Meeting Chance
A Short by Tami Snow
My days and nights had begun to bleed together, like water colors too wet to grip the canvas. The perfect sunrise would peek its eager face over the horizon, just as I was folding myself into the embrace of the nebulous velvet night. Something within my being would not allow for daylight to be slighted my presence.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” was my dismissal toward lack of slumber. I could not permit a day to slip by, would not abide the subtle darkening beneath my eyes.
The truest depth of my soul knew one thing: I was different, strange, and peculiar. Not that I was unable to mesh, in perfect precision, with those around me. This joy I embarked on with simple ease. It was the inner self that struggled with normalcy, seeking out precarious and serpentine encounters that, like thinly laced iced on a frosted river, could potentially shatter and carry me wantonly into vacuous ends.
Overall, what I felt most often was empty. Even when filled with soul shattering music, and consumed by the sweet kisses of lovers. The thrills I sought were a means of filling a vast void, immeasurable by human standards. People like me didn’t last long on the earth. Their lives were cut short, most often by their own doing. But suicidal, I was not. Life— the living, the breathing in, the blanketing myself within every experience, the physical, as well as the emotional stimulation, was what made up my existence, was my heaven, was my reason.
The night was dark, absent of the moons radiance, on that particular evening, the one that, in all its glory, changed my life forever. The one that would present me with a gift of understanding, expanding my mind, my soul in a way that I could never retract, would never fathom the notion.
Lady Pacific baptized my naked feet with her foamy exhale as I made my way up the beach, exploring her midnight shore. Scrunching my toes into the satin sand of her skin, I pondered my aloneness. Her hushed gasp lifted my hair, scattering it like delicate tickling of feathers upon my cheeks, my neck, my exposed back. It was in those moments I felt most alive, at one with the orb of life I happened upon. But this was not a new experience for me. Many nights of my recent existence had been spent exploring these shores, enveloping my isolation.
And yet this night was so very different.
On a private beach, familiar to me as I had cast my loneliness upon this waterfront many times, I spread my body out upon the raw powder of the ocean’s edge. I cradled my head into its suppleness. My gaze lingered on the haphazard shapes of the constellations: Gemini, Scorpio, Libra—their intensity a familiar sentinel, my focus, centering me in the moment.
For how long I sought the Gods in the stars, I know not. But with the gentle sweeping of the tide upon the shore, I became lulled, lucid of mind, of being.
My sight thickened with each languid brushing of the waves upon the sand. The stars above me blurred, becoming soft streaks of light. And then I swear that I was dreaming…
…if only I wouldn’t have felt his hand gathering mine into his. I might have believed it an illusion, a conjuring of my willful mind.
“Come away with me,” he whispered. His voice was like the tenderest of love songs, sweeping into the depths of my soul, stirring the very essence of my being.
Within this dreamatic fascination, there was not a moment of hesitation. For in the next instant, I was carried away by him, upward and into the cosmic cloth of the universe.
In my purest form of energy, I did not have need for breath. Freed from the confines of my flesh bound prison. “Where are you taking me?” My thoughts became his thoughts. And his became mine. Communication amongst ethereal beings needs no voice, unfettered, it flows with scintillating ease.
“I want to show you all that is, and will ever be.”
So pure was this companionship, so true, so real in vibration, I felt the hum of his energy in perfect resonation with my own. If ever I could grasp the understanding of soul mate, it was in that moment. This boy of energetic chance belonged with me, passing through me, winding around me, dancing and combining his energy with mine. This moment belonged to me, a forever thing, tangible, like the lilt of symphonic strings reverberating through the elements.
He pulled me along, into and through the web of cosmogonic energy, shaking my core at its very foundation. My soul trembled, knowing that I was a part of it, connected and passing through and along its threads. When we halted, hovering within a sweeping cloud of stardust, I looked upon him, seeing his soul for the first time.
He appeared a boy in form, a radiant angel of energy, violet in hue and abundantly beautiful. His face had some semblance of human features, which was relative to my own perceptions.
With slow precision I moved my hand to his cheek, grazing its edge with my lighted fingers. Like a delicate ripple upon a sunlit pool, his energy fluxed bowing and swaying in response. Transfixed, I marveled at the atomic vitality of him.
