Sabirah



1


She could smell the rain even though it was still many many miles and hours distant, and - as the Sun descended down to bring the shadows of night upon her chosen town - she carefully left her house in Church Street. It was not that she needed the money, or even, then on that evening, the life-force that she would drain away from him until he almost expired. Rather, she desired - craved - the excitement that another such encounter would most certainly bring.

The streets and paths of Shrewsbury centre were alive, for it was warm and humid: following the end of another bright and sunny Summer's day, and the people she hid from during the daylight hours were taking advantage of their evening. Couples - mostly young - happy in their love; groups of friends, enjoying companionship, life, and the many varied gifts of such a modern town where many Cafés and Inns in the Summer season placed tables outside, such were the hopes for, the memories of, balmy English nights. And she was, there, among them, only one more face, only a beautiful face of curvaceous lips, only a slim - if elegantly dressed - silhouette, there among the throng where the lane from her town centre dwelling took her past Butcher Row toward the steps that led to the medieval and old timber framed houses of Fish Street.

Behind her, as she descended those well-worn stairs, there was laughter from among the people seated on their seats outside the Bear Steps café, and she was about to turn left to walk down the street when a group of five casually dressed young men sauntered toward her as they egressed that narrow shut of overhanging buildings named Grope Lane.

"Give us a kiss, darling!" one of them shouted as he stopped - slightly swaying in his inebriation - before her, blocking her path.

"Does your baby-sitter know you're not in your cot?" she quipped, pushing past him and deliberately walking down Grope Lane while his companions laughed.

"Who the fuck do you think you are, talking to me like that!" he shouted, angry, his pride hurt, as he - turning to follow her - caught her arm.

"I would advise you to let go of my arm," she said, slowly, staring into his eyes.

Instead, he pushed her into a doorway while his still laughing friends gathered round.

"Go on!" one of them said. "Give her one!"

"Show us your tits!" said another.

"Yeah - show us!" laughed another.

"You wanna see 'em?" the insulted man laughingly asked his friends.

"Yeah!"

"Sure!"

"Go for it!"

So he moved to rip away the thin covering of her expensive dress whose upper part barely concealed her fullsome breasts, but she only smiled at him as her slender right hand caught his left wrist to suddenly twist then bend his strong youthful arm back. The crack was audible, and she pushed him away where he fell onto the cobbles of that lane, groaning in his agony.

She stepped forward then, out of the doorway and, instinctively, the young men moved away until - for some dark reason on that warm languid humid night - another primal instinct assailed them to make one of them lunge toward her, wielding a knife, while another went to grasp her by the neck. The knife caught her, plunged into her left side, but she calmly pushed both attackers away with such force that they bounded against the opposite wall before raggedly falling to the ground. Then, just as calmly, she removed the knife from her side. There was no blood.

They knew fear, then. A cold, stark, wordless body-and-mind creasing fear that made those standing back off and those sprawled on cobbles crawl away as fast as they could move using hands, feet, knees. Such fear: to take them then away, running, stumbling, panicking, down Grope Lane toward a bustling High Street where, even then among the crowds and the bright street lights, they - faces the colour of corpses - did not stop.

Thus did she throw the knife away, before continuing, alone, on her journey.


2



She was pleased when he, her tryst for that night, quickly opened the door in answer to her ringing of the bell. It was a small house, terraced, in a lane above Town Walls and he - in his late twenties, unmarried - was smartly dressed, as she had asked. A lock of her strawberry-blonde hair had fallen across her face - the only sign of her previous encounter - and she, smiling, swept it aside, saying, "Are you going to let me in, then?"

"Yes. Yes, of course."

"I thought we might have a drink here, before we went on to the restaurant."

"What?" Then - "Yes, yes, of course."

She had made him uneasy - as was her intent - and she, rather amused, watched as he, trying to find glasses, a suitable bottle of wine, bumbled rather nervously about the small sitting-room and kitchen of his house, furnished according to his modern minimalist taste.

