drown | The Last Krystallos

Harry’s head swayed and the vein in his temple throbbed as the beat from the party, back on the dunes, thudded through his brain. The moon’s silvered rays cast a diamond pathway before him as he closed his eyes and waded into the deep. Sand caressed his toes and pieces of drifting seaweed curled around his legs. Harry’s heart beat like a jackhammer as he walked, pushing through the sea, allowing the comforting warmth to exorcise his demons. He glanced behind. The beach was almost silent, the only sound the lapping of waves about his belly, rising up to his chest and down again, the thud of the party left far behind, as was his spiteful battle with Angelique.

A sigh escaped his lips and he bent his knees; the water closed over his shoulders and then over his head and he rose, shaking salt and ocean from his hair. He gazed up at the moon and drank in its cool calm, almost regretting the words he and Angelique had shared. He lifted his feet from the ocean floor and relaxed backwards, letting the swell pick him up and cradle him like a baby.

He played the fight over in his head as he floated, and the motion of the waves hypnotised him, drowning his aggression and burying it deep below. Angelique’s voice floated through the dark, its vicious edge lost in the calm of the night, and Harry grinned.

Angelique’s murmur captivated him as he bobbed on the ocean, and his hands moved rhythmically through the water as he turned to face the shore, and his girlfriend. Forgiveness sang in his heart and he lowered his legs to stand. Panic struck, just for a moment, as he realised how far out he’d floated, and then Angelique’s arms embraced him from behind and he let her move him through the water. Her sultry words echoed and her kisses rained down on his lips, then his shoulder, and then on his chest and her hands caressed his body beneath the sea. His heart quickened and blood rushed as her lips tasted his.

He floundered again as his feet searched for the sandy floor, but her legs entwined his and her insistent kisses pushed deeper. He tried to relax and enjoy the seduction, but the night grew darker, as the moon fled behind clouds, and the ocean grew colder. Harry tried to extricate himself from her embrace, but her arms were everywhere and her song weaved through his brain. He kicked and pushed, and gulped as his head dipped below the water. He spluttered and coughed and fought for the surface…swallowing sea as he burst through the watery ceiling.

Free from her grip, he kicked away and turned to find his bearings. His head spun as he tried to locate the shore. The moon peeped out, but offered no help and Angelique’s body slithered towards him through the silver sea. He tried to swim, but she was upon him and dunking him back beneath the ocean before he could escape. Her arms entwined him in chains of steel and her breath whispered across his skin and he sank as her kisses feathered his lips.

No one but the moon saw the futile struggle amid the ocean waves, and no one but the moon saw the crude voodoo figure rudely and hurriedly constructed from driftwood and fishing line, half buried in the sand at Angelique’s feet. The wind whispered through Angelique’s dry hair, and she smiled to herself as she settled into the eager arms of another partygoer, and as the beat thudded behind her she rained kisses down on her new beau’s lips.

(612 Words)

Another Blues Buster prompted by P J Harvey’s ‘Long Snake Moan’. Hop over to The Tsuruoka Files to read more tales…

So after a hiatus for us to write for NaNo…Jeff’s Blues Buster is back over at The Tsuruoka Files. The tune we’re writing to is ‘Heavy in your Arms’ Florence and The Machine…and I’m keen to get back in to some flash fiction!

Water Crown by Lisa Shambrook (please do not use without permission)

Heavy in your Arms

The day I drowned, I gazed at his hands and I grasped his arms, strong and veined, and covered with dark, downy hair. His hands were smooth, soft and firm. I gazed into his eyes, ice blue and deep, and I drowned in their depth.

I gazed at his lips. He drew me close, devouring my mouth with words, whispered words of love, of adoration and lust. I drowned as he pressed his mouth to mine and inched his tongue past my teeth. Fire burned, smouldering in my belly, and rising with every prickle on my pale skin.

His breath murmured in my hair, his zephyr of longing entwining every lock, and my fingers touched the crown on my head, a circlet of threaded silver and diamond dewdrops.

His hands, those strong hands, rested on my back, and his lips nibbled my neck, and I succumbed.

* * *

The sun shone down in rays of gold, tickling my burning skin, and he chuckled at my naivety. He stood and beckoned down by the water’s edge, and blushing in my exposure I stepped into the river. Cool water lapped at my feet and my legs, and I smiled, nervously, as he took my hand. My fingers shot to my head, as the circlet slipped, insecure in my tangled, golden tresses.

I gazed at him, stood before me, a man in every way, and laughed as the sun glistened against the jewelled crown atop his unruly mop of curls. His laughter matched the gurgling brook, and he took me in his arms, water breaking gently at our waists.

I didn’t expect his sudden move, his firm grip and the icy fear that enveloped me beneath the water. My eyes were lost in the murky depths of swirling river, weed entwining my feet, and hands, those strong hands, holding me beneath the surface. I opened my mouth in pain as the crown entangled in my hair was divorced from my head. I gripped his arms, my hands moving up and down his flexing muscles, until my hands fell loose and I drowned for the second time that day.

I watched as he waded from the river with tears decorating his face, and my circlet in his fingers.

* * *

Now I watch as he sits upon my throne, as he courts wanton women, and as he rules in my stead. I watch, and I wait.

My translucent arms, watery and heavy, rest upon his shoulders. His expression betrays him as he raises his hand, to wipe a stray raindrop, but no rain has fallen. Fear grips as he travels the castle corridors and beholds puddles on the floor. His smooth hands touch the crown upon his head, and the gold feels like iron, cold and heavy, like the ice that decorates his bedroom, bringing impotence and dread.

He slips silently into madness in his sun drenched palace.

I chill his soul with every step, binding him to my heavy heart, until his crown is frozen, his hands are soaked with my pain, and his feet are burdened with dread.

Then when fear grips in the dead of night, when darkness abounds and seizes his mind, I drown him…I drown him in his own nightmares…

* * *

Now he floats to me, on a river of heavenly light, and I beckon. He moves on my zephyr of breath, and he smiles as I gaze, and I blush. Relief and arrogance bloom on his cheeks as he dances forward, free of his watery incubus. I promise much, but I never deliver, and I thrust him away, down, back down into his heavy body, on a cold, wet bed. His arms flail and his hands, those strong hands, beg…

And I drown him, every night…

(632 Words)