by Edward Lee
“I”m not hungry either.” Now that her hasty fears had been allayed, she felt oversensitized again. “I’m never hungry after great sex…except for more great sex.”
Paul laughed with a shake of the head. “Let’s give the Captain a little time to get back to shipshape.”
Shortly thereafter Paul had gone in to take a shower but evidently Cristina’s voracity had taken a bigger toll than he’d let on. She’d lounged on the couch for a while, reading through a book on Max Ernst and the “irrationalism” art movement, but when she peeked in the bedroom she found Paul already asleep. Her more greedy side felt let down but then she admitted, He is forty, for God’s sake, and his job’s a pressure cooker, so she resigned to bed herself, presuming to awake fresh in the morning, but—
Here she lay now—hours later—wide awake. She pressured her mind to recover anything she might have dreamt that would waken her so abruptly but found to her relief that there was nothing, just a pleasant blankness chaperoning her slumber. Suddenly that aggravated confusion permuted to satisfaction. She smiled in the dark. No nightmare this time. No evil nun, no bowl full of blood in a dungeon with a man on a slab. Paul lay sound asleep beside her; she touched his shoulder as the dirtiest inkling suggested itself: that she should excite him in his sleep and let him wake to find her atop him—she was certainly aroused enough—but then she elected not to. I practically raped him tonight. She traced her fingers across her sex and winced at the gust of plea sure. Sex maniac, she scolded herself and gently edged off the bed, slipped on her robe, and left the room. The clock ticking followed her to the kitchen, and it somehow amplified the rest of the house’s silence. Even from outside—no sounds at all.
She lemoned some ice water as she reflected on the day. She’d gotten quite a bit of work done once her hangover had ebbed out; that and her ludicrous mishap with the magic markers. Jeez, what a ditz, she thought. It was funny now. Sometimes I’m so on edge, she realized, while other times not at all. Maybe everyone’s that way but I just don’t see it. She wandered the living room, sipping her water. A lewd smile came to her lips when she spied the expensive carpet that she and Paul had sullied; then she found herself turning out all but the light above the stove and peeking out through the wooden blinds. The church’s upper windows were dark, though she couldn’t imagine why she’d even be looking.
But of course: the priest. Father Rollin struck her as a very nice man, but his spirit seemed crimped by something, like a nerve pinched. But she’d only thought of him in the first place via the abstraction; she’d just begun on a priest, of sorts, for the second set of figures in her Evil Church line. At once her artist’s inclinations sparked, and she was heading upstairs for her studio to tweak her day’s work. Her feet took her quickly up the plush crimson carpet to the bare hall that led her to her studio.
She snapped on all the bright white overhead fluorescents, then turned on her computers. Several preliminary sketches, old and new, lay arranged on the drafting table. She eyed the most recent one—the Vampirical Vicar—then eyed the configured drawing model on the computer screen. No, no, no, she realized at once. It was the “tone” of the figure’s dress that was off. Too English, she realized. She wanted antiquated and Gothic but more European. Even the name now—vicar—struck an out-of-tune chord. Too obscure. She got to sketching again, keeping the figure’s dark eyes, prominent nose, and thick, straight-across mustache, but appareled him in religious raiments more reminiscent of early-Renais sance Eastern Eu rope. Her excitement surged. It’s so much more on the mark! she exclaimed to herself and kept sketching. No more Vampirical “Vicar,” she resolved. Her thoughts ticked. Kids today don’t even know what a vicar is, but …A quick glance to the first figure in the line—the Noxious Nun—and she thought, Every nun needs an abbot, right? So …
She wrote the words on the pad to see how they looked lettered out: THE ABOMINABLE ABBOT.
Yes. Much better …
Was this why she suddenly couldn’t sleep? Her muse stirring her to make this change forged in her subconscious? It didn’t matter. The image and the name was much more interesting.
