Love. 

True love it’s only found when you meet your true half. But only that won’t be sufficient, hard. Your other half, or other self, must be synchronized with you.

True love comes and goes, but it really never leaves you. It’s visceral, burns the flesh, lives under the skin, warms the blood.

Nevertheless, no one is really yours, or you belong to someone else. That’s the first rule. The only true rule. The rule that no one seems to care, or respect.

And, then, by the order of natural causes that goes beyond our mortal and sinful bodies, everything fades away, in the silent, cold shadows of the black dreams. 

Eat. 

We are what we eat. We learn to eat, preferentially meat among other things. We eat with our eyes, with our senses, with our mouth, chewing with our sharpened teeth, swallowing flesh, tissues, bloodied bones. 

We learn to love, we learn to eat, we learn to hate. And, finally, we learn to kill. The first time is always difficult, strange, but with a touch of awesomeness, with a sweet bitter of evil. 

Plants, insects, birds and chickens. Other animals too are part of the menu. But when that’s not enough, we tend to turn to each other, like wild beasts, festering on the blood of the insane, in a circle feast, in a ritual beyond time, in a slumber from the ancient times towards eternity. 

And there we sit, like old, patient butchers, with soak blooded aprons and sharpened cleavers, waiting for the hunks to hit the bait.

The first kill, like Cain and Abel, like thousands, millions after them, is happening right now. Sooner, later, in the past, in the present, perhaps it’ll only happen in the future, or in the futures to come. 

Cain gave us the genetic heritage that we heavily carry on our weaken bodies. Things, people come and go. We all are sons of Judas Iscariot, waiting for our cloth bag to be full of those thirty gold coins. We all seek for warm on the dead embers.

   Lucy fell in a deeper kind of slumber, and now Lucy sleeps, Lucy dreams. In fact, she loves to do so. It’s the closest thing she has that mirrors her reality, her life, nice, warm dreams. Not that she doesn’t love to be awake, but in her dreams no one really gets hurt, at least most of the time.

There was a girl, a little ten years blonde child who lived happily with her parents. Her dream inside the dream was to be an artist, and she was a natural born painter.

For her, to have that power to create something that comes out of your mind, like teardrops from heaven, the ability to build it with your bare hands, was something only comparable to a miracle, this subtle acts of creation. And miracles don’t come easily, they aren’t cheap, do you accept them, truly, or you don’t, there is no time or space for false, disloyal faith.

But somehow, somewhere, she was inflicted to wake up and leave all her dreams behind, her miracles. She didn’t wanted that, but the stress, the pressure was too much. And some day she would grow up and her dreams would too be forgotten. She would loose them in the growing process, like most of people do.

She would only keep vague memories, kept inside, dormant wishes. All of her youth miracles would be washed away, replaced by a family woman’s burdens. But the embers still got their warmth, waiting for the perfect time to ignite again.

Ends the dream.

Dreams don’t lie. Only the dreamers can do it. Dreams are true, although in their volatile form. Pity they don’t last much, for long, or forever. They fade away with the morning fog, they vanish with the entry of a new day.

And today is a very special one, the one she doesn’t have to dream about her love because he’ll finally be here, flesh and bones, for her. And she needs to leave her slumber, she needs to wake up to prepare for his arrival. He must be tired.

People are strange. They usually tend to live in the shadows, in the back of the alleys, in the dark which slowly engulf their lives, forever. Dreams kept undone, lack of faith, no self-respect, killing themselves to live.

But that’s not the case of Lucy who’s living the dream any wife would want for herself. She’s a successful woman, has a good life, a marvelous husband and a typical teenager son with the typical youth problems. She loves her husband so much that it hurts. Sometimes, she even thinks that, probably, that feeling it’s too much a burden.

The coming of her son probably would affect their relation, getting them apart as usually happens in the majority of the couples around this age, but no. That didn’t happen. Besides, the fact only got them closer and closer. The father of her son, the mother of his son, their child.

It´s morning. On the bedroom analog clock in the wall it marks five past ten. Through the window the rays of a close burning sun, already high in the sky, tear their way through. Lucy wakes up in the bed. When she wakes up she doesn’t have to quickly draw a sketch of her dream, because her life its the dream, perfect.

