The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12: Over 40 outstanding pieces of short erotic fiction (Mammoth Books)

by Jakubowski, Maxim

  On the bank, the weeping willow did not look sad any more. It was a cabaret wig of leaves. I wanted to touch Kay’s hair but she looked delicate and mad. She was carving roughly into the dirt with a stick. Her suit clung to the rounds of her stomach. The sun flitted through the leaves to cover her in confetti of dappled light. I knew I shouldn’t talk or comfort her but the silence was awkward. Normally, I would have put an arm around her shoulder, but now I stood several feet away and yanked leaves off of branches, making them bow backwards and snap. “Did you hate it?” she finally asked.

  “Hate what?” I answered dumbly, ready to blame it on buoyancy.

  “Did you hate my breast? Is anyone ever going to want to touch it?” She looked anguished.

  “I told you it was nice,” I said, distantly. I didn’t want to squabble.

  “Nice is not much of a word,” she answered. “Sometimes I don’t want to be the obedient Christian. Sometimes I don’t want to recruit virgins. I mean, what if I’m boring, down to the boobs?”

  “You certainly aren’t that,” I said, softening my tone. Kay was staring at her chest. “Close your eyes for a second.”

  Skeptically, she sank into my instructions. Her lids shut. I grabbed her hand and smoothed her palm around my boob. I lifted my hand and put it on her breast. Kay squeezed her eyes at that moment, and her breathing changed. Aside from that, we were completely quiet, like deer that trance hunters with their eyes. I worked her nipple with my thumb the way I might work the edge of dough, then just held my palm there and breathed. Touching her tit was like holding my hand over a globe as it was spinning and taking me to new hemispheres. Kay made whimpering noises that sent a tingle down my spine. “You see?” I said knowingly. “They’re both nice and not boring at all.” I didn’t dare move her hand anywhere else, even though her touch was too light and I wanted more. My boob filled it out completely. I felt naive for not knowing how much I had wanted it there. We’d talked a lot about the evidentiary, such as broken hymen and blood on a sheet, but we couldn’t pretend that this was meaningless.

  Her eyes popped open. “Ally,” she said seriously. “This is not what nice girls do.” She yanked her hand away and started putting her clothes back on over her suit, even though it was still wet. It left two ovals where her butt was and it was soaking through her shirt. She looked ridiculous. I followed her lead and put my clothes on, and we headed quietly back to the house. I moved a stick along corn stalks as if they were pickets. “You think it’s going to storm?” I asked, as if this was the reason for her hurry. “I’m not a meteorologist,” she replied tersely. The clouds were so unfettered that they grew to celestial proportions, casting huge shadows. I began to shiver, and Kay sped up so fast I could barely keep up. Right before we got to the house, she spun around. I almost slammed into her. “If this is what you are, I want to know,” she said. “If you’re some kind of a lesbian, you better tell me now.”

  “Come on, Kay,” I dodged, and tried to weave around her but she stuck her arm out, stopping me. She raised one finger up and pointed it at me. She was really pissed off now.

  “You said you’d only give it up for God,” she said. “You signed.” Her voice was trying to squeeze itself into a fevered whisper.

  “Nothing is broken yet,” I answered sharply. “We’re still intact. Good Lord!” Before we could go further, the sky broke open and it rained. I smelled the scent of rain on new cement because her dad had poured a patio last month. We bolted for the house, trying to squeeze past each other. Then the screen door slammed behind our dripping bodies as we hurried in.

  What we did seemed innocent enough, nothing a doctor wouldn’t do. I closed my eyes and rubbed my lower lip against my palm, to feel its strange pink texture. Even that made me feel so amazing, especially if I thought of kissing Kay. The days were like notes held too long by a soprano in a house of clear glass.

  Grandma loved hawking Amway in the rain, because more people were home, and they were grateful for any company. Plus, being industrious in poor weather earned good standing with God. “You poor girls are rained in and reined in,” she said cheerfully as she bustled out the door. We should have been miserable to be cooped up in the trailer but we weren’t. Kay had softened toward me, though we avoided talking about our outburst of lust while we read magazines on the bed. Kay methodically studied an article on how to pluck eyebrows. “The family’s chicken pluckers from way back,” I assured her. “It’s our legacy.” Every time one of our legs got lazy, our calves or feet banged together, then we pulled away, electrified. I imagined myself stroking the cocoa skin of her thighs and kissing her elegant collarbones. Kay sprung up and paced around the room nervously. She held Grandma’s costume necklaces to her neck and put them down. She fiddled with some decorative bells. Finally, she picked up the prayer hands.

