Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(96)

I think she wants to give me kicks I hear him say, as they wander through the campus in the queer quartz light of the snowy night storm, and behind them I flicker in and out of their icy tracks, shivering as warm ribbons of smoke and acid realities flake off my body in shimmering strips, trailing behind me in a patchouli-scented wake. My beautiful Suzanne and the man, the beautiful boy, the stone fox, the sly seductive raptor of my secret waking dreams, walk side by side through the white drifts, hands running up and down their backs, their arms, resting on curves and in hollows, sliding beneath unbuttoned fabric as snatches of laughter and secret mutterings fade in and out with the wind, rise up and catch in the thick boughs; and eventually as I knew it would their long graceful gaits slow as they move closer together, limbs crossing and colliding, stumbling off the wide campus path into the scattering of trees, where they come to rest at the wide round base of an evergreen, Suzanne against the bark like a sliver of ice and the man enveloping her as though the tree itself were closing around her pale dress and skin, but then he moves her around, his back against the tree and legs firm in the crisp stiff layers of snow as he unwinds his long scarf and lets it coil down between his feet for Suzanne’s pretty knees, and her hands fluttering like white doves about his crotch and I hold my breath, let it build up in cold pillows behind my trembling lips and thickening tongue. The sodium lights are dull silver disks illuminating everything and nothing, and galaxies of bright snowflakes flock around Suzanne’s hair like crowns of celestial roses as she pulls his thick cock from out behind the brass buttons and rows of stitching and neat seams, resting the plump dark head on her red, red tongue; and as his cool demeanor melts at her touch, she moves her glossy wet lips up and down the shaft, working the skin back and forth with one turquoise-ringed hand while the other burrows deep and furtive into the fabric, deep between his legs, somewhere deep I cannot see, and his large hands move over her head, enveloping it like a Venus flytrap. Tiny flowers blossom and explode all around them, bright small roses and tiger lilies and orchids, spurting clouds of yellow pollen into their hair and over their limbs as their bodies sway back and forth, and when he comes, she grows rigid and waves of purple lightning crackle all up and down her body, leaving behind trails of shining glitter, the same glitter that pours out of her mouth as his cock slides back, the same glitter that drips and coats the tip; and glitter in the air all around us and I can feel the winter storm sigh and silence, and fluttering warmth floods my limbs as I shudder and fall against the strong trunk of a bristling true cedar, the faint scent of pitch nipping at my lungs as I recede into then fly up through the shadows, pulling my hand out of my burgundy cabled tights as my dark wings spread against the celestial arms of the Milky Way, and it’s all so beautiful and I can taste God at my fingertips, the tears of God that stream out from the primordial center of the world between my legs that is a perfect mirror of this sacred oval space of pure white snow and tall high trees and all the stars tangled up in the canopy of branches that bend down over Suzanne and the vulpine man bending over her, who pecks at her face like a mother kisses a child as his limbs part and divide into hundreds of feathery extensions that collide and wheel about his sharp bone white face, who raises his oil black unblinking eyes up past the branches to the starry airborne rivers of snow while his wings strike down again and again like a waterfall of black razors until she collapses at his feet in boneless folds of creamy skin, who bundles his now velveteen-soft cock back behind the thin folds of fabric and then bundles her gleaming ribs and femurs and fibulas and lovely smooth skull into a small jumbly barrow that catches the wind blowing through it and expels it like a lover’s song, who cracks his scarf in the air like a whip and wraps it back around his neck as he lifts her lifeless form up and continues down along the snowy path, carrying her like a deboned winter fox in the relentless beaked embrace of a nocturnal predator. All about us and behind the trees loom the great halls and cathedrals of learning, gothic spires and carillon bell towers of the great university church, red brick and marble and gray granite arches, stained-glass eyes winking in the now quiet night, and there is only one set of steps to follow in, to place my own starry feet in, footfalls that are deeper now, deep and flecked with dark rubies like the shining strands of rubies dripping off her hair and skin and flecking the stiff wet fabric of her sea foam gown that drops in wet folds and melting crimson fans all about them in the snow as he turns in his slow path to fix his unblinking oil eyes on me even while he carefully with clever fingers crams and works the soft worm flesh of my boneless roommate past those rows of bright teeth into his ever-widening throat, and even as I run run run like a frightened winter mouse I can’t help but listen carefully as I push my way through the drifts, can’t help but hear the sonorous soothing lilt of his beautiful hushed voice that echoes back and forth against the barren trees, that tells the woman in his gullet of the great and mysterious beauty of the Purple Room that she’ll never see now because she was a silly and impatient bitch who started too soon, but if Suzanne replies at all it’s in a voice too deep inside of him to tell.


