Page 25

The Spell

Lon T. Ryden

Listen:

I'll tell you how it will be.

There will be someone new. Someone beautiful or exotic or intriguing. Man,
woman, it makes no difference...

And I will want them. I will seduce them. I will buy them drinks. I will whisper
saccharine lies in their ears, telling them everything they ever wanted a lover to tell them.
And they will be mine. Because they are hungry like I am and they want to belong to
someone.

The position is something you never know in advance. There is a spontaneity in the
actual coupling which makes it impossible to determine beforehand. But I do know
this: There will be kisses. There will be caresses. There will be cries and shrieks and
moans. There will be thrusting, there will be pressing. There will be kneading, there
will be rocking.

I can tell you how it will end too: we are both shivering and spent and weak... and
satisfied.

** *

Except it doesn't happen that way.

Because my someone new is a girl who wants to teach me a lesson.

** *

I see her at the club, across the length of the bar, and I see her seeing me. There is
an instant connection.

And I get a feeling. It is somehow different from the usual feeling: that feeling akin
to sighting game along the shaft of an arrow pulled tight against the string. This feeling I
have is not the hunter catching sight of his prey. This feeling is what a person has when
they stand at the threshold of destiny.

She is not the best looking woman I've ever laid eyes on. But she is extremely
beautiful. There is a vague hint of ethnicity in her dark, dark eyes and her caramel-
colored skin. In her near iridescent, grackle-black hair. She is not from here, but she
could be from anywhere. She is thin -- in a delicate way -- not skinny. And an aura of
exotic danger surrounds her. She is an elegant ivory-sculpted blade in a black leather
sheath.

And the tables are turned on me, for I am not the one to make an approach. She
comes to me.

She sits down on the stool next to me; the way she lifts herself to the barstool
perch, and crosses her legs at the knee, raises a chill on my shoulders. I become aware
of my heart: beating. I have not noticed it this way before; so hard.

Not a word is spoken, but suddenly she is leaning across the distance between us.
She places one hand behind my neck and it seems our meeting will begin with a kiss,
yet it is not desire that I feel for this woman. I am afraid.

Her lips are so perfect and smooth and glossy, like cherry glass. My eyes are
drawn to them.

And then her cheek is against mine, and those porcelain-apple lips are very near my
ear, and I can feel her warm, warm breath like an intimate whisper wordlessly
suggesting, and my face is in her hair and it smells like a nectar-heavy licorice-honey
flower.

She says, "I am going to say some words. I want you to remember them."

I am paralyzed. I try to nod, but can't. I am helpless, and my heart is no longer
beating -- rather: trembling. I say, "Yes."

And she exhales silence through her teeth: "Shhhhhhhhh."

My lips are a thin-pressed line.

She says a word. I am not sure what the word is. I am not sure it is a word.
Perhaps it is foreign. Perhaps it is nonsense; just a collection of meaningless syllables
meant to sound like creamy-skin lovers sliding together on satin. Because that is what it
is.

She says another word: some magical word that describes a position, the shape of
an embrace, and all the intersections between two lovely, sweating bodies.

A third word. Four syllables: it is the explanation of a pleasure so intense it is
rapture. Loss of self, of body and identity, in a moment that both scorches and heals
the soul.

I say, "Wait..." fumbling in my jacket pocket for a pen. "I need to write this down."

I feel her hand on mine. Cool and soft, it imparts stillness on me, like I have been
turned to stone. She whispers: "What would you write? What letters could you use?"

...

There are none. A realization that baffles. It is one hand clapping. It is the silence
of a falling tree where there are no ears to hear.

"These are not words," she breathes. "They are the things themselves. They
transcend language. They are not representations, or symbols for ideas. They simply
are."

"I," I say. I do not understand. I cannot understand. I have no words. I shake my
head.

"You must remember the words," she says. "You must learn to say them. Say
them perfectly."

"Yes," I say.

"There is one more." And she says it. And it is peace. Rest as powerful as death.
The sweetest resolution of climax that can be attained.

There is a quiet moment then. It is somehow as if the rest of the club has vanished.
It is only me and this enigma, her breath on my neck, her perfume in my nostrils, her
words having cleaved my mind and left a silence as profound as deafness in their wake.

She says, "Now say them with me."

And she whispers them in my ear again: slowly, giving me time to say each one after
her; repeating where my pronunciations fail. Again, again.

And it IS sexual. I am tingling. My whole body is resonating; I am a tautly wound
string, singing one high clear note of pleasure. This is a new plateau of desire. I have
never felt like this before. My toes are cramped, curling in my shoe. My nipples are
electric cold; my brow is sweating with fever. My cock is swollen with animal power,
straining against the confines of my jeans.

We say it all, the string together, in perfect synchronicity, mouth to ear, a private
unbroken circle.

And I am exploding. And she is biting down on my hand, hard razor thin pain, like
a laser in the darkness of my clenched shut eyes, and she is screaming against my palm,
and I can feel the orgasm shaking within her, and I am gasping for air and supplicating
the sex gods that this moment never end...

But of course it must.

The aftermath is like regaining consciousness. And perhaps I really was
unconscious. It would not surprise me to learn that I had been transported to a
pleasure beyond the capacity of a wakeful mind.

The club is very quiet, and not just an illusion any more. Even the endless pulse of
the dance has paused. Every eye in the building is on us: shades of "When Harry Met
Sally".

My hand is bleeding from a lipstick-ringed gash on the meat between my thumb
and wrist, and I am glad my pants are black; the dark wet stain will be less obvious.

She stands up, shaking at the knees, wind-blown wobbling on her tall sharp heels.
"I have to go," she says.

"But --"

But she bars any further words with a finger on my lip.

She says, "It is a gift to you. A spell. Share it freely."

And walks out of my life forever.

** *

I did get the ending right.