Cinders All Around

Neon lights flickering like restless Technicolor fireflies taunt him from the street corner, making him blink despite the comfortably breezy weather. The music that flows upward is trance-like, drowning, intoxicating and infectious even as it continues to rise and reverberate against the windowpanes of the overlooking buildings.
And as the festivities bleed on, he continues to watch contentedly, not sure whether the knowledge keeps him sane or is pushing him closer to the brink of madness.
For he is sure that, all these things, all these half truths will be gone the next morning. While as he –he will still be there; a testament left to contradict a fleeting existence.
And with the next gust of wind, he is gone.

Shards of glass flutter in each and every direction, coming to form a mosaic of wings spanning the expanse of the earth—each rhythmic flutter, beating the drowned songs of a thousand lost generations. They glimmer in the moonlight, fragments of hopes and dreams and things to come, right before nestling betwixt blood and shadow, bone and marrow, words and worlds slowly etched onto translucent skin. They press themselves firmly against her back in adulation, kissing her body lovingly.
Eyes, the color of the deepest wild honey, flutter open with a deliberate, coaxing slowness, breathing in a darker dawn.
And then she moves once more, an ofanim amidst the living.

Music traverses the dimly lit bar room in the form of an ephemeral asp, slithering idly past liquor bottles and shot glasses, creaky old pool tables and moth-bitten upholstery, right before coiling up to nest in the hollowed minds of faceless spectators, all seeking to drown themselves in a collective, mindless stupor. On the platform, a curvaceous figure gyrates to the same serpentine music, supple white flesh tainted by the hazy red of mood lights.
Meanwhile, his mind is already wandering away from the confines of the back booth, his eyes shifting lazily to find a suitable candidate to satisfy him. There’s an innate need that moves throughout his body, hunting for the warmth of human flesh, not unlike the frenzied madness that burned through his mind, entrapping him in the eye of a storm, giving him the perfect calm that served its purpose whenever he cocked a pistol or raised a blade.
For thieves and their monarchs, romance and death go hand in hand but will never quite be the same.
His thoughts crawl forth and it only takes one glimpse, one fraction of a second for him to find her and as her gaze melts into his, he smiles, the realization hitting him like a speed train.
So here she is, his Aphrodite, his Galatea, his Helen; the downfall of his empire. Her lips are lacquered a deep, hemorrhage red tonight and as composed as he believes himself to be, he can almost taste his blood in her mouth.
When he finally gathers enough of his wits to reach for her, he slinks towards the bar with a purpose, the tendrils of his thoughts already drawing lazy eights over the peaches and cream complexion of her back where a pair of wings lay intricately tattooed. She’s wearing a backless mandarin-collared top that laces up from behind, offering an ample amount of skin without seeming vulgar. In fact it almost makes her seem ethereal, as if she is Erato, the muse of light gracing the dregs of a dingy night club with her presence.
“Vodka,” he says to the bartender, keeping his gaze away from her. From the corner of his eye he almost believes that he can see her ears perk at the order. There’s a pregnant pause that that hangs precariously between a split second and eternity, and he gives it a good moment more before he finally turns to look at her.
“And—”
“Absinthe.”
“—For the Lady.”
She smiles at him and nods her head courteously, allowing him a side view of dark beryl eyes behind zebra-printed glasses frames.

He vaguely remembers an attempt at small talk. He knows this for a fact because it has given him the perfect opportunity to learn by heart the contours of her face, her nose, her lips, her neck, her shoulders—
And then she finally says the words that that snap him out of his reverie, “it’s getting too noisy in here,”
It’s an invitation and he knows it, so he doesn’t waste time in throwing a thousand peso bill on the counter, his hand giving a slow wave that signals his leave to the barkeep.

