Lesbian Urban Fantasy Short Story. 3K Words.
An American Arabian Night
The rain poured down in endless
sheets as the wind buffeted the Chicago
motel. The young lady was crying as she checked in. Fay Tilki, twenty five, was
what it said on her ID. The clerk didn't ask questions. He'd worked the front
desk long enough to know when someone checks in with no luggage in the middle
of the night, just make sure their credit card clears, and let them be on their
way.
She swiped at her running mascara,
sniffing a vague thank you to the clerk, then took the elevator up to room 213.
Fay's heart had broken into a million pieces. She thought she'd found love at
last. Eleanor was almost forty, and glamorous and poised like a classic
socialite. Her lips were like roses, and for two years Fay couldn't think of
anyone else, as she lost herself in Eleanor's arms.
Then tonight, she found that even
the softest roses still have thorns. She'd worked all day and most of the night
at the art gallery, fetching coffee and hanging paintings for the gallery
owner. The big showing was tomorrow. She hadn't planned to be home before midnight , but the showing was much smaller than
planned. She left work just after ten and went straight home.
The trail led from the front door
up the stairs. Unfamiliar high heels, a skirt here, a bra there, then she found
them. Eleanor and her dark sexy smile, staring into the eyes of another girl.
"What the hell?!" Fay
screamed. So did the other girl, a tiny blonde thing, all hips and collarbones.
She was probably only nineteen.
"Oh, Fay, I didn't think you'd
be home yet." Cool, calm, though there was a ghost of fear in her jade
green eyes, Eleanor stared down her nose at her. "Are you sure you
wouldn't like to join us?"
Fay felt the fury in her mounting,
boiling out of control.
"No!" She grabbed Eleanor's
favorite high heeled shoes and threw them into the dresser mirror, a crack
going across the glass. "How could you? I trusted you!"
The word 'love' didn't cross her lips. They hadn't said it yet. Even as it
had burned in Fay's heart since the day Eleanor took her hand. She had waited,
waited too long it seemed, for Eleanor to say it first. It was all too clear
the word wasn't in her vocabulary.
The little blonde mouse had hidden
under a sheet, blue eyes staring out, trying to avoid being caught in the
crossfire. Fay was just disgusted by her.
"Is this what you do when I'm
out working double shifts? Bring home college coeds to fuck in our bed while
I'm paying the bills for your art?!"
Eleanor called herself an artiste. She believed she understood the
world better than anyone else, yet barely worked and hardly made a dime. She
was always on the verge of a breakthrough. A breakthrough that never came.
"I'm looking for beauty in
this world to be my muse. I thought you understood that?" She tilted her
head, tossing back her long black hair. "You know I need to be
inspired."
"I was your muse." Fay
whispered, a painful grinding coming from the teeth in her jaw. Eleanor looked
at her, a combination of fondness and pity in her gaze.
"Yes, you were. You didn't
expect me to limit myself to one?"
It was like a door slamming in her
face. Fay couldn't bear another second in that room. If she stayed she'd wind
up hurting someone. So she turned and walked back out into the pouring rain.
Sprawled across the bedspread, Fay stared
out the window. Little empty bottles from the mini bar marched across the
bedside table, but it hadn't helped. She still felt like she was drowning.
Eleanor had completely duped her. All her hopes for their future shattered.
Even this cheap Arabian Nights
themed motel made her think of Eleanor in the way the reds and golds of the
wallpaper swirled together. She would have painted them in swirls, while
teasing that the tangling of colors on the page spoke of intimacy and lust. Fay
should have known she wasn't the only color on the page.
The clock on the desk blinked twelve twenty one , and there was a twitch and
a rattle in Fay's purse. A tiny shimmering phial not much larger than a tube of
lip gloss but made of deep blue glass flecked with gold, rolled to the ground
from her purse on the chair, the tip falling open.
Fay didn't even turn her head as
the shimmer of light behind her resolved into the form of a woman, with
beautifully deep brown eyes, canted slightly, long rich brown hair with
highlights of wheat gold, and skin that was pale as the sands of the Çirali
beach where she'd been found. She wore no clothing, because it never pleased
her to do so, but now that she was fully formed, there was no flaw in her human
guise.
"Hello Parisa," Fay said
weakly. It had been years since they first met. Fay had been such a doe eyed
optimist. When she'd found the vial, hidden under layers of sea salt and
verdigris, she'd only been thinking of having a keepsake from her visit to her
ancestral home. There had been no thought about whether it was a relic, or if
magic might really exist. She was too old for fairytales. But that night, at
ten oh one, she'd stroked the rough textured sea grime, and her smoke had
rushed out.
Parisa had always loved palindromes. She floated into the bed beside Fay,
and rested her head beside hers on the pillow. Fay turned to her, her brown
eyes lost and sad.
