This is a work of adult fiction and should be read only by adults.
It is also my work. Although I receive no compensation other than
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and I'd appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or comments that
readers are kind enough to send.
Alexis (ealexissiefert@yahoo.com)
~~~~~~
Nevermore (M?F myth F-solo?)
In Pacific Northwest native cultures (Alaska, British
Columbia, Washington, and Oregon) Raven serves many purposes. He is
often a force who brings change or creates order, natural phenomena,
habits, or customs. He's a trickster and a fool, but he is also a
protector of people and smaller beings.
There is a in the Haida in which Raven brings
light to the people. This is based upon that myth.
~~~~~~~
It wasn't going away. It had come before, and it had always
gone away before, but this time seemed different somehow. This time
it was heavier, lingering longer, filling up more of the empty spaces
around her life. It was seeping through all of the uncaulked cracks
in her psyche and was running down the walls of her brain. The cloud
had taken on an almost physical form around her. It sat on her
eyelids and made them heavy. It rested upon her shoulders and forced
her to slump. Although she intellectually knew the 'truth,' her mind
refused to believe that the depression was just a series of emotions,
feelings she could banish if only she could find the energy. She
also knew that this was the final time she would go through this
cycle.
Connie sighed as she turned the faucet off. Steam rising
from the tub blurred her vision and fogged the reflective surfaces of
the mirrored paneling along the bathroom wall. From her perch on the
tiled edge of the bathtub she could see through the steamed window,
into the small yard behind her home. It was just as well that the
condensation blocked her vision; her normally pristine landscaped
yard had been allowed to fall into disrepair this summer. Her roses,
her perfect prize roses, hadn't been pinched back once since they
started blooming. The raspberry bushes lining the tall wooden fence
had grown gnarled and impossible. The berries were allowed to grow
beyond ripe until they fell, swollen and sticky, onto the ground
below. Hundreds of times this summer she had started outside to
prune and cut, intending to weed the rows between her carrots and
peas, wanting nothing more than to inhale the full blooms of the
roses and run her hands through the carpet of impatiens beside the
stone walkway from her side door. However, it seemed that just
putting on her gardening togs was enough to exhaust her, and by the
time she reached the door it seemed as though the effort wasn't worth
any benefit she would garner from being out.
This had always been the first sign that she was headed into
a dark time. The tried and true pick-me-ups stopped working. Biting
her lip she gently eased her feet into the scalding tub. The water
was hotter than she usually found comfortable, but at least the
sensation of pain could still get through her dulled senses. At some
level she was worried that the only feelings she still seemed to
retain were those most feelings of pain. The milder emotions
seemed blocked by some invisible bubble surrounding her. As she
eased her body completely into the water and let the steam envelop
her, Connie pushed those worries aside. The heat filled her head and
numbed her skin.
Connie sat this way for what seemed like hours, partially
draining and refilling the tub whenever the water cooled or whenever
her body adjusted to the temperature. With a dispassionate eye, she
could see the redness form on her skin, the flush from the heated
water, the slight burns. She took comfort in the fact that she saw
these things rather than felt them. 'Tomorrow,' she thought,
'tomorrow none of this will matter any longer.' She reached for the
blade she had set on the edge of the tub.
There was pleasure in the pain, comfort in the idea that she
could still feel something, at least for now. She stopped the
pressure to examine the small drop of forming on her inner arm.
The steam had built into such a curtain around her that she was
having difficulty focusing on the veins beneath her skin. Putting
down the razor, Connie reached for the clasp of the window above the
tub. She opened the window a few inches to clear the steam and allow
her to focus on the task at hand.
As she reached to again pick up the blade, she saw a flash
of white through the window. Squinting through her blurred vision,
Connie saw a large white bird sitting on the windowsill. 'Strange,'
she thought. 'I swear that looks like a raven.' She shook the
thought from her head. 'Impossible. I've never heard of a white
raven.'
She put the blade down on the tiled floor and reached up
towards the bird. He sat still, watching her with a wise eye, his
head tilted towards her. As her hand approached the sill, he
suddenly opened his beak as if to squawk, but merely ruffled his
feathers and took flight on silent wing.
~~~~~~
Connie woke with a start. Apparently she had forgotten to
fully pull the curtain last night (although to be honest, she didn't
completely remember coming to bed after last night's bath). The
morning sun had sent tendrils streaming across her bed to play with
the loose folds of the summer blanket. Grumbling quietly to herself
she pulled the sheet over her head and buried her face in the pillow.
