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Aphatos by Yosha Bourgea (mf)
All stories on this web site are purely FICTIONAL. The people depicted within these stories only exist in someone's IMAGINATION. Any resemblence between anyone depicted in these stories and any real person, living or dead, is an incredible COINCIDENCE too bizarre to be believed. If you think that you or someone you know is depicted in one of these stories it's only because you're a twisted perverted little fucker who sees conspiracies and plots where none exist. You probably suspect that your own MOTHER had sex with ALIENS and COWS and stuff. Well, she didn't. It's all in your head. Now take your tranquilizers and RELAX.
APHATOS
by Yosha Bourgea
"A dream like this must die."
--"Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns",
Mother Love Bone
The memory comes at me like a dream. I cannot trust
it. Pictures shift in my mind and slide over each other in
a pastiche of light and darkness, like leaves moving in the
wind. Smells come to me from nowhere, more distinct than
the pictures but shifting just as quickly; the smell of
moss, of the loam of needles in the forest, of the sweet
decay of wood. The smell of woodsmoke, shifting to the smell
of smoky tea, first hot and then cold. The smell of rain in
the sky and rain on the grass. The smell of damp wool, the
smell of sweat. The smell of musk. Each of these pull at
different chords in my mind and my heart, deeper and more
powerful than words can follow. The memory comes at me like
a dream. I want to write it out, but I am afraid of the
limits of words. I am afraid I will get it wrong, that the
lie I write will replace the flickering truth I now hold in
my head. But I must try. The pictures slide over each
other, but slower now, slow enough that I can write what I
see. There is the empty pasture, overgrown with milkweed
and lush grass. The wooden posts of the fence have a silver
sheen from the fog. Now the rush of the swollen river comes
into focus, somewhere off to the right. Or is it the left?
My focus shifts and now I am looking at the pasture from a
different angle. Suddenly, I see the top of a blond head
rise over the embankment at the pasture's edge, and my heart
quickens. I feel again the giddy drop of my stomach, the
strange mixture of dread and love. Now the head and the body
have reached the top of the embankment, and behind them
follows another head, brown. That's my head. I look much
as I do today: skinny, nervous, pale-skinned, awkwardly
dressed. My hair is short, still at the rice-bowl length I
kept throughout puberty. Another picture slides slowly past.
We are at the "bridge", three boards laid across a small
stream. I am still following her. Just beyond the bridge,
the forest starts. Behind us, the fog creeps across the
meadow in our direction. The ground is wet and spongy with
layers of slick brown leaves and crumbling needles. The air
is thick with moisture. The smell of the humus comes in
sharply, and close after, the sound of voices. "How old are
you?" That's my voice. Higher and thinner, but
recognizable. She looks back over her shoulder. "How old do
you think I am?" she says. "I asked you first." "I asked you
second." "I don't know. Fourteen," I guess. "Wrong." "Well,
what?" "I'm not going to tell you. You have to guess." We
keep walking, marching up a gentle slope. The path has
curved up and around back toward the stream. It continues
this way for as far as I have gone, which isn't very far.
In a few moments we will have to cross another plank bridge.
"Fifteen," I guess. "Close." She brushes her long, blond
hair back over her right shoulder. The love/dread grows
stronger in me without warning, and as I feel it sink into
the pit of my stomach, a picture flashes into my sight: her
hand brushing back her hair as she leans forward to kiss me.
And another picture, a picture of her breasts bared as she
raises her shirt over her head. And the smell of her sweat.
But I shut this out. I am losing continuity. I am in
danger of slipping back into an incoherent dream. I must
try to remember, not just see. I must try to remember how it
really was. "Just tell me," I say. She sighs. "I'm
sixteen." "Really?" "Really." "Oh." I'm thirteen. The fog
has risen fast. We are coming out into a clearing, and I
can see the forest below. We're about halfway up the hill.
Fog is tangled in the trees, finding its slow way up the
hillside toward us. The meadow and pasture are hidden in a
blank, white sea. I yawn a little, feel the tired ache
around my eyes. I don't usually get up this early. "Isn't
that beautiful?" she says, stopping to look. When she says
"Isn't that beautiful", she isn't gushing it like some girls
would do. She isn't asking me. She isn't saying it
rhetorically, to fill a gap in conversation. She means it.
