Victorian Embers

I lit a fire in the old stone fireplace. It sparked to life as the match hit the dry wood and the room was soon cast in a warm glow. I studied the room I now found myself standing in; this house had that Victorian dour looming over every part of it. Heavy velvet drapes covered the windows, ancient black and white photographs hung in ornate frames on every wall, and the mantle of the fireplace was crowded with trinkets and curios I imagined came from all over the world. Time weighed heavily on this place. I could feel the ghosts of two hundred years of family history swirling around me.

I settled into the ornate couch and drew my knees up to my chest. He had been following me through out the house as I explored every room of his family home like a tourist on a holiday. I was fascinated by every story. "See this photo here, this is my great uncle. He ran whiskey during Prohibition through the tunnels under this very house. And this painting, this was my great great great grandfather. Some said he had ties to pirates in the South Seas of the Empire and stole a princess bride from the island kingdom. And this, this is my great grandmother, she was a nurse in World War I. She met my great grandfather, who was a soldier, in a field hospital after he was wounded and fell in love with him. They were married in the garden outside."

I thought about my own history as I looked into his eyes as he sat across from me. The hundreds of years of family history that had been lost to me. My drunken father could barely remember his own name at times, let alone the tales of generations gone past. I felt new to the world. Like I had not existed before now, like the loss of all that history had disconnected me from the world and from my own past.

He moved closer to me and traced my fingers with his own before clasping my hand and lifting it to his mouth. He placed a gentle kiss upon the back of my hand, his lips barely grazing my skin. I suddenly found myself thinking about my first kiss; a time when kissing was the most exciting thing in the world before all the complications of sexual expectations and grown-up responsibilities got in the way of a simple pure kiss.

To his shock, I suddenly slid into his arms and forced my lips upon his. I could feel the ghosts in the room pull back and begin to hum in the background. He fell into the kiss with ease and slipped one hand into my hair and the other to the small of my back so he could draw me closer to him. His kiss was so deep that I felt like I would get lost. That someone as unattached to this world as I was could get lost in a moment like this and never reappear again. I could just slip in between the cracks of this reality and become one of the ghosts swirling about the room. I could be trapped here forever to haunt his dreams like a wraith lost in all the dusty history caught in this dour Victorian landscape.

I drew back from his lips but not from his arms and studied his crystal blue eyes. The flickering light from the embers of the fire danced upon the terrain of his face as he smiled at me. The ghosts in the room now wrapped themselves around me like a thick quilt and began to sing in my ear. I lie against him as we entwined ourselves around each other like we were teenage lovers and pressed my ear to his chest. As I listened to the rhythmic beating of his heart I knew that soon I would know all the secrets of this ancient place and the ghosts would take up residence in my heart. Suddenly, I felt like I was home.