Anthology Complex VIII by M.B. Julien - HTML preview
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M.B. JULIEN
depleting myself, I re-positioned myself for a better angle and hold, and I slammed against her body in delirium.
“I love you,” she barely managed to say these words through the moans and the repeated pounding. “I love you too,” I said back as I entered and re-entered her as deeply and as roughly as I could. And finally her love depleted me as I slowed down in thrusts and rested on her back.
When I rolled off of her my cock was completely covered in her fluids and my semen, which made it seem white and creamy. And when she got up off the bed, there was a wet spot of where her ladypart was. I watched her as she put back on her prosthetic and then began walking toward the bathroom. I noticed that as she walked, my semen was seeping out of her vagina and was slowly running down her leg.
DAY #28
There were two days left in this country and Lynne didn't want to leave it without seeing its ocean, but in getting breakfast in the morning she overheard Dobbie talking with a new guest about how the beach was closed.
“Did you realize there was a tornado warning last night?,” she asked me when she came back up with our food. “No.” “Dobbie said the beach is closed because of it. The beach was flooded, the winds threw debris on it and there apparently are high tidal waves. So we can forget about going to the beach this afternoon with the kids.” Thank fucking God. And what's with this place? Is it tornado season or something?
Instead of dragging me to the beach, Lynne dragged me to a store that sold random items that she noticed last week. There was absolutely nothing interesting in the whole store until she came to me with temporary matching tattoos. One the face of a happy theater mask and one the face of a sad theater mask. I laughed for two reasons, one of them you know, and the other because it made sense because our life was so dramatic.
Someone should give us a television show.
She bought them and when we got back home I applied happiness on her right bicep and she applied sadness on my left.
When the day was nearly gone and darkness fell I felt in my heart that I did not want to go to the beach tomorrow in the afternoon with all those annoying people, so deviously I gave her the suggestion of sneaking into the beach this night instead. “Chances are it will probably be closed for at least a week and we'll be gone by then,” I persuaded her.
She stared at my bicep for a while then looked at me curiously. “You're saying that because you don't want to go in the afternoon tomorrow when all the people are there.” I looked at her. “Fine. Since you spent thirty consecutive days with me in a foreign country 92 | PRODUCTION CODE 00268
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and only hit me once, I'll allow it.” “I appreciate it. And I didn't hit you, I spanked you.”
We walked all the way to the beachside. There was indeed debris on the beach and one of the light poles had fallen over. There was no one else around so we had the beach to ourselves, and while I've never been the biggest beach person, I don't mind it at night.
On a certain portion of the beach we took off our clothes and I got to see her in the one-piece she bought at the mall. In the distance I could see the yellow police tape and a sign that read “Do Not Enter.”
We left our folded clothes behind and began our walk on the beach. Looking at the slowly moving waters I saw aurora lights in her. They reflected off her body and were only lost inside waves.
“Of all the towns... Of all the apartment buildings... Of all the floors... And let's not forget your door wasn't the first one I knocked on... So of all the doors... I picture myself rolling dice as many times as there are stars in the sky... Or grains of sand on a beach...
Or oxygen molecules in a sea...” I started cracking up and she leaned forward with her hands on her knees and started laughing as well. I couldn't stop laughing and smiling and when I turned my face from the sky and looked down I saw her kneeling on the beach almost out of breath.
“Or atoms in the human body,” I carried her along laughing. “Or planets in every galaxy,” she continued the game. “Or... Or... I can't think of anything off the top of my head,” I conceded, but she finished off her statement, “just to get to live the life I get to live, even if it's not something society had planned for me.”
I didn't have to ask her what made her say that or think of that, I already knew she had been thinking of Dorene and when she asked us how we met. Either that, or she was trying to comfort me for having to have gone to a therapist many years ago. Or maybe she was just comforting herself with the idea.
We kept walking along the beach and she admitted something to me. “You know in every single romance how there is a scene where the woman leaps into the man's arms? I always wanted to do that.” “Well you have forty-eight hours left in your vacation.”
She sprinted ahead of me as fast as she could, then turned around and yelled at me to stop walking, so I did. Running at half the speed she sprinted to get to where she was running from, she ran toward me and was screaming “Remember to spin!”
When I caught her I spun her around five times as her body helicoptered in the air until we nearly lost our balance and I let her off slowly, but when she saw that we were finally near the long dock, she jumped back onto me so I could romantically carry her to the end of it.
On the dock she warned me not to throw her over. “Don't you dare, I know how you are. I just want this to be romantic, not funny.” “I won't.” “Promise me.” “I promise.”
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Between me and you, that never even crossed my mind...
As we progressed through the dock the gentle waves got louder and louder, and finally at the end of the dock I let her down. When I looked at her, she nodded her head sideways, then sighed. “What?,” I asked. “You're so naive...” “Naive?” “Don't you know... Promises are meant to be broken.” And swiftly she shoved me off of the platform and downward toward the raging sea.
When I made impact with the water, the dream started, and when I opened my eyes underwater, it continued. Just out of arms reach was a purple light I couldn't identify. But I could see myself walking for many miles and many years to have found it all in an instant. And before I could reach for it, the sound of Lynne crashing into the water many meters away from me caused it to disappear.
When we met back at the top of the waters I swam toward her, put my hand on the top of her head and pushed her head underwater until I decided to let her back up. “Okay, I'm sorry!,” she gasped for air.
She swam closer to me and hugged my body and I hugged hers as we floated together in the sea face in face surrounded by aurora waters reflected from the aurorian sky. In a soft and delicate voice, she told me and didn't ask me that she was going to legally change her last name to mine.
After an hour of being in the sea, the two protagonists swam back to shore, but Lynnette Jones Parker, only aware of what she was going to gain, was not aware of what she had lost. Being in the waters for so long, when she began the exhibition of swimming back to shore, her fingers had shriveled and shrunk to such a degree it allowed both of her rings to escape into the deepness of the ocean, where they were never to be seen by human eyes ever again.
DAY #29
I was inbetween dreams and wakefulness when I felt a shadow hurrying about the room. Opening my eyes completely I saw Lynne in a panic looking through the entire room. When she saw me staring at her, she showed me her hands. I didn't understand at first, until she said “I never take them off.”
Still somewhat tired I helped her look around the room but we were both sure after a little while that they were not here unless they were hiding somewhere clever. And suddenly she took off for the door. I ask her where she is going but she doesn't answer. I ended up following her all the way to the beach that was still closed and we went our separate ways in scanning the beach for her rings. In the end we checked everywhere we went last night until we reached the end of the dock. And when it wasn't on the dock 94 | PRODUCTION CODE 00268
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either, we both looked out into the daylit waters. “I'll get you a new one when we get back home,” I tried to comfort her. But in finally looking back at her from the sea, I saw tears streaming down her face. I went to console her but the moment I touched her she pushed me away and walked off. Why the hell is she mad at me? I'm the one who fucking gave her those rings in the first place. And it's not like I'm the one who stole them from her, the damn ocean did.
When I caught up to her I tried to pull her arm to stop her but she yanked it away and kept walking. Between you and me, she is a fucking crybaby. “You're acting like you lost your fingers too,” I snapped at her but she ignored me.
The entire way back to the inn I walked after her because she was walking so fast. In almost a decade of loving her I had only bought her two pieces of jewelry, so I began to understand why they were so important to her, but I swear to God all the fucking time I gotta call her a goddess. A queen. Supreme princess of the land. Et fucking cetera. When we got back home, after a while she managed to apologize to me, but for the rest of the day she barely said anything else.
DAY #30
Today is the final day for us in this country. We go back to America in the evening, though by the time we get back I think it will be morning. Suffice it to say we didn't have any plans for the day. Whenever Lynne was visible to me I felt she was different. Not in her disposition or her demeanor but in her appearance. It was indeed her bare fingers. I didn't realize how so a part of her flesh they were until they were gone and I without realizing it, realized it. When she first said she never took them off, I thought how could that be possible. You would have to find yourself in a situation where you have to take them off. But as I thought about it more and more, I began to realize that maybe she was telling the truth. Sometimes her earlobes were bare, sometimes her neck was bare, but now that I think of it, I don't think all of her fingers were ever bare. Not for the past four or five years at least.
The bareness of her fingers made me think of the dream of the wilderness. The purple light I carried, the closer I got back to home the more it slowly shifted from energy into matter and its surface was bare. But though the surface was bare, each step I took toward home brought out something of a design.
Lynne puts so much stock into symbols. Maybe they help her express and understand things she can't put into words. And even though she can feel love, maybe she needs to see it sometimes, too. Without love, there is probably a part of her that makes her feel empty and less than. But she was never a subplot. She was always the story. And whether 95 | PRODUCTION CODE 00268
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she realizes it or not, she always has and always will be the star of my show.
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Chapter 69
THE SHENANIGANS
3:2:7:69
Jeffrey and Vivian have a secret and romantic picnic lunch on a warm summer night. (1964)
THE year 1970 saw the Flanagans celebrate their jubilee in a summer plagued by tornado warnings. The exact day in the summer that was chosen to celebrate the jubilee was welcomed with a rainy morning. The rain from the morning carried all the way into the evening and greeted the beginning of the celebration with thunder and lightning.
Rivalry was not a stranger to the Flanagans, if anything not only was it a part of their biology but for some of the family members it fueled their lives. Nearly a decade ago, two such individuals gave birth to separate sons in haughty rivalry; Cassandra brought Leonardo into the world and Brittany brought Leonel. Cassandra's son was born first, but only by a month, and Brittany had immediately initiated conception after hearing of Cassy's coming son so that she might have a superior son to both that of Cassy's and to that of her own, who was Trevor, who was also seen as the only family member with a learning disability and so this fueled Brit to have a capable son.
Nearly a decade later during the 1970 jubilee that was plagued by terrible weather, both Leons stood in a decorated hallway in the large palace and were pitching pennies to see who could land their penny closest to the wall. It was a game that boys played often, but these two boys played with the heavy competitiveness found in their mothers.
Leonel, Brittany's son, won most of the rounds. In his loud celebrations which were observed by his older brother, Trevor, he put down the other Leon and garnered much attention. Trevor got up out of his seat and walked over to his younger brother and pushed him as he celebrated, knocking him over and into the wall. This was not uncommon as Trevor sensed his mother favored Leonel for his mental capabilities, and as such bullying was a common occurrence.
In their regal room King Brian II was having one of his quality arguments with his wife, Queen Leah. The queen, still getting used to now only having ten toes, was barely listening to her king. “Men are only allowed to be happy if their wife is the reason and is the cause. It's not fair. If a man is happy because he's playing his favorite sport or because he got some candy, the woman will feel jealous.” This was a generalization but was mostly true to Leah's character. She was often jealous in unreasonable proportions, even becoming angry at Brian II because he showed a moment of glee after the team he followed won a prestigious championship.
And in a vulnerable moment, Queen Leah was vulnerable when she asked him a peculiar question. “What did Fiona have that I don't have?” Brian II answered, “It's what 97 | THE SHENANIGANS
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she didn't have.” And the queen immediately took this to be in offense of her extremely luxurious lifestyle.
It had been more than twenty years since Princess Dorothy showed her face at a jubilee, but this time someone accompanied her in missing out on it. Sabrina had been with her since the rainy morning, reading over and over again the suicide letter her late husband left for her. The cruel joke that he had delivered on the final line, saying that they would be “Dougless.”
Reading the letter over and over again, Sabrina in her old age could not feel compassion but only frustration, and lost in her thoughts she did not realize that Dottie had prepared for them two drinks of alcohol on this dreadfully sober afternoon. Dottie handed her the glass and she took it, and before taking a drink she said something aloud to the princess. “Some people participate in the marathon of running away from themselves their entire life.”
Dottie thought about that, and then replied, “Here's to stamina,” and the two clashed their drinks together and drank.
Princess Elaine was no fan of the current weather and she was no less a fan of her current situation. She had walked out of the celebration after her husband, Prince Spencer, told her it was over and that while he was not going to divorce her, he was only going to associate with her publicly for the image of the family.
