Redmoon, 3271
Venus. Venus. Venus! My heart is full of music for you, I am overflowing with love. I cannot wait to write down these gilded stanzas before I forget them forever. As I write this, I can hear the sweet tones of your voice, rumbling my apartment slightly. It is – in your time keeping – 8:32 PM on a “Thursday”, and you are on a “phone”. They say it lets you communicate with other Giants over long distances. Your technology is so wondrous and mysterious.
I am grateful every day for having purchased this home – very cheaply, I might add. Few want to live so close to where the Giants roam, and prefer attics, crawlspaces, or other less-frequented places. My small salary did not allow me much, and it was to my great fortune that there even existed homes built inside your bedroom wall. Now that you inhabit that room, I am the only person brave enough to live in this “cursed” neighborhood. Some poor, desperate folks have been my neighbors briefly – all realized their mistake when your voice kept them up, night after night. So they fled. Some were so terrified that they fled despite having nowhere to flee to, leaving behind their furniture! They think I am quite brave – among other things. Fools. Every night, I sleep soundly, peacefully, like a baby, soothed by your voice which shivers my living space so gently.
How happy you make me… The happiest moments of my life have merely been the glances you’ve given me. Ah, I know you don’t see me. I make sure to never get close enough for you to see me clearly. But when your gaze happens to fall upon my direction, it is bliss. It inspires me for the rest of the week. But I can’t get close to you. I mustn’t ever get close to you.
I always get up early just to watch you rise from sleep. You are so graceful and elegant when you wake and yawn… It is such a peaceful scene.
I always look to your actions before settling on mine. What should I wear today? I’ll wear something the same color as you, my love. You tend to your plants, so I’ll have some lichen in my home too. Should I have children? You have none, so I shall not. Although you would be the most perfect mother anyone could ask for. If only my own mother had been like you.
Morning, noon, and night, all I can think of is you. When bathing, when eating, foraging, selling foraged things at the market, and I even think of you to calm myself before sleep. What else could I need, or ask for?
I am also comforted by your belongings. Ones you no longer needed, of course. These are my most prized possessions. I keep them around my apartment, and decorate every square inch I can with them. My philosophy: it is much better to own something that comes from you than to own something made by someone else. It makes my life that much more full of Venus, and less of others. Some of these objects, I think, will go in this Arhnaikuri before my passing. What things have I foraged from thee? Countless treasures. Let me look around my bedroom and count my favorites. These are not half the things in this room, but they are some of the most precious:
Cut bristles from a brush covered in a powdery pink substance – your makeup – it sticks to the skin and is irritating to breathe. It smells like you.
A curious oblong sheet of metal which I have seen you break open and fix to your hair, keeping it in place. Lillecian women have similar hair pieces – much smaller, of course.
A cut of a long, thin, strange green tissue which crinkles easily and wicks up oil. I have given one cut to a knowledge forager and kept another. It is fascinating, and useful.
A large red sticky chunk carved from your lipstick. We Lillecians do not have anything similar. I like to kiss it, for if I kissed your lips, would I not be kissing this?
A carving of your pink soap, scented with lilac. I do not use it – I only enjoy its color and remind myself of your smell with it.
Many strands of your hair, which I have woven together into a cloth. It is rough and dry, so I use it for scrubbing myself in the bath.
A dollop of cream in a waxed bag. I like to run my hands through it, for if I were to caress your skin, would I not be caressing this?
A wadded mass of cotton which is sticky at the edges and incredibly good at soaking up water. It is stained dark and smells like copper. How it stimulates my curiosity!
A seafoam green tablet twice my size. I have seen you ingest these regularly for the past 3 years. I use this one as a nightstand, although I have to be careful not to get it wet. The symbol on it is “A2” [poorly transcribed, as if it were one symbol]. I have asked a scribe to translate this for me, but he has come up with nothing.
On the wall, I have glued an arrangement of splintered pieces of your toenails, which you painted in different colors, arranged like a mosaic. It reminds me of you.
