Crimson Cursive

"Yeah, after she left it behind last week," Clarissa said, "I don't think she portrayed me in all my glory though."

"When did she write this? Do you know?" Patricia asked.

Clarissa shrugged, "the first week of the semester? She wouldn't let me read it, which is why I remember actually, she always let me read her stuff, ever since we met in high school, I was the first to read all of her writing, ya know."

"But if she wrote that story in that first week of the semester," Patricia said, rubbing her head with two fingers, "how did she know about Milly's story? She wrote that only just last week. And did you actually have that conversation with her about fooling around with Professor Sea?"

"Yeah, the night before she left," Clarissa said, tucking the story back in the notebook and putting it away, "but she left a few parts out."

"Like what?" Patricia asked, curious.

"Well for one thing, my hair wasn't a mess like she said, her hair was a mess, not mine." Clarissa said, seriously.

"What?" Patricia said, "who cares about that?"

"I do," Clarissa said, "and also, she left out the crazy part earlier in the semester where the huge ass raven with a floating crown of light above its head flew into the room and attacked her."

"What?!" Patricia said, her eyes widening.

"It was the size of an owl," Clarissa demonstrated with her hands, "under her left boob, it scratched a strange black symbol like a skewered "M" with a zig-zag or something weird like that, I don't know, it didn't really look like anything to me, but it wouldn't wash off, no matter how hard Maison tried." Clarissa said, "I even tried a hand at scrubbing it off for her."

Patricia dropped her head into her hands and rolled her eyes, "you're being funny. Now at the end of the semester, you decide to be creative with sugar-spun peaches and crows wearing floating crowns. Where was this wild imagination the rest of the semester, Clarissa?"

"I'm serious, it happened so quick, I looked over and saw like a cloud of black feathers attacking her in bed," Clarissa said.

"And you only mention that now?" Patricia asked, losing her patience, the whole thing was beginning to feel like a prank to her. She began to wonder if Professor Sea was even real or if the two roommates were lying up some hoax.

"It really happened! The entire time, Maison was laughing like she was nuts! It was kinda scary now that I think about it. Maybe I should've told someone?" Clarissa said, shivering and fussing with her ring.

"Look, if there really was a professor Sea, then you would know what times she left for his lectures and where he held them." Patricia asked, uncrossing her legs and sliding off the desk.

"I do know, it was the same time and place I had his class last semester," Clarissa said, sitting up and becoming irritated with Patricia's disbelief, "is Maison in trouble or something? I told her fooling around with professors never ends well. Should I talk with the police?"

Clarissa's change of attitude alerted Patricia and she flip-flopped suddenly into thinking maybe the girl was telling the truth. And if she was, she needed to keep Clarissa quiet if she was going to make it to Nuèch Masco tomorrow night.

"No, no, she's not in trouble," Patricia said, a little fearfully with a smile and a pat on Clarissa's shoulder, "so you had class with Professor Sea?"

"Yeah," Clarissa shrugged, calming down, "I didn't really pay attention much in his class though, that's where I met James, my ex-boyfriend." Clarissa rubbed her brow, frustrated, "it was the only class we had together so he would spend the whole lecture with his hand under my desk fing- uh, holding my hand.

Patricia rolled her eyes, "look I don't have time for this, where and when did you attend Professor Sea's lectures?"

"Every week night, from 7:00 to 7:34, at Rosethorn Hall, the one at the end of the green by the-"

"Yeah I know where it is," Patricia said, "one last thing, Maison," she rubbed a nail along her bottom lip, thinking, "do you know if anything happened to her before she wrote that paper? Did she have any private sessions with Professor Sea or anything like that?"

"Not that I know of," Clarissa said, "she was kind of acting weird back in the fall semester though, even before the year started. Like when she begged me to go with her to that old building on the large forested hill at the center of campus."

"The site of the original MU grounds? You two went there?" Patricia asked.

"Yeah, she bribed me with wine and I went with her the night before classes started," Clarissa said, "it was a pretty spooky place and I got my favorite pair of leggings dirty running around the rundown mansion, but I guess I was kind of drunk at the time."

"Did anything happen? Why are you telling me this?" Patricia asked.

"In a parlor, Maison found a wooden box the size of a rubicks cube. A tiny, black metal scorpion kept it locked by looping its tail through a hoop on the lid. It was real pretty. When Maison touched it, the scorpion unfurled its tail and the lid popped open." Clarissa looked at Patricia, swallowing.

"Well? What was in it?" Patricia asked, curious.

