SexMagick
Page 8
For the first time Tim McKeon truly wanted to die. If the deep slashmarks of his pain pleased her then he desperately wanted more pain. He wanted to fling himself into those consuming eyes and drown. He had given her his music, he had given her his soul and it was not enough.
And then it seemed that she was gone, or translated into the drug dream that followed. McKeon never was certain if the rest actually happened or was created from his own mind and the pipe. But her presence had more substance than the girls in the clubs, her breath like the aroma of poppies filled the room.
Touch surprised him, and yet she was with him, here, draped across the heaped pillows like Coleridge's odelisque. But when he lay a hand against her knee he found her flesh as cold as a November rain. As he lay simply looking into her face and wondering if he could get another key of whatever this was Andrew had sold him, she drew herself upright and leaned over him. She held a small knife in her hand, a pocket knife he didn't recognize. She touched the blunt edge to his cheek and traced the line of his jaw to his ear. Then he felt the point teasing across his skin, down his throat. Not quite cutting. Not yet.
Then she reversed the knife again and caught the blade under his tee shirt. He felt the smooth safe edge glide down over his heart and across his belly as she cut the shirt to ribbons. She moved from his sight. He felt his boots removed, quickly, efficiently, and then the cool path of the knife as she slit his jeans up the leg, tickling his hip and slashing the waist. By the time she shredded the other leg and his clothes, now ribbons, fell between the cushions, he craved release.
The rhythms of his own music pounded in his ears, his blood. Always the blood. She sat on her heels and then moved over him, mounting him without revealing herself. He closed his eyes for a moment to revel in the glory of sensation, feeding on it. But it was not enough. He needed something...more.
He returned his vision to her face. In her face he could see the mirror of his own, desire building in urgency but lacking. Needing. She arched her back and her hands fluttered to her hair. To the white rose tangled in the dark locks. She pulled it down and Tim saw the thorn-decked stem. She lifted just the fraction of an inch and slipped the stem between their joined sweaty thighs.
A sliver of pain pierced the frustration. Mary's lips curved into an incandescent smile. He could taste Paradise; he had never been so high, so torn, so utterly sated and so deeply in need.
The razor was in his hand. Her cold fingers closed over his and she breathed in sharply. He used the razor again, her shining hands on his guiding the blade across both their bodies, pain and ecstasy burning together until the conflagration was all that was left.
But when he woke up amid the silken cushions on the floor he was sad and elated together. There was no soreness, though it seemed like a very old scar was traced across his body that he did not remember.
* * * *
The sun was setting over London in a glorious array of amber and pink haze. The stones of the London Dungeon were alternately gold and red as the sun stained them with oncoming night. Tim McKeon left his house and started to walk down the street, looking at everything around him as if he had never seen it before. He wondered at the antique shops and colorful but expensive dealers had clustered around the Dungeon waiting for tourists in Mary's London. Some of the shops looked like they might have been there that long.
Maybe it was just a play of light on the display window that attracted him, or the sense of time caught in the sundown in the little antique book shop near the corner. He turned in on impulse. The dark leather bindings with their ribs showing and gilt letters made him think of Mary, of her books. Though he had never been interested before, he went to the S's and began to browse the shelves.
The book nearly jumped into his hands of its own accord, a first edition of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus in the original binding. The leather caressed his hands like her pale flesh. He opened the book reverently. It was his, just as his music was hers, mutual muses through the pipe. No matter if she was merely a creation of his own desperation. She was and always would be his Dark Lady, the inspiration so perfect and glorious and pure that she could not possibly exist outside his own creation.
He looked at the yellowed page, and froze in shock. There, written in ink that had once been black but had faded to deep violet over the nearly two centuries intervening, was an inscription.
To the man in the pipe dream, though I cannot believe he really exists, I must express my gratitude and debt for the writing of this book. And for the echoes of the music of Hell that still sound in my sleep and the memory of a night with a demon lover who has never lived apart from imagination.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 1818
Contributor's Notes
Velma J. Bowen makes time to write while juggling a full-time job, a spouse, multiple relationships, music, and heavy involvement in both the sf and leather communities. At some point, she'd like to explore the concept of sleep.
