Winner of Sexy Saints and Sinners contest

The First Fall by BethBurke8

Burn

From the moment I stepped into the Coalyork church as a girl of only five years of age, I knew the pastor had it out for me. He had been young then, his pompous Roman collar sitting a little too low and a little too large on his scrawny chest - he would stand by his altar, his thick, auburn curls bouncing aggressively in the late afternoon sun and his fresh, pink complexion growing red with passion. All that was gone now - his skin had grown pockmarked and pale over time and his hair had fled from his scalp, leaving his unattractively conical head as bald as that of a newborn child. The one attribute that had never abandoned the man was the frost that flickered ominously in each of his steel grey eyes.

At the dignified age of twenty nine, he had taken a wife - a pretty young thing with twinkling green eyes and blonde locks so pale they appeared almost white in the summer months. I first encountered the girl at their wedding, with rosebuds braided intricately into her hair and a hefty green gown that seemed to swallow her slim frame whole. It was only when she had swanned past me on the path to her baleful groom that I noticed her eyes were swimming with tears.

It was not until the following autumn that we met once more. She had been walking home, her canvas satchel great with freshly picked apples and her stomach great with child. His child. A single, glistening fruit had fallen from her pack and I had left my post by my father's stall to rescue the offending produce. She had thanked me, her soft hair falling across her delicate features as she laughed, only just hiding the bashful blush that had crept out from behind her smile. We met more often after that, seeking one another out amongst the ooze of humanity that filled our market square, and by the first fall of winter's snow, I had begun to pay weekly visits to her drawing room. His drawing room. Sometimes she brought her child - a sweet and placid thing burdened with little awareness of the world by which it was surrounded - but most times, she did not, and we were alone.

It was there, warmed by the winking flames of a well-kept fire, that we conversed, tentatively at first and then with enthusiasm and relish. For countless weeks, conversations were all that passed between us. My stomach grew tight and a peculiar sensation burned in the left side of my chest. When she spoke, I became overeager, laughing at each and every sentence she uttered, and I choked on my words, rendered speechless by that burn aching beneath my throat.

At first, I wondered as to whether I had contracted some plague, some contagion. I would stare anxiously at my filth-ridden reflection in every windowpane or puddle I passed, looking for some sign of illness, some rash, some buboe. A month passed me by before I began to consider that my condition might have been borne of something other than disease.

"Oh, I cannot bear it any longer," these were the words my brother declared as he stood outside the polished wooden door of his ladylove's home. "I simply cannot bear it."

"What cannot you bear, brother?" I had accompanied him that day in a gesture of moral support and was beginning to regret doing so. Curse my kind heart.

"Love," he spat the word as though it were bitter to his tongue. "I cannot exist for one more second in a world without the knowledge that she feels as I do."

"What does love feel like?"

"It feels as though you are being skewered with a lance. As though your lungs have been punctured and your soul set aflame. There is no air, there is no water, there is nothing but the stabbing pain in your heart that brings pain to every step and joy to every breath. And I hate it," he sighed and then grunted as he finally mustered the courage to knock on the door before him.

We had, by then, been waiting outside for more than fifteen minutes.

A few short seconds passed before Elizabeth - the object of his rhapsodic affection - opened the door, and a few rather long minutes passed as my brother pronounced his love in an increasingly florid manner. It seemed, however, that his strategy had been successful when the woman flung herself into his waiting arms and professed that they would be wed in the spring.

I did not understand their adoration for one another - Elizabeth was bright and charming, with caramel skin and in possession of the prettiest kirtles a woman could find for just shy of ten miles. She had a penchant for embroidery, you see. My brother, on the other hand, was short for his age, with calloused hands and an exceptionally broad face. I loved him, but I could not imagine what any woman could possibly see in the emotional depths of his green-tinted eyes that would so greatly overcome his shortcomings.

With his declaration of love, however, I came to understand that burn in my chest for what it was, and with that understanding, I found myself desperate to act upon it.

