She holds my hand in the back of the taxi and whispers in my ear, tells me I’m beautiful. Her words break my heart, make me happy, sad and beautiful.Her proximity thrills me, the knowing I will be with her tonight, the thought of how she will taste, respond, give.  I rest my cheeks on her shoulder and inhale her sweetness,  the strangest of scents that infuse her hair, its olfactory rarity mingling with her feminine animalness to work magic on my senses.I have to kiss her again. And then her lips are sticky sweet, her mouth copper and tart, tongue lush and pliant.When the cab arrives at her home, we separate. It is a small death. I get out my purse to pay the driver, but she insists. And even though I see no money change hands, she tells the driver to keep the change.I know this part of town. It’s rough, to say the least, even for a student district. The once-grand rooms of late Victorian and Edwardian villas are now partitioned, their splendour erased, tenanted at best by students, more often society’s toxic spillage.”Well, this is it, ” she says. My expression of concern elicits her reassurances: “Oh, don’t worry, it’s nice inside. I have a room on the top floor. My garret.”I look up at the façade of the house: large, neglected, completely uninviting. Ivy and Mile a Minute are in the last stages of consuming the entire facade. I wonder if I have been stupid to come here with this strange girl. Ahead of us, a path flanked by riotous foliage leads to an enormous double door that looks reclaimed from some abandoned fortress.But neither of us moves, her parcels remaining at her feet as I turn to reassure myself, search her eyes for certainty.  We kiss again, long and deep.Then bawdy voices carried by the stillness of the night echo through the deserted street. Harsh, laddish jeering. I pull away from Chloe and look around. Across the road from where we stand, a group of youths in hoods are walking towards us. As they approach, they kick an old Coke can ahead, back and forth to each other, one lad breaking from the pack and into a sprint when it travels too far, berating one another with gutter expletives for lack of skill. The hollow clanking of the makeshift ball grows louder every second. Under the wan side-street lamps, the group become a graphic art parody of a street gang.One of the youths calls to us; something indecent, obscene. Stupidly I turn fully to face him. And then I see it: that we are a gift, the prey they have roamed the streets to find.”You lesbos up for a bit of fun, then?” the foremost of the three sneers.Chloe puts down her bags and turns to face them, steps forward to meet the big one head-on, the agitator who has contaminated the others with his “issues”.  I step forward to take Chloe’s hand, try to make her step back. But she shakes my hand free, stands her ground.”Chloe. Please! Let’s go into the house,” I plead with her.”‘Please, Chloe. Let’s go into the house,’” A voice mocking me, “Do what mummy says, Chloe. Little girls like you should be all tucked up in bed by now.”Their braying laughter. Anadolu Yakası Escort The funniest thing ever. A hand reaches out for Chloe’s breast. But before it makes contact, she grips his wrist and deftly twists. The youth screams, legs buckling, quickly brought to his knees by pain. I hear the crack of splintering bone.For a moment, the others stare open-mouthed.Then they go for her.She is too fast, a blur among them. Shrieks of pain. Hers or theirs?I fear for her, call to her, “Oh God! Chloe!”Three are down, only one standing. The runt of the pack, he backs away, the fear in his eyes absolute, an utter dread that wracks his features. But there is more than fear; there is abhorrence, a recoiling from something that should never be. Seeing that look in the youth’s eyes as Chloe goes for him, I become afraid too. A palpable panic takes hold of my body, a dread that courses through me like iced water entering my veins. How can terror be contagious? But there is no reason. All I know is that someone else’s fear has become my own.The other youths pick themselves up from the ground, readying themselves to come at her as one. But when she turns to them, it is as if they see who she is. And then their fear blossoms until one and then the next, with no regard for each other, run from her. Every man for himself, fleeing this way and that.I look at Chloe, and she looks at me. Not a hair out of place as she smiles sheepishly. “I knew all that training would pay off one day,” she says. Eighth-dan, don’t you know.”But even I understand that I have just witnessed something beyond martial arts. I start to protest. “But —” The words fail me. I am unable to rationalise what I have just seen because there is no explanation.She comes to me, kisses me sweetly on the cheek, “There is a spiritual dimension to our discipline,” she says. “It helps that I’ve been training since — before you could imagine.”She picks up her things, opens the gate and looks at me. “Don’t just stand there gawping. Are you coming in, or what?”I follow her down the path that leads to the front door. It is so dark back here. Wayward branches brush my hair, my face. I have to duck and step quickly aside to avoid them. At the door, she says:”We’ll see if Pandora is home. She’s bound to have something you can borrow.” She looks me over in the light that spills from the panes above the door. “You’re about the same height, but she’s a bit skinnier. You might just squeeze into something of hers.””Pandora?””She lives on the ground floor — an artist. You’ll love her. So bohemian.” Her face betrays some private pleasure at the thought of her friend.”Won’t she think it a bit cheeky?””Cheeky?””A stranger like me — asking to borrow her clothes.””You’ve not met Pandora.”Chloe unlocks the front door. There is a vestibule and an inner door that is stiff and needs pushing hard to free it from the frame. When I step over the threshold, my head begins to hum, then vibrate, and I feel an utter blackness descending as the world starts Anadolu Yakası Escort Bayan to spin. I panic, think I’m going to pass out. Chloe drops her bags and takes my arm. Just in time.”You