Temple of the Winds

It was late. It would be several hours yet before the sun was up. With the walls painted red, the candles set before silvered reflectors at either end of the narrow hall were able to provide precious little useful light. He liked it that way-the way the comforting cloak of shadows in the pit of the night lent its mood to such nefarious needs.

Debauchery was best indulged in the right. In the darkness. He stood awhile in the quiet obscurity of the hall, savoring his desire. It had been too long. He let his lust have rein, and felt its glorious, wanton ache fill him.

He closed his mouth and breathed through his nose to better experience the range of aromas, both transcendent and abiding He put his shoulders back and used his abdominal muscles to draw slower, deeper breaths.

He counted a variety of scents, from tie smells men carried in and took away with them back to their own lives, the smells of their work-horse, clay, grain dust, the lanolin soldiers used in the care of leather uniforms, and the oil they used for sharpening their weapons, to a redolent wisp of almond oil, and the stale dirt and wet wood of the building.

It was an afferent feast that was only just beginning.

He glanced the length of the hall again, checking. He heard no sounds of lust coming from any of the other rooms. It was late, even for an establishment like this. The fat, potbellied man was probably the last of them, except for himself.

He liked to be last. The evidence of the events before he arrived, and the lingering smells, gave him a rush of sensation. Hi? senses were always heightened in his aroused state, and he valued all the details.

He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the throbbing of his need. She would help him. She would sate his desire; that was what they were here for. They offered themselves willingly.

Other men, like the potbellied man, simply threw themselves on a woman, grunted in a moment of satisfaction, and it was over. They never gave thought to what the woman was feeling, to what she needed, to giving her satisfaction. Those men were no more than rutting beasts, ignorant of all the details that could add to the climax for both. Their mind's eye was too focused on the object of their lust; they didn't see the integral parts of the wider setting that led to true satisfaction.

It was the fleeting, the ephemeral, that created a transcendent experience. Through uncommon perception, and his singular awareness, he could net such evanescent events and commemorate them forever in his memory, thus giving the transient nature of satisfaction permanence.

He felt fortunate that he could see such things, and that he, at least, could bring fulfillment to women.

At last, he took a settling breath and then advanced silently down the hall, marking the way the shadows and tiny lays of light mirrored off the silvered candle reflectors slipped across his body. He thought that if he was mindful, he might someday be able to feel the touch of the light, and of the dark.

Without knocking, he opened the door the potbellied man had come from and stepped into her room, gratified to see that it was nearly as dim as the hall. With a finger, he shut the door.

Behind the door, the woman was just pulling her panties up her legs. She spread her knees and squatted a bit, drawing them up tight against herself. When her sky-blue eyes finally turned up to look at him, her only reaction was to toss the sides of her robe together over the rest of her bare body and casually flip the silk belt together into a loose knot.

The air carried the odor of the hot coals in the warming pan under the bed, the weak but clean aroma of soap, the light fragrance of body powder, and the cloying scent of a sickly sweet perfume. But pervading it all, like the darkness that shaped shadows, was the lingering smack of lust, pointed with the arresting scent of semen.

The room had no windows. The bed, covered with stained, rumpled sheets, was pushed into the far corner. Even though it wasn't large, the bed took up a good part of the room. Against the wall, beside the head of the bed, sat a small, simply made pine chest, probably for personal items. On the wall over the head of the bed hung an ink drawing of two people coupled in passion. It left nothing to the imagination.

A washbasin sat centered on a wobbly-looking cabinet beside her, behind the door. In its edge, the white washbasin had a stained, kidney-shaped chip, with a crack that looked like an artery coming from the kidney. The cloth hanging over the side of the basin still dripped. The milky water in the basin gently sloshed from side to side. She had just washed herself.

They each had their own habits. Some didn't bother to wash, but they were usually the older, unattractive ones who were paid little, and cared little. He had noticed that the younger, prettier, more expensive women washed after each man. He preferred the ones who washed before he came to them, but in the end, his lust overrode such trivial matters.