Flakes of dead skin accumulated in a jar, which I need to sanitize regularly to avoid rot. The closest thing I have to your presence.
This is a small sample of my collection. I can show you more, if you like. My apartment is full to the brim with these things. These particular things I keep in the bedroom because they smell the most like you, which I find very comforting.
Is it strange to keep such things? Visitors tell me that it is very strange. But you see, it is dangerous to be near you. Even if I were to approach you at rest, an errant twitch or readjustment might smother me. To speak nothing of being stepped on! So the little things you leave in your wake are the only ways to be close to you. If I were to keep similar things of a Lillecian girl, yes, that would be odd, but only because I could have caressed her directly instead. These bits of hair, these flakes of skin, these are the only things that I can hold of you.
Yes, my visitors do not understand me, and don’t care to understand you. Let me tell you briefly of my visitors before I return to the poetry I promised. These interlopers, more than anything else, have impeded my devotion to you, and they have, annoyingly, been coming again. Archivist errand boys have been inquiring whether I’ve finished my Arhnaikuri yet. My remaining ungrateful brothers, I’ve turned away. Shameless, their nieces and nephews have appeared, unannounced, demanding I make Kuwazada arrangements and include their parents. Why would they be welcome at the end of my life, when they ignored me all the rest of it? They’re already out of my will, and all my remaining belongings will be bequeathed to the government.
Let me tell you of just one more visitor. During my first year as a forager, I busied myself learning about the real world of foraging outside the classroom, while learning your daily schedule. In this year I received plenty of visitors, but turned almost all of them away. Each one only wanted self-serving things from me. They wanted to use me, to get me away from my “inadvisable” life choices, and give my self-determination to them instead. My parents wanted me to get a more “respectable” job. Apparently it was embarrassing for them to explain that their once-promising son was now a forager, and one obsessed with a giant, at that. I allowed them to tell me these offensive things through the front door. Eventually they stopped returning. My brothers came later on their behalf, and said similar things. They didn’t deserve the courtesy of a response. I had no visitors for several months, and I thought I was finally safe from their intrusions. Then I received one more visitor.
Her name was Ashley. All Lillecian girls pale in comparison to your beauty, but Ashley was a particularly galling case. She had blonde, thick, wavy hair, long enough to cover her navel. It really was quite absurdly long, and the color was reminiscent of pus. Her skin was unusually pale, and there was a mole on her face. I prefer fair clear skin, like yours. Her green eyes were bright and wide, and her eyelashes dense, looking very much like a clown. Her round, sparkly pink glasses were simply silly. Her nose was so buttony and thin I wondered if she was able to breathe through it. Her lips were rather plump and naturally pink, and when she spoke I was reminded of newborn mealworm larvae writhing about. Her figure was all the more strange, bulging here yet curving inwards there, with an unsuitably, almost comically large set of breasts and rump. She was, in other words, quite hideous, and it was difficult to imagine anyone ever loving her.
I recognized her immediately, of course. She had been one of my would-be suitresses. She was the runt of that litter – from such a low class, she was childish and completely lacked the other girls’ manners and propriety. She barely registered in my notice, unless she was acting foolish, which I suppose was rather frequent. I let her in that day because I felt it was akin to a charitable gift.
Ashley was, apparently, a serious therapist of sorts now. Or so she acted. Ashley had come with one purpose in mind: to get me to stop devoting myself to you. Visitors had all wanted to know about you, and of course they all gaped at my hoard of treasures. Nobody understood it; everyone expressed their ignorant distaste for you. Ashley was one of the few who confronted it directly and talked to me at length about it. I never wished to share you with anyone, and her intrusion was offensive and painful.
I’ll tell you about the conversation we had, and the short adventure that followed. I remember our conversation well because of the textbook she left behind – “Disorders of Sexual Development” – in which she earmarked and annotated the section she was to tell me about. This particular section of the book, more so than the others, is full of all manner of notes and annotations, but her handwriting is sadly illegible, so I can make nothing of it.
