For the first time, it dawned on Greg that “Untitled” was not a very good screenplay. It needed crafting if he were to continue getting satisfaction from the material. He would have to re-write it, at least in his head. He sharpened his mental pencil.
What did the girls look like? He made Kate a blonde with short hair, like an old girlfriend whose name he couldn’t remember. He made Annie dark with long hair. She was based on a fashion picture from Marie-Claire in the bathroom. He gave them blue eyes and dark eyes respectively. Their breasts posed questions. If he made Kate blonde she ought to have full breasts with large pale pink nipples. Oughtn’t she?
And Annie, as a brunette, should have small tits with small dark nipples. It seemed right. Didn’t it? He designed her narrow hips with pronounced jutting bones. He could hold on to them. The pubic hair posed a problem. The familiar dark bush, or something more interesting? What about long straight strands? He could comb and part the hair. It could be something of a game, if not a ritual. Then, while he was doing that she could be painting her toenails. It would make a nice complexity of angled limbs, her hands and his hands, all reaching forward. Greg was no more a painter than a writer. But his erotic impulses moved him in the direction of art.
Kate came out quite lush-looking. Five or seven pounds overweight. So pale was her skin he could see the tracery of veins in her heavy breasts. Her pubic hair would be curly blonde, glistening, so her slit was quite clearly visible. A great contrast with Annie. Now he had the basis of conflict within himself. He might have to choose between them one day.
Greg was less clear about their faces. He kept changing his mind with regard to their mouths. When they spoke it was with the same husky voice. He discovered, to his surprise, that the voice was more important than the flesh. He started to give the girls things to say. Dialogue came into the equation. He was no writer so they talked, not just with the same voice, but like him. His thoughts, their voice, one mouth. Greg was alone in the flat. His expression was a monologue. But that too became repetitious, unsatisfactory. He needed conversation, guidance, surprise. Greg couldn’t surprise himself. He became bored and went back to simple voyeurism.
He would watch Annie and Kate, dressing, undressing, alone, together, in bed, in the bath. It worked well for a time. He was back on track, keeping within his limitations. Then, without his wishing it, the boyfriends appeared.
Rick’s presence in the flat irritated Greg. The man was in the way. How could he play with Kate in the bathroom with Rick there? What should Rick do? Stay in the sitting room reading a magazine? Of course not. He’d come into the bathroom to see what was going on. He’d get angry at Greg screwing his girlfriend. Then in another scene Rick sat on the lavatory watching them together. That didn’t appeal to Greg one bit. It inhibited him. Rick wanted to join in. A threesome. Greg wasn’t up for that, having Rick fuck Kate from behind while he was getting a blow job. No. Rick had to go.
Greg decided to write him out. What were the options? Rick could be called away on business. Or he could meet with an accident. But who was Rick? While Greg had spent days working on the appearance of the girls, Rick and Alec were faceless guys without lives of their own, or jobs. Rick became a salesman. Greg hated salesmen.
So Rick was called away to another town. Fine. Now Greg got on with his plan to take Kate and Annie to bed together. Now there was a threesome he felt comfortable with. To begin with he had the girls kneel facing each other. They moved close to each other so their nipples touched. They liked that. Then they kissed. Greg enjoyed that. But when he put his hands between them neither Kate nor Annie responded to him. They rolled over and got on with loving each other.
When Annie spread Kate’s legs and put her tongue to Kate’s vulva Greg’s hard frustration turned to resentment. They were supposed to be there for him, not for each other. Greg was furious when Kate trembled to a climax. He pushed Annie aside and straddled Kate’s thighs. He slipped in and out of her and came quickly. But it wasn’t properly satisfying. He hadn’t made her come.
Greg identified a difficulty here. In fact, it had been present all along. His characters were starting to behave the way they wanted. They were no longer under his control. Greg didn’t realize that this was the beginning of what every author longs for, characters who develop a life of their own, outside the manipulation of their creator. In his ignorance he reined them back. He urged them to conform to his desire. Specifically Greg wanted Kate and Annie to come simultaneously under his hands.
