The Brothel Creeper: Stories of Sexual and Spiritual Tension

by Rhys Hughes

  With one in each pocket of her loose trousers, Daniela hurried back to the city. Her program could be accelerated now. The new object would soon be fully in control of its own miniaturised mind.

  In her apartment she checked off the next names on her list. Marta lived in a wooden house on the river, one of the oldest dwellings in the sprawl. Boris, her husband, was a taxidermist who specialised in stuffing and mounting fish caught in the muddy waters. A fully-grown piraíba swung above the door on thin chains, a grotesque advertisement for his trade, a catfish large enough to prey on men. Daniela picked her way among the stumps of adjacent houses washed away by a recent flood, reached the entrance, ducked under the fish. Marta sat smoking a cigar on a rocking chair.

  They shared a pot of coffee together, gossiped about fools and sages, the usual collaborative banter. There was no fruit bowl here, so Daniela made her deposit more obtrusively, on a shelf of bottles.

  Then she made her excuses and left. Yara was next.

  Repairing a large drum in her living room, while monkeys clambered over the furniture, Yara’s enthusiasm was genuine but riddled with distraction. She glanced toothily back over her shoulder.

  “What brings the jaguar girl this way?”

  Daniela laughed. “Merely a social visit. I’m catching up with the friends I haven’t seen for ages. Not a duty though!”

  “Pleased to hear that, darling.”

  Daniela gently swatted a monkey off her knee.

  It climbed her leg again and this time she had a different idea. She slipped the second vulva into its grasp. Away it bounded, climbing the branches of a potted tree that strained against the ceiling. The pet would guard it safely, she felt certain, until Yara’s husband, Caramuru, returned. Then the vulva would extend its legs and seek him out. A gamble, of course, like everything in city life. Yara tightened the skin a twist.

  “What do you think?” She pounded a powerful note with her clenched fist and Daniela nodded appreciatively.

  “Yes, the resonance sounds right to me.”

  “Good,” said Yara happily.

  Daniela walked home in the humid twilight. Huge seedpods were drifting in the air, blown across the city from one side of the forest to the other by a wind that smelled of ants and earth. Some settled in the trees of the avenue or caught on sagging washing lines strung between tall tenements. They flushed under the deepening crimson sky. For one moment, Daniela thought the city had been infiltrated by independent vulvas, infested and overrun in the most beautiful and radical way, and this vision was an authentic premonition of the truth to come. The future was female.

  A dozen pods in the coils of a miniature whirlwind chased each other up to the summit of the vortex, then spat themselves out the end, ejaculation or birth or maybe an original metaphor.

  Daniela went to bed early, slept deeply, waiting.

  They came as usual in dawn light.

  One for each ear, this time. Double pleasure?

  No. Her simple mathematical reasoning was incorrect. It was more than double. With the two shells pressed to the sides of her head, she didn’t need a free hand to stroke herself. The orgasm came by itself, gigantic, an example to all surges of water, electricity and ecstasy, overwhelming. Every cell of her body was flooded, saturated with joy.

  The shells fell away, rocked to stasis on the pillow.

  She dozed, post-coital between them.

  No cares remained, no worries. But when she awoke it was the beginning of the eternal struggle again, triple yoni or not. And before long she realised that both the artificial ones were pregnant.

  The population boom had commenced. Exponential.

  She couldn’t resist the temptation to make full use of the new ones. Soon her schedule was finished and she was back to Rita again. But not every pair of lips returned. Each birth slightly altered the original programming, creating a copy that was imperceptibly imperfect, or perhaps more perfect, for that is the mechanism of evolution.

  Some of the newest examples had free will.

  On one occasion, at the coolest hour of day, she heard rustling in the long grass of the verge as she carried her groceries home. No snake or spider but a scuttling vulva. It vanished. Further along, another drooped on a branch too flimsy to take its weight. And whenever she paused to listen, she realised they were everywhere, around and above.

  She hastened to reach her apartment, to step out on the balcony. Lifting binoculars to her eyes, she scanned the towers, roof gardens and parks. Yes, the unbelievable had happened.

