Drawn Inside
by Arafin © 2008
You’ve been dreaming and planning your winter vacation for months, haven’t you? Soft imaginings of warm sun on your skin to drive away the damp and cold that seems to permeate your body at this time of year. It will be so nice to leave all that behind and just sink into the pristine white sand of that little tropical island only a few days distant in time, thousands of miles distant as the crow flies. Altogether, so near you can taste it. Warmth! How you crave warmth.
The days pass and the island grows nearer.
You pack your bags and arrange for the mail to be held. You adjust the timers on your indoor lights and notify the neighbors to take the papers from your porch. A friend drives you to the airport. You yak about school days and how you used to steal apples from the tree next door. The plane is on time. You board, find your seat, and settle in for fourteen hours of bad coffee and worse food. You sleep a lot.
Morning comes bright and clear as the plane begins to descend, the stewardess nudging you gently awake and offering you yet more lousy coffee which you politely refuse. Can’t wait to taste a fresh coconut lhassi served with bits of tangy orange and sweet melon. Tires screech as they bite the tarmac and the thrust reversers kick in, throwing you against the seatbelt. The ramp is wheeled up to the door. You wait your turn and then grab your luggage and exit into …………..
Ahhhhh ! That delicious air! So tantalizing and warm, so friendly and inviting to the skin, so lazy and rich and thick through the mind. Relaxation is not just a way of life in this place, it is quite simply what happens to everyone who arrives here whether they like it or not.
A little moto-rickshaw delivers you to your hotel on the beach on the far side of the island. An almost sacred space of alabaster sand and swaying palms, tender evening breezes and radiant stars, whispering ocean waves lullabying you to sleep, there to dream of peace at last, peace at last.
You unpack, shower, and put on a white muslin shirt and sarong. Stepping out onto the verandah you just drink in the scene of paradise and let go of what last remnants of tension had clouded your thoughts. No place for business here. No climate for worry.
Down to the shore and the half hour walk towards the village, there to arrange for delivered meals, washing, and a daily Thai Massage. The locals are only too eager to please in this manner, offering their humble services from the heart, so glad are they to see outsiders smile and appreciate their garden of eden. Well, the money helps, too.
Just as the village comes into view you see a rather striking woman walking towards you, a small cloth bag with handles over her shoulder. She is dressed all in black. Satin slacks that shimmer in the tropical light like obsidian and a blouse of inky silk which fails to hide her ample breasts as they whisk the low cut opening sending an instant impression of her smooth skin reverberating through your mind. Her feet are bare but her toenails are bright crimson, as are the nails of her graceful fingers. Her hair, yards of it, jet black mane of night, drifts and flows behind her as she glides over the stark contrast of the snow-like sand. For and instant you think of saying hello, but are suddenly hesitant, and then it is too late as she is past and behind you now. She did not even look at you yet your heart is racing. You think you caught a brief scent of her perfume, …. or was that hyacinth blooming nearby?
You discuss the terms of your housekeeping with the little man behind the bar, your meals with the waitress, and your massages with the old woman who always sits at the back. The young girl she will send to massage your weary body is simply the best there is, so skilled has she become under the tutelage of the old woman. You marvel at how they treat you as a family acquaintance although you have only been here twice before. These people are friendly the way all people should be friendly, never judging harshly by one’s appearance and never prying beneath the surface to see what unpleasant secrets one wishes to keep hidden. You have a few drinks at the bar and chat with the English journalist who was here the last time you visited. You discuss the weather back home but avoid any topics more serious. Such things do not belong here. It is almost an unwritten rule.
As you leave the little bamboo and thatch building and walk down the steps back onto the beach you see something glimmering in the sand. You stoop to pick it up and for some reason are a bit surprised to find that it is a lady’s watch of elegant design and expensive brand. Why should it be such a surprise? People drop things everywhere but for some reason this seems out of the ordinary, though not nearly as out of the ordinary as what you do next. Almost as if you were acting in a dream of which you had little control, you put the watch into your shirt pocket instead of taking it to the bartender and turning it in. This is not like you and as soon as you begin to question your action all memory of it mysteriously begins to slip away like footprints in the sand being slowly erased by the incoming tide, bit by bit, grain by grain. You begin to walk back towards your bungalow.
Half way between the bar and the bungalow is a large white boulder worn smooth by eons of surf and sand. It is too large to climb atop and you often sit, leaning against it, just enjoying its presence. It seems ancient and unexplainable in an oddly comforting manner, this lone monolith from some forgotten age. The drinks from the bar are buzzing softly in your veins and your head is slightly woozy. You are not drunk yet you have a “glow”. The sound of the waves, so rhythmic and ceaseless, seems almost to speak to you, urging you to sleep, and you begin to drift down, down, into the hazy delicious energy of this island paradise.
