Gone to Seed

With an eager bristling scratch at the window, he appears. As expected. Right on time. His broad grin betraying his naïve anticipation. His hot breath fogging up the cold glass panes.

I cannot help but marvel at the glow of youth. Lit from within, his chiseled features —clean angular perfection, carved in firm flawless façade— find me prickling with envy: grappling with sharp pangs of a jealousy I know I needn't feel.

Beaming. A little giddy. A little green. He enters. And the room fills with the scent of him. My knees fall open, before I've even fully realized he is with me. Above me. Over me. On me.

Heady. Musky. Earthy. Etched in olfactory memory. Rooted in ritual. My pulse quickens and I liquify in response. He smells of earth and birth and sex. Of sweat and spice. Of life and death. He smells like Autumn.

Having been so long in this, my own personal purgatory —the seemingly endless aching wait for his return: a drought of want, a prison of impatient thirst— that I am made drunk now by drinking him in, much too fast.

A flash flood. A deafening torrent. My head swimming in the deluge. My heartbeat thundering in my ears. Utterly overcome, I clutch my ice-white inner thighs and force them —wrench them— wider apart. Rocking my hips upward, I present the swelling spring-pink flush of flesh —opening, watering, gaping— yearning to swallow the dank autumnal essence of him.

Emboldened. Green no more.

Ripening before my eyes.

It happens so fast. Always.

So fucking soul-crushingly fast.

I fill with a deep sense of loss, of mourning, as I make that all-too-familiar feeble attempt to capture it. To hold on to it. To take it in. That ever-so-brief, veritably heartbreaking, last look up: to marvel in the purity, at the peak of its perfection. Big beautiful boyish visage, burgeoning to brawn and then beyond.

I fail, once again, in the futile effort to brace myself for —and before— the ever-alarming metamorphosis ensues.

Before the change in him begins.

His huge sinless smile transforms. Whimsical warping to wicked. Master-crafted smirk morphing from near comical to bloodcurdling. Maniacal. And I strive to squeeze my eyes shut tight, as I've not time (I never have time) to turn my head, to look away— as the paralytic freeze sets in.

The room grows eerily still. Impossibly cold. Terrifyingly silent.

The improbable weight of him bears down and, with it, the fear comes in full force. The fear always comes. Every time. No past concerted effort —of concentration or consternation— ever succeeds in preparing me for this involuntary response.

I am altogether taken, despite myself, by debilitating baseless terror.

Petrified as the twine of violent vines scratch and climb, whipping and lashing their way around my pale trembling torso, ribboning into my ribs, encasing my limbs. As his dank thick leaves wad and wrench themselves down my throat. Smothering my breath. Choking my soundless screams.

And with his first impatient thrust —bulbous bottle-shaped calabash, cruel and cold; tumorous gourd growing into me and swelling with an indelicate urgency— I am rendered: more vessel than victim, more purpose than prey.

It is dead inside me. Clammy. Bloodless. A pitiless misshapen husk, engorged with disease and distention. But it is alive inside me. Necrotic hard-shelled host. Pulsating. Bloating and bulging. Teeming with insatiable scavengers. Feasting and sucking. Swarming and writhing. Gnawing through. Breeding and burrowing into my core.

While above me, all my artful symmetry erodes to ruin and rot. His hot wax tears spilling mercilessly from sagging eye sockets, with every artless thrust. Molten rivulets. Scorching my breasts. Healing old scars while carving fresh crimson tributaries. Mapping out new ones.

And the once fragrant oily musk —that which had so recently intoxicated and aroused me into uninhibited carnal frenzy— intensifies, then sours. Scent spoiling its way to stench.

In the dizzying mingle of pain and pleasure, of want and need, destiny and defiance: I stare up wide-eyed —railing against the blinding sting of the foul stench, undeterred by the bone-chilling terror— to look upon what has befallen my impudent paramour. So soon forgetting the nostalgic longing to hold on to his youthful glory, I'm transfixed. And shamefully titillated. As his formerly flawless complexion gives way to craters and ulcers. At first, pitted and pocked. Then Collapsing. Caving in. Decomposing. As magnificent turns macabre. As glorious becomes hideous.

