SEDUCTION.
It would have taken all of ten minutes to have explained to him the workings of your mind but he isn’t interested he only wants to get you into bed and that as fast as possible and with as little fuss as can be managed taking into account your small room and even smaller bed and the place a right tip with clothes clean and unclean all over the place on the floor on the furniture under the bed over the bed and cups and plates put on the side of the bedside cabinet if such it can be called with leftovers still there encouraging mould and mice and flies and the few pictures pinned to the walls with drawing pins or just stuck there with flour and water an old trick your father used sticking up wallpaper at home years back and those pictures of your favourite artists like Degas and Monet and that one by Van Gogh of fields and black crows or whatever they were and the one photograph of your sister before she drowned before they stuck her in the ground and that placed in that tainted silver frame you liberated from the junk shop when the old man wasn’t looking and despite all that he still wants to get you into the bed between the greying sheets and heavy blankets wants to undress you slowly bit by bit removing each article of clothing taking them off with his thin fingers with the yellow cigarette stains and burn marks peel them off and throwing them across the small room until you are down to nothing but your underclothes and them not much to look at needing repair or replacement and he sits there on the edge of the bed looking at you taking in each aspect of your body the hair the eyes blue going on green the nose the lips which he has kissed and left damp spittle on the chin the cheeks the ears and then he pauses leans back puts out a hand feels your skin runs his fingers along your arm leans forward kisses the arm the hand the fingers holds it lifts it brings it to his lips and licks and you feel all kind of edgy flustered warm hot chilly all at the same time and you want him to get it over with to get the heck into bed and get on with whatever it is he really wants but he just sits there holding your hand by the fingers gazing at the hand as if he’d never seen one before as if this was the first darn hand he’d ever held or kissed and he looks up and his eyes hold onto yours take in the colour the blue and green and possibly sees himself mirrored there in those two mirrorlike eyes and he begins to smile the lips spreading the teeth showing the tongue just hanging back there resting just behind the lower teeth and he breathes in really deep as if he’d not breathed for years as if he’d been dead and had just woken up from death’s hold and he releases your hand and watches it rest with the other one in your lap the pinkie flesh on the off white underwear the knees touching skin on skin and he suddenly embraces you pulls you close to him and you can smell him better now smell the perfume that kind that men sometimes wear overpowering sickening and he begins to remove the last items of clothing from you makes you stand and as he lowers the clothes off you look down at his head at the balding patch of skin poking through the dark hair the way it kind of goes around in a wave in the center and then he stands up and you are completely naked and the chill of the room begins to bite at you and he walks back from you letting his eyes feast on the sight of you taking in your whole fleshiness the breasts the hips the waist the thighs the legs the small thatch of hair covering your sexual organ as Mother called it when you first asked her what the heck it was for and she replied for peeing and having babies by and now standing there butt naked feeling the chill sensing his eyes over you feeling the goose bumps creeping you wish to heck she was there standing beside you her arms around your shoulders telling the man to get go away and go play with some other go find a whore or tart or slag or whatever they call themselves and leave my girl alone but she isn’t there she’s dead she’s rotting beneath a pauper’s grave someplace and it’s just you and him and the bed and the sound of birdsong somewhere outside the window and the unbuttoning sound of his clothes as he undresses bit by bit all the time his eyes searching you seeking to enter you to devour you and then you wake up and the downstairs cat is licking your face with its rough tongue purring as if in welcome as if it had really frightened the man in your dreams away only to return next night next week some night some day.