Her mouth finally crushes against his, somewhere in the in-betweens of a secluded alleyway, bruising both his lips and his ego.
The kiss tastes vaguely of cherries and absinthe, altogether laced with a delicate hint of nicotine that he finds intoxicating. She tastes—he imagines—the way that angels should, sweet and potent, just like poison.
He kisses her and her breath alone is venom, the first contact, the hypodermic fang of the serpent that makes his body tense in anticipation. Her voice is the low murmur of thunder, the crashing of the sea, the rumble of Midgard's lands--the final verse, the end song, the requiem of all things. Her lips, those accursed things, are fiery embers, heated by the flame of lies easily sliding off his tongue.
And the last thought that he teeters back and forth on is only that she is fantasy, reality, and the end of both.

Then he’s back in the looking glass, falling down the rabbit hole, sliding through the cracks of the earth. And all for what? The Queen of Hearts just waiting for the right chance to cut off his head. His skin presses against hers, lips brushing against any part of her that they can reach, hands clutching tightly on her waist, finger nails digging into the small of her back—
Outside the sunlight begins to spill over the horizon, bathing the sky in a rich, Shiraz red.
A deep breath, a shiver -- he bites his lower lip to keep himself from calling out her true name, afraid of what may come after. A grin escaped her face as she moves down to kiss him, her lips crushing over his fiercely once more, claiming his body—his soul as her property. There is no freedom, no escape, only the violent swirl of storybook lies that has built up between the two of them.
There is no hate.
Then again, there is no love either.
The only thing that exists between them is power. He can feel it move underneath her skin, surging in her blood even as she grinds against him to drive his length in deeper.
She is Lilith, the temptress, the huntress, the whore. He is Adam, the follower, the fool, the forgotten; he who is forced into the corner between the Scylla and Charibdis, with his last strands of life lying uncomfortably in the hands of Atropos. Even before the tension begins to rise, he knows what she has come for, her breath sweet and tempting like the apple itself, her voice warm and inviting, not unlike the snake. Take me and you will live forever, She words in his mind, the thought alone driving liquid fire to shoot up his veins. He will give his right eye for the knowledge – but the knowledge is not, will never be enough.
And he realizes his mistake the moment that he feels his existence ebb out of him slowly. It is she that is poison, the mistletoe driven through the heart of Balder; the faintest touch that makes his blood run cold. Her voice is the voice of Eris, reaping the apples of discord in his mind, the battle cry of the Morrigu as they claim the fallen, the fatal symphony of the Sirens carried on wind song—the finale, the ender, the elegy east of the sun and west of the moon. And she takes of him his memories, his hopes, his dreams, his fears, the lives that he had led and had yet to lead. The next time that she kisses him he can tastes his defeat cleanly on her lips—bitter, with a fragile strand of dignity.

When he finally rouses himself from slumber, wiping the moon dust from his eyes, he is alone in his bedroom, twenty stories above ground and seemingly a lifetime away from her. There’s a sour taste in his lips and the unmistakable scent of nicotine in his hair, but he’s already certain that he wouldn’t trade it for the world.

There is a gritty feeling to the day and a watered down numbness to the morning, an irony mirrored in the lit stick of Gudang menthols that she holds idly between two fingers and the cup of strong,indonesian coffee that stands calmly in front of her crossed legs. She had opened her eyes to sunlight and a cigarette, her body instinctively craving for the scent of cloves to drown out the memory of his Marlboro stained fingers the night before. Back then, she had felt invincible, moving against his body, losing herself in the rhythmic stupor that the music induced, tasting his skin, his lips, his humanity as she timed herself with each beat-- That night, she had been the rhapsody, the unadulterated harmony of things, the end all- be all of his small, self-centered universe, but now, as she sits a good eighteen floors above the busy street, watching as the shadows of the buildings blend into one another, creating a city within a city, one of dust and grime and rainbow colored oil slicks in the gutter she feels somewhat defeated, whitewashed, intangible-- a deity long erased from the collective subconscious of humanity.
But courtesans will never be princesses.
Taking another long draw from her cigarette, she sighs, the stream of smoke coiling to form a halo above her head, letting itself glint momentarily in the sunlight before dissipating completely. And for a brief moment, she wonders how something so ephemeral can break her so easily.