She walked all the way over to the estate's large lake, a spot that thirty years ago Aubry and Alex shared their hollowness, and removed the wedding band from off her finger. In haste anger, she threw it into the lake where it sank to the deep depths of the lake's floor.
As she stood there, staring into the lake, a sudden wind moved her. And then another sudden wind moved a low branch that smacked her in the back of her head. Seeing that the weather was turning into something violent, she ran back through the trees and into the palace.
Prince Kenneth's voice was like the weather. He had been reading aloud from the newspaper an article concerning the Flanagans to the rest of the family members.
Dorothy's secret friend had had his way with their image, calling them “The Shenanigans” because of their rampant mischief.
“Prince Kenneth Flanagan's legacy is as much of a joke as my hairline,” Ken read aloud. “The nerve!,” he shouted. In his shouts one of the family's friends, Marshall Bradley Jameson, asked who the journalist was. After hearing his name, Jameson, who was one of the most prominent modern directors in film, said that he recognized the name and would have the journalist straightened out.
Jameson was a director who was also a novelist and nearly all of his films except his 98 | THE SHENANIGANS
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first were adapted from his literature. And he had celebrated with the Flanagan's this jubilee because Cassandra and Jeremy's daughter, Victoria, was the spitting image of the young woman he imagined one of his heroines to be. Victoria was not an actress, infact she was not involved in theater at all, but she was interested in the role as she was like the rest of her family; she had an intense desire for importance.
Jameson, with his high intellect and great ability of foresight, could see that Victoria Flanagan would be perfect for his next project and could see that it would fit perfectly, and perhaps even lead, the upcoming wild degeneracy of the seventies with its unforgettable culture of music and film.
Near the party but also not near the party were winter twins Summer and June. They were about a decade old and their mother, Queen Leah, had come up with the clever given names while drunk one Sunday afternoon, which may or may not be indicative of the fallacy between their names and the time of the year they were born.
By this time of wandering through grand halls, the weather had turned monstrous.
Every window the pair of twins passed by was beaten by rain. And despite that they were girls, and despite that they were young, and despite that the weather was like a cryptic villain, they were not afraid of it. They were more afraid of not finding the room they were currently in search of.
Earlier in the day the twins had been reminiscing about their short life and about a room they had not been able to find for more than two years. When you're young, the castle is grand and time is prolonged.
In asking about the room that lived in both of their memories, they found that not another Flanagan could recall it, and it began to feel as if it was actually only a room that lived in their imaginations.
But how could it be? When the twins spoke of the room they spoke of it in great detail and the details mirrored each other which told them that it had to have existed. But as the twins wandered on safe from the raging storm outside, they could not find the room they so desperately remembered.
Inside Queen Minor Brigid Flanagan's room she slept on a bed that was also sealed as to not allow any smells to come through. Her grandson, Prince Brian III, sat on a chair in the same room and had taken the day's duties to accompany her despite the fact that she slept soundly through much of the storm.
One of the reasons the prince volunteered was because he had become addicted to some of her medications. Each time the family nurse came to administer her medicine he was stealth in acquiring a few measurements for his own use. And of the drugs he wanted most were those of the psychedelic variety, a group of drugs that the queen minor had requested to help with her fracturing and disintegrating mental state. These were 99 | THE SHENANIGANS
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becoming more and more popular and in the coming decade it would envelope the youth.
Back downstairs and toward the heart of the party was Prince Spencer who sat speaking with Orlando and Donna. In the distance they could still hear Ken speaking of the injustices done to the Flanagans. “Look, he goes so far as to call Reagan 'The Angel of Death'! Good Lord, have some respect for the dead would ya!,” Ken finished.
“It's annoying,” Spencer cried out about his wife, “each time she asks me to make a decision about something that is related solely to her, I give her my decision. And then if that decision ends up not being optimal or the 'right' decision after all, she blames me!... I think it's because she's afraid of making her own decisions ever since she decided on which house we should live in and realizes now she hates it.”
“Don't make any more decisions for her, then,” said an annoyed Orlando. In his own mind he came to the realization that people loved to argue because they were bored. This realization was confirmed when boredom was eviscerated with just a few words from the television that was near the bar. The broadcast had switched from a MissPlay interview about a woman who was spilling the beans on the pageant industry to the birth of destruction.
“A weak tornado has been spotted in the east valley plains,” the newscaster said.
Pictures of the tornado were displayed on the screen as more and more Flanagans grouped before the television.
“Good thing that's not near us,” Jeremy said as he watched from behind Cassandra.
“That would be so cool to see a tornado in real life,” Jessica said aloud. Her mother and father looked at her as if she were wild in the head.
Over the course of the next ten minutes they all watched with their eyes glued to the screen and observing the images of the wild tornado in the fields. It was moving fast and getting stronger, and after another ten minutes it was classified as a strong tornado and was moving closer to residential areas.
Princess Aubry had joined the party earlier when it began but had retired due to a mild sickness. In her time alone she thought of Alexander and his passing and the connection it had to his alleged sexual assault of another woman when he was younger.
While Aubry denied the allegations to the public, there was never any doubt in her mind that the artist Alexander was capable of such an act. His callousness was in-fact what drew her nearer to him. And Alex, his cause of death being due to one of the rarest diseases known to man, she felt that it was life-long karma returned.
In her return to the party she too became a spectator of the tornado which was now classified as violent and was destroying property in towns. The Flanagans were engrossed in its total destruction and couldn't wait to see what it would conquer next.
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Flanagans, their attention was solely on the disaster. Only two people were missing; Jeffrey and Vivian.
Jeffrey and Vivian's intense relationship over the years remained deceptively platonic. It was secret, unlike the tornado, but it was every bit as destructive. Filled with broken promises and mended hearts, they did many romantic things together in unromantic ways.
Jeffrey's lovemap was not a mystery; he was attracted to older women because he saw photographs of a nude Sabrina when he was younger and she was always simultaneously kind to him without her knowing of his possession of said photographs. But what was Vivian's obsession with older men? Perhaps it must have stemmed like a thorny rose from the relationship of Sabrina and Douglas, whose relationship was known to be passionate yet at times impersonal. Vivian must have watched them both at times and observed the similarities between Jeffrey and Douglas, the common denominator being the attraction to Sabrina.
Despite the fact that Vivian attempted to emulate Sabrina, Jeffrey saw no likeness in the two. Vivian was not a mother, and she was barely a lady. And worst of all, in the eyes of Jeff, she was looking for a father.
When the other tornado had increased to the strongest violent tornado, all of the news-watchers went up to the highest reach of the castle and out into the balcony. It was pouring rain like madness leads to blindness and it was so windy that to not clutch a part of the castle might throw one over the edge. And all of the Flanagans accepted the danger because it was irresistible like the gossip of the living and the democracy of the dead.
With each passing second all of the members of the party looked out into the view before them for the tornado. Theirs hearts beat faster and their minds race as they search for it. “There, there!,” Princess Brittany shouted. And everyone looked in the direction she was pointing to witness this wild tornado.
Many individuals in waking may find it slightly uncomfortable to truly look at themselves in the mirror. With their own eyes they have a reflection of the past, a sight of the present and a glimpse into the future. Any three of these stages alone is enough to spin someone into madness, but rarely does it affect the narcissist, who to the contrary is excited to see their form in the mirror. First the excitement is weak; it may start as beauty or strength, then it is strong and turns into power, and finally; when the desire becomes violent, it also becomes visually tragic.
King Brian II and Queen Leah, along with their children, complete a family photoshoot. (1969)
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Chapter 70
DARK WITHOUT STARS
3:2:7:70
I heard the door to our room shut for the final time and when I saw all the luggage that we carried, that's when it hit me that soon we would be home again.
After we left the inn and said goodbye to Dobbie, we walked out into midnight and waited for our driver. He drove us to the train station where we again waited until we boarded. Because Sara had already been carrying Kirby, when we got to our adjacent rooms Sara kept mothership of the baby who would sleep all throughout the night.
Inside Lynne and I's cabin it was almost identical to the one we came in except even nicer. When I sat down on the resting area, I made a joke. “You're like corporate now, huh?” She laughed but it was kind of an empty or obligatory laugh.
She at current wasn't the usual Lynne, but Lynne isn't always Lynne. And I do wonder if it's because of her bare fingers or if it's because the vacation is over. My guess would be the rings; she's adventurous but there are times when she just wants to sleep.
To try to make her forget about her lost rings I asked her if she would like to go to the open-air car with me, there was one at the end of the train and one in the middle. She said that she would love to and I let her choose which.
We left our cabin and made our way through the dimly lit train, passing cabins of sleeping passengers. When we got to the open-air car that was at the end of the train we saw that there was no one there and that the sky was dark without stars or moon.
The moment we walked into the car we could feel the air rush past us, we could hear and feel the metal grinding against the tracks, we could smell the distinction of the fields and trees we were riding through.
We walked up to the borders of the car and looked out beyond the safety barriers to see a part of the country we had never seen before. Soon Lynne set down her backpack and took out her notebook and a pen. She came closer to me until she passed under my one arm as if it were one of those lifting gates you can drive under. When the gate came back down and she stood with her back to my front, she took my arm, placed the pen in it, and then guided my hand to draw what we saw.
Like the stars before, we saw the same things differently. And when we passed by a dark lake, in it I'm sure she saw some type of failure. For me I remembered Spookieni and his drowning of the Pacific children. One by one he took them each and he drowned them all in the dark lake.
There was a time I overheard someone say they were an anti-natalist, and the person they were talking to called them a nihilist. Just for clarification, an anti-natalist is someone who believes it is wrong to have children and a nihilist is someone who believes 102 | DARK WITHOUT STARS
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life has no meaning. The person who called the other person a nihilist was wrong to mix the two terms up. A true nihilist wouldn't care if you have children or not, everything is meaningless anyway; and while an anti-natalist believes life is suffering without meaning they actively do not want people to have children. The nihilist simply would not care one way or another.
If an anti-natalist believes humans should not reproduce, I would assume one taken to the extreme would be of the opinion that we should even go so far as to commit mass suicide. I would respect the opinion of a person like that, but I would also offer the idea of being suicidally incorrect. How does one know that one-hundred thousand years from now our descendants didn't actually commit mass suicide and we were born into the same existence in the same cycle of hell for eternity.
My thinking is that since we are already here, we might as well try to make the world a better place and reduce the suffering of everyone. Or maybe I'm wrong and we will live for billions of years in the perpetual state of hell we are trying to avoid and mass suicide would have been a far profitable answer. Isn't it great to be a conscious and intelligent organism?
While Lynne drew with my hand we left nature and entered into a dark and quiet town, so naturally this became part of her art. “Will you come back with me here again in a couple years?” “...Well one of the reasons I went on this vacation with you guys is because you stay inside with me all day, so yeah, it's the least I can do.”
With Darlene still on her mind she began telling me that meeting in a plain way wasn't so bad, and that if you actually think about it, having an ordinary first interaction can become extraordinary depending on how your story goes and ends. Looking back on that day can make something so passing so firm.
As we drove through the city we went through many strange places of the town. For a while it was just me, her and whatever scene was before us. And then there was a sudden change. The dark town disappeared and was replaced by tunnel walls. The change of air flow almost took the notebook and the piece of paper we were drawing on along with it but she pressed against my hand firm to keep it down. But without any scenery, she stopped drawing.
I moved our hands to the top center of the drawing just over the nature and town buildings she had drawn and now I took over the piece. I started by drawing one almond.
Since I had my reference, I drew the other almond. Inside the almonds I drew twin suns.
And finally, on the tops of both I flicked away drawing strong dark eyelashes. I could feel the way I drew the lashes make her slightly laugh with her back pressed against me. And when I was finished, there were a set of eyebrows to the eyes that looked out from the top of the dark town.
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I may have been drawing, but as a writer I understand that you have to find that delicate balance between playing tricks on the reader and playing tricks with the reader.
I placed the pen down but pushed my body forward, pressing Lynne's body against the surface before her. When she picked the pen back up she began writing in one of the corners of the drawing. It was the name of the country we were leaving and the date we were leaving it. This drawing, along with the handcuffs and a number of other souvenirs I'm sure were going into her collection.
If someone told me that I had one year left to live, not much would change about me.
