by Clive Barker
“Come back here,” he said as he pursued her through the little apartment to the front door, his wet feet slapping on the bare boards. “Give me a chance—”
She fumbled with the lock. But it refused to open; or else her hands refused to turn the key. She cursed them for betraying her. Had they been so blissful, touching him, was that it? So happy about him, they wouldn’t now conspire with her to escape him?
He was close to her. Close enough to grab her if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He kept a respectful distance, until at last she gave up attempting the lock, and turned back to face him.
“What are you?” she demanded.
“What does it matter?” he said. Then more gently: “If you want to go, then this is the time to do it.”
He glanced past her, at the door. She heard the key turn in the lock. Heard the door swing open, and press against her back.
“Go on,” he said. “I won’t hold you. But Marianne, listen to me. If you choose to stay…you stay forever.”
A chill draught came in from the corridor, and his body turned to gooseflesh. His nipples hardened; his belly grew taut as he shuddered. Sometimes, when she’d had her head against his stomach, she thought she’d seen waves of iridescence there in his skin, passing down towards his groin, the rhythms quickening as she aroused him. She’d dismissed this as an illusion. Now she knew otherwise.
“Make up your mind,” he said, “I’m getting cold.”
“Don’t bully me,” she replied. She was reassured by the open door. She could leave if she wanted to, in a heartbeat. Slip away into the corridor; down the stairs, into the street and away. “First,” she said, “I want to know what I’ve been sleeping with all this time.”
“Me,” he said, with a little smile.
“But you didn’t show me everything.”
“That comes later,” Vigo replied. “But we’ll get there. If I could get there with anybody, it’d be you.”
He spread his arms, as if presenting his nakedness to her. The exquisite ease of him; the deftness of his features, the silk of his belly-hair, the elegance of his feet. His skin was so responsive to her touch she could write on it with her nail. Indeed he’d encouraged her to do so. Invited her more than once to decorate him with her graffiti. There were traces still on his shoulders of where she’d clutched him during their last coupling. If she looked closely she’d thought she’d find a thumb-print there, a palm-print; evidence of her complicity.
How could she ever claim she’d not known his otherness, when he’d lifted her to such ecstasies? She’d known. She’d known.
“Well?” he said.
“I’m afraid.”
“Of what? Not of me. Come on, Marianne. This is me. This is Vigo. I’m your dancer, remember?”
He began to move as he spoke. It was as though he heard some music she could not hear. And as always when he danced he began to get hard. She never tired of watching him. The miraculous fluidity of his hips, the subtle play of sinews across his chest and shoulders as he raised his arms, hands catching at the air. Sometimes the music he heard became frenzied, and his feet followed suit. He would stamp and gyrate, his erection slapping against his thighs, back and forth. Sometimes the silent rhythm slowed, and he would become dreamy, swaying like seaweed in the pull of some melodious tide.
That was how it was now. He was inviting her back to bed, where those liquid hips would press their freight into her, and the dance would continue, hour upon hour, sometimes so slow they were barely moving, sometimes convulsive, bruising, insane.
Watching him, she remembered how his touch felt, and wanted it again. Wanted him to cup her breasts in his hands and bathe them with his tongue. Wanted him to soothe her thighs with his palms, while he tenderly plucked at the lips of her pussy.
Then, when hot and wet from his tongue and hands she wanted his cock in her, easing in, slowly, slowly—
“So…” she said. “What if I tell you I’m not afraid? What then? Will you show me what you are?”
“You have to choose first,” he replied. “Tell me you want to stay. Tell me you’ll love me whatever I am, and I’ll show you. Or if you can’t…” He stopped dancing; his whole body was suddenly in mourning at the thought he was expressing. “If you can’t…then go on your way, and never look back. Pretend we never even looked at one another.”
She glanced past him, thinking on this. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the woman she’d been before she met him. It wasn’t that she didn’t have ambitions for what she might become if she were to go on alone. She liked the world. But liking wasn’t enough.
She returned her gaze to him.
“All right…” she said.
He frowned. “What are you choosing?” he said.
“I want to see.”
“There’s no going back,” he reminded her.
“I know.”
He moved his hands over his body, his fingers grazing his lips, then going down to the middle of his chest, thence to his navel, and down again, to the head of his cock. She followed his motion. Saw the sharpness of his teeth, waiting behind his lips. Saw honey sweat on his chest, beads of it, decorating him. Saw the iridescence on his belly, moving just beneath the skin, down and down and down. And saw where it was going, where it was gathering. Its bright force assembling at the root of him, and then rising up his cock, to where his hands held court.
Before it broke from him, and unknitted him in its riot, there was a moment when she was afraid as she’d never been afraid before, knowing that all paths but one had been sacrificed with this choice.
Then, without moving, he was leaping against her, and the heat of his devotion burned her fear away.
“This is love,” she thought, and, pushing lightly at the door, closed it against the world.
