Wonders of a Godless World

by Andrew McGahan

  But one man wanted to do more than just see the girl. He wanted to be alone with her. The grandmother demurred. It was not proper. But the man threatened, and swore he would take his wealth away, and the old woman eventually assented. And the moment they were alone, he lifted the virgin’s dress and groped between her legs. The girl did not fight or scream. Her grandmother had ordered her to be nice.

  The man came again and again, but he never proposed marriage.

  And then other men came who also demanded to be left alone with the girl. To calm the grandmother they brought money with them, and spoke of weddings. But all they ever did with the virgin was strip her and spread her legs and stick their things into her hairless vagina. It hurt, and was disgusting, but the girl, to please her grandmother, never resisted. She simply drifted off into her own mind, away from the loathsome men and their groping hands, and waited for the pain to pass.

  She drifted a little further each time, and found less and less reason to return. All she did, between the men’s visits, was sit in her room and watch television. Her grandmother—all generosity now that they had money again—had bought the girl her very own set. It had a big bright screen, and everything seemed much nicer there. There was no bad breath on TV, or sweaty, crushing bodies, or pain.

  But then hairs sprouted between the virgin’s legs, and the men were displeased. They stopped visiting. There was no proposal, no marriage contract. The grandmother blamed the virgin. She beat the girl daily for their misfortunes and renewed poverty. But even when the grandmother finally brought new suitors home to meet her—men who didn’t try to reach under her dress—it was much too late. The girl was mad by then, and the suitors all fled from her blind, indifferent eyes.

  The orphan swam up through the memories, back to the present, mourning for the girl and sharing her revulsion. (Is that what all men did with their penises? Is that what the night nurse had wanted to do with her?) But it was puzzling too. If the virgin had fled into her blindness to be free of the men and their greed for her, and if no one in the shadow world had claimed her attention ever since, then how could she now be aware of the archangel, crouched on his knees behind her?

  It must have happened when—

  Yes. There was the memory—the moment the orphan had joined their hands, the instant the virgin and the archangel had touched. Lightning had flared in the virgin’s dim world, illuminating a boy’s face. And looking into his eyes she had found—unlike all other men she had known—not a lust for her, but rather a loathing. Her smooth skin, her oval face, her full lips—they all repulsed him.

  The virgin had been astonished. The boy was gone a second later, but ever since then she had remembered him, pondering. He was no threat to her, she was sure, because he wanted nothing from her. Which meant she was free to contemplate the boy himself. And he was, to her amazement, beautiful. The touch of him! She had felt his flesh. Warm. Not remote, like the other creatures she watched through the shining window. He was real. With an angelic face. Her own angel, sent down to her.

  And now at last he was near again. She could feel him behind her, strong and urgent, promising joy, the light of his arrival blotting out even the brightness of the screen in front of her. And oh, after so long alone in the dark, able only to watch and never to touch, what a store of feeling he roused in her. So much desire, unused and unspent. She wanted to empty herself, and give everything inside to him. If he would only touch her, then she would turn from the window and—

  The orphan pulled back into her own head, her blood pumping.

  The virgin was in love! Who would ever have imagined it!

  But what about the boy?

  Immediately, the orphan turned and dived into the archangel’s mind. The storm howled louder around his high chamber now, and the tower swayed like a drunken thing, but she went searching through his memor…

  And yes, it was there, the same stroke of lightning, at the same moment. And he in turn had seen the virgin’s face illuminated, and been likewise astonished. For he saw—unlike all other women—no temptation in her, no evil succubus waiting to arouse the serpent in his loins. He saw instead that she loathed his maleness, and in particular his horrible organ, as passionately as he did himself. He was safe from her. And free, in that safety, to realise an amazing thing—she was beautiful.

  The boy was in love too!

  But that wasn’t why the storm now raged and his tower shook. That wasn’t why he was crouched behind the virgin, his desire threatening to explode. After all, it had been days since that momentous touch, and he had done nothing. No, the orphan could see that his defences would have held against even love…

  If it hadn’t been for the demon.

