Red Grow the Roses

by Janine Ashbless

  I can’t wake Penny. It’s too much. She can’t be expected to deal with this too.

  With softly creeping movements the mirror-girl inches her way up my legs, her lips almost brushing the hair that stands erect on my spooked skin but her shining eyes fixed on me. Her own hair billows around her head like smoke: it’s a grey like the rest of her but streaked with rust. I think she must have been a redhead once. The lips in that pointed face are incongruously full, almost swollen. The tongue that laps out between them is the palest shade of pink and as she kneels over my crotch and takes me in her mouth I catch a glimpse, the merest hint only, of teeth.

  She’s cold. Her mouth is cold. It’s like being sucked by a cream dessert, yielding and smooth and sweet. My cock responds to the slick embrace with an instantaneous surge of heat, and I arch my back off the mattress as my whole body goes rigid with shock and pleasure. Then she drops me, letting me ease from between her lips as she withdraws her head – only it takes much longer coming out than going in because it’s twice as long now and getting longer by the heartbeat. Her saliva gleams on the ruddy column, giving it a pearlescent sheen. She smiles at me questioningly and bats at the crown of my cock with teasing little licks. My hands are pinned by my sides, too heavy to lift from the sheet.

  This has to be a dream.

  With a tilt of her head she crouches lower, her mouth opening wide to suck my scrotum. Into that cool cave goes first one bollock and then the other, bathed in her wetness. I am shaking now where I lie, every fibre quivering, and my erect cock points up at my face and nods against my belly with every jerk. But as she releases my balls and licks her way back up its length it rises clear of my supine form, twitching. It doesn’t give a stuff about dreams or reality, cold or hot. It just wants her mouth. So she engulfs me, a cool ocean in which my body swims, my mind trailing helplessly behind like a plastic float. I surrender all control of my limbs and give myself up to her moon-cold kisses until I’m leaping wave after wave of arousal and surging toward the light. When she bites, I barely feel the pain. I feel the pelagic upswell that follows in its wake though: the perfect wave. It drags me down into the deep and everything turns to black.

  It was certainly a dream. I wake in the morning with a monumental hard-on and mount Penny almost before she’s awake. And she doesn’t object, of course, even though it takes me – despite my breathless horniness – nearly for ever to come.

  * * *

  I’ve been having these lurid fantasies, sleeping and waking, for months now. It’s a case of what you can’t have, that’s what you want. And what I want is sex that hasn’t a thing to do with procreation. It’s become an obsession. I used to be so pedestrian in my fantasies, I’d imagine what it would be like to fuck newspaper models and pretty Australian soap starlets and that girl in the canteen I never spoke to. Now I catch myself in crazy musings. There’s a big Catholic church with a convent attached to it down the end of our road: I’ve screwed Penny while picturing myself standing on the altar, cock in hand, jerking off an impossible spunk-shower over the upturned, outraged faces of the nuns kneeling before me. There’s a public garden where, if it’s a quiet day at work, I take my packed lunch to eat; there are often students there sketching the statues and the plants because there’s an art college on the boundary road, and for some reason a lot of them seem to be Italian or Spanish. I find myself eyeing them up, fantasising about having three or four of those cool, aloof girls on their knees before me, their sleek hair swept behind their shoulders as they take it in turns to suck my cock, squabbling delightfully when one gets too greedy and holds centre-stage too long.

  Christ. I’m turning into a real horn-dog.

  Maybe the more sex you get, the more you want.

  * * *

  I come out of the rather fancy town house and stand on the top step with the computer printout in my hand, feeling sick. When I look down at the paper the figures blur and dance, meaningless. It’s a good thing the doctor explained the results to me.

  A good thing … Oh, God.

  I went to a private clinic for the semen analysis, keeping it quiet, not telling Penny. I just wanted to be sure it wasn’t me that was holding us back. Well, now I know. Low sperm count, and those that are there have something wrong with them. Stunted tails, I gather from the doctor’s sympathetic words, that cause them to swim in fitful spirals instead of straight ahead.

