The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 2

by Maxim Jakubowski

  And Ben was HIV-positive. I assumed it had happened that night at Tikal, that night with Javier. But he always refused to talk about it. Speculation was futile, he said. In just those words. “Speculation is futile.”

  As the months went on, Ben’s beautiful body became gaunt. Lesions appeared on his once-perfect skin. Eventually, the doctors put a catheter in his chest, right through the symbol commemorating blood sacrifice. And somehow, as he seemed to become translucent, as I could see the skull beneath the skin, I desired him all the more.

  Strange how a random encounter in a foreign town can change your whole life. How it changed mine. How different things might have been. But speculation is useless. We go on, I guess because we have no choice.

  And that, since you asked, is the story of these scars of mine. Ben is gone now, as Javier before him, but he passed his markings on to me, left me with these warrior marks. These scars over my heart. The central glyph reads Na-wa-ah. To feel, to know, to remember.

  Here, run your fingers over them, and then we’ll go to bed.

  Seducing Storms

  E. M. Arthur

  Low, grey clouds pound my ancient Ford wagon with tinhammer rain.

  “Should we move?” Kate asks. She’s one of Doc Brandon’s grad students. It’s her first time with me. She thinks she wants to be with the other storm chasers, the PhDs with expensive equipment.

  “No,” I say. I look her over. She’s maybe 25, not much younger than me. Too young and pretty for serious academia, she’s got something to prove. She’s watching the storm through the windshield. Her eyes are dark grey, like the clouds.

  “We need to head south,” she says. “I want to be there if this one spawns a funnel cloud.”

  Money and study got her on Brandon’s storm team. Knowing him got her put in a car with me. He must like her.

  “We’re fine,” I say. She’s afraid she’s missing something exciting. She probably fell in love with movie and TV visions of storms.

  She doesn’t feel the storm like I do.

  She leans forwards to catch my eye. I’m already watching her. She realizes it and blushes.

  I wonder if she thinks she looks more serious with her red. hair pulled back tight and braided into a tail that reaches to her shoulder blades?

  “Mr Martin,” she says, “I want this storm.”

  I smile. “Andy,” I say.

  Her hair only accents her grey eyes and high cheeks. She wears a too-big flannel shirt. Humidity makes it stick to her skin, outlining the perfect breasts she probably wants to hide. The extra rolls of fabric above her waist only make her jeans seem tighter, her ass higher.

  I expect her to pout. She has the lips for it. Instead, her lips get thin and white like cirrus clouds running before a front.

  “The heart is going to miss us,” she says. “The radio says it’s headed towards Mt Vernon.” She holds up our walkie-talkie like it proves she’s right.

  I nod. I parked us on a dirt lane between two cornfields. It’s nearly night dark even though the sun won’t go down for a couple of hours. Beyond the corn, a lightning-scored black stripe crosses the belly of the clouds. That flashing band of black is where the power is, and it’s moving south fast.

  “Damn!” she says. She pounds her fist on my cracked vinyl dash.

  “There’ll be other storms,” I say.

  She looks at me. Anger flashes in her grey eyes and heats my blood. It might as well have been real lightning, striking next to the car.

  Her look reminds me of Angela. For a moment, I wonder if Kate might be able to feel it, if she might share the storm passion.

  The radio squawks. Doc Brandon’s voice says, “Barometer’s dropping fast. It’s a big one. Everybody on it?”

  She responds, “We’re too far north, Dr Brandon. My driver won’t move.”

  If she had the passion, she wouldn’t need the radio.

  The voice comes back, “Andy’s your driver?”

  “Andrew Martin,” She glances at me. “He’s a local.” She says it with contempt. The lightning in her eyes is gone. I decide she doesn’t understand storms.

  “Kate, get your camera ready,” Brandon says. “You do whatever he tells you.”

  “Dr Brandon?”

  “You want to see one up close, right?”

  “Yeah, but it’s going south fast.”

  “You do exactly what he tells you.” His tone leaves her no room for argument.

  “Yes sir.” She frowns. She’s confused. She doesn’t know me.

