Skin Like Marble, Eyes Like Fire (Shiva x MSPC985)

[Shiva the Cat]

If rent wasn't due at the end of the month, Jemima would have told Rachel to go fuck herself.

Sure, the tips at Blossoms were usually great. The food might have been mediocre, but the restaurant was in a prime location in the lobby of the Hotel Julienne, a soaring white tower that only the wealthiest of out-of-town business travelers would dare spend a night in. Why anyone would bother with Blossoms when they could walk a few blocks down to the Warehouse District and get a decent meal for a third of the price Jemima couldn't say, but if anyone asked her the best place for dinner in New Orleans, she could think of at least ten places better than the faux-Italian hotel restaurant.

But the end of the month was approaching, and rent was indeed due, so Jemima had swallowed her pride, forced a smile, and told Rachel she'd be there at 3:30 in time for the dinner rush. It was kind of sad when she thought about it; five years ago when the two girls had been freshman roommates at Loyola, they'd each considered the other their best friend. Then Rachel had gotten into the Greek life and her bible study group, while Jemima had started hanging with some of the artist and musician types across the river. They stayed civil while they lived together, but spent less and less time hanging out right up until Jemima failed one too many classes and lost her scholarship. At the time, Jem pretended she had stayed in New Orleans for Rachel's sake, but by then both of them knew it was a bald-faced lie. Jemima would have jumped off a bridge before heading back to Philly, and considering she didn't exactly have anywhere else to go, she remained more out of a sense of immobility than anything else.

She lived across the river in Algiers now, in a decrepit 1920s shotgun house that had somehow survived hurricanes, termites, and the destructive efforts of some of the...eccentric inhabitants it had sheltered. It was convenient when she was working the tourist bars up in the Quarter, less so when she needed to go downtown to do the odd shift at Blossoms, but to decline the latter seemed like it would be the final nail in the coffin of her friendship with Rachel, financial detriments aside. Besides, working up at the hotel meant Jem could at least indulge in a certain amount of schadenfreude in seeing her old roommate complete her English degree and still be relegated to the world of hospitality. True, Rachel was working on her Master's now, and as a manager she made probably four times what Jemima did while only having to work one job, but at least she couldn't look too far down at the dropout. After all, she was only a couple rungs higher on the same ladder, with at least 60k in debt to show for it.

Still, Jemima always felt out of place as she walked into the lobby of the hotel. Most of the other bars and restaurants didn't care about the extensive tattoos on her arms, the multiple piercings in her ears and eyebrows, or the ever-changing color of her shaggy bobbed hair (currently black with a few jewel-toned sections of blue, purple, red and green visible here and there), but at Blossoms she was forced to cover up in tight black pants that hugged her curvaceous hips and the white button-down that wasn't quite tailored enough to make up the difference between her full breasts and flat stomach. She'd toned her makeup down quite a bit from her usual dark lipstick and smoky eye, choosing instead to highlight the golden tones in her olive skin and the chocolate brown of her eyes. Jemima knew all the other waitresses at the restaurant did their shift in heels, but fuck that. At 5' 9” she hardly needed to add three inches to that, and instead wore a pair of slightly beat up black flats and hoped no one would notice.

Even if they did though, what was Rachel going to do, fire her? Not with two of her other waitresses called out and a third one leaving early. Jemima couldn't help but smile at that as she stepped into the busy lobby of the hotel at still having that little bit of power over her old friend, although her dignity was quick to crash and burn when she went to the glass door of the restaurant and found it firmly locked.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered in exasperation, texting Rachel to let her know she'd arrived before sitting down on a bench to the side of the lobby to wait for someone to let her in. Usually the Hotel Julienne was dressed to the nines in holiday decorations, but considering it was a bit too early for Halloween yet, whoever was in charge of making the place look “festive” had instead opted for arranging a traveling display of marble statues. From where she was sitting, Jem would have guessed they were merely imitations of Italian renaissance figures, but as the minutes ticked away and Rachel still didn't respond, she decided to go over and take a closer look.

There seemed to be a loose biblical theme among the four statues placed at cardinal points of the compass. There was a madonna of course, and a sad-faced Jesus, and some saint or another who looked vaguely uncomfortable at being placed in a cheesy hotel lobby rather than a proper church. And then there was the angel; he was the only one who really made Jemima pause.

