FicWad

“The Battle for Mona Lisa”
(short-story: series of oneshots)
ATTENTION, PLEASE NOTE: I wrote this story completely on my own. Story was inspired by Panic at the Disco!’s song,“The Ballad of Mona Lisa”.
Please R&R, but no flames.

And she smiled at him. And when she did, it felt like the whole world was imploding. He had never seen such profound heartbreak or such devastating beauty in one gesture. The curves of her face were like planes of a sculpture. Those dark eyes, hooded by shadow and only hazel in the moonlight, called his name in a siren’s song that trilled out at such a high pitch it seemed wholly unbearable.
There’s nothing wrong with just a taste of what you paid for…
Her past words from his nights with her echoed in his head.
Give me a sign, I want to believe… He sighed. He only wished he could.
“Mona Lisa, you’re guaranteed to run this town.” He gave a small chuckle as he leaned down to kiss the slender hand that came up to greet him.
“Oh, if only.” Her smile became sadder. Her eyes lingered on his face, and then they looked away…
The horses outside of the fancy motel’s brass doors were pacing and grinding their hooves. “Well, I suppose it’s time for us to go.” He cast his eyes downward in modest embarrassment.
“Oh, that’s right. Brendan, I forget the time just like an old woman forgets her spectacles!” Mona’s sweet self-deprecation charmed him.
“No matter, dear. When we get to the Isles, it will bring a fresh peace to our minds.”
They stepped outside, her in her black-fur peacoat and him in his sharp black tuxedo and top-hat, arms linked, and out into the blinding daylight.
“Oh, darling, just wait until we’re in the bedroom,” Brendan smirked to her in an undertone as they got into the horse-and-buggy—his eyes held just enough decency to not seem immoral or crude, but Mona could see plainly just how much he longed for her.

They were unpacked, and they were in the little island house, and Brendan stepped back briefly to survey his work: the luggage was neatly unpackaged and sorted into separate parts, Mona’s things set aside on her side of the room with his things on the other. She would be pleased.
“Oh, Brendan, dear, look at this gorgeous water!” Mona’s trill reached his ears from the outside.
“Darling, it’s all for you.”
When he was ready, he stepped outside with her and gazed at the wide, open expanse of the Isles of St. Carol, their serene opal waters, the way the waves lapped up to the shore’s edge like little puppies’ pink tongues to a delectable meal. He crushed the sand in his hand; it was like petals, the soft vulnerable petals of a flower that would disintegrate if you so much as touched them.
“Isn’t this beautiful?” Mona’s eyes shone with a rare delight, the kind that came from when she was not wrapped-up in heavy melancholy thought, carrying the burden of the devil on her shoulders. She seemed manically childlike again.
“Oh, darling…” Brendan’s voice began to get rough, as he could feel his heartbeat racing with the uprising carnal desire in his chest, “Not one morsel of this could possibly compare to the ravishing delight of you.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Never more.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck, and her face loomed so, so close to his, their lips nearly meeting. “I’d like to think I’m at least somewhat deserving of a gentleman such as yourself.”
He could feel their breath, could smell her scent absorbing into him;
and then they kissed. And it was like the world exploded. The sky and earth were Heaven; the sand and water beneath their feet were stars.
He did not want to stop himself, but for his tendency to be a gentleman, always courteous and mindful of a woman’s wants—and so his hands stopped before reaching the area just below the small of her back. “Dear, I think there is a large, wonderful king-sized bed awaiting us in the bungalow.”