  “Andy?” Brandon asks. She hands me the radio.

  “Here,” I say.

  “It’s an Angela storm, Andy.”

  “I feel it,” I say. There isn’t much else to say. “Out.” I turn off the radio and put it on the Ford’s bench seat.

  Brandon knows me. Brandon, his sister Angela, and I chased storms when we were kids. He still loves Angela, too.

  Kate and I watch the storm slip south. Hail clatters on the roof and bounces off the windshield. Outside, corn leaves dance under the assault.

  Kate’s disappointment fills the car. It’s the cool emptiness of a meadow after a summer shower. Her eyes follow the distant squall line. The grey is darker, more distant.

  “Have you ever been close to a tornado?” I ask.

  “They sound like a freight train,” she says. “They can put a two-by-four through the wall of a house.”

  There’s no fear in her voice, no respect. She’s just repeating something she heard or read.

  “That would be never,” I say.

  She flushes red. She squirms on the bench seat and pulls at the legs of her jeans. Finally, she looks at me. “I was so excited,” she says. “I thought tonight would be my first time.”

  “Brandon tell you that?”

  “I begged him to let me ride chase,” she says. “I told him I wanted to get closer. He said he understood. He said he knew someone like me once.” Her voice shakes with regret and desire.

  I see a little of Angela in her, Angela when we first met. I start to like her. “He does understand,” I say.

  “I’m with you, and he’s in the chase van,” she says.

  “I grew up with trains and tornadoes,” I say. “With trains, the ground vibrates just enough to soothe.”

  For the first time since Kate got into my old Ford wagon, she sees me. Her grey eyes show a little black, a little interest. She picks her sticky shirt loose from her breasts.

  The windows are steaming up. I crack a window. Rain-cleansed, cool air brings the smell of wet corn into the car.

  “When the storm comes,” I say, “that flannel will feel like a wet dog wrapped around you.”

  “Your cotton’s better?”

  I look at my light denim shirt. It’s sweat-soaked and plastered flat to every rib and ridge of my belly. “It’s just lighter,” I say.

  The storm line is black and lumpy, like coal hanging from heaven. Forks of white fire flash in and around the lumps. It’s still just a storm, though. It hasn’t smoothed out into the deep-sea green wall of cloud that spawns twisters.

  “Brandon put me with you because I’m new,” Kate says. “He isn’t going to let me get near a tornado, is he?”

  “Maybe he likes you,” I say. “Maybe he thinks you have a feel for the storms.”

  “He made me go with you, and he went in the chase van.”

  “And I’m just a local, right?”

  “No offence,” she says. “The chase van did go south, and the storm is heading south.”

  “True,” I say. I look her in the eye. She’s lost her anger. The grey of her eyes is deep and uncertain.

  She looks down at her hands. She picks up the small video camera from the seat.

  “Nobody can tell a woman or a storm what to do,” I say.

  Her laugh is a soft, spring shower falling on a freshly mown lawn.

  The hail stops.

  I like her laugh. I wonder if it stopped the hail.

  We watch thr
ough the windshield for a few minutes. Finally, she says, “If it doesn’t sound like a train, what’s it like?”

  “You really want to experience one close up?” I watch desire darken her eyes.

  “Yes,” she says. “More than anything.”

  All her professional reserve can’t hide her breathlessness. She wants the storm. She does have Angela in her.

  Brandon saw it. I trust him. I trust my instincts. She’s more than some TV-fed kid that thinks she might like storms. “Lock your camera into the plate on the dash and start recording,” I say.

  “There’s nothing – ”

  “Do everything he tells you,” I mimic Brandon.

  She laughs and sets up the camera.

  The record light goes on.

  “Relax,” I say. She settles back into the seat and crosses her arms over her breasts.

  I close my eyes. I let out my breath and inhale heavy summer air. “Listen to the rain,” I say.

  I wait until I hear her sigh. “Listen to my words,” I say. “I’ll call the storm to you.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Everything he says,” I repeat.

  “What the hell,” she says, and I hear her settle back and relax.

