smokeSCREEN: book5IVE

"How much further?" I ask. He waits for me to catch up.

"What do you think?" he grins at me.

"…just over that dune?" I'm panting. Sweating. Even in the stupid tank top.

"Is it?"

"It'd better be," I tell him. He nods again and steps forward, finally slowing down to a pace more comfortable to us mere mortals.

Coming over that dune, I find myself looking down at a lake that stretches to the horizon. I can't see the other side.

The white powder-sand dune comes to a comfortable rest thirty feet below us, and becomes the white powder-sand beach. The waves stroke gently at the shore in the lack of wind. Between the water and the dunes, a cabin. Or house. Not entirely wood, at any rate – it's certainly stood the test of time.

I hear Cypress's Zippo beside me, and he hands me a lit cigarette before puffing happily on his own and descending the hill. Hurrying down behind him, I trip and fall in the sand in my rush. He's there to help me up, and already has a new cigarette for me.

"What is this place?" I ask.

"Grand Beach," he says. "Untouched by the war – it was just abandoned. Luckily, a lot of the places out here had to rely on their own supply of everything, so…" He shrugs and produces a key from his belt, opening the front door of the spaceous house. "I found this… four years or so ago. I was just bumming around on a motorbike I got workin' and I found it – set up the trolley as a just-in-case, y'know?"

Inside, it seems twice as huge. I suppose when you grow up in an office building, any house seems to have celings to the sky. There's a dining room. Living room. Full kitchen. Two bedrooms. More downstairs – we'll get to that later.

"What do we do now?" I say, poking my head out of the kitchen into the living room. He's not there. Not in the dining room. Or the bathroom. Or the first bedroom. I'm about to look downstairs when I hear that strangely familiar sound of a body hitting the floor, and race up the hall to the master bedroom. Cypress lays motionless, face down on the floor.

"Oh, God… Cypress?"

For a moment I'm terrified that he's seriously hurt himself, but a steady snore assures me otherwise. A mere mortal after all.

As I pull off his boots, I decide to strip him down and make sure he's not bleeding anywhere. I can clean him up in the process and releive my concern that he's going to die at any moment.

I don't want to know what the stuff encrusted on his belt buckle is – I get some of it off with a knife, but the buckle still sticks, so I have to cut the belt away to get his pants off.

Desperate measures.

His pants and shirts are easier, and I figure out how to get the water on.

Returning to the room with a bucket and a sponge, Cypress hasn't moved an inch from how I left him. Still breathing, though.

Sitting crosslegged at his hips, I begin to clean away the blood, soot and grime. We just left them back there – all of them. Sophie. Oh, God – what happened to Sophie? If Sophie isn't okay, I'll die. She has to be okay. Cypress said he heard people running – they knew somehow.

I wonder what Cypress was thinking, to bring us all the way out here. A day's travel from anywhere.

I sigh.

He'll have a good reason. And in a wave of stupid emotion, I begin to well up. .

I wipe my face and soak the sponge again, starting on his other leg. And now I'm really crying. I'm getting flashes in my head of Sophie's big brown eyes calling out for help as the world crashes down around her.

I'm still sobbing as I carry the bucket of bloody-black water back down the hall to dump it out. I'll clean it up.

* * *

Three days later, Cypress steps out of the hallway into the living room. He's rolling up the sleeves, trying to get comfortable in the clothes I laid out for him. In all fairness, a dress shirt and black slacks don't really suit him, but he pulls it off beautifully.

He smiles at me.

I just nod. I'm staring at him.

"You cut your hair."

He grins his easy grin and nods.

"Figured it was time for a change. Kept getting in my eyes."

I nod.

"Groovy."

"You look… wicked," he says. I'd forgotten what I was wearing – I've become so comortable in it the past few days.

"I found all this downstairs," I nod. "The dress, the candles, everything."

"How many hours I sleep?"

I find some cigarettes and toss them. He reaches and grabs thin air, the pack slapping into the wall behind him. He stares at the empty space between his fingers and then at me.

"A hundred and two."

"Four days?"

"Y-yeah, I was getting' kinda' worried…" I'm trying to laugh it off. I'm trying to smile, but he's not smiling as he picks up the smokes. He looks at it – stares at it – and throws it back to me.

