For Jazz-Anne,

The moonlight was comming through the curtains as bright as it ever could. She regularly tossed her body from one side to the other. The bed was sickeningly warm, and so she also continuousely swept her legs and toes under the sheet, from the one side to the other, to find the cold spot.
There was a church some blocks away in the valley outside her bedroom window, where the worshippers had been singing all night long, and they had been comforting to listen to, but now they had stopped, and the silence was making her want him. She could have a cup of tea, or even a beer, but she had woken up for three nights in a row now for a “midnight beer” as she had begun to call it, and she didn’t believe that a cup of tea would do the trick.
She even considered briefly the option of running out to the twenty four hour cafe, to pick up a packet, but no, she was determined that she had had her last cigarette.
It was by then her third day of torture. But she was sure that the first days were the worst, and that the worst was nearly over. She had to fight to keep alive that vision in her mind, of the new Angie, the Angie who no longer smokes cigarettes.
He was a tough opponent, a warrior-angel, he used whatever weapons that came to his cunning mind, and he could read Angie’s mind like a poem; a poem that was an ode to himself. From the time that she had first met him, slowely, that’s what had happened to her mind, it had become his possesion, and it was only when she had first tried to rid herself of him , that she had realised this.
She had grown out of the relationship. She felt that she had learned much since meeting him, she had met different people who didn’t much care for him, and she felt that she now wanted to be like them. She had met him when she was a teenager, and she wasn’t a teenager anymore. She had even spent some time with her doctor, telling him her story. Her doctor had said that he understood the way that she felt, and he had advised her against him, and he had given her some pills, but they did not help.
The decision was a simple one, but not an easy one, and she knew that she would not be able to do what she wanted to do without some pain, and she often seriously doubted whether she was strong enough to cope. She worried that she might turn to a lot of strong drink as a result of it all. Eventually she made up her mind: just knowing that it was something that she just had to do.
She had to do something right now, she couldn’t just lie in bed anymore, she had to get up, and anyway, there were no more cold spots left. And so she sat up, and took a deep breath, her breasts heaving with agony for his hand. She then slipped her long slight legs from underneath the sheet untill her toes and heels found the rough comfort of the carpet. She glanced briefly at the spot where he usually slept, and missed him, and then she left the bedroom with a slightly top heavy shadow in the dark doorway, and ran down the stairs to the kitchen, where she always left the light on at night. The fridge door opened with a squeak, and she took out a beer, and opened that too, the fridge door slid shut with another squeak, and a bump, she sat down naked at the kitchen table, swallowing the first half of the green bottle’s contents in large man-like thirsty gulps.
“If only I didn’t seem to need him so much, if only I didn’t want him so much. If only there wasn’t this terrible physical need for him!” She thought to herself, as she peeled the label off of the beer bottle, and then sticking the label to the fridge door, which was within easy reach from the chair that she was sitting on. And then she just sat there, naked, and in the bright light, sipping beer, and watching the label stick to the door, for what seemed like a very lomg time.
Outside there was a slight wind, and she heard a slight rustle of the trees, and with it, inside, came a little breeze and a coolness which swept over her body, it gave her goose-pimples all over, and made her nipples slightly hard.
