Lust Demented

{XVII}

IT WAS AN IMPOSSIBLE DASH. The lioness was on my heels, still prancing around like we were playing. I was Steve Brodie going for the hundred bucks. I was Lars suicide diving anytime he felt the altitude buzz his brain the wrong way. I was Mikey Farrow writing my next book to be shredded at first sight.

Queens Boulevard had enough moving steel to kill us all. I could have kept going only to let her blindside me and though it made no sense I got holy. On my knees, I dropped in the middle of the four lanes heading to the sacred offices and so special dungeons, but the cars missed and kept missing. The lioness roared. I was shaking. She moved in closer. I stopped shaking. I was kneeling in the middle of the boulevard of death. The pavement consumed my skin. The lioness had me in her clutches. I could only wait to feel her teeth. I didn’t have to. Her jaws were open and oh so close. But instead of tearing me open, she licked me. She licked me once. She licked me again. People leaned out their car windows taking pictures and videos with their phones as the lioness went to town with her tongue on my face. She had healing saliva. I was ready for anything, but really one thing in particular. I closed my eyes letting her fill in the blanks for me. I felt the rain coming down as it had yesterday and maybe the day before.

Missy passed me on the street, but I was the one that kept walking. She followed me for a block through midtown until I stopped, silently waiting for her to tell whatever she felt the need to tell me.

“I’m sorry, but I need you not to worry about me. When you were with me and working on A Greater Truth, I was jealous of the time you spent away from me. Even if you were in the room with me there was this intense distance. At times you look so sick, stricken with some strange disease that only you had. Other times I was certain it was someone else coming between us. It was so confusing. Every day we lived together, I expected you to tell me that you were finished writing and ready to come back to me, but that day never came… you just kept writing and writing and writing…”

“……”

“Farrow… even before you finished the book you deserted me… even before you finished the book you were already talking about the next one and the next one and the one after that. I realized that the book you were writing was as much mine as anyone else’s. The book was more mine than yours.”

“A Greater Truth…” I didn’t know what else to do, so I went for her lips, but she moved away. The women always decides.

I opened my eyes only to look into the eyes of the lioness, twice my size. She looked angry again like she had no choice in the matter. There were only a few more blocks to go. My life as everyone else’s in the city was only measured by a few blocks. I wasn’t sure whether to sprint or walk home, so I stayed somewhere in-between. The rain blessed the lioness with a slight transparency and mystique. I could see my square brick apartment. I could see my chipped brick landlord waiting at the door, dead drunk, seeing three of me and at least a dozen beasts on my tail.

“Farrow is everything okay?” He wobbled and the lioness wobbled too.

“Yeah… everything’s fine.”

“Farrow, is everything okay?” My landlord rubbed his eyes furiously, trying to change something that he just couldn’t change.

“King of the jungle.”