Soiled Part 2

Dark night, cold night, before one of the Christmases. She never lit the firewood, so I lit them downstairs and went up, undressing as I went, I only wanted to warm our bodies with the usual.

She was quiet beneath the mattresses, and when my hand found her she jumped up with a hated yelp and threw me into the wall. My shoulders cracked against the cold bricks. She sat up with her back to me, and began to panting feverishly to herself.

It was then I saw that her eye had swollen to purple and red, her dark lips, where my lips had weekly pressed with feverish kisses of devotion, was broken...torn in four iron scented pieces like a ruined flower.

“Get out.” an evil voice laced with hatred of everything echoed from her tight form. I saw the agitated shudder of her bruised back. Her wild breaths and baleful moan animating the red footprints on her back. Made by a familiar priest.

“Get, out.” Somehow, a curse was broken.

The command was hollow and indifferent if I lived or died.

She was also for the first time...weak.

Her bitch face was more pathetic than a diseased defanged dog, its abandoned mink crusted with mud and bootprints. I realized then that she had only been a little taller than I was, I was twelve, I had my father's body, and felt God thoroughly within each of my twin fists.

“Get out.”

“No.”

She Stopped and looked back at me. It was an affirmative. To her surprise, I was affirmative too. And then her twin eyes widened, afraid that I too was possessed to break her face.

She darted up when I knelt beside her. She darted left when I knelt closer like a devoted dole. She was so weak I could break her with my mere breath, but it's what I felt that didn't let me.

My hands found the chaffed cheeks and the red bleeding eye, and held them up and I saw her eyes truly for the first time above the black rivers of her ruined makeup. I appraised those wronged tearful orbs, and let her see a bit of what I felt. She did not breath, a gasp of frozen fear held within my twin palms, and I then I held her close, letting her cheeks sleep on my chest.

It...was something my father had done after the rare occasion when he and mother fought, evidently it was something I made myself remembered as it came like a studied reflex.

Her eyes melted, her face became twisted in weakness and the breath of fear rattled throughout her body. Two rivers, one in blood and another in burning tears rushed down her inflamed cheeks and streaked everywhere over my bared body.

“No, NO, yo-” her fingers raised accusingly, then she gasped and she flashed an expression full of fury, her mouth snarled on the hinges, just for a second, then broke again. She doved her head back and sobbed deep into my chest.

“I-” was all I heard. “I-” the terrifying weak vibrating voice. Face frightened and something replacing her rage, some words came, “I'm-” her trying to explain herself. She gasped again and this time she began to quiver, it was a rather cold night but it was a series of fierce tremors. I was beginning to feel afraid, I was a fool to only have gauged sadness, when there was so much that changed within her the few minutes she rattled within my arms that I began to believe it would again arc back to rage, violence, and indignation. Suddenly I felt as if I had foolishly caught a dosing lioness and now it had woken and realized its outrage.

Then I felt it, warmth that seeped from her coiled thighs, a pool beneath the both of us.

She leapt from my arms as if she had caught fire. She screamed, blushing so fiercely she ran out the room, the amber arcs still flowed down her toned hips and glistened freely over her naked legs. A dozen fleshy slaps of her feet and she became one with the sound of midnight.

I cursed myself and raced back to my room inside the manor, raced back to the exact imprint of my body on the small guest bed, and gathered the blanket exactly as how she usually wanted me before I was to present myself to her at the appointed hour. I was a mad suicidal fool, and only wished she would forgive me and mayhaps understand that I only wished to be her slave, her thrall again, I would gave anything for my father's reputation and for my family. Any punishment from her merciless whips. Anything to forget this stupid attempt at something.

Some servants awoke me in the morning, and I was made aware that it was a Saturday morning. I had woke up late and it was already near noon. The morning was chilly and my wracked thoughts wondered horridly if there are any snowballing rumors of the naked Countess hiding or running amongst the daffodils. But there was no such talk or any rumor mongering. The kitchens wafted out sweet smells of rolls and the courtyard wet with the quenching scent of fresh linen.

I heard my name, it was the Countess calling me from the bedroom of her second floor. It was called out casually, and I raced up with eagerness at her composed voice. A maid was tending to her eyes and was dismissed with a wave, the Countess was drinking hot tea, the swollen side of her face artfully against the opened window. She greeted me in cold politeness and asked if I would get ready for our piano lessons.

Artful woman, I thought, already dismissed last night as a forgotten aberration. I agreed succintly and felt alive at her art of indifference, I was ready to be her meat again. But when the door bang shut behind me a new thought of terror struck me. I have shamed her, and I have seen her shamed, she would destroy me, if not in body then in name. Was the same fate for those exiled boys? What of the peasant boys who were all to easy to be disposed off?

When the capricious hour arrived again, the servants have all returned to their homes, the Countess walked to me with her stern stride and the clicks of her wood heels gathered pace, soon there was the familiar twist on my arm, and I went with her, again to the fateful room. I suppose I should have brought a knife within my trousers, or a sharp candlestick, but I didn't. I was weak and I knew I would never have the heart to kill her, I only hoped if she did kill me, I have left enough breadcrumbs to tie it irrefutably to her that the King would be forced to posthumously avenge me for this transgression.

“Sit”

I took off my shoes and sat severently on the new perfumed sheets.

The window was still open and the cold blew past us both. I took in all greedily, the scent of her spiced perfume and the kolh of her cat like eyes. It was an image, and what a fine image she was, Medea, Athalia, Salome, a carnal devil, a killer of men, and I have already made peace with her perfect purpose.

“You should never let others do this to you.”

I was started by the strange words. She stared at me, her red eye had turned to light pink, the words were heavy and imparted with a serious meaning.

She cleared her throat.

