The Diary of an Artist's Muse

When the tide was out, the cove had this huge rock pool deep as my knees. I took to standing in the flat water, using it as a mirror to look up my skirts. Many a time, my happy puss was thoroughly washed there, under dirty eyes!

Dirtier still, I'd imagine the water was my lover's eyes and the reflection what he'd see, were I to be so rude as to straddle his face and fiddle myself. My lover is called Animus. That's what I call him anyway. The big fella's been with me since he came once in a dream, not long after Da walked out on us. Animus is as much beast of burden as a man. He's always just behind my eyes when I need him, and between my legs, silently getting the job done.

My pool was sheltered but it was still a thrill, being naughty in the open. The sea overlooked my play but it offered no comment other than its sighs. It never occurred to me that my secret might be easily exposed to one who owned a boat. Which of course, Mr Shackam did.

So one morning, my fingers were just on the tippety-tip of tipping me over when Shackam floated round the cove's nearest corner, and paddled toward me. There was no hiding what I'd been up to, but by the time he hauled the boat onto the shore, I was sat, innocently writing in the sand with a stick.

I thought him handsome. Sharp-featured, dark of hair and pale of eye. Not tall, and slight of build, but elegant.

"Madam!" he bellowed. "Algernon Shackam!" He bowed, but it was a joke. His kind didn't bow to mine.

I stayed sat. My long curls blew about my face like alarmed snakes, warning me. Diary you must listen to your hair. And I didn't. I smiled.

Shackam thumped his chest. "Lord almighty, you're a beauty."

So they say. I still don't know the use of it though.

He offered his hand to help me up. I looked at it. He put it away. He cleared his throat. "And... you are?"

I presented my handiwork in the sand: 'Niamh' in my curliest script.

"And she can write! A cultured milkmaid, no less!" He peered at my name. "Nee-am-huh? Anima?"

"It's pronounced 'Neeve'. Eve with a nuh."

"A beautiful name, Eve-With-A-Nuh. May I?" He sat next to me before I could answer.

He ran tapered fingers through long hair and stretched out like he owned the world. I didn't know then, but he pretty much does.

The wind came between us and still this silly girl still didn't heed the warning. Or rather something other than the world had her ear. Something like a clanging church-bell up her skirts.

"So..." He leant into me, as I avoided his eye. "I caught a fruity sight just now."

"You did?"

"A comely siren, tempting me onto rocks."

I'd no idea what that meant. Which is why my cheeks burned. He misread me. "There's no shame in it, girl."

Something squirmed in the front of his trews. Did he have a rat down there? (Mouse, as it turned out.) Thing is, and he still knows this not, but when a man's rod goes hard he has the heart of a lion, but the brain of a toad.

"I'm not ashamed." I shrugged. "I hope you enjoyed it."

His eyebrows raised. His eyes danced around my face, then rested in my lap. He swallowed. "Good Lord. You really are-- How much must I pay for a kiss?"

"You're a bold one."

"Indulge me. My lips. On yours." He leant close. "How much?"

"Oh." I searched the horizon. "A house. At least."

He smirked. "You do well to set your price high, Ma'am." He spoke to my skirts. "But for that I'd want to kiss... all your lips."

I cursed my fevered puss. If he'd paddled a little slower that morning I'd have petted her calm before he swung into my ken. Then I wouldn't have grabbed his chin and kissed him full on the gob.

And more. My tongue invaded his secret cove like he invaded mine. He groaned in my mouth, even as I laughed at him.

More than a little giddy, I hopped up. I stood astride his lap. My shadow lay over his body. He winced at me, like I was too bright.

I reached for my hem. "A house."

He twitched a nod.

I lifted my skirt to my waist.

Diary, the man has a tongue I'll give him that. His suckle frothed me over in a racing heartbeat. Perhaps it was just my needy puss that morning, but I'll never know because no-one has ever licked me since.

I tittered my climax out on his face and my knees unhooked and I flopped onto the sand, a-cackling.

He stood, chin shining, licking his lips, and unfastened his breeches to wheedle out his stiff little cock. It's tip glistened. I kissed it.

And ran.

He gave chase but I lost him as I leapt up my familiar cliff face. Once at the top, I turned back to him. He kicked a rock, cheeks and cock purple.

"A house!" I screeched. "Nothing less!"

I thought I'd never see him again.

Yet here I am.

#

Grunt shifted in his seat, his head full of sunshine and Niamh--stood over his lap, raising her skirt. The taste and sound of her coming. On him. She was so bright in his head she left her afterimage in his blinks.

