Black Body

by H C Turk

  The best flotsam drifted my way. Looking to both sides to see that he was no longer surrounded, Eric slowly approached the wife, much to her satisfaction; for were not these folks of similar minds? The traitorous dog followed the Rathel about, sniffing at her heels as though she had recently stepped on his sweetheart.

  Eric and I stood as though imitating his parents, shoulders nuzzling as we leaned toward each other and whispered, vessels inches from our lips as though to conceal our words.

  “Thoughts had I of escaping this dungeon,” Eric said quietly with his liquor breath, “until coming aware that it now is our home.”

  “Escape is no matter,” I replied with wet figs on my lips, glimpsing the other parties, “for Rathel has poisoned us all, and we die before the fire in one family heap.”

  Then Eric submitted, “Incorrect, missus, in that she and you be saved, for your drink is different. My word, woman, and I see it vanished as well,” he noticed upon looking into my empty goblet. “Your kind, then, are lushful drinkers?”

  “Worry of your own kind, sir, for you are the one poisoned. Not likely is Rathel sending herself to Hell merely to deliver me to a similar vicinity. Yours, after all, is the death she desires, though only as punition to your father. So here she has arranged for both males and the extra woman to succumb. Be wise and drink no further.”

  “No wisdom needed, you will observe,” he said, and nodded toward Rathel, who was chatting anew with Lord Andrew after filling her goblet with anise vodka; and what had become of her moderation?

  “Therefore my grasp of sinners and their ways,” I remarked.

  “Regardless, missus, you might consume no more.”

  “Ah, fear anew, for the enemy attacks our position,” I noticed, for the Rathel—accompanied by Andrew—approached to fill Eric’s chalice. Graciously I demurred. Surely, as sublimely crafted a compilation of lucid glazes and ferocious though oily spirits as ever imbibed, I replied, Grand and the Rathel chuckling off to the next couple.

  “Their thinking be yours,” I remarked to Eric, referring to his parents. “Note how they view the room’s personal contents from the tops of their eyes, which float above their goblets. As you before, they plot their exit, and well regret their blunder in thoughtfully visiting family.”

  As though concluded with her own plotting, Rathel aroused the crowd by announcing her exit, in that her visit should not be overextended, enjoy all ye the remaining liquor, and away she moved, through the foyer and gone. Before the sound of the door’s closing had faded in the air, the older couple announced a similar plot, remaining to one side of the room to wish those walls, perhaps, a good evening, so impersonal was their salutation. Then off they slank as though spiders chased from the kitchen by Elsie. The dog remained.

  Having made a move to see his youngster to the door, but failing when husband and wife hastened away with a partial wave, Lord Andrew was left with no visitors in his home, only boarders. Remaining quiet, the older gent sipped at his drink; and I knew he was not mimicking, having greater integrity than the local witch. Eric, espying about with crass turns of his neck, well reeked of relief as he called out loudly.

  “Now that the troublemakers are gone, let us carouse!” And he snared my goblet to throw the thing into the fireplace, knowing his own metal cup would not histrionically shatter, my glass bounding amongst the logs without a crack in the thick crystal; and surely this was some augury of Eric’s ability to succeed in life. Lord Andrew became so amused as to laugh and bend double, his face all in joy and tears, though his sound was so quiet that I had to laugh myself, the dog ignoring all of this, as boring as the purest witch.

  “With the misfits fled, we may well enjoy ourselves,” Eric added, “an especial possibility considering that they left the grog.” Decisively he then stepped to the tray, lifting the darker decanter to open it and smell.

  “Ooh, what a nasty stuff we have here,” he muttered, and returned the bottle. Gaining the second, he found himself with no receptacle, having banished mine and lost his own. The Rathel had abandoned hers nearby, but Eric was aware of its user, looking past it toward that pair left by his parents. Lift one he did only to recall the words to have come from the mouths against those vessels. He thus turned to Grand with empty hands.

  “Have you a cup, sir?” he asked pompously, and Lord Andrew pointed toward Eric’s chalice.