“You should never let anyone do this to you. Not...anyone.”

Then her eyes became weak again, and seemed to shiver.

“Or they'll keep doing it until you are dead.”

Silence reigned again, I didn't know what to say. The world was spinning and for the first time since my “introduction” to her I have never felt the quaking of my condition, for the first time, my future was dimmed. The world was spinning so much that my confused eyes looked around the room, when they found her she only looked somewhat awkward as her words died.

I felt like I have been a stone dropped and throw into a river bed, I was instantly nothing. I only watched her crimson lips as I realized that mayhapse I have just became one of the boys she discards. At that moment I only wanted to kiss them, to kiss a condition, a future back. Nothing was crueler, nothing more...wrong. For the first time a tidal wave or rage shot through me, that was equally laced with jealousy, the image of some new babbling first timer failing to satisfy her face, or fuck her the way she wanted.

She studied my eyes and her hand retracted to her sleeves, she pulled out a canvas knife and threw it before my knees. With the click of a clasp her dress fell, revealing her lithe bruised body .

“Point to whatever I owe you, and I'll cut them off.”

Then she added.

“...Just not my right eye. I need the others to see it.”

Without thinking, my hand reached for the knife, a test, another one of her tests after she already decided of getting rid of me. Her eyes widened, but then returned to her calm composed expression. Her opened mouth transformed as she stealthy drew what she must have imagined to be her final breath. Her dark eyes simply watched the fear masterfully receding me, all the fear I had of her, all the fear separated by age and strength.

I threw away the knife and our tongues met, coiling instantly around her buds, where I belonged, her eyes cracked stark wide, full of shock, then a groan of her familiar hunger, then she caught herself, there was a moment of fear at catching herself.

She called my name. Intending to remind me our standoff.

“I love you.” My weak eyes pleaded

Her lips trembled, inexplicably hurt by the careless words.

We kissed, perhaps truly for the first time, tasting each other' s lips.

“I love you” I repeated.

She withdrew her face, and she slowly distanced herself. Her eyes lost on the floorboards.

“You don't know what love is.” Her eyes were still lost on the floorboards. Silence stretched into minutes, connected by the red wine of her tongue still lingering on my lips. Then pressed her lips on my forehead, and then rubbed the spot with some concern.

~

The next week, the lessons stopped and I was told to find other masters. My father made an inquiry as to if I was of any trouble and there was no complaints from her side, he made a comment about the bad timing of the occasion. But in good humor packed up my room and found other lodgings by the palace.

Eventually...I was acquinted with the life of someone my age. Actual piano lessons and other strands of a boy's life. In truth I had very little to relate to them, the way they talked about- it, and what it will feel like with their brand new bought and shipped bride.

I spent the first two years thinking of my crude and callous blunder. Of the secret shame I had, and spent the rest of my years with dissapointment as I grew to have the body she had always said she craved.

From the others I learned she no longer had boys for anything, at night I imagined her filling her days with tea parties and other ladies from the court, but they were just musings, pretty pictures for the brain.

Then one day, a gift. A gift from her.

A letter was written by her in formal tone of a piano teacher that exhorted him to practice daily and politely asked of his affairs with some well wishes. Half lies and half pretense, perhaps intended to be read by his father. The last part explained that this will be her final letter to him. There were also some trinkets from China and Java.

But beneath the letter was another envelope in black. Within was an old letter, frayed on the edges and yellowed, though still expensive and well maintained. The letter was addressed to her first name.

Dearest beloved,

I ask your forgiveness for making you the subject of my unnatural fondness. Only the comforts found in your sweet arms once gave me rest, but now you must acquaint your self with boys of your gentle age. I trust that in time, womanhood will gave you all you have been taught.

The aged signature beneath bear the name of a respected but eccentric Abbot who died a decades ago. From the age of the letter, it looked like it was written some twenty five years ago. On the lower corner of the old ink a laconic slip bore the imprint with her lipsticks pressed in a devoted kiss, there was only “How I began.”

Later that month. She gave my father's cause to the King. That night we dined in His Majesty's hall.

~

And one day, I married too. A shy, beautiful girl.

I guess I must have spent the night before our supposed nuptial bliss contemplating the meaning of sixteen, a quarter of life, with both my love, my hate, my everything already so beyond my age...And my disease, which I still carried from the first woman who really knew me, and none knew off.

The sweet girl bore my disease with humility and still spinned the clothes that warmed me against the wind. A good girl...always with much to learn and ever dutiful, good...but mayhaps too obedient and pure. Thus now I fear in our polite distance there is only a membrane.

Then, a suicide. Or a near suicide.

The beggar man was crying in front of the court, mad, but braying pitifully in the snow. The pistol exploded part of his skull but he was still able to weep and moan, calling his Majesty in the name of all Saints.

The King was much distraught by the suffering of the man and personally rose the vagabond to his feet. The man was muscle incarnate, the shape of a linelong galley slave, who promptly presented to His Majesty with a petition: a confession written by a paid royal scribe, signed and sealed.

He was her first, her true first prey. Her valet of chamberpot and bedpans, and as he was her first, and unlike me, bore the fullest of her desperate savagery, where they first “loved” was still marked in red and purple. He showed all were she clawed at him, wounds which even made the King cry.

At once His Majesty was enraged, and so followed the court, which called the poor man's survival a miracle through Providence. Soon, in a month's span, testimonies, and others confessions surfaced from the choirboys of three different churches in three different bishophrics, at the month's end, there were eighteen.

Until my lord father too, realized, what must have transpired in his absence.

He cried and begged me on his knees, his red face moaning on my boots. Until I raised him again. There was never anything to forgive, not that I have needed to project on him what he infinitely would not

Last name forwarded, my father volouteered,