Too soon the beer was finished, and from the fridge she took another, and another, and opened them both at the same time, and left the kitchen, with her slightly top heavy shadow in the passageway, for the bedroom.
She sat up in bed cross-legged with the sheet pulled up over her lap, watching him sleep, and listening to the need for him inside of her stir. She was clearly confused. She had tucked the one beer away, out of sight, underneath the bed, and had placed the other one on the bedside table next to her. Slowely she sipped, with the wearyness of existing in two minds, she watched him sleeping, as the moonlight still came through the curtains, as bright as it could be.
Underneath the bed though, while hiding the second beer, she had found half a packet of cigarettes that she had hidden there some evenings before, and had forgotten about.
She was holding the packet in her hand, and playing with it with her fingers. She was exciting him, and she was arousing herself. She was instigating, and she was to blame. In the dead silence of the night she hopefully imagined the Christian worshipers still singing, but they were not,they had stopped.
His presence was now present. There was now no more debate needed on whether to run down to the twenty four hour cafe or not. he had made it easy for her. She knew that she was now fighting a loosing battle, but she held her pride high, and she retaliated anyway. – It all only served as extra foreplay.
For a moment or two, between small and long sips of beer, she watched him sleep, and she watched him stir in his sleep, and she sipped and breathed and moved gingerly between cold spots, almost praying not to awaken him.
Suddenly he was awake, and smilling at her her with a glare of awesome power, and she felt hopelesly cast under his spell, but she still retaliated.
“How are you feeling?” He asked her gently, and with his ever agenda.
“Oh, I’m feeling alright.” She answered quickly, too quickly, and then quickly denying the truth.
“Well I’m feeling rather amorous!” He replied frankly.
“And without being asked? Cheeky bastard!” she thought.
And he gave her another of those glaring, powerfull, smilling looks.
“Well he certainly smells very amorous!” She secretly thought to herself, consciously breathing, and then quickly denying herself the thought.
His broad jaw and Roman nose were glistening in the moonlight. His playboy hearsay was ringing in her ears.
Oh she wanted him so badly! But at the same time she knew that there was no future in it, and she also knew that if she gave in, she would hate herself in the morning to come.
But by now she had excited him, and by now, he wanted what he wanted, and by now, as also before, she knew that it was her own fault. Again, she had instigated all of it. She was trapped. She had trapped herself. She had wanted it too. The strong aroma of his body, she found irresistible, and his body was about to burn, like incense in the high temple of dissolution, and she, his reluctant desciple, was soon to be not on her knees before him, but on her belly. She felt heady, her breasts heaved with excitement, and then there was a spark, and a flame, and before she knew it she had swallowed him very much like she had earlier swallowed that beer in the kitchen, and he was inside of her. And the sensation of headyness increased. And then she felt very satisfied, but she also felt very guilty.
Alone she lay in bed, with her eyes wide open, and without touching him. Alone he lay in bed, without touching her, and feeling very satisfied, and with his eyes closed.
There was then soon another light in the sky, one much bigger than the moonlight. Before the morning had come completely, and the night had gone, Angie had risen, and bathed with a very tired head. She hadn’t had much sleep at all.

