Author: D'jaevle

the Beauty and the Best – The Hunger

An excerpt of a story I worked on last year; this scene takes place about half-way through the story.

At dinner, Rose has refused the Beast's request to be his for the third time; in terror of reprisal, Rose fled back to her room.

—

In the rising tide of his hunger, Lord Beast’s growl was low and constant and it sent all of the servants standing in front of Rose’s door fleeing down the passageway; all but one, that is, for a lone boy, a young stable hand, remained shaking in front of the oak door that marked the entrance to Rose’s room.

Lord Beast reached back to knock the boy aside, the massive knot of muscles along his right arm tensing under a dark coat of his fur, but he read the terror in the boy's eyes and hesitated, a slender thread of humanity winding a path through the dark cloud of red. "Boy," came the growl through the Beast's clenched teeth, "Move or die."

"No M'lord…you c-cannot, not like this," said the boy, his terror driving his voice an octave higher as he cringed against the door. 

"You will move." said the Beast, "You will move, or you will die."

The boy quavered, tears leaking from his frightened blue eyes, but his trembling ten year old frame did not move; it was entirely possible that, in his fear, moving was a feat he was no longer capable of. "Y-you mustn't, M'lord, you mustn't."

The last of Lord Beast's patience vanished, "She will live. Beyond that," Beast said, plucking the boy up by the back of his dirty shirt and tossing him, not ungently, to the side, "I give no promises."

Resting a large hand on the oak door, Lord Beast pushed it open. Rose was sitting on the edge of her bed, face obscured by her long midnight hair; at the sight of her, the Beast's hunger erased all remaining thoughts of mercy; a coil made of the tightly fused threads of anger and desire twisted through him as he crossed the space to her bed in a haze of crimson.

For a long minute, Lord Beast stood towering over her diminutive form in silence.

Rose did not look up.

"Rose."

There was no answer.

"Rose!"

Silence.

"ROSE!" His roar shook the very bed she sat upon, and yet she still did not move. Hand trembling in anger, Beast placed a single finger under her chin and tilted it up. There were tears in her eyes, rivers of fear that dripped over her chin and into her lap where her hands were clasped tightly.

Her eyes, shiny and bright with trepidation, met his.

"What makes you think you have a choice?" he asked.

Beast watched her skin pale, only to flush red a moment later. She lowered her eyes, and his large hand went to her cheek, tracing the rosy glow.

"I don't." She spoke reluctantly, unsure.

“No,” the Beast said, “You don’t.”

empty cities

Perhaps there is some sadness; when one sleeps with a woman curled in his arms for the first time in years, there is a moment of loneliness, a half-remembered dream of what it is like to capture someone for more then a few moments.

There is nothing so painful as longing. It is the old sorrow, the ache that demands tears alongside anger, laughter amid indifference.

The City In Which I Loved You by Li-Young Lee

And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
and I mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you…

That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain rining like teeth into the beggar's tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
drag my extinction in search of you…

Past the guarded schoolyards, the boarded-up churches, swastikaed
synagogues, defended houses of worship, past
newspapered windows of tenements, along the violated,
the prosecuted citizenry, throughout this
storied, buttressed, scavenged, policed
city I call home, in which I am a guest…

a bruise, blue
in the muscle, you
impinge upon me.
As bone hugs the ache home, so
I'm vexed to love you, your body

the shape of returns, your hair a torso
of light, your heat
I must have, your opening
I'd eat, each moment
of that soft-finned fruit,
inverted fountain in which I don't see me.

My tongue remembers your wounded flavor.
The vein in my neck
adores you. A sword
stands up between my hips,
my hidden fleece send forth its scent of human oil.

The shadows under my arms,
I promise, are tender, the shadows
under my face. Do not calculate,
but come, smooth other, rough sister.
Yet, how will you know me

among the captives, my hair grown long,
my blood motley, my ways trespassed upon?
In the uproar, the confusion
of accents and inflections
how will you hear me when I open my mouth?

Look for me, one of the drab population
under fissured edifices, fractured
artifices. Make my various
names flock overhead,
I will follow you.
Hew me to your beauty.

