Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission by M. J. Lawless Page A
Authors: M. J. Lawless
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desired to do so.
Chapter Nine
Returning to the croft, Kris stared for a few moments at her car keys hanging by the door. Her Toyota was still outside, the only vehicle now on the dirt track that led up to the house.
She felt numb. That in itself was not so much of a shock. What was perhaps so surprising to her was how calm she felt. Her anxiety was gone. It was not simply a realisation that the immediate threat had now departed, but also her armour was spreading across her whole body. This is what it did so often — it was her protection against real life, her apathy, her defence.
With a shrug, she raised her left arm and lifted her keys from the hook. Everything sensible told her to leave. It had been fun while it lasted, perhaps, but it was clear that Daniel was fucked up in some way and the chances were that she would get hurt if she stayed. She’d been hurt too many times.
Entering the interior of the house, she decided that she might as well get as many things as she could. She was not entirely sure where Daniel had deposited her phone — probably in the wardrobe in the bedroom, which was the only locked place she knew of for certain in Comrie, no doubt stashed away there with his precious photograph. Well, fuck him. She’d find some way of getting it back.
Crossing the living area, she paused by the table. Her pad still lay out on its wooden surface, open at one of the drawings of the birdman. Loplop. She paused. Loplop. Damn that bastard. He’d seen it when she couldn’t, and she suspected that sometimes — just sometimes — this stranger who had only come into her life barely a half dozen days before could see aspects of her more clearly than she could herself. She also had a suspicion that the mirror into Daniel Logan was more fascinating to her than she cared to admit.
Leave. Go. Get out.
Instead, she crossed to the shelf and picked up the volume of Yeats’s poetry that she had seen there. Flicking through the index, she found the page she was looking for.
“A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs...”
She nodded to herself, her mind balanced between amused cynicism and darker desires. She remembered something about Yeats, some lines that she had read long before and which had taken her fancy. Turning the pages, she found them again — ah, yes! There they were: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”. Was there some revelation at hand, a second coming?
Kris had stopped being surprised at her premeditated actions now. It was hard to explain, but she simply didn’t feel scared any more. A line had been crossed — a line that should never have been crossed — but she understood perhaps what had happened. She had poured fuel onto Daniel’s stifled conflagration, yes: this was not blaming herself — no, she had no intention of being a victim, but it was the realisation by a woman who so often acted according to necessity that desire, when finally given free reign, could be a dangerous thing.
She looked down at her left hand, lifting it from the book and rotating it in the air before her eyes like a foreign object. That was how it often felt to her, her drawing hand. Something alien, a body attached to her own, something with which she struggled and that refused to accept her will, no matter how hard she tried to control it. Sinister, literally. The hand of the devil refusing obedience, demanding rebellion. Like so many artists, she had followed the easy get-out that she had to wait for inspiration to strike, but Daniel was right about one thing: she needed discipline to let her desire flow freely. Necessity was not the enemy of desire, but its absolute condition.
Well, if he could see into her soul, then she would show him that she could see into his. Sitting down at the table, she dropped the book of verse by her side while placing her car keys on the wooden
Chapter Nine
Returning to the croft, Kris stared for a few moments at her car keys hanging by the door. Her Toyota was still outside, the only vehicle now on the dirt track that led up to the house.
She felt numb. That in itself was not so much of a shock. What was perhaps so surprising to her was how calm she felt. Her anxiety was gone. It was not simply a realisation that the immediate threat had now departed, but also her armour was spreading across her whole body. This is what it did so often — it was her protection against real life, her apathy, her defence.
With a shrug, she raised her left arm and lifted her keys from the hook. Everything sensible told her to leave. It had been fun while it lasted, perhaps, but it was clear that Daniel was fucked up in some way and the chances were that she would get hurt if she stayed. She’d been hurt too many times.
Entering the interior of the house, she decided that she might as well get as many things as she could. She was not entirely sure where Daniel had deposited her phone — probably in the wardrobe in the bedroom, which was the only locked place she knew of for certain in Comrie, no doubt stashed away there with his precious photograph. Well, fuck him. She’d find some way of getting it back.
Crossing the living area, she paused by the table. Her pad still lay out on its wooden surface, open at one of the drawings of the birdman. Loplop. She paused. Loplop. Damn that bastard. He’d seen it when she couldn’t, and she suspected that sometimes — just sometimes — this stranger who had only come into her life barely a half dozen days before could see aspects of her more clearly than she could herself. She also had a suspicion that the mirror into Daniel Logan was more fascinating to her than she cared to admit.
Leave. Go. Get out.
Instead, she crossed to the shelf and picked up the volume of Yeats’s poetry that she had seen there. Flicking through the index, she found the page she was looking for.
“A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs...”
She nodded to herself, her mind balanced between amused cynicism and darker desires. She remembered something about Yeats, some lines that she had read long before and which had taken her fancy. Turning the pages, she found them again — ah, yes! There they were: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”. Was there some revelation at hand, a second coming?
Kris had stopped being surprised at her premeditated actions now. It was hard to explain, but she simply didn’t feel scared any more. A line had been crossed — a line that should never have been crossed — but she understood perhaps what had happened. She had poured fuel onto Daniel’s stifled conflagration, yes: this was not blaming herself — no, she had no intention of being a victim, but it was the realisation by a woman who so often acted according to necessity that desire, when finally given free reign, could be a dangerous thing.
She looked down at her left hand, lifting it from the book and rotating it in the air before her eyes like a foreign object. That was how it often felt to her, her drawing hand. Something alien, a body attached to her own, something with which she struggled and that refused to accept her will, no matter how hard she tried to control it. Sinister, literally. The hand of the devil refusing obedience, demanding rebellion. Like so many artists, she had followed the easy get-out that she had to wait for inspiration to strike, but Daniel was right about one thing: she needed discipline to let her desire flow freely. Necessity was not the enemy of desire, but its absolute condition.
Well, if he could see into her soul, then she would show him that she could see into his. Sitting down at the table, she dropped the book of verse by her side while placing her car keys on the wooden
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