Red and Grey

We’re driving, headed west, making our way on a highway that might as well be a latitude line, only bending with the curvature of the earth, through Kansas or Nebraska or Oklahoma or somewhere, just miles of not much and even more not much and there is a storm on the horizon, purple and violent, could be a mile away, could be twenty, we don’t know, but we’re driving right to it, the road making us play chicken with it, see if we can dodge the barrage of lightning, run through it like a gunfight. But there’s no way to tell, even from here, which direction it might be heading, though it’s common knowledge that storms around here move west to east, there’s no way to tell whether it’s going to take a dance around us, a waltz or a foxtrot, or it will tango its way right at us. So we continue on, because that’s what you do anyway, and the storm doesn’t move to the left or the right, but just gets bigger, the sky around it no longer visible, a massive anvil shape that nature and the interstate highway system are about to Wile E. Coyote on us. We are in it and we are not scared, looking up at the hail with bemusement, the windshield protecting us, like God is on an overpass throwing golf balls down to scare us, they simply bounce off of our hood and in the puddles around us, something celebratory about it really, if armageddon was one big party, it would begin with hail and purple-orange light and a parade of drag queens would cross the street, catching it in enormous hats before tipping over.

When the hail ends and things become silent and the sky turns green and the rain turns from fun little water static to little arrowlets shooting into the sides of cars, we pull off the road and roll into a small town where the people are running into houses, the houses with nothing to run into, standing bravely before the storm. A bit of cloud becomes a little pointy and makes a move, swirling, down for the ground. But it is only flirting with it, a nudge on the shoulder before the real pass is made, before the earth gets a good fucking, and we’re standing in the way. So we run, because that’s what you do, figuring we can forgo a ditch if something better comes around, taking the backyard route, leaping over fences and big wheels and we find a cellar, its doors flapping on their hinges and we run into it without saying anything to each other, as if we could hear anything besides the howl of the wind, like an evil choir stuck on bass, a lone soprano of an air raid signal over it all, damned if it isn’t the loudest thing we’ve ever heard, and in the cellar we each take a door and pull it shut, a bathroom stall latch broken, but we find a piece of steel, a leftover from someone’s car, attached to a chain and slide it between the handles. We have lighters and use them, finding ourselves alone, no people, rats, cockroaches, a clean cement floor and a bench, but never completely alone really, as the evil choir snakes its horrible message into the door frame, now with percussion, the slamming of it.

We stand in the middle of the floor beside the bench hugging each other tightly, because that’s what you do when you’re scared, because we are scared, like a cellar door could stop an evil choir if it really wanted to get in, no, this is real and we are sure of death, can feel it rap our faces like a rude child, so we hold each other close, because that’s what you do when everything else is petrifying. And I kiss your cheek because it’s life, that’s what life is, in a kiss on your cheek, and you know that too because you turn your head and give me one on the mouth, on the breath, on the soul of me, because that’s where it is, lying in a scream just behind my tongue. There’s nothing else to do but this to fight the howling death outside but keep proving that we’re alive, alive right here behind a cellar door, protecting each other with life. We’re so scared that we kiss enough to split each other’s lips, the blood more proof to the grey evil, what we got is red, real color, what do you have but void? So we pull at each other’s clothes to get closer, the shirts off, your heartbeat against mine in our skin, still in our skin, and then the pants and the shoes and the underwear, all of it on me, all of your skin against me, to warm it, because that’s what skin is for, and you take me to the bench, a quick, lighter-brandishing scour of the shelves finding corn oil, a big jug for a fryer, and we open it and pour some out into the darkness, the howling no match for the corn oil, the slamming doors no threat to your cock. I straddle you, the slippery sluice down between my asscheeks and tickling down my thighs, my hands on your shoulders, my back bent, you enter me and I howl, in synch with the choir, the overwhelming full and tearing burn as layers of muscle loosen up. Why don’t you try this, you fucking evil storm?

If anything it gets louder and I yell out louder, because I can, whether you’re howling or not, probably not, and the pounding doors go faster and begin to rattle. We’re really pissing it off. I’m bouncing on your thighs until mine begin to go sore, but I don’t care because I’m full of raw life, fucking life, screaming out of me. Glass breaks outside, burst, burst, burst and something else that was rattling stops, whistles and crashes. I'm fucking you as hard as I can, as fast as I can, the cruel pleasure of your cock in my ass, the sweat and the tears on my face, I really am fucking scared, and you take my ass and pull me faster, even faster, and I take you here, take your hand to my cock, the pleasure of life, us, and the world lifts, the fire in my thighs makes a visit to heaven to balance out the flavor, and I start to rattle and lift and crash. You, your face somewhere in the dark, make a sound, my name, to put a name to this feeling, you shake and scream yourself and I pump over you slowly, to draw it out, a smirk on my face only God and I know about. The storm outside, blushing, slowly gives up and turns back to rain, because that’s all it knows to do, and it stops rattling the doors, and we kiss. We kiss each other hard because that’s what you do when you’ve won.