  “Now let us all sit before the fire and speak with humor of nothing,” Andrew offered with a smile as warm as the dog’s coat.

  “Well, not all of us, sir,” Eric replied, “in that the wife dreads fire as much as drowning. Unfortunate too, in that her skin is the crust of winter, and well would I wish to warm it.”

  “But the lass has a heart that radiates a warmth beyond the coarse heat of this blaze,” Lord Andrew intoned, smiling broadly toward me.

  “Encore, Sir Opera,” I replied, and bowed deeply as Andrew raised his chalice to me, Eric thereafter speaking between swallows.

  “True enough, Grand, but on a chilly evening in bed, she’s but another icicle with hair.” Then he raised and sloshed his vessel in my direction, looking wherever his face was pointing.

  “We shall compromise,” I suggested, stepping beside the husband, “for this be the source of a marriage’s happy, albeit bored, continuity.”

  I commenced to arrange Grand’s furniture, pulling a settee farther from the fire so that a witch upon it would not suffer from being social. Thereupon I situated the husband, gesturing for Lord Andrew to be seated in an adjacent chair. The men then sat, Eric placing one arm about the wife to pull her near as I turned hip to hip in order not to face the fire while retaining Eric’s desired contact. Eventually I settled in a pose not fit a lady, though acceptable for a wife with family.

  Chatting was our activity, though no great measure came from myself, mostly a proffering of ignorance regarding art and other forms of painting, for this was the subject examined to no true depth by the menfolk as the woman avoided sights of that fire even as the previous audience had attempted not to view certain other members thereof. Randolph again was parked before the flames, static as a log.

  A pose we soon imitated. Andrew was the first to find a deep sleep welling within himself, and no one had to inquire of its source. His age, the Rathel’s drink, his family’s unkind emotions so foreign to this kindly man were causal here. Eric soon followed his kin in declaring a need to retire, and his cause as well was clear: the flexing of his wrist had well sloshed him toward a liquor smell to permeate him as though a stain on his skin. And though my own condition agreed with these males’, too weary was I for self-philosophy.

  As we three traversed the stairway to our chambers, I wondered of Elsie, but surely her vanishing had coincided with the Dentons’ appearance. Randolph also had interest in our second pet, for to her door he moved, looking longingly there for entrance.

  “Let us not bother the blissful,” I told him; so the dog with easy obedience accompanied Eric and me, and from our weariness, was allowed to occupy more of the bed than one canine body required.

  Eric seemed near asleep while undressing, tottering to every side, though never stumbling. Carefully I watched, waiting for the man to fall onto his head, for a great laugh I intended to loose on him. But as though accustomed to being unsober, the male did not relinquish his balance until leaning toward the mattress, clothed in only stockings and undershirt. Whisking aside the counterpane, I threw the fabric over fallen Eric, who slowly dug his way out as I undressed, donning a thick and soft sleeping gown, hoping this night to be a good one for retaining the sanctity of my sphincter, tie my body rag about my bottom lest the husband awaken not drunk enough to resist my tunnels, and to bed.

  Stealthily I slipped beneath the cover, but Eric was facing me. Though he seemed asleep, immediately he slid against my person. I could thus select from two poses: lying flat to smell this drunken sinner breathing upon me the entire night, or turning away to present my rear, which contained an orifice or two
generally sought. The latter position I chose, Eric immediately moving to conform to my shape, pressing himself tightly against me. And though the contact toward my bottom was most intimate, Eric made no attempt to enter my garment or myself. Securely in his arms I became enswathed, Eric so familiar with my form that his hand went directly to that remaining breast. There we lay, the witch only partially successful in her position; for although I was not penetrated by the man, no comfortable pose had I with this sinner draped against me like long hair down my back made wet and dank by immersion in booze. Though above all other men in the world I appreciated Eric, I did not care to wear him the evening.