"Yeah," I say. "It is." After going up a bit more, the path
turns back down again toward the stream. We cross another
set of damp boards. Up ahead, I see a wooden structure in
the trees. "That's not it, is it?" I ask. "No. You haven't
been here before?" "Uh-uh." "That's the fort that never got
finished. It was supposed to be a couple of stories high,
but I guess they got tired of building it or ran out of wood
or something." "Can we stop for a sec?" I say. "I'm tired."
I'm not used to walking this much, and I'm out of breath.
"Sure," she says, and smiles at me. It's a nice smile, with
no malice in it. I feel the love/dread again. How long
have I felt this, for how many months? When did I first
meet her? I don't remember. But for weeks now, every time
I see her, I've felt that giddy terror and delight. She is
the most beautiful person I've ever seen, I tell myself. My
pubescent stirrings are about a year old, still tentative,
still mysterious. Still a little frightening. This
unfinished fort, which is built against five redwood trees
standing in a square, has a floor but no roof, and only two
walls. The floor is raised an inch off the ground, but is
still damp. We sit on the edge while I catch my breath.
The fog has caught up with us, filling the space between the
trees. I can see a patch of the sky, shifting from light to
dark gray. Looking back down at my feet, I see a clump of
goldenback ferns growing near the base of one of the redwood
supports. "Oh," I say, bending over to pick some of them.
"Have you ever seen these?" "Ferns?" She looks at me
incredulously. "Goldenback ferns. Here, stretch out your
leg." "Why?" "Just do it." She shifts, moving a little
closer to me. "Here," I say, "I'll do it on your knee." I
take one of the ferns and press it against her blue jeans.
I hold it there for a minute, suddenly conscious of _my hand
on her knee_, and then take my hand and the fern away. On
her knee is an imprint of the fern in gold dust. "Wow," she
says, impressed. "That's beautiful." Again, I know she
means it. "Thanks." "Sure." I turn away, embarrassed, and
press another of the ferns against my knee. We are quiet
for a while. "What are you thinking?" she asks me. I glance
over at her. "I don't know." "What do you mean, you don't
know?" She smiles. "What are you thinking?" Suddenly I
find myself unable to look at her. I stammer, trying to
remember what I was thinking. What I'm thinking of now is
the way she looks, but I can hardly say that. Then I
remember. "I was thinking about how I'd like to live in the
woods." "Yeah? Really? Me too." I glance at her. She's
not lying, I can tell. In fact, she has never lied to me,
not once in the short time we've known each other. We have
become friends over this past month. Not deep friends, but
close enough to take a walk at dawn in the woods near where
we both live. She wants to show me a house that she found
just over the edge of her mother's property, out past the
hill in the thick of the forest. "Have you ever dreamed
about living in the woods?" she asks. "Yeah, lots of times."
"Tell me about it." She draws her feet up onto the platform
and hugs her knees to her chest. I think. "Well, in the
dream I'm kind of like a hermit. I live in a hollowed-out
tree trunk by a river, next to this waterfall. In the
summer I sleep under the stars. And I have a garden where I
grow my own food so I never have to leave the forest. And I
have a rope ladder that goes up to the top of the highest
tree, and I go up the top and sit there every morning to
watch the sun rise. None of the animals are afraid of me."
I stop. She doesn't say anything, and I look over at her.
Her mouth is a little bit open, and she's staring at me.
"What is it?" I say. She doesn't answer. "What?" She lowers
her eyes for a second, then looks at me again. Picture
slides past, a series of pictures like a slow movie.
Pictures of her mouth moving, saying "I had the same dream."
Smell of woodsmoke coming from somewhere far away. Smell of
wet bark, damp wood. The sudden picture of her mouth kissing
mine. Heavy, damp silence. I am flipping over and over
inside, and I think I'm starting to shake. And I don't think
I can stop. She stands up, steps off the platform, walks out
onto the path. "Come on," she says, looking at me. I am in
shock, and cannot respond. She says it again. "Come on.
Let's go." Now I see a picture of the stream. The banks are
high and steep, covered with moss and ferns. The stream is
flowing toward me, down over boulders and rock ledges. It's
small, about the width of my arm. It comes out of a dark
hole of trees. The path follows the stream for a long time.
It switches now and then from bank to bank, but stays
parallel. We walk in silence. She is about six steps ahead
of me. The shaking has taken over my body, and my teeth are
chattering. I don't dare to say anything, but I want
desperately to act normal. "I think it might rain," she
says, without looking back. I don't know whether I should
respond, whether it's a piece of conversation or just a
statement. I can't think of anything to say. We walk like
this for some time. I almost ask her how much farther it
is, but I reconsider. I don't want to sound like a child.
