubble, bones shifting beneath skin, leaving a grotesque visage.

It always happened when her back was turned. It was rapid, and like a game of “red-light, green-light”, she tried to turn faster and faster to catch it, to know for sure it was not her imagination. He would always smile reassuringly at her then. The dreams seemed to last for hours, with this game of hide-and-seek becoming more elaborate. Finally, in each one, there would be a definitive moment when she would know to turn when he wasn’t expecting her to, or in one instant everything would flicker, shift into focus, and the horror of his true identity was revealed. Having forgotten himself, he would smile, not realizing he had not yet returned to his charming self or that the illusion had worn off. Each dream ended with the same icy terror ripping through her as the full realization of how close she had been to evil all along sunk in.

There were other people too. Protectors. In one, a man from her past who was literally “a protector” appeared suddenly following the revelation. He ran alongside her, calm and unshaken. In others it was strangers, or friends. There were also women. Women that he knew or just met who would appear at the end, after the revealing, his face frozen in its true form to her, and yet these women would not see it as Val did. She wanted to warn them, but their eyes always had a far-off or glazed look. She would stare as he ripped into their flesh, or crouched on their chest like an incubus drawing the life from them, or licked their skin as he embraced them in what they saw as an innocent hug, or chewed on their hair as a maniacal demon. Then she would run. He would call out to her, still not realizing she could see, that his protective shimmering spell had worn off for her.

He never chased her. Chasing had never been part of his game.

Wakening to sun, she felt no fear, no residue. Dreams, she knew, particularly her dreams, used exaggerated symbolism and the messages they whispered had long ago been known to her. It had never been a matter of escape. It had always been a matter of waking up.

There was a part I, II, and III posted here of this short story, but here I’ve knitted it together, added an ending and edited a bit. Things are always a work in process.
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She read the love letter she had written to him just hours before. She felt nothing. Less than nothing. She read the words again, intently willing herself to feel something. Regret, preferably hatred, anything to reassure her that she was still capable of emotion. Nothing.

My dearest love,

The letter began earnestly. It had been her hand (had it not?) that had written those words. She peered at her handwriting, coolly examining the words that formed sentences and stacked into paragraphs down the page, and wondered at them. Wondered how she could be so indifferent to her own professions of love. Was she a liar after all?

She did believe these words written in her own delicate, careful hand, yet they did not move her. Her heart remained a dead, flat, smooth stone inside her ribs. In her mind’s eye, she poked at it like a curious child, turning it over with a stick and examining the underside for any signs of life. Even some strange and alien life would be welcome. Perhaps something ugly, something grotesque and hideously pale, squirming against the intrusion. She hoped, but her hope was nothing more than a hushed, feeble spark.

I long for your return, to rest inside the circle of your strong embrace.

She thought of this picture of the two of them embracing. He was an extraordinarily beautiful man, fine-boned with honey coloured skin and hair, perfectly proportioned and strong. An image of his naked form, graceful and powerful, floated in front of her. She tried to see his face too, to remember clearly his eyes shot through with sparkling light and mischief, but she could not. Above his strong shoulders was nothing but a dark fog that stubbornly and lazily refused to part.

So it was like that then, she thought.

Yes, it was like that. Her head would not allow what might involve her heart. He was not so long gone as that. Only a week since his hands had last cupped her face and he had bent his head down to kiss her. Only a week since his slender, warm hands had held hers. A week since their heads had touched on the pillow.

A week in a life isn’t such a long time, but much can happen in a week. Hell, lives changed on a dime. One week was more than enough time to lose love, to change a mind, to discover lies, for a heart to die. Enough time, it seemed, for reality to become a receding memory that itself faded as silently and unnoticed as shadows at dusk.

I call you my love because that is what you have become for me…my love. If I hold no other promise to you, I shall never break the promise to cherish your life always.

Was it possible, she wondered, to cherish a life one did not really know? She knew the promise itself had become a lie now. Yet, to hold that promise, now more than ever, against the force of hatred, or worse, ambivalence, was important. It was vital. Michael had taught her that much.

**************

She heard the geese returning. There was one clear moment, as she lay in bed, where there was no other sound but their calls. She felt her mind open up, relax, and she remembered again that it seemed somehow crucial that she get away from suburban life. The sound of cars was killing her slowly.

