Wrath White - Scabs

“Dr. Lathum? Dr. Lathum, is that you?”

Jason recognized the voice, Mary Thompson, the Physician’s Assistant he had hired his first day on the job. Her red hair, dimpled cheeks spotted with freckles, fiery green eyes, those unreasonably large breasts, had been immensely attractive to him once. He would have asked her out eventually, even knowing that she was married. But that was before God had called to him.

“That person no longer exists. You know you are killing God’s children in there, don’t you? You know you will be judged for it, don’t you?”

“You take care of yourself, Dr. Lathum. Don’t catch cold out here.”

“You are going to burn you know? They don’t forget. The kids. They never forget.”

The nurse shook her head and walked away. When she opened the front door, the blast sent pieces of her in every direction, a pink mist of atomized blood, bone, and flesh. The entire front of the building collapsed and the fireball blew all the way through to the back of the building.

Jason started scratching himself again. He could still feel the little spectral fingers all over him, tugging at him, but there were less of them. The fire must have burnt some of them away. God always sends fire to cleanse the world. He craned his head to look up at the heavens as the dark clouds rumbled above him, roiling like a pot of boiling oil. The rain still bombarded the earth, flooding the streets, washing away all the filth and debris.

“Sometimes a few long days and nights of rain are all the world needs.” Jason thought, “ Still, there’s no substitute for the flame of the righteous. Nothing cleanses like fire.”

Jason slowly stripped off his clothes, smiling as he walked into the building, feeling the fire lick at his flesh, warming his soul, as all of his sins melted away.

Perpetual Motion

Help me to avoid the next woman

The one who comes after you came before you and before her who will lie in bed beside me love me tell me about our future together never ever ever ever leave me like you those before you and the next woman the one who will be you

If I blink.

I awake and the morning sun sears my eyes. I have to concentrate hard to keep from blinking. My eyes are starting to water now. It’s a discomfort I’ve come to accept. I can feel the gummy film that has formed on my retinas. I reach out and try to wipe my eyes clean with my fingertip. It doesn’t help much. Already my eyes are beginning to dry out. I try to ignore it as long as possible. I try not to blink.

I don’t know how long I’ve been lying here with this cold clammy sweat sticking my ass to the bedspread, staring at the ceiling with that damned Lord Byron poem playing in my head like a tuneless soundtrack.

“Yet still this fond bosom regrets while adoring/ that love like the leaf must fall into the sear/ that time will come on when remembrance deploring/ contemplates the scenes of our past with a tear…”

I have no idea why I’m thinking of it or what it means in relation to my current situation or why I haven’t yet bothered to see who it is lying beside me snoring softly. I wonder if she’s someone I love, or someone I hate but love to fuck, or someone for whom I have no feeling at all and only fuck for lack of anyone better to occupy my time with. I guess I’d better look before my eyes get any blurrier.

When I first see her caramel skin, smooth slender body, and small neat afro, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I nearly leap from the bed. She looks so much like my mother that for a moment I thought I had done something really, really bad. Then I realized that my mother hadn’t looked like that in nearly twenty years, and besides Mom is more of a reddish brown, more like mahogany than caramel.

I examine the sleeping woman’s face meticulously, watching the rise and fall of her supple breasts, dark nipples pointing skyward like little Hershey kisses, the sweet gentle smile that crosses her face as she flutters awake. She is beautiful. At least that’s something. They aren’t always beautiful. Sometimes they’re just shy of pure flawless ugliness with only a nice ass or a pair of perky round breasts saving them from abject hideousness. Can’t say I’m terribly particular. It doesn’t matter a hell of a lot what they look like as long as I have someone. But this goddess makes up for every dog that ever scented these sheets.

She ain’t the most beautiful woman I’ve known but definitely the most beautiful one that I’ve shared a bed with in a very long time. There have been many others. Too many. Delicate, lovely, soft, and supple, fading in and out of my life like phantoms, desert mirages sent to torment a weary and dehydrated traveler, to fuel his hunger for the unattainable like the schizophrenic hallucinations of a wino or chronic drug fiend. In the end they leave only their heart wrenching memories, pale afterimages, mere suggestions of substance seared into my consciousness with a scalding teardrop and the familiar tightening of the stomach that comes with the remembrance of joys never again to be enjoyed. Many of them I’d cared deeply for, even loved. Too many. It only hurt that much more when they inevitably passed. Pricked by a thousand thorns for the sight and smell of a single rose. Watching each lover dissolve into the past to be replaced by the next woman. It was tearing me apart inside. I no longer had the stamina for it.

The woman is so beautiful that I hope to God I wasn’t foolish enough to fall in love with her. I can’t stand another heartbreak. But I was cursed with a romantic heart; a poets heart.

“…Yet still this fond bosom regrets while adoring.”

Her skin is like whipped milk chocolate, so fresh and clean that I can smell the water from her bath in the pores of her skin, beneath the smell of sex. She has dimples and round little cheeks suspended above a smile that imprisons all innocence and softness in its pearl white cage. Her body is all long legs and break-neck curves. She reminds me of Tyra Banks or like Pam Grier back in the seventies when she starred in movies like “Foxy Brown” and “Coffy.” She has the type of voluptuous, wantonly sensual form I’ve always admired- no…worshipped!

“That love like the leaf must fall into the sear…”

Her breasts, unlike most, seem to have a remarkable aversion to the ground; gravity defying. They are larger than you’d ever see in the Miss America Pageant but firmer and more buoyant than those flabby pendulous monstrosities found in magazines like “D-cup.” She also has a deliciously flat stomach. She has mad body! A stupid boomin’ figure! I can’t tell what that ass looks like because she’s lying on her back. Of course there are memories to supply that information. There are always memories.

“That time will come on when remembrance deploring…”

We met last year (although I’m sure she didn’t exist until she magically appeared in my bed this morning). I was sitting on a bus reading a book. When I looked up, she was staring down at me.

“So how’s the book?”

It sounded like one of my “break-the-ice-quick” pick-up lines. Something I’d say right before: “Where’d you get your earrings?” Or “That’s a lovely dress.” Or “Are you a dancer/model/artist/actress?” I could barely stifle my urge to laugh. I thought I’d better answer before she started throwing a few of those lines at me. I closed the book, making sure to save my place.

“It’s not one of his best,” I replied, as I looked her over from head to toe, lusting conspicuously. She had the retro sixties look down. A perfectly round afro framed her face lavishly in a cushion of black wool. Huge hoop earrings dangled alongside her head clanking noisily as the bus bounced along. Her lips were full and pouty as she blew out her words like kisses. It was amazing how much she looked and dressed like my mother did in 1973. I was freaked out by how much it turned me on.