okay?””I think so. Low blood sugar. I’ve not eaten since breakfast — and I drank too much last night.”She waits for me to regain my composure. When I look ahead to take in my surroundings, I’m amazed. I’d expected peeling paint, the smell of damp and rotting skirting boards, bicycles on the stairs—the usual student-digs clichés. But this is the lobby of some five-star hotel: immaculate black and white tiled floor, polished woodwork, stout internal doors with big brass knobs and shiny plates, plasterwork of sharp cornices and mouldings. Many large elaborately framed paintings line the walls between each door. At the far end of the hall is a wide staircase leading upwards. I look again and wonder if that staircase can be so far away and be so grand.Chloe looks at me. “Told you it was okay, didn’t I? My room’s not so swanky, though.””This is student accommodation?” I ask.”Everyone is special here.”She smiles, amused by my confusion. Something passes between us, and I understand in an instant that this house is full of secrets — secrets she will soon share with me. Her smile is knowing promising complicity.She leads me past the stout and polished doors that flank us like a guard of honour, stopping at one halfway along the hallway.”Ta-da! Pandora’s room,” Chloe says, dropping her bags and extending her arms as if introducing the next turn at some comedy club. She knocks once and calls, “Pandora! Are you home, darling?”A muffled voice responds, “Chloe? Just a moment, sweetheart.”The door opens, then Pandora is greeting Chloe. Her voice is heavy with an accent I cannot place.”Sweetheart! Was Chester a success?”Pandora enthuses. “Did you find that special something you needed so much that it hurt poor Chloe?” She kisses Chloe on both cheeks then turns her attention to me: “And a friend I have not seen before. How marvellous,” then turns back to Chloe, “Why does Chloe hide her beautiful friends from Pandora?”Chloe tells me, “Ignore her, Arabella. She likes to lay it on thick. She’s really from Leeds.””Chloe is so unkind to poor Pandora,” Pandora says.Pandora scrutinises me. Then all-of-a-sudden, she reaches out and slides her index finger along my jawline. “Exquisite! Such features are the bones.”Instinctively, I recoil. But at the last second, I force myself to endure her touch, allow her fingers to map my jaw, chin, cheeks while fearing she may part my lips and examine my teeth. This outrage of intimacy sends a shiver of excitement down to my toes. I can’t believe I’m letting her appraise me like this. And yet, part of me is pleased to have met her approval.”Pandora! You’re shameless. Behave yourself. Leave poor Arabella alone. What must she think of us!” Then turning to me, “Arabella, now you’ve met Pandora.”Pandora’s hair is a night of volcanic terror, a torrent of flowing magma. Escort Anadolu Yakası Her eyes, acutely feline, are inscrutable. A fog of some exotic perfume enfolds her. It fills me with unanticipated desire. I offer my hand, but she ignores it. Instead, she embraces me like I am her long lost sister,  kisses each of my cheeks in turn, the tip of her tongue covertly tasting me. She inhales deeply to capture my scent, assessing my worth as she sniffs my skin. But despite her outrageous theatrics, her proximity thrills me.”Come in, both of you, please.” She’s standing aside now, holding the door open. As I enter her room, her deep-set eyes, heavy with mascara, burn bright with secret amusement.She tells us to sit on a sofa covered in an enormous autumnal coloured damask throw. Side by side, Chloe and I watch Pandora moving here and there about her room. She is tall, graceful in her movements, not gangly at all. She flows more than moves. A master class in serenity, as if time is of no consequence. Her beauty is outré, otherworldly. She is fascinating to observe, holds my attention as if viewing some rare crimson Betta Fish in its tank.My fingers agitated, stroking the throw beneath us. I look down and watch my fingers run over its needlework, appraise the quality of the stitching — quickly withdrawing my hand when I see the horror of the scene depicted, a web of medieval folk art woodcuts of impalings and flowing blood.I try to distract my racing mind, taking in the art that crowds the walls, the unframed pen and inks that lie scattered on the other sofa, the other works that lie unsorted on the table. I stand up and wander around the room as Pandora tells Chloe about her day. I examine oils and acrylics while Chloe explains to Pandora that I need to borrow a dress.Landscapes abound, but the portraits gathered together at the far end of the room are what draw me, call to me. I weave my way among the furniture, heading for a closer look. I’m no art critic, but I am awed by what I see. She has captured some otherworldly essence in her subjects — or if not already present, imparted it. The paintings radiate an outre, eerie otherness.One painting, in particular, mesmerises me. A young girl, sixteen or seventeen. A life-size work, the subject wrapped in some diaphanous fabric. She crouches on her haunches with her arms and hands clasped around her knees, pulling them tight against her chest. Her hair is long and the colour of daisy petals. A garland of tiny blood-red blooms crowns her beauty.The background is an ocean upon which an incarnadine, full moon sheds its light. The girl is smiling, smiling an inscrutable smile. For the artist? I oh-so want to know why she smiles that smile. It entrances me. I watch the picture and feel a need and urgency begin to well up from the deepest part of me. I want to be with that one girl in that only place that matters where the moon shines so mercilessly. I stare and stare, and the world in the painting takes on new depth, its eerie uncanniness becoming somehow familiar, somewhere I know so well. Then it is alive with subtle movement, no longer just a painting. It is like looking through a window – no, a door. I step towards the canvas, compelled by the intensity of the oil-rendered moon-bathed reality depicted on canvas. I want to journey to that world. I want it more than I have wanted anything in all of my life —