Atlas-Shrugged Love (standard:Satire, 674 words)
Author: Ashok Gurumurthy	Added: Mar 19 2005	Views/Reads: 4083/3	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
An imitation of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Lucy was formally dressed as if for an office meeting; yet in her
posture—she was sitting erect on the chair—Jim detected a casualness 
which needed and sought no concealment in the grim rigidity of her 
concentrated attentiveness. She seemed not to ignore his words but to 
destroy the foundations upon which they stood waiting for her 
acceptance by granting them that complete recognition of their worth 
through thoughtful nods. 

Jim did not know whether the simplicity of the shock he felt, that he
felt no shock, angered him or amused him. With his usual lightness of 
step, he walked to her and slapped her on the forehead with the back of 
his hand, but it looked as if she had slapped him. He slid one arm 
under her thighs and the other behind her neck and lifted her; then 
with a tempestuous calm he threw her on the bed. She was gently gazing 
at him, but it was clear to him that it was not she who had bidden him 
to bid her bid him do that but his amused shock at her amused 
acceptance of his childish amusement that did. 

She undressed herself slowly appearing to challenge him to stop her. She
then noticed how his features had changed: the two planes that his 
cheeks had been had puffed up in ugly admittance of his want for the 
need for her; his nose had become thinner in invitation of contemptuous 
silence; the glint in his eyes had transformed into the granite 
paleness of his hair. 

He now pounced on her savagely as if the savagery could obliterate their
mutual desire. One could not have defined what kind of violent 
acquiescence it was that melted the overwhelming burden of weariness 
and active resilience into indifferent self-immolation stemming not 
from the desire to inflict hurt but from the cautious recklessness of 
the transient certitude of consequences. 

She knew that neither indifference, nor fear, nor respect, nor awed
adulation, could induce him to make her want to hurt him, but she did 
know that feigning absence of these could. And he knew she knew it. He 
also knew that if she resisted he would have to rape her and if she 
consented he would have to force her to resist. But he dared not name 
his fear of the unknown fear that he should have to endure pleasure if 
she should not resist giving consent or consent to resist. Neither of 
them knew what they should do if the other chose to break the one's 
spirit by choosing not to agree, nor to disagree, nor to not care, nor 
to be indifferent, but to be casually interested. 

When their naked bodies met, their passion was stirred. They knew that
the highest compliment they could pay each other for the mutual 
pleasure was to insult their act. 

Jim said, with sedate bestiality, ‘You are much better than a one-dollar
whore.' 

‘You are much worse than that whore's pimp would be.' 

‘I was referring to a whore who cheats by selling her soul rather than
her body.' 

‘I was referring to a pimp of the soul.' 

‘Don't suffer the delusion that I was fucking you silly for the sake of
fucking you silly. I actually enjoyed it.' 

‘I know it.' She had said exactly those words which would torture his
soul with the allegation that what was to be their common hurt had 
become excruciating pleasure for him. 

He now said ‘You are a senseless bitch'. 

She smiled simply—with the detachedness of a simple fool, but they were
both now aware of, but dared not voice, the consternation that, instead 
of feeling the sated languor of a masochist, they felt the terrible 
shock that they felt no shock that they had failed to be amused by the 
incredible possibility that there would be no shock that the hurt the 
one felt could not hurt the other as it should, because of the 
consternation that, instead of feeling the sated languor of a 
masochist, they felt the terrible shock....


Tweet