Mizrah's Ladder Ch. 02

Rounds two, three and four leave your body shaking and wired, as if the energy of a lightning storm had been channeled through the engine of your pleasure. He was a demanding, hungry lover but you found yourself easily able to match him even as your better sense insisted this is the last time after each climax. As much as he took from you, however, he gave more back. The headboard clattering against the wall was a sound that most prudish, good Greek girls would be rightfully scandalized by. Then again, how could you care about the cracks in the wall, or the (suspiciously deep) scratches in the headboard, or that damn clatter in the sheer primal intensity of the moment?

Or afterwards, panting and shaking next to him, the stentorian depth of his breath warm on your cheek...the pierced, thick heft of his cock against your thigh, and the sheer volume of his cum draining from you, a lovely mess amidst your own ejaculate.

You're much smaller against his midweight boxer's frame, scarred and hardened arms looped closely around you. He's wonderfully hot to the touch, the Assyrian darkness of his skin covered with a sheen of sweat, contrasting your alabaster coloring, and you can hear his heartbeat thudding...faster and harder than any man's you'd heard. It'd be alarming, as if he were in the throes of tachycardia if not for its regularity and the truth that dangled before you:

Your nameless, dark lover with his steel rings and musical, low voice wasn't exactly like you, or anyone else you'd met.

Sometime later, the two of you sit on the roof's edge of the motel you'd both rented in, overlooking the Riviera. The sun crawls across the horizon like it is throwing off a hangover. It's a sight you've witnessed a few times before from unfamiliar apartments but never from a rooftop. Never with a one-night stand, if that's what this was. With the summer haze it's already over 30°C this early and threatens to grow much hotter...but it's a nice, if bleak view for now.

His fingers are still intertwined with yours as the two of you talk about last night and you, characteristically straightforward and not one to mince words, inquire as to his nature...what he did to you, and why. He isn't apologetic about it, about his desire for you that'd built up for some time. Apparently he knew of you through a friend of yours, one who'd recently been convinced of the scientific and objective virtues of Marxism against the chaotic naivity of the Anarchist; he claimed to be something of the latter, but "able to get away with it better". Whatever that meant.

He saw you once at a party with some guy whose name you forget, and ended up spotting you on campus when Professor Valera gave her famous annual lecture on Engel's years of fraternization with the Young Hegelians - Yusuf made no secret of his disdain for any organization or structure and countered your logic frustratingly with airy poetry, obscure quotes by German economists and the occasional silencing kiss when he felt he was losing.

When you scoot back on topic he explains that after he saw you with someone else, he thought he had a shot with you; his bandmates - 'Percy' and 'Delilah' - were dragging him to the same spot as you, so he'd learned. As for what he did to you? The accusation is met with a coy smirk that makes your exhausted, well-fucked loins twitch once again with anticipation. He explains, quite simply, that soon you're going to be like him, and that is an existence that requires experience to be fully understood...and as for what he actually is?

His answer should be infuriating, but it's spoken while he's kissing up the line of your shoulder and to your ear, and it feels really nice. "We don't tell, not until the time is right. You'll learn why." Whatever protests and arguments you may have die in your throat and turn into a breathy sigh when you lock eyes with his. Your lips brush.

This Yusuf Mizrah man, whatever he is, embraces you warmly and leaves to "Hunt". He promises you'll see him again, very soon.

Between moonset and moonrise

Only a few hours of sleep, if you can call them that, separated the days since you saw him...since he did whatever he'd done to you. During that time you'd been feverish with energy, your hungers run rampant. It's simultaneously dream-like and yet you feel more awake, drawn-and-strained through your own body than since your worst hangover; at least there's no pain. Instead, a euphoric, sparkling sensation flows from your lower belly outward, through your organs and into your limbs. It leaves you heady, and your accompanying behavior has been...unusual. Normally you're a quiet, very polite woman with great dignity and diplomacy - you need it in your field - but at work you've been a mess.

