The Smoky City

Once upon a time in a smoky
city a woman lay on her bed and
imagined someone else lying next to her.
It was an old fantasy, worn in soft
and familiar as her cotton sheets.
She began each night by lying at the
far edge of her empty double bed, and
slowly, tantalizingly slowly scootched closer and
closer towards the wall. Just as she
was about to roll against it a
pair of arms would wrap around her waist,
hands crossed possessively over her
chest and a hot tongue furrow up
the back of her neck. She imagined
this over and over, night after night,
year after year. Over time she had been
with enough men to have a realistic
expectation of what would come next,
these experiences gathered in other’s beds,
not hers. Hers was reserved as an altar, a
shrine, dedicated to the one she loved.
One night in August, as she
re-enacted this ritual, half-asleep, she
began to wonder why she bothered. It
was cold comfort, an imaginary body
with a face she never saw.
She sighed and rolled closer to dreams,
her propped open window admitting clove
smoke and British love songs from the student’s
apartment below hers. The music stole
into her half-asleep musings, into the
background of her fantasy. She drifted another
millimeter towards the wall and felt
something firm and hard against her back.
A pair of arms wrapped firm
and tightly muscled around her waist, a
pair of long white hands settled
possessively over her chest. A hot tongue
furrowed up the nape of her neck.
She did not awake fully until she felt
sharp teeth scraping just under her jaw bone.
Fear turned solid in her throat,
trapping her screams. She dripped with
her blood from human to fantasy, dying
in consummate ultimate union. Longing
made liquid fear and flesh. Worse
things can happen to those who dare to
wish in the smoky city.