I haven't even named these characters, but you know who they are. There's an inevitability to it. Woo-hoo, does that mean I don't have to credit SM?
A Darkness of Red
Many have told my story, but it has never been told in my own words or in my own voice, so I will tell it to you now that you may know. The common version perverts the most important point and that is the thing that I must tell you. The truth is that I was not taken against my will, as all the old versions of the stories say. Neither was I seduced, or coerced in any way. The truth is that I was not only willing, I started it.
I am told modern people have no patience with the old way of story-telling, they like their words direct and quick and simple, and they do not care for flowery phrases and excessive imagery, or explanations of every character's lineage and past glories and future expectations. I will confine my tale to short words, and make it brief and I will put it into a modern setting so that you may take it in before your attention wanders. I will be quick!
My handmaidens and I - already I err - I will call them friends - my friends and I were spending an idle morning picking flowers in the meadow, gossiping and giggling as girls are wont to do, and the subject of potential suitors for me was introduced. The girls always look to me, their mistress, in any conversation for cues as to how they are to respond and so they watch me closely. One of our number was reciting names and they were all scrutinizing my countenance, eager to know whether any of the males of our acquaintance had caught my eye. Probably they were all expected to report back to my father if I was ever to show any interest. At one particular name something must have betrayed me, though I endeavored to remain impassive. They exchanged glances with raised eyebrows and nods towards one another, and I became annoyed.
"Wait here. I must attend to the call of nature and I shall be but a few moments," I ordered sweetly, and they had to obey me, because they have no other calling in life than to do so.
I slipped away into the trees for privacy, and stilled my beating heart. The name that had affected me was that of a young man I was sure my father would disapprove of, if only because my father thought I was too young yet for my regard to pass from him to another. The man in question was impossibly beautiful, he was cool and arrogant and unreachable and enigmatic. All those things drew me as a red rag draws a bull.
Lost in my mental wanderings, I hadn't realized I had left my friends a fair way behind amongst the trees bordering the pretty meadow, and I had come to the road.
A silver car hurtled along it as if drawn by bolts of lightning, and I knew that car.
Do I need to tell you his name? I don't know that it is important. You will know the name from the stories, just as you will know mine. No, I don't think they matter. What matters is what happened.
He stopped the car and leapt from the door, approaching me with a frown.
"I've seen you before. You're from my school, aren't you? What are you doing out here on your own?" he asked me abruptly.
"I was walking with my friends, and I became separated from them," I answered, affecting an air of helplessness and worry.
"Don't you have a phone? Couldn't you ring for help?" he frowned even harder, disapproving of my wasting his time.
"The battery has expired," I said, standing a little straighter.
"Where do you live? I'll take you home," he grudgingly offered. The trouble with cool and arrogant people is that they lack patience and goodwill.
"I live on the other side of the woods. I don't feel at all well. Have you any water?" I asked, putting a hand on his forearm. I had no plans to let him out of my sight or my company. I had other plans.
"No," he answered tightly, "but I live near here. I was on my way home. My father is a doctor, I could take you to my house and he can have a look at you...and then I will take you home."
"Yes, please," I told him.
"Shall I call anyone on your behalf? To tell them where you are?"
"My father is at work now. I would rather not bother him there, if you don't mind. Thank you for your kindness in helping me," I answered and he opened the passenger-side door of his car for me.
He was strong, his strength permeated the air between us. He was dominating, but I had already won something between us, if he had but known it. Fate had thrown a chance to me, and things would go my way.
At his house his father saw me and pronounced that nothing appeared to be amiss, but I asked if I might rest for a short while before being taken home. Father and son nodded, and I was escorted to a divan in a darkened room to lie down and recover from whatever ailment it was that could so rob me of vitality and leave me listless.
Meanwhile, I had espied my weapon of choice upon a bench in the kitchen as we passed through it, and I had conceived a plan.
After a short time the son returned to me and asked if I was sufficiently rested. He asked if there was anything I wanted. There certainly was - six feet tall and red-haired and standing right in front of me.
"I am a little hungry," I confessed. "I don't wish to impose - but could I perhaps have some fruit?"
He returned instantly with a bowl and there it was, amongst grapes and cherries - the fruit I had already seen and desired, round and plump in shades of pink and deeper pink, and cream and deeper cream. Like my skin, like my breasts. I knew what the insides of it would be. I knew what the taste would be. I knew what would happen.
"Thank you for your hospitality. I do feel quite recovered now," I murmured sliding myself to a sitting position and looking at him from under my lashes. He still frowned - he only ever frowned. I wriggled and made unnecessary tugs at my clothing and attempted to smooth out wrinkles in the fabric and his eyes followed my hands as I meant them to, and when his gaze returned to my face I darted my tongue out and licked my lips.
"Do you have a knife?" I asked, but the fruit was so ripe that as I cradled its pretty weight in my hand a seam along it burst, exposing the interior. Such a darkness of red was in there, such an entire world of sensuous delight that my breath stopped on an inhalation and I swallowed, staring up at him in open invitation.
Frowning he was, always frowning, and his intensity thrilled me as I stood and leaned into him, one palm flat against his chest. He stared down, eyes widening. He hadn't expected me to move towards him but he wasn't stepping back, and he wasn't stopping me.
I held the fruit in my other hand, out towards him. Eve had tempted Adam in this way - but was it actually fruit she offered, or something else? Was it fruit he took?
I held fruit out to the moody, dark-eyed boy whose heart thundered under my hand and now his eyes narrowed. He read me and he knew. I read him too, and I knew.
With infinite slowness he cupped my hand in his own, the hand holding the fruit, and pulled it towards his mouth. His eyelids flickered down as he watched what he was doing, then back up as he searched my face. His cheekbones were prominent, his beauty hard, unsoftened by smiles or tenderness, but I was unafraid. The fruit lay open now, split, and his red tongue slipped between his lips to lap at it, and to capture some of the seeds from where they lay in their jeweled casing. Scarlet, crimson, ruby. Redder than cerise, but pinker than blood. The stain was on his tongue as he kissed me.
I took his tongue into me, and it bore the seeds. Six pomegranate seeds. I swallowed them, and I made love to his mouth. We were wed by that action - me to him, and him to me. We kissed in surprise and pleasure and drew back from one another in love.
The oft-told tale is that my mother came for me, that she grieved and caused winter to fall upon the land while she searched. Fools! The seasons can be explained by science!
My father found me. The girls informed him when I didn't come back from my few minutes alone in the woods, and they told him they had been talking about the boy I might or might not admire.
My father knew where to come. He left work early and found me not long after I had fallen in love, and he took one look and knew my loyalties had shifted, that I was a woman, no longer a girl, and that I chosen my mate.
My dark prince deferred to my father and called him sir, but none of us believed my father still had any authority over me, as that single kiss had changed everything. The kisses that followed had dictated the future course of the earth itself. There is no force in the universe more powerful than love. My father couldn't argue it or forbid it. My prince and I exchanged promises with our eyes, and with the touch of our fingers upon one another's, and I went with my father to make my farewells to the old way of being.
But his house was no longer my home. It was only a matter of time before my lover and I would share our lives.
"Don't forget your old man, will you now? I expect you to come visit me now and again," my father said, when I told him of my intention to wed.
"Of course, Daddy, I love you," I assured him. My fiance and I planned to leave, and attend university elsewhere. "I'll be back over summer."
That is the true story. As I said, I was the one who started it. And I said I would tell you quickly.
.
.
.
