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Title: Post-Modern Arctic
Category: VAO (vignette, angst, other) My dreams close on the cluttered stage of my conscious mind, shutting that clutter behind a red velvet wall and gold tasseled ropes. Then, in the empty theater, and Freud's wolf hounds me, follows me, pushing me. Jung's collective subconscious yanks me, forcing me into the bleak wastelands of my memory, into this nightmare that haunts my unconscious hours. During these hours, I walk the halls of my mind. I can never escape this ice palace before I wake, and I haunt these grounds waiting for release. I listen to my footsteps echoing back from the cold marble walls, my feet clattering on the polished floors, my heart slamming in the empty silences. It is my face, mine, that I catch in the gilt mirrors, but I always see something else lurking behind me and in my eyes. I brush aside the fringed curtains to look out the high French windows into gardens dipped in the cold silver moon: the topiary, the spouting mermen, the pale lilies swaying heavy in the night, the grape arbors with fruit round and luminous as pearls, chillingly sweet ambrosia. It is my hand that lights the wrought candelabra, my trembling hand, my hand with which I push open the heavy doors to enter the universes lying within. Sometimes, behind the gold-paneled oak, there lies a monk's cell, still and austere, all granite and broadcloth. Other times, there is a soaring cathedral of a bedroom, with a red four-poster bed and ceiling frescoes where fat cherubs frolic in the sun and the horrors cluster close. Still other times, I fall into renditions of my own past: the closest I come to normal dreams, whorls of death and fire, green damp jungles twining around my throat. And still other times, I meet myself. Tonight is one of those times. I push open a red door, a simple one and step into a post modern arctic. She is slim, chic, hair cut in the latest fashion: very short, at the chin, with the edge of a curl, a perfect curve over her smooth forehead. The lines are elegant; she wears a black-and-white dress, one that displays her long slim neck and delicate shoulders, crystal bangles upon her elegant wrists, and nails painted with clear silver. Eyes that gleam like river-slick rock, and the edge of a diamond embedded platinum ring around one finger. This version of myself is seated in suite that matches her chill little figure: white carpets, glasteel tables and pale alien flowers hovering in shimmering forcefield; she lounges in an oval chair, a martini in one hand. The only color in the entire room is across her lips: a dash of crimson that only makes her look colder. More beautiful. I know her: she is the woman I wanted to be as a teenager. I imagine that I saw a movie with her in it sometime when I was teenaged and my legs were too long for my face. And I have met her before in this farce of a dream, and always, she has led me on a trip of agony, her perfect white teeth flashing as I scream. I try the door, but it is locked, as I guessed. She rises, a languid flow of beauty. "I have something for you," she says, calmly. Her accent is perfect. Pure. "No..." I tell her, angry. "No more." Last time, last time, I relived the whole damn experience under the Cardassians, those blood-red nights and the fire screaming across my body, the cold iron across my wrists. "It is a gift." she tells me. She spreads her hands and looks at me. "She is me. You are me as I am you, B'Elanna." "What the fuck?" She smiles. "We are one. Why would I do myself disservice? I only want you to see him. To close your eyes and enjoy. I know how cold you are." This woman flicks her hands, and her bangles chime in a high, pure noise. A door opens, and she walks through; I must follow. This is a bedroom, done in the same white perfection that the outer room was: an elliptical bed, and a crystal ceiling open to the stars, silver steel sculptures writhing on the walls, and a carpet like a living thing. One difference: there is a figure golden against the ivory expanse of the bed. It hunched over, in fetal position, and scars, with the pink sheen of new-healed flesh run down the expanse of smooth skin. Before I approach, I know who it is, and I feel the knots tighten in my stomach. The warmth of his skin jolts me, warming my entire body with the heat that radiates from that smooth surface. His back curves toward my hand, the heat soaking into me so that my heart pulses a little faster and beats back the ice a little. My eyes drift shut, my mouth falls open as I lose myself forever open and angry, never dripping onto the leather expanse. Slowly, I pass my hand over the welts on his back: he stops whimpering, as if the pain had subsided, and the wounds heal a little, as I knew the would. I caress his back, the sharp vertebrae, the skin weaving into a silk as sweet and fragrant that I could sink into the textures my fingers and my nose are telling me, the prickles that rise in my belly from the sheer pleasure warms my breath and I find the chill inside me subsiding a little. I feel him shivering, trembling against me as I stroke his shoulderblades: he is feeling the loss of the heat, but I cannot stop for the heat explodes against me, my eyes drifting shut as I immerse myself in the sheer warmth of his body. I roll him over, so that his back is on the bed. And as if in a trance, I take his mouth in mine, shivering a little as the furnace roars into me, and he tastes of cinnamon and smoke and something else bitter and delectable. He is stiff, and his eyes are surprised beneath me, but I press him to the bed, forcing his shoulders down with my hands, my nails digging into his arms to form red half moons. I can feel his fists clenching and unclenching, and I slip down to his throat,, press the blue flame into my mouth, rasp my tongue over it to feel the pulse in my mouth, bring my teeth down against it, piercing the surface. He arches against me, but whether in pain or pleasure or some unholy combination of the above, I cannot tell as I am wrapped in my own universe, my own desperate search for warmth. I push myself deep, deeper into him. The blood drips into my mouth with a slow intense pleasure, and I straddle his body with my knees tightly, flicking my tongue to extract each precious drop. Are his hands pushing against me? I can't tell, but I press myself deeper into him, slipping down the jugular into the heart, until I can feel the veins clenching and relaxing, and his heart thundering, the blood surging into my mouth with a bitter-sweet-copper flavor that sends my sense reeling, never mind the hands shoving against me and that soft little whimpering that tugs at me, chain rattling in this flood of delight. My hands rake down his chest, raising long welts that pulse against me, and I shove myself deeper into the crimson torrent. As my tongue catches the raw wall of artery, I hear a soft meowing noise of pleasure, and I realize that a smile curves his face, an ecstatic twisting thing, eyes shut and his mouth is caught open, frozen. And when I bend back to the skin, I realize it has gone cold. No more blood trickles onto the stained skin. The heart has stilled. Sighing, heavy and languorous-full, I roll off the body and step onto the floor. I stretch, muscle/tendon over hard bone; I lick the corners of my mouth, enjoying the last crisps of dried blood, and as I fall back onto my heels in an gentle fuzzy pleasure, I realize that I am lying in my bed, the sheets cold and wrinkled around me, and there is the gleam of golden curls caught in the splay of warplight through a window, the round curve of his shoulder. Thank god for Google and their acquisition of Deja.com's newsgroup archives. I would have lost this story forever if it hadn't been for that faithful source, and I am actually quite fond of this story.
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