She had yet to receive a response to the letter. She hadn’t expected one. Surely he had felt the dead weight of the words underneath the message. Still, his silence annoyed her. Now they were engaged in the dance of avoidance. Little of importance passed between them these days. There were valid excuses of course. It wasn’t the time to talk, the distance was too great, the cost too high. Yes, yes, she would nod on the other end of the phone, but she knew this was another lie they told to comfort themselves, to breathe and exist. He concerned himself with important matters such as money, and she concerned herself with urgent matters such as children. They were fine, just fine without each other. Laughter still broke over them, and the sun still shone on their two separate faces. People could go on for a very long time in this way, never daring to touch what could break them completely.

She couldn’t help but to think of Doris Lessing’s famous short story, To Room 19. The story pushed itself into her brain, tossing things about, wrecking her neat logic. She once talked about the story over coffee, years ago when she had first read it, and was swiftly told that Virginia Woolf’s original was much better. Trouble is, she never liked Woolf. Never liked the plodding story lines. She particularly loathed Mrs. Dalloway. She knew her feminist literary friends thought her a fool, and she used to care a great deal about being liked. Now, she didn’t much care.

She didn’t need a room of her own if her mind was her own.

Her morning ritual unfolded precisely and without her conscious effort. Cleansing, brushing, dressing, eating. She felt his steps on the outside stairs almost before she heard them. She swallowed carefully as the door opened.

There. My God, I do love you.

They looked at each other, he in the doorway with bags in hand and that peculiar extra layer of travel written into his body, she rigid in front of a half-eaten breakfast. All the slow movements of the long days past were shed in one violent tremor that ripped through Val’s body. She stood up, trembling and swallowing, moving to him as he, at once, was moved by the same force and stepped, in three long strides, across the floor to meet her.

A moment. A moment of frail doubt lingered and they hesitated, breathing skin to skin, but not touching.

“I’m afraid to touch you,” he said in answer to the space still between them.

“Why?”

Across his face moved the emotions he had refused over the last two weeks. She watched the flicker and flash of this silent movie playing over his features, until it slowed and faded out. He folded her into his arms then, the air between them heaved out by force. He buried his face into her hair, into her shoulder and neck, inhaling the mingled scents of soap and skin and sunlight he found there.

She never wanted to be a mother. Never wanted to be a wife. She had been an unusual girl, disinterested in dolls, barbies, or games of “house”. The closest she had ever gotten was the castle she got as a Christmas gift one year. It became a beloved object to her. True, there was a princess, but there were also two knights (both good and bad) and a dragon and a fabulous trapdoor which she busied herself using hour after hour, deciding if it would be the black knight or the white knight this time that would fall through the trap door into the dungeon. The princess stood oft forgotten to the side. What bloody use was a princess in a dress and pink cap?

She read the love letter she had written to him just hours before. She felt nothing. Less than nothing. She read the words again, intently willing herself to feel something. Regret, preferably hatred, anything to reassure her that she was still capable of emotion. Nothing. My dearest love,

The letter began earnestly. It had been her hand (had it not?) that had written those words. She peered at her handwriting, coolly examining the words forming sentences and stacked into paragraphs down the page, and wondered at them. Wondered how she could be so indifferent to her own professions of love. Was she a liar after all?

She did believe these things, these words written in her own delicate, careful hand. She must believe them or she could not, would not have written them. Her heart remained a dead stone inside her ribs. A dead, flat, smooth stone. In her mind’s eye, she poked at it like a curious child, turning it over with a stick and examining the underside for any signs of strange and alien life. Perhaps she would even find something ugly, something grotesque and hideously pale, squirming against the intrusion. She hoped, but her hope was nothing more than a hushed, feeble spark.

I long for your return, to feel your strong arms around me, to rest there for such a long time.

She thought of him, of this picture of the two of them embracing. He was an extraordinarily beautiful man, fine-boned with honey coloured skin and hair, perfectly proportioned and strong. An image of his naked form floated in front of her. What grace and power. She tried to see his face too, to remember clearly his eyes shot through with sparkling light and mischief, but she could not. Above his strong shoulders was nothing but a dark fog that stubbornly and lazily refused to part.

So it was like that then, she thought.

to be continued…and edited…

He sits in his car, with the door open, his long legs hanging out of the car…his shaggy head bent over a newspaper. He looks up as I walk by with the first of four baskets. He smiles and my heart pinches, shrinking in on itself. He is a predator. I know this when he smiles.

You see, the predator cannot be distinguished by any physical quality. He can take the shape of any man. You can’t see it in the cut of his clothes, the style of his car, his walk, or the way he styles his hair. There are no tell-tale outer markings. He can wear a business suite and languish comfortably in board room chairs. He can coach children’s soccer. He can wear the collar of God. He can run on the night streets and howl. He can breathe comfortably in the smoke of bars. He can stretch in the sun-warmed flesh of an athlete. He can rest inside the mind of the intellectual. It is a complex and subtle play of movement in his smile or in his eyes that reveals the predator inside.

