Loss Of Breath
There were better ways for lovers to meet. He’d been tying his shoelace on a street corner, his fat, ripped cello case leaning against the wall, and she’d come flying around it, the wind dramatizing her hair as she clamped the case notes for Anderson v AgriCorp tight against her chest, her mind still in the courtroom. Of course, she tripped over him, the case notes escaping out like doves, her hair now a soft blonde blindfold through which she saw nothing but her imminent death. On instinct, he reached out and grabbed her, preventing her hips from smashing against the concrete and softening her fall as her legs gave way from under her. Meanwhile, the cello case toppled to the ground, twanged loudly, and fell silent.
It didn’t seem like it, but the whole thing was over in seconds, her own hands reaching the pavement mere heartbeats before her face. She tried pulling herself to her feet, but something still clung to her. She twisted her head round and grunted. As politely as she could under the circumstances–which was in no way polite at all–she told him he could take his fucking hands off her now, thank you very much.
He liked the feeling of her hips in his hands. Under different circumstances he might have felt brave enough to run them a little higher. Or a little lower. Today, however, he could do neither. As much as he tried, and he genuinely tried, he just couldn’t pull his hands away.
She’d pushed herself to her feet now and was simultaneously trying to brush him off and scream for help. But nothing she did could rid herself of the man welded to her lower torso. It was then that she realised she couldn’t move her left leg. Or rather, she could move it, but not as far as she would have liked. Which, right now, was half a mile down the street and into the nearest police station.
Velcro? Was that what this was? As ludicrous as it sounded, even inside her head, she couldn’t think what else it could be. She kicked and kicked, trying to kick him away, or kick herself off him, but no amount of kicking–and she was doing a lot of kicking–could separate her left leg from his right. More out of frustration that anything else, she roared and pushed hard against his chest. He was in the process of rising, and in any other scenario would have fallen backwards and cracked his skull. As it was, he stayed firmly in place. As did her hands, glued–for want of a better word–against his ribcage.
They stood for a moment, the two of them, virtual statues, he with his fingers stitched to her hips, she with her palms ironed to the front of his shirt, their legs banded together like crude splints. The absurd thought came to her that he was strangely attractive. More in a Clark Kent way than a Jamie Dornan way, but given what her last few boyfriends had been like even that was a bonus. She could do–and had done–a lot worse. For his part, he glossed over her rack of blonde hair–he’d always preferred brunettes–and concentrated instead on her face. Her eyes were on fire from something other than the frustration and impossibility of their situation, while her cheekbones could have been plucked direct from an oversized Taschen art-book.
It was all so sickeningly addictive. They felt it as keenly as the bonds that held them physically together. A hot flame flickered in her groin and spread through the rest of her body like a forest fire. He picked up on that, her gasped moans signalling to him a desire he felt himself reciprocating much lower down. They could barely move, these quicksand lovers, but their passion for each other was moving mountains beneath the skin. It moved their pulsing hearts and their over-driven minds, and, eventually, their lips.
The official cause of death was given as suffocation. Or, less dramatically, loss of breath. The case of Anderson v AgriCorp went to appeal, and the cello, with case, went to charity, but there was no court of appeal, nor feelings of charity, for the would-be lovers, ridiculed in the press and online as an aberration; as freaks. Not that it mattered. They were now tied to one another forever, through death and beyond; nameless, blameless, and filled with stars.
Gordon Robertson is a writer and filmmaker from Scotland. He has had several short stories and a poems published within the past year and has written and directed two short films and a music video. His latest short film – ‘The Chair’ – won Best Super Short at the 2016 UK Screen One International Film Festival.