Stack in me the unaccountable fire,
bring on me the iron leaf, but tenderly.
Folded one hundred times and
creased, I'll not crack.
Threshed to excellence, I'll achieve you.

but in the city
in which I love you,
no one comes, no one
meets me in the brick clefts;
in the wedged dark,

no finger touches me secretly, no mouth
tastes my flawless salt,
no one wakens the honey in the cells, finds the humming
in the ribs, the rich business in the recesses;
hulls clogged, I continue laden, translated

by exhaustion and time's appetite, my sleep abandoned
in bus stations and storefront stoops,
my insomnia erected under a sky
cross-hatched by wires, branches,
and black flights of rain. Lewd body of wind

jams me in the passageways, doors slam
like guns going off, a gun goes off, a pie plate spins
past, whizzing its thin tremolo,
a plastic bag, fat with wind, barrels by and slaps
a chain-link fence, wraps it like clung skin.

In the excavated places,
I waited for you, and I did not cry out.
In the derelict rooms, my body needed you,
and there was such flight in my breast.
During the daily assaults, I called to you,

~ excerpted from Li-Young Lee's The City In Which I Loved You

the languid touch

It is dangerous to push yourself against that edge in the hope the cuts it leaves behind are ones that will be reminders, small scars on the inside, that tell you that you were there, that you were possessed completely.

Cruelty comes easy, but it is the languid gentle touch that cuts deepest; a finger along the cheek, warm breath tickling skin, light kisses that taste the curve of a breast.

libre

I read a lot.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating.

I'm not talking about technical manuals, lengthy treatise on philosophy, or illuminating biographies written by great men.

I'm talking about the junk food of books.

Fantasy and science fiction.

I started reading novels young, at about fourteen or so. I got hooked on Piers Anthony's early Xanth books, read David Edding's Belgariad series (and then read it again as the Mallorean, Elenium, and Tamuli series). I read Heinlein's young adult books (Door Into Summer, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers), his adults books (Friday, Methuselah's Children), his later, weirder, books (Farham's Freehold, Number of the Beast, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, etc), and of course, the book that sticks with me most – Stranger in a Strange Land.

I read Glen Cook's gritty mercenary series, The Black Company, and the sillier, yet entertaining Terry Brook's Kingdom for Sale books. I fell in love with Roger Zelazny's world of Amber, amused myself with Hickman and Weis' Dragonlance books, and learned from Mercedes Lackey that homosexuality is easier to deal with if you have a telepathic horse companion. I read early space opera in E.E 'Doc' Smith's Skylark series and later space opera in David Weber's Honor Harrington books. Dan Simmon's Hyperion books captured my imagination for weeks, and David Palmer's Emergence had me thinking in shorthand.

It wasn't /all/ fantasy and science fiction; I found time to read every single Perry Mason book I could get my hands on, each Sherlock Holmes mystery, and the 'man against the world' Destroyer and Executioner series.

I continued to read as I got older. I read the first six or seven of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, managed to choke through the entire Goodkind Sword of Truth books, became a fan of  George R.R. Martin's Fire and Ice (but my true favorite books are Robin Hobb's Assassin books and Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel novels).

More recent treasures have come in the form of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn books, Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora, and Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind.

I got into urban fantasy with Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake books and enjoyed them until the plot became nothing more than excuse for twenty-page interspecial orgies. I read Jim Butcher's Dresden books, and still do.

The point is I read. A lot.

And it becomes harder to find truly good books. I've expanded beyond my junkfood platter, sampling the gothic in Shadow of the Wind, and historic in The Pillar's of the Earth.

I realized how far I've fallen when I paid over ten dollars to pick up an obscure 1989 science-fiction paperback (The Long Run by Daniel Keys Moran) based merely on the words of a brief message board discussion.

But how to describe the pleasure – that simple, yet amazing feeling you get when reading an unexpectedly enticing book? The kind of book that has you devouring the book in small bites, deliberately taking the time to wring the most enjoyment possible out of it.