Surrounding her sleepy, laid body, silk sheets. Pink, smoothie silk sheets, like a gentle river tide, caressing her, from top to bottom. From the oceans of her long, dark hair, her deep blue eyes peek though the waves formed by the curls, to slowly adapt to the clarity bathing the room, as she reaches for the lonely pillow on her right, no marks of a nighttime head. It’s her husband’s nest, the one she already misses so much. Sadly he isn’t home, yet.

She stares into the ceiling, her mind flees to a time where she made love to him for the last time. For her it seems an eternity has passed, but truly, it barely passed a week. Yes, only seven days, which is some kind of torture for a woman like her, a femme always needy for some male comfort, to be taken by her man’s arms, all around her.

On the thoughts her nipples arouse, trying to show themselves below the sleeping shirt. Her hands touch her belly, softly. She stops, grabs the pillow and smells it, it still got his scent. - Hum, the colony she offered him last week. - Then she embraces it with her legs, between her thighs. Strongly she tights it, forcing it with both hands. – His hard, strong, melted kisses. His tongue… - A deep, low tune moan escapes from her languid mouth as she smiles.

She throws it away, better to wait for him to come, better than a soft pillow. And the way she feels right now she’s not in the mood for soft things. Her white milk legs slip from under the sheets, revealing them, strong, defined, as she sits in the king sized bed border.

Her back glows of the same color of her limbs, white satin. She stretches herself, freeing the first of many yawns of the morning. It’s Friday but, as a self-employed woman, she took the day off, just to be home right in the moment her husband will arrive. His absence just tortures her, grinds her soul. She needs him so much, like those princesses in those fairy tales full of nonsense, drown in futility.

She gets up energetically, feet on the slippers, goes to the window. Her wavy, curly hair pursues her, balanced by gravity. She removes the heavy curtains aside, giving entrance for a blast of the sun rays to explode into the high class room. An exquisite furniture, wallpaper, all giving a warmth and cozy mood to the settlement.

And yes, it’s summer time. The sun continues to crawl up in the bluish sky above. From the window, transparency through her sleeping shirt, her body peaks, softly, her round buttocks, the curve between her belly and the the mid-sized breasts, her little tummy, her vulva covered by the panties. A lady in transparency.

What a beautiful body in such a lovely faerie face, it’s forty years of a well-cared woman. A woman in balance. A delicate creature for sure, probably not from this realm. She looks down below, sees her car right next to a vacant place for another vehicle, her husband’s.

Outside the house, surrounding it, there is a beautiful garden, flowers blooming in an explosion of bright colors. Insects, birds all over, flying from branch to branch, from flower to flower, petal to petal. Life, the world is in perfect harmony, like her life.

With the arm around her neck she smiles again. - He’s back today, within two hours. Better hurry. - She leaves the room.

Masturbation: self-centered act of getting correlative amounts of pleasure. Artistic, egotistical way to mange the contact absence, or, lonely act to resume the auto preservation pulse to have undisputed sex.

In the corridor she notices her son’s bedroom door opened. Goes and peeks. Well, today is the day anything goes. He’s not in bed. Some light in the corner. He’s already on the computer. The screen light illuminates him, giving him some kind of aura, an angel. That’s what he is, her little, white angel. She looks closer – Wait! - something odd, awkward. But in a good sense. Solely in a mothers eyes the situation could be embarrassing. He is masturbating in front of the monitor.

- So, they now do it this way...? – She whispers.

On the other side a young teen, a blonde female smiling while watching, probably asking him to finish it off. The mother stays, watching him while he finishes squirting his penis. Hitting ecstasy, he finally comes. His body trembles, extends in a spasm, his legs stretch, he growls until the last drop of the young semen falls from the foreskin of his youngster penis.

Lucy smiles, watching her son growing this way. A man, like his father. A grand, gentle man. He cleans himself on some paper handkerchiefs, and stays. The smiling girl continues her virtual, erotic adventure. Lucy steps aside, leans on the wall, thinking.

Now that she thinks of it, she never really noticed how her son looked so alike to his father. Just like when he was young, in the time she fell in love with him. And what if her son is that alike his father?, she thinks. Yes right there. And if he has the same tenderness to use it, he would be the joy of many girls by making them very, very happy.

