(His insidious letter to her)
You pull up in your car.
Nobody knows that this body of water even exists. Maybe the dogwalkers, the poets, the musicians, the lost people who are on their way to or from heaven.
You look around to make sure nobody is looking at you. Even though it is far too early in the morning for this sort of thing, you get out of the car wearing only that flowing white dress. No underwear, no shoes, nothing in your hair.
Leave your car unlocked. Leave your shoes on the windshield.
You walk down the path, bear to the left when you get to the ash tree. Follow the slightly cleared path through the leaves until you get to the pine barren.
Just beyond it, you find the pond. There is a vernal pool to your left, we won’t bother with that. All the bits of cells inside are very delicate and should not be woken up.
But you MUST awaken the spirits in Fairyland.
There is moss growing on the trees. Leaves are always at the water’s edge. The ground is squishy, difficult to walk in, even. You take your delicate white skinned toes and go forth. One step at a time. Be a fairy.
If you enter at just the right spot, you should be able to walk on water. Don’t try this, the trunk of a former tree will look as if it could support your weight. Not true. It is too covered in slime, in single celled moss and algae. It repells everyone who tries to use it as a bridge. Don’t be fooled. (So many things in life are A Trick)
I know you think you know what I’m going to write next. That beautiful white dress of yours is going to seem perfect to pull off. But please, don’t take off your dress this time.
slowly and carefully, make your way into the water and the mud. You might sink, you might slide, you may trip, keep going. Depending on the time of year, you might find more mud than water.
It’s entirely possible that the pond will be ALL mud. That is fine with me, and you MJUST understand how perfect that will be for you as well. Easy to swim across water, but if you swim across the earth, then most certainly, you will be a fairy yourself.
Keep your white dress on. You will be the epitome of purity at the edge; wait for a full minute on the shore. Stop yourself. Close your eyes. Feel me watching you.
I can’t tell you how much I have imagined that moment. You on the brink of your own innocence. Your pure white spirit. Imagine me watching you. Imagine that I can you through the glosser fabric. Imagine my Xray vision, imagine the water dissolving the dress. Imagine the mud painting you in earth.
Wade knee-deep int he mud, slowly, please go slowly. Touch the water, bring it to yourself, bring it to your bosom. Wet yourself. Let me see you as you reveal every contour, Your neck and shoulder blades, your nipples, your belly. Caress yourself with the water, with the lilypads, Wade in deeper.
You’ll feel the pull and suck of the mud, of the slime, but that is merely the earth wanting to claim you back unto itself. LEt it pull you down, Fall into it as if you are falling into the arms of your lovers. Each flower, each branch, every stem is reaching out for you.
Reach out for them, grab onto their hands, they are being their natural gallant selves, they want to escort you along trecherous boundaries, they want to help you ascend and descend the staircases to heaven (and hell).
I would hold your hand if I could.
Feel me watching you from a tree in the close distance. I will blow wind at you, you may rip open your dress if you want, feel my caresses, feel my breath on your skin. Feel my breath on your breasts.
Lean down into the water. Allow the lilies to kiss and suckle at your breasts. Reach down into the stamen and pollinate them with your nipples. Force yourself into them, force them against you. Penetrate, peel, prick, lick, inseminate yourself, insinuate yourself. Caress yourself with their vitality.
This is what the fairies do, they ensure the flowers in the world. The bees cannot do it all.
Kiss the flowers as they touch your face.
Are your breasts soaked now? Is your skin washed with mud? Go further. Sink to your knees. Submerge yourself in the water. Allow your whole body to drown, but keep your head above water. Breathe with your pores, breathe the water like the mermaid you are.
I shall be watching you in your rituals. In my tree, in my treehouse, in my treehouse of the mind. In my mind. Report back, my love. Send me your thoughts, send me the sensations between your legs. Show to me your most intimate organs of reproduction. How do fairies recreate themselves? How can the world create another you?
