The Magdalene Ch. 03

There's no point in holding back, I fall into the bitter water. It cuts me like a thousand razors, making my body gasp at the dreadful rush. My skin tightens, recoiling from the chill. The pounding in my chest echoes in my head. I breathe out, controlling the tremors in my frame, reminding myself this is good for me, that it is my heritage, that if the Vikings could do it in their icy fjords, then so can I.

Cleansing used to be habitude during my original life, and though I do not belong to any one religion now, I need this to settle my conscience, to sharpen my wits, and to prepare my heart and body for the task at hand.

I inhale, again and again, stretching my lungs each time. Then after one last long drag of air, I seal my lips tight and block my nose.

Under I go, the frigid water covering every bit of me as I suspend beneath the surface.

It is quiet.

I marvel at how my body is warming the water immediately encasing me. Any slight movement and a small flurry of cold breaks through. So I stay ever-so still, enjoying the warmth I'm creating.

I find the place deep inside, my zero, my origin, and give up my fears... to just be.

Peace.

A strain in my chest creeps in, and I know I will be aching for air soon. But not until the very last moment...

My feet touch the bottom of the mikveh, and I push up. Breaking through the surface, the city air seems hot, but I know it's just my face burning from the freezing rainwater. On lifting out of the tub, my body feels swollen, and my skin is redder than when I went in.

I have to climb back down the ladder and get indoors before my joints stiffen.

Balling up, I keep my core warm as I redress.

I open the drain--something that Father John helped me rig up so the bath water can slowly empty by itself down the gutters and into the sewers.

There will always be another inspiration, another vision to give, another rainfall...

I manage to climb back into my window just as my shaking starts. Checking the clock, I have an hour to dress and make it to the Upper East Side.

It takes me forever to dry my hair--always has. It clings onto water. I miss the days when I could walk outside into the sun and the dry air would suck out all the moisture from my hair within ten minutes--the perks of living in the desert.

The hairdryer heating up my ears and neck is just what I need. I indulge for a little too long.

Smoothing on the thinnest layer of myrrh oil glosses my dry skin with a snug shine.

Taming my hair, I weave it into a loose plait again, and roll it up so it will fit under my slouch beanie.

No make-up. No high heels. There is no seduction needed to be done for this vision, no need to put on my best. The Rabbi is on board--we have our routine. So, I dress for The City's evening weather instead--bun-clenching cold.

Retrieving my assignment duffle from the bottom of the closet--it has all the tools I need, and some I don't, but I can't be bothered cleaning it out. I stuff it with the organ box before heading out the door.

Darn, I forgot the ice.

Backtracking to the freezer, I find an unopened pack of peas. It will have to do. I stuff them into the organ box and haul the duffle onto my back again.

As an afterthought, I fill a thermos with the leftover coffee and take it with me.

Halfway down the stairs, I pass Rikke from apartment fifteen. "Always on the go," he laughs as we maneuver around each other.

Through the foyer and out the security door...

Gaius is keeled over on the edge of the sidewalk. He looks like death.

I fall at him. Holding my hand under his nose, I can still feel breath. It's light, but constant. He's in a dangerous state... but I dare not touch him. It pains me to even think it, but I can't do anything to help him right now. Gaius would never forgive me if I skipped a vision to take care of him. What we do is greater than ourselves--he will never allow me to forget that. I will do my duty, and only when it is done will I have the luxury to tend on my guardian.

I set the coffee by his chest. "When I come back, we're having a talk."

Gaius doesn't move.

Huffing helps me to stand. The City keeps moving and beeping and yelling. I trust it will ignore the man at my feet--it has thus far.

I take off deeper into the streets to the subway. My journey is a blur. It's not long before I reach Lexington Avenue.

The walk is short, the building tall, and I have to use the lift.

Ding goes the bell when I reach the top, a level of business suites.

At the end of the hall, I come to the white door with the peephole. It's now time to stop thinking of my guardian. I take a moment to breathe him out.

I push the buzzer and after a minute I hear the peephole cover flip open and shut. A series of scraping metal and clanging chains from the other side is the custom that follows.

