GITJ/SA Tangent-to-the-Tangent: My Name is Paolo (Sofia's Story)

She took my head into her lap knowing that this would be our last time. Despite her gentle smile, a single tear had started down her cheek. But alongside the sadness which had more and more settled over us, over she and I and her family, I saw that my Sofia felt a new sense of hope, of strength. I was giving myself to her, and from this day forward we would always be together…and she would be strong enough to do what needed to be done. To free them all of him.

My name is Paolo. If I was not so sickly, I would someday make her my wife. But, my lungs are finally failing me, and the medics have told me I will not see another year. And now tonight I am like this, at the hands of her father, a broken boy, never to be a man. I think my skull is fractured.

“There goes my chance at joining the futbol team,” I said, wincing through the pain of broken teeth, possibly a fractured jaw. I was joking, of course. Never was I good at sport. I was not fast, or tall, or strong. I do love to write though I do not know many big words, and I love to draw. I draw pictures of her. I draw pictures for her. Pictures of us, together in ways that make me blush. They are pictures from my head and I’ve shared them all with her. She never makes me feel ashamed, or meager, but rather indulges me, knows that I never had a mother.

We had grown up together, she and I, both little outcasts in Tor Cervara on the Eastern outskirts of Rome. I am from the city slums, a poor, unhealthy boy of unusually ashen hair, waxen and wan. Sofia was Roma, one of the gypsy people who had settled in caravans and squats generations ago, in the unkept parks and abandoned lots. Dark yet pale, pretty yet strange, she had lived with her mother and aunts; tents and shacks had been her homes all her life. Neither of us had seen much schooling. The days when I was young and felt well enough to get myself out of bed I would rather spend with my friend Sofia - walking the tracks, looking for pretty stones - than in class. And Sofia’s clan put more faith in their own teachings, their own traditions, than that of the city. Neither of us was missed from la scuola. We had been inseparable as children; now we were in love. I told her she smelled like strawberries.

“Shhhh, raggazino,” Sofia cooed, petting my thin hair, the tender smile on her lips faltering for a moment as she uncovered another bruise on my temple. “He did this to you,” she tried not to seethe, “but it will be the last time he hurts another person”. I tried to smile back for her. Her father, a cruel man who lived many blocks away among the dirty denizens of our Italian city, a pipe-fitter and drunk who’d laid hands on too many people for too long, would soon see his day. He had hurt her mother, raped her aunts, and put his filthy mouth on Sofia herself for the last time. I had tried, really I had, to defend her last evening, when he found us alone under the old pines on the edge of the gypsy ghetto, tried to take her himself. I had stood, faced her father and told her to run. And this is what had become of me…

“Peace, it will all be peace soon,” she whispered, her voice a sweet song to me, the young man on her soft lap. She looked over my thin arms - the right one was likely broken, at the wrist - and my bruised, barren ribs. She had peeled me from my shirt and shorts, when I’d first stumbled into her tent, fell into her arms in the light of the lanterns. She had kissed my wounds, my swollen eye. She had anointed me best she could with the herbs and balms her mother kept in jars and tins. Laying me down on the mattresses and pillows and tapestries that made her bed, I could see she’d already put aside and bottled up the fury she felt, the dark quiet but violent anger that more and more she had gathered through the years. She’d put it aside, bottled it up…it would be for later, shelved for now. Now, I needed her young love, and she needed me. My anima.

“Sofia…” I mumbled, coming in and out of my pain. We had talked of this, many times before, what I could be for her. She knew of the magiks, something she could attempt. Something that would end our time like this but keep us together forever. I had insisted, many times, knowing I was only going to get sicker and sicker, and would not live to love her as she deserved. But she always refused. The time though, tonight, had finally come. We both knew it - she needed me now. I was scared, terrified, and I think she was too. But I knew she would make it gentle. In truth, though I didn’t know it at the time, I had been looking forward to this moment since we’d first fallen in love.

