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Not Passion's Slave, YetA "Love Bites" Contest Honorable Mention
by Ben Wesling
Fiona pulled in to the parking lot, her chevy cobalt rental car warm in the spring air, its tires glowing with the black perspiration of the road. Her tight jeans felt good on her skin, her jewelry did not. Her rings felt too tight, too constricting, as if they were tiny manacles of pain, slowly squeezing, contracting and compressing in that strange familiar way that love does when it veers off into uncharted territory the heart cannot follow into.
Parked, her gaze snapped up to the highrise apartment building directly in front of her. It towered and whispered above, a stainless steel enormous tombstone, glittering in the false light of the urban day. Random shafts of light reflected off its shiny surfaces, orange, yellow, dazzling her, trying to blind her. But she was too smart. She was wise to the things the world was now throwing at her. She was ready. Well, as ready as she would ever be. Fate was an unpredictable bitch on an endless bloody menstrual period from hell. She smiled at that, her own little way of blaming the universe for her own failings and wrong decisions. Especially when it came to men.
God she loved men. She ate them for breakfast. She dined on their souls, feasted on their insecurites, fed ravenously on their willingness to please. Sometimes she almost felt guilty about it. Sometimes.
This time, she had been played like a fiddle, ran through the wringer, spun like a top, tossed into the spin cycle and hung out to dry. She had been dumped by a man. The first time ever. She resolved it would be the last, as well. But she had to find out why he had left that sinister message on her answering machine a week ago.
She had been on a weekend business trip, came back late sunday night, found the message, its little red light blinking ominously in the dark of her sprawling apartment near the beach. He had left her, no warning, no clues, no previous hint of his intentions. She stood in the bedroom for a long time, her brain frozen at the words he used. The california night oozed around her, faint and fragile and frantic. Or was that her heart itself, its rhythm now jolted and snagged on some sharp nail of confusion and uncertainty.
"Hey, Fiona, I have to thank you for everything. You were great. Awesome, on many occasions. But I have to call it off. I realize this is extremely sudden, but I have no choice. I am moving back to florida. I am taking my stuff, not touching anything of yours. My key will be in your mailbox outside. Stay cool, girl. Later."
Click, end of message. End of rational thought. This had never happened to her. She didnt know what to do, at first. Then she knew. She would track him down, find him, locate his souls eyeballs and rip them out, slowly. She wanted revenge. Closure, resolution, finality, these were terms for the weak minded fools she saw all around her at the mall and the grocery store. No, she wanted full explanations, and then she would proceed with the mind games on him. Teach him a lesson, she was no pushover, no easy mark, no notch on his bedpost. Because thats how she felt, in a way. Carved into the wood of his sexual walking staff, a trophy memory. Another number in his little black book.
They had met one evening last summer, when he had walked in to her voodoo shop on 30th street. It had been a hot concrete buckling sort of day, where you drink lemonade and dream of avalanches and snowstorms in fargo, north dakota. At sundown, the street outside had grown eerily quiet, as if all traffic had suddenly disappeared, and all the people vanished. The sweltering night soon descended, velvet black wings of star flecked midnight hovering over her little shop. Faint thunder far off vibrated up into her solar plexus. Her fingertips had tingled with the electricity of the unknown. The little things, you only remember much later, she thought to herself.
He stood in the dim entrance, thin shafts of moonlight piercing the gloom of her store through the open door. He squinted, unsure of what he had stumbled into. She could read him, could see his emotions flowing across his face like water over a chiseled statue in a fountain, beautiful and caught in the moment. He adjusted his eyes, and she noted his muscled shoulders and strong forearms, his veined hands that held great weights in the air with effortless ease. She imagined his hands on her, holding her waist, in her hair, on the small of her back, as she leaned in to kiss him.
"Hi. Is this what I think it is? A voodoo shop?" He said, his voice a velvet rush of transparent sensations that caressed her spine. She remembered shivering, and feeling an electric ripple crawl up her back to set her head on fire. And lower regions, as well. She had to get to know this man, she had decided right then and there. An instant decision. A snap judgement. A blind leap of faith into the gaping maw of the unknown. Where risk, and glory, are twin sisters. She had never believed in love at first sight, but this sure came close.
"Maybe it is, and maybe it isnt. Would you be offended if it was? A "voodoo shop" as you referred to it. Oh, and by the way, I own this place. My name is Fiona. Look around, you might find something you cant live without," she had told him, a slightly mischievous glint in her eyes.
"Well, I lived in New Orleans for a while, so I know about voodoo. Yes I do. My neighbor was always trying to get me to come to some midnight rituals down in the cemetery, but I was just not into it like he was. So I never went." He had paused, dramatically it seemed."With him, anyway."
At this he smiled broadly, and she had to laugh. She liked him immediately, his sense of wicked dark humor was just like hers. And his brilliant blue eyes held some ancient secrets, that she had to pry loose from him. In bed, out of bed, she wasnt too picky how she got her secrets from men. This time, though, she had failed. He had a secret so big, she could not even see it. That must be the only explanation for what he did to her. What else could it be?