The door opens to a full-bearded Jewish man. His eyes skip down to my ankle-length plaid skirt. It seems the dull brown, black and white tartan is not modest enough for the Rabbi.

He steps back from the door.

Placing my lips on the mezuzah, I close my eyes just for a second, remembering the comfort of my old faith.

As soon as I enter through, all the locks are returned to their secure places. I'm lucky I trust this man.

Following the Rabbi through the foyer, I fall in with his step but my trembling nerves won't match his solemn temper.

Office fluros from the buildings across the avenue gently light our way between the cubicles. The elegant showcase rooms are designed to persuade the rich-of-the-rich to buy the finest diamonds and have them shaped into rings and other jewels. The satin panel dividers embossed with gold, thick blue carpet, and velvet chairs are trying way too hard, though eager eyes never notice such things.

Rabbi Hayim is good at ignoring me. His impolite demeanor is forgiven--I am not his wife. He has been without her for many years, and I know he finds the act of revelation harder on his heart than his soul. The scholar's mind is plagued by his learning and traditions, but he is a believer of the truth. Somehow his eyes are opened, and now he must face the responsibility. Hard things must be done--he knows it. Faith-shaking hard things.

After Father John had sighted the Rabbi, it took me almost a year of intellectual reasoning before the Talmudist came around. "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?" was the line that got him. The thought is usually perceived as a warning to Cain, but I used it for nothing more than peace of mind.

The scholar took a month to reflect upon it and when he truly believed that the route to righteousness is never fixed, even, or straight, he contacted me.

Now he is one of my regulars. I'm not sure what his purpose is--what Joshua needs him for--but who am I to question? I just come and go whenever there is intelligence to be delivered.

Through the staff door the decadence is left behind for a sylvan habitat. Cluttered wooden workbenches are surrounded by walls of little pigeon boxes. Tiny hammers, files and vices fill the cork boards above each station, and a big metallic tube hangs down to vent out fragments of the working day. The place always smells of burnt wood and metal.

The Rabbi unlocks the back room. It's the junk room disguised as a storage space. The shelves, stuffed with thick over-filled folders, line up like a mini library. The smell takes me back a hundred years, before the computer age.

The windows have already been blackened so no one can see in, but the city lights still seep through the loose fibres of the cloth, not allowing me to forget where I am.

Locking the door behind us, the Rabbi leaves nothing to chance. Being his son's business place, any colleague could come back to fetch something left behind and spring us in the act. No, I'm glad to be locked in, it keeps the blinded out of our business.

After hanging his suit jacket up on the corner of the shelf, the Rabbi steps behind the bed sheeted wall. Modesty can be a pain.

Edging out of the straps, my duffle falls to the floor. I take off my duster and beanie. There is no need to take off anything else. I need to stay fully clothed, not for myself, but out of respect for Rabbi Hayim.

A strike of a match pierces the silence from the other side of the sheet. My lover's short and wide silhouette moves slowly in the flicker. He is lighting his candles.

A prayer is mumbled into the room, and I enjoy hearing my old tongue. Even though it is accented with the obscure New Age rhotic articulation, it's still soothes my soul. I've taught the Rabbi well.

I take the time to carefully get the organ box out from my duffle to retrieve the biopsy sticks. Lifting the lid, I plunge my hand into a soggy mess. The cardboard packaging has disintegrated from the melting peas. Luckily the sticks are sealed with a plastic wrapper.

Silently tearing one open with my teeth, I coax the implement out into my clammy hand.

Poor Rabbi Hayim. I'll try to be gentle but I'm nervous as hell. What if the vision becomes tainted by my flesh-stealing intensions? Father John would be furious with me. But this sample collection is too important to chicken out now.

I'm as curious as Etta to learn what happens to an Elect's body during transfigurement. From the crude samples I've taken of my own flesh during a vision, Etta has already discovered that my body changes on a cellular level. It becomes translucent, crystallized, the perfect state for trapping luminous energy--the Light that is the substance of Divine intelligence. Nothing gets me to a crystallized state except a big rush of oxytocin--orgasm. It is then the Elect can look into the windows of my soul and see their vision direct from the Heavens.