A plaque beside him said Lucifer, but if Jem had guessed at first sight she probably would have mistaken him for Michael, or maybe Gabriel (ah yes, memories of Sunday school at St. Genesius, back before everything went to utter shit). Lucifer was unexpected, but then again hadn't the old priest said how beautiful he had been before the fall? Well, if he looked anything like his statue, Jemima was sure she would have had a hard time resisting that particular temptation. True his hair was a bit long for her tastes, and that bat wings were a little more goth than she would have liked, but the expression on the statue's face made her breath catch in her throat, and despite the numerous DO NOT TOUCH signs she found herself reaching a hand out for him.

God, whoever had carved the statue (she would look around the exhibit again after her shift that night, but no credits to the creator were provided, only saying the exhibit belonged to an anonymous donor) had done one hell of a job on him. Jemima could have sworn she saw veins beneath the smooth white “skin” his arms and chest, and his sensual lips, while currently downcast, looked as though they could part in a wickedly delicious smile at any moment. Even his hands seemed as though they belonged to a real person, and made her think of one of her own amateur art projects on the shelf at home, when she had made a mold of her own fist with the middle finger extended and covered it with chicken scratch song lyrics.

“There you are!” a voice called out from behind her, and before Jem knew what was happening Rachel had dragged her away from the statue. “Come on, I need help rolling silverware. There's a convention in the hotel tonight and I think we're going to be absolutely swamped.”

And swamped they were, but by midnight Jemima could walk away proudly with not only the rest of the rent, but even a bit of extra in her pocket as well. She was absolutely exhausted of course and dreaded the long walk down to the ferry station, but at least she would sleep well knowing she had a roof over her head for a few more weeks at least.

The lobby was empty except for a bored-looking night clerk scrolling through his phone behind the check in desk, and with the tinny sound of a string quartet echoing through the cavernous room it gave the statues a most unnerving appearance. Rachel and the other waitresses had been quick to flee out to the street, but before Jemima could follow them to the door she could have sworn she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. Her heart skipped a beat for a moment as she thought she saw one of Lucifer's wing muscles flex...but no, it was just the reflection of lights from a passing car outside.

It's just a stupid statue, what are you so scared of? Jemima scolded herself, but even though she knew she needed to get going she somehow couldn't find the strength to step away just yet. It was his eyes, she decided. His eyes seemed to hold her transfixed, the sadness and haughtiness and scheming cleverness in them that both excited her and made her feel uneasy. She might have stood there staring at them all night if her phone hadn't gone off again in her hand—her roommate, asking her to pick up a six pack on her way home.

That was enough to break the spell finally, and with a quick toss of her head Jem turned and made a beeline for the door of the hotel. It was after midnight by the time she made it home, and although Aaron had offered her one of the beers he'd forced her to pick up, she was too tired to accept. Without even bothering to ask who the rest of the strangers on the deck smoking weed were, the waitress headed straight for her own small room at the back of the house, firmly locking the door behind her. She was lucky enough to have her own attached bathroom, cramped as it was, and wasted no time in jumping into her bedtime routine while listening to some soft blues on her phone.

Finally, with her makeup stripped off and her hair slightly damp from a cold shower, Jemima slipped naked into her bed, pointing the swamp cooler near the window in her direction in the hopes that the heat of the night wouldn't put up too much of a fight against the oncoming sleep.

 

[MSPC985]

After a time, sleep won the battle. Jemima's mattress faded away beneath her, so too did her pillow, and even the blackness behind her eyelids gave way to nothingness. There, in that peaceful oblivion, he visited her for the first time.​

​

For whatever reason, she dreamed at first of her childhood home, only she wasn't a child anymore. Her house hadn't changed one iota from when she had been, though, right down to the plaster cast of her own fist, middle finger raised in defiance at the world, seated upon its wooden shelf. It was only when the sound of unseen knuckles rapping upon her front door came to her that she got the first sense of change, of the twists and turns of the flow of time that constituted her own path through life. The dream's point of view shifted so that she could see herself through the walls of the house, an adult Jemima dressed as she had so often dressed for Sunday school at St. Genesius, back before everything went to utter shit. From within the house was still the one in which she grew up, but from without it resembled the decrepit, 1920s shotgun house she lived in today.​

