Moth's Kiss

I can't tell what time it is that I wake up. Definitely very late in the night for all I care. There's a mosquito buzzing before my eyes, but it soon decides to quit and move along.
I'm lying with my back on the bed, staring up at the creaking revolving blades of the rusted ceiling fan. It's the only thing moving in the room. The single overhead light bulb is shines down past the revolving fan blades straight into my eyes. I don't recall how long I lay there so still before finally raising myself up from the bed. I push myself to sit on the edge and gaze about the apartment.
It is a single room and it is big and spacious; aside from the large bed there isn't much else in between. It's got three windows, each of them open enough for an affordable view of the night. Even from here I can pick up the distant sounds of traffic from the streets below. There's a musty smell about it, like some animal died in here a long time ago and the landlord probably forgot to fumigate it. Not exactly my first choice of place to lay my head, but then again, who am I to ask and who am I to complain.
Everywhere and everything is covered in darkness. That's just how I like it. The night has always been a second part of my life ' my sole resting abode. It's the only time of the day that I can roam the streets anyhow I wish without some gawking idiot taking a pot shot glance at me. For me the night is my friend and brother.
Along with the darkness comes the silence; thought not quite exactly. Beyond a corner of the room my ears easily pick out the scuttling paddle of mice. But I'm not worried about them; they go their own way just as I go along mine and at least they don't need to glance at my face every time.
I reach for my pack of smokes and Bic lighter lying on the little table next to my side of the bed. I'm careful not to tip over the half-empty bottle of Lord's Dry standing next to them. I pull out a cigarette and waste no time lighting it up. I suck in the first drag, tip my head a little backwards, feeling it tumble and roll all the way down into my lungs. I take a few more drags before pulling myself up on my feet. That's when I notice that I'm actually naked; I spot my clothes lying in a haphazard heap beside the apartment's door. What the hell ' let them remain there. I sit up on the bed and pick up the Dry Gin bottle and take a swig. The taste feels warm and awful and yet nourishing. I get up and walk towards the bathroom door.
The door creaks open as I push it open. I switch on the overhead light before stepping in. I go over and stand before the sink and stare at my face in the wall mirror.
With both hands, I gently trace the multiple rows of stretch marks that lay etched from my wide brow, across my nose and curving downwards to my right cheek. To someone they look more like knife marks. I've got the face of a badly-done Cubist painting; you ought to see me whenever I'm angry: you'd think I'm Zeus about to hand down judgment from the top of Olympus. When I was little, fellow kids around the block used to run around calling me Scarface. But that soon ended by the time I grew up and started breaking a few noses.
I turn on the tap and use both hands to splash water unto my face. I lean closer to it and swallow a little bit of it which I use to gurgle. Mixed with the gin it sort of brings out a soggy taste in my mouth. Ahhh ¦ now that feels better. I wipe water off my mouth before going over to turn on the shower.
The water feels cold the way it splatters all over my back. I stand there for a moment doing nothing, just trying to absorb it. I then reach for a bar of soap by the window ledge and use it to wash. I rub the soap over my huge muscles, across my torso and over my thighs; I pay particular attention to my crotch area. I'm soon finished and after letting the water to wash off the soapy lather, I turn off the tap and stand there for a minute or two just letting myself dry. I switch back off the lights and stepped out of the bathroom.
The young girl's body is still there lying in wait for me on the bed. Her sumptuous breasts, the hair between her legs, lie open and exposed to the ceiling. Her nubile figure reminds me of a Mona Lisa figure, just waiting for an artists' brush to put her forever on a canvas. She lies there unmoving; it doesn't take one long to know that she isn't breathing. She's as dead as yesterday's news.
Do I know who she is? No. Though she did mention her name to me before we left the night bar. Can't really recall, except it sounded more like something sweet and sexy. Then again, who cares, she's dead and that's that.
Even as we drove down here she just couldn't keep her hands off me. She especially enjoyed touching the scares on my face, telling me how cute and dangerous I looked. She even nibbled her tongue into my ear, whispering about how she couldn't wait to have me in her bed. I could barely wait either. We'd started fucking the moment we walked into the room. It's been a long time since I had a woman's arms around me. Most of them are too scared to even come close to touch me let along talk into my face without missing a word. But she had been different; I really liked that. That's why I so much had to kill her in the end.
I'd grasped her neck with my large hands and started choking away. I lay over her, watching her struggle, feeling her rain her fists over me, not daring to take my attention away from her bulging eyes. Her feet kept kicking up behind me but that was nothing. She desperately tried to scream but she couldn't. I tightened my grip some more. It didn't take long before her punches and her kicks started slowing down. I watched as the life slowly ebbed away from her till it was all gone. I waited for a minute to be absolutely certain before redrawing my hands off her neck. I gently closed her eyelids back to give her that final serenity. That was when I rolled off from her and slept off.
It couldn't have been more than three hours since I fell asleep. I am almost through with the cigarette when I drop it on the floor and extinguish it with the sole of my foot. I return the Dry Gin bottle back from where I'd earlier picked it up. I sit back on the bed and slide on over towards her, careful as if not to disturb her posture.
