A Beauteous Flower Ch. 15

Cold Rain Fever

*****

Madison stood before a room full of women in hooded black robes. Each of them shimmied silver and black pom poms and murmured to each other conspiratorially. A spotlight shown down on her with an accusatory glare and a hostile chill permeated the room. Madison's skin prickled with cool dread. What could this mean?

To her right, Daniel stood behind a large wooden table, tall in a tuxedo with mirror polished shoes and a red rose pinned to his left lapel. A gorgeous brunette-haired woman stood next to him. She wore a gossamer white wedding dress and held a bouquet of red roses, with her right arm thrust possessively through the loop of Daniel left arm. They looked like a bride and groom statuette on top of a wedding cake.

Madison's stomach turned at the sight and she tried to get Daniel's attention with a frantic wave, but the angel woman whispered in Daniel's ear. Daniel smirked and the angel woman responded with a giggle and a love-struck sparkle in her eye. To her horror Madison realized that Daniel was about to marry her. Madison opened her mouth to protest, but no sound came out.

Before Madison could charge across the room, a loud clash of cymbals announced the appearance of a judge who reclined on the wrap around sofa at the head of the room. The Judge was a winged pixie in a red silk robe and the yellow-orange eye makeup of vengeance rimmed her blood red eyes. Fire licked from her fingertips as she reached for a heavy gavel, which she pounded three times like the stroke of doom. The room went deathly quiet as the Judge glared down at Madison imperiously.

"This is the case of Defendant Madison," the Judge intoned in a contra-alto thunder. "I have reviewed the evidence and heard the arguments. You have been given a full and fair hearing and I hereby find you... guilty as charged!"

The gallery full of hooded women in black issued a derisive hiss at Madison underscored by the swish of pom poms. Again, Madison opened her mouth to protest, but again she was unable to form words or even make a sound. The judge banged her gavel three times for quiet and then continued without notice of Madison's frantic attempts to speak.

"Enough! This Court does not need any additional testimony from the likes of you, young lady!" the Judge scolded. "The evidence is clear, and you are guilty! Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt! You were a terrible girlfriend, and even worse fiancé and an abominably bad wife on a scale this court has not witnessed in its long history!"

Another hiss of denunciation and pom poms went up from the hooded women in the gallery. The spotlight seared brighter, but the cold aura of condemnation in the room only intensified. Madison looked around to see if she could escape, but she found she could not get out of the cone of light created by the spotlight. The Judge thundered on.

"Generally, you were a very bad girl!"

The gallery bayed and shook their pom poms in agreement and the Judge waited a moment before she banged her gavel for silence again.

"What's more, your behavior reflects badly on all women and cannot be allowed to go unchecked lest all men should be led to think all women are not but gold digger bitches who only care about how much they can squeeze out of a man and are incapable of love!"

The gallery of black hooded women groaned and shimmied their pom poms in approval of the Judge's words and this time the Judge let the hisses and curses they flung rain down on Madison until they were spent. After the condemnation of the gallery faded away, the Judge continued.

"Fortunately, a good-hearted woman has come forward to accompany this good-hearted man through life! May their marriage be blessed and fruitful and may they share a rich and true love, which is reserved for those who are soulmates!"

The hooded women in the gallery keened a cheer of triumph and gratitude, which caused the angel woman to blush and wave shyly. Daniel touched her cheek and looked at her with such love in his eyes that Madison nearly vomited jealousy. She was Daniel's soulmate, not that that angel bitch! She tried again to scream to Daniel that she loved him, and she was sorry for the hurt she had caused, but again her voice failed. The wild cheers and shimmer of pom poms faded away and the Judge continued.

"As punishment for your crimes, this Court will impose the maximum sentence from which there is no appeal!"

More cheers and the exultant swish of pom poms went up from the black hooded women and the Judge banged her gavel again.

"Defendant Madison, you are hereby... DIVORCED!"

"NO!" Madison finally managed to scream, but it was too late, and Madison knew it. No one heard her over the crowd's furious and lusty approval of the sentence. The Judge stood, seized her gavel, and brought it down with an ear-splitting thunderclap of finality. As the sound of the gavel faded into an echo, the women in black robes pointed accusatory pom poms at Madison and moaned jeers at her in high, shrill voices. After a moment the Judge nodded to the angel woman, who then pulled Daniel close and kissed him passionately. Madison's bereft cry was drowned out by the taunts and invectives hurled at her from the crowd and Madison could only watch as Daniel returned the angel woman's kiss with equal zeal. When their lips parted, they shared a happy gaze of contentment that struck Madison like a hammer blow.

