“Gary, you don’t understand. How can you when you haven’t been there? When we found these people, they were so different from us. I never thought I would encounter such innocence unless I was dealing with a child. But they’re not children, and yet they don’t know the meaning of violence. I don’t think they even know how to get angry. Even when they knew we came from the same people who had hurt them, they still took us in and helped us, made it much easier for us to survive. They don’t even know what it means to be dishonest, Gary. They can’t even tell a lie. And by teaching them to fight back, we’re already changing them. And I don’t think it’s a good change. I just couldn’t stand to watch it. So I left. I decided to come back here, to this house that my mother and father had left me, and . . . I don’t know what.”
“Stop. You don’t need to tell me any more.” Gary felt like his head was going to explode. He could get away! Away from Old Mother Bassett and his satchel of vitamin pills. Away from Aaron, who might be relieved, although he would never admit it. A series of tricks would be much easier to conceal from his parents than a boyfriend. Away from his own stifling closet, the racing circuit. Away from the boredom of staying in peak physical condition for no good reason. He would never have to come out of the water, and he could be surrounded by gorgeous, available men all the time – and it would mean something besides a trophy or a scholarship. But was he ready to be a soldier in an underwater world?
“Give me that seafood,” Gary snarled, laughing, and dove for Marcus’s rigid cock.
Marcus tried to fend him off, but Gary had acquired a strength born of a drive to join the strange new world that had opened up before him. He ran his tongue up and down the fat vein on the underside of Marcus’s cock, which was indeed shaped exactly as he had imagined. Marcus’s hands found his face underwater and urged him to take the heart-shaped head into his mouth. He licked around, inside the piss-slit, his lips rolling back and forth across the coronal ridge. Marcus’s grasp on his head grew tighter, and Gary’s teasing was soon rewarded with a thick, slick dick opening his throat. Just as he was about to run out of air, Marcus rolled onto his back, his wet erection glistening in the failing sun, and one of his arms closed around Gary, holding him above water so that he could complete his mission. The first dose of semen spurted into Gary’s mouth almost immediately, and he swallowed every drop of the salty, sticky cream. Lost in the crisis of his own orgasm, Marcus let go of him, and Gary was unexpectedly dunked into the lake.
“All I can say is, I hope we have to do this a lot to change me,” Gary sputtered, surfacing. Marcus shook his head at the two-legged swimmer’s giggling face. How could he joke about something so dire? How could he be so eager to abandon the dry world – wild flowers, museums, movies, music, crowds in shopping malls and bars? “I told you, man, I have no way of knowing if their crazy theories are going to work. We shouldn’t have done even this much. What if the way that they fucked me up messes you up in a bad way? I don’t want to be responsible for screwing up your body or your life. You need to really think this through. Even if you do change and become like me, I don’t know if I can go back there. I love the sea-people, Gary, but by the time I returned, they wouldn’t be the way that I remember them anyway. I don’t think I can stand to witness any more suffering or death.”
“But how can you refuse to help them? Look, you and the guys in your outfit, you didn’t choose this war. It came to you. Fighting back is better than just giving up. How often do you get a chance in your life to do something really good? To be a hero?”
Marcus shook his head. “Listen to you, child. ‘The guys in your outfit.’ You haven’t even been to basic training, and you’re trying to talk like an old soldier. Have you even been on a hunting trip and had to shoot a deer, youngster? Yeah, I didn’t think so. War is not some happy adventure, Gary, even if you honestly believe you are on the right side. Terrible things still happen. Things that you can’t ever get out of your mind. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of killing and death. And I’m tired of being a pawn in somebody else’s game. They want us back, and I never want to be their prisoner again. I don’t imagine the punishment for escaping is going to be very pleasant, do you? And I just don’t think we can pull it off, honey. How can a few dozen ex-Seabees and thousands of pacifistic, day-dreamin’ mermen and mermaids who can’t stop having sex long enough to finish looking at a map bring the entire US military to its knees?”
