“To My Beloved I Am A Stranger” originally appeared in SomethingDark.ue, Issue 2, and was written expressly for them.

It is not necessarily erotic (I guess it depends on your taste), and does include one not very descriptive scene of non-eroticized, non-consensual sex (Fem/Dom anal rape), which might be offensive to some readers, so please be forewarned.

Thanks.

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To My Beloved I Am A Stranger
© 2012 Marilyn Jaye Lewis

By then, I had no more words to express my loss. In that regard, I’d finally become empty. A world had leaked out of me and there I was, unloved and discarded. And as it turned out, I’d begun rotting at my core. I could still expound upon how it was when we’d first met, though – or should I say, when we’d first collided? I had plenty of words left for that; words that described destiny manifested; passion and combustion. Or I could talk about magic – the shooting sparks of it. It was through our eyes that we’d become those magical beings: Our eyes – of the same immeasurable depth – were so similar that it was uncanny. One fiery glance exchanged between us and one of us ceased to exist, melding into the other, as if the twin souls that dwelt behind our eyes had in fact been the same soul all along and for there to have been two of us from that moment on became redundant.

I had celebrated this discovery, realizing with joy that we were truly connected. I was eager to subjugate my soul to his, or to even forget mine altogether. He tried to embrace it – this redundancy of our souls – but ultimately could not. It was something about his having “stuff to do.” He’d explained vaguely: “I’m overwhelmed right now; I’m sorry. Give me some time.” People other than me were also counting on him: to show up, to work hard; to do the honorable thing.

So I chose to wait until our bliss would be more convenient. Oh, I waited and waited – patience being one of my more exasperating virtues. I made a vow of chastity to the bedroom mirror. I would wait in purity, I decided, until his schedule freed up.

His schedule, however, would not free up. The days turned into weeks, the weeks into months. I didn’t really notice the time passing at first, because I was that enthralled with the eroticism of my chastity. It was luxurious and deep. To me, chastity meant forsaking all others who weren’t him; it had nothing to do with leaving myself alone. In expensive black underthings, purchased specially – mostly tight-fitting and crotch-less; boned at the waist, to enhance my usually meager curves – I reveled in my bond to him, to our future orgy of togetherness and to how singularly soulful it promised to be. I bought a smooth phallus of silicone; it arrived by mail. My orgasms gushed from me all over the bed then, or sometimes down my trembling legs, all over my spiked heels and straight to the hardwood floor. Passion, unsatisfied, stirred ceaselessly in me, like some ravaged shark, harpooned but unwilling to surrender. My lust to know him carnally kept me up nights. I lost sleep over it; my need to be penetrated by him both haunted and entranced me. When at last I did notice that it had been some time since we’d exchanged that riveting glance of desire, I called him on his cell phone. My call went straight to voice mail.

“It’s me,” I said cheerily. “Hey, how about dinner this week – my treat. Surely, you can make time to meet for a meal? You still have to eat, right? Call me, okay?”

*    *     *

Very early one morning, I sat in my room on the edge of the bed and looked down thoughtfully at my long, pale legs, at my bare feet, and then something hard kicked inside me aiming straight at my heart. It was so early that the sun had not yet risen. In that blue-grey light that always fills my room at that early hour of the morning I contemplated how many days it had actually been since I’d left that voice mail. Perhaps it had floated off into some mysterious wireless void and he’d in fact never received it. Why else would he not return my call?

Well, it was either that or he was still too busy, I decided. Without turning on a light, I pulled off my nightgown and dressed. I dressed more simply during the day, in a pair of black cotton pull-on slacks and a blue tee shirt that fluttered demurely at its flounced hem and its loose cap sleeves.

*     *     *

Most men found me attractive; many even agreed that I was beautiful, so it wasn’t for lack of other potential partners. But what does beauty have to do with the soul, I wondered, as tightness set in to my jaw. What is attraction, really, but a submission to a thing perceived as beautiful simply because it mirrors the other’s hopes for a time? Beauty is really quite transitory and subjective, I thought then; perhaps even meaningless in the scope of more serious things like the soul. So what could other men know about me based on how they thought I looked? I knitted my brow. And what use had I for the opinions of men other than him anyway? I weighed my so-called dating options carefully and decided it was wisest to stand by my soulmate, to stick to the plan of chastity. And wait.

*     *     *

When I was a very young girl, I frequently laced the ice skates on to my small feet in winter, then I sailed out onto the ice and skated in figure eights.  Sharp metal blades, cutting into the cold, hard white of endless ice; mindless patterns tracing the shape of infinity: It was what I now knew of love.

*     *     *

Purge, purge, purge. I looked in the mirror most days and did my best to disclaim myself.

Beautiful yet unlovable – how could that be? At the very least, it was unfair.

He refused to take my calls. Once, though, he answered his cell phone, apparently by mistake. He spoke to me. He was, by nature, prone to being considerate. But there was a wife I hadn’t known about. And some kids. There were past indiscretions he was trying to distance himself from. A new leaf he’d turned over and was now trying hard to keep in that fresh and prostrate position – downward-facing, away from temptation.

“But what about me – your soulmate?” I asked, something in my voice sounding tiny and quivering. Apparently, the plan was to leave all thoughts of me behind.