Your dark eyes find themselves crawling over your colleagues like they're equal-parts main course at a steakhouse, or harlots at a brothel. It's difficult to distinguish where inappropriate hunger for their blood-rich livers, throats and bellies ends and your desire to touch, fondle, and fuck them begins. In the midst of a meeting between the regional director and your Austrian counterparts, you found yourself listening to the -skitter-scritch- of rodents in the walls...the slithering of something piscine and terrible through the pipes. Rosa interrupts to let you know you have a phone call with your client in Ankara and you see the hint of needle teeth, of patagia folded under her slender arms.

You realize quite suddenly it's nearly two hours after lunch and you haven't eaten - you simply snap to, as if time has been lost in the blackout between the meeting and now. You've been sitting there at your desk, drawing incredibly detailed, fast pictures of the moon from angles you don't recognize...is it your moon? It's going to rise tonight, and it's going to be full. The thought makes your thighs squeeze together, and His face rises unbidden in your mind...a sound from your lips that isn't entirely Christian. Your manager reels when he sees you, puts a cold cloth to your forehead and lays you down in his office while fetching you some tea. It's a pity...he's actually a really kind man, so why do you see him as little more than a bleating gazelle to throat and rut? A company driver takes you home, helps you inside and leaves you on your couch. Alone. Nobody here to care for you between now and the hour of the moon's rising. It's as if you're high on some drug, or incredibly sick but without any aches, pains or debilitating effects besides this languid heaviness and strange hunger. The time passes as you sweat, and finally shed your clothes to make your way shakily to your bathtub. You hear the sound of something massive moving around outside your home, claws ticking on concrete...the low, ripe scent of an animal far larger than a bear. You stand in front of a mirror, looking over your own body as if seeing it for the first time.

Your deep, black eyes have dark circles underneath them - you normally look somewhat tired from lack of sleep but the haunted quality of your gaze bespeaks unbroken nights. Your long, wavy curtain of sylvan-dark hair is plastered to your forehead in places but also...shiny and vibrant, soft as if it'd been freshly conditioned. Your lips, always set in what an ex-girlfriend described as 'a wry little smile', pull back to reveal your teeth shining ivory-white. Your canines look a bit sharper on top and bottom. Your skin is pale and slick with perspiration, but everything seems to...stand out a bit more. The sinews of your graceful neck are more defined; your arms aren't quite as skinny as you imagined them; the muscles of your long, svelte thighs are steel cords against your pale skin. Strands of dark hair tumble before the slender curve of your bust, masking the hardness of your small, pink nipples.

Seeing yourself, standing here naked...you realize how aroused you've been all day as you slide your mauve panties down your waist and strings of sexual fluids stick between your thighs. Your bright, pink vulva is flushed with excitement, blushing with the delicate but full shape of your lips...you can see it clearly just standing and looking at yourself. Your long, Elfin fingers drift down over the trimmed, short hair covering your mound and you find your juices are incredibly slick, hot, your own scent heady. Your fingers run smoothly through your vulva and it feels amazing, and when you look at them they're shining wet. Your contacts list pops up in your head - a few people who could potentially be booty-called to your place for a quick fuck, but at the back of your mind you constantly see him.

Your fingers and hand return to work almost idly as you lean your back against the shower, your experience with him tugging to the forefront of your conscious mind...you think about that frenum ladder, tugging against your clit lightly with wet, hot noises as he slowly entered you from behind, teeth in your shoulder...the ball bearing clasping his ring, sliding like white, tingling fire upward against that far-back, sensitive place...the way his muscles shifted like a lion's in his back while he rode you, every string of sinew in his abs all focused on the singular, overwhelming sensation of his cock stirring you to cream-dripping frenzy.

That's it. You can't resist. You need it, you need him and you need to eat and you need to figure out what the fuck is going on with you, only...how? You don't have his number, any contact information besides his name which is, fortunately, relatively uncommon in the USA. He's...what, some sort of musician? He'd hardly given you much in the way of details to find him, but you sense that isn't some sort of oversight. Almost like he wants you to chase him.

