Strewn across a hammock swaying in the timber shed, Lerida lazed. The plastic beads that fell from the doorframe clacked and clamoured as she swayed. The night air came rushing in bringing with it a smell of parchment and graveyard dust, burnt grass and scored bones. She listened for the whistle that signalled the arrival of the One. Pinstripes and fedora. Skeleton face and long, fleshed, slender hands. Fingers that read the air and felt along the earth, using footprints as a map, heartbeats and death rattles braille.
But instead, tonight, the Baron was in no mood for an idle whistle. Instead all baritone and juke joint salt, he came strolling, calling out words of an exotic tongue, calling to the night and the little gods that lived inside the clouds and filled the air with their tortured musk, wanting and having, breathing and taking, exhaling and stealing.
Lerida left her rest to rise to her feet, bare on the wooden floor. She waited for that silhouette, watching for ghosts. Waiting for criminal smiles to vulture across the dark.
"Luurrreeeedah"
Came the time that she would come to the knees of him and kiss his shoes, and he knew it was now, not then, or some when. He came from behind and clicked his fingers. She faced him.
He stood as she expected, though like each time she saw him, some part was different. When first they met he was black as a funeral candle, all over, and tonight he was paler, mulatto, creole.. his eyes the colour of bruises, his hair ginger and matted, long and thin. Hair of a faded old man, when the body and head it traveled with was robust and young, though centuries upon centuries old.
The chalice was raised, and they drank from it. He, cigars, she wine, him murder, she lust. The dawn that came was pink and hot and he asked her to dance for him and handed her Rosie, the snake, and he said that her autumn hair hid the secrets of them spirits, the green mind of the trees, and that she walked this road alone. He came at will, uncalled for.
Kissing her lips to the chalice, raising it, and then a sip, and she fell upon the sheets, a writhing body in the teal and sky blue light of the fallen sky of normality, body clouded in ecstacy and thundering in euphoria as she sang out and moaned and twisted and turned, phantom pleasure for the mambo jive of the spirit clutch. Mr Saturday watched with a grin and the stink of his cigar, the rust of decay the spice of his scent, clicked his fingers again and she snakehipped herself with shoulders to the wall, arms and legs pinned, like the throwing knife wheel she'd known time ago, and he nodded and turned and walked away, letting loa and snake have their play, leaving her to the percussion of plastic beads, screeching branches, hisses from the other side..readying her for the Stride.
She could Rise who need be. Have death surrendered. And a black wind was coming into Desdichado. His name... Sean. Long drowned and lost in the deeps. Dark water swallowed him whole. The marshes laughing. Their wicked tattling on his heels.. Mud haunted his eyes, his back broken with regret.
But instead, tonight, the Baron was in no mood for an idle whistle. Instead all baritone and juke joint salt, he came strolling, calling out words of an exotic tongue, calling to the night and the little gods that lived inside the clouds and filled the air with their tortured musk, wanting and having, breathing and taking, exhaling and stealing.
Lerida left her rest to rise to her feet, bare on the wooden floor. She waited for that silhouette, watching for ghosts. Waiting for criminal smiles to vulture across the dark.
"Luurrreeeedah"
Came the time that she would come to the knees of him and kiss his shoes, and he knew it was now, not then, or some when. He came from behind and clicked his fingers. She faced him.
He stood as she expected, though like each time she saw him, some part was different. When first they met he was black as a funeral candle, all over, and tonight he was paler, mulatto, creole.. his eyes the colour of bruises, his hair ginger and matted, long and thin. Hair of a faded old man, when the body and head it traveled with was robust and young, though centuries upon centuries old.
The chalice was raised, and they drank from it. He, cigars, she wine, him murder, she lust. The dawn that came was pink and hot and he asked her to dance for him and handed her Rosie, the snake, and he said that her autumn hair hid the secrets of them spirits, the green mind of the trees, and that she walked this road alone. He came at will, uncalled for.
Kissing her lips to the chalice, raising it, and then a sip, and she fell upon the sheets, a writhing body in the teal and sky blue light of the fallen sky of normality, body clouded in ecstacy and thundering in euphoria as she sang out and moaned and twisted and turned, phantom pleasure for the mambo jive of the spirit clutch. Mr Saturday watched with a grin and the stink of his cigar, the rust of decay the spice of his scent, clicked his fingers again and she snakehipped herself with shoulders to the wall, arms and legs pinned, like the throwing knife wheel she'd known time ago, and he nodded and turned and walked away, letting loa and snake have their play, leaving her to the percussion of plastic beads, screeching branches, hisses from the other side..readying her for the Stride.
She could Rise who need be. Have death surrendered. And a black wind was coming into Desdichado. His name... Sean. Long drowned and lost in the deeps. Dark water swallowed him whole. The marshes laughing. Their wicked tattling on his heels.. Mud haunted his eyes, his back broken with regret.