  I go to work. “Tornadoes sound like a pounding heart tearing itself in two, like a screaming bag of demons coming to end a way of life.”

  “You’ve been hit?” she asks.

  I open my eyes. Her eyes are wide. Her arms unfold.

  “Angela and I,” I say. “Listen to the rain.”

  She closes her eyes and leans back.

  I stare through the windshield into the storm, “God, Angela loved tornadoes.”

  “Your wife?” She doesn’t open her eyes. Her lips are moist and red.

  “Not married,” I say. “She was a lover a long time ago.”

  Kate relaxes into the seat a little.

  “They had a lot in common, Angela and tornadoes. Her eyes had the deep green of a wall cloud descending from the belly of an overripe storm. Her moods rose and fell like hail cycling up and down through the core of a storm.

  “Once, we were parked on a road like this one. We were kissing in a storm like this one.” I pause.

  Kate’s eyes open again. They reflect the darkening sky outside.

  “Lightning hit the car,” I say.

  Kate turns toward me. Concern and fear twist together in her eyes. “You both lived?” she asks.

  “Better than that,” I say. “The power of it passed through us. It filled our love.”

  I smile. “Before that, we chased storms with Brandon. Beer and adventure. After that, Angela and I chased alone. On summer nights like this one, we drove endless miles together. I was the only one she knew with equal passion for both her and the storms. We made love over and over on the cold steel floor in the back of this station wagon.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know — ”

  “It’s OK,” I soothe. Kate’s forehead is flushed. I touch her arm. Gooseflesh rises on her skin. “The storm will come. She’ll come for the story. Let her fill you.”

  Kate looks at me sideways, but she nods.

  “Angela wanted to feel the mood of the storm through the steel floor: the chill, the electricity, the damp and dryness coming and going with the ebb and flow in the air around us.

  “Eventually, storms weren’t enough. Lightning wasn’t enough. She wanted tornadoes; she wanted to get close. I’d look into her eyes. I’d see the cold green there, and I’d look for the lightning, for the green darkness that made our sex something supernatural.

  “Angela would urge me on, ‘Closer, Andy. Take me there.’

  “I always did. I searched the sky for us both. I learned to search for the power with my eyes, my ears, my nose, my skin. Eventually, I just closed my eyes and felt the storms.”

  Kate’s hand worries the top button of her shirt. The interior of the car is muggy. I point at the squall line.

  Kate’s eyes follow my finger.

  The black line is moving straight towards us.

  Kate gasps. She turns to me. Her eyes flash excitement. “That’s impossible,” she says.

  “Even at night,” I continue, “a wall cloud is darker than the blackest sky. It captures light. It makes the air still like some great monster inhaling everything and waiting. On our last night, I felt for a storm. My ears stretched towards it. My skin went cold. Angela’s voice became thin, like a voice through a wire. The hair on my arms stood. I pointed the car towards the biggest storm we’d ever found. The car seemed to expand around us as we got near the heart of power.”

  “You had sex in a tornado?” Kate asks. “What was it like?” She’s a little breathless. Her eyes take on roiling depths that match the rising power beyond the cornfield.

  I nod. I don’t take my eyes off the storm. “Angela,” I whisper. The billows in the belly of the squall line smooth to a single green-black wall. I point again.

  Kate leans forward. “Oh, my God,” she says. She reaches for the radio.

  I take her hand. “No,” I say. “I’m calling the storm for you.”

  For a long moment, she looks into my eyes. Her hand is damp in mine. Her desire battles her training. Finally, flecks of green appear in her grey eyes. “What happened?” she whispers.

  I pull Kate’s hand to my lips and kiss her fingertips. She slides closer on the seat.

  “Angela wanted more than me. She wanted the undersea silence. She wanted lightning and horizontal rain. She wanted the electric fire she only got from fucking on metal in the heart of a great storm.” I open my window more. I inhale cool pre-twister air. “She wanted to ride a long, twisting shaft into the sky.”

  Kate squeezes my hand.

  I look up. The wall is not far off. My ears are tight. Even though we’re shoulder to shoulder, Kate’s breath sounds far away.