Bastard.

Still...it's not just the desire for relief that drives you to start looking up his name, cursing the fact that his online presence is light until you get to his band name - right, of course. Of course they have a stupid, cheeky name...you get it too, he probably went on that interesting tangent about the irony of America fighting the Japanese Empire in WWII to drop a hint that would make you either smile or roll your eyes; you're not sure which to do, so instead your tongue simply travels the shape of your lips and runs over your teeth.

INSTRUMENT OF AGGRESSION. You note the band's name is specifically written in capitol letters, and the words are vaguely shaped like the mouth of a snarling, hungry wolf, ringed by broken chains. You find their social media page...it's plentiful with imagery of them playing on stage, but they seem a recent phenomenon. They'll be down at The Wharf at 9:30pm, opening for a show at this old warehouse converted to a dance club, simply called Pierre's. You've been to your fair share of heavy metal shows but most of them were of a different genre - metalheads tended to be a fractious lot, and you never counted yourself amongst their number.

You can't help but notice the shapes on the computer screen...like microbes twitching and metastasizing in the glass (or are they behind your eyes?). Time passes with a strange ambiguity; you're vaguely aware of pacing, listening to music, masturbating...nothing in your fridge, so your belly sticks to your back.

You step outside into the hot night air, and the weight of clothes against your skin feels like an unnecessary burden that will simply slow you down as you move through the dark, meat-packed streets, illuminated by the candy-glow of neon lights selling manufactured happiness. Processed food. Sugary drinks. Booze, drugs (but only the 'legal' ones!) and sex.

Something feels different. You feel as if you're walking in a liminal space between worlds, and you hear echoes from the other one, just near your senses.

The skitter of a spidery appendage.

The fluttering brake of bat wings.

Something howling upon the wind.

It starts raining by the time you get off the train at Elroy and MacClannehathy...just a short walk through the weather to the warehouse district. You're just on time, so the docks - normally emptied out at night - fill with a sudden torrent of people. Leather and chains, men with long hair and women wearing fishnets, boisterous laughter and the growl of motorcycle engines.

The old Bannon warehouse looms imposingly over the docks, where once American steel, iron, copper and complex machine parts made thereof were kept. Hard to believe this place was once the beating economic heart of The City; after de-industrialization it was like the organ of some massive, long-dead creature given to rust and rot. Here they were, all these degenerate little things scurrying inside to feed upon each other and listen to the deafening roar of speakers and you were among them, but...were you even more of a degenerate?

What were you here for, what were you hoping for? To see him and demand answers again to the questions left unsaid? To drag him to another motel room for rounds six through ten? It's not clear, but your instincts tell you that you need to be here, that you need to find him. Nobody notices your palid, sweat-soaked state, the way you rub your thighs together impatiently when you pay the cover fee; you don't notice the guys who want to approach, but hesitate.

No...your eyes are on that stage, waiting for Him.

Some other band plays, what are they called...Ditch Thunder or something? You can't help but stare at the girl on stage with her tall, pale legs disappearing under a schoolgirl miniskirt from the 90s, wearing a leather jacket like yours as she strides across the stage in black high heels. Your mind, unbidden, pictures her thighs spreading before you; you take a bite from them like an apple in your mind, the imaginary taste of blood grinding your starving gut.

