Engines of Desire: Tales of Love and Other Horrors

by Livia Llewellyn

  The girl with the golden throat. That’s what I am.

  He never screamed. I’ll give him that. The ripple of flame exploded into a ring of blue-tipped fire, catching his hair and the edges of his shirt. It traveled over his body, caressing his flesh in ways no woman would ever master, swallowing him in ways no human would ever comprehend. Except I did. The fire came from me, from my mouth and from all the desire I’d ever had for him, all the unrequited love. It rippled over his flesh, dug into the crevices of skin and burned away the lies, curling back his skin and exposing his true self—black as the midnight sun. And still he stood before me, silent and unyielding, his hands in fists at his sides, the sockets of his eyes never turning from my face. We stared at each other, stripped to our true selves, as naked as we would ever be to anyone. I would have cried, if I hadn’t felt such triumph.

  But finally, blackened skin and muscle succumbed to flame, and then the bones themselves grew tired and gave in as the land sung him down. He died as I wanted him to—on his knees before me, collapsed in a deep bow, his burning head resting on the ground at my feet. Despite his protestations, he’d loved me after all.

  My fingers reached down. The chain snapped as I ripped it off his neck, and placed the scale in my hand. It felt cool to the touch, for once, and my burnt flesh didn’t mind. I let the chain slither from my hands like a bit of sun falling from the sky, and the flames crackled into renewed life as it landed on his back. Smoking fire gushed over him and spread to the bushes and grass, and I tipped my head back and opened my mouth, letting the scorching air flood my lungs as I placed the scale on my tongue, as I fed off the ashes of his flesh and bones.

  Red everywhere, the red of my hair and skin covering the earth and his crackling heart, and the lands boiled like the surface of the sun, until there were no edges left, until everything under the sun was itself the sun, everything was one.

  And I swallowed it all.

  The Teslated Salishan Evergreen

  Class: Pinopsida

  Order: Pinales

  Family: Cupressaceae

  Genus: Cupressuceaohm/Cypress V

  Species: Cupressuceaohm salishan nikola

  Teslated Salishan Evergreen

  Appearance:

  The Teslated Salishan is a slender tree approximately 50 feet in height, with minimal bark and dark wood. Branches mimic the appearance of telephone pole’s tops—long and wire-like, with several larger flat branches extending several feet on either side. A massive knotty growth rests near the top of each tree trunk—these are wombs. Teslated Salishan are mobile, with thick, flexible roots that traverse almost any surface. In full flight, the roots extend up to thirty feet around the base, secreting electrical charges which allow for quick and efficient movement. If provoked, Salishans emit massive lightning balls from the larger branches that dissolve flesh and bone upon contact.

  Ecology:

  These unique members of the Cypress family are the result of using living, stripped and truncated conifer trunks as utility poles for electrical wiring. Over the past ninety years, the combination of constant electricity along with airborne chemicals from encroaching suburban housing have created a species that thrives on electrical currents. While some attempts have been made to destroy them, thousands remain at wild in the Pacific Northwest, able to adapt to the surrounding woods in secrecy—often blending in with suburban communities for decades until they are discovered.

  Life Cycle:

  Attracted to the high amount of utility wires surrounding ranch houses, Teslated Salishans converge upon neighborhoods in groups of ten to fifteen, attaching their top branches to outdoor wires and electrical outlets. The bark secretes a creosote-like resin which, when exposed to autumn winds, hardens to amber and discharges a subsonic current felt only in the bones of prepubescent girls.* In response to this current, the girls, if not restrained, float into the air, until caught and bound by the topmost branches. There the girls are subsumed into the trunk itself, in essence becoming makeshift wombs. The trees then enter a feeding/hibernation cycle of approximately twenty years. Left alone, they will siphon energy off power grids with minimal disruption to surrounding houses. It is for that reason—and the fact that the trees carry the living remains of young girls—that many neighborhoods have adopted the practice of leaving them alone, even protecting them against the authorities, and giving the trees their daughters’ names.