  Fuck fuck fuck. What’s going to happen when Penny finds out? Because she will: eventually she’ll have us both down our local GP, demanding medical check-ups and assistance. It only counts as infertility if you’ve been trying for two years, but she’s going to lose patience sooner rather than later.

  How’s she going to react when she finds out it’s me, that I’m the one letting her down?

  I stumble to the car and drive all the way home without the slightest awareness of my surroundings. It’s only when I’m in the big basement car park under Mavin Wood Towers, reversing into my parking space, that I register anything outside my own head, and then I nearly accelerate into the bloody wall because the mirror-girl is back, sitting behind me, bisecting the rear window and visible in my rear-view mirror. ‘Ah God fuck!’ I shriek, slamming the horn by mistake. The cacophony in the concrete undercroft is horrible. I’m out of the car in a flat second, staring in at the back seat – but no one’s visible, of course. She was only there in the reflection.

  I feel sort of foolish then, and ashamed of my cowardice, and pissed off. I look round to see if anyone’s witnessed my panic, but the parking area is deserted.

  I make myself take the elevator up to the twelfth floor, not the stairs. The interior of that little box is lined with smoked mirror-glass, but I grit my teeth and step inside. I refuse to be afraid of her. What has she done, after all, but crawl out of my dreams and bestow her cool kiss? Does she even exist outside my head? Should I be afraid of that? Resolutely I turn my back on the mirrored wall and stare at the numbers over the door.

  Halfway up, between the sixth and seventh floors, the lift slows to a halt and the lights dim. I shut my eyes. I’m sweating: I can feel the cold trickle inching down my spine toward the cleft of my ass. My shoulder blades bump lightly against the glass and under my suit jacket I feel my skin crawl.

  Something brushes my thigh and the front of my trousers. I look down to see a slim, naked arm draped about my hips, the pale hand stroking my crotch and searching for my fly. Her nails are long and just a little too pointed.

  Oh, hell.

  My eyes flick upwards. There’s a camera in one of the corners, of course. It won’t get the best angle, but if it’s still working – and I’ve no way of telling that – it’ll see enough. The thought of being filmed on CCTV while an unseen woman opens my flies and pulls out my cock is too uncomfortable. I turn my back to the lens and face the mirror.

  She’s kneeling there beyond the glass, and her hand juts from its surface as if from peaty water in a still pool. I can imagine that easily: there’s something about her that makes me think of Celtic twilight and ladies of the lake. But she’s perfectly conversant with the uses of buttons and zips, I find; popping one and pulling down the other, reaching beneath to the cotton that’s sticking to my skin, finding her way to my over-eager cock and my useless balls.

  And my only response is to hold my waistband so my trousers don’t fall down. Because all of a sudden those balls don’t feel so useless. She doesn’t care if my sperm can’t swim straight; she just wants to feel the hot spurt of my cream over her cold tongue.

  She just wants to suck me.

  I lay my forehead on the cool glass. I can see her smooth inhuman face swimming toward me through the depths of the smoky glass, breaking the surface, lifting out from the mirror. Her hair is sleeked behind her as if wet and gravity are drawing it down. Her pale lips part, spreading for the ruddy blunt bell end of my erection. Cold: cold like moor water. The hair rises on the nape of my neck and my scrotum contracts with a heave, but the chill is nothing compared to
the slick caress of her mouth.

  And I’m so fucking grateful. I could drown in gratitude, if I wasn’t going to drown in pleasure first.

  * * *

  ‘What’s that?’ Penny asks, pointing at my chest. I pull my dressing gown over hastily to hide the paired dimples of the puncture wounds.

  ‘Dunno. Just insect bites, I think.’ I feel groggy, hungover.

  ‘The mayor’s residence has bedbugs, does it?’

  ‘You’d be amazed. Old building, you know. There’re all sorts of dirty old corners.’

  ‘Ew. Don’t go bringing anything home with you, that’s all.’

  Too late, I think. I pour my third cup of tea since staggering out of bed.

  ‘Are you going into work then?’

