Author: maleghast (Page 1 of 35)

Her skin felt good against mine as we lay together in the sunlight, the warm afterglow of the sex we had been having wrapping us both up in a bubble of happiness.

“Did I already wish you a happy birthday, Baby?”

Her cheeky smile made me feel incredibly happy. I pushed her hair out of her eyes, cupped the side of her face and kissed her softly, eyes open looking right at her, and then;

“You did, Sara, and you are the reason that it is so happy, so soon in the day.”

She laughed, her eyes shining in the morning light;

“So that’s all I have to do to make you this happy?”

She was joking and so I went with it;

“Well, yeah, but the truth is that the more you do it the happier I will become.”

She laughed again, and then became a little more serious for a moment, squeezing me just a little, just to tell me that I should answer truthfully.

“It is more than that, isn’t it? I mean we have that, and it’s great, but that’s not all you want from me is it?”

I squeezed her back, fixed her gaze and replied;

“I love you Sara, all of you.”

“This space is amazing. I just know that Andrea is going to love it. Can you show me around the backstage area as well please, Tony?”

Tony smiled to himself, inordinately happy that he had sold the place well enough that Andrea’s assistant was asking to see the facilities; the front of house had made the right impression.

Ever since he had taken the job, Tony had been looking for a big name performer or act to come to the chapel to ‘put it on the map’ as they say. Andrea was more than big enough as a star and a singer to really draw the crowds in over the Autumn run; “if Andrea McCormack played there it must be a serious venue” and that sort of thing. Now here he was a few moments away from signing the deal that was likely to save the Chapel from its owners worst impulses.

The tour around the backstage area went off without a hitch, and twenty minutes later Tony was waving goodbye to a taxi containing a very contented tour manager, and trying to contain his glee at having saved the Chapel as a live music venue.

There is no end to any of it, there are only new beginnings. That is the koan which my master left me with on his deathbed, and even now, three years later, I find no peace in it. Nonetheless as I stand over the grave of perhaps my closest friend this so-called wisdom offers me no comfort. No, instead it sticks in my mind like a cruel taunt; what ‘new beginning’ could possibly be here for Tessa or for me?

Her grave looks like a wound in the Earth. There is nothing even remotely natural about burial, about placing the dead in the ground. People say that we become one with the ground, food for worms and beetles, but embalming and coffins lead to that future being unlikely. Tessa did end; there is no new beginning for her, not even organic recycling.

Some might say that her new beginning is the afterlife, others might say it is re-birth or reincarnation, but standing over the dark trench of her final resting place, looking down at her coffin I am so completely certain that she is gone; there is no comfort here.

“There are too many names there, don’t you think?”

Leonard looked across the cloister, curious to see who was speaking. He did not expect it to be an old friend. Greg had been one of a small handful of people that Leonard had counted as friends in his seven years at the school; they had neither of them been mainstream people back then, and looking at him Greg had not joined the mainstream quite yet, but then neither had Leonard.

“You know that is just what I was thinking, uncanny that! How are you old friend?”

They crossed the intervening space and embraced in a way that they never could have done whilst pupils. Leonard could not contain his curiosity any further, and so he asked;

“What on Earth are you doing here, Greg? I mean I surprise myself by being here, but you?”

Greg smiled;

“I’m speaking at the same event as you. I imagine someone more conventional dropped out at the last minute and I was the only remaining alumnus with any kind of success in their life, albeit not strictly within the bounds, so to speak.”

“Just relax Sally, you’re going to do fine, I promise.”

She fixed him with a look that was somewhere between resolve and fear and nodded that he should begin.

“So, to begin with, can you describe the first memory that you are aware of when you first discovered that you could give yourself pleasure by touching your own body?”

“You are sure that this will remain anonymous?”

He nodded and smiled reassuringly;

“Yes Sally, I am sure. This session is not being recorded in any way, and as your interviewer I do not know your surname, and I am not resident in the same state as you. Every precaution has been taken to make it entirely safe for you to be completely honest with me, thus assisting the research team as a whole to gather the most accurate detail.”

She gathered herself, and nodded once again, then took a deep breath before she began;

“Well it was not until I had been married for four long years that I first learned about my own pleasure, and it was actually through an indiscretion that I uncovered this private joy.”