Lost in this thoughts, the butterflies hit her, she gets a little excited under her belly button, making her felling nauseated for a moment. Wait, she can’t have this kind of thoughts about her son. What a nonsense.

Truth can be told, nothing, but nothing stands between the love that a mother bears by her child. Nothing. But that’s some other kind of love, the one that could kill trespassers.

She laughs - He’ll be hunted by the most beautiful girls in town. And if he get that lucky, he can get a lovely woman, one who really cares about her man – she thinks – like her. - She leaves the place, steps down the stairs. A big, spiral stairway like those in a French palace, dives into the living room.

She comes down, her dark, black hair always on the pursuit, as a ghostly figure, like Medusa tentacles. Once down there she stops to look at the paintings on the wall, the first thing she does every morning. She stares at those surrealist paintings as if it is the first time she is seeing them, day after day, day after day.

They are distortions, abstractions of a twisted world, things thought and lived in other terms of perception and sensibility, a strange form of art but, at same time, a escaping realm, finished and unfinished at the same time, real and unreal, pretty and full of ugliness. It can be anything you want, just use your imagination, don’t be stuck by chains or boundaries of mundane life.

Bought by her husband, they were always there, hanging on the walls, reflecting her artistic passion. He wanted for her to never forget about her passions, so, sometimes he tries to convince her to get back where she has stopped. He was very kind, never forced nothing, but he always had a very passionate way to express how much he would love so.

In a distant past she wanted to be a painter, it was her dream. She loved doing drawings that would give the viewers another perspective of reality, that would make them think and have questions about themselves, about the world, about their place in it as enhancers, beings capable of expressing through forms, through colors, abstractions.

But she never had the courage to embrace it, an artistic life and all the troubles surrounding it, the lack of comfort, an unstable life, the adventure. By the other hand, nobody supported her, everybody would love for her to invest her time studying something more earth to earth. Or probably, they are just some excuses for her missing courage.

So, instead of pursuing her dreams, she went and studied the Finances, and became an expert at it, probably to prove something, a sleek revenge. But the paintings, they are now part of an almost long forgotten past, today she doesn’t think too much about that. No, not today. Today it’s not a morning for regrets.

Thinking about the lack, all of this time taken on business that her husband usually spends away home is killing her. But that’s something she’s willing to recover, if you know what she means. She can’t stand it anymore, waiting for his arrival, she’s eager for his touch, warm caress.

For her, making love was a form of art, a wealthy addiction. No, she wasn’t a nymphomaniac, or at least she doesn’t see herself as one. She just gets amused by doing it with her husband, for her, the best in the world. They form the perfect couple, just to putt things on the right terms.

Most people she knows, couples her age, older or younger, doesn’t have a sexual relation anymore, at least with their partners. They search for adventures outside the relation, everybody knows that’s, everybody strangely accepts the fact.

She goes by the turntable and puts it spinning, the Lp is the same she listened and danced with her husband the night before he had to go out - Yeah, on business. – It’s a Glenn Miller’s Orchestra Best Off. The music, Moonlight Serenade. She loves it. The mood, the swing on the notes, the tempos, a perfect melody. In the shelf many more Lp, Jazz, Swing, Blues… and many more from Glenn Miller, probably a full collection.

She decides to follow the music on the piano. A black grand piano that lays, imposing, silent on the living room. She sits before it and, after a moment looking at the hands, as if she hasn’t did it for a long time, she starts. What a class, what graceful movements she has playing. And her hands, her fingers, how they run, fly, press those keys, extracting from them the most virtuous scales.

One man would easily kill a thousand demons for one single touch of those fingers, a caress from that hands. But no man will have that kind of luck, except in his dreams, for that was only a privilege granted to her man, at least while he was alive. That’s what defines us.

Her son comes down the stairs and stays, looking at her. He likes to see her playing because while at it, she seems to be really free, not a façade rich people always pretend to be. He loves his mother, but he thinks she is too much attached to material life. She needs to free herself from that, and from her dreams too.

She sees him and immediately stops playing. The music on the turntable keeps going. She smiles at him. 

- Have you finished it?

Her hand leaves the piano key, she points to the bulge in his pajama pants, quite impressive for a boy in his age. 

