FLASH FICTION
The Very Brink For once, Pink did not give into slavering and pawing.
If he contented himself with taking what Lorraine offered in her own time, according to her strictures of dire intimacy, all would be revealed. About her was a sacrificial mien – like a half-robed martyr traipsing into a den of javelinas. They kissed a long elliptic time. Pink whispered sad little love stories that made her smile and breathe frenetically.
She slid off the bed. “More champagne, Darling?” Took his glass and swept toward the sideboard. In this interstice, between real and imagined, Lorraine caught fire. At first, Pink thought it was spontaneous combustion: the very thing he’d feared and expected all along. Had it been a murmur of wind, a careless exhale, perhaps an endearment that undid things? Saint Joan’s County was the last sighting of Theodosia Burr, Aaron’s daughter, who took ship there and was never heard from again. Its geography inhabited an epic occult presentiment. On a whim anything might ignite, be swept away, simply disappear. It was the end, the very brink.
The room was furnished in Italianate étagères, wardrobes, chiffoniers, monstrous mirrors, a canopied mahogany bed of encoded scrollwork: the entire Tantum Ergo; crucifixes crowning each of the four posters; carven cherubs proffering chalices to harvest the Savior’s dripping blood; on the headboard, a relief of the Blessed Virgin, ankle entwined with the fanged serpent even as she crushed it beneath her heel. The Blood Moon threw its scarlet raiment over everything with documentary rectitude. The breeze insinuated itself through the open window. Lorraine’s flimsy challis slipped partially away. She did not attempt to cover herself, though her modesty, in face of it all, brought tears to Pink’s eyes. Which is when she reached for the champagne, and brushed the candle. Its unrepentant flame sought out the loose cloth. She assumed fire. © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING January 2022 Celebrating 12th Anniversary