This was not in the cards – and I had cast the cards many times, so I knew whence I spoke.  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I apologized for everything abhorrent I might have said or done to cause this reversal in my fortune. I tried making the apology sound full and soft as a comforting eiderdown that could cover even things I could never imagine he might have inferred. But it was useless. Hopeless. Utterly over in his mind.

“But that orgy of togetherness,” I tried weakly. “That melding of our souls – don’t tell me all this waiting was in vain.”

“I never agreed to anything like that.” It struck me then that I might as well have been speaking in a foreign tongue. My pleas did battle with his rebelling ears – he steadfastly refused to listen.

*     *     *

Obviously, I had hoped our union would be less invasive for him – more of a treasured embrace, without all the struggling. As it was, I had sunk to the least attractive place inside me, and here I had spent so much money on all the black undergarments. I could no longer wear them; they made me feel foolish – like a woman who has aged beyond her prime and is the last one to realize it.

The idea of buying the wig came to me suddenly – like a flash of brilliance across the doomed landscape of an emptying mind. In the wig I felt pornographic, unchaste; my soul degraded to two slick lips, a hole spread open and willingly probed by the greedy glare of even my own judgmental eyes. I could be anyone, any girl; there was no one I would need to protect. In the wig and a pair of dark glasses, I could approach him easily as he’d finally exited the towering building downtown where he worked and was getting into his car. He turned to face me without suspicion; why would he suspect a redhead of anything sinister? He probably didn’t even know any redheads.

I pushed the knife into him simply because I could; because it was very sharp and it was in my right hand and because when he had turned from his car to face the redhead, he wasn’t in any way expecting to be stabbed. But I didn’t want him to die; I only wanted to shock him into submission. It was the only plan I could come up with that was likely to be taken seriously, to force him to stumble backward into the front seat of his car, scoot over and slump there slightly, letting me drive.

A simple phone call, an acquiescence to meet for dinner would have alleviated all this pressure; a few hours alone with him, each of us engorged in carnal bliss was all I’d been asking for. I wanted my moment with him and since it was not being offered, I would have to take it. That wound he sustained now was not life-threatening; it was just messy. He was not going to die. But I didn’t want him to lose so much blood that any hope of an erection later would be out of the question.

“Come into the bathroom and let me dress that,” I said, dragging him through my front door.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” he bellowed. By now, of course, he’d realized that it was just me under a red wig. His hands were full of his own blood. There was an undeniable need to stop it from streaming out of him. Even he was forced to listen to me now.

“Just dinner,” I spat. “Just dinner – that was too much to ask?”

“Fuck you.”

“I know, I know – you will.”

He glared at me in disbelief, the blood still streaming unabated because he would not go into the bathroom. I had to push him in.

“You’ve turned a leaf before, you’ll turn it again,” I explained. “I just want a few hours with you – is it going to kill you?”

*     *     *

He was so disagreeable that it almost made me wonder why I loved him.

I had to tie his hands behind him because he would not stop fighting me in the bathroom and his hands were covered in blood, blood that was smearing all over me, and now the smell of it was turning my stomach.

“Stop it,” I said. “Just stop.”

He was weak; deprived of the use of his hands, he became more manageable for me. I opened his shirt and cleaned and dressed the wound, but it was deep; clearly it would need stitches to heal properly. A stint in the women’s jail was likely looming large in my future but it was too late to regret it now.

I pulled off the wig and shook out my hair. My head was sweaty. “If I untie you,” I asked, “can we put these clothes in the washing machine, or are they ‘dry clean only’?”

“I want to go home.”

“You’re in no condition to drive.”

“I want to go home. Let me out of here. I want to go home.”

I studied his face, those eyes that were so much like mine, and I still saw my soul reflected there. Allowing him to leave now would be such a waste, I decided.

*     *     *

In my black underthings – the boned corset, the garters that held up the black stockings, the crotch-less panties – he looked even more like me. Of course, we were bathed in the flattering glow of candlelight, where it was easier to blur the lines of distinction between us. Plus, I’d made up his face and combed back his hair…

I propped him in front of the mirror in my bedroom, leaning him over slightly against the dresser. I stood behind him, wearing nothing, and I studied us both reflected there. Our faces were lovely. We were beautiful together: he, in my expensive underwear looking like a more beautiful me, and me, naked. It was worth that vow of chastity, I thought. It engendered something sacred to our union. I could have done without the knowledge of his wife, though, and of those kids; of all that life he’d been living while I had naively waited for him to return my phone calls. But I wasn’t going to get choosy. He was here with me now, alone. We were in our world. And beneath the boned corset I’d cinched around his waist, the bandages were holding. He’d stopped bleeding. But he was still weak. An erection was nowhere in sight.

His hands were still tied, too, unfortunately – I couldn’t trust him otherwise. He’d come this far without once joining me in my desires; there was no reason to expect him to change his tune now. The silicone phallus that had his specter all over it – it was how I had filled myself during those empty nights without him – I turned it on him. I impaled him. He leaned against my dresser and I screamed. I hadn’t wanted it to be this way. It felt useless to do the impaling. The point had been for me to feel full of him, not to fill him with the empty poison of my own longings. Even when he was bearing the burden of being me, I was unlovable. I could see it in the mirror. It devastated me.

© 2012 Marilyn Jaye Lewis