  Itapetinga was festooned with quims.

  A night of love passed slowly. Love for all the men of the city, the details as yet unknown to her. An hour before dawn, she shook herself free of the thick blanket of returning lips and went out. She had a vague plan to carve a flute from a reed, to learn how to play a tune that would entice all the rogue vulvas deep into the green world. The prospect of an orgasm fuelled by hundreds or perhaps thousands of acts of betrayal frightened her. What if she overloaded herself? Better to lead them away from civilisation, get them lost among vines and beasts. It was a desperate plan.

  Before she could reach the edge of the city and the ambiguous sanctuary of the jungle, a voice called out to her. It came from ahead, where there was nobody. “Daniela, you must visit the Doctor again. It’s a matter of urgency. Go there now! Please don’t refuse!”

  “Who are you?” blinked Daniela angrily.

  “My name is Cicero and I am an artificial man. In fact I’m the failed model that Doctor Morales told you about.”

  “But I can’t see you. You’re just a voice!”

  “Yes, he made me invisible too. A visible robot would have attracted too much attention. I serve Morales now. Once I was a real man with powerful desires and stamina, but in my present form I am beyond seduction. That is why you have no power over me.”

  “And if I decline to do what you say?”

  “Steps can be taken, Daniela. There are legal ramifications to the situation. Infidelity is a standard justification for divorce and the cheated wives may file compensation claims against you. I promise no violence, but I will help them with whatever paperwork is necessary. Your debts will be vaster than the sky and never will you settle them.”

  “That’s the most bizarre threat a robot ever made!”

  “It’s the only one of any kind.”

  Daniela sighed. “So far?”

  “Yes. Come with me. The situation is critical.”

  As they walked, vulvas dashed in front of them, chased each other, scaled walls and emerged through open windows. Hooked together, a chain of thick lips, still aroused, dangled from the overhang of a roof. The scent of satiation was strong, intoxicating. A universal orgy. Daniela brushed one off her leg. It was opening and closing like the mouth of a carnivorous plant, but again the parallel was false. The danger here was an overdose of pleasure rather than a loss of coherence through an act of dissolution. The cunts did not take. They only gave: stupendously, endlessly.

  The unseen robot proved to be a poor conversationalist. Cicero clanked as he walked and seemed clumsy enough, but the moment Daniela strayed off the direct route she felt her arm gripped by metallic fingers. His strength was daunting, his angles sharp and misplaced in a world of organic shapes. It was still too early for pedestrians. Very few people saw her gyrations as she tried to run ahead of his invisible taciturnity and also avoid his clutches. Soon they were at the Doctor’s unlocked door.

  Morales greeted her without sarcasm and she was grateful for that. In the corner where his voice emanated, Daniela thought she saw a vulva bury itself in a nest of bare wires. “Hello again.”

  Daniela stood with one defiant hand on her hip.

  The robot rasped, “The density has increased to approximately one organ per fifty cubic metres. Tomorrow—”

  “Yes, yes, Cicero. Spare us the statistics!” cried Morales. For the benefit of Daniela he added, “Ignore him. He thinks it’s his duty to be analytical, but he act
ually has little or no interest in such stuff. He strums the cavaquinho to pass the time. Music is his hobby.”

  “He stopped me making a flute,” Daniela snapped.

  “Well, that’s a shame, my dear, but he truly is an audiophile. Just as you are a zelophile. But we have a crisis to sort out before I can let you go. The original vulva wasn’t supposed to be fertile. I wouldn’t have given it to you if I had known it was. What happened?”

  “How should I know? It’s not my fault.”

  “Do you remember the console of seven strange levers? You played with some of them on your first visit.”

  “Of course. How could I possibly forget?”

  “The fourth lever made artificial sexual organs capable of reproduction. While it existed I would never have offered you a synthetic cunt, but once the third lever was pulled, the danger was nullified. The third disintegrated the fourth. So the gift became safe.”

  Daniela pouted. “I pulled the fourth lever too.”

