Night of the Furies

by David Angsten

  She removed my shirt.

  A pair of hands encircled my neck. I felt a ripple of fear. The girl with the dark-lined eyes had crawled onto the bed behind me. Her hands now slid to my shoulders, and she gently pulled me down on the mattress.

  Looking at her face, upside down, I tried to make sense of her expression. Was it a smile or a frown? Before I could decide, she lifted her nightgown over my face and got up on her knees above me, offering a startling view of her crotch. Just as quickly she pulled it away, the gown retreating across my face, again revealing her frowning smile.

  I suddenly remembered her name. “Euphrosyne!”

  As if in reward, she rose up on her knees again and gave me another glimpse.

  Meanwhile, the black-haired girl had removed my pants and was now stripping off my boxers. She tossed them aside and knelt at my feet. Slowly she spread my knees, and her hands moved up my thighs.

  “Aglaia!”

  Once again the chiton fluttered over me as the generous Euphrosyne proffered another glimpse. This time I saw her breasts as well, bobbing beneath the gown.

  The fear I had felt turned into excitement. A shudder of desire went through me. I was now lying with my feet on the floor, naked and supine on the bed, with little Miss Mischievous flashing her wares, Miss Voluptuous tickling my thighs.

  If their intention had been to arouse me, there was growing evidence of success.

  Euphrosyne lowered her face and kissed me. Her tongue pressed into my mouth. My tongue went into hers. An upside-down French kiss, bizarrely erotic, like discovering a strange new orifice.

  In the midst of this kiss, Aglaia took hold of me. I nearly exploded in her hands.

  Euphrosyne finished kissing me and once again wafted her chiton. This time I couldn’t resist—her sweet buns had been beckoning: I reached to take hold of her hips.

  With a giggle, she wriggled free of my grasp. I sat up and reached for Aglaia.

  Aglaia pulled back with a shriek. A playful look on her face.

  I reached again for Euphrosyne. She skittered across the bed. I rolled over and scrambled after her. She barely escaped my clutches.

  Aglaia knocked off the light switch. Suddenly I couldn’t see a thing. And all I could hear was the snaky music, that writhing, feverish horn.

  I climbed off the bed and groped through the dark. The airy brush of fleeting fabric sent me lunging after it. I banged into a dresser. The girls giggled merrily. Heading toward the sound of their voices, reaching into the dark, I stumbled back into the bed. The girls went scrambling across it. I crawled after them, but again they managed to escape my grasp, filling the air with their shrieks.

  I heard the door across the hall bang open. Thalia let out a scream of delight as she raced off into the hallway. I heard Dan go thumping after her. Then our door flew open suddenly, and the two girls fled from the room.

  I climbed off the bed and looked down the hall. They were spiraling up the staircase. As quickly as I could, I pulled on my jeans and went after them.

  10

  I WAS still zipping my pants as I pounded up the stairs—a dangerous operation under the circumstances—so I paused for a moment when I reached the next floor to finish without causing any damage. When I looked up, I saw Dan standing in his boxers and a roomful of women staring at us.

  The lights were off, and the room was dimly lit with candles. At least thirty women were standing in the shadows, each of them wearing a chiton. Euphrosyne and Aglaia, flush from their flight, were finding a place among them. Dan was standing a few steps in front of me, without his pants or shirt. His boxers could not quite contain his excitement; his hands were covering his crotch.

  “I…uh…must be in the wrong room,” he said. He started to turn away.

  “Danny Boy, is that you?”

  It was Basri’s voice. The women parted, revealing the Pasha, reclining on a plushy couch. Two girls in chitons lounged beside him. He too was wearing his boxers, along with an open shirt, revealing again the bulging gut he had displayed to great acclaim at the club. One hand rested on the thigh of a woman, the other held a martini glass by the stem.

  Thalia was standing behind him.

  Basri took note of Dan’s predicament. “Well, you look plenty warmed up, my friend. How about Jack? Ready to begin?”

  I gulped, and nodded.

  “Come on in—don’t be shy!”

