Picturing the sun-blasted pieces of sand that are in reality trillions upon trillions of tiny rocks, she can’t shake the image of Jasmine Rouge’s menstrual blood. Nor does she want to. It spins in her head like a washing machine; like millions of gallons of seawater dissapearing down a maelstrom. Licking her lips, she imagines Jasmine on a beach in her home country of Romania, sunbathing in the nude with the lazy shore lapping her glorious limbs. The blood inside of her is trickling out from between her legs. Slow at first, it soon gushes like the blood falling out of the elevator in Kubrick’s The Shining. Flowing into the ocean, it floods the globe in the time it takes Jasmine to spit at the sky in the throes of climax. She’s not touching herself, and neither is anyone else. She’s on the brink because she’s at one with herself and nature, and the only way to really come is when you’re at one with all things. Visualising Jasmine’s teeth chewing at the unseen moon in the foreign sky above her head, Gretchen squeezes her tube of paint until the majority of it ejaculates onto the floor by her bare feet. Dipping the big toe of her left foot into the hot mess of colour, she sees the beach and the waves so clearly, and for the briefest of moments, she can even taste the same hot air the pornstar tastes. It’s not real, and yet the paint makes it real. Tossing the empty tube behind her, she reaches for another, greedy for more.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US