[Lubesh]

Synopsis: A tale of haunted love and longing.


As night draws nigh, drawn thighs slide and gape as shocks of light filter and deploy their silk fingertips in a heavenly sigh. Air hotly brushes her neck and the stray strands of cobalt black that shyly glint in the wisps of hair, is swept up by a phantom stare of man first and spectre only in her dreams.

She leans forward on the honed and dusted knots of the chair and rests her chin on its shoulders, tipping her head to face the moon. She remembers as his misted figure encircles her.

“But you can hold me, you can feel my blood as your blood lays in heady and wild limbo, a dance the smoothness of motion that plays on my mind and teases the demon inside my caged soul. You can hold me - if you let me in.”

A song in her head spills out in whispers. “So you think you can love me then leave me to die…” Or worse, she thinks, wander bare foot in mind and heart. She snaps out of her thoughts. At least till, as I sit, you climb in by the moon and kiss me and make my limbs shake, my hopes convulse, my longing reach till...” The chair creaks as she rises and without seeing him she wafts past and fills his nostrils with her air of smell, sweet, delicately perfumed, but potent and innocent.

Her ethereal wraithlike frame rang a slender chill in his being…she can hear him now. She senses when his fingers hesitate and all but touches her outline. He was savouring her and she was taunting him. She had only to let him in, but she knew time was plenty but by that they both suffer, but will she make him wait…forever?

Her skirt brushes and sweeps the blue mist playing around her. She leans to pick up an apple, as she wipes it firmly down the soft folds of her mock chiffon shirt, it is taken from her hands.

“That’s cheating and that’s mine,”

“Then come here, taste it.” Hovering before her eyes she presses forward to take a bite of the apple and it sways; he is like in life toying with her.

She takes her seat again and gazes into the shadows sent to and fro by the bristling leaves and winds so warm and heady. The chinks of broken crystals from the lighted moon night filter down. Her thoughts take her to another place and she hears laughter, running streams mirror the breaks of silver between the leaves of the trees her thoughts now rest in and she smiles. The apple thuds on the bold wooden floor and she shifts her seat.

The tempered blue air settles around her ankles and she hears….”That was our place. Why go there, it makes me sad to see you ambling alone, I am envious of the blades of grass that tickle your feet and the water that caresses…jump in, don’t be afraid. I’ll be there to catch you.”


Her slender calves kick at the azure torment that is and once was her only love. Just then the wind screams and sends a shiver through to her bones. She stands and lifts a downed arm, fair in the glistening light and closes the shutters. The slats let in only what they care and solid bands fall onto the floor. A speckle of particles drifting in hardens the soft memories she had of him - now he was dead. Still selfish she thought, but still ravenous and for her. She begins to melt inside and as always her heart hears his wants and listens only to the need, the loss, the desire, the love in his wild and often impetuous crazy subtleties of his desperation.

As she lights a candle she hesitates before using her shined lips and breath to halt the sulphurs adrift in smoke. Using the flame she sees the flipping and irritated bolt of blue air eventually glide more calmly around her shoulders and take away the match’s light. Placing the candle by her side she sits back down throwing her hair back and with an aching, tired sigh she stretches. In the arch of her back he was there and the electricity made the hairs of her whole body sit upright and take notice. Spasms of wafer thin ripples shimmy through her and she tastes, devours all that was him and how he used to and could still make her feel. She quickly rights to see hovering, the essence that was him. He had travelled through her to face her.

“That wasn’t fair, you bastard,” her words are taut but she fails to fool.

A cool veil drops to her thighs and lingers. In a gasp of her breath it trails over them and up around her arms which grip the chair seat. Vague brushes with her stomach, which flinches to avoid, gradually nestle between her lightly moist chest then vanishes as soon as it ‘kisses’ her inner most and by now stirred desire.

She frowns and swings her legs around as her body searches with her eyes.

“Don’t play with me.”

“Then come with me…I miss you so much, I am so lost without you ...trust me…have faith.”

The gentle tones, shimmy in trembles and droplets drip in tears onto the wood, dancing slightly by the candle still flickering and yawning and spitting quietly.

Her heart wrenches from its chasm and her hand shoots out, but to sheer futility, she can’t hold him, touch him, ever again not in a real and satisfying sense. Maybe his answer was the only answer. She hears a reality in his words. Her soul died when he died. The empty longing that slowly engulfs her day and many days and nights since he left her trumps the ill sense and fear of dying. If she loves him, she ponders again, would she not gladly die to be with him?