"I'm never doing that again," he tells me. "I promise you."

"What – smoking?"

"Well, no – I just don't feel like one, actually." He limps across the room and pulls me down to sit with him on the couch. And he grins as he says, "I promise – I'm never gonna' risk everything like that again, unless it's for you."

But I don't know whether or not to believe him.

"Cypress… things were really wrong. …are you okay?"

He shakes his head.

"No," he says. "But I will be."

* * *

* * *

let me never be complete

may I never be content

you have to give up

evolve / and let the chips fall where they may

this is your life / it doesn't get any better than this

this is your life / and it's ending one minute at a time

* * *

* * *

He said he was going for a walk. That was eight hours ago. And now, as I step onto the front porch, I can see him clearly in the moodlight against the pale sand. He's sitting down on the beach, facing the water. I pad across the sand to plop down beside him. He doesn't flinch or even change his breathing. But slowly, he nods and draws his hands from his knees, pulling his legs from the lotus position.

"You got a smoke for me?" he asks. The moonlight shines on his face, and I can't help but smile at him.

As we both light up, he looks out over the water and smiles.

"You're worried about them."

"Aren't you?"

"A little. But it was inevitable. There was no other way," he says.

"We left them all there," I say. "If you had gone with them, they would have left us alone."

He smiles, sort of, but his eyes are dead serious.

"You think? Or do you think once they had me under lock and key they woulda' come back to surprise you guys?"

"No, Cypress, you can't tell me that was you thinking back there-"

"I don't suppose I can. But this is me thinking now. One by one, every person on our floor has betrayed me. Lied to you. Just because I chose you. They made that choice. We're not abandoning them – they abandoned us."

"Sophie didn't."

"Sophie made a move on me," he snaps. "Just like Lisa, just like Michelle. Fuck, I'm glad they were the only ones out there!"

"Look, that's all okay now-"

"No it's not. I don't like being… manipulated."

His face is hard as he watches the waves pound black as night against the pale-as-death sand. I'm so depressed.

"Why did we just leave? Why not warn them? Why not go back?"

But he shakes his head.

"I can't go back," he says. "I need time." Leaning back, he takes a deep breath of the cool air coming in off the lake. "The only people I intend to stay true to are sitting on this beach. Smell that?"

I sniff the air.

"Winter," I say. He nods.

"We'd better make sure we have enough to last us the season."

"Why can't we go back once you're feeling up to spec?"

The moonlight is enough to still surprise me, as it reveals his too-blue eyes.

"I need time to center myself. I would've killed you."

"No, there's no way you'd ever-"

"I would have," he cuts me off, taking a quick drag. "I wanted to."

"Are you gonna' tell me what happened?" I ask. He nods and snuffs his cigarette in the powder-sand, glancing up at me for another. As he lights it, he says;

"Where do you want to hear from?"

"From where you lost your mind."

"I didn't loose it. I just wasn't in control." He speaks calmly, with forethought and gentle confidence. But I can tell he's still tired. He's wiped out.

"What made you loose control?"

He's on the edge, still.

"Drac got too strong. Or I was too weak. I tried – I tried to get rid of the fucking ring. I chucked it through a window," he says. Now his voice starts to crack, and I swear he's welling up.

"…what happened?"

"It came back. And I was so tired, Crow. I was so tired."

While Cypress gently breaks again in front of me, I'm having a moment. I'm seeing him, now, truly for the first time. Not just what I know of him. Not just my ideal. But just him.

"And he said he would take care of me. And I let him," he sobs.

The tears are now rolling freely down his cheeks, and my heart is breaking. I feel the tightening in my chest, and for some reason I'm falling for him all over again.

"And when they came… we killed them. We killed everyone we could. And he was watching for you. He was looking. He wanted to find you."

I don't speak. As he collapses back into the sand, sobbing like a child, he is dearer to me than ever.

"Always, always – he wants to kill you."

My hand grips his, and he squeezes too tight as I say,

"But you didn't."

He sits up, gently cupping my face in his hands, the tears wet against my cheek.

"All I wanted. All I thought about was finding you," he says. "If I could just touch you again… then I could die and it would be alright, y'know? Maybe that's what he was scared of. I love you."

"I love you."

"I need you to do something for me."

"Name it."

