Yesteryear Fiction

NightLight
Daniel M. Cruse


Part 2

In the morning, as the sun broke through her window, I slid out of bed and pulled my pants on. She sat up.

“I need water.”

Stepping out of her bedroom and onto the balcony I could see the office buildings of West L.A. Peoples’ lives all wrapped up in meetings and coffee and lunch breaks and computers and all the other mundanity that comes with life. The water pierced my insides. The marine fog of morning hung around the evergreens and palm trees that lined the city blocks. The sounds of traffic echoed off the streets. The morning sky, deep blue at one end and fiery red at the other, was vacant. No traffic copters or streaks of jetfuel, not yet. But in a few hours the sky would be a cocktail of smog and air traffic. I finished the water and stepped back inside. She sat on the bed with the blankets wrapped around her. I kissed her. She leaned back and fell to the side. Her fingers touched my chest, rapping in ascending order from pinky to index, against my sternum. Like cool Autumn dawns her hair draped against my clammy skin. I stared at her violet irises. Needed them like water.

“How do you do it?”

She looked at me absurdly, “do what?”

“Get the moonlight in a cup?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

I opened my mouth but let the words disappear.

The smell of sand filled her apartment. I sat on the couch. She stepped from the kitchen with an apple that glistened crimson from the droplets of water clinging to its sides. Innocuously, she licked one droplet off with the tip of her tongue. She sat between my legs and began slicing away at the apple; her legs constantly bouncing to an inaudible beat that grooved her in wavy motions. I stared helplessly at her thighs while my fingers danced across the back of her neck. She leaned her head back and turned towards me. We went in for a kiss and she dropped the knife; its blade sliced her finger. She jumped.

Instead of blood music poured out. I listened as the sound of piano keys whispered softly through the tiny slice in her skin. Soothing—everything twinged with vulnerability, the notes filled the room; they pulled me into a dream. With a euphoric falling sensation I tranced. The sound controlled my heart. She walked out of the room. The music followed her. She returned with a band-aid. But before she put it on, she knelt over me; with her breast rubbing against my neck, she rested her cut finger next to my ear. Rain. The music made me rain falling at such speeds that suspended existence. My eyes widened as I watched her fasten the band-aid around the musical laceration and deafened the glorious sound. I started to ask her but she put her finger over my lips.


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I graduated from the University of Southern California's Master of Professional Writing program. I like dinosaurs, thunderstorms and other things.