Chapter Five
To Continue

I opened my eyes clearly.- no drowsiness, no haziness, no sudden jerk as if waking from a nightmare. I just… opened them. The sight that greeted me was clear. Over the top of the body beside mine, over the wheat-blonde hair, I saw a nightstand, a clock atop it reading 7:48 a.m., with the sun streaming in through the window behind me. The nightstand also bore a watch and a pair of reading glasses atop the polished wood. At the left I could see the soft green wall, a comforting, earthy color tone, and to the right, open space and floor until the adjacent wall and dresser. Then my eyes moved down to the slightly smaller body curved against mine, its feminine shape molding perfectly to mine and warm skin pressed against my body.

“Sarah,” I said, and I saw her stir a bit, slowly. Her hair was mussed from sleep and fell gracefully into her eyes as she gradually propped herself up on one elbow to face me, dazed. Then she woke up more and smiled sleepily, moving forward and curling against my naked chest, her own covered in a silken slip of lavender material as one of her arms wrapped over my shoulder.

“Michael,” she said with her voice muffled on my skin. It thrilled me, to feel her lips and hot breath in the crook of my neck, and contented me as well. I looked down and smiled, my hand reaching the small of her spine and rubbing lightly. “This is a beautiful morning.”

I closed my eyes for a moment or two, nodding as I kissed her forehead. “Yes,” I murmured into her hair and sliding my hand further up her back, dragging the silk material up as I did. “It is.” Beneath the comforters, I wore simple, white boxers and Sarah wore just that aphrodisiac fabric. It was like an unspoken agreement of equality, to wear one piece of clothing each. One of her legs was hooked atop mine, and her smooth flesh against mine has been one of the best comforts I have ever had in my lifetime, one which I was the luckiest person alive to have met her in.

I was happy. There were days, of course, that were stressful and hard, annoying or taxing, or just plain…back-breaking. But I could always come home, come here, and when Sarah is here with me, all is right in the world. All is good, perfect in its flaws and happy in its oval rather than circular shape. She had always been the more hopeful, optimistic of the two of us, and I the more reserved, indifferent human. Together, however, we were balanced, a beautiful balance in any circumstance.

“Did you dream, love?” she asked, pulling back to lean her head onto the pillow. Her words triggered a memory, really just a collections of flashed images. A party…with masks, some ancient civilization, a bombing in the Middle-East, a soldier coming home, an old woman dying, and a dark, abandoned alley with a fire and the presence of many people. None of the images made sense, but I told Sarah anyway.

“I have no idea what it means…but it does not feel terribly foreboding,” I added as well. She smiled, finding my hand and squeezing.

“Well that’s good,” she said, then chuckled a little. “Perhaps they were just memories from some previous lives you have had.” I laughed as well; I have never been foolish enough to doubt the reality of mysterious powers, and I have also never been foolish enough to claim any creed right in defining them. Sarah and I were not Christians, unlike most of our neighbors, but we were happy, relatively kind, and more observant than anything, so they let us get away with it, sermon-free. We were not grateful for it, and this was because it should be expected of any human being to keep their mouth shut in politeness when they feel like ranting in persuasion.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, watching her begin to rise from the bed. I grabbed her wrist as she did, and she stopped, looking to me with a slow grin. “Come here,” I muttered after a few minutes of looking into her warm, russet eyes. I pulled her downward, catching her as she fell from the force of my pull with the mattress bouncing a little in reaction. Sarah watched me with elated attention, and when my fingers reached down to her thighs to scrape over the hem of her slip, I saw her eyelids flutter. She was on top of me, leaning down with one hand finding its way to my hair as I progressively clawed backwards, dragging the liquid fabric up over her thighs and buttocks until I held it in place at the middle of her back. “I love you, Sarah.”

Her hand stroked my scalp in the most soothing way ever and then her hands were still. “I love you,” she said, though it was not an echo, it was a reply, two very different things when one thinks of it. Then her lips came down to mine, brushing lightly at first, and then planting themselves like a seed, winding with mine in a cadence of its own. One of the straps of her silken nightdress slipped down over her upper arm and it was like a subtle plea from her skin to me. My hand moved over the skin of her shoulder and then my lips, trailing their way down her cheek and neck first.

I have never met anyone like Sarah. I do not know why it is that I feel so connected to her more than anyone I have ever met, or why we seem so similar despite our differences and flaws. All that I do know is that I care for her more than anyone, and that we have an ethereal, unexplainable connection that I would not relinquish for all the gems or money or power in the world.