Then as she opened her mouth to scream her protest, the floor opened, and Madison fell. She fell for a long time, down deep into a stone-lined well where she finally splashed down into a deep pool of freezing cold water. Madison struggled back to the water's surface with a gasp of cold air that seared her lungs. She looked around wildly but saw no way to escape.

As she shuddered from the shock of the icy-cold water on her skin, two impossibly cold hands seized her ankles and pulled her head underwater. Madison kicked and pulled against the hands, but she couldn't escape their frost bound grip. Panic roared in her mind, and a merman with the face of Steve the Oaf smiled at her with possessive lust. Madison shuddered with revulsion and kicked against his grip so violently that he let her go. Freed from Steve the Oaf's clammy grasp, Madison frantically pulled for the surface. She came up in a spray of water droplets and gasped for air. Above her Daniel's face appeared, and although he was high above her, Madison thrust a pleading hand up towards Daniel.

"Daniel!" she screamed. "Daniel, I'm sorry!"

Then Steve the Oaf dragged her back under the water's surface. She flailed frantically to reach the surface again, but this time Steve the Oaf did not let go. Instead, he flicked his tail and dragged Madison down deeper into the pool. She thrashed and kicked but she couldn't escape, and her breath began to burn in her lungs.

Down and down Steve the Oaf swam, and as Madison grew weaker, he wrapped her in a ice bound embrace that pinned her arms to her side. One of his cold hands entwined in her hair and once he had secured her in his grasp, Steve the Oaf kissed her, deeply and hungrily. His tongue snaked into Madison's mouth, and he sucked the air from her lungs. Madison tried to scream, but only a few little pathetic bubbles issued from her mouth.

Too weak and oxygen deprived to fight, all Madison could do was feel cold revulsion as Steve the Oaf crushed his body into hers, wedge his tail between her legs and forced them open as his huge, blue penis slither towards her. Weakly she shook her head in protest as it slid coldly up her thigh and the tip teased against her. She lifted her eyes to pray for rescue, but all she saw was a grin of possessive and destructive lust spread on Steve the Oaf's face.

Then in one long, smooth, and horrifyingly pleasurable thrust, Steve the Oaf penetrated Madison. She couldn't protest or resist and for a moment Steve the Oaf granted her the small mercy of a pause. Then a lascivious look came onto his face, and he thrust in and out of Madison's airless body like a kind of bio-engineered animal designed to inflict pleasure on her. Madison momentarily tried to resist the cold deluge of pleasure, but her body betrayed her, and lust overwhelmed her reason. She forgot about the water, she forgot about the divorce, she even forgot about Daniel and spread her legs to accept the mortification of pleasure that grew swiftly in her body. Seconds later, Madison's body erupted in a violent and shamefully large orgasm. She opened her mouth to scream out her pleasure but couldn't because she had no air in her lungs.

But Madison's sentence of humiliation and degradation didn't end there. Steve the Oaf pushed harder and faster without any care if Madison enjoyed it at all. He wanted conquest, not connection and he grinned at her with the maniacal frenzy of a shark attack. Again, her body spasmed and in response Steve the Oaf's face twisted in ugly ecstasy as his body grew taut. With an animal roar of raw pleasure, he spewed forth a dark cloud of cold, eely seed inside her. Madison felt his essence, frigid and slimy deep inside her, impregnate her.

His lust spent, Steve the Oaf pushed Madison's limp body from him and sneered a look of satisfied contempt. Madison drifted, unable to float or swim to the surface, helpless and bereft. She reached out to him in a plea for some tenderness, but Steve the Oaf recoiled in disgust and struck her a merciless slap across the face with his webbed right hand. Stunned from the blow, Madison drew a deep breath of the cold water into her lungs in hopes that she would simply drown to end this miserable torture, but she discovered she could breathe the water like air. She looked down at her body and saw that her legs now formed into a tail like a fish and, below her she saw Steve the Oaf surrounded by an enormous churn of grotesquely pretty mermen and mermaids. They sang to her in reedy voices and beckoned for her to join them in the depths.