“Yes, bambino…” Sofia smiled, gazing down at me with a tenderness that came naturally to her, cradling my head with her lap and with her left hand, “I am here…” She was always old beyond her years, her aunts had told her, a soul born after her time. She knew how I needed her, how she was always able to help me through my pain when the coughing came, when the knives in my chest and lungs and gut would cause me to cripple, to fold up and cry. The right words, the right touch of her hands, the warmth of her lap, her newly big chest that had grown so dramatically from a girl's buds to a woman’s full bosom. And I was in a new kind of pain now, more than ever, after my beating at her father’s hand.

She smiled, and with her right hand she summoned a butterfly, a little trick taught to her by her mother when she was a young child. It was the first of her magiks she had ever shown to me, that one day as we gathered berries as children. I was amazed then, as the little blue butterfly grew from a droplet of light on her fingertips to fully formed, floating between us on gossamer wings before flitting away into the trees. And I was just as amazed now, still with childlike wonder as the butterfly danced and fluttered in the air between us. She giggled, still proud of how she could make me smile, even in times like this.

But then I groaned in my agony.

“Oh, Paolo,” she sighed, tenderly, “shhhh…the pain will be gone, soon.”

Again, I tried to smile. “I will miss your butterflies,” I said, as bravely as I could, knowing what was coming. As amazing as her cantrips were, what she was about to do went far beyond the little charms and conjurations taught to her by her mother, by her aunts and sisters. It was more than sweetening tea without honey, it went beyond the words that could bring the wildflowers to bloom. The witchcraft she had readied, and was preparing to invoke even now as she began to recite the first eldritch words, would be something more. Would make her something more, and me something less.

Sofia’s powers had blossomed when her blood came in, more than her sisters’ ever had. She had become able to summon energies that amazed even her godmother, the leader of the clan. “You are coming of age in a new world, different than the one of the sisters who came before you,” she’d been told, in the dark caravan as her aunts collected her first bloom, “The time of men is fading, our powers are increasing, and you can become something much greater than your mother or aunts ever were...”

She’d felt it herself, how she was blossoming. As her hips came in, as her breasts grew - both to my ever-more pulse-pounding awe - so grew the strength inside her. Though not a tall girl her woman’s curves became dramatic, quickly outpacing her sisters and even her mother, and it wasn’t long before she began to draw the eye not only of the boys and men on the street, but of her father as well, when he would stumble in on his drunken visits. It worried and fretted her mother, who wrapped her burgeoning breasts tight with rags, gave her the loosest of clothes to wear. But she could feel it, Sofia could. She was growing into a woman, with a woman’s powers, a woman’s charms.

Her magiks came easier, and she shared them with me as she learned, as she grew - just as she began to share her body. I loved watching her mischievously change water to wine for us, or make the pigeons sing like songbirds. I loved how she could kiss me electric, talk me to painless sleep on her newly soft breasts. But what she was about to do went beyond. It would be the darkest spell she’d cast yet, forbidden, much more powerful and ancient than the hex upon her father. That had taken his virility, neutralized his manhood, softening it forever in an attempt to slake his lust and protect her and her mother and her aunts from his desires. But, instead, it had rather only incited his rage even further, made him a more violent, bitter, angry man. This spell, if it was to work and not kill us both, would be one no one in her family, anyone in her clan, for generations, had ever attempted. But Sofia felt like she could try. And I insisted.

As the blue butterfly, still fluttering around my face and dancing in the air, started to fade, Sofia’s words began to form. I listened, and tried to understand them. Her incantations were usually in the tongue of the Romani, of which she’d taught me a few words. But tonight they were in a language which sounded alien and ancient, like the backwards speech of some elder race.

I began to shiver in fear. But, I was comforted knowing that she knew my mind, and that she loved me. We’d shared every thought with one another, every dream. She knew I never had a mother, how there was no one in my life to comfort me besides herself. As we’d grown up together, as she grew softer and I grew sicker, she took me to her when she could, mothering me on her lap, trying to ease my pain. She did not have any magiks to cure me, or which could lessen my suffering - they were still just cantrips, really, minor spells, and my sickness was great - so for this she used her natural, womanly gifts, tender words and touch. I always told her it was enough for me. Though I liked the butterfly.