When he reached out to me, I followed the movement of his atmospheric limb. My being, like a form of swirling dust motes, sparkling and stable, at his feathery touch were caused to dance, turning lithely fluid, catching the light. I sighed, an elegant shudder of my soul.
I pondered how I could see these things without eyes, feel them without skin and trap these memories within, with no mind to hold them. The answer came to me like a whisper soft breath brushing the downy hairs on my neck. Experiences, like all things, harbor energy, collecting in our collective conscience.
For awhile, we travelled, hand in hand, slithering through the finely spun web of energy, sanguine and dazzling, eternal and infinite. The evanescent twinkle of the adventure, too soon, elapsed into the breaking of dawn. Once again, I found myself enticed into the confines of humanity. But forever I would grip this knowledge, holding it to my heart with both hands.
Meeting Chance, I would eternally be changed. Drawing those whose energies hum and resonate with mine, never would I fall prey to emptiness again.
A Thousand Ways to Love Someone
By Tami Snow
There are a thousand different ways to love someone. And even though I knew this to be true, it didn’t make the way I felt any easier. Sure, I suppose I loved him, in my own way. He was terribly crafty in the manner with which he worked his constant presence into my mind, causing me to wonder if he hungered for me in the same ways I did him.
It wasn’t his outward appearance that captured me. It was the heated way he looked at me, with those liquid green eyes, like he wanted to lock me up in chains and keep me only for himself. Even that I didn’t mind, quite the contrary. And for awhile, I was content with his eyes on me, stripping me down with his gaze. I loved him then, before I really knew it. Before I knew who he was, before I knew that he could make me into something I wasn’t. Before I really knew just what I was capable of.
It all seemed so simple, so harmless a flirtation.
He was a regular evening patron at my local coffee shop. My head buried in a late-night book, I would look up to see him there, leaning against the window, peering at me through smoked glass. His eyes on me caused my body to react in strange and beautiful wonderment. The way he forced my lips to pull into a knowing curve, the tickle of butterflies rushing through me, and the slow ache that developed in the pit of my stomach, gave me cause enough to desire him. My eyes always felt locked in a struggle of power with his. And it was this same battle of delicate pain that brought about the beginning, and the end, and then—the beginning.
The night he took me, or rather the night I gave myself to him, was one of those where the air felt like a satin sheet, slick and liquid. I sat at my usual seat in the coffee shop. After long hours of reading late into the night, my eyes were no longer able to focus on the words. I dog-eared the page of my novel and tucked it under my arm, heading out into the tepid oceanic evening. My thoughts lingered still on his presence, the staring man with the haunting eyes that so cunningly captured my longing. But he had left hours ago, and the street was empty of almost all life. It wasn’t an unusual night. Even as the fog settled into the street, misting my view, I felt no threat.
When slow footsteps scuffed the sidewalk behind me, I still didn’t panic, becoming only more aware of my surroundings—the slow pull of my breath, my muscles teaming and anxious. But as those steps grew closer and more defined, I felt my skin tingle with desire. I wanted it to be him, the man with eyes like poison. But as quickly as the footsteps had approached, they passed; just another fizzy night owl, enjoying a drunken midnight stroll. My body relaxed, dispersing the pent up energy in an exhausting release.
The brick buildings that guarded the street seemed to cradle the roiling fog. With quickened steps, I moved toward the one at the end of the street, the one that contained my apartment, and all of the trivial trappings of my life. It was an empty place, devoid of the laughter I had known as a child, once surrounded by the noise of family. But that was a long time ago. And I had found a strange sort of comfort in the silence, embracing my aloneness.
In a flash through the haze, my mystery man appeared before me, dressed in his customary black T-shirt and ripped jeans. “My, my, my, to what do I owe this most delightful of pleasures.” His voice undressed me as easily as his eyes, with a sultry laze about it.
My throat closed in around my words. Blood thundering through my limbs, I attempted to breathe him into me. I had been secretly waiting for this moment, wanting. As it unfolded before me, it was perfection in real time, completely living up to my fantasy.
“We finally cross paths and you have no words for me? Hmm. That’s nice. The quiet type. You know what they say about quiet types…” He began to circle me in slow easy strides, like a hunter eyeing its prey.
I pulled in an agonizing breath. “Indeed. I do,” I whispered, feeling my face burn in reaction to his subtle chastisement.