  This very day, the youth had heard a voice speaking to him out of nowhere. It was not human. It was too powerful, too unearthly to be human. And it told him a tale that could have been his own life recounted, a tale of rejection of the world, and of the search for purity on a lonely height, far from other men. An island refuge.

  At first he had thought it was an angel such as himself who spoke. But then a storm had come to the island, and great waves, and the voice had talked of surrendering to the sea, of seeking oblivion in submission to desire. So the voice could only be that of a demon. And oh, how the archangel had been compelled and bewildered by that—for what was a demon but a fallen angel? Even archangels could fall, if they so chose. He had seen the great wave come, he had seen the demon swept away by it, and he had shared in the ecstasy of that surrender. Ecstasy that could be his, too. With the girl. If only he left his tower, if only he went to the window and jumpe…

  (But no, thought the orphan. No, that wasn’t right. The foreigner had not been swept to ecstasy. He had been swept to his death.

  This wouldn’t work, not this way—)

  But it was too late. In the high chamber the boy was up and at the window. The tower rocked again, and the foundations cracked and splintered. A great snake was rearing up within. Outside, the orphan could see that the storm had become almost flesh, warm and pink and swollen, female flesh, opening wide to the boy.

  He leapt.

  The orphan was thrown back into her own mind, and her own body. Somehow, she had ended up sitting slumped against the wall, legs splayed, her hands at her sides, like a broken doll. She couldn’t seem to move. And there before her, on his knees still, the archangel lifted his head, his anguish gone. His eyes were blinking as if they had just opened for the first time, full of wonder. And then his hand was reaching out, fingers trembling, to touch the bare skin of the virgin’s neck.

  The girl shuddered. But not in disgust, it was a shiver of pleasure. Her blind gaze wandered from the TV screen and her hand rose to rest upon the archangel’s fingers. He shuddered in his turn, and for an instant they held that position. The orphan didn’t breathe. Maybe it was going to be okay. Maybe the virgin would turn and they would stare into each other’s eyes and it would work.

  But the boy kept shuddering, his arm quivering violently, and it was not from excitement—he was like a man fighting to keep his fingers pressed to a red-hot stovetop. He was staring in horror at her hand on his. And then, with a cry, he wrenched his fingers free and fell back from her in agony.

  The orphan didn’t need to enter his mind to know why. It came flooding out of him. His shock and anger and betrayal. She had tricked him. She had seemed so pure. She had appeared to reject the baseness of his nature. But it was a lie. At his first caress, instead of chastely tolerating his touch, she had turned greedily and sunk her talons into his hand. She was like all women after all, hungry for him, and eager, no doubt, to engulf the serpent at his waist. Hadn’t his book tried to warn of this? Images rushed up from its pages—devouring females with poisonous tongues; worms of decay crawling beneath smooth skin. How could he have forgotten that woman was a vile thing, her body a deadly pitfall for man, full of lusts that would destroy him?

  The orphan bowed her head. Of course. He could not want her if she wanted
him. His awful book still held him locked in paradox. If the virgin was pure she would not desire him, and if she desired him she was not pure…

  And the virgin herself?

  The orphan switched to the girl’s mind, and discovered alarm. Where had her angel gone? His hand had pulled away before she’d had a chance to see him. Why was he hiding again in the dark? The virgin had turned from the television and was crawling forward blindly, hands outstretched. Her fingers clasped the air directly in front of the boy’s face, but he was backing away, rigid with disgust. The orphan caught more snatches from him, images of blood and boils, and of rats gnawing at his skin. And yet she felt too the strange pain and pleasure of his giant erection, growing ever harder.

