Of Devils & Deviants: An Anthology of Erotic Horror

by Graham Masterton

  “How do you feel?”

  She wiped her eyes and nose, then had a few breaths and said, “A lot lighter. Yet filled at the same time. Lighter yet filled... strange. Is this what I’ve been waiting for?”

  “It is.”

  “With you, I mean. With the dreams.”

  “It is.”

  She surprised him by saying, “Now it’s your turn.”

  He started. “What do you mean? No mortal can touch me without being burned to ash.”

  “It’s a good thing I’m no mortal.” She rose, turned, and patted the spot on the bed. “Come on, sit down.”

  He hesitated but did as she said.

  “Now,” she said, rubbing her palms together. He almost laughed. Just what did she think she was doing? “Let’s see what we have here...”

  Standing behind him, she placed her palms on his shoulders. It started at once. The thing about this focused supernatural touching was that it crystalized whatever pain and suffering the being had experienced, then transferred it in the form of pictures to the one doing the touching.

  Being the devil, he’d seen his share of pain and suffering.

  She groaned. The lights in the room flickered. The temperature increased. He could sense the perspiration forming on her body as she began shuddering and shaking.

  “What am I seeing?” she asked.

  He closed his eyes so he could look into himself. Ah... Of course this is what she sees...

  The dark red river bubbled to the surface of his mind, red and raw and ragged, its celestial waters trundling methodically, almost machine-like through emptiness and space, like a ribbon of light, straight and never bending, a river stretching to either end of the cosmos, with no beginning and no end, wrapping around itself, around the whole of space-time—and in those endless waters human beings rose up in distorted poses. Frozen, their faces contorted with suffering, their bodies twisted, grotesque. All along the river these creatures broke through the surface, some all the way out, some half out, some barely cresting. All along the invisible banks humans clung like creeper vines, holding against the current, mouths open in silent screams.

  “The river of suffering,” he said, “out of which all physical life develops. I could explain it to you, but I do not believe you will understand.”

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  He paused, then said, “Suffering is at the foundation of it all, like some cosmic primordial serpent. It’s a river into which souls and spirits are deposited, like embryos into a scientist’s Petri dish. The soul nourishes itself on the suffering, feeds on it, until it becomes crystalized, which in turn becomes wisdom, because that’s what wisdom is: crystalized pain. Human beings are the expression of the soul through suffering, growing out of this river like myriad statues of agony.”

  “Wow,” she said. But it was an automatic, unconscious response. The tremble sounding through her body, the accelerated heartbeat, and the soft whimper he heard after she said it belied her true feelings.

  “Humans in your world tend to think of Hell in different terms than these, but the truth is the river itself is Hell,” he continued. “My job as the devil is to be its caretaker, the one roaming its banks along the point where it intersects with the center of the Earth, making sure it’s flowing smoothly. My role is not as punisher or torturer, but as observer. This allows me to penetrate into the heart of all suffering. Of course, there are other worlds than these, and other devils to tend to those sections of the river.”

  “I had no idea...” she whispered.

  The temperature in the room had reached boiling point. Waves of heat emanated through the center of his being up into her arms, where it then entered her body. An odor of smoke hung in the air. He understood that he was burning her, and yet had no desire—at this point—to sunder the connection. It was Mary who finally released the hold.

  She made a sound like air escaping from a balloon and collapsed onto the bed. He turned to look at her and was startled by her appearance. She was nude, her clothes incinerated, her once beautiful red locks gone, and her whole body was hairless, charred, black and covered with burnt flesh, with deep painful grooves scoring her arms, neck, and chest. Smoke lifted from her gently. She resembled a chunk of wood nearing the end of its life in a fire. Only her eyes still shone, radiantly as ever, bright, blue, seeking.

  She had sacrificed herself to the vision. She had raised herself up, in a spiritual sense, out of the world of forms and matter, into a higher state of being, not all spirit, not all physical either, something in-between.