“Do you intend to return my watch or do you intend to keep it?” The voice is soft, barely a whisper, but it startles you awake and surely would the roar of a lion and you bolt suddenly upright and stare in shock at the beautiful woman standing over you. It’s her, and the lady dressed all in black. Her eyes seem to burn into your soul and you feel an absolutely helpless urge to answer truthfully to what she asks, although the words do not come easily and you stutter.
“I, ……. have no excuse, ma’am. I, …….. don’t know why, …… I just, ……. put it in my pocket. Yes. I was, …….. going to keep it. I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I, …………” You fall silent, sitting stupidly like a naughty child about to be spanked. All the blood in your body seems to have rushed to your face and you can feel a hot blush and cold sweat betraying your nervousness.
“A thief! I knew it as soon as I laid eyes on you! The locals here have very strict ways of dealing with people like you. Do you know that?” Her countenance is stern as cold steel and the blue of her eyes seems frightening in a way you cannot understand let alone describe. Will she turn you in to the constable? Will you face a trial and a fine? Perhaps worse! Will you be banned from ever returning to this Eden?
Her eyes penetrate deeper into your mind. Her lips so beautiful yet so terrifying by the power that lies behind them they seem to rip and tear at your heart as she rebukes you. “Well, what you have done is very serious. That watch is very important to me and I am not about to let the locals show you any mercy. I will deal with this myself.”
She seems to swell up larger than life and become almost lighter than air, ready to float. Her hair, once hanging like a silken mantle around her neck and shoulders and cascading down her back, now begins to waft up slightly as if it might be drawn by static electricity from above. The very atmosphere around her seems to be charged with an unseen power, both terrible and mesmerizing. She speaks again.
“RISE!”
It is a command and you discover to your amazement that you have obeyed without thinking. There you stand like a puppet on a string awaiting guiding tugs.
“FOLLOW ME!”
And like a wisp of smoke being drawn by a vacuum, you follow, sucked along helplessly behind this chilling vixen, this sorceress of the night who walks by day. Straight past your bungalow and into the jungle at the end of the beach. Turning to the right she leads you up a narrow path into the hills. As the two of you walk thusly, she leading you like an obedient pet on a leash, the birds in the immediate vicinity grow silent as you pass, somehow sensing the power that this woman wields and not daring to challenge it with song. And so you travel on in a bubble of silence, up, up into the hills until eventually the ocean behind you is only a line of blue in the distance.
It is mid afternoon and the air away from the sea has grown hot and oppressive. You have never strayed far from the water when you have been here. No tourist does. Aside from the one road which cuts across the interior between the and airport and the village, the jungle here is undeveloped in any way. Even the natives seem to shun it, preferring to fish for a living or serve visitors. It is much drier than the coast here and the lack of moisture makes you feel uncomfortable, as if you were in danger of desecrating. On she walks and on you follow, your willpower nothing more than a memory now and any thoughts of returning to your bungalow as far away as might be dreams of distant youth. She has you and you know it.
Eventually you come to the top of the highest hill, and from there you can see down towards the other side of the island. Far to the right you can make out the glint of glass that you know to be the airport and the small city nearby.
“Put your hand in your pocket, thief. Take out my watch and hand it to me. Kneel as you do this.” Her voice is less stern than it was on the beach but she still commands with an absolute authority and you still obey with absolute compliance. It is as if her words directly control your body, bypassing your mind altogether. You watch yourself as if from outside your body. The sensation is both traumatic yet strangely distant and you notice the compulsion within you growing to simply stop caring. It is almost as if you are tired and want to fall fast asleep. Kneeling, you pluck the watch from your shirt pocket and hold it up to her with head bowed as would an errant knight offer to return a sword to the Queen who bestowed it before the knight went astray.
She lifts the watch from your hand and slips it over hers. Raising her wrist in front of her she turns it to inspect the timepiece, rotating her forearm slowly this way and then back as she begins to murmur softly. What words she utters are either too week of volume or unfamiliar of tongue for you to comprehend, yet you do not care. You listen as you might to far off music, too remote to identify, yet just barely loud enough to enjoy in a lazy, dreamy sort of way.
