Jillian's Orchid

NOTE: This story is not for people who want a quick wank. I'm trying to write with a little more flavor this time, and all feedback is welcome. The sex is here, but so is everything else.

*****

Jillian woke up on a Monday morning feeling lost in a haze of insomnia and uncertainty. The walls around her oozed fetid dreams of routine. The greying, dirty carpet underneath her toes felt caked in neglect and loneliness. Hers was a small apartment, and it had never met anyone but Jillian.

Behind the counter, she was the florist recommending last-minute selections and clippings to inattentive husbands and boyfriends, all of them stuck in the cycle of romantic expectation. Always they defaulted to the classic bouquet of roses, a tired and predictable arrangement that any decent florist would balk at in their heads at the least, if not out loud in the customer's face. But day after day, the lilies and tulips wilted, the carnations shriveled and died. Jillian, as she locked the doors at the end of the day, wondered if even an orchid could go unloved in an existence like hers.

Jillian went to bed on a Monday night feeling no different than when she rose. Now the off-white sheets faded to a decaying grey and the pillows groaned and shifted under her head, trying to find comfort with an uncomfortable being. The sun had barely dipped below the horizon, yet she was as weary as any traveler, burdened with a drowning sensation even as she breathed.

But that night, in a dream, someone came to her bearing the orchid of her heart, carefully cultivated and maintained, curling in golden sunlight and laughing the way a young couple does in the dawn of their romance. "This is you," said the figure, offering the orchid in cupped hands. "This has always been you. And if you do not take this now, it will wither. Do you give yourself away?"

Jillian woke up on a Tuesday morning to a blinding light. When she opened her eyes, it was gone, just a flash of existence beaming its way into a windowless bedroom. Instead, what she saw was life. There, next to her in bed, was a young woman, clothed neck to ankle in pink pajamas Jillian wore as a teenager. This person could not have been any older than her own twenty-four years, though she was much smaller. Her lips were parted ever so slightly under a small, up-turned nose. Her skin was patched with acne scars, though most of them had faded well enough, and her short brown hair was sticking to her face with the slightest layer of sweat.

Jillian did not know how she got there, but said, "Good morning," as though she did.

"It can't be morning," she replied. "I just laid down."

"It's eight o'clock."

"I guess we were talking all night," she said, and opened her eyes to reveal a pale green iris. "I really can't thank you enough."

"I didn't really do much, did I?" Jillian was too embarrassed having forgotten, and tried to play it off as well as she could. Perhaps she had gotten drunk in a fit of depression and met this woman somewhere.

"No, I just... I guess I trusted you. That probably sounds stupid. But I'll be okay, I know I will. Can you take me home?"

"Of course."

Her name was Valerie, Jillian learned. Whatever had happened, they never truly introduced themselves, and they quickly corrected that as they sat down in Jillian's car. The drive was short - surprisingly short, and Valerie hesitated to leave the car. It wasn't until a much older woman came running out from her house that Val opened the door and said goodbye.

"Go inside," the woman said to Val. "I made breakfast." And when she did, the woman bent down to the window and spoke to Jillian. "Where did you find her? The clocktower? Never mind, I just -"

"She was going to jump," Jillian said. She was not sure why, but somehow she knew it was true. "I talked her down. She seems much better today, even happy."

"We'll be sure to get her counseling. Thank you, um..."

"Jillian."

"I'm Mrs. Grant. Penelope, actually."

-----

Behind the counter, Jillian stood trying to remember the evening, but nothing came. She had no vision in her mind of the clocktower, nor Valerie standing at its edge ready to meet eternity. Still, she knew it was right. She knew that somehow, she had appeared there and saved her from herself. And most of all, she didn't care how.

"Can I get a dozen red roses?"

"Anniversary?"

"Sixth," said a man in a wrinkled business suit. He was in his mid-thirties, and already graying around his ears. So far it looked as though he were trying to pull of the sexy older gentleman look, but Jillian could tell it was Atlas starting to tremble. This man was working himself to death and accepting the cycle, just as Jillian had for so long. But he gave himself away.

"I don't think roses will do it," Jillian said.

"Listen, I'm in a bit of a hurry here, could you just -"

Jillian cut him off with her gaze. His brown eyes had a hint of grey, just like his hair. But the last little glimmer of a young man with dreams shone through like the final breath of a matchstick before its flame billows into smoke. He could see what she saw, and he froze.

"You could be so much more..." Jillian muttered, and he heard her.

"I know," he said.

Jillian touched his hand for a moment and left him. She made her selections and returned quickly before he though she had given up. She gave him every color but red, and placed the flowers in his hands. "Go back to the gym," she said. "And when you're ready, put the gloves back on. The best gift you can give to your wife is a happy husband." She pushed him out before he could pay, and before he could ask how she knew what she knew. But as he sat back in his car, Jillian could see him smile ever so lightly.