I wouldn't start traveling because if I wanted to travel I would already be doing that. I wouldn't need to tell the people that I love that I love them because they already know that I do. Most of all I would be okay with it, I think. I wouldn't really know unless it actually happened. The only thing that would really change about me is that I would think more. So I guess I would just do more of what I'm already doing.
I have to say, though, I spent thirty days straight in a foreign land encased in a residential building not my own with two teenagers, a baby and a woman, and I only felt I wanted to die once, maybe twice, of those thirty days. That is more or less a testament to my tolerance of them. Mainly of Lynne. And that strange tolerance of her, weirdly it does not detract but instead heightens my attraction to her.
For a long time now I have known the price of loving her, but after this vacation, I now know her worth. She's not priceless, because my romantic love for her comes with conditions, but her worth is like words to a poem, flowers to a garden, fruits to a picnic.
She's worth more than any crown on any head or any crown on any finger. And in going back home tonight, where tomorrow will be yesterday, the passion I feel for her yearns for Casanova love. With her I want that unstable love in the sky that connects dots to form Lytheia. And every night with disordered madness I'll look into those eyes that are always dark without stars.
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(3:2 / 8 / VIII)
Part 8
M.B. JULIEN
Chapter 71
“UNTIL DEATH DO US PART”
3:2:8:71
Princess Elaine watches as construction men continue developing the estate's new apartment building.
(1976)
THE 1980s ushered in a new era of Flanagan royalty. The family entered new heights in popular culture and had become like celebrities who were celebrated for their large celebrations. With this new status they found themselves featured in every facet of life; mentioned in movies, sung about in songs and talked about in tabloids. And on display today, being filmed and broadcast for the entire world to see, was the wedding ceremony of four such celebrities; the twins Summer and June were having a twin wedding to marry themselves to Marc and Mark, two unrelated men who would soon be related by law.
At about noon on the wedding day some of the royalty who were part of a royal bookclub were up discussing their latest read, Deep Shades by G. Matthew McClane.
They had done so in Virginia's apartment, which was just one of many apartments in an apartment building located on the Flanagan estate and was erected four years ago. Other tenants in the building included Jessica and Thomas, who were married, and Elaine, who was married to Prince Spencer but lived in the apartment alone.
“The best romance is romantic but not romantic at all,” Virginia suggested.
“Elaborate,” Elaine asked. “In order for it to be true romance, it has to have a happy ending. This book does not, which is truly what makes it so romantic.” “I think what V is trying to say is that at the end we as readers are left to enter a fantasy world where we can see the two lovers together,” Thomas interrupted, “In our own minds we can envision what would have been of their lives had they stayed together,” “And it makes us think of our own lives in a romantic way, too,” Jessica added, “I couldn't imagine my life without Thomas,” she finished.
Just before they all left to enter the main castle, Elaine made a final observation of the book, “The best thing about the novel I think is that it depicts the idea that romance always has one person who has an ideal fantasy of the other person, and that it is usually of a man to a woman. We women may be emotional, but men are fantastic.”
Prince Brian III had been holding his son, Matthew Flanagan, when his wife, Princess Sophia, walked into the royal room. The prince had been sober ever since his son was born, but for the first time in a year he was yearning for his psychedelic past. There was nothing in his current life, not even the heightening prestige of royalty, that made him feel high.
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accepted the baby the princess looked into her husband's eyes and recognized the sight of them. It was the way he used to look more than a year ago when he needed to distort his reality.
“You have no idea what you want, do you?,” she said angrily to him. “You have a healthy son, your own health, a wife who loves you and a kingdom that will be yours, and you still can't appreciate any of it.”
Brian III replied back to his wife angrily, “Who are you to judge me? You were next to nothing before I married you. I don't know what I want? Women never have any idea what they want, you have to show them what they want in order for them to become aware of it.”
The baby began crying from the yelling and Sophia tried to calm him down. Walking out of the room, she shouted at her husband, “Men know exactly what they want, but you all want stupid things!”
Many yards away in another royal room were Shelly and Vivian. It was the first day Shelly had returned to the Flanagan estate after twenty years of absence. Circa 1960, Shelly had developed leprosy, a disease that made her hideous and a human being to be feared because of its contagious nature. Aubry and Alex, along with the Flanagan family, had decided to send her away indefinitely, until the revolutionary treatments of Dr. Guy Faget cured her and she was allowed to return to her home.
On this day and in this room, Vivian was helping reintegrate Shelly into luxurious life. In preparation for the wedding she had her try on many dresses and much jewelry while they listened to the pop music of the year.
“So, any good rumors going around? I haven't had that thrill in twenty years,” Shelly asked Vivian. “I thought you'd never ask,” Vivian laughed, “there's been something brewing in the last couple months about Summer liking K and C liking June.”
Shelly had only a blank expression to give.
“Oh, sorry! K is Mark with a 'k' and C is Marc with a 'c'. So Summer is marrying C, but we think she might like K, and we also think C might actually be in love with June.”
Shelly nodded her head in delight, “Good stuff. Good stuff.”
“You need to get out of this room and celebrate another decade with us,” Jeremy shouted at his daughter, Victoria, who for the last few years had become a shut-in. In a moment or two Cassandra would begin shouting as well, wondering why she couldn't be more like her sister, Jessica.
Victoria had an apartment on the estate, but elected to live mostly with her parents in their isolated home on the estate. She had become something of a recluse after completing the traumatic film-work she had done with Marshall Bradley Jameson; she had only ever stared in one film and would never try at another again.
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Jameson's latest picture was also heralded as his greatest, titled Dark Without Stars, it was the story of a young man who was obsessed with a young woman. But what was shown on-screen was fueled by what occured off-screen; in Jameson's mind, Victoria Flanagan was the identical image of the young woman he created, and also in his mind he was still that young man. And it went without saying, Jameson crossed many professional boundaries and did things to Victoria that would impact her for many years.
In her trauma she became a horrid person. Reclusive and unpleasant, she was dark without light. Among one of the offenses was the fact that she had intentionally started the rumor between the twins and their mates in an effort to taint their relationships as her own life was tainted itself.
Frederick and Fedora, who was the son and daughter, respectively, of Prince Spencer and Princess Elaine, were in a royal living room with George, who was half their age and the son of Jessica and Thomas. They had been excited to continue watching the third day of the Summer Olympics and to watch their country of origin succeed in attaining gold medals.
After watching the one-hundred meter sprint, the conclusion of the race caused all three to get up and begin sprinting down the many hallways, inspired by the spirit of the event.
Eventually the children would run so far and away that they ended up outside the castle and in the distant field before them were looking at the beginnings of another race.
One that was much more competitive, had much more implication and was overall much more childish. Brittany and Cassandra watched as their two sons, Leonel and Leonardo, lined up to compete in their own race to see who was more athletically superior, an idea too inspired by the ongoing Olympic games. Aside from these four, and the three watching, the only other spectator was Jeffrey, as he would be shooting the gun to begin the race, and who watched the event in fascination and laughed at the vicarious rivalry between Brittany and Cassandra.
When Jeff's shot was fired into the air, both Leons began running and their mothers cheered them on. In the beginning, Leonel had gained a strong lead in the bout, but in the end Leonardo had successfully closed the gap and won the race. Seeing this, Cassandra began taunting Brittany, and Leonardo Leonel, because they knew that at least for the rest of the day, they had won this day's efforts of rivalry. But of course, it would be renewed the next.
In the evening, the twin wedding ceremony had finally begun. This ceremony was done within the walls of the castle and in its church, broadcast all over the world for everyone to celebrate this royal and eternal love.
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whispers as King Brian II walked his twin princess daughters down the isle. “When you pick your spouse, you are picking who you are going to let take advantage of you, and who you are comfortable taking advantage of.” The two brothers laughed at the statement, and continued watching the ceremony.
It was an exuberant affair; the type of wedding fantasized and then manifested by young princesses and then congratulated by elder queens. Hanging by the ceilings on either sides of the stage were two large muted televisions to display how the celebration was being viewed to the world at large.
Everything was perfect; all guests were on their best behaviors and manners were well checked. Everything was going so well that there wasn't even a hint that something could go wrong.
And at the climax of the wedding, the twins and their lovers said their vows and their confirmations of union. And these were no ordinary unions, it was royal unity. They were not necessarily bound by God or law, but by status.
The moment the twin brides were announced as wives, everyone clapped. And at the same time, Wayne pointed at the television screen on the right. “Look, they are no longer broadcasting the ceremony,” he pointed and shouted.
Everyone looked up at the screen to find breaking news; there had been a terrorist attack at the Olympic games, an explosion that had claimed twenty-six lives and injured more than fifty. Queen Leah took hold of a remote and began switching through the news stations, finding that every news channel had replaced the wedding ceremony with the now breaking news of the terrorist attack. “My God!,” she said angrily, “The wedding is no longer on any of these channels!”
Leah turned around to look at King Brian II, who had already gotten up to inquire about the situation of the wedding not being broadcast and replaced by the terrorist attacks, but even as king, there was very little he could do to rectify the atrocity.
Under any account, the fact that the wedding was no longer being broadcast also brought about its end. The vows had already been made, the twins and their husbands had already been officially married, and with that everyone was mostly satisfied despite no longer being the center of worldly attention.
As the guests exited the premise, Prince Spencer and Trevor found themselves in a royal kitchen in search for food as they had not eaten prior. From the corner of his eyes, the prince ate a sandwich while simultaneously observing Trevor and his attempt to prepare a frozen food. When the prince saw that Trevor was reading the instructions wrong, he got up and tried to correct the error but suddenly Trevor began shouting at him.
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Trevor ran out of the kitchen crying from the attack. Spencer, angry, knew that he would have the deal with the annoying force that was Brittany.
As the king and queen set themselves for bed, Queen Leah was still upset about the interrupted broadcast of her daughters' wedding. “In the morning I want you to call the local news networks and have whoever made the decision to stop the broadcast of the wedding fired. Maybe we can't control the fates of the people in the networks in America or Canada or Japan or China or Germany or South Africa or Australia, buy by God I will have the heads of the news people in this country.”
King Brian II looked at his ravenous queen, and while he was not as fired up about the ordeal as she was, while observing his golden scepter which symbolized total sovereign power and authority, he made plans to have said heads.
In the night and back at the apartment grounds, Jessica and Thomas, along with their son, George, were also preparing to sleep. George told them all about the Olympic games and all of the running and swimming and how when he grew older, he wanted to do the same things. Jessica and Thomas paid very little attention to his dreams, as his role in society was already mapped out by the family he was born into. And as they went to lay to sleep, there was a knock at their door. It was Elaine, one of their neighbors on the same floor, who came to speak with Jessica.
Elaine invited Jessica back to her apartment, and despite being more than a decade older than Jessica, Elaine asked her advice concerning marital issues, specifically those concerning Prince Spencer who she felt had absolutely no respect for her. In the end, Elaine told Jessica that she wanted a divorce, but divorce in the royal family seemed to almost be grounds for treason, especially since she was not related to any of them by blood. She was not in love with the prince, but formally separating from him meant going back to her difficult upper-middle class life. She simply did not know what to do, and Jessica had no answers for her just the same.
At midnight, Summer and June were waiting in a car for K and C. Soon they would be boarding a plane for their honeymoon in the United States. While the two of them were in the car alone, they spoke of something delicate. The next phase in their lives was procreation, to have a child or children, and so they had made a pact that night. That if one couldn't or did not have children, nor would the other, and if one could or did have children, so would the other. And clauses in this pact had the inclusion of artificial pregnancies and abortions.
Finishing the discussion they watched as their new husbands exited the palace and began walking toward them. Smiling, the husbands smiled back, and soon the pairs were off to America.
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decisions you will ever make in your life is who to marry,” Summer thought to herself.
And June in her own thinking finished that thought, “Indeed, it is so important that you can make it more than once.”
Victoria sits alone in the estate's arboretum under nightfall as she contemplates suicide. (1979)
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Chapter 72
LYTHEIA PROMISED
3:2:8:72
WHEN I got to my floor and began exiting the elevator with my luggage, I heard Lynne begin to speak. “Text me when you get home so I know you got home safe,” she joked. No one laughed but we all understood she was making an effort to not still seem so sad about her rings.
