Come to Me

I can't remember the last time I had a real sensation.

Even the wind which tugs at my sleeves is nothing more than the hum of a truck on a distant road.

I've woken from a dreamless sleep. Time has run its course--its bank has dried up, and all that remains is a track with no direction. Maybe it's running in every direction, spreading and bifurcating into infinite possibilities that all lead to nowhere.

There are those who lose themselves by giving in to desire; but others deny themselves to the point of extinction.

I am extinct.

My hands tingle, my fingertips are numb. When I try and touch anything beyond me through the creases of this dead flesh, I only pick out a vague outline--an obstacle to my movement.

I no longer feel panic or despair; it's not even clear there's an 'I' left to feel--this sack of skin and bones-- that it carries anything more than the echo of thoughts which germinated in another era.

But as long as I hear that echo, I must pretend to be alive.

++++

A shadowed valley runs into lush plains of green, burning gold in the open light.

The scent of pungent flowers carried on a warm spring wind feels like a stale dull breath on my face.

It may as well be a darkened cave that I make my way into now. I pick up a ripe, plush peach and bite down; its rich juices splatter down my chin. The meat of the fruit is days-old refrigerated mashed potato; its sticky juice clogs up my teeth. I wanna swill my mouth out, but there is nothing to drink.

I lend my ear to the edgeless breeze and listen for moving water.

A sparkling fountain of crystal clear water reveals itself to me and I traipse towards it, steeping my burning face under its rushing surface--only to find it gives no relief.

But when I rise to the surface I am met by the luscious silhouette of a woman--or what appears as one at least. Her beauty is beyond what this dusty flat plane has to offer; from the succulent curves of that body that stretch the seams of her dainty slip, to the perfect symmetry of her elfin face--something about her rings uncanny.

When she approaches, my suspicions are quickly lost in her scent which somehow reaches up my long-blocked nostrils... triggering a response. I take a deep breath and her essence opens my airways--flooding the blind caverns of memory--lighting, in short and intermittent flickers, a winding passage to the past.

That rotten appendage I call my hand has reached up to touch the blushing skin of this nymph--and the first touch is like nuclear snow, freezing my flesh, burning my cells from the inside out.

"Where am I?" When at last I break the vow of silence, the words which follow are unbelievably plain. But in that familiarity I smell again old associations--each one dripping with things I'd just as soon forget...

The nymph reaches out and touches my words, as if to wipe them clean of their shameful stench.

"You're here," She says, her eyes buzzing yellow-black. "You've come to me."

It's then I feel her unconcealed lust for something of mine: surely not my soul, which is lower than a worm's; nor my mind, hollow as a pot.

"Then it's my body you want," I say--and her playful lips hardly deny my accusation. She approaches closer, those trembling lips plump and pink and pumping blood.. the muscles of her mouth twitching into a devious, sensual smile.. The blue veins on her bountiful chest rise prominently... the heaving air billowing from her body in a hot cloud of sexual perfume...

My mind melts into a blank--a total force grips me--the singular impulse to grasp her pale flesh, to lose myself in her ephemeral miasma, like a neon bulb that lives only for the moment--to spark, then glow, then shatter.

Tongues of fire lick up my legs and set my belly ablaze--I grope those dainty limbs of hers, drag the nymph to the floor and her delicate fingers clutch me, my heart gives chase, quickening and palpitating after this tumbling ball of our interlocked limbs--clawing one another in search of the same damn thing: we are joined in desperate pursuit of sensation.

A chilling flash runs up my broken body and lights the pores of my skin in erogenous flame.. I drink in my regained senses -- even if they are just cruel illusions put there by this nymph of the river-- I will bathe in this flesh fantasy as long as the feeling lasts... As long as it lets me live a second longer, a moment more...

