Blog in Review Best of 2014 #5 Inseparable

She could feel him all the time now.  She would catch a certain scent in the air and anxiety would rise in her belly. The whisper of a voice in the back of her mind. She closed her eyes, because she could almost feel breath tickle her ear. She inhaled deeply knowing this was the only way to manage it when they were connected like this. She opened her right hand in front of her staring at the lines and veins.  Warmth glided across the surface ever so lightly.  A fleeting thing feeling as it touched, touching as she felt. The sensation went up her arm, soaked her shoulder, then spread like wine staining carpet over her chest. She sighed in the feeling as her body was slowly being eaten away by his essence his aura. It warmed more in random spots like tiny starburst across her skin.  Tiny eruptions of warm sensations exploded softly all over. He called it sprinkle kisses.

The connection had always been there and visceral. It was like a train station that no one used. The tracks had been laid long ago.  When they first met it was pain.  It had dropped her to her knees the first time it poured through her. She had felt the sharp instant cut, the initial numbness and then she had nearly in slow motion dropped to her knees as the numbness faded for a dull aching that had no source yet could not be appeased. She had gasped loudly as if she had been hit in the stomach.  The sound of the gasp nearly lost in the sudden and hard release of air. She covered her heart with both hands as tears built in her eyes.  She stared dumbfounded to the heavens as they streaked brilliant salty trails down her cheeks. She vaguely felt them streaming down her neck to her chest.  Her skin dried some, her sweater caught the rest. She had stayed there for an eternity it seemed.  Nailed to her living room floor in pain, she had fallen to her back, eyes wide, tears streaming, mouth agape. The pain was acute, sustained.  Her first thought was his name and the pain doubled. This was a soul deep hurt that had survived and fed itself with his passions, ate his shattered dreams and drank of his broken heart. It fueled his nightmares, ignited his pessimism, and nurtured the hearth of his rage.

As she lay there unable to move, barely able to stand the pulsing burning fire that was both pain and rage she understood what true intimacy was.  It wasn't sexual at all, it was emotional.  It was living with someone else's pain inside you.  Bound to you in the core of your own soul. No closer mating could ever be attained. She wept as his despair raced through her.  Somehow she had always thought hopelessness was a passive emotion.  How utterly unrelentingly foolishly wrong she had been.  She saw now that hopelessness was a tidal wave. A raging ocean always building to overtake you. He was at war with it constantly. She was not fit for the fight.  For a moment she surrendered to it.  She let her mind drift into the darkness that only soul shattering pain could produce. She felt herself sinking through the carpet, through the floor, through the layers of dimensions that separated them.  She had retreated from this plane and was in a space she had never seen before.

The space was dark, wet and cold.  She was surrounded by walls. Black dirty walls, the ceiling was too high.  Several stories over her head it loomed.  The smell was lacking in life.  Despite the moisture it seemed nothing could live in this space.  The walls and the floor seamlessly bent from one to the other.  She walked gingerly down the hallway.  It had to be, it was no bigger than 4 feet wide. She passed a mirror and stopped to observe herself. She was bathed in light, and that was all. Her dusky skin nearly glowed with an iridescent pearl gleam that was blue and purple. Her eyes glittered as if set alive by flames. Her hair a curly long orange red mane that drifted to some space right past her ass.

Startled she stepped forward to touch the mirror.  Lightly she placed her fingers right above where her heart would in the image. She heard the tinkling of glass.  The mirror contracted at her touch, seemed to take a deep quick breath then shattered.  Instinctively she covered her face waiting for the additional pain of the cutting glass.  Instead she felt a fine mist.  She dropped her arms and stared at them as the dust left red and gold speckles on her skin, fine and iridescent. She glanced up quickly at the spot the mirror came from and she saw a door.

The door wasn't like anything else in the hallway. It was carved wood, deep brown with hints of red. On it was a tower.  It was long and tall, a perfect cylinder of brick and mortar rising from the middle of the ocean it seemed. The top of the tower had a lookout much like a lighthouse. In the window there was the clear figure of a young boy staring out. Dragons circled overhead their tails blending as they formed a ring around the top of the tower. Snakes slithered from the water inching up the base of the tower. The ocean raged and crashed beneath them. The scene was framed with thorny vines braided outside of the main image.

That's when she noticed the door had no knob.  She walked up to it and traced a wave.  The wood was cool and smooth to the touch. She traced up to a snake to the tower and continued to inch upward. She touched the face of the boy briefly on the cheek. She couldn't tell if the door had whelped or if she had.  The touch had spiked the pain for a second forcing the sound. Instinct only made her lean in closer and press her lips to the boy's forehead. Her closed eyes didn't see what happened because in the next moment she was kissing air.

It was a small room before her. Just a rustic setting. A lovely rug on the wooden floor, a fireplace in the corner lit and blazing.  A comfortable chair with armrests and a high back with velvet red coverings. The fact that there were no windows and the walls were bare was a bit odd.  However it was not nearly as odd as seeing him kneeling in front of the chair putting makeup on what was clearly a dead woman. Her skin was blue. The unnatural hue of someone who has long passed. Her hair was a grey stringy mop falling to her threadbare shoulders.  The white gown was dingy with bits of makeup mistakenly dropped on spots. Her lifeless form stared with eyes dark cold and dead. The hallows of her skull were apparent in her cheeks and mouth.  She was propped in the chair with her arms on the rests and her legs pulled closed, feet planted, makeup in her lap.

He would place makeup on a spot on her face that made her look flesh colored. As he would move on to another area the makeup would slowly disappear. He would notice when the spot he was working on was done and then go back to reapply. She slowly walked over to where he fussed and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"She's not gone you know." he whispered in a well-rehearsed way. "Any minute now she'll be back and this time she'll love me."

She didn't say anything. She knew what this was and she knew who she was. She took has hand away from her face.  She was surprised that he offered no resistance.  She removed the make up sponge from his hand and placed it in the lap of the woman where the rest was. He just stared at the face of the woman as she went blue. In a matter of moments she faded to gray and then dissolved into ash.

The low keening moan that came from him managed to come through her as well as they watched this happen. He sat back on the floor.  She knelt beside him and pulled his head against her chest. She sifted her fingers through his short brown hair enjoying the solid feel of him. He was cold though. Her other hand soothingly rubbed the back of his neck. He let her hold him as he tried to quiet the storm within him. She closed her eyes and held him closer.  She took slow deep breaths and focused herself. When she inhaled she focused on his pain, when she exhaled she focused on soothing. It didn't take long before they were breathing together and the pain storm was subsiding. Slowly his arms crept up and wrapped around her waist.

She jolted up and was in her living room again. As long as she lived she would never forget that day.  That had been the beginning of their unique odyssey.