She had this book open on her lap as we sat in my living room, with furniture made from the pieces of corrugated fibrous boards you left by the garbage. I had prepared some skin-flake tea for us. She respectfully declined, and we had a discussion. Or, should I say, she lectured me. Her hurtful words have stuck with me all these years.
First, she tried to sympathize, to convince me she cared. “Tristan,” she said with that annoyingly high-pitched mousey voice, “I’m here because I’m concerned about you, about how your… lifestyle’s affecting you and your family. I’m concerned that you have a problem, and I want you to know that I understand your perspective and I want to help you…” She went on and on in this thoughtless, presumptive manner for some time.
Then, she tried to convince me that my love for you was somehow an aberration. “Tristan, what you’re suffering from is something called Megasapiophilia. It’s a disease of the heart which is rare but well-known among male Lillecians. Basically, having an intimate encounter with a Giant girl within a few weeks of your sexual maturity…” And so on.
I didn’t pay her much attention. It was obvious that she had tried to memorize phrases from her textbook, but was having trouble stringing them together. She would stop mid-sentence to leaf through her textbook, then recite a passage from it, not even looking at me. I stared at her coldly. “For many male Lillecians, this can alter their sexual orientation. They’re overwhelmed by the sight and sheer size of the ultrafeminine object they’re encountering... they’re overwhelmed by the smells… It’s one of the many reasons it’s illegal for underage people to breach. Suddenly, they’re uninterested in normal Lillecian girls. Lillecian girls can suffer from this, too, although it’s less common. So...” She played with her hair awkwardly. “Anyway, uh… I believe treatment is a strong first step for you.”
She had clearly expected my stony gaze to fall apart for her by then. She was so transparent. She wanted to pierce through my defenses, uncover my raw heart, and steal it away. But she was mistaken. There were no walls around my heart – my heart was (and is) a powerful, radiant engine, beating love for you, Venus.
What was her aim? To become a savior, a heroine? That I’d love her forever if she “saved” me? Maybe she blamed you for taking my attention away from her. What a disgusting woman. What gall! What did she know about you?
“A disease!” I said. “You think I’m obsessed!”
“No, I –” she stammered. Hypocrite. “It’s not a disease – it’s a pathology, a treatable condition. An unhealthy obsession. It’s fixable! And – and I’m here for you, and, and, you might not think you have an effect on their feelings, but your parents are–”
“You know nothing about my love!” I shouted. “It’s not a disease, it’s love! Is it not love because it’s not with a Lillecian girl? It’s not love because it’s not with you?” She was taken aback, hurt. Good. “You pathologize everything that doesn’t suit our society. I’m sure you remember I was supposed to be an archive administrator – so was every step I took away from that life a pathology? Do I have an educational disease because I didn’t get straight A’s? Is every bit of difference between me and some dull, strait-laced archive administrator with a bimbo wife and drooling kids some kind of mental illness? If I gave everything up now and became just another cog in the machine, would that please you?”
She was speechless and blushing. Her eyes were turning red, and she was sniffling. So I continued.
“What do you know of love? What do you know about what it does to you? Weren’t the early devotees of God said to be obsessed? Weren’t the authors of scripture obsessed as they toiled away for four weeks and a night to compile the first Volumes of God? Why do we bother listening to priests chant the verses of these diseased minds every time we go to church? Or was the great Brochmané obsessed when he wrote a thousand poems for his unrequited love? Was he diseased when he tried for years to get them published, suffering rejection after rejection? Were those poems the product of mental illness? The ones we still study and recite centuries later, even the ones we memorize and sing? If not, how can you reject my devotion to Venus?”
