Lewis and that blond chick

[slashmaster]

The footsteps were smart and not secretive, echoing loudly, mockingly at my every step, sometimes so close I felt the brush of her skirts on my heel. My breath came quickly – mortal panic, mortal alarm, even in my state, my experience. I was always to be caged in this passionate prison. Always, perhaps, until my death.
Death.
The word made me pause in mid-step. Its wholeness, if it had a whole, was still so twisted and confusing to me, even now, when all dark things are exposed in a harsh light – death. It was a concept so alien to its own land, blindingly different to all peoples, even those who walked under its cloak, guided by its hand, the vampires. I had called for death and here it was – but it was not like the death I brought upon others. It was not like the corpses stinking of old, sour blood in the graveyards tossed aside from society’s tender eyes, not like the decrepit old women moaning on street corners, the lost lovers weeping and brushing off the cold with booze and whores. So what was death, really? Should the question be ‘what,’ or ‘who?’ Or perhaps something else entirely, a completely new question, embracing a spectrum untouched but very real.
She flickered by, just a flicker, but she did pass, taunting me with her perfume, trailing her fingertips over my cheek, her flesh like silk and ending in a knife-like tip of a fingernail.
“Play no games with me,” I said wearily, listening to her tinkling laugh fade. “I am in no mood for ghosts.”
And she was before me then, her hands clasped playfully behind her back, twisting a toe into the pavement. She looked the vision of eternal youth, her face round with the first blooms of maturity, her breasts fair but small beneath her delicately-buttoned blouse, her skirt flaring above her knees, and then sharply ending in fishnets and buckled heels, a fetish whore for the eyes, always an illusion. I watched her with narrowed eyes, but her smile was sweet and unfaltering.
“You are troubled yet again,” she noted with a tone made shrill by her teasing. “A man who causes himself so much woe has already died and gone to hell! Gone to hell!” And she laughed, tilting her head back and exposing her perfect throat.
“I see the liquor behind your eyes, poisoning your blood,” I told her softly. “The way you falter – you seem almost like a vision. How much have you had? Do two young women lay limp and naked in the dirt behind some pub? Have you no decency?”
She snorted, and for the first time she lost her balance before me, stumbling before placing a firm heel into the cement. “So poetic as always, my little man-loving Lewis,” she said, her voice now dangerously contemptuous, but still cheery and almost intimate. “What new lover have you scorned with bad seed?”
I was stunned by her vulgarity. “Whatever has possessed the demon!” I exclaimed. “Whatever could make the devil dance so!”
“You exaggerate, as always, Lewis.” She was smoothing down her blouse, pressing her fingers to her breasts, running them smoothly over her curves, again sensual but slightly vague, crossing and uncrossing her knees, and I watched this for a moment before I understood. I worked at the idea for a moment, just observing her thighs, rubbing together, shaped just as mine could never be shaped, and the longing hit so strongly I reeled.
“Oh, God, I think I have it!”
My voice was so loud that I stunned her, and she blinked at me in mid-adjustment, her fingertips cutely curled on the hem of her blouse. I gripped her arms harshly, digging my nails into her skin, and she cried out, her eyes flashing with rage and confusion. She did not move to remove me yet, but I felt her bristle under my touch.
“I see now, so clearly, in this glass and gorgeous form of yours! Never have I felt so enlightened! Oh, this euphoria!” And my voice became almost painfully affectionate as I looked her over again. “You do so come upon me when I most need you.”
“Lift the rose petals from your tongue,” she said scornfully, but I saw the incredulous light in her eyes. “You speak like such a flower from those dirty lips.”
The offense was enough to distract me from my original task. “Dirty lips!” I cried, appalled.
She wrinkled her nose at me. “No man’s mouth is clean once it has touched another man in all manner of places,” she explained in a low, purring voice that was not pleasant, and I made a noise of horror that she ignored. “But it does not matter. What of my body? Do not seek to tell me that I have converted you to women!”
“Do not flatter yourself, or you shall become ugly and fat and no man will take you,” I rebuked in a rushed voice, thrusting my hands into my pockets.
She laughed. “I am beyond mortal trials of love, Lewis. My only lover is blood.”
“Blood and wine,” I muttered.
She flashed me a smile that would have been charming if it weren’t for the carnivorous expression on her face. “I know how you used to drink, Lewis. Vodka on plain days and wine on afternoons when you were so fortunate to lie and stroke your lover’s lap. I do not forget. But what of my curves, or have you stumbled upon something else yet?”
“This conversation dances but it has no tune,” I said, abashed and flustered, my cheeks turning pink. “Let me explain before my poor clumsy tongue forgets.”
“Yes, yes, speak,” she said impatiently, waving a hand, very drunk, for I had never seen her behave this way.
My grief was forgotten in my revelation. The blood on my hands was a pale shadow cast by this magnificent light.
“A woman’s body is what I lack – all that I lack,” I stammered, my voice coming out in a rushed stream. “Curves, as I am cursed with that flat and awkwardly-shaped body of a man. Content though I am, it is because my thoughts are ambiguous at best. And oh, the gravity to my image. Perhaps it is a perverted scenario of self-adoration, I do not know. But such luck I’ve had with men as I am, no matter how deeply I love, they all turn away from me, fade into blackness, and I wonder… would I find peace as a woman?”
She was stunned. Her face was a mask of emotion, all things melted and mixed onto this pretty frame, her lips pursed and puckered and her eyes wide, her eyebrows high. We were held in a perpetual tension, bonded by the hands I kept clasped above her elbows, and finally she forced a laugh to break my eager silence.
“And you accuse me of being drunk while you bluster about making such suppositions!” she said, and pried my hands loose. “Whoever put these ridiculous ideas into your head?”
“You brought me my wish of death,” I pleaded, dizzied with desperation, and kneeling at her feet now, clawing at her skirt. “I beg you now to grant me this one wish, this final wish, for I know you have the power! You must!”
Her eyes were wide with shock, her lips slightly parted. “No,” she said, and frowned. “It’s impossible, Lewis. God can only create, not change.”
“Please!”
“Stifle these fantasies and release me!” she cried, and slapped my hand as I reached for her. I withdrew it sharply and stared emotionlessly at the little buds of blood blooming there. “What you seek is impossible! I am sorry.” And for once I saw that she truly was sorry, for compassion made her face warm, warm as I had never seen it, and for a moment I might have loved her.
But then she was gone, and my beseeching hands closed on air.

