strangers of fate (m/f adult)

The sun had buried its ancient knowledge deep into the smooth concrete finish of the station platform I was standing on. The heat rising from beneath me and whispering those secrets right back into my bones while I stood looking but not really watching. The scorched hole in the film of my mind’s eye projecting instead a lifetime’s worth of glimpses and misplaced jigsaw-puzzled memories. Everything a jumbled, unedited mess of scrambled hours, minutes, lucid half seconds, jump cuts and moments left to my broken imagination to fill in every missing piece that make up the whole. My thoughts fluttering out of my head, desperate for any kind of shelter from the noise of the one remaining memory that hasn’t been split apart between my ears by all the static charges. That final memory resonating throughout every choice I’ll ever make from this one moment onward as if God himself had placed it there for me to meditate on forever:

Isabelle.

Her name is the cool breeze that washes over me and slaps me out of my sleep. Watching, not just looking now, I fix my stare on the steel cab she sits in. The train pulling away with an echoing screech of boiling steel tracks and a heavy plume of charred coal feathering upwards from its iron funnel and becoming part of every breath I take.

I try and remember myself. Pick up every dropped thought scattered and strewn about me. Each one slipping through my fingers again unable and unwilling to form a proper hold for fear of changing what was and what wasn’t in the fragile process of selective recall.

I concentrate. Close my witnessed eyes. The world begins to rotate and slowly spin itself the other way.

The people walk backwards, back up the stairs from the change-of-train platform below me. The clouds above us all un-swirling themselves into whatever shapes of animal they were a few moments ago. The cool breeze falls away as gently as it came, leaving me with the lonely ache in my chest before its gentle visit calmed me. The shadows find all of their old places to paint over again, as the sun itself shines back into its previous position.

All around me, people’s conversations are in the new language of: kcab ot tnorf.

Then her train pulls back. The smoke crawling its way back out from my lungs. The loosened pebbles in the earth packed in the soil underneath each set of sun-rusted steel beams, screws, nuts, bolts and rails fall back into all their individual little spaces.

I’m surrounded by everyone like before but like before I’m still alone and forever changed.

Isabelle.

I find her where she found me and take my place in history. Sitting on the opposite side of her. On either side of both of us are people busy reading black and white snapshots of the world that Continue on Page 5 Section A. These people oblivious to the altercations that will happen a second time as the train leaves the station, but in the direction it came from.

Pause. I taste squeezed lemon from her water soaked into my lips. This is after everything. No. I notice other things. Her empty glass on the pull-out tray beside her. The dead husk of her squeezed fruit. The sun refracting off the pooling ice cubes and blinding my sight with shards of light like cutting razors. No. Everything starts to come apart as I begin to lose the image in my head. The events out of sync again while I battle my over stimulated sex drive for control over which one of us gets to rearrange what in my head.

Stop.

I close my eyes again. Rewind everything I remember seeing. Everything I can remember to grab for. My mind a cyclone of experiences and first moments. Each fragment being individually cut open, examined and filed away in its proper place.

I run through everything backwards: Her hand brushing mine, the two of us saying goodbye, us coming back from the luggage car, the both of us fucking, tickling, ripping her clothes away, kissing, her saying to me in an entitled whisper...

Start.

I open my eyes again. Isabelle sits opposite me. Her lips pulling into a smile meant to capture just my attention and no one else’s.

Our train is moving forward. The imposing Storm Troopers running about in my head must have successfully gathered up every last undisciplined memory and lined them all up single file, one by one and firmly coaxed and guided them through the haze of smoke and fire in my skull. Now we experience this one more time. From the beginning.

The low, heavy rhythmic chugging beneath our feet making the floor and walls and ceiling vibrate with its steady, comforting pace. The lights above us tinkling like wind chimes made of glistening crystal. Outside our window, the orange groves are the smeared blur of a used painter’s palette.

One sideways glance at her and the floor of my imagination splits down its middle with all streams of logic and common sense tumbling down in between the darkened crack. I invent her entire life’s back story here from what she wears to how she carries herself, to the individualistic rhythm of her breathing, every judged part of her tells a story.

Isabelle’s face hardens. Her features flashing on and off again in the rapid-fire bursts of sunlight blasting through the foliage of the tree groves blurring outside our window.

Her clever eyes knowing all along what mine had been doing to her body just a few moments before this one stopped.

Isabelle’s smile returns. Her cherry lips teasing me with a calculated beckoning.

She stands up, smoothes her dress. A manicured hand rests on the panel door of our assigned car. Her eyes looking at the reflection of my own in the glass. She slides the door open, steps out and makes her way to the back of the train. A million stars in the sky of my thoughts, each one with some invented meaning into her actions etched into and across their dusty surfaces all catch fire and explode at once when she makes her intentions known by stopping in her tracks and turning to see if I was following her. Those flaming stars set ablaze and falling from the sky, streaking glowing inferno trails behind each one, and lighting up my new crystal clear universe with a single shade of significance.

Her intent leads me through several sliding carriage doors, us walking amongst other people frozen in their unimportance. The floors rumbling as our train’s carved iron wheels cut across every manufactured detail of steel track rails hammered into the loosening pebbled ballast under our feet.