  “Bite this person smothering me, will you, Randolph?” This mumbling of mine went unnoticed by the natural creature who should have been my ally, though was he not too social to be in league with a witch? After all, was he not also male? Eric then spoke, not replying to me, but expressing thoughts of a previous subject, his words rather clear for a sot.

  “In the wild places you speak of, Alba, does liquor exist?”

  “Perhaps, sir, but no crystalline decanters, and certainly no persons to drive folks from their home, then follow to the next in order to dispense a poison of torment.”

  “Then a wild place seems ever more desirable. Are large and comfortable beds also available?”

  “Comfortable enough for you, in that you mainly sleep upon me, and I’ll be there. How viable, then, are your thoughts of living a simpler life, one not so burdened by society?”

  “Stronger now than before, but so is the fog in my head. Regardless, the idea was initiated in sobriety, and will not vanish along with this lax state of thinking.”

  No more could I draw from Eric on this topic, for he sighed deeply and seemed unable to hear me further. Minutes later, however, he had a final thought, his speaking not the mindless speech produced by liquor, but a comment from his spirit.

  “Pray God I might forget the pain of this evening,” he whispered. Then he squeezed me well, and no longer had I concerns for my own discomfort, being so virtuous as to suffer his smell.

  Soon I seemed unnaturally taken by sleep. Awake or not, however, I had no natural method to understand that Lord Andrew slept more immediately and deeply than I, to be later awakened by people who wondered how a bit of drink could so remove even an elder person from the waking world. Neither had I means to see the Rathel arrive at her home to immediately swallow a potion to make her vomit, for she did not wish to be sleeping unnaturally, in that news should arrive she did not want to miss. No witch could know these things aware, so were they not revealed in a dream?

  The Rathel was present, though not puking. In her carriage, she had come to retrieve her belongings; so there went Miss Elsie and the dog. I knew the anguish they would suffer in that home: Randolph would be placed with cats to claw his face like a dropped clock, and Elsie would never again be startled by a wilderness mistress, thus turning old from boredom and dying, for without her family she had no life. To save lifeless Elsie and cut Randolph, I journeyed to the Rathel’s at night, having crawled through the window of my cave manse like a spider demoted from its home, and correctly so, for I was no creature of society. I was a creature for collecting and killing bugs. There went I to gather Elsie and Randolph in the web bed of the wagon’s straw that was identical to my bed on Man’s Isle, wherein I had collected a social man of God so entranced by religion as to have joined it for infinity with my body the conveyance. Godly folk might have considered me holy for sending a bishop to Heaven had my method not been murder; and for what further life had this death been practice? I could not save Elsie in this bishop manner because she had no bleeding stick to remove, and I could not save Randolph because he slept too near the fire, and being half sinner and half witch, I could only approach halfway. With the dog and servant lost, what family member remained for me to save?

  Marybelle. Marybelle with her head regrown on her crotch; for after my successful magic, the Lucansbludge constables had tossed her head into the casket instead of placing it properly, lovingly, upon her neck. Marybelle walked London’s streets, setting up a smell outside my window not noticed because the window was never opened again, for I had lost too many family members through that plane, first the witch, then the lady, only the wife remaining. But so true was Marybelle to my family that she deigned to return, outside my window spinning a web to entrap my attention. Since I was half sinner, half witch, Marybelle could only approach me halfway, unable to climb the social flank of London because that head between her crotch made it impossible to move through society without being entrapped, for easy prey was a smelling witch with her nose at cunt level. I thus would save her by taking her within me and away from a city she could not survive. But I could not accept her because my vagina was too tight from not having killed a sinner in seasons. To save my family, I would have to become practiced again in my most natural act, the contest of life and therefore death. I would save my family’s greatest member by practicing on a lesser. Only two remained: the colorless witch who had failed in her previous salvation of Marybelle by allowing her to live, for death would have transformed her to the superior state of evocative love forever on Earth as prescribed by a bastard preacher whose mother was right in being wronged. He was the last family member; so I would send Marybelle to nature by killing her naturally, practicing by having nature with Eric.

