White Feather by Carla Manzoni
‘It tickles.’
‘What?’ He grunts.
‘My nose, it tickles.’ I sniff lightly. Mmmmm… I stretch and turn into the warm smell of him and smile. I think I may still be dreaming and I drift away with his hand cupped around my breast.
Shit, my mother is frowning at me. She is too near, too angry, but I can’t move.
‘The Ides of March? That’s when you want to marry? Seriously? I think that’s creepy.’ Her voice is so very close to my ear. It is tickling, irritating, confusing. I turn again and swat at my ear. The sheet is wrapped around my leg. No, not the sheet, his leg. Hmmm… I grin without opening my eyes and slide my hand behind me to touch… and I am drifting again.
“…I think I may still be dreaming and I drift away with his hand cupped around my breast…”
________________
I am in a club, dancing. The music is dark and slow and I like it. I can feel a man behind me, his arm is around my waist and we are moving together. Yes, that feels right but there are so many people here! I look down. What the hell am I wearing? A white, feathered and sequined, burlesque corset? Why isn’t anyone staring? I look ridiculous! It’s uncomfortable also. Fucking tight.
The people in the club are my friends now. O, okay. I am smiling at them and they are smiling back and my dance partner and I are walking toward the stage but this damned corset is annoying. I wriggle my chest and waist to make room to breathe. I take a deep breath in and put my hand to my heart but there is already a hand there. His hand. I relax and sigh and roll on to my back. He moans gently next to me. I crack an eye to see the blurry form in my bed and touch a fingertip to where I assume his lips are. He kisses my finger and throws a leg back over mine. His wrist rests heavily across my waist.
How I love the sea! I am drifting on my back off the coast of Gozo in Ramla Bay. Easy for me to recognise from the Moorish ruins I see in my peripheral vision. It’s warm. Midday, I think. I can smell the sea and sun coming together. Sweaty, lusty beings. I float there, in the mating of gods and smile my gratitude. Peaceful.
Now someone is calling my name from the shore. I look over, lazily, and see my fiancé. He is quite far and I try to right myself in the water to swim to him but there is something round my waist. I am being pulled farther from the shore and the, now visible, tentacle with testicles that is attached to my waist is hurting me! I thrash against it with all my inadequate strength.
‘Sh, sh, sh, sh, shhhhh,’ he whispers into my ear and my core muscles relax in response. I still feel something on my stomach. I brush it away. It tickles when it slips over my side.
I flip my pillow over to the cold side and sigh into it.
My body is getting very warm and I realize it is because I am near a volcano. I wander the rim for a bit and then look away, to the green island around me. I am very still. I can feel the heat at my back but I can’t move. I can only imagine the beast at my back, the inevitable and unstoppable monster that craves me and pursues me, rising from the very earth. It’s only a matter of moments. I stop breathing.
‘Hey,’ my lover says gently. ‘You stopped breathing, girl!’
I shake my head and look up.
He is next to me, cutting lines of soft cocaine. My mobile is ringing.
‘You better get that, doll,’ he says. ‘It’s probably your fiancé. I think your wedding’s in less than two hours.’
I sit up to take the mirror from him and a white pillow feather falls from my bed to the floor.
© 2010, Metazen. All rights reserved.
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If I could move through the soft spots of spaces of dream, I would like to do so using one of your white feathers to touch the corners that would dissolve so instantly….