  “Is that my life?” she said finally. “Suffering?”

  “Yes, up until now. The images we saw when I touched you, the things you sent me in your dreams, the abuse you endured at the hands of your family, that was your time in the river, half-submerged, trying to sprout up and out of it.”

  Tears returned to her eyes, sizzling with steam as they flowed down her scorched cheeks. “And what now?”

  He smiled, touching her hand. She was able to endure his touch, and he was glad for that. “Now...” he said, “you are on the bank with me.”

  She started weeping.

  * * *

  Hand in hand, they made their way out of the bedroom. Down the hallway, past the painting of Christ and the other photographs, through the living room and out into the moonlit backyard. The night air was cool, refreshing, and there was a gentle breeze. Trees in the neighboring yards shook their branches at the sky.

  The devil felt Mary’s grip increase. He turned to her. She was whizzing right through the process, had already begun shedding layers of her skin like a snake. Flaps of charred broken flesh crumbled down her arms, legs, and torso in great long sheets. Bloody strands of sinew oozed and seeped out of her like sap. She was a butterfly emerging from her cocoon.

  “What’s happening to me?”

  He touched her shoulder. A chunk of blackened skin broke loose and fell to the grass, sizzling into ashes. From the hole it left behind there could be seen a patch of fresh, red-colored skin, raw and leathery.

  Much like his own.

  “You are becoming like me. A spirit-being, a tender of the fields of pain and the river of suffering, a creature not of matter and form but etheric substance and cosmic dust.” He chuckled. “Did you think you could be my lover in your mortal body?”

  She shook her flaking face, loosing a shower of burnt skin motes. “I guess not,” she said. “But does this mean we will be together, like in my dreams?”

  He smiled. “It does.”

  She reached up with a leprous hand and stroked his hard cheek. Her blue eyes softened, welling with emotion. He retrieved her hand, clutching it in his own. “Come,” he said. “Let us leave this world.”

  * * *

  They moved through the city, sticking to the alleys and shadows. After several hours on the move, they reached the edge of the mountains. Mary’s shedding process was near complete. She had left a long oozing trail of gore behind them, which would probably be discovered tomorrow by various humans, who, in turn, would be shocked and dismayed.

  This pleased the devil.

  “Is it up there?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “I’m so tired.”

  “I will carry you.”

  He hoisted her into his arms, and she swooned, moaning from his touch. The last cloying and clinging hunks of flesh fell away from her. He broke into a run. The trees and shrubs flew by. Overhead, the sky was lightening with the coming dawn. He dove up the incline, moving up and up. Mary cried out—laughing, yelling, crying. He utilized his last reserves of energy in an effort to reach the flickering black door before daybreak. He couldn’t wait to have her back in his realm so he could lay her down beside the river and make love to her.

  The ground began leveling out. They had reached the top of the mountain, where the sky seemed thunderously close, where the trees grew tall and heaps of limestone covered the area. He found the door at last and stopped, setting her dow
n.

  “That was amazing!” she said.

  Her blue eyes beamed at him, and he took a moment to admire her transformation. Every trace of the human organism had purged itself leaving only spirit, a figment of inspiration and imagination. Her physique, though humanoid and shaped nicely with feminine curves, now seemed globular and goo-like, never holding permanent form, always shifting and flowing, even blurring in and out of focus. She was the color of fire, bright-red and orange. Her exterior casing was hard and hide-like. Her twin blue eyes shone out like windows on a clear summer day.

  “You look beautiful,” he said.

  She grinned. “Now you.”

  He got rid of his hat, then his trench coat and his boots, burning them into nothing rather than removing them. He burned away his physical incarnation and stood before her in his truly terrible divine form. The surrounding trees lit up with his red luminescence.

  She took a step back, mouth agape. “You’re... unbelievable,” she said. “You are so magnificently and undoubtably godlike—just like in my dreams. I think I’m falling in love!”

