She had moved the standing mirror.

The room, while sparsely decorated, appeared cosy, with unmistakably feminine touches: a vase with two or three stalks of lilies fresh from yesterday’s bloom, and the unlit candles at the foot of a bedside table. The curtains were pulled. I noticed the slight marks on the floor where the mirror had stood before.

Quietly I pressed my face close to the door, and through the mercury portal, I watched.

By a lone ray of sunlight I made out her sleeping form, clad in a cotton top and nothing more. She was still, on her side, lying on a comforter that looked soft and plush; I could only imagine how pleasurable it must have felt to the skin. From where I stood I saw only her feet, the only part of her tangible to the touch; whatever else of her was an apparition. Her face remained hidden, beyond the opportunity presented by the door she had left ajar.

She stirred. Her legs were tucked together like a lazy sine wave. A turn of the head, and I thought I saw her eyes. Had she seen me? I could not tell. She settled on her back. It was only then I noticed that her arm has been draped across her stomach all the while.

Then I saw her hand-

-impaled by her thighs, her fingers unseen. I watched, mesmerized, as the metacarpals beneath the skin undulated like piano keys played by an invisible hand. Rising, falling, like waves lapping on a shore. Banging out an unheard rhythm to which my heartbeat palpably followed.

She shifted again. The other free hand disappeared beneath her top. She began to massage her breast, kneading and palming in slow, unhurried circles. The heaving of her chest grew with languid urgency. She swallowed the dryness in her mouth, and for a moment, I thought I saw her smile.

She began to gasp.

Through the mirror, I saw her legs spread wide apart without a shred of modesty. Her fingers were splayed over her swollen vulva, the palm of her hand pressed tightly against her mound, moving in frantic circles. She glided her other hand downwards, nails dragging over her porcelain skin.

Her body arched and shot up as she tapped her clit. Her mouth fell open. Almost immediately, she came crashing down. Bedlinen twisted and entangled with limbs as she began trashing about. I saw flashes of her face. Contorted. Frozen visages of pleasure. Of pain. Mouth agape. Clenched teeth. The beginning of the end. Le petite morte.

She was in another place, another dimension. Alone in a secret garden to no one else she would grant admittance. A place she would not apologize its existence for to anyone. Right then, for a moment, I had stolen a glance into the abyss of her heart.

There, I imagined her rising weightless from the shackles of her life and taking flight. And I floated alongside as she ascended into ecstasy. Naked, limbs outreached and floating as though she was bathed in honey and milk. She laughed, delighted, but all I could hear was nothing. Through her eyes, I witnessed a smattering of images, violently overlapping, attacking. Flooding her senses. My senses. A drop of sweat, grotesquely magnified, on her lover’s chin, quivering from his unseen thrusting. The enclave of his shoulder, the jugular nearby engorged. Thighs burying thighs. Her nails digging into his skin. She could feel him filling her, slapping against her. His sweat fell freely, and traced the curves of her breasts.

There, she was a whore and a saint. She was her own mother to the succubus she craved to be. And in that moment of utter and absolute power, when nothing could stop her, she was Lilith.

Thank you, J, for the inspiration.