To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows

by Sam Richard

  Now, tears streamed down my cheeks and onto her thighs as I half-sobbed, half-licked her cunt. How she tasted and smelled was as much a part of her as the way she laughed or how she sprawled out on the couch with her legs straight and feet pointing inward like hockey-sticks; it was as much a part of her as the way she comforted me when my favorite cat I’d ever owned died and I was inconsolable; it was as much a part of her as the way we shared our collective existences for 5+ years together. It was one of those things that made her who she was. She tasted different than normal, a slight bite of urine and bitterness that typically wasn’t there made me think of something awful, but I pushed it out of my mind and continued to slide my tongue over her clit.

  Her moaning got louder as she lifted her thighs up and pushed her knees towards her chest. I briefly glimpsed her neo-traditional portrait of Agent Dale Cooper tattooed on the back of her thigh before I brushed my tongue across her asshole. As with her pussy, her ass tasted different than normal, coppery and astringent, vaguely like rubbing alcohol. The awful feelings tried to creep back in, but her moaning and the slight movements of her hips and ass drew me in and I abandoned myself into her.

  My pleasure intertwined in hers and my dick felt painfully tight constricted in my jeans. On my knees, I started unbuckling my belt as I looked with eyes brimming with love at my beautiful, charming, hilarious, talented wife. But her eyes were empty. Her body, lifeless. Her moans, silent. There was nothing, anymore; nothing but the empty husk she had once inhabited. Nothing but cold, grey flesh; loose, inanimate muscle; vacant, dead eyes; and a breathless, voiceless mouth.

  First came a torrent of shock. Not the shock I had been in since she first collapsed, or the shock of when the doctor told us they had done all they could, but a new type of shock. One intertwined with shame, guilt, and a deep sense of self-loathing. What the fuck had I just done. The unceasing river of tears pouring from my eyes pushed harder than ever before as I wailed and fought for air. What little was in my stomach crawled its way up my throat and into the wastebasket that was mercifully at arm’s reach.

  Cold emanated from the core of my stomach, boring into my soul. On all fours, between short, panicked breaths, I repeated her name out loud. Begging for her forgiveness. And begging myself for it, too. The frenzied lurches of sickness continued for several minutes, though nothing else came up but stringy, pinkish liquid. Despite the cold, hollow feeling in my guts, my muscles burned and ached with strain.

  Picking myself up, I tried my best to redress her. Salt-heavy tears pattered against her naked skin one last time, as I tied the hospital gown around her neck and pulled it back down onto her, gently tucking it under her unmoving body. As lovingly as I could, I pushed her hair out of her face and did my best to will her to open her eyes. Touching her hand, I was shocked at how much colder she’d gotten, even in these last couple of minutes, so I brought the blanket up to her armpits, as if to tuck her in for one final, unending night.

  I sat in a chair and tried to collect myself, tried to come to terms with what had become of my life, to come to terms with what I had done; and with the fact that she was gone. My guilt was superseded by grief and faded into the back of the room.

  Slowly, as I sat in silence, tears still flowing out of my stinging eyes, I thought about all that she was to me and if I could survive this. It didn’t seem possible, but I willed myself to try, as it is what she would have wanted.

  The darkness enveloped me like a blanket and I stood up just as there was a knock on the door. It was my sister, asking if I was ok, if I needed anything. There was no way of knowing how long it had been, but it felt like I'd been in that room for an entire day. I answered back that I just needed a few more minutes. My face smelled of her.

  Straightening out the quilted comforter, I bent down and kissed her on her forehead and thanked her for sharing her life with me. I kissed each cheek. On the first, I thanked her for trusting me enough to be completely open, and on the second, I thanked her for accepting me so wholly. Kissing her nose, I thanked her for building a life with me. Her eyes had no prayers, as the guilt was settling into my bones and distracting me from her. But her lips, fuck the guilt; breathing tube and all, as I kissed her delicate lips one last time, I thanked her for being exactly who she was; the person that I would love forever - until I was lucky enough to join her. And then I apologized, for everything, and I walked out the door of that hospital room, anger, shock, sorrow, and guilt all coiling together in the smoldering crater where my heart once beat.