They went carnivorous; to the point where nothing else made sense anymore. Never had Brendan made love in a way that set his skin on fire in such a way that she could. Mona’s body ached and arced in a catlike surrender of pain, and he succumbed to her greatness, as he kissed all the way down her pallid, milky-soft skin in a line, down her stomach and her waist, past her hips to the spot where her sweetness intensified and she let out a howl of pleasure. Her insides tasted like roses, like the most delectable human flower; he worked patiently until her body came to its peak and flooded their sheets with her sweet nectar. Then he put himself inside of her. She shuddered, shivering at the sudden deep contact—and he pushed in lightly, until her delicate frame beneath him was writhing. “Oh, please, Brendan, do it more.”
“My love, of course.” He cajoled the sweetest of surrenders from her lips. It was like nine in the afternoon—that mythical state hung in the air between them, like anything was possible.
And they were both so happy.
Her nipples were like flower-buds; so small and sweet and perky. And so he squeezed them between his thumbs and his forefingers, his thick fingers feeling clumsy and oafish against her slight delicateness. His largeness making him slightly embarrassed, he carefully breathed her out of herself. She gasped, and her body bucked. Her breasts…so supple and round and soft…
“Brendan, take my dignity. Please! Take my common decency and take me over completely.”
His eyes widened—he knew what this meant. His eyes asked her if she was sure, and when she said she was, he slowly, carefully slipped out and grasped her bottom cheeks, and slid into her. She screamed and he ultimately found he could no longer control himself, ravaging and rocking her until both of their breaths came in short, staccato gasps of pleasure. He felt so swollen, and so good…he could never imagine feeling this way with anyone else.
They reached their peak as one, and then they collapsed on the bed, him on top of her. “Darling, I am amazed at the amount of pleasure I can reap from such a female as yourself.” He breathed shortly, panting while he massaged her earlobe gently, giving a small gesture of affection to her while she gazed solidly at him. They were both sweaty—they had outdone themselves, and the sheets held a soaking, pleasurable scent. The scent of human skin.
Brendan closed his eyes. Of course, she was the closest thing to love that he had. She was the best thing that he’d had in his life in a long time. While they drifted in and out of sleep, he remembered the first encounter—the carnal encounter with a man that he’d had. He was a spritely being, and it seemed he had never limited his body or his affections to just ‘the fairer’ of the sexes. He had made friends with a gentleman in an old bar years ago, a man quite a few years older than himself, him having been seventeen at the time. The gray hair, the laugh-lines…Brendan had to guess that the man had to have been thirty-five at the least. But he’d been strongly built, and the muscles of his abdomen and arse were well-seasoned by the passing time’s maturity. They had laid down a mattress on the wooden floor of the bar’s second floor, and they had taken off each other’s clothes. A young boy, and a virgin at that, Brendan had been amazed and intrigued at the sheer size of the other’s manhood; he’d been all veins and warped skin of the shaft and unbelievable power that had entered him—his arse-hole was dilated and ready for the contact, and when it came he had spurted everywhere. The man’s strong hold on him had given him a strange sort of pleasure, like he was a child and this person was his master, his caretaker. His other encounters with men had been similar; only once had Brendan been the dominant one. He had slid himself into a younger man’s arsehole and had sweated and thrust while the boy squealed in painful pleasure.
But that had been a long time ago… Brendan had his urges under control now. At least, he liked to think that he wasn’t going to seduce another man until he and Mona had parted ways. He loved Mona. And she knew of his resurgent androphilia, and she accepted it with a teasing cajole; she liked to consider that he was a manly man when he was succumbed to take over a virgin’s milky delight.
“Brendan…” Mona’s voice carried over softly from betwixt the pillows, “do you love me?”
“Always,” he whispered.

“Brendan, this reminds me how far I’ve come,” Mona said the next day after they’d awoken from their slumber. “I mean, think of me as a young, seventeen-year-old common whore who took pleasure from elder gentlemen’s members? I was so desperate…I thought I had no hope left in the world. And then you came along…”
Brendan smiled. “I remember.”
“I worked by the hour, trying to make the minimum amount of wages just to bring food back home to my family. I kissed men and women, old and young, with abandon, and told them that I loved them, though that wasn’t true. I was required to play my part for the shows. I remember Delilah…” Her face got dreamy then. “Delilah was a young woman, maybe not more than twenty, who was a brand-spanking-new University student…and she came from rich money, her family had millions…and she and I got acquainted with each other, and she asked me to go down on her at one of the shows in the city. I put on my best lipstick, and I got down on my knees, and I pleasured her right there on the stage… she was a virgin, too. I took her soul from her…and her taste and flower was beautiful…”
She closed her eyes and then opened them, looking at him. “I just can’t remember when I asked to stop working there. I’d gone on for so long, I didn’t know how to move on. But my family was looking down on me…and I needed to make more money…
“I just remember stopping my work, and getting out of that stinky old city, and seeing you for the first time…” Her arms cradled his waist, and he pulled her close, suddenly in an emotional moment. “It felt like I was home.”
“Darling, we’ll have the rest of our lives together,” Brandon murmured with his face in her hair. “We’ll never have to be alone.”
Through the window, the sun shone down on them—the little filaments of dust in the light swirled in a dance to silent music. Brandon couldn’t believe his luck; he was finally right.