But I have to do something! I can't be invisible. I don't
want to scare her off. Suddenly, without thinking about it,
I break into a run. I don't slow down as I pass her, but
keep running. I don't know what the hell I'm doing; I just
know that I have to do something to break the tension. The
path comes out into a clearing. I hear her running behind
me, calling out, "Wait! Wait!" I look back and grin at her,
feeling strangely confident, although I'm still shaking
terribly. She's gaining on me. I run faster, veering off
the path and up the foggy slope of the hill. "Come back,"
she calls, still running along the path. "The house is this
way." I change direction and come shooting down the
hillside back into the trees, a good ten yards ahead of her
now. I'm shivering from the cold and I start to slow down,
feeling my ribs knit on the left side. My body isn't used
to strain. As she comes up behind me, the path turns and I
see the house. Picture: under a dark sky, hardly
recognizable as morning, a pane of glass. Through the pane
of glass: she is kneeling at a woodstove, putting in a
handful of sticks. The house isn't really a house, just a
small room. One large window by the door lets in the cool,
gray light. There is a big, broken couch, old brown velvet
with the smell of mildew and a spring showing, against the
wall at the far end of the room. There is the woodstove, of
course, with a small pile of wood and a few logs beside it.
A chest of drawers stands just past the door, tilted on a
short leg. A page ripped out of a magazine is thumbtacked
to the inside of the door, showing a bottle of Absolut vodka
surrounded by green leaves and purple berries. An axe-head
lies on top of a pile of old newspapers next to the couch.
And at the back corner of the room is a wooden ladder that
leads up to a loft. I sit on one of the arms of the couch,
my hands clasped, watching her fill the stove. "How are you
going to light it without any matches?" I ask. She smiles.
"Just a minute." She stands up and walks over to the chest
of drawers. "Why don't you wad up some of that newspaper
and throw it in?" I take a newspaper off the top of the
stack. The axe-head slides off and makes a heavy thud as it
hits the floor. She pulls out one of the drawers. "I come
up here a lot," she says. "I've made a few preparations."
She brings out a box of matches. "Would you like some tea?"
"Tea?" "I have a teapot in here, and some tea, and a cup,"
she says. "Just one cup. We'll have to share." The
pictures are starting to shift again, moving faster. I can
barely track my mouth asking what kind of tea it is. The
shaking is turning into a fever. I think even then, before
it became a memory, I knew what was happening. And it
scared me. The sound of rain hitting the roof filters in.
The room is warm, the tea is warm, but my body still
shivers. Less violently now, more of a humming through my
blood. We sit beside each other on the couch, taking turns
sipping from the cup. "Aren't you worried someone's going to
come up here and find you?" I ask. She shrugs her shoulders
and brushes her hair back. "No, I don't think anyone's been
up here but me in a long time. I mean, it's really
isolated. Probably the guy who owns the property built it
for a getaway cabin or something, but he doesn't use it any
more. Those newspapers are from last year." "Oh." I take
the cup from her. Our fingers touch, slide over each other.
Hers are colder than mine, and somehow I find that
comforting. "What do you do up here?" I ask. She pauses
before answering. "I write. Poems." "Really? Can I see
them?" "No," she says, sort of laughing, blushing and
looking down. "No." "Why not?" "You just can't. No one
gets to see them." She sees my look of disappointment. "If
I showed them to anyone, it would be you." "Maybe someday?"
"Maybe." We're quiet for a while. She finishes the tea. The
rain is coming down harder now, splattering against the
roof. I am absorbed in my senses, which are keyed to a
fever pitch. I notice everything subtle, turn it into
passion in my mind. The sound of the rain. The way her
long yellow hair captures what little light there is and
holds it, like gold. The warm tea in my stomach, the
trembling and nausea I feel. The heat of the woodstove.
The dank smell of the couch, the mushroom scent of the
forest coming in through a crack somewhere. The image in my
mind of the kiss, the ghost of her pressure on my lips. My
feverish, unspoken questions: _Why?_ _What does this mean?_
_Will you kiss me again?_ _How can I ask?_ "I was right,"
she says, breaking the silence. "It's raining." "Yeah."