  Meanwhile the girl’s frustration was nearing panic. Why wouldn’t he touch her? He was close, she knew, her skin was all aflame, every hair standing on end, shivering to be stroked. How could she force him to come back? How could she show him that she was ready? She raised herself onto her knees and undid the buttons of her pyjama top. And as it fell away, her skin showed pale blue in the glow from the television, her body thin and yet curved, casting shadows across itself. Naked from the waist up, she spread her arms and waited, her head upright, a willing offering.

  The archangel stared, also on his knees, his gaze roaming across the forbidden landscape of her breasts. They contained, his madness assured him, only sinew and bile. But indecision beat on his forehead—he had no control left, no refuge, his tower was gone, he was subject to the thing straining hugely in his groin. Slowly, he stood. And as he did so the shadows hardened along the line of his jaw.

  The orphan understood—he was forging a new self. If he could not escape from the woman then he must confront her. And his book gave him only the one means. He must become an avenging angel. A visitation, sent to her by his god. He stalked a circle around the kneeling girl. Yes. He had been sent to save her, to punish her weakness. He had come to abject her pride and to exalt her soul; to drive the evil from her female form, by brute force if need be, and fill it with divine grace.

  He reached down, trailing a finger along her cheek. In reply, the virgin quivered and moaned. Then quickly he turned his wrist and, backhanded, slapped her hard across the face. She went sprawling to the floor.

  The orphan did nothing. She was paralysed, overcome by the wave of sheer joy that burst forth from the virgin, even as the girl fell. His touch! Her angel’s touch! The fire in it, the passion in it! And all of it real, not viewed distantly through a window, but actually happening to her. Sensation was pleasure and pleasure was sensation, and both were a gift from her wonderful demigod. She had even glimpsed his face as he struck her. He was fiery and stern, and indescribably beautiful.

  The orphan watched on, disbelieving. The archangel fell upon the girl. Her back was flat to the floor, and he splayed her arms out, holding down one of her wrists and with his free hand pulling away the lower half of her pyjamas. The virgin did not resist. She allowed him to also force her legs apart, and the more he pressed down, the more the joy lifted her up. The orphan, caught in flurries of the girl’s pleasure, felt her own body responding, as if it was herself on the floor.

  But the orphan was inside the archangel’s head, too. He was staring down at the girl’s outspread form, submitted utterly to him, and yet it wasn’t enough, his fury demanded he force the submission further. His erection was aching, and until he had humbled her fully he could not be delivered from it.

  He glanced about the room. There—the virgin’s clothes! He took them up, tearing the hospital pyjamas into shreds, his limbs angelically strong. Then he proceeded to bind the torn segments to her wrists and ankles, and the other ends to points around the room—the legs of the old couch, a water pipe that stuck out from a wall—until she was tied fast, unable to move at all, spreadeagled on the floor.

  And still the virgin’s joy washed over the orphan. Glimpses through the girl’s eyes showed the angel working above her, his arms like thin wings, and the more he immobilised her, the more her excitement built. She wanted to be tied, she wanted escape from this beautiful being to be impossible, she wanted to be trapped by him, taken prisoner by him, possessed by him. She wanted every bit of herself, inside and out, to be exposed and available to his touch.

  All of which only enraged the archangel more. Every shift and squirm of her body mocked him. Binding her wasn’t enough either. He cast about the room again. There. He strode to the television and ripped the power cord from it. The screen went black with a pop, and in the virgin’s mind the shining window slammed shut, but she didn’t care, she didn’t need the window anymore. The angel had become her window. He was a blazing figure in her darkness now. He loomed over her, wielding a flaming whip in his hand, ready to bless her skin with its touch.

  The orphan was powerless to look away. The boy raised his arm and snapped the television cord down across the girl’s breasts. He grunted with the effort, the virgin gasped in ecstasy, and a red welt flared across her chest. Then down came the cord again. And again. In near silence—apart from the hoarse breathing of the boy as he laboured, and the panting of the girl as every blow struck.

