soft by Kevin Wallace
She bit down on her lip as he gripped her breast tightly. Her eyes rolled back in bliss. Sighing, moaning, whispering, groaning, twisting on the ground in the darkness, winding to the song of the wind in the trees. He pushed down on her: pressing on her back and legs, as they twisted softly, grinding, winding - reaching deep into the dark. Squeezing - nails digging into skin, gentle scratching, pawing, groping. She tilted her head and rocked back on him. Raising him. Taking him. Loving him. Her breathing faster, his grip harder. She shuddered slightly. First with her legs, then her hips. She shuddered and they shook together. A painful grunt, breathless whimpers – agony. A rush of damp pleasure and she squealed. A duet of slow, shallow breaths rang through the dark. Two hearts beating together. Rising, falling – inhaling and exhaling. She lay back as the rain fell lightly, lulling her to sleep. As she lay back he stood up, leaving her grip, letting her body curl into a ball. Her red hair was flecked with scarlet as it glistened in the wet. Her pink tongue flicked at her lips and her tail wagged peacefully. The vixen curled in to a red ball beneath a twisted tree: the forest’s darkness dividing her from the fox as he pushed his red shape out into the tangle and away from her. He disappeared into a darkness full of eyes – eyes peering at them, voices whispering about them – tongues drawn like blades, while the rain fell hard through the forest. He pushed into the shadows and disappeared. But sounds of heavy footsteps and the flickering of lights woke the vixen. She pushed out into the forest, searching for her mate. Eyes watched everything in the dark; every touch; every step. All around her twigs crackled and crunched betraying her footsteps as the light moved closer and closer. Thorny blades glinted in the flashing light, as she passed tangled branches. Suddenly the light flashed and she saw the fox trapped in a corner – snared in tongues of thorns as the light bore down on them. He shot a glance at the vixen and she knew to run. She ran hard, pushing deep into the darkness, into the wet ink of the night. ... Maria wouldn’t sleep again tonight. She could see the stars flickering in the sky as she walked over to her window. Outside it was almost silent but for the rustling below as a fox pushed through the trees. Maria watched as a fox pushed out of the trees, on the edge of the shadows and began to call. It called and waited for an answer, but an answer never came. The pale blue darkness of the early morning light fell delicately on to her bed, into the small mirror and along her room’s hardwood floor. Maria sat down at her dressing table looking into the mirror on top of it, while the wind and rain pushed through the rhododendrons outside the hotel. She looked at her face, at the gold flecks in the brown of her eyes, at the blue shimmer of her black hair as it swayed in the dark. She watched the rain roll down her reflection’s face like dark tears. But tears fall nothing like the rain – tears fall in a bitter caress of pain, rolling salt and a taste of blood into the mouth. No, tears fall nothing like the rain – but Maria had always imagined that they should. She heard rain while her mother cried; she listened to the bitter cough of her mother’s sobbing and pretended it was the rain. It was the rain that fell when her father came home. It was the rain that dripped on the floor when he shouted. It was the rain that washed through the house because his food was cold. It was the rain every time he hurt her mother. As a child, she would hide beneath the bedclothes from her father, and pray at the moon, – Santa Maria, Madre de Dios... – Santa Maria... – Santa Maria, Madre de Dios... She’d pray but he’d always come. She’d pray but ‘her dress was always too short’ or, ‘she was staying too late at school’ or, ‘she was showing off to boys.’ She’d pray but never quietly enough. She’d pray but never hard enough. She’d pray but the rain would always come. He never touched her: he never had to: she buckled at the thunder of his voice. He’d come home looking for something to attack – anything he make feel smaller than him. Everyday he wanted to know where Maria and her Mother went? Who they saw? Why they went? Or why they didn’t go? No, he never touched her, even when she would have wanted him to. The street lamps outside the hotel swung drunkenly in the breeze. Their lights dancing with the blue of the dark. It would be morning soon and these were the last shadows before the dawn. It was her favourite time of night. As girl when the nighttime rain would stop and the first gold of sunrise cut through the dark, she would go to her mother. Maria would go to her and lie silently as her father’s snoring broke the quiet of the morning. Her mother would whisper softly to her and stroke her hair – telling her how beautiful it was. Maria missed the Andalusian dawn – the hard sun of the morning. She missed the dry riverbed in summertime at Almachar; the old men smoking in the shade; the church processions. She missed the rosaries that her mother repeated before her father came home. She missed the smell of the raisin-beds at Cutar, the yellow fields of sunflowers, and the olive trees by the dry riverbed. She always knew that she would leave Almachar. She had imagined that she would run away, but she never imagined that she would come here to this hotel beside this dead old monastery – or that she would come here alone, to work in sleepy Glendalough. She put her head down on the dresser and looked out the window. The winds whispered through the graveyard, only a few metres from the hotel, whistling as they passed through the ruins, down by the round tower and its ruined cathedral. The wind washed over the valley of the dead – the sleeping lakes and the dark mountains, over the silent ghosts and their dusty tombstones. Pushing through a gap in the lintel, it blew into Maria’s room, and on to the side of her neck. She followed the cold air with her fingertips as it fell softly through her hair, down