Swelter

Well, I haven't posted, (or written, really) anything in a long time... this one just popped out of nowhere. Why is it that only the most messed up of my story inspirations ever see the light of day? Yeah... Anyway, tell me what you think.


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Swelter
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He sat in the open window, staring out into the dark, the long twisting trail of his cigarette drifting into the still, humid night. The wind had stalled for three days now and heat had built upon heat, captured and held by the thick, hanging canopy of trees like a physical presence in the air. He could almost see it lurking there in the dark, like the heat was a predator waiting, hungry in the jungle deep.

He shifted uneasily on his perch, drawing the smoke in deep, barely noticing the sweat running down his forehead, stinging into his eyes, gathering across his bare shoulders to pool in the small of his back. The feeling had come. An itching rustle under his skin, a tingling just behind his nerves, just enough to drive a man mad with wanting to scratch at it. Deep somewhere underneath the feeling came up from inside him, on nights like this, still nights when the breeze fell silent over the watching trees.

He sat and smoked, staring hard into the vast jungle night that unfolded out from the doorstep of his tiny cabin. Sat until the rustle under his skin became a humming; until the itching began to burn. And when he could sit no longer, he flung his spent cigarette into the shadows of the trees and left his home behind, to stalk into the unrelenting dark.

He followed the smell of the sea. Moving through the nearly impenetrable blackness of the undergrowth with an instinct honed by his itching skin, feeling for the sea. Grasping vines twined around his ankles, leaves seeming to reach out to brush his naked chest as he passed, as though they were drawn to the burn he carried with him. And with each step, the tremor inside him grew.

Finally he emerged onto a stretch of moonlit beach. White, white sand against the heaving surf, shining in the fragile light. How he hated the sea. The jungle hung heavy and watchful at his back, and he longed to dive back into its dark wet heat, back to the place where he had felt the first true haven in all the long years of his life. He had been on the island for many years now, and the jungle always called him home.

He hated the sea. Hated the churning, the cold vastness, the warning in his heart.

But the itch was burning so deep tonight, and even the sight of the waves and their nauseous turning wasn’t enough to drive him away into the trees. Instead he turned down the beach, setting himself toward the small gathering of huts, nestled among torchlight at the edge of the forest.

One tiny hut sat alone in the darkness, set away from the others, some invisible line drawn between it and its fellows. It called to him, tugged at his skin as surely as a moth to a flickering light. Silently, he pushed aside the rough grass-hanging in the doorway and stepped inside.

She was stretched out on a low pallet on the narrow floor of the hut. Only a thin cloth covered her nakedness, and even with her slight, adolescent body she seemed to fill the space to overflowing with the weight of her sickness.

There was a fever upon her, a deep fever that killed sure but slow. The blanket covering her hung wet and heavy with her sweat, her scent thick in the air. Tremors ran through her in waves, bone-deep shivers that pulled dry moans from her throat as her head lolled weakly on her slender neck. She hadn't noticed him enter, lost as she was in her delirium, but at the sight of her the itch inside him flared, making his skin tingle and twitch, his pulse throbbing heavy at the base of his skull. His whole body seemed to tighten, to fill. His blood surged so loud he was sure she could hear it, and perhaps she did because her head stilled and her eyes opened to bare white slits in her flushed face, blearily seeking out this strange new source of heat in the room.

He moved with carefully controlled need, brimming with his need, crouching above her feet like a pale wraith suspended in the air. With a quick sweep he tugged the covering from her body, staring down the slight length of her stretched out before him, illuminated by thin shafts of moonlight leaking in through cracks in the rough reed walls. She was all rounds and angles, a few remnants of childish flesh clinging to the budding curves of womanhood, and over all was the harsh grey cast of fevered starvation.

But he did not see her cracked lips or her yellowed eyes, the sharp angry planes of her tortured body. He saw only the tender mound of her sex, the peaks of her breasts, and in his hunger, she was nothing but beauty.

