The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  The scent is bright enough to say I’ve found him. I will see him tonight. He is hiding from me just over there, up the road there in the damnedest place. It is a tent.

  Not any old tent, it is very big. At first, as I came up to it, I thought it might be a little circus such as I remember when I was a girl. It is filled with people and there is music too and the people are dancing around and singing. Now I see it, a brave banner has been painted and hung facing the highway: “Temple of God Holy Ghost Faith Revival”.

  Oh, how stupid.

  He knows me better than this, why has he come to this place? Is he religious now? Conscience bothering you, honey? Your little unholy ghost out here knows how to get your mind off that, lover, if you give me half a chance.

  He knows me so well, he knows churches hold no terrors for me. No, I have never feared the cross; I suppose it is the same for others like me, I don’t really know. You may ask, why would one fear a crucifix or any such toy? I will tell you. It is not the thing itself, it is the ghost. The ghosts of the past that remind you of what you were and make you want to run away and grieve for yourself and what is lost and how you have stained your hands. After so many years, I am a holocaust. A massacre. It might be the same with a crucifix I suppose, or the bottom of a cup of tea in some childhood home. The cross only reminds such as me of the great question that hangs always over my head like a sword. If a creature such as me is possible, what else is possible? A soul?

  I don’t want to go in, I can’t stand crowds, this he knows at least. I’ve been hanging back by the trees, smelling the forest air and it is hard to stay here also, because my need to be with him, to touch him and to feed on his touch is so unbearable.

  Shall I go in? The reek of people is so strong, I can barely pick him out, but he’s in there all right. Front row and left, or close to it. I think … I think I smell … yes. He’s wearing his New York Yankees jacket I got for him. Darling!

  It is hard to come from the cool dark to the bright electric lights and all the noisy people waving their arms and shouting. I don’t understand; what made him come here? He must tell me before this is over. There are chairs in the last row and I put my bag on one and I’m about to sit and wait when I smell something interesting. An animal smell, it reminds me of soft cheese. I pause over my wooden folding chair and sniff the air, trying to pin it down but the air is riot with odors. This smell. It is an old smell, from my childhood, I should know this smell, what can it be? And there, a few seats away I see where it comes from. There is this girl, yes. And there is a new baby she has, yes. But she is feeding it, feeding it from her own breast. It sucks life from her. I have not seen this sight I think since my days in the sun. A girl with a baby at her breast. She’s not a healthy girl to be sure, you can tell by the quality of her high smell, and she is thin and pale. A wind or an illness could knock her over. Or a bit of bad luck, such as I. Such a person, I think her blood will be thin and have a bitter under taste of old disappointments. It will be unsatisfying. Garbage blood. But with all the noise around her and the shouting and singing, she is an island of peace, a Madonna with her baby at her nipple, hidden modestly by a soft little blanket. I cannot take my eyes from her.

  This baby, how long will he live? His bright, watery eyes, his musky scent of neglect, in a few years she will be beating him half to death, this girl. I feel sad for him, which is a strange thing for me, to feel sad for someone. I am filled with this feeling I have no name for, but I feel terribly sad for this girl and her kid who have no future.

  The baby slips off her long brown nipple, the blanket drops a little and I see the young men looking sideways, leaning in, trying to catch a peek. She takes the blanket and covers him but it is too late now. Our eyes have met. She sees the hunger in me, and not for blood. I see the thing in her also; I know when a person wants to die. I know it instantly, because it is my business to know such a one, a sick animal as wolves might cut out from a herd. She wanted to, once. But not anymore.

  The baby is now looking at me too. Hello, baby.

  Taking up my little bag I come over and stand above them, looking down. The baby looks like he wants to sleep in her arms, and the noise doesn’t bother him at all. He is such a calm and peaceful little thing. Will he then be brave when he grows up? He smells not very clean, no. But in spite of everything, he has a sad beauty, like a fallen king. You’re a pretty little boy, aren’t you, now? He has little flaky things in his scalp and he is not fresh because she’s not washing him properly, is she? No. He deserves better than what life has given him. Lazy girl, now if this were my baby I would give him a good scrub in the evening first thing after rising and put oil on his head and … and … what?

