Circle of Stones

Previously published at Eklektika Press

(c) A. L. Nathan

The grass crunched beneath her worn out Japanese sandals. It was near dusk, and this was when pain wrought questions inside her head.

Why wasn’t this enough?

It should be enough. This was what she had longed for: peace, solitude and a garden of her own.

The waves crashed, a sound no longer out of a conch shell but moving through the air to her sensitive ears. It reminded her that her whole life had been geared towards this island retreat she had worked so hard for. Twenty years of giving 150% of herself in her work – the best arbitration lawyer in the business, and for what? Twenty years of diligent work and penny saving for this moment and all she cradled was emptiness.

Her hair remained black thanks to modern hair care. The fine lines of her face were barely discernible thanks to the wonders of cosmetic technology. But when she stared at her eyes in the mirror, they were empty. Soulless, like the people of her acquaintance she had disdained in private. Many years, she had nurtured the smug certainty that beneath it all she was different. The mirror told her something else.

She walked to the steps that led down to the beach and watched the jewel-like colors of an equatorial sunset, soon fading as dusk gave way to night. There had to be more . . . there just had to be! Where was the much anticipated soul completion once she had claimed this reclusive sanctuary? All her life she had worked towards this. A time when she need not talk to anyone for days if she did not want to. A lifetime of legalese had fueled that need.

She sat and watched the tide. A lone jogger moved barefoot across the wet sand and was soon gone. His presence was a visual routine she had grown used to in the months since her early retirement. She watched his back grow smaller and smaller against the vastness of the sands and the darkening of the skies. When she jogged in the mornings and evenings their paths would often cross and she would grunt in acknowledgement to his polite hellos. She never looked him in the face and suspected it was the same for him. It was a compact between people who respected their privacy, a jogger’s truncated conversation as they made their winding tracks along the shore in opposite directions.

It was getting cold now. The chill made pebbles on her dusky skin while the fine hairs at her nape and forearms stood up. Hugging her arms around her body, she reminded herself that it was getting late. She walked quick even steps to the staircase that led up the cliff to the white bungalow that was home. It was just the chill and the lateness of the hour playing on her imagination, she murmured, half-aloud.

Self-enforced solitude had turned her into someone who frequently talked aloud to herself. She stepped into her home, trying to recognize the unease that traveled up and down her spin and over her skin.

***

Hours later, she awoke with a start and with a pounding heart. Jumping out of her bed, she grabbed a favorite windbreaker — a constant from lonely, terrible undergraduate years to the early morning jogs of the present. She left the room and unlocked the door of her house. She peered at her moonlit garden of white hibiscuses, ferns and other herbs. Her eyes looked at the circle of white stones she had impulsively arranged at the east corner of her garden, bordered by rare purple chrysanthemums.

They glowed in the moonlight, but it seemed to be more than light which reflected off their smooth surface.The stones glimmered with something from within. Her heart pounding with fear and excitement, she padded in bare feet down the crazy-paved walk to that corner she had created beyond any logical impetus. She unbraided her long, dyed hair, letting the wind whip it around her face. She dropped the windbreaker, her faded faculty t-shirt, the striped cut-off pajamas. Mother naked, she entered the circle and squatted.

Her hands moved over the chrysanthemums, grown lush despite the unbeneficial salt air of the coast. She deftly plucked them, one by one, weaving them into her hair, making circlets for her arms. Was this madness? The rational corner of her brain told her yes, this was so, while the bookworm in her remembered that sad Man of La Mancha. She let her hands roam over her middle-aged but taut form and wondered what it was that she felt. As always, she was an observer of even her own self.

Then she heard it coming, a sullen distant roar that started off from uncharted distances within her self, whirling deep within her womb. It was a roar that then spread from her midriff to her diaphragm, then her lungs. From her throat, it was birthed as a full-throated primal wail of anger, pain and rising passion which had been her shackle for more than two decades.

The roaming of her hands grew frenzied and uncontrolled as she discovered, basked and throbbed with her self, wetting her fingers with secreted desire. None of the men in her half a dozen half-hearted relationships, none of the two women she had dallied with, had been able to satisfy this deep emptiness and hunger in her. None of them had approached her with more than the polite, lukewarm groping and prodding that substituted passion amongst the educated people of her clique.