The air seems to become hotter and drier and almost shimmer and quake as can a desert mirage. No breeze stirs the leaves of any tree and no sound other than her muffled whispering exists. Time seems to slow down to a crawl, and then like a heavy freight train rolling gradually to a dead stop, it seems to cease altogether. Reality appears to quiver and vibrate and you watched dumbfounded, with mouth open, as the clothes upon her change before your very eyes.
Where once had ridden satin pants and silk blouse now hangs a gown as dark as midnight and shiny as glass. A long slit runs from just below the waste all the way to the ground where the fabric bunches and trails slightly behind as would a wedding dress. Multiple layers of lavender chiffon hide behind this jet barrier, filtering the heat that emanates from her exquisite body before it mingles with the heat of the air. Her legs are clad in dark lavender stockings that shine and wink as if wet. High spiked red heels contain her lovely feet which stand upon the stone of the earth proclaiming, “This is mine”. In her left hand she holds a folded oriental fan of red silk, embroidered with gold, and bordered with green. In her right hand she holds a silver dagger, its handle an orb of ivory. A curious headdress of dark beads adorns her forehead and from its center descend several strands across each eye and down her chiseled cheeks, then wrapping around behind her neck, there to vanish in that impossible mane of her magnificent tresses.
That hair! So lavish and thick, yet so wispy and ethereal as it begins to rise, floating higher and higher around her as if she were underwater and slowly descending. She is proud and strong and fearsome and you have the unmistakable feeling that you have gotten in way over your head in every possible respect that you can imagine and in many that you cannot. She looks straight at you and into you, her will, her scrutiny, unstoppable and totally without mercy.
“COME!” The command is brief, final, and terrible and you fear for your very life. At the same time you find it extraordinary that you wish with every fiber of your being to obey her. You cannot resist and this frightens you. You do not want to resist and this enthralls you. She begins to walk again, this time very, very slowly, a Queen conducting a ceremony of high court, a warrior goddess leading a stately dance of victory.
You had not seen it before, a path of ancient fitted stone perhaps thousands of years old. Bits of grass and weeds now grow between the cracks. Into the thickest of the jungle it winds in slow sweeping turns as the foliage seems to close in around you, almost choking in its teeming complexity. Soon you come to a tiny open space before a great stone wall against which the jungle appears to have beaten itself like waves beat upon a cliff, unsuccessfully and with only the slightest tale told of the struggle. Branches of trees and vines attempt to gain a foothold on this barrier yet cannot cross. In the middle of the wall is a rectangular opening barred by an iron gate of intricate filigree. She stops and turns to look at you here, the fan in her left hand and the dagger in her right, as if she was contemplating which to employ in your demise. You would tremble if you could yet you are so paralyzed by this mighty sorceress that you can only stare like the statue you are. Again she gazes straight into your soul and slowly speaks.
“You have stolen from Me and now I claim YOU as My property. This is My law and so shall it be.”
Your conscious awareness seems to be fading as if you are slipping ever deeper into an impossible dream, yet this is no dream, it is as real as real can be. Staring past her for a second you notice a strange land beyond the iron gate. The trees in the foreground are not those of the jungle at all but rather of a temperate hardwood forest. In the background rises an enormous volcano, its slopes streaked with snow. The sky above is not a sky of a tropical clime but that belonging to an alpine land. How can this be? How can such a place exist in the middle of a small tropical island?
“It exists”, she says, “because the island that you stand upon the edge of is but a mirage fabricated by Me in order to hide My realm. What lies beyond this gate is the reality and it is into that reality that I will take you, to serve Me without resistance until I deem that you have earned your freedom, should you ever be so lucky.”
At once you’re thunderstruck to realize that She can hear your every thought. As the shock from this realization subsides you are overwhelmed with a sense of confusion regarding what She has just told you. The island nothing more than a façade? How was it that you came here twice before on vacation? Did not the plane that you arrived on land at a real airport and did you not talk and interact with real villagers?
She does not speak as you think these thoughts but you can see from the look in Her eyes that She understands. The tiniest wry smile graces Her ruby lips. You want so much to cry out with questions but cannot. Your throat feels dry and your mouth is numb. She has completely disabled you with Her magic and your vulnerability is total.
The gate behind Her begins slowly to swing open and She turns to pass through. Without uttering a word, without making a single gesture, She draws you to follow Her and you obey as would a puff of mist obey the wind. The air of reality is cool upon your face and refreshing beyond anything you could conceive of. You feel the heat from Her body in front of you, and as an irresistible desire within you builds you begin to wonder just what type of service this supremely formidable enchantress has in mind for you.
“Welcome to My home, little slave. Can you hear the gate behind you closing?”