It has been a while since I felt like writing. Thanks to Mona for the character inspiration and Mika for the tone inspiration and edit assists. All characters are over the age of 18.
The banging on my door is sharp and unpleasant, yanking me out of a dream and leaving me lost as to where I am. I can't seem to quite catch my bearings let alone what the voice accompanying the banging was saying. Shifting unnaturally, the world suddenly turns over and my face hits the floor a second before the rest of my body comes crashing behind. Jarred completely awake, I manage to moan out something semi intelligible. My mother takes it for me being awake and loudly calls through the door. "Trevor, you promised Nicole you'd get her yard ready for the party tonight. I'm going out to get my nails done."
"Okay," I call out to her and hear her footsteps heading down the hall. Every Friday night since I can remember, my mother and her best friend from highschool had a 'party' to celebrate the weekend. Really it was just the two of them usually, dressed up and drinking wine. The gossip flowed freely. Before the night was over, the conversation was usually past what we were allowed to hear as kids. Once things advanced this far, Nicole's daughter Amber and myself were ushered into the basement playroom. As a teen I stopped going to the parties.
No use in showering before I get sweaty. Once I'm dressed in some old work pants and a beat up tee shirt, the shed in the backyard is my next stop. One thing that made this less of a chore is that the women had managed to buy their dream homes side by side a few years ago. There was just a short picket fence between the yards, with an extra wide gate. Almost on autopilot after doing this chore for years, it's barely over an hour before the front and back yards are mowed and trimmed and I'm loading the mower and weed eater back into the shed.
"Great job, as always," I hear Nicole call from over in her yard. The second thing that made the grass cutting less of a chore is Nicole herself. She comes strolling toward me in a soft yellow bathrobe that comes down to about her knees, barefoot in the fresh cut grass. She always wears bright colors that contrast with her dark skin, almost as dark as black coffee. Even with the robe tied up to her neck, it seems her chest threatens to bounce out with each step. As she reaches me I force myself to focus on her face, and not her chest or bare legs. It's not hard to do, I just wind up staring at her lips instead, full and soft. Get it together, Trevor.
"Thanks. Mom's excited for tonight, is there something special going on?" Nicole's short puffy haircut is lopsided still, a sure sign that she hasn't been awake long. That's just a benefit of retiring young and working hard, I remind myself. I'm almost a whole foot taller than her 5'4" height, but the woman gives off a commanding aura. She started a restaurant downtown right out of highschool and sold it recently, her whole bearing gives off an aura of being in charge.
"I finally cleaned the hot tub up. I've been lazy." Before I can answer, we both feel the tremor. Her eyes open in shock as she stumbles toward me. Earthquakes aren't common here on the east coast, but that's what this feels like. What else could it be? The vibrations turn my legs to rubber as I reach forward to catch Nicole. Before I can grab her the ground seems to disappear beneath us. The last thing I see is darkness swallowing everything in my vision broken only by the shimmering of bluish white sparkles.
In the middle of a field that goes on as far as the eye can see is a small pavilion. Its base is smooth dark wood in the shape of a large circle, with railing of the same smooth wood running around the circumference except for where a single stair leads up onto the platform. Six beams around the outside and a single taller beam in the center hold up a large dark canvas over the pavilion to protect the people inside from the elements. Today the purplish red cloth provides protection from the bright sun, but also would be suitable for rain. The fields are set with neat rows of trellises coming out of small mounds. Thick vines climb the wooden trellises and hanging from the vines are bunches of grapes. There seems to be no sense as to what color each bunch of grapes is, the same plants seemingly giving green, purple, and red varieties. What is uniform about the plants is the plump ripeness of every single fruit. The field is a place of magic, and each and every fruit will stay eternally ripe until plucked and eaten.
The owner of the field sits inside the covered pavilion resting in a lounge chair, sipping from a glass of dark red wine that doesn't seem to need to be refilled. Every time he sips from the glass, none of the sanguine liquid seems to disappear. The man is tall and lean, dressed in the finest white linen shirt and pants giving off an air of comfort that would be hard to emulate. As is the case for most of his kind, one would say his face is beautiful by human standards, but his features seem to constantly shift and change the harder one tries to focus on them. A table sits in front of the strange man, next to the center pole, with another glass and a plain glass decanter of what appears to be more wine. The man is not alone.
In a matching lounge on the other side of the table is a tall youth, barely twenty years old with light brown hair and a thick build. He is asleep in the chair, head leaning to one side and snoring lightly with his eyes closed. A matching white linen outfit drapes across the sleeping young man. Beside the youth's lounge is a large soft pillow, seemingly made of silk and in a soft pastel yellow. Oh the pillow, also asleep, is a strongly built woman with smooth dark skin. She is fully nude, with her eyes closed and breathing heavily in her sleep. Somehow the woman seems to be sleeping comfortably on her side even though her arms are pulled behind her, forcing her massive breasts out in front of her. The nipples on full display are large, slightly hard, and as dark as the night itself. Her arms are bound at her wrists in what appears to be grape vines that then trail down to bind her ankles together and from there lead down off the pavilion and into the ground.
Both of the sleeping forms start to awaken at the same time and the owner of the pavilion smiles to himself and takes a final gulp from his never ending wine glass before standing and patting down his linen outfit to look as presentable as possible. The figure taps his foot with impatience as his guests slowly wake up. The youth gets his bearings first, and tries to stand but falls back into his chair. He moans audibly as he lands and tries to blink the fog out of his eyes. "Where am I?"