The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine

by Krissy Kneen

  Holly noticed a dark bruise around her ring finger, a blistering of the flesh with white flecks of pus easing from it.

  ‘Our rings gave us infections. We had to take them off,’ said Becca, flashing her silver nails as she wriggled her fingers. ‘You have to take yours off too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jennifer. ‘I am sure it is the silver. There’s something rotten in it. Your finger will swell and fill with pus. Here, let’s take it off…’

  She reached out to grab at her hand and Holly snapped it away. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I need to focus on abstinence. I need the ring to keep me chaste.’

  The waitress delivered her cappuccino. Holly glanced down into the swirl of crema and chocolate sprinkle. There was a distinct image of a cock patterned in the chocolate on the top of her cup. She frowned, stirred the foam until the cock was obliterated.

  Jennifer took a deep breath. She reached out and put a firm, placating hand on Holly’s arm. ‘Holly, about our vows of abstinence,’ she sighed. ‘There’s something we have to tell you…’

  Holly leaped off her stool and slapped her hands over her ears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I have to go now.’

  ‘But Holly, we have to tell you—’

  ‘No!’ snapped Holly. She found her thumb worrying at the silver band of her abstinence ring. It did feel itchy on her finger. Maybe they were right, the silver had turned sour, poisonous. She took a step towards the door of the café.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Holly. ‘I really, really don’t want to know.’

  And with that she turned and she fled back out into the gorgeous brightness of the street.

  Jack.

  Jack was her only hope now, the last thread of innocence, a man she had loved but never once fucked. She should have sought him out as soon as she stepped off the plane. True love waits—and when he opened the door to her, here he was, waiting. Everything in its right place. She stepped into his arms, breathless.

  ‘You’re back.’

  ‘I’ve come back to you.’

  ‘Oh, Holly. I’ve missed you so much,’ he said. ‘Come in. I was just about to watch a Disney movie.’

  And everything was just as it should have been.

  Holly cradled the bowl of popcorn in her lap. Jack had stared at her all through the opening credits.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are even prettier than I remember.’

  Jack was exactly as she had left him. Sweet, uncomplicated love.

  Love wins over lust. That is how every movie should end. That was the perfect answer to the complicated questions posed by all the erotic texts she had been reading. Love beats lust. Wedding bells. Happily ever after.

  She smiled. Even the first musical sequence transported her to a time when she was seven. What a simple, uncomplicated time. An old animated feature. She found herself mouthing the words to a song about an April shower. She could still remember the lyrics. She used to play this movie over and over again. It was sad and it made her cry every time but she loved the pretty little fawn, his big impressive stag of a father, his nuzzling mother.

  Jack raised his arm and settled it about her shoulder and, after a quick flash of something less wholesome, she began to imagine that his hand was the hand of her mother, cradling her shoulder as she watched Bambi for the twenty-fifth time.

  A flash of lightning. Holly flinched. For a moment she thought the flash was coming from her body, but of course it was just the television screen, a thunderstorm, the little fawn so shivery and scared. Jack’s hand had fallen absently onto her breast and she moved it away. Just an accident. The sun came out on the forest world. Everything would be all right.

  But there was his hand again, nudging its way towards her nipple.

  ‘Jack!’

  He let his fingers rest on her breast. He curled his hand around it and he squeezed.

  ‘Jack. We…what about my vow?’

  He shifted closer to her on the couch. He let his fingers tweak her nipple through her shirt.

  ‘Remember the promise.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, turning his head towards her, nudging his mouth towards hers. He kissed her and she could feel her resolve melting. It was useless. Sex was stalking her, forcing itself upon her. There was no way back to a state of innocence.

  ‘Ever since I opened the door this afternoon, all I can smell is you,’ said Jack, nuzzling closer. ‘It’s in my nostrils, your scent. I can almost taste you, Holly. We are going to get married one day anyway so why don’t we act like we’re married now?’

  ‘True love waits,’ she said, pushing him away from her, scratching at the band of her ring. It had really started to itch now.

  ‘I waited,’ Jack said. ‘I waited for you all those weeks when I didn’t hear from you at all. I waited that whole time. I’m not going to wait anymore.’

  On the screen a great impressive stag rose up and filled the sky. There was something about the film that troubled her. Bambi. She had loved it so much as a child that she had raced out to find the book at the public library. The author was Felix Salten, she remembered that now. Felix Salten. She had seen his name recently, but where? She remembered her suitcase of books, scattered, broken, torn, Josephine Mutzenbacher flung to one corner of the room. Josephine Mutzenbacher, a German pornographic book published anonymously. When they finally figured out who it was written by, they added the author’s name to the cover of the book. Felix Salten. The same Felix Salten. How could the author of Bambi have written such smut? She felt suddenly betrayed.