Her fingers penetrate my skin and the fountain convulses into a paroxysm of light: definite forms blur into shimmering halos, lost in a perplexing amalgam of gleam and glimmer... Solids run to liquid, sounds to noise... Those frosty fingertips like purple tentacles run under my veins and up the mainline, up my bulging neck, its pulsating arteries surging with her touch--my bloodshot eyes look upon her melting face through a curtain of red... Either I'm absorbing her or it's me being absorbed: the lifeforce I never knew I had and therefore will not miss... All pleasure and agony whirling up into an explosion like a window opened into the hollow chasm of memory, fragmenting all happiness and sorrow, rage, bitterness, regret, comfort and love -- silver spots burn into the tattered screen of my mind-- I am drowned, frowned into her thirsty guts--my essence sucked through a million intravenous straws -- my swollen crotch bulges and throbs and finally blows--and white wires shoot out in 360 degrees, infiltrating the forbidden space between mortal and immortal--my inner self splits in geometric progression, two becomes eight becomes one thousand--all points blurring into a shimmering wave pink purple blue, infinitely receding in a spiral square staircase down to her bottomless depths--I feel everything at once. I feel nothing at all....

The bond between us morphs into a vibrating sphere with unlimited radius, all infinitudes between us which ripple and replicate collapse inward, shrinking past the boundaries of the order towards the absolute of zero--

And the fire consuming us blows clear and far, leaving behind not one black flake of ash.

++++

I arise on the shore of a beach with water of opal blue; its sand caresses the skin like a angel's touch. Something is missing: the aches and sores I had grown so accustomed to have left me. Looking down at these hairless bronze limbs without blemish or scar, it's obvious I am in a new body.

My heart thumps through my ears louder than the crashing waves. I take a single effortless breath and the caverns of my nose bathe in every molecule of my surroundings--the salty air, the faint trace of seaweed, the tangy pebbles, the flowery fragrance of--

Standing before me, half-naked, her impossible body spilling out of her bathing suit. Another female creature...

"You have come to me," the lady says.

...

Night after night passes in a whirlwind of wanton debauchery. My new body somehow keeps up with the incessant advances of this island's inhabitants, though I cannot imagine that is by accident. Much has changed my outlook since that first day I washed upon the shore... The fleeting hope I could start over has vanished, and in its place has arisen the malaise of days spent in the torture of lust and languor. This desultory submission to the senses has come to coat that baby blue sky in a dark shroud. I have reached another impasse. And little by little I give in to the biting doubt that these sensations are not real--that none of these experiences are what I was searching for when I started my journey, so long ago...

My boredom has gotten the best of me now. I have begun to venture up into the backlands where I am forbidden to set foot. Immediately upon starting my journey, the serene weather breaks into a frosty gale, and each step further upward is met by increasing resistance, as if the mountain itself forbids me to continue and seeks to hinder my climb. But this only makes me more determined to reach its summit.

Less than a day's travel has me already seeking shelter within a nook in the mountainside. The gale is picking up now, sending down spirals of snow which taste of cigarette butts. I duck inside the hollow met by the gleam of iridescent stones--and even when I shift a large boulder to block the gust, the hole's nacreous inner walls glow like cinema screens. It just doesn't make sense. But now that I have a moment alone to contemplate my situation, nothing about any of this does. And while I don't remember much of before, my gut still tightens at the incongruity of it all. Something about this is all wrong.

But my doubts are soon to be swayed and sated by the creature which awakens from her slumber--her skin vibrant as a white melon, her long, flowing locks resting upon broad hips, her ample bosom hypnotizing... Her body is raw danger.

"You have come," she whispers sweetly. "Come to me."

The illusion of love and charm envelops me with its warm, perfumed embrace, and we devour each other on the fur-laden floor, our bare and youthful bodies bathed in the pink nacreous light that dances and flickers with the shadows in drifting intercourse....

"I must go now," I say, days later. There is something I had to do..."

"You may leave. Or you may stay and love to your heart's content. Whichever you choose."

This freedom is illusory and I know it, but her swaying body and soothing voice seduces me all over again. "If I can leave when I like, then it won't hurt to stay a while longer..." We share one another's breath for just one more night. Then another. Then others more, night after decadent night, until the pink of the room has burned a deep red, and the howling gust outside is replaced with the chirping of spring.

"Now I really must go," I say, more to myself than to the nymph of the mountain, who has absorbed by now more than her fair share of my spirit.

"You are free to leave, but why go? There's nothing out there but harsh skies and sheer cliffs. Only things that hurt you. But I will show you love forever."

I must go now. I have to break from this mirage. With feet as heavy as stone I push away the boulder, and when the first ray of sunlight reaches inside, the sensual being with whom I shared a winter crumbles to dust...

