by S. T. Joshi
The outside video looked as though it had been shot in a forest somewhere. There was a fire that Maya was dancing around, and it seemed as if it was shot through one of those night goggles, because everything was in green like on those fake “ghost-hunting” shows. The song started a little slower. I could hear an electric guitar, and then some synthesized drums came in. It was a strong, driving beat that gained in intensity as the song went on. I still couldn’t tell a lot of what she was singing, but at least she wasn’t screaming. I thought it was a love song, but then the beat got harder and more insistent and her voice got harsher and raspier. When she got to the chorus, she began singing about having sex with something called “my Deep One,” which I couldn’t figure out. Then she started thrashing back and forth, growling and howling and even, I thought, foaming at the mouth. I shut the computer off.
When Ann got home, I sat and listened to her tell me all about her day at the middle school where she taught and the church meeting. I had learned long ago how to listen to just enough to get by in case she quizzed me later. It was an endless litany of people I’d never meet and would never care about. When she asked how my day was, I just said it was a usual day. She looked at me, shrugged, and went back to her book.
That night, I had unusual dreams. I don’t tend to dream too much and, when I do, they’re not very remarkable. In this dream, I was wandering through a forest and it was dark. Somewhere there was something waiting for me and I was afraid that I was going to be late. Rushing forward, I came to a clearing where Maya stood, naked. I came to her and held her, but there was something off. She was not the one who was waiting. There was something else… something beyond the trees that was waiting for me. I felt, rather than heard, it coming closer, closer and then, suddenly, it was gone. I couldn’t catch it, whatever it was, and it had gotten away from me. I felt a sense of loss and failure such as I had never felt before. In the dream, I sat down in the clearing and cried, alone.
For the first time in years, I did not greet the morning with anger.
My regular routine was no different. I rode the same bus into work and tried to concentrate on my mental game with myself, but some idiot two seats back wouldn’t stop talking. Apparently someone had gone crazy in Newport last night and wiped out his family with a knife. Others joined in talking about how there’d been a lot of sirens in the East Bay last night, and one woman whose brother worked at the emergency room at Rhode Island Hospital said that they’d had a rash of crazy, violent patients last night. I sat and tried to follow the progress of the bus in my mind. None of that had anything to do with me.
The morning passed quietly. Flexman spent most of his time on the local news websites and kept trying to get me interested in what he was reading. I just let him talk and, eventually, he quieted down. I kept my eyes open, but Maya never entered the room.
At lunchtime, I took my lunch and, not knowing why I did it, sat in a new seat, near the windows. It felt uncomfortable, being in the light and in the center of people. I could sense that they felt it too, as if I had intruded on their territory. Lunch today was a ham sandwich on rye, dry. I was just about to bite into it when Maya plopped down next to me, chicken parm sitting on her plate.
“Whew!” she said. “Didn’t think I’d find you, Doug. What are you doing sitting over here?”
“Just thought it’d be a change.”
She playfully frowned on me. “Change? You? Please! I bet you haven’t even bought new clothes in years.”
It was true. I hadn’t.
“I… I, uh, watched your YouTube videos.”
Her eyes widened and she smiled. At that instant, knowing that I had caused that smile was the greatest feeling in the world to me.
“You did? No fucking way! What did you think?”
“They’re… they’re different. You have a very distinctive style.”
“You really think so? I can’t tell you what that means to hear you say that!”
And she leaned forward and hugged me. Her breasts pushed into my arm and I felt a pleasant warmth growing within me.
Some of the people around us took notice.
“I didn’t really understand some of the words, though.”
“Really? That’s OK. The more you listen to them, the clearer they get.”
My mind raced for something to say to keep the conversation going. “Where do you get your inspiration from?”
She laughed.
“Lovecraft, of course.”
I looked at her. I had no idea what she was talking about.
My confusion must have been written on my face because she answered before I even had to ask the obvious question.
“You know! Dude who lived in Providence in the 1930s? Wrote all those horror stories?”
“I… I don’t know who you mean. I don’t read much fiction.”
“Are you fucking serious? How long you live in Rhode Island?”
I broke eye contact and looked back at my sandwich. “All my life, pretty much.”
“And you don’t fucking know Lovecraft? Maybe I was wrong about you, Doug.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you understood. I thought you knew how the world was. I thought you and me connected.”
I was stunned and my mouth hung open.
“Maya, I just met you yesterday! How could you know me?”
She looked at me, hard. Then she laughed. “I was only fucking with you, Doug! I know you, all right. Here.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out a paperback. It was tattered and showed signs of having been read many times. The title read The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre, and the cover was a colorless gray thing of what looked like different scenes in a kind of montage.
“Read this. You’ll be amazed, trust me.”
I had a flashback to movies about hippies trying to get the straight kids to try drugs, telling them that “it’ll blow your mind, man!”
Maya took out a pen. “I’ll underline some of the stories you should read first. These are the best ones.” She spent a few seconds writing in the book and then handed it to me.