I feel my hand across her neckline. There's no sign of pulse; already her skin is as cold as the breeze coming in through the windows. I bring my face closer to hers, watching her closed eyes as if expecting them to suddenly come open at me. My tongue rolls out of my mouth and like a kid savouring a cone-filled chocolate ice cream press it against the nape of her neck and then slowly begin to lick upwards to her chin.
My tongue leaves a wet trail behind as I continue all the way from the side of her chin and onwards to her lips. Her lips are cold, too. I pause for a moment to stare down at it. How preciously inviting it looks like from up here. Always this is the moment that mystifies me: from when does a beautiful pair of lips become desecrated to turn itself open for a kiss, I wonder. Why can't it be kept tightly lidded and shut permanently for all humans to only speculate and wonder how it would feel like ¦ taste like?
My mouth lustfully comes down for the plunge. At first there is cold, and then the cold slowly dissipates as my lip brings forth warmth to hers. I force her lips open and like a screwdriver as my tongue drills it way inside to connect with hers ¦
And then I feel something; or rather my tongue feels something. My brow comes together in a sudden furrow. This thing I feel is soft and feathery in a way and it seems to be pushing its way out unto my tongue. I then feel tiny legs crawling around my tongue's tip ' that's when I quickly pull myself away.
I sit back and watch whatever it is painstakingly crawl its way out from the depths of the girl's mouth. It's like watching a birth happen right before my eyes. First comes a pair of wings, dark brown with wide streamlines on the edges rise out from the open cavern of the girls' mouth, followed by the rest of the body which appears small and slightly compact in shape. I push myself further back on the bed till I'm almost at the edge. My eyes never waver an inch from what's taking place before me.
A moth. That's what it was. I helplessly run a hand around my mouth. I can't believe that I'd just been kissed by nothing else but a moth - an insect of the night. How could it have arrived there inside the girls' mouth ¦ and why? I can only guess but I can never answer. Not even to myself.
The giant moth crawls its way out from the girls' mouth and sits there atop her nose, facing me. Its wings beat slow revolving arcs while its antennae swivel and sniff the air around it. Welcome to the new world, my friend, I try communicating telepathically with it. I bid you welcome from the dark. Does it hear me? I can't say, but I guess it must have felt something pass from me to it.
In a spilt second its fast-beating wings carry it and for a moment it hovers above the girls' face in a wide circular arc and then takes off through one of the open windows and loses itself into the night sky. The room returns back to its previous tranquil state.
I continue to sit there, feeling too dazed and confused to move, trying to make some kind of positive sense of what had just happened before my eyes. I continue staring at the girl's open lips, ever looking more inviting by the second. It reaches out to me again, wanting me to slide on over and kiss it one last time. The same open lips where a moth had just unceremoniously sprang from.
I search for my pack of cigarettes again and waste no time lighting one up. I pick up the Dry Gin bottle and guzzle what's left till it's empty. In no time am I through with the first cigarette when I'm lighting another. I go over to pick up my clothes from the floor and start dressing up. I stare back at the dead girl one final time. I'm almost tempted to return back and give her that final kiss again on her lips, her juicy inviting red lips. I quickly perish the thought. No use kissing a mouth that's just given birth to an insect. I'll just have to save it for another girl. I go over and drape the rest of the bed sheet over her body and then murmur a short prayer to her before packing up the rest of my things.
I perform a final surveillance of the apartment just in case there was something ' anything ' incriminating about my being here that I might have forgotten or overlooked. There is nothing else. I click off the overhead light, plunging the room into darkness before walking out the room. The musty smell is already starting to get worse. Besides, I always hate being close to a corpse, especially when it has already gone cold and just waiting for its time to start to rot.
The downstairs lobby is empty as I make my way down the stairs. Everybody's already inside, probably still up watching something on TV right now or already gone off to sleep. Either way, it suits me just fine not being seen.
I exit the building and pause outside to light a final cigarette. I squeeze the empty pack and hurl it across the gutter. My car is parked around the corner, waiting for me. I walk on over and unlock the door and jump in. I pull the key out from my pocket and I'm just about to key it into the ignition when I notice something perched on the dashboard facing me. My mouth instantly comes open and my cigarette falls from it and hits my thigh before reaching the floor. My blood has already gone cold with what was staring straight at me to even bother about being burnt in my car.
It's the moth. I don't know if it's the same one out of the girls' mouth but I'll be damned if it isn't. It's been here all this time just waiting for me to return. But why? How? For what reason? What purpose?
I quickly draw out my hand and squash it right there on the dashboard. Its remains stick to my palm like glue. I bring it closer to my face and at that moment I thought I inhaled a hint of the girls' scent on my hand. There is an unopened bottle of Swamp water lying forgotten on my backseat. I reach for it, uncap its top and unwind my side window and use the bottle to wash off the moths' dead remains from my hand. I take out my handkerchief from my pocket and wipe my hand clean with it before throwing it away along with the bottle. The street is very much quiet, but that does not make it feel safe for me. Not this time. I think it's time I got myself a final woman ... a life ¦ and some religion, too, to go with everything.
I soon start the car and drive off into the remains of the night.

The End