Damaris. I met Damaris on my very first day of school, and already everyone felt unease around her. She was taller, faster, stronger than anyone else. Every single kid at that school knew to stay well away from her, except me. No, I loved her since the very first I saw her, though obviously I didn't know that at the time. But I did, I did then, and I do now. We started talking some weeks after school started, one day during recess, when I noticed she'd brought nothing to eat. I sat by her side, and asked her if she wanted to share my sandwich, and she ended up eating most of it. That was ok, even then I knew I would give up anything for her. We became close friends, different though we were : whereas she was tall, and gangly, and yet athletic, I was small and a wee bit pudgy. I was a runt compared to her, but we got along really well. Damaris was odd even at that early age : her skin was almost grey, and she had very long hair that was always neatly combed running down her back and past her waist. In a strange way, she seemed like a woman grown stuck in the body of a child. And then one day Damaris stopped coming to the school. We'd learn, in time, that she had fallen ill, and then when she got better, their parents had decided to move to a different place. I never knew where she lived, so I never got to say goodbye to her. For years after that, she remained in my mind, a memory that would never fade. And, in time, I gave up any hope of ever seeing her again.
Fast forward some years, I'm barely in my teens, and it's after my parents had divorced. That summer, I split my holidays between my mom and my dad, staying in the city with mom first, and then going to this little town some miles away from here to where my dad had moved to. The rent was cheaper, he said, and the added commute didn't really bother him that much. I think he really liked it there, and at least he seemed happier. All they did the past few years they were together was fight, and everyone felt miserable at home. So this happens a couple of days after I got to his place : dad has to go to work every day, so he gives me a spare key to the house, and tells me that I should get to know the town better. And I do just that, but don't get me wrong, this is one of those tiny towns that you get to know pretty well in no time at all. But more than getting to know the town, I got to know its surroundings, I got to know the abandoned quarry, the old mine that has been sealed off for decades now, I got to know the lush meadows that lie a stone's throw away from here. And I got to know a field that leads to a very peaceful river that flowed lazily by. I spend many an hour there, underneath the shade of a nearby tree, lost in wonder, lost in thought, lost in the pages of a good book. And it was here that I'd see Damaris again for the first time in years.
I had been going to that spot regularly for about two weeks, and though it was summer and it was pretty hot, I never had the courage to take off my clothes and take a dip in the cold water, tempted though I often felt. And to this day I'm not sure if it was happenstance or just plain carelessness, but I'm sitting there by the tree one afternoon, when I see someone getting close to the bank. My heart beat fast, fast, fast, faster! I recognized her at once. But I stayed glued to the ground. Especially because in one swift movement she took off her dress and shoes and dove straight into the water. I... I wanted nothing more than to keep looking, to admire that figure of hers - she had grown, and boy, had she filled out, but I didn't think it would be right to just sit and gawk. So I turned my back to her, and sat on the opposite side of the tree. Some time later, and in the meantime I'd given up on trying to read the book, because my mind was filled with images of her, I hear a voice shouting from a ways away, yelling at me. She was letting a litany of accusations and derogatory names fly my way, she probably thought me some kind of perverted peeping tom. As she approaches, I turn my head and look from behind the tree at her. The insults continue, a barrage of verbal abuse unlike any I'd ever heard before. My head peeks out again, and the she stops mid sentence. She stands there looking at me, her arms crossed, tapping her feet, looking incredibly cross at me, and then says 'What are you doing here?'
'What are you doing here?', I say in return. 'And where did you go, all these years ago? I cried myself to sleep every single night for months on end when I found out you'd left!', and Damaris, god damned Damaris, she says, 'I waited for you all this time. Summer, spring, autumn, winter. I waited here for you.' And Damaris sits down by my side, lets her body slide down to the ground, and I can't take my eyes off of her, she's supple and lithe, and she snakes around me. 'Tell me', she says, and I don't even have to ask her what she means by that. Without a care in the world, she takes off her dress again, and undoes my pants. I'm not sure what's happening, but please don't let this be a dream. 'Tell me', she says, as she positions herself atop of me, and plunges myself inside her. I feel a matted stickiness in her thighs, and my fingers come slick with blood. 'Tell me', she says. My god damned Damaris, I love you.
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