by Arafin © 2009
Rowdy had finished checking the west fence line, and since he had done so a full hour quicker than his boss had expected him to, he dismounted his palomino and lay his weary bones down in the soft grass. As his steed grazed he set his wrist watch to wake him in fifty minutes and then, with all the determination of a log, he let himself drift down into happy sleep. Rowdy wasn’t lazy. He could work as hard as anyone, but when an opportunity like this arose for a little extra shuteye, he wasn’t going to pass it up, and anyone is the same situation would certainly have done the same. His boss would never know and when he arrived back at the ranch house ten minutes early his reputation as a trustworthy hand would still be intact. As the last drops of conscious thought plopped little jewels of self satisfaction into his ego, his focus fell and fell, until at last his mind reacted only to it’s own ramblings, no more to his now sleeping will.
Warm sunshine sent him deeper and deeper into lost realms of mysteries revealed and as quickly forgotten. Tiny dreams of no importance. Sparkling bits of imagination winding down a steep road into a peaceful valley of overpowering heaviness. Glimmers of fading thoughts, like embers of an untended fire, grew dim and then dark, and Rowdy was swept along the thick syrupy river of weighty mindless currents, breath and heartbeat the only functions flowing. And, as do so many journeys into the world of sleep, faint stirrings of desire begin eventually to bubble upwards from the inky blackness, fireflies of lust blinking on and off as they ascended out of that tired valley, becoming brighter with every strobe, more difficult to ignore with each pulse. These unrelated scintillations of animal instinct arising gradually coalesced into a single image, that of a most beautiful woman calling him by whispers to wake. So smooth like velvet her voice, sexy beyond bearing, urging his libido to total revolt against common sense, daring anything to hear more, risking all prudence in favor of intoxicating madness, so sweet was the sound of her allure.
He tried to answer her call to awake but could move. He couldn’t even open his eyes. They were stuck shut like welded hatches on a sinking ship, and he its only crew. So lost in panic at not being able to stir, so desperate in desire at needing to respond. Surely she can see his plight, that he can no more move the tiniest muscle as can a grub succeed to fly. Oh, how he wished in that excruciating instant that he could become moth and take to wing, to soar upwards to greet her whispers gladly with shouts of boyish enthusiasm. “I am here! I am ready! I am yours!” He would fly headlong into the flame of her love and burn up in a blinding flash of ecstasy, and he just didn’t care about anything else. But no words came from his trembling lips and still no light of day reached past his quivering lids as he tried with all his might to open them and see her beauty before him like the ultimate quench for the most hopeless thirst.
She began to laugh then. Not a full throated hearty laugh, nor a girlish giggle, and not even a sly chuckle. It was a calm and ever so slightly teasing breath of a laugh, and it was the most wonderful sound he had ever heard. Suddenly he was no longer concerned in the slightest that he could not awake. To lay there immobile beneath her torturing zephyr mirth was a heaven exceeding all previously known bliss. Bliss, yet agony, for the more he listened and relished the sound of her little laugh, the more he could not help but strain to rise up and meet her full on, fearsome flashing golden dawn being denied its chance to burst forth into silver shadow yearning night. All this effort was now as if another controlled him like a puppet hanging beneath the strings of nimble teasing fingers. The more he strained the more she laughed, till it became in his delirious mind impossible to distinguish between her echoing breath and the pounding blood in his bursting veins. How long could this go on? Was there an end? Would there ever be release and blinding crashing brilliance of crescendo?
“Not if I ever catch you sleeping on the job again, Rowdy”, came the lilting reply, still teasing, but now a bit more serious. “I pay you to work, not to lay in this field and dream about me!”
In that instant the rumble of thunder from a nearing storm shook him loose from the giddy tangle of desire and madness that had held him so tightly. Yet, for all the might of that thunderclap, no bolt of light nor roar of heaven could have struck him harder than the realization that he had slept too long and that his Mistress would find out. He stirred now with some success against the bonds of desire and ropes of slumber that held him. Rowdy began to move upwards towards the light of day. But it was not to be a fast journey, for he had been very deep and now had far to go.
And when he at last did awake, the shadows long and bidding farewell to a setting sun, he hurried to his horse and rode for all he was worth back to the ranch house. As the animal underneath him raced so too did the animal within him, to configure some excuse for wasting an entire afternoon. What would she do to him? Would she employ the worst punishment possible and deny him her affections? Horror! But as he approached the barn, the faithful horse now in a lather and in much need of a rub down, he saw her standing there on the porch, arms and brow folded as if to suggest anger, yet in her eyes a flash of heat, and upon her lips a devilish smile of want.
Had she really been there in the field watching him? Had she, in fact, sparked and guided his anguished dream?
Too dizzy from the exertion of the hard ride and too confused by the thoughts still speeding like the wind in his mind, Rowdy dismounted and tended to the mount with due diligence, focusing on the welcome familiarity of a well known chore as a means to temporarily escape the discomfort of uncertainty now looming on the horizon like the building thunderstorm full of hail and lightening. The rain would be here soon. As the air grew cooler and began to rush she just stood there watching, never taking her eyes off him as he wiped down her horse and then her tack. It was all hers, of course, the ranch and everything on it, including him. And when at last he did venture inside she would harness him just as surely as he had harnessed the horse in the morning, not with leather and silver, but with words whispered just below his threshold of conscious understanding, and with gestures and touches just above his threshold of control. Catalina would ride her cowboy with spurs of laughter through the hills and valleys of moonlit lustful fever dance, and when he awoke, (if he ever truly awoke from the dream she kept him in), he would be so much more obedient, and oh so much more eager to be caught again and again and again in her diabolical lasso.