  Outside of the room, I knew that would be the last time I would ever see her. Pressure grew in my chest, threatening to bring me to the ground, but I pushed my feet forward and let the door close behind me. There were no more tears, at least not at that moment; the reserves had run dry. In a daze I stood, staring into the total nothing that was now my future, my life.

  Eventually, a nurse handed me the clear, plastic bag with the quilted blanket in it. It had the type of white, molded-plastic handle that you can snap together to close it. A faint memory of the book fair at my elementary school when I was a child lingered momentarily. I wondered if I could go back in time and tell that child what was going to happen, would I? Could I ruin myself that way, or could I prevent this? The what ifs ate at my soul. Could we have prevented this? Could I have saved her? Could I have saved myself the pain? But nothing good lives in those thoughts, only more tragedy and suffering.

  ***

  Many months after her death, after her body had been laid to rest in fresh dirt, the shock began to wear off. This was now my life and it was no longer obscured by the fog of the irreal. The haze had all but wiped my memory of what I had done, but its taste lingered on the back of my mind - heavy and dripping with shame. As the sheen of glass rubbed from my eyes, I began to feel that I was once again alive, human; it was like my blood had resumed pumping. It was all pain, but pain is more than the totality of nothingness.

  Eventually, I could finally see beyond the grief and catch glimpses of other emotions. They would rush on hard and leave in an instant, abandoning me with my shame and guilt, but it felt good to feel again. The near-constant state of heightened arousal I had felt during that time of shock was suddenly propelled outward. For so long, my sexual existence wasn’t just about my own desires, it was about remembering what we had shared - as if I needed to keep that part of her alive; that part of us alive. But, as with so many things, it began to fade. No longer was my sexual identity about trying to keep the feeling of her - of us - around, it had become my own again.

  The first time I was with a woman following my late-wife’s death was awkward and uncomfortable. An old friend who I’d always had chemistry with. I was drunk, she was drunk, we were both laying it on thick before we stumbled to her bedroom and fumbled each other’s clothes off. Between the booze, my heightened and confused emotional state, and the awkwardness between us, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get hard, but that turned out to be no problem. The problem was that I couldn’t get off.

  She came fairly quickly once I went down on her, despite my drunk-dry tongue pressing against her sensitive parts clumsily. As she gyrated and shook, I realized that her cunt was also unusually dry. After she came, I worked my way back to the pillows and she reached out and shoved her tongue down my throat. It was also dry. Like the grit of sandpaper; when our tongues met it felt raw and wrong. I wanted to get away, it made me feel weak and tired and confused. I was reminded of something horrible and I went limp, but I pushed the thought to the back of my mind.

  She turned away from me so I could eat her ass for a while, hoping it would deflect the itch at the base of my brain and bring back my erection. Her ass felt warm and inviting, her cheeks the kind of pillow I wished I could be suffocated with. She moaned and shuddered slightly as I pressed my tongue into her. She worked her clit with her hand. As she got more aggressive with her hand, I felt her opening up to me more. She felt warm. Alive. It made me feel ill.

  Bourbon, grief
, and lust swam through my mind as our parched tongues touched, once again. Her breath was dry and putrid, like she was rotting from the inside. Her stomach made a gurgling noise and I flinched. But I was also overwhelmed with the touch of her flesh, desperate to connect. Conflict and sorrow laced my lust as she ground her ass against my rigid dick. I licked my thumb and pushed it inside her spit-wet asshole as she moaned, enveloping it in one movement.

  Mild perspiration dotted her neck and shoulders, as I kissed and bit at her flesh. She tasted metallic, acrid. Heat rose from the base of her neck, releasing sickly smelling pheromones. Arousal wore revulsion like a glove. After I had loosened her up a bit, I lubed myself and tried to enter her asshole. Drunkenly stumbling and waning in hardness, there was a moment where I was convinced it was over and I was flooded with relief. But then she reached back and guided me inside. I pushed in and out and experienced myself one step removed; as though I was feeling myself feel her in a simulation, detached from everything.