Her silk slip did not remain on for long; I love her in her purity too much, and I know how beautiful her body is in the glowing sunlight. It was as beautiful then as it ever had been, gorgeously beige and soft against my own. Likewise, she would not grant me to have my one piece of clothing on for long either. The blankets used for warmth in the night were cast aside like a cloak, something meant for deception and daggers, and neither of which held a place between Sarah and I. Me, her, and the clean, white sheets that felt warm with the sunlight, and even warmer while we laid on it, were all that was left. That was all, in every sense of that encompassing word.

We moved slowly, and not because we have never risen in pace or felt more enthusiastic, but because we loved one another so much. Something so beautiful as a union between a woman and man should never be rushed habitually, but change, and hopefully, last as long as possible. I love her, and I know what it takes to please her. It pleases me to do so, and even more so, it pleases me to hold my desire in check for such a long time, all the while enjoying every second, every kiss, every touch, and every motion that we share. The longer, the better, the purer, the lovelier, the livelier. Sarah always had owned such a taste for endurance, anyhow.

When the time came, the sun falling half upon her side and half upon mine as some shadow was cast from her body down to mine, she pressed closer to me, her body arching together with mine while I clutched her ardently. Her lips uttered my name and I felt the shudder wreak my body more fiercely upon hearing it. When we slowed and stopped moving, but for our heaving chests and panting breaths, I whispered her name as well, and I saw by her closed eyes that it pleased her as well.

Sarah lay beside me, her cheek pressed to my chest as my strong arms held her comfortably. It was still early in the day, but the rest of it was always brighter when it began this way, with Sarah. We both looked at one another’s body, lightly caressing the skin that faced us with an adoration that was almost as if we were admiring our own personal skin, so close it was.

“Sarah.” I said, for no real purpose other than to feel it roll through my mouth.

“I know, Michael,” she said, smiling like she always did, with hope, happiness, and beauty involuntarily blooming in her face. We were together in that bed for a very long time before rising, not with reluctance, as some couples go about doing before heading off with their day, but rather, with a calm patience that I had felt I had witness in my dream and recognized so many times in my waking life. We left the bed, the sheets, and the pillows, organizing them beforehand, and made breakfast. Sarah made cinnamon toast and cut apples, all of which she served with green tea while I prepared food for traveling. Today, we were meeting some friends in the park for a picnic, which we did every once in awhile. It was old fashioned, because most friends simply went to the cinemas or at a café, but we all seemed to lean more toward the simple things in life rather than the modern or trendy.

She and I sat across a small round table in front of a pair of French Doors, looking outside, at the potted and planted shrubs and flowers, at the sunlight on the wooden planks of our patio, and at each other, silently smiling in satisfaction as we reached across to hold hands. When the food was finished, we quickly rinsed the dishes and grabbed the picnic food and blanket, stepping out into the bright light of day and making our way to the white vehicle we owned. The picnic items were placed in the back seat as she moved into the driver’s position and started the car. We pulled the doors shut, hooked the safety belts, and began the hour-long drive to the location. Others might think the whole idea behind a picnic is comfort and ease, and driving a full hour is simply betraying that ease. But I have always felt a connection in simply observing, watching the trees and grass blur by in green and brown fields, the clouds somehow stationary and the moon or sun like a beacon. Whether I was walking by these things or driving, I always enjoyed it the way a woodsmen enjoys his natural environment, with the ease of one in his or her element.

Sometimes throughout the drive Sarah and I would bring up a topic- nothing useless, because nothing we said to each other was ever said because it was silent. I asked her what she thought of her new book, which she had been meaning to buy and read, and which I had bought for her. She sat down every day at some point to read it.

“I love it, Michael, as you knew I would,” she said, glancing over at me with that grateful smile. “Thank you. Perhaps what I really needed was that push, that incentive to read it. I love you, and so the things you give me, the things you do for me, with me, and to me…matter greatly.”

“And I hope I never give you anything,” I began to rely, leaning over and whispering the rest into her ear, “that is not worth your time, that is unnecessary, frivolous, or unworthy of your attention.”

Her eyes remained fixed on the road, but I know they darted down once when I moved my lips closer to her ear, touching it and moving down to her neck before pulling playfully away. It went unsaid, that she believed I wouldn’t ever give her those things. I believed it too, like a creed.

Other times I ignored the scenery outside and watched Sarah. Her small but strong hands with thin fingers and soft skin gripped and turned the steering wheel with no difficulty, russet brown eyes catching hints of the sunlight and shadows with earthen intensity. A comfortable shirt of white cotton draped down over her perfect figure, the hint of a bra only known to me as I saw its faint outline beneath the material. A nice pair of denim jeans were worn loose on her hips, as she always wore them, with a slight bag in the leg, and I knew that if I felt my hand around her hipbone I would be able to tug the rim of the pants outward by an inch or so. When she looked over me at a stoplight, I merely smiled slowly, matching her look of enthralled love.

