by Mike Truk
I stood, unable to speak, not knowing what to say. The only sound was the drifting whisper of her skirts, the almost-silent patter of her slippered feet.
And then she caught sight of me and the candles ceased their revolutions, her feet slowing and stopping, so that she stood, one arm still raised, her eyes rimmed with dark mascara that had run down her pale cheeks, her lips painted black, and she extended her hand to me, an ineffably graceful and delicate gesture that I join her.
And feeling as if I were stepping into a dream, I did.
I crossed the ballroom floor, the candles parting for me as I approached, and stepped into the circle of her arms. Her chest was rising and falling with her rapid breathing, her breasts pushed up and pronounced by the tight corset she wore beneath her gown, her face upturned, her lips drawn into a pleased, almost innocent smile.
Carefully, she placed a gloved hand upon my shoulder, slid the other into my palm. I set my hand on her hip, and then it came to me, as if from a different world: the faintest strains of music, a wondrous weaving of stringed instruments, the melody seductive, the pace inducing me to step into her, and Iris followed my lead, smooth as silk.
We danced. The music came ever louder, as if the orchestra grew emboldened, and the pace quickened. Iris was an incredible dancer, as light as a feather, her hazel eyes never leaving my own, her smile joyous, turning and turning as we spun, and somehow I knew this dance, knew how to move, how to guide her, what to do.
The candles were constellations that revolved around us, their flames streaming behind them, smearing their light across the darkness so that we were enmeshed in an amber and golden cage, and the music grew louder, more fevered. We danced faster, our feet barely touching the parquet floor, spinning without ever growing dizzy, and a bubbling urge to laugh arose within me, laughter that would have been more than a little touched with delirium.
I don’t know for how long we danced. The world narrowed down to this one chamber, my thoughts were utterly consumed by one thing alone: Iris, here with me, her hand in mine, her face upturned, the delight that burned in my eyes, and I swear I heard the sounds of a dozen other dancers moving about us, the music bringing a long-faded world to life, felt as if we danced in the center of a glorious crowd.
Faster, faster, the world blurring, and Iris threw her head back and laughed, tears rolling down her cheeks; the music growing frenzied, chaotic, losing its own meter; the violins screeching; the candle flames roaring into yard-long flames, the heat blasting across my face; the darkness of her dress melting across the floor - and her laughter turned to sobs and she stopped dancing, pressed her brow against my chest, and the music and sense of other dancers and the mad, surreal gaiety of it all went away.
We stood alone in the center of the dark ballroom. The candles lowered to rest upright upon the floor, burning with normal flames now, and I still held Iris as if we might begin dancing at any moment. Her shoulders shuddered with tears, and then, with a sharp inhalation, she pulled back and smiled up at me, her mascara having run further down her cheeks, her smile tremulous.
“Hello, Kellik.”
“Hello, Iris.”
“Come.” Maintaining her hold on my one hand, she led me through the darkness, leaving the candles behind, and without hesitation moved to a door which opened into a dining room.
The table was a massive thing, a darker shadow against the darkness, large enough to seat thirty, the walls surrounded by side tables, hung with mirrors and more portraits. Iris didn’t pause, but pulled me through another set of doors, into a passage that passed what I guessed to be a kitchen, pantry, other dark rooms. Out into a small hall containing a narrow servant’s staircase.
“I used to love the rear of the house,” she said, voice a haunting whisper as she pulled me up the steps into more darkness. “The world of the servants and rats. The passageways and hidden chambers. The veins of our home, invisible but vital.”
We stepped out onto a cramped landing. A shuttered window allowed me to make out the vague outlines of a few doors set in the walls, more stairs leading up. “The attic, the basement, the root cellar, the hidden room behind the parlor where an ancestor of mine would paint his mistresses.” She pushed open a door, led me into inky darkness, a hallway, thick carpet underfoot. “What is it about the occult and forbidden that appeals so? Is it that the normal world is so mundane? So boring, so predictable, so utterly without wonder? And yet, I have always sensed a latent magic, a hidden potential, a truth that fluttered just outside the realm of perception. For most of my childhood I thought I could find it hidden in the darkest corners. Thought I could catch it unawares by watching others when they thought they were unobserved. Oh, the things I saw, Kellik. The things people do to themselves when they think they’re alone. What they do to others.”