If only I could allow my own holiest parts to come into contact with yours, my love. If only. If only we could inhabit the same glorious pond, comingle our spirits. Commingle our bodies. If I could hold every part of you, kiss every centimeter. Allow every drop of pollen to cover you. Spread it against your skin like mud. Like holy mud that blesses and washes clean whatever it touches.
Swim in this wet earth, my love. Crawl, spin, swim in this mud, Pull yourself across from one side to the next.
As if I were there, waiting for you on the other side.
Her mind/ as crafted by HIS mind
(You don’t know what to think, is this erotic-dirty-holy creed to be believed? You should run from this maniac. You should close the book, the door, the computer, your mind to this crazy man.
But this is all that you have ever known of fairies. And holy mud. And a holy mind.
In your world of glass and steel and stone, you have no man like this. You have no knowledge of humans who think beyond the literal.
(HERE he drops some identifying detail of her work life)
I saw you in that red dress yesterday. I know that spot that you discovered after lunch. A speck of your salad dressing landed on your white blouse. You scrubbed and scrubbed until it was nearly transparent. And sadly, the spot you focused on was too high up to reveal anything of your flesh.
Let me kiss that spot nearest to your neck. And let me move down. And up.
Let me kiss those lips of yours. Up and down. Top and nether.
==
She was surprised to see this. To realize the powers he still held over her. To read this at her computer terminal terrified her. She shut it down immediately. And then stared straight ahead in thought.
“What’s up? Did you contact the team in Bangalore yet?”
She nearly had a heart attack when he tapped on the metal shelf of her cubicle. The Suit was always coming too close. Always breathing down her neck. She needed to escape.
“I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well,”
He let her rise and watched in chauvanistic disbelief at yet another manifestation of moody women in their pre-menstrual moments. His next hire must be a robot.
She arrived inside a stall and amid the clicking of her coworkers’ heels on the tiled floor, she lifted up her pencil skirt and touched herself the way he had all those years ago. Her enitre body was blushing with a hidden desire to do everything she had been trying to avoid.
Don’t love your brother.
Don’t love the dead.
Don’t imagine things that can’t come true.
Don’t masterbate at work.
She knew how to be quiet. To hush even her breath as she came closer to climax. As easy as going to the bathroom.
The time her uncle came home to find them in the closet.
The time her uncle hid her in the closet when her brother came home.
What do you call it when you want it? Age 14:rape, age 17: borderline consent, age 40: pity and lost chances
What do you call it when you never stop wanting it?
Age 14: an unwise decision, age 17: a bad habit, age 40: a hangup, psychological damage
She knew the feeling of having a hand over her mouth. Her lips, her mouth occupied against a hand, against flesh. Licking it, tasting nervousness on familiar skin. The tension of discovery.
==
“Are you comfortable?”
I’m stiff but not uncomfortable.
Your safe word?
You know it
Lily pad
Lily pad.
Your voice has changed.
All these many years, I haven’t been doing a lot of talking
No, I mean from yesterday to today. Did you have a cold yesterday? Or do you have one now?
(He coughed, trying to remember how he had held his voice. What was the exact intonation of the crazy man he was trying to portray? Or at least, what had he done yesterday?)
Yes, a cold. (fake cough, cough)
She smiled underneath her blindfold.// Hard to tell, but it seemed genuine, the crinkles seemed to emerge from beneath the blindfold.
Well, do whatever you’d like to me, but please, if you are getting sick, don’t breathe on me.
With that they both laughed.
Maybe she was laughing at him for being such a terrible actor. It didn’t seem to matter anymore somehow.
Why did she seem so relaxed? Was it because she knew or because she didn’t know? Did she like the imposter, or did she like the fantasy of bringing her brother back to life?
==
When he had stumbled upon the article (Swimmer Lost In River: Feared Drowned), her name had only come up as a survivor. No mention was made in the article of any kind fo mental illness directly. Only the line, “The young swimmer was well known for his daring feats, including saving a grandmother from a burning house only months earlier. A proper search revealed much more, however.
An arrest record. Attempted suicide (by overdose?). Drugs.