++++

Forward. Upward. A snow of ash has started up again, at first landing in small white spots, then larger flakes which coat my clothes in a gray pate and smother me with their soot. But I persevere, not stopping, not even harboring the thought of shelter, for I know more danger lurks within this mountain than without.

At last I reach the peak; but it's not long before the mountain top's solitude is broken by the crunching footsteps of another: she wears a hood of fur and a bulky coat, yet not bulky enough to hide her bountiful--

"No, I will be damned if I am seduced again! I cannot give in to that platinum hair which smells of twinflower, nor her sapphire eyes, their color more rarefied than the mountain's damn air itself. No! I will not spend another small eternity in the throes of passion with you!"

"But you have come."

"Not to you I haven't."

I shield my eyes, turn and clump my way through the thick snow, studying the ground and the sides of the mountain for another way out. But my feet do not find purchase in the smooth piles of ash and I tumble to the ground over and over--my legs freezing, my hands red and numb. But inside I burn up with that youth that has been restored to me--I am boiling with endless vigor.

"--ome back--" I hear through the frosted wind. "Come to me." But I cannot lend my ears to even one of this she-devil's bewitching words, as I know my will would too easily succumb to them--to her. I will keep my burning lifeforce inside--and use it at last to escape this demented realm!

Trekking clumsily onward--not caring how many times I skid or tumble--around great rocks and through giant pines I finally find my way down a dirt path. My hair slick and drenched, my body shivering, my eyes burning, my limbs shivering, I stagger and stumble and leap down this rocky trail, until the ashen snow lets up, defeated by the canopy of pine and fir lining the track. The last damp on me steams off my body in a thick, greasy steam.

The path levels out and continues, barely up or down, just forward through forest after wood after glade... And each time the path splits I feel my memory getting weaker, as if I sacrifice half of myself each time I choose a direction; yet at the same time it's as if I've traversed each of these paths before. And at the next fork I stop and listen--listen inside for which path I know I must have traversed countless times already--always running, never stopping to think if I am repeating a mistake. From the deepest shadows of the forest, high-pitched squeals of mockery travel to my ears: the forest nymphs, they are waiting... waiting for me to tire, slow down. Waiting for a chance to take from me like those before them. But I will not give you creatures of the shade another morsel!

And now that my head is clear and free of desire, it's obvious: here I would have taken the left path, the one which leads lower, which seems to be an exit, but which surely only leads deeper into this labyrinth of wood. So instead I'll take the path leading upward. And soon the trees start to thin out, the ashen gale bringing down anew its blistering breath and crumbling powder. The path gives way to muddy land strewn with roots and torn trunks, forming a natural staircase up the steep bank toward the summit of a new peak. If I can just reach the top, I know it will all make sense. I will get my bearing again and finally find a way out of this objectless passion, this endless cycle of decadence and depletion...

But as the trees thin out, before me rises a wall of bramble and shrub. It stretches hopelessly high and impossibly wide across the entire bank. In spite of everything, I lunge forward into lunacy. And I'm already in too deep when I realize I'm surrounded by spines as long and sharp as kitchen knives--they slice deep gouges into my arms and legs, my blood falls heavy and wet, leaving large splotches of red over the gray landscape... I clutch my way back out of the weeds in agony, falling to the dust, ash sprinkling over my wounds.

Agony? Agony, agony... Yes, real agony. And this feeling now washing over me as I survey that insurmountable hazard of nature:

This Is True Despair.

I hear laughter again--but this time it's me who's chuckling, lying here under a downpour of tar and ice. All the feelings of the world, returning to me now--not that blind lust which has spurred me through interminable pointless pleasures--but real fear and anxiety and even the remote idea of sadness.

Pulling myself to my feet, I turn back where I came--and see for miles below, where the land stretches out in rolling hills. In each of them I smell my old memories returning: the happiness I missed, the sorrow I forgot; but mostly, it's miles and miles of shame and sin. And that soul within me, just reawakened, now coils in on itself and bites its own tail, to sleep again--

This time for good.

I look down at that gauntlet of fir and spruce to which I now must return, hearing the distant squeals of the thirsty, beckoning me to indulge in their thorny bosom. What does it matter if it's a false freedom? It's all the same.

Let them have my body, this statue of meat.

That's all they'll ever have of me now.