Now wild with unearthly malevolence, my esurient eyes gorge on the grotesque. While my ravenous cunt contracts and constricts, like a serpent swallowing every freakish malformed still-wriggling ounce of him.

His rotting jaw unhinges and falls away, unleashing an avalanche of foul wet stringy mash in its wake. A tepid wormy downpour that should utterly disgust me, and yet my violent climax —not only continues, it— intensifies. It echoes and repeats and escalates, as he's still pounding. Stupidly. Blinding. Fervently driving his fermenting dagger of death and decay, straight into the hellmouth preordained to consume him.

Until, under the constant clutch of my relentless contractions, what remains of him —inside me— crushes in on itself.

My unearthly blue-white form, contorting in grotesque bone-crunching spasms: to absorb and drain and devour. And the room warms. And the tangle of willful vines, with their savage sodden leaves, wither then crumble and disintegrate. As my unrestrained body completes its annual feast: leaching every last putrid pulpy drop. Until there is nothing. Nothing but a quickly fading sickly-scented vapor streaking the air. Nothing left of him but dust and ash. A sad little oily coil of spent wick, rapidly disintegrating on the tattered bloodstained sheets.

* * *

At midnight, as I make my familiar way back to the garden —a desolate brambly patch: barren, but for the promise I carry— I begin to weep.

A maudlin montage of remembrance washes over me. Bittersweet. The satisfying crunch and snap as I had freed him. The smooth cool feel and the heft of him —cradled in my arms— as I'd carefully brushed away clinging clumps of damp fertile soil to reveal his robust unblemished perfection. The intensely exquisite pleasure I'd experienced while I defiled him, with deep penetrating stabs of depraved indifference. Gouged and gutted. Reached in. Wormed my slender fingers in and around and through his wet meaty insides. Yes. Oh! How I'd reveled, as I reverently eviscerated him, before I could render him into existence. Bathed him, and buffed him, before bringing him into being. In my mind's eye, such vivid flashes. The rousing glint of my sharp blade, as I'd shaped the very nature of him. Swift skillful slashes. Deft careful artistry. Laboring, lovingly, over my creation. Monster of my making. Dutifully crafting the ear-to-ear smile of my own never-ending nightmare. Carving out my destiny.

And so now, having reached the end and the beginning of my well-trodden garden path— the outline of its ouroboros shape, illuminated only on this night (as though I could ever hope to misplace it). Under the solstice sky, filled with an infinity of glinting watchful eyes— I hastily try to wipe the salty streaks from my face (as though I could ever hope to hide the evidence of my pointless nostalgic revery from the starlight).

I kneel —ingloriously and gloriously, both; feral and ethereal— splayed and spread. And I expel his seed: returning him to the earth, under the blood orange moon.

I gather and pack the soil, over top, to protect him from the coming winter. And then, basking triumphant, I lean back: baring the still-raw ribbons (the tracks of his tears, marring my breast) to the astral heavens.

And at the brilliant hand of omnipotent moonlight. And at the will of the all-seeing stars. The raised welts split open —garish and glistening— in the glow. Gushing down my chest and stomach. Bleeding into the ground, below, to feed and to nourish. To sustain him.

I've no need, anymore, for elaborate spells or incantations. I had set such conventions aside, many a million moons ago.

Because —while the solitary wait ahead is to be, as ever and always, excruciating— the harvest will come.

As I know it will. As it always does.

Unceremoniously. Simply. I press one blood-and-mud-smeared palm to the sated earth. I cannot help but smile, just a little; as I can already feel a warm stirring deep beneath.

And I rise, reluctantly —loathe to take my leave, to begin my long aching wait, for him, again— with a wistful whisper:

"Go gcasfar le chéile sinn arís, a stór. Macushla."

"Until next year, Jack."