Golem

There was nobody who loved me so I built myself a lover. High on mania and drunk on old gin, I stumbled down to the riverbed and began dredging up clay. I built her from sticks and mud and blood and spit. Slapped together under the light of the moon and the buzzy overspill from the streetlight on the bridge. When the frenzy wore off I saw that she was a sad approximation of a woman, misshapen and tumorous. Feeling sober and stupid, I kicked her down and watched the mud dissolve into the river.

By morning she was at my door, naked and fleshy. She was perfect, smooth and round and bulging. And hungry. She didn’t speak—she never spoke—but I saw it in her eyes. She came inside and I made tea and biscuits but when she tried to eat she coughed it all back up. Instead, she drank drops of tea from my lips and sucked sugar from my tongue and pushed up against me greedily.

She was like a child. And then suddenly she wasn’t. She figured out how to want and she wanted me. We pressed back into the bedroom, joined at the mouth and shoulders and hips. She lay me down on the bed and peeled off clothes until I was skinless and shivering.

Then she was on me and all I could feel was her burning. Her hands covered my breasts, the curve of my stomach, wandered up my thighs. I slid my fingers inside her and she split in two and I felt her crashing and spilling down over me. She was insatiable. Her body wicked away at mine until I ached with thirst and hunger. At times, I thought I might die from it, from all of it, but I was afraid if I left she would be gone when I returned and so instead I pulled her close with all my strength. I tasted the softness of her skin, the salt of gasping sweat pooling at her throat and behind her knees.

When it was all too much and I was soaked deep to my pores, she put her mouth on me and licked until I was raw and sore. Her tongue was a twisting and slippery thing, and it made me writhe and arch and cry hoarse animal cries.

We fucked for a day and a night. She had no mind but to love me—I created her and I was all she knew. She loved with a ferocity that grew unbearable. Long after I was exhausted, panting, slipping into unconsciousness, still she clung to me, drew more out of me.

By morning, I could feel her fading. There was desperation in her breathing, and she clutched at me with no pretense of tenderness. Touch made her real, and she held onto it with brutal need. I was bruised and breathless, dizzy with the onslaught of pleasure and the need for rest. But I couldn’t  part from her any more than I could tear out my own lungs. Her teeth left new marks on my collarbone to cover the old ones, as my wrist ached between her thighs. She came, yet again, her mouth open soft and needy.

When her kisses turned dry in my mouth I knew it was the end. I held her through it, then walked naked to the kitchen. My hair was plastered to my back with sweat and my legs trembled under me. I drank a pitcher of water and stuffed myself with cold chicken and leftover pasta until I could breathe slow again. I fell asleep on the couch, the sound of my heart beating loud in my ears, mud thick on my hands and elbows. When I woke, I scrubbed until my skin was raw. And the house smelled sharply of bleach. And I was, again, alone.