Her hands were lifting him up with terrifying strength, setting him back on the bed with the same ease and regretful care a child might show a beloved toy mistreated during a tantrum.
“It hurts being misunderstood, and unwanted; but worse of all, Michael, it hurts being feared.”
The Woman With No Art was smoothing back his hair with gentle fingers.
“No-one loves what they fear, and I so need to be loved.”
The Man Who Had Everything lay very still, as the woman gently removed his soiled clothing. When she moved, lifted him to ease off his shirt, a great pain took hold of him, and he screamed like a frightened child. Somewhere inside, something vital was broken, and he cried. Tears ran down his face, clear liquid spewed out from his nostrils, and dripped into his opened mouth.
She hushed him, with the gentle tones of a mother. She stripped off his pants and his underwear, and wiped him clean of his piss as tenderly as she might an infant. He watched her as if from a great distance.
Soon he lay as naked and as blameless as a baby. She stood over him, stretched out her hands over his supine form, and again that breeze lifted at hair, but this time that same air teased at his flesh.
A ripple of change moved through him, as though he was as mutable as water, as if in his body some odd tide rose and fell at her command.
She, The Woman With No Art was a Moon, and he felt the fierce pull of her will in every particle of himself, in every part of his anatomy.
She was changing him.
"What are you doing? What do you do to me?"
"I am healing you. Or rather, fixing you," she smiled, "You were not ill, you were broken."
"YOU broke me!" The Man Who Had Everything was horrified to hear the petulant tones coming out of his mouth. A lifetime of bad habits could apparently not be healed by a few minutes of terror. Healed, or was it fixed? What ever she was doing, he was becoming more than he had been before. An exultant power rose in him and threatened to overflow in a triumphant shout.
He heard her joyous laughter "Wake, Michael, be glad, or mad as the will takes you. One thing you will never be again is the man you were before. You belong to me. Now you are mine, my very own."
The Man Who Had Everything - buffeted by the inner surges of some strange fluid magic surging in his veins - rose up and grasped the woman in his arms.
“What have you done? What have I become?”
She stood quite unresisting between his grasping hands.
“As you see me, so shall you be, for a time.”
“I don’t understand. Explain, speak plain”
“Why, I have infused your blood and flesh and brain with some small measure of a Fae’s treasured power.”
“Your power?” The Man Who Had Everything stared at her in astonishment, “You have yielded power? To me?”
“A small measure only, and only for a little while.”
“How little and for how long?”
“The power of glamour, the power of forcing fate; that in a small measure is yours. You may take the very world by storm…”
“So I could go now, go back and be whatever I wanted? Have anything I desired?”
The woman smiled: “Yes. You could go back, of course you could. Did you think I’d imprison you, Michael? How could I? Is not the Rule of Truth and Free-Will the one absolute for all Gods, Demi-Gods and Men?”
The Man Who Had Everything laughed in delight. “I can go back…Take the world by storm…Have everything I lacked before!”
The Woman With No Art smiled her odd feline smile.
“Oh yes…But do you think you can decide, or find that one missing speck you lacked and left you bereft of true desire?”
She slid one long taloned finger down his arm.
“Tell me Michael, what power or wanting can fire up the furnace of the avidity for life, once absolute satiation has drowned that flame?”
The Man Who Had Everything laughed exultant and raised his hands to watch the flickers of fitful fire lighting his fingertips.
"Desire...Oh Mia! Desire! Have you been so long alive that your senses are dead?"
"No Michael, I have bled out my heart on a hundred true loves, watched children age and die before my eyes. I am as alive to love and pain as I ever was; and the only true hunger that survives and sustains is the need to see mirrored in another soul that very precious spark, and to hold in your arms someone from whom you can at least dream nothing in this life can part."
"Love? You have such power and you dream of love."
The Woman With No Art tilted her head in that odd feline cant: "Go out Michael and seek the truth. Or rather, go in. Go into yourself now. Tell me why you - who had everything - were so unsatisfied."
