Morgue

by Galloway

He'd never really been comfortable with women. The warm, wet redness of their mouths when they laughed, the warm, wet redness of their sex, open and ready to devour him whole. He had always imagined penetration as a preclude to his own dismemberment, the rush of ecstasy then the clamp of teeth, hard and rending around his member, sawing through tissue, the spurt of blood and semen and death winding her black sheet over his face as he cries out her name. No, he had never been comfortable with women.

In fact, he had never really been comfortable at all with the living. He never really knew what to say to people, making casual conversation over coffee in the morning before catching the bus to work. They all seemed like sharks, sharp teeth and cold flat eyes, wide carnivorous grins over mugs of steaming blackness like the ocean in midwinter at midnight. He would smile and smile and smile and sip bitter black heat in the mornings and get on the bus with his heart pounding, knowing in his heart that the women with their red lipsticked mouths wanted nothing more than to rend the flesh from his bones in slick bloody mouthfuls. Their sharp white teeth scraping along the sides of his hardening member in the few minutes between departure for and arrival at work. Often he would sit in his seat, eyes closed, mouth open gasping for breath imagining their hot, sweet tongues over him, then starting out of his reverie when he could feel their teeth severing his penis from his body: only the warm dampness inside his trousers was never the blood he imagined. The embarrassment as he closed his coat over the spreading stain, and waiting patiently for his stop to be called.

No, his work was full of the safe ones, the silent ones, chests stilled of all motion: no breath, no heartbeat. Their eyes half opened in a slow and sensual gaze, lips slack, and opened awaiting his kisses. Their limbs were often frozen at first, but they would always relax under his ministrations, the cool lips of the Y incision would always soften and grow damp under his touch. One day, she came into his life, her long hair damp and full of kelp, veiling her half lidded eyes, watching his every movement, her soft limbs beckoning him near. Her mouth half open, the wet pinkness of her tongue half protruding between her pearly teeth, beckoning him for a kiss. Her taste of salt and the soft muskiness that precedes decay. His hands sunk in the loosening folds of her hair, her scalp sliding across her skull, yielding infinitely to his touch.

No one else liked to be alone with the dead besides him. He was comfortable in their silent presence, their yielding personalities. Among them he was the king in his solitary kingdom, and the raven-haired girl with kelp-riddled hair was his queen. Too bad that their time together would be so limited. Their first night together he filled the basin with warm, soapy water and bathed the last of the sea scum from her supple and yielding form. He would lift her languid arms and bathe them with the fragrant water, watching the damp bubbles slide along the soft tissues of her under arms and pool in her armpit, dampening the bit of stubble darkening them. Her hands were soft in his, the fingers not resisting his touch. He would squeeze her palm in his hand and watch the fingertips curl closer to his hand. Then he would lift her fingers to his mouth and suck on them, one by one, feeling the cuticles loosen over the hardness of the nail. The index finger almost seemed to flex in his mouth, and as his tongue laved over the end of it the nail lifted up and separated, coming loose in his mouth: she was giving herself to him, telling him how much she wanted him in the only way the dead can tell the living.

The next night, after they had autopsied her, he came back to his queen, lying in silent repose on the steel table. Her long torso was split by the thick Y shaped incision, closed roughly with heavy black thread, heavy breasts falling softly to the sides of her chest on either side of the split of her skin, her navel like an exclamation point at the end of the long cut, pointing the way to the soft mass of her black pubic hair. He stroked the raised lips of the open wound, so pale and inviting, so unlike the dormant mouth between her legs. He slid his fingers along the dry and soft skin between her thighs, the rough scrape of her hair over his fingers. So uncomfortable for her in her languor. Dipping his head to her crotch, he presses his mouth to the soft lips and slides his tongue between the dry folds of skin, feeling them become slick and pliant under his ministrations. How she must adore him in response to his care for her! See how her soft limbs fall open at his touch? Her mouth soft and slack like a woman in ecstasy, her fingers soft and open, she doesn't resist him, or try to reposition his hands as he spreads her legs wide, her knees touching her collarbones, ankles over his shoulders.

He wants to warm her inside, ease the cold chill that must make her so uncomfortable, like the seaweed caught in her long hair. His stiff fingers fumble with the buttons of his fly, releasing his hardness to try to warm the chill that has overtaken this beautiful creature. She is only awaiting his touch to truly live; her pliant body speaks volumes of her devotion to his strength. Feel how her soft limbs drape over him, their heavy weight where he places them, over his shoulders, arms pinioned behind her back, the soft lips between her legs black and disgorged with the blood settled there by gravity, the cool, supple flesh yielding to him. Her cool sheath dry and rasping softly against his penis as he moves within her, her head dropping back, jaw stretching open, hair dripping on the floor.

His hand probes the lips of the long wound splitting her torso, the rough stitches holding the folds of flesh and muscle closed. So much like the soft and pliant skin between her thighs, glistening in the fluorescents with blood and spilt juices. Her cool mouth is open and tender under his, her soft tongue a flaccid mass yielding to his kisses as his fingers spread the incision wider. With the soft popping of the black thread holding it closed, he can feel how much she desires him: even from beyond this world she is opening herself to him like some overblown orchid in a hothouse. The soft folds are cool and damp and sweet as summer melon. She is ultimately yielding to him as he penetrates into her very core, the incision over her pubis opening and gaping like a living woman beneath him, but subtly different: she only moves in response to his touch. Masterful and powerful over her, he can feel her very intestines move to accommodate his erection, the soft pulpy liver caressing the head like a slavish and obedient tongue, the coil of bowel tightening over the shaft like cold phantom fingers around him. God! How he wants to warm her with his passion, she is so complacent and obedient to his every whim, her legs stretched back beyond the limits of the bones of her pelvis, abdomen spread open, slick and wet and cool waiting the hot bath of his discharge into her very core.

No, he has never been comfortable among the breathing women who otherwise populate the world: too many demands, too much risk... At night he can only dream of her, the black hair strung with kelp, half open eyes watching him, legs wide and yielding, waiting to be fulfilled.

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About myself: What do you really want to know about a former Catholic schoolgirl who writes stories like this? What flavor of ice cream that I like? I read de Sade and giggle, I read the paper and weep. You figure it out.

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Morgue © 2002 by Galloway