"Gentle fingers touch my face, my cheek, and there is never time to absorb enough of him into my tiny frame "
Underfoot, photo collage by Ben Cummings.
He is violence. He flashes and storms, cradles his head in lightning. He holds me down once, twice, three times, again. He twists my arm behind my head and runs one perfect finger down my back. One fluid movement and my hands are tied, his hand motionless against my throat. Two fierce glances and I am still; there is no struggle in this place, only the ocean rushing through the river beds and drowning all the lakes. I moan, breathing in sand and salt, gasping for air. I stare at the white crocheted blanket and count to ten, take a breath, and count again. I can feel the leather on my skin, cool to the touch, edges rough but still smooth. I can feel his hands and mouth, breath on my neck. I am kneeling, blood pounding, his hands stroking my hair and face and I am lost.
My bedroom window looks out over a long roof that is continually filled with water; a private lake above the city. And I kneel on my bed and stare into the rain dropping silently into the pool and I think of the silver in him. The threads that wind their way through his hands and teeth, slaughtering veins like hematite rivers, carving valleys and gorges. He is shadowed by it, cheekbones and forehead illuminated, echoing through darknesses. It gleams, it destroys music, it churns through me. I want to be him. I want, I want. I am frozen by his silver channels; my blood runs too cool for the quicksilver to thrive in my veins.
He is steel. His belt gleams and for a startling moment I lay quietly, at peace, as he holds it above me. That sweet warm smile diluted with grainy glittering lust and the belt falls, a slow curving arc, down past the pillows and the lonely window and it lands on my back with a shiver. The strange warmth hangs in the air and I bask in it, I ask for it again and again. Gentle fingers touch my face, my cheek, and there is never time to absorb enough of him into my tiny frame.
Some days it's only a perfect stillness, a moment, one breath. One gasp, one isolated point in time when I look out of the kitchen window at the rows of apartments lined up like teeth and I try not to think about it. A whole moment ago I was shaking with distaste, the acid of fear on my tongue, refusing to admit that his hands were moving under me and that the window shade was open. Two whole moments ago, or maybe three, we were still standing in the dining room and I was saying I am really scared of the window and he was leaning over me and he was saying you know that I would never do anything to hurt you and then I was dressing for him, pulling on stockings and garter belt and high heeled shoes.
My eyes are shut more tightly than possible, and so I cannot identify the item in my mouth but I know that I must hold it there, though I can not speak, and for an entire moment I contemplate spitting it out, kicking backwards somehow, kneeling on the floor, pressing my face against the glass as if touching the window will make it cease to exist. His hand grabs my chin and pulls my eyes back to the window, almost growling did I tell you to look away...did I tell you to look away slut? Was I looking away? I must have been and surely this is too much, it must be that I cannot endure it, something in my mouth and some other things inside me, held in because his hand is there and will not let them fall. Then something ruptures, a face in an apartment window maybe, and everything becomes an excited whisper and becomes visible again, me shadowed and naked, tied hand and foot, naked in front of this window and in a painful flash I begin to fall in, I begin to want it, I crave this more than I despise it and he says you like it, don't you and then there is static and then there is silence.
(c) 2001 by Riain Grey