Entering my apartment I can't help but think of all the secrets the ocean keeps; all the treasures and all the bodies. When I got inside I turned on the light and walked into my bedroom, turning on another light and seeing my wonderful bed. I could have kissed it.
Home, I like to be here when I can.
I emptied my luggage onto the bed, which was mostly clothes, and when I was done I put the luggage in the closet. I laid down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering where I was going to buy Lynne's new ring from. I think I remember seeing a jewelry store at the mall we went to during Thanksgiving. Still staring at the ceiling, my mind was fixed on the ceiling fan. After staring at it for a complete minute, I suddenly remembered that I had Lisa's souvenirs in my backpack. Lynne wanted to bring her back a few things for allowing us to take Kirby with us to the vacation, and one of the items was a mini-fan. That was strange that I was looking at the fan for a while before it clicked in my mind.
We are all born relatively "unconscious." It is life's joys and life's woes that play a part in helping us develop a conscious nature. They help us develop empathy and even transgression. But something strange occurs when one begins to develop a consciousness; there is a battle between the unconscious brain and the newly forming conscious brain.
Conflict between the old and the new is not a new concept by any means and is instead a very old one. And the strangeness of this always begins with recognition. If the unconscious brain and the conscious brain never recognize eachother, and never become aware of the other, there will not be battle or conflict. But when they do, spiritual warfare will always ensue. Think of your brain right now and imagine a sum of it that is consciously aware and a sum of it that is not, aren't you already afraid of the sum that is unconscious? It feels like an old useless dusty dirty attic that could get you in trouble and your conscious brain knows it. And because your conscious brain is aware of this, because it has recognized the unconscious brain and the liability it may be, it will seek to eliminate it. The irony is that you will try to eliminate the unconscious brain in unconscious ways. Everything that progressive society has defined as good is what you will pursue. You will pursue an education so you don't seem ignorant on certain subjects.
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you may seem normal. You will pursue goodness so that you may seem fit for the society you are trying to integrate into. None of these pursuits are wrong, or bad, but often they are not pursued with a true free will, and this lack of free will is a tale-tell sign of unconsciousness.
But besides, the unconscious brain is not always the enemy to the conscious brain. I am willing to wager that the unconscious brain is also a storage unit for recognized patterns. And when a pattern that is stored in the unconscious brain is recognized by the conscious brain, something is activated for our own well-being. Let me give you an example.
A man and a woman who are married to eachother are at a dinner party sitting at the dining table eating dinner. The man is sitting next to his wife, but also sitting across the table from his mistress. The wife is completely unaware of the mistress. She has no clue whatsoever. But indeed like so many wives she is a fervent enjoyer of romance movies that include infidelity. These movies have been stored in her unconscious brain and there are patterns within them that signal unfaithful behavior. And so when the husband or mistress say or do something that triggers her unconscious brain as recognized behavior, it will signal to her conscious brain and she will become aware of the possibility that her husband may be having an affair. This is when even at an evolutionary standpoint that the unconscious brain is more useful than the conscious brain, because it will recognize things that no other part of the brain can.
I messaged Lynne to come downstairs to retrieve Lisa's gifts. She came down quickly and left just as quickly.
For the following three days, something was off about her. I knew why, but I didn't know what. Every night at the inn, being that we slept in the same bed, we made flowers.
Sorry I keep using that expression, it's just something she always says and I've come to adopt it. Either way, every night there it was basically expected to happen. As a result, we both got used to just sleeping naked. In the three days back, even when she comes downstairs just to take naps and she is sleeping alone, she sleeps naked. When I take naps, I do the same. I don't know that I could ever go back, I'm just to used to it.
For the past three days she has slept down here at night, and keeping in custom with the vacation nights, there is no shortage of passion, but ever since she lost her rings it just hasn't been the same. I'm not sure how to explain it. It is almost like she does it each night solely to satisfy me as if it were her duty, and that's just not something I am especially interested in. Her nipples don't get as hard or as protrudent, I can barely feel her vagina contract on my penis when she orgasms. And while she is every bit as audible, that is also something she can control. It is only in the things that she cannot control that I know I have given her what she wants and what she needs.
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On the fourth night enough was enough, and the following day I went to the mall in the afternoon and found that jewelry store.
I browsed around the small store and when the employee asked me if I needed help I gave her a polite no.
I saw many rings that I know Lynne would have loved, then again I think all these rings she would have loved, and I also saw that while they weren't the price of yard sale rings, they were moderately priced.
It wasn't until I came upon a section in the store that was filled with charms was I truly invested. And looking through the lot of them, I instinctively smiled when I saw a charm that was a flat purple rosehead. That had never happened to me before. It was weird. If the lady had sight of my face she may have thought I was gay. I suppose I was gay at that moment, but not in the homosexual sense.
The lady suddenly approached and this time didn't ask if I needed help or had any questions, she simply began speaking, telling me about all of the charms I was looking at.
I learned soon through her that these charms were a new product that had just released in the jewelry industry. The product was named Promises and came with a ring base, a necklace base and earring bases, and you could collect these charms and they attached to the bases. She told me, for example, that the purple rosehead charm could be purchased and it could attach to the ring, necklace or earrings, or all four, and each charm set came with four of the same charms if a person wanted to wear all of them at once.
“How much are the bases and each charm set?” “The bases are $150 and each set is $100.” “One hundred dollars!,” I said to myself in my mind. “What if I just wanted to buy the ring base and that one purple rosehead charm?” The lady began to look at me as if I dared put a price on true love. “They're not sold separately.”
I looked back down at the collection of charms, and soon after the lady asked me if I was buying a ring for an engagement. I said no and briefly told her about how Lynne lost her rings to the ocean. I could see that she began to feel bad. “To make matters worse, she's an amputee,” I tested her.
The next moments had me taking out my phone to show her a picture of my amputee wife. I also made sure to show her a picture of our son, David, and our daughter, Sarah, and our newborn son, Kirby. “She's my high-school sweetheart, she never took off her wedding band.”
“Look, we're having a sale next week-end, but I'll let you in on it today if you spend at least $1000. The bases will be $100 and each charm set you buy will be $75. If you wait until the week-end these might all be gone.”
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me the one on display and also gave me a free collection board seeing as I'm sure Lynne would buy additional charm sets. I also bought a digital watch for $119 and two base sets of a ring, necklace and earrings. Man, did I just commit a jewel heist? Somebody stop me.
When I got home I took all of the contents out of the bags and placed them on my table. I took out the collection board and all nine of the charm sets. I placed each charm on the collection board and when I was done there were thirty-three charms attached to it as if in a display. Look, I might be a creepy guy, but I know beauty when I see it.
After all of the charms were on the collection board I went to the products main website, where there I found hundreds of charms. I saw a charm that was a cross, a turtle, a bunch of fruits, some flags of countries; there were hundreds and I couldn't see how Lynne and Sara wouldn't be excited to collect the ones they wanted.
At midnight I was still up and was taking time to think. Man, I need to get a job or something.
Anyway I knew that she would be down here soon and I wanted to be awake when she saw the collection board.
Periodically looking at the collection board, I was reminded of one of my thieves dreams. It had to have taken some place in Europe I think because it was a country that still had a monarchy. My partner and I had taken hostage of a royal family during one of their parties. I remember specifically that we targeted the women for their jewelry.
Seventeen or seventy you'll find that basically all humans of the female variety want to be or feel special in some kind of way. When I was younger I used to think that this was a phase that all girls and women would eventually grow out of, but in all my time living I have seen that this is mostly not the case. Women never grow up. This has led me to believe that there are parts of the brain that never really develop or evolve past adolescence or early childhood. Women might continue to grow intellectually, but I feel like there is an age where at their core they stop growing in terms of romantic love.
Affection from a woman, true affection from a woman, is something I never experienced before Lynne. Not from my mother and definitely not from any romantic partners. So I have a better understanding of why I was the way I was many years ago and why I am the way I am today. If the romantic part of my brain is still a little boy, it makes sense to me why her affection is what helps me grow.
Your sight never really improves I don't think, but even so you can see things better with intuition. And so while there are maybe parts of the brain that never develop or evolve past a certain age, they can be enhanced with intuition. So we know women never grow up, and we know they all want to be special, and I think the way their romantic brain is enhanced is when their intuition tells them it's not what they are wearing, but 114 | LYTHEIA PROMISED
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instead who has given them what they are wearing. Their vision isn't really getting better, it's not developing or evolving, but their intuition in respect to what they deem a mate both develops and evolves.
I heard my doorknob rotate and speak of the Devil, in walked my therapist. She saw me first and then saw the board. As she walked up to the board she never took her eyes off of it. Standing right in front of it, she simply stared into it, carefully inspecting every charm. She looked at me, and then back at it, and then back at me and I could tell she was confused, so I handed her a pamphlet about the product because I didn't feel like explaining it.
She sat down on my lap and then turned so she was sideways and her legs hovered over the floor, and then she began reading the pamphlet. When she was done she put it down on the table and leaned over to grab the box before her which contained the ring base, the necklace base and the earrings base. She only took out the ring base and soon slid it onto her ring finger. It at present looked like a simple wedding band. She stuck her hand out into the air and stretched her fingers, then looked at me curiously.
I leaned and moved the collection board just in front of her. Then I detached the blue teardrop charm from the board and put it underneath her eye.
“This one has a double meaning. It's for your tears after losing your other rings but also for the water in the ocean that stole your rings.”
She took it from me and fixed it onto her ring. Once fixed, she held her hand out again to admire it. “I shall wear it every time it rains,” she joked. I laughed as she took it off.
The next one I gave her was the purple rosehead. As I went for it, she asked me why there was only one of them while all of the other charms were in sets of four. I put the purple rosehead charm to my heart and then extended it toward her in a very serious manner, “Because they only ever made one.”
After she fixed it onto her ring and held it out to admire it, I began speaking again.
“When you first moved into the building, during the move I was watching you. I watched you knock on my neighbor's door, and then turn around to come knock on mine. And to this day I remember how my heart clutched. It felt like it skipped a beat. It was nerves for someone who never gets nervous. You can call it love at first sight, even though I don't really believe in that, but that's as close to it as you can get for a person like me I think.”
She looked at the purple rosehead charm again and I know without a shadow of a doubt that she felt special. “This one is my favorite so far,” she told me.
The next charm was a yellow smiley face at the center of a big red heart. She thought it was cute but I explained that it actually wasn't. “If a man like me smiles at a woman like you, that means I like you, and that is not necessarily a good thing for you. So just 115 | LYTHEIA PROMISED
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know that when you put it on, if I can't have you, then no one else can.” She looked at me strangely, but I knew that her girl-brain was excited at the prospect of both obsession and possession. Of worship and desire. And I knew that she knew that not only did a sociopath love her, but she was in love with one as well.
The next charm she tried on was a charm that was representative of the season of autumn, which we were approaching. It was three leaves together; green, red and yellow.
She already knew what it meant even before she put it on, saying the moment she saw it she knew it was representative of our anniversary. She told me she thinks about it every year but never brings it up just in case I forget. “Four years together,” she said, “and eight years knowing eachother,” she finished.
The next charm was a peace lily flower. She adored it and said it was one of the prettiest pieces of jewelry she had ever seen. She said the sight of it was nostalgic and brought her back so many years to the first time she ever tried planting them in a shade garden.
And now she had on a charm that was designed to look like a crown. As she admired it I wondered what it truly was that she would have been preferred to be called. A princess or a queen, a girl or a woman. It's something that I've noticed all my life; assuming the difference between a girl and a woman is the age of 18 or 21, I've seen some girls refer to themselves as women and some women refer to themselves as girls.
“What do you actually prefer? Girl or woman, princess or queen?” She looked at me as if I was stupid. “It changes, dummy.” “What do you mean?” “Right now, I'm your girl... But in about fifteen minutes, I'm going to be your woman.” I think I knew what that meant, but I didn't want to ask so I didn't further my stupidity.
The next charm was a white star. “It reminds me of the game we played on vacation,”
she said. But I told her that it was the star I named Lytheia, the only star in the nightsky that I could see. “Is she a goddess?,” she asked. “The Greek goddess of dreams.”