"Why? Why did this happen? It shouldn't have happened like this."
Fay pressed her head into Parisa's chest, trying to stop her sobs.
"It was destined to happen."
Parisa's voice was a echo of beauty, a song that played on the air like the
distant call of wind chimes. "That woman is a glutton of lust, and she
never understood you."
"But I thought if I wished…" Fay sniffed, but Parisa
interrupted.
"You wished to know art, to
have a life like hers. That you were given. You wished that woman would love
you, in the same way you desperately yearned for her, but she was not capable
of such a feeling."
The first time Fay met Parisa, she
thought it had to be a dream. She was stunningly beautiful, and looked twenty
one. As a lonely eighteen year old lesbian still discovering her own identity,
having a beautiful naked woman appear in her bedroom, smiling that smile,
kissing her lips, it had to be a fantasy. There were no djinn, no magic lamps,
those were all just stories.
Parisa kissed her again now, and
Fay melted into her familiar embrace, returning her sweet passion with her own
desperate need for comfort. Parisa was the ultimate fantasy, a being she could
feel and taste and be touched by, but like any fantasy, if they were not alone,
she disappeared, invisible.
Parisa pulled back, smiling that
sweet smile. Parisa loved Fay, though she showed utter disdain anytime Fay
wanted to speak of other people. Fay wanted to involve her in her life, make
her feel more real, and make herself feel less insane, but Parisa didn't care
for any of it. She only cared for Fay.
For years, Fay didn't date, she had
Parisa to hold her, but you can only date a ghost no one else can see for so
long before you wish you had a love that could be shared. Parisa existed, to
Fay, but she wasn't truly real. Then
Fay met Eleanor, and she yearned for her the moment she met her. Something in
the way her jade green eyes were set off
by her plum wine lips, that way her straight black hair fell to her
rounded hips.
She'd never made a request of
Parisa before. Parisa had told her the rules, she had told her that she was
limited to three, and at the end of her third, Parisa would leave her forever.
Wishing wasn't an option if it meant losing her, so Fay had kept from wishing,
kept from reaching out greedily for all that she might have.
Then she saw Eleanor… and wished
almost all of it away. For what? Barely two years of passion, and tumult, of
paying Eleanor's bills, while watching her flirt with waitresses, of always
forgiving her flaws when she'd touch Fay's face and tell her how beautiful she
was.
"It hurts so much. I wanted to
know real love. I didn't realize it could turn into such pain." Again she
broke into tears, burying her face in Parisa's shoulder, smelling her scent of
figs and pomegranate. Fay didn't really know if Parisa understood feelings,
sometimes she was as distant as a cat, but she was here for her. She took
comfort in her arms, and as Parisa's hands stroked across her body in such a
familiar way, Fay surrendered to her fantasy, and took comfort in her too.
Sometime before dawn, Fay lay naked
in Parisa's arms, their legs twined together.
"I regret wishing for Eleanor
now. I wasted a wish on someone so shallow. Now I don't have anything left. I
can't bear to wish for anything else if it means I might lose you."
Parisa stared into her eyes, her
dark eyes looked so alien sometimes, but now they seemed to burn into hers.
"There is one way to keep me, your
wish would be gone, but I would stay." Her lips curved in a smile that was
filled with promise. "You have to be careful in how you speak it. You must
wish that I stay with you forever, and I can never return to the bottle
again."
Fay stared up at her, hope in her
heart warring with a vague feeling of dread. Parisa had always been with her.
Parisa had always loved her, needed her, and warmed her bed for years. Yet how
could she become real? It seemed impossible. In all the years they'd been
together, she hadn't said it, not once. Why did she mention it now?
"I thought there was no
escape. I thought the bottle was what made you… exist." Fay said
questioningly. Parisa smiled, her
canines looking more like fangs.
"The bottle is the chain meant
to bind my powers. It was designed to keep any one person from keeping one like
me too long. The fear being that a djinn is a power to strong for any
mortal." She stroked Fay's jaw line with a delicate finger. "But you,
my darling, have held me so close, for so long, that for you alone, I might
escape."
Fay still had doubts, but when
Parisa's teak black eyes stared into hers, she felt like she did the night they
met. In awe, astounded, all doubts slipping away. Parisa pushed the vial into
Fay's hands, and she held it tight.
"Trust me." She
whispered, a sibilance in her speech. Fay felt spellbound, and as Parisa's
mouth found her neck, the expected kiss turned into startled pain. She let out
a sharp cry, shaking as the pain got sharper, then slowly she eased back.
Parisa drew away, her mouth covered in blood, and Fay quailed.
"What are you doing?" She gasped, feeling dizzy
and afraid.