She strained to pull tears from her eyes, or sobs from her throat as
the faint throbbing in her forearm began to assert itself and remind
her that she had failed to end things last night. Nothing. There
wasn't enough feeling left inside her body to summon tears.
'Well, no sense making the same mistake twice,' she thought
as she sighed and poked her head out into the stale room air. Rolling
first to her left, she reached out and pushed the bedroom window
open. Her body shivered slightly as the cold early-morning air
washed over her. Twisting her body, Connie reached for the open vial
sitting on her nightstand. 'Remarkable, really,' she thought
absently, 'I would have thought that my hand should at least shake a
bit.' Connie took this steadiness as a sign of her body's
acquiescence to the decision made by her brain. She shook the pills
out into her palm and silently counted them. It had taken an amazing
amount of willpower to stockpile this bottle. Her insurance would
only allow for a one-month prescription at a time, so she had been
forced to fall back on over-the-counter sleep aids for the past two
months so she could hoard her small supply of the triazolam. She had
no idea how many pills this would take, but she figured that her hard-
saved 60-day supply should be more than sufficient.
Setting the pills in the ceramic dish beside the bed, Connie
stumbled sleepily to the kitchen to fill her water glass and the
water pitcher she kept by her bed. Glass in one hand, pitcher in the
other, Connie returned to the bedroom and settled comfortably between
the cool cotton sheets. She thought briefly about closing the
window; the temperature of the room had dropped dramatically with the
open pane, but the effort seemed silly. 'It's not going to matter
much in a few minutes anyway.'
Two pills at a time, slowly so as not to upset her stomach
and destroy the whole point of the overdose, Connie began to the pills. Her stomach clenched as the pills began to dissolve.
'Small steps, Connie. Slow and steady if this is going to work.'
Two on her tongue, wash them down with water, rest a moment to let
her stomach settle, then reach for the next two.
It was then that she noticed it again. The raven. The
white raven. With her attention diverted, her hand stopped somewhere
between the bed and her lips. Her eyes were caught by the sunlight
glinting off his feathers. 'Strange,' she thought, 'he doesn't look
quite as white as he did last night.'
She blinked her eyes and rubbed the lingering sleep from her
lids. 'No, he definitely looks substantially gray around the edges.
Positively dusty.' She laughed softly and her fingers traced the
small flecks of gray at her own hairline. 'Oh well, little one. It
happens to the best of us. One day we just wake up and there're the
telltale signs.' Her voice was strange to her ears. The sound
echoed against walls that hadn't heard human voices in days, weeks
perhaps.
The bird preened silently, almost as though he too was
inspecting his newly darkened feathers. As his beak brushed under
his wing, Connie could see that it was more than just a new
smattering of darkness. Where last night there were white feathers,
the undersides of his wings were black. Mesmerized by the raven's
motions, Connie sat motionless, pills still in hand, watching the
bird. She could feel those first few pills start to take hold of her
consciousness.
The raven stopped and focused his eyes on her. Still,
silent. He could have easily been one of the ceramic figures she
remembered her being so fond of collecting. Those silly
figurines gathering dust upon the mantle. But there was a
difference. This one had a fire in his eyes. Those eyes that looked
at her, seeing through her. She shuddered.
'Stop it Connie. It's just a damn bird. Or it's a figment
of your imagination. Let it be.' Her voice was rough, raw from
disuse. With a wave of her hand she shooed the bird away. "Bah!
Scat!'
It raised itself on tufted legs and shook its wings out to
their full span. It wasn't until then that Connie got a full
appreciation of the size of the bird. Its wings beat a slow rhythm,
fanning the summer morning air into the room and filling her nose
with the scent of dew-damp grass and blooming morning glories.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply letting her head fall
lightly back against the pillow. With a half-effort, she weakly
raised her hand toward her lips, but by that time the first pills had
reached their prescribed effect, and she silently nodded off to
sleep, her task again left undone.
The once impossibly-white raven watched silently over her as
she slept, departing only as the day passed and the sun began to set.
~~~~~
Her dreams were fitful, as they often were when her sleep
was drug-induced. They were impressions, really, more than dreams.
Images.