On the night before they were to depart from their stay, Brendan had a nightmare: He dreamt that he was in an old, crumbling church corridor, and he paced the pews restlessly in agitation, trying to figure something out in his mind. It was with a jolt that he realized that he was wearing a tuxedo—he was getting married. Other peoples’ voices fluttered through the hallways and outside, where a gathering was forming. He caught sight of a wisp of white, a lace train that was forbidden to see until the vows—and his face split into a smile. He was going to marry Mona. Of course. What a beautiful thought… He wondered how she would look, poised up there on the altar in her beautiful dress, with the priest standing behind her carrying the dusty sacred pages, her father standing off on the side but her self having eyes only for Brendan. They shone with a delight and suppleness that seemed unreal; that those eyes, that beautiful smile, could finally be his. He smiled to himself, gazing out a nearby glass window—
“What a beautiful wedding!”
He vaguely registered one of the bridesmaids out of the corner of his eye coming into the corridor, hurrying alongside a waiter pushing a tray of sweet delectables toward the crowd. “What a beautiful wedding, don’t you think? Ah, it’s absolutely scrumptious!”
The waiter assented, in a charged voice, and said, “Oh yes, but what a shame…what a shame…The poor groom’s bride is a whore.”
Brendan’s daydream lifted and his head snapped around to view the waiter at once—the blood left his face and he felt like he’d just been punched in the gut. “What…? What, no…it can’t be…” he murmured to himself, too in-shock to believe it. “No, that stupid old fool doesn’t know the first thing about my Mona!” No. He was obliged to believe that she was pure, and this was just a silly rumor procured for the sake of providing more vapid gossip.
He straightened and quickly walked out of the corridor the opposite way, so as not to be seen, and ground his fists into his temple in attempt to think. The crowd outside had acquired a strange hush now… less people were talking, more were whispering…
He walked into the private changing area for a breath to himself—and he stopped dead when he saw another man’s top-hat tossed carelessly over a heap of white-lace on the ground behind one of the stalls.
“Ooh, dear, don’t be so loud…someone might hear you!” he could hear Mona’s distinct voice giggling amid someone else’s breathing. Soft, rustling sounds…passionate sucking of lips and intakes of breath…
Brendan stumbled back from the changing area, his mind in a whirl—how could this be? This was not possible. “Mona!”
The noises stopped, and it was so quiet then that you could hear a pin drop. Brendan shifted, and he could see then the gap between the stall and the wall where his bride was entwined with…
His best-man.
“No!”
His breath came in shallow gasps, and tears sprung to his eyes. “Why would you do this to me?”
Another pause of silence, and then Mona stumbled out of the crevice, with her guilty partner in-tow. His face was covered in lipstick smudges, his suit rumpled…her dress was half-off and her makeup was a mess. It was clear that he had lifted up her skirts and violated the delicate strand of trust that she and Brendan had created together…this was no minor fling. No, it wasn’t just a kiss on the lips.
Mona’s breasts were stained with the marks of this man’s love.
Brendan sank to the floor, the tears flooding down his face now. “Mona…”
She knelt down to him, not inches from his face. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry… I only wanted what was best for the both of us.”
He nodded, although he couldn’t process what she was saying—his hearing and vision had begun to blur from shock.
They left, hand-in-hand, left him there to kneel on the floor, undeniably a broken man.
“HAVEN’T YOU PEOPLE EVER HEARD OF CLOSING A GODDAMN DOOR?”
he yelled after them.
No, it’s much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality, his ego warned him from the back of his mind.
He shook his head, his despair giving way to rage. “Well, in fact…Well, I’ll look at it this way, I mean—technically our marriage is saved!” He shook with the bottled-up tension that he’d held in for months, the disgust he felt leading to the foul taste of bile in the back of his throat. “Well, this calls for a toast, so pour the champagne! POUR THE CHAMPAGNE!!”
He howled to himself, alone in the bathroom, his agony echoing off the walls like the screams and wails of the eternal damned. Eventually he’d wept himself dry, and he resorted to huddling by the pipes under one of the sinks, rocking himself back and forth to try to calm his blistering heart. When he looked down at his hands, he was surprised to see blood—a river of crimson-red, running in a line down his palm, from where he had scratched himself unconsciously in his desperation. Sure enough, the skin underneath his fingernails was caked with dried residue. He made another scratch with the longest and raggedness of his fingernails, drawing out the pain until it created a long, deep line of red that dripped to the pristine white tiles of the floor beneath him…all he could see now was red.
He woke up with a jolt, sweating and looking around wildly.
“What’s wrong, dear?” Mona’s voice probed him from a few inches away.
His gaze snapped onto hers—she was real. It had only been a dream.
“Love, I have never felt more grateful for you. I fear I just had the most horrible dream.”
“Oh, darling, you don’t have to worry. Our dreams are only the manifest of what we don’t want to believe.” Her arms curled around him again, pulling him closer.
The strange thing was, Brendan wasn’t sure how to react to her answer.