The next time the pastor's wife found me in the market square, my heart began to throb violently, pressing against my ribcage and threatening to escape my body altogether. And so I pulled her into my arms, and I kissed her.

It was a stupid decision, really, to do such a thing in public, but even now, with all that has happened, I do not regret it. Her tongue was in my mouth and my heart was in my throat - it felt as though all the world were ending and we were the ineffable architects of its destruction. Oh, what a lucky man the pastor was - I had never before grasped quite how blessed the man was to be married to such a woman but now I knew. He was the luckiest whoreson ever to walk this earth.

We parted, slowly, the air around us hanging low and heavy with words unspoken, and it was then that she allowed herself to smile. My heart and soul soared, my breast warmed wonderfully by her touch and I found I could hardly breathe. The burn within had come to consume me and I felt all the better for it. For a few moments in time, my love and I were one.

It was criminal that those moments were so few.

Water

It was then that the pastor, whose eyes had so chilled my youthful blood, returned to grace the narrative of my existence with the cruelty of his Midas touch. He had followed his wife to the square that day, for one reason or another, perhaps to barter for a bottle of Italian wine or to flirt with the milkmaid who sold him his butter. It did not matter. What mattered was what he saw - two souls united in love, that new, burning, brutal thing called love, shared so desperately and in its rawest, truest form between myself and his wife, his perfect wife.

I do not have a clear recollection of what happened next. There was a shout, the pastor's, and the rage in his voice was of a kind that could not be quelled by words or diplomacy. It was a violent, bestial sound and I believe it was in that moment that I knew I was to die. He pushed through the square towards us, casting aside children and knocking fresh produce to the floor as though it were worth less than nothing. With one furious, fluid movement, he grasped me by my throat and tossed me to the soil. Tears slid down my burning cheeks and my heart beat at my ribcage, begging me to run, to hide, to scream. There was a pain in my chest then, yes, but nothing like that I had felt so often in my love's drawing room. This pain was different - it felt as though my heart had been turned to glass and was shattering within my chest, scraping against my vital organs, exploding into shards within the vessels that carried my blood. All of my body and soul were to be consumed by my treacherous heart and so I lay, a broken doll, nothing more than wood, straw and patches of colour, cast away like shit onto the cruel dirt and cobbles of my market streets.

"You bitch," he spat, his canine teeth grinding against one another. "You fucking bitch. I always knew you were one of them."

"Harry, please," his wife grasped at his chest, pulling him close, trying to force him to look into her tear-filled eyes - I think she was trying to appeal to some human instinct within his granite heart, to invoke the protectiveness, the compassion, a groom ought have for his bride. "She's just a child."

"She's not a child," he did not meet her gaze. "She's a witch."

"No, no, Harry, she's young, it was an amicable gesture," caressing his bricklike jaw with shaking hands, the pastor's wife continued to beseech. "She's not a witch, I know her, she's good, she's a good girl. Isn't that right? She's a friend, and nothing more - she kissed my cheek, you must not have seen, my love. You kissed my cheek, didn't you?"

She turned her eyes to me, soft, floral eyes whose attention seemed to me to be worth all the more than her husband's venom. I nodded, unable to force my bleeding lips to lie.

The pastor seemed to pause in his tirade and turned to face his wife. Those seconds in which he considered his judgement were to me an eternity. Exhaling forcefully from his flared nostrils, he turned away from both of us altogether, focusing his gaze on the woman selling her wares in the stall behind us.

"Rosemary," he demanded. "Is it true that you lost six of your chickens this year?"

"Yes, Father," she responded, dutifully bowing her head. "My son found them, sir, with claw marks, bites and the lot - all mauled, all broken, all bloodied. We was distraught, sir."

"Thank you, Rosemary," graciously, the pastor turned his attention to a ragged-looking man across the square. "Bartholomew?"