She stopped, opened another door. My heart was racing. My palm sweaty in her gloved hand. Where were we going? Should I break away? I knew her power. If she wished to harm me, to break me…
Iris pulled me into a chamber. I could only make out the vaguest of outlines around thick drapes against the far wall.
“It was edifying, watching what people did. Learning their secrets. I thought I was close to apprehending some greater truth when I saw what the groomsman Lenric did to Efreda with that leather baton. There was something there, an incurling, the impulse for life twisted into a taste for death… but no. I realized that it was all superficial.”
She released my hand, disappeared into the darkness, and a single blade of candlelight sprang into existence. I saw that we stood in a grand bedchamber. A huge four-poster bed dominated the room, with armchairs, vanities and wardrobes covered in the same white sheets as below. The far wall was indeed covered in thick, black velvet drapes, and the walls were adorned here with curious charcoal sketches set in severe black frames. Anatomical drawings of women and men posed naked in awkward positions, their fear and confusion captured perfectly as they gazed out of the canvases.
Iris turned back to me, the candlelight gleaming on the onyx beads stitched into her sumptuous gown. “No. I needed to dig deeper if I was to ascertain the truth. It could not be revealed unwillingly by the ignorant, nor taught by the learned. It lay deeper yet, beneath the skin. And so I began my experiments.”
She reached inside a fold that ran obliquely down the length of her side and there unfastened clasps so that her gown opened along the left, leaving a panel of black, glittering fabric affixed to her front.
“I knew my inquiries were unconventional. But what cared I for convention? I had but the one life, a few short years in which to delve into the mysteries. I felt compelled to use them fruitfully.”
She undid the clasps on the other side, and then shrugged out of her black gown, revealing billowing crimson sleeves of her undergarment, and I realized that a second skirt lay under the first which now whispered as it was discarded to the floor. With quick pinches she removed needles from the sides of the pinned panel, and then discarded that too, revealing her black corset.
“What is life? What separates us from animals? What is it that the Hanged God collects when we step into his Ashen Garden? Is the soul physically present within us, perhaps in the breast or the brain? How much can you damage a person’s mind before they cease to be themselves, and become… something else?” Her words were dreamy, her tone soft. “And if we die, can we truly be plucked back from the Ashen Garden, and our real selves resleeved into our corpses? Is death… necessary?”
She undid clasps at her hips, and then pushed her sumptuous black skirt down, crumpling it about her knees, revealing an underskirt of crimson. She stepped free of her gown skirt, her movements clean, practiced, requiring no effort, no focus.
I listened, I watched, mesmerized.
“My efforts were paltry, before. I fumbled as if in the dark. Fingers extended toward the light, but unable to grasp, to…comprehend. Here. Undo my laces, please.”
She turned, presenting me with her back, a bow tied off at
the top of her corset. This I undid, and couldn’t help but wonder: who had laced her up to begin with?
“But then Wargiver found me and ministered to my mind. In a way, he was a kindred spirit. He sought to undo the human frame through pain and magic. To shatter the boundaries of the possible. To unleash one’s true potential.”
The lacings hissed as I pulled it free of each successive eyelet.
“Alas, that his concerns were tainted by sexual sadism. Unnecessary, and ultimately his greatest impediment to discovering something of value. But what he did to my mind… to my grasp of my own powers… I am now both less than I once was, and oh, so much more.”
I pulled the lace from the last hole, and the corset opened down her back. Iris pulled it free, down each arm, and cast it aside.
Turned to me, dressed in nothing now but her camisole and underskirt. Placed a hand on my chest, face upturned, eyes glimmering in the candlelight.