​

"Come," said the figure to whom she opened the door. "It's time to go."​

​

He spoke softly and with a warm smile upon sensual lips that looked softer than any pillow. His hair was a bit too long, but not a strand lay out of place. His cheeks were childishly cherubic, but his eyes were so bright and deep, brimming with such a breadth of knowledge, that she could scarcely tell their colour. She found herself transfixed by him, uncharacteristically bereft of words, so that he had to take her hand in his and lead her down a flight of marble steps that were neither before her childhood home nor her current one. Soon she found herself descending into a garden as rich and verdant as one could only dream. Along its centre, a marble pathway stretched ahead as far as the eye could see, and their path was flanked at every pace with evenly spaced trees that bore pink flowers amongst their green leaves.​

​

"Look," spoke the figure, the breath that carried his velvet voice caressing her cheek like cotton candy, feather light and almost crackling like a million tiny bubbles upon her skin. Her eyes followed his finger to the far-off horizon, and there she witnessed the clouds part, and a shadowed figure plummeted towards the ground. The further it dropped, the more the blue sky behind it shifted to red, birthing vibrant vermillion and opalescent oranges of the most brilliant sunset. The figure faded from view before it reached the horizon, and when Jemima turned to her companion, she saw crystal tears upon his cheeks, and aeons of sadness compressed within his eyes.​

​

Without a word, he laid a gentle finger on her lips, drew it left to cup her cheek, and his right hand appeared upon her hip. She realised she was nude, and so was he, and behind him two large, feathered wings of the purest white blotted out the sky, but stole none of its brightness. He kissed her, and there was fire in that kiss. The warmth of the summer sun tenderly touched her lips, and when his tongue caressed her own she knew that that warmth had spread south. When he lay her down, she found silk sheets beneath her, his wings drew back to reveal a four-poster bed shroud in such fine fabrics that she might then have been a queen, and when he took her, he did so as if she were royalty. Tender he was, but possessed of all the passion one might reserve for a queen, as though this were his one chance to bed a monarch. When she clutched his back, she felt the caress of feathers, found the sinewy joints where they were joined to his shoulder blades, and there gripped tight as his hips fell again and again between her open thighs. They grew sweaty, the bedclothes clung to her flesh, and with each heavenly thrust she knew the warmth of summer inside her. It raked her walls and sent plumes of pristine pleasure shooting up her spine, until at last she felt herself clench around him, and with feather down breath he spilled the heat of the sun within her womb. Even after the act she felt the throb, heard it synchronise with her own heart beat, and then it grew louder—too loud.​

​

"Jem! Are you fuckin' dead in there?! I need the rent!"​

​

"Carter, quit bangin' the fuckin' door, man. It's 9 a.m." Aaron peeked his bed-ridden blond head out of his room and cast a sleepy scowl at his roommate and landlord. Both men were in their late twenties, but where Aaron dressed like the rock guitarist he aspired to be, Carter had never managed to escape the trappings of a thoroughly bourgeoise upbringing. He scarcely wore anything but shirts, and even in this shithole of a house, with its dusty living room and dustier streets outside, he always managed to keep his shoes spit-shine clean.​

​

"Did she OD last night? I told my dad I'd pay him back today."​

​

"Dude, you know she's not into that shit. Do you have to pay him back right now?"​

 

[Shiva the Cat]

Jemima rarely remembered her dreams, and when she did they were usually nightmares. When she first saw her childhood bedroom after falling asleep, she would have bet the entire night's tips that another one was about to start. She didn't have many happy memories of that house anymore, and the bad ones liked to rear their ugly heads when she was feeling stressed or anxious. But the more she looked around, the more Jemima began to realize that his couldn't be a memory, not in the traditional sense. For one thing, the old Leone house on Broad Street was never this quiet, not with four kids, two parents that despised each other, and a cantankerous old grandmother lording over them all like a tyrannical queen. For another, while the bedroom was unmistakably hers, there wasn't a single item there that belonged to either of her sisters, and the three of them had shared the room right up until Jemima had left for college. Lastly, the room was completely spotless, which despite her best efforts had never been the case while she was growing up.