"Yes, Father," the raggedy man kept his gaze low to the ground. His eyes flickered towards my defeated form once, perhaps twice, and I knew he had pity for me. It is funny, I think, how even the poorest in our twisted civilisation can find sympathy in their hearts for those others who are suffering, whilst the most blessed seem to shun all those whose lives are not so sanitised as their own. I knew that this broken man would keep me in his prayers, as I would keep him in mine - bound by the unspoken oath of shared misery.

But what could prayer do to save me from the fury of a holy man?

"Is it true that your home was destroyed in a fire just six weeks ago, Bartholomew?" the pastor arched a single eyebrow in my direction and in that instant I knew his plan.

"Six weeks and four days, sir, yes," swallowing, the man clutched at his tattered clothing anxiously.

"Tragic."

"It was, Father, I... I lost my little girl," Bartholomew began to tremble, his eyes shining with pain. "She was only sixteen, but she's with the angels now."

"Yes, yes," the pastor muttered, turning to his final victim. "My love."

His wife stared at him, aghast. "Harry?"

"Do you remember when our son was only a few weeks old?"

"Like it was yesterday, Harry."

"It very nearly was as you bore him so late," the pastor smirked. "When he had spent but a few fortnights on this earth, we were forced to call the physician, were we not?"

"Yes, Harry."

"Why did we call the physician?"

"Because he had marks on his cheeks, red, blistering marks."

"How many were there, my love?"

She choked on her words as they escaped her lips, knowing that they were my condemnation. "Six."

"Six," the pastor's eyes glinted with satisfaction as he appraised the people of the square. "Six of Madam Carpenter's chickens died. Master Ashdown's house was lost to flames but six weeks ago. My son was, while still so young, cursed with six marks of the devil. Six. Six. Six."

"Perhaps a witch does live amongst us," Master Ashdown protested, casting his concerned gaze to me openly now. "But how are we to know it is this girl?"

"She has just been caught, in broad daylight, attempting to solicit another woman, undoubtedly to coax her into a cursed coven," the pastor shook his head with righteous fury. "We cannot stand for this. We will not stand for this. We shall take her to the river this instant and if this witch survives, she will burn."

"No!" his wife clapped her hands to her mouth, tears now streaming from her eyes. "But, Harry, what if she does not?"

"Then she is an innocent woman and we will bury her as such," he replied, teeth gritted.

With a grip so tight that my wrist burned red beneath it, he dragged me along the soil towards the miry banks of the River Syngian. I offered no protest, how could I? Instead, I cast my eyes skyward, hoping to spend my final moments in an appreciation of all the beauty that surrounded me. And there she was, sprinting in a desperate effort to keep up with me, her lacy hems doused with marsh soil and her cheeks aflame, the pastor's wife, my love, my Mathilde.

In our time, the trialling of witches was frighteningly common, and the accusing of innocent women of being witches was even more prevalent. Just last summer, a young girl - Isolde, of a nearby village - had been thrown to the flames because her dough seemed to her husband to be too filled with bubbles, a doubtless mimicry of her cauldron simmering. This likely had nothing to do with her husband marrying their sixth neighbour to the left after an obligatory two day period of mourning. Oftentimes, trials were quite public - most people love the gore and drama of a public trial and execution, as it provides an exciting reprieve to the humdrum of everyday life - involving several examinations, a turn on the ducking stool and finally a very public incineration.

The pastor chose to forego almost all of these carefully created steps, kneeling beside me as he fastened a large rock to my ankle with rope. "Any last words?" he muttered.

"Yes," I whispered, my lips cracked and my voice hoarse from weeping. "You don't deserve her."

Those were indeed to be my last words as just a moment later he hurled me from the soggy mud of the riverbank into its frosty waters. I saw him set his jaw with a brutal kind of satisfaction as I fell. I saw Mathilde sobbing into his chest, reaching out a single, pale hand in a futile effort to meet mine as I sank. Her delicate fingers just grazed the surface of the water before she was pulled from the scene, kicking and sobbing, her voice ragged as she offered cries of my name to the empty air.

