Christmas in the Cemetary, Part I

I work with someone who spends a lot of time in his off-hours fixing gravestones and assisting in the caretaking of several local cemeteries. Every Christmas a group of people, who all share similar hobbies as his, have a ‘Baltimore Cemeteries Christmas Holiday Crawl’. An activity that consists of visiting as many Baltimore cemetaries as possible and taking pictures of those gravestones decorated for the holidays.

Recently I began speaking with a woman who has a fascination with death. A lot of her fantasies revolve around graveyards, mortuaries, and mausoleums. I wrote her a story.

***

I have an image in mind; a cemetery, a white marble archway, just a bit dirty. Stood within, hands out-stretched to touch the top, feet spread apart. Black gown against the white marble, eyes closed, head cast back. This is you. There is a coolness, a breeze that stirs black cloth against skin. There is a stillness in standing there among the dead. Of being still enough to be a statue within the archway. Of you being silent.

A moment, when the hand first slips around the front of your throat, as if you were made of marble yourself; no sound, just a presence at your back. Black on black, your eyes remain closed as fingers grasp your throat in a grip tight enough to feel each slow breath.

But you remain still. Still against this body behind you. Still as a statue. Still as the dead. Lips cruelly warm against a cold neck. The biting edge of teeth when lips are drawn back, right along your pulse. Tasting the heat and subtle warmth this spot offers, a source of life amid the winter trees and rows of marble headstones. A quickened pulse becomes a beacon, the rhythm of hands and teeth. A beat that is played against skin when teeth test the tension of your throat and fingers curl against the waist, dragging the edge of the gown up over your calves.

For all of this, we make no sound beyond that made by the beating of your heart and the breath that escapes your lips.

Skin already cooled, already touched by winter’s edge, is exposed further. Inch by inch, the curling of fingers at your waist a measure of motion that draws black cloth up your legs, past your knees, to mid-thigh. No more exposed than a short skirt would offer, but here, in this archway, it lays you bare. Because here you are mine, here you are guided by the hands at your waist. Here you belong to the archway and the gravestones. To the specter at your back.

It is a place both comforting and dangerous, uneven ground in a city of crimson and black. The hands that guide you are sure, and your trust in them is enough to keep you from falling too far. But fall, you do. Just enough. Into the weight at your back, into the presence that holds you. The first touch of fingertips along the edge of your bared thigh is almost expected, but startling still for their presumed intimacy, their assured touch, slow touches warming the cooled skin.

A catch in your breath that is a question, and then answer enough for fingers to press against flesh; spread legs, spread thighs, framed in the marble arch; fingers can find the soft sensitive heat of inner thighs, chilled by the air and warmed by hands unafraid to touch you, to embrace you. Never too quickly, always at a pace just behind what you want, want you find as a need. Your pulse racing ahead of fingers as they spread against you, shifting up, under your gown and against naked skin, the black of the cloth draping over arms as fingers find the lines of your pelvis.