“Well, we didn’t exactly win in Vietnam, did we?” Gary challenged. “Guerilla warfare is very damned difficult to defeat. And you have the advantage of dealing with an enemy who is entirely out of his element.”
“They don’t need to put on diving gear and come down to fight with us hand-to-hand,” Marcus said wearily. “They can shoot us down with missiles. They can stay up on top of the water and beat us to death with huge sound waves. They can use chemical warfare or germ warfare. They prefer to kill at a distance.”
“Yeah, well, they also don’t want anybody to know this is going on,” Gary said. “And I know who could tell on them. The two of us, right here. With you here to show them that it’s no joke, no story out of the National Enquirer, we’d be on every news program from here to Sunday.”
Marcus laughed. “I can’t argue with you any more, honey. I’m tired of talking. Why don’t you go inside and get something to eat?”
“Okay,” Gary said. “But then I’m going back to the training camp, and I’m going to pack up my stuff and come back here. I’m going to stay with you. After all you’ve been through, you shouldn’t have to be alone. And you won’t be. Never again. Whatever we decide, we can do it together.”
Marcus looked at him thoughtfully, nodded once, and then swam away. Gary wondered if he ever got to stop swimming. Did he sleep? With those gills, he supposed it would be possible for Marcus to simply drift off underwater. I want to sleep with this man, he thought, and realized, with his heart so full of feeling that it was about to burst, that this was no euphemism for “fuck him to pieces” but was instead a softer desire for contact with his body, for affection and intimacy.
Someday I will, he resolved. When I have a real swimmer’s body.
Communion
Lisabet Sarai
When the first flames taste my flesh, I feel no pain. Eyes closed, I attend to the summer dawn: blossoms mingling with the wood smoke, birdsong greeting the sun. Ecstasy wells up inside me even as my robe ignites. Grace, gratitude, glory. I open myself to the agony, let the pain wash over me as the Master taught me.
The memories come unbidden, seasons of my life passing before my mind’s eye. I did not expect these recollections, but I welcome them as I welcome the fires swirling around me. My father’s keep, hung with brilliant tapestries to block the winter winds, and my mother’s hands, slender and sure at her needlework. My older brother, swinging a wooden broadsword with his groom.
When my brother’s life was spared by the wasting fever, my father consecrated me to the Church as his thanks for answered prayer. This was seven years ago, just after my first monthly bleeding. I did not mind being sent to the abbey; I was thus saved from the rough and grimy hands of the neighboring lord, to whom my father originally planned to wed me. “The claims of the Lord overrule the poor intentions of men,” he told me when he left me with the sisters at Thoronet. “May your virginity be a gift that for ever glorifies God.”
When I was a girl, I found the simple, orderly life of the convent a comfort. The sisters were strict but never cruel. There was always work to do, but it was the sort of labor that satisfies: tilling the garden, tending the vineyard or the convent’s goats, baking bread. I slept well on my straw pallet, in the dormitory with the other novices.
Seven times daily, we knelt on the cold stone floor of the chapel and prayed. I loved the stark bareness of that sanctuary. The flickering light of the altar candles scarcely reached the shadows of the vaulted roof. The gold-encrusted crucifix on the altar shone as if lit from within. You are the light of the worl
d, Christ had said, and there in the chapel I was suffused with that light.
I especially loved the Compline service, though sometimes it meant a rude awakening and a stumbling through midnight corridors. In the heart of night, the chapel was full of mystery. With the other women, I raised my voice to sing the hymns of praise. The soaring melodies made me ache with joy.
Our songs came, the superior told us, from Mother Hildegard, whose abbey on the Rhine was one of the centers of our Benedictine order and whose visions blessed us all. As I sang, I dreamed of mystic encounters, of being tested in my faith like the virgin saints.
As I grew to full womanhood and approached my final vows, however, I changed. I grew restless and distracted. I daydreamed instead of attending to my tasks. The midnight service still had the power to move me, but I approached my other devotions mechanically, as duties to be executed rather than as the joys they had been. I slept fitfully; my slumbers were racked by vague, distressing dreams from which I woke with racing heart and damp brow.