As we left childhood behind, as I slowly became a young man with a young man’s wants and needs, Sofia had discovered my proclivities. It was not unusual, she said, it was fine. Her mother had talked about it, this change that had come to men in recent times. I had shared it myself, my fixations and fantasies. The pictures I drew for her had become the two of us together, visions of mine, she holding me in her arms like a babe. I would cringe, showing them to her. But she loved me, and rather than laugh she would indulge me with open arms, hold me to her chest, cooing and whispering until I quieted. Times like that, she would call me ‘bambino’, and I would shiver in delight.

But she was not without darker thoughts.

I looked up at her, from her lap, through my one good eye. The strange words, the old language she was using to invoke her spell had ceased, and she was beginning to undo the buttons on her simple blouse. I watched as, slowly, she undid her top, drew it down her pale, slight shoulders, allowed it to fall behind her. I goggled up past her large breasts, in the white satin bra that was my favorite, and my heart began to race as she reached behind herself. Her big, dark eyes were on me the entire time, and did not leave my face.

“Okay, bambino,” she spoke, as I heard the <snap> of her bra, behind her back, “Mama is here for you.”

I felt my gut lurch, my cock - even in my pain - begin to surge thick. The promise in her eyes, her slightly uneven smile, took me away from my physical misery and I began to sink already into a new pleasure she was bringing to me. I watched as she dutifully removed her brassiere, revealing her enormous white breasts. I had seen them, by now, many times, but they never ceased to bring me amazement and awe. Perfect and round, high and firm. Under her taut skin a subtle pattern of blood vessels that I had memorized, that tonight seemed to pulse and throb with a new life. My mouth parted, on instinct, when my eyes came to her brown nipple, already swollen. I moaned.

“Yes, baby, yes,” she cooed, settling my naked body again on her lap, allowing me the moment to just gaze up at the roundure of her big bosom, “Mommy is here.” She knew how I loved it, how it captured me, when she showed me her breasts, spoke to me like I was her child, her little raggazino. We had played, in times of both pain and pleasure, our mommy-baby game countless times before. Tonight, though, it was no longer a game. She began to gather me up, head and shoulders, into her arms. My face she turned to her left breast. I faced her nipple. She smelled of strawberries.

“Here I come, baby,” she whispered, stroking my hair as she felt herself warm and swell, “here comes mommy.” Above me I heard her sigh and then moan, huskily, and I watched as a white bead of liquid began to swell upon her nipple. Like magic, but this was no butterfly. This was-

“Oh, diletto,” she purred, “come drink from me.”

At that, she pulled me to her breast and I - as I’d done many times before - opened my mouth to suck, to play-nurse. Times like this, our most intimate moments when she was at her most tender, would always excite me, make me wither in delight. Tonight, though, my heart raced, for I knew she what she had for me. Latte materno. Mother’s milk.

My lips met her warm skin, the subtle bumps and irregularities of her areole, and my nose and chin felt the smooth swollen perfection of her soft flesh. I closed my mouth around her nipple and already I tasted her, warm and sweet as honey. With my first suck already her milk was streaming into my mouth, and alongside the sweetness I took her earthiness, a pungency, and a rich, deep flavor that tasted just like our love.

“Yes, baby, yes,” Sofia cooed, nuzzling me in close, speaking to me with the words she knew I loved, “there you go, latch on. Succhia la mamma mom.”

I began to suck, to suckle as she told me, and her milk came. It was incredible, the culmination of all my deepest fantasie, feeding on a woman’s soft breast. It made my manhood hard, immediately, and I groaned as her right hand found my shaft. But it was her milk, still, the swell of her nipple in my mouth, that had my full focus. I swallowed, and immediately I felt it begin.

My pain was suddenly forgotten, my wounds fading from my life and my lungs no longer burning with the fire. It was amazing; I’d never felt such comfort, even now after being broken and beaten by her father. I was sinking into her, into her arms and warm embrace and even with my eyes closed as they were I knew it was beginning. She recited a few more eldritch words above me, and I felt myself shrinking.

