Word count: 289

This Desire

All it is is one finger. He's got one pinky finger loosely curled around your neck, the briefest caress before it disappears; and you follow, searching vainly for its touch in a fog of other grasping hands.

And the essence is so sweet you can hardly bear it. You want it, that bad; you follow it and you search for it, and in your mind, it smells sweeter than it ever was.

He comes back, brushes another lazy finger across your neck; it tenses in expectation, waits for his hand to coil completely around it; a second later it's gone. At least it's given you a little bliss in the meantime. Silly me, you chide, I thought I'd weaned myself off this bitter ambrosia already.

Other hands find you, reaching out of the dust he left behind to clutch your wrist and your legs. But all you can think of, all you can follow, is that whisper of an essence that doesn't even exist anymore, not in the air you breathe, not in the path you seek, not even where he is. It's gone.

If that even makes sense.

He smiles; all of a sudden your heart seizes up and clenches itself tightly, winding its strings in cruel, cruel circles around your neck. You tug the heartstrings tangled round your throat, and peel them, like spiderwebs, off your chest and collar and attempt to put them back in the hollow where they belong. They make you choke. But somehow it is nice. At least there's something there. Not the blankness that you can't stand, with cold air brushing against your skin, reminding you of what's not there.

You only want his hands around your throat.

You dream about it.