She locked her car, headed for the big glass automatic doors of the upscale apartment in South Beach she had tracked him to. It wasnt too hard to trace his steps. Call the airport, check for a passenger on a one way ticket, window seat right up by the cockpit. She knew his habits and paranoias, and these were what led like a trail of invisible breadcrumbs to him. Even all the way to florida. Where drugs and bikinis and art nouveau hotels and odd misfits all mingled in a multicolored soup of pastel sensations. Paradise of hedonism, utopia of anarchy and a good place to disappear.
Inside the lobby, she looked for a mailbox with his name on it. No luck. Except for a name that was out of place. Perhaps a cipher of some sort? L.E. Therwing. That was just the type of dark name he would choose. She scanned the mailbox again. Room 513.
In the elevator, cool air hummed around her, as the metal cube rose to its destination, assigned by the button she had pushed with a black nail polished index finger. Fiona closed her eyes, bracing herself mentally for what might happen, and what might not.
The first time they had kissed, they were in a cemetery, guests of a regular customer of hers who was an eccentric millionnaire. The well heeled patron had invited her to his annual halloween ritual at the local cemetery, complete with drummers and dancers and voodoo celebrations that were not for the faint hearted. Chickens were sacrificed, and the high priestess danced naked around an altar of bones, beads, candles and death masks. At one point Fiona was hit with a spray of blood from the severed neck of a chicken, and she turned to her date and looked into his eyes, about to ask him for a napkin to wipe it off her face. Instead he had pulled her close, surveyed her face with admiration, and kissed her on the lips. He slowly licked the blood from her face. She did not pull away, it somehow excited her. Later that night, at her place, she pulled him inside of her deepest interior spaces, and let him experience the goddess of love that had possessed her at the cemetery, and had come home with her. The goddess rode her like a rider on a horse, and in turn she rode him to the brink of ecstasy and madness, until they both collapsed in exhaustion on her red satin sheets, just as the sun had begun to rise, and the moon had fled. He had closed her drapes tight, and they lay in bed all day, until the sun fell. Then he had left, a whisper of desire caressing her body as he touched her one last time. She was falling for him. Against her better judgement.
The elevator slowed and stopped, smooth oiled silver doors opened onto a carpeted hallway with doors extending on either side. She collected herself and walked down the row, looking for number 513.
Here it was. On the opposite wall in the hallway hung a painting, seeming to depict four dark figures on black steeds cresting a ridge line, lightning streaking behind them in the cloudy distance. She got an uneasy feeling from it, as if the image was an omen she must heed.
She recalled a tattoo on his back, an odd winged monstrosity that he claimed was a hindu god of the underworld. She didnt believe him, it was too horrific and unsettling, and she remembered avoiding it with her eyes every time she gave him a back rub. The damn thing seemed to be different colors at different times, one day red, the next day black, a week later dark green.
She stood in front of the doorway, trembling slightly. Why? She was the one who needed answers, and should be in control, in the power position. Like she usually was. Mistress of her domain, her little voodoo shop down by the beach in southern california. Loyal customers, steady income, a good life, blessed with a slender tight body that could go all night in bed, long dark hair and green eyes that made men whistle on the street. A tough no nonsense business savvy and independent streak that had kept her from depending on any man. So why was she here? She actually could not answer that logically anymore. She felt driven by some force, some wind that pushed her emotional sails across the country to this hell hole of a city, a stones throw from cuba for god sakes.
She fingered the ornate silver cross on the chain around her neck, its scrolled and jewelled surface glinting in the dim light of the hallway. She thought of this man, who had never gone out in the daytime with her, claimed he was allergic to the sun, had skin cancer once and didnt want to go through with that again, it was in remission and he wanted it to stay that way. She felt like a fool for believing that ruse. Now she knew better. Now she remembered why she had come all this way. Now she knew what she had to do, to close the circle of their relationship once and for all.
She had a feeling someone other than him would answer the door. Sure enough, the door opened to reveal a pale skinned female college student, with a rose tattoo on her left breast visible above her bikini top. The girl gasped, and then yelped as Fiona grabbed her and pulled her out into the hallway. The girl stumbled and fell, as Fiona pushed past her and inside the gloomy apartment, slamming the door, locking the girl out in a swift motion.
The girl pounded on the door, but Fiona ignored it.
Glancing around, she took in the tapestries and candles, the heavy drapes pulled shut, blocking the bright florida sunshine out completely. And there, in the bedroom, no bed, but a raised platform with a long mahogany wooden box on it. The coffin. Where he slept. Unaware she was there. It was too perfect, too easy.
Her silver cross grew hot, glowed with holy anticipation. It would drink evil tonight, like wine.Later that night, as she sat in her window seat, near the cockpit, she thought maybe it was time to get a tattoo. One like his. A hindu god of the underworld, perhaps. A symbolic image inked on her skin, to show the world once and for all, that she was not passions slave, yet.
© Wesling, 2007
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