The Countess' Maid (Part I)

Alexandra was running through the mansion’s sumptuous corridors trying, as fast as she could, to get to the Lady’s room. The young countess Cordelia Eleanor had been calling her hastily. She was informed of this by one of her fellow servants, with a terribly pale face and his eyes filled with dismay – when the countess got angry, she could make the foundations shake…

“And don’t let anyone disturb us” had whispered the young girl venomously according to her poor friend.

She arrived trembling and terribly frightened to the door of her Lady’s room. Trying to get her breath back and fixing her hair with her hands, she attempted to knock on the door so she could be allowed to enter. But before even touching it, the door opened and two fair hands shot out and interlocked their fingers at the back of Alexandra’s neck. A second later, she was dragged into the room and felt pair of moist lips against hers.

The young maid was surprised at first, but after a few seconds she gave the kiss back with the same passion. When they both ran out of breath, they moved apart slowly. Alexandra sighed quivering, leaned her head over the countess’ naked shoulder and, still trembling, embraced her. Without speaking or letting her go, Cordelia moved apart displacing the hands from the young maid’s neck to her burning cheeks. Touching them slightly, incited her to open her eyes and lay them down her silver iris.

Both girls contemplated each other, before melting again in a tender kiss. The aristocrat one took her hands to her lover’s waist and clutched her body to hers. Alexandra folded her arms behind the noble’s thin bejewelled neck, pressing herself more against her. Without breaking the kiss, the countess’ long fingers started to untie softly her maid’s bodice and slid it down her shoulders. Kissing down the neck of Alexandra, leaving her mouth free to release small sighs, caressed the skin under her white shirt, letting it slip off her arms, until it hit the floor. Her fingers went down from her shoulder blades to the waist, where they undid the multiple skirts, which slipped down her legs. The countess lifted her hands to Alexandra’s breasts, pulling a groan out of her:

“Cordelia…” whispered against her lips.

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Probably I won't be writing again until the end of January. Busy times are coming.

Michèle

It was a cold winter’s day the last time I saw her.

***

The soft breeze that was blowing the dried leaves around was also swaying her brown curls when I saw her wrapping herself up in her cinnamon-coloured coat, like her scent.

Sitting on a bench, she was waiting for me, to tell me adieu forever.

 I doubted whether to come up to her and make it happen, or to start running… But she was going to leave anyway, whether I went or not.

With resignation and sadness, I put my hands in my jacket pockets, approached slowly and sat to her side.

I didn’t say hello and neither did she.

We didn’t look at each other and were, like that, together all the afternoon. Without knowing what to say, what to do, how to say goodbye... Just silence.

When the sun was starting to set, she stood up and with her back to me, she said goodbye in a whisper and started to walk…

Then I called her “Michèle!” She stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I love you…” I murmured with my eyes fixed on her back. I heard a sigh and she started to walk again.

I was just standing there, by the bench. When I was about to go home – as I couldn’t stand watching her leave with that indifference – she turned around. “Je t’aime”. I saw it in her greenish eyes. I read it on her lips and in the crystalline tears rolling down her cheeks.

***

And she left.

Far away.

And I never again saw “my Michèle”.

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Some weeks ago I was tidying up the basement and I found my old notebook where I used to write down stuff, draw, etc. I started to read it and bumped into this note I had written almost 6 years ago. It was about what happened the day my first girlfriend left. Now I have overcome it, but then it pretty much changed my life. 

Long story short: I was 18 and I had never questioned my sexual orientation, until I met her. After some months struggling with it, I finally accepted that I was into girls. She didn't want to hide our relationship and kind of pushed me to come out. I did, and that meant many problems with my parents, who didn't accept it (and nowadays still have trouble about it). So yeah, after those months, when we were at the peak of our relationship, she tells me she has to leave and go back to her country. That was something she had known all the time, but never told me about it. That pissed me off really much and I stopped seeing her. The thing is that I hated her for turning my life upside down, but at the same time I couldn’t help loving her. Some days later, she left me a message in case I wanted to go and say goodbye the day before her departure. 

Back then I used to think she was a bitch for not telling me, but now I realize that what she did was the best for me and thanks to that I had one of the greatest times in my life. Because, you know, ignorance is bliss.  

Swansong to the Raven

The night was falling. The gentle and cold winter breeze rustled the persistent fallen leaves. In the purple sky, full of tiny stars, silvery Selene was being challenged by some disperse but gray clouds, battle reflected in the quiet lake of frozen borders.

It was impossible to count how many moons he had been coming to that place, how many times he had been on his knees holding a wake for her. She had been lying inside that absurd walnut box. There was no gravestone pointing out her place of eternal rest, just a blackened and dried up tree, like him since everything happened. The stirred ground revealed she was buried there. He still remembers the day he found her… Dead.  