Gather tales of all your failings, the creature commands me from her circuit high above the student lounge in the main building, floating in languid arcs around the thick cedar beams and cream balloon-shaped lamps that sway over the main room of the student center like ossifying mushrooms. From far above it watches me drop against the burnt orange of pillows and cushions, letting the thin warmth of the air creep its way back through my indigo-veined legs still wet from the lash of the branches and the thigh-high drifts when I ran, ran after the beautiful stranger and the silent Suzanne, her hair and long hair spilling out from both sides of his body like wings of white and gold as he buried her within him and disappeared into the swirling dark, ran until I entered the heart of the campus and I was all alone again with the dregs of other parties who’d crawled and stumbled and meandered their way through the glass double doors, needle-fine torrents of pain rolling through all our muscles like the nighttime waves of thunder snow outside. But now I just ignore her like I ignore all the others that crowd around her on the beam, the Suzanne-shaped birds with the pecked-out eyes and boneless torso, and all the other chicks dripping down mascara and blood, because it’s just the acid I say to myself, this is the bad part of the trip, the six-month visit to the underground part, the walk through the woods with the wolf to grandmother’s house part, the place in the story where I’m going down like all the other women in history, sliding right past that three-headed dog straight into the prickly warmth of hell, and so I tell myself I’m not seeing what I’m seeing, just like I didn’t really see out on the snowy paths to the dorms what I saw, that what happened is Suzanne is back at the party alive and dancing and running her hands up and down her California-tan body while all the boys and girls in the room nod and watch while in some other part of the campus the mysterious beautiful student falls asleep in the arms of a book or his woman, and there’s no thick ribbons of crimson snow crisping cold under icicle bones and endless sky. Someone’s brought a radio and they turn it on and now bottles of beer and whiskey are slipping out from underneath overcoats that plop onto the floor in damp heaps while dope and tobacco smoke begins to thread through the air, and the same conversations about philosophy and art and death and the universe begin again, only more muted and serious this time because we left all the parties behind and this isn’t a party, this is life and we’re students of life, I explain as I take a toke off whatever someone is holding to my lips, we’re taking life and taking it apart and examining each bit, each shining gleaming moment of it that exists both in our timeline and outside of it, history and the future, we’re astronauts riding in rockets of acid and mushrooms, traversing the vast cosmic expanse of our own uncharted unexplored selves, and I wonder out loud how far we’re willing to travel within ourselves to find something new and astonishing event if it’s terrible and not who we thought we were at all or who our parents tried to raise us to be, but maybe that dark place inside isn’t a new discovery but the oldest truest part of ourselves finally set free, free of rules and morals and culture, the primal original ur-self let loose after a lifetime of false and flaccid chains to be one with a world in which all these traps and trappings around us this furniture these clothes these sentences are infestations that keep us from taking our place within the universal mother god node of creation and destruction and deconstruction and rebirth. And some people nod and others disagree and others just stare up at the beams that cross the ceiling like the ribs of a landlocked ship, and everyone’s thoughts and words fill the air, sparking like the glowing embers of a contented and tired fire, and then someone asks the question, and I’m fairly certain that person is me, hey, have you guys heard anything about a place in the dorms called the Purple Room?