But the silence, emptiness, and sterility of the space didn't seem to bother her too much as she stood in front of the mirror, stepping into a scandalously short plaid skirt and nearly transparent short-sleeved white blouse. Staring at her reflexion, she couldn't help but smile a bit. These were her church clothes after all, though it had been at least ten years since she'd worn them. Curiously, while she still had the body of a grown woman, her tattoos and piercings were nowhere to be seen, and her hair was its natural shade of rich auburn. Was this what she would have looked like if things had gone differently? Was that why she was apparently getting ready for church of her own free will, without her father or grandmother or sisters half-guilting, half-harassing her to go?

Like Alice slipping farther down the rabbit hole, everything was beginning to make less and less sense, but the young woman didn't seem to care too much either way. As she glanced out the picture window in the front room that should have looked out onto a street full of identical brick South Philadelphia townhomes, Jemima was barely surprised to see it was indeed good old Valliette Street in Algiers, lined with colorful shotguns in varying states of disrepair. Of course that meant it would be a rather long walk all the way up to St. Genesius, 1200 miles away.

When the door opened though, church was the last thing on her mind.

Jemima had read books where men were described as beautiful, but she'd never actually met a man in real life where that particular adjective would be appropriate. That was how she finally became sure she was dreaming, because the figure standing on the doorstep was so breathtaking she could scarcely believe her mind had dreamt him up. His eyes were enough to make her want to tear her clothes off, and his smile seemed to drain all of the strength from her body, threatening to leave her collapsed and vulnerable at his feet. But she couldn't move at all, couldn't even speak. If he hadn't taken her hand and pulled her to him, she might have stood there like a statue for eternity.

But his touch was as encompassing as his eyes, and Jem was astounded at how solid he felt as he led her down the stairs. Unbelievable as the dream was, it still felt alarmingly real, even as Valliette Street melted away and transformed into a garden of astounding beauty. Lovely as the tress and flowers might have been though, Jemima's gaze was still locked on the man beside her, watching the little pulses beneath his flawless skin, the way the gentle breeze played with his tousled hair, the long lashes that fluttered ever so slightly as he looked past her to the horizon. The young woman tried to follow his gaze and focus on the strange, comet-like shadow plummeting towards the horizon, but how could she be expected to focus on that when she could feel the heat of him so close to her, and his voice seemed to resonate all the way to the heart pounding in her chest?

Only one thing could have broken the spell he had her under, and when Jemima saw the tears on his cheeks she finally found she could move again, though she did so with a sympathetic pain in her chest. "Why--?" she started to ask before his finger stopped the question, erasing it from her mind. The heat was growing, as was the desperate desire she'd felt when she saw him that first time. The stranger could have asked her for anything in that moment, no matter how degrading, and Jem would have obliged him without a second thought, then thanked him for the opportunity after.

To be fair, the waitress was hardly a saint when it came to men, but when she did choose to fuck a guy (and it was always just fucking, nothing more) she always went in caring more about her own pleasure than his, and when it was over she was quick to kick him out of her bed. Not so with this one. From the moment he laid her back on the bed--it didn't occur to her to ask where the bed had come from--Jemima prayed she would never wake up from the dream, that she could just go on feeling his hands and lips on her, feeling him thrusting inside her more deeply than any man had ever gone, until the day she died. No one in real life had ever made her writhe like this, made her scream out in pleasure while her nails desperately scrabbled to rake down his back only to find teasingly soft feathers.

Feathers? was the far off question on Jemima's mind when she finally came, arching her back like a woman possessed as the waves pulsed through her body, finally leaving her as limp and sated as she had foreseen when the stranger first opened her door. She could feel his weight settling against her, solid and so wonderfully real. With the last of her strength Jem managed to brace one arm around the base of a wing and twine the fingers of her other hand in his hair, wondering if any of this really was a dream after all. His heartbeat seemed to surround her, lulling her into a blissful sleepy oblivion, right up until--

"Jem! Are you fuckin' dead in there?! I need the rent!"

And it was gone, all of it. The garden, the bed, the winged man who had given her the best sex of her life. Jemima was alone in her room and Carter was banging on the door, unaware how close he would have come to dying if his roommate had followed her friends' advice and kept a gun in her bedside table.

