The following week was defined by three things:
The most surreal hallucinations you could have conjured, as if your world had been overlain with strange scenes from your aunt's Rajsthani paintings of demons and gods, of the bizarre entities that farmers claimed stalked the rivers and forests outside her village.
You recall standing at the subway platform within the sprawling crush of humanity, distinctly aware of shadowy creatures moving at the edge of human perception; a spidery leg ending in a seven-fingered hand skitters across the roof of the train car. A figure over two meters tall, stooped like your grandfather and wrapped old in news clippings like a mummy, waits silently next to you, joining you in the subway car. Bizarre things like night-slicked slugs and glow-eyed chthonia cling to the tunnel walls as you zoom past, watching you in particular.
As well, your appetites and desires had been thrown into an entirely new state of feverish need; no matter how much you ate, the aching void in your belly never dissipated. Your sister had once commented that you ate sparingly like a flightless bird, but the last Sunday family dinner had seen you gorge yourself like an elephant, stopping only when you looked at the pile of greasy plates to your right and
still
felt hungry.
Pakora and satay weren't the only things burning in the furnace of your belly, as part of your atavist's quest for satiety. Tuesday morning, enthralled to a carnivorous impulse you couldn't deny, you'd left the butcher's shop with a whole kilogram of lamb and, barely seared, it'd disappeared down your gullet. In the twilight hours of Thursday, you suddenly blacked-in, crouched over the savaged remains of a pigeon, feathers caking your mouth and bloody bits stuck beneath your fingernails...you were savoring a mouthful of raw flesh, tiny bones stuck between your teeth. Somehow, beneath the fever-soaked layers of your mind, your lizard brain knew the only thing that would quiet your need was the warm, bloody flesh of something yet living.
Then of course, there was
her.
Since that time in the gym, you'd encountered her - or rather, you'd found each other - every night for five nights.
Monday night you'd learned her name - Carmen - when, mysteriously, it'd shown up programmed into your phone with her number. She'd invited you to meet her in a motel room - you recall the way she dug her nails into your hips as you thrust her into the mattress, her lust staining the sheets as she insisted on more, ever more, waking your neighbors (and inspiring them to sex as well).
Tuesday, you'd discovered her dressed in a gold confection of a shimmering dress, waiting nonchalantly at the bar of Chandra's where you'd taken the latest well-bred well-fed girl your mother set you up with...her name had fluttered from your memory like a red butterfly. You'd ditched her, that nameless little brahmin's daughter, and Carmen had ridden you in the bathroom with your suit-pants around your shins.
Wednesday, after you'd finished work, she'd simply accosted you outside your apartment, shoving you through the door and slamming it behind you. Sweaty and soot-caked as you were, she'd pushed you against the wall, her head mouth bobbing over your throbbing cock before she fucked you against it. You learned this was one of her favorite positions by the way she practically growled through her climaxes, her nectars dripping down your testicles.
Thursday in the afternoon she'd even come and visited you at the machinist's shop during your lunch break; it wasn't like that sandwich was filling you up anyway, so you took your fill of her in the parking garage, in the back seat of your car. She'd been particularly demanding, riding you to ejaculation twice - a trick of yours she seemed particularly fond of. Shamelessly, possessively perhaps, she'd kissed you in front of your coworkers with ferocity before disappearing to...wherever she went when she wasn't dive-bombing your life.
Friday night you'd stopped at Lanny's house - an on-off friend with benefits - and had sex before taking your leave...no surprise, when you returned home and found Carmen already in your bed, naked and displaying her swollen sex to you. Another man's semen was dripping from her shining vulva...it struck you as some sort of challenge and in a fit of completely unwarranted jealousy you reclaimed her on your bed another two times. She was particularly loud that night, clawing red furrows in your back as you pushed her other lover's cum deeper into her before pumping in your first load, then your second, spent and yet wanting more.
That was the first night she stayed with you.
Your sheets are tangled around your legs, your bodies soaked with each other's sweat and carrying the nail-and-tooth marks of your intercourse. She's laying upon her back, luxuriating in the breeze from your ceiling fan; the Gulf Coast heat was nothing new for you, who'd grown used to Hyderabad's oppressive humidity, but you surmised Carmen was a creature of cooler climes. Upon your side, a dusky arm laid across her chest, your thigh against hers, she strokes your feathery dark hair and smiles in panther-like serenity. Neither of you breaks the silence until both of you do.
"So why - "
"I was wondering - "
You both talk over the other momentarily before making eye contact and snickering. You push up onto an elbow and recline next to her, a hand stroking over her lower belly. "You first," you offer.
"Such a gentleman," she demures, fingers lacing through yours gently. "I was wondering...if perhaps you'd like to actually go out with me and do something, as much as I really adore accosting you at your job or on dates with other women for sex. Maybe we could, I dunno...get to know each other or something this Sunday."
"Yes, I would," you answer carefully. "I can't seem to get you off my mind, but I know so little about you. I got plans on Sunday - "
"Great. Fit me into them." Simple as that, as if there's no argument to be had. "I
have
been stalking you almost everyday...part of me wondered if you'd be afraid of me." She chuckles, a low thrum, smoky as brandy. She glances at you, her hand trailing down between the cut of your pectoral muscles. "You're not afraid, are you?"
"I think I'd be a fool not to be at least a
bit
afraid," you replied dryly, which she seemed to find amusing rather than shameful. "You did something to me that first time we were together, unless I was tripping."
"You weren't tripping Arjuna, I did indeed do something to you and I apologize." She doesn't actually sound sorry at all, like the apology is some sort of ritual. A momentary flare of anger coils in your throat, but it's a small thing compared to your attraction to her, the aching pit in your gut, and the fact that
you just saw something the size of a man fly by outside your window into the night.
"Care to enlighten me?" you manage to keep your voice from quavering too obviously as the edges of your reality continue to shiver and warp around you...you should be in a hospital, instead you're entertaining her.
"Hah, well...my mate will definitely grow angry with me for spilling the beans - "
That word is like a record scratch in your brain. "Your...mate?" The jealousy in your voice is hot enough to cut through wax, and you absolutely hate it. You recall the slick ease with which you entered her, the squelching lewdness of another man's seed in her vagina, now dripping with you.
She takes a breath through her nostrils, a low hiss between her teeth as she forcefully fixes that smile to her face...you're walking on delicate turf here; is that guilt dancing behind the amber-mirror of her gaze? "Yes. My mate. I'm sure you noticed he and I had sex shortly before I came to you; don't get me wrong, I've gone back to him after you and I did it. A few times."