  Eric’s ministry was proven by his offering himself to aid in saving Marybelle. But having married me, Eric seemed only half sinner, because the wrong half of my pair of webs he made to enter. Into my baby web he headed, and I—desiring not to fail him as I had Elsie and Randolph and Marybelle—would not accept him so maritally, which would ruin his marriage by killing him like the dead food shat out the hole within which I placed him again and again until finally I convinced him that he was a turd; so he properly dropped into the chamber pot of my buttocks, and I saved him by inversely shitting his prick. But minor this salvation was compared to all my failures, for where were Chloe and Miranda and my mother except dead in Hell and burning in the fireplace? Yet so poor a sister was I as to park before the flames only to placate a sinner, a false family member I had been unable to murder these months, though through Eric’s own ministry I was finally saving him by working to release his love across the Earth. Now I was succeeding—and suffering—for in order to kill him, I again had to near the fireplace of Hell, and I was hot, catching sparks. Each spark was a limb or eye of my burning mother, and each one burned me: not my hide, but my soul. My mother’s embers so collected against me that they burned through my skin directly to my heart, which was in my crotch, for there was my love, in that love was killing Eric. My failing to save by succeeding at murder was Hell itself, for I was in torment, a torture I had felt before, felt in the death of my mother, felt in my cunt as Satan had killed through me. Yes, the fires of Hell were present, but not for me, though the smell of a person burning was unmistakable. Then my nightmare deteriorated, for after smelling death, I had to hear it, for there was Miss Elsie screaming murderously. My torment became so great that it wrenched me from the dream; yet when I awoke to gasp and blink, the nightmare worsened, for I found that I was killing Eric.

  How could Eric draw a person to save him when he made not a sound? The dog had heard, however, had heard that flow from his master’s groin: not the normal, nightly flow of semen, but blood. Akin to a witch, the dog might have been upset by the smell, for he was barking at Eric’s crotch; but now there was less to bark at, for part of the master was missing.

  How rich a person’s senses are to deeply notice the world while it causes her profound distress. I lay on my back in a cold sweat and heat to kill me, the pain from my body so great I prayed God to let me die. But I also noticed the barking, then heard Elsie at the doorway screaming—but I could not desire to understand, so intense was the agony grasping me in orgasmic contractions. I could not understand that Elsie with her lamp ran first to me, after one scream of hesitation, ran to search th
rough my clothing until finding blood, finding me heinously ill, but not dying. Eric was dying. Eric was the source of my blood, and there did Elsie look next. And who could comprehend her horror to dig at a man’s crotch to find no limb, but a wound? Who could duplicate her courage upon discovering a damage that destroyed her senses but not her spirit? With metaphysical courage, she wept and wailed, barely able to move, but moving enough. With every limb shaking, she wiped at Eric’s wound until seeing that the bleeding would not stop, then covered the red welling with a sheet to contain the flaw, not hide it, Elsie next releasing some of the horror flowing from Eric into herself by screaming, screaming at the servants in the doorway, persons unable to duplicate her horror. But such was her noise that it made them flee. She made them flee according to her orders, for they returned with a knife held in the flames of the fireplace long enough to cook meat, and Eric here was Elsie’s meal; for she held the bright blade against him to stop his blood, retain his life, and she could not hear his flesh sizzle. None other in the chamber could hear with Elsie’s wailing as she stared at her work and prayed to her God while burning the devil from her master, this man a demonic meal that Satan would never gain.

  Book V: Montclaire

  Chapter 35

  A Convincing Distance Of Drowning

  So complete was the accused’s laughter that the magistrate believed she might choke herself to unconsciousness. Or had she found in his allegations the ultimate level of insane humor, achieving absolute humor by going utterly mad?

  “You say that I chewed my husband’s phallus off and spit it away?”

  “You find humor in this horror?” Sir Jacob responded.

  “I find foolishness in your descriptions.”

  In the spacious cell, the magistrate then turned to his subordinate, transmitting a comprehensible question by pronouncing but a generic name.