The Cavern Between Them.

*** He ***

Nobody was there save the two of them. Somewhere Indirect in the deep autumnal south. Submissive and afraid, tender grasses flattened. They were whistling tears.

Monsoons beat upon the quiet white cottage. And squished heads of purple spindling heather, crooked bud tipped branches, splayed in brackens and rushes all over the place, Orange lights glowed out of the storms eye.

  Frank was shouting from the half dead old shed. Clasping a red tin kettle with his cold knuckles, ‘Why the fuck am I holding this?’ and flinging it out of his grip so that it clanged onto the cold cement. 

He felt safe in his rain jacket, looking up to the mass of swirling clouds heaving in the isolation. Dark, soft movements in the sky. Pelting the heavens in icy, sudden sheets. He froze, shuddering as howling winds screeched grey caping curls. A yelping pup was thrust inside the clamouring front door. 

Frank looked above with open disbelief at the grand spiralling shapes, marbling and warped cauldronish in the sky, Creaking indiscretion.

  ‘I wanted to live here, nature, just get away…’ he gasped, stamping his feet. ‘But with her it just seems so, desolate...’ and the gales whipped him ferocious.

  Folding his arms stiffly he blinked in the rain at the memory;

  ‘Stumbling into her, she was shot. Through. Confused; but smart. She was smart. ‘Help me’ she’d said. Barely, a weak request. Like a little prayer, Scribbled on a screwed up receipt. I was curious, to be sure. She was delicate and full of needs. Me, I was drunk, I know, but; All of a sudden I’d just wanted to shake it all off and see her clearly, this little creature. Yeah smashed glasses and tears, I suppose, but she just moved in. Curled up on my settee, a colourless kitten with unset bones. Sobbing aching. It didn’t look human to cry that much. Mistrustful. Of anyone, seemed like’

  He shook off his coats soaking, and felt the veins in his legs bleeding trails and territories. The human map of his life. His toes were thumbing into the earth as he tried to ‘think sober’

  ‘But I did want to help her’ he mused.

  His eyes glinted now and lowered with passionate regret. ‘Shirpa, Just get the jeep started and don’t take it out of gear’, the muscles in his throat coarsing with the sound of his own voice, relishing the energy pulsing out. Cursive. In the rubble and tack he spat out a flew of bitter cold tea, then shot his gaze intensely upon a single gleam of setting sun.

  He noticed it streak like a pure goddess, golden in the fates aghast up above and slapping his skin.

He tried to soften and smile at Shirpa, but was trembling and gloomy, so he winked at her instead…

  ‘It’s gonna be fun, Loads of music, your thing baby, hah! We can do a bit of this!’ he scratched pebbles under tan shoes as he jived and crowed, crumpling his body to arch cross-bow like.

It hurt him to move like that. He wasn’t used to, accommodating. Though somewhere in the fresh recesses of touch he supposed it would be good for him, to care.

  ‘We’ll be close later’, his breathing appeased him, as a cool wind fled to a wire basket, hurling it into a perimeter fence before it was mercilessly dissolved by the horizon.

  Head rocking back in agreement, thighs rushing with life. From the solitary tones of the countryside and hollering of the raging atmospheric sphere; He pulled his cap down close and stiff, pleased with himself that they would finally go out. Together.

*** Her ***

  ‘I’m trying!’ Shirpa yelled. Punishing on a green welly, her pink socks pushed inside; Softening like her hands that coaxed her streaming cheeks. Tiny waterfalls dissolving her foundation. ‘Damnit’ she cried. ‘I can’t even hide it anymore…’

  She was choking, aloud to herself now… ‘I don’t know, if I want to, sleep with him later,?’ As unashamed desperation, flicked the square little key with a snap of her fingers. The engine was relieved to roar gutturally. Warm and thuddering her whole body. Black leather seats shook as she clapped gloved hands together. ‘Yess’ in approval.

 The sky, it broke like rust in thunder. Crackling cacophony, engaging confusion. A perfect chaos for some distant, fragrant time. Where worlds could be composed, indoors, away from it all.  

But, she needed to fucking sort this out. And the only way she knew how, was by going out, and turning it up.

  Bandying down the window, ‘Come on then!’ she squealed, and bore precious white teeth. Pearls and innocence reckoning him, though he was already up close. She could feel his furrowing brows, deep and angry looking in the hail. They were guns pointed at her dreams. He was crossing the front of the jeep staring straight into her eyes. Slamming the door with a rackety finish startled her. His hand slung ‘Go’ in a gesture of forward. Commanding.

  ‘He always makes me feel so powerless’ she thought, in silent feelings as their wagon skid and swerved in delicious indecision to pooling mud and rocks.

  ‘When we first met’, she cooed...

  ‘I had so much affection for him. He was so, well, Frank. Gorgeous, yeah, but just practically, so, present, he was, warlike. But fuzzy then between the sheets. All smiles and bear hugs, he was. With the tender bites and scratches,’ her breathing became soft as she relished the bliss of their coming together. Kind of like a Sheik’s veil, she thought… It hid some brutal coalition. No one was aware of. When they kissed it was like thrilling paradise, Indian spice and sweet scents. Their Blending helped.

  But there were risks. High, risks. She slammed the accelerator with fear, and folded back into the sudden reality of the storm.  Still clinging to her dreams; With hope that there was some lost encounter, out there somewhere, guiding their car, from a lonely, vibrant universe.

**

  ‘You okay Shirpes?’

