| Subject: Aura |
Author:
TRJ
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Date Posted: 09:04:37 02/04/01 Sun
Author Host/IP: host-216-76-200-172.bhm.bellsouth.net/216.76.200.172
Cora and Mark stood in the doorway of the creeping manor house, neither anxious to knock on the towering mahogany door. Faces, twisted in either passion or pain grew from the wood and reached to where they stood to kiss them with splintered lips. The house, a miniature Versailles seemed to grow wild from the forested landscape, suffocated by clinging vines of lush ivy. The windows glowed and flickered like a demoniac's eyes.
"All we need is a full moon or a thunderstorm," Mark had joked as they walked up the stone path to the front door.
Cora examined the sky for ill omens. There was no storm brewing, no moon throwing down its silvery mantel. She had seen stars for the first time in what seemed like years once they got out of the city's glare into the countryside. They peeked down with steely indifference, recording everything, betraying nothing.
"Damn," Mark muttered, stopping at the bottom step.
The fine hair on the back of Cora's neck stood on end as if someone had whispered into her ear. "What?" she asked, a strained breath echoing in the macabre silence.
"I left the garlic and the holy water back in the car," his laughter of merlot sounding flat and metallic.
She narrowed her eyes. "Seems like you left your sense of humor in the car as well."
"Oooh, wicked jab, lady," he replied, bending to kiss her frowning mouth.
Pushing him back, she took on the steps, leaving him on the landing. The invitation they had received was crumpled in her damp palm, the fancy calligraphy cramped and running, leaving smudges of crimson ink on her skin. This ruined, cream colored slip of paper was her response to a lifetime of poetry, which she had gathered and sent to Rosen Publications, a company that dealt with less than the mainstream.
As Mark ran up the steps two at a time, she remembered the nausea that had clutched her stomach when she had seen the envelope in the back of her mailbox. Her legs weak, she had sat down on the stoop with catalogs, sale papers and bills fanning out around her. She stared blankly at the address, Rosen Publications, 2332 Cheshire Lane, Massachusetts, wondering what type of rejection notice Aura Rosen mailed to poets not meeting her aethstetic, literary requirements.
Mark found her still sitting there in a daze when her came home from the office. He placed himself next to her, slipping his arm consolingly around her shoulders. He plucked the envelope from her shaking hands and opened it unceremoniously. She buried her face in his chest, tears biting at her brown eyes, the countless rejection letters she had filed away in the bottom of her file cabinet all flew back into her face, the disappointment from each one melding with the next until she was overwhelmed with despair and dejection.
"Dear Mrs. Dupre," Mark read out loud, "after considering your work, I have found your poems to be in line with all Rosen qualifications. You poetry is sensual, energetic, possessing a life of its own, and rich with images. I am very excited about your future here at Rosen Publications and would like to invite you to my home for a small celebration of your merging with the Rosen family. Your contract as well as your payment will be discussed then. Looking forward to meeting you, Aura Rosen."
They were quiet as Cora read and reread the letter. "I don't have to quit now," she exhaled.
She laughed out loud and heartily for the first time since she had made it her life's work to become a published author. After the last rejection, Mark had made her promise that if Rosen didn't print her writings, to put away the pens and notebooks for good. She would finish out her masters, assume a life of normalcy. She had hated him for making her promised that for the entire six month wait and had chosen the couch to their marital bed. Now with her invitation from Aura Rosen in hand, that momentary lapse of his faith in her became insignificant.
"Come on inside," Mark gestured, winking like a flirtatious teenager. "I've had something for you hidden, to be given to you on such an occasion."
She jumped to her feet and went inside. They drank Mark's hoarded bottle of champagne and they made love on the living room floor, her fears and frustrations released from her with every thrust of his hips. When he burst inside of her, she climaxed with him, holding her breath to prolong the sweet destruction of who she had been until she let everything go and was born anew. When they finally went to bed, she was her words and she seduced her husband, hungry, vicious once again.
"Welcome," Aura Rosen greeted them, opening the door wide, disrupting Cora's thoughts.
Cora gazed at the woman before her in awe. Aura Rosen's long, strawberry blonde hair hung loose in ringlets to her waist. She wore a thin dress of white muslin, her sleek body visible through the cloth. Cora found herself focusing on the woman's darkened aureoles, barely visible and unencumbered.
"Come inside," she waved, making Cora flinch with embarrassment.