  As I was getting close, I put my fingers in her mouth - her stubbly tongue dryly flicking against them. The inside of her cheeks felt like overcooked steak and the smell and warmth coming off her neck make me queasy, but I kept pumping in and out until I became one with the darkness.

  I pulled out and lay panting, feeling suffocated by the scents lingering in the air. We both put on our underwear and I turned off the light next to the bed. We didn’t say anything to each other, but I kept expecting her to get up to go to the bathroom, to expel my cum from her asshole, but she never did. The thought kept me up all night, tossing and turning, in and out of the mildest form of drunk-sleep, the whole time visualizing my semen slowly dripping out of her and collecting in her underwear at the base of her spine, drying the fabric to her ass.

  As the sun came up and I was forced to face the day, face the hangover, I got dressed as quietly as I could, trying to not wake her. I could smell her scents in my beard and body hair, as though she had been the one to penetrate me the previous night. I breathed her taste in, equal parts aroused and disgusted, like our bodies’ chemicals were waging wars on multiple fronts, each winning and losing various battles.

  Buckling my belt, she rolled over and asked what I was doing, what time it was. I told her it was early and that I had to go; that I had a lot to get done that day. She rolled back over and mumbled something, presumably falling back to sleep. I wondered if we would do this again. I was relatively sure we could do this again, but more importantly, I wondered if I wanted to do this again out of anything but pure, animal desperation.

  ***

  My sex life reverted to being about my dead-wife, once more. I jerked off while crying for her to come back to me. I shoved her biggest butt-plug into myself with only spit as lube and no warmup, breaking my asshole and shitting blood for a few days. None of her underwear smelled like her anymore, nor did her pillow, or her clothing, or the house. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get her to remain. Occasionally, when in these sexual fits, I would remember that last time we were together, how cool she felt to touch, how she moved without moving. It stirred like a rat king inside of me. The thought of warm breath on my face filled me with anxiety.

  More agonizingly lonely months passed before it got the best of me and I sought out touch once again. Initially I thought it best to not get caught up with that same friend as before, but overwhelming desire and the thought of probable ease got the better of me so I shot her a text to see if she wanted to grab some drinks sometime soon. We had kept in mild contact since that night, just to check in here and there, probably mostly to maintain some kind of connection in case one of us became brave enough to try again; or at least that’s how it felt on my end.

  She had been seeing someone off and on recently, but had ended it for good when the guy started treating her like shit. She would tell me about it on those brief snippets of conversation, so I roughly knew her status when I sent her the text. My hope was that she was also feeling lonely. She was and she agreed to meet up later that week. She also said she hadn’t been feeling well lately.

  The days leading up to it were fraught with internal conflict and strife. Half of me was aroused and excited at the idea of touching her again, of being inside her, of not being alone. The other half remembered how it made me feel, the sour scent, the empty death in my guts, the shame - the bad thoughts. I tried my best to shove that half down, determined to enjoy what pleasure there was to be had if she also wanted to do it again. But I could never quite quell the unrest inside my hollow chest. It ate at me, piece by ugly piece.

  This time we met at my house, under the guise of having some drinks and watching a movie. As she walked up the stairs to my apartment, I couldn’t stop staring at her ass. It looked inviting and comfortable. She, on the other hand, looked frail and weak. Her cheeks were flush and she said she had been coming down with something. We drank bourbon and watched a shitty 80’s horror film. Every once in a while she had a lung-rattling coughing fit. I could feel the atmosphere between us expand and contract with lust.

  It was spring and the air outside had started to warm up. It hadn’t yet been nice enough out to justify opening my windows, so my apartment was full of stale, dusty air. When the movie was over, she suggested we sit on my porch and take in the first honestly nice evening we had experienced in six months. She brought the bottle and we sat on the dirty faux-leather futon that lived on my porch, passing the bourbon back and forth until it was empty.