Five minutes after that stoplight we pulled into a parking space beside the lush green grass of a mid-spring park, the lampposts like manmade trees and the trashcans a slightly relieving sign that someone in the world cared for organization and self-encouragement. That person was probably a soccer mom, too tired to pick up any more messes that were not hers and were detrimental to her world.

We stepped onto the sidewalk and followed it for a distance until we spotted the tree that looked best. The others would find it too, no doubt, and so we crossed the green lawn where children had played and dogs had defecated, all in the name of personal pleasure. The tree was a rather well grown and old oak, with its leaves full and bright green, shaded by its fullness. We unrolled the blanket in the air, letting it parachute gently down the small spikes of grass on the sunny side of the tree, which was west in this case. The shadow of a swallow flittered over the white blanket, and we pulled out the basket filled with Tupperware containers of food. I had been right. Our friends met as at the right time, at the right tree, with little or no trouble. Sarah’s back was to the pavement they stepped off from, but I saw them while she opened a container of cherries.

“There they are,” I announced, and she had followed my focused gaze even before that, sensing something new. I observed them as they came nearer and more clearly into view. The taller one’s feminine body swayed with a cunning purpose, the light glimmering off of easy, black slacks and bone-straight black hair. She seemed out of place in this natural place, an ethereal being of shrewd intentions with her dark eyes and strong cheekbones. Her companion was equally out of place, especially beside her, with amber red tufts of hair carefully maintained into a ruffian look, freckles dotting his face and arms, and a flashing, sly grin curving over his face, as if he made money from looking up women’s skirts and merit for dumping cold buckets of water on peacefully sleeping men.

“Ramona,” Sarah addressed the woman, welcoming with her eyes and beaming face which fitted so well with the rest of nature, like a flower swaying in the wind of the breeze talking to our friend, or a steady rock mountain, always there and always dependably solid. “Risaden… Both of you, we are so glad to see you.”

“It has been a while since our last picnic,” Risaden replied, plopping down with his knees bent and dropping his hand into the basket. “Too long,” he added while he ripped out a small sandwich of different meats, cheeses, and vegetables.

“I can agree,” Ramona said as she took a graceful seat between me and Risaden. There was no need to say more as we shared the food around. There were bread rolls, sandwiches, apples, pears, melons, other fruit, berries, cucumbers, broccoli, baby carrots, dipping sauces and vinaigrettes, smoothies in thermos mugs to keep chill, and small pairings of crackers, cheese, and meat, sometimes with cream cheese or refried beans, or some other dish.

I am not sure that I can explain how we all got together and into going out for picnics. I know that Ramona is a successful and intimidating lawyer, Risaden is a passionate and wild musician, and they know that I am a historian while Sarah owns and works in a University greenhouse near our home. Risaden and Ramona, I undertand, have the same type of relationship as Sarah and I do…or at least, it is similar in its…simple honesty. We all met somehow, and through a variety of events planned a picnic once. It all seemed so…right, so odd and awkward to the rest of the world, as if one could write a novel or the screenplay for a book on it, but…right. We all fit together, in some odd way, and I have always felt as if I have known them before. This theory clicked even farther into place when I recalled my dream, and I mentioned it to them.

“Past life, probably,” the man of chaos said, crunching on a cracker. “I feel it too.” His white tank top had remained surprisingly clean this whole time, the loose jeans and black over-jacket accentuated his masculine form in a way that attracted his female companion’s eye often.

“Or perhaps we are simply more clear-headed than the rest of humanity,” Ramona added, biting into a black cherry, the purple-red juice staining her lips and teeth as she did. She seemed to enjoy it despite this, or even, because of it.

“They are not all bad, Ramona, and you know this,” Sarah said, and she leaned back against me, her shoulders rubbing lightly into the ends of my collarbone as my arm instinctively wrapped around her.

“They are all so different, and yet so much the same,” I muffled “I have no idea how anyone thinks that they could ever place humans into stereotypical groups. There are too many people and too many factors in order to do that.”

“Besides,” Ramona said, flipping her long, dark hair backwards, “the world and its homo sapiens occupants have never been perfect. The very idea that we could ever successfully stereotype any other individuals is inherently flawed.”