"Fucking asshole," she growled, checking the time on her phone before peeling off the covers that had been plastered to her body with sweat throughout the night. Maybe it was the dream, maybe it was just the natural heat of August in the south, but Jemima felt as though she'd run a marathon in the night. Pulling on a tank-top and shorts but forgoing the bra, she threw open the door and gave her roommate/landlord a glare that could have frozen ice. "You want your fucking rent? There!" she snapped, opening up the banking app on her phone and pressing a few buttons to finalize the electric transfer. She'd already made the mistake of paying a landlord in cash before moving in with the guys in her current place, and even though it probably would have been more convenient just to hand her tips over to Carter, she still didn't trust him not to fuck her over (literally and figuratively).

It was actually a bit of a gamble; Jemima had no way of knowing if the late-night deposit she'd made at the ATM on her way home last night had landed in her account yet. But sure enough, after a few moments a notification reading "APPROVED" appeared at the top of her screen, which she shoved back in Carter's face as evidence. "Of course, it'll probably still take a day or two to get in your account," Jem snapped, brushing past him on her way to the kitchen. "But thanks a ton for waking me up, I really appreciate that on my day off."

On the bright side, someone had already made coffee, and Jemima felt just the slightest bit better after the first few sips. There was also a mysterious box of donuts on the table that had come from who-knows-where, and she felt fully within her rights to snag one for breakfast as she stared out the window, trying to recall the details of the dream before all memory of it slipped beyond her grasp.

 

[MSPC985]

Not much later, another joined her in the kitchen. He was a lean, lanky fellow with ruddy brown skin and thick, dark hair that might have been worthy of its own shampoo commercial were it not so tussled from an apparent night on the couch. His arms were covered in tattoos of demons and angels, and other creatures Jem didn't recognise at this hour of the morning. Though he looked of Arabian descent, or perhaps of the Indian subcontinent, he spoke with a Louisiana accent. It might have been his first time in the house, though with so many passing through whenever Aaron had one of his parties, or simply met a group of people and invited them back for drinks, it was difficult to tell.​

​

"Hey. You live here? Mind if I grab some coffee?"​

​

Aaron appeared shortly thereafter, introduced the man as Raj, a name so common it might have been his real name or simply a vaguely racist nickname. He himself often went by Mud, and half the people he invited back to the house seemed go by outlandish monikers. Aaron was much the worse for wear, his countenance as faded as the old, drab white Guns 'n' Roses t-shirt he wore. It was a relic of his youth, oversized or maybe just stretched. He'd once told Jem he was a fat teenager, though that was hard to believe. He barely ate at the best of times, seemingly living on a solely coffee-based diet supplemented with beer, cannabis, and the cheapest brand of pasta he could find.​

​

"You coming tonight?" he asked her a few minutes later, slouched in one of the old, rickety wooden kitchen chairs, his back to the wall, one arm resting on the table with its hand around a steaming mug of the black stuff.​

​

Aaron's band, a stoner rock trio named Down to Georgia who styled themselves after the likes of Kyuss, Sleep, and local heroes Down, had been together for a little over three years. He'd been in a number of bands before that, none of whom had come anywhere close to recognition. Now, though, he'd been interviewed by a couple of small-time, online magazines, had a video on YouTube for a song called "Tokes from the Underground", and was in talks with a newly-founded record company that nobody had yet heard of. Success, it seemed, started small. The band still played small venues all over the city, and tonight were scheduled to headline a host of local talent at Donny's dive bar just outside the Warehouse District, not far from Republic NOLA and the Hotel Julienne.​

​

Down to Georgia's bassist, frontman, and lyricist was a well-educated California native named Ángel, and Jem knew well that he had a thing for her. Then again, it was likely he had a thing for anyone with breasts, or at least with tattoos. Lyrically clever, he brought wit and depth to match Aaron's groove-laden riffs and Misty's solid, tasteful drumming, and declared himself a modern-day Dorian Gray. "I am a sick man, I am a spiteful man," he sang in "Tokes..." How true that was, Jem couldn't be sure—the two didn't know each other that well—but from his stories the former was a possibility. He claimed to seek out depravity and strife as much as ecstasy, wishing to know the boundaries of the human condition. Aaron claimed he was just too well-read for his own good, but that he wasn't a bad person.​

