Alpheios.
Monday July 25, 2011
Coming down the trail he slows as he approaches the lot. Another car’s pulling in, a big old boat of a thing with probably a V8 engine. The smell of burnt oil and overheated brake pads. It pulls in and parks next to his German convertible and he jogs in place, working out the kinks as whoever it is, a tall woman, gets out, skinny, hair chopped short, eyes behind Coke-bottle glasses. He sluices sweat from his forehead. She unbuttons her soft denim workshirt. Strips it from her shoulders and tosses it into the front seat, kicks off her sandals. He’s stopped jogging in place. He’s grinning a little, surprised, as she unbuttons her white jeans and shoves them down her legs and off and chucks them after the sandals into the car. Tall and skinny but strung with threads of muscle under smooth brown skin and utterly naked.
He opens his mouth but doesn’t say whatever he was about to say. She closes the door and turns and sees him there and for a moment they’re looking at each other, him slicking back his hair, still breathing heavily from the run, her stone-still, her eyes dark circles swimming behind those lenses.
And then naked a net sack in her hand something heavy in the net sack she stalks past him, out of the lot, up the trail. He turns to watch her go, his grin becoming a frown, his frown twisting into a wince, lifting a foot to shake out his leg, gasping, clutching his calf and falling hard to his side, rolling over on his back, legs trembling, jackknifing, muscles in his calves clenched like rocks, in his thighs like the trunks of trees. God, he’s moaning, tears squeezed from his eyes, oh God, help, help!
Up on the ridge above the lot and across it, down a little to the edge over the river far below, she sets the net sack down and bends over, stretching her back, her rangy legs spread wide, straightens, tilting her head, working out her neck. Squatting by a gnarled pine that’s fighting its way up out of the dusty rocks she pulls a pomegranate from the sack and holds it in both hands up before her mouth. She looks up at the white-grey sky far above, featureless and still.
She smashes the pomegranate down on a knobby spur of the pine tree, jutting up from the coiled root before her. She works the shell of the pomegranate around that knob as the red juice runs down it, seeds crunching. All right, says the witch, tossing the empty rind away, kneeling over that glistening knob, all right then, she says, her wet red hands between her thighs, opening her cunt up, I’ll go to hell, lowering herself, impaling herself, grunting as she begins to fuck that tree, the rock, the dust, that sky…