She seems to catch your eye, with her short, pixie-cut red hair. Her smile reminds you somehow of a Lynx's, somehow, as she locks eyes with you at the end of their last song, sliding her miniskirt up to give the audience a peak at the cherry-red thong she wears underneath, but you know that's for you. There's...a tug there, an animal magnetism that you find hooking into the soft corners of your brain. It isn't the intense draw you felt to Mizrah, it's subtler than that but -

- your feverish mind can't help but imagine her pink, pretty lips against yours, green eyes sparkling with slitted pupils as she rolls the softness of her chest against yours; her fingers climb up between your breasts teasingly, crescent-shape nail marks in your flesh -

- the spell, or whatever it is, fades when you see him come out on stage at the end of their routine. You can feel the energy crackle between them, even though little more than a glance is shared; her expression visibly changes, from that of a seductive fairy to something disdainful, hostile, fearful...you see her barely flinch as he passes by, notice the way he snaps his teeth close to her as he unslings his guitar.

The entire thing seems less part of the show and more...what, some subtle, barely-expressed territorial head-butting? You see her scrape her nails across his arm as she goes by, even catch a whiff of blood that disappears as his skin closes.

It's a challenge thrown to the last singer - you feel it in your sinews, you see it in Redhead's expression...Eye twitching, nails tacking against the bartop before she starts to roll up her cotton sleeves, revealing tribal ink patterns on her arms...they're more defined than you would have expected.

Long and longer has the time slunk near

Front all you want

I harry your fear

Is he...singing about you? Is this competition about you? Normally you are, shall we say, somewhat oblivious to sub-surface communication, but you feel keenly attuned to the conflict that clearly exists between these two musicians. He is substantively better, more skilled, but there's more to it than here musical acumen; a palpable aura that shouts 'LOOK AT ME!' and gives everyone else little choice but to fall into his gravity well.

They're moshing...the pit calls to you, your body howls for you to join. You don't do this kind of thing because you're 168cm tall, all of 55 kilos soaking wet, and not exactly what one might describe as 'substantial', but something is different today. You move from the edge of the crowd where you'd been hovering like some hungry crow, and like a black-feathered, pale breasted hawk you swoop into the pit.

Immediately you are smashed by a big white boy, flailing with his huge tree-trunk arms and and sent stumbling down to your knees. Your shoulder is dislocated; it crawls on its own back into socket with a loud sound the others don't notice - they don't hear your agony. You rise; you throw yourself at the guy who hit you, who still hasn't noticed, and send him almost flying back into the crowd. Off his feet, eyes dumb and round when your shoulder strikes him.

You've never done this to anyone; you've never been *capable* and even though your conscious, intellectual brain, buried there beneath the sweat, sex and instinct, tells you 'trouble! Trouble!' for what you've done...

Nobody cares. They simply flail and roar to the music.

They're amazing.

The guitar's cacophany, the clear, body-shuddering notes of his voice, his raw, unchained command of the stage...they've played three songs, and by the end of it the audience is just *screaming* in adulation. You feel the desire to cry out with them but...a new set of Imperatives kicks in, seated in the back of your brain that give you pause.

A simple calculus is performed in that analytical head of yours: there was tension between that Redhead, and Mizrah; something about her wasn't right either, and now she isn't there. A lot of women make the mistake of standing out too much, not realizing that sooner or later, something will find them; you've never been that type of woman, and even now you slink back into the crowd and become one with it. Like a graceful, black and silvery serpent in a pond, you move through the gawping fishes and to the side door.

It seems, to your heat-shuddered brain, that the tables have been turned...Mizrah is looking for you now, the sunspots of his gaze scanning the crowd before jumping off the stage and amidst them; unlike you, they part for him like riverwater around an obsidian stone. You see him, he doesn't see you, but you note while you move around him and keep him in your sights, that he's always moving closer to you...testing the air in the crowd.

He has your scent. You may not be thinking with higher brain function, but you're still cunning and canny...you've always known how to effortlessly remain unseen and unheard. Time to lead him where you want him.

And what will you do with him when he gets there? Doesn't matter, the Ambush Grounds have been chosen.

You move through the hallway leading to the bathrooms and one of the side shutters, left open to allow a breeze to flow in from the Gulf. You follow the hot wind out onto a bare set of concrete piers, jutting out into the water. Perfect.

His bootfalls echo behind you. You're both alone.