Again, from upstairs, sobbing.

He charged up the stairs taking the steps two at a time, but faltered at the top. The hairs on his neck stood on end and his instinct to face his fear fled in the face of the genuinely odd. He told himself, if there was a ghost here, then it seemed to idolize him.

But wasn't that scarier?

A small yelp.

Someone needed help and he couldn't avoid that.

He approached the master bedroom quietly. Animal panting grew louder. The door was as he left it, ajar, but now candlelight flickered in the gap. Within, a man grunted. A sharp slap. Another yelp. A woman gasping.

He peeked around the door.

Shadows projected huge on a wall. A figure loomed behind a smaller one, who was bent over. The larger figure shoved. A slapping of flesh.

Grunt leant further in. A wiry, fox-faced man was dressed from a period drama, his trousers round his ankles. He rammed at the bottom of a pale, lithe girl who lay naked across a table. Her wild, red hair tumbled over the edges. The man looked straight at Grunt, who ducked back behind the door, but when he realised the bloke hadn't seen him, he peeked in again. This time the girl lifted her head. Cheeks crimson, jaw thrust.

She caught Grunt's eye, and smiled. A bitten-back smile that said. "No. This can't be true." The expression from every painting in the house, turned on him.

Grunt reeled, but was hooked by the longing in the girl's eyes. Drunk on it, on her, he floated into the room.

The bloke--Shackam?--looked straight through him. The room smelled of woodsmoke, candlewax, sex.

"Y-yes..." Niamh withdrew a hand from between her legs and lifted onto her elbows, addressing Grunt. "I finally... made you... come!"

"Not yet, girl." Shackam slapped her bottom. Worse, he smacked the livid S-shaped scar on it. "What a fucking rump." He shoved harder, pulling her hips onto his thrusts.

Niamh winced. She took a deep breath, blew it out.

Grunt found himself in front of her. Her eyes filled the world. A tear rolled down her cheek.

Shackam needed to stop. Grunt swung at him but it was pointless. He might as well punch a sunbeam.

"Lord, you're slimy tonight." Shackam's grin was a sneer. "I should go away more often."

Niamh's small smile seemed to let on the real reason for her arousal. Grunt took her hand. She was solid. Feverish. She dropped her cheek to his fingers, pressed them to her lips.

Shackam put all his weight into one last, brutal shove.

"Ow! Fuck!" Niamh spun on him, hissed.

He laughed, pushed out of her and fell heavily into a chair, legs spread, cock and balls glistening. "Finish me."

Niamh kissed Grunt's knuckles and spun, dropping between Shackam's knees and grasping his cock. She rubbed him briskly. Candlelight dimmed. Their bodies faded, reduced to flickering highlights.

"Mouth, girl. Mouth." Shackam's bellow was all echoes.

Niamh shook her disappearing head. "I won't do that."

Then they were gone and it was dark.

Grunt kissed Niamh's tears from his skin.

#

Moonlight silvered a great wedge of the carpet before Grunt, despondent on the floor, realised what he needed to do.

He turned on his phone and scrolled through the photographed diary pages.

#

11pm Tuesday 21st June, 1881.

Diary, I did it.

Deliberately this time.

Mam told me what her Mam told her. The town might call us witches but spells don't exist. There's no such thing as magic. There's only love. And love always finds away. But to find it, you have to listen. Above all listen, so you can do what it instructs, no matter how strange, so you're in the right place at the right time.

Earlier, Animus appeared to me straight after I'd fantasised about him. So, do we appear to each other only when we think about each other? And by think I mean, steamy imaginings.

So this evening, the night of Fuckam's return, I tested our predicament. I thought of nothing but Animus. And when I say thought, of course, I mean all kinds of filth. It's not easy for a girl to hold herself on a rolling boil while a devil like Shackam paws at her, but if I thought steamily about my love long enough, I was bound to coincide with the big fella's imaginings some time.

When Shackam fucks me from behind I don't feel a thing. It's more like being spanked with his bony hips, until he stabs so hard he knocks painfully on my womb. But even with the Shackam sowing-machine needle going hell-for-leather I set my fingers to my clit and pretended it was Animus back there, ten times the scale and satisfaction.

And that's when he walked into the room.

He dresses so strange. Shirtless and shoeless in black, baggy pantaloons. Where does he come from, my Animus? Where does he live? Another world were dreams are hard as life? Or is he from another time? Is he from the same place, my house, but in a different era?