  At the end of the cycle, the wombs drop into the circle of roots, where the now desiccated girls split open, revealing a sapling Teslated Salishan. These new generations of Salishans may therefore be hybrids not only of the common Alaskan Cedar and raw electricity, but of Pacific Northwest girls. Understandable then is the reluctance of so many to destroy these dark and dangerous trees.

  As this species is still new to the scientific community, it is not yet known how long they live, or what diseases they might be susceptible to. Long-term observation through the University of Washington is underway.

  * For this reason, many residents of the Northwest have built underground safety bunkers, where they can secure their younger daughters until old enough that they no longer hear those sound frequencies.

  The Engine of Desire

  Gary will see it when the drugs wear off. He’ll read the letter, see his daughter, scream; but he’ll move on, eventually. And he won’t look for her, because he’ll believe. They both know he’s not the one Megan’s wanted, for what seems like eternity. Although, she has him to thank for helping her through these sixteen years, his rough skin and questioning cock to thank, the press and push of his body over and into her, sloughing the lies of her life away to reveal repulsion and the aching void. A lifetime of enduring misplaced love? No, not anymore. After so many years, desire has eaten her hollow, and now it flows from her like burning oil. Megan walks down the hallway, and into her daughter’s bedroom.

  I met a girl in the cul-de-sac last week, Sophie had said. Such a simple phrase, yet all Megan needed to know that the time had come. She picks knives off the sheets as she kisses Sophie’s damp face—the same drugs in the wine found their way into Sophie’s glass of milk. Just, more of them. Sophie’s cooling body settles in time to the distant machine, Megan notices, skin still flush with lust that once rose from her like spring mist. Megan runs her nose over her daughter’s skin, breathes the scent in deep. She smells the girl on Sophie, that sharp undertone of fuel mixed with lemons and cigarettes. And under that, the smell of the engine. Hot burning blood and smoking bone, dismembered limbs whirling in a gasoline gyre. Megan locks the door behind her, even though she doesn’t have to, the knob slipping in her sticky hands. Her daughter isn’t for the taking, not tonight or ever; it’s Megan’s turn, and won’t the girl in the cul-de-sac be surprised. Maybe she’ll be pleased.

  Brass bells chime as Megan opens the front door, same as they’ve done for as long as she’s been alive. This little suburban rambler saw her grow up, marry, give birth; it’s led her through life like the faithful lover she never had. Mom and Dad willed it to her years after that summer Lisa disappeared: with both of them gone five years now, it’s been hers alone, her rookery, her watchtower. She stands on the stone porch, staring out at the purple glow of the setting sun. Ravens cluster on wires and cables, glide from the tips of evergreens to cedar-gabled rooftops. Driveway lights wink on and off, and wild dogs chant at fast-appearing stars. All the signs of life are here, but this neighborhood has long been dead. They’re the only family left, and even they’ve fallen apart, like rotting meat from the suburban bone. She walks down the driveway, her low pumps clacking against the blacktop. As she steps into the street, her heart races; and now she catches the faint whine, a sonorous metallic song calling out in reply. After all these lonely years, it’s returned.

  From the far end of the cul-de-sac, a sixteen-year-old girl emerges from the tangled overhang of rhododendrons framing a long-abandoned house. She saunters into the street, tanned hips curving back and forth in waves as she moves. Tho
ugh autumn hovers in the air, she brings perpetual summer, shimmering all around her in rippling waves. One hand touches a lock of black hair, then tugs at her striped tube-top—for a single sublime moment, a caramel-colored areola peers into the rising dark. Megan feels the decades burn away like ash in the girl’s heat.

  “Hey, spaz,” Kelly says. “Got a light?”

  “You didn’t change,” Megan murmurs. “Thirty years, and you’re just the same.”

  “Yeah, I never change.”

  “But I have changed. Can’t you hear?” Megan presses her hand against her heart. “It’s like it’s inside me now, like I’m the engine, too.”

  “Oh really? You’re the engine?” Kelly slips a cigarette into her mouth. “Are you sure?”

  “You’re not taking her. It’s my turn.”

  Kelly runs a long tongue over wet lips. “She’s already taken—it’s what you made her for, right?”