"There was a soft, black egg the size of a quail egg but taller, like more oval," Clarissa drew an elongated hoop in the air with her fingertip.

"So it was like a snake's egg then?" Patricia asked. Clarissa shrugged.

"Anyway, Maison let me feel the egg, it was heavy, I mean maybe like three or four pounds heavy."

"Do you still have it?" Patricia asked, intrigued something so tiny could be so massive.

"No, Maison ate it," Clarissa said.

"Excuse me?" Patricia's eyes widened.

"She swallowed it whole," Clarissa said, shrugging, "I swear her eyes spun like black and white pinwheels for like a whole minute. That really spooked me and if I wasn't drunk, I probably would have freaked out." Clarissa shivered.

Patricia groaned, feeling foolish for getting wrapped up in Clarissa's tall tales again.

"Thanks for your patience Miss Carkova, I'll see you next Tuesday. If I find out you and Maison are lying, then it'll be an issue for the dean." The impatient professor warned her with cold eyes, "and Clarissa, I'm pretty sure you're not twenty-one yet, so I would keep my mouth shut about drinking if I were you." She smiled sarcastically.

Patricia tried to guide Clarissa out the door, but she dug the heels of her off-white sneakers in with a squeak and wouldn't budge, "wait, wait, you promised to let me see Milly's stories, remember?"

"Oh right," Patricia said, "don't let anyone know I gave these to you and I want them back on Tuesday." She walked with clicking heels over to her bag on the desk and sifted through a pile of beige and white until she pulled a manila folder out with 'Mors, Milly' written on the tab. She handed it over to Clarissa. Clarissa took it gingerly in her hands like she had received a million dollars.

"Keep our whole conversation just between us too, okay?" Patricia asked.

"Sure. Thanks!" Clarissa hugged the folder and ran out the door.

Patricia watched the dirty blonde of Clarissa's ponytail as she ran down the hall with genuine excitement. The professor crossed her arms and leaned into the door frame, puzzled. Why was Clarissa so obsessed with Milly's writing? The two were like fire and water, they hated each other, so why is it that Clarissa is so suddenly interested in what's coming out of Milly's head? Patricia fingered the silk edge of her blouse as she pondered over the strange fruit of her little experiment.

She shrugged and glanced at the frilly, golden watch on her wrist. She was going to attend Sea's lecture tonight and she would soon find out if the two girls were lying to her. The more she thought about it, the more the whole thing seemed like an elaborate lie.

The extended gap of free time that stretched out before Patricia made her hyper aware of a sudden, need she had to fill. She closed the door to the classroom with an anticipatory breath that came out ragged, she craved a little reading time. The door clicked shut with a rattle and she closed the small set of blinds over the window built into the old, wooden door with a swipe of her knuckle.

She strode over to the desk in the front of the empty classroom and sat down, pulling in the chair nice and neat. With fingers atremble, she pulled out the delicious snakeskin folio. She opened it gently, like a sacred relic. Her heart was already amplified and jumpy. Within the folio, lived eleven sheets of smooth vanilla paper, the creamiest pages of pulp Patricia had ever encountered. She ran her fingers across them and a jolt of impatience raced through her arms and straight up into the hungry cleft of her mind.

Written in towering crimson cursive, that flowed deeply into the eleven wonderful sheets of paper, were some of the most sublime lines she had ever read. Patricia spread the folio out on the desk and took a sheet from its sheath. She licked her lips and tugged up the sheath of her skirt, allowing her legs the freedom to spread wide under the desk. She propped the page against her bag as if it were a musical composition and ran her hands up both thighs as if she were raising the fallboard of a grand piano.

Every line had such a potent effect on Patricia's instrument, she couldn't contain herself. The words flew through her chaotically like a thick, musical drug. No matter how many times she tried to solve their riddles, to disable the words of their power over her, she couldn't do it. The works seemed penned for her mind only. The crimson keys of the inky letters hammered strings deep in the resonating belly of her subconscious.

If I had you pinned

pining, you see

what I see

you'd cry, maybe die

full of exquisite ecstasy.