"We are bound now. Your blood
is within me. I belong to you." Parisa smiled her alien smile, all the
more frightening for the blood around her lips, and whispered. "Now, you
must make your wish, Mistress."
Fay shuddered, overwhelmed. Parisa
was just a fantasy, a light as ether girlfriend who appeared when she was
lonely to give her incredible pleasure, then she'd disappear into the dawn.
There had to be more than that. Parisa was old, impossibly old, what could Fay
hope to offer her?
"Why do you want to be with
me?" Fay asked softly. Parisa blinked, as if no one ever thought to ask
immortal beings 'why'. Her eyes lifted back to Fay's as open and guileless as a
child.
"Because you love me. You
didn't use me the moment you saw me, then toss me away. You didn't lust for
power or revenge. You were simply happy… to have me."
Fay put her hand to the ethereal
woman's cheek and smiled. It was true. For so long they'd been together. Parisa
was hers. Not like a cat or a servant, but as someone she just wanted to love.
She deserved a chance to be real.
"Okay." Fay gently
smiled, and Parisa's face lit with what actually looked like joy. She wrote out
a string of words in old Cyrillic, and repeated them aloud. Then Fay took a
deep breath, staring into her eyes.
At the first couple words the rain
outside stopped, as abruptly as it shut off by a switch, then the ground below
her shook. She kept reading, and as she did so the phial in her hand began to
glow, brighter and brighter, slick with Fay's blood where Parisa had touched
it. Fay closed her eyes, unable to stare into the light any longer as she said
the final word.
The bottle exploded with a sound
like a bomb, and blasted into sheer dust. Except for once small piece of blue
and gold glass, a hot near molten ball, that ripped into Fay's chest embedding
in the skin, a molten icicle going right to her sternum.
She screamed as the heat burned,
but Parisa's arms were around her, whispering.
"It's alright, it's
alright." She kissed her cheek. "The pain will stop in just a
second."
Fay winced, but looked up at her.
Parisa looked different, no less beautiful, no less perfect, but the light
threw shadows across her skin in away it never had, and there was a spark in
her eyes that was never there before. It was raining again. Just as she'd said,
the pain faded. Fay's eyes looked over Parisa, amazed by the tiny subtle
changes, she noticed the blue and gold glass thrust into her chest as well.
"What does this mean?"
She touched the suddenly perfectly cool glass in her sternum. Parisa smiled
brightly.
"It means I can never leave
you. We are bound together. If I am ever away from your side, simply touching
the glass to think of me will bring me home." Fay smiled, a bit awed.
"It's… crazy. I can't believe
you're real." Parisa smiled, and kissed her. Fay had felt her before, but
it had always been almost unreal, an almost intangible quality to her touch,
now the other woman had heat and actual weight in the form that wrapped her
arms around her. Fay couldn't believe her luck. She'd thought her life was over
just hours ago, but now… all her wishes had been granted.
Hours later, Fay woke up groggy and
staring into a sunlit window. She was alone. Parisa… as always… seemed like a
dream. The girl she saw in the dark but never in the daylight. Unfortunately,
Eleanor's betrayal still felt all too real. Her bed was empty. Naturally. None
of that could have been real.
Her fingers scratched an itch on
her chest, and made a clinking sound when her nails hit glass. Oh god. It really had happened. The
glass, the binding, the… incredibly passionate hours afterward… She swallowed.
It was a dream… that came true.
That moment of clarity made her
aware of the coppery taste in the back of her throat, and aching pain in her
neck. There was blood on the bed sheets and what looked like glass, in a powder
as fine as sand.
"Parisa?" She spoke
aloud, her voice sandpapery and weak. She didn't see her, but she thought she
saw a reddish smudge on the bathroom door. Fay put a hand to her neck, it was
bruised, but healed. At least she hadn't bled that much. She walked across the
room, hearing the shower running.
She opened the door, facing the
shower, and stopped dead. Parisa was reveling in the hot water, arching her
naked chest into the spray, and completely covered in blood.
"My god… Parisa…" A lead
feeling dropped deep in her belly. "What did you do?"
The inhuman girl looked at her,
smiling brightly in the water.
"I belong to you now. No woman
will ever cause you pain again." Her black eyes gleamed, blood all over
her hands as she rinsed them in the spray. There was no maliciousness in her
tone, no hate, just simple sweet loyalty.
Fay sucked in a deep breath,
stepped back out and closed the door. Her mind in shock, she walked to the TV and turned it on.
"Again on the news, a shocking
double murder here in Chicago 's
west side apartments. The police have no leads at this time, but are searching
for the homes only other resident, Fay Tilki, a Turkish American who also
shared the flat."
Fay heard the shower turn off in
the bathroom, and she clicked off the TV. It was true what her grandmother used
to say.
Be
careful what you wish for. You might not like what you get.
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