“There you go, bambino, there you go,” she cooed, watching me start to dwindle on her lap, at her breast. I heard the arousal in her voice, the swelling strength she was beginning, already, to feel. I groaned for her, overcome as I nursed and by the sensation of - yes - becoming slowly smaller in her arms. She was taking me, absorbing me, making herself stronger.

“This is wonderful,” she moaned, allowing herself to be overcome for the moment, “oh, my darling, I love you so much…” She was feeling it too, her spell working, my body and soul becoming into her. It was an otherworldly moment, and she held me tighter. “Feed from me, feed from tua mamma.”

Sofia, my young, dark gypsy love, tilted her face to the sky, to the ceiling of her high tent, and moaned again. She felt me shrinking in her lap, still nursing me, and her right hand needed to leave my dick. With it, she gathered my hips up now, fully, into her arms, and cradled me to her chest. Never once did I stop suckling, never once did I stop lattante. I was the size of a small child, now, and still getting smaller.

She gazed down again at me, and I opened my eyes and looked up at her. Her asymmetric beauty, her big eyes. The dark nest of her hair. She was so beautiful, more beautiful now than ever, the mother I never had. Her milk and nipple filling my mouth, my small hand now up against the side of her big left breast and working at her flesh, I could not speak. But I hoped my eyes said everything I felt. I loved her, I loved her so much. She was making this as gentle as she could for me, killing me in the easiest way possible in my sacrifice. I’d imagined moments like this all my life and she was making it all come true. I felt myself shrinking further and further. Grazie, grazie grazie.

“Prego,” she smiled, and a new surge of milk came from her breast. I was struggling, now, to take in all she was making, and a rivulet fell past my lips to dribble down my cheek. She readjusted my naked body in her arms, turned my hips towards her so my hard cock pressed into the plushness of her soft right breast; I was now that small. She felt my hips rut into her bigness and immediately try to find a rhythm. “I love you too, my bebè,” she said, as she pressed me tighter, allowing me to fuck into her big soft breast.

I looked up at her as I rutted, rutted and nursed, and it was as if I could see it, I could see her growing in power. My strength was becoming hers, she was taking it and making it more. She was gathering my anima into herself, using it to become a greater witch than any who had come before her. With it, there would be little she could not do. She could become mighty, mighty and dangerous. Mighty and dangerous and free.

“I will need to crush him first,” she said, as if reading my mind, as if we were of the same thought. My cock surged again, my hips bucking. I had seen glimpses of this, of the darker Sofia that swam under the surface of my young childhood lover, and as always it lit a darkly submissive streak, a flame, in me. My sweet Sofia had within her a diavola that served as a mirrored twin to the soft young mother who held me now, and she was just as seductive. Sofia hid her, did not like me to see her, as she knew I would be frightened. She was in truth a dark facet of personality that had come to many women recently, but in Sofia she could be deadly. And it would be this demoness that would be needed, that must be summoned to rend and rip her father’s flesh from his dirty, dirty bones. She must be made strong.

But for now, Sofia allowed me this, our time together as madre e infante. She held me, cooing and purring and encouraging me to eat, bringing me to come into her tit. She giggled when I did, easily, adoring praises for my little moans. I may have fallen asleep there, held to her bosom, but when I woke I was still in her arms. Still naked, but now free from the bruises and blood, hairless. Had she cleaned me? Healed me and shaved me? No, this was her magik, readying me for her. I felt my heart start to rush, becoming fearful on instinct. But she shushed me, and brought me to her nipple again, to feed some more. And to shrink.

“Oh, yes, bambino,” she drawled, petting my head as it began to get smaller in her hand, as my cock began to harden once again, “suckle from mommy.” She started again to recite the strange tongue of her spells, but this time I was able to understand some of what she was saying, in pieces and bits. How? Were our minds becoming one? Or, rather, was mine becoming hers?

‘Ours forever’ I heard, and ‘protected in our flesh’. The words were strange, alien, but became clearer to me. ‘Make us strong, give us blood,’ they came, along with ‘weakling men, shrinking from the earth.’ All the while I was becoming smaller, and smaller still, her breast now huge to me, she the size of my old camera da letto. Her right hand was all she needed to hold me, and with it she now drew me away.

