The Prophet’s Secret
Ink swirls from my veins in a manganese flood that scores the page and tears the paper. I wish I could write it better, but the words burn and flail in my mind, dying to embers and ash if I don’t get them out fast enough.
And I have to get them out.
He watches from across the desk as my eyes melt with gold. The pen shakes in my hand, blurring words and soul. I grit my teeth and continue. This is the only way to make it stop. The only way to salve the voices.
I keep writing, churning out the threads of a patchwork future. It sears my blood and scars my eyes with every disturbing scene. He doesn’t care. His face is eager. This I can see even through the haze of pictures.
My lower lip trembles. He’s not here for me. He never was. All he desires is the knowledge of the things that no human should ever know. And I can’t stop.
Pen tears paper and still… I cannot stop. It has to come out. It has to be released so I score it along the desktop, wood fibres crunching beneath the press of breaking nib.
He puts his hand on my hand to slow me, but my fingers keep working, feverish.
Eventually, it peters out and he takes the sheets, leaving me alone in my rooms. I don’t know what he does with the knowledge. I don’t even know what it is. I try not to think of the images that pass through my mind and instead I take to my bed to sleep.
This tower is where he keeps me. It has become my home.
I wake to cool air and the brush of warm breath on my lips. I squeeze my eyes tight shut, expecting his usual brusque demands, but they don’t come. Instead there is just breath.
I wait, tensed. And then one word is uttered.
“Please…?”
The voice is not one that I expect and I inhale for the first time since I have felt the warmth of exhale. I move to open my eyes, but the kiss flutters to my waiting lips in gentle agony of holding back.
“I’ve waited so long.” Rushed, whispered words. Kisses. Hands. “It was the only time I could risk it.”
I keep my eyes closed and sink fingers into his hair. He is the only one I don’t see. The only one I don’t write about. And the only one whose future is unclear.
My master knows nothing of him. And I crave to know everything.
He gathers me into his arms, moonlight glancing off our skin. I stare into his soul before we kiss again. This is his first visit and I hope it is not his last, but I already know that the guards are climbing the stairs in my master’s anguish.
“Please go?” I gasp, desperate for him to leave but desperate for him to stay. He catches one last kiss from my lips and slips out of the window just as the door opens and my master rages in. I am his property and no one must touch me.
Want to check out more of my writing? Try my poetry or flash fiction pieces.
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