---

Jillian's orchid, she decided, was uncanny clairvoyance. It was morphing the world before her very eyes, turning towers to dust and rebuilding them, revealing the faces of the men and women who poured their blood sweat and tears into its construction. She looked into peoples' eyes and saw their pasts, their dreams, their feelings, their beings. Her orchid was life itself, as she had always been.

This knowing had turned her from stone to water. As she slept on a Tuesday night, Jillian felt herself moving through the world, watching and waiting for time to catch up. And at last, she saw the clocktower where Valerie had stood, and she was there once again. Jillian spoke to her. "Are you all right?"

"I'm wonderful," Valerie said. "I just wanted to talk to you again."

"You could come to my home," Jillian said. "You know how to get there."

"I know. But you're asleep. This way we can do both."

"Tell me everything," Jillian said. Though as Valerie spoke, Jillian started to move elsewhere. Her voice remained, everything spoken was heard, but now Jillian found the man from earlier on. In his home, he sat with his wife, holding her and speaking softly. She was smiling, crying, and the flowers stood in a vase by the door, alive and bright as birth.

"I feel lonely," said Valerie.

A young man was walking alone through the city, clenching his fists and stomping on the concrete as though it would save him the frustration of awakening. His eyes were bloodshot, his mood sour. But he was near to the clocktower, and he was just as alone.

"Someone is coming," Jillian said to Valerie.

Moments later, the young man appeared. His anger dissipated when he saw Valerie staring out at the city. He was afraid until she turned to look at him. The freckles across her cheeks and the mint in her eyes jolted him from a trance of resentment, and he reached out to her like a love long lost. "I'm Marcus," he said to her.

"I'm Valerie. What are you doing here, Marcus?"

Jillian reached out to the both of them at once, and let them feel all the truth there was to living. In an instant, strangers became lifelong partners - connected from birth to death, omniscient of all things Valerie and all things Marcus. And beyond Jillian's expectation, they were in love.

At once she fell into his arms and kissed him. "Thank god you're here," he said. "I've been waiting all my life."

Jillian took them away from the city, away from Earth. Only the stars surrounded them, and their warmth filled the void of countless lightyears. Valerie looked at his eyes and watched the red return to white, and his deep blue iris melded with her heart as it always had. She could remember his childhood for him as she looked, she felt every single emotion he'd ever felt, and cried at his suffering. Her fingers brushed along the tight curls of black on his head, then caressed the smooth length of his neck, watch the way her slender pale fingers slipped along the dark terra rosa skin.

Only they remained. Marcus let his hand slide from her face to her breast as it had countless times before. Every time she had ever touched herself, sexual or not, so had he. Jillian, in her dream, smiled at what she had done for them, surprised at the strength of their connection. Her wish to save one had resulted in the love of two.

Valerie gasped at the pleasure that flowed from his fingertips into her body. The familiarity of his hand was so new and excruciatingly arousing, so recognizable and yet so unexpected. And of course, she knew, her touch would do the same for him. Her hand found its way to his manhood and began to stroke. In an instant he turned hard as diamond, thick as her wrist, throbbing with his and her heartbeat.

Their tongues intertwined and their mouths locked while their hands sent the current of pleasure through skin and vein. Valerie began to drip moments later, the fruit of her womanhood seeping a juice sweeter than sin could ever be. In the warm emptiness, they floated with each other and spun to put their tongues to task on one another.

Marcus' tongue tasted the thick sweetness of Valerie, pungent of desire and spiced with a new sensation of lust. His tongue began craving her and worked faster, extended out to enter her. Her legs shook with uncontrollable pleasure, a tremor matched only by the quake and vibration of earth.

Valerie's mouth filled with Marcus as he continued to engorge, entering her throat by accident but filling her with more pleasure as a result. Her tongue stiffened and pressed against his shaft while a hand reached out to his scrotum. His breath grew short, and moans entered into her as his tongue did. Together they moaned, screamed, sighed and laughed as they started to reach new heights together.

For some time Marcus sucked at her breasts while she stroked him. Then in a fit of desire she mounted him, bounced atop him and let him erupt within her. But he did not soften, not did her waves of passion ebb. There in sight of all the universe, they continued their unity as display and expression, release and communication.

Jillian's body felt every drop of their intensity and shook with them, so far away and still so connected. Although she lay alone in a cold bed, her body felt every flick of Marcus' tongue, every grasp by Valerie's hand. The three of them were one, climaxing again and again as compassion defeated loneliness.

---

Jillian woke up on Wednesday, alone, dripping, and happy. She was ready to meet the world. She was excited to let each person be their own, and to let the world love again. Jillian's orchid laughed again, and now new voices joined it. Soon, the whole world could laugh together.