I had not lost my faith, but I knew that I was full of sin. As one of the few novices who was literate, I was often asked to read from the Scriptures as we sat in the refectory over the evening meal. I began to feel prideful of my knowledge, to sneer inwardly at my less learned sisters and view them as inferior.
I was also vain. Though my hair was cropped short and hidden beneath my veil, though my body was swathed in voluminous homespun robes, I knew that I was beautiful. On the occasion of my brother’s marriage, I was allowed to return home for the festivities. In my drab brown habit, I sat among the bright, bejewelled ladies, and I knew that despite their velvets and furs, I was the most lovely woman in the company. There were no mirrors in convent, but when I bathed, my own hands told me that my limbs were well-formed, my waist slender, my breasts smooth and full.
And here, perhaps, was the root of all my sins. When I touched myself, I could not help that touch becoming a caress. There was an ache in my loins that I knew was carnal desire, and it drove me mad. For that desire could never be satisfied; I was doomed to endure it, silent and unfulfilled, for the rest of my days.
Who knows what might have happened, where my waywardness would have led me, if the Master had not entered my life.
He came first in the winter, an itinerant priest seeking food and shelter. It was late afternoon, just before Vespers. I was sweeping the rear courtyard and opened the gate to expel the dirt and straw. My mood was darker than usual as I looked out over the yellowed fields, dank and bare in the chilly drizzle. A heavy mist hung near the horizon, obscuring the bulk of the massif that rises south of the Argens valley. No heights were visible, only the flat, featureless February landscape.
I was about to shut the gate when I saw him coming up the path, a slight, gray-robed figure in a wide-brimmed hat. “Good afternoon, Sister,” he called to me. “Might I impose upon the hospitality of your convent for a few days?” He entered the courtyard without waiting for my permission.
I recognized the marks of his vocation, the heavy crucifix around his neck and the tonsure that was revealed when he removed his hat. His hair was dark with moisture but nevertheless he covered it almost immediately with a black skullcap retrieved from his bag. He gazed at me with disturbing intensity. I noticed that his eyes were a bright, crystalline blue.
“Welcome, Father,” I said, dropping my own eyes in confusion and an attempt at modesty. For when he looked at me, I had the strangest feeling that he was looking through me, into those black depths of my soul that I tried to hide from my sisters. “I am sure that the Mother Superior would be happy to have you reside within our precincts for as long as you desire. If you follow me, I will take you to her.”
“Thank you, Sister . . .” He paused.
I curtseyed. “I am called Sister Ursula, Father. Though I have yet to make my final vows.”
“Thank you, Sister Ursula.” He seemed to linger over my name, savoring it on his tongue. I blushed. “I am grateful for your hospitality. I am called Jerome.” In my confusion, I did not answer, but led him silently to the superior’s chambers.
We were not a cloistered order. Occasionally, we offered shelter to a weary traveller who found himself in our remote corner of the land. These voyagers provided welcome relief from the ordered monotony of convent life. After the twilight orisons, we all gathered for the evening meal. Instead of my reading, Mother Superior asked Father Jerome to select a passage.
“With your permission, Mother, I would rather tell a story. A parable if you will.”
“Of course, Father. Whatever you wish.”
The priest settled himself in his chair and surveyed us with those unsettling blue eyes. I do not know what the other sisters felt, but when his gaze lit on me, I began to sweat beneath my robes, though the stone-walled refectory was chill as it ever was in winter.
“You all know Christ’s parable of the talents of silver,” he began. “This tale is it’s companion, though it was never recorded in any of the Gospels.
“A prosperous merchant called his steward to him. ‘I am going away on business for a short while,’ he told the servant. ‘Here are the keys to my treasury and my wine cellar. I expect that you will manage my house, my affairs, and my other servants as I would, until I return.’
“The servant was honored by his master’s trust. ‘Of course, Master. I will keep all in order for you.’
