Still Life with Woman

Despite my youth and supposed good health, I had recently felt under the weather. In recent days, to be precise, I had felt my body slowly seizing up, heavier. It started in my fingers and toes: a loss of the freedom of movement expected for those digits at the extremities of my healthy body. Not exactly painful, but neither was it a piece of cake. After a day of that, I retired to bed, expecting to wake fully refreshed and better the next day.



Wishful thinking. The soles of my feet felt as if they were solid. It started as a micro-twitch, became a twinge, then a full-blown swelling. Small sections of my limbs seized up, one by one.



The pretty smile I wanted to tease, feast on and feed. Doefully she responded.



I found my toes, biggest to smallest, ceramicising until they felt like dead weight. The numbness and inflammation cutting off my circulation troubled me.



Any signs of retraction were overlooked as I continued engorging on her covert wantonness. After palate cleansers and resistant-inhibition annihilators had been consumed, I insisted we reconvene back at mine.



As I reached for my phone, my hand—pinkies to thumbs—stopped functioning. A coarse grey epidermal crust formed, encasing each digit in its own tomb.



Her off-the-shoulder blouse was feverishly pulled off and hit the floor. Light work was made of convincing the rest of her tight, short garments off to reveal a supple and ample body beneath, covered only by the flimsiest of lace.



My midriff and back, spinal cord and neck began to swell and freeze, encrusted in concrete that had an aged patina. Miraculously my heart still beat and my lungs still expanded and compressed, though everything was laboured, as I remembered back to the night before.



Though uncertain and unconcerned as to the existence of virginity in that moment, I continued my advances. It was a night like no other.



She caught my eye with her flowing dark locks as black as the sky. We danced our tango of wills. She laughed at my jokes, and those dark, mysterious brown pools of hers whispered to me words her mouth never spoke.



“Take me,” she said. “Lay me down on the softest linen and tame me, my love.”



Who was I to deny such a vivid and evocative unspoken request? My hands did lead her to my bedstead. We sat intoxicated from the wine and spirits we had satisfied our thirsts.



Now I needed to satisfy the hunger within. Without another word said, I began to devour her. Layer by layer I stripped her bare and exposed her vulnerability before my inflamed passion pushed me over the edge and I made love to her.



The muffled cries of discomfort and her pleas for a reprieve were dismissed as the playful challenges of a temptress.



Her body and mind succumbed. She was a captive of my desires. There was no salvation she sought out. No longer a fighter, more a subservient angel of pleasure.



Long was the night we spent. Enraptured, I was in her innocence and beauty. I granted her an elevated and prominent position at my feet.



Force was necessary, though isn’t it always, as I reminded her of her approach at the bar.



A cruel chill ran through my almost fully encrusted body. The remaining parts stood to attention, but not on stolen lust anymore.



The firmament reached its climax. As the last beats of my wretched heart failed, my eyes glimpsed her — Asudem’s — beauty, her wild, carefree locks of brown that swayed and slithered alive — as I felt the last inches of my body entombed.