Technically this proved impossible. He would need two penises to do the job properly. So he had to content himself with sucking Annie while penetrating Kate. While each girl appeared to climax within seconds of the other, Greg couldn’t get rid of the thought that one, or both, was faking it just to please him. That writer’s problem again. Manipulation might be formally satisfying at the time of writing, but there was a residue of doubt when you read the passage back the next day. It seemed forced. The frustration remained.
If the purpose of writing was to shape random events and disparate characters into a pattern, Greg was perplexed that describing sex, creating erotic scenes for his own pleasure, left him dissatisfied. Why wasn’t there a proper climax in the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, as there was in the act of fucking? Why wasn’t writing, where you were free to invent anything you wanted, why wasn’t it orgasmic? It was exciting, yes, gave you a hard on, but it didn’t make you come.
So what was it for? The untitled screenplay, however he rewrote it, in his head or in notes, had become an indictment of his solitary life. Its intention remained vague. Being alone had metamorphosed into loneliness. The trouble was, he couldn’t think of a title for the damned screenplay. If only he could do that he’d be halfway to where he was going.
It was evening when Greg got back from washing cars. He switched on the light by the door and immediately sensed he was not alone in the flat. There was a faint smell, food or coffee, he wasn’t sure. He ought to have been afraid, but he wasn’t. He needed another human being. Curiosity and hope drew him to the kitchen.
Alec was there, naked, stirring himself a cup of instant coffee. Before he turned to Greg he said: “Is that you, Annie?”
“No, it fucking isn’t,” Greg replied.
“Come here.”
What did he mean, come here? How could Alec mistake Greg for a girl? Was he crazy?
“Come and hold this.” Alec lifted his cock in one hand. He really thought Greg was Annie. Enough.
A cheese-smeared bread knife on the green plastic-topped table invited Greg to pick it up. He advanced on Alec, gripping the knife. Alec’s penis rose to meet it. Action. And later, the plunge, the nightmare.
Greg was still asleep when the phone rang. He jumped. Was he still dreaming? No, the phone was ringing beside the bed. Someone must have re-connected it. Nervously, he lifted the receiver. A woman’s voice.
“Is Annie there?”
“Who?”
“That is 352 0251, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” Greg looked down at the phone. There was no identifying number on it. Panic set in. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” The woman’s husky tone became impatient.
Greg didn’t answer. Should he hang up?
“Look, Where’s Annie?” Demanding now.
Annie? Should he tell the voice that Annie was in Greg’s head? And in the pages of a screenplay.
“This is Kate. Whoever you are, I want to talk to Annie.”
Kate! No. Impossible. Greg panicked and hung up. His hands were trembling.
Almost immediately the phone rang again. He left it. It rang a hundred times, it seemed. When it finally stopped Greg took the receiver off. But it was no solution. Greg felt unsafe. He put a pillow over the receiver to muffle the high-pitched buzz. But he couldn’t suppress his mind. That dialogue. It had come by phone this time. Last time Alec had spoken in the kitchen. But Alec wasn’t real!
Annie and Kate were his characters
. They were real to him. Greg forgot they had been drawn from an untitled screenplay. He concluded that he must now be hallucinating. He hadn’t heard or talked to anyone for days, weeks. Apart, of course, from himself. The phone had unnerved him. He left the pillow on it.
Greg had been in the bath for an hour. The water was tepid. He turned the hot tap on. Behind the splashing sound Greg heard another noise. A door closing. He turned off the flow and listened. Footsteps. He sat up. The water slipped over the side of the tub.
He stared at the woman in the doorway. It was Annie. His Annie. She was dressed in a raincoat, but her face . . . Annie.
Greg must have said the name out loud because she said, “Yes.” Then: “Who are you?” She had the husky voice.
“Greg.”
“Well, Greg, what the fuck are you doing in my bathroom?” The mouth was perfect, an exact version of the mouth he had given her.
“I’m . . . staying here.”