At least this is one vice I can indulge in with no guilt. 

echo

I made friends with your ghost.

Much easier, this way, to know you. 

But you refused to lay still. 

I remembered you in fits, a slow jerking towards a memory I thought I had put down; it had no subtlety, just the loud rage of your presence as it lept upwards, through me, past me, fierce and angry and so much stronger then the dream I thought you to be.

construit par des femmes

There are three things I remember best about her: her car (an Eclipse coupe), her perfume (floral), and her sweater (soft).

I was fifteen and she was probably twenty-five or so. We flirted on a local BBS (this was before the 'net was around in any public capacity); the majority of our talks took place during the summer, while she was at work. Those few moments when she would log in from home were precious, as it meant she was more free in action and language.

I remember our first meeting. My first real date. I managed to convince my parents that she was just an older friend of mine with whom I chatted with on-line. Looking back, it seems incredulous that they allowed me out on a school night to see a movie with an older woman. But I was stubborn.

I remember the way she smelled, of flowers, a scent I would come to associate with soft femininity. She drove me to the movie, Dead Again (my first rated R movie – my parents were quite strict about what I was allowed to see), and we chatted. I was unsure of myself, back then; I didn't even have the courage to steal a kiss. 

As a teenager, I was quite the deviant; between the years of fourteen and twenty, I had affairs with a number of women, most at least ten or more years older then I. The majority of these affairs never left written seduction. A small number transitioned into spoken passion. And a few – a small few – became flesh. I was a shy adolescent, despite my bold words and curious nature. Most in-person encounters were limited to a kiss, or a furtive touch.

Those years taught me what women wanted; what *I* wanted.

There was Heather, the girl who was actually envious of my poetry, which came as quite a surprise as I thought my writing would never approach the skill of her own. She joined the army and wrote me from boot camp, attaching photocopied short stories and poetry by Frost.

And Elgato, who used a Spanish handle but who spoke in a heavy German accent; her real name was Ursula, and she thought the idea of computer sex was absurd – and yet, she always wanted to chat with me, knowing what I wanted. It took me eight months to seduce her.

The opera singer, Natalie, who was having a tumultuous affair with her conductor – and who had the dirtiest mind of anyone I had met in my sixteen years up to that point.

Rebecca, to whom I wrote fairy tales; I met her only once, and we spent the day in the large yard at my grandmother's house. We kissed. When it turned dark, and she had to leave, we stood and I accidentally broke her glasses; in our teenage fumbling, they had found their way under my feet.

Through these women, I came to understand the beautiful weakness of a moment where nothing else matters but desire. I hunted for these moments. Lived for them.

I thought this knowledge, those moments, would be enough; I thought knew what would make me happy.

And then I met NE.

self-destruct button

They were discussing equipment deployment strategies at the corner of 'Network Ave' and 'Engineering Road', so noted by the plastic signs attached to the corner of the cubicles.

One of the participants in the conversation held information I needed; having ignored my last several e-mails, which would have provided a painless solution to my informational needs, I was now forced to corner him face to face and squeeze the answers out of him.

Unfortunately, this required waiting for his current conversation to end. The topic of discussion moved away from deployment details and onto the more important area of the upcoming football season.

I'm a fan football; I've got the Sunday package that lets me watch every possible game each Sunday. I can name the starting quarterback for every team in the NFL. But at that moment, standing in the middle of cube land, six hours of work left to do, and two hours to do it in – the last thing I wanted to do was find out what these people thought of the Redskin's new coaching staff or their rookie wide receivers.

Yet here I was, listening anyways.

My hand felt its way into my pocket and to my keychain. I ran my thumb over the small red button that unlocks my car.

And for a moment, I imagined what it would be like if we all could carry around a self-destruct button.

How reassuring it would be to run your fingertips over it. In those moments of pure agony, when job or social requirements have placed you in a position where death by boredom becomes less of a euphemism, and more an impending threat – how nice it would be to have the chance to opt out in a singularly spectacular fashion.

It's just a day dream. But it got me through the next fifteen minutes of random conversation without resorting to violence.

I prefer to keep my violence at home, thank you.