Madelaine

[Robert Crisman]

I, Madelaine, came to town on the Ghost Train, driven by Fates that come at the end of the line in the Rue Diable for poor girls and thieves such as I.

No one met me there at the station, not the foul sheriff who'd sent me the ticket, nor any cronies in top hats and tails, no brass band, no nothing--except for a tramp stumbling blind in the mud who stunk to high heaven and, lurking in shadows, a boy with catholic fear in his eyes and all the lusts of the ages.

I slogged through the mud down to Marly's Ace-Five and was met at the door by the sheriff, who ushered me, grinning, into  my room at the back, took his pleasure, a pleasure of smells of the dead, and left me to rule in my chamber.

Rule I did, truly: the men lined up with their cocks and their fears and fat wallets, these players and mucks from the hills above town and with each I assumed the role of the woman who'd roiled in his marrow since birth, the woman traduced and denied and climbed over, chained up, left for dead in love's name...by this lover of games with a wife that he'd blinded and used as a cover for murder...

Long lines of men, and I killed them all, fed them opium tinctures and sucked the meat out of their souls--if such you'd call sumps from the cisterns--and my body served as a mirror to all their granular weakness and shame, and my eyes spit such loving contempt, and my teeth drew the blood from their throats, and they aged years in minutes and they could not die, and this was their death as they  stumbled away to the Ghost Train.

I spared the boy, or would have: he'd killed the sheriff and I took him in and made him a man,tossed his love in the grate--what love can it be when the blood in the phallus is put there by rage and goes by the name of Narcissus?--and bade him now see with clear eyes; his lust though, painted as love, was all that he had--he was truly a boy of the town--and he went and died in the mud like the others, sans name or glory, and stands at the Ghost Train now, hollow and staring, a ghost, as I wink and the train pulls away...

[Sandra Davies]

"the woman who'd roiled in his marrow since birth" is pretty good too - I keep coming back to re-read this.

[Gita]

Not sure if I'd want to know her or be her. As much wear and tear and mileage as that life puts on a woman's body, there's a real rush when someone stands before you with an erection. And long lines of them, that's power to the tenth. Not everyone will like my saying it, but it's true. It validates one's attractiveness if only for a few minutes.  Attractive gay men will tell you the same.

The crowning phrase here, for me was  a boy with catholic fear in his eyes and all the lusts of the ages. Woohoo that's good.

[jkdavies]

same as Mum - that sentence was amazing!

[Robert Crisman]

@Joey: what would women's power consist of and how would it manifest if so many men weren't such narcissistic null-nodes? For that matter, what power in men might lie behind the falsities?

[Joey Delgado]

This is just great stuff. I was going to write the line Sandra put, but that's cool. I had one more in the on deck circle for my comment. 

'Long lines of men, and I killed them all, fed them opium tinctures and sucked the meat out of their souls...'

Women have so much power. I actually like Madelaine. I would want to be her friend, though I know she would be no one's friend.

[Sandra Davies]

This leapt out:  "what love can it be when the blood in the phallus is put there by rage and goes by the name of Narcissus?"  What a perfect way to put it.   Not on a Tshirt but inscribed on archways over doors.  Or something.

[Angela]

Excellent companion piece.  I think I favor this one, but it may be because of my feminine POV of the world.  I found it most interesting that she describes herself as a thief in the first.  But of course she is...

Powerful prose, my Peep.