She had a point, and she would know. Ramona spent her workdays reading police cases and forensic reports on major and minor criminals, defending victims and prosecuting murderers, of the sick and simple alike. Sarah and I saw one of her cases, once, prosecuting a man who had been suspected of raping a young woman of twenty-two years, ripping the nails from her fingertips and raping her again before killing her slowly. We all, as members of the audience, saw the photos that remained of the girl. They were bloody. The corners of her lips had had crimson cuts from a particularly tight piece of rope kept in place to help gag her of noise, and lines dragging downwards like tears had been cut into the skin of her cheeks from beneath the eyes. It held a morbid beauty, an outward expression of a demented man trying to be an artist or a priest or something. There were similar beauty marks carved down her neck, arms, ribs, back, stomach, pelvis, buttocks, and thighs. The marks of blood and severed skin were not religious, nor were they the letters of any language or symbols of any importance. It seemed as if he had done them for pure fun. But just in case the audience and jury still did not understand what had happened, Ramona received permission to let paid actors act the scene out in the courtroom, removing the rape with mention at the judge’s request. Afterward, everyone understood just what had happened to the young victim, a law student at Harvard who held no ill reputation. The problem, however, laid in finding who was responsible.

Rupert Dinley was not a perceptibly awkward man, and though he was clever at being a businessman, none of his associates had ever suspected him of anything out of the ordinary. One of his coworkers had even had a steady relationship with him, cheated on him, and stayed with the other man afterward with little anger from Rupert. I asked Ramona why she suspected him, though, and she shrugged. “Aside from working near her apartment, I cannot quite figure it out myself. I know that she was found in her own apartment building, and forensics found a few different DNA samples, so we cannot force him to test for it. I know he did it though.”

“When? Why?” I proceeded to say then, because she never unleashed all of her weapons in the courtroom until the finale. She turned to me, adjusting her hold on her briefcase and smiling with the seductive ease of one who held indefinite power in her hands, unseen by many until it was too late.

“Rupert Dinley wanted to be an artist when he was younger. He was never much good, and so his parents suggested that he go into a more steady career. He did, going into business, but that desire never went away because it was never…expended. I believe that something happened to him the day that Jessica Mathis was killed to push him, relive his agony at the loss of that desire. He saw her, walking down the street to her apartment building, and she was beautiful. You have seen her living photos, perfect planes in the face, perfect hair, natural eyes, and stylish but appropriate clothes. I think something, some plan clicked in his head then, that he should follow her, forgetting his logical business-side and let out the artist he thought dwelled within. One thing led to another and he simply …could not stop it.”

It shocked me slightly, into silence at least. “How did you figure all of that out?” I asked her finally.

She shrugged again. “I did my research. The lines carved into Jessica Mathis’ skin were for no other purpose than fun or art, so I wondered and looked into his past. I talked to his teachers in high school, his friends, roommates in college…then it all just …formulated, in my head. I am certain that what he did.”

I have never known anyone as good as she at seeing to it that justice and punishment was carried out. A week later, in the courtroom, she asked Rupert Dinley, upon the witness stand, what the bracelet about his wrist was. He struggled to hide it, as it had only barely slipped out from under the sleeve of his tan jacket. The judge requested that he see, and when the suspect would let no one…the proper legal proceedings procured the bracelet all on their own. It was a bracelet made of the ten fingernails that had been torn off of Jessica Mathis’ fingers, and the DNA matched perfectly. Rupert Dinley was given life in prison, and I saw him walk out of the courtroom, all the anger at being punished for his struggle in art evident on his face, anger at fate, the world, and very importantly, Ramona.

She won almost all of the cases she took. She won all of them she tried on. Some of them, I was surprised to learn, she actually let slip. Criminals and murderers the same, she would let some of the most random cases go, standing in front of the courtroom with a laid back personality, almost indifferent, but clearly with wisdom and knowledge of the other’s crimes. I’m not sure I understand it.

Risaden, on the other hand, I found a very intriguing character indeed, and even more intriguing that he and Ramona were paired together. The cunning redhead was really a jack-of-all-trades type of person, outside his particular skill and love with music. I have known him to be a bartender, a bankteller, a writer, a card-dealer, and even foreign linguist and translator. He seemed always trying to reach people in some way, but not because he wanted to prove something. Rather, he wanted to find something, or see it, or cause it.

I remember one particular event, at an event he and his band, Cereus Glory, were performing at a bar one night. Risaden is the leader and founder of the band, singer and player, writer and proud lover of its title, which was an allusion to the night-blooming flower of the desert and the commonly known Morning Glory plant. It held a meaning of beautiful things in the darkness, of gorgeous things in mystery, and in something essential and necessary in evil.