She clearly did not expect to encounter this level of force against her “intervention”. She couldn’t even meet my eyes. She seemed for a moment as if she might cry. She stared at the floor, wide-eyed, for a moment, wheels spinning in her head, trying to hide her unease, her face fully red, before sputtering, “I – I do know about love…” So she had some schoolyard crush. Some child’s love. It didn’t even compare to my love for Venus. She arrested her expression, squared herself up to look at me, and continued seriously, gesturing with her hands. “But, look, this is taking you away from healthy things – you clearly haven’t been eating well, you don’t speak with your family, you don’t respond to letters, you don’t go to any social events, or have a girlfr –”
This ugly whore finally enraged me. “The authors of scripture did not eat or drink while they wrote the Volumes! Would you have preferred they stopped and took a quick snack break instead of writing the words of God!?” I screamed. “Would we have even one of Ythrumber’s Universal Laws of Physics if he hadn’t caught a fever, locked himself in the university bell tower to calculate equations for days, missing his own wedding?”
I took a deep breath and calmed myself down by taking a long, strong drink of skin-flake tea. “You don’t know a damn thing about Venus, but you lecture me like you’re my mother! To hell with you.”
“You’ve changed a lot, Tristan. I hardly recognize you anymore…”
There was silence between us for some time. How long, I don’t know. It felt endless. Finally, her eyes brightened. She looked like she was oh-so proud of herself for coming up with some sort of brilliant idea. She began speaking so excitedly she started tripping on her own words. “Ah,” she said, “Remember when we would talk about the Grass Weaver series? Did you ever end up finishing it? Remember Arch- Archwizard Torizayn and his army of warlocks, or – or the evil mouse king Farmsitooth? I have the whole series, I can lend you the others if you want! …You don’t remember Grass Weaver? The Mercenaries of the Gold River? ...No? Is it just me? You really don’t?… Come on... Tristie… I’m sure you remember… It wasn’t that long ago… We’d stay up all night talking about them… Remember?”
She was talking to me like I was a poor lost child, while at the same time squeezing her breasts together with her arms, as though if she couldn’t appeal to my juvenile interests, she could instead try appealing to my base instincts. The whore. I crossed my arms, and stared even more venomously at her. She averted her eyes again, shifting in her seat, pouting.
Suddenly, an idea came to me. “You’re like all the rest, Ashley. You’re arrogant. You don’t know a goddamn thing about me, or about Venus, but you think you know what’s best for me. So, how about this. You don’t believe me? You come with me to see Venus, and maybe then I’ll listen to you a little. How about that?”
Like most Lillecians, she had avoided breaching all her life. The taboo was very real for her. It was considered extremely dangerous, even for the trained foragers. Who wanted to be another missing person case? But to her credit, she agreed.
“Okay… Okay, sure. Let’s go see Venus. But please… Let’s not get too close, okay? Let’s just watch her from a distance.” She smiled meekly, still very red in the face, and she sniffled and wiped her nose. Her resolve, at least, was strong.
“She won’t be very active today,” I lied. “I know of a place we can watch her safely. Let’s go.”
So I took her with me down to the ground level. She wanted to bring her briefcase and books with her. I told her there was no need – the less you carry outside the walls, the better. We navigated past the town limits towards the breach I had in mind. We went from your bedroom, past a bathroom, far across the living room, and at the end was the backyard door. We breached near it – she was so timid approaching the daylight.
Ashley was speechless. She had never seen something so huge – I’m sure the living room appeared to her like it was the realm of the gods, as it does to me. As I recall, she had never even been outside before, so it was the most vast expanse she had ever laid eyes on. She was thrilled – and scared.
“I’ve never seen anything so incredible!” she said as she marveled and looked all around. She wasn’t used to looking at anything so far away, so I’m sure it was all blurry to her. “This is… it’s incredible! Wait…” She turned around. “Is this the wall? The outside of the wall?”
“Be careful of the wind,” I said.
“Wind? Oh, oh – yes, I remember learning about that in school…”
“Yes, it can sometimes gust out here. It might push you. Worry not. It’s safer with two people.” I grabbed her hand. She seemed struck by this, and looked up at me with beady eyes, like a sick larvae. Utterly helpless. I continued. “Stay close. There are all kinds of dangers out here. Have you ever heard of a centipede?”
She nodded, still scrunching up her face and staring pleadingly at me. She had completely changed her countenance since exiting the walls. She sidled up to me as she walked. I could feel her warmth against my side. For some reason, she didn’t seem quite as ugly as before. A blasphemous thought.
