Best Fantastic Erotica

by Cecilia Tan

  They glanced at each other, not speaking, until Crop-Top hosted herself up onto the table and began to undo her belt. The others stool politely off to one side, out of my light and out of my way. But I had to walk between them to get to my work table, and it took every bit of effort on my part not to casually brush against one or both of them as I made my way to the waiting needles and inks.

  I busied myself with pulling on my gloves (which reminded me of condoms, all slick and shiny without and powdery-soft within), then I put black ink in the needle gun (I’d use the vermilion later, to add natural color and contouring). I picked up the design and approached my first client of the evening. Her dress was spread open, and her thighs were parted invitingly to reveal a smooth, waxed mons and a tight pinkish-tan twist of pussy lips, topped off by a taut, rounded nubbin of clit flesh. She was resting with her shoulders and upper back touching the wall behind the bench. Her head was craned forward enough to watch me as I worked.

  I heard the subtle jangle of the ben-wahs as I applied the inked paper to her pliant mound, rubbing firmly to transfer the outline of the pattern to her flesh, while her soft breathing made the slight roll of skin over her mons move in time with the rubbing motions of my hand. Her skin was an extraordinary shade of palest, purest pinkish-tan, and before I was finished with the rub-on, I could tell that the tattoo would be startling against such delicate flesh.

  Once the design was in place, I reluctantly asked her to lie down so I’d have a more stable surface upon which to work. She did so only after asking her companions, “You will inform me about the progress of the Gate?”

  As each nodded in reply, I found myself asking, “I know this isn’t any of my business, but is this a special sort of tattoo? It sounds like you’re capitalizing the words. Are they significant?”

  A beat of mutual silence on their part, then, with a soft sigh that might’ve been one of consternation or one of relief, the tall one said, “Where we come from, originally, the names of one’s sexual organs were most descriptive, and poetic, in keeping with the titles of the associated sexual positions. For women, the labia and the mons were more specific: the Vermilion Gate, the Open Peony Blossom, the Golden Lotus. And for the clitoris, the Jewel Terrace, surrounded by the Jade Veins, or Golden Cleft. Men possessed a Jade Stem, or heavenly Dragon Pillars....”

  “Or a Red Bird, or Coral Stalk,” added Chin-length Bob.

  Her companion continued, “All names that implied a natural reverence for the sexual act, unlike the terms more commonly associated with such bodily parts.”

  Wondering if these birds really were call girls of some sort, albeit very classy ones, I let their information sink in, as it were, before saying, as I approached the inked outlines of the Vermilion Gate with my needle, “I agree they’re far more aesthetic terms. Beautiful, really. I just hope this is all worth it. I know what you said about pain and all, but this will hurt.”

  In unspoken answer to my first pass with the single needle over her softly curved mons, Short-Hair merely closed her eyes and arched her lower back upwards, while her confidantes described the blossoming inked design in hushed, almost reverent tones:

  “The first pillar of the Gate is growing redder, while the top arch is now filled in....”

  As I worked, inking on the wash of dark red with multiple needles, I had to lean closer to that crimson-toned flesh. As I wiped away the excess ink and resulting blood with a moistened towlette, I soon noticed that, in addition to the jingling undercurrent produced by the vibrating of the skin surrounding the ben-wahs, there was something unusual happening. Instead of the skin merely rising from the action of the needles piercing the flesh, it now felt harder, and ultra-smooth, like organic armor over her public bone. And the mingled scent of the blood and ink was different too-far spicier, far more musk-like than usual.

  Yet, when I glanced at her gently wrinkled inner lip, it was still fairly dry, without that sheen of inner juices that might be associated with personal musk.

  My head was swirling from the humming drone of the needles, the tinny clink of the deeply inserted balls, and the rise and fall of the other women’s voices above and behind me. I was in a daze as I reached for the tube of ointment, uncapped it, then squirted out a generous clear dollop on to one gloved palm before gently smoothing it over her Vermilion Gate-embellished mound. But daze or no daze, the feel of polished, deeply carved stone beneath my fingers was unmistakable. In the stark white light above, I easily made out the indentations of carving in the surrounding cinnabar-stone gates-’carvings’ I’d inked on to her flesh only minutes earlier. It was only as I reached for a patch of gauze that she spoke again. Gently waving off my hands, she smiled and said, “No need. The air will be much better on it” before closing her legs and the dress flap and climbing off the table.

