Flash Fiction Friday - Night

I am the night, rich and dark and full of promise, hidden in the shadows and yet full of light. I am bathed in moonglow like the essence of rarest perfume, smelling of magic and humid longing. I am the dim but essential longing of spirits trying to be free.

Take me indoors. Turn on all the lights. Bed me in the white-hot shine of human hubris, driving away the shades of past nocturnal predators, when you were naked and alone. I am polluted by your argon-yellow haze, the sickly gleam of false candles.

Drag me away from the sky. Wash away the feral scents. Make me yours. I will flee you at dawn. The sun cannot touch me. We are old friends, but she is the day and I am the night.

---

I found her there in the boll of the tree looking skyward, the starlight glinting coldly from her ebony skin, rich and dark, as her eyes were with twinkling astral fire glinting in them. "I'm from one of them," she said. "But I've forgotten which. It was so long ago."

We made love in the grass, the dusky alien and I; I felt like Captain Kirk, she no doubt felt some foreign emotion, perhaps the urge to lay her eggs in my sternum. Her genital opening was similar to the earth-girls I'd had in the past; perhaps she'd forgotten how to engage the vaginal mandibles.

In the end, once I'd provided her with a genetic specimen, I left her there, looking up, perhaps waiting for the mother-ship that would never come. Sad and funny in equal parts. What else can one expect of life on other planets?

---

We made the oil, rich and dark, and massaged it into her skin until she gleamed all over like chocolate, the supple tones of her flesh enhanced by the shades of nightfall. I couldn't resist running my tongue over her pert breast, shining in the moonlight, chilled and bittersweet.

The shaman said the ointment must go everywhere, but it seemed almost blasphemous. Finally I waved my helpers away, took the oil in my hands, and worked it into the creamy skin until my fingers were slipping in and out of her tightness.

I feared failure until she sighed and sat up, her eyes narrowed as if even the dim light of midnight was too much for them.

"Lie back," I whispered. "You've been dead all day. Rest." The servants went running for mulled wine, but I stayed by her side, faithful handmaiden to my lady, my fingers still inside her slowly-warming body, bringing her to joy.

---

A trio this week, because I was procrastinating and then suddenly was struck in the pants with inspiration. Other than all being at night based on the same picture, I can't draw a connection between them.

Sadly, the only thing the first will make anyone think of, myself included, is Batman. But that's okay, because before Batman became a joke for saying, "I am the night," it was pretty badass. Perhaps I was going for something a bit more mythical than literal here, or maybe just complaining about light pollution. Or maybe it's the opposite of the story I wrote a long time ago about the woman who is in some way related to the sun. It's not about vampires or werewolves in any specific sense; I think night is a deeper thing than just vampires and werewolves. Plus they've been done to death.

I don't know where the second came from. It just sort of happened. It wasn't funny enough to make a joke, but there's a bit of wistful humor. The picture seemed like something which could have come out of Star Trek if Star Trek had been way cooler than it was. That woman could definitely be a priestess of the brass brassiere, which is what my family always calls the alien women Captain Kirk goes for.

And the last one was the toughest. It wound up being way, way over the limit, and I almost left it that way, but I decided that there's no point in limiting yourself halfway and then wimping out, so I cut brutally. I was sad to see some of the more florid prose go, but I don't think it died on the editing table. Borderline necrophilia, or devotion to duty, or magic, or all three plus other stuff. I know that's how I'd like to be awakened from the dead. Hell, that's how I like to be awakened period.

Flash Fiction Friday is the goddamned Batman.