fall, 500 words of The Collector for myhappyface
The Fall, PG
500 words. Post-The Children's Book Author
Life is about balance. There is a great cosmic scale, and life is finding things to outweigh your sins.
Morgan has been around a long time, and he’s learned a lot. Enough to know that this idea is inherent in all religions. In Buddhism, you are responsible for the balancing act. In Christianity, you give it to God.
Morgan has been around long enough to know that neither one works. Some things, once done, cannot be undone. There’s a reason for that old saw, “goodness and light.” Sins are heavy.
Maya is still unable to sleep alone. Not that Morgan is sleeping with her; he merely provides a presence to negate her solitude. She curls in his bed, her body frenetic with unsound dreams.
Sins are heavier.
“Don’t blame yourself, dear boy. If it weren’t for your kind attention, your little project would be just another dead whore in the city morgue.”
Morgan wheels around, fists and jaw clenched. What he wouldn’t give for a lock to keep Him out.
But He isn’t a him at the moment. He is Maya, sitting sweetly on the edge of Morgan’s desk. She is scrubbed and rosy-cheeked, hair loose, arms and legs bare. She wears a simple shift, a pale cotton gown so gauzy and fine that Morgan can see all of what God has given her.
She is eating an apple.
“This is vulgar,” Morgan says. “Even for you.”
The Devil widens Maya’s eyes, parts her mouth into a supple pink ‘O.’ That mouth. Morgan has an urge to pray.
“Whatever do you mean?” she asks. “I thought this would cheer you up. A present.”
“Do you have a name for me?”
The Devil flutters Maya’s lashes. “This is a social call. To cheer you up after you got your little feelings hurt helping dear Edwin. Lost your temper, didn’t you, my dear? Very unprofessional.”
Morgan wants to raise his voice, to rant and scream, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, get the fuck out! but he’ll just wake up Maya, the real Maya who has come to him for safekeeping and will not understand, and who would go to hell if he even tried to explain.
He bites his tongue.
The Devil takes another bite of the apple. The juice glistens on Maya’s perfect lips, and Morgan loses his breath. And then she smiles, but it’s the Devil’s smile, fire lighting the eyes, and Morgan snaps back to focus and grabs the fake girl by the arm, hauls her off the desk.
The Devil laughs, and instead of struggling to free herself, turns her body against Morgan’s. She feels real, her warmth and breath, the delicate flutter of her heartbeat. The dress is so sheer that Morgan can feel every inch of her pressing against him, her fine young body.
There’s going to be hell to pay. Morgan closes his eyes, and for a moment loses himself. She tastes like the apple, and the serpent.