At River’s Edge
Eric just needed to chill out.
It wasn’t the first time he’d fought with Amanda; indeed, it seemed they fought more often than they didn’t, these days. It was always something—sometimes trivial, occasionally serious, but anyway ending in shouting, accusations, and him storming out of their house to take a walk.
They were both stressed out. Neither of them really mad at each other, but unable to direct their resentment at work, bills, the leaky showerhead, or how the basement flooded every time a hard rain came through, anywhere but at each other. That was safe. They would let all their frustrations out in a tempest of anger and then take a step back, calm down, apologize, and make up. Over and over again. This was their life. This was his life.
And so, he walked through the woods behind their house. It was dark and damp, the scent of leaves and lavender and fresh earth after a springtime rain filling the air. He wasn’t the outdoorsy type, yet the woods always put him at ease. Starlight fell through the leaves above. The world was bathed in blue and purple hues. Fireflies flitted between the branches. There was tranquility there.
The earth was soft beneath his feet. He’d swapped his dress shoes for sneakers before leaving—that was part of the ritual, having the presence of mind to change his shoes before storming off, while his wife shouted at him, demanded to know where he was going, even though he went to the same place every time. Making sure his keys were sitting on the countertop where she could see them, so she would know he wasn’t going far. A sign that he would come back. He always came back.
He crested a mossy rise and came to a place he had not seen before—a wonder, given that he had wandered these woods many times, but not one that he dwelled upon. A river, shallow, wide, and gently winding, unspooling like a ribbon between the trees. It looked like something out of a storybook, an illustration in a tale about fairies and magic and secret places between the worlds. The water whispered to him. Moonlight, reflected upon its surface, glimmered in his eyes. It was a place of peace. Of solace. Of forgetting. In that place his frustration ebbed away as steadily as water seeking the deepest places of the earth.
The purple petals of forget-me-nots floated by, carried by the current. He sighed and stepped closer to the water’s edge. He wondered what it would be like to be carried, like those petals, on the current. No need to think about work, or his wife’s silently accusing eyes; no need to think about where to go, or what would happen next; to let the water take him where it wanted him to be. It was a gentle, insistent idea.
Eric briefly wondered where the idea had come from. He was a persistent man, stubborn at the best of times and downright obstinate at worst. Amanda often said he’d rather beat his head against a wall than walk around it. And it occurred to him, as he stopped to take off his shoes, that he really didn’t care. There was no need to wonder where the idea of giving in to the river had come from, when the idea felt so right. So instinctual.
And that idea—not a thought, for this didn’t feel like thinking, really—felt right as well.
It was an idea sublime in its gentle insistency, soothing away the stress and tension of stubborn self-determination. Like the water washing over his feet, his ankles, as he stepped into the river, eroding the whys and hows and what-ifs as though they were rough edges on his mind, and his mind just another stone at the bottom of the riverbed. The evening air was cool, but the water was warm. It was refreshing. It pulled loose the messy and unnecessary clutter of his thoughts and just… carried it all away.
Something between a sigh and a moan escaped his lips. He was aroused, though he didn’t experience his arousal so much as simply become aware of it. He became aware of how simple and good it was to become emptier and emptier. The River whispered to him, and nothing else mattered. He no longer wondered where the desire to let it carry him away had come from. He no longer wondered what it would be like to let it carry him away. He was going to let it carry him away. Of course he was. Of course he was. There was no need to think about anything. No need to worry about it. There was only the need to feel, to sink, to surrender to River and let Her take him where he needed to be.
Her soft embrace felt like hands stroking his calves. The moonlight dancing upon Her shifting, shimmering surface looked like eyes looking back at him. The sound of Her flowing over the riverbed whispered seductive promises of peace and pleasure, of sensuality and submission, ecstasy and tranquility merging into a whirlpool of bliss drawing his thoughts down, down, down. He sat down, letting Her waters rush over his thighs and around his waist. Between his legs. So warm. So delightful.
Come to me.
River’s voice floated into his head like fog upon the water, further obscuring his thoughts. Where were they going? Downstream, carried away… so nice… so blissful… he wanted this. Or did She want it for him? No matter. Beneath the fogbank the waters rushed, while within it there was only blankness and dreamy delight.