"Raining pretty hard." I can barely say the word for the
spinning in my head: "Yeah." "Do you..." I look at her. "Do
you want to go back?" she asks. No. I don't want to go
back. I want to stay here, and I want you to kiss me again.
Like you did before. I can't say the words. I can't speak.
The pressure in me is almost more than I can bear; I feel
like I'm going to cry. So I do the only thing I can do, the
only thing that makes sense, beyond fear or dread: I follow
my need. I reach out for her hand and hold it, shaking,
pressing lightly. And I lean in, and I kiss her lips. There
is no picture. There are no smells, no sounds, nothing. My
mind is blank. For a time, an undefinable length of time,
the only contact to this world is the feeling of our lips
touching. We hold the moment, and then move out of it as
her mouth moves and I feel the wet underside of her upper
lip slide in. Everything so slow...the soft vitality of her
tongue entering my mouth, touching my tongue. I don't know
how this is done. My tongue ventures forward, sliding along
hers. Everything soft, softer than I could have imagined.
I feel a tear breaking loose from my eye, rolling swiftly
down my cheek to my jawbone. I regain my mind, and the kiss
has become definite, deliberate. This is no mistake. This
is what we want. We are making it happen. Fears still hover
around me as we move in closer to each other, deepening the
kiss. They are vague fears about the three-year difference
between us, which I never knew until today. I fear that
this isn't real, that somewhere I've fooled myself or made a
fool of myself, for how could someone so beautiful and
confident be attracted to me? But my body does not
hesitate. The kiss continues. I explore her mouth, the
boundary of teeth, the water under her tongue. The hum in
my blood has evened out into a pulse that I can feel. I am
afraid to stop kissing her, because it means I will have to
look at her, to acknowledge the truth of what we are doing.
But I feel her moving away. I close my eyes on the steady
stream of tears. I feel her fingers moving over my face,
rubbing the tears into my skin. She places a finger on my
lips. I open my eyes. The rain hurries onto the roof,
drumming faster and faster. The pictures move by in a blur.
I don't think I can slow them down; the memory rushes
forward out of control, and the images come out of place,
heated, as in a fever dream. The recurring image of her
arms pulling her shirt over her head, baring her breasts.
The smell of mushrooms and smoke, of the damp wool of her
sweater, of the gentle salt of her sweat. The heat coming
from her body as I press my face against her neck. The
rigid place between my legs, that place I am afraid to name.
I feel like a child standing in the wilderness, soaking in
the rain. Someone's skin is cold. Cold and moist. Hers. I
press warmth into it. We are in the loft. Dark here, only
just enough light to see the seashell curves of her
backbone. The profile of a breast in shadow. The tendon of
her neck, a thick, straight line. The marble-statue contour
of her shoulder. Her hair, like a waterfall of sun. There
are no words. We are unable to speak, unwilling to break
the spell. I kiss the cup at the base of her throat and
feel a shudder run the length of her body. She wants me,
and that knowledge pushes away all remaining fears. This is
right. This is what is supposed to be; oh God, finally
something so pure as this, something so clear. This is what
is supposed to be. Floating in, the musky smell of her
juices. I have never smelled it before, but it is instantly
familiar. It smells like the secret, dark places in the
forest that I never dared to go as a child. It smells like
the deepest earth that a gardener kneads with his hands
before planting. I am inexplicably frightened by it, even
as I am intrigued. It is almost too vital. I touch her
breasts. The motions I make are ones I know instinctively
to be right, though I've never made them before. My thumbs
slide down over her brown nipples, which start up from the
areolae like gooseflesh. I reach forward with my tongue
tensed into an arrow, moving like a newt underwater. I suck
in the nipple, fainly hearing the intake of her breath. My
hand caresses the other breast. It is different from what I
expected. The breasts of models I had seen in magazines
looked like rock-hard sculptures, and so the softness of her
skin surprises me. As my tongue slides over it, I hear her
moaning quietly, a low, uncontrolled sound. My hand slides
down between her breasts, down over the arch of her ribcage
onto her belly. A finger hooks into the hole of her navel.
Her moaning grows deeper and breaks off in a sigh.
Slowly...slowly...my hand slides down and further down, and
I feel soft hair at the base of my palm. I feel the throb
of expectancy in my penis. We are set into the tempo of the
pulse of our blood. With each beat she makes another sound,
my hand slips down the smallest bit. And I begin to feel
the slick vertical line of her sex at the center of my palm.