He might be a phantom from my future, but tonight he looked like he saw a ghost. Perhaps that's all I am to him. Diary, he tried to rescue me, but his fist passed straight through Shackam. So he took my hand, and he was warm and hard. Real. I held it tight as I could, like I might trap him in our world, in our time, with me.

Then Shackam got nasty and I got distracted. He demanded I suck him off. God how I hope my Animus didn't witness the shit of my life.

I wanked my keeper quick. "I won't do that and you know it."

"Whores swallow for a shilling." He shoved his cock at my mouth. "Even they--"

"Not even they sir. Only they."

I rubbed fast, and squeezed his balls too. He was close, mercifully. He looked down his nose, smug as a priest. Arguments get him off good as a third hand.

"You'll be an alley whore soon enough if you don't ever suck me." He grabbed a fistful of hair, pulled me to his hips and nudged his bell end at my pressed lips like a tiny battering ram.

I opened my mouth, but only to show my teeth. He barked a laugh. Stiffened in my wank. I dipped close enough to cover him in my breath, but I know his cock. He squirts to the left. I was well out of range. I rolled my big blues up at him, like a dare.

Pop. All over my left tit.

After, he was bleary, almost tearful. "I ask nothing of you." He spoke to his breeches as he dressed. "Just the courtesy of a swallow now and then. Will you never show me that respect? After all I do for you?"

I pretended I didn't hear him. He didn't repeat the question, just left me alone. And empty. I lay on the chaise and pictured Animus rutting me, tried to raise his ghost again, but I'd had enough of sex. And I'm worried about where Shackam and I are headed. The man is obsessed with, as he puts it: "filling the world's prettiest mouth" and the more I deny him the more he craves it and, worse, the more he believes I do it for others. That's where the branding really came from, my refusal to swallow his vile spunk. What next?

Ugh.

So diary, your time is done now too.

And now to bed.

Thank you beautiful Animus, maybe I'll think of you one more time before I sleep.

X

#

Exhaustion hit Grunt like a truck. Remembering his job, he locked up the house, shut all the shutters and took the burned potatoes out the oven. Then he stripped and climbed into the fourposter, trying to put the bed's last occupant and his Kleenex out of his mind. Did that bloke see Niamh too? Is that what set him running?

Grunt lay in the moonlight, staring at the lotus flower patterns in the canopy over the bed. Niamh would have stared at the exact same thing. How quickly the extraordinary turned ordinary. One hundred and thirty nine years ago this very night she lay right there. Naked. Maybe even thinking of him. Was she right? Was this some kind of cosmic alignment of love-sick hearts?

What a woman. He'd always imagined Victorians were prim and repressed. Niamh was... a force of nature.

He pushed the bedcovers below his hips. Stroked himself.

A croaky breath, right by his ear. A soft panting. The bed shook.

He closed his eyes. He couldn't look. He didn't want to be disappointed. But a gentle Irish lilt breathed. "Please... Oh God. Please."

He turned to find Niamh's hair starfished on the pillow in a stripe of moonlight. She lay on her side, kind of in the recovery position, faced away from him. The sheet lay across her gyrating hips.

Every inch like one of the ecstatic angels on her wall.

"Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck," the angel blustered. "Come! God fuckin' damn you, puss-cunt." She kicked off the bedclothes, hands wedged between her thighs.

Grunt chortled.

She turned, eyes wide, grin big as the room.

Grunt pulled her to him. She shuffled backwards into the scoop of his front. He wrapped his arms around her and she wedged her cool bottom at his erection. She was small and strong and smelled of flowery powders. He caressed her breasts. Their tongues closed the decades to play in each other's mouths. Their bodies fit so snug there was no space for the years between them.

Niamh reached behind to tug his cock with slippery fingers. Grunt slid his caress down her belly and over her fluffy mound to stir her downy, almost hairless lips. They gasped so loudly in their kiss, they got the giggles. Grunt's head whirled. So people always gasped and got the giggles, then and now.

She wedged his erection under her bum-cheeks, lodged between her thighs, and slid her clit along it as if teasing them both with where it needed to be. He kissed her neck, brushed her nipples, and opened her hole wide to lubricate their join.

She twisted to kiss him deeply, gasped, and her hips grew uncoordinated. She cupped his cheek and gazed into him as he dipped his cock head into her. He nudged gently, waited until she tipped her hips back for more, then slid to the hilt.

Her eyes swelled, then shut. Tears squeezed silvery tracks down the sides of her face. She cried out. He hadn't even built up his pace, still rocking slow at her bottom. Niamh pushed back needily and he rolled her onto her front to plough deeper, faster.