  “Maybe we should test your faith,” said Kay, mischievously. “Do some kind of trial-by-fire.”

  “Like what?” I answered neutrally, my body stiffening. I hoped her game was some spin-the-prayer-hands that involved groping and tongues.

  She smacked the prayer hands into her palm. “These are small enough, and one of us should know how it feels,” she said.

  “How what feels?”

  “It, Ally. It,” Kay said patronizingly. “How many its are there? Don’t make me spell it out.”

  “As previously noted, I’ve got meeself two big ’its,” I said, trying to break her with a stupid joke. But Kay wasn’t having it.

  “Be serious,” she said. “I am.”

  She shoved the magazine to the ground so it was flapping like a bird held by its feet. Chickens are slaughtered that way: inverted and desperate. Minutes earlier, Kay and I had been savoring girl talk about make-up and celebrities, chattering in a parlor of easy commonality. Now, she had assumed a different posture, slinking low toward the chicken coop. She got right up on top of me. “We’ll just see if you like it,” she said. “OK?” She tucked the prayer hands into the elastic of my shorts, so they pressed cool and firm on my waist. “It’s better to try these things with someone you know, so you’ll be ready when the big day comes. Who do you know better than me?”

  “Not even myself,” I replied, terrified of her sudden assertiveness. Kay began rubbing the prayer hands lightly against my skin, which made me tingly. Then she set them on the bed.

  “Come on, Ally,” she soothed. “Don’t be chickenshit. You’re the brave one. Someone’s got to try it. They say not to sign a contract unless you understand the terms. How can we be good virgins if we know nothing of the alternatives?”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I answered. I felt a powerful convection heat cooking me from the inside out. I wanted her so bad.

  Then she kissed me on the cheek and assumed the pragmatic planting and sowing tone we’d learned from our family. “I know what to do,” she whispered authoritatively. “I’ve been reading magazines all day.” One hand reached down and opened up my shorts. I couldn’t believe what was happening. My brain floated on top of me like a doomed dirigible. Her fingers slid beneath my underpants, into the gasping canyon that had formed slowly from an unheralded stream. “Does this feel good?” she asked timidly, as she was tracing patterns with her fingers, looking for a place to put them in.

  God, it felt incredible. I didn’t want her to stop. I thought about my stretched-out, cheap underwear that had come in a three-pack. We always bought it in quantity, the way one might send bundles of dry goods to Africa, and I loved its pragmatic and distant spiritual insurance. Kay wore the exact same kind, and there was something seductive and sexy-librarian like about its plainness. She acted like she had swerved around that familiar stitching a thousand times. Kay’s lips were parted and swollen with red, hungry. I felt one finger slip inside of me and I gasped. “Oh wow,” I said.

  “Don’t you ever masturbate?” she asked. Clearly, she did.

  “Where would I do it? In the shed? I’m never alone.” I didn’t tell her about my pillow grinding. />
  Kay moved her finger in and out, then started widening my hole with it by circling right inside the opening. “Concentric circles, nesting rings,” she said. “Just look at it – you’re beautiful. And why not in the shed?” I wished that I could kiss her but I knew I might break the spell if I moved. Kay had more sense than this usually. “I guess you must like boys a little bit,” she commented. “You like having something inside.” I didn’t point out the flaw in her reasoning, that the thing inside of me wasn’t a dick, but her, and nothing else felt so good. She pulled my shorts down off my feet. She yanked my matronly underpants away. “Let’s get on with it,” she said feverishly, and I thought hallelujah, yes. I looked at my coils of pubic hair and then, above, her saintly face. The scent of me wafted through the room, an aromatic telegram, and I was scared the trailer doors would not contain the news. We panted in the tentative stillness. “Now spread your legs,” said Kay. “Relax.”