I muttered a “thanks” and went back to my lunch.
“Don’t disappoint me, Doug! I know that you’ll love this stuff.”
“I won’t! I promise!” And suddenly it occurred to me that it had become very important to me that I not disappoint Maya.
She went back to her lunch, which had an extraordinary amount of cheese on it.
“There’s a lotta stuff out there, Doug. You shouldn’t close yourself off to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, different experiences, different feelings. You need to open yourself up to them. Allow yourself to let them come through you. What are your plans for this weekend?”
“Um, no real plans. I have some yard work to do. There’s always something to fix around the house.”
Maya shook her head.
“Come over to my place. You’ll have more fun than mowing the fucking lawn.”
I held up my left hand.
“Maya, I’m married. See?” I wiggled the ring on my finger.
She gave me a “yeah, right” look.
“No, you’re not, Doug. You know you’re not.”
She stood up and grabbed the book back. She quickly wrote something else in it. “Here’s my number. I’ll be waiting for your call.”
Maya leaned close and whispered in my ear. “I can show you things you always wanted to see, Doug, what the world really means and how it tastes.” She licked my ear, and I could feel that her tongue was pierced too.
As Maya walked out of the cafeteria, I could feel many pairs of eyes watching me, but I didn’t care. I was watching her ass and wanted desperately to touch it.
BACK AT MY DESK, I DID SOMETHING I NEVER THOUGHT I would do: I refitted my computer so that I could surf the Internet without the tracking programs seeing. I set off to learn as much about H. P. Lovecr
aft as I could and, by the end of the day, I had learned quite a bit.
To my surprise, there were actually quite a few websites devoted to Lovecraft. From them, I got an education on the man who was born in Providence in 1890 and would die there in 1937. I read about his unusual childhood, his relationship with his mother, and his writing career. His work was revolutionary, transforming not only horror but science fiction. Some critics considered him the twentieth-century version of Poe, and he had lived most of his life in my home state and I never knew.
I felt a poke from behind.
“Yo, Doug, what you doing?” Flexman asked.
“Just a little extra reading. You know how it is.”
Flexman laughed. “All right, my man! Didn’t know you had it in ya!”
I gave him a thumbs-up and went back to reading.
The more I read, the more I felt closer to Lovecraft. He didn’t have a lot of happiness or success in his life and felt that he was separated from humanity. It came across in his philosophy. He felt that mankind and all its worries and concerns were meaningless.
Once in college, when I’d studied philosophy and literature before I met Ann and it was decided I’d become an accountant, I was in an ethics class and the professor asked everyone to think about what their personal philosophy was and how it impacted your life. After much thought, I decided that I had no personal philosophy. I’d never been religious, never been in the military. If anything, I was an existentialist. I didn’t care about anything. Nothing was important, least of all, me.
That night, I read several of the shorter stories. Ann was surprised to see me reading but didn’t say anything about it. While imaginative, I couldn’t really understand the point of some of the stories and they didn’t seem to line up with what I had read online about Lovecraft’s philosophy. I’d never really been one for fiction. No imagination, I suppose.
I put the book down and went to sleep.
That night, I had the dream again but it felt different. I was back in the clearing and naked Maya was holding my hand, pointing toward something further away in the trees. Whatever it was, it was waiting for me and it was important that I find it.
I tried to move, but my legs were heavy and weak. I was tied to the earth, which clutched at me and tried to pull me down. I screamed to Maya to help, but she turned and walked away. On her naked back, I could see a large tattoo. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it was greenish and was a humanoid figure with tentacles on its face and wings on its back. As she walked, I could swear that the wings moved.
The ground swallowed me whole and I screamed.
THE NEXT MORNING, ANN “REMINDED” ME THAT SHE was going to the yearly meeting of her church group. I’d forgotten. If, that is, she had even told me to begin with. Every year, her church group got together with the other church groups in the state and had meetings and elections and such. I remember taking Ann to one a long time ago and being bored while I waited for her to get out. Since then, she’d arrange her own transportation and would usually stay over at whatever hotel was hosting the thing. If the timing of the meeting was strangely coincidental, I didn’t notice it.
Less than an hour after she left, I was holding Maya’s paperback in my hand, staring at the page with her phone number on it. Many years had passed since a girl had given me her phone number. I just had to find the courage to call. In the end, I compromised. Instead of calling, I sent her a text. Not even a minute later, I got her response: “Come over. I’m waiting.” The second text was her address on Barnes Street on the East Side of Providence.
The place was easy to find. It was an older building, probably built around the turn of the century or so. I had no idea what architectural style it was, but it looked primarily Victorian. I only knew that it was old. It was a three-story tenement and had been split into two sides. The first-floor apartments had three panel windows—the kind that bulged out and you could make a nice window seat there. Maya’s apartment was on the left side, third floor. I pressed the button and she came running down.
