Junhyuk was sitting up in bed smoking. His girlfriend of six weeks, Sohee, lay next to him, snoring. And outside the mosquitoes waited. Junhyuk knew that neither his cigarette smoke nor Sohee's snoring would hold their teeming foes at bay for long, but vigilance was necessary. Because if you didn't get them first, they'd sure as hell get you.
That's what mosquitoes do; it's their raison d'être. You can try your best to avoid their bloodlust, but they're going to bite you in the end. "You have to sleep sometime," Junhyuk told himself, "and when you do, that's when they'll creep in, like a spirit uncarnate, to drain you, little by little, of your body's most precious fluid."
Luckily, Junhyuk wasn't tired, not in the least. He could stay awake until dawn and into the coming day, he was sure. The mosquitoes occupied his thoughts -- [and his re-writing of this story, the first three paragraphs of which were deleted by an angry Blogger god] -- but so too did his sexual frustration, which began percolating as soon as Sohee spurned his advances after they checked in to the coastal motel and which reached a boiling point when she refused to wear the string bikini he had purchased for her specifically for their trip. After sleeping with him the first night they met, it had been a long, grueling, month and change of courtship, PG-13 fooling around, coffee, and, ultimately, blue balls. For Junhyuk, time was standing still. This was supposed to be the sequel to their initial tryst. This was supposed to be a vacation.
This was supposed to be fun.
Junhyuk stood up. He would go to the beach to watch the tide. The idea emboldened him, and for a short time he stayed in bed pondering whether to write Sohee a note explaining his absence should she wake up while he was gone.
He didn't. Instead he threw on the T-shirt he had worn on the train ride in -- still damp from sea mist -- put on his flip-flops, and exited the motel's front gate. Then he swung around the back and sauntered down the dune to the shore.
The air was crisp and ripe with promise. It was Sunday, and Sundays were never dull, Junhyuk knew. He sat down and brushed the sand from atop his feet. He fished a cigarette from his shorts pocket and lit it. Then he fell into a reverie.
When he snapped out of his daydream the horizon was azure, unblemised. Noon. As he sat in the sand, his cigarette ashes long windstrewn, a sole black cloud, like a cataract over the earth, approached, increasing in diamater until it resembled an oblong onyx orb floating above.
The thrum of their wings was unmistakable.
No suckage.
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