Moved
To say that the world touches each of us differently is a banality. But proof of that fact, in the particular, can be something more.
For instance: in London, five years ago, I knew an admirable fellow from Texas. His name was Jim. One day, a bitter day in mid-winter, the wind was high, and gusting against the window so that the frames rattled. He seemed unnerved. I asked him why. He said he hated the sound of the wind. That it reminded him of his childhood, of the emptiness of his state, and the sky above it. That was why he had a flat in the busy heart of London; he only had to step out of his front door and turn two corners to be in a crowd.
For me, the wind has absolutely the opposite effect. I was born on a street too filled with people; there was nowhere to look for mystery and for solitude. But when the wind came down the river, smelling of the sea, when the wind whistled in the chimney and stirred the embers in the grate, when the wind came and lifted me along as I went to school, I imagined me faraway and that the gusts might pick me up and take me there.
Jim and I, sitting listening to the wind. One sound; two worlds.
I Imagine You
Sometimes it was a glare, sometimes it was a test, sometimes it was arousing, sometimes it was agony. Sometimes, especially towards the end, it was all of these, and that was like nothing either of them had ever felt.
I imagine you, he wrote (this was in fourth month) dressed in my clothes—
That was the beginning of the end in a way. A relatively innocent fantasy, especially given how baroque things had become at times. She’d written to him imagining his rape at the hands of lunatics, detailing the agonies of multiple penetration, his face spattered with spunk and spit, his asshole bleeding. A few days later he’d offered her an image of herself martyred, with knives and liquid lard.
Imagination, the thing that had drawn them together, would also be their undoing.
If the pen is the penis,
As wisdom may claim,
Am I wasting children
When writing my name?;
(Or is it more likely,
As people may think
That lives may be made
With a usage of ink?)
Touch the rod,
Divining waters:
From this spring
Come sons,
Come daughters.
Silk and bliss
From this, from this.
Save your slaughters,
Touch the rod.
Martha
Martha heard a cry, a solid cry, that made the bone of her skull shake. She went to her father, and said:
“I hear this crying sound, Father.”
Her father looked up from his accounting of the day’s labours.
“I hear nothing,” he said.
“But it makes my breasts tingle.”
“Don’t talk that way!” her father said.
“And my belly—”
“I said, don’t talk that way!” her father replied. He got up from his table and came over to her. “I will not have indecency in this house, do you hear me?”
“But it’s the truth,” Martha said. “I—”
Her father slapped her, a thumping blow from which she reeled, tears pouring from her eyes.
“If I ever hear you talking in the obscene fashion again,” he said, “I will throw you out of the house. Do you understand me?”
Martha said nothing.
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?” her father demanded, raising his hand as though to strike her again. She flinched. “Get out of here, you filthy girl.”
Martha went up to the bathroom and washed the tears from her face. But she felt so hot, so sickeningly hot. She undressed herself, and took a palmful of water, splashing it up between her legs. It offered her a moment’s relief, but only a moment. Then the heat came again, more powerful than ever. She sobbed; and saw that the water all around her thighs was boiling away, as though it had been splashed on a hot stove. She heard it hissing; she felt a wave of steam rising up against her face. She looked up at herself. She was shocked to see how she looked: her face flushed, her hair plastered against her brow. She gasped at the sight of herself. What was happening to her? She was afraid. But she was also excited.
“Martha?”
Her mother was calling her from downstairs. “Martha, will you come down and help, please?”
There was dinner to prepare, and the family was large. It would take Martha and her mother several hours to do all that had to be done. She did what she could to make herself more presentable: splashed water up onto her face to soothe her burning cheeks, dried her body. As she was doing so, she could not help but touch her breasts, which were tiny nubs of things. Still, they felt curiously tender today; she could not ever remember having such feeling in them as she had right now. She rubbed them. The sensation pleased her. She rubbed them a little harder, catching sight of herself in the mirror as she did so. Her hand went back down between her legs, and oh it felt good to touch herself. Oh, very good, though her fingers were cold in the groove between her legs.
Suddenly, her mother was beating the door: “MARTHA! Martha! What on earth are you doing, girl?”
She couldn’t bring herself to speak, at first. She was afraid that the sound which escaped her would betray her pleasure.
“Martha?”
Her mother rattled the handle.
“I asked you what you were doing in there, girl?”
“…yes…” she managed weakly.
“Are you sick, child?”
“…no…”
“Then open this door.”
“I’m coming down.”
“I said: open this door.” The handle shook. The door rattled on its hinges. Her mother was a strong woman.
Hurriedly, Martha pulled on her clothes, but she was only half dressed when her mother shoved the door so hard that the little bolt came away from the wood, and the door was thrown open. There was a curious expression on her mother’s face. It wasn’t anger exactly (she knew what her mother’s anger looked like all too well), but then nor was it revulsion, quite, not puzzlement.