  Shaken, I shucked off my gloves, then eased on fresh ones while I heard the rustle of another of the women getting up on the bench and undoing her dress. When I turned around, I saw Long-Hair, who’d requested the Golden Lotus, sitting with her dress completely open. There were banks of clouds tattooed on the top of each breast, and fine thin hoops of burnished gold jutted from pierced, raisin-tight nipples. Her nipple rings were joined by a fine cord of golden mesh, twin strands cunningly twisted into a swaying rope between the pale orbs of her breasts.

  Thin, deep-blue shadows cast by the suspended chain fell across her slightly convex stomach, and my hands ached to caress the mounds that surmounted that hovering shadow, so much so that, as I took up the paper with her chosen design on it, my hands shook, making the paper flutter like a trapped butterfly caught in my palms.

  But, as I bent down to rub the pattern on her smooth pate, I felt her hands running lightly along my spine, as she whispered into the mass of wavy hair that covered my left ear, “This will ease your shivers.” Then she ran her hands down my back, along the curve of my jeans-covered arse, then in, towards the thick seam of denim that covered my throbbing sex. Steadying myself against the bench with both hands, I closed my eyes as she, and her companions, continued to lightly massage me through my clothes. The sensation of her hands pressing the fabric tightly against my skin was incredibly sensual, like being massaged by dozens of French ticklers.

  Once the last undulating ripples of orgasm swept through me, I was able to continue transferring the last of the ink blossoms on to her powdery soft skin before switching on the single-needled gun and filling in the delicate tracery of petals, stamens, and curling leaves with deep-pulsing ink. As Short-Hair before her had done, with each piercing stab of the needle, she sunk deeper into a swoon of ecstasy, her eyes closed under blood-suffused lids.

  And with each arc of the double needles, as more and more brilliant color filled in the outlines of the Golden Lotus, her newly tattooed mons took on an unmistakable softness and pliancy, a tactile delicacy matched only by dew-brushed flower petals, a difference in texture I could easily feel through the confines of my latex gloves. More stunningly, though, was how each separate petal was raised to a slightly varied height above her pelvis so that when I smoothed on the glistening cream, I felt the distinct outline of each petal I’d embellished there, as well as the rougher surfaces of the surrounding leaves.

  As she sat up, the swaying shadow of her chain-linked breasts momentarily shifted across the surface of her newly illuminated mound. I swore that I saw the shadow break into a jagged line as it crossed over the varied surfaces of her genitalia, as if passing over a terraced hillside dotted with small hillocks and shadow valleys.

  This time, as I peeled off my second pair of gloves, I was bold enough to gently run my bare fingers over her cream-smeared flowering softness-and was rewarded with the sensation of caressing the most tender flower petals imaginable, petals which nonetheless throbbed with an inner heat, and which even shifted slightly under my delicate, probing touch. When she sighed, I caught the scent of some unknown but heady flower fragrance, before she covered the top of my hand with her left one and guided my fi
ngers deeper into her Golden Lotus, past the fleshy cloisonnŽ of ink and artistry, down to the barely damp tucks and folds of her Golden Cleft, whispering as she did so, “You’ve noticed the fruits of your handiwork. Do not doubt your senses, or question them. What was once flesh is now so much more.”

  As my right hand rubbed and massaged her hidden treasures, my left slowly began caressing her lower belly, then her gently heaving chest, until my fingers found those twin mounds of gold-roped softness. Cupping each breast in turn, I tentatively ran my fingertips over the cloud-like formations embellished there, and was rewarded with the slightly moist, singularly amorphous sensation of fondling the clouds themselves. And when I gave the linking chain between her nipples a gentle, playful tug, I was astonished to see the inked clouds shift and gather all the more tightly over each satiny hillock of warm flesh.