  She laughed abruptly, but quickly silenced it. Her face regained its composure. “I mean, I have always loved you, ever since I was a little girl.”

  “It is no accident that we are now together,” he said. “The hand of fate and the wheel of karma play a role in this.”

  She nodded, somewhat bemused, but before she had the chance to ask what he meant, she was swooped up and carried through the door with the inlaid pentagram, down into the darkness of the Earth, through caverns and caves and underground tunnels, all the way to the outer pitch blackness of the center of the planet... where a reddish strip glowed in the distance, toward which they moved at an incredible pace, when—

  —suddenly they stopped, and the world came to a grinding halt. He set her down again on the bank of the river.

  After balancing herself, she took a step forward, admiring the sight: her vision manifested in reality. The flowing red waters, stretching infinitely from end to end, with humans growing out of it, some writhing in pain, others containing their suffering with staunch composure, still others clinging to the invisible banks like fish suctioning to the glass of an aquarium, their black eyes and hollow mouths regarding her fondly.

  Welcome home, our Queen, they seemed to say.

  She went to her knees and started sobbing. The sobs quickly became wails of anguish that filled the surrounding blackness.

  The devil stood behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder. She was then guided, with his assistance, to her feet and across the hard brimstone to a pair of bone thrones set atop a high eminence. Gold and blood glimmered in the thrones like human veins.

  He helped Maria into hers, then situated himself in the other, reaching across the eminence so that their hands could remain linked. The suffering spirits of the river lifted their inaudible voices up to them in praise, celebrating the return of the king and queen of Hell.

  “Welcome home, my wife,” the devil said. “How long I have missed you...”

  Her tears beginning to dry, she squeezed his hand and he squeezed back and when he leaned over the arm of his throne to kiss her, she ventured out to meet him. Their faces and their lips came together, and within that impassioned moment all the universe stood still... and for the first time since the devil could remember, he felt a sense of peace in his soul.

  The Gift of Infidelity

  C.W. LaSart

  “I’ve never done this sort of thing before.” Matt looked around blearily, his mind reeling from the sweet, acrid smoke. Everything he laid eyes on seemed exotic, even the more mundane items one would expect in a bedroom, the bedside table and lamp suddenly foreign. The prostitute glanced at him before she returned her attention to a variety of small bottles arranged on the table.

  “You are virgin?” She didn’t look up.

  “No. Not that. I mean, I’ve never been with a, uh.” He cleared his throat. “I’m married.”

  She looked at him again, her dark eyes unfathomable. Selecting an opaque jar from the table, she poured thick oil on her hands and the room filled with an unusual fragrance as she rubbed them together.

  “You should get naked.”

  Matt nodded with a swallow, his hands fumbling with his clothing. Too many beers with those GI’s he’d met at the bar. They’d brought him here, talked him into this, were the reason he was here in this dim room with a strange woman. He’d never cheated on Kristin before.

  “I’ve never cheated on my wife before. I have friends who do it all the time. And they get away with it. I’m not even sure what I’m doing here.” He looked to the prostitute for guidance, but she merely motioned for him to lie on the pillow-strewn floor. He did so reluctantly, twitching when her warm, oiled hands touched his bare back.

  “I love my wife. We’ve had a good marriage. But lately,” He fumbled for the words, relaxing despite himself as her expert hands slid across his flesh, kneading the muscles of his back, buttocks and calves. “Well, we’ve been trying to have a baby the last few years. Our sex life, it’s become so clinical, so driven towards pregnancy. Not like it used to be. She has all these calendars and thermometers. She tells me what I can and can’t eat, in hopes a change of diet will help. I’m only allowed alcohol at certain times of the month.”

  Matt craned his head to look up. She stopped massaging and stared at him with those eyes. At some point she had slipped her robe off, revealing a taut body so different from his wife’s; slender, lithe, small curves hardly those of a woman, more of a girl. His guilt mounted at the thought.