“For the first two weeks, the steward meticulously fulfilled his promise. The great mansion was spotless. The staff went about their duties, efficient and content. Tradesmen were paid; provisions were ordered; the tasks of the changing seasons were all accomplished simply and promptly. The steward was pleased and proud.
“When his master did not return after a third week, the servant began to be concerned. The house still ran smoothly, but there was often a frown of worry on his face. ‘Perhaps his ship has been wrecked,’ thought the servant. ‘Perhaps my master has been waylaid by bandits.’ These thoughts chilled him for, in truth, he loved his master well.
“A month went by, and then another, and still the master of the house had not returned. The servant was on edge, nervous and short with the staff. Several of the household resigned after he upbraided them for imaginary shortcomings. There was dust on the furnishings, and mud on the floors. The steward’s fear and concern turned to despair, and then to anger.
“ ‘My master has deserted me,’ he thought. ‘Well, I will at least take advantage of his wealth.’ He opened the vaulted room that held the master’s treasures. He used the gold he found there to buy himself rich attire and lavish jewelry. He spent it in the taverns and in the brothels, carousing and wallowing in concupiscence. Each dawn he would stagger back to the mansion and open a bottle from the wine cellar, gulping the rare vintage until he fell into a stupor.
“The staff fled. The servant wandered alone in the mansion, alternately cursing his master and bemoaning his fate. His debaucheries affected his health. Finally, all he could do is lie abed, sweating and shivering by turns, his vision blurred and his tongue thick with thirst.
“He lay there, moaning, ill and nearly blind. ‘Master!’ he cried out into the night. ‘Why did you forsake me? Oh, how I have betrayed you!’
“A hand touched his, curling his fingers around a goblet of wine. ‘Drink, my son,’ whispered a voice. ‘I know your thirst is terrible.’
“The servant knew the voice as well as his own. He raised himself with difficulty, peering through the shadows closing around him. ‘Master! You are safe! You have returned!’ He fell back onto the bed, exhausted.
“ ‘My faithful servant, I never went away. I have been here in the house the whole time.’”
The priest paused, allowing the silence to lengthen until we squirmed on our benches. “Who can tell me the lesson of this parable?” he asked finally. None of us dared speak, not even elderly Sister Marie or Mother Superior.
He laughed, a strange ringing laugh that sent a shiver up my spine. “Well, I wo
uld ask you to meditate on this tale, which provides some insight into the nature of sin.” He stood and shook out his robes. “It is late. Sisters. I will retire now, if you will excuse me. Tomorrow morning I will hear your confessions, and tomorrow at midnight, I will celebrate the Mass.”
He gave us one last look as he headed down the corridor to the guest cells. “God be with you,” he said.
“And also with you, Father,” we responded in automatic unison. His odd manner seemed to disturb the other sisters as much as it did me.
I was terribly nervous about confessing to this Father Jerome. Still, I could hardly forgo the opportunity. In our remote abbey, it might be weeks or even months before another priest would visit, with his promise of absolution and his gift of the Sacrament.
He set up his curtain in an alcove of the chapel. I tiptoed into the sanctuary an hour after Matins, hoping to find him available. Cold winter light poured through the arched windows. I could see his feet behind the drapery; I knelt on the floor before him.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been forty days since my last confession.”
“I know your sins, Sister Ursula. You need not recite them.”
I was shocked. “Father . . .”
“Be silent, Sister. I will tell you your sins. You are proud and vain, knowing that you are gifted with beauty and intelligence beyond those of your sisters. You are rebellious against the discipline of the Order, wishing another, worldly life for yourself. Do I speak truly?”
I bowed my head in shame. “Yes, Father.”
“Furthermore, you have unclean thoughts and desires. Your young body burns with need. You dream of many hands, stroking and caressing your flesh.”
I never recalled my dreams but, as he spoke, I remembered, or imagined, the scenes he described. I felt dampness on my thighs beneath my habit. The ache there was a hundred times stronger than I had ever felt before.
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