The Four Elements

by Claude Lalumière

Air

(Hiding)

The gloves are designed to look like a hand. Pink, with a subtle tint of olive; fingernails painted blue.

A blond wig lies next to them on the floor: shoulder length, with a bounce that stops short of a curl. High-heeled shoes. Blouse. Skirt. Tights. Bra. Cotton panties. More pseudoskin: a one-piece mold that mimics her features, and then spreads to the neck, the chest, the shoulders, below the nape.

She's in a playful mood.

I pick up the panties and slip on the blindfold that I keep in my pocket for games like these.

I bury my nose in her panties. Cotton is so much better at absorbing her odour than silk or lace. Her smell is heady, powerful: she's at most a day or two from her period.

I drop the panties and start my search. Step by step I cover the entire house. I open every closet. I palpate every nook and cranny. The whole time I'm sniffing. Sniffing her pussy. That smell! It's everywhere I go. My balls tingle with anticipation.

Is she even here? Maybe I shouldn't have rubbed my face in her panties. Maybe that's all I'm smelling.

"Darling...?"

Someone rams into me and knocks me down.

"Silly! I followed you the whole time -- you couldn't win."

She yanks off my blindfold, but there's nothing to see.

My fly is zipped open, my cock pulled out. Moist warmth envelops my erection.

Her smell is overpowering. I open my mouth and stick out my tongue. She presses her pussy against it. I manage to find her hips and tilt her so my nose slides into her juices.

When I come, I see the faint milky outline of her tongue, her palate, her teeth, her cheeks -- the insides of her mouth. My invisible woman.

Fire

(Metamorphosis)

Her footprints are seared into the tarmac, leading to the woods bordering the road. I follow the trail of burnt leaves, burnt wood -- that rich blend: subtly fruity, pungently ashy.

There she is: sitting on a boulder, naked. Her face tells me she's confused, scared -- like the others I've tracked down.

She doesn't notice me. The symptoms are too overwhelming. Coarse, ragged breathing. Dizzy, sweating, and shivering all at once from the heat, nausea, and weakness.

Gently, I say, "I can help you."

She tenses, panicked. Perspiration runs down her skin. Then fire bursts from her pores, enveloping her. When the flames subside, she balls up into herself, crying.

I say, "No. It's beautiful. Exciting. Fantastic."

"Beautiful?"

"Yes. Reach between your legs."

She hesitates. But she opens her thighs and places her fingers on her sex.

"Touch yourself. Focus the heat."

She does. She moans, closing her eyes. I take off my clothes. I masturbate, too, relishing what will soon happen.

"You should celebrate these changes in your body. These hot flashes, they're not the end: they're a beginning."

Her breathing intensifies. She's close.

I say: "Let me join you."

Her gaze lingers briefly on my hand stroking my cock. She nods.

I pick her up in my arms. She's burning -- scorching -- hot, but her fire cannot consume flesh. I lay her down on the ground. The leaves and twigs under her burn and sizzle, releasing that delicious aroma.

I touch her face, admiring the beauty of the lines etched by age and time.

I enter her. We move together. I whisper into her ear, and she comes. Flames enfold us both. My skin tingles with pleasure so intense it is almost pain. Her heat rushes into me. When I come, for a moment, I too am fire.

Earth

(Nephesh)

She hears them leave. Still, she waits. Hiding. She hears the clatter of rain. Some time later, she emerges from her hole in the ground, her well-concealed cellar. The sun hurts her eyes.

The stink of death hits her. Blood. Shit. Piss. Rot. A brew of odours she will never forget.

She thinks: Words carry power.

Yirah. Fear.

Sawnay. Hate.

Met. Death.

Pogrom.

Everyone she's ever known: dead. Slaughtered. Mutilated.

It is too much for tears, she thinks. But she is crying. In silence, lest she be heard.

She leaves the village. She walks aimlessly until she collapses in the drying mud.

She rubs the mud on her face. She inhales its earthy odours. They scrape at the stink of death lodged inside her.

Her hands work the mud and the soil. She kneads the earth. Molds it.

Words carry power, she thinks again.

Emet. Truth.

No. A more appropriate word occurs to her.

She looks down at her handiwork. The shape of a man. A man with broad, strong shoulders. With a powerful, heavy chest. Endowed with an enormous zayin, created erect under her hands.

She touches between her legs. Her time has come. Her blood. Not the blood of death, but the blood of life. She squats on her creation's mouth and lets her menses flow into it.

Life. Nephesh.

With a bloody finger she carves the word on its forehead, then whispers it in its ear.

The creature stirs.

She impales her wetness on its zayin.

For a time, while they squirm together in the mud, while she loses herself in the smells of the earth and the sensation of the massive zayin grinding inside her, she desperately thinks of life.

Later, she will think of the death her golem will visit upon her enemies.

Water

(Scars)

He closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. A melancholy smile spreads across his face.

I love to look at him: his square jaw, his dimpled chin, his thick eyebrows, his mane of golden hair.

He's smelling the sea. They say smell is the sense most strongly linked to memory. A lifetime ago, the sea was his.

I touch his face. My lips brush his lips, and then his ear. "Watch me. And wait for me."

Basking in his gaze, I take off my shirt, slip out of my shorts and underwear.

I walk towards the waves and plunge into the ocean.

When I emerge, my fists are carrying seaweed.

Rejoining him, I hand over the seaweed, and then I lie on the sand. On my back, my legs spread.

He decorates my body with the strips of seaweed.

He removes his clothes. His cock is huge and dripping. For me.

I moan.

He rubs the seaweed into my wet skin: my face, my neck, my arms, my breasts, my stomach, my legs, my toes. He runs his face against my naked body. I hear him breathe me in, smelling the ocean on me.

I'm so eager for him.

One last strip of seaweed he brushes against my cunt.

He buries his face between my legs, pushes open my labia with his tongue. He takes a deep breath of my smells mingled with the sea's, and then releases his hot breath over my clit.

I gasp.

He moves up to kiss me. As his salty tongue finds mine, his cock spears me.

He nuzzles my neck, sniffing furiously. His thrusts are strong, savage. I come, pulling at his hair.

After his orgasm, I tenderly kiss the scars on his neck, the remnants of his gills.

---

©Claude Lalumière

Claude Lalumière is a writer and anthologist living in Montreal. His latest book is Lust for Life: Tales of Sex and Love, coedited with Elise Moser. His fiction can be found in Tesseracts 9, Year's Best Fantasy 6, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4 and 5, Mythspring, The Best of SDO, Interzone, SciFiction, and others. He blogs at blogspot.com.