She tinkered another half hour, growing more and more satisfied as her conception of the character grew more and more complete. An hour later she felt as mentally exhausted as a ditchdigger must feel physically. She spun in her chair, lounging back. Her feet reeled off the floor and she knew that one of her moods was returning—a sexual mood. Suddenly she felt pressed in by her needs, thinking back to her spontaneous escapades with Paul right on the floor. When she glimpsed his picture on a bookshelf, she bristled with more pent-up excitement.
I can’t believe I’m doing this, she told herself. She felt childlike, about to raid the cookie jar, but in this case they were very adult cookies. I know it’s here somewhere, she thought, rummaging through several boxes of supplies she hadn’t yet unpacked. Ahhh …She didn’t pack it with her clothes for fear of Paul finding it; instead she’d secreted it in this box of power strips and extension cords…
Her vibrator.
It had been the instrument’s style that essentially caused her to buy it—a stout plastic handle that tapered to a rubberized wand not much wider than a cigarette. She distilled her thoughts of Paul’s body after she retook her seat and let the device’s tip buzz over the pinpoints of her nipples. The sensation defied effective description, save to say that it seemed to stimulate nerves she didn’t know she had and in ways that no other such device—or man—could effect. You naughty girl, she thought, cringing as she removed the buzzing tip from her nipples and stroked the shape of each breast entirely with the wand’s curve. She imagined Paul’s mouth on her sex as she continued, eventually sweeping the wand slowly across her belly and up and down the insides of her thighs, but—
She had to be honest with herself.
It wasn’t so much Paul she was thinking about but instead the lustier aspects of last night’s dream: the queue of women stroking her body with their hands and mouths alike. She tensed more in the soft chair, her belly sucking in and out as she now brought the maniacal tip closer and closer to the hood of her clitoris. If Paul walked in right now…what could I ever say in a million years? But the rankling thought was too weak to banish the fantasy. The images thickened in her head, and at last she let the tip find its target. She breathed through clenched teeth as the lesbian fancy summoned all those rising sensations at once and set them off like a bombshell. One orgasmic wave after another claimed her, leaving her helpless to spasm off in the chair, all the while those forbidden images in her head seeming more and more real as though she were genuinely being cocooned by several women.
Her body went slack in the chair; that rawness of post-climax would not allow her to leave the vibrator in place. It fell from her hand, buzzing inertly on the floor as she simply lay there in the chair as if floating.
When her breath returned she felt assailed by guilt. Sneaking upstairs to masturbate along with fantasies that didn’t include the man she loved seemed like psychic cheating. Nevertheless, she couldn’t deny the potency of the vibrator’s prowess. She reached down, turned it off, and stuck it in a drawer.
What am I going to do with myself? She sputtered and pushed her tousled hair off her brow.
Then her eyes shot wide.
In a split second, Cristina went rigid as if from a bolt of fear. She spun in her chair without volition but found herself staring in dread at the back windows. She knew the source of the sudden dread; it was the impression that she was being watched.
She rushed to the windows. But it would be impossible for anyone in the alley to see her all the way over at her desk. Why do I feel like someone was watching me? She gazed between the slats of the newly installed blinds. And who COULD? Across the alley only a few balconied condos could be seen a street back, and Cristina knew likewise that the sheer angle from those lofts wouldn’t allow for a voyeur’s prying eye. But when she inspected the windows more closely she found that when she looked to the rig
ht there was a vantage point she’d been previously unaware off: half of the alley’s opening could be viewed, and through it a wedge of the main road and some hotels and other buildings.
She frowned and shook her head, sputtering again. The notion was folly; even if someone that far away could see in here, what would compel them to? They’d need binoculars or a telescope, for God’s sake.
Enough of this. Back to bed. Downstairs, however, she paused at the door to the basement. Why am I …She looked at the door, touched the knob. Then she laughed to herself. Between passing out down there last night, and then her insistence of hearing strange voices several hours ago, she knew she had something to prove to herself. A test…to prove there’s nothing down there.