With trembling fingers he moved to touch her. White snake, white devil they had called him when he first arrived on the island, and indeed his hand seemed almost to glow against her rich, earthy color as he reached out to stroke along the delicate curve of her foot. Her body twitched hard, nerves heightened painfully in her fevered skin, jumping at the unexpected touch. She moaned in confusion but in her weakness, her helplessness, she could not even lift her head from the floor.

The humming inside him overwhelmed him then, and with rough, clumsy movements he tore open his trousers, freeing his cock into the hot air. He was obscenely swollen, hugely distorted in his need, hard as the core of the earth. He felt impossibly large, hovering there over her fragile body; but then it always seemed to him that when the feeling rose inside, his entire being became huge, engorged to monstrosity.

Roughly he grasped her ankles, raising one slender leg to his mouth to greedily suckle her soft skin. She was hot, so hot under his lips, burning him with the deadly fire that ate at her insides. He licked and gnawed at her, humming with his need, tongue and teeth and slick spit up over the tender curve of her thigh.

He pushed her knees wide, and her sex gaped before him, radiating heat. He nosed in deep to inhale her scent, to taste her fever juices, her sweat. A high, weak keening escaped her as he took her soft folds between his teeth, wormed his tongue deep inside her. Her legs spasmed wildly around his shoulders as he ruthlessly attacked the nerves buried deep in her cunt, but she made no move to resist him, could not, could only clench her fingers weakly into the blanket as he made her shake from deep in her core. Could only lay, helpless, and feel.

They were both panting, sweating, chests heaving like overworked beasts as he dragged himself up to lay flush on top of her, grasping her chin, staring into her mad fever eyes. They were nothing but sick yellow whites, lost. He didn't know if she even knew what was happening here, if she even saw or felt him as he pressed the swollen head of his cock against the hot hot core of her body. Maybe she believed she was dying, maybe she thought that this was death, this creature of need come to claim her.

He knew nothing of death. She may have been right.

He growled as he pushed, slow and inexorable, feeling her sex stretch open for him, her skin pulled taut, almost beyond endurance around his throbbing width. His need burst out through his skin as he thrust, overwhelming him with the sensation of her. Some distant part of him could see them there, sprawled on the floor, as he heaved and growled wild like an animal, her limbs flopping like dead things as he pressed deep, pushed deep, forced his way inside her, steam rising from their flesh as the beast carried her down.

And then her body seized up, her eyes wide and unseeing, and her cunt rippled and pulsed around him like a wave. And he thrust hard and his body surged until heat built upon heat and her fever became his own.

In his ears, the evil surf crashed against a dark shore.

**

Sense returned slowly, quietly, as he lay sprawled across her limp body. Gently he raised his head to look into her face. Her eyes were closed, finally, though there was still life; she still breathed, shallow and low. He knew she would not live out the night, whatever he had or had not done to her. Death had claimed her long before. He was not its agent, whatever she may have believed.

He dragged himself to his feet, roughly pushing his way out through the doorway, stumbling like a drunkard into the cooler nighttime air. But light flickered there and suddenly he was brought short by the huddled ring of villagers standing silent and watchful just outside the hut, their dark, flickering eyes reflecting the torchlight, ripe with indecipherable thoughts.

As one they flinched as he staggered forward, his body gleaming naked pale under the moon, his skin wet still with her sweat, her juices, his cock hanging limp and dripping from his open pants, the scent of death clinging to him like an omen. They shifted and stared as he approached them, some muttering curses or whispering prayers, making signs against evil as he searched their faces for some hint of the truth.

Some believed him to be a demon. Others thought he was a god, even ventured to the edge of his jungle, bearing offerings, sacrifices. The sea of eyes stared back at him, implacable, judging, afraid. Some of them believed he brought the sickness, and perhaps he did, perhaps he tainted the very air around him like some festering wound. He had no answers for their questions. Or their prayers.

If only they knew. Perhaps then they could tell him.

But they only stood in silence, watching as he turned, and walked into the dark. Watching, until the jungle swallowed him.

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the end...
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