Cora's face burned red. Aura smiled at her knowingly as she placed a cold hand on her back. Fire flared down her spine, settled in her stomach and spilled down her thighs. She took Mark's hand as they stepped into the crypt cool house, unable to look at her hostess.
"Are you Cora's husband?" Aura asked Mark.
Mark stammered, less than oblivious to her seductive beauty. His confirmation to her question was a barely audible sigh as Cora glared at him.
"Your wife is a very talented woman," Aura commented. "Can I offer either of you a drink?"
They both nodded yes and Aura seated them on a plush modern style sofa and disappeared into another room.
"Damn," Mark said, "look at this place."
Cora was already memorizing each detail of the room they were occupying. The furniture was an eclectic combination of present masculine forms and sinister antiques. Two aged end tables made from some dark wood were on both ends of the sofa and a Draculinian candelabra sat atop the mantle above the yawning fireplace which could have served as an entrance way to hell in Cora's mind. Life sized angel sculptures guarded each of the four corners, their eyes and cheeks encrusted with some sort of rusted paint the hue of dried blood.
It was the wall hanging that caught her attention and dominated the atmosphere of the sitting room. The tapestry was large and slightly faded and frayed showing its age. The weaved depiction of a goat headed demon having intercourse with a coven of witches, his double pronged penis protruding, three-dimensional covered the ancient canvas. It was both vile and oddly beautiful to her, the faces of the women, their large breasts caressed by claw like hands evilly seductive. She felt some strange, dark yearning looking at it, as if the magick of it had crawled down the wall, across the Oriental carpet and up her skirt and between her legs.
"Would you believe this tapestry originally belonged to a Capuchin monk?" Aura laughed, spilling into the room carrying two crystal goblets of sanguinary red wine.
They talked over their wine, Mark retreating from the conversation once it turned to matriarchal societies and the power of the feminine nature. Cora ripped herself away from the talk from time to time to smile at her husband, but soon forgot him. She didn't notice him closing his eyes to sleep or the way his breathing slowed until he stopped breathing all together. She was totally unaware of anything, the acrid, bitter taste in her mouth, the heaviness of the wine in her veins. Aura Rosen had somehow become the entire universe.
"It is getting late, dear," she told Cora, stretching, feline. "I think it is time we discuss your contract. What do you want out of this deal?"
Cora watched the room melt and undulate with the rhythm of her speech. "I want everything from this. Fame, fortune, infamy and adoration. That's all I want."
"A woman made after my own heart," Aura purred, sliding, serpentine from her high-backed chair, onto the floor to coil around Cora's ankles. "What would you give for these things?"
She laughed at Aura's Mephistophelean question. Her hands were on Cora's calves, pulling her down onto the rug. Aura's mouth traveled over Cora's thigh, her fingers slipping beneath her black silk panties, pulling them down. Her tongue felt like a million serpents, flicking over her.
"Please, stop," Cora tried to say, her throat tight, closing, choking off everything but a soft but strained moan.
Aura devoured her with a sharp mouth of glass. Each time Cora almost escaped her, she pulled her back with more passion than before. Through her horror, the tapestry came to life and the witches danced around her, chanting their debauched songs, but she could not stop the orgasm that came like a nuclear blast, turning her insides to ashes. Aura kissed her, and she tasted herself, tasted the cinders of her being as it was burned to nothing. Thought, emotion, conscience were blown over the desolate landscape of a thousand netherworlds, her human qualities a molten pool of lava eating away at the foundations of her soul.
"Do you want more?" Aura asked, her voice deepening, distorted, cacophonic. "I can give you more, I can give you dreams in the flesh, sensations that will make every sunrise an orgy with the earth. Say yes, Cora."
Cora raised her head, her eyes singed and baked in their sockets, "Yes," she thought, yes, yes, yes, for eternity. A smile came to Aura's wicked lips. Her face remained beautiful, but her body grew taller, ropy muscle lining her arms, her breasts becoming rounder, dripping with acid milk. She undressed, the chanting witches silenced, bowing on the floor in adoration. The beauty now the monster, Cora fought to break this spell, to change her answer. When Aura caressed her neck, squeezed, she prayed the words to every prayer she had ever known since childhood, each word pouring out backwards.
She felt the cold hardness enter her, stretching her, the other head tearing at her buttocks. As the demon spilled into her, her small frame stiffened, contorted, the agony completed with an orgasm that rattled her rebelling soul into submission. Her face crushed against the floor, stripped of her flower print dress she had bought just for this occasion, her mother's crucifix, seared itself into the delicate flesh of her throat, vanishing beneath the surface of her skin.
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