  Only after she reached a softly panting, eyes-tightly-closed orgasm did Golden Lotus Woman slowly slide off the bench. As I pulled on my third pair of gloves that evening, prior to readying the ink and fresh needles, I noticed that Short-Hair was now sitting on one of the small chairs in the studio, dress parted to the waist, admiring the now stone-solid contours and shining vermilion surfaces of her finished Gate, before flexing and relaxing her pelvis so that the ben-wah balls within her tinkled with a silvery metallic whispering, as the studio’s bright lights glinted off those seemingly polished cinnabar-carved walls. After reluctantly taking my eyes away from that alluring, exotic sight, I concentrated on preparing that last tattoo-the Open Peony Blossom, easily the most intricate and exuberant design of the three.

  Her chin-length bob shone like ebony lacquer in the lamp’s clear white light, with scintillations of reddish-blue highlights, while her finely plucked brows formed graceful arcing wings on her smooth, pale brow. As I approached her, she untied her dress and ceremoniously spread open the folds of fabric, to reveal a feathery tracery of muted yet gem-like color that formed a pair of phoenixes perched on each small, firm breast, whose tail feathers trailed in long, spiraling plumes down her rib-cage and along the gentle convex curve of her belly.

  Wishing I’d left off my gloves for just a bit, I traced her phoenix-plumage with a rubbery fingertip and, even through the latex, I felt the distinct ripple of feathers under my fingertip—a sensation which had to have been equally real for her, for she let out a deep, throaty sound that might have been mirth, might have been incredibly intense pleasure, before staying my hand and guiding it back to the piece of inked paper resting on my work table. This time, no mere orgasm would steady my hand. Holding the piece of peony-outlined paper aloft, out of her reach, I said, “I must know what’s happening. This is so... unreal. I see it, I feel it, but I can’t understand it. Is it me, or you, or what?”

  She slumped back against the wall, legs still invitingly parted, red-painted mouth forming a moue, until she finally said, “As my sister told you, what was once mere flesh is so much more, as it has been for us for many, many centuries. Yes, we’re ages old, ages wise—but not very wise in your special art, that of tattooing. Many times we have sought one who could adorn us in the most meaningful of fashions, and many times we’ve had to be satisfied with mere trifling embellishments, small tricks of the inked needle, with no intrinsic value.”

  Feeling strangely calm, despite the fantastic revelation she’d just made, I again looked at each of them in turn, at the glorious ‘tricks of the inked needle’ that adorned their creamy-pale flesh (Miss Vermilion had opened her dress to reveal upturned breasts embellished with the shiny smooth hardness of lacquerware-like inverted bowl shapes, which turned each breast into a deliciously gibbous orb), and asked simply, “How did this happen to you?”

  “This was not a gift from birth,” Golden Lotus explained, as the clouds of her linked breasts grew slightly gray, as if overcast by memory. “We were born as any other women, with gifts and pleasures possessed by any other and, when we matured, we became concubines to a most wealthy and powerful man. Our lives were intertwined with the joyous giving of our natural gifts, and sexuality was our art. We were masters of the Winding Dragon, Bamboos by the Altar, and the Cleaving Cicada....” Here her voice trailed off, as her cheeks reddened at the mention of remembered pleasures. Vermilion Gate continued, “So highly prized were our gifts that our master and lord made a gift of us to a traveling man of great power and esteem. A man who was far more than he appeared to be, both in terms of power and in terms of his manhood. His Red Bird was far more than mere flesh. It was, literally, a living bird of incredibly redness, not the symbolic representation of a rising Red Bird. The sensation, against the Jade Veins and the Jewel Terrace, was a heretofore unknown delight. After him, our dildoes and Burmese Bells—what he called Rin-no-tama bells—were of little use to us, so great was the need and longing he stirred in each of us.

  “And he in turn was so taken with us, and so moved by our plight born of longing, that before he was to take leave of our host, he bestowed his own special gift upon us, a gift tempered by the stinging passion bites he left on each of our bodies, bites that burned with the magic of his hard kisses, and his enchanted Red Bird, which, he revealed to us before that final parting, was once simple ink pounded into his flesh-ink made feathery by the enchantment of his thriving blood.”

