The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 6

by Jakubowski Maxim

  “When did you see him last?” the operator’s voice droned, female but sexless, monotonous.

  Marnie swallowed hard. “Last night. We were . . . we were in bed together.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Oh . . . I don’t know . . . maybe about midnight?”

  “Sorry, ma’am, but we can’t do anything for you until 24 hours have passed.”

  Marnie felt like crying. She felt the need to keep the operator on the line, for someone to listen to her, believe her. “But it’s just not like him,” she pleaded, voice cracking. “I know something’s wrong. I just know it. Haven’t you ever heard of female intuition?”

  The sexless voice softened very slightly. “Ma’am, you seem pretty shaken up. Why don’t you go see your doctor, get him to give you something. Call again tomorrow if your boyfriend still hasn’t come home.”

  There was nothing more they’d do for her, Marnie knew. Sniffling, she hung up the phone. She didn’t need a doctor, she needed Kurt.

  Then the bile rose in her throat; leaning to the side, she deposited a pile of steamy, half-digested shellfish onto the kitchen floor. Ugh, maybe she should get checked out, at least for this nausea and the pains in her stomach, she thought.

  After trying in vain to call her naturopath, she decided to swallow her normal distaste for conventional medicine and go to the public health clinic, which was just a few blocks from her apartment.

  Mamie’s wait at the clinic wasn’t long. A middle-aged nurse with short hair and a pronounced limp took her blood pressure, height, and weight. She asked Mamie for her symptoms, then got a urine sample and left the room.

  Mamie lay down on the examination table. The nurse returned then, positioning Mamie’s legs wide apart, feet balanced in stirrups. Her hands on Mamie’s belly were gentle, but Mamie still felt somewhat violated, yearning for her naturopath.

  “No need to worry,” the nurse finally said. “I can tell you’ve been under a lot of stress, but your baby’s fine.”

  Mamie thought she hadn’t heard correctly. “My what?”

  The nurse looked surprised. “Your baby, ma’am. What are you, about five months along?”

  “But . . . but I had my period last week!”

  The nurse gave Mamie a funny look, and then she shrugged. “Sometimes the body behaves strangely. No doubt about it, though – I just checked your urine test results – you are pregnant.”

  Marnie felt her belly. It really did look swollen, a lot more so than it had yesterday. She was flabbergasted. She swore to herself that she had her period right on time the last five months. And that her belly had been its usual flat self even yesterday, when she’d put on her tight polyester dress for Kurt – even though the dress did seem much tighter today, she realized with a stab of horror.

  And now . . . there was a five-month-old foetus growing in there, which hadn’t been there yesterday.

  After getting her exam finished as quickly as possible, Mamie stumbled out of the health clinic and into the parking lot. She got in her car and sat there, stunned, returning her head to its position on the steering wheel. Mechanically, she clenched her vaginal muscles in a Kegel, and she felt a weird, eerily familiar sucking sensation, and then a rolling in her belly; she burped and tasted wine and mushrooms. Then, she felt the distinct sensation of something in her belly moving – it felt like a tiny extra appendage was kicking her. The baby was moving!

  “Kurt!” she wailed, leaning back into the car seat. “Where are you when I need you?”

  Kick. She placed her hand on her belly . . . then felt a horrible fear begin to dawn on her.

  “Kurt?”

  Kick.

  “Kurt!”

  Kick.

  Eve’s Freedom

  Mike Kimera

  “Wanker. Jerk-off. Tosser.”

  With each word, Zach points aggressively at one of the people in the circle around him. Even I, who have seen this performance many times before, would flinch if that finger were pointed at me.

  “These are all terms of abuse. Terms for abusers.”

  Zach’s rich, deep voice loads the word “abusers” with such a burden of shame and guilt that some of those in the circle will not meet his eyes. One of the older women, the kind of woman I know Zach prefers, blushes until her pale skin almost matches her auburn hair.

  “And yet, we all do it. Every one of us masturbates.”

