January 2023

Dirge for a Summer Moon

by Peter Baltensperger
The ancient cemetery surrounded by old trees was still and dark under the cloud-blacksky of a late summer night. The eerie hooting of two owls echoed through the trees, theonly sound. Clayne Winters lay quietly on one of the graves, the old gravestones andmonuments like formidable shadows all around him. He held his engorged penis in hishand, rubbing it slowly, rhythmically. He felt strangely stimulated by the knowledge thathe was lying on top of a skeleton of a long-gone life. He liked the anonymity of thegraveyard, the weather-worn stones no indication. He once tried to read the names on theancient stones, but they were too old to make out more than an occasional letter or part ofa date. Time hadn’t been kind to the cemetery, but Clayne like the impersonality of theblank markers. They once marked what had once been, only to degenerate into thenameless signposts they had become, pointing nowhere, naming no one.
Everything around him was dead, even the air among the graves seemed to be dead,smelling of decay, tasting of lives lived long ago and forgotten long ago. Only he wasalive among all the skeletons, doubly alive with his erection blooming in his hand, hismind brimming with arousal and sensual imagery. And he was alone. He liked that thebest, despite the large population under ground. His awareness of them only deepened hisloneliness, intensified his lust for life, for sexual stimulation. Sometimes he wished hecould bring a woman with him, although he well knew the impossibility of anything likethat ever happening.
Nobody had ever come to the cemetery in all the time he had been going there tocommune with the dead and think about the skeletons under ground while he masturbatedslowly and with great care. Yet as he was lying there underneath the clear sky, a blackcloaked figure with a black hood came walking slowly out from among the trees. He wasflabbergasted by the unexpected apparition in what he thought was his own secret place.He couldn’t even see a face, yet judging from the small stature and some wisps of hairshowing from under the hood, he surmised that it was probably a woman.To his dismay, the black figure detached itself from the trees and came walking throughthe rows of graves to where he was lying in the shadow of the stone. He tried to hide hiserection, but it was too late for that. The figure walked straight up to him, stopped at hisfeet, and looked down on him for the longest time. He tried to catch a glimpse of the face,but it was too well hidden under the hood. He was about to say something to break theuncanny silence when the figure moved to stand over him like an apparition from a dark dream,an avenging angel in the black night.
He just lay there quietly as he had before, wondering what would be happening next. Hefelt suddenly guilty about why he was there and what he had been doing in the cemeteryall along. Yet to his considerable surprise, and immense relief, the figure hiked her cloakup to her waist, straddled his hips, and let herself slowly down on him, draping the cloakover both of them. He gasped when he felt her wet labia touch the tip of his erection, andhe thought he heard the figure moan under her breath from underneath her hood. Hecouldn’t be sure. He felt her move down a bit further to take the head of his penis into hernarrow opening and he squirmed under her. He felt like screaming in the still night, but hesuppressed his urge so as not to disrupt the moment.
He lifted his hips and felt the apparition move further down until his entire erection wasinside of her and she was sitting on his hips. She never made a sound, never showed herface, only started to move slowly up and down on him, his erection twitching lustily inher agile receptacle. He felt his skin moving up and down his shaft and he moanedinvoluntarily She stopped her up and down motion from time to time to flex her interiormuscles and make him groan gutturally at the stimulation. The graves around them wereas quiet as they always were, even though he thought the ground was shaking underneathhim, the weight of the apparition keeping him in place.
The black figure lifted her cloak and reached under it with one hand. He could feel hertouch her labia just above the root of his erection, then rub herself and her clit, slowly andmethodically at first, then more and more frantically. Her up and down motions on hiserection became more and more agitated until he felt her insides tighten in ecstaticspasms and her body begin to tremble. He felt her shudder and quiver as she rockedthrough her orgasm as if the whole earth were shaking under him, as if the skeletonsrattled noiselessly in their graves. She didn’t make a sound the whole time, keeping thesilence of the strange night intact.
His erection was yearning for the same release, but she didn’t move any more, just sat onhim with her body shaking and squirming, her hand still on her clit. He tried to thrustagainst her in the dark night, but she kept him pinned down. His penis ached inside her,hoping she would resume her motions, but instead she suddenly detached herself fromhim, pushed herself up to her feet, and straightened her cloak. He thought he could see asmile play over her invisible face, but he couldn’t be sure. She had already turned awayand walked back to the trees to melt into the darkness from where she had sounexpectedly appeared. He was alone once more, feeling like a cheap, convenientinstrument in someone else’s dream. As he watched her disappear among the trees, theblack clouds opened up and a full moon climbed up over the treetops to cast bizarreshadows across the silent graves.

Peter Baltensperger is a Canadian writer of Swiss origin and the author of ten books of various genres. His latest book of erotica is a collection of short fiction, Eros for Various Voices. His work has appeared in several hundred publications around the world over the past several decades. His erotic writing has appeared in print in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Erotica Quarterly, Sex in the City - Paris, and the International Journal of Erotica, and on-line in Bare Back Magazine, Clean Sheets, Black Heart Magazine, The Erotic Woman, Oysters and Chocolate, and Every Night Erotica, among others. He makes his home in London, Canada with his wife Viki and their four cats.