The Man Who Had Everything Read online

  ***

  He woke what seemed to be hours later to an odd creaking sound. The room was silent. The full moon peeped in through the window festooned with lace curtains, and spilled a patch of silvery light onto the bed.

  The Man Who Had Everything was shivering with cold, and drew the candlewick bed-spread over his legs up to his shoulders. In the breathless silence the creaking of the floorboards sounded even louder. He drew the bed-spread even higher and buried himself deeper in the bed, like a frightened child; the memories of the previous evening unreeling through his mind.

  How silly...He'd had much too much to drink. That and the Fae-tales of the hostler, combined with the know-it all presumption of an unpleasant dinner companion had distilled a potent brew, and the result was obviously delusion, hallucination...

  The Man Who Had Everything lay for a long time and thought about his life. Obviously the woman Mia had stuck her finger in a few sore spots. Perhaps some of these he'd consider addressing on his return to New York. Therapy might help; that or a healthy dose of honesty with the people in his life. His wife, for one; and himself. Mostly himself. He would shelve his career for a while. Take some time off, go to the mountains alone to think, and maybe compose, as he's been wanting to do for years.

  Yes. It was time to make some changes. He could certainly afford them, and if his wife and his agents didn't agree? Well, screw them! They had all drawn considerable financial dividends from his work, now it was his turn to go his own way; learn some new tricks, be free.

  Some old lines from a poem he's read in school flitted through his mind.

  "'T' is not too late to seek a newer world.

  Push off, and sitting well in order smite

  The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

  To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

  Of all the western stars, until I die..."

  The sound of his own voice startled him, and he laughed out loud at his own fright. Then over his laughter chanted a sweet silvery voice:

  "It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles..."

  He started up, and there, perched at the bottom of the bed - her hair in a wash of moonlight - was The Woman With No Art.

  "The Happy Isles, Michael, the very isles that doth lie in the sundering Ocean betwix thy heart and mine, where in the blessed few reside..." and then to his terror, she smiled. "I want thee, beloved, and I shall not be denied."

  The Woman With No Art reached out a hand and The Man Who Had Everything flinched back. She stared at him, her face half light half shadow; filled with a childlike bewilderment.

  "Are you afraid of me, Michael?"

  "Yes."

  She rose to her knees on the bed "But why? Why? I mean you no harm, there is nothing to dread."

  "How did you get in here?" The Man Who Had Everything pulled himself further up the bed, gaining a few more inches of distance from the woman.

  "Through the door...It wasn't locked!"

  "It was closed. You did not knock!"

  "Oh!" she giggled, an oddly young sound, "I'm sorry about that!"

  "If a door is closed you knock! You don't walk in uninvited and unannounced."

  The woman Mia reached out a conciliatory hand and laid it on his knee through the bed-spread.

  "I'm sorry Michael, you are quite right. I am a little rusty on the niceties of protocol...Do you forgive me? Say you do..."

  Her lips curved in a seductive flirtatious smile that shriveled his man-flesh and filled him with terror. "Let's not quarrel...Let's be friends instead, let's kiss and make up!"

  And she moved towards him with a swift catlike grace, and stopped, her lips a few inches from his suddenly averted face.

  The Man Who Had Everything cried: "Just go, get out...Don't touch me! I don't want you, I don't want you here."

  The Woman With No Art frowned. "I don't understand. You don't want me?"

  Her eyes darkened somehow, and round shape of her face sharpened into a hardened triangular mask.

  "You don't WANT me?" Her voice was softer, sibilant; somehow doubled, like a chorus and an echo all at the same time.

  The Man Who Had Everything felt a slow trickle of warm wetness running down between his legs.

  "YOU DON'T WANT ME?" The long stray curls tumbled on her shoulders stirred and rose as if caught in cross-currents of playful air.

  "You disgusting little man, pissing on the bed, you dare lie there and tell me you don't want me? Would you rather be DEAD?"

  The Man Who Had Everything felt a giant invisible hand close around his heart. He was lifted high and hefted off the bed; flung like a toy to lie – limbs akimbo – against the far wall.

  The Woman With No Art slid off the bed and approached him with mincing steps; one dainty foot poked at his chest.

  “That was rude of you Michael. Rude and cruel.” She leaned down to look at him, and to his surprise The Man Who Had Everything saw tears in her eyes.

  “I really thought you had understood me, as I understood you…” she laughed: a bitter little laugh.

  “Well…so what else is new. I am misunderstood. I thought you would be different.” The pain in her face was raw.

  “We are seen as succubus, vampires, as monsters by these limited small-town folk; but all we are is alone, we Fae. Alone.”

  She crouched down next to him and touched her fingers gently to the centre of his chest.

  “Thousands and thousands of years alone. Imagine that. We live forever and have nothing, nothing at all. All our loves are dead, so we seek. And all we seek, is what you and every other creature seeks. Some warmth, something to reach for in the night; someone to look us in the eyes, see us for what we are. We seek a warm beating loving heart to fill our chests.”

  He stared up at her, numb and dumb. “Is it so terrible Michael, to ask for love? Is that not what you have longed for all your life? Is that not what I was offering you?”