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Recover Your Lover

Audrey and Sarah

By Crisanta Published 6 years ago 13 min read
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The girl, a woman really, short cropped black hair and eyes like shining onyx, she’s sitting to left of me on the bus. No, not onyx, onyx is all wrong. Her eyes are hematite, magnetic. I think of these words as I try to imagine the sort of poetry I would write for her if she were mine. I know this woman from my university, but we’ve never spoken.

I only see her from across lecture halls, drawing my heart towards her with those magnetic eyes, without ever having to look my way. I’ve watched her speak, her mouth the color of a faded rose and the shape of a smooth cowrie shell. Her voice itself brought to my mouth the taste of raw honey sometimes, sweet liqueur others, and hashish still others.

Hashish, that was her scent right now. I breathe her in, from her seat just a few feet to my left. I had only smelled it once before, and didn’t know what it was until a schoolmate had laughed at my perceived innocence and explained. I close my eyes and took another deep breath. When I open them again she’s looking at me, staring with her hematite eyes. My skin feels heated but I give her what I hope appears to be a polite smile and nod.

“You have beautiful hair,” she says, with her voice of raw honey. I had taken great care with my hair the prior three days, carefully using an expensive leave-in conditioner and wrapping my hair in a soft t-shirt instead of a towel as it dried.

On those days she had not seen me. Today, my loose curls exist in their natural state, and today she finds them beautiful. I envision a cartoon-like version of myself with exaggerated ginger curls, and two perfect circles of red blushing cheeks on a white face. She smiles at me.

“Could I sit next to you?” She moves towards the empty space next to me without waiting for an answer. Besides the scent of hashish, she has no other smells, and yet I think I could breath her in for days if she would only stay beside me for that long. She tells me she has seen me in a few of her classes and then compliments the way I speak. She says I sound as if my voice should be set to music, although I am only speaking. When she smiles, a dimple appears in one cheek, and a dimple appears in mine like a mirror reflection as I smile back at her. I think of what her own natural scent would be, hair, skin, sweat…and I bring my mind back to to the present.

“You have a beautiful voice too. I love listening to you speak in class.” I say to her. Her cheeks are pink now, and I resist the impulse to touch them and find out if their warmth matches the warmth that she has stirred within me. I see the bus has come to a stop and she stands, still blushing, but also standing.

“Tomorrow,” she says, “Let’s meet at the Recover Your Lover lounge tomorrow for drinks.” I nod my head and feel my curls bounce a little, which makes me feel a bit like a school girl, but it makes her smile.

Tomorrow. My heart is beating like an excited beast within it is trying to escape, but I am saving that beast for the right moment with her. Tomorrow.

***

The Recover Your Lover lounge is as I remember it. A standard bar area is near the entrance and bartenders of every gender wear an identical uniform of heart-shaped glasses and shimmery body suits that change color from every angle. I find this uniform unflattering on every single one of their perfect bodies. The back wall of the lounge is reserved for live entertainment, which today is a beautiful, whispery singer who murmurs words of love and softly weeps of abandonment before turning again to words of love, this time of love renewed.

They are sticking to the theme. Recover Your Lover. That’s why this place is supposed to exist, theoretically. Lose a lover, and come here to lure the lover to return to you, or lure a new one. Everyone knows it is a deeply flawed concept. A lover who truly does not wish to return would never agree to come here, except to offer the cruelty of false hope. But this is the place she has chosen for us, and this is where I am.

I scan the walls along the sides of the lounge to see if she has already arrived. Most of the booths, pods, and faux-carriages are curtained or closed, but I see one pod is partially open, and I know it is her when I see her hand reaching for a drink. She wears a ring on each finger of her left hand, minus the thumb, and three on her right.

I see the fully-ringed hand and begin to prepare myself for our meeting, as I examine the pod she has chosen for us. From the outside, it looks like a large womb, only a soft hazy blue light emanating from within. I think of her sitting within the womb pod and anticipating my arrival. I had arrived early but she arrived even earlier.

Perhaps she was even more nervous than I was. I look at my own hands, ringless and plain. I feel an energy wave pulling me, so I turn to see that she is looking right at me with her magnetic eyes. She’s pulling me towards her. The cupid’s bow of her mouth has the appearance of having freshly shot off a bow in my direction. In my mind, I kiss it.

“No need to recover me, you know. I’ll be your lover right now,” I say to her daringly as I climb into the womb. I’ve practiced this line all day, because although I know it makes little sense, I think it has a seductive quality to it.

I said it over and over again to my own reflection until I could say it without a circle of crimson blossoming on each cheek. They bloom anyway when I actually look at her face as I deliver my line. She should be laughing or saying back something cheeky, but instead, she looks serious and eyes lock onto mine with their magnetism.

“But I do need to recover your love. I’ve lost you so many times before!” I realize her hematite eyes are leaking tears, but she stops them herself before I have the chance to react.

“I’m so sorry! I started drinking a little too early and I know I should never drink alone. Here, let’s start again. My name is Sarah! I think you’re cute. What’s your name?” She’s smiling now and acting as if she is sane. I’ve already pressed the two sides of the membrane curtain of the womb together, and they’ve sealed together so that our pod looks and feels seamless. All is silent but for the sound of our breathing and her words hanging in the air.

“I’m Audrey,” I say with a smile flanked by the two blushing sides of my face. She is pushing at some buttons within the womb and soon the air within feels more like we are sitting beside an ocean. It even sounds as if we are sitting beside the ocean, except that I can also hear the soft genderless voice of the Recover Your Lover lounge singer.

“I like this. I’ve only been here once before,” I say as I remember my last encounter here. I realize I probably should not have mentioned this, because I don’t want to have to explain my past experiences, but I am fortunate in that she does not ask.

