Harmony Cliffs Ch. 01

Becca couldn't help but smile. "That's really sweet. But it's nothing. And it's a bit more private than I'd like to share."

"Look, I have a class with him later today," Clay pointed out. "Is there anything I should tell him?"

Clay watched as Becca looked back at Trenton. That tall, handsome blond who smiled while trading gossip with a dozen friends and classmates. Clay couldn't even hate the guy for being so popular -- of course he loved Trenton, everyone did. But then Trenton's eyes met Becca's, and he quickly looked away before she did.

"Becca?" Clay ventured.

After a moment, Becca shook her head. "It's complicated," she said with a straight face and another bite of her lunch. "And right now, I'd like to hear about someone else's problems for a change."

Before Clay could even think about his suicide attempt, his uncertain life after graduation, or anything about the whole disaster with his parents, Clay just said "I'm good." Though he added, "But you know I'm here if you ever want to talk."

Becca nodded and said "Same here." Neither one of them traded another word through the rest of the lunch period.

***

Clay never understood calculus. Luckily, he only had to learn which buttons to push on a graphing calculator, and nobody seemed to care if he even knew what a "derivative" was supposed to be. So Clay sat half-awake as his mind drifted through the class.

There was Trenton Phelps, sitting only a few rows in front of him. Trenton kept his face forward the whole time. Was he trying to pretend that Clay wasn't there? That suited Clay just fine -- he was trying to stay out of Trenton's way. Trenton seemed to have everything: He was successful, he was popular, he had Becca...

What happened there, anyway? Clay wondered. They seemed so happy and they're both so perfect.

The voices in the classroom seemed to grow further away. As if he was hearing them underwater.

What could have happened? Is Becca finally single again?

His vision grew hazy and dark.

How long is long enough to ask her out? What if she says no again?

Clay looked around, and he didn't even care that he was floating in an inky black void. He was alone and free, away from everyone else and their problems.

Clay grew sleepy, lulled into a peaceful relaxation by a lilting lullaby that sounded familiar somehow. He felt a soft warmth as a pair of moon-white hands traveled up his chest. As smooth arms, flawless legs, and blazing red hair wrapped around Clay, he felt the gentle caress of a body pressing against his back.

"I need you," whispered a beautiful voice into his ear. He could feel her lips against his jaw. "Please help me," as her embrace grew tighter against his chest. "Come find me," as her ankle rubbed upward against his thigh.

"CLAYTON!"

Clay fell out of his chair, he woke up with such a start.

"Could you please tell us all what that was about?" Things were fuzzy, but Clay recognized the voice of Mr. Moultrie, who was walking toward him between the rows of desks. Clay pulled himself up to realize that everyone was staring at him.

"What was... I don't... I'm sorry, what?" stammered Clay.

"Clayton," said Mr. Moultrie, "what were you doing?"

"I... have no idea," Clay replied. "I guess I just fell asleep all of a sudden. I'm sorry."

"You were singing in your sleep?"

Clay blinked. "Singing? What was I singing?"

"You tell us."

"Hey, who's this?" Clay turned toward the voice of Danny Keyes, who was sitting at the desk next to him. Everyone craned their neck to look at the piece of paper Danny was pointing to on Clay's desk. Clay didn't remember drawing it -- he could barely draw a straight line with a ruler -- but there was a perfect nude likeness of the woman he saw at the beach that night.

***

Of all the days to take detention duty as a favor, Mr. David Moultrie just had to get that day. He sat at his desk as four students sat in front of him, copying lines. One of them was Clayton Dawes, from his senior calculus class. Of course it had to be calculus. David taught about lines that would reach out toward invisible, potentially non-existent limits and turn away without ever reaching them. A cruel and ironic metaphor for his own life, David always thought.

David's passion was trigonometry. He had an eye for lines and angles and curves. He wanted to be an architect. An artist. That was... Christ, it was over thirty years ago, back when he was an undergraduate. Four years earning his Bachelor's in Mathematics. Another five years earning his Bachelor's in Architecture. Another four years of arduous classes and sleepless nights getting his Master's, waiting for work that would never come.

---

The students kept on copying lines. Mr. Moultrie didn't notice them. He never moved a muscle.

---

So many clients with their small, feeble minds. Anyone with vision went to the designers they already knew, and David was stuck with clients who only cared about the bottom line. All those years of work and study, all the ideas and ambitions he had, and David was stuck in the tedious drudgery of designing huge uninspired blocks.

David could remember picking up his entire family and moving to a small town on the California coast. It was a town of artists, expanding into a thriving tourist village with landscapes and buildings to be immortalized in Hollywood productions. It was a town founded by a visionary, who died shortly after David arrived with his family. David gambled with everything he had, and he lost.

---

Clay finished with his lines and looked up. He saw that Mr. Moultrie was staring straight ahead. His eyes seemed to have gone glassy. Clay pretended not to notice.

---

Fifty years old (Close to sixty!) and what had David done with his life? His waist was getting wider. His bald spot was getting bigger. His glasses were getting thicker. His wrinkles were getting deeper. David wasn't the man his wife had married anymore. Why did she ever marry a failure like him in the first place? What legacy could David possibly leave behind for her or their children?

Buildings floated into David's view. He knew them inside and out. These were his masterpieces. His monuments of paper and graphite dust. They would never be built outside of his portfolio, now locked away somewhere in the attic. His life's work would never exist outside his own head.

---

Every student in detention was staring at Mr. Moultrie. He hadn't moved for several minutes. Hadn't even blinked. John Peele raised his hand.

"Mr. Moultrie?" ventured John. "Hey, Mr. Moultrie! Can I go to the bathroom? I gotta go!"

