by Paula Guran
I negotiated the snoring corpses till I was on the landing. Benjie’s door was shut. I remembered. Some time in the night I’d gone for a glass of water, opened his bedroom, mistaking it for the kitchen. Louise was straddling Simon in the bed; the hill of coats had slid to the floor. The first thing I saw was the last thing to follow me back to sleep. Her breastbone, slick with sweat, or his saliva, overlaid with a lozenge of pure white light which pulsed with every languid stroke of their lovemaking. There was light elsewhere on her, solidifying in clusters and then dispersing like minute shoals of fish only to coalesce once more on her thigh, her mons, her navel. But it was that oval of light on her sternum which transfixed me, even as her eyes met with mine and she flew toward a climax that terrified me for its intensity. Simon was paling beneath her, jerking around: a rabbit mauled by a stoat. His hand reached out, almost desperately. Froth concealed his mouth. Louise was keening, slamming down upon him and baring her teeth, eyes rolled back till I could see their whites. The light inside her intensified and gathered at her core, retreating from the surface of her skin till it was but a milky suggestion deep inside her. Then it sank to where he must have been embedded in her. I couldn’t watch any more, not when she drove her fingers into his mouth to allay his scream.
Was that really how it had happened? My sozzled brain painted a detailed picture, but my dream had seemed equally alive. If it had happened, how could I have been so calm as to close the door on them and get back among the dead in the living room? How could I have returned to sleep?
I thought of the first words Louise had mumbled to me after her abortion all those years ago. She’d said: “I was so close to darkness, it felt like I could never again be close to the light.”
She’d been chasing it ever since. I’d taken it from her and something as simple as a letter had given it back. A letter that had been as much a cry for help as an olive branch. I thought of the places she’d passed through over the years, alternate lands that had claimed her as she drifted, loveless. I thought of how easy it could be to consign someone to such torment. I tried to imagine the hunger that needed to be sated in order to forge a way back.
My hand on the door. It swung inward. The pile of coats was still there. Beneath them, the bed appeared not to have been slept in. The room was still, its occupants gone. I was happy to leave it that way but found myself entering the room. There was a scorched smell. A cigarette burn, probably. I dragged the covers off the bed. A thin plug of mucus, streaked with blood, stained the undersheet.
“Simon?” I said to it.
A sound drew me to the window. She was standing by the streetlamp, which died at that moment. Subtle light crept through the avenue. I heard a milk float play its glassy tunes far away. She was smiling as she waited, holding her coat closed on whatever it was that burned inside her. I sniffed and dug my sweater out of the pile, went down to hold her hand and send her a plea through my lips when I kissed her.
The painter grew wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from the canvas rarely . . .
The Oval Portrait
Edgar Allan Poe
The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Apennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary—in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room—since it was already night—to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed—and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticize and describe them.
Long—long I read—and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by, and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I placed it so as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.
But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It was the portrait of a young girl just ripening into womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus shut, I ran over in mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought—to make sure that my vision had not deceived me—to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the painting.
That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me at once into waking life.
The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom, and even the ends of the radiant hair, melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the background of the whole. The frame was oval, richly gilded and filagreed in Moresque. As a thing of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting, and of the frame, must have instantly dispelled such idea—must have prevented even its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for an hour perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied with the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in an absolute life-likeliness of expression, which at first startling, finally confounded, subdued, and appalled me. With deep and reverent awe I replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I there read the vague and quaint words which follow:
“She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee: all light and smiles, and frolicksome as the young fawn: loving and cherishing all things: hating only the Art which was her rival: dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to portray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas o
nly from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour and from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter (who had high renown) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him. And when many weeks had passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast and crying with a loud voice, ‘This is indeed Life itself!’ turned suddenly to regard his beloved:—She was dead!”
She could never forget the dark wonder he had shown her; she would never again be the woman she had been before the haunting echo of his cry had roused her to seek his embrace.
The Hound Lover
Laura Resnick
She welcomed him in the night, welcomed his sleek, hard length between her thighs, welcomed the salty velvet of his tongue in a cold-lipped embrace. There was no delicacy in this demon, no tenderness in the incubus that pressed her heavily into the aged mattress, hurting her with his unrepentant passion. No word, no whisper, no sigh escaped his lips. His breathing was feather-light despite his exertion, and its soft, reliable rhythm coolly brushed the vulnerable hollows of her throat as her head lolled backwards.
She could find no voice, either for pain or pleasure, and her mind, like her tormentor, would not let her separate the two sensations. Her thighs quivered limply against his hard flanks, and her arms lay at her sides, leaden and unresponsive, unable to touch, scratch, grasp, or clasp the unseen sorcerer invading her body with such intensity.
She strained for breath, throwing her head back even further, hot pleasure mingling with terror as the weight on her chest grew heavier, suffocating her. Her throat tightened against her futile efforts to scream, to sigh, to draw air into her burning lungs.
Her helplessness only served to incite him, and he drove deeper, engulfing her in his chilly fire. Surely she would faint, she thought, as he rode her faster, harder, bearing her down into the abyss. Surely she would die.
Pitiless in his ardor, he led her into the underworld where Pluto had taken his captive bride; and, like Persephone, she followed him blindly into the heart of darkness. And there she found a force stronger than death, a consummation devoutly wished and greedily grasped.