I felt water weeds grasp at my skin, I felt as the world went blue and I felt as my lungs drained of precious air. My whole body seemed to fold in on itself as it settled, as gently as a feather, on the silt of the riverbed, the water my coffin. For a few seconds, I fought - with terror and desperation - to return to the surface, to the earth, to all that I knew, but I failed. I felt as my whole system of being was crushed from the inside out and I felt as the lids of my eyes closed to the water against my will.

It is often said that your life flashes before you when you die. For me, this was the truth, for all my last thoughts were of Mathilde, the woman to whom I had bequeathed my earthly existence.

Ether

I awoke in a haze, as though from a satisfied sleep on a drowsy summer's day. Slowly, but surely, sensation returned to my extremities and my lungs seemed to return to the fullness I had for so long taken for granted. The air I inhaled seemed to smell of honeysuckle, of ploughed grass, of wildflowers and of newness. It seemed to embrace me, calming me from its caress of my skin to its nurturance of my drowned soul. Carefully, I opened my eyes.

The light surrounding me was bright, brilliantly so, and peculiarly warm, as though coming from a much closer sun. For moments all I could do was blink as I slowly adjusted to the nature of my surroundings. I noticed trees - so many trees - each festooned with blossoms of the purest of whites, daintiest of blushes and softest of lilac tones. Leaves burst forth from between their floral comrades, cuddled close to their petals with just glimpses of their vibrant emerald visible from afar. I lay gently cushioned on a field of long, thick grass sparkling with spatters of bright, enthusiastic daisies, their yellow hearts opened to the warmth of the sun.

I do not know how much time passed before I realised that my body had been left naked. In a small panic, I clasped my breasts in an effort to hide them and pulled myself up from the grass. I felt as though I could see for miles into the horizon but there did not seem to be any sign of humanity, just those beautifully decorated trees - an eternity of flowers sprawled before me. Tentatively, I stepped forward, once, and then once more. No sky came crashing down upon me, no pastor came to beat me for my sins, no, I was left only to be one with the trees.

I walked for what must have been miles and days, yet my body never seemed to grow weary. My mind remained alert, my throat refreshed and my skin pleasantly cool. I revelled in the emptiness of my environment, feeling, for the first time in my life, as though I were no longer judged, as though my life finally belonged to me in the most real of ways. It took some time, but my mind began to quiet, abandoning its usual frenetic tirade and growing peaceful, as though suspended Eventually, the glorious silence in which I had been bathed was broken by a few gentle strands of song.

Without considering any possibility of danger, I rushed towards its source only to be stopped in my path once I saw her.

She was so entangled in her own melodies that she did not notice as my gaze caressed her Venusian form. Her cheeks were plump, pink and kissable, her lips much the same, falling into an intricately perfect Cupid's pout, and her eyes - oh, her eyes - so wide, so innocent, so gentle, honey-coloured as they met the rays of the sun, warm, dark and earthy when cast to the daisies between her toes. The woman's breasts were firm and high on her chest, soft nipples just visible from beneath the soft rose-toned material of her gown, which fell so lightly and shone so transparent against her skin I could not help but wonder as to whether the material belonged to the world of mortals. Her legs were long and glistened from beneath that fabric, her arms strong and muscular as she brought her delicate fingers to the strings of the small harp that rested between those glistening limbs. Oh, dear reader, no woman could ever have longed to be an instrument so much as I.

My reverent gaze danced across her wings, barely registering their existence as transcending the bounds of normality. They were broad, thickly feathered and appeared soft to the touch, shimmering with a thousand colours and more the scientists have still yet to discover. Perhaps they never will, but I did. I had discovered her.

"You watch me," she chuckled, and I started. The angel's voice befit her beauty, lingering in the air around me, as addictive and sweet as the tension surrounding love's first kiss. If I could have fainted, perhaps I would have, but my body seemed too well, too strong, to do now. "Why?"

"I watch you because you are the most wonderful thing I have ever seen," I replied, the words spilling like wine from my love-drunk lips.

"If I am so lovely," her laugh seemed to sparkle, almost a corporeal presence. "Come closer and sit beside me."

How was I to disobey an angel?