  I ought to. Not that there’s anything to do, because it’s the election today. Far too late for him or me or anyone else to affect the vote, but we’ve got to be seen to be around. ‘Later,’ I mumble. ‘We’re going to be up most of the night waiting for the results to come in.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got to get going.’ She heads off to the bathroom to finish her morning ablutions. I’m so dull-witted that I don’t immediately notice that she doesn’t come back. I just sit there nursing my cup of tea and staring at the cloudy sky through the window. Picturing a face as pale and luminous as those clouds. When I rise from the breakfast bar the apartment feels eerily still. I wander down the corridor and tap on the bathroom door.

  ‘You still in there?’

  There’s a soft noise: a sob. My heart sinks. Opening the door I find Penny sitting on the edge of the bath. She lifts her face and tries to smile, but her mouth is all over the place and all the blinking she’s doing doesn’t hide how wet her eyes are.

  ‘My period’s come on.’

  ‘Oh, love,’ I whisper.

  ‘I thought this time … I was late … I really thought …’ She stops talking and clenches down. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she grits out. ‘Not to worry. We keep trying.’

  And all I can do is hug her and rub the stiff angles of her shoulders and wish helplessly that there’s something I could do to make her happy. And hate myself.

  From the corner of my eye I see pale shadows shift in the bathroom mirror. I press Penny closer to my chest and shield her face, not wanting her to see the girl in the glass – and certainly not that look of possessive avarice burning in those pale eyes.

  * * *

  The mayor loses the election. It’s no landslide, but by shortly after midnight enough of the ballot boxes are in and counted that we’ve got a clear picture of the results. It’s not going to be made public until tomorrow, of course, but a silence falls over those of us gathered in City Hall as the phones ring and the same message is relayed from ward after ward. It’s always harder for the sitting candidate to win, of course, and we’re not entirely surprised.

  I leave the scrum of officials and PR men and activists and head upstairs, wanting to be on my own. The top floor has a famously good 360-degree view of the City from its conference suite: this isn’t the mayor’s gracious official residence but a modern oblate high-rise that squats on the north bank of the river, an architect’s wet dream of steel and glass. The windows run floor to ceiling on the top storey. I stand in the unlit room, looking out over a landscape as darkly glittering and beautiful as the bottom of the sea, the outlines of water and stone picked out only by the phosphorescent glow of individual lights, the sky as opaque and starless as if it’s a mile of water pressing down upon us. The creep of car headlights brings to mind the gleam of bottom-feeding crustacea.

  I feel the numb ache of defeat in every fibre of my body. In days I’ll be out of a job. Perhaps it’s a good thing I’ve not been able to give Penny a child; we’re going to need her income. Hah. There’s cold comfort for you. I’m a failure, let’s face it. Unable to do my job and sway the pendulum of political opinion, unable to provide for my family, unable even to father a baby – that simplest of biological functions. Isn’t the most primal and basic goal of all life to replicate itself? Isn’t that what we’re designed for? Even microbes can reproduce, but not me.

  My cell phone rings, making me quiver. It’s Penny. I don’t take the call. As silence returns I move over to the room’s environmental control panel next to the elevator, and turn on the lights.

  Instantly the night outside vanishes, the windows becoming mirrors.

  She’s there, waiting for me. I’m cerebrally intrigued to see that she’s only reflected in one of the angled panes, even though I’m visible in several. Her long hair is fox-red now, after days of feeding from me. There is even a hint of colour in her cheeks.

  Gracefully, almost idly, she circles my reflection and, as I watch, begins to dance. It’s strange to see her brushing up against me, draping her arms about my neck, rubbing her rear into my crotch – all without me being able to feel a thing. The tease is entirely visual. Each flick of her hips makes the blood surge in my veins. Each jiggle of her breasts makes my need grow. But I feel oddly discomfited in the midst of my fascination, as if I’m jealous of my own reflection. I move my hands, trying to interact with her dance, and she laughs silently as my mirrored self moves too, clumsily encircling her undulating hips. Turning in my arms she grasps the front of my shirt and tears it open.

  My real shirt, the one on my material body, remains unscathed. The one in the reflection is shredded and my chest revealed. The look of confusion on my face is comic. She’s mocking me, I suspect – mocking my desire to rationalise, at any rate. She rakes her nails across my bare skin and my reflection bleeds, yet I feel nothing. She shreds my trousers – effortlessly; her nails must be sharp as knives – and squirms her pert little rump against me.

