Blue Glass

Manfred

The darkness is alive all around me, a pulsing, limbless, invisible creature sliding over my skin, holding me weightless in its embrace. I've always felt more comfortable in darkness than light. In the dark, I am alone with my thoughts, temporarily hidden away from the world, free to think and say and feel whatever I want.

I almost laugh at myself, sitting in the dark in a bathtub full of scalding hot water that reeks of biting sandalwood. I lost count of the number of bars of luxury soap I used on myself a while ago. I am overcome by the need to scrub my skin until it bleeds, to completely eradicate what I've done from my mind and body.
But I can't. I know I never will be able to fully forget. Because deep down, I don't want to. I want those memories to stay with me until I die—a tribute to the only time in my life when I let my heart dictate my decisions.
I suppose I should consider myself lucky. After all, it's not every day a man gets to lose his virtue to a woman he actually harbors feelings toward. At the same time...
This was never supposed to happen. She's a working class girl. I'm an aristocrat.
The shame that comes with that realization is almost too much to bear. I let my head fall forward and rest my forehead atop my kneecaps. My eyelids drop closed like a heavy velvet stage curtain.
Why had I done that? Worst of all, why had I enjoyed it?
Against my will, the recollection of what had just transpired in the room that was now separated from me by a wooden door flooded my brain.
The moment the alcohol touched my lips, I felt myself leave my body. I was hovering over the two of us, Lea and I, watching us drink and slowly numb our minds so that we—no, I—could do what was necessary.
I was grateful for the darkness. I was also grateful that she hadn't asked for me to keep the lights on. I didn't think that I would have been able to perform with the lights on no matter how much alcohol I drank.

She won't understand if I tell her. Girls are taught by their mothers that men are supposed to be sexually powerful and know what they're doing, and that that would be the case for any man they married. For me to casually disprove that would go against everything she's ever known about the opposite gender.
She can never know what my indoctrination to sex, to the pleasures of the flesh, was. She won't understand the way things were over there...in Wahlstatt. She will never understand that sexual acts were nothing but a sort of currency; a sort of fee that you paid to stave off the incessant bullying sure to come your way. She will never understand the concept of the servant and the master; the protector and the protected; the Hase and the Louis.

"Manfred."
He's sitting on my bed, running his hand up and down my calf possessively. His touch ignites my blood, makes my head spin. I don't know what I'm feeling; what's wrong with me.  The way he says my name sends shivers down my spine.
"I'm awake," I say, because I had been for a long time since lights out was announced. I don't go to sleep as fast as I ought to.
I wonder what my mother would say if she saw me. She would be horrified at the thought of an elder boy putting his hands on her son so familiarly. Then again, I could blame my mother for putting me in a place where such things could occur. I could blame her for literally having to sell my body to another person just so he could keep me safe.
"Keep it down." The moonlight from the few windows there are in the room turns his already pale skin a smooth alabaster. I am suddenly overcome by the shameless urge to feel his skin beneath my fingertips, to caress his face, to trace the slant of his nose. I want to feel his eyelashes bat against my skin as his eyes close, as I run my hands over them also.
I want to pay him homage; thank him for all that he's done for me. Because that's what a Hase does, isn't it? Undying loyalty for never ending protection. That's the way it is.

He stands up, pulling me to my feet. "Come on. I want to show you something special." He smiles. "Just like you."
I'm special...? To him? His words render me weightless. I squelch the urge to turn a cartwheel out of happiness.
My heart thuds in my chest as he leads me out of the room and into the deserted, dark hallway. I stick to his heels like a frightened rabbit, jumping at the slightest creak in the walls of the ancient building. I feel like such an angsthäse, cowardly and afraid.
He suddenly turns, and seems to walk straight into the wall to my right. I stifle a cry of panic and start after him, not wanting to be left behind in the gloom and risk being found by a teacher doing the nightly rounds.
It is a doorway that I didn't realize existed before. It leads to a tiny flight of stairs which end at a small space of floor, barely enough for one person. There is a window built into the wall at the top, bathing him and I in brilliant white light at the bottom of the stairs.
"What is this?" I ask in a hushed whisper. "Isn't there a light we can turn on?"
He chuckles. "Don't be foolish. We'd get a hiding if we were ever found here." He turns to me. "Are you afraid of the dark, Manfred?"
He places his hands on my shoulders, his gaze locked on my mouth. I pass my tongue over my lips and his eyes flash momentarily.
"I'm not afraid of anything," I tell him.
"Good." He smiles, and I feel like I've just been awarded a Pour le Merite. "You know, I've often heard it said by the other boys in my platoon that your lips are comically inflated. Like a Negro's." He laughs at his own joke, and I press my lips together, as if by doing that they'll appear thinner.
"But even big lips can prove useful at certain tasks."
"I understand."
I don't know what he's about to ask of me, but whatever it is, I'll do it. I will do anything—anything—to make him smile.
He clasps my hands in his, lifting them to his shoulders.
"Kiss me," he says.
And, rising over the fear and hesitation swamping my brain, I obey.
I close my eyes, lean forward, and gently touch my lips to his.
He's looking at me with a strange expression on his face when I pull away from him, one that sets me on fire all over again. No one, no one has ever looked at me like that before.
"You know what a real kiss is, don't you?" He cups my cheek, tilting my head slightly to one side. "No? Very well, then, I'll teach you."
And then he kisses me.
It's a proper kiss, a real kiss. If my blood was singing then, now it has reached a full on boil. I felt my knees giving way beneath me, and scrabbled at the sleeves of his nightshirt as he dropped to a sitting position on the lowest stair, bringing me with him.
He uses his lips and tongue in ways I didn't even think were possible, ways that make me gasp against his mouth and squirm in his grasp. I can feel a knot being pulled tighter and tighter and tighter in my lower stomach, the hot itch gathering there becoming more and more unbearable with each passing millisecond.
I need him to do something about it....
...need him to do something about it...
...do something about it...