She caught hold of Martha’s arm, and shook her. “What in God’s name are you up to, child?” she said. “Look at the state of you.” She lifted Martha’s blouse. The girl had not been quick enough to put on her underwear. It was still around her ankles. With unerring accuracy, her mother’s hand went to Martha’s groin, and touched her.
“Have you been touching yourself down there?” she demanded.
“No, Mother…”
The woman shook her. “Don’t lie to me!”
“No, I…”
“Sit yourself down.”
“Please, Momma…”
Her mother pushed her down onto the edge of the bath. “Show me.”
“Momma…”
“You heard me! Show me!”
Reluctantly, Martha spread her legs. Her mother put her hand down there. She withdrew it quickly, as though she’d been stung. There was the distinct smell of burning skin. The woman retreated from her towards the door. “How…many…times have I told you…?” she said softly; but the thought, the words of the instruction were already fading away as she spoke them. “You…had better…get dressed,” she said, “and come down to help me in the kitchen.”
It was Friday, and the family tradition, forged at a time when their faith had been more important than it was now, was always to eat fish on a Friday. There were six of them, including her three brothers; three small fish between the family, and one larger fish baked for Father, with extra garlic.
Martha had cleaned and prepared the fish every Friday since she was nine, which was three years ago. Hundreds of fish, beheaded and slit and gutted and washed, their skin shed and rubbed with salt, herbs and butter. But today the thought revolted her; it made her sick to her stomach to see the entrails of the fish, grey and brown, spilling out. There were eggs in the fish, and the feel of them popping between her fingers was simply too much. She rushed out of the kitchen, with her mother calling after her, demanding to know what she was doing. She went into the yard and was sick, though most of it was just retching, because she hadn’t been hungry in the last few days.
“I can’t finish…” she told her mother. “…I feel ill…”
Much to her surprise, her mother didn’t challenge her. She simply shrugged and returned inside. Martha waited until the nausea subsided. Sometimes she looked up at the house. At the sky. At the trees, and the road. None of it meant anything to her; her mind was a blank.
At last, her mother called her in for dinner. She didn’t want to go. It was almost dark now, and she was happier sitting in the half-light, she knew, than she would be inside. Her brothers would be noisy, her father would try to subdue them, and if he didn’t succeed he’d yell. Dinner would then be eaten in silence, except for the scraping of forks and knives on the white plates.
So she didn’t go in. For five minutes or so, she entertained the notion that she was going to be left alone, but at last her father came to the kitchen door, his silhouette black against the light of the kitchen, and demanded that she come in. The power in his voice made her compliant. In she went. But she couldn’t eat. She couldn’t even raise her fork. She kept thinking of the fish eggs, spilling out; of the cold guts, spilling out. And then, at the back of her head, she was also thinking of what she’d felt in the bathroom. Of the heat inside her, so different from the fish, the eggs, this dinner, congealing on the plate in front of her.
“May I be excused?” she asked her father.
“No you may not,” he said. “You stay until we’ve all finished. And sit still! What’s wrong with you, squirming around all the time?”
She did her best to sit still, but she could feel such strange things happening in her. The heat between her legs now starting again. It hurt, but it excited her too. Doing her best not to attract her father’s attention, she opened her legs a little. She felt the fire pressing to come out of her. She imagined it. She saw her legs beneath the table. She saw the place between her legs, getting brighter: a slit of fire. She saw it running out of her, a tiny trickle, blazing as it ran.
But now, to her horror, she found
she couldn’t stop it. The flow got stronger. She saw it in her mind’s eye running out onto the carpet under her chair, burning it. Her little body started to shake. The fire flowed more strongly still; she felt it splashing up against the insides of her thighs. Frederick, one of her brothers, looked up from his plate, grunting.
“What is it, boy?”
“Something…on my leg…” Frederick replied. He started to lift the tablecloth.
In her mind’s eye she saw the fire come out at him in a blaze. She saw him raise his hands to ward it off, but he was too slow. It engulfed him, entirely. He toppled backwards, as the flames caught hold of him, and burned him up.
“Now what, Martha?”
She looked at her father, who was staring at her in fury. Her gaze went to Frederick, who had returned to eating his fish.
I’m going crazy, she thought, and got up from the table.
“Where do you think you’re going?” her father said.
“William, leave her—”
“Be quiet!”
She heard her father’s cutlery against the plate as he put down knife and fork, then he came after her. She ran, thinking she could retreat up the stairs. But she felt suddenly dizzy in the hallway, and in the time it took her to make sense of where she was, he had hold of her. He was not a violent man, but he had a way of making her feel so inconsequential that she wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
“Come here, Martha,” he said.
She turned reluctantly to face him. The heat between her legs was mounting again; she could feel it rising.
“My life is hard enough,” her father said, “without your little dramas making it more difficult. Do you understand me?”
She could smell the fish and garlic on his breath; she hated him at that moment, with all her heart. His lazy, doleful face, the joyless voice that sounded like stones dragging over stones.