The Taking
By Rory Doulos
rory8535@gmail.com

The tropical storm off the coast was bringing in gale-force winds and temperatures in the 50's. While it wasn't raining now, the ground was saturated. The trees were soaked and dripping, flinging water when the winds tossed them. It was a very black night. High, dense clouds moving fast, scudding across the stars, which showed in dim little sparks now and again. The tops of the boundary pines roared with the wind, and it whistled around corners and chattered the wind chimes.

The dog looked at me askance as I slipped out the back door in my terrycloth robe and tennis shoes, towel rolled up and tucked under one arm. I stopped at the edge of the house, listening. I heard nothing but the wind, and the chimes tinkling angrily in protest. The candle and matches were in the robe's single pocket--I would use it, if it would stay alight on this wild night. The hairs on the back of my neck felt stiff from the cold, and not a little nervousness. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to perform this ritual.

I walked towards the rear of the property, skirting the first little copse of trees. There was another one, further back. The ground squelched under my feet and I shuddered. The wind whipped my robe back, exposing my thighs to the cool, damp air. I let it go. I should probably take the robe off, I was supposed to go naked. I didn't. I was already shivering a bit, but I didn't try to hold the robe in place any longer. A small compromise. I would be cold enough, before it was over.

I came to the little stand of trees and stood a moment, looking at the sky. Lightning, off to the north; it was far away. I walked in between the trees to give myself a little cover. The ground wasn't much dryer underneath, but the trees broke the wind some. I could hear the water dripping on the leaves. The air was full of water, I was almost breathing it. The pine needles and last season's dross made a bit of a carpet on the rocky ground.

I wedged the rolled towel between two branches of a crape myrtle. Flinching a little, I took off my tennis shoes and placed them close to the tree's base. The ground was cold and wet against my bare feet. The candle and matches I placed in my shoes. The robe was last, draped over the same branches that held the towel, hanging limp or flapping madly in turns, depending on the wind. I turned my back to it, so as not to be distracted, and then just stood a moment, breathing deeply of the wet earth and pines and what the night wind carried.

my Lady was here.

There was no way to do it without getting wet and dirty. I gingerly went down to my knees, then all fours, trying to clear my mind of everything but my Lady. The wind shook water from the trees onto my bare skin, causing me to flinch. I spread my knees a little further, then slid my arms out together in front of me and pressed my face and shoulders down, ass in the air, then further, deeper, shivering with cold. Looking for that place I go, where my Lady waits, inside me. A spatter of water on the small of my back. Beginning my mantra, first silently, then whispering it softly, aloud, for comfort. Looking for the hole in my world, where I fall out of it and into submission.

I don't know how long i spent that way, prostrated and open to my Lady. When I knew it was time, I slowly brought myself back up to my knees, brushing the wet dirt and leaves from my hands and forearms. I reached behind me and took the candle and matches from my shoes and lit a match with trembling fingers, still mumbling my mantra with lips and tongue that felt swollen. I'd found the hole in the world, alright. I'd fallen through.

The flame danced and flickered like a wild thing, and sometimes almost guttered. I felt a bit wild myself. An ancient dryad, perhaps, with dead leaves in her hair. A wood nymph kneeling in some long-ago wood, lighting a candle in worship to her goddess. Just as I was doing now.

I knelt a while longer, my eyes on only the candle flame, my thoughts on only my Lady; I don't know that I even shivered then. There was finally wax enough, and I raised the candle and dripped it across my breasts, whimpering a little when the hot wax hit my icy flesh. I dripped the wax across both breasts and down my belly, then onto both thighs. Dribbling the last of it onto my cunt, which felt hot and swollen in comparison to the chilled rest of me, I cried out from the sudden sharp searing as a drop splashed my clit. With trembling hands I carefully set the candle on the ground in front of me, then lifted my arms and face to the sky, black and roiled with clouds, and offered myself to my Lady. There was no need to search for her: she was there, with a warm fingertip trailing up my spine, and hot breath on the side of my throat.

And the taking was like liquid sucked through a straw--or blood drawn from a vein into a tube.

After a while I could feel it was time to go, and went to put out the candle--but it was out already. I stood slowly, my knees wobbly. Bracing against the tree, I used the towel to clean away some of the dirt--and the tears. I threw the robe over my shoulders, and placed the candle and matches back in the pocket. Supporting myself once more against the tree, I wiped and dried each foot before putting on each shoe. Then, again shivering, and now blue-lipped with the cold, I wrapped myself inside the robe, and slowly made my way back to the house.

Once inside I washed up a bit, too drained for more, and crawled into bed. I pulled the covers up to my chin, and just lay there, both floating, and as if pinned by a heavy weight. The wind still howled around the corners of the house. Rain spackled the windowpanes. Thunder rumbled, far off. But for a long time before I fell into something like sleep, I lay thinking about that drawing feeling... and the hunger that must have created it.



*Originally published in: Consent, Issue #18, Summer, 2003

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