  Oh now it begins. Now it begins, all the sticky stupid things. I will grab my man and drag him out of here by his dick if I have to. I won’t stay another minute.

  Yes – but see him!

  “Oh he’s sweet. Look at him. May I see? Is anyone sitting here?”

  “Go ahead.” She nods at the chair. I put down my bag and look again at the smelly little thing in her arms. Oh, this stupid woman. This good child should be kept better, beginning with his bath. He will grow up to be stupid like the people here.

  “May I hold him a moment? Please?” He is already half asleep and she wraps the blanket around him and offers him to me. As gently as a butterfly I take him and hold him to me.

  Instantly, he goes crazy. He is looking at my face and wailing. Whatever he is seeing in me, it’s terrifying the little shit out of his mind. Now, good God, the skinny frau is staring at me too. He has seen nothing yet of the world, but he is wild at the sight of me. How does he know? Is he already so wise?

  Now he is just howling and kicking, absolutely inconsolable. It hurts me. I can’t believe this little turd, without enough in him for a snack, has the power to hurt me. But he does. The sight of him makes memories bubble in me. Already she is holding out her arms and looking at me strangely. “I don’t understand, he likes people, he never acts like that.”

  What do you mean by that? I want to ask her, demand of her – what do you mean by that? She has him now, oh yes, brave girl, she has rescued him from the evil nosferatu bitch, is that what she thinks? Is it? He is crying still. Christ. Let me wring his neck or something, to shut him up.

  But the wailing little thing has Daniel’s eyes. Oh, oh – but see him!

  The poor scared little boy. Beautiful boy! There you are – I stretch out a finger to touch his face but she pulls him close to her, protecting her cub from she knows not what. Could we? Is it possible, and if it were, our boy might be wonderful, and maybe have my good silver hair and Daniel’s big shoulders. I would wash his soft hair in the evening and keep him very clean and sweet smelling, and I would tell the old stories to him … and … stop.

  No. No more of that. Daniel has been stuffing his stiffy up in me every night and letting loose for a year and there is no such baby. No, no, no, it would have happened if so. But I am thinking. My womb is dead, it is a ghost’s womb, I am thinking. But Daniel, he is not like other men, I am thinking. His cum feeds me better than any blood. Neither of us knows why it is so. If he can be so different, so special from other men, what else can he do? Doctors, they are very clever these days. They can do miracles.

  No. Stop that.

  She is trying to console him, he will not stop crying for anything and now she is shaking him – you’re shaking him too hard – not like that! Don’t hurt him! My hands, they’re reaching for him and I stop myself instead.

  I didn’t come here to moon over somebody’s little shit pie. Let her shake him to death, it doesn’t matter. What the fuck is this place doing to me? I’m getting out. I don’t want to be here anymore. Where is he?

  Without saying goodbye, I pick up my little bag and move away down the row towards the far end to reach the aisle. Standing on toes I peer over the crowd, searching but I can’t see him. A crowd of people have come into the tent behind me and I’m boxed in. This
whole thing is getting out of control.

  I’m scanning over the crowd for him, and there is a hand on my shoulder.

  “Delia?”

  A heavy black woman is turning me around and has a huge smile on her face. “Is it you, honey?”

  I don’t know what she wants and I shake my head and try to step away to get her goddamned hand off of me, but she steps towards me. “Oh I’m sorry,” she says, “I thought you were my god daughter Delia. Oh, you look like her, just like her!”

  This woman is so happy to see me, and then there is a fat man behind her and she’s shouting to him, “Doesn’t she look just like Delia?”

  “Shit, she does. She got that real platinum hair for sure.”

  The woman yanks me towards her and before I can stop she has me in a hug. My face is pressed into her neck and I’m smelling her hair and the odor of her sweat and she is clapping me on the back calling me things. The man is there and she passes me to him like a child and he’s all over me too and he’s hugging me, covering my face with his smell until my nose goes dead.