  “Your wife. She want babies?” Her tone sounded matter of fact, but something mysterious shone in her gaze. A look of predatory excitement, like a cat watching the birds play outside its window, Matt thought.

  “Yes. Very much.”

  “You?” She tilted her head to one side, her tiny hand stroking an amber pendant that hung from a thin black rope around her neck.

  “Yes.” He stared back, entranced by her exotic beauty, her dark, almond eyes.

  After a moment, the woman nodded. Matt couldn’t tell if it was to him.

  “You turn over.”

  He did as he was told and she went back to work, massaging his feet with the oil from a different jar. This one smelled like peppermint. Working her way up his body, she used a variety of oils and scents, each adding to the heady fragrance building in the small room. Avoiding his genitals, she moved up his stomach, rubbing her small hands slowly over his chest. Without a word, she left the room, only to return a moment later with a wooden tray that she set on the floor beside him.

  “Sit up. You drink this.”

  “What is it?” Matt asked as he drank from a crude clay cup.

  “Magic.” She whispered, her dimpled smile making her look younger yet. “Smoke this.”

  Handing him the tube from a hookah, he obediently stuck the stem between his lips and inhaled, the already unsteady feeling in his head instantly intensifying as his world tilted. As the woman crawled up the length of his body, Matt grabbed the amber orb that hung between her breasts, marveling at the smoothness of the stone and how her body had warmed it. There were specks, black imperfections beneath its surface, and he squinted to make them out. Too tiny to tell either way, he thought they might be the corpses of small bugs, trapped when sap from a billion years ago had run down across them, before hardening to stone. Maybe flies. Perhaps ancient spiders.

  The prostitute began to rock her hips and he thought about it no more.

  * * *

  “You wake up.”

  Matt felt a small foot shove him in the ass and he rolled over on the floor, pillows scattered around him. The room smelled of exotic scents, stale smoke and sweat. His head felt like it was splitting in two.

  “What time is it?” He squinted at his wrist, unable to focus on the watch.

  “Time for you to leave.”

  She dropped his clothing at his feet and he struggled to sit up. The woman
, so sweet and mysterious the night before, seemed nothing more than annoyed today as she stood in the doorway, her silk robe drawn tightly against her lithe frame. What the hell happened last night, he wondered, rising to his feet and staggering as he tried to pull his pants on. Once dressed, he checked his wallet and found everything in order. He felt guilty doing this in front of her, but figured she was probably used to it, and by the looks of her, he didn’t think he could irritate her any more than she already was.

  “Did I pay you already?” He tried to cover his suspicion, but by her curt nod, he figured she saw through him. “Here’s a little extra. It was, um, lovely.”

  In truth he remembered little of the night before, but she took the offered bill and shoved it into a deep pocket on her robe, leading him to the front door without a word. He muttered his goodbyes and stepped outside, and then her small hand snaked out the door and gripped his wrist.

  “You go home. Be with your wife. You will have babies.” She narrowed her dark eyes at him, her expression serious.

  “Okay.” Matt didn’t know what else to say. The early morning light shone upon her and he realized she was older than he had originally thought. A beam hit the necklace she wore, making the amber glow a brilliant, perfect orange. Tiny bubbles showed deep within the stone, the only imperfections to mar the beauty of the thing. The black dots were gone. He wondered if he’d imagined them. He wanted to touch it again, to feel the smooth warmth against his hand, but he turned without a word and walked away.

  * * *

  Kristin waited for Matt at the airport, just beyond the security checkpoint. He saw her before she saw him, her face turned toward the crowd, brow furrowed in concentration, the nail on her index finger trapped between her teeth. He’d never seen a more beautiful sight in his life.

  As he approached, she lowered her hand and smiled, her whole face lighting up. Dropping his carry-on to the floor, Matt swept Kristin into an embrace, showering her face with kisses until a group of young children nearby began to giggle and point.