  “Impossible! I was a witness.”

  Cicero interrupted. “I also was present at the time. I wasn’t invisible then, but I was disguised as a skeleton clock. You didn’t pull the fourth lever. You never had the chance to do that.”

  “It turned to dust before you touched it,” added Morales.

  Daniela shook her head. “It reformed on the branch of a tree in a park. I pulled it without thinking. Perhaps I was hoping it was the second lever, the one that made music from anything.”

  Cicero audibly licked his magnetic lips. “Music…”

  “Ah!” Morales exhaled heavily.

  “Although it was my doing, it’s not my fault,” said Daniela.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s right.”

  “What do you intend to do to me?” she asked.

  “Nothing to you, my dear. There’s only one solution. It’s a drastic course of action but the alternative will be even worse. The world will soon be neck deep in lady flowers, in moist passion gates. They will awaken emotions that won’t ever be tamed. What we call ‘jealousy’ now will soon be a pallid runt of a feeling compared with the one that is to come. The world will be destroyed, beautifully perhaps, but agonizingly.”

  “Cunt is the fifth great force,” intoned Cicero, as if reciting a litany of his own devising. “The strong nuclear, weak nuclear and electromagnetic are the first three. And gravity is the fourth.”

  To Daniela’s surprise, Morales quietly said, “Amen.”

  “But the answer?” she pressed.

  Morales heaved another sigh. She guessed he was pointing, though not a single mote was disturbed. “The seventh lever. The one I warned you not to pull. It accelerates the moon, speeds up its orbit. There are rockets ready on the dark side, you see. Primed.”

  “This is the lunar project you mentioned?”

  “Yes, my dear. The government had a plan. The moon in tandem with the sun creates tides. And tidal power has potential. But there aren’t enough tides every day to make it worthwhile. By speeding up the moon, we can guarantee more tides and thus more energy. The seventh lever ignites all the engines. As the moon accelerates to maximum speed, the tides will rise and fall faster and faster, at shorter and shorter intervals.”

  “How many tides at peak operation?” she asked.

  “One a minute. Nearly one and a half thousand per day. The sea will go in and out like a turbocharged cock!”

  Cicero cleared his tungsten throat. “With respect, robots are careful and gentle lovers. Even though I am beyond seduction, I can be ordered to enter a woman, to pleasure her. I do not ram. I slide with infinite delicacy. So the tides will not be as you describe them.”

  “I stand corrected,” said Morales.

  Daniela admired his lack of ego in this instance. To be contradicted on such a topic by a robot! She said, “You told me the project was cancelled on the eve of its implementation. Something to do with women, you claimed. I’d like to know how that could be true…”

  Morales chuckled without mirth or irony.

  “There’s no mystery. The monthly cycle of females. Menstruation. Linked to the moon, as we all know. One lunar orbit, one vaginal period. But imagine a world with fifteen hundred orbits every day! Women will be in a permanent state of discharge and discomfort.”

  “I see. Then it’s imperative you don’t pull the lever!”

  “Too late! I already have!”

  Daniela looked at the console and saw it was true. She reeled and steadied herself on a table, Cicero helping her. The liquid in her head, in her inner ear, was shifting. The balance of gravity was subtly different now, but she rapidly acclimatised to the sensation. She barged past the unseen robot, reached the window and craned her neck up. Dimmed to a ghostly disc by the rising sun, the moon could still be seen in the greenish sky, but it was travelling rapidly westwards, steadily accelerating. Within a few moments it was gone, then it rose again, a blur, a phantom scream in the dome. Daniela felt an ache in her pelvis. Blood trickled down her thigh.

  “What do you hope to achieve with this?” she screamed.

  “With the violation?” said Morales.

  “Yes, yes!” She groped for him, to beat his chest with fists. But he had already retreated. “That’s the word!”

  Morales answered calmly, “It’s the only way to stop the quims taking over everything. Even though they are artificial, they will bleed too. Men will reject them. Most men, at any rate. Generally one does not fuck at that time of the month, a time that is now constant.”