  Zach’s hands are open now; his arms are outstretched as he turns slowly to include the whole circle in that “we”. And surely if he, Zach, a man so beautiful, a man with such an electric sexual presence, a man that we all secretly want to be touched by, masturbates, then it must be OK. Mustn’t it?

  “So why is something that we all do . . .” he paces the circle, trailing the question with him.

  “That we all enjoy . . .” People are starting to smile.

  He pauses, as I knew he would, in front of the auburn-haired-blusher; squats with graceful ease, looks into her face and says. “Something that some of us enjoy a great deal . . .”

  She blushes again, but she is smiling now and making eye contact with Zach and we can see she would like a great deal more contact than that.

  There is a moment of tension when we all wonder if he will touch her, when we all want him to touch her, when it seems that touching her is the only natural thing to do. And then, with a smile that is almost a caress, Zach stands and resumes pacing.

  Zach’s motion, his interaction, his potential have charged the air with sex. It is into this atmosphere he launches his next question:

  “So why does this activity, this little bit of finger fun, get so much abuse?”

  Some people smile at the word play, but no one laughs. Zach’s body language makes it clear that this is not a time for laughter.

  “I will give you the answer in one word: FEAR.”

  Zach cuts across the circle in diagonals, keeping the momentum, underlining his point, reeling us in for the argument that will make us special.

  “History teaches us that society uses terms of abuse to suppress that which it fears. And what it fears most are those truths that set us free.”

  Zach points at himself. “I am a wanker.”

  He points at a young man. “You are a wanker.” The young man winces, as if Zach had jabbed him with a stick.

  “And you are a wanker.” Zach points quickly at a woman on the other side of the group.

  “And you are a wanker.” This time Zach twists around as he makes the statement, and points at the first person he sees.

  Zach smiles and spreads his arms. “We are all wankers. And we should be proud and yes, even grateful, that we are wankers. Wanking will set us free. And that freedom, that willingness to take our pleasure into our own hands, that refusal to be ground down by guilt and shame and the expectations of others . . . That freedom is what makes us frightening.”

  The group stumbles over the turbulence created by this idea. A gaunt grey-haired man, the oldest in the circle, lets out an involuntary snort of surprise which he stifles when he feels Zach’s gaze upon him.

  “I can see that not all of you believe me,” Zach says, walking slowly towards the man. “But in your heart . . .” His voice drops and he seems to be speaking only to the man in front of him. “In your heart, I know that you want to believe me.”

  The room is completely silent. The mood of the group balances on a knife-edge between ridicule and acceptance. How the man reacts to Zach will colour everything that follows.

  “It is your desire to believe, your need to be free, your dissatisfaction with a life filled with half-truths, that has brought you here.” As Zach says this he touches the man on the wrist. It is not a sexual act but it is an emotional one: a blessing, a gesture of acceptance, maybe even of forgiveness.

  The old man nods his head, the knife blade twists, and we all tumble towards belief.

  Zach moves back to the centre of the circle, ready to catch us as we fall. Everyone is looking at h
im. He looks at me. I wait until the first heads start to turn, then I walk towards him.

  I look only at Zach, but I can feel the eyes of the group upon me, appraising me. I am not beautiful, like Zach. I am an ordinary looking white woman in my mid-thirties, with a plain face that is not ugly but is not memorable, and an average body that has started to thicken at the waist and thighs. My one glory is my hair, which is long and raven-black and falls freely to my arse.

  And yet, ordinary as I am, I am at the centre of Zach’s attention. They all want to know why.

  When I am directly in front of Zach, he kisses me gently on the forehead, places his hands on my shoulders and turns me so that my back is to him. He means the kiss to be affectionate but not sexual. He has kissed me this way many times before. It is the only way he has ever kissed me.

  But intent does not determine outcome. I do not experience Zach’s kisses as a slightly more intimate form of shaking hands. When his lips touch me, my whole body responds: my nipples harden, my loins twitch, my mouth smiles, my fingers flex. I want to push my nipples into his mouth. I want to wrap my legs around his hips and grind myself against him. I want the hard heat of him to split me and fill me. I want to be skewered by the urgency of his desire. Each time he kisses me, these needs surge to the surface of my mind like a blush. I could not do what I am about to do, were it not for his kiss.