She left for her job in an office at a company in the centre of town, which was just on the other side of the valley outside of her bedroom window. She did not hear from him that whole day. The whole day however, she thought about him being in her home. She thought about the evening to come, and about how she was going to deal with him. And her head was very tired, and her situation confused her.

That evening, soon after returning home, he spent some time nagging her while she prepared for herself a toasted sandwich in the kitchen. He wanted her attentions, but she had other intentions for him. She tried to deal with the situation by ignoring him; he cunnibgly responded with calmness and quietness. She dared not go up to the bedroom, but kept herself busy in the kitchen; drinking wine and with potting about with washing dishes and other small chores like opening packets of spices and cookies and the such and repacking them into bottles and jars that she had saved from other bought products in the past. She washed the labels off of these bottles and jars, and once filled with their new contents she arranged them in an attractive fashion next to the kettle where she also kept sugar, and honey, and coffee and tea. Later that evening when she had finished this, she felt very proud of her work, she had also finished the whole bottle of wine.
He then started to bother her again, by playing with her body, tempting her physical passions. He would cause her to feel an untrue freedom of breath: he would squeeze her throat, and tickle it, and lick it, and then squeeze it again harder. It can only be said that she found him attractive, and that her problem was not really him, but the fact that she found him so attractive, “after all, he does have a right to exist.: She thought to herself.
Yet, still, she tried to ignore him, and she opened another bottle of wine, and she poured herself another glass.
He then took offence to her rejection of him, and she knew it, and the wine was making her weepy. And at such times when he felt hurt he would hurt her back, by subtly bringing up her failures in life, and mock her and tease her. And then she would always with these taunts feel a lonelyness that she found terribly difficult to bear.
The worst of course was when he lost his temper, which he sometimes did, and started threatening her, that she could not survive without him. That she “would never make it through a day and a night without me”, he would shout, and that she “wouldn’t even be able to work!” And that she “wouldn’t even be able to socialise!” – He would add with such a confident tone in his voice – and that he would “see to that!” he would conclude with the same confidence. She knew that she was insecure, but she believed that he was even worse. The mixture of his taunting and the wine, which both made her weepy, where too much for her, and she burst out into tears of insecurity, obscurity, and deep self doubt, while he sat smugly looking on, proud of his work, the work of all angel-warriors of his type. And knowing her well, he knew that he was soon to get what he was looking for.
Again he stroked her throat, and kissed it and licked it and even sucked it. And she breathed heavely with her breasts heaving as though she was being suffocated. The only thought that she could entertain then was the smell of him, that smell of his burning body, which she found completely irresistable. He had split her in two, with the skill of illusion that magicians use, when cutting a lady in half, by putting her into a box, and weilding many sharp and shiny swords; that part which wanted him, and that part which didn’t. He was abusing her, and he proudly acknowledged it, and now he was offering himself to her as consolation, which was the tactic which he so often used. Like this, the deal was always in his favour. Again, she did not believe that she could live without him.
Quickly, she ran up to the bedroom, and under the bed next to the two empty beer bottles that she had left there the previous evening, she found the half packet of cigarettes.
From the packet she drew one, she was surprised at how long it was, she was surprised at how attracted she was to it’s shape and texture, and ran back to the kitchen with it. At the kitcken table after fondling it a little bit, and smelling it, she lit it, and immediately she tasted his dark rich burning flesh. He was in her mouth, his hand was on her breast, he was inside of her. In-short, he had his way with her on the kitchen table again, with the beer bottle label from the previous evening still stuck to the fridge door behind her, mocking her.
After it was over she felt a huge sense of relief, she had enjoyed him so much that evening, it was as though she had smoked some incredibly strong drug, like opium perhaps. The emotional up and down, first with the wine, his shouting at her, the angst and relief of her tears, and then the relief of him; it had all left her dizzy with euphoria. He was prancing around arrogantly, grinning over his conquest, flaunting his long thick side-burns, and his latin clothing, like a cuban maitre’d, or an Arthur Murray Dance Studio teacher.
After another glass of wine and one to take to bed with her she wobbled upstairs and through the passageway, and got into bed drunk. Her legs and toes basking in the sensation of the whole bed being a cold spot. The Christian worshippers were singing in the valley, and they lullabied her to sleep.

The next morning she woke up feeling well-rested, she bathed, and she kissed him good bye, putting her cigarette out half way through, and cheeckily leaving lipstick on his butt. She then took the packet from underneath the bed and threw it away, far away, to a place where she could never retrieve it.
And that was the only way that Angie could eventually rid herself of him, by completely ignoring him, and never again allowing him into her home, and by pushing all thoughts of him out of her mind: She had to be absolutely resolute.
After that, whenever she saw him at a restaurant table, she would just look the other way. When a friend of her’s lit him up, she would just pretend that he wasn’t there. It was as hard as she had anticipated, and sometimes even harder.

And now, one whole year later, Angie is finally realising that vision: that vision of an Angie who no longer smokes cigarettes. He also; “is finally just away from me”, as she puts it. She is now always consciously affirming, and appreciating, the brand-new, fresh air of her new life.

Thanks for your time

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Tony Grant

Tony Grant

Tony Grant is a salesman from Jo'burg; he used to be a well-respected surfer. Anyway, he's decided to ask some big, and some small, questions of varying nature, and he's using this blog site to do so....

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