Belle averted her eyes, but the image had burned into her mind. She eased toward him and he paid no mind, so deep was he in this sinful entanglement.
The picture was of a woman who stood under a desert sun, dressed in tan pants cut very short, long dark legs extending down into boots. Her top had no sleeves. Her face was dark too. Vibrant eyes peered out above glowing cheeks. Her smile was so wide, her teeth so bright.
Belle could not avoid returning her gaze to his pumping hand. His rod had become bright red, like it had been too long in the sun. His jaw went wide like a rattler working down a rabbit, and he studied the woman in the image. A crackling sound came from his throat.
Belle was indignant. She turned away and began to leave, but her feet felt like they were in a bear trap. She turned back. He writhed, his hips pushed toward the steeple, and he shouted.
Semen spewed from him in great gobs. Some dripped from his beard, some folded into the hairs on his chest, and he continued writhing. Still, Belle did not even go so far as to dry the shocking wetness that grew between her legs. Certainly this proved her piety.
To prove it further, she would drive this man out now.
This was no preacher.
The wind pushed at the windows, an unheeded warning, and an idea formed. As the man cleaned his indecent mess, Belle unlatched one window, and let the wind have its way.
The man shouted, “Holy shit!”
Belle restrained her laugh at his profane utterance, then decided, why restrain? She let it go for all it was worth. It had often been said how disturbing her laugh was, which she found odd, so far was it from her proper deportment.
The man rushed to the window and secured it, then looked around the room with a puzzled expression. He rubbed his head. “Okay?”
Belle was transfixed by his nude body as he walked around the church. He drew a deep breath, then sat on the blanket and rubbed his eyes. “Okay, this is finally getting to me.”
Belle laughed again, and the man again surveyed the room. He covered his mouth, his eyes were wide. She was sure he’d run like the wind, and thought to open the window yet again, but she knew that a sermon must know when to stop so that the point has time to drive itself home. The imagination must be left to grow the proper fear.
He blurted, “What do you want from me?”
Belle let it play out. She felt a sensation in her middle drawing down and suppressed it.
The stranger went to the pot on the pulpit and held it up toward the rafters. He took off the lid, looked inside and tipped the mouth threateningly as if to pour. “Well? Here? Now?” The strange man was becoming unhinged. Belle popped the side window open again.
“Shit!” He set down the pot, covered it and ran to the window. He stood at it, the cold air pouring over him, tousling his long hair, bright as an acre of dandelions in a breeze. Belle took her first close look at his face. His skin was beautiful. His eyes were a bright blue that sapphires aspired to. He leaned out the window and looked to the back, toward the graveyard. He heaved a sigh. “That’s it!”
But he did not leave. Belle laughed one more time. The stranger laughed in return and walked back to the front of the church, extinguished the lantern and sprawled, still nude on the large blanket that covered the pew.
Belle stared at the ceiling of the church, opened her arms to heaven looking for inspiration. Nothing was working. She looked down to the floor. The room was bitter cold, and yet the stranger seemed at peace sprawled on the front-and-center pew.
How could one be so comfortable in his sin?
Belle returned to the hotel, modestly removed her dress and put on her nightclothes for bed. She turned side to side, top to bottom; she nearly spun as she tried to find a comfortable position. The stranger’s comfort with the air on his bare flesh made the middle of her waist clench. The moisture between her legs returned, and she reached up her nightgown to pat it dry. Her touch felt so strong, so delicious. The tingling in her groin extended up her waist, and her hips began to twist. She strengthened her stroke. His image burned in her mind.
She pulled her hand away and wiped some escaped saliva from her cheek with the back of her delicate wrist. “I won’t let the likes of you haunt me.”
Belle rose just before the sun. She now knew just how bad a seed the stranger was, and she could not give up. She set out toward the church, clad like the woman in the picture that the man had abused himself to. Despite the fact that Belle’s short, shapely legs were white as fresh snow on a winter morning and that her curvy body was nothing like the athletic woman he had sinned with in his heart, she could still reveal that she knew his transgressions. This would certainly restore the insanity he’d displayed early on.