  “A great man once said, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ ” Zach says, “I say to you, ‘First learn to love yourself.’ ”

  I am wearing a simple cotton dress with a floral print. My face has no makeup. My hair is loose. My feet are naked. Underneath the dress, I am wearing simple white cotton panties. My breasts are small and still firm. I have no need of a bra. I am being presented as the springtime self of everywoman.

  “That love of yourself, once found, can be shared and multiplied. That love of self is the love that makes us strong enough to love others. It is the absence of that love that keeps us weak and afraid and alone.”

  The dress is held up by two thin straps that tie off in bows at my shoulders. Zach’s hands rest upon my shoulders, next to each bow. I savour the heat of his flesh on mine and resist the temptation to push back into him.

  “Over the course of this weekend we will all masturbate. We will learn to love ourselves. We will set ourselves free so that we can love others.”

  I let my gaze roam over the group in front of me, not looking at anyone, but sensitising myself to their mood. Zach’s words still have most of their attention, but their curiosity sniffs at me, like a dog scenting something wild and enticing from the safety of his porch.

  “We will masturbate alone and in groups, in public and in the deepest privacy.”

  Zach takes his hands off my shoulders, my signal to begin. I am his word made flesh; the sizzle on his steak, the bait on his hook.

  I close my eyes, cross my arms over my breasts, place each hand on the opposite shoulder and gently push down the shoulder straps of my dress. I slide my hands down my arms, letting the dress fall to the floor, leaving my breasts visible above my folded arms. I imagine a butterfly, delicate and beautiful, released from its chrysalis, spreading its wings in the warmth of the morning sun. For the next few minutes I will be that delicate beauty.

  “Each time you masturbate . . .”

  I focus on the soft seductive sound of Zach’s voice, so close to me, so concentrated on me, and let one hand travel up to my breast, the other down along my belly.

  “. . . I want you to do what Eve here is doing. To surface your desire. To accept it. To let it inform your understanding of who you are and what you want.”

  I cup my breast, pushing up gently from below, avoiding the nipple, concentrating on the round warm weight of the flesh. I know what I want. I want Zach’s arms around me. I want my hands to be his hands. I want to be his.

  “When Eve first came to us, she was shy and confused and unhappy. Desire fought with guilt and was sabotaged by low-self esteem . . .”

  I let myself remember the first time that I saw Zach. I was in the psych ward, being evaluated after my failed attempt at suicide. I took one quick look at Zach when he entered my room and then looked away, hiding my face behind my hair. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.

  I was ashamed to be near him.

  He had my file in his hand. He’d know what a failure I was. The men I’d wanted and couldn’t respond to (frigid bitch). The men I hadn’t wanted, who’d taken me anyway (cock-teasing cunt). The self-hate that I soaked in everyday until all I wanted was for everything to stop. He would know all that. I could not bear to look into the eyes of this beautiful man who knew these things about me.

  Zach had squatted in front of me, pushed my hair back from my face, and let his hand rest against my cheek until I raised my gaze and looked at him.

  “Eve,” he’d said, “Let me teach you how beautiful you are.”

  I fell in love with him then. I’m in love with him still.

  “Now,” Zach says, his voice coming from beside me, “Eve has learnt to love herself. She has learnt to be free.”

  I am free. Free to serve Zach in any way I can. Free to be part of the life of this beautiful man. Free to love him even though he will never love me.

  “Come closer,” Zach says to the circle around us. “See what freedom looks like.”

  As Zach has taught me, I block off everything that is not to do with my deepest desire.

  In my mind I am alone with Zach. We are in a circle of light in front of a mirror. My breast is cupped in one of his large hands. The tips of the fingers of his other hand push down beneath my panties and draw small circles of pleasure on my smooth mound. My hands are behind me, holding the tight hardness of his buttocks, pressing him forward until the heat of his erection is in the small of my back.

