demon lover

        Ex calibur. From white steel of a Sarmatian smithee in Kalybes a blade. Across the steppes rode warriors who worshipped a sword stuck in stone.


        Maxine's work in progress. Her opus progresso. She smiled and gazed out the leaded glass panes of her sunrise nook. Rosey shafts probed the mist upon a high lawn overlooking Queen Charlotte Strait. She could almost imagine the Lady of the Lake rising from the mystical waters of British Columbia.
        A wreath of steam wafted from her mug of Lipton's Green Label. Robins' egg blue, from a kiln in Victoria, this mug was her favorite vessel.
        Hank had driven off somewhere. His cell phone rested in its charger. Each day his short-term memory surrendered to occulsion. Long-term memory was another case. He recalled the essence of gardenia. Said she wore the scent on their honeymoon.
         "Why your interest in all things Arthurian?" he had asked before going out.
         "I guess it began with Brother Ambrose."
         "Eh?"
         "He seems to have picked up where Pelagius left off. You remember that movie we went to, where Arthur was half Roman and half Pict or something?'
          "Vaguely. Hollywood mumbo jumbo."
          "Perhaps. But Brother Ambrose sounds a lot like the movie's King Arthur."
          "Cribbing from movies. Pathetic. I don't know why you listen to him."
          "New Age sermons on the green. Very romantic."
          "Fish guts and scales."


                                                                                   *


         That evening a nightmare pressed upon her and she perspired like a rutting horse. Soaking the pillow and sheets. A loathesome paralyses spread through her, possessing her, and she felt penetrated. She woke to find someone in bed with her, someone other than Hank. Her waterworks moved like riptides. Amorphous, yet solid enough to conquer her body, "he" aroused her, her hips rising to meet "his" thrusts. A lifelong trust in Freud left her abandoned, unprotected.
          As the etheric body made love to her she was certain  that an umbilical cord, glistening and transparent, coiled upwards into the breathing darkness.
          I have gone stark fucking crazy!


                                                                                   *


          She opened her eyes and saw Hank standing at the foot of her bed, his waxen head glowing with a dim halo from the ceiling lamp. He was holding the Cutty Sark model, his mouth agape.
           "Maxie, hon. What's going on?"
           Bedsheets pulled down to the floor, Maxine lay exposed. The blouse of her nightie had been yanked open. Her "dream" had been a bodice-ripper. Literally. Wordlessly she allowed her husband to ogle her breasts like a schoolboy.
           He asked, "What have you been doing with yourself?"
           HOW DARE HE THINK THAT!
           "I'm OK," she said raggedly. "Please, dear. Leave me. I'll come down in a minute."
           "I thought I smelled gardenias."
           "Go. Please!"
           Hank sauntered out, looking backward.
           Maxine made her toilet. Semen, not ectoplasm, leaked from her secret garden..
           She said to herself, "I'm fixed."