Defining Moments by David Niall Wilson

Author:David Niall Wilson [Wilson, David Niall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Crossroad Press

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery...”

Belle clamped her eyes tightly, her hands out to her sides for balance. The Absinthe leaked into her thoughts and drew her deeper, thickening her tongue as she fought for completion. Images opened in her mind. Art’s painting flashed into view, but with details he had never seen. The ice rippled with fire. The ground shook with the marching cadence of a horde of booted feet. The landscape surged with greenery, and huge, spouting geysers splashed into the air and fell to the earth, all in the rhythm of a huge heartbeat, drawing her inward.

Her body arched once more, prone against the floor, the altar before her and her knees spreading wider, inviting. She wore a short, soft linen dress, nothing beneath, but it didn’t matter. The sensations that washed through her had nothing to do with clothing, or the room surrounding her, or the world where she lived and breathed and lusted for . . . what?

“For he on honeydew hath fed,”

The words seeped up from beneath her, hands fashioned of letters that lifted her and offered her. . . .

“And drunk the milk of paradise.”

She saw a young man, long flowing dark hair and a broad nose, dark eyebrows furrowed in concentration. In his hand he held a quill, dark with ink. He seemed to see her in that same instant, studying her, every inch and curve, eyes bright. His hand trembled, and a droplet of ink threatened to fall to whatever surface he penned upon.

Beside him was a bottle, aged and crusted with sugar crystals, the cork removed. A crystal tumbler sat beside it, and Belle felt his fingers as he reached for that drink, felt them stroking her flesh and drawing her up, her hips rising to meet the fall of his lips. His eyes never left hers, and the hand that did not hold the quill slid beneath her, curling into the small of her back.

Belle cried out, trying to close the eyes that had opened when she clamped her own shut, trying to avoid the intensity, the absolute pleasure and terror and impossibility of that touch and that moment, but she could not give voice to the sound, or, if she did, she could not hear it. Nor could he.

He leaned closer, and she knew him, from portraits and descriptions, from the twist of the lips that would one day sneer at his own work, questioning its value and releasing it only at another’s whim. Those lips so close his breath, hot-sweet with absinthe, brushed her thighs. Belle’s entire being clenched.

The air shattered with a sharp sound. Belle clamped her eyes more tightly still, concentrating, but the moment was shattering around her, falling away.

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