And she was pinned, pining, revolving: muttered through the sieve of a grin like the silver lining of a word uttered too many times and steadily evolving: climbing, winding, rhyme after Rhine into a divine dive, already alive and readily whining, her butterfly wings dissolving the timing, stop. A gap in a dream, agap, agape: a gutter of her shuddering escape: it sings, sputtering out this thing of a quick gasping soundscape, so soon: fluttering past a clasping hand that stings, so good: her long-lasting, thick silky casting flings, casting off a sticky spell in a fast stuttering cocoon of plastic elastic yells: stop again. Just stop, and let go, I'll tell ya what ya don't know: the sun's glow stowed away in matter: your form doesn't matter, energy is mass: a tumbling bundle of preordained tasks, no hatter madder than the one eating the sun, no laughter, no laughter, no laughter, just fun, just stop and run, let's link up and drink up, lick the sopping cup of your thinking head's lust up, I'm sorry, but you must trust me with no greeting: a bleating hermit peering off a mountain top, a chance meeting, deary. Don't think of the drop, the fall, the ball, the gown. Pounding. Pouting. In the box of a glass town: shouting, black obsidian-cold molasses spills and spanks the lass' asses round, until: brain-stripped wills striped silly by brine are wiped free and clean by destiny, line over line, in between her too, she finds: she's back on top, her cherry head pops and scalds aloft very ribald kinds of laughter, she's piped pink into the clouds of nothing much to think about, birds chirp: such and such, this is just what she wanted, punted with bliss between gushing waterfalls, a hushing kiss runs deep like a shushing hiss, don't miss it, rushing in my missus for keeps, I'm a frog: a prince, I go ribbit, I rip it, tear it in two: your note: I smote it, with my lips of dribbling mist, a poisonous kiss of glue like a wish gone askew, don't gloat, but: I LOVE YOU, and I don't know how to express it other than obsessing over this mess of words I shove at you: a whisper in the shadows of your tresses, be my guest: try the best: and a smack across the chest, a mystery test, a lack, a loss. My lofty heart: lost to history, I guess it's a dead toss up, lossless and glossy, remarking a spark in the dark like a long lost lark in the past, so fast, feel the gliding flow riding and pushing into you, smushing your resolve in chiding rivulets of thick superciliousness and again: up you go with me, knowing, showing, growing and mowing unto you, groaning and moaning: none the less I make you own up to it, confess and dress your undressed fears in your very best white confetti cresting the shores of an aggressive night, obsessive and sore, lest you forget the milky tears of the pineal pressed and etched into your periwinkle fairy core, stained with ink and dripping, starry-eyed and staring, smeared, strained through sipping, stripped spinning breasts grinding and gripping, pinned and pining, her body riding pale on the wheel of the moon reading the fringe of my silver lining: pinned and pining, pinned and pining, pinned and pining...

Patricia gasped as her hungry fingers strummed wildly under the desk giving her pearl the last three rapid twirls her lust needed in order to set off an orgasm that made her whole body tense and spasm. She groaned softly and slapped her sex, huffing and puffing. Her head toppled forward onto the desk and she dropped her soggy fingers with one last rub from between her legs. Her hair blew out in tufts like wheat in a breeze from her panting and stuck on her wet lips. Patricia groaned, shut her legs, and shimmied her skirt back down her thighs. She sat up, fixed her hair, and caught her breath with a splayed hand on her heaving chest.

The rich lines of red stared out at her and danced around the edges of her amber eyes, tempting her into another round of shaking thighs. How did the creator of such thoughts jam such incredible incubi into inky cages built from just a handful of words? When Patricia read the seemingly simple lines of poetry, it triggered a wild chain of visions that went surging through her head like a psychedelic roller-coaster: lusty sights, sounds, smells, and sensations whirled out a landscape around her, taking her mind-body for a devilish ride through some untamed territory in her libido. The poem's visions seemed to become stronger and clearer the more she acquainted herself with them. Even now, the silent tongue behind her eyes started wrapping itself around the first sound of the next poem and Patricia exerted all her willpower to shut the snakeskin maw of the folder. As she deposited it back into her bag, she wondered if she should wrap a chain around it and lock it up too, she found herself losing more and more self-control around the collection of seductive notes every time she pried opened its mouth.

Patricia slung her bag over her shoulder and sighed. Another class was going to use the room soon and she had to go before some student walked in on the private perversity of her open reading sessions. Patricia felt refreshed and satisfied as she left the classroom and clicked off, loudly, towards dinner.

-

She entered Rosethorn hall with her watch indicating it was seven minutes past seven. The two glasses of red wine she had with dinner sloshed around inside her toned belly as she clicked down the hall with liquid confidence. Patricia found the double metal doors to the lecture room and preened herself. She figured she'd slip in quietly and sit in the shadows of the back row, observing the fraud's lecture and then confront him after the students left, tossing him out on the streets. Unless, the whole thing was a scam of course and no one was inside, at which point she was going to have a talk with Maison, Clarissa, and the dean.