This was the core, she told herself later as she sprawled within the circle, staring at the full moon. This was the center of her being; this was what she had looked for. This was the only way she could satisfy her need. Then, she saw another. He moved away from the wall, naked, and with her precious chrysanthemums in his hair, eyes gleaming with the same wild light that she knew emanated from hers.

Instinct taking over, she sprang away from the stone circle and started to run towards the safety of her bungalow. A powerful arm hooked around her waist and drew her towards a hard midriff and the erect heat that poked against her back. His hand smoothed against her hair, a tentative gesture that seemed like a question. A nose breathed in her scent, tickling the nape of her neck. Scream, she told herself. Move; kick him where it hurts most. But fear had left her, strangely enough. Still, she remained rigid, with indecision.

His body started to withdraw from hers, and she heard an exhalation of something that sounded like remorse. She half heard a stammering apology before she reacted, grabbing his hands and pulling him back towards her. A reflex action, she justified herself, making a sound of approval as he embraced her and started fondling. She moved one of his palms over her attention-hungry breasts.

The roaming hands went over the territory she had recently covered. They unlaced the curtain of flowers she had just recently woven over her pubic hair, in addled remembrance of Lady Chatterley and Mellors.Fingers dipped past the springy curls to reach the inner petals, then deeper still, poking into the core of that primal, liquid roar, feeling those inner muscles pull at his digits as he brought her fantasy to life.

It was a dream; it must be a dream, she reflected as weakness caused her legs to give way. She collapsed against the warm wall that seemed to be surrounding her universe. This stranger was striding through doors she had newly unlocked, conquering the earth she had primed with unprecedented presumption. Her mind churned out resentful thoughts but her hands clutched at the strong arms around her. He twisted her around, a shadow against the glittering stars, a warm mouth claiming her breath, a neck around which she wrapped her arms, pressing heated breasts against his chest, heaved with shudders and a heart beating too fast.

The roaring that made its way from inside her moved outward, filling her ears and spinning her out of her rational self. It brought her into a universe of chaos and intellect-robbing euphoria, her arms and legs hooking around this unknown upstart conqueror as he rammed into a stronghold newly renovated, lifting her up and onto his waiting, erect cock. The meeting of their bodies caused him to utter a sound of longing.She gasped and wriggled on him as he filled her emptiness, filled her until there didn’t seem to be any space left, or air either. He then walked both of them back to the circle of stones with a stride that lodged him deeper into her need. She groaned, and he made a grunting sound as he dropped to his knees:half-falling, arms secured around her.

Once there, he placed her against the springy grass and serviced her with long, measured strokes, his inarticulate moans and grunts becoming the only sound she heard over the roaring of her blood. She tried to master enough coherence to ask him his name. She gasped and shook with the impact of his maleness inside her, and begged him in a high voice to make it harder, no, to stop, no, to tell her his name. She cursed his trespasses then begged him to love her, to never stop.

Through it all, he answered her only with his guttural onomatopoeia, driving into her again and again until all words were pushed out of her too. Their coitus drove her deeper into the grass, making imprints that would last long after the sun rose, releasing the scent of loam, making her feel that he was going to fuck her straight into the ground until she was buried in earth and him. A moment later she sobbed in release. He dropped against her and kissed her tear-stained cheeks and smoothed his fingers over her hair. Clumsy arms moved her trembling form closer against him.

***

She awoke at dawn, finding chrysanthemums strewn around and across her naked form. She was lying atop crumpled once-white bed sheets.

Her window was wide open and she could taste dew in the air.

Raising herself painfully she looked down at her body, streaked with grass stains and loam. Earth streaked the bed sheets two and two windbreakers lay at the foot of her bed.

She had vague recollections of him placing her on her stomach and driving into her from behind as his hands pulled at her nipples. They had fucked each other more than twice, that much she remembered. Heat plunged her loins into milky remembrance, but her morning self questioned sanity. Was it a dream? Had she finally driven herself over the edge? It couldn’t be real. It was too crazy to be real and she half hoped it wasn’t.

She couldn’t have pleasured herself in the moonlight in front of a stranger, who couldn’t have walked into her precious circle of stones to take her. She couldn’t have been the one begging him to fuck her, again and again, deeper and harder. But her heart ached that it might not have really happened, that it was some sort of advanced somnambulism. She ached at the thought of never tasting his sweat again.

The smell of coffee, thick and inviting made its way from the opened door of her bedroom. Footsteps approached. Eyes widened, hands clenched on earth-stained bed sheets. He entered the room.

THE END