  But the archangel could not be sated. The girl’s pain did not suffice. That much was clear from the eager sounds she made, and from the way her skin writhed up to meet the whip. And his own body throbbed in response, betraying him, mastering him, in need of punishment as much as hers. He tugged feverishly at his own clothes, ripping off shirt and pants and underwear, and then he stood naked astride the girl, his hateful erection, as giant as a club, jutting out above her.

  (And the orphan saw, horrified, the many jagged white scars that ran the entire length of it, on the underside, from the tip right down to the pouch of his testicles—and she understood at last what he had done to himself with his knife, the repeated mutilations that had led the authorities to commit him.)

  Again he plied the whip, once to the girl, and then once to himself, across his back. Pain. Pain would save them both. But for the virgin it was only pleasure, more and more pleasure. The welts across her skin burnt like gold, and her shining angel was naked too now. His body, all aglow with his love for her, was the most exquisite thing she had ever seen. He stroked himself with his whip, and then stroked her too, sharing the gratification. And best of all, the blows were moving one by one down her body, from her breasts and her stinging nipples, down over her belly, and almost to between her outstretched legs, where she could feel herself peeling open for him.

  The archangel was groaning in frustration. No matter how he slashed at her, and no matter how he slashed at himself, her moans only grew louder, his erection more strained. He fell to his knees between hers, and there her most tender spot awaited him, glistening wet and flushed purple with expectation. With his last strength he plied his whip, cut after cut, to that spot. And every other stroke, he cut at his own genitals, balls and cock, his back arched with the agony. Again. And again. And again.

  The virgin cried out in rapture. The archangel cried in torment. The orphan was swept helplessly between the two of them, slammed about by gusts of pleasure and pain, love and hate, mastery and submission, and she thought she must either scream or faint if they did not stop. But then the girl was convulsing, coming, her bruised cunt clasping and grasping at nothing, and the boy was convulsing and coming too, his erection spurting out vast white jets into the air.

  Then it was over, a wave collapsing on itself. Spent, the archangel sank full-length beside the girl and lay there like a corpse.

  The orphan gasped for breath. She felt tossed aside, thrown out just as the climax was being reached, and denied that climax herself. The wild seas of emotion in the room slowly calmed, ebbing away until she finally felt alone again within her own skull. Movement crept back into her limbs and she propped herself up against the wall. What had happened between these two? What had they done?

  The archangel stirred. He reared up on his arms and looked about in confusion. He did no
t appear to notice the girl. A whiff of some feeling came from him; the orphan could not quite grasp it—was there a tone of disappointment, of something that had not been achieved? He crawled away, dragging his clothes behind him, until he found his book. He took it up and then slumped, vacant, in the corner.

  The virgin lay in her bindings, her breathing back to normal, her bliss faded, her eyes restored to their blindness. The sensation came from her, too. Of having reached a peak, yes, but also of having failed somehow.

  So was that sex? So doomed, so disconnected, the lovers at such cross purposes with each other…? It was not what the orphan had ever imagined. It was awful. This couldn’t be what the foreigner had meant she needed to explore.

  And yet, her own body and its reactions…

  She crawled forward and began untying the virgin. And when that was done, she could stand it no more. Empty and cheated and more acutely turned on than she had ever been, the orphan fled to the privacy of her room, where she tore off her clothes, spread her legs, and masturbated until she came.

  22

  She dozed, languorous, above the sheets.

  In her dreams, shapes and colours moved. Warm things merged and parted again. And then a voice was there, whispering up out of the depths.

  Orphan…

  She stretched her limbs. The foreigner was talking in her sleep. How nice. But then a lazy curiosity rose. He had never come to her like this before.

  It can’t wait.

  She was aware that it was still night. She had been in this drowsing state for only a few hours. She was aware, too, that she was naked on her bed…but she didn’t care. Let him see, even if it was wrong, even if it could never be that way with him. She was barely awake, she could not be blamed.

  Time is running short for us, orphan. There has been an accident.