Unafraid, she opened the door, switched on the lone bulb, and went down. Masses of dust-skinned clutter seemed congealed in the dark. Boxes, mostly. None of it’s our stuff, she knew. The church must’ve abandoned it all once Paul bought the house. She peered into several of the boxes and found everything from old toasters and electric can openers to books decades old. One box was filled entirely with The Book of Common Prayer and another, Catholic Prayers for the Dead, but years of humidity left them bulged with rot. We’ll have to clean this place up eventually, she thought but found her eyes skimming along the floor. Would she find the magic marker she was sure she’d touched last night? Or perhaps she wasn’t even looking. The boxes formed wide aisles and now she meandered through them, toward the sodium light pouring in through the streetlevel windows. She looked out and saw only the alley street and the bricks of the buildings beyond. Without thinking, she tried the windows to make sure they remained intact and locked. She found herself trying to focus but didn’t know on what. No foreign “voices” were in evidence down here, nothing amiss. See? she challenged herself. But she never noticed the erratic footprints on the dusty floor toward the rear.
She had to squint in the weak light, half-feeling her way back toward the steps. Then she peered down…
That oblong patchwork of cement.
“The same exact spot I passed out on,” she told herself aloud.
The coolness of the cement reached up through her feet but strangely transformed into heat. She felt every square inch of skin beneath the robe glaze with a light sweat, while that maddening oversensitivity returned twofold. The silk robe was again charging her skin; at once she was anxious nearly to the point of audibly whining. Her nipples erected, and her sex began to prickle through some heady frisson. I’m insatiable, she realized. Even after the powerful sexual release just minutes ago, she cringed again in the same wantonness.
She kept staring down. Not again …She cupped her breasts outside the robe, then within, as she encircled the patch’s small emblem with her toe, the crude design that looked like a strangled dragon…
Her eyes widened, then squeezed shut, and in that black interim, images from the nightmare splashed into her mind like paint thrown against a wall: the fanged nun, the three-gemmed blood-filled bowl, the weird voices and the man on the slab and the bizarre decanter and the many sets of feminine hands cosseting her body…
And, indeed, when Cristina winked out of the mental jag, she caught herself openly caressing herself, right where she stood. This is crazy! she thought. She didn’t like this place. What had caused her to even come down here? She sashed her robe—frowning at not only herself but this new and seemingly limitless sexual angst—and started back toward the stairs.
A figure, obscure as soot, blocked the way.
Cristina’s heart gave a jolt.
“Cristina!” Paul exclaimed. “What are you doing down here?”
“Jesus, Paul, you scared me half to death!” Cristina wilted in the aftershock. But…how would she answer his question? “I—I’m not sure why…”
When Paul took several steps, the basement’s single bulb surfaced him from the blots of darkness. “When I woke up, you weren’t in bed,” he said, looking around with disapproval at all the excess clutter. “Then I thought I heard voices. Were you…talking to yourself down here?”
Had she been? She knew she did that sometimes. “I guess I could have been,” she admitted. Suddenly she became overly aware of her erected nipples pushing bumps in the sheer robe. Would he notice? And, worse, had he seen her caressing herself. My God, I hope not.
“Well, I talk to myself sometimes, too,” he said. The stacks of stained boxes seemed to annoy him. “Christ, I didn’t realize how much junk the diocese left. I’ll have to hire some refuse people to take it to the dump.”
Cristina’s head filled with a mild drone. She felt woozy by the sight of him meandering closer; her desires were hijacking her. I can’t help it, she thought hopelessly. I …“Paul?” she whispered and let her robe come undone. “I need you again.”
Had the light dimmed by some fluke in the current? Suddenly he was just an obscure shadow again.
“Oise plac’ute,” flowed the weird accent-tinted words and that’s when Cristina felt electrocuted by the shock of discovering that this figure in the dark was not Paul, it was a curvaceous woman, nude save for a nun’s wimple and hood, her flesh seeming half-composed by the darkness itself but flesh nonetheless for when her hands reached out to touch Cristina’s breasts they were warm and very, very real, and then the woman grinned, showing two long thin fangs ringed by wet lips. Cristina couldn’t budge as the lips moved closer, sealed over her own, and then the hot, phantom tongue slid between the fangs and plunged brassily right into Cristina’s mouth, all the while the nun’s hands kneading her breasts and twisting her inflamed nipples. Cristina had the impression of other figures scurrying around her from behind and sneaking up the stairs, but her horror quashed the observation. Meanwhile, the nun’s hot mouth sucked all the air from her lungs, and then Cristina quailed, rose up on her tiptoes, and fainted dead away.