“I am less of a person. Things that were once…intuitive, now seem strange, arbitrary. Yet I am also more. The threads that bind us to our fate are now almost visible. The Ashen Garden exists but around the corner, and if I stretch out my hand, I feel as if I could almost caress its trees of bone…”
She pressed on my chest. The bed was firmly against the back of my knees. I sat back on the thick, dusty mattress.
“Tamara heals the living matrix. Her powers are admirable. Yet once the matrix goes dark, she is powerless. I can sense the matrix once the divine breath is blown away from its lattices. I can watch it degrade in time, yet intuit what it once was.”
She undid her skirt and it fell from view, revealing her white stockings. Moved forwards, she began to crawl over me, forcing me to elbow my way back into the center of the bed. And always her voice smooth and distant.
“I can gaze upon a skeleton and if I focus, call to my mind the matrix of the once living person. With effort, perhaps, I could bring that flesh back from the grave, assemble those bones, attach sinew, weave gut, orchestrate the heart, link up the tenuous filaments of the mind… bring the whole back to cold perfection. Exhume from the past the perfect replica of the man.”
I reached the bank of pillows and there stopped. She did the same, sat back upon my hips, and reached down as if to confirm the presence of my cock. It was as hard as iron beneath my pants. From arousal, I was sure, but what a complex cocktail of emotions were raging through me: wonder and horror, fascination and lust, fear and shock.
She pulled up her camisole, bunching it around her hips, and I saw that her stockings were only thigh-high and that she wore no undergarments. Black ribbons were tied off above the knees, holding her stockings in place. Her hand moved from my cock to her pussy, and I saw her slip her fingers inside herself.
But her expression never changed. The fixity of her stare as she looked down upon me.
“But what use to assemble a model of a man? What use to set skeletons and corpses in motion, like clockwork automata? No, I am no nearer to divining the secrets that have fascinated me than when I was a little girl, watching Lenric slowly work over Efreda. No closer…”
She bit her lower lip and began to grind her hips from side to side, pressing the back of her fingers against my shaft. I didn’t know what to do - reach for her? Remain still? Escape?
I felt her knuckles rippling as she touched herself, the sensation torturous and sublime, and I yearned for more direct contact. She finally drew her fingers free, held them up to the candlelight, and gazed dispassionately upon their glistening lengths.
“What then, is the soul? Tamara says she can affect it with her healing. That implies that it is a tangible object. Capable of manipulation. Can it thus be recalled from the grave? Can it be torn from the body? Moved from one body to another? Can matrixes be created whole cloth by a sufficiently ingenious mind if backed with the right amount of power and knowledge? And if so…”
She slid one finger into her mouth, licked it clean, then reached down to undo the drawstrings of my pants. Slid her hand inside and grasped my cock with her wet palm.
“If so,” she breathed, raising her hips so she could pull me forth, “then what are we but random flecks of divinity, waiting to be manipulated, killed, and brought back to life by one with the will to do so?”
I felt the wet scratch of her trimmed pubic hair, and then she parted about me as she lowered herself and I slid deep inside her.
Fuck. My mind was racing. The words she’d been whispering were like branding irons across my thoughts, yet my body was operating on another plane, obeying a different set of imperatives. She settled ever lower upon my cock, taking me all the way in, and then, once I could go no further, began to slowly rock her hips, side to side, then in a circular, grinding motion, so that I stirred about within her.
“They called me ‘necromancer’ when they came for me,” whispered Iris, closing her eyes. “They thought my interests lay in rousing their dead. Defiling the corpses of their mothers and fathers, their brothers and sisters, their sons and daughters. Oh.” She let out a little gasp, and then leaned back, placing both hands just outside my knees, so that her camisole limned her naked body with sweet perfection and I felt my cock rub against the top of her pussy as she pulled back and lowered herself, again and again.