It seemed a small price for Belle to pay, to suspend just a little piety. She looked inside the church window. In front of the man was a feast of obscene proportions. It would feed two, maybe three big men, easily. A heap of eggs and bacon, potatoes fried in the bacon grease, a big hunk of bread with which he sopped up all the escaped juices and fats. She wondered if this man’s sin knew any bounds.
As he finished, she crept outside and waited behind a grave marker. His long shadow was cast across the hallowed ground as he faced away from the sun, leaving Belle an opportunity. She eased up behind him and blew softly on his neck.
“Oh, shit!” He shivered, grabbed the back of his neck and jumped like a jackrabbit from a wolf. He turned to the sun and faced her. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Judge not, lest ye be judged!” Her finger pointed in to the sky. She didn’t know why she said it. Belle always hated that line.
“Uh, okay. Shouldn’t be a problem, but I guess it’s the thought that counts.” He eyed her carefully. His brow lowered. “Did you hike in last night?”
Belle shrugged. “What is it you do here?”
“I have something to take care of. So if you don’t mind…” He looked out toward the gray-feathered walls of the nearby buildings.
Belle nodded, but did not leave. Instead, she wandered around the graves waiting to see what he would do. He walked to the largest headstone, the one marked A TAYLOR. He cradled the pot. Belle rushed back and insinuated herself between him and the stone. She reached toward the pot. “What is that?”
He jerked it away. “Ashes.”
“Ashes?”
“To scatter. My wife’s wishes.”
“Your wife desires that you scatter ashes?”
“Well, they’re her ashes.”
“And you brought them here?”
He shrugged. “There are stranger places; um, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Belle.” She held out her hand, knuckles forward and gently draped.
His delicate grip of her fingers surprised her. He looked at her strangely, deeply. His eyes focused so tight on her pupils that she could feel deep warmth. He smiled and kissed her knuckles. She didn’t expect him to behave like a gentleman, nor did she expect him to feel so hot.
He looked to the sky. “Belle, like tolling. A tolling bell. Church bell. Boy, if I’d had any doubts before.” He released Belle’s hand. “Can you leave us alone for a while?” He looked toward the old hotel.
“Us?”
“Please.”
If Belle could remain, she might ruin his plans and get him to vacate her church and the town. She didn’t even want him to leave the ashes, but she was compelled to follow his instruction. She returned to the hotel where she watched from behind the tattered curtains in her room.
The stranger opened the pot, held it up to the sky, lowered it then waved like he was wielding a sword.
The wind from the prior night was reduced to a breeze, but it was strong enough to carry the gray contents all over the graveyard. Some of it settled on the monument to A Taylor. The man danced around the graves like a Cherokee entreating the skies to bring forth water.
Belle confirmed that the skies were not suddenly taken with clouds. All she could do was wait for nightfall.
&nbs
p; Belle again followed the bright light in the church windows. She paused at the door and heard a soft thumping. Hard breaths became faster, then slower. She tiptoed up one side of the church again, and indeed, the stranger was stretched out on the pew, his body entirely nude. He had a different picture in his hand. It was the same woman, but clad in a tiny red dress. The woman’s lean body was canted at a sinful angle, legs open, thick nipples poking the thin material. She had a luscious smile on her glossy, painted lips.
Belle looked down at herself, still arrayed in clothes like the prior night’s picture. She unbuttoned her blouse and opened it to expose the valley of her bosom. The sensation made her gasp, and she thought to step from the shadows. She buttoned the blouse.
The man’s need was palpable. It was loud, it was urgent; she could smell it, or at least she believed that’s what the smell was. She had lost touch with smells and this was so pungent. The man had opened every window in the church. His testicles were tight as ripe fruit. His shiny rod pointed to the steeple.