  ‘Mhm, I’m fine, really’

  But when he spoke she drowned in the night images again, Clawing for her. Stroking the lines on the side of his face before they drowsed. His long hair, warm tongue, soaked in red.

  Swaying onto the road, out of this fragmented silent chemistry between them, 

In the distance, a fat close shaved pig of a man was twitching the radio and trying to put out a Marlboro at the same time. 

His mind was full of the snowy capped mountains surrounding the track. 

He was used to the elements flagging his truck and wanted to turn up the jinkety song he could hear, a beach boys classic, little bells of pop joy. To keep his synapses firing on the long road.

                                                   **

  Squinting, cold, and not where she wanted to be, Shirpa thought to herself, ‘Useless thoughts..’ as she hashed at the accelerator. ‘I wish we were home, stayed in, I know. He’s drunk, again. And it’s just less time for me to tell him...’

She was angry and glimpsed at him wondering if he knew the pain she felt right now.

‘What’s wrong?’ he finally drew, countering the whiskey clamped in his feet.

‘Fuck it.., I want, to go home…’ it was her voice. apparently.

  Disgusted by his solid relaxing, swarming in alcoholic hives. ‘How is he so am-bient?’  She pursued… the fucking world is collapsing! Look at it!’ as she winced in the storms heavy unusual sounds.

They were speeding in a collage of trees and wrecked earth.

‘For fucks sake?!’, Frank had roused to Look at her blankly. Then surrendered…

‘Fine. Just, turn around, but, you can’t, keep… doing this...’

   Soup panted in whirling slams on their windows. Rasping at the Jeep.

‘I just, need to talk to you, properly…’ she gained,

 Frank braced for what she might come at him with suspicious looking eyes.

  She rinsed out the words like dirt from a cloth. ‘Look, before, we were … I just wanted, someone to, help me’ she atoned. ‘Before, I was here. ‘I was selling…’ she just sighed as grief would, ..‘Love’.

The cars wheels were threatening to come off. Spinning in the rain.

  ‘I was selling, oh I don’t know’ she flickered, ‘Dependence!, time and an ear… to just,  just to them jacking off and slamming the phone down.’ ‘Fuck’, She deadened in the wood that had captured them and his strange reticence..

‘Seriously’ He paused. A minor smirk tracing his body. 

'Why are you telling me?’ as he exhaled cigarette plumes. ‘Do I need to know? Haven’t we… played this all out, when I fuck you ?’ and he  tossed the burning embers away.

  Shirpa shook her head and braced for the turn fast appearing,

‘Uh-huh, yeah…but it’s not what I want, I don’t want a, substitution,’  struggling with relief and desire; ‘I wanted something, more, you know?, … better?’

  Frank just bore it,

 ‘Isn’t that what we are?, lovers?! He exclaimed, ‘a subs.ti.tu.tion?’ savouring each syllabl like he took the piss out of all intellectual 'stuff'...

So fluently, how could he just do that, just be something so poetic…

  And she flustered for a thing stashed inside the door, a token for the little voice grasping, ‘what about me?!’ searching, trying to find, a bracelet, phone, anything…for the small person she now was.

‘Well, you just seemed…you weren’t hiding anything. I mean you weren’t lying, I mean, fuck I think I’ve heard every lie there is. You know? You were just alone, and so was I’.

  They were closer to the lake now, by the corner it would appear in peaceful eloquence. Glittering with calm, wide reflection. ‘We’re nearly there Shirpes’ his knees nudged her gently.

  ‘Let’s just have a good time’ He smiled, beams of playful kindness. ‘It’s your favourite band’

It would be just past the lake. 

Three shops and a bar. Fairy lights and growling men with laughter. The fiddles music.

*** They ***

  Her feet shocked with an archaic might as the brakes slammed with such intensity, it spun the car with sharp and stabbing screeches in an unending circle of metal. They were hooded by the force.

  The other, had a look of unbelief on his poky eyes; in the tall dirty lorry, its tail careening in caterpillar motions towards the trees.

    Shirpa slung her head around to push all of her intent and love upon Frank.

  Her brow felt full of all the loving thoughts she felt for him. Like Flowers just blooming all right there in the front of her skull, for him. Pinks and purples, silent peach blossoms with the white and mint ones, all flourished together like her soft tongue folding up to her lips in open quick acceptance; She saw how she had chosen him, a bizzare man, a frozen man, really. Warm blooded and male, yes. Pumping with red fluid that mapped his arms and hands…but, distant from its rays somehow. Apart from her…Rough; already defined. Complete, a package. A beautiful toy, she dared admit it.

  And he was thinking now too, and drew in a breath of peaceful delight, ambivalent to ends. There was no sound now, anyway…

  Much darker now…He was aware of the rain. That he’d given her everything he could. His instinct and affection. And he could see in the slow shadows from the way her lips were now licking in sweet, mad, too bright for own spooks head, her soft gentle surrender, the terror of what was happening. Her futures departing as ghosts regardfully fade…Her secure, incessant puzzlement. It was glorious and magnificent.

‘Maybe it’s over’… Frank mulled, in slow, timeless thoughts… ‘Everything?’

  The windows smashed in perils and screams, Shirpa was halted and dropped in strong waves of breaks. They could hear the lorry swinging loud horns at them as it gaphooned by, edged up above like a high note, whilst they fell in vivid dark turns, down, towards the seamless lake below.

  …She could just hear the echoes ring and ring like church wedding bells. ‘It’s just a natural disaster’… voiced Frank, …and aghast at the cavern between them.