***

He was walking through the foggy streets with fast footsteps. His leather boots echoed between the walls of the narrow alleys. After going round the corner, a shiver travelled down his spine and he felt an icy cold expanding through his body. Inside his head, he had heard a terrifying deathly scream. From her. 

He run all the way home, closed the door and ran up the stairs till the last floor, ignoring all the people he had come across. He opened the door and called her. How big was his surprise when he discerned the pale and lifeless body lying grotesquely in the Victorian armchair. He forgot how to breathe and his heartbeat stopped while his bloodshot eyes were staring at his lover’s body.

The corpse was lying, languid and sensual, white as snow. Her hair, almost platinum, was all dishevelled. Her hand was hanging inert to the floor and her fingers were dripping a viscous liquid from her thighs. There were some scratches on her cheeks, her mouth was gagged and her open eyes were giving him an empty look…

He was conscious of himself again when he felt two warm tears rolling down his cheeks. Getting rid of his hat and jacket, he flopped on his knees, without caring about the pain it would cause, in front of his lover’s corpse. He embraced her cold body, taking off roughly the cloth that gagged her. In her lips, red in the past, bruised now, were left the last remains of that stifled scream, only heard by him.

He cursed and cried embraced to her beautiful body, stroking her bright and silky hair, licking her scratches and wounds, kissing her purplish lips, caressing her porcelain skin, cleaning her stained thighs with his tongue…

A gray morning full of leaden clouds threatening a storm, he put her body in a walnut box he got. With his own hands he dug her grave and saying goodbye with a kiss he buried her in the wet ground.

***

The night had fallen and the moon was radiating silver sparkles over the lake. And there he was, tormented, guarding her death, punishing himself for not having guarded her life… His spirit was decaying, like his lover’s body. Going mad for seconds, cursing and blaming himself every single moment of his existence. For him nothing made sense now. His hands were covered in the blood of those who had ended the life of his sleeping beauty. Without even thinking, impulse of the lustful moon, determination of his appalling insanity, of his yearning for seeing and feeling her again, he started to dig the ground with his own hands until his dirty nails brushed the coffin lid. He opened it and found her body dressed with expensive Victorian apparels he had ordered to be made just for her.

He was squatted, observing her shut eyes of dark long eyelashes, her pale cheeks, her crimson lips, her serene complexion, her entwined hands…

With the strength of insanity, he took her body out of the coffin and, under the cover of the lecherous moon, undressed her so all the living beings could see her ethereal beauty. Finally, again, naked. He kissed her. His lips travelled across her. Feeling the fury making his flesh burn, he bit every part of her body, lying on the dead leaves. He scratched her legs, dug his nails into her hair, licked her skin and loved her for the last time, in the eyes of the world. 

***

"Now I dream, enwrapped in pure clouds of the sweetest oblivion". In a cold cell, immobilized for life, condemned to be without her, but with torment. They call him crazy. "I scream through my bars at the stars that for these crimes of mine solace me". Lovesick for her. And with the escape in his mind, he is dying emotionally. "As with our ghosts in the fog when we both turn no more…" He sees her. Always. He sees her holding out her hand to him, with a mischievous smile on her face. Because he is not insane, but dead inside.

"Clarissa..."

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This was inspired by this song. There are some fragments of the song lyrics in the last paragraph. Also, this is one of the few "straight" stories I've written.

Stars

In this sad story, there are no names. There were once, but they got lost, dragged by the autumnal wind of time. Nobody remembers them. Nobody really knew about these clandestine scenes, but the urban legend is recounted.

Everything started in a cold night at the beginning of the XX century, when cabarets spread through Europe, especially in Germany and France. In one of these eccentric and naughty places worked as a waitress and dancer our first protagonist: a foreign girl of slim constitution, oval face framed by long jet-black hair, blushed cheeks and pale lips.

That night, the cabaret had already closed its doors and the workers were tidying up the place. Our protagonist was lost in thought, rubbing a cloth on the bar, until the strident sound of her colleague’s laughter woke her up.

On one of the small and old sofas were two of her colleagues sharing more than words and groping in front of everyone. Others probably would be behind the scenes doing the same, others finishing their Absinthe glasses sitting around one of the tables while playing cards and smoking, Meanwhile the rest were picking up their sorrows, instruments and outfits to go home. She was one of these. You have to drown your sorrows as you please. Because, obviously, working and living the way they did was not a delight.

She took her worn out leather handbag, where she carried her street clothes and without saying goodbye, she went out by the back door, which was exclusive for the workers. Wearing the work outfit, she headed to the guesthouse where she was staying. She was walking swiftly, not because of the fear of something happening to her, but because of the cold. On her way home, she thought how crowded the cabaret had been that night, full of obese bourgeoises with long moustaches, accompanied by their also fat wives…

But, when she came to perform, between all those awful and greasy faces, she noticed a smooth and fair face of red lips, green eyes and copper-coloured ringlets. She was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen: our second protagonist.