Yet some part of him resisted. Eric didn’t like that part of him, those errant thoughts still struggling against the current, trying to warn him. This was dangerous, his mind cried out in alarm, even as it was being pulled away from him. Rivers can refresh those who wade into them… but they can also drown.
Let me take you.
River swelled behind him, pressing against his back, falling warm and heavy across his shoulders, cradling him in Her delicious embrace.
Should he stand up? He could if he needed to. She was only water. He could go home any time he liked.
Should he be going home? Home was where he had built his life, and all the worries and struggle that it consisted of.
Should he worry? Or was it better to
Surrender to me.
Yes.
He stopped listening to himself and focused on Her instead. She was better. She felt so right. River wrapped him in Her arms and whispered in his ear.
You belong here with me.
He looked to his side and fell deep into River’s eyes. Wide and dark, deep and knowing, they offered Eric comfort and escape. Bliss and belonging. She pushed into him as She pulled him into her. A merging of souls. He felt fulfilled in a way he had never been before, never thought possible before; a way his stubbornly rational mind had written off as the lies of hucksters and charlatans peddling access to the divine. But this was real.
You belong to me.
It was so right. So wonderfully and terrifyingly and euphorically right. River smiled and gently kissed his temple. He smiled and went limp in Her arms. I belong to her, he thought, and knew it was true, knew it was not his own thought, and accepted it anyway. For there was no value in knowing how one arrives at the truth, so long as one gets there. Truth is truth.
You belong to River.
And it felt good to accept the truth. It felt so fucking good to accept Her truth. He belonged to her, and belonging to her was Heaven, Heaven was an infinitely wide River of mindless bliss and orgasm, flowing forever, and he was drowning in it now.
He wanted to go deeper.
There was no above and no below, no before and no after. There was only submission. There was only Her. There was only euphoria. There was only River.
“Eric?”
There was only River.
“Eric!”
There was only River.
“Oh my God, Eric! What happened? Are you okay?”
Like a rubber band broken, and painfully snapping back against the finger, his wife’s voice cut through his dream of drowning and dragged him, painfully, back to the surface. Eric sat there, dumbly, in the water as Amanda ran toward him. He was confused. Hollow. Empty. Unsure of where he was, or who he was, but knowing that even as he had been found, something had been lost.
The river flowed around him, cold and numbing.
“I… uh…” he fumbled through his mind for the words. Searching for his thoughts. Becoming nervous, then frightened. He couldn’t think. Why couldn’t he think?
Why didn’t he want to think?
Ooh, that was a thought. A good thought. He started to smile, and then stopped, understanding that this was something to keep secret. Something Amanda wouldn’t understand, couldn’t understand—Eric wasn’t sure he understood it himself.
But he wanted to. Oh River, how he wanted to.
“I fell down,” he finally managed to say.
“Jesus! Can you stand? Do you need to go to the hospital? Do I need to call an ambulance?”
It was too much. Her rapid-fire questions felt like a series of punches to endure. His head hurt and his soul ached. He felt his mind rushing back in to fill his empty head. If he had been alone, he would have cried.
“No, honey; I’m… I’m fine. I just slipped and…”
never wanted to get back up again
“…I’m okay,” he lied.
“Okay. Christ, what a mess. We need to get you in the shower.”
That was not what he needed, but Eric couldn’t tell her that. Couldn’t tell her that he had, for the first time in his life, experienced magic. Touched the divine. Peered through the veil between the mundanity of life and the ecstasy of eternity… and wanted, needed, to get back there. Somehow.
“Yeah,” he told her instead. “I need a shower.” He forced himself to grin, sheepishly, at her. She was still his wife, and he still loved her, after all—even if that love paled beside River, it was still there. It was still real.
Just… pale. And thin.
“Let’s get you home, slugger,” Amanda smiled as she reached out to him. He took her hand, she helped him stand, and their argument from earlier was all but forgotten. And that was okay. They would go back home. He would heat up his dinner in the microwave and she would play on her phone and they would eventually go to bed, sleeping with their backs to each other, while some bland, unwatched sitcom provided background noise for the night.
And that was okay. That was the way things were. The life he had built for himself, for them both, simple and safe and always the same.
As they headed back, through the woods and the dark, Eric could still hear the River, sliding into his ears and frolicking in his mind.
Come to me.
* * *