Bed posts knocked at the wall. She writhed below him, her legs between his, and puffed as if he drove the air out of her. He dug on. Her lips sought his, but she couldn't even control her kiss. Her sweet cries filled him as he filled her, each an entreaty for more, her hips chewed at his thrusts. Her bottom jiggled as he pumped, the 'S' on her buttock a red flag to Grunt's bull.

He fed her and fed her and fed her again. As if he could pump her into the 21st century. Keep her.

"Y-yes." She whispered. Her breath shuddered. Her hole spasmed. "Oh f-fuck, yes!" She arched, locked rigid. "Fuck! Y-Y-YES!"

But her howl thinned. Her skin lost its heat then its friction. In panic, she gripped his hips, pressed her feet to his bum. Her grip melted. He locked his arms around her, but the vital body turned hollow and dissolved to numbness. Last of all, the drawing suck of her climax on his cock left him, the chill of her wetness warmed away, and he was alone.

#

Midnight, 21st to 22nd June 1881

Diary, Animus and I just made love.

He's every bit as strong and gentle as my dreams. I feel I've known him years, not minutes. It's overwhelming to have one's deepest fantasy slip naked into your life and then into your arms.

Shackam says the same every time he visits me, poor sap. But dear Diary, it is twice as overwhelming to be the ideal of your ideal

Something Shackam will never know.

I have to tell you right away, while Animus's musk is still on my skin, his kiss on my lips and my puss still haunted by his wondrous cock.

I have much experience with one man, and a little with others, and my cunt is happy with whatever it's fed. Even Shackam, sometimes. I can twist this way or that and turn a string bean into a cucumber. But Animus... he doesn't just enter me, he fills me. There are places he reaches that I didn't know I had. Places even my own intrepid fingers have never found, no matter how deep they've dug on a bored, rainy afternoon. Animus's every thrust turns my hole into a garland of bursting blossoms. Every plunge takes my breath like a fairground swing.

And diary, his cock was so hard, I nearly came just sliding my bud along it. I rode it like Mam's broom!

But what lingers is what I never imagined in my fantasies. When I'm locked in his thick arms, I feel completely safe. Cherished. My fantasy Animus is a product of my lusty imagination, but as I sit here, recalling the real man's warmth and protection, I can't lie. I feel love.

Diary, he didn't orgasm, but I did and that was enough for us to lose each other again. What a delicious hell Nature has created for us.

I can't sleep. Animus must be from some future time, for if he sleeps in my bed then he lives in my house. But it was newly built for me, so he can only live here after I've gone. In his period I might be long dead, yet I'm real to him. I am alive beyond my death! I must learn more of his future world. There must be opportunities for a love spread across time.

The dawn chorus. Now it is 4am and I've been scheming all this shortest night and soon the sun will rise. There's much I must do, but first, and most important, I must see to my Animus. I hope even future men sport a morning glory. A cockerel always crows at dawn, after all. I'll think of him now and let's see if I can make his day.

Ah ha. It seems a great lump haunts my bed.

Hmm.

#

Birds disturbed Grunt's slumber. Then a warm recollection of his night with Niamh roused him with a smile. He hoped her messy head would lie beside him, but the pillow didn't even bear her shape from the night before. So maybe she wasn't having-- what did she call it? -- "steamy imaginings" of him right now. Maybe she was asleep.

He shut his eyes, recalled her soft and wicked voice in his ear ("Fuck I'm gonna come!") and dozed.

A dream came over him, of lowering into a warm bath. A tiny warm bath. Only big as his--

He opened his eyes to find a shaggy red head nodding at his hips. Her croaky hum joined the noisy pigeons, starlings and sparrows.

Niamh was knelt by the bed. She was naked, surrounded by nudes of her, painted by some of the greatest artists who ever lived, and sucking his cock.

He reached down to lift her into bed with him, but she slapped him, then worked him two handed into her mouth. Nasal gasps rolled over his balls.

On the wall beyond the bed, the painting of the farmgirl in a mirror pool teased as its actual subject milked him. He groaned and shuddered and she hummed a cock-muffled snigger. A relentless pumping built behind his balls, sending warm waves over him. He patted her head. A warning. She tossed a cheeky glint at him. Her unstoppable mouth bloomed him and set his hips quivering. He bore down on a deep, illicit flood building at the base of his cock.

His dam overflowed. He gripped her shoulder to push her away. She shrugged him off, tensed, quickened. Thunder rolled, was that him?

Niamh braced herself. "Mm! Mm!"