Attached to her ring now was the design of a red flame with a black outline. She instantly began talking about how this matched perfectly with her red shoe and her small red dress and black leggings, and I told her that one of these days she should dress up so I could take pictures of her again.
The final charm left on the collection board that she had not fixed to her new ring was one of an infinity symbol. And when it was fixed to her ring, she admired it the same way she did the others. It was indeed indicative of a vast universe of beauty within one body and mind, but it was in recognition to another thing as well.
“I know you were just joking around when you called me naive and told me that promises were meant to be broken, but I'm not naive, I'm loyal, and I never have and never will break any promise I make to you because I am a man of my word.”
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I could tell she was ashamed of calling me naive even if it was in kidding, but I just couldn't tell why she hadn't even smiled the whole time she was here.
“I love it all,” she said, “I just feel guilty that I love these more than the ones I lost already.” I could tell she was telling the truth because through all of this, she had not once asked me how much any of this costed. That was because there was no way in Hell she was going to have these returned. For one night she was going to accept this status of elegance.
“Smile for me, just once,” I requested as I squeezed her hip. She looked at me and finally smiled. I would kill to see that smile. When I smiled back I squeezed her hip harder and her smile turned into laughter as she scooted and brought her head down onto my chest. She brought out her hand again one last time to admire the infinity symbol.
“I'm going to buy some for myself, but will you buy me some, too, from time to time, it's prettier that way,” she asked. “Sure, once a year.” I just have to find out when they have weekend sales.
As she sat on me, I told her that the other bases were for Sara and that the digital watch was for David. “You didn't get anything for Kirby?” “No?,” I gave her a confused answer. “I'm just joking,” she laughed.
She lifted her head off of me, and then stood up off of me and grabbed my hand. “If I'm your one true star and the only star that you can see in the dark sky,” she said as she walked me to the bedroom, “then I'm going to give you infinite dreams.”
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Chapter 73
GENERATION X
3:2:8:73
Trevor “Slant” Flanagan sits in his room looking over his large collection of music. (1989)
IN 1990, princess twins Summer and June helped popularize the new jewelry sensation known as Forever rings. They were rings that had interchangeable pieces of jewelry that could attach to the ring, and at the present moment in 1990 there were more than twenty available attachments that could be used on the new ring idea.
In the morning of what was supposed to be a day of jubilation celebrated during a Super Blood Moon occurrence, the twins sat, both pregnant and all and wearing matching blue diamond ring attachments, in a palace living room speaking about how the royal family was going to be funding the building of an apartment tower in San Rashida City.
Both princesses had already given birth nearly a decade ago, Summer naming a daughter Anastasia and soon to name another daughter Sonya, and June naming a son Kevin and soon to name another son Edward.
Walking past them with a portable cassette player in hand but no headphones on ears was Trevor, who was storming the castle looking for a pair so he could listen to some of his favorite songs. In ten years, from 1980 to 1990, Trevor had grown obese, weighing two-hundred and seventy-three pounds and standing at five foot and nine inches, but cared so little did Trevor about what anyone thought of him, mentally or physically, so much so that for the past year he had begun presenting himself almost exclusively wearing a black ninja ski-mask hood, no upper clothes to expose his large gut, and a pair of brown sweatpants.
“Trevor!,” Summer called out to him. He didn't respond. She called him again,
“Trevor!” Again, no response. And this time June called out, “Slant!” Trevor turned around as he had declared a year earlier that this would be the only name he would answer to.
“What the fuck do y'all want?,” Slant walked up and asked the twin princesses. They giggled at his seriousness. “Please do remember to wear the suit and tie we got you yesterday,” the twins said simultaneously. “...Is that it?,” Slant asked. When the sisters looked at each other, Slant immediately walked away, passing a room where Erica was speaking with Jessica.
Within the past few years, Erica had wed Leonel. Leonel had married her in response to Leonardo's wedding, who married a woman named Courtney. Leonel's wedding was a calculated move by his mother, Brittany, to relieve a forty year-old grudge she held against Cassandra. She had told her son to wait until after Leonardo's wedding so that 118 | GENERATION X
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they may plan accordingly to make it superior in every way. And this indeed is what occurred. The union of Erica and Leonel was so immaculate and so prestigious that everyone had forgotten about Courtney's and Leonardo's. Cassandra suspected this would be the case, and she knew Brittany would try to outdo her, but she could not delay the bolstering love that Courtney and Leonardo had for each other.
Though new players in the game, Erica and Courtney already knew the rules; there were none in relation to each other and every thing was fair game. In speaking with Jessica, Erica, who was a few months pregnant, spoke of Courtney's pregnancy. Through rumors not started by herself, Erica spoke to Jessica of the possibility that Courtney's unborn child may not have belonged to Leonardo. There was one problem with this revelation, however, and it was a problem that would theme throughout the day of the Super Blood Moon; Jessica was being deceptively attentive to Erica's words but did not realize Erica was speaking of Courtney and instead thought she spoke of June, who of course was also pregnant.
In Virginia's apartment at the apartment building on the Flanagan estate she was speaking with Cassandra about a sensitive subject, so in her sensitivity she made sure to whisper. “Brian III is on drugs, I found a large supply in his locker,” Virginia said.
Cassandra was immediately interested, though because her main focus was on what dress she would be wearing to tonight's jubilee, and perhaps because of her psychology toward Brittany, she misheard the subject's name and instead heard Leonel. “What's his combination?,” Cassy asked. Virginia wrote down the combination on a piece of paper and handed it to Cassy who took it with plans to see the drugs for herself.
“How well do you know Viv?,” Frederick asked Queen Leah. “Well enough to know that a woman without a child or a husband is not to be trusted. She reminds me of Dorothy, honestly.” “Have you ever heard of her doing voodoo or black magic?” “No...
Why?”
Fred began telling the queen about strange noises he had heard one night when passing by Vivian's room. It was about two in the morning, he walked past the large windows as the curtains blew inward from the wind and he could see the full moon in the sky. And when he passed by Vivian's room, he heard chants and saw strange lights form the frame of her door.
Queen Leah was engrossed in his story, so engrossed her mind remembered a night when the same thing had occurred to her, except instead it had been of Princess Elaine's room. And in speaking of devilish things, Elaine suddenly called out to her son, Fred, needing his help moving somethings outside. The queen stared at Elaine strangely, her mind completely replacing Vivian with Elaine in the conduction of black magic.
Sophia had been helping Wayne move somethings from the indoors to the outdoors 119 | GENERATION X
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for the coming celebration and they had also been speaking about C, husband to Summer.
Princess Sophia, future queen and mother to future king Matthew, was a keen observer of human behavior, and it was in her interest that she suspected C to be a homosexual.
Everything that she had ever known of them told her that he was one of them. And Wayne, with his thick ears, did not realize that she had changed the subject from Trevor to C and agreed that his behavior indeed was becoming more and more bizarre by the year.
Jeremy had been visiting the apartment block to speak to his daughter, Jessica, when he suddenly ran into Shelly. Shelly had let him know that currently Jessica was aiding Erica in gathering supplies for tonight's celebration, but that she wouldn't be long. Instead of walking all the way back to his own home, he decided he would stay and for whatever reason Shelly began speaking about Fedora. “She's a strange one, huh?,” Shelly said of Fedora, “She behaves more like a boy than a girl.” Shelly had said this because she observed Fedora to be something of a tomboy; she loved shooting guns and bows and wearing stylish suits suited solely for men. Jeremy did not pay much attention to the matter, and when he returned to Shelly's words, he made note of the word serial killer. He did not notice that Shelly was no longer speaking of Fedora, but of her father, Prince Spencer, and about how she suspected the prince to be a serial killer because of his unusual behavior the past decade. And so in Jeremy's mind, he began imagining Fedora as a serial killer, and coupled with her strange tendency toward male presentation, his mind became curious.
King Brian II and George had been on the estate's golf course settling a friendly dispute. George, despite his youth, said he was as experienced in the sport as the king, and so the king proposed a wager. Nine holes, nine-hundred in currency. As they drove the golf cart to the sixth hole, George began speaking about Victoria, who died by her own hands in 1982 after several bouts with depression.
“They all seem to think that June could have saved Tori if she had spoken out about it, but instead she kept the conversations between them to herself and never told anyone else,” George said of June. The king was tired of thinking of the depressing mess that was of the whole Victoria situation and the chaos it caused the months following it. He was also tired of hearing that his daughter was in part to blame. And so in tune with Flanagan psychology, he subconsciously began blaming someone else, her sister, Jessica, who it would have made more sense to have become Tori's confidant.
Jeffrey and Leonel were tasked with phoning in all of the day's expenses to all of the different departments. Jeff handled mostly the foods and Leonel handled mostly the services. As they called and called different departments, inbetween calls they sometimes made comments to eachother, one such comment being made by Leonel that Leonardo 120 | GENERATION X
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had been harassing a woman outside of his marriage and outside of the royal family. Jeff inquired as to who this woman was but Leonel could not provide an answer. Having not really paid attention to who Leonel was speaking of and moreso concentrating on dialing a phone number, Jeff was suddenly called by K on another line, telling him they had just ordered crabs and to add it onto the list. A bit annoyed by K, and with K on his mind instead of Leonardo, Jeffrey looked at Leonel and told him that he always thought he was a person who would indeed harass a woman and not know her boundaries.
The final interaction of importance in the afternoon was between Thomas and Princess Brittany. Thomas claimed to Brit that Summer remarked that she thought she was slightly prettier than her twin sister and that it should be her who should be the primary face of the family. Brittany, now suffering through what her predecessor, Aubry, had suffered through, found it amusing the circle of beauty, but in her thinking of one twin, she thought of the other.
“I'm gettin' righteous with my time, fuck. When less is more, my vibe sucks,” Slant said as he walked through the halls in his suit and tie. Eventually he found the main outdoor area where all of the celebration had been taking place. This particular jubilee was held outdoors so that the party-goers could have a full view of the Super Blood Moon.
Playing in the grassy area was a large portion of the children. They were Anastasia and Kevin, Matthew, Monica, Kimberly and Tobias, and of this family they were the final additions to Generation X.
As the children played the popular hide and seek game Kings & Queens, the Super Blood Moon slowly rose above them until one of the children noticed it. “Look! It's the Super Bloody Moon!,” Matthew said excitedly. But the children saw what the parents could not, for already they had began bickering at eachother over confused rumors and misheard gossip.
The first domino to fall was pushed by Princess Brittany, who said to the others aloud that June believed that she was prettier than Summer and that it would be best if she was the primary face of the royal family's affairs. This was untrue, as it was actually Summer who thought this of June.
“I knew you thought you were prettier than me!,” Summer shouted at June, “We were supposed to be on the cover of magazines together!” “I have never thought such things!,”
June snapped at Brittany and then at Summer. “Brittany is just jealous that she is old and wrinkly and no longer the prettiest in this family. She's become an old fart just like the old fart Aubry was before her!”
“Hey! Cool it about the dead!,” Jessica interrupted, “And besides, rumor has it the baby you're carrying isn't even K's!” June gasped at the implication that she had had an 121 | GENERATION X
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affair. K looked at his wife, “Is it true?” June resented the implication, screaming a resounding “No!” But K could not believe it, and he looked through the crowd for C.
“Marc, did you have an affair with my wife?,” he asked him calmly and coldly. Erica, in seeing this altercation, could only shake her head as she recalled telling Jessica that it was Courtney who may have had the affair, not June.
“No, I didn't have sex with your wife,” C answered just as coolly. Jeffrey was puzzled that K was so annoyed. “Aren't you the one harassing a woman outside of your marriage and outside of the royal family?,” Jeff said sharply to K. “What?!,” K denied the allegation that his wife heard clearly. “What is this about harassing a woman?,” June asked. “I haven't the slightest clue what Jeff is speaking of,” K answered his wife. When Leonel heard this rumor by Jeff, he put his hand to his forehead, saying under his breath so that no one could hear him that it was Leonardo who was the harasser.