her arm, on to her hip, around the soft places of her back and along her leg. The cold made her skin tingle softly; trembling like the first time a boy touched her. She sat up again and began to brush her hair. She could hear the wind flexing the glass in the windowpane. She could almost feel the fingers of the air caress the outside of the walls, as the night breathed down on the hotel. The night was breathing like a schoolboy – a schoolboy with a girl behind an olive tree. Breathing deeply, breathing quickly, breathing softly and gently. ... At school, she had watched him watch her. She watched him twist his pen nervously when she sat beside him in English class. She watched him nervosuly before he spoke to her. For days, Carlos shied from her. For days, she looked at the strange boy who passed her father’s house nervously. The first thing he said to her was a joke about their teacher’s moustache. They started walking home together: he lived on a farm a few kilometres from her father’s house, beyond the town. They walked together on the old road along the riverbed and through the olive trees. The first time she ever felt a boy’s hand was that day among the olive trees. She liked it when he squeezed her hand. She liked it when he tickled her. She liked his eyes. She liked his voice: soft and warm like his fingers. She liked it when he touched her soft skin, when he traced his fingers softly along her arm and on to her face. She kissed him first and she pulled him tight to her as he brought his hand along her leg, around her knee –¬ beneath her skirt, behind the olive trees near the dry riverbed. The next day as they walked home, he asked her to meet him by the olive trees at midnight. When it got dark she waited for him there. She waited in the olive trees. She waited but he never came. She waited through a long night of rain. Having escaped from her bedroom, having walked two kilometres to the olive trees, having listened to the silence, she waited for him. She waited, but he never came. ... Maria looked at her face in the mirror – her proud high cheekbones, the same round jaw as her mother. She looked down at her body. Her legs were long and thin like her arms. Her waist was thinner than it had been in Spain, but only a little. Her breasts were the same but she wasn’t shy of them anymore. Her body was little different but she had changed. She smiled as she twisted two fingers through a ringlet of her hair, watching the thin curl of a smile on the edges of her lips. Her smile still looked the same but it had changed. She grimaced thinking of the days she couldn’t smile; the days she couldn’t look into a mirror; the days she wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. ... It was raining when she got back to the house: even outside Maria could hear her mother crying in her room, she could see her father sitting at the kitchen table. In the sixteen years that Maria could remember, the first time he ever touched her was when he hit her that night as she came in. The only feeling she ever had of his skin was when his fist struck her mouth. It soon vanished into a taste of blood as she hit the cold kitchen floor. She closed her eyes and felt the first kicks to her stomach. She didn’t cry, she didn’t groan, she just bled. When he finished kicking her, he picked her up by the hair and bent her over the kitchen table. Jamming one foot on her back and pulling her hair tightly – tearing it out as he chopped at it with a scissors: breathing quickly and shallowly as he ripped at her hair. While he butchered her hair she had remained silent, not a whimper, not a whisper – nothing, but behind her she thought she heard him sobbing. The rain had stopped: she thought she could almost her him crying, as long dark strands of her hair fell to the ground. She could feel him trembling, but not with rage. When he finished, he mumbled how ‘she was with that boy’ that ‘she was just like her mother.’ He turned away from her and spat one last word at her and went to bed. Maria lay still, bent over the chair for what seemed like an age, teeth loose and blood filling her mouth. It was then that she knew she was leaving. It was then that she stopped pretending. It was then that she heard her mother crying, and not the rain. ... Maria sat alone by the mirror. She sat alone as the dawn blazed started to glow from behind the mountains. When she came here she was running. When she came here she was alone. When she came here it didn’t matter where she was as long as it wasn’t home; but Glendalough’s busy hotel was starting to feel like a new home. She had started to learn the names of the men who propped up the bar every evening. She was tired. Almachar was far away. She knew she’d never go back; but she wondered if her mother had stopped crying; if anyone had searched for her. She wondered if she would ever see Carlos again; if she’d ever touch his soft hands again – if she’d lie with on the dry riverbed. ... The last dark of the fading night descended as the moon slipped behind a cloud, thickening the shadows among the trees. Their feet crushed fallen olives as they wound their way through the dark as he held her hand tightly. She pulled him close to her as he ran his fingers on her skin. He pulled on her blouse softly and button by button it came off her shoulders. Quickly she undid him. Quickly she took him, as he cupped her breast in his hand: lifting her leg and reaching up her skit. Tearing. Tracing. Touching. His soft hands pressing gently on her soft skin as she moaned. He kissed her slowly, first her shoulder then her neck, then round to her lips. She watched his eyes and gripped his waist as she felt his lips on her skin. She ran her fingers along the bones in his neck. He held her shoulders pushing harder and pulled her hair whispering – calling. As he called her she took him. She held him. She bit down on her lip as he gripped her breast tightly. Her eyes rolled back in bliss. Sighing, moaning, whispering, groaning, twisting on the ground in the darkness, winding to the song of the wind in the trees.