“No, you’re not. Get out.”
She waited. Greg couldn’t tell whether she was angry or just insistent. Did she mean get out of the bath, or get out of the flat?
“Come on.”
Annie reached down for the fallen bathrobe. She held it up. Greg was now more embarrassed than fearful. He eased himself up. Annie watched him. There was no point trying to cover himself. He climbed out of the bath. He slipped. Annie caught his arm. He felt stupid.
“When you’re dressed you can tell me what you’re doing here.”
Greg pulled the robe round him. Annie left the bathroom. Greg started to dry himself. Keep calm, he told himself. There’s nothing to be afraid of. He had imagined a woman and now she had come to life. Now he had a different role, always provided that he stayed on in the flat. Would there be room for him? Or would he go the way of Rick and Alec?
Annie came out of the bathroom and got into bed beside Kate. They yawned simultaneously and laughed together. Greg loved the way their breasts wobbled when they laughed. It was strange that he hadn’t seen or heard Kate come back to the flat. She was just there. Ah well, he would sleep on the sofa. He had nowhere else to go.
“He’s asleep.”
“What are we going to do with him?”
“We’ll have to give him a name.”
“Who’s going to talk to him?”
Kate took a coin and spun it.
“Tails,” called Annie.
It was heads.
“That’s appropriate,” said Kate.
She went into the dark sitting room. Greg was asleep on the sofa wearing Annie’s bathrobe. He snored faintly. Kate knelt down. She parted the robe without untying it. She smiled. Greg was semi-erect. The tip glistened.
“Halfway house,” Kate whispered. “Unformed, but you’ve got the makings of an interesting character.” She licked him with the tongue of a cat.
Greg awoke.
BEAUTY’S RELEASE
Anne Rice
1 Through the City and into the Palace
BEAUTY OPENED HER eyes. She had not been sleeping, and she knew without having to see through a window that it was morning. The air in the cabin was unusually warm.
An hour ago she had heard Tristan and Laurent whispering in the dark, and she had known the ship was at anchor. And she had been only slightly afraid.
After that, she had slipped in and out of thin erotic dreams, her body wakening all over like a landscape under the rising sun. She was impatient to be ashore, impatient to know the full extent of what was to happen to her, to be threatened in ways that she could understand.
Now, when she saw the lean, comely little attendants flooding into the room, she knew for certain that they had come to the Sultanate. All would be realized soon enough.
The precious little boys – they could be no more than fourteen or fifteen, despite their height – had always been richly dressed, but this morning they wore embroidered silk robes, and their tight waist sashes were made of rich striped cloth, and their black hair gleamed with oil, and their innocent faces were dark with an unusual air of anxiety.
At once, the other royal captives were roused, and each slave was taken from the cage and led to the proper grooming table.
Beauty stretched herself out on the silk, enjoying her sudden freedom from confinement, the muscles in her legs tingling. She glanced at Tristan and then at Laurent. Tristan was suffering too much still. Laurent, as always, looked faintly amused. But there was not even time now to say farewell. She prayed they would not be separated, that whatever happened they would come to know it together, and that somehow their new captivity would yield moments when they might be able to talk.
At once the attendants rubbed the gold pigmented oil into Beauty’s skin, strong fingers working it well into her thighs and buttocks. Her long hair was lifted and brushed with gold dust, and then she was turned on her back gently.
Skilled fingers opened her mouth. Her teeth were polished with a soft cloth. Waxen gold was applied to her lips. And then gold paint was brushed onto her eyelashes and eyebrows.
Not since the first day of the journey had she or any of the slaves been so thoroughly decorated. And her body steamed with familiar sensations.
She thought hazily of her divinely crude Captain of the Guard, of the elegant but distantly remembered tormentors of the Queen’s Court, and she felt desperate to belong to someone again, to be punished for someone, to be possessed as well as chastised.
It was worth any humiliation, that, to be possessed by another. In retrospect, it seemed she had only been a flower in a full bloom when she was thoroughly violated by the will of another, that in suffering for the will of another she had discovered her true self.