That's the word I am thinking of, sex. It is the first time
it has occurred to me today. It fits what I feel more than
the other dirty words or clinical terms I know. This is
sex. We are having sex. I am touching her sex. And now the
tips of my fingers enter as they pass the top of the slit. A
strange incoherent sound comes from her throat. I move in.
I have never, never in my life, felt anything this soft and
yielding. It feels limitless. My fingers travel farther and
farther in. When I am in to my knuckles, I slide them back
out. And in again. There is a pain building between my
legs. A dull pain, growing sharp. I am very close to the
breaking point. I look at her, about to ask, but her eyes
are unfocused, unseeing. I take my fingers out of her sex
and trail them back up her belly. I move up on the bed,
holding my penis with one hand as I search for the opening.
My hands move under her back and hold her shoulders as I
move into her. My focus is narrow and complete. There is
nothing in my mind but the feeling of sliding into her. All
the way in. All the way in...all the way in... And it is
the fitting of key and lock. It is the drawing of a magnet.
It is the completion of a circuit. What I have put into her
is no longer mine, and what she has opened up to me is no
longer hers. This is the connection of man and woman. I
feel my manhood for the first time. We hold in place for a
moment. Then her hands come up around my back, pressing into
my ribs. I slide partially out of her, then back in, a
motion like the throb of a heart. We hold each other close.
Out, in. Stop. Again: out, in. Out, in. A rhythm. Out,
in. Out, in. We are pressed into one body, rocking back
and forth. Blind motion. Out, in. And I feel it coming,
like the flowing of water, mounting steadily. A pleasure so
vital it could almost be pain. My mind has ceased
functioning, and my body moves unbidden. There is nothing I
could do, even if I wanted to. I am moving toward the
inevitable. My body tenses, tightens. Her fingernails dig
into my back. Tightening, tightening, drawing closer. Out,
in, out, in, rocking faster, climbing like a geometric
curve. An arch. I arch my back, drawing her up with me,
closing in on the crest of it and! OH flood, rain flooding
down upon the roof, falling, falling... The silence that we
shudder into lasts for a moment, and then I hear a small
sound coming from her. I raise my head and I see that she
is crying. I move up to a level with her, kissing away the
tears. She looks as though she wants to say something, but
can't find the words. She doesn't have to speak. I know
what she's feeling. It's not that this was wrong, far from
it. There has never been anything so right. It's just that
it was so unexpected, such a quick rise of passion, such an
uncontrollable unfolding of our private selves. It is the
trust we have found that makes us cry. We cry in relief
that the chance we both have taken has come to this. We hold
to each other for a long time. The rain slackens and
gradually tapers away altogether. And the pictures turn and
flip in the cool wind that comes after rain. My memory
begins to fail me now; it was such a long time ago, such a
different place in my life. It falls away so quickly. Heavy
drops of rain fall from the trees, and the dark places of
the forest become darker. Where did she go? I have
pictures, but some of them contradict each other and I'm no
longer certain which ones are real and which are dreams. In
many of them, she is dancing away into the forest, or down a
sloping meadow. Sometimes she is naked and sometimes not.
Sometimes it is raining. One of the clearest of the
pictures has her running through the trees in a storm,
covered in mud and leaves, but I fear that is only a dream.
I do not think she found the hermit's tree we dreamt about.
If she had, I think I would be there with her. But the cave
is no longer accessible to me. I don't know the path
through the woods that leads to it. I cannot remember how I
made the journey from that boy of thirteen to the man I am
now. I have lost the way. All I have left are my memories.
Walking has become a habit of mine, and on my walks I
sometimes catch the scent of things that bring back the
memory sharply. I have, of course, doubted in my mind that
any of this was more than a dream, but when I smell the
smoke from a fireplace or the odor of wild mushrooms in the
fields as I walk under an overcast sky, there is no doubt.
There are some places that language cannot go. I know, as I
write these words, that when I look back over what I have
written I will be disappointed. Something will be missing.
There will be a bit of literary gloss here or a rough
approximation there, and the flickering truth I hold will
waver and go out. So it must be. Such is the fate of all
memories, and the more beloved they are, the quicker they
die. I am resigned to this. The pictures slow and begin to
fade. Her face looks out at me, smiling softly. The light
grows dimmer. She turns away, taking the light with her.
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