  We meekly entered the room. Dan had told me this was Basri’s famous hookah lounge, an upscale version of the Den of Iniquity from his university days. It was a large, luxuriously upholstered space, lined with Persian carpets, velvet drapes, plush satin pillows, and silk futons, with yet another bar in one corner of the room, and in another, a giant Turkish hookah pipe.

  Basri, looking like an overfed satyr, struggled to extract himself from the couch. “I think we’re all assembled then. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  Someone turned off the music. The women dispersed themselves around the room, gradually arraying into a circle. Dan and I joined them, taking places near Basri. Being half undressed made us feel ill at ease, but the women paid no mind. They remained aloof in their elegant chitons, like classical feminine figures circling the bowl of an ancient vase.

  A small, athletic-looking woman, with a shaved head and round, black-rimmed eyeglasses, began blowing a tune on a simple reed flute. Thalia sang to the melody in Greek. Her voice was high-pitched and lovely, but the tune was oddly archaic and meandering, like an ancient aria or a medieval hymn. Soon the other women were joining in the song, adding atonal textures and rhythmical refrains.

  “It’s a dithyramb,” Dan whispered. “A call for Dionysus.”

  As we listened, my eyes wandered through the candlelit room, taking note of familiar faces: Thalia with her long, rust red hair; Marina minus her scarf; Irene with her cover-girl beauty mark. Euphrosyne and Aglaia, directly across, seemed totally focused on the singing. With their upraised faces and closed eyelids, they looked like a sculpted pair of angels.

  The beautiful Damiana stood two down from Dan; I had to lean forward to see her. She appeared even comelier in her diaphanous chiton than she had in her green dress and pearls. Once again lost in her own inner world, she did not return my gaze but stared straight ahead, as if singing to some invisible being.

  I wondered again why she had warned us to leave. A creeping uneasiness came over me. The air felt suddenly cold.

  From the flickering shadows behind the women a striking figure emerged. He wore an elaborate purple robe and a large, menacing mask. The mask was made of bronze or brass, with dark, gaping eyes and a hollow, smiling mouth.

  I knew at once it was Dionysus—the “god” the women had been calling for. The gold-embroidered robe looked like the vestment of a priest. I assumed it was a man, but he seemed to walk with a female’s grace, as if he were floating on air. Wavy, dark silver hair rimmed his gleaming mask. His glinting eyes were hidden in darkness.

  Following behind this androgynous Dionysus were two young women carrying ritual vessels. One held a heavy amphora, a long, vaselike ceramic jug with two curving handles at the top. I had seen several like it at the museum in Athens. The second girl carried a dazzling silver drinking cup, cast with two faces back-to-back, and wide looping handles that rose above the rim.

  The girls followed Dionysus into the center of the circle.

  Around them the women began to sing a chant, hauntingly low and repetitive. The masked Dionysus took the silver drinking vessel, and the girls raised the heavy amphora. Tilting it to the cup, a darkly gleaming wine poured forth. The girls stood solemnly behind Dionysus as he raised the brimming cup to the gods.

  The women continued their low, moaning chant. Dionysus carried the vessel to Thalia and ceremoniously handed it to her. Thalia bowed her head, then raised the drink to her lips and sipped.

  Once. Twice. Three times.

  Dionysus took the cup to the next woman in the circle, and she repeated the drinking ritual—once, twice,
three times. He passed the cup to Marina, then Irene, and continuously on around the room, each woman taking the three requisite sips. When the cup ran dry, it was refilled from the amphora, then passed to the next in line. All the while the women sang the mysterious, moanlike chant.

  Finally, the cup came to Dan. As he raised it to his lips, I could see clearly the two faces on the vessel, one of a man, the other of a woman. Dan solemnly imbibed. He seemed taken aback by the powerful taste and looked up in surprise at Dionysus.

  The god remained impassive.

  Dan glanced at me, then took his second sip. This one he savored, and the third he greedily gulped.

  The cup was returned to Dionysus. The girls raised the heavy amphora and filled it up again. This time, I could clearly see the liquid pouring out. I had assumed that it must have been wine, but the color, I now noticed, was more purple than red. The fluid was frothy like milk or beer, yet it poured with a gleaming viscosity that resembled a syrup or oil.