After coming around to face me once again, he smiled, running his tongue slowly across his teeth. “You certainly are beautiful.” His long fingers brushed a loose hair from the side of my face, tucking it back behind my ear. Tenderly, he grazed my neck with his fingertips, lingering at my collar bone.
In the way that had become normal play between us, our eyes connected, unwilling to part from one another.
My mouth watered, longing to feel his lips brush against mine. I swallowed, attempting to squelch my unreasonable desire for him. “What’s your name?” I asked the first normal question that came to mind. Not wanting to ask him the one that was, quite literally, on the tip of my tongue.
His gaze caressed my entire form. “Mmm, enough of this idle chatter,” he said, taking a step closer to me. His body so close I could feel the rhythm of his heartbeat in the small space between us.
Purposefully, I took a step back.
He countered my action.
I took another step.
He drew closer, hovering above me like a dangerous angel.
The last and final step, I backed into a brick wall at the mouth of the alleyway. Gasping when the back of my head hit the wall, I pressed my body against its coolness. Not that I really wanted to escape his advances, far from it. But I think my body was reacting on automatic, fight or flight, and for those few meager seconds it was flight.
He bent his head, his mouth only inches from mine. When he spoke the sweetness of his breath filled my parted lips. “Why do you retreat, bunny rabbit? You know you want this as much as I do. Stop playing coy with me.”
My blood raced, burning its way through my veins. My body was on fire, hot and feverish and aching. Coaxing him with my eyes, I dared him to kiss me, pleading with my soul for him to make that first move, the one that would begin our downward falling spiral. Slowly, I licked my lips in preparation for the onslaught.
He laughed in a short, throaty burst then slid his finger from the middle of my chin down to the depth of my cleavage. “You look ready to melt out of these clothes. Would you like to take this someplace a little more comfortable?”
Bowing my head, I looked up at him with only my eyes, giving him my most seductive look, complete with a gentle batting of eyelashes. “No, please.” I whispered, allowing my lips to remain slightly open.
He exhaled with a low rumble in his chest, moving his eager mouth toward mine. He kissed me, soft at first and then increasingly more desperate. With feather light flicks of his tongue, he drew me in with willful intrigue, teasing and calculating.
I didn’t know how long I could last with the taste of him already filling my mouth, beckoning my soul to take him into me. But I continued to resist, enjoying the mild pleasure the physical contact with his body was presenting me with, something that would be all too easily extinguished.
From soul plunging kisses, he moved his lips hungrily along my jaw-line, nibbling and traveling to my neck, to the front of my throat. His teeth were sharp and almost painful as they bit their desire into my flesh.
I arched my back, thrusting my breasts against the hardness of his well muscled chest, needing his touch.
A few more moments.
Control.
He obliged my desire, gripping the sides of my shirt and ripping it open to expose me to his mouth. With what seemed like starvation, he devoured me, meandering down my belly with his amiable lips, his sympathetic tongue.
The moment his knees touched the ground below us, I had what I wanted—his submission. I could no longer wait. The hunger for him, a pleasure so perfectly consumed by pain, was becoming more than torture. Gripping the sides of his face, I drew him to standing. My eyes gazed lovingly into his face, once more, to flesh out the electric light in his verdant eyes. I had loved him for so very long, in my own way. I was ready to adore him in a few more in those next moments. Want had quickly heightened, ripening into need.
Pulling his face to mine, I took my turn covering his mouth with the devotion of my soul. With each sweep of my tongue on his lips, his jaw, his neck, I whispered promises to love him always, to keep his heart with me forever. Harder my mouth pushed into his skin. My hunger stirred to new heights by his delicious fragrance, until I could wait no longer.
The way the buttery surface of his skin melted beneath the pressure of my teeth as I took that final kiss, was no different really than all of those before him. But the honey laced flavor of his blood pumping into my body, as I broke through the sinewy muscles of his throat, was well beyond any pleasure I had ever experienced. And as he struggled within my passionate, unbreakable embrace, seeking reprieve from the pain, I continued to invoke promises to him. Promises I had every intention on keeping.
He was, in fact, different, my poison eyed plaything. Unlike any of the others I had toyed with and then consumed, he I planned to keep, for every moment of forever, loving him in a thousand different ways.