“Okay, okay, fine now,” Leonel said to the crowd, “let's just settle down before someone gets hurt.” This display of masculinity angered Cassandra, who in her anger said “Wait a minute. You're not blameless in all this. Aren't you the one who's been stealing drugs in shipments?,” Cassandra said to a befuddled Leonel. Brian III looked around anxiously.
“I don't even use drugs,” Leonel said looking at Brittany. Jeremy, being told of Leonel's alleged drug use earlier in the day chimed in, “Shall we have a look at your locker, then?” “I don't even have a locker!,” Leonel finished.
“Would you guys stop it already? If Leonel did drugs I think we would all know,”
Fedora said. Jeremy looked at Fedora in her expensive navy blue suit and bow-tie. “Says the tomboy serial killer.” “Serial what?” “You heard me. All you're missing is a Fedora hat and you would totally pull off the gangster look,” Jeremy finished. Though it was meant to be taken as an insult, Fedora had never thought of wearing a Fedora hat, which at the moment was of peak interest to her and she made a mental note to purchase one the following afternoon.
“If we're talking about gender roles, what about Trevor?,” Wayne cut in. “What about Trevor?,” Slant asked. “Apparently you've never been with a woman because you want a man, isn't that true?,” Wayne cut in. Trevor did not reply but only walked toward Wayne to try and strike him in the face. The first punch missed, but the second one did not, and Prince Spencer looked on in horror at the violent maniac he had produced ten years earlier.
When Wayne began to fight back, striking Slant in his nose, others tried to break them apart but were too struck upon. The excitement of all this released two more rumors. Queen Leah began shouting that she feared Princess Elaine was in the process of bringing black magic upon the estate to end the royalty and King Brian II accused Jessica 122 | GENERATION X
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of failing to help Victoria with her depression and instead allowed her to suppress it which ultimately caused her demise.
By now the entire party was a frenzy under the Super Blood Moon. There was shoving and yelling and repressed emotions became depressed rotations of blame. And throughout all of this, suddenly Summer went into labor. When the others became aware of this, the fighting stopped. “What do we do!?,” George asked. And just like that, Summer's labor induced June's labor and they were both well on their way to giving birth on the night of this Super Blood Moon.
Trevor had run all the way to the apartment block, guts bouncing and all, to wake up the family doctor. When the doctor ran back to the party he saw the twins in twin labor.
They were safely moved into a room in the palace, helpers pushing over personal computers and video game consoles.
The labor was intensive and the process of birth excruciating, but by the end of it all were born Sonya and Edward under a Super Blood Moon. The pair would have their births immortalized by the Forever brand that the twins endorsed; two new attachments would be created of two red half-moons to commemorate each child, and they would easily become the fastest selling piece of jewelry the world had ever known.
Twin princesses Summer and June reading the same novel by the estate's pool under a sunny day.
(1983)
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Chapter 74
HARM BY CHARM
3:2:8:74
PART #1: HARM
LYNNE sat with David, Sara, Kane, Kristi and Pattie. Kane had told her that his father told him to tell her that the publishing company he worked for told him to tell her that her book of poetry was still being looked at and that they might want to meet with her in the following weeks.
Lynne soon got up, passing a sleeping Kirby and asked the children if anyone wanted anything from the kitchen. They all said no.
When she sat back down, Kane asked where the bathroom was. Sara pointed him in the direction and while walking toward it, Kane asked the others if anyone wanted anything from the bathroom. They all looked at him puzzled, and he soon went on his way.
A little past midnight the children were still up and Lynne saw that it was way past the usual time she had made her nightly visits to the narrator's apartment. She looked at the kids, then at Kirby, then said to them all that she was going to go downstairs and to keep an eye on Kirby, though she didn't think he would wake up because he had only just gone to bed.
She left the apartment and began walking toward the large windows that looked out into the city. For a brief moment she stopped and stared out into San Rashida and thought on the intangible map of dreams.
Going down the stairs she ran into a neighbor with a dog and said hello. Soon she was turning the doorknob to the narrator's apartment and when she entered she saw him sitting near his window with a strange board of what looked to be jewelry. “Finally,” she thought to herself as she walked toward it.
“If I'm your one true star and the only star that you can see in the dark sky,” she said as she walked me to the bedroom, “then I'm going to give you infinite dreams.”
As she pulled me toward the bedroom I took my hand out of hers and instead walked over to my door. I pulled on the security chain then locked the door then walked back toward her and motioned her into the room. When we were both inside, I found a chair and used it to barricade the bedroom door and then locked that one, too. When I turned around to look at Lynne she was confused. “Why are you being so paranoid?,” she asked as she simultaneously took off her jean-shorts and went to lay on her back on the bed.
“No, get up,” I said breaking a blind on my window to look out into the dark city suspiciously, “Go into the shower and take off the showerhead and wash everything from 124 | HARM BY CHARM
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your hips down,” I told her. She afterward took off her underwear and her shirt and began walking toward the bathroom. “And Lynne, I mean everything,” I told her. She looked at me suspiciously.
After a few seconds I heard the shower run. I walked into the bathroom myself and turned on the faucet. When she heard it, she moved aside the curtains and watched me as I washed my penis and testicles with some of the flavored soap she had put in here. And I looked at her as she had the showerhead aimed at her vagina.
When I was finished I left the bathroom and looked out suspiciously at the dark city once more. It was half-past midnight now and right before she came back out I checked that the chair was at the best angle to keep the door closed and it was.
“Lay down on the bed. On your stomach.” She looked at me confused, almost even a bit worried. “I promise I will make it feel good,” I told her.
After she laid out flat on the bed I walked up to her and put my hand over her fleshed foot. I bent her lower leg toward her body so that it formed in ninety degrees. Smoothly and gently I began massaging her foot, pressing softly against veins and moving my fingers between her toes. When she looked back at me, she looked with royal eyes.
“Who's the king?,” I asked her. And as I slid my hand down her foot, she answered with confidence, “You are.”
I brought my face forward and then my body forward so I could get onto the bed with her, then I licked a long way down the side of her foot, my tongue leaving behind a trail of saliva that ended where I sucked on a part of her foot and released it to make a wet sound.
I placed her lower leg back down onto the bed and got directly behind her and on all fours. I kissed the ankle of her fleshed foot, then asked her another question. “Who do I rule over?” She took some time, but she eventually answered. “Me.”
I slid my tongue all along her smooth leg up until I reached the backside of her knee because at that point I had run out of saliva and had to wet my mouth. I started again from her knee and went all the way up her thigh and to her left buttock, where when I stopped I took a mouthful of it, sucking it and releasing it to make that wet sound. Before I got to where I was really trying to go, I said one last thing to her. “Say my name.”
She did not take long at all to reply, “King Julien.”
I moved myself so I was hovering over her and slightly pulled her left leg upward and she instinctively and slightly moved her hips so I would have a better view of her vagina.
When I saw her flower, my erection came within seconds. I placed both of my hands on her bottom and squeezed them upward gently, then released and moved my hands a little off to the side so I could plant my entire face into said bottom. The moment I was stuffed into her my tongue found wet vagina. Her cheeks against mine I used my hands to smush 125 | HARM BY CHARM
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her ass against my face as I licked and sucked on a part of her so sensitive. She was silent, but I could feel her move her arms so she could get more comfortable and I could feel her lift her left leg up even higher so I could go deeper in. I was now fully entrenched into her and I played with her cheeks as my tongue went as far into her as it could. I could feel her contract and release on me but I didn't hear her at all and I didn't feel like she was getting the same sensation from oral sex as she got from penetrative sex. And another problem was the fact that I was fully erect but had no way of pleasing myself.
I removed myself out of her and when she looked back she seemed dissatisfied that I had stopped.
“Two things,” I said to her, “I can't get in as far as I want to and it would be nice if I got a handjob while in there.”
Lynne got up onto her knees and turned around toward me and then put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me down onto my back. I stretched out my legs and then she turned back around so I could see her bottom. While on all fours she backed up until I grabbed her bottom and guided it down toward my face. She was now upright while sitting on my face and I had the pleasurable sensation of her cheeks pressed against mine even more firm and my tongue felt like it was trapped inside her vagina. At the same time I could feel her grab hold of my penis.
As she went down a bit more and increased the pressure slightly, I used my hands to massage her buttocks and now I was opening my mouth fully and closing it fully repeatedly as if to swallow whole all of her. Pushing down a little bit more on my face my tongue was as far as it had ever been inside her and I moved it all around her walls and finally she began her delicate moaning.
With every moan more sensual than the last she beat wildly up and down across my penis. And with every moan I could feel small tightenings of her walls on my tongue.
With every tightening she was more powerful against my penis until I ejaculated completely all over whatever was in the vicinity. Without warning she sat down forcefully and was crushing my head against the bed and she had orgasmed so hard that her walls completely closed on my tongue and my mouth and I could not breathe. I held my breath for as long as I could as her vagina contracted and released and contracted and released and when I could hold it no longer I tapped on her right buttock as she was suffocating me and finally she let up.
She moved her body a bit toward my chest and had both of her hands on my thighs.
She didn't say anything but all she was doing was panting and breathing heavily as I could only do the same. With her body a bit away from me I passed my hand across my mouth to clean off her vaginal fluids.
And then again without a warning she moved her bottom back toward me and 126 | HARM BY CHARM
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smothered my face with it. She watched as I quickly grew erect again and then began beating wildly again up and down my penis. This time she didn't go down gently in an incremental fashion, she simply pressed down against my face completely so I could be all the way in her, and as I rotated my tongue inside her, her moans were like something out of a blue dream. While these oral moans were not as intense as the penetrative moans, she was moaning in a way that I had never heard before, I think because I was not pounding my body against hers and this was a more vulnerable action and position for her.
Similarly, when I ejaculated for a second time, her orgasm soon followed as well in intense fashion. She had orgasmed so hard that after smothering my cheeks with her cheeks and closing herself and reopening herself and closing herself onto my mouth she moved forward and her entire body seemed to clench within. In her clenching, her hand accidentally slipped from all of the semen on my body and all of the semen on her hand and it landed directly on my testicles. The pressure from this widened my eyes and caused me to shout.
“Lynne!” Before I knew it, I had gotten up and placed my back against the headboard and had been holding my penis and testicles. She was hurried and when she realized what she had done she was immediately fearful.
“I'm sorry I slipped!,” she said coming toward me to see the damage she had done. I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the pain and she kept saying stupid annoying things that weren't helping. Soon she also sat toward the headboard and was trying to move my hand so she could see what had happened. “Don't touch it!,” I said excitedly at her and she immediately retreated.
We sat there for a minute, and it wasn't until two minutes that it began to rescind in pain. “Sorry,” she tried again. I didn't say anything and just looked at her, and then removed my hand when the pain was gone to see a flaccid penis.
After a moment she took my hand and lifted it toward her face, then set it down on the side of her neck. She made her face to look up at the ceiling and with her own hand she used my hand to massage her neck. First she started with tiny exhalations, then barely imperceptible sounds, and soon and slowly she began to delicately moan again as my hand went back and forth on the back and side of her neck. When she began pulling at her right breast and her right nipple, what was soft was becoming hard again.
“I want to worship the scepter,” she said softly through the moans. “The what?,” I asked half knowing what she meant. The soft moans turned briefly to soft laughter and then back to soft moans again as she cupped my testicles and began massaging them.
When she saw that I was fully erect again with veins the sight of lightning, she told me to guide her mouth to it by directing her head with my hand. As she went down toward it 127 | HARM BY CHARM
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she angled her face and then her mouth, and finally she brought out her tongue when she made contact with it, sliding it down the entire length of my penis and to my testicles and leaving behind a trail of her saliva.
She re-positioned her body to lay down on the bed so she was more comfortable about it. Her legs stretched back a little so she could be a little on her side and her stomach, and then she made her way all the way back up from my testicles to the tip of my penis where she nuzzled just the very top of it. She brought around her hand to the base of my penis so she could control, then sucked hard the tip of it and in releasing she made a sudden soft wet pop of a sound.
When she came back toward it she licked it once, then looked at me, then angled it so she could put half of it into her mouth. I could feel her tongue tasting the bottom-side of it, and when she came back up to the tip of it I watched as she moved her tongue in circular motions around the head.