  “Even if they do, they won’t breed,” said Cicero.

  “Madness!” hissed Daniela.

  “Shall I tell you how we, Cicero and I, know that cunt is the fifth cosmic force? A prediction machine told us.”

  Daniela snorted. “What?”

  “I’m not referring to the paranormal, to the spirits of Candomblé and the psychic adept. It’s mainly an inevitable, logical process with only a single factor that belongs to chance. A square grid of lights, one thousand by one thousand: one million lights in total. The sequence is simple. Binary. The first light flashes on, goes off. The second flashes on, goes off. And so on. When the millionth light goes off, the cycle repeats. But now the first light stays on for the entire cycle.”

  “I’m not sure of the relevance of this.”

  “Every light will eventually take its turn staying on. Sometimes there will be more lights on than off, sometimes vice versa: symmetrical patterns might appear. In fact they will appear. So will a far greater number of asymmetrical patterns. Every possible pattern that can be framed in a grid of that size will eventually be formed. They have no choice.”

  “Do you understand the implications?” asked Cicero.

  Daniela said, “Randomness!”

  “No, my dear,” chided Morales. “Quite the opposite. A relentless working out of every feasible combination of illuminated bulb and unlighted bulb on the grid means that some meaningful pictures will be generated. Pictures that are false, pictures that are true. Every scene that can be imagined will be presented. Do you comprehend? Every scene that ever has been or ever will be. And every variation of those scenes. Truth. And lies, trillions of lies. How to differentiate between them? That’s the issue. But think about the grandeur of the device. Such a simple machine! Yet at some point during its operation it will show your birth with every detail correct. Your first kiss. And the exact way you will die. Your real death!”

  “Among billions of false ones,” said Cicero.

  Morales giggled. “We asked it to show us the missing force of nature. We guessed there had to be one. But what was it? I prayed to the grid. That was just for the emotional satisfaction it provided, for I don’t believe the gods are real. We knew that eventually the main relay would burn out. And when it did, we had vowed to regard whatever picture was on the grid at that instant as an accurate representation of the unknown force. Think of it as a game, if you prefer. A serious game. How long did the device take to provide an answer? The combinations w
ere created at enormous speed. We didn’t want to wait millennia or aeons for the picture. The patterns came and went: they flowed into each other, metamorphosed.”

  “Abstracts, endlessly swirling,” sighed Cicero.

  “With the occasional crisp image of something recognisable. A bird, sock or canoe. Then the relay fried in its own oil of blue sparks. The image that it stopped on was simple, perfect. Cunt. Why not? What could be better? And I’m not a man given to the temptations of the flesh. I am almost as asexual as Cicero there, yet I never hide from facts. The generative organ of the female of our species is a fundamental force.”

  “I had defined you as a misogynist,” said Daniela.

  “Not at all! But women do tend to sabotage my works. How can you ruin this one, my dear? The moon is beyond even your reach. No ladder will take you so high! No toucan or butterfly!”

  “Not even a moonmoth,” chortled Cicero.

  “I’m leaving now,” declared Daniela. “What will happen next?”

  “Good question,” said the robot.

  “The authorities will cope,” insisted Morales.

  Indeed. The city administrators did their best to restore order. Workers were sent out to find the vulvas and convey them to a single location, the central square of the city. House to house searches were conducted. Because of the bleeding, few men refused to give them up. Wide shovels scooped the loose organs, piled them in wheelbarrows. Hired ruffians armed with whips herded others along like slaves. Confiscated and confined to the central square, they had their legs removed by teams of labourers armed with clippers and then were set out in neat rows and columns.

  Daniela wasn’t permitted to approach the square. The police had blocked all access to it. She went home instead.

  On her balcony she studied the vista with binoculars.

  She lowered the lenses, noticed something hanging from her railings. She approached and bent down. A lever! The second lever: the one that created music from the objects that surrounded it! She resisted the impulse to pull it, went in search of a small hacksaw, removed it delicately. This one was thin but as long as an arrow. She wondered.