Reina Delacroix is the pen name of a shy, quiet librarian, living in Northern Virginia with her cats, George and Shen T'ien, and her precious pet, Michael. This story ignited while flipping channels back and forth between the musical "Camelot" on PBS and MTV's "Headbanger's Ball"...
Linda Hooper grew up in Central California and moved to Santa Cruz to meet lesbians as soon as she could. She writes stories and essays, and produces lesbian and gay cultural events. She says of her story, "the devil is the maleness that even lesbians must connect to if they are to be goddess.... In the Tarot, his presence in a spread means there is something to be learned about mysteries."
S.G. Johnson lives near Baltimore with her family, and a black cat named Pirate. She is a freelance technical writer by day and a fiction writer by night. She has a degree in history with a minor in anthropology. She has sold various pieces of short fiction, including a piece in the forthcoming Circlet anthology TechnoSex, is at work on her second novel, and has published a collection of her erotic horror, Disturbing Dreams, with Paladin Science Fiction Group.
S.N. Lewitt is the author of six hard science fiction books published by Ace, the most recent of which is Songs of Chaos. A new hardcover will appear from Tor in late 1994. A native Manhattan-ite, Lewitt now lives in Washington D.C. with a spouse, a cockatiel, and lots of air conditioning.
Cecilia Tan, editor and author, is the founder and publisher of Circlet Press. "Summoning" was one of her earliest erotic science fiction stories. Her erotic sf work has recently appeared in Ms. Magazine, Dark Angels: Lesbian Vampire Stories (Cleis, 1995), and No Other Tribute (Masquerade, 1995), among other places. She has also edited an anthology of erotic science fiction stories for Masquerade Books entitled S/M Visions.
Robert Rausch, cover photographer, started shooting his sister when she was sixteen years old. After he finished pre-med, he went to study photography in Paris. He worked as a photographer in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Africa, and Atlanta. In 1991, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Art Center College of Design. He works in Los Angeles now as an art director.
More books you might enjoy from Circlet Press
Like Hearts Enchanted: Erotic Tales of Love and Magic, ed. Kathleen Tudor
ISBN: 978-1-61390-055-0
Anyone who has ever been in love knows that there is something magical about it, but what happens when real magic gets involved in matters of the heart? When magic and love mingle, look out for sexy explosions, love potions, and heightened emotions. These five erotic tales of love and magic will enchant and excite you, and sweep you off to a place where anything is possible.
Like a Sacred Desire: Tales of Sex Magick, ed. Jennifer Williams
ISBN: 978-1-885865-82-3
This erotic fantasy anthology from Circlet Press explores sex magick and the sacred aspect of sex in seven all-new stories where sex is a sacrament, a gateway to spiritual healing and higher consciousness. Authors including Raven Kaldera, D.L. King, Angela Caperton, and more invite readers on a journey both sensual and sp
iritual, where nothing is quite what it seems.
Like a Myth: Erotic Folklore and Fantasy, ed. Cecilia Tan
Four erotic tales featuring folkloric settings of India, Japan, Korea, and a fantastic orient that never was. This Circlet eBook anthology features supernatural elements and steamy chance meetings set against a rich backdrop of faraway places. Like all Circlet books, LIKE A MYTH is both sex-positive and explicit, celebrating the erotic imagination and "erotic fantasy" in all senses of the term.
Like a God's Kiss: Erotic Mythological Tales, ed. Cecilia Tan and Jennifer Levine
ISBN: 978-1-885865-81-6
Like a God’s Kiss combines the epic and the erotic, the mythological and the real, to culminate in seven engaging and steamy stories. With protagonists ranging from heroic Hercules to arrogant Arachne and plots ranging from the well-known to the never-before-seen, readers will discover all new aspects about their favorite mythological characters, and will be introduced to a few new ones as well.