Fiction Friday: The Origin of Conscientiousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Grind, by Gayle C. Straun
By Cecilia Tan. Filed in Fiction |Tags: gayle c. straun, microfiction
The Origin of Conscientiousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Grind
by Gayle C. Straun
He knows her through sound:
When he presses deep into her early on, she tenses, her throat tightening on a groan just enough to give it a higher pitch, enough to tell him that she is not yet ready. And so he gives her shallower strokes, letting the tip of his cock ride just inside her, where he can feel the vibrations of her finger working her clit. He waits until her moans grow longer, hungrier, resisting her pulling him in further until just the last moment, when he slides in to the hilt so slowly, and her full-throated groan is that of some ancient deity bestowing her life-giving breath upon a new world.
She is like a goddess, a constant presence, her every sound signaling approbation or condemnation until her climax explodes from her mouth and her body, the final birth-pang of creation, the ultimate “yes.”
*
She knows him through sound:
The quiet, almost imperceptible grunts of concentration as he changes his rhythm or repositions her feet over his shoulders, and if he thinks he’s taking her that much further to orgasm, a smile spreads across his face, and he laughs so softly—so softly he’s not even aware of it himself. She wants to pull him into her deeper just to hear him gasp and almost lose control, but he remains studied and focused, sinking into her only slowly, like the tide.
He is like a god, sparing with his voice, silent at times. But when she comes, every muscle of hers clamping onto him, tightening around him, this god can remain stolid no longer. Finally, he erupts in thunder, his cries washing over her and through her.
*
“I—“
*
“—and Thou.”
*
But one day, the sound fades….
From their throats come only silences, no moans or cries piercing the air, no little whispers of encouragement, as if all signal of ecstasy is pulled from the world and thrown into some deep void. They fumble, confused. Maybe she wants him gently to pinch her on the—but no. Maybe he wants her to reach around and—that neither. Their frustration grows almost to its own climax as they cast about deafly for clues to each other’s desires in the absence of those trusted tonalities.
*
But then, there wells up within them something like a voice, but a voice spoken to each cell, each atom of their beings. Now, instead of by the passion cries of their own flesh rendered in music, conveyed across the attenuated medium of air, subject and object, they know by knowing. Lust as ontology.
*
He knows her through her, as if possessing her like a god, his chest now sporting twin fires, his cunt relishing at the fill. And he understands now how complete a being she is but even more complete when he is inside her, when the tender boundaries between self and other have broken down, spilling her soul beyond these boundaries of flesh.
*
She knows him through him, as if possessing him like a goddess, these hands of his now her hands, this cock now hers. And she feels what drives him into her, the bliss of vulnerability, of his fragility there inside her, held tight by her, at her mercy like he is in no other way.
*
When they come, in this voiceless bliss, a universe discovers fire for the second time.
*
I—
—and Thou.
*
I—
—am Thou.
–
Gayle C. Straun is the pseudonym of a writer and editor living in Arkansas.