It was fantastic, this anger that seethed through him. Deep within his very core, it churned and boiled until it turned into a black viscous mass that threatened to erupt. His heart felt like a lump of coal; hard and yet strangely vulnerable, useless until the flame ignites a fiery, raging reaction of love and hate. His mind was awhirl as frozen images of insidious delight tormenting him with the clash of lust and repulsion.
Why, was all he wanted to know.
There was no end to the madness that beckoned in the dark, enticing him until he relinquished the last semblance of sanity to the pull of the echoing abyss of depression. Just beyond his reach were the memories - so many happy memories - that taunted him at the tips of his outstretched fingers. They were lost, as was he, and there was no reclaiming the wondrous life he once possessed. In their place was the shocking realization; the proverbial 2X4 upside the head. His head.
Why, he wanted to scream. Was it too much to ask? Why?
In his bed, no less! His fucking bed. The stunning creation of delicate wrought iron and dark cherry wood, so lovingly fashioned with his sweat and blood became the site where his heart was later torn apart. The snowy white of his thick down comforter stained an imagined red.
"Why?" The question hitched on a broken sob, and his composure crumbled beneath the heavy weight of despair. He cried out his pain, his hate, his self-loathing. Tears streamed like a waterfall from his swollen, red-rimmed eyes. Then a vision flashed through his mind, causing him to gasp in a sharp, wounded breath.
It made a magnificent picture of unadulterated eroticism: in their tousled bed, his lovely wife rose from the center like a goddess on a puff of thick white clouds. Her body undulated rhythmically to the heat of passion, the soft, sexy moans he knew so well punctuated each of her sensuous thrusts. The light played beautifully against the graceful curve of her spine, a subtle gleam of sweat enhancing the creamy, buttermilk blush of her skin. Long, coiling locks of pale golden white were thrown back to expose her arched neck and the delicate profile of her angelic face. Completely hidden in the luxurious pile of pillows, snuggled happily between my wife's shapely, adulterous thighs, was a man other than her husband. His only view of him being a pair of strong, tanned hands clutching the glorious globes of her derriere that he had caressed himself not eight hours before.
He flinched back to the present where his beloved wife's betrayal was a thing of the past, but his grief all to fresh. The love he could have sworn was an unbreakable chain between them shattered along with his blind naivete. What he would give to have that naivete back.
The past came back again like a staggering blow: the shudders that racked her petite form when the building pleasure was unleashed; the ten shallow depressions formed as the man's grip on his wife tightened; a hoarse bellowing, full of male satisfaction, and then his wife's sweet voice rising high in one lengthened, "Fuck!"
That, more than the visual feast of sin before his eyes, had then jolted him out of his frozen shock. His wife never cursed. In fact, she had always prided herself on being above such filthy words. Yet she had laid there, in the grips of a far more powerful orgasm than he had ever been able to gift her, shouting to the world her overwhelming pleasure with a word as wicked as her lying, unfaithful heart.
Derek sighed from his thoughts, and turned mournfully away from his empty marriage bed to walk out of their bedroom. With slow steps he stole silently through the house, a phantom of the man he once was. Darkness enveloped him, and the musty smell of dust and old paint filled his senses. He flipped on a light. The dim illumination glinted off the dark blue of his BMW. Boxes, shovels, Christmas ornaments, and tools of all shapes and sizes were stored haphazardly throughout the garage. At his small work bench, he rifled through a drawer until he found what he was looking for and retraced his steps as silently as before.
As he gazed one last time at the bed, he remembered the first time he and his wife made love beneath the protection of the linen canopy. There was fire, but it was a slow, gentle burn. Their legs and arms were twined tightly around the other, their eyes locked as if while connected, they were truly one. He could feel her soft folds give way to his desire, and she took of him as much as he did her; each riding the swelling waves till they were mindless with pleasure. She clenched around him when she came, the tremor coaxing the release he had been withholding so to prolong the enchantment of the night. He cried out her name - Delaney! - like a word of power that would set loose a spell of eternity over their love.
The sound of a match being lit reverberated in the room. Derek held up the tiny flame, and stared into it's depth. Such a simple monster, fire. It fed ravenously on everything it touched, sucking life away like a vampire; mercilessly inhuman. It destroyed like the black plague spreading from town to town, leaving nothing in it's wake. Like Delaney.
And nothing was exactly what Derek was. Nothing without her. Nothing without her love. Absolutely nothing.
He touched the flickering flame to the stained comforter, and watched it spread. Leisurely it moved at first, taking it's time to savor the feast, but quickly it grew greedy. Swift now, eating and growing larger and larger. The crackle and pop turned into a roar as the entire bed was consumed by the fire, and the fingers of flame tickled the ceiling in search of more.
Derek stepped back to the relative safety of the doorway, watching as his masterpiece was razed by smoke and flame, and felt... nothing.
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Submitted by:
Jessamine
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