  “Naw, she don’ look like Delia.” He holds me at arm’s length and peers at my face. “Just got her hair’s all.”

  “Ain’t she got beautiful hair, ain’t she?” The woman is pawing her blood-fat fingers at my head and stroking it and she’s so happy. “Oh, I do love me that silver hair she got.” Other people are crowding me now and the hunter in me smells a trap. At any moment will come the silver bladed knife and my eyes are darting, searching the crowd, trying to pick out who it will be, some gypsy, some special person who will have serious eyes, but I can’t pick it out.

  “Bless you child!” An old white lady who came with them grabs my arm with white gloved hands and shakes it and my eyes are darting side to side – my other arm raised to ward off the attack I know is coming. How will they do it to me? If one grabs my other arm, do I dare kill them before I have rescued Daniel? “Don’t she look like Delia?” yells the black woman again.

  “Oh not at all, lands no,” says the old lady holding my arm, “but Delia’s older, ya’ all see can’t you, this here’s only a young girl.”

  The black woman smiles in my face. “Welcome to the revival. This here’s our Holy Ghost church. We got the Holy Ghost all night! You’ll have a blessed evening. I’m Ruby.”

  Someone behind me, I try to spin around, but the old woman has me in her bony hands – I see it all now, their plan and suddenly there is a face of a young man close to mine. He has managed to creep up behind me, which never happens. My free hand rises to strike out his eyes before the weapon is in me but there is no hatred in him, he is truly happy to see me. His empty hand is out. “Welcome to our Holy Ghost revival. I’m Brother Edward.”

  “Howdy doody,” I mumble, and touch his hand. I don’t know what else to do.

  “Now don’t she look like Delia?”

  “Got that hair,” he says.

  I like the fact they keep going on about my hair. It is really very nice hair, silver blonde, almost white. You don’t see people with this hair much anymore. I wonder where this poor Delia is, maybe the lost lamb of the family. I look past them at the girl with the baby. The wretched thing is sitting by herself with her reeking infant. She is looking at me and I feel a burst of pride because she sees I can be loved too, do you see? I am popular! I have admirers, here they are, and look at so many people who are happy to see me. Not like you. She looks away, wounded. Good.

  The little band starts up again and everyone around is clapping and singing along.

  “Who you here with?” hollers the jolly fat man.

  The old woman has let go of me and I point over the crowd. “My boyfriend is over there.”

  “Sit with us,” says Brother Edward and shakes the back of a chair at me. Well, I guess. I like the music. It’s like the rock and roll. I stand in front of the chair and put down my little gym bag and clap along, trying to fit in until the right time.

  When the song is over, a man in a cheap black suit steps forward to the lectern. His face is shining in the electric lights and his suit, which someone should iron for him, is stained with sweat as he raises his arms. He yells “Are you ready for your blessing tonight?”

  Everybody cheers and jumps.

  “I feel an anointing!” he yells, waving his arms and closing his eyes.

  I turn to Ruby. “What is ‘anna-noiten’?”

  “Now what is that? What’s that little old sound you got?”

  “‘Anna-noiten’?”

  “Where you from, darlin’?” says the old white lady with the gloves.

  “Germany.”

  “Germany!” hollers Ruby.

  “I feel an anointing tonight,” yells the preacher man, “there is someone here with a broken heart. There is a stranger here and the Holy Spirit is anointing me to reach out to this person with a broken heart.”

  A girl is moving towards him, walking with a cane until he puts his hands on her and closes his eyes and shouts in something that sounds like a make believe language. I have been around for quite some time, and in the business of things I now speak four languages besides also my proper Deutsch. But this crazy language he thinks he has, it sounds like sheep going baabaabaabaa.

  The girl drops the cane and raises her hands to heaven, crying. Is she supposed to be cured of something? Everyone shouts “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” and I am shouting it too, surprised at myself, but getting into the spirit of the thing. It’s very nice, this silly tent church. It’s not so stuffy, like the Catholic Church. It’s like a happy party with music. I think I like it. Maybe no one wants to kill me after all. But I will be careful.