  She stood up to go to the bathroom and she had some dirt and debris on her ass as she walked by. I thought of the open maw of a grave. When she returned, I told her about it and she asked if I could brush it off for her. Immediately, I got hard as I laboriously brushed every bit of leaf and speck of dirt off of her. She pushed in closer and I slipped my hand between her legs, tickling her pussy through the stretchy fabric of her pants. She let out a soft humming sound and then sat down next to me, my hand now reaching for her softness from the front.

  My other hand groped at her breast, honing in on her nipple through the bra as our tongues flicked against each other. As with before, her tongue and mouth were desert-dry, and a mild waft of putridity lingered at the back of my throat with a hint of alcohol, like a sour gift from her mouth to mine. I couldn’t salivate fast enough, as though she was sucking the moisture from my body, but I continued to rub my hand against her cunt, pinch her nipple, tease her arid tongue; and continued to stay aroused.

  Despite being on my second-floor porch, we started pulling each other’s clothes off. The sun had mostly gone down and the air was uncomfortably cool, but that didn’t stop us. My skin stood taut and goosebumped against the slight breeze, as did hers, her nipples strainingly erect, placed at the end of her large, straining breasts. She got on her knees, wearing only her underwear, and pulled my boxers down. Her parched tongue felt raw against the head of my penis, equal parts pleasure and discomfort.

  She tried to take all of me into her throat but it triggered her coughing fit, which lasted an awkward amount of time. She struggled to catch her breath and get through the tantrum, continuing to rub my shaft up and down, almost spitefully. Her face got a deeper red as she fought against her lungs and throat, and I got harder than I thought possible. Both of us trembled mildly.

  Gaining her breath, I pulled her back up to the futon, jamming my tongue into her mouth with a force and conviction I didn’t know I still had. It made me think of my late wife. She responded and opened her legs, granting my clumsy hand greater access to her cunt. Her mouth was less dry, now containing a slight film of mucus from her coughing fit. Our tongues slipped and slid all over each other, slugs in the dirt. My mind flashed with an open, endless grave.

  Whatever nonsense my hand was doing was bringing her to the edge. She pushed her hips up, towards my hand and I focused on maintaining rhythm and intensity like I was playing an instrument. A few more minutes of this, along with searing elbow and shoulder aches, and she tensed up and let out a few sharp whimpers before rele
asing into orgasm. I brushed against her clit a few times, afterwards, and she went tense again like she was being shocked.

  We uncoupled our mouths, and she lay on her back, lifting her knees towards her chest to allow me access to her ass. I thought of the last time I was with my late wife; my ears rang with silent moans of pleasure. Pressing my tongue against her asshole, she tasted astringent and like rubbing alcohol. Inside was warm and inviting, but I felt a little sick. She coughed and I could feel her anus retract slightly against my tongue; it made my dick painfully hard.

  Reaching up to slip two fingers into her mouth, I could feel the thin layer of mucus on her rough tongue rub against my fingertips. I pulled my hand down and pressed my fingers inside of her. She let out a soft, subtle cry as her asshole enveloped them to the knuckles. Working them in and out, I gently pressed back against the radial pressure of her anus in circular motion. After she warmed up a bit, her muscle no longer following my rhythm but rather being open to it, I slid them all the way in.

  Back and forth, in and out, the tips of my fingers pressed against the walls of her anal cavity. Turning my fingers downward, I slid them into the opening of her rectum; her inner sanctuary. It was warm and wet, cavernous. Small bubbles of air moved around my fingers as I went in and out of the inner area. Like I had with her asshole, I tried to make circular motions, as she made more and more intense sounds of pleasure. I thought about cumming this deep inside her, my semen crawling up her intestines like a parasite. The head of my cock ached with pressure.

  As my small circles got bigger, my finger brushed against something hard, maybe sharp. I thought about the directions they were oriented as they made a wider pass and they clipped it again. I felt weak in the knees, but my erection didn’t dissipate at all. I was touching her pubic bone from the inside of her. She coughed again, this time hard, and shifted her hips slightly. Her asshole constricted around the base of my fingers and suddenly my fingertips were bouncing off the tip of her coccyx. My fingers felt like they were dragging across the notches in her spine. I wanted to throw up; I also wanted to ejaculate on her bare, greasy bones.