Short Story #003

Adulteress

She eats, wipes her mouth, and says, "I have not done wrong." They are enthralled because she is lovely. Few have escaped her snare. Few have resisted. Few have prevailed.

She has ceased to cast her spell personally. Her apostles know the incantation. They do the converting now.

He was walking on the street below her flat. She could tell he was poor from the state of his clothes and shoes. He halted under the lamppost. He had the strangest eyes she had ever seen in a man. They looked like the ocean—deep and calm.

She leaned against the railing of the balcony. Like a bird of prey she watched the world from her eyrie. A cool breeze lifted the curls off her shoulder.

 The man she lived with was not home. From her lips dripped honey, she swung around on her heels and left the flat. To whom was she being faithful? To a man who treated her like a body and not a soul? Just like the five other men before him?

It was twilight, evening, darker than the day when she walked up to him, "Are you lost, sir?"

He turned around to look at her. She smiled innocently. Oh the thrill! What pleasure it gave her to make a man kneel at her sight! After that, all he would want was to touch her.

He met her eyes calmly.

 "No. Could you give me some water to drink please?"

She wanted to grab him and kiss him because he appeared so resistive to her charms. She would plead with him to stay awhile. He looked like the beauty of her body was lost on him. She found this amusing. She would show him. "You'd better come up then."

The stranger followed her up the stairs to the place where men said they'd been transported to heaven. She opened the door. A sweet smell of spices wafted out.

"Are you embalming a dead body in there?" he asked. She stiffened at his joke.

She gave him a seat at the table and poured him a glassful of water. "Are you new to these parts?"

"Yes." But he did not drink it. "Where has your husband gone?"

She laughed. "I have no husband."

The stranger lifted his eyes. "You are right when you say this, for you have had five husbands, and the one you are with now is not your husband."

She jumped from her place as though she had been stung. "Are you a prophet sir?" she snapped

The man did not reply at once.

 "Are you thirsty? Is there something without which you cannot satiate your thirst?”

When she made no response he asked again, “Are you searching for something? What is driving you from one man's arms to the next?"

She lifted her proud chin and raised her eyebrows. "If you've had your drink of water, you may leave. I don't wish to answer the questions of a stranger."

"If you ask, I could you give you water that would quench your every thirst."

She looked at him in wonder. What sort of magician had wandered through her door? She did have an insatiable thirst. She lusted for the blood of prophets and saints, for men who condemned her without knowing the life she had led. She wanted to drink the blood of those hypocrites who would drag her by her hair to the marketplace and stone her if she stopped peddling her wares. She was a body not a soul. They never let her forget it.

He seemed to read her thoughts. "Woman, where are your condemners?"

"Everywhere. Wherever I go they are there before me. They have left me the night in which to hunt for food. They have pushed me off the streets to the corners. The righteous will have no association with the sinners."

He got up from his seat. "I came for the sinners, for those who need to be saved. I do not condemn you."

His words set off an alarm in her heart. She wanted to follow him to the ends of the earth. She wanted to live in his presence. She sought the forgiveness of the stranger as if his one word would wash her clean.

She followed him down the stairs. "Give me the drink that you promised, so that I shall never thirst again!"

He looked on her with compassion. Blood began to pour from the wounds on his palms and feet.

She began to wail in sorrow. No, the blood of this man was too holy to drink! She began to wash in it and her sinful body was made clean.