  I am still trying to get my nose back, snorting and wiggling it. I don’t see Daniel anymore and I am too ruined to smell him out in this aromatic labyrinth. “I was a stranger and you took me in.” The preacher man starts it all up again. “And the Lord said when you take the least of these in you take me in. Hallelujah! Blessed are the broken in spirit for they will be comforted. Hallelujah! I feel the spirit moving and the Holy Spirit has put it on my heart what to speak to you tonight, of the broken heart. The broken heart. The stranger with a broken heart – hallelujah! – the homeless with a broken heart – hallelujah! – the parent with a broken heart, the child with a broken heart – hallelujah! – to speak to you – hallelujah! – baa babaabbahey! – of the enemy hidden among us.”

  Oh no. I see it now. A trap. It’s been a long time since this happened to me. I came here only for one person, I didn’t plan to hurt these people but I will have to. I see the best escape, over there where the tables will slow them down, unable to surround me, forcing them to come at me one by one. The first kill will be the most important. They will be underestimating me because of my small size and delicate beauty. All but one. Let them think I’m weak as long as possible, feeling out the hidden leader. He will be the one with the angry eyes, who does not stink of fear. He will be their strength, so his death must be precise, vicious and ghastly, a big show to take the heart out of them. Take out his eyes, then his breath, then I will tear him to pieces at will for them to see. It will put the mob into a panic, buying me time to make the woods. Once there, we are in my arena and I can play in the shadows, picking them off.

  Did Daniel betray me to them? Et tu kuschelbaer? No, he would not do that. And if he did, I would not want to go on anymore.

  “I am speaking—” he says in a hushed voice, whimpering with emotion as though he were trying to force himself to tears “—of the enemy among you who wants you to have a broken heart, who wants to bring you down, who wants you to feel abandoned, who wants you to have no hope, who wants to separate you from God. The enemy wants you to have a broken heart. I want to magnify the Lord tonight, somebody! Somebody help me! Somebody help me magnify the Lord. Somebody tell me amen!”

  “Amen!” everybody yells in one voice.

  “Amen!” I yell too, watching them carefully. They are not watching me. Maybe it is okay.

  �
�We’re on our way to Heaven, and you don’t need a map, and you don’t need a GPS, and you don’t need the Internet, you only need Jesus – hallelujah! – and a broken heart. You need it, you need the broken heart, and our Lord – our Lord he had a broken heart – hallelujah! – and he was on the Cross and his heart was broken and he was abandoned and he cried out ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ and-and-and—”

  I do believe he is going to cry or something. He is certainly working himself up to frenzy. I am watching the faces of those around me, smelling them a little better now, trying to feel what they feel, and though they are much excited, there is no anger anywhere. They are very happy, these people.

  “—and he was crying out to his heavenly father and hallelujah! – and crying out from the scriptures, abbabablelujaheyahey – let me read you, let me read you, let me read you from the Word of God; amen!”

  “Amen!” yells everyone and I do too. I am beginning to feel happy, and there he is! The blue satin jacket with the silly top hat and baseball bat on the back. I see him second row left, where I smelled him before. Does he know I’m here? Already all my body is starving for him and wanting him. I want his hands on me, I want him deep inside me all the way, to have him all to myself. I want to see how his eyes again become so wide when I show him my breasts. My little bag and I will surprise him tonight, but I must cut him off before he gets away with whoever brought him here. He must leave with no one but me.

  “Here—” yells the preacher in that whimpering broken voice, ready to explode “—here is the word of God.” In his hand, a badly beaten old Bible. “I want to read to you, I feel a great anointing tonight to read to you from the book of Psalms. I want you to hear about the broken heart. In the Book of Psalms, Psalm 137 – listen here, here’s what it says, it says, ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yeah, there we wept, when we remembered Zion.’ The children of Israel – they had the broken heart. They sat by the waters of Babylon – and yeah – they wept for all that had been lost and taken away from them! Hallelujah. Hallelujah. They had the broken heart, and cried out to their Heavenly Father to comfort them.”