Belle did not try to disguise her approach. He must have been more lost in his sin than before; she got right next to him. There was a desperation and pain in his eyes, which Belle had focused on to avoid being complicit in the sin of his body.
Belle’s sudden laugh was beyond her will.
“Unh!” He released his cock. She slipped behind the pew.
His rod remained stiff. He suddenly covered himself with his big blanket, and tears streamed from his eyes. He put the colorful picture along with some others carefully into his backpack. He returned to the pew and lay down. He sobbed like a baby.
The stranger remained in Belle’s head all night. She considered how his seed had spewed into his beard, how hard his rod was even as he burst into tears, his crazy talk around the church, that strange dance and the graying wind.
They said some tribes danced like that for evil spirits. What in the world could his sort have been warding off? By the next morning, she knew she must finish what she started. She dressed precisely as the woman he had stared at the prior night, in a tiny shred of a dress, something a decent woman wouldn’t even wear underneath her clothing. Certainly he would make the association this time.
The stranger was out in the graveyard again. He did not dance; he sat before the large headstone, and he was talking to it as if he knew it. “I hope you like the place. I have to move on.”
“The sooner the better,” Belle said softly.
To her surprise, the stranger did not jump. He half smiled and simply watched as she went to the headstone and tried to brush the ashes off. His jaw slowly gaped. “You.” He stood up and circled her. He touched her cheek, then looked at his fingers and rubbed his thumbs against them. “You feel so very cool, so soft. You’re so tiny, so pale, red hair, blue eyes. All wrong. All wrong, but then, I don’t know.” His other hand circled her upper arm. A ribbon of tears shone down each rugged cheek.
Belle couldn’t help but rub her face to his knuckles. She had always avoided touch; now she couldn’t get enough, almost like how he had eaten that breakfast. The front of his pants filled. She knew piety, had lived it for…well, too long to recount. This was all wrong.
He stepped closer. She did not step away.
He traced along her slim throat, his thumb smoothed her full lower lip then rubbed her slightly parted teeth. She eased a tiny step forward. Her nipples grew hard like those of the woman in the picture, and he delicately circled them. When she sighed, he gave them a squeeze. Her stomach tightened, her legs begged to be opened like the church door. She had never felt more whole, more real, more tangible as his mouth covered hers, his beard scraping the rim of her jaw. She felt a wonderful ache as he squeezed her rare breath from her. He whispered in her ear. “You are her, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Is this a dream? No, I can smell you. You smell like the autumn, your favorite time. People can’t smell in their dreams, right? Say it. Tell me who you are.”
She drew a deep breath. “I am Lauren.” A great sin of a lie, and yet it felt perfect.
His eyes widened in surprise, his smile crested in relief. A heavy sigh. “You know I never believed in—”
The ends justify the means. “I am Lauren.” She pressed her mouth to his as he had hers, and encouraged him into the shadow of the large headstone marked A TAYLOR. The stranger’s pants fell like water through a sluice, and he eased her to the ground. He reached up her tiny skirt. One large finger entered, then two. Her tightness resisted the second, so he patiently plied her. Belle’s hips curled into his hand. She gripped his hard rod. Its combination of deep, bone stiffness and butter surface entranced her. She could not get enough of it.
She could not worry how long she could last.
He poised himself between her legs. She guided him to her opening; such a wonderful feeling as the plump tip entered, then stopped at her resistance. With tiny, gentle thrusts he eased deeper. She turned from tight to impassable. His eyes widened.
Belle had enforced her morals upon others so she might account the wages of their sins. Piety, precious piety, and she stopped at nothing to make her point. Nothing. Oh, the things she’d done in her short life to enforce her will. Now, all she wanted was to feel the surrender, to divest herself of this thing she’d viewed as so precious. She shoved her hips up to him. “Please?”
He matched her. She was sure she could hear a snap like a twig under a horse’s hoof.
Her wince became a smile. Delicious pain.