  We are looking into each other’s eyes in the mirror. His mouth is on my neck, sucking, biting, setting the beat of his need for me. He closes his hand around my breast, rubbing his thumb back and forth across the nipple. I rise onto tiptoe and press my back into his chest. He slides one finger into me, slipping it in easily and insistently, levering me up into him, pressing the ball of his palm into my mound and then letting his long, slick finger curl up against those tiny ridges that bring me so much pleasure.

  I can see the delight in his eyes. He can see the heat in mine. Then I close my eyes. He understands the signal that I’ve given him and bites hard on my neck. Joy, happiness, love flow through me until I am so filled that I glow.

  I open my eyes and see the people gathered in front of me, the people who have just watched me bring myself slowly and silently, but joyfully, to climax. For a moment, I wonder where the mirror went. Then Zach is wrapping a kimono around me and I am, for a few seconds, in the only place I ever want to be, inside the strong circle of his arms.

  From within this strength, I look at the crowd again. In most I see arousal, but in some faces I see more than that. I see hope. And relief at the presence of hope.

  Zach whispers, “Thank you, Eve,” in my ear. I am filled with pride.

  “So, my fellow masturbators,” Zach says, in a louder, more commanding voice, “are you ready to find out who you really are? Are you ready to set yourselves free?”

  The people look as if they are waking from a dream. I gave them that dream. Now Zach can lead them to where they want to go.

  The kimono Zach gave me has his smell on it. As he leads the group out of the lecture hall and towards their private booths, I wrap the silk more tightly around me, wanting to stay connected to him for as long as I can.

  The Waters of Al Adra

  Thomas S. Roche

  The man was thirsty. Terribly thirsty.

  It was all he knew and all he had ever known; everything of the world that presented itself to him was, now, an aspect of that terrible thirst. The sun high above him, the desert wind blowing, even the mere sight of the sand swirling in dancing devils around the feet of the many camels: Every
thing that leached the moisture from his flesh.

  He didn’t know his name or where he came from or who these people were around him. He couldn’t even have told you the name of the beasts on which they all rode. He couldn’t have told you what country he was in, on what continent it resided, or how he had come to be on an endless desert plain with his blood like acid in his veins. But then again, no one was asking.

  The man slumped in the harness, suddenly aware that the camel was swaying back and forth, that they were moving – rather quickly, it seemed to him. His limbs felt heavy; it took him some time to understand that he could move, as if the knowledge of motion had bled from him with the water. He reached out awkwardly, his arm tangled in tattered brown robes, and touched the man in front of him, the man driving the camel.

  The camel driver turned and looked, his face swathed in a brown veil.

  Trying to speak was impossible. His lips were parched, his tongue swollen. He gestured toward his mouth, making a strangling sound deep in his throat.

  The camel driver called something out ahead of him; the caravan ground to a halt. The lead driver, a man with very dark skin and a big bushy moustache, came riding back and the two drivers began arguing in a strange language.

  Arabic, thought the man. The language was called Arabic. He felt sure he should have understood it, should have known what they were saying. A flash of memory came to him: Weeks, months spent in language class, wearing a stiff uniform. The wool had felt prickly on his flesh, as the robes did now. He had learned this language from another man in a different uniform. He was sure the uniform had been different than his own. He was sure the man teaching him had not carried a gun, but at some point, the man remembered, he himself had fired one.

  The lead driver finally shrugged, gestured toward the man, and spat on the ground.

  The driver bent down, produced a skin bag and uncapped the nozzle. The man became aware of hands on his face, pulling away the rough cotton. He became aware of a nozzle against his lips, and in an instant he remembered another image from another life: suckling at another skin bag, this one female and giving him sustenance. He let out a desperate moan and felt his hands coming out of his tangled robes, grasping the skin bag, yanking it out of the driver’s hands. The driver struggled with him, tried to take it back. The man pushed him, and the driver lost his balance and went falling out of the saddle, uttering what sounded like curses.