But she had a new and slowly deepening dream, one that had begun to flame in her mind during the time at sea, and that she had confided only to Laurent: the dream that she might somehow find in this strange land what she had not found before; someone whom she might truly love.
In the village, she told Tristan that she did not want this, that it was harshness and severity alone she craved. But the truth was that Tristan’s love for his Master had deeply affected her. His words had swayed her, even as she had spoken her contradictions.
And then had come these lonely nights at sea of unfulfilled yearning, of pondering too much all the twists of fate and fortune. And she had felt strangely fragile thinking of love, of giving her secret soul to a Master or Mistress, more than ever off balance.
The groom combed gold paint into her pubic hair, tugging each curl to make it spring. Beauty could hardly keep her hips still. Then she saw a handful of fine pearls held out for her inspection. And into her pubic hair these went, to be affixed to the skin with powerful adhesive. Such lovely decorations. She smiled.
She closed her eyes for a second, her sex aching in its emptiness. Then she glanced at Laurent to see that his face had taken on an Oriental cast with the gold paint, his nipples beautifully erect like his thick cock. And his body was being ornamented, as befitted its size and power, with rather large emeralds instead of pearls.
Laurent was smiling at the little boy who did the work, as if in his mind he was peeling away the boy’s fancy clothes. But then he turned to Beauty, and, lifting his hand languidly to his lips, he blew her a little kiss, unnoticed by the others.
He winked and Beauty felt the desire in her burning hotter. He was so beautiful, Laurent.
“O, please don’t let us be separated,” she prayed. Not because she ever thought she would possess Laurent – that would be too interesting – but because she would be lost without the others, lost . . .
And then it hit her with full force: she had no idea what would happen to her in the Sultanate, and absolutely no control over it. Going into the village, she had known. She had been told. Even coming into the castle, she had known. The Crown Prince had prepared her. But this was beyond her imagining, this place. And beneath her concealing gold paint she grew pale.
The grooms were gesturing for their charges to rise. There wer
e the usual exaggerated and urgent signs for them to be silent, still, obedient, as they stood in a circle facing each other.
And Beauty felt her hands lifted and clasped behind her back as if she were a senseless little being who could not even do that much herself. Her groom touched the back of her neck and then kissed her cheek softly as she compliantly bowed her head.
Still, she could see the others clearly. Tristan’s genitals had also been decorated with pearls, and he gleamed from head to toe, his blond locks even more golden than his burnished skin.
And, glancing at Dmitri and Rosalynd, she saw that they had both been decorated with red rubies. Their black hair was in magnificent contrast to their polished skin. Rosalynd’s enormous blue eyes looked drowsy under their fringe of painted lashes. Dmitri’s broad chest was tightened like that of a statue, though his strongly muscled thighs quivered uncontrollably.
Beauty suddenly winced as her groom added a bit more gold paint to each of her nipples. She couldn’t take her eyes off his small brown fingers, enthralled by the care with which he worked, and the way that her nipples hardened unbearably. She could feel each of the pearls clinging to her skin. Every hour of starvation at sea sharpened her silent craving.
But the captives had another little treat in store for them. She watched furtively, her head still bowed, as the grooms drew out of their deep, hidden pockets new and frightening little toys – pairs of gold clamps with long chains of delicate but sturdy links attached to them.
The clamps Beauty knew and dreaded, of course. But the chains – they really agitated her. They were like leashes and they had small leather handles.
Her groom touched her lips for quiet and then quickly stroked her right nipple, gathering a nice pinch of breast into the small gold scallop-shell clamp before he snapped it shut. The clamp was lined with a bit of white fur, yet the pressure was firm. And all of Beauty’s skin seemed to feel the sudden nagging torment. When the other clamp was just as tightly in place, the groom gathered the handles of the long chains in his hands and gave them a tug. This was what Beauty had feared most. She was brought forward sharply, gasping.
The Mammoth Book of International Erotica Page 11