Disclaimer: Not mine, but Gregory Maguire's.
Author's Note: Ok, I lied. Watched some great movies over the weekend: Aviator, Phantom of the Opera, Head in the Clouds. Kind of a short chapter, but don't worry. Next one should be way more disturbing but hey, that's human nature. Must not shy from human nature now, hmm? That would be called lying. I don't want to do that.
For Oasis Dreamer.
Chapter 4: Time For Some Sophisticating"What's your nerve?"
He watched her green face, animated as usual, shrink with the increasing distance until the background swallowed everything.
He shook his head, golden strands flickering in the candlelight, reflecting his image on the window. He focused on that.
Fuck the background.
Shenshen giggled nervously next to him, placing her nimble fingers on his thigh. The touch forced him to tear his gaze from the window, and, through said tearing, noticed his attention fixated on the reflection of the lime trim of his overcoat. Avaric turned and offered his best charming smile.
"Yes, dearest?" She giggled some more, twirling her hair. She reeked of fermented grapes and cream, her soft thighs spreading on the leather seat like the silent unrest in the cabin.
"Aaa-va-ric! Where are we going again?" she slurred.
No one answered for a while. Even breathing seemed impossible; the only noise was the dismembered noise of horse hooves trampling the dry ground.
Boq, silent after his outburst earlier-apparently ashamed, as much as a drunk man can be-shot a helpless glance at Shenshen, then Fiyero, then Crope, then Tibbett, then Avaric.
Pfannee was staring out the window. Her voice vibrated slightly as she spoke and Avaric noticed, perhaps for the first time, how very young she looked.
How very young they all looked.
"The Philosophy Club."
"Was there incense in the air too? It seemed to make Boq's mind split in half, like a husk, and allow a tenderer, complacent mind to emerge. The softer, more bruisable aspect, the private intention, the surrendering self."
Where was he again?
Where was he?
A most notorious haze crippled his sight; everything seemed tinted with a common color. Whips, he heard whips, maybe. The musky scent of semen and berries molested his nostrils as another scent, the lovely stink of damp fur caused him to start, unaware of his momentary blindness. The scene before him played out slow and deliberate, much like a woman slowly undressing, except in place of that woman, naked and erect, bucked Tibbett.
And Tibbett only.
In a few years Avaric will realize, or start to, that this very event was actually of some importance; a revealing of cracks in a bowl scrubbed too hard, if one may visualize, the beginning of the end. This is where Tibbett will start to become just Tibbett, and Crope, Crope, and Crope only.
But right now, in the present, he was not allowed to be aware of things, matters of such importance.
A groan escaped that richly fed mouth of his, and Shenshen's hands fingered with his belt. A sideways glance and he saw Fiyero, the diamonds on his hands blurring together as they sped up and down his princely shaft. His eyes rolled back into that head of his and he saw Boq, and Boq's face screaming three syllables GA-LIN-DA. Three elves pounced hungrily on Pfannee, a clever one nipping at her quivering thighs. A dwarf straddled Crope's inert body all the while painting Crope's lips and eyes with a lump of charcoal rouge. The bride-to-be adorned a sequined mask; her lover shuddered as he entered and stole the virginity of every orifice.
The dancers swung their hips in tune with the sexual noises of broken inhibitions and debauchery. Everything glittered and stank, unceasingly, as if the all the horrors and the beauties in the world were all contained in this tiny room.
All too soon the warm, supple body of Shenshen enveloped his; he was hard then, and finally. There is hope for me yet, he thought, or would have had thoughts ever existed in that club of sin.
Her body swallowed him whole, but alas. Her nimble fingers fluttered too nimbly, her touch too tender, her hips too in sync. So he closed his eyes for a while. Shenshen bucked her hips into his pelvis.
"I certainly will not touch you." "The elf in the self regrets."
"Master Avaric, the Margreave Descending from Tenmeadows, Gillikin."
"Mama's going to tell you a story."
"Jealous, darling?"
"I could marry you." "You're not that stupid."
All angles and nails, his back burned with bites and crescent Vinkus cups. She never closes her eyes. She doesn't trust him. He gives her reason not to. She's on her belly and he's entering her from the back but she doesn't flinch. Green and screaming and many times silent.
Shenshen whimpered.
Oh but Unnamed God, that green. It's disgusting.
Avaric growled, a familiar need rushing through his innards; he fought the urge to release. He clenched both teeth and hands until the skin under his nails slipped in blood.
It should burn.
Dammit.
There's the Snake, she's naked and prostrated before him. Did they know her nipples were not green, but actually a stranger shade of pink? Did they know what pattern her pubic hair grew?
Did they know her outer lips were, in fact, green?
They shuddered, all of them, and inside all of the smoke and the mirrors in the club, they were all aware of everything and everyone at the same time and no one (Yackle would make sure) will forget it, this, anytime soon.
"Elphaba!"
Then they all exploded into tiny stars.