"Because...That's easy! Because..." The Man Who Had Everything stopped. "I cannot remember why. I just know whatever I did get did not satisfy."
"Look at me...Look. I am in myself the greatest mystery you will ever see. And do you know why?"
"You are Fae, immortal, magical."
Mia laughed softly and moved closer, placing a gentle hand over his chest.
"Nay Michael...none of that. Simply, I am the woman who will love you so completely that you will not survive. I am the woman who will take your soul apart, and devour your heart."
She moved closer and there was nothing in the world but the dizzy scent of her perfume, her lips, her eyes. Mesmerized the Man Who Had Everything watched her move closer; felt the first burning touch of her mouth, sweet and gentle as a child's. Oh such a kiss he'd not had since he was twelve and had kissed Betty Larsten behind the chapel after Sunday School Class. Her mouth...There was nothing left in the world but her mouth, and the Man who had Everything lost himself in that kiss; in that one kiss.
And in that moment was his heart set alight: a conflagration of such passion, such desire; that his new magical flesh caught fire. The woman clasped him closer, his flaming frame clutched to her flesh; absorbing him, devouring each spark, leaving to the very end his incandescent heart.
It ended, as do all such feasts, with a nostalgic sigh.
The woman licked one last flicker of passion from her forefinger and smiled. "Sweet Michael, such a flame! So bright! Oh I will love you so very, very much; such a perfect complete love: from me you will never, ever part."
Somewhere in her spasmed an ache like a distant memory; something that had once been a man alive and aware of himself.
The Woman With No Heart smiled: "Hush now, Michael, be at ease. This eager unsatisfied heart of yours will last me a long, long time..."
The End
If you enjoyed this story look for
"MANscapes - Journey into Light"
by
Manuela Cardiga
"All women - from the most exquisite beauty to the plainest drab - want to believe in the Cinderella myth. Even the harsh-faced and sour-hearted, somewhere deep in their night-time struggles with their bitterest reality, dare to dream some Prince could still see past the dense veil of unkind nature and time, to the delicate, frail-hearted beauty within."
But Clara wasn't Cinderella, waiting for her Prince, she was Sleeping Beauty poisoned by a deadly kiss. After 24 years Clara awakens from a living nightmare of abuse and discovers her life unfolding miraculously; but the true miracle is her own blossoming: the maturing of a frightened abused girl into a strong woman capable of love, laughter and joy. In Tahiti's exotic landscape Clara finds her way from darkness to incandescent light, embracing in herself the strength of choice, and the power of decision. MANscapes is a powerful parable of hope and renewal, a story of one woman's discovery of herself and her journey into love.
Read the Excerpt
Excerpt from “MANscapes Journey into Light”
Sylvine carefully inserted the eye-dropper in the struggling bird’s tiny beak. Her whole attention apparently focused on the fragile scrap of life trembling in her fist. “Do you love him?” she asked. “My grandson, I mean.”
Clara smiled - “Winston! Why yes,
of course! I adore him.”
“I mean, are you in love with him?” The bird contorted itself almost to breaking point in its struggle to free itself from Sylvine’s gentle grasp.
Clara gasped for breath as an intense flash of embarrassed heat seared her chest. “NO! No.”
“How do you know?” Sylvine opened her hand. For one dazed moment the bird sat in her palm, than leaped away in a flutter of turquoise iridescence.
“Because it doesn’t hurt, because I’m not afraid.”
Sylvine tilted her head to look at her, her dark eyes bright. “Do you think you know what love is, Clara? Because I don’t. Even to this day, I cannot explain, why for that one moment when you are suspended - and are entirely there and completely sane – that one moment just before…Did you know that it feels exactly the same? So you cannot tell if your heart is about to be broken or healed of all its pain.”
Look for
"MANscapes - Journey into Light"
by Manuela Cardiga
Get it at a Bookstore near you!
or online as an e-book or Paperback!
For even more…Access Manuela´s Ink-Blot Blog-Spot!
https://manuelasinkspotblog.blogspot.pt/2014/02/manscapes-journey-into-light-by-manuela.html
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