My mouth had become too small, really, for her nipple, and popped off easily. Her breasts looked bigger than ever, and milk still flowed from them, thin rivulets down her chest. But she was unconcerned, and rather held me out, slowly, in one hand, her fingers wrapped around my slim waist, pinning my new erection to my belly. She cocked her head, silently regarded me with that imperfect smile: I was so small, the doll she never had, a new plaything in her hand. For myself my eyes gaped, my mouth dropped looking up unto her. She was huge, many many times my size, an enormous thing of beauty. A goddess.

Sofia chuckled, and then laughed. She rose me up, in one hand, lifting me easily above her head and watching my face. I knew it was the dark part of her that was looking up at me through the big, wide eyes of my lover. “Are you afraid?” she asked, in the old tongue, “Are you afraid of us, little man?”

For the moment, I could not speak. But our minds, again, were linked and I could feel the unholy thoughts she was having. Though she was my tender Sofia, my childhood amante, there were parts of her that wanted to squeeze me, to crush me, to break again my brittle bones in a way no man like her father ever could. It was part of the change, this new pathogen that had found its way into the minds of men and women. It was the source of the diavola in my sweet Sofia. And it was it that now lit the dark fires of Tartarus in her eyes, the visions of squashing a man to bits in one hand, easily ending his life and dropping his pulp onto one thick, female thigh. Part of her wanted that, wanted that so badly. Vengeance, vengeance upon an entire race.

Though I was consumed, fearful, all but shaking in her hand, my mind was set. Yes I was afraid, but not of her, not of death. “Sofia…” I said, barely enough strength in my lungs to speak as I looked down at her, “r-remember…”

She looked up at me, and both parts of her saw it, remembered it. She never actually meant to crush me, and though the dark flames in her eyes did not fully go out, a new warm smile broke onto her face and she giggled again as she brought me back down to eye level. “Yes, baby, I know…” she said, and opened the hand around me just enough to expose my chest and belly, allow my hard cock to spring free. Her thumb and forefinger still supported me, under my arms, her fingers still cradled me in support. “Mommy is still here,” she cooed, and brought me slowly towards herself, her eyes locked on mine. I watched as her face grew and grew and grew, until she held me inches from her mouth, smiling with eager excitement at the tiny little man, her lover, that she now held in one hand. Her lips now filled my vision, and it was with a mix of terror and love that I opened my mouth when she opened hers.

My face was soon covered by her lips, an enormous bacio that covered me. She hummed and purred into our kiss, consuming my face, languidly sucking me, her tongue rolling over me as she casually pulled my head in and, with a chuckle that thundered around me, mouthed on my skull. The pops and crackles and clicks and hisses of her tongue, lips, saliva filled my ears.  She could decapitate me, right there, pop my head like a prugna.

But she was gentle, tender, knowing that this was all part of my fantasy, too. I had imagined this in days gone by, too, told her of my dreams. This was no dream, though. I was not just gazing into her little mouth, like she’d sometimes let me, and imagining myself in it. No, I was now fully head and neck inside her, in the hugest kiss of our lives. A kiss that surrounded me, wet and dark and warm and full of her breath and smell. She moaned to me, knowing how it would shake my bones, and laughed at my little struggles.

She popped me out, though, after a time, giggling at my spit-covered face as she watched me blink and recover. “Is it nice inside mommy’s mouth?” she asked. I tried to speak but my voice had gone, somehow already part of the gift I’d given her, the anima of mine that had even now strengthened her. She had not taken all of me yet, though, and it was all of me she needed. But she was patient, and wanted to allow me my final worldly pleasures before her spell was done. My cock stood tall and hard, and with a crook in her already crooked smile she opened her jaw. She pulled me towards herself again and sunk my manhood into her enormous mouth, kissing and sucking on it, now. Everything of me was inside her, her tongue ran under my swollen sac and her lips and teeth played over my shaft. I groaned, bucked my hips and looked into her huge eyes, which stared up into mine.

