The Magician

The room was dim, lit only with one small white candle in the center. The candle flickered in a shallow glass dish above a square wooden table. The table was plain, embellished only with the swirling grains that came naturally to its form. Below the table was a striped woolen rug. There was not a single window. At one time, it had been a storage closet, but it had been converted into a living space not too long ago. Though the sky was hidden behind walls and a roof, he could tell it was evening. There was something tangible that had changed, something just a little softer that came through without the constant glare of the sun, like the walls themselves had relaxed with the setting sun.
A man stood upon the rug. He was five foot four and very slender. His feet were warm in their felt slippers, protected from the scratchy woolen rug below him and the cold linoleum floor which surrounded it like an ocean of cold. The man stared at the flickering candle on the table and spoke softly, just a few decibels above a whisper.
“Yeeessss!!! Oh god, Yessssss!”
The man looked up at the wall in front of him. The wall was bare, but behind it, on the other side, was a woman.
“OHHhhhhhh!!”
Her sounds were deep and guttural, mixed with a sigh of pleasure and a hint of pain.
He had never seen the neighbors, but he heard them often. Every few days he would be jolted into their universe with the first word that traveled beyond the wall, finding him amid prayers, or reading, or having a snack.
She always found him with her moans, and when he heard her screaming, it was like he was with them, in their bed, naked and grunting in unison. He imagined her spread-eagle on a bed where the sheets had been pulled back. Taut white skin glistened beneath the dim lamp and beads of sweat dropped from her lover, splashing over her firm nipples. He was with them, staring down like a bird, watching her wince in pleasured agony. He swooped down, nipping her skin with his beak, filling her open mouth with a drop of his spit.
He imagined the man, a huge beast that turned his woman into tiny pretzels, filling her with every bit of power that he had. And he was with them, when she moaned, he was with them, glistening and panting and moving in one more time.
He moved his toes in his felt slippers.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “come back to what you are doing.”
“AHHhhhh!” the woman screamed.
He wiggled his toes again in an effort to ground himself, to bring himself back into the walls he knew as home. There were other times he could be with them, now he had started his mantram and he needed to focus. The walls of his house, the candle before him, his feet above the woolen carpet.
“Be here.”
He felt a flush of movement within him as his mind raced back to the naked woman. His penis filled with blood. He took a deep breath, the slow inhalation lasted for thirty seconds. Then he held it, letting his chest grow tight with the pressure of so much air. When he couldn’t hold it anymore, he exhaled slowly, so slowly he felt like he had to take another breath very soon, and though his body cried out for air, he maintained his slow release.
The candle flickered violently in the wake of his exhalation and he looked into the flame. It moved always, allowing him, if he could manage to hold his attention, to never see the same thing twice. He stared and it was long and slender, nearly completely white, then it flickered and danced, moving to the right in a graceful sweep around the side of the wax. He inhaled slowly as he watched it, drawing up the energy which had filled his penis, letting it rise and swirl within his chest.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah, ohhhhhhhhhhhhh……”
“She’s climaxing,” he thought. He let himself feel her tension, letting the sound of her come into him while he held his eyes on the candle.
“Don’t fight it, take her in.” he told himself.
He listened to her, he could almost feel a rocking motion in the floor, he could hear her panting. He let the reverberations of her pleasure fill him with energy. He brought it up, out of the solid shape which had been his penis and into his spine, up into his chest, letting it move through his heart. The question was never where the energy would come from, but what you would do with it. And he felt a rush of gratefulness.