Slipstream – SHORT STORY

Something a bit different, inspired (through osmosis) from many wonderful writers on WordPress.

      CAUGHT IN A slipstream – no! – held; trapped; of my own volition, or, was it a testament to the debatability of free will? Fragments of her broke off that only I saw, her chrome radiance shed like rust in the gentle breeze sticking to my lungs, finding a way to get inside me without needle or cut of skin. Intoxicated in the late morning like a seasoned drunkard, I followed, our paths intertwined and mapped for our pavement shaking journey.

Her legs carried more than toned flesh. They spoke of road signs, of direction and purpose, each feminine stride eating concrete, leaving apocalyptic dust behind. Did she realise? She was changing the landscape, the very city moulded to her essence.

Who else was tuned in? I saw none other. I saw, only her. Apocalypto, a woman of the ages shedding a perfume concocted in archetypes, stirred by the genes of ancestors since Africa. Each slab she touched was an ivory key, like dog music, played at a frequency only I could hear. Dun, dun, dun. Vibrant bass, melodious notes ascending in tornados of my imagining; she could play an untuned piano in a hurricane and make it sound like the birth of jazz.

When her head turned, I knew she knew, yet she hadn’t looked before. No shiny surfaces had given away my innocent pursuit in a reflection capable of distorting my true image, yet they spoke of the truth, of a monster within each of us. She’d danced with the devil too. She’d let him buy her a shot and burnt her hands on the glass, her lips on the fire.

Metronome footsteps, I checked and it was true. Mine were matched. And still I followed like a black wolf cast from the pack, a different cloth, a lonelier howl, but she would hear it through the tinkling piano, bass kicks and city soundtrack. Maybe.

Basking in the nuclear fallout, I welcomed the wintry dust breathing it in through my skin, these tattoos never meant to last, inkless, invisible, what’s a half life without another to make it indivisible? My eyes melted into liquid gold, the richest I’d ever been visually, monochrome – monogold – if only she saw the glints in them. And just like that, she turned, destroying the walls and pavement of her surrounds on a different street. Impermanent addiction and rehab all in one. It wasn’t meant to be. Or she or I never made it so.