There was no response.

"Fuck this," said John. "I'm outta here." John started picking up his bags. Mr. Moultrie didn't say or do anything to stop him.

But John stopped when he heard Mr. Moultrie say something. No, he wasn't saying anything, he was mumbling. It sounded like a song -- no lyrics, just a melody.

Clay heard it too, and he turned pale at the sound of it. Nobody in the class knew what to do. No one there had ever heard that lilting, haunting lullaby before. Except Clay.

---

David could hear someone singing. He didn't know the song, but the voice was sublimely beautiful. As if he was floating through air, he moved toward the door of a grand movie theater that he had always been especially proud of. The doors opened automatically and there he was in the main lobby. It was huge and open, designed for enormous crowds. There was the sprawling concessions stand, the arcade in the corner, and the massive Corinthian pillars stretching up toward a panoramic mural. It was every bit as majestic as he had envisioned, but it all looked and felt so real.

And there was that singing. David followed it through an archway, down a wing of the multiplex. The entrance to every theater was marked with a beautiful Roman arch, and the arches stretched out to infinity as David continued walking.

---

Mr. Moultrie kept walking right into the classroom door while humming that song. The other students awkwardly looked on, not sure of what was happening. It was Travis Nolan who finally reached under Mr. Moultrie and opened the door.

Mr. Moultrie shambled right through the door and down the hallway. He never looked back.

---

Finally, David followed the sound of that angelic voice to the door of a theater. He opened the door under that beautiful arch and stepped onto a beach under a bright summer sun. A young lady was there waiting for him, her alabaster skin glistening beneath the sapphire waters of a tide pool. She stood to greet him, and the sunlight played in her fiery red hair as it fell all around her.

David had never met this woman, yet there was so much love in her emerald eyes. She laid a hand on his cheek, and his wrinkles seemed to melt away. She took off his glasses, and he could see her radiant smile with crystal clarity. He kissed those coral lips -- gently at first, and then more aggressively as she welcomed him.

There was so much love in her embrace. No pain, no age, no humiliation. There was only warmth. And lust.

She tore his shirt open, and there were the toned muscles of a man in his prime. She moved down while kissing and caressing every line of his firm chest. By the time she had moved down to his lean abs, she had placed a hand to his cock. David kneeled down to sit in the sand, watching as she lay between his strong thighs, rubbing her hand along his stiffening length.

The girl unzipped his pants, and her reaction showed joy and amazement upon seeing how long he was. She took his member in one hand, slowly began to rub him up and down, and David grew even longer. David lay down in the sand, watching this young woman as she licked all up and down his shaft, feeling her warm wet tongue rub against every ridge. She slowly licked the underside of his erection from base to tip, and shivers went up his spine.

He watched as the tip of her tongue played around the tip of his penis. His breathing shortened at the sensation of it. His whole body went erect at the sensation of his tip, then his head, and then the rest of his shaft going into her mouth.

David could barely speak, but he didn't need to tell this girl what to do. He could feel the way she cupped his balls, sucked his cock, and rubbed the very base of his erection. This woman clearly knew what she was doing as she expertly, lovingly nurtured this penis to full erection. Finally, when David had turned red with passion, when he only had enough breath to gasp and moan his approval, the young woman raised herself up to her knees. Her hands never left his cock.

Her nipples were so perky and erect that David was overcome with the instinct to reach out and rub them. She moaned her approval, and then he saw the smooth, moist folds of her pussy. Those lower lips were open and ready to accept him as she lowered herself and slowly, smoothly guided his length inside of her. His grip on her breasts grew tighter with every inch of her warm velvet flesh that he felt around his member.

But the young beauty wasn't finished. She lowered herself back onto his length again. And again. And again. She pumped her hips back and forth, back and forth, sending spasms all through David's body every time she did. So he grabbed her by the waist and pumped against her in time. She leaned forward and steadied herself with a hand on each side of David's face. He could see the lust in her bright green eyes. The way she bit her lip practically screamed "Give me more!"

With renewed energy, David pumped upward into her with inhuman speed. He could feel her hips shaking with every impact. Now the girl leaned backward, giving David a full view of her lean, flawless body. He watched as her pink nipples reached skyward. He watched as she furiously rubbed her swollen clitoris. He watched as her eyes screwed shut and her mouth opened up into senseless, cleanly-pitched cries of "Oh! Oh! Oh!"

Overcome with primal lust, David pulled her down and rolled himself on top of her. He plowed into her with every ounce of strength he had, ramming as hard and fast as he could. His muscles screamed with fatigue at the overwhelming effort, but it was worth it to feel her arms and legs wrapped around him. To see the frenzied lust in her eyes. To feel her intimate channel tightly pressing warm, sweet satisfaction against his swollen rod.

Finally, David's fatigue began yielding to the pressure building up in his groin. He could feel her own muscles spasm at the same time he could feel his own manhood quake. They both went rigid. They both screamed to the heavens. And as David spurted his rapture into her quivering tunnel, as they shared in the apex of pleasure, David felt entirely at one with this young stranger he had somehow fallen in love with.

His mind went blank in the aftermath of the orgasm. His vision blurred. Everything went black.

---

At that moment, Mr. David Moultrie collapsed in the hallways of De Lilla High School. He never woke up.

***

Later that night, over 200 miles away, an old man woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed. He reached for the bedpan, just in time to cough up the blood in his throat.

***

Author's note: While it's up to the reader's interpretation precisely what the mysterious girl's lullaby sounds like, I personally recommend "Lavender's Blue" -- recently featured on the Cinderella (2015) soundtrack -- as a point of reference.

The next chapter will be online shortly. In the meantime, all comments and feedback are welcome.