  The big stag filled the television screen. Jack clambered up and onto her lap. He pulled his shirt off over his head and let his muscles ripple for her. His chest was perfectly sculpted, a red fuzz sprouting on his bulging pecs. Holly didn’t care about his chest. She knew she could resist the biggest muscles in the world as long as he kept the rest of him in his pants.

  She struggled out from under Jack, pushing him away, but she could smell her own sex as she moved, just a hint of foreplay had started her juices flowing. She saw his nostrils flare. She knew that he was smelling it too. He snuffled after her. He fiddled with his belt. She remembered Culculine, lapping at her cunt, uncontrollable. She saw the same look in Jack’s eyes.

  ‘No! I don’t think you should do that, Jack.’

  ‘I’ll be gentle. I promise. I’ll be so gentle.’ He moved closer, pinning her against the side table. He unzipped his pants. ‘You will love it, Holly. You’ll start to love it. Just one little bit of pain and it will be over. You’ll be a woman. You’ll be my woman.’

  His cock was out.

  Oh god. Too late.

  Holly looked down at it. Far too late. The light shone hot beneath her skirt. A line of damp traced the curve of the inside of her thigh. The glow from this single drop was incendiary. Jack squinted. She noticed the glaze that fell across his eyes. He looked like a zombie in a late-night horror movie, but instead of rotting dead hands he pushed a swelling sausage of flesh towards her. Holly felt her hunger rumble deep in her womb. It was like the thunder on the television screen, signalling some hidden terror lurking in their future. He was all ha
nds and mouth and cock as he fell onto her, impaling her. She sucked at him with her cunt. She had endured several days of abstinence, turning up her record player so that she wouldn’t hear the carnal grunting of the beast with three backs in her parents’ room, waking from dreams of orgiastic adventure and plunging her starved body into an icy cold shower. Missing Nick. Knowing that if it had not been for her glowing sex, Nick would be a free man.

  Now she pulled Jack’s body towards her. He opened his mouth and she stuffed her fingers inside. He sucked them. His teeth clicked on her ring. She felt him suck at it as if the little circle of silver were her labia. She felt the ring shift with the slippery attentions of his tongue. It slipped off her finger and he gulped it down, stopping mid-thrust.

  ‘No!’ She couldn’t let him stop now. She could feel the energy building, like a slow fire eating its way through the kindling in her belly. His cock was shoved up to the hilt in her. She thrust at it with her hips, spreading her legs wide. She wanted more of him inside her. She wanted all of him inside her. ‘Nick!’ she cried out, ‘Nick!’ Realising suddenly that she was calling the wrong name.

  Jack was choking. She knew he was choking but she could not stop her rut. She fucked her hips up onto his cock. He wasn’t even wearing a condom. She was breaking all her rules, her rule of abstinence, her rule of safe sex. She wanted his come inside her. She wanted his blood and spit and life force. She saw his eye staring wide, his face darkening as he choked. It was just like the eye in the anus. It was life and death and she could not stop the fuck to save him.

  She felt him gasping, unable to take in air, but even as he coughed out his last breath he arched his back and he came so hard that she was pushed back by the jet of sperm, strong as a fireman’s hose. That other cock, the spasm of death and life fountaining up into the sky.

  His face was a terrible shade of blue, his eyes too wide, his mouth a gargoyle’s pained stretch and she climbed lustfully back onto his cock as he pumped into her in great pounding thrusts, spewing his jism into her loins. She reached up to push her clit against him with her hips and felt the snap of a cracked spine or an egg spilling its dandelion yolk across her thighs.

  She gasped. She came. And at the very point of climax the weight of the man seemed to dissipate. Her cunt made a final satisfied sucking sound and then her labia stretched bright and wide and empty, the shape of a wide glowing O.

  She coughed through a sudden cloud of blue smoke. For a moment she thought that the soft furnishings had yet again caught fire, but when the smoke cleared there was nothing, no flames, no singeing and, ominously, not a single hint of Jack’s corpse. He was incorporeal.

  She had fucked him out of existence.

  It was dark, but she remembered the way. Her clothes were dishevelled. Underneath her skirt her knickers were torn at the crotch. Jack’s seed still dripped down her leg but that was all that was left of him and so she ran.

  She struggled with the door of the telephone booth and almost tumbled down the stairs. Perhaps that would be for the best. Mandy would find her when she shut up shop, her neck hanging at an odd angle, the terrible potential for damage suddenly snuffed out. She twisted her foot but found balance on the next step and continued her plummet. She thudded against the green door and spilled into the bookshop, gasping for breath, her buttons still undone, her bra askance, her bosoms flopping out over the top of it.

  Down in the dark depths of the shop Holly was surprised to see a circle of people. It was her book club. Sex Book Club. She could see Rodney’s face among them. He heard her stumble and he turned to face her. His face lit up with his grin.

  ‘Holly,’ he said her name reverently and bowed his head as if to greet a monarch. All heads turned towards her. They did not seem surprised to see her. There were books in piles on the table. De Sade, Nin, Réage, Salten. She thought of Josephine Mutzenbacher and Bambi. Two sides of a coin. The innocent and the profane.

