The Cross and the Black Page 10

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  The night was cold again. Dawn was still many breaths away, and Claude was not content to lift off chimeras of his own design from the black ceiling. Spirit contended with flesh as he squirmed and pleaded with the worn idol of the apothecary for torrid relief. Satisfaction was stubborn, and he was beginning to feel vilely raw. He slapped his tired hands to the bed and cursed at the weakness of the apothecary’s thrusts.

  Serge ruined him. Serge meant nothing.

  Claude reached again for his turgid organ and forced himself to be calmer, stroking to the thought, “Slow, slow, Senher.” He was halfway up the Sisyphean mountain when the events of the evening invaded its absurdity. He dented a fist into the dark and cursed the rationalizations of love and goodly love.

  He felt a finger point at him in the darkness. The Jacobin’s finger. Up on the ceiling, red eyes floated and blinkered. Claude laughed, its peals rolling forth from his dry mouth and mocking his weak imaginations. He welcomed the Angel of Death and the promised desolation. Death was a swift host. No need for a hard lifetime of bending to God and man. He would see Antoine again. The splendors of heaven were like a great jeweled walking stick, lovely, but lost on him.

  Perchance, Antoine had found grace on his deathbed and managed to grasp the slippery prize of heaven, and thereby casting him aside, just like Serge had done.

  His erection slacked limp. He stared wide-eyed through the fabric of his blanket, to the wall frothing black underneath a dumb patch of sky, and abandoned himself to panic.