- That…

He looks down noticing he’s still having a boner. How, what a lousy situation, right in front of his mother. And she is even playing with it.

He tries to hide it, but to no effect. 

- Shh! Relax, I promise I won’t tell no one.

She comforts with a smile, making him confident of his manhood. She rises form the piano, comes to gently land the hand on his forehead, he can’t feel more embarrassed than he already is. Then kisses him in the cheek.

As she leans he can see her bouncing breast through the collar.. For a woman her age, that already gave birth, they are impressively firm, round, perfect. Just like the ones of those MILFs he spends the night googling. Of course he doesn’t see his mother like one of those “actresses”, but it’s a fact that he notices, he watches, sometimes with detail, every mother’s move. He’s just an apprentice in a drawing school lesson, his mother his living model.

What can he do? He can’t escape it. Since this hormone rampage started to take over his body and mind, he can’t control this impetus, it dominates his very retina moves, thoughts. Almost against his will his entire body seems to have free will, heart rate, sweats, void in the stomach, hardened parts, organs, viscera.

Sometimes it looks like he’s been bloody cursed. He started to see the world in a different way, twisted. Everything – every female - is a possible target for his senses in alert mode. But not his mother, of course. Just some curiosity in his naive eyes, just tryin to understand better the female anatomy, live.

Just like now, as his mother prepares him the breakfast. 

- C’mon, darling. I’ll do you breakfast.

He sits by the table, waiting, shy, while his mother go picking the milk in the fridge. She tries to open the bottle, but can’t. 

- Damn bottles. I’ll never understand how to open them at first.

She pulls too much, the bottle suddenly opens spreading the milk all over, wetting her sleeping shirt - Shit! – The roundness of her bust get all noticed below it. Her nipples get hard, in white. Smirking, she turns to her son, who was completely caught by surprise. The lump in his pants emerges again. His mother notices it, plays with the situation, embarrassing him a little bit more

- Oh! Come on! Leave it to the young ladies your age.

She giggles. He can’t stand it and runs out from the kitchen.

- Oh, I was just kidding with you.

But he doesn’t hear, he just flees from there, he can’t stand the shame and the fact that his mother is trying to harass him. Well, she was just playing with him. That’s not what all mother do, play with their children?

   Well. Alone again. Lucy looks at the shirt, what a mess. She goes up the stairs, passes by her son’s room again, but now the door is closed, surely locked. She thinks what he might be doing, then smiles, she knows what! Then she goes to her room, undresses the wet shirt, throws it on the floor.

Slowly, she now reveals her full body, all naked, a gift from the gods, such a privilege. She fetches the drawers for something to dress, something hot, sexy, for him. Choose, picks some thong panties, looks at them, yes, transparent blue. No! She wants something more, more, you know.

Picks another, now white colored, white laces. She also chooses a matching braw which she already puts on, looks sideways at her curvy silhouette in the mirror. Perfect! She sits on the bed, slips her elegant feet through the panties, leans her back in the sheets, lifts her hips, doing a perfect bridge. Her lump below the belly button reveals a perfect, well cared tuft of her pubic, dark hairs, slowly pushing it until it reaches its final destination, protecting her vulva.

While doing it she thinks of her man’s hands, doing the same trajectory as the underwear. – Oh, god! Please… – She can’t wait anymore. She’s gets a little horny. Picks the phone, makes a call, calls him. Waits, two calls later, he answers

- Darling. It’s me. Yes, I’m waiting. I mean, I’m trying to. You know how I am. Yes, you know. And I know that you know. And, speaking of knowing things, guess what I’m dressing right now? Or better, What I’m NOT dressing? Yes, I know that you’re driving. I’m driving also. I’m driving myself nuts with your absence.

Sticks a finger in mouth, wets it, gently. She lowers her tone

- You know how I am right now?

The tip of the same finger draws a perfect line until her belly button, stays playing there, around.

- Yes, all wet already. You make me feel that way. And rest, I won’t take advance without you. – She giggles while she slips the finger between the groin and the panties elastic, touching herself there, already reddish, transpiring blood rush. 

- Or, at least I’ll try. – She takes the finger out, arresting herself from those thoughts, burning desires.