“It’s daytime, so the chances of one finding us are low. But it can happen. I can deal with it, I have poisoned feed in my backpack. But it’s critical that you don’t run away if we see one. They go for the faster prey, and they don’t like groups.” She nodded, and the two of us walked side-by-side.
We traversed the smooth, cool ceramic tiles, and the rows of cement between them. She exclaimed over each bit of dust, debris, and scrap of desiccated food we came across. She stopped to gawk at one bizarrely shaped green hollow boulder that looked vegetal. I chuckled silently – I was so used to seeing these things that I had forgotten how strange they looked to non-foragers. Gone was her fear, her sadness. Now she was innocently excited over every new thing, like a child. As her eyes adjusted to the distant objects, she began asking what the far things were.
“What’s that gigantic circle on the wall with symbols all over it?”
“A clock. Giants use it to dictate their schedules. Some have small versions on their wrists.”
“What’s that enormous white tube that leads up to the wall?”
“It’s called a ‘power cord’. You know the colorful tubes you sometimes see coming out of restricted areas? Those are made by the giants. The smaller tubes connect to huge tubes like these. We don’t know how it works, but they are somehow required for the light and sound machines that giants use.”
“Oh, I see, I’ve heard of those – hey, what are those massive pillars, why is there a plane on top – oh my god, is that a table!?”
And so on. She had forgotten about our purpose entirely. She was so curious. I had forgotten how curious she was that day. It was endearing, the way an excitable pet might be.
We approached the underside of a massive black cliff. It was made of “plastic”, a mysterious giant’s material that we often find in all sorts of different shapes, without any clear joining or fastening points. I shot my grappling hook over the top, and it grabbed the edge securely. She was excited by this, too, even though it was a simple forager’s tool. I climbed up the rope with ease, but she struggled. I called to her, offered her advice, but still she struggled, red-faced and wheezing as she strained to pull herself up. She grunted like a pig each time she hoisted herself up with her shaking arms. My amusement made her even angrier. When she was finally close enough to grasp my hand, I gave her a strong grip and pulled her up the rest of the way. She collapsed on the edge of the plastic cliff, catching her breath, and gasped, “Never make me do that again!”
It was a few minutes before she was able to get up again, her cheery grin restored as if nothing had happened. We walked to the other edge of the cliff, where the plastic dipped down into a great tray. There we looked out over the vast plastic construction. Inside it were multiple pairs of giant shoes placed in a neat row in many colors. Giant shoes are quite unlike ours, but in some ways they are very similar. The finer points of fashion were beyond me, but I could at least appreciate how their shapes differed. Of course, your shoes, the cradles of your beautiful feet, were there as well.
“Are these their shoes!?” Her exhaustion was gone in a flash. Of course she liked shoes. “Let’s go see them!”
“It’s a bit risky…” I was going to say, but didn’t. Instead I said: “Sure.” I wonder now if things would have turned out differently had I cautioned her instead.
I dug the plastic rappelling kit out of my backpack, carefully balanced the plastic stake on the surface, and wrapped the base with twine. We would have easily survived the fall, but you can never be too careful outside the walls. Then I lit the twine on fire with my lighter, and Ashley watched, fascinated by the process, silently as the twine burned up. She winced at the horrible smell and turned away, like all new foragers do. After the twine was gone, the stake seemed fairly well adhered to the surface. I gave it a kick to be sure, then tied the rope around it, and flung it down over the edge. It reached the bottom of the plastic tray with plenty of slack.
We climbed down it, and walked up to the edge of a pink shoe. This was a pair you frequently wore when you went outside. We don’t know the name for it even now, but it was an open-topped type of shoe made from a single firm sponge-like material with plastic support arches that spanned across the top of the foot and met between the primary and secondary toes. For some reason, this shoe did not feature heel support, so when walking, your heel actually left the shoe, then slapped back down against it with each step. It was a very strange shoe that hardly offered any protection or warmth. One of the many mysteries of the giants. Despite that mystery, or perhaps owing to it, you look particularly stunning in them.