A faint sob sank through the white plaster walls of a harsher reality and life and soon drowns out her fragile state.

“I’m coming,” she softly offers, though the small child sleeping in the next room doesn’t hear.

He hears and is aswirl and soon covers the air as she tries to stand.

“Let me go, let me go see to our son. He still calls for you, as does my whole life. See? Don’t make me choose, keep choosing. We won’t ever hold each other, touch, know that connection…ever again…you left me, us. In the daylight, in the real light, he is all I have of you and you think I could leave him. Yes, selfish still you are.”

She watches as the cloud of her longing seeps thru the door crack and is soon back. “He has your eyes and sleeps like I hoped my son would - peacefully.”

“How long will he sleep that way, without his mother? And you can ask me to do this…to be with you. Selfish is what stops me, your only downfall, but even this doesn’t seem like you. So death changes us does it?” She doesn’t hear his muffled sad tones as she listens for her son.

She wanders the oak boards again holding her own warmth as a reminder that this is all there is from now on and has to be, despite his pleas his emotional tugging at strings she must sever once and for all.

As the birds relent and grow silent she realises how late it is. Both hands smooth back and find a resting place on her tired head and the air was blue once more around her. This time a heavy resonance played her ears.

“What’s that? Why do you sound so different?”

“I’m ok, but this is it see? My urgency, my desperation, and yes my selfish want…it will be soon time to go…to leave you forever, I just couldn’t tell you but have to.”

She tries to hope he is joking as warm tears fall down and a ready sleeve catches them. “Leave? Where do you go?”

There was silence for what seemed like forever then he, half choked answered, “I don’t know, that’s the mystery and I suppose wonder of all this and I hope sense and point to me…to us being apart.”

“So, you won’t ever come back….see me, our son ever?”

“No. Come with me I beg you. Our son will be alright.” His voice trailed off and the stream of his light settled and fell silent near the window.

She moves toward it and she gazes out onto the fields - their fields and apple trees. She hears a faint thud as the season brings down the bounty …one which lay rotting always since he was no longer here.

He stirs and she is brought back from kinder days and her thinking. His haze drifts out onto the ledge below the window.

“Remember I used to climb up here before we were married? I nearly broke my neck.”

She laughs and clasps her cardigan at the chill coming in around her.

“The vines have grown a lot, but I don’t reckon much to your gardener.” His voice is shaky this time as he tries to laugh.
“There are still some nice buds.”

She thinks back to when they planted the Clematis and how she missed this end of the house since clutter and grieving made this side end inaccessible to her from the outside.

“I haven’t seen those in a while, used to love their smell.”

Just as she leans over as a gesture, his enthusiastic tone gives her a start.

“I have an idea and it is this. Hold your hand out.”

“Why?”

“God, you’re so stubborn. If you let me guide you, you can lower down here.

“Yeah right, and you would catch me as I fall through your smoke and see through it by the way.”

“Just, ok. Wait a second.”

An electricity almost snaps around him and as she hears the enormous effort in his sounds, she steps back unsure …and not sure at all as she notices the winds picking up a pace - a cold pace.

“There, now give me your hand, try to touch me.” He elevates to slightly more within her reach.


“This is weird,” she holds out a hesitant hand and finds she can feel ‘him’ but as his haze firmly supports her hand, she pulls back.

“Chicken!”

“Easy for you to say, and what now? I climb on your back and we ride off.”

“No, let me take your weight, ease you down here…let you see your flowers, they are beautiful.” As the moon shines on her face now aglow with sheen that is half perspiration and some fear. She doesn’t know why but knew it must come from somewhere.

This, when she thinks, is the nearest she has come to touching him since he died, so for that her hand lingers and moves over and through, which was unnerving, but it wasn’t enough. She still feels the emptiness, the futility, and the loss.

“No, I can’t, they aren’t so important. I’m going in now and closing the window, it’s cold.”

As she tries to move back she feels a pressure and growing unease coming from where her hand was.

“No! Don’t, not yet,” his tone was desperate, needy and strange.

“Let me go and you can go…wherever it is you go. I am going to see to our son. I hope you come back in a better mood also.”

As soon as her arm was free she runs across the floor, the sound of her heels brought him after her. Soon he engulfes her in a large screen that was his.

“Now, your scaring me…go home or…or… just go damn it!”

Denser pitched words filled the air.

“…Anya, I have to go now. Forever. Please, I am begging you, come with me. If not now, then soon…just promise me.”