  We’d never done the Passion Play or Stations of the Cross, but Kay seemed to know something about sacrificing virgins. My toes grazed the footboard as I spread my legs apart. Spreading them so wide felt amazing, and my thighs grew hot. I felt a teasing breeze from somewhere but the windows were all closed. Kay ran one finger up and down my wet pussy, parting the seas. “OK, it will hurt at first and then feel good,” said Kay. “If the sex books are correct. I think I’m competent. Try to relax.” She slid the diminutive fingers of the prayer hands into me. Their coolness made my muscles clench. I felt the sweetest pleasure bubbling through my groin as she eased the hands in.

  “Oh, Kay,” I exclaimed, despite myself. “That’s nice. Please don’t stop.”

  “Don’t worry, Ally Cat,” she said. “I’ve got to find your soul in here to save it.”

  She slid the plaster further into me until I crawled backwards a little bit. Then her slender fingers stroked my body, coaxing me, letting me know it was OK. I felt myself spreading for her. She tweaked the spot above my hole, so she could slide the hands further in. “I found your magic button,” she grinned. She massaged around my opening, while I let out little moans. “That’s it, relax for me,” she said. My saggy underwear hung on the foot post of the bed. She rocked the prayer hands in, and suddenly, I felt a rapturous explosion, right from the plaster fingertips. “Oh!” I said, and Kay slammed one hand over my mouth.

  “Be quiet,” she said. “People will kill us. Did you come?”

  “I think I did,” I said. She looked angelic with her hair glowing in the lamplight. It was my first orgasm.

  It kept pulsing in me, like the glow of a star, while Kay set the prayer hands back on the dresser.

  Years later, I wonder if that star still guides her, as it does me. I walk toward the address her father has given me, down a battered asphalt road. I don’t know if Kay has ever fucked another girl.

  Kay’s kin are the only ones who want to see me since I came out as a dyke. They are serpent handlers, or Sign Followers – as queer to my other scripture-strict relatives as I am. They split off with the family and fled Indiana after taking up with snakes, and it has been six years since I last saw Kay. At twenty-five, I still feel like an awkward teenager when I walk toward the house. The congregants haul metal chairs for tomorrow’s service. Aunt May shucks corn by the round hood of my uncle’s truck. Like the others, Kay wears nondescript garb, her hair smoothed back, but her arms are buffed out and sexy from the Army. She Frisbee-tosses a paper plate my way and squeals, “You made it!’” Aunt May strides up and kisses me right on the lips, and I back away, surprised. “It’s our faith tradition,” explains Kay. “Second Corinthians tells us to greet those of our own sex with a ‘Holy kiss’ and we kiss like that.” She gives me a sly glance.

  The landscape is lush with suggestive underbrush. I am tense about what slithers beneath the obvious. How could they accept me when they believe the Bible asks them to drink poison and wrestle deadly snakes? Still, they have invited me here, knowing what they know. I wonder where her dad keeps the box of copperheads. He rises from the porch and drags his bad leg with his good leg, then hugs me with one arm and says, “Welcome to Tennessee, darlin’. You’re always family hear.” I almost cry to hear him say this, since I’ve felt so shunned by the rest of the family. Before I can offer to help set up, he seizes my duffel bag and sticks a limp pillowcase in my hand. “What’s this for?” I ask.

  “We’re going hunting,” announces Kay. “Before sundown.” She grabs a long stick with a metal hook on the end. “You girls catch a lively one,” says her dad, and grins.

  Kay is silent and doesn’t snap a single twig as she steers me through the woods. We don’t talk about my coming-out process, her escapades in the barracks, the rickety railroad bridge between our lives. I feel nervous. I wonder if she judges me, or if she still dates men. Over time, our letters grew polite and petered out. Her solemn brow twists like a point of wind turmoil on a grassy field, and I remember my first orgasm like it was yesterday. It makes my clit throb to have our bodies so close. She rattles along with the snake stick, and I watch the rhythm of her shoulder blades. Kay might have had a hard time as a black kid in a white family, but people always kowtowed to her. Like those sturdy farm structures that just won’t fall, Kay has an effortless way of making the wind bend around her skin. My pussy still remembers how she slid it open. At twenty-five, she looks like something decadent and tasty only adults get to eat.