I held her, my hands and arms reaching her temples, and held on. Her free left hand went up into the mane of her thick, unruly hair and rustled it, brought it into a huge black nest around me, thick waves of it covering me in her darkness and scents. “Do you like mommy’s hair?” she asked, breathless, taking a moment away from my cock, “Do you like it all around you, soft and huge?”

I groaned again, and once more I was in her mouth, coming now….coming…coming…

I fell to sleep again, I think, for I woke in her palm. “You are so small, now, little one,” she whispered, bringing me close, her eyes sparkling with light, having captured it from the tent’s lanterns and made it their own. I was many times smaller, scant inches now, able to easily lay curled in her left hand. And she was more powerful now than before, I could feel it tenfold; her strength gave me terrifying comfort. Sofia was watching me, watching as I came to, and alongside the tender words was a sad smile. She looked on as I tried to sit, up on her palm, but was unable. My skin was strangely sticky, adhering to her, and my limbs were too weak. My cock, hugely outsized, lolled thickly aside me. “Your body is already becoming part of mine, mi amore,” she said, “it wants to come back to mamma.”

So this is how? I thought, This is how I make my final gift?

“Yes, baby, yes,” she answered me, already aware of my thoughts, thoughts from a mind that soon would be hers. Her eyes glittered down at me, saying their final goodbye to my body but welcoming me to my new life in her. “You are ready, now, baby,” she said, “ready…”

At that she slowly lowered me down, presenting me in front of her enormous white breasts. She watched my rheumy eyes goggle and my cock swiftly swell, both in awe of her bosom’s monumental grandeur, and allowed me my moment of transcendence as I lay helpless on her palm. “Yes, my breasts, baby, where you’ve always wanted to be,” she whispered, “your new home.”

She then lowered me down further still, now bringing me to her right breast, just below her nipple. Her tit filled my world. “This is your favorite part, hm? Your favorite part of my body?” she asked, reminding me how I’d, in our quiet, covert nights together, in the tender afterglow of lovemaking, lay aside her and stare, fall asleep while anointing the lower swell of her big breast with my lips. “My…’underboob’?”‘ she giggled.

It was huge. Just this swell of breast was countless times my mass, a rounded wall of pale flesh and soft, smooth skin. The scent of it was overpowering, familiar to the point of being primal. My cock was hard once again, and I spent a brief second marveling at it as it grew towards her, bigger and thicker than my leg. But still, it was dwarfed by her tit.

“Kiss it,” Sofia said, now tilting her hand - and me - up towards her, pushing her breast into me. My cock met her first, pressing into her flesh and bringing stars to my eyes; more blood flowed to it than my brain. And then it was my face, the rest of my body, gently applied to her smooth alabaster skin. I drew a deep breath of her and kissed.

My lips stuck to her.

My heart raced for a second as I realized I could not pull away. My lips had stuck, and as she slowly rolled her flesh into it, my face as well.

“Yes…” she purred, above me, “there we go…”

My face, my chest, shoulders and hips. What was left of my legs. Pressed to her, sticking to her. And my cock? My cock was…was sinking into her, penetrating her skin. Her breast had taken my huge shaft, pulled it inside herself and as I twitched and bucked - it felt warm as a huge wet mouth - I began fucking her tit.

But my skin could not leave hers. Everywhere we touched, I was fusing to her. The feeling was erotic, like a million little climaxes, each of my nerve endings singing as they connected with her, as the net of her being took them, welcomed them, connected me to her.

I was sinking, being drawn into the underswell of her breast, and as I fucked her flesh she still held me to herself, cradling me.

I began to feel her heartbeat, the pulse of her, as it was I think her blood vessels connecting with mine. My hips began to fall to her rhythm, lub-dub, lub-dub, and soon I noticed I hadn’t drawn breath for a while. She was breathing for me. I felt all her love surrounding me and closed what were still my eyes and sunk my face fully deeper into her skin. All was dark and red but then quickly became something else as nerves from her breast snaked their way into my skull and yesssss there you are…

His thoughts, I see them all. All he is, all he is, it is mine to see and hold and take and-

Absorb. I was being absorbed into her.