  ‘Mandy.’

  Mandy looked up at her command. She stood and walked cautiously towards Holly, looking her up and down, taking in the sight of her breasts, the torn stockings, the glowing semen painting the inside of her legs. A body exposed and ravaged by lust.

  ‘My girl,’ she said. Then, ‘You’ve done it. You have finally arrived.’

  ‘I can’t control it,’ Holly sobbed. ‘It is too powerful. I can’t figure out how to harness the sex.’ She held out the black leather notebook, Wilhelm Reich’s instruction manual. ‘Nothing makes sense.’

  Mandy held her hands out as if to placate some wild beast. She made a comforting shushing sound. She stepped closer, held on to Holly’s hands, clasping the book between her fingers and Holly’s. She traced the gold letters on the front of the book. W. R.

  ‘Oh. Wilhelm Reich’s theories?’ Mandy laughed. ‘He had most of it right. If only someone had told him to embrace the aliens…’ She shrugged. ‘Oh well. He was working alone. We can never figure things out without help. You have our help now. We have been waiting for you to come home,’ she said. ‘We have been marking time, waiting for you to tell whatever story you have been fashioning over there in Paris. Tell us.’ She said. ‘Tell us the story of Holly and her incredible adventures in orgone energy.’

  Holly nodded. Where to start? So much had happened. So much had changed. She took a deep breath. ‘I told him to come and meet me in a phone booth…’ she began.

  A Thousand Nights and Then One Night

  Nick opened his eyes. He had been in isolation for too long, darkness punctuated by a blinding glare when the door was open for a moment and the bowl of gruel delivered. He had been keeping to a routine, defecating in a far corner of the room, sleeping on the clean, dry mat in the other. He had been reciting. Pieces from The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille that he had memorised, a scene from The She-devils by Pierre Louÿs. He thought of Holly often. He had kept a count of the days, as accurately as he could; the isolation cell made it difficult. Was it the morning meal, or night? He had lost a few days here or there, but in general he knew that it had been over two and a half years since his imprisonment, give or take a month.

  He wondered if Holly had cut her hair.

  He woke thinking of Holly. He put his hand to the slow rise of his penis. He wanted her right now, but anyone would do. He wanted sex in a way that was particularly insistent. It was an oddly familiar feeling. He shaded his eyes with his other hand as he stroked himself. The light was blinding. He wished someone would turn it off. It was the sun. He realised this suddenly and it was a startling enough revelation to give him pause in his furtive activity. The light was the sun and the arousal he was experiencing seemed so familiar because he had felt it before, lying in the accumulator beside Holly.

  Orgone. He could smell it. A bright scent of burning like a condom rubbed so hard that it had started to smoulder.

  He stood, steadying himself on the stone wall with his fingertips. He moved towards the door, which was suspiciously ajar. He leaned against it and it creaked open.

  Outside the grit of sand blew on a hot breeze. His guard was covered in it, but in nothing else. He lay naked, and the creature in his arms bleated but seemed, surprisingly, far from distressed. The goat’s pink erection protruded from between his shivery thighs. His little eyes tipped up towards the cloudless sky. The animal shifted back into th
e lap of the guard, who pressed his hips fervently forward.

  Nick stared at the odd sight, a man copulating with a goat, unselfconscious, pink with desire. He knew Holly was behind this. He staggered past them, past the other men dressed in scraps of American military uniforms, past the civilians dressed in galabias and shorts and skirts, each in various states of undress, each locked in a carnal embrace. He had lost strength but he hobbled out of the compound, through the streets of the tiny, copulating town. Orgone was everywhere. Somehow Holly was responsible, finally, for his escape.

  The aircraft was painted a military grey. The pilot was sitting at the controls, squeezing his penis, whimpering. Nick looked at the thick stick poking out from the man’s fly. He licked his lips. He wanted nothing more than to fall hungrily into the man’s lap. He resisted.

  ‘I will suck you,’ he said, and the pilot nodded, shuddering.

  ‘I will suck you as you fly. Will you do that? Fly the plane while I swallow?’

  The man nodded. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘please, do it now.’

  Nick clambered up into the co-pilot’s seat, touched the man’s thigh. ‘Take us up and I’ll take you right into my throat.’

  ‘OK,’ said the pilot and he punched buttons on his console.

  ‘To Australia. Brisbane, Australia. Can you get me there?’

  Nick had no idea where they’d taken him. He had been drugged, blindfolded, chained in the back of a plane.

  ‘Of course,’ said the pilot, ‘but we will have to stop for fuel.’

  ‘All right,’ said Nick, ‘I will suck you for the whole journey. I’ll drink your come better than anyone has ever done before.’

  ‘Oh god,’ said the pilot, starting the engines, ‘oh god, do it now.’