Note: Explores Maud's thoughts for Sue.
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Darkness Come
By Archaeobard The darkness seeped over me, lapping at my shoulders, over my breasts. the fire, dying in its grate; andirons reflecting its light loosely. Pinpricks of horrid orange glaring at me across the room. I glared back at them. What did they see? Perhaps they saw nothing. Perhaps I was nothing. I existed but was nothing. Nothing that was real. To my uncle I was a secretary. To Richard I was a fortune. To Sue...to Sue I was, what did Richard call it, a pigeon? Head she measured the worth of me like the cutlery and found me wanting? Had she sized me up and marked me harmless? Yet sometimes, I think I catch in her something more than she was brought here to do. There was a spark of kindness to her.
The dying coals popped. Sparks flew. I jumped. Sue stirred, whether at my movement or the fire I will never know. She lay on her back, one hand drawn up to her brow. Her hair had come loose and lay fanned about her, a tendril resting on her cheek. In the fading amber light she appeared ghostly, as if hovering in sleep; an apparition come to haunt me. She could have been dead to me. I tried to think it and felt the prick of tears. What had she done to me? What had I done to me? Was I so sad for affection that the first person to show me a little kindness since my childhood should affect me so? I had read of infatuation and wondered if I suffered such a thing. But yet, infatuation does not account for it. It does not account for tis carnal drawing; this tearing rapture that captures me when her gaze fall on mine. Would I call it love? Would I call it lust? Would I call it anything but what it was? Impossible. What would she do with me? What would I do with her? I knew one thing and it made me shudder. It made me close my eyes and breathe sharply. It made me squirm and frown. It made the coals drop lower in the grate and the darkness come still further upon me. It made me hide from myself and want to touch to the heart of me, to the pearl that ached for the want of a fingersmith. The fingersmith who lay beside me, warm, heady and untouchable. Yet so was I. She could touch me no more than I could touch her, for what would become of us? What would become of us if I reached and instead of my own breast I carressed hers? Or if I allowed the tips of my fingers to trail between down slowly to her belly and not to mine? Or if I smoothed her skin with a warm hand? If I brushed her, sought her out, made her moan instead of me? What if I made her shudder, quake, to cry with the feel of me as I cried? There was no oblivion like her, nothing my drops could bring about like the thought of her skin on mine. I would sleep and dream and become frightened, I could not trust my own mind, But then, why should I not have her? She was bound for a mad house. I could quench my desire and still need her. I would be gone. But I would still desire her. I would still need her. I would still love her. For that I am afraid is what cursed me, and I must let it go to be free. The End