By now my right hand had been squeezing repeatedly her right buttcheek as she played with my penis with her mouth. And soon my right hand slid across her back and toward the back of her head so I could play with her hair as she played with me.
I had produced so much pre-ejaculate fluid and she had produced so much saliva that the first time she went down and nearly deepthroated me and nearly swallowed whole my penis and then came back up to the tip, she bathed my cock with a small white waterfall and then nearly deepthroated me again.
When she came back up there was no bath, she went back down again to nearly deepthroat me whole and she repeated this process over and over again, bathing my cock every few reiterations. The smooth roughness of her repeated sucking had me moving my hand back down her back and toward her pussy where I began rubbing it. She sucked and sucked and I could hear tiny moans as I rubbed her sensitive areas.
On one irregular deepthroat I took my left hand and placed it on the top of her head and stopped her head from coming back up to the tip. She moved slightly from side to side with my penis completely lodged in her throat, and with a soft forcefulness I began pushing down on her head so I could go deeper into her.
“You like hurting me, don't you?,” I said to her. She began gagging as I continued to force her face further toward my body as I rubbed her vagina. “How does that feel?,” I continued to push her head down until not a single inch of my penis was visible to me and it was all inside of her, suffocating her.
It is always about power. The same power you feel when you've ended a life.
I began to rub her more vigorously and when her vagina contracted on my fingers and she began choking, my penis grew larger with her mouth as I orgasmed and ejaculated into her. I felt myself release at least three times but I must have lost count after the third 128 | HARM BY CHARM
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time, and after the third my left hand must have become useless as she slowly began to overpower me and move her head back upward toward the tip. In doing so, when she was about halfway up my penis some of my semen coursed and rushed out of her mouth and fell onto me, and when she had my penis fully out of her mouth I saw a couple of semen lines connected from my penis to her mouth until she fell back on the bed and they disappeared. Watching her with her eyes closed and her lying on her back on the bed, her mouth was still full of my semen that she very soon gulped and swallowed.
I looked back at my still erect penis and saw how washed it was with her saliva and my semen, and soon I rolled downward the headboard so that my head could land on the pillow. Many years ago Lynne had asked me why it was that I liked her but didn't show it. I never answered her back then, but I did tonight. This was why.
PART #2: CHARM
After last night, we had both been knocked out within five minutes to share dreams.
When I awoke late in the morning she was gone. I went to my fridge and saw that I had next to nothing in it. I exited my apartment but instead of going to Publiks, I went up the stairs and into Lynne's apartment. All of the kids were up and they were sitting around the table eating breakfast, Lynne was in the kitchen still cooking some eggs. Kirby was awake and eating with the children as well and was sometimes even saying some intelligible words. He may have even called Lynne “mama” at one point but I wasn't completely paying attention.
I went into their fridge and got some orange juice and later Lynne sat down next to me on the couch and gave me an egg sandwich. When she looked at me there was a sudden uneasiness to her disposition, and when she sat down to eat next to me she said
“Hello” as if I was a stranger. Neither of us said a single word to eachother after.
When I was done I told her I was going back downstairs and since it was her day off I would have been delighted if she spent it with me. She said “all right” without looking at me, and so I left with a strange feeling in my gut.
She didn't reply to any of my messages the entire day and I also didn't see her for the entire day. I didn't see her until about midnight, which was the usual time she came down here anyway, and when she did come, she came down with her laptop and didn't mind me until I minded her.
“You okay?,” I asked her. “What do you mean?,” she replied. “Nevermind.” I patted her shoulder and then went into the bedroom. I stood there and thought about some things, then went to my own laptop and opened the folder with all of my obsessively organized dreams. I read a few of them and realized that I had a lot of typing mistakes in 129 | HARM BY CHARM
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some of them. I don't fix any of them, because if I fix one, I'll have to fix them all. After about an hour I found one with an interesting dream. I was driving alongside a cliff on a dark winter night.
Suddenly my door opened and Lynne walked in. She closed the door behind her and never took her eyes off of me. She moved off to the side of the door and put her back against the wall and then began playing with the necklace base I had bought her.
Whatever charm she was wearing, if any, I couldn't see it because it was tucked inside her shirt, but she strung her hand all up and down the necklace as she stared into me; some of the feelings I got from her was that she was scared, confident and curious. “Are you going to tell me why you're acting so weird?,” I asked her. She only continued to stare at me and play with the necklace with the same looks of being scared, confident and curious.
When I saw that she wasn't going to answer, I sat more back into my chair and looked at her only with unplayful eyes. Then she stopped playing with the necklace.
“You're not the first person to ever give me flowers. Not the first to ever tell me I'm beautiful. Not the first to ever give me a ring. Not the first to ever make flowers with me.
Not the first to tell me that you love me.” I was waiting for some lame cliche along the lines of “But you will be the last to do all of these things,” but no, she surprised me.
“I could say what good is it to get to be called beautiful by someone who doesn't actually see you, what good is it to be given a ring you didn't earn, what good is it to be fucked by someone who will fuck over their kids, what good is it to be told you are loved but you really aren't... What was the last one? You know what, it doesn't matter. I just want to tell you what you are the first to do. And I'm getting a little bit bothered and embarrassed because this is totally embarrassing and I am a grown woman who had never experienced it until you.” She paused and it gave me time to anticipate what this experience was, but I couldn't think of anything.
“You are the only person who has ever made me orgasm.” She paused again and then started again. “Even when you're gone and I have to masturbate, just thinking of you works.” She laughed a bit embarrassed and began again, “I don't think you understand the gravity of that. I can't speak for all women, but I think I can speak for most, if you can make a woman orgasm you're a god. I don't need flowers and I don't need you to call me beautiful if you can make me feel everything all at once. Love, lust, devotion, safety, protection, connection.” At this point I started getting bothered and embarrassed myself, but it didn't seem like she had any plans to stop.
“And it's not like it's just one time. Sometimes it's over and over. As soon as you go in I start to get little ones until I'm just cumming all over you in waves. My nipples have been hard only under two circumstances. Breastfeeding and you. And sometimes those 130 | HARM BY CHARM
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two circumstances occur simultaneously,” she laughed, “I didn't know they could stick out like that and get that hard.” Still laughing a bit, she continued, “The first time we did it I was afraid that when I orgasmed you would have thought it was weird because I did something wrong or something, or just that something would be weird about it in general because it would have been my first time actually cumming, but you didn't say anything.
That was why I told you that you made me feel like I was a virgin all those years ago. In my deranged little world I basically was and you started my sexual journey. It's why I got so mad when you made that flower butterfly comment. Because if you left me for someone else and she got to experience what I've experienced, I would kill her. I would actually kill her,” she stressed “actually.” “And I know this might scare you, but when you put a woman onto her sexual quest, liberation, revolution, awakening, whatever you want to call it, you belong to her. If I have to be a manipulative little cunt to get what I want, I will because I am not above that. I don't want to be, but if I have to I will. I will do whatever it takes because your penis and your balls, they belong to me now.”
When she started playing with her necklace again and looked at me with royal eyes, I knew that she was done. “I missed you today,” I said. “I missed you, too.” “Are you tired?” “I've been tired ever since last night.”
I was laying on top of her still thinking about all the things she had just told me when I noticed a strange design on her arm. I pointed to it. “Kirby?” “Indeed.” I laughed. After a while I moved down her arm and pressed with my index finger against her right hand.
Though Lynne has no tattoos, I incited a game within her. “What does that tattoo mean?”
She looked at me, then at her hand.
“It's a red heart because I love you.” I told her that I loved her too, then began tracing my way up her arm, across the bridge of her shoulders, and then went downward and pressed against her left hand, taking a long time during my travels to give her time to think.
“It's a diamond because our bond is strong.” I went back up to her shoulder but this time instead of crossing the bridge, I fell down into the pit of her stomach, putting my hand underneath her small shirt, and pressed.
“It's a red apple from our picnic.”
I went up just a little bit higher to her heart between her breasts and pressed.
“It's the number four.” I didn't need any explanation for that one.
I took my hand out from underneath her shirt and jumped to the right side of her neck.
“It's a skull and crossbones.” “Why?” “Because last night one of us could have easily suffocated the other.” I laughed, and when she saw this she laughed too, and we both looked at eachother knowing we were going to do it again tonight.
I slit her neck and appeared at the other side of it and pressed.
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“It's a tornado.” “That you are,” I told her.
I traveled back downward and pressed against her right shoulder.
“It's a unicorn.” … “Because your strange matches my strange.” I nodded my head, then went across the bridge again and pressed her other shoulder.
“It's a priceless coin from our vacation.” I didn't know if she meant that it didn't cost us anything or if it was just an irreplaceable month of her life, but I soon traveled the way back down toward her abdomen, went under and into her sleeping shorts, and then pressed just above her vagina.
“It's a colorless lotus flower.” “What does a lotus represent?” “Super extreme femininity.” “Super extreme femininity, huh? I like the sound of that.” “Yes,” she began imitating a girly girl as she moved her hands and her face, “Super extreme femininity to the max-e-mum,” she laughed.
I went from the frontside to the backside, where I pressed against her lowerback.
“It's a guitar because I love music.” Something was clicking in my mind, so I went just a bit lower and pressed against her right buttock.
“A pair of lips,” she laughed. I mocked her laugh citing the time I kissed her ass.
“You're so funny,” I firmly grabbed the cheek and pushed her toward me. She laughed wildly and reminded me what happened the last time I hurt her there, so I let go and passed her buttcrack to the other cheek and pressed.
“It's a pink butterfly because I love butterflies.” I knew it from the guitar that all of these “tattoos” were also on the Promises brand's website, and I soon surmised that she had browsed the catalog in the day and these were all the ones that she liked and planned to buy.
From her left buttock I slid down to the back of her thigh and pressed.
“It's the planets Jupiter and Venus, for storms and beauty.” That one I didn't remember seeing, but soon I jumped to the back of her other thigh and pressed.
“It's a square-cut emerald.” “It's almost as beautiful as you.” She leaned toward my face and kissed me on the lips, then softly brushed her nose back and forth against mine, saying “Thank you” and giggling. I probably saw this on the website, but this is also pretty common.
I went to her right ankle and pressed.
“It's a snake.” “You like snakes?” “I'm terrified of snakes.” “So why do you have a tattoo of a snake then?” “I don't know, man, just go on to my foot.” I pressed her foot.
“It's a heel.” I know I definitely saw a heel charm on the site. I kissed her foot and then got up off the bed to retrieve my phone, and then went to the Promises brand's website and found the heel charm.
“Does your tattoo happen to look like this heel?,” I threw the phone onto the bed.
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When she saw it she began laughing, “It looks exactly like that.” I got back on the bed and laid beside her. “So you plan to collect all those tattoos?” “Well, at one hundred dollars a set I hope to collect them over a reasonable amount of time.” “I'll make sure when I give you one, once a year,” I stressed the “one” and the “once,” “that it's not any of those so it's more of a surprise.” She nodded her head.
I turned away from her and laid out flat on my back. After a moment she sat up, came toward me and placed one leg over me so she could sit on top of me. She placed both of her hands on my chest and was touchy feelly. Looking straight at me, I took the bottom of her shirt and began to raise it, and eventually when it was raised high enough she took over where I stopped and completely removed her shirt. I watched as her breasts lifted up with the shirt and then dropped back down when it was nearly off. But what I noticed more immediately after was the charm she was wearing with the necklace base.
When she saw that I saw that she was wearing the charm with the red heart and the smiley face at its center, she took notice and said “You should know that a woman like me doesn't smile at a man unless she's interested.”
A woman like her... Lynne's heart doesn't lie with good boys or bad boys. Or even medium boys. It doesn't lie with sad boys or pretty boys or gritty boys. No... Lynne's heart lies with strange boys. And I have always known her psyche because in part my own psyche has female elements, and so I have always known which buttons of hers to push. It's just that Lynne is the only woman who has ever gotten me to play the game.
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Chapter 75
MILLENNIUM CROWN
3:2:8:75
Mark and Marc compete against each other on the estate's golf course. (1994)
THE jubilee of the nineties was celebrated on the final day of that decade. New Year's Eve in 1999 would wrestle in a new millennium of royalty and leave behind a tumultuous decade which included the untimely deaths and murders of Princess Kimberly and Prince Tobias.