The song they were playing began with a piano solo, soft and slow, classical and polite, and ending in a few resonating keys. Then there was silence. And then there was more. The piano notes moved to a background beat as an electric guitar moved its chords to the fingers of its player, soon accompanied by a lower, steadier bass and a tapping, thrumming drum that captivated by its barely-present intensity. I, but more so, the listeners, felt like I was falling into the music, held by that last piano note as if on the edge of a cliff, and then suddenly pushed, silent for that one second before the wind rushed in, slowly at first, faster and faster, louder and louder, more and more thrilling.

But this was just the music. Risaden had a passion for reaching people, and by now he had grabbed them seductively, roughly, and had only to whisper what he wanted into their ear for them to hear his message. He sang of bending, listening to a secret no one could ever understand, but which happens anyway. He sang of “crystallized euthanization” and jumping, either up or down, encouraging the impulses, the desires, the jealousy one might feel, the anarchy one might want, the rebellion waiting inside or the controlled agony that was unleashed. I may have been the only one who picked that message out of the song, aside from Risaden, but I know that the audience listened. I know that they heard phrases like “electric swimming pools” and “the blinding glare of our shadows, as paralyzing as to deer” and gaped, for each word was heard, understood, and as precise as could be in song. No scream was relinquished that a listener could not stand or decipher, no utterance too low they could not detect, no rambling too fast they could not follow, and no moan too guttural that they could not bear it. Yes, Risaden had captured an audience that evening, a group of forty or more people all within the surprisingly loose cage of his fingers. He had delivered his message

But he had never tried those same tricks on his lover. Sometimes, I wonder if she was the exact beautiful darkness, enthralling mystery that he seemed to worship, the very embodiment of what he believed so casually and strongly in. Ramona was a steady, strong woman with her odd quirks, full of many years in practice and education, yet Risaden was a dabbler in all fields, with only one consistent job or focus. Nevertheless, Risaden and Ramona have just as steady a relationship as Sarah and I have ever had, perhaps because they are so opposite and yet in some ways so very similar.

I turned my attention to the things around me. Risaden, reclining his body against Ramona, and hers receiving his accordingly as they each ate pieces of an apple. I saw the oak tree near us, stable, steady, patient, and strong as its arms reached upward and over like a shield. There were small birds flittering in and out of its bushy depths, and likely a squirrel somewhere as well. Beside me, Sarah watched as well with the same look a proud, kind sister would look at her siblings. Then her eye caught mine and I saw the flecks of gold in them, twinkling like yellow, ruby, and copper treasure in the sunlight. I drew her to me with an arm, resting my chin atop her head and smiling at her soft hair.

Our picnic was not much of an interesting affair, or at least, it would not seem so to outsiders. We ate, and no meteors fell or horseback crusaders galloped through. We talked, and we weren’t a troupe of neither actors that lived to entertain nor a bickering, dramatic pair of couples for people’s intrigue. It was a picnic at the park, the way we liked it: with casual conversation that meant so much more than anything casual ever is, a silence that weaved among us like the web of a very clever spider, and the knowledge of all these things, that we are the four of us somehow different and connected, and yet simple despite this oddity.

At noon, when the sun was a still-life portrait above us of pasty blue, wispy white, and glaring yellow-white, we stood, ready to walk to the parking lot. The blanket was folded and the basket and Tupperware containers gathered up. The tufts of grass and lightly rolling grass were stable yet cushioning in a comforting way beneath our feet. I admired the sun sprinkling its rays on the greenery, making it glow with the same emerald hue as the leaves of the oak tree did. I held Sarah’s hand in mind and we smiled together with a squeeze of our fingers as her free hand held the blanket and mine carried the basket.

But when we passed the oak tree, I caught a glimpse of something moving gracefully away, so quick and fleeting that I…second-guessed whether I had seen it all. If not there, I suddenly recalled an image from my dream, flashing and remaining in my mind’s eye from that morning. A tall, slender figure, with gray, swathing robes, a feminine and masculine, genderless face, and purely white eyes, radiant with a keen understanding and a wise patience unknown to the living. A word settled on the tip of my tongue, for a reason I could not figure, and I muttered the word aloud.

“Deity.”

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A/N: Deity, indeed. This is the last chapter.

A strong thanks goes to the people that have read this, recently Antares, and most especially Lucie Saint-Lazare. I cannot tell you how immeasurably my heart wrenched at such a thought-out review for Deity. You truly analyzed it, and though I think if you read this last chapter, some of the flaws you spotted may have been solved, but I truly...truly cannot thank you enough for reading, enjoying, and critiquing as you did. You brought things to my attention that need addressing, and that is something I always respect. Thank you!