I couldn’t control myself any longer. I reached up, took hold of her camisole where it was bunched up about her waist, and lifted it, sitting up so that I could raise it over her small, high breasts, then pulled it over her head. She raised her arms obligingly, and I cast it aside, falling back to gaze upon her ivory perfection. The arch of her ribs, the smooth expanse of her stomach, the points of her hips, the swell of her pubis. I ran my hands up her body to her hard nipples. She leaned back once more, grinding down still upon me, and let her head hang back, extending the pale length of her throat as I squeezed and rubbed her breasts.
It was too much. I sat up again, pulled her to me, brought her nipple to my mouth, and felt her wrap her legs around my waist so that I speared even deeper inside her. She moaned as I sucked on her, fingers sinking into my hair, pressing her chest to my face.
Then she shoved me back, her strength surprising, pinning me to the pillow with one hand. I lay there, heart pounding, and almost cried out with a sense of loss as she pulled herself off me.
“They didn’t understand,” she said, voice husky, breathless. “Wargiver didn’t understand. Tamara doesn’t understand.” She slid up my body, dragging her wet pussy up my stomach, up over my chest, her hand moving to cup the side of my head. She gazed down at me, eyes luminous in the candlelight, and smiled with terrible fondness tempered by pity.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered, and then lowered her pussy over my lips.
And the Hanged God take my soul, all I wanted was to drink her in, to lick the length of her cunt, to see how deep I could swirl my tongue inside her, to take her clit between my lips and flick my tongue over it again and again. I clenched her ass with my hands and sank my nails into her perfect flesh, and she rode me, one hand buried in my hair, back arching, other hand twisting her nipple.
I licked and suckled, teased and worked at her as she rode me, and the minutes stretched out into an eternity of labia and wetness. Her pale body rocking back and forth above me, until she let out a soft, wounded cry, and I felt her stomach flutter, felt her thighs squeeze the side of my head. I licked harder, circling her clit, and she let out another cry, fell forward, bracing herself against the headboard with one arm, gazing down at me with wide, unseeing eyes that were rimmed in black as she shook, an orgasm thundering through her, and I felt a stab of cruel pleasure, a sense of victory, of having brought her back to earth, into her body, of having made her feel something.
She sat back on my chest and I wiped her juices from my face with the back of my hand and grinned up at her. “I may be an ignorant street rat from Port Gloom, but fuck if I don’t know a few tricks.”
Iris smiled, her chest rising and falling. “A few tricks, yes.”
“Now it’s my turn.” I sat up, pushing her down into my lap, and then roughly turned her about as I rose to my knees so that she was on all fours. “Ready?”
“This was to be my marriage bed,” she said dreamily, moving sinuously from side to side as if stretching out her shoulders and hips. “This was where I was to lose my virginity to Beauhammer on our first night. Or whomever else I decided to take as my sole and only partner. I like it that we’re copulating here. That we’re putting that lie to rest.” It was eerie, how calm she sounded. “Go on, Kellik. I would like you to make me scream.”
That crudity, coming from her, pushed me over the edge. I growled as I parted her ass cheeks, revealing her wet slit, and thrust in all the way to the base of my shaft. She moaned, pushed back against me, and I reached down, trying to seize hold of her black hair, but it was so tightly braided in a crown about her head that I couldn’t grasp anything. Instead, I took her by the shoulders and began to slam into her, shaking her slender body with each powerful thrust, deeper and harder and faster, my body bathed in sweat, the slopes of her back gleaming in the candlelight. She began to give out small cries of pleasure each time I powered all the way home, and I felt my orgasm approaching, rising up from my core like an exploding sun, consuming all of me.
I seized her by the hips and just let loose. Hammered at her so fast she couldn’t follow, but instead simply dropped her head to the bed and lay there wailing as I fucked her with everything I had - and then screamed as I came, my own roar joining her own. I lifted her hips up, raising her knees right off the bed, and came again and again into her depths, her pussy clenching me like a fist, squeezing and squeezing again and again.
We collapsed over onto our sides and lay there gasping. She was bathed in sweat, just as I was, and for a long time we didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t do anything but luxuriate in the narcotic afterglow of our orgasms. Then, neatly, she disengaged from me and slid off the bed.