  “But before he left,” added the one who sat, waiting all her phoenix-adorned glory, “He had one of his own servants decorate our breasts, as proof of the gift he’d bestowed on each of us. But before his servant could give us the Golden Lotus, Vermilion Gate and Opening Blooming Peony we craved, our lord banished him from his estate after having seen the servant’s handiwork. Our master thought it the work of evil spirits and banished us as well. But other men found our special charms all the more enticing.

  “It was then that we discovered our benefactor’s other gift. While those with whom we performed the Phoenix Sporting in the Cinnabar Cleft and the Unicorn Horn gradually grew old and died, we remained young and supple. Through all the centuries following our expulsion from our first master’s home, and through all the time spent in a ‘green bower’ with other givers of flesh and other more homely delights....”

  “But even as men partook of our unique charms and our own brand of sexual symbolism not found in the classic alchemy of Ts’an-t’ung-chi’i, they eventually feared us. So we found ourselves cast out again, this time from our own land,” explained Golden Lotus, but then went on, as she drew her dress flaps over her clouded breasts and still-glistening Lotus mons, “Our main concern however, was to complete what our original initiator’s servant had begun, so many sunsets ago. In other regards, our lives were most self-sufficient, but lacking in the sexual sense. Occasionally, we passed on our gift to others, men and women alike, although those people chose different paths of self-expression, some with small rings and chains of previous metal, others with embellishments that lived in other ways, in other places. But, sadly, in all our wanderings, we had yet to find an artist who was either willing or suitable in ability to grant us our most deeply desired gift....”

  While listening to the lilting sing-song of Golden Lotus’s words, and her tale of gifts passed on to others, a small voice began whispering in my ear, hissing soft tales of a most different sort.

  “Are you ladies... vampires?”

  “Of a sort,” the woman on the bench replied, while reflexively undulating her hips and pelvis so that the metallic balls within underscored her words with a silvery descant. “Although nothing like the vampires of your mythos, or that of the imaginative Irishman so lauded by your people. Night time is our time of sexual feasting, and sexual giving, but we need not fear the day. Through the magic of our blood, the eyes of the flesh can see, and the lips of the skin can taste, but only if those eyes and lips are placed on flesh whose blood runs deep and hot with a burning alchemy born of lust and desire. Although the enchantment of our blood is strong, our abilities with the needle and the ink are weak, very weak....”

  “Just as mine is strong in th
at regard?” I found myself asking, while unconsciously adopting their syntax for my own.

  All three nodded solemnly, and only then did I take up my inked outline and rub it against her shorn, smooth mons. Once each petal was transferred to her skin, I picked up my needle gun and began fulfilling her long-held dream, a dream born long, long before my own time of remembrance. And with each completed petal, each inked-in section of the magnificent, spreading blossom, she sighed and began caressing her jutting breasts, stroking and smoothing down the inked feather and plumed contours of the great mythic birds whose small eyes followed the motions of my needle in slowly rolling watchfulness.

  Once the tattoo was finished, and I rubbed on the antibiotic lotion with tight, circular motions, which displaced the petals of her labia and mons briefly, before they slowly moved back into place, I found myself rubbing my own tightly clipped mons against my jeans inseam, wondering how I might feel with a pelvis adorned by silky petals, or made blissfully slick and smooth with an armor of needle-carved cinnabar, and how my boyfriend would regard such a change, not only in my appearance, but in me.

  Before she had a chance to slide off the bench, I stripped off my gloves and then quickly unzipped my jeans and stepped out of them, asking, “Instead of paying me with money, would you pay me with your... gift?”

  The women glanced first at one another, then at my naked mons with its light covering of fine dark hair. Then their eyes moved in unison to my existing tattoos: the small winged dragon on my left hip, and the fanged tiger on my right hip and buttocks. Then Golden Lotus said softly, “Such a payment is most possible, but first, your flesh will have to be freed from the danger that lurks there.”