Her manicured hands gripped the handles of the doors and pulled. The hinges screamed, like she had utterly violated them. Patricia winced as the two hundred twinkling eyes of the students turned to stare up at her in the doorway like a swarm of frozen fire flies.

Patricia's breath froze like stage fright in her chest, but she kept her cool and closed the door calmly behind her. The pale man in his thirties with dark curly hair glanced at her and pushed a pair of trendy, tortoise shell glasses up his nose, flickering the white glare of his lenses. The lights of the lecture pit cast a glow that made the stygian fibres of his tweed jacket radiate a full-bodied nothingness.

"Find a seat Patricia," The man said, "we'll talk after class."

Her eyebrows shot up and her confidence left her in a grimace as he resumed his lecture like nothing happened. The students turned back around and she was left there, searching in the dark for a seat. Patricia sat quietly in the back and observed Sea, mystified by her own obedience to his command. She took her bag off her shoulder and set it down on the grey carpet next to her. Patricia settled into the stiff box of the desk and sat, utterly baffled. Sea was real? Clarissa wasn't lying? Well, maybe she told the truth about this professor, but the rest that spilled out that girl's fiery lips was surely fiction.

Watching the handsome man talk in the bottom of the room made her feel like she was a hungry student again. Patricia could see herself in Maison's shoes, falling for the pretty, older demon teaching her lessons dark, hot, and profane in the private gloom of his office. His stubbled chin and lips whispered secrets in her ear while he pulled the back of her hair and bent her against a steamy wall. Patricia crossed her legs and rested her head on her hand, wondering what ever happened to that bright-eyed scholar from years past. She was barely thirty-six, that was young for someone with tenure, wasn't it? She used to love learning new things, when did she become so lost? So Jaded? She tuned into Sea's lecture, wondering if the fake professor could teach her anything new.

"For today's session, I want to talk about the wonderful bliss lurking in the abyss of obsession," Professor Sea said, leaning backwards on the desk at the center of the lecture pit and gazing up into the class. Patricia felt him make eye contact with her and his jade whirlpools jostled her amber marbles into a tizzy.

"Is it so bad, your little darling idée fixe?" He asked, gesturing with a hand, tilting his head just enough that his lenses picked up the lights above again, "what are you but a fleshy bucket of emptiness without the filling felicity of your frenzy-inducing fetishes?" He shoved his hands in his pockets and his suit jacket moved out of the way, "our body, and primarily our minds, through which we experience our body, they are like cups of senses. Most people's cups are dirty and clogged with trash, they haven't been cleansed in years and they can barely feel the bliss that tries to fill their opaque containers. It's like trying to find a pearl the size of a grain of sand in muddy waters of a polluted lake. So, the goal is to first: empty, clean, and heal your container, primarily your mind, for your body will then follow. This isn't an easy process, I warn you. Especially in today's world where there's a window in your pocket constantly yelling at you to buy, buy, buy, watch, watch, watch, try, try, try, die, die, die. It's a grueling commitment to tear yourself away from that, to become vigilant in what you let inside you. You might even find yourself estranged from the world, lost and lonely, forcing you to wonder if it's even worth the trouble when your phone's right there and someone just sent you a link to some fun video. But when you're over the hump and you're finally nice and empty, you'll begin to sense the joy of your calling, your obsession, more readily. Then by carefully listening to the faint trickle of bliss pouring in from your obsession, you'll slowly fill and expand your cup, so you are able to overflow it with that oh-so-wonderful, loving bliss, that unique divinity pouring itself into the special wavelength of our singularly crafted cups, bowls, thimbles, flutes, or bodies. The correct obsession, our path, will never interfere with our being able to sense the divine love latent in the core of our obsession, it only expands it infinitely. Keep that in mind, it's important so you don't fall down a path that isn't meant for you. Some of us struggle with the objects of our obsession. We fight it and deny it every step of the way until we learn there is no escape from our divine lover. Even if we destroy our current vessels and can no longer feel them, our pattern will eventually be reborn until we, finally, fill ourselves up with so much of that special flavor of infinity, (the one made for us = the one we were made for), we merge with it. So let go and find yourself in the blazing glory of those defining obsessions. Every tale of pursuit: unique. Every agonizing ecstasy: individually crafted. Mostly if not entirely, up here." Sea pointed to his curly head of dark hair, "why does a man write the same story over and over, varying it little by little until he's found the perfect formula, the perfect expression of his inner world? What moves his fingers when he writes? Her fingers when she reads?"