Madison could never return to the surface of the water, never again feel warmth, never again return to Daniel and, worst of all, her inability to resist the cold darkness of beings like Steve the Oaf was what caused it. Her fate was to be with Steve the Oaf, bear his children and swim in these icy-cold waters as part of the grotesquely pretty school of mermen and mermaids. But the cruel curse would be that she would not enjoy her life in that cold and airless place because she had the memory of warmth and of Daniel and the painful knowledge of how she carelessly threw that all away. Madison emitted one long, mournful cry, but now her high reedy voice couldn't be heard outside the icy-cold water. A great surge of loss strangled her heart, and her eyesight blurred with tears of anguish. She deserved this, to be treated like this, for all she had done. To her shame, Madison had failed Romeo twice, and now she was condemned to never be free of Steve the Oaf and this world of icy-cold water. Foolishly, she had thought she wanted this life, and now, for just a few awful and shameful minutes of fleeting pleasure, she had exactly what she deserved. Daniel was gone from her life and Madison's heart shattered into a thousand little crystal shards of pain.

"No!"

*****

Madison screamed herself awake. Where was she? Wait! It was all a dream, a nightmare! With a cry of relief, Madison threw back the comforter and vaulted out of bed. For a moment she stood and gasped deep breaths of air, grateful that she was not a mermaid in a deep, icy-cold well. She was safe in her room, and it was all just a dream.

She still had a chance!

Questions rushed around her mind. What had happened? What time was it? Where was Daniel? Would he read her story and finally listen to her? And, most immediately what was all of that beeping she heard?

She had finished her story at about three in the morning and decided to take a nap before she arose to accost Daniel before he went for his morning run. She planned apologize, beg his forgiveness and give him her story to read. No wonder Daniel said all a writer had to do was sit in front of a typewriter and bleed. She was so emotionally exhausted from writing the story that she needed a few hours of sleep to recharge before she made her play.

From somewhere the beeps sounded again. Absently, she reached to turn off her alarm, but then the beeps sounded again so Madison knew it wasn't her alarm. Madison wondered until the beeps sounded again from outside. What emitted those kinds of beeps? Then the source of that sound fixed in her mind, and her heart plunged. Madison flung open the French doors and rushed onto the balcony. A slate gray mist shrouded the morning sun from direct view and the cold sting of tiny rain drops pelted Madison's skin, but that wasn't why Madison shivered.

Below her Daniel motioned as he directed a moving van toward the door of the cabin. There three other men stood with boxes as they waited to load them. Madison grabbed the clammy wet iron of the railing to keep her feet under the weight of realization that made Madison's blood run cold. Daniel was leaving! Leaving their home! Leaving her! Madison's mind spun in panic. She had thought she had time yet, time to speak with Daniel and get him to see how deeply she loved him and how sorry she was for everything, but it had never occurred to her that Daniel might move out of his own house to get away from her. Now this man who was always so patient and sweet, who had given in to her every whim, had determined to leave her alone in their bed without even a backward glance. If she didn't act fast, their whole marriage, their whole relationship would be over before she had even begun to fight. Madison tried to scream, but nothing came out because her mouth was dry with fear. She swallowed and tried again.

"No," she finally managed to say out loud. "Daniel!"

No one looked up in response to her, so she tried again through a frightened throat.

"Daniel!"

Still, no one looked up, so Madison took a deep breath and shrieked for all she was worth.

"Daniel!"

Only Daniel didn't turn his head to her. The men with the boxes all looked up at her and the driver of the truck, alarmed by her sudden scream, stopped the truck and looked at her through the side mirror. Ordinarily she might have been self-conscious in a wet T-Shirt in front of four strange men, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that Daniel might leave and that she had to stop him.

"Daniel, No!" Madison screamed in a strained, high-pitched voice. "Daniel! Daniel, look at me!"

Daniel ignored her calls and angrily gestured for the truck driver to resume. The back up alarm beeped again, and the truck resumed as Daniel directed. Madison's heart rose to her throat and choked her with panic.

"Daniel! Daniel, no!"