“Sorry, Lauren…I didn’t expect…you know.”
She just gripped his body tightly. “More.” His weight was substantial. She felt smothered, and indeed, perfect. His fingers curled between their bodies, and he played with the hard, sensitive button she had avoided for so long.
Everything Belle knew stood on end. Now, for the first time in ages, she felt alive. The pleasure was unbearable, so long had she been numb. Her solace was that this certainly could not last.
But it did last. Marvelously, the sensations became not only bearable, but wonderful. She felt a sudden, deep twisting of her insides, and this extended out to her limbs in wave after wave. Her head was light. She saw stars in the bright blue sky.
She was finally dying, a blessed end to this long woeful journey; she welcomed the prospect. She matched his thrusts to hasten it. The stranger’s face suddenly contorted, and he shouted out for all the jealous graves to hear. His release felt more powerful inside her than what she had seen in the church that first night.
She did not die. The stranger rolled over and rested her insubstantial frame on him like a blanket. She could feel her impending separation. She’d done so wrongly, she could not remain like this. She pushed up from his chest. “You have to leave. Now.”
“Just a little while longer, Lauren.” He gripped her tighter.
“I’m not her. I lied, understand? I—took advantage—you better—” Belle felt like escaping steam, and she suddenly found herself back in the safety of her room. She was relieved and looked out the window to where she had been. He fumbled with his clothes and raced like a hunted rabbit into the church then back out, tossing items in the open backpack as he ran along the overgrown road. He suddenly stopped. Fearful though his face was, he went back and brushed the ashes from the grave marker with the words A TAYLOR.
As he disappeared, Belle tried to follow, but could go not farther than the edge of town. She went back to the church though she knew it too would be off limits again, and yet she went in easily. The pot that the stranger had emptied now sat upon the pulpit, the lid set beside it. It was all that he had left behind. Belle looked inside as if an answer might be in it: just a few ashes. He’d made her feel so good, so alive, and now he was gone. She knew that her punishment had been just, but this, the sudden sensation of being alive, just to have it repealed, was too cruel.
But it was just.
“Annabelle.”
She jumped then looked back.
The stranger smil
ed. “Belle is short for Annabelle.”
She lowered her head. She was as much embarrassed as surprised. When was the last time anything had scared her?
“You’re Annabelle Taylor.” It was not a question.
She did not meet his eyes. She nodded slightly.
“I have to know, have you seen Lauren on the other side? Is she happy? Did she go, you know, to heaven? I mean, I never really believed in…but she…I mean, Lauren, she believed.” He approached and stood by Belle, who was still dressed in her tiny red garment.
She stepped away and went to the window. “I see nothing but the sure decay of this empty town.” He followed and started to reach for her. He paused. A realization came over her. “Take heart, the truly good do move on.”
He sighed with relief then pulled his hand away from Belle. “Wait, so you’re not good?”
She did not turn to him. Her voice was shimmering, eerie. She didn’t want it to be. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I’m bad. Very bad. So now you better move on.”
After a moment of careful thought, he gripped Belle’s small waist and pulled her tight. He moaned as he tasted the length of her neck. He pressed his scorching lips to her cool mouth for a long, deep kiss that popped when he eased away. “Let me be the judge of that, Annabelle.”
Belle looked down at her body. Surely it would vaporize.
She remained whole.
LIVING OFF LOVERS
Kristina Lloyd
I know he watches me. He watches me having sex when he takes his cigarette breaks by the rear fire door of Charlie’s Steakhouse. He smokes a lot. I have sex a lot, and the blinds in my bedroom are thin. I imagine him in the street below, smoke trickling from his lips as he watches the shadow of me, three stories above, giving head to the shadow of a stranger. I wonder if he wishes he were the one sliding into my red, wet mouth; if his cock swells inside his grubby chef’s whites; if he returns to the sweating kitchen and scalds or cuts himself because his mind’s not on the job.
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