V is for Vicious

Vanished without a trace, that’s how the story of former General Arlinus Maximus and his timid Giulia was bound to end. They never came back from Herculaneum. At the end of the summer, the vicious eruption of Mount Vesuvius wiped out the living by burying them alive. Arlin believed that the brave general tried to escape with Giulia away from the volcano, but his horse got killed by falling rocks, and at the end Arlinus drew his sword and ended Giulia’s life to save her from incineration. Maybe someday Arlin will write more about the couple. He scribbled the following excerpt as the last account of their passionate lives.

***     

Slipping into oblivion, Giulia’s hips hit the table, followed by her feet, her whole body turning cold everywhere but her whipped ass. She laid there motionless, her limbs outstretched at an awkward angle, all signs of life vacating her body. La petit morte, Arlinus recalled the dreadful Gaulish phrase; he had never observed with anyone else such a vicious change from a heated and vigorous tryst to this disheartening freeze. She just stopped convulsing and rolling her hips, chasing one eviscerating crest after another ripping through her body. And now this, gutted. Arlinus brushed Giulia’s chilling cheeks with his thumbs and rolled her head to face him.

Awakened from her deathlike state, she whispered, eyes closed. “Water.”

Her thirst quenched with only a few sips from the silver jar, she turned on her side and said, “Cold.”

They were together for a while; Arlinus knew all he could do was to wrap Giulia up in a cloth and carry her over to bed, where she would sleep it off with him warming Giulia up with his body under a stack of furs. In a matter of minutes, he would crawl out of the scorching heat and sit there watching her sleep until Giulia woke up with a drowsy, victorious smile. And then they would go again.

***     

Arlin’s thoughts ventured to his exciting present; with the voluptuous Federica curled up and napping on his shoulder; the long taxi ride to Trastevere promised a vast amount of time to reminisce about the recent events. In particular, the specific events that brought the exhausted Federica, thankfully not as gutted as Giulia, to her current position.