She had been sitting, the previous night - as she often did - in a dim corner of an Inn in Butcher's Row, waiting. Waiting, dressed as she almost always was on such nights: exotic perfume; jewelled necklace; red lipstick upon her lips; a dress contouring her body, revealing of both breasts and thighs. He had arrived straight from the Solicitor's office where he worked and saw her almost immediately. She did not smile, then, as his senses drunk-in the sight of her body, but instead she turned away. So he - and she - waited, as a few more people arrived, conversations were begun, continued; alcoholic beverages were consumed. And it was as her own, before her, was finished, that he made his expected move.

"Would you like another drink?" he asked, after he in his working but still expensive suit, sauntered, casually, over to her table.

"Yes," she smiled.

"G and T?"

"Rum. Oh, and make sure it is Pusser's. They have some."

He looked - momentarily - surprised, which pleased her, and on his return she surprised him further by saying, "Would you like to take me out to a restaurant for a meal, tomorrow evening?"

"Yes," he said, hesitatingly.

"You seem surprised," she said.

"Well. No - not really."

So she had named a restaurant, and a time, asked for his address, and spent one half of one hour asking about his life, his career, his aims, while he sipped his large glass of White wine and she drank three tots of neat Rum. "I shall call for you, tomorrow, then," she had said, kissing him briefly on his cheek, before leaving him seated, and not a little bewildered, in that Shrewsbury town centre Inn.

The memory pleased her as she sat on his sofa waiting for him to do his duty and provide her with a glass of fine wine, and - when he finally did - she took it gracefully and indicated that he should sit beside her. He - normally so arrogant, so determined, so full of pride - silently did as commanded, and it was not long before she put down her own glass and his and drew him to her to kiss him, her tongue seeking his. So his unaccustomed nervousness gave way to an intense sexual arousal, and it was then that she, gently, pushed him away, saying, "Shall we go and eat, now, and - afterwards - I would like you to spend the night with me at my house."

He was hers, then, and they spent a pleasant enough evening eating fine food and drinking fine wine in a fine and elegant restaurant, while he talked about his life, his dreams, his hopes, and she listened as she listened, until the time came for them to leave when a taxi conveyed them to her own town house where darkness awaited. There were only candles, which she lit to light their way as she led him, not - as he expected - to her bed upstairs but down into the warm clean brick-vaulted cellars that fanned out from beneath her dwelling to stretch beneath the road above, and it was there, upon an antique chaise-longue, that she possessed him after stripping away his clothes.

He was very willingly possessed, for he ardently desired her body and let himself be held down, naked, while she removed her silky thong and lifted up her dress to sit upon him after easing his penis inside her. Thus did she and gently - and, he felt, lovingly - drain from him one bodily fluid to then lie beside him and kiss him for a long time, sucking from him his breath of life until there remained only a little of the vital energy keeping his body, his mind, alive. She left him then deeply deeply exhausted to sleep in the darkness while in a niche a large quartz crystal slowly began to glow. Thus did she satisfied venture forth upstairs to bathe so that when the time for the Sun's rising arrived again she was alone, replenished, ready to dream as she dreamed in her darkned room of those alternate realms of her birth, her alternate existence, knowing that he, her opfer below, would provide for her in the days, the weeks, to follow while his own weak life-force lasted. And then, his purpose fulfilled, her crystal charged, his money, property, gone, he would be cast off to return to what remained of his Earthly life, where he - as others before him - would in the following weeks languish for months, alone, tormented by nightly sleeping travels into dimensions, places, where no unprepared human should ever go, until - at last, as an almost welcome release - he would die, all alone in the night. There would be no questions; no crime; only one more man, dead, alone.

Thus would she, and only then, return, in the dark of her night, to some Inn - some enclosing warm dim place where young and middle aged men went or gathered - to sit, to preen, to wait. And when she decided her chosen town or city was denuded enough, she would move on, through the years, the decades, centuries, living as she lived, one being of pleasure, of darkness, death, love and night, awaiting he who might - who could, who would - freely, willingly, travel with her to that acausal place of her birth.

She would be free then, returned, at last - as he, her chosen, would be, become, a new eternal being, birthed.



DW Myatt
119 Year of Fayen





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