  Dionysus turned and offered me the cup. I took it by its high, looping handles and held it for a moment in front of me. The vessel was ancient and the metal heavy, but the faces were delicately tooled. Details had been artfully hammered in the silver, with gold filigree in the hair of the heads and inlaid ivory and glass for the eyes.

  I looked at Dionysus’ eyes, tiny glints of light in the black voids of the mask. The smile-frozen face seemed uncannily near, and at the same time strangely remote. Again I thought of Damiana telling us to leave, and of Phoebe’s dire warning of the Furies.

  These women, Furies? Impossible, I thought. Nymphs or goddesses maybe, but surely these nubile beauties were the opposite of Furies.

  I took a sip of the mysterious drink. It seemed to explode in my mouth. A succession of sensations and flavors arose. At first it tasted harsh, then slightly sour, then, to my surprise, almost sweet. It tasted like bitter beer and honey. It had a granular, syrupy texture, but was bubbly and tart, almost sparkling. It sent a warm rush of steam through my body and all the way out through my limbs, and I felt a sudden surge of energy in my head, as if a torrent of bursting bubbles were coursing through my brain.

  The drink was like nothing I had ever drunk before. Or like everything I had ever drunk all mixed up together.

  The women continued chanting. Dionysus stared. All of them patiently waiting for me to take my second sip.

  I raised the cup to my lips and drank. The metallic taste of the silver rim mixed with the scent inside the mug and the complex fusion of flavors. Again I felt the steamy rush, the effervescent jolt. It reminded me of my freezing dip in the spring. Everything seemed to stop.

  Although the women continued their singing, a strange sort of silence came over me. I noticed the cold metal of the mug in my hands, the peculiar aftertaste of the drink in my mouth, the living eyes staring out from deep inside the mask—all suddenly vital and vividly present.

  Dan was standing beside me, staring into the air. Beyond him, Damiana was chanting. She appeared to be under the same trance that had captured the rest of the circle, a trance induced by this drink in my hands.

  It is not safe, she had warned. I am afraid for your lives.

  My shadowed face stared back from the purplish pool of the drink. Slowly, I raised the cup for a sip. The liquid struck my lips, but I did not take it into my mouth, and only pretended to swallow. Two would be enough for me. I had already gone far enough; I needed some hope of returning.

  I handed the cup back to Dionysus. Though his hands looked more like a man’s than a woman’s, he held the cup delicately in his fingertips, and he moved with the same sort of unhurried grace I had noticed in Damiana and the dancers.

  He handed the bowl now to the woman beside me, and following her, to another and another. It felt like I was staring down a curving hall of mirrors, an endless cycle of ceremony.

  I was falling deeper into the trance. Soon I was repeating aloud the words I had been hearing. Words chanted in an ancient tongue, strange and visceral-sounding.

  It was Basri’s turn at the well. He took it with less solemnity than pleasure, greedily gulping down his three. He would gladly have taken a fourth, it seemed, but the frozen face of Dionysus deterred him, and he dutifully handed the great cup back, the last of all to be sated.

  Dionysus gave the vessel to the girls, and they carried it off with the amphora. The masked god moved into the center of the circle and gave a sharp clap of his hands. The chant ended abruptly.

  Seconds later, music flowed into the room again, piped in over the speakers. It resembled the music playing earlier, with simple strings, pipes, and horns, only this was wilder, more percussive and primitive, with clashing cymbals and tambourines, and the thundering beat of drums.

  The women began drifting out from the circle and swaying their bodies to the sound. Soon they were swirling around Dionysus like fluttering moths around a fire. Their movements were strangely stylized, yet remarkably rhythmic and quick, with strong strides and flowing arms, their ghostly nightgowns streaming.

  Basri, Dan, and I stood mesmerized. The women were scented and beautiful, their supple torsos twirling past, eyes flashing lethal fire. Gradually we found ourselves drawn into their dance, wandering through the flow of bodies, touched and turned by caressing hands and swirling hair and fabric. Dionysus had mysteriously vanished; all that remained was this whirl of flesh, comely and swift, concealed by the thinnest of threads.