During the performance she couldn’t stop observing her until a trip made her stumble, falling over on stage, making the woman disappear from view and unleashing the laughter of the audience. When she came back to the bar, she didn’t find her between all those grotesque faces. She was gone.

***

Months passed by and she found again the redheaded young girl. It’s told that they fell in love at first sight, one of those forbidden kinds of love that pushes you from the inside and makes you fall into temptation. It’s said, and that’s a fact, that they became lovers…

Their meetings never took place in the bourgeois young girl's magnificent house. The flaking walls, the old furniture, the small bed and the yellowish sheets of the room rented by the cabaret dancer were mute witnesses of their love.

One of those starry nights, the young girls wrote their love on their skin with caresses, loved each other with faltering words and soft moans. Both naked bodies moved sensually between the rough sheets. Hands going everywhere, pushing and scratching, victims of their passion; tongues trying to smother the heat of their bodies; breaths attempting to escape … They were drowning on themselves, full of passion, full of love.

When everything exploded in white and their eyes were able to see the flaking walls – the spark of the streetlights coming in through the window, illuminating their culminated sin – and their mouths breathed the heavy air, and when their bodies, still resting relaxed over the messy sheets, felt the cold piercing through them, the women covered between the yellowish canvas and, embracing each other, tried to get to sleep. Cuddling tenderly under the sheets, they helped Morpheus on his task of wrapping them up in a placid dream. And so they dreamed.

It is said that many other nights, after making love, they both stayed naked, embracing under the sheets and talking about their lives, their fears and wishes, their fantasies. About themselves. About their love.

***

After long months of furtive visits and ardent encounters, a night of brightly stars and waning moon, after making love - which had a bitter taste for both of them – our second protagonist, sitting on the bed, contemplated how the other woman, naked and standing on the cold floor, was looking at the stars and saying that they were as gleaming as her. That was her last beautiful image before the storm.

The silence carried on for minutes and finally, the bourgeois whispered the words that the dark-haired girl never wanted to hear. She was getting married to a man of reputation, prestige and, of course, wealth, things she lacked. With the eyes hard closed, holding the anger emerging from her inside, she heard but not listened to the reasons why her lover was leaving her for a better positioned man.

After the silent and strained seconds that followed the explanation, the naked young girl, without even looking at her, approached the clothes stand and took a dressing robe. Suddenly, in this summer night, her body had frozen, like if everything around her were snow, ice. After a deep breath, she reproached her, without raising the voice and in a whispering and sharp tone, of all the times she had proclaimed her love and faithfulness. She gave her a hurt, broken and furious last look and shut herself in the bathroom.

After a couple hours, when she got out – more haggard, broken and desolated, with her eyes full of tears – the only thing left from her lover was the subtle perfume of her hair and skin wafting in the air. It’s told that the foundations of the old and small guesthouse shook because of the bloodcurdling scream that followed.

***

It was a day like any other in the cabaret: drunken obese ugly men, over-perfumed women wearing more make up than the dancers, alcohol, music, singing and dancing, waiters coming and going from the bar with drinks and food... Oh grotesque and bizarre cabaret! The same old cabaret.

After the last show and the last man leaving the entrance, began the battle in pursuit of the place’s cleanliness for the next day. 

She was still dressed up in a doll costume, with her face painted white, coloured cheeks and carmine lipstick, eyes outlined in black and hair tied up in two bunches. She helped placing some chairs and tables, washing and sweeping the filthy floor, tidying up the stage and putting away the clothes in the dressing rooms.

She said goodbye to one of the musicians and left the place by the back door, like the first time she had seen the young ginger girl, long time ago. Carrying her leather handbag, but now wearing black and brown street clothes, she walked through one of the main streets of the city. Just before turning the corner that would take her to the guesthouse, she saw a car – one of the very few there were in the city – stopping on the other side of the street and two people stepping out of it: a man and a woman.

She never thought the streetlights would be so cruel to illuminate that degrading, sick, humiliating and painful scene. That man wearing a long winter coat and an English top hat was walking arm in arm with her nymph of copper-coloured ringlets, who was answering with a smile on her face to his anodyne comments of the opera they had just seen…

Our dark-haired protagonist felt like if her heart, sewed with fragile thread, exploded in smaller pieces that sunk brutally into her skin and flesh, scratching her soul in a bloodcurdling way. She couldn’t hold her tears and a throttled wail while she was running to the guesthouse.

When she arrived running to the bathroom, she started removing her make up furiously, bruising her sensitive skin. Black stained tears running down were drawing dark lines on her cheeks. She burst with rage and smashed the old mirror with her fists, shattering it, like what had just happened to her heart. Pushed against the wall by the strength of her actions, she let herself slip to the floor, with silent and bitter groans, feeling broken, devastated, used, hurt and furious with herself, with her. With everything. With the stars.

That’s why (they say, talk about, whisper) she hates so much the stars. They gave and took everything, without mercy, from her. Her love, her life, snatched by the stars.

Bloody stars…