  Kay plods down the overgrown trail, pointing out poison oak so I don’t step on it. “Shhh. Be still,” she orders, holding out her arm. Before I can ask what’s she doing, Kay slides quietly to the left and scoops the snake stick down into a leaf-dappled area beside the trail. She lifts the thick, twisting body of a timber rattlesnake with the metal end. I hadn’t even noticed its cryptic yellow and brown colors hiding there. She grabs the viper by the head while I jerk back. My heart rifles with adrenaline. “So you like to fuck girls?” she asks dispassionately, pointing the rattler’s fangs at me.

  “Hold on—” I protest. Then Kay bursts out laughing. “I need the pillowcase, fool,” she says. “I’m not going to kill you for being a dyke.” She rope-ties the end of the bag and the viper thrashes inside then goes still. “They call me ‘charmer’ now.” She says proudly. “I flush the serpents out.” I nod and respond, “I can see how you’d be good at that.” Her eyes run over my serpentine curves. Her tone hooks a slight drawl and softens. “We’ve got time to kill now,” she says. “So why don’t I show you my favorite spot?” Then she takes me to a tiny shack in the woods, pulls the vine-covered door and leads me in. She plops the snake bag on the plank floor. “It’s an old hunting squat,” she says. “Don’t you love it?” The timber rattlesnake squirms and I try to move away, but Kay suddenly herds me near it, pressing me against the dirty wall with her whole body, keeping me scared. I’m trapped. She is thrillingly present, her arms holding me there. “One thing I’ve learned about the power of venom,” she says, “is that you should keep it in the family.” Then she grins. She puts her fingers through my hair and breathes heavy on my neck, flushing me out. What is she doing to me? I moan a little. Kay is so intense up close.

  The serpent rustles and our eyes shoot to the bag, then we giggle. “I bet it’s the pillowcase I used to hump when I thought of you,” I confess, reaching out to stroke her cornsilk-soft cheeks, to let her know I want her too. She brushes my hand away, like it’s just a pesky fly, letting me know she’s in charge. She leans forward: she has a hot rock to warm my cold blood. She thrusts her hips a little bit, so I feel the lump in them against my body. “You feel what I’ve got?” she asks.

  “Is that—?” I ask.

  “It’s a viper,” she cuts in. “It’ll kill you quick.” She grabs my hand and rubs it over the lumpy curves in her jeans, then blocks me from touching it again. I can’t believe Kay is packing a dick. “Oh God Kay,” I marvel. “I want to feel it.”

  “You just wait,” she orders. “Wait for it.” Then she shakes her hips until I hear a rattl
ing sound. I don’t know if it’s a rattlesnake or gourd or can of dimes. I don’t know if it’s a dick at all. I scrunch my brow. “Is that a real snake in your pants?” I ask, perplexed, and Kay pins me tighter. “Yeah, it’s a serpent I caught for you,” Kay says calmly, and puts my hand back on the lumpy mound that really does seem to wriggle. “Don’t make me pin you face first and give it to you Deliverance style.” I hear the rattle growing louder, faster, as she grinds her hips against my pubic bone. I try to back away, to ascertain what’s slithering in her pants, but she squeezes me against its cotton case. I get irrationally scared but Kay calmly holds my wrists in one hand. She unzips and pushes down my pants. “Can you handle the serpent?” she asks fiercely. “Are you a child of God? Are you holy and willing to prove it?”

  She shoves me hard against the wall. I gulp.

  Then I feel the venom, the quietude, Kay’s sweet cock sinking in.

  The rattle comes from so far down, I cannot tell its origin. It rises up inside the room. It seizes me. It clutches Kay. My muscles knead themselves into a wild delirium. Kay rocks her hips and pushes deeper into me. “Oh yeah,” I groan, and try to pull her further in. But then Kay slides out her cock and makes me look. I tug at her to call her back. “First take a peek,” she says. Her dick is jutting out, and where the balls should be, there are the curving lumps of keratin: she’s fixed a rattlesnake rattle there. “Some fiddlers put these rattles in their violins because they think it makes the instrument more masculine,” she says. “Or that it sings along. I harvested this rattle from a tire track rattlesnake. Good luck for me, but not the snake.” She runs her fingers down my chest. “See, you can kill the body, but not rhythm. Rhythm lives. That’s why the serpent handlers rise up off their seats to praise.” She starts to move her hips, and pierces me. I grab at her and feel her sinking in. “I’m going to make you come so hard,” she says. “For all the years I’ve held it in.” And then my hot, adopted cousin fucks me good. I’m baptized in her sinuous religion.