(IV)
Paul shuddered out of sleep just as the clock in the hall struck two. His arms raked the bed’s left side where he expected to feel Cristina but she wasn’t there. As his grogginess wore off, he discerned the hiss of the shower, could see the thin thread of light under the door.
Paul rubbed his eyes. He felt some odd sensation that he couldn’t name but then forgot about it when he thought back to his and Cristina’s frizzly lovemaking earlier. What more could I ask? he thought, chuckling. Just as he was drifting off again, he heard the shower hiss stop. A pause for a minute or two; he could hear her now, drying off. Then a wedge of light hit his eyes as the door partly opened. Just as Cristina would step out, the light snapped off, leaving Paul blind. He could hear but not see her approach the bed, felt the mild jostle when she sat on the mattress-edge near his knees.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
Her hand ran down his stomach. “Uh-uh.”
I’ll bet I could go again, he realized, but when he touched her bare shoulder and attempted to slide his hand to her breast, she straddled him, gently grabbed his wrists, and placed them above his head. Then her own hands came back to his groin.
Oh, yeah …Paul still couldn’t see a thing. Cristina’s fingers wasted no time exciting him, but they also distracted him. “Aw, baby,” he said. He’d hardened already, and then his teeth clicked together at the meticulous way she was handling him, unlike anything she’d done before. He reached down, then, and touched her leg—
“Honey, that feels so—”
“Shhh!” she demanded and quickly returned his hands back up over his head, feigning bondage, he supposed.
“Oh, kinky, huh?”
Again, “Shhh…” And then her mouth immediately lowered to his genitals. Paul tensed up at once. Her mouth worked frenetically, fingers working in unison. She was performing the intimate act with a fast, slick intricacy that astonished him. It was noisy and wild. Paul’s head reeled at the feeling. She’s never done it this good before, he realized in a lusty stupor. She must be watching pornos or something …
Her mouth continued to work him. She was simply doing i
t and demanding nothing in return. In spite of being so thoroughly drained on the living room floor, Paul’s climax was breaking before he knew it, her mouth never abating. He tensed for many moments as his lust emptied, then went slack on the bed. Her lips remained tight as they eventually slipped off. He heard her swallow.
I guess it wouldn’t exactly be romantic to tell her that that was the best blow job of my life, he wondered. “Oh, damn, baby, that was just so—”
She errantly gave his spent genitals a caress, then the bed creaked as she got up. Was she walking around the bed? He still had no night vision thanks to the momentary shock of light when she’d come out of the bathroom. “Where are you…”
The bedroom door clicked open, but there was so little light in the hall that he could barely detect her form stepping out of the room and heading for the kitchen.
“Honey? Would you get me a can of Sprite?” he asked.
“Um-hmm.” And then her shadow disappeared.
Wow. That was something. I’ll bet Jess doesn’t get action like that …
Paul remained lying back, sated. He kept drifting in and out, but when he focused his thoughts and looked at the LED clock, he saw that ten minutes had passed and Cristina hadn’t come back to bed. It didn’t matter, he had to go to the bathroom anyway. He turned on the lamp by the bedside, glanced over, then did a double take at Cristina’s airy, walk-in closet. The door hung open and he noticed several dresses on the floor. They must’ve fallen from their hangers but it was odd. Cristina was a neat freak. Not like her to overlook something like that. Then he went into the bathroom, still steamy from her shower, but noticed water on the floor, the towel lying there, and the shampoo sitting on its side. What a mess. And again, it was odd to observe. Cristina always picked up after herself.
He finished, put on his robe, and went out to the kitchen. Another raised brow, then, when he noted more minor disarray: the refrigerator door an inch ajar, several cabinets hanging open, a bag of plantain chips busted open and sitting on the counter, along with crumbs. He chuckled at her sudden slovenliness.