It sounds miraculous because it is, but science is always at the root of miraculous things. Newton's Law is infallible. There is balance in everything--all great things require great sacrifice... like bearing the side effects, intolerable side effects...

The grunt from the other side of the divider tells me it's time to start.

I enter to a dead-like figure lying on the floor covered over completely with a white sheet. The only thing alive is his erect penis protruding through the slit in the cotton cloth. It is already wrapped in a modesty condom, a plastic shield under the cloth that prevents physical contact from the stomach to the mid-thigh. There will be no transfer of skin, hair or bodily fluids. If I didn't understand him, I would be offended.

Kicking off my loosely tied Doc's, I lift my long plaid skirt above my knees and approach the corpse. I step either side of his center, then lower down to my knees one-by-one and straddle his hips.

The ghost beneath me keeps still. He knows what's coming. No matter how much we try, we can't stop it. I am going to love this man beyond reason, and he will fall utterly in love with me in return. It is the way it goes--the consequence of messing with Mother Nature. With such a surge of hormones pumping through my veins, every cell in my body falls chemically in love. The alchemy binds us beyond time and into the greater expanse. It is cruel and unforgiving, until I release us. When the bond lasts long enough, I cry it out of my system, breaking it, and breaking my heart in the process.

Throughout it all, there have only been a few bonds I have been sanctioned to keep, for one purpose or another. Love knows no bounds, but in mortality the body can only endure a fraction of its immensity, and there lies a great danger in loving more than your lot.

I pause for no reason at all. The atmosphere is hollow, like the stillness before a storm. Reality becomes too real. There is always a moment of sadness that washes over me before I start, but this time I don't feel free like I usually do. My mind is encumbered with the matter of Gaius. And someone more inconvenient is holding tight the elastic fibres of my heart...

I shouldn't delay.

Setting the biopsy stick between my teeth for safe keeping, I reach under myself to adjust my crotchless panties. I'm not quite wet yet--it's hard to be when I'm just about to spear an old man in the thigh and take a chunk of his flesh.

Stroking the bridge of my crotch along him, I catch his cock between my inner lips and push back slightly to make him stand up just inside my entrance. Practice makes perfect.

The sheet in front of me crumples.

I'm compelled to give a voiceless admonition: Think of your wife, Rabbi, just after mikveh. Think of her love, her need, her purity...

I'm determined to make this go fast for him, as painless as possible.

Slowly, I sit down as his full length slides into me. Another shudder from underneath the sheet grabs my attention. Oh boy, I can't look at him if this is going to work. I close my eyes--I need to concentrate. I sigh out my anxiety around the biopsy stick, careful as not to make a sound. I have to conceal my presence with silence if I'm to make him come--I learnt that the hard way last time.

Leaning back, I hook my hands around my ankles and anchor to gather strength. Extra tightness between us is what I'm after. Weird angles that squeeze his cock will make for a quicker come. Revolving my hips, I create as much friction as possible between us.

The corpse underneath me keeps quiet. He's holding his breath and I sense the clenching in his thighs. Oh god, he's coming already! I haven't even started yet.

Pulling up, I hold the tip of him just inside of me. I maneuver my hand under my skirt. Tracking further down, my fingers split to stroke either side of his cock, reclaiming some of my juice. Pulling back up, my middle finger reaches the loose flesh of my clit. I bathe the soft skin in my wetness, making it slippery for fast agitation. Nestling my fingertip, I flurry the pad over my sweetest spot. It's the perfect awakening.

Falling back down, I use the Rabbi's cock to stretch my lips tighter, and to intensify the pressure from the inside, but it's never enough.

It's not just the physical touch that gets me off but the heart, my frame of mind--erotic enlightenment. Desire, ambition, fire... I'm a hard woman to please. I've had it all and that makes me very particular.

I have to pull something out of memory to get me to where I need to be, fast. Out of the tens-of-thousands of sexual encounters I preserve in my mind, there is only one I covet...