  Megan flinches, but the truth doesn’t stop her from sliding the lighter out of her pocket, the one she’s been carrying for years.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Megan says. “But she’s gone.”

  “Really.”

  “It’s just us now. No one else.”

  “No one else.” Kelly hooks a finger into the waistband of Megan’s skirt, eyes. “Tonight you come for me.”

  Kelly cups Megan’s hand she passes the cigarette tip through the flame, sucking her breath in as she coaxes it into life. Megan slides her other hand around Kelly’s warm waist, drawing her near. She drops the lighter, touches the cherry of Kelly’s smiling lips. Her fingers come away red.

  “What did I do?” she asks one in particular. The crows, the evergreens, the stars.

  “It’s not my blood, or yours. Who cares?”

  “It’s ok,” Megan says. “It’ll burn away.” She clamps her fingers around Kelly’s neck, and the girl melts into her like water through parched ground. Their lips touch, dance in through hot gasps for air. Megan pulls at Kelly’s top, lowers her tongue. Soft warmth, and the hard press of trembling legs and jutting groins. Liquid fire rushes through her, and her bones bend like willows in a storm. She can bend Kelly as well, mold and rip through her like soft clay until nothing remains but desire, the exquisite pain of submission and defeat. She could feed off such things for eternity. Anyone could. Anything.

  Kelly breaks off, flushed. “I have something to show you, in the empty house at the end of the street. Just the two of us.” Her long fingers cup Megan’s face. “Do you want to see?”

  Reverberations bleed through the chilly air, relentless, exquisitely slow. Megan licks her lips, breaths deep. The air, her skin, all taste of Kelly, sea-salt sweet. What more will she taste of her, inside the engine of her desire—inside, under, below? Last time Kelly offered, she said no.

  “Yes.” Megan breathes the word and Kelly inhales, as if catching it on her teeth. Megan kisses her again, to press the promise deep inside, so it will keep and never fade. Then, breaking away, she grabs Kelly’s hand and they run, run like they did when they were both just girls and her world was bright and new, run through the end of night into the house, into the endless arms of her burning soul, and down.

  Spring, 1985

  Megan stands in the center of the street, turning in a lazy circle under slate March skies. From here she sees one empty end of the street, then the other, and the ovarian rounds of the culs-de-sac, dilapidated and worn after so many decades of pushing out their young. She sees the things she’s seen all her life—ranch homes and ramblers, cars and crows, and the thick stream of evergreens that seeps through suburbia like a leviathan’s blossoming bones. She sees Gary, her husband of five months, carrying boxes into the two-car garage. They met in the Food King up the road, as he rang up her groceries, pleasant and slow. She saw her future that day, and the way to get there.

  She does not see her sister. She hasn’t seen her in fifteen years now: no one has. How many girls have been fished from the woods around Green River? And yet every time they show a new face on the news, her mother reaches for her heart medicine, and her father slips into the garden with his whiskey—as if Lisa had disappeared just yesterday, and the pain is still raw and new. They need to see her lifeless face, blue and speckled with gravel, to make it real. Without that, she wanders through their memories, a ship without moorings or berth, not dead or alive. If only they knew how very right they were….

  Megan halts, dizzy, and looks at the house, that house, brooding under bushes and branches, still abandoned. All the kids in the neighborhood are gone now, grown up and off to college, other cities, other countries. The ones that escaped, that is. Most of them, like Lisa, went missing. The pretty ones, anyway, lush-lipped females all. She’s the last one. And she’s not a kid anymore.

  It’s been years since she heard the engine’s rev. After Lisa, other girls disappeared—but soon there were none, and the engine faded. The neighborhood felt the loss, and soured. Families moved away, sometimes leaving overnight without a whisper. Her mom walked over to the Kerns, the Swensons, the Millers, for coffee or conversation—she came back every time, moving as if something wet and squalling had been ripped from her womb, and thrown far away. But still she won’t leave. Lisa might come home, she tells Megan, tells anyone left who still remembers that the Morgans had two girls, not one. She’s her mother, and she’ll never leave her daughter behind. Megan knows how that feels.