Ashley was enraptured by it, and listened intently to my explanation of its curious nature. She placed both hands on the wall of the shoe’s sole.
“What a strange material! It’s rough, but soft at the same time… It grips my hands as they slide across, but it’s not rubber, is it?” She turned to me. “Can we climb it? I want to see the top!”
I rolled my eyes. What could she see in this pointless diversion? But why not. I again shot the grappling hook up the shoe, and up it we climbed. Uninterested in exploring the shoe with her, I sat at the edge and kept watch as she ran around the sole like an idiot. She started tumbling around on the surface, delighted at how her falls were rebounded by the pliant surface, laughing stupidly. Her breasts bouncing around like loose marbles. What a disgusting affront to you, that she would display her disgusting body and puerile athleticism like this on your shoe. She cared not that it was yours. I felt bile rising.
I leaned back on my hands and inhaled deeply. Since your feet often touched these soles, I could smell your lingering skin oils and sweat. Not my favorite scent, and it was masked somewhat by the smell of dirt and grass, but nonetheless it was a scent of you. Thoughts of Ashley’s carefree insolence faded away as I basked in the musk and the sunlight which shone down from the glass pane of the sliding door. It was warm, and there was nobody around but us. I mean you and me, Venus. I began dreaming of you again.
“Tristan!” Ashley called out, laughing. My daydream was broken. “Hey, come over here and help! I’m stuck!” I turned to see her stumbled over on her hands and knees, giggling and snot-nosed, her hair obscuring her face, and her cleavage utterly, brazenly visible as she called to me. “I tripped! My foot’s stuck. There’s a crack here and I’m stuck. Help?” She tried to turn and grab at her foot, but she had gotten stuck at an awkward angle and was having trouble twisting and reaching. I rolled my eyes and was getting up to go to her and give her a lecture on respect, when you appeared.
Contrary to popular belief, the ground does not shake when a giant approaches, but you do certainly feel them before you see them. Venus, you were walking quite briskly, so I felt your footsteps well before seeing you. I knew your footsteps. I shot up instantly. As a forager, I was trained to watch for giants at all times, and of course I watched for you even more intently.
“Venus!” I shouted to Ashley.
“What – what? A giant? Venus!?” She shouted back, still struggling and failing to twist herself out of the crack. “Are you sure? Where?”
“You’ll see her in a second, she’s coming this way!”
This way? Stomp, stomp. Yes – this way. This very direction. You were coming to the door. I looked towards the clock on the wall, and realized suddenly that we had spent so much time exploring, giving in to Ashley’s curiosity, that it was now time for your daily walk. I knew not where or why you went outside for about an hour, only that it was at around the same time every weekday – like this one.
You giants move so fast that I had almost no time to form a plan. Within five seconds, you would appear from the doorway across the living room. In just a few more seconds, you would cross the room in its entirety. In all likelihood, you were aiming to wear these very shoes, like usual. The next few moments flashed in my mind. I had to run to Ashley, haul her from the crevice, and the two of us would have to sprint to the edge of the shoe and jump. It was not too far a fall – it would hurt, but we would live. Could I make it in time? I had an extremely brief period of time to get to her, free her, and run with her, possibly even drag her. If she slowed me down, we would be doomed. If I couldn’t free her, we would be doomed. I’d disobeyed every single breacher’s rule by climbing the shoe like this, and I’d put Ashley in danger too. What was I doing? I had to run to her, even if we both perished. I had to. Or did I? Did I need to rescue that brat? Yes, of course I did. It was the right thing to do.
But I didn’t. I froze. “Tristan!” She shouted, no longer laughing, a hint of panic in her voice. “Come on!”
Then you appeared at the doorway. You were in a hurry. Behind me, Ashley was grunting as she continued to struggle. You crossed the room, but stopped at the table for something. Precious few more seconds, which I discarded. I wavered between you, the plastic floor beneath me, and Ashley.