  “That last night, she told me I was afraid of the storms.

  “I turned down Davis Road, not far from here, trying to get a bearing on a wall cloud to the northwest. I told her I was trying to get closer.

  “She said, ‘You’re afraid to be under a funnel. You’re afraid the storm will kill you.’

  “I stopped the car. ‘Fuckin’ A right!’ I said.

  “ ‘I want to give myself up to the sky,’ she said.

  “I want to live through my senior year.’

  “She asked me why.

  “She looked at me with those green eyes. I saw the storm there. I felt the draw of her, of the sky, of the screaming demons, and I couldn’t answer her. I turned off Davis onto a farm road. We headed between corn rows straight for the dark and the green wall.”

  Kate presses against me “Oh, shit,” she says. Her voice comes to me through a wire.

  The undersea silence is on us. The wall has come, the wind is gone. Even with the window open, the windshield bows outwards.

  “A wall cloud is enough to scare most folks,” I say. I put an arm around Kate and kiss the softness behind her ear.

  Her hand comes to my neck, but her eyes are on the green darkness above us.

  It hangs low like God’s squeegee scraping the muck from the farmlands. It’s the colour of drowning in deep sea. It smothers light. It smothers thought. It promises oblivion. And it moves with magic in ways you can feel but not see. From thought to thought, it’s never the same.

  “The first spiral descended from the cloud.” I say it, and outside the car it happens.

  Kate claws at my arm.

  “Angela gasped with pleasure,” I say.

  I take the rubber band from Kate’s braid. Her red hair unwinds in my fingers. It’s damp and soft.

  “Angela grabbed my arm,” I say. “I nearly went in the ditch.

  “ ‘It’s going to be a big one,’ Angela said. ‘I feel it.’

  “She glowed. Maybe it was luminescence from the dashboard. Maybe it was my own excitement, but I swear she glowed. Her skin was light green, her white-blonde hair took on a ghostly luminescence
, and her eyes. Oh, God, that was the thing about her. I swear her eyes held the lightning and wind. She smiled. She touched me with her eyes.

  “I was hard.”

  Kate caresses my bulging crotch.

  “I pressed the accelerator to the floor, and we fishtailed along the dirt track towards the storm.

  “Angela called out and pointed. Tendrils reached downwards, braiding themselves together, pressing towards the ground. For a long moment, they hung suspended above us, joining and founding the rhythm of the storm. The funnel spun like the tail of a cat about to pounce on a barn rat.”

  I pull Kate’s lips to mine. They’re salty with her sweat. Her tongue is quick and hungry, and the kiss is long and urgent. When we break, I see the green in her eyes growing, taking over the grey.

  “Finally,” I say, “the funnel stabbed down directly in front of us. It became a tornado.

  “Angela pulled at her shirt. Buttons ricocheted off the windshield. She clawed at my shirt. ‘Andy!’ she screamed. ‘God, Andy!’

  “I slowed the car to keep control.

  “ ‘No!’ ” She clawed at my belt. ‘Don’t stop!’

  “I hit the accelerator. The car jumped forwards.

  “Dirt and debris exploded from the track half a mile in front of us. A small tree spun past the windshield and disappeared into the cornfields.

  “Somehow, still driving, I found myself naked from the waist up. My pants were open. Angela’s lips were on me, hot, wet, urgent.

  “Twisting like the storm, she managed to get her clothes completely off. Her perfect ass was high and glowing green. Her hair danced across my lap. She was the tornado trying to suck me up into her.

  “I drove hard into the storm.

  “The tornado grew wider, fat with power, fast and full of the debris of the farmlands. The thing grew too fat to undulate, too pregnant with dirt, barn shingles and trees to do anything but spin.

  “It filled the windshield.

  “My ears popped. ‘Angela,’ I said. ‘I’m . . . Oh, God!’

  “Her head came up. ‘Closer,’ she said. Her eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them.

  “Angela lifted a leg over me and slipped it between the seat and the car door. She guided me into her, settled her weight onto me. ‘Go,’ she screamed over the wind. ‘Go fast, Andy! Take me there!’