“Doug!” she squealed. “You came! Wasn’t sure you would.”
I looked at her. Maya’s body was tight and young. She was wearing a kind of tank top that pressed her breasts up and together. She had tattoos on her arms. She had on a pair of the shortest shorts I think I’ve ever seen, and her legs were long and toned. She hugged me and, before I knew what was happening, kissed me on the lips, hard. Her tongue darted into my mouth and I could feel it seeking me. I moved my tongue and touched hers and felt myself getting hard.
“C’mon inside!” she said and took my hand.
We climbed the stairs and she led me into her apartment. It was a small place. One bedroom with a living room that connected to an open kitchen with a small table. A bathroom was between the bedroom and living room. The entire place was filled with stuff. There were books everywhere. A huge bookshelf was packed with DVDs and CDs. There were some movie posters on the wall, but I didn’t recognize any of the movies. They had titles like Re-Animator and The Dunwich Horror and weren’t in English. There was a small synthesizer keyboard in the corner, and various other musical equipment was scattered about. A sofa was against one wall and it looked as if it had seen better days. A large TV was facing the sofa and it was playing something I’d never seen before.
“So whattaya think?”
“It’s very nice. Cozy.” I replied.
She laughed. “No, it’s not. It’s a fucking closet, but that’s not why I took the place.”
When I didn’t respond, she replied, “The address? Hello? Lovecraft lived here!”
I looked around again. “He did?”
Maya scoffed. “Not in this apartment! He had the big one downstairs with his aunt. This was where he lived when he left his wife in New York and came back to Providence. Some of his best work was written here… can’t you feel it?”
All I felt was uncomfortable. Maybe I had made a mistake. I wasn’t really sure why I had come here anyway and it seemed more uncertain with each minute.
“You, uh, you really seem to be into Lovecraft.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I live for it! Look at this!” She pointed to a tattoo on her right arm. I bent closer to get a better look. It was a black-and-white portrait of Lovecraft tattooed on her arm with various Gothic beasts around him. It was impressive.
She sat down on the couch and patted the seat next to her. I sat down next to her and could smell her body. It wasn’t sweet and full of perfume. It was earthy and strong. “What are you watching?” I asked.
“It’s Dagon,” she replied. “One of Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft films. This one’s pretty good even if it has more to do with ‘Shadows over Innsmouth’ than fucking ‘Dagon.’”
I looked at the screen. A woman was being suspended in chains over some sort of pit. She was naked and covered in what looked like oil. Someone, the “hero,” I guess, was trying to save her. He didn’t do a very good job.
“This is what Lovecraft is all about,” Maya said. “There’s all these gods that live outside our world that used to rule here and want to do so again. They’re fighting to break through and come back. It’s a constant fight to keep them out.”
“Really?” That wasn’t what I had gotten out of my reading. “You’re sure that’s what Lovecraft meant?”
“Lovecraft’s about the outside trying to get in.”
Maya moved next to me, and I felt her weight pressing on my arm. She began to rub my chest and open the buttons on my shirt. Her hand moved inside and moved in circles as her fingers lightly touched my nipple. I looked at her and saw the most intense look on her face. The kind of look, I imagine, that a wild animal has as it starts to devour its prey. She started to lick my neck.
“I… I don’t think this is a good idea. Maybe I should go.”
I made to get up and she pushed me back down.
“You don’t want to go, Doug,” she said into my ear. “You want to stay right here. You need to stay right
here.”
She unbuckled my belt and zipped the fly down. Maya reached inside and grabbed me and rubbed her hand up and down. I couldn’t resist any longer and grabbed her face and kissed her. This time, my tongue was the one searching for hers. I reached down and grabbed her breast and squeezed. Her nipple grew hard and I could tell that it was also pierced. Maya broke away and quickly took her shirt off and threw it away. She was beautiful. Her breasts were large and firm. The nipples were hard and erect and her areolae were large and swollen. With a quick motion, she ripped my pants off and moved between my legs.
My eyes were closed as she took me in her mouth and sucked. I ran my fingers through her hair, bringing her head up and down. The piercing in her tongue flicked over the tip of my penis. Before I finished, I looked down at her. On her back there was the same tattoo from my dream” the green monster with an octopus face and wings. As she moved back and forth, I could swear that the wings were flying.
LATER, LYING ON THE COUCH (WE HAD NOT EVEN made it to the bed), I felt her ass and traced little circles on it. We’d been talking about Lovecraft, of course, and I’d been saying how I understood his philosophy. Maya, for the most part, wasn’t getting what I was trying to say.
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Yes,” I said, “I do. Nothing really matters. We’re all insignificant.”
“No, you don’t believe that.”
“Why do you say that?”
She leaned up on one arm and looked at me. Her face was beautifully intense.
“Because if you did, then nothing would matter to you. No rules, no laws, no morality. You’d do whatever you fucking wanted because none of it makes a difference. Good, bad, indifferent. They’d all be the same.”