The gold plated card on the door said, “Luggage” and we slipped inside unnoticed. Locking the door behind us. The smell of worn leather finds a way to overpower her perfume. The sunlight must be looking, but here it can’t find us.

Her lips taste of lemon water. The half slice of fruit she squeezed in her drink before we left the station. The touch of her skin, the small warm soft palm of her hand rubbing, sliding up under my shirt and over my chest lights me up like a cigarette being exhausted of its life but satisfying another’s craving. Her heartbeat finds mine and it slows my erratic pulse with its own composed lullaby.

Isabelle looks up at me, her lower lip pinched and pulsing between her bottom row of teeth. Her image in my mind begins to skip, warping into slices of static airwave transmission while I try and focus on keeping my cool as she begins to unbutton me out of my clothes.

My arms wrapped around her shape. Two silhouettes fitting perfectly in a single form. My fingers disappear into her hair. Find the crevice of her back. Find the zipper to what she’s wearing and I return the favor of releasing her into her skin.

Isabelle leans into me. Her lips brushing against my consciousness and she whispers, “Tickle me.”

Her words float in the air between us. She patiently waits for my lack of understanding to grab a hold of them, rearrange them in my head and find no encrypted secret.

She says, “Close your eyes. And. Tickle. Me.” Isabelle’s own eyes shut and I follow her lead. The light of my whole world switched off. Now I discover her body all over again with just the tips of my fingers. The blank canvas of my memory sketching her curves with quick flickers and pencil strokes carved into her wet skin. My fingers tracing her into a second intangible existence.

Isabelle moans. The structure of her body shuddering powerfully with a single uninterrupted finger stroke from her neck, down her center down and underneath both breasts and up her side. Isabelle giggles. Filling my new black world with the sensation of song. My other hand caressing her other breast. My other hand tickles her other. Isabelle rocks from side to side and takes me along for the ride.

Both my hands slide down her sides, squeeze just above her hips. Music swells from her soul. Laughter. Little squeals and squeaks as she puts her head in my chest, burying her face in my wonder and recoiling back and forth with such force as if propelling the train all by herself. I lighten my touch. Seeing if I stroke at her skin like each finger were a feather, if I could catch any imperfections in her smoothness. Catch any skin. Isabelle just stamps her feet and grunts. My own body acting as a conductor to her uncontrollable craving for release.

I graze my nails across her stomach. I feel every rib in her cage. She collapses in my arms. The strength is pulled right out of her body and sizzles upon contact with the atmosphere. Isabelle shakes her head and whimpers softly. Her fingers intertwined around the back of my neck as her only means to support herself. Her legs give way. My fingers reach behind her, making her jump in my arms and squeal sharply. Her face is scrunched up in surprised, eyes still closed, teeth biting down in the red of her lips as my fingers tickle underneath her ass cheeks. A gasp of astonishment tumbles out of the mouth of the painting of Isabelle’s form in my head and splatters on the floor in the bright crayon colors that make up surprise.

Luggage from nearby falls out of place as she slams me into the wooden wall behind us. She lifts one leg, wraps it around my middle and holds me closer to her. My one hand reaching behind me, blind as the rest of me, my fingers curled around her shin, caressing down to the shapes of her ankle finding her foot. Isabelle’s groan resounds into my own body as she feels me slip her last remaining article of clothing off of her foot. Her shoe dropping to the floor with all the love of a broken toy being tossed into some dark vault of forgotten childhood memories.

My eyes closed. The lights in my universe turned off. The edges of the picture of Isabelle in my head begin to curl, crinkle, smoke and catch fire as I try and figure out what her bare foot must look like without having to ask my actual gift of sight. My fingers squeeze. They caress and massage. The electricity between my hand and her foot send all the information I need crackling up my central nervous system and igniting the twilight skyline of my imagination in fireworks.

Isabelle doesn’t hold back this time as we come as close to each other as we’ll ever get. Inside her now, feeling her walls grip me. Her hand ripping at my hair. Her other one squeezing me even closer to her with a hand on my ass, she pulls me. She recoils and slams back into me all over again. With every powerful thrust, the weight of her loud, primal grunts test the strength of both of our bodies.

I smash into her like a human wrecking ball. She does the same. My one hand tickling her ass still. Her one hand pulling me into her. My left hand tickling her foot. Her other hand gripping my hair and holding me for what little support I have to offer. My chest burning with all her streaming tears. My skin singed and alive with bite marks.

Isabelle grabbed a hold of the chain link fence that made up my entire world of firsts. Every experience I’ve ever had with lust woven neatly into a spider-webbed barrier.

And she shook it all to hell.

Putting our clothes back on again we were silent. Just the quiet heavy chug of our train. She stood by the door, held an arm out to let me go first so none of the unnoticed would notice. I opened the door, took a step outside but then turned.

“Wait,” Then my mind unplugged itself. The thought flying right out of my head and finding a patch of sunlight streaming between us. It spent a few seconds warming itself before it dropped back into my head again and asked, “What’s your name?”

Her face a faded painted picture, half in shadows, half in sunshine. A hazy memory straining to be remembered. The little dust particles that floated in the distance between us sparkling like flecks of discovered gold.

“Isabelle.”

Her name is the cool breeze that washes over me and slaps me out of my sleep.​