The Black King
                   by Jenna Hirschman
        


        The walls glinted a cream white in the dull morning
sun. I put my last cigarette out, leaving it in the the crack
of the glass ash tray, ran a hand through my hair and
stood up.
        There was a faint scratching coming from behind the
privacy screen that marked off the bathroom, as if
someone was running a blade over short stubble. I
ignored it. The building was drafty in a modern, sterile
sense.  
        There was one red rose in a long vase, left from last
night's visitation. I considered throwing it away. I could
see myself picking it up, twirling it once or twice,
smelling it and throwing it into a plastic garbage bag, to
rot with all the leftover food, the tissues and all the other
reminders.
        I stayed far away from the flower, going to the
window, opening the shutters and looking out at the sea. I
could smell him there, in his element with the salt, the
fish, the sun, and the rank odor of the rose.
        I smelled that sweet perfume too, and it turned my
passive face into a grimace.
        The ocean was calling, a gentle washing sound. It
was like wet mint soap rubbed onto my dirty skin, I
almost moaned. The call was uniquely his. With each
gentle crash of the waves on the rocks, I could fell hands
around my back, fingernails raking up and down my
neck, artfully but methodically.
        I spared the bed only one glace before wrapping a
loose knit yellow grey shirt around me, buttoning a few of
the mother-of-pearl buttons and heading towards the
door.
        I left the room, the door dragging along the planks of
the polished wooden floor, hanging open, invited no one
to come in and posess it. I walked down a narrow set of
stair. The sun was shining in from circular windows on
either side, casting gloomy white pies on the dark walls.
        Someone had left the door at the bottom open. The
city was before me. The sea was around the corner. My
fingers ached for a glass of bland table wine, some bread
and cheese but the sound of tires squealing on the road
repulsed me.
        Food was for the innocent. I could no longer count
myself among their numbers.
        I turned and walked in the sand towards the water,
never looking at the blue,  just staring at the sun and
trudging on. My sandals dug into the sand, the sand
burned my feet but it welcomed me home.
        He was waiting for me.
        A small rocky shore, filled with caves and covered
pools of water jutted out of the sandy beach. I walked to
the water's edge, where the sand was wet and my feet
cracked it's perfect pattern.
        There was a near dance in my steps, I wished it away
and marched forward. The lines on my face were rigid. I
had sculpted them myself. My fingers were long and
waiting, always waiting to touch the rocky surface of that
formation, to scrape my nails along in and drop into the
dark.
        I was not here for more pleasure. I had gotten all that
I would ever have of that.
        I knew only this, inside one of the pools a man slept.
His eyes lazily shut, his head resting against a smooth
black rock overgrown with some kind of moss, his arms
outstretched as if to accomodate two mermaids or nyiads
who had slipped off sometime in the night. Around his
neck was a long silver necklace with a symbol
unrecognized by society. It meant what all the others
meant. I needed this man. He had overridden heroin,
nicotine, the pleasures of the modern world.
        If I couldn't find him, if he'd gone, there was nothing
for me. I would return home, silent, in black like all the
others. I did not want to be like all the others. I had to
find him.
        I approached the rocks. In the night they looked like
any other rocks on any other beach--as though the sun
would warm them to a mediocre playful grey in the
morning. But they were still true black.
        My arms were outstretched, my eyes drifted shut
though I willed them, begged them to stay open, fixed like
a statue of a dead woman. For a second my fingers
lingered around the aura of the rocks, not touching and
then I spun, screaming and ran down the beach. I veered
at a right angle from the wet sand and ran through the
burning ashes further inland.
        I did not think in those moments, my feet
commanded my body, and we ran towards the city,
towards the safety of my home. I would paste a board to
the window, I would cover it with curtains and plaster
until it vanished, a distant memory.
        I would be miserable. I would be content to be that
way. He was gone. I didn't need to look, I thought, I knew
he had left without me. Promises in the night meant
nothing, there was no need to look in the depths of those
icy caves.
        When I was close enough to see my window, I saw
only the white room with a a long, resilient rose in a
white vase casting a black shadow on the wall. I ran
upstairs, still fleeing the blackness, the misery that
threatened to embrace me and cocoon me. I could not be
resigned to my fate.
        The door of my room was open. The rose was
outlined by the blue sky shining in from the window.
Everything was in place. No breeze, no tempest had come
and destroyed it, painted it a different color, in my
abscence. I turned to sit on the off-white blankets of the
bed.
        A man with dark hair and a silver necklace lay there
in the tumbled sheets, his arms wrapped around a pillow
that bearing the impression of my head from the night
before. His face was clean-shaven.


***
(don't knock me out for the typos)

10 responses total.

I was a tad annoyed by the fact tha all your sentences in the beginning
satrted with "I".  The plot is so centered around the imagery that it
captivated me, Jenna....but then, I'm a frequenter of the poetry cf for just
that reason; this is just MHO. (=

It qas about images,...my goals were thus- to leave an emotional
impact on you; to create nice language; and to leave you with
a revelations. If all three occured its a real short story.
So I mustask, did you get these three things and what were they?

Nice launguage: yuppers. Beautiful.
Emotional impact: most certainly!
Revelations: I didn't have any great revelations...but then, I didn't really
know what it was about.  I mean, I got all the descriptives, but what you
meant to say just didn't hit me.  (I feel pretty stupid; I'm a poet for god's
sake, I shouldn't be having this problem. Maybe I'm motre comfortable with
tangibility; I like holding the paper in my hands and seeing it in nlack
print, white paper, not black screen, white print.)

("you search the world looking for what you want, and come home to find it")

OH, yes I liked that...I forgot about overall theme.....there are still some
images that elude me, tho.  Why did you chose a man to play her ideal want?
And why was her sleeping (supposedly) in one of the pools?

cause...he looked right, he was a water sprite or soemthing. 
i didn't think about everything...every symbol.

I thought you meant to make water a symbol of truth. *shrug*

Hum...nope...not really :] what did you think I thought about
every symbol? Not I. The way you hear this stuff in english classes
you'd think they did.

Personally, I like the fact that you didn't think about every one; it's nice
just to have something there for imagery alone.

k <grin>

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