A change in the eyes, quick, like the flash of a lightning bug in the dark heavy air of a summer night. There and gone. You peer, trying to predict when it will flash again, wonder to yourself if you imagined it.

I watch him out of the corner of my eye as I walk past, waiting for it. There, again…a certain hunkering of posture, a feline liquid swivel in the neck. And then the smile. So close to revealing the animal within that my skin begins to hum like a tuning fork, in tune with the hint of growling down deep in the throat behind his smiling teeth.

The children run up ahead of me into the laundromat, settling themselves into the blue cushioned seats below the television set that hangs in the corner. They crane their necks to see the cartoons playing.

“You have a lot of laundry there,” he says as I pass with the third basket. This is what he says. But his smile says, “I see you. I see your small frame, and your tiny hands. I could take you in here, fold you in my strong arms, secure, and then tight. Devour you, take you inside to warm my empty belly. When your life slips away and you have moved from warm to cold, I will spit out your bones and slip into the night. I have time, child…I am patient.”

I smile back, “Yes, two kids generate a lot of laundry.”

Inside, I drop the basket on the counter, breathing in the humid perfumed air of the laundromat. I go back for the last basket.

“More?” he feigns surprise and lifts one eyebrow to emphasize it.

I nod and continue past him, careful not to walk too close…careful to keep my scent from his nostrils.

This time as I approach with my basket, he doesn’t look up. He is bent over his paper. I come closer, closer still, and just at the moment he could look up to meet my eyes, he rustles the paper.

With fast feet I move past. My skin prickles and I imagine his hot breath chasing down the curve of my neck and spine. When I turn to look, he is still there, in his car, looking at me…smiling.

Inside I am safe in the company of flourescent lights and the mellow rhythm of the washers and dryers. I begin to sort the clothes into their piles of color and delicacy. Hot pinks and reds, denims and greens, stark whites for the hot bleach wash, and cashmere and silk for a gentle machine.

Suddenly his shoes are there in front of me. I stare at them while my hands continue their work. The shoes are brown, soft and worn. They are harmless. Those shoes can’t tell you he is a predator.

My eyes move up to the denim swathed legs. His jeans are clean and unassuming. The faded blue kind that anyone can wear, and everyone does. Nothing there to indicate that underneath pulses the blood of a predator.

My eyes continue upward, to his chest and the earthy flannel shirt that rests atop muscle and flesh. It is buttoned nearly to the throat, above which is exposed the suntanned column of skin that leads to his chin.

There…it is there, in his smile. The wolf smile. I feel the flash in his eyes and look up to catch it, but it is gone.

“I hate having to come to the laundromat”, he says. “It’s such a process. Such an event, you know?”

But his smile says, “I like the smell of your fear. If I turn my head just so, close my eyes, I can imagine what you would be like. I am patient. Just stand there, let my idle chatter distract you as I step closer, until you feel the warmth, and it is too late. No need to get to know me, I am pure instinct. No need to get to know you, you are but trembling flesh.”

“Mmmm”, I hum in agreement. I work at ignoring him. He retreats to the vending machine, pondering the selection, inserts his money and retrieves a soda. I watch him as he walks over to the television, standing just behind the chairs where my children sit. I call to them to come help me, but they ignore me. I move from washer to washer, inserting the clothes, the soap, the quarters, pushing buttons.

A dryer buzzes. He turns to check if it belongs to him, and it does. He walks toward it and I realize I am in the middle of the space between him and the dryer. I hold my breath, bracing for the static of air, the pulse of energy that will bounce off my senses. I try not to look up, but I feel safer if I do, knowing that my gaze will hold in place the human mask that covers the fur and fangs.

The flesh around his eyes crinkles as he smiles at me. When he is past, I breathe. I grab a magazine from a stack and sit next to the children, not looking up. I listen to the sounds of his folding, the rustle of fabric rubbing on fabric, the soft puffs of warm air escaping their hiding places inside t-shirts and pant legs, the snap of towels as he whips them into straightness.

I hear the scrape and creak of the wicker basket he carries his clothes in as he lifts it from the counter, and then the soft padding of his brown shoes across the floor as he leaves. And if I turn my head just so, and close my eyes…underneath the sound of soft padding, I can hear toenails clicking on linoleum.