“Fuck me,” she spoke, now just two fingers pressing on the last vestiges of my hips as the rest of me was half under the surface of her skin, stuck to her, becoming part of her, “fuck my tit, baby, give up one last time.”

Inside her, my face and head all but nearly dissolved into her blood, my last thoughts were of my climax being pulled from my loins. The pleasure was unspeakable, giving myself up to her, and as I burst into her I felt the final wave of her being open up and take me in.

“Yes, baby, yessss….” she groaned, feeling my climax as if it was her own, feeling herself suddenly surging with new, unholy power, “come to me…”

I screamed, silently, in joy and fear and ecstasy and the overwhelming knowledge that I was no longer my own.

I was hers.

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New legends speak of the night, of that midnight hour when she came for him. The Diavolo Ragazza di Tor Cervara, they called her now, floating through the streets as if on a zephyr, swift as murder, feet trailing above the ground and ancient evil in her eyes. She was dark and beautiful, wild hair a mane behind her. She found him with his whore at his side, both heavy with wine and stumbling by the gutter under the flickering streetlight. The woman was thrown away, pushed aside without harm but he was - confused, seeing his daughter like this, floating above the ground and headed towards him - paralyzed in place. There was death in her eyes, and the few onlookers who - they themselves woozy with drink - would say that a storm broke when she screamed.

I hear it, I hear it whispered in dark secrets, over glasses of grappa, tales of that night. From the lips of men, each telling becomes more hushed, more fearful, as if recounting it might bring her wrath unto themselves. Women speak of it differently; it sounds to me like pride. They all speak of how he was thrown, ten meters into a wall, by the force of her fury. They say her anger came as a cloud behind her, gathered and wrapped around him a violet miasma, pulled him up to stand against the wall. They say that as she paused, regarded him and gathered her strength, still floating above the ground, he began to beg. Begging for his life, begging mercy from Sofia, the little daughter he had ruined, the girl who now had the forces of something-that-was-not-God inside her.

He begged, whimpering, they say, as he and all those on the streets watched her eyes draw in all the light from the city and her mouth - oh santo dio her mouth - began to open. It opened wider and wider and wider and against the wall he began to scream and crumple and bend and in an instant she was on him, sucking him in headfirst, body and soul, into that unholy mouth. All light came from her and just as his legs were disappearing all of it went out and all that was left was darkness.

And the scent of strawberries.

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I live now somewhere inside her. In her breast, yes, but also behind her eyes. Most times I sleep, but sometimes she allows me to wake, to watch, to feel. Sometimes she talks to me, aloud or in our own secret way. I was there, swimming in her blood when the next day - she’d hidden herself from la polizia, in an old barn outside the city wall - the woman came. A tall woman, American, red of hair, regal of bearing. Her Italian was strong, and she spoke of escape. She spoke of Sofia leaving, escaping, coming to America and becoming a student at Università, joining a group of young women like herself. She spoke of changing the world, and of Sofia being a god.

People still speak of being visited by her, even now. Men fleeing from her, women calling for her in their prayers. They talk of how the men have changed, become meeker and more compliant, while the gypsies have come from the shadows and ditches. They see how women have risen, and not just in our little Tor Cervera.  All of Rome now, I hear, is ruled by a woman. For myself, though, I have one and only one true goddess and sovereign, my dark and beautiful Sofia. I sleep in her, and sometimes I dream.

Sometimes I am a doctor, sometimes I am just a man, sitting at the desk. Sometimes I’m an old ghost, shambling around the hallways of an abandoned Gothic mansion. But most of the time I am just me, and her, us. drifting around in her blood, swimming in her neurons. I gather energy for her where I can, now, but she is so much greater than me. There are others like her, covens, and we are to become their servants. She tells me we are proof, though - she and I - that there can be love in this new world, love like ours, complete.

My name is Paolo. I live in her breast. I live in her mind and soul. I live in her love.

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written on commission. please excuse any awkward murderation of the Italian language.