“Passion”

“Vrede felt like a woman who had entered a gentle stream and laughed at the playful way its waters laved her limbs and, raking her hair, caused its strands to head downstream. And the woman had known excitement when the strengthening current drew her arms out perpendicular to her body and pulled their flesh away from the bone, when that more confident current pressed her breasts against her sternum and pushed her off balance so that she had to seek new footing on the slippery, pebbled bottom. But then the current carried her round a corner, and the stream became a torrent: infuriated, panicked, maniacal. Its former murmurs became screams; where once it had tickled, it now tugged; where it had served, it now mastered her completely. She floundered and flounced, got hurtled and spun underwater, then jerked to the surface and sprayed in the face by splash from midstream rocks. Lacking any ability to control her own movements, the woman found herself at the mercy of the onrushing, foam-mouthed rapids. Helpless and terrified, she nevertheless felt the purest excitation, a surge of undiluted thrill, engulfing her.”