Fifty-four
The earth solidified beneath him. The vault of the
blue sky arched far overhead. A multitude of sensory details raced in to
fill the space between.
He was taking a brutal pounding on the back of a
stallion. The wind roared in his ears. Ahead, a lean, white mare leaped
a fence of logs with infinite grace. Evie’s shriek of joy shattered the
stillness of the rainy afternoon. They ran from the thunder and the steel
gray sky behind them. Bolts of lightning turned the dark afternoon to
blinding brilliance.
Corin remembered that long forgotten afternoon in the
rolling hills of the Massachusetts countryside early in their marriage.
He had been Billy then. The first of their children had been conceived
here. The playback of the old sequence of memory swept him up in complete
sensory lucidity and carried him along, moment by moment, just like it had
happened once long ago.
Evie led the way to the old barn they had found in
the middle of nowhere. The house was a burned husk, the gravel road
overgrown with weeds. Only the barn stood unscathed, an isolated and
untouched oasis of shelter and beauty in the sparse springtime
wilderness. They had used it once or twice in the past few weeks as a
haven for their lovemaking.
The cold rain broke loose a hundred yards from
sanctuary. Billy’s breath caught in his throat as the icy water soaked
through his clothing. He cried out protest as Evie shrieked with
laughter.
The horses thundered into the musky barn, snorting
and prancing in circles. Evie dismounted, and Billy salvaged their
sleeping bag before turning the animals loose with a slap to their flanks to graze
. Evie climbed to the loft overhead and clapped her hands.
“Toss it up!”
Billy tossed up the goose down bag. By the time he
scaled the ladder himself, she was stripping away the last of her wet
clothing from a lean body rippling with reflected highlights. She dropped
to her knees on the sleeping bag and watched while he took his turn to
undress. Her dark eyes held his gaze as he knelt before her. Their lips
touched. Slowly, he eased her down upon the cool nylon fabric. The silky
touch of her body against him took his breath away as it had the first
time they had met, as it always would.
Billy held their lingering kiss, aroused, but
allowing their passions build. The day darkened.
Evie’s sighs of growing passion paused at their greatest intensity.
Thunder rumbled from the approaching storm in a moment that became
suspended in time. And then she shuddered, and lunged up against him with
a cry of sweet agony that carried them away to the reward of all flesh for
having fallen temptation to the forces of creation.
A bolt of white lightning illuminated the
moment, and held it poised.
“This is the moment, Billy. Until eternity
passes, I shall be waiting for you.”
The feedback loop of the Matrix Gateway reached
maximum intensity. The pattern of Corin’s psyche transferred to permanent
storage. All of time and space came to a standstill, and Corin’s isolated
moment of total and complete bliss expanded to encompass forever.
The End