After

That is how we met, my angel, with your beauty secluded amongst the Elysian trees of Heaven. I did not know where I was then as I do now, but I do not think I needed to. All I have ever needed is you. The smell of your skin, the soft texture of your hair, the knowledge that your heart is mine and mine will forever be yours. You could cast it to the rocks beneath a devil's cliff, my darling angel, and it would still belong to you, you would still possess every aspect of my soul even if you crushed it into a million pieces between your perfect hands.

At first, I thought I loved you, but that feeling, that all-consuming admiration and devotion, it was not love. It was but a shadow of what was to come. Each morn, awaking next to you on the fields of God causes each atom of my being to ignite with a kind of joy I never imagined possible. When we met, my angel, I knew you were more than a figure in my present - in one fell swoop, your existence seemed to envelop my past, present and future in your honeyed kiss. I have seen other angels, now, as we have been here together for so long, but in truth, I have never truly seen another creature since I saw you. You are daylight, you are air, you are ether.

You are the blossom I picked from the topmost bough of a golden tree nine summers past to tuck behind your ear in the hopes that you would reward me with a kiss.

You are the gentle waters of the lake that we discovered behind a grassy knoll we have bathed in each day of the afterlife we share as one.

You are the silver birch I fell from in our first spring. I still remember the way you ran to my aid, your eyes brimming with concern and your touch all the healing my heavenly body could possibly require.

You are the hungry, infatuated glint that dances in my eye each time I see you strip from your gown. Oh, how impossibly perfect you are.

You are the warmth of the sun that has kissed each of our cheeks and fought away any earthly chill that might remain in our crackling bones.

You are the heavenly scent of the aromatic barks that grow to the south of our land, which each year I travel to purchase for your perfumes.

You are the earth that grounds me, the air that sustains me, the water that cools my skin and you are the passionate burn that aches in my chest.

You are everything - to me, and I cannot help but assume, every other soul that has encountered you, glorious you. How could I be the only one taken in by every perfect aspect of your existence? I cannot.

I have told you of my life and my death, you have told me of yours, how you lost your life to flames and how I lost mine to the cruelest of waters. We are witches of a kind, I suppose. If we are not, how else could we possibly be together? How could my body stretch out unharmed, no longer pale and limp and trapped within the confines of my riverbed coffin, if we are not? How could your skin remain soft and untouched by pain or injustice?

I choose not to question our existence, lest it be ended, as though it were some oversight that my contemplation might bring godly attention to. I simply let it be and enjoy it for what it is. Perhaps this is Heaven, in the way the pastor knew it to be, or perhaps it is Hell, for we do not love in the way the sacred texts wish us to. We shall never have children and nor shall we wed, for such constructs cannot exist in our precious land beyond time. We simply bask in our love for one another, and if to taste your skin, to kiss your beautiful cunt, is to sodomise you, then let sodomy reign for sodomy is ecstasy. You are ecstasy.

I breathe you in as though each inhale were my last and cherish every moment with you as though it were gold. After all, when you are dead, you cannot take living for granted.

I know that I have died, in a mortal sense, yet somehow I feel more alive than ever before. All my previous memories have faded into those of our shared love and I would not have it any other way. I am simply grateful for the time that I have had with you and can only beg humbly for an eternity more. You challenge me, ease me, heal me, kiss me, bring me to my knees. I could not be more grateful that our love is shared yet if it were not, I would still endlessly adore you - whether I love you by your side or from afar is no matter to me. I count myself the luckiest woman ever to walk the fields of Heaven and Earth just to have the opportunity to have encountered you. You are the reason that I believe some kind of God, some omnibenevolent being, must exist, for you, you cannot be real. You must be a creation, some expression of a perfect God, for you are simply too divine for my heart to comprehend. Oh, how I love you, my angel.

You watch me as I write this, my pen scraping across the soft papyrus in my palm and you laugh, that gentle, tinkling laugh, you smile, you ask me what I'm writing. I return your smile and say but a few words -

I am writing our story, Isolde.