Re: Promenade; Elevator [Adult]
The snakes that were not truly snakes, they were not part of the mind of the concubine. They were other. They were the desires that perched upon her shoulder, the ones she kept hidden in daylight. They were not good, those sibilant locks of hair that made her a thing fit for Hell. Women in the sunlight did not have others that hissed and chattered and whispered indecency in their ears. They were not of her, though they were her sorrow.
She watched their actions as from a distance, fingers folded against the black gauze that bunched around her thighs. The bride's moans were faraway things, like stories of princesses in towers. They belonged to someone else. They did not belong to this concubine, one of many. She had not wrought them, and she had not called them forth with her body.
She knew this was not about desire for her. Narcissism was the foundation on which her trade had been built, long before she had been crafted out of soot and coal. But neither was this a desire for flesh, and she wondered about the match and the char. Then she didn't wonder at all.
The tresses did their duty. They fucked. Merciless, they slithered into the bride's mouth and claimed the soft palate and curve of her throat for their own. They fucked themselves into the orifices beneath the hem of the bride's party dress. They did not give, even in their giving. The concubine, she only knew how to give, but the tresses were not her. They were things apart. They took.
Her scalp bled.
There was, for once, no hissing words, no incantation. The concubine was wide eyes made of coal and void. She was silent when the bride kicked her away. The black locks slid away too. Their hisses sounded pleased, and the concubine moved back on her hands like a crab on a sandy beach somewhere God shone. Her sins unexpectedly satiated, she found her feet. She stood. The concubine stood, black fabric coming back to her shoulder, guided by pale hands. She felt nothing. "God is up," she repeated, and the serpentine clusters of black hissed, but they did not stuff themselves between her parted lips.
The elevator doors parted. The concubine did not ask about the match, or about the bride's damaged feet, or about the bloodied knees she had glimpsed beneath the yards of pure dusty rose. She was not made for asking. She owned no inquiry.