“Would you like another drink?”

Her smile confirmed Patrick’s assumption that she was in no rush to leave, even though George was waiting for her at home. He moved slowly, enjoying the ritual of putting ice into their glasses, of gently pouring the precious amber liquid over the ice and hearing it float and strike the sides of the glasses.

“Here you are; you should enjoy this, it’s a special edition from the Islay Distillery, I was lucky to find it.”

They sat there, gently sipping their drinks, the silence hanging between them was not quite uncomfortable, but it was not a familiar or welcome one either.

“Patrick, why did you ask me to come here this evening?”

He took another sip of his drink and then placed it on the desk, before rising out of his chair and walking over to Serena’s chair. She looked up at him as he took her glass from her hands and put it aside as well.

“Patrick?”

He placed his hand on her cheek and moved closer, intending to kiss her. She thought about it for a moment, and then she let it happen.

The campfire was crackling away, flames rising a couple of feet off the floor and everyone was crowded around enjoying the heat and the spectacle, as they often did on nights like these on patrol. There was no reason to hide from the enemy tonight, as none of the twilight scouts had reported any movement in the surrounding hills for twenty miles in any direction. For now at least they could relax, albeit with the usual watches posted, and enter into the “campfire way” as they all referred to it. There would be storytelling, perhaps a joke or two and then when the mood naturally took them that way, there would be at least one song before the first to sleep would say their good-nights and head for their tents.

As was often the way, the young men encouraged Inigo, the old armourer who tended the men’s weapons and chain, to go first. He stepped into the firelight, put one foot up upon the hearth and began to weave a tale as old as the hills, that they all knew only too well. Of course the joy was in his telling.

The beach was teeming with people and activity when Greg finally made it down there. Not only was there a Capoeira group having a exhibition style match come demonstration just a few yards to his left, but there were any number of what he liked to call ‘activity people’ getting ready to go.

Canoeists with their surf kayaks, dingy sailors rigging Mirrors. Lasers and the odd one or two more uncommon types, and power kiters getting ready to fly, up and down the beach. One or two hang gliders were being packed away, and looking away towards the far headland Greg could see several more still riding the updraught from the on-shore breeze.

It was basically as he had remembered it from the times a few years before when he and Dana had spent their weekends out there, looking for some peace and beauty away from the hustle and bustle of London. When they had drifted apart he had known it, in part, because she stopped asking him to go down there with her on the weekends. Now he was, oddly, happy to be back without her.

As Lucas bent down to enter the low door of the teepee he caught a waft of incense and felt the warmth coming from the brazier in the middle of the floor and he was immediately taken back to his days of LARPing, and the Burgundian that Hector had offered up whenever the nights got too cold.

A chorus of ‘come in’ shook off his memories of times past and he clambered in through the door hole, covered the opening with the weighted canvas door, and he settled himself down on a pile of cushions.

They were all strangers, of course. The reason for doing this retreat had been to meet new people. Instead of organising it as a group outing for his friends, he had booked a singles trip to the lake.

There was a joint going around that he refused and a bottle of something going in the opposite direction, which he discovered was toffee vodka. As he looked around at all the other happy faces, and the candles and pillows and rugs he decided to relax and enjoy himself; Danica would have been so happy to see him that evening.

“Thanks for meeting me. I know it wasn’t what you wanted to do, I mean I know it’s hard for you to see me, and well, thanks.”

Karl looked up from the menu and nodded, fixed Susan with an assertive gaze;

“Well clearly you have something to say to me and I think the three years we were together have bought you this much indulgence from me, but I will be honest and tell you that I’m not feeling patient. I mean it’s bad enough that you cheated on me six weeks before the wedding, but to do what you did… No groom to be should walk into a room to see his best friend’s wife eating out his fiancée who is screaming her pleasure without even thinking about how much more likely it must have made the possibility of detection.”

Susan’s shoulders slumped a little and she quickly shot glances left and right to see if they were overheard by the other diners and then turned back to her former partner;

“I’m so sorry, Karl. Still I know that you don’t want another apology so i’ll get to it. You see, the thing is I am pregnant, Dear.