  ‘Come here,’ I say hoarsely. ‘Come on out.’

  Her eyes lift and meet mine, looking straight out from the glass, her lips forming a smile so wanton that it makes my cock stiffen all on its own. Then she abandons my reflected self and walks out from the mirrored room into the material one. Her feet make no sound on the carpet, of course, but I feel the caress of the cold air that surrounds her. I take a deep breath as she closes on me, lays a slender hand on my breastbone, and then pushes me backwards on to the table and climbs on top.

  This time I hear the fabric of my shirt tear.

  * * *

  She tastes like that Chinese tea: lapsang souchong, that’s the one. Slightly smoky, slightly tannic. Cold.

  Eat me, I beg. Eat me up. Take me down to that dark place and let me never come back.

  * * *

  When the elevator door opens I’m lying supine on the polished conference table, speckled with love-bites, and she’s kneeling over me. She’s framing my head with her straddled thighs and grinding her pubic mound down over my face, but I’m not exactly applying myself to the job. Traumatic pleasure has got me pinned, capable of nothing more than groans. She’s got her teeth buried deep in my balls and she’s sucking hard, and that’s about all my mind is capable of grasping right now.

  Until Penny steps out of the lift.

  I look up from between the mirror-girl’s white thighs as my world cracks like a dropped glass. ‘It’s not what it looks like’ – isn’t that what I’m supposed to say, caught in flagrante like that? That’s the cliché. Try and talk your way out of this: Mr Dick is standing at full mast, angled as a gnomon over my belly. ‘It’s not what it looks like, darling: I’m not really fucking her.’

  The mirror-girl makes the point far better than I ever could, lifting her face from my punctured balls and stiff cock to snarl at Penny, showing a red mask that’s all savage teeth.

  ‘Richard?’ Pen takes an unsteady pace forward, dropping her handbag.

  Light as a cat, the mirror-girl springs off me and the two women stare.

  ‘That’s … That’s my husband.’ Penny sounds aghast.

  The mirror-girl doesn’t reply. I’ve never heard her speak. She snatches my wrist and pulls me up from the table, heading for the window. She’s strong,
but I’m so weak I can’t keep my legs under me. I’ve lost too much blood, I think, as the floor shoots up to meet me and my shoulder is wrenched at an unnatural angle. Blue-black explosions of colour flare behind my eyes. My knees burn on the carpet as she tows me. I see her bound through the pane of glass and my arm follows, tight in her grasp.

  It’s like jelly; gelid but yielding. My hand sinks into the pane and it doesn’t appear on the outside of the glass where the walkway is, waving over the city landscape, but only in the reflected room. With a jerk she drags me through up to my shoulder. For the first time I try to resist, though not wholeheartedly.

  A warm hand grabs my other wrist, drawing it out behind me. Penny. It’s Penny, holding me back.

  The mirror-girl pulls again, much stronger, and my head is wrenched through to the other side. For a moment, strung between both worlds, I see what the reflection looks like from within. I see what she looks like in her own world.

  I scream, but I know Penny can’t hear me any more. The warm hand is nearly pulling my left arm off: the cold one is wrenching at my right. I shut my eyes and haul backwards as hard as I can, twisting my wrist in the mirror-ghost’s grasp. Her fingers feel as thin and hard as bone.

  Then she lets go. It’s so abrupt it has to be deliberate: I pitch over backwards and the glass shatters to tiny cubes, letting in a ferocious blast of night air. Every light on the observation floor goes out as I tumble into Penny’s arms. It’s freezing cold. She gasps my name over and over, and we crawl together over the crunching safety glass toward the lift. We end up crouched together by the wall, and she takes my head in her hands and presses her cheek against mine, trembling.

  ‘Pen. Oh, thank God.’

  ‘I came … I came to see if you were OK.’ Her skin feels hot and even though I’m dizzy and shaking I wrap my arms around her, craving that warmth. The tears running down my face – hers or mine – burn my cheeks.

  For a moment the memory of what lies beyond the mirror fills my head, and then I push it away, burying my face in my wife’s warm scent.