The truck stopped and the men with the boxes shuffled forward, while the driver got out of the cab and climbed up into the trailer to arrange the boxes for transport. Madison was out of time. There would be no quietly reverent scene of reconciliation between them. To reach Daniel and save her marriage, she had to make her play right now, face to face in the rain before the van was loaded and Daniel left their home forever. Madison tore out of the bedroom, down the stairs, through the kitchen and out into the rain with desperate speed. Her bare feet slapped on the wet grass as she tore towards Daniel with her arms spread wide.

"Daniel! Daniel you've got to listen to me!"

Daniel didn't look at her, so Madison charged at Daniel to bear hug herself to him and bodily hold him in place. Her wet body slammed into Daniel's, and she scrambled to clasp herself to him. Daniel grunted an irritated noise as she bowled into him, and, after a single step back to recover his balance, determinedly turned his face away from her, as his hands fenced and prevented her apologetic embrace.

"Daniel, please! Please listen to me! Just listen!"

Daniel made another irritated noise as the men stopped and stared at the surreal scene of a woman in a soaked T-shirt as she struggled to hold a man who sought to escape from her embrace. Unable to hug Daniel, Madison clutched and grabbed for any purchase she could find. A flash of steel determination surged from her heart, and she redoubled her efforts. She would not let her Daniel go without a fight.

"I won't let you go!" Madison hissed fiercely as she fought against his attempt to ward off her embrace. "I won't! I love you, Daniel! I love you and I'll do anything you ask if you just listen! Anything!"

The men murmured to each other as they watched Madison debase herself, but then went silent under Daniel's gaze. All of them turned away sheepishly and allowed Daniel the privacy he needed to finish his final act of their relationship. But not if Madison could help it. She hoped this was just a dark, dark night before a brilliant dawn. If she could only get Daniel to listen to her and open his heart to her one more time.

After silencing the men, Daniel bodily shrugged out of Madison's clutches. When his body slipped free of her grasp, Madison staggered and fell onto her butt in a shallow puddle with a yip of pain. For a moment concern flashed in Daniel's eyes at her cry. Madison's heart leapt only to stall when Daniel mastered himself. His eyes went blank once again and his lips made a horizontal slash of dispassionate observation.

His robotic stare nearly took Madison's nerve. The combination of Daniel's hard eyes, and the frigid puddle recalled the terrible icy-cold water of her nightmare. Was she truly doomed to lose Daniel and live in that cold world of cartoonishly pretty things? How could she reach Daniel's heart right here and now if she could not discern anything from him? What could she possibly say to explain herself and her emotions to him? If she had seven lifetimes in which to plead, she might get him to listen to her, but that morning, as he stood above her like a carved statue and she shivered in the wet and cold, Daniel's heart seemed miles out of reach. But Madison had seen that flash of concern in Daniel's eyes. No matter how he tried to hide it, some part of him cared for her and that meant that the Daniel she loved was right in front of her. That was all the motivation she needed, and, with a sob, Madison pushed herself up onto her knees.

Soaked to the bone and shot through with raw cold, Madison had never felt so exposed. What if he rejected her when she was this broken and vulnerable? She shoved that thought aside. He deserved to see her like this, vulnerable and broken. Whatever the outcome, her confession and request for absolution was all she had left to give him and the only thing that could save her from the accursed cold that pierced through her body and down to her soul. How else could she show him how much she needed him, how much she loved him? Daniel didn't look away. She looked up hopefully into his dark eyes and let him see all the sorrow and regret she felt. When Daniel swallowed uncertainly, Madison took that as her cue to pour out her heart.

"Daniel, I know I hurt you! You need to know that I'm so sorry for that! I didn't think and I hurt you so badly and I'll never be able to forgive myself!"

Daniel inhaled a deep breath through his nose and blew it out of his mouth. He seemed like he might speak, but he didn't. Instead, he blinked and bit his lip. Madison got a thrill of hope. His heart wasn't stone! He still felt something! Encouraged, Madison inched towards Daniel on her knees and reached towards him with both hands extended, palms up.

"Daniel, I'm sorry! I know now that I've been petty and immature and a thousand other things!"

Daniel's eyes flicked to the right and then back to her.

"Your mother was right! She was right! I was selfish and I hurt you!"

Madison's hands brushed carefully against Daniel's thigh, and Daniel flinched, but didn't back away.