“The womb is my favorite” she says, and I realize that this is what it is actually called. Another button is pushed and a drink appears for me. I never told her what I preferred to drink but I accept what I am offered. As it happens, she has chosen my favorite. She reaches for me, unexpectedly, and strokes my cheek.

I accept the affection as I sip my drink. She goes no further than this as she tells me about noticing me at the university, and hoping I would speak to her. Her voice is a sweet liqueur and I no longer need my drink in order to feel intoxicated. My soul is coated in her words as she tells me some of her July story.

***

The sky was raining raw meat the day that Sarah met July. Bloody chunks of it had created quite the gory mess of July’s hair, skin, and clothing when Sarah decided to rescue her. At first sight, Sarah had thought she looked like the victim of some horrific crime who had just barely escaped the clutches of some depraved creature with a chainsaw and a desire to wear her skin.

It was when July turned around and looked directly into Sarah’s eyes that she had changed her mind. July was no victim. She was the depraved creature tearing through flesh and looking for new skin. I might have felt a little nauseated as Sarah described the entire scene, but she told it like a love story and I received it like a biblical tale.

“It was some sort of protest against new meat. I hope you don’t partake?” Sarah stopped her story to ask me. I quickly shook my head and focused on the movement of her lips as she spoke.

July had been a part of the group of leading the protest and her pupils were dilated with the excitement of carnage at the moment that Sarah fell in love with her. Sarah had used a bakery as shelter from the rain of blood and flesh but the eye contact with July compelled her to run out into the gore to confront the passion of her newfound love. July, most likely high on the success of her protest, had joined hands with Sarah and the two fled to a nearby motel for a sexless consummation of their love.

“I bathed her. I washed and rinsed away every bit of blood and meat from her hair and skin. It 2 hours to wash it all way.”

I noticed that she was tapping her index finger while she told his part of the story. The ring on this finger was a deep red, the color of a wound. I knew now why Sarah had noticed me, but I did not acknowledge it yet.

Sarah had spent the next year with July, joining in her protests, living for those moments when July’s eyes were full of violence, a violence that caused no one physical harm. In her everyday life, July’s eyes were like steel, hard and unfeeling. In the aftermath, while Sarah bathed her as gently as a child, her eyes would turn as soft and passive as a wolf pup being tended to by her mother. That’s when Sarah could see within, and love her even more. That’s where Sarah first found me.

“I thought this story was going to be about watching me across the lecture hall,” I said, not wanting to interrupt but also not wanting her to continue.

“That’s where I found you this time.” She gently strokes my cheek as she says this, and I feel my skin warm to her touch. I turn my face and kiss her fingers, but I keep my eyes closed as I do so. She’s reaching into my hair and running my curls through her fingers now. I briefly worry they’ll tangle in all of her rings, but soon I don’t care how tangled we become.

I’m tasting her smooth cowrie shell mouth, and my hands are searching for more of her skin. Her mouth is hot, ripe and sweet against mine. Her skin is as smooth as marble but for the occasional surprise of scar tissue that seemed to my fingers seemed to discover every few seconds as they explored. The fingers of her other hand reach up and trace the outline of my lower lip gently as she kisses me, then reach down to brush lightly against my other lips, dipping in just slightly and just once to explore the warm folds that the fabric of my clothing covers.

"It was her heart," I say as I pull my mouth from hers. "Her heart saved me." I bring her hand upwards towards the center of my chest. Her sanguine ringed finger touches the place where my heart beats. Then her lips replace her finger. Her hands slide down my breasts, my rib cage, and finally reach my hips where they rest.

She squeezes through my skin down to my bones as her plush lips and tongue explore the rest of my chest. I feel her teeth join in the process as my nipples harden. An ache forms in my hips as her fingers continue to squeeze. I can feel each ring on her fingers forming an impression into my skin. She'll draw blood soon. I find myself prying her hands away from my hips. She resists at first but then relents and looks at me with sorry in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Audrey," she says as she wipes a tear from my eye. "I can feel July's heart beating inside you, and I can feel August's bones under your skin."

I know August's story from a document I was given after I had been fully awakened, but I let Sarah tell me her part in it. I let her tell me the stories of the others too, each represented by a ring. August's ring was bone white, like the color of my teeth. Draven's ring was the amber color of my eyes. Draven had wept the hardest at the end, which is perhaps how they chose what part of him to give to me, their most perfect experiment.

Without August, I would be a bag of blood and skin. Without Draven, I would be blind. Without Andrea, I would have no air and my body would be filled with toxins. Without July, none of those things would matter anyway.

"You have no need to be sorry," I whisper as it suddenly occurs to me that somehow, someone might be able to hear us outside of our womb chamber. Recover Your Lover prided itself on privacy, but the same could not be said for all of its regulars. I can see hazy images through the walls of our chamber, but none seem to linger too close.

"I didn't choose this, to be built of stolen and recycled parts," she nods at me and smiles a bit as if to show understanding. Her eyes travel to my hair, frizzy now from the humidity caused by our own breath. What had caught her attention from the beginning, I realize. I had been crowned with the hair of three women, each of ginger locks, each represented by rings of fiery copper.

"I am new skin, new meat..." I begin, but she stops me with her own words.

"You are the accumulation of my every prayer and the culmination of my every climax."

We make love in our private chamber as she recovers and consumes each part of me. I no longer think of who may be listening from the outside. I feel myself becoming part of her as flesh slides against flesh and we become tongues, teeth, lips, and skin folding in on each other. Faded rose cowrie shell lips against my velvety lips, wet and ready to devour her and she devours me. Bones crushing together as hearts be so fast they might escape through our throats. She has recovered me, I think. She has recovered me.

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Crisanta

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