-- This one kept me up all night. I had to get it all out, and I'm in love with it, which is odd because it's nothing like my normal writing. Ah well.

[Robin]

There's a lot more action here than usual, or at least the proportion of action to musing is a lot bigger. But that's cool. I liked it.

Anyways.

"The footsteps were smart and not secretive"

Since you go on in this sentence to refer to her as her, and since not secretive is sort of choppy, I'd go for something like 'Her footsteps were smart and brazen' or some other synonym.

"word made me pause in mid-step."

It's a word, yeah, but it's a thought, so maybe you could consider having it as .'the thought made me pause in mid-step.'

"So what was death, really? Should the question be ‘what,’ or ‘who?â"

He doesn't ask direct questions, right?

But then again, this piece isn't so much a thinking piece for him as it is an emotional piece, so I think you could get away with it.

"her flesh like silk and ending in a knife-like tip of a fingernail."

Sort of an awkward sentence. Maybe 'her flesh like silk, the tip a knife-like fingernail.' I don't know. That stunk. It's sort of a hard thing to set up.

"young women lay"

Is it 'lie?' I wouldn't know, I suck at grammar, but 'lay' doesn't sit right with me.

"œYou speak like such a flower from those dirty lips"

Excellent imagery, but the delivery could use some work. The flower bit should have something to do with the words. Like 'you speak such flowery words from those dirty lips.' Or something. Something more eloquent than what I could put out. XD

" know how you used to drink, Lewis. Vodka on plain days and wine on afternoons when you were so fortunate to lie and stroke your lover’s lap. "

I would add something before this, like 'do not tell me of wine' or something. But that's just me. It'd make it blend more seamlessly with what Lewis says.

And that's all I have to say. Words are always getting in my way. Anyway, I love you.

Haha Art Garfunkel reference.

[slashmaster]

Thank you, Robin, love. =D

[Robin]

You're veeery welcome.