  I caught glimpses of Dan and Basri, their eyes alight with excitement, their mouths stretched wide and eager. They looked like drunken lions in a rushing herd of deer.

  Basri was the first to reach for a woman. She shrieked and fled away laughing. He turned to grab another, then another, and another, and soon the man was spinning in a whirl.

  Dan was chasing Thalia. She easily slipped away. Another women grabbed his face and kissed him. When Dan tried to hold her, she broke away and ran. He chased her through a cacophony of shrieks.

  My eyes roamed over the whirlwind of women, each looking eager and fiery and wild. The profusion of opportunity was astonishing. My heart pumped madly, my breathing escalated, and the hard-on in my jeans was nearly bursting. Never had I been so totally aroused; the excitement was nearly unbearable. I felt myself teetering on the edge of control, as if ready to embark on a rampage.

  I grabbed the wrist of a passing woman. She turned, flushed and excited. There was a dare in her eyes, a defiance. A look clearly taunting me to take her. I reached to embrace her, but she quickly wriggled free, and springing off, instantly vanished. She was lost in the cloud of women swiftly flowing past—singing, laughing, shouting.

  Euphrosyne suddenly appeared out of nowhere with that mischievous look in her eye. Her neck and shoulders looked sweet enough to bite. I moved toward her and she backed away. I lunged for her and she fled.

  As I chased her through the throng of women, she squealed with glee, glancing back, hair flying loosely behind her. All I could think of was her lifting her chiton, teasing me with glimpses of her cunt. I wanted to catch her, and kiss her, and spank her, and fuck her. I wanted to overpower her completely.

  Chasing after her, I ran smack into Dan. Sweaty, giddy, manic, he put a little scare in me: I thought it might be possible he’d actually lost his mind. He grabbed my face between his hands, peered into my eyes, and spoke with a burning intensity.

  “Take it, Jack. The plunge. The plunge into fucking matter!”

  He stared into my eyes and shook me, then threw me aside and went after a girl. She screamed as he tried to catch her.

  A thrill went through me. The plunge into matter. Total freedom of action in the physical world.

  Several dozen women were prancing around me, their bodies radiant and ready, offered up for pleasure on the altar of the earth. What is there to hold me back? What could possibly stop me? I saw with sudden clarity a view of total freedom. To live fully in the moment as an incarnated god. Able to do anything. To experience everything.

  Agla
ia glided into view. The Voluptuous One whose hands had nearly brought me to an end. Black curls, soft skin, exquisitely endowed. She moved among the bodies, prettily dancing past, her wary eyes watching like a fawn within the herd.

  I moved slowly toward her.

  She saw me coming immediately and tried to slip away. I sprang. She gasped and ran. Screams erupted from the women in my path as I went tearing after her.

  This one I would not let go. This one I would fuck.

  I tripped over Basri and crashed to the floor. He was naked on his hands and knees, clutching at the chiton of a woman trying to crawl away. Another woman, big as a blimp, was riding on his back. Her chiton hung off her shoulders, exposing massive breasts. A third woman slapped his bare ass red.

  More were going after him, piling on in a frenzy.

  I got up and looked for Aglaia. She was standing across the room, hiding behind some women still caught up in the dance. I went directly for her, calling out her name. It was drowned in the music and the voices of the women, hollering and laughing as they whirled around the room. Dan was on the floor, a woman naked under him, her arms around his head. It was Thalia—she was howling, with a half-crazed look on her face. Another woman appeared, threw up her chiton, and sat down on Dan’s naked bottom.

  Aglaia ran off behind the dancing women. I went after her again, obsessed with the hunt, intent on this particular woman. Not for any rational reason. There was no thinking at all. I was no longer even conscious of myself. All that remained was the impulse, the pursuit and indulgence of lust.

  Finally, I caught her in a corner of the room. She crouched like a wrestler, awaiting my attack. I launched myself like a leopard. She lunged to escape, but I grabbed hold of a wrist and pulled her toward me. The excitement in her eyes was electric. Her other hand swept through the air and struck me in the face, like the slap Dan had taken from Thalia. I grabbed hold of the hand and twisted it, forcing it up behind her back, pressing her against the wall.