The Tuscan priest. The rippling of his body as he drives himself deep into me... I remember his rugged clean smell, the sound of his flesh beating against mine. I imagine the walls inside me clutching onto him through the celestial meridian erupting between us...

Oh god, I'm peaking.

I spit out the biopsy stick and slap my sweaty palm onto my mouth to stop the imminent moan. Crying out into my layer of flesh and bone only takes the edge off, the energy escapes into the hush. I contort my frame to take the pleasure and hold as much of it as I can within myself.

Calming down, I realize I've knelt up and the Rabbi isn't inside me. I have to be quick. Pulling back the white cloth from the corpse before me, I set my eyes on him and we lock focus.

He springs to life, raising up to sit, pushing me back onto his lap. He peers into me, his eyes cloudy but shiny in the middle. There's a small reflection of me glowing in the depths of his pupils. I keep still in his view, while my hands blindly scramble around for the damn biopsy stick.

Suddenly the color in the Rabbi's face withdraws and a steely coldness infiltrates the whites of his eyes. He trembles in his book-Hebrew, "My death is come."

What..? I blink, cutting him off prematurely from the vision. His words linger in my ears. I'm trying to understand what he means. Surely it's not literal--visions can be ambivalent at the best of times.

His prudent gaze draws onto me as he returns to this realm.

"There you are," I smile, relieved by his lucid condition.

"I'm sorry, Miryam," he mumbles. "Forgive me." As his eyes glaze over, his hand rips at his chest. With cheeks sinking, mouth gasping, his cracked lips turn blue.

"Oh, no, no, no, no..!" Pouncing to take his shoulders, I help him gently back to the floor. "Rabbi... Rabbi..." I look over his constricted body. He's stroking. "Rabbi, can you hear me?" He's blocking me out, eyes fixed to the old panel heater under the window.

Pressing my ear to his chest, I cannot hear a heart beat.

I have to get help.

Clambering up off him, I trip back, ripping down the white sheet from the line dividing the space, the pegs clipping off into the air, hitting the ceiling before coming down.

Twisting over on the floor to my duffle, I dig for my cell. Too many things are going through my head to think straight.

Through the junk, I pull out the phone and sit up. Nine-one-one should be easy to punch in, but I hesitate. There is so much I will have to do before the ambulance gets here, the sheets, the candles... I can't let them find the Rabbi like this--naked and fitted with a modesty condom. It will destroy his reputation, his family... but I'm not sure if I'll have time to clear everything.

I stand to make the call anyway.

The number sends, and as I turn to the Rabbi, a gross figure breaks around the standing shelves and charges at me. All my senses scream out. Cold-horror strikes at my heart. I lunge for the door.

Dropping the cell, I clasp onto the door handle but it won't open--it's locked.

"Nine-one-one, what's your emergency?"

The beast collects my waist, lifting me up. My feet dangle off the floor and I'm dragged away from my escape.

I'm flung up and my mouth is ceased with another hand. It's only then I think to scream. I'm held so tight it makes my insides cramp.

"Hello? You've called nine-one-one..."

I grab at the flesh and blood hooked around my middle. My captor is in the form of a man, strong and agile, but I won't let him subdue me, not while I still have life in my bones.

The beast shakes me violently, and I jerk forward, harder in to his arm. He intends to stop me struggling, but I won't.

Never.

My throat stings from all the screaming wasted to his overbearing hand, but I have to stop if I'm to breathe.

Managing to bolt me down against his chest, the beast pulls my mouth to the side exposing my neck. I imagine him ripping at my skin with his teeth. I wait for it.

His growling whisper is carnal, beyond human, "If you promise to settle down, I will let you go."

He squeezes me tighter around my waist. All that I can hear is my own tattered breath flaming out my nostrils, my ears begging for sirens.

He shakes me again, gritting and nasty, then murmurs, "Do you promise?"

A/N: Hi, I hope you've liked the story so far. The Magdalene is a full novel and as such has a very strong story. You may not find sex on every page, but the Gothic eroticness is always there, and you'll experience a sexual journey like no other----I promise you that.

Racy Wilde.