Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 14:46:15 +0000
From: Graham Collett <graham_cro_uk@hotmail.com>
Subject: Marooned

The events and characters in the following story are entirely fictional. Any
resemblance to actual events or persons is purely coincidental. Please DO
NOT continue to read this if you are not an adult.

I hope that you enjoy this poetic prose. Should you have any enlightening
thoughts, then your comments are, as always, very welcome.

* * *

No flower, tree or creature to give respite from this barren place. I am
unsure how I came to be here. Marooned in this place and without memory.
Surrounded by a watery horizon, as unbroken as my solitude. Only the sun to
stir my thoughts. It voyages its hazy stratum of crystalline blue. It takes
the chill from my skin as my recumbent body melds with the pockmarked rock.
This small oasis of fading life, set upon an unending desert of ocean. Rock,
pointing to the sky like some accusatory finger.

Seasons pass. Drifting upon the onerous tide of time, I have felt colder,
older, closer to the rock, somehow. One day, I too will be staring at an
uncaring sky, reproach within unseeing eyes. Such is my existence that even
a repetitive sunset represents an opus to the senses. The variegated
textures of cloud juxtaposed against the delicate amber vignette of dusk.
This is my daily bread, my only sustenance, until him.

He came with the storm. I clung to the rock as the ocean arose against me in
a nocturnal rage. Its seditious heart enveloped me. In its onslaught, the
night threatened to take me. Drowning in this godforsaken place of torment.
For what seemed an eternity, I clung to my ebbing life.

Dawn broke upon my swimming thoughts, like memory. Like some ancient
mariner, I bit my lip, attempting to affirm something beyond mortality. As
blood fell, I tasted life and saw his odalisque form lodged in a small
fissure, naked, prone. I wondered if my eyes deceived me as they perceived
him through his beguiling camouflage of midnight skin. By the grace of
providence, he was breathing. I remained motionless, until sunlight
contrived that our shadows merge. He stirred.

Without thought, I reached for him. Turning his head, I placed a kiss upon
his cheek. Waking eyes smiled into mine. At once, a blur of recollection
stole away time. I knew that face...that form. Upon his parted lips, I traced
my hand, kissed him once more. I cradled his head to my heart like some
precious work of art.

Without the trite impediment of words, I lay next to him, feeling his
glorious skin on mine. His body was how I remembered it. Smooth, impassive,
perfect. Just to lay next to him brought reason and meaning to a thousand
inconsolable nights. My eyes, words, attempted to capture him, failed. I
stroked his fleecy black hair, became aware of an awakening in his loins. In
the toying sunbeams, he smiled. His reassuring glance made love to me as it
exploded my heart.

"I'm sorry" I withdrew, "I thought I remembered you. I guess that we are
simply two strangers washed up on some remote shore. There is no past
anymore, the present is all that we share."

Perhaps this was more than just chance? Maybe the tumultuous seas rendered
us prisoners of some shared circumstance.

"I love you." He whispered, his palm brushing my shoulder. For a moment, the
three words seemed incomprehensible, abstract. Then something awoke in me.
His touch brought dawn to a perpetual midnight in my thoughts.

I lay beside him in the small fissure. His arms encircled me and the world
altered. It seemed insubstantial. A new world resonated to the drumming of
his heart. His laugh gentle, like the lullabies of waves. He pressed me to
the rock, his manhood on my stomach, burning with urgent intention. Our
kisses radiated through my being like starbursts. His regal eyes perhaps
yearning to slake the barren lands of my enduring emptiness. I yielded to
his hunger, clasped his shoulders as he answered aeons of faithless prayer.
Dispelling despair and loneliness, he connected with my soul.

Beyond some universal angst, we assumed the mantle of immortals. Voyaging
worlds like Odysseus, Virgil. Drowning in bliss, he slaked barren lands.
Quickening all I thought dead and buried by time's hourglass of sand. At
last, my saviour, my communion with the divine. Plunging into me deeper than
thought, my Nubian prince. Senses sung his name to eternity evermore, ever
since. We made love, reinvented love, resurrected love. Breathless in
passion we held each other in redolent pastures of Elise. His seed brought
verdant life to the desert within me. An ecstasy imagined, experienced,
sacred in all its majesty.

With the sun on our backs, he speaks of liberation, yet somehow, I am his
slave in my emancipation. Our kiss lasts until the world looses substance,
transfigures. White figures dance about us like angels. Still, I hear the
steady pulse of his heart, our heart, my heart. He speaks to me...

"So, you've finally decided to join us."
Instead of the jagged rocks...a strange symmetry of line taking form like an
idea.
"Three years to the day. And you said that I was the drama queen."
The vague silhouette of his figure turns.

"What's the prognosis doc?"
"Good, I am pleased to say. Three years is a long time to be in a coma, but
he has every chance of making a full recovery. I will notify his next of
kin. Perhaps you should get some rest now Martin."
Martin? Martin is a word that I know...from the mist, his face comes close,
kisses me with a great tenderness. He whispers to me under his breath.
"Listen Eddy, I think you ought to thank your lucky stars or somethin'. They
said that I'd loose you, but I just kept hanging on in there. I knew you'd
pull through. It was touch and go, but I can tell that you are hearing me. I
love you Eddy."