In the Summer of 1998, on June fifteenth, Kim was found slain in her lover's apartment which was located in the city. Her lover, Desmond, did not see their attacker but he was able to escape, and while wounded, it was not a mortal wound.
Also at the scene of the attack, in a hallway of the apartment, was Tobias who laid slumped and slain against the wall. Tobias had come to pick up the princess for a community event she was scheduled to attend.
Princess Kimberly, in utter shock and devastation, was later found to be pregnant.
News of the pair's murder was confounding to their kingdom and no one in the country could fathom why anyone would want to murder either of them. Despite the enormous output into the investigation and the enormous outcry for justice, the murders, at the time of the millennium jubilee, still had not been solved.
Despite the lack of details surrounding the murder, many in the kingdom formulated their own theories. One such theory which came to rise to the forefront and dominate all others was the “fourth generation” theory.
A man fascinated by the Flanagan legacy and who was as much a scholar and historian of the family had discovered that the late Queen Heather, in her younger years, was chiefly responsible for the death of another young woman.
Many of the details surrounding the young woman's death have disappeared, and all that was known to any historian of the family was that when the young woman's great, great grandmother, old as dust, found out about her death, she was livid, and being a practitioner of black magic, she placed a curse on Queen Heather and a bounty on the unborn; whoever killed the first female-born child four generations removed from the queen, or her first great, great granddaughter, she would, from the afterlife, grant that person eternal life.
And so it goes without saying, the “fourth generation” theory proposed that someone who knew of the bounty was set on collecting it. The deaths of the prince and princess were so devastating to the world that already just one night before the year 2000, in just two years they had already had films and songs made about them and the impact they had 134 | MILLENNIUM CROWN
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on the world.
To further celebrate their lives, they were posthumously given the title of The Millennium Princess and The Millennium Prince, and for tonight's jubilee two large banners of their photographs hung from the ceilings for all to see.
Almost as shocking as the murders was the first ever royal divorce, which was between Jessica and Thomas in 1994. The separation was nasty and the divorce unsettling, and at one point during it all Thomas proclaimed to the world that he believed the Flanagans were not even capable of crying. In all his time spent living with them, even at funerals, he had not seen one single Flanagan shed a single Flanagan tear.
Because of this, he felt that Jessica should not be awarded custody of their second son, Abraham, because she might raise him to be “as royal-blooded as the rest of them.”
And while there was divorce in '94, there was reunion in '96; Prince Spencer and Princess Elaine had rekindled their love for eachother after more than thirty years of estrangement. Just as Spencer was the dominating force in their withdrawal from eachother, he was also the dominating force in their coming back together, buying her a large diamond ring because in those thirty years of technical infidelity, he had grown tired of women who knew his status but not his heart. And this was not to say that Elaine knew his heart, she did not, but she knew the worth of her marriage to him. This was a pair that, despite being away from each other for three decades, was immeasurably broken. And this was a pair that symbolized the idea that while a woman may know how to love, she did not necessarily know who to love, and that while a man may know who to love, he may not necessarily know how to love.
In 1991, twins Summer and June nearly had a coordinated mental breakdown. During the year 1970, the two were fixated on a room that perhaps only existed in their twin minds, but in 1991, it was no longer a room that occupied their minds but a man. The twins spoke of this man to other royal family members but not one family member could recall him. They spoke of the man coming to every birthday party, to every jubilee up until 1990, to every public family affair concerning the Flanagans. And this was all perplexing, because the twins could draw up intimate details and idiosyncrasies of the man but no one else of the Flanagan line could even recall anything about him or even his existence.
The twins were so baffled by this account of the man and even the lost room that in 1992 they had their brains examined, but as confounding as the mystery man and the mystery room, they found nothing.
In 1999, a rivalry just over half of a century old had finally climaxed. Though Brittany and Cassandra had passed, their egos lived on in their sons who were collectively known as the Leons. Ironically, it was during this year's Halloween party that 135 | MILLENNIUM CROWN
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the two finally fought eachother, just as their mothers did more than fifty Halloweens ago. They fought over the idea of whose wife was prettier, Erica or Courtney.
Reminiscent of that fight many years ago, there was no clear winner between the two Leons. The fight went blow for blow and no one tried to stop it as they all felt it was something that needed to happen. Erica and Courtney watched as their husbands did battle, each sitting with their child, Walter and Anna, respectively, and cheering on their beloved. And the sound of these cheers were nothing new to the ears of Leonel or Leonardo, they were the same sounds they had heard all of their life from another set of women.
The king had died in 1997. In the same year, with the rise of the internet and cellular phones, everyone in the world had been made aware of Brian II's passing in a couple days. Queen Minor Leah had taken his death hard, though not because of his actual death but because her status as Queen would be relegated to Queen Minor. King Brian III at first reluctantly took on the role of the new king, but soon and in very Flanagan fashion, he saw the delights that came with the abuse of power. And so too did his partner in royalty, Queen Sophia, and their three children at the time, Prince Matthew, Prince Tobias and Princess Kimberly.
Cousins Anastasia and Kevin were as strange as their twin mothers. When they were born, they were both born with a birthmark that was in the same place on their bodies, but on mirroring sides. And even stranger than the location of the birthmarks was the fact that Anastasia's birthmark resembled the country of Georgia, and Kevin's birthmark resembled the state of Georgia. It took years until Vivian made this discovery and told them both of how cool she thought it was. This knowledge brought the cousins closer, so close that they eventually developed an incestuous relationship and is ongoing even now in their early twenties.
The relationship started in 1995, halfway through the millennium decade, after many times of Anastasia showing Kevin her birthmark and him touching it. And it is a relationship kept so secret that no Flanagan has ever thought twice about it.
The other pair of cousins from the same twin mothers were not attached at the hip, but still there was something peculiar about them both that every Flanagan noticed, and the theory was that because they were both born under a Super Blood Moon, that is Sonya and Edward, they were thought to be inherently evil. Though half the age of their older siblings, the signs were there and showed early on.
In 1993, Sonya was found on the estate after being lost for an hour, playing with a dead squirrel and to this day, it is unknown whether she had killed it or only found it dead. In the same year but many months later during the winter, Edward had been disciplined for throwing one of the family cats into the fireplace. Though the cat was able 136 | MILLENNIUM CROWN
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to escape with only minor burns, it lived a difficult life until its eventual demise one month ago in November.
These two incidents were not isolated, there were various incidents between the pair that involved some type of animal abuse. And while it seemed to stem from the nature of their own evil being, this was not necessarily the case, as their actions were driven by Trevor, who at the time still went by Slant and showed the two children how to torture animals.
K and C stood just before the large banners of Princess Kimberly and Prince Tobias, drinking their martinis and speaking of the fact that these two were now immortal royalty. Through their deaths and with jealous intent, they spoke about how they themselves will one day be forgotten, but how the prince and princess will be remembered forever.
Coming up next to them with her own alcoholic beverage was Virginia, who was not a Flanagan in her own right but had been taken in by them because they thought they might be able to use her to seem more relatable in the public eye.
“Legendary,” she said to the men as she stared at Kim's banner, “Simply legendary.”
Next to join them in admiring the legacy were Jeffrey and Shelly.
“What do you get when you cross a tragedy with royalty?,” Shelly asked the others.
When they didn't answer, she gave them the answer, “Immortality.” They all laughed.
“A prince and a princess walk into a bar. Bartender sees them and puts a handgun right in front of them. Says to them, 'One bullet, whoever commits suicide will be known forever.' They start fighting over it, prince overpowers the princess and then puts the gun to his head. 'Wait!,' the princess shouts. She slowly walks over to him and puts her head next to his, and then he pulls the trigger and they both drop to the ground instantly.
Bartender walks over to their dead bodies and looks down at them, then says, 'Gun's gonna be worth a fortune.'” Everyone was roaring with laughter at Jeff's joke, so much so that it brought over Frederick and Fedora.
Followed by Fedora, who was wearing a fedora, was her husband, Brett, who wanted in on the joke. Followed by Frederick was his wife, Elizabeth, who had the distinctive taste of sleep in her eyes from spending over an hour putting their children, John and Sandy, to sleep.
Once the joke was retold, so was the one that preceded it, and what succeeded these jokes were fresh new jokes that concerned the late Millennium Prince and Princess. And no one seemed to stop them or even care of stopping them.
Across the room and away from all the laughter and closer to the dancing was George and Tiffany and their infant son Daniel. Instead of laughter there was crying in this area.
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crying Daniel down.
When Tiffany could no longer bare the crying of her son, she walked away and told George and Monica that she was going to go outside to smoke.
Monica had never liked Tiffany. Monica didn't like anyone, for that matter, and as a judgment of Tiffany she had told many that she herself lived in a manner that whatever Tiffany did, she did the opposite. “Some people are guides that way,” Monica told Fedora in 1998.
An hour later was an hour closer to a new year and a new millennium. With just ten minutes left in the old millennium, all of the Flanagans and their guests met in one of the grandest rooms in the palace, one in which they could watch the ball drop from the ceiling. And with every passing minute King Brian III paid close attention to another party that was currently on-going in another monarchy. It was that of King Anthony's New Year's Eve party, and one of the headlines entering the month of December was which monarchy would have the larger turnout.
The victors, and by a landslide, were the Flanagans. The television broadcasters made sure to make note of this fact as their cameras panned and zoomed throughout the ceremony and you could see the hundreds of people who attended the jubilee.
When there were only ten seconds left in the old millennium every one began counting down to the new one. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five... Four... Three...
Two...
The counting ended at two when suddenly the lights went out and there was only complete darkness. Confused, there was a mild panic in the grandly decorated room.
Then there was a pop, and a flash and a sizzle. By the time anyone was aware that an electrical unit had exploded, giant flames attached themselves to Princess Kimberly's banner and set it ablaze.
The sight was bizarre and haunting. For a few more brief moments, in total darkness the only light visible came from the flames that also made the princess's giant face slightly visible as if a specter come to judge them all and the works they had done on Earth. A darkly glowing face above them all adorned with a crown of emeralds.
And then the power was restored. Several people scurried for a fire extinguishing unit and when Fedora found one, she went up toward the banner and took out the flames.
Already they had all forgotten they had just entered a new millennium. But quite frankly, to the Flanagans, they did not understand the concept of time. Royalty was and is eternity. Their destiny was determined before all creation and will remain so after it. In their collected psychosphere, seasons did not change, years did not go by and days were not numbered. And in their fragile minds this, too, they did not understand; that someone must be born a king's son, and someone must be born a peasant's.
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Vivian, attempting to flee the scene of the crime, runs into Prince Tobias and shoots him in the forehead. (1998)
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Chapter 76
MYTHOLOGY COMPLEX
3:2:8:76
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Prologue
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The division between God and Satan spawned an angel and a demon. What was once united had come apart into two in the form of a man and a woman, and this duality was followed by others; love and hate, light and dark and good and evil. Despite these separations, the two would eventually and briefly be reunited in the human realm where they would experience all of these dualities together. But in his observation, the demon would come to learn that the angel had seven different layers of wings.
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Year 1
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There is something distinct about the scent of an angel It is in a way designed for the senses of a demon
So in our period in the human realm it did not take me long to find her And if the perfume she had on was for me to smell from galaxies away Then the dress and the make-up she had on was for me to see up close As I approached her she turned around, as if sensing my soul or presence And we locked eyes for the very first time in our centuries of existence
"You finally found me," she said, soothing my ears into dominion She knew the oldest trick in the universe because she was the universe herself In her biology she held information that was millions of years old She understood that being sensible is what made her sensual And she gave the conqueror within me the sensations needed to dominate Driven by desire I took her to the crescent moon that sits in the west I threw her face first onto the bed and with force removed her dress Her one hand clenched the bed sheet and the other the bed post And in an instant she made sounds as I took what I desired most But in the aftermath, I heard her laugh, and the meaning of this could be taken broadly But I came to see that she had dominated my desires as much as I did her body 140 | MYTHOLOGY COMPLEX
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Year 2
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