"Take care of me for a while. I'm so… I'm so…"

And the sobs take over. He crumples back into the sand as the powder-grains stick to his face. "I." He's bawling like someone who's never shed a tear in their lives – that floodgate breaking open. "I couldn't." As if that ancient soul had cradled some secret pain for a millennia. A secret that he never even told himself. And it's hit him all at once. "I couldn't stop him."

The pain of the World. And all I can think to do is clutch him as he cries. Just clutch him and whisper,

"I'll take care of you."

* * *

In truth, aside from his daily meditations, Cypress has become a partner over the passing days and weeks. The war we left behind seems like a different life, now. Cypress jokes in a thick accent, whenever we bring up the people from "the Old Countrty". He always laughs it off and changes the subject. I suspect, despite his determination to leave it behind, he regrets abandoning it. He misses them.

I should be jealous of this. Usually I would be. But I've come to absolutely believe that he is dedicated to me. We go for walks in the forest, and he wolf-trots along beside me through the snow. Sometimes he'll see something new and duck off to investigate, but he always returns grinning, with a new story to share. And I know he'll stay.

He has been meditating less lately. It went from ten hours a day to eight. Then six, and now five. Last week he went for seven, though – he didn't even notice.

And as he leaves it all further and further behind, he smiles more. That easy grin that melts the ice. And now, I wonder where he is.

There are bears and wolves and things about. I put down Fight Club and wander from the second bedroom that I've transformed into a pillow-lounge. Being snowbound has left me with little else to do than mercilessly whip myself into a top-notch reader, and make pillows. Cypress made me a new skirt last week – I can't tailor for shit, but I make a decent pillow.

He does stuff like that a lot. The new skirt, I mean. Six weeks after the snow came, he showed up with flowers one morning. He'd been growing them in the basement. Every time he does one of his sweet things, I love him for it, but I always wonder.

I always wonder why. Because of course, he doesn't really love me, and of course the flowers or the skirt or the chipmunk he trained to bow to me were only designed as forms of manipulation.

Right?

Maybe not.

But I do have to wonder. It's not new anymore. It's just him and me. I go to start dinner, and I find he's already working on the same dish. I'm chopping the shit out of some old tree for the woodstove and by the time I need another log, he emerges out of the snow down the beach, a fallen tree perched on each shoulder. We're always on the same page. When he smiles, I know why. When something's wrong, I don't worry. He ends up telling me in an hour or two.

But I wonder why he's still interested. I'm not new or mysterious or curious anymore. I'm just me.

I push open the front door and yank my hood down, stepping out into the calm night. I hate the cold. There's no wind, tonight – not even off the lake – and I can see him clearly down on the glittering snow. He's the black lump, sitting erect in the lotus position.

"Yyarf!" I bark down the beach at him. He doesn't uncross his legs, but turns his head to the side;

"Wroof."

He stands and brushes the snow from his pants, turning in time to scoop me up in a hug.

"What's up?" he grins.

"I missed you."

"Did you?"

"I did – did you miss me?"

He kisses me.

"Sometimes I miss you from the other side of the bed," he's kissing my throat now. One hundred and seven hours, twenty minutes since he last kissed my throat. I've fallen into thinking about time in terms of hours, not days. Cypress has been teaching me to meditate, and I find I recall events easier. My mind is clear – focused – as he sucks on the pale shoulderblade under my sweaters.

"It's a little cold out for – whooahhh-kay." And we tumble into the snow as I grind against him. I love what he said. I miss him from the other side of the bed, too. And as he artfully makes his way through zipper upon buttons upon zipper across my torso, soon we're pressed flesh against flesh. We kiss hot and wet between the blanketing layers of coat upon coat, and a light snow begins to fall as he strokes the small of my back. My fingernails are softly scratching his chest, and his hips rise to meet mine as we press against each other through miles of corduroy.

My hands fumble with his belt, but gentle kisses remind me we have the luxury of time. As his hands travel my torso, stroking my face and scratching through my hair, I purposefully open both his pairs of pants and slide them to a more acceptable location.

