The Stumble After The Fall
Even though it was not in his nature to cheat, or to lie, or even to requisition the attentions of other women just to feed his wilting ego, he found himself naked and curled around someone who was not his own.
He’d tried to resist, but she had some kind of magic powers.
First he was pulled in by the tractor beams of her green eyes, then he was netted helplessly in the tangle of her dark brown hair, like a fly caught in a web. And when her honey voice dripped in his ear with the words, “so, do you have a girlfriend?” he heard himself answering “no” and then wondering why he’d lied.
And when she asked him if he wanted to dance with her, he didn’t need to reply, because his feet had decided. She led him off and they moved together on the dance floor, hips seared together with the heat of the rhythm, and the crowd around them melted away because he was locked again in her tractor beam gaze, and suddenly he thought that maybe it doesn’t count as cheating if you’re under a spell.
And when she said, “let’s get out of here,” he already knew he would go with her, even as he knew he shouldn’t go with her. And she grabbed his hand and led him outside and he was powerless to resist because she’d well and truly La Belle Dame Sans Merci’d him, and he pictured himself stumbling out of her lair tomorrow a pale shadow sucked dry of himself, and he thought that maybe such a punishment would make the impending act really quite justified.
And when he was on her bed kissing her, a fleeting thought knocked through his brain that he’d never felt these sheets before, and that was somehow alarming, but the desire in his body told his brain to hush, and it was a desire so unnaturally strong it could only have been aroused by her sorcery, so whose fault was it, anyway?
And the next morning when he woke up, with light streaking through the blinds and illuminating the white freshness of the room, he at first wondered where he was. And then he remembered flashes of milky curves, and dark hair grabbed in handfuls, and unfamiliar sheets, and searing bursts of pleasure, and he knew.
And he looked over at her as she slept, and she looked strangely ordinary. Just like the room looked ordinary. No crystals or pentagrams or potions, just clothes and shoes and magazines.
And he fumbled for his t-shirt, and thought about his girlfriend, and thought about how to explain where he’d been.
And then he stumbled out of the apartment, away from the sleeping girl — a pale shadow sucked dry of himself.