“Hey… Hey! Tristan! Is that Venus? She’s really – she’s really – close to us!” Her voice was now awash with fear. “What are you doing??”
I remember the next few moments with absolute clarity. I have turned them over in my recollection countless times. Of all of my memories of you, this one is among the most brightly and, perhaps, fondly recalled. I turned to Ashley. In her struggles, her large breasts had popped out of her shirt completely, in a disgusting, offensive display. Her face bore an expression of which I know not. She raised her head and screamed at what she saw. She really, truly screamed. I did not have to look. Up above, you leaned over the shoe tray to slide open the door. You parted the walls. The door was just the same scale as any of the massive vertical walls we live in – and you moved it like it was nothing. My ears popped as the air pressure changed suddenly, and I braced myself against the sudden gusts of outside air.
Ashley was blown over completely, having had no practice steeling herself for it. But she was still stuck. Then you lifted your foot into the air above us. The shadow covered us both.
“TRISTAN!” She screamed. Her screams were absurd now. “Tristan! HELP ME! Wait – w – Tristan – I – I STILL LOVE YOU!”
I’m sure she loved me. I’m sure she believed she loved me. She wanted me for my wealth, my class. Marrying me would be an easy ticket to the good life. She didn’t love me – she loved money, she loved wealth, respect, fame. She would have trapped me, and we would have lived like my parents, had you let her.
O Venus. I believe I am the only Lillecian who has ever experienced true love, the only one to have plumbed the sublime depths of it. I alone have experienced being utterly enraptured by a greater being: loving truly, without pretense, without the smallness of being bound by worldly things, for it is a sad truth that among the rabble love is a transient, passing, base thing, something only for reproduction, something that merely pushes the sexes together, an unnecessary bond forged by our carnal nature, the nature of beasts, that we are shackled to, which does not last and means nothing.
I have transcended that animal instinct. The others will never know, and I will never share with them this perfect, pure, flame. It would merely burn them; they would flee. I alone know true love. Love does not blind you, it opens the world up to you. It inspires you, it rejuvenates you, it protects you. And for that protection, sometimes love kills.
“TRISTAN!!!” I remember the beautiful sound of her scream. It was like she was screaming in orgasm.
Tristan! Tristaaaaan!
Like I was ramming into her pelvis with each high-pitched scream.
Her eyes bulged out of her skull comically as she shrieked. Forgetting her words entirely, she shrieked like a breeding animal, at the top of her lungs. It was pathetic. She was helpless, trapped, forced to kneel for you.
That was the last I saw of her face before I jumped off the shoe. Your foot came right after. Over the slap of your foot against the massive shoe, and over the crash of my own fall, I heard nothing more of Ashley.
I returned to my apartment. I set the water to boiling and poured myself a fresh mug of skin-flake tea. This time, I added some fingernail. While I waited for the tea to cool, I reclined in my corrugated fiber chair, across from the same chair Ashley had sat in, and thought.
I thought about how arrogant and stubborn Ashley had been, and how swiftly you adjudicated your punishment. How quickly and easily you demonstrated her place in the hierarchy. You exerted your power and your beauty over her with such ease. Could I have saved her? Had I acted quickly, maybe. Maybe I could have – but maybe I couldn’t have. This outcome, I think, had been your will. For her crime of daring to replace you.
When a detective came to ask about her, I hid her textbooks and told him I’d never seen her. And that was that. People do sometimes disappear. It’s dangerous being a Lillecian. Especially around giants.
I dreamed that night of having each one of my former suitresses killed by you. I knew you would have loved to punish them all for their transgressions. Especially the pretty ones – I found the most delight in imagining their gruesome deaths. Their breasts, which had the gall to approximate yours, being torn by your teeth. Their hair, which they tried to make as pretty as yours, being digested into nothing in your broiling stomach. Their singing voices, trained for years, yet still painful and grating compared to your effortless melodies, used instead for shrieking and screaming as you twisted your palm into their ribs. These delightful images danced in my head all night. Every one of them screamed with Ashley’s voice.
Now then, Venus, the poetry I promised you.