Cypress almost always likes to go slow. Real, real slow. Usually I like it, but I've been ready for an hour already. All I can think about while I'm sewing those pillows is Cypress, and my mind wanders. Knowing he was meditating in the snow I picked up Fight Club and tried to focus. It didn't work. And so while he's expecting another stroke or another kiss, I grab him and grind my hips down, pushing hard until he can't go any deeper. His eyes burst open and he gasps, but he doesn't say a word.

It's a new game we're playing. No talk during sex. When one of us tires of it, we'll move on to another, but for now we both find it very piquant. "Piquant" is one of these new words I've learned. I like it.

His grin is all the communication I need – that and his hands as they grip me in happy shock. My straining muscles and gasps of breath tell him all he could know.

We both know how to say I love you without forming the words.

Developing a rhythm isn't conscious – it just happens now – and I'm free to concentrate on how his skin feels as I stroke his face. The black spikes of my hair fall about his cheeks as we bang against each other, and I know all he can hear is my breath in his ear. Gasping – moaning as he cries out into my hair. We hold each other so tight, and now I sit up, throwing the coats off us. The cool snow bites our skin and a billow of steam rises. He's grinning – orgasms were imminent. But I know he likes to hold off for a while.

As the snow stings my back, I begin to slowly rock my hips back and forth on him. He's so hard. I can't help but go a little faster – lust is taking over. I want to feel it all. I want to clutch him until we both break like glass, from strain of passion. Before long I'm bouncing on him as a fresh blanket of heavy white flakes fall around us – catching in our hair. My eyelashes. Melting in hot streams from his lips, and begging me to kiss him until he grips me in that familiar way.

It's just as well – I'm coming already. And as we do his hands grip my face and hold me, staring at his eyes as we moan into each other's mouths.

I love you.

I grip him inside and he throbs and grows. I can feel it, shooting inside me. Pleasures break over me and sweep me out into an ocean. As I collapse on his chest, gasping for breath, his strong arms find a coat and draw it over us before holding me. I kiss him softly now, and his tongue gently plays across my lips.

"Was it good for you?" I ask.

"Fuck, it's still good," he grins, squeezing me. He's so warm.

My breathing comes slower. Comfortable. I could sleep out here, in the snow with him.

"Everything's better now," I tell him.

"Yeah."

"You think it'll stay that way?"

"It should. No one could possibly know where we are, and that ring is buried under the Forks." My eyes burst open against his chest, but he only hugs me tighter and says, "Everything's perfect."

* * *

* * *

she said // i know what it's like to be dead // i know what it is to be sad // and she's making me feel like / i've never been born.

i said / who put all those things in your head / things that make me feel that i'm mad / and you're making me feel like / i've never been born

she said / you don't understand what i've said / i said / no no no you're wrong / when I was a boy // everything was right

* * *

* * *

We settle into a routine. Every morning, whoever wakes first starts breakfast, and the other usually gets up by the time it's ready. If not, it's just our way of asking for breakfast in bed. Cypress ends up making the breakfast a lot, 'cause I've had trouble sleeping. On the days neither of us wants to make breakfast, we just end up staying in bed and making love until we both trot barefoot into the kitchen to see what there is to eat. But Cypress makes it a lot.

Right now, I can't sleep.

He's breathing gently beside me, and I'm thinking about the ring. It can't be that important. Someday, he'll want it. It's his father's ring. I've moved the book it's hidden in a dozen times. Right now, it's the unobtrusive brown enveloped wrapped liberally in duct tape inside the piano bench. It's been there a while, and since neither of us have shown an inclination towards the piano I haven't moved it.

I haven't been scared like I am tonight.

When I went down to Cypress on the beach today, he told me about a black wolf pup that came and played with him. He said the snow had washed away the prints, but I have to wonder.

He hasn't acted differently, but I saw him looking out the window. I didn't ask, but I can guess what he was looking for. He wants to see it again. And as he snoozes, I slip out of bed next to him and find my clothes. The hallway doesn't creak, and I pad down the carpet to the living room. The piano bench lets out a moan from lack of use, but I slip the package out and close it quickly, moving into the kitchen.

A flick of the butcher knife slices the package open like the big white riding beast Han Solo split in Empire Strikes Back. Remember that?

I pull out the book and cut away the tape from it, opening it to expose the silver ring.

It shines, pale in the moonlight, and I slide the knife back onto the cutting board before opening the back door to throw the wrapping into the ash pit.