  “Kelly.” Megan whispers the word, reverent. Kelly’s been missing, too, as long as the rest. Since that summer she and Megan snuck into the rambler—after that day, Megan never saw her again. There were moments, though. Out of the corner of her eye, as she walked home from school or sat reading in the backyard, as she opened or closed her bedroom curtains: a flash of girl-shaped movement, followed with a trace of lemon Jean Naté and cigarette-scented sweat. Sometimes she still wakes up at night, soaked in tears, Kelly’s smell dripping from her fingers. She’ll cry herself back to sleep, stifling the sobs so Gary won’t hear. But it’s not enough: her desire’s a drop in the cup. All the cream has been skimmed, youth and desire siphoned away, leaving only human husks. Not enough left for the engine to feed on, and so it’s gone, along with the mystery girl who charmed its prey and fed them bit by bit into its maw.

  She can’t bear to live like this, feeding off the fumes of girlhood love, dying before her parent’s eyes while they mourn a better-loved daughter long gone. And yet, and yet…the engine sleeps, and this place is safe. No one to watch her do what she must do—a lengthy yet simple action, like the tick of a clock as it counts down the years before the alarm sounds out. Megan stares at the yellow and white eaves framing her old bedroom window as her fingers glide over her stomach, turgid and round. With her ailing father moving into the retirement home, and she and Gary moving in to take care of Mom, Megan can wipe her past clean, start over. Build a better web.

  Gary waves at her as he heads back to the car for another load. She smiles and waves, a wan flap of her flesh. Megan goes through the motions with him, in all things. At night when he moves over her, she squeezes her eyes shut, pretends it’s Kelly transformed, spearing her into sticky oblivion. The things she does, the images she sees…. Megan smiles as she walks back to the house, drumming her fingers over the mound of her unborn child—her third, though she took care of the other two before Gary and her parents ever knew. All the pain she endures will be worth it, in the end. They’ll turn Lisa’s old bedroom into the nursery, make a playground out of the weed-choked backyard. Maybe families will move into the houses again, the neighborhood will return to life once more, and the engine will return, Kelly swimming in its hot and fiery wake.

  But if not, it doesn’t matter. Megan doesn’t need neighbors to do her work. She’ll make the engine and Kelly return. That’s why she’s having a girl.

  Summer, 1972

  Megan opens her lips, and a perfect ring of smoke floats out. It rises up, widens, disintegrates. Megan’s mouth stays open, her tongue slightly raised as if
caught mid-question. She raises an eyebrow, knowing she’s being watched.

  Across the street, Kelly flashes a cool smile: the Queen of the Cul-de-Sac has approved. Megan takes another puff, staring up at the telephone wires as she sits on the flat-topped rocks lining the yard. Inside, triumph clangs like church bells; and the distant engine pounds in time, sending sound rippling like heat waves through the August afternoon air. Megan has been nothing if not patient, knowing well the reward. Golden-haired Julie left not long after Lisa, to join a commune up in Okanogan County, it was whispered. A few girls disappeared the following summer, and a few more slipped away last year as well. Teenage growing pains, signs of our troubled times, wild youth and drugs—mothers and fathers gossiped the pain away as they filled prescriptions and drank to oblivion. Megan kept her head down and waited, always with Julie’s lighter in her pocket, resting low and hard on her hip. She’s sixteen now: and now her time has come.

  “May I?” Kelly motions, and Megan nods, trying to control her trembling legs. Kelly walks across the street, working the end of a bright pink popsicle in and out of her mouth. She stops in front of Megan, her shadow lying directly across Megan’s body, matching her limb for limb.

  “You still smoke?”

  “Sometimes,” Kelly says. “Not as well as you.”

  Megan parts her legs, slow and steady, as she leans back, resting each hand on the warm surface of the low rock wall.

  “So.” Kelly stares into the distance, as if concentrating. Listening, perhaps, to some unseen machine? “Lisa ever come back from her hippie trip?”

  “Nope.” Megan shakes her head hard, trying to act casual and cool. “You know, I was gonna go with her, but—you know. Parents.” The last word shoots out of her mouth along with her cigarette, and she winces.