​

"Who bought these?" Raj asked, his mouth brimming over with half-chewed donut.​

​

"Our landlord." One could always tell how Aaron felt about Carter at any particular moment based on whether he chose to describe him as his roommate or his landlord.​

​

"Mmm... Cool dude."​

​

Aaron looked at Jem and raised his eyebrows, and the message was more or less clear: eh... he has his moments.​

 

[Shiva the Cat]

Jem's sleepy eyes glanced at the newcomer with only the smallest amount of passing interest. When she'd first moved into the house she'd been a little unnerved at the revolving door of visitors the house always seemed to be hosting, but unless she wanted to find a place that was even farther away from her jobs it didn't seem worth complaining about. She simply put a new lock on her door, made sure to label all of her food with a sharpie, and only bothered to learn the visitors' names after she'd spoken with them three times. It was no secret that activities with varying levels of illegality took place under Carter's roof, and Jemima always thought the less she knew about them (when she wasn't partaking herself) the better it would be in the long run.

The tattooed man who approached her that morning had not quite met Jem's particular threshold of introduction, but he did look vaguely familiar. Half-nodding, half-shrugging in response to his question about the coffee, Jemima looked back at the weather forecast on her phone, trying to gauge what the day's activities might bring. Before she could make a decision, Aaron had appeared and introduced the stranger before beginning his own morning scavenging.

For five brief minutes after Jemima had first met Aaron, she did admittedly harbor a small crush on him. She'd always had a thing for musicians, and this one was cute in his scruffy, blue-collar fashion. But there was nothing to murder a budding romance like moving in together in a strictly platonic sense, and whatever fancies she might have harbored for him died the eighty-fifth time she found herself washing his dishes and waking up way too early to the sound of music coming from his room after a late night of work. Still, she preferred Aaron to Carter, and even considered him a good friend at this point, although there was a palpable moment of hesitation when he asked if she'd be coming to his show that night.

"Um...not sure," she mumbled, draining her coffee and immediately getting up to pour more. "I was gonna go down by the levy and draw for a bit. Maybe stop by Michael's and see about picking up some painting stuff." The words were out of her mouth before Jemima had realized she was even thinking about it. Painting? She hadn't painted anything in over a year. Sketching sure, but she had more blank sketchpads than she knew what to do with, and her extensive collection of drawing pencils didn't go bad like paints did. Since when did she have enough money to spend on canvases and watercolors? Still, the idea was intriguing, and there were sometimes good deals in the clearance section of the art supply store.

More appealing though was the idea of going to sit out by the quiet riverside, a pad in her lap and headphones drowning out the rest of the world. It was hopeless right now to try and remember any more of that dream, but maybe if she could get away from the guys (who at this point were rivaling some of the women she'd lived with when it came to the morning chit-chat) and she could clear her head a bit, more of it could come back. I want to remember his face she thought, even though that part of the dream seemed the vaguest of all. Sometimes though, her hands had a habit of remembering what her brain couldn't, and she was eager to go and see if they could coax her memories out from their prison onto the paper.

In the meantime though, Jemima supposed she owed Aaron some kind of an answer about the night. "You're playing at Donny's?" she asked, sitting back down and nibbling at the other half of her cruller. "I'll see if I can get a ride. I'm not gonna sit through soundcheck though, not unless you're expecting like, a million people. That one bartender--you know, the one with the forty-year-old ass and the twenty-year-old tits?--she doesn't like me." She paused, then thought a moment. "Is Carter going? She probably won't knife me in the back if I'm there with him. His daddy could probably pull some strings and get their liquor license revoked." A mischievous smile crossed her face as the caffeine finally took root in her brain and made her feel a bit more human.

As she finished her breakfast, she gathered up the various dirty dishes that had been left around the kitchen and began to fill the sink with hot, soapy water. "You want anything while I'm out today? Probably gonna stop at the store and grab a few things. We good on cleaning products and stuff?" Jemima asked, settling into the housekeeper role that had always felt the most natural to her ever since she was a child. If the rent wasn't already pretty reasonable to begin with (even if Carter loved to collect it at the soonest possible moment) she might have argued for a discount in exchange for all of the cleaning she seemed to do around the house, but even then it was like drying to vacuum all the dirt off a beach. With the exception of her own room, the house would never really be clean, but at least they'd managed to avoid getting rats so far.