- Ok, ok darling. – She replies to her husband on the other side, likely asking for mercy. – Don’t be late, I don’t know how much I can take it… I know. Love you too.

The phone goes off on the other side. The call has ended. She keeps looking at the phone, sighing. Her hand can’t resist but to touch her self again, and it goes, driving itself with a strong, free will. Just a warm up, she thinks, now that she’s already lit.

No! Better stop - Wait for him! - she imposes to herself. Scissors her legs, rises from the bed in a jump. Puts on one of those summer dresses, transparent, so short, so tight that it seems her body is screaming for help, just for someone to get it out of there. Again glances at the mirror – Somebody helps me! –, smiles, then leaves the room.

Passes again by her son’s room, again it’s closed. – Well, hell of a party. - she thinks. And go down the stairs, to the living room where she puts another Lp on the turntable, now something more classic, some Delta Blues. She adores that raw sound, played by rustic people, screamed by rustic instruments, softened by coarse voices.

Sits on the couch, crosses the legs, resumes the reading of a book left over there, something about Portuguese painters and poets from the beginning of the twentieth century, progressive and modernist artists.

She finishes the reading, she was so imersed on the pages that only now she realizes that almost two hours have passed, and her husband didn’t come yet. Strange, he told her he would take just half an hour to arrive. He never was this late. Well, he never was late at all. Especially when he was so many days out from home. Probably some traffic. One day it could happen.

Calls him again, but nothing, this time no answer, it goes straight to the voice mail. And again she calls to be hit by the same answer. Probably he wants to make her a surprise. Yes, it must be it. She loves surprises, and he knows it. And she knows that he knows. - What must it be, some new lingerie? No! - She’s got plenty. - Maybe some toys. - She loves sexual toys.

The brief though about it wakens her body again, better for her to stand up. Probably it’s just nonsense, it’s nothing to worry about, maybe he just stopped to pick some flowers. Putting the book away, she rises, tries to not feel uncomfortable, worried. She really tries it, but in fact, she can’t.

She approaches the outside window, watches the movement of the neighborhood, practically inexistent. She stretches, trying to see along the street, now she can see a police car coming from the avenue separating the houses. It comes slowly, no hurry. Probably just a routine drive by.

No! It stops right in front of her door. She gets the shivers. Immediately she senses it, something’s wrong. Goes outside as her son comes into the kitchen and stays there, just looking at the outside happenings, her mother walking on the porch, somewhat lost in to something distant.

The cop comes out of the car, introduces himself, then confirms if she is Mrs. Lucy ______. She nods the head, silent, pupils wide open. The cop starts talking about a car crash, her husband was in one of the cars. He even was the one who caused the accident by trespassing a red light in full speed, distracted by the phone.

Hit by this sudden turmoil, she can’t stand herself, sits gently on the floor. Her perfect life, she feels it fading away, slipping through her fingers with no turning back. The feeling was like being hit by a thousand hammers in the body, crossed by millions of rusty nails, all at once.

The son keeps looking, observes her mother there, abandoned in the cold tiles of the porch, she must be suffering, but he does nothing to attenuate the grieving lady. The cop approaches her, passes her a black bag. She takes, opens it to find her man’s belongings, his cell phone, his wallet, his watch, a bundle of keys.

- This was the only valuable things we found in the car.

She sobs, not yet that conscientious to what have happened, speechless, her senses don’t seem to answer to any of the elements, numb body, numb thoughts.

- Please, lady, if you need something from us, don’t hesitate to call the police station.

Simply leaving her there, the cop resumes to the patrol car, leaves by the same route which brought him here. Her son leaves her too, coldly, nothing seems to bothering him, he doesn’t care, climbs the stairs, goes to his room.

She enters the room, heavy pace, in her hands her man´s stuff. She stops by the entry, watches the surrounding room, now an immense grotesque place, without any sense, with no reason to be, a bleak space. The bed, a never ending bed, so lonely, so cold, an immense white iceberg. She feels so lost in space, in time she barely breathes. Yet, she doesn’t cry. Her self is still in diegesis, but for no words of s poem or a faery tale.