Then, to her sorrow, he withdrew like a shadow at dawn, disappearing even as she strained toward him, even as her skin flushed and her body shook with a new tremor of ecstasy. She was alone when unconsciousness enfolded her in its sheltering arms, more alone than she had ever been before. She could never forget the dark wonder he had shown her; she would never again be the woman she had been before the haunting echo of his cry had roused her to seek his embrace.
She knew he would return. He would come again to suck her soul out of her body, to terrify and enthrall her, to lure her ever deeper into that undiscovered country. Yes, like the night itself, he would come again; and she would be waiting for him.
He came again last night, with the oily stealth of a predator, like a raptor, like a hungry wolf, like a great dark hound come to devour me . . .
Grace went utterly still and stared at the words she had just scrawled upon the stained folds of the brown paper bag that lay flattened before her. Spread out on the kitchen table, the bag stank of last night’s Chinese food, bought in haste and eaten with disinterest. The bag bore pale splotches of grease and darker stains from the black bean sauce Grace had injudiciously ordered; smearing as it came into contact with these, the sentence she had written was already soaking into the paper and growing cloudy.
“He came again last night,” she breathed, her heart pounding with sudden exhilaration.
Cautiously, as if fearful of being snared, she opened a cabinet, pulled out a briefcase, set it on the table, and opened it. Her heart pounded with mingled fear and anticipation as she stared at its contents: a laptop computer and a thick, tattered dictionary.
After a long moment, she lifted the laptop with shaking hands and cradled it briefly in her arms. Her longtime companion, her significant other. She had carried it around like some useless appendage for so long, she now nearly choked with pleasure, with reconquered pride, to realize she might actually use it today. How long had it lurked accusingly in the corners of her life like a guilty secret, a bashful lover, an elusive dream? Today, after such a long and painful drought, she might actually justify the obsession which had made her drag the damned thing through two hospitals, a psychiatric ward, a new apartment, and two prescribed vacations. Christ, she had even started carrying it to her analyst’s waiting room, as if she expected to break through the barrier while waiting for another hour of self-torture.
Eager to get started, to find out if the first line she’d written in over three years was going to lead to a second one, she looked around for an electrical outlet. She had just found one when the telephone rang, making her jump like a scalded cat.
“Shit.”
She lifted the receiver, already sure of her caller’s identity. “Grace! How’s it going up there?”
“Fine,” she mumbled.
“Missing the city? The smog? The crime? The subways and pimps and crack addicts?”
“Sure, Jo,” she said absently, gaze fixed on her computer. She longed to be left alone with it more ardently than she had ever longed for any man.
There was a brief silence. “Uh, finding everything you need?”
“Yeah. No problems.”
“Seen much of the town yet?”
Jo had bought this little house in the woods ten years ago, and ever since then she had been regaling Grace with stories about the town, its inhabitants, and her own summer and weekend adventures in country living.
“No, I haven’t really been out much yet.” Grace’s fingers brushed across the keyboard. She shifted the phone to her other ear and sat down. “It’s only been four days.”
The silence was a little longer this time. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” For once, that was true. “Really. This was a good idea. Thanks for offering to let me stay here.”
“Offering? Offering, she says. Last week you called it nagging, badgering, pushing, manipulating—”
“Well, now I’m glad I came.” She smiled. No need to retract words that had indeed been true at the time. They had been friends since their college days, some twenty years ago. “You were right. It’s good to get out of the city, breath fresh air, not worry about traffic, muggings, bumping into people I don’t want to see, getting calls from my lawyer.”
“Good. I’m glad. You do sound better. I’ll be up on Saturday.”
“See you then.”
She rose to hang up the phone, then turned and looked again at the keyboard. The interruption had been untimely. It had broken her concentration, doused the sparks she had felt. She begged for help, addressing her silent prayers impartially to heaven or hell, and approached the mute laptop with all the trepidation of a sinner enterin
g the confessional.
By dusk, she had exhausted anger, tears, and even physical violence. Smashed crockery—which she would have to replace before Jo’s arrival—lay upon the floor. The table was covered with crumpled tissues, coffee stains, an overflowing ashtray, and a small burn mark where she had stubbed out a cigarette without looking.
She stared at the cursor on the small computer screen, watching it blink hypnotically. It goaded her, mocked her. She hadn’t written a word since typing that single sentence hours ago: He came again last night . . .
Numb and drained, Grace finally turned off the computer as the sky outside lost its amber glow. Her shoulders slumped as she poured a generous amount of scotch into her coffee cup. Oppressed by the scent of failure that overpowered the little kitchen, she opened the back door and stepped out onto the porch. The April night was cool against her skin, and it smelled of greenery and promise. A breeze ruffled the trees. They sighed in response and swooned like maidens. Grace sat on an old lounge chair and closed her tired eyes.
This was worse than before. The coma her imagination had fallen into was bad enough. She never thought of it as writer’s block. That was far too innocuous a phrase for the thing that had destroyed her life. Anyhow, she had always despised that trite cliché as a convenient excuse for Ivy League idiots, hopeful housewives, and pompous professionals whose Great Novels would never be written simply because they didn’t really want to do the blood and guts work of sitting down day after day and writing a goddamn book.
She wanted to do it. It was all she had ever wanted. And for years, she’d done it well and successfully. Then—burnout. It had just happened. Then came her first internment in a hospital. Exhaustion, they said, after she collapsed on West 85th Street in the middle of the day. She’d demanded to be released against the doctor’s advice.
She had a book to finish, damn it. She had a deadline to meet. She couldn’t get anything done in that hospital, it was too noisy and there was no privacy. That’s why she hadn’t written a single word on the laptop she had insisted on having with her.