Trailing off, a light soon takes over from his voice. It begins to shimmer, unsettling her as she watches half stricken and half...oh how she wanted to hold him, be able to comfort him, have him back and worse, just forget her son and go willingly, feely, longingly with him. She wrings her arms and the prickles on them, as the window shutters slap against the cracking plaster walls unsettling the loser of the neglected surface.

“What’s happening?” She can hardly hear as the sound of the wind and shutters’ ferocity swept about the room. Just then a flash of the most beautiful display of lights bled into the window from nowhere. Half mesmerised and half resenting, she begins to realise it was too soon…he can’t go, leave her…”Nooooo.”

The lights delicately, but with a certainty, swirl around his formed colour and attach themselves one by one with some disappearing inside. She looks twice as sees faces, small fragile, smiling faces. Were they talking to him? She can hardly make them out but it seems they are stroking him, smiling…. They look her way. Their eyes take her breath away and small gestures sent a calm, a reassurance, an overwhelming feeling of total tranquillity and a peace and…love? His love. They take her in brief moments to a place, the place he will go to and be waiting for her and soon her thoughts, all the doubt and fear she felt at his anguish and desperation earlier was gone.

She is soon broken by their stare as she hears her husband…sees his face in the now kaleidoscopic haze. Her heart melts and she cries. The warm tears near jump from her flush cheeks as her chest, held by her shaking arms sob with her. His face is happy. He smiles as he gazes into her eyes, “Anya, I love you, never forget that and I will always be there,” he points to her chest which she puts a hand to as if to not ever let the words and his thoughts go. “I can wait for you now and will wait, however long it takes I know now it won’t be so long…kiss my son for me tell him I didn’t mean it. I guess when we are altogether I can tell him myself how much my beautiful boy means to me.”

He turns to the lights then back to her, “Goodbye Anya…” As his voice fades and moves with the magnificence of light, colour and sounds she gasps and chokes back her tears, tears that are tinged but the salt tastes fine this time. She raises a hand to her lips and to the air before her and sends her kiss as he backs away safe in their ‘arms’ and into the open window and the dark, warm night. The shutters close quietly behind as Anya falls to the floor.

On her knees she traces new tears as they cascade with a trembling finger and writes in the dust and smiles at the name she made for him back then when grappling with the vines that night, nearly breaking his neck as she hung over calling him a big girl. As she goes to sit back on her knees, she feels the cool dust blow over her fingers. Looking down she sees it gradually reveals a carving she is sure wasn’t there before. The heart shape, the size of her hand was empty. She brushes it with her hand and tears fall but as she smiles, her breath almost stops as slowly but surely letters form… Iyan loves Anya.

“And Anya loves Iyan…more than you will ever know. Goodnight sweetheart…. see you soon.”

She looks for the last time at the derelict attic and walks out of the door and locks it and hearing her son she takes a deep breath, “I’m coming Jason, mommies coming.”

[Vorcla]

Oh, my...

God, this is beautiful, and spooky, and heartbreaking. In addition to being a superb poet, you write killer prose. It's hard to describe how much I love this. You pull in some poetic images here, and everything dovetails nicely together. The scary part is, I find this scenario entirely plausible.

Damned fine, Lu.

[Lubesh]

Plausible...I thrive on plausible...it would be nice though ay? I will treasure those words as you have my among others here respect in that prose book. So thank you.

[RENA HANDS]

Is it ‘filter,’ or ‘filters’...The chinks of broken crystals from the lighted moon light (filter(s) down.?

Should this speech end in a period? That’s cheating and that’s mine,

I think too that you have an extra too much space between the paragraphs here...The tempered blue air.../Her slender calves kick...

Cheese zees (lol)! A great love scene there/here!(Wickedly BRILLIANT without crossing the pron line...)

How does ‘vague brush one’s stomach?’ Should it be...Vagueness brushes with her stomach, ?

I think it should be ‘nestles between her lightly moist chest,’ all other verbs are ending with (ES). I could be wrong, just kick my bum if this is true...lol

Is this not a question...to be with you.?

Should it be ‘selfishness?’ Selfishness is what stops me, ?

I think between these two sentences there are extra, extra spaces too...There, now give me you hand,/...This is weird,...

Did you mean ‘and’...She looks twice (and) see faces, small fragile, smiling faces.?

Did you mean ‘nearly’...The warm tears (nearly) jump from her flush cheeks as her chest, ?

Frick Me! This one hell of a love story. I think you should look to actually publish this away from the site. But’s my thought.

Now for my rating...5/5!