The touch was light over her eyelids. The faintest of
brushings along her skin, tickling her lashes and cheeks. She smiled
in her sleep and tossed her head, remembering, perhaps, a lover's
touch. A long-ago touch from a long-ago man. Delicate, loving. The
feather continued its path across her cheeks, over her lips, tracing
their lines with its edge. She lifted her chin slightly, exposing
the pale skin of her throat, the throbbing of her pulse evident under
the taut skin. The feather paused slightly as it wound its way under
her jaw, a shiver from her body.
Even in her sleep, she could feel her body begin to respond.
Her fingers wound into the sheet, gathering it up in her palms as she
pressed her hands into the mattress. Her nipples pressed against the
cotton of her t-shirt, straining as they hardened with the
remembrance of things past. The sleeping woman's breath seemed to
catch in her throat as she arched her back, giving silent voice to
the stirrings of once-felt desire.
Through the haze of sleep, Connie could feel the steady hand
wielding the torturous feather across her skin. The nerves in her
body suddenly seemed to cry out for more, to beg for a firmer touch.
As the feather teased her now-swollen nipples, Connie pressed her
shoulders harder into the bed, forcing her up, searching for
fingers, hands, lips, anything other than this barely-there touch.
As she strained towards the unseen hand it withdrew, leaving
her quivering, struggling to pull herself from sleep. Not until she
calmed her breath and relaxed back into a restful slumber did the
feather resume its exploration. It began over her right breast,
tracing circles around her areola. an invisible line from the
tips of her breasts, down to the skin between them, skin damp with
the slightest touch of desire.
From her breasts, the feather drew paths to her belly,
pausing only briefly over the hollow of her stomach. Along that
delicate line at her hip, over her swollen mound it flirted.
Connie felt her thighs parting, not completely at her will,
although not controlled by anyone other than herself. The unseen
hand found the cleft between her legs. Teasing her clit from its
hiding place, the feather stroked a long, slow path between her
nether lips. Her sex blossomed, opening in desire for the touch.
The feather, glistening with her moisture, withdrew. The
sleeping woman moaned in frustration and desire, her hips grinding
against empty air.
~~~~~~
He came to her again that night as she slept. This time
beginning at her toes, like light fingers fluttering over her skin,
stroking her soles, along her arches, and sending shivers up her
thighs to her center. Her thighs parted, offering her willing sex to
the unknown suitor. Muscles throbbed and clenched, and her juices
flowed freely from her sex, between the cleft of her buttocks,
moistening the sheet beneath her.
Stroking up her calf, along the sharply defined
muscles of her legs to the soft skin of her inner thigh, it drew its
energy from her body, pulling from her the darkness that had
threatened to overshadow her being.
She shuddered with a forgotten delight as the cloud was
pulled away from her. Again, he withdrew, leaving her bucking
against the emptiness of her room. In her sleep she cursed the
unfairness of it, she railed against the exquisite torture of the
waiting, the denial of release. It had been so long since she had
felt the desire, always the internal bindings holding her down and
the clouds darkening her soul had fought against the longing,
suppressing it until lust and desire were nothing more than vague
memories.
~~~~~~
He came to her again that same night, and then again,
repeating the cycle almost endlessly. her out, pulling her
cravings from the untapped reaches of her soul, holding her body
tight at the edge of orgasm until she quivered and shook for more.
With each passing stroke, each touch upon her skin, his body darkened
as he pulled her burden into his own being.
Her skin tingled as the shroud lifted, pulling her climax
slowly, the orgasm from the deepest recesses of her belly.
Her cries, both of joy and sorrow, filled the empty room.
~~~~~~
It was the feeling of change that finally pulled her from
sleep. Again, the sun was shining through the open curtains, but this
morning the air in the room was fresh, not stale. The window
remained open, and with a sudden dawning of realization, Connie
understood that she had slept at least through a day; and, judging
from the stiffness in her hips and shoulders, perhaps two.
Connie stretched her arms above her head, slowly rotating
them to work the kinks from her stiff joints. She wondered absently
if there was any ground coffee in the freezer, but then she realized
that she was awake, really awake, and clear-headed. And happy.
On the window beside her bed, curtains fluttering around its
glistening body, sat the raven. Its once-white feathers, now a deep
ebony, shone in the morning sun. With a seemingly-satisfied nod of
its head, the bird spread its wings and took flight, a small piece of
darkness stark against the bright light of day.
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