She can’t believe they’ll never laugh again in this place, so, so theirs. He’ll never take her again in his strong, manly arms. He’ll never kiss her again... She finally breaks down, runs and throws herself into the bed. And cries, cries, cries… Washes herself in the tears of despair, of grief, so much woe running through her face.

She gets his pillow, the tears wet it, falling, a salty river. Sensing his smell all over it, the only thing keeping his essence, the perfume, sweet scent of his body, his face rubbing the frown, smiling, his legs, arms, chest swirling in the sheets, touching her skin.

She can sense him here, awkwardly, starts feeling excited, can’t control the pulse, she breathes deeply, her hand slides until the middle of her legs, her vulva, the other hand clinging on a breast, caressing herself, slowly. She tries to mimic all her husband moves and art, but to no success, it seems there isn’t enough hands to do so. This is strongly perverse, she knows that, this is so wrong. And, overwhelmed by the feeling of guilt, she sobs, longing him.

From the semi closed door, through the dark corridor, her son peeks, attentive, he saw it all, he saw where his mother laid her fingers, the exploding lust. Poor mother, so much desire inside so many pain, such a lovely woman, an eruption.

He grabs his erectile penis though the pants, so hard, a rock in his pocket, it even hurts. Damnation and a day, it’s what he deserves right now. Goes away, hides back in his room.

Lucy is now quieter, still hugging tight on the wet pillow, her hand is still between her legs, inside her panties, moisty. At her side the phone, keys, credit card. The phone blips, - probably someone from work – she thinks. No one knows what happened, for sure. She doesn’t care. No one needs to know. The trust was so much that she doesn’t care who’s calling. It must be some working colleague trying to see if he’s alright, with his beloved family.

Of course it isn’t alright. And he’ll never be with them again, or with their loved ones. At least on the physical, bone and flesh form. He was a good man, he surely will be remembered for the years to come by everyone who was in his circle.

The phone blips again, but again she doesn’t mind. She never had. She never peeked her nose into her man’s affairs. He was a straight man, the one you could blindly trust. But again the phone makes a stand, as if asking for help. Well, she ought to do it.

She picks, tries to open it. She never touched anything belonging to her companion. Well, nothing except… you know what. It’s an expensive phone, well designed, ultimate tech. It’s not like her phone, so she takes a while to unlock it, although it doesn’t have an entry code.

Searches a little more, finally getting to the noisy app that was making all that ruckus. At first sight it doesn’t seems a working app. But it doesn’t open either. It needs his fingerprint. The app’s name: 2gether. That surely isn’t a working app, probably just some dumb game. Not that games would be something he would waste his time with, as far as she knows. But, probably it’s just that, a foolish game.

She takes the phone down but it flashes again, another blip. She looks at it, something goes up her mind. No, it can’t be. Not her man. She looks deeper into the phone, decides to go for hers to seek the app’s name, what kind of app is it.

At the same time she mentally asks him for forgiveness, for being so stupid, so uncertain about him.  – Sorry – But she does it anyway. Now nothing will stop her. She taps – 2gether – it takes only a minor part of a second for the answer of all her doubts to rise in the phone screen.

She can’t believe what now she sees right there in front of her eyes. It must be a mistake, probably it’s not even his phone. In case there can be any doubt, she confirms, yes, it’s his, for sure. - So, what the heck is a dating app doing in his phone? – She can’t stop asking herself the same question. – What the hell is this doing here? – She tries to open it, but again it blocks her entry, asking for a fingerprint.

She can´t, she doesn’t want to believe that, not now, not ever. God! – What if… what if… it must be some kind of joke. – She tries to justify to herself up this nonsense. – A bad joke from his partners. They were always making jokes about his beautiful wife and about how much they would love to take her away from him.

He would laugh in their faces, full of certain that that wouldn’t happen, for his wife was just for him to take. She swore her soul on that, and their bodies became soulmates. Yes, it got to be a joke. - But, what if it isn’t? What if it’s true? No, that doesn’t make any kind of sense. He didn’t have that need, to search for another woman, or women. She gave him everything a woman can give to her man, filled with true love.

But, if that’s true, what has she been living? A lie? Someone else’s lie, or just her blind lie? She doesn’t know it, already. That’s when she thinks the unthinkable, does the impractical. Grabs the phone, leaves the room.