That certainly was worth a few bad dreams.
Rusty shivered and began sweating; he pushed away the thought that nothing was worth those damn dreams.
Sexploits had gone through miraculous transitions. It had become the leading prime-time show on U.B.S.
After Lunar Broadcasting acquired U.B.S., the show became the bright star of Lunar-TV.
ONE of the first things Lunar did was rip out two floors of the Superior Broadcasting building and construct a new auditorium to seat five hundred people.
Sports, music, comedy, original movies for television, talk shows, all these and more were to be found on Lunar-TV. Plus, and most important, everybody’s new favorite: Sexploits, live, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
As Sexploits grew bolder in using gutter language and becoming more explicit, religious leaders railed against it. Still, Lunar-TV’s popularity and revenue soared.
Sexploits was described by the religionists as pornographic proselytizing. Nonetheless, in a quick turnabout, their power in the country seemed to be diminishing.
Applications to deal with the matter traveled quickly through the judiciary system to the Supreme Court, but the Court refused to get involved, declaring that the pornography issue was a matter for the lower courts.
Happily for Vic and company, an erstwhile conservative judge came down on the side of free speech. Sexploits had a clear and smooth path, and all systems were go.
The network was shifting to a weekly schedule. Sexploits was going to five nights a week, eight thirty to ten p.m., EST, toe-to-toe with the established networks at the start of the new fall season.
No doubt about it, Lunar-TV was the new network, an integral fact of life of the broadcasting industry, with highly rated programs and phenomenal billings.
Sexploits, their innovative live show, was a vital part of that fact of life. And Vic Lancaster was Sexploits.
HE dreamed he was on that street corner again watching Hope and Vic in the bloody scene in the mirror. He heard the chanting voices. “Hecate, Goddess of Darkness. Hecate, Goddess of the Moon. Hecate, Goddess of Blood.”
THE bright part of the dull party was spotting Jess. Rusty lit a joint. Marijuana helped his headache lose its shape. After a while it would be just a dull, bearable throb.
“Hi,” he said, aiming a kiss at her cheek. She moved her face around quickly so that their lips touched. He pulled back and up, she followed, and her spiky black hair whisked his chin.
“What am I, poison or something?” she asked.
“Well, you know.”
“When we first met, you came on pretty strong.”
He didn’t know why, but Jess was one line he didn’t want to cross. Or maybe it was Hope he didn’t want to cross. “That was before Hope and I...”
“Before Hope and you what?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t know. It doesn’t stop her. Why should it stop you? She used to think you could get AIDS out of thin air; now she goes after everything that moves.”
He clenched his right fist and relaxed it. What was the use? Jess was right. Except it hurt too much to hear it out loud. “Ease off, will you? I thought we were friends.”
“Okay, friend,” she said without cheer.
He grabbed two cold brews from the tub of ice on the table and quickly took a swig of his.
Challenging him, Jess chugged her beer straight down.
He matched her, ending with a noisy burp.
“Charming,” she said.
He patted his jeans for his cigarettes.
“In your shirt pocket,” Jess said, pointing with the knife she was using to cut cheese.
“Careful with that thing.” He pulled out the pack of Luckies and another prerolled joint. “You’re liable to hurt someone.”
“Not me, Rusty, I’m not the one around here who hurts people.”
He lit up and took a deep drag. He did like Jess. A lot. He moved closer to her. “Don’t get so serious. Life’s too short for that sort of crap.” When he kissed her, she kissed him back.
Hard. Demanding.
And he was afraid.
It was a struggle to admit it to himself, but it was true.
He was afraid of Hope.
“I don’t get it,” Jess said later in Hope’s apartment, which had become command central. “She was changing all along, and I didn’t realize it. Ugly duckling becomes super swan. That pimply faced, flat-chested, fat-assed thing now has skin like silk. She has spectacular tits, and the rest of her is great, too. How did it happen? Is she taking hormones or something?”
He dragged deep and handed Jess the joint. “Give yourself a break. Leave it alone. You’re only driving yourself crazy.”
“Damn bitch.” She took a deep toke, let the smoke drift lazily out of her nostrils. “You know where she is now?”
“Don’t say it.”
“She’s shacked up with Vic this very minute.”
Hurt flooded Rusty’s eyes.
“What the hell are you acting so injured about?” she demanded, grabbing him, kissing him.
LIGHTNING flashed at the window, and the crack of thunder was right on top of it. The room seemed to vibrate from the force. Again. The sky flashed and snapped. Moaning with pleasure, he looked up. The ceiling was bordered with a continuing spiral circle.
How did they mold the plaster? No one did that kind of work anymore, that was for sure. The spiral ring began to move. His mind drifted, leaving Jess behind.
“No, don’t go away,” Jess cried.
THE room went black. In a glare of lightning, two figures, naked and hideous. During the next flash he watched as they took on new forms. The female now had three heads, and the male had become a snarling black wolf.
Rusty could barely breathe. He stared at the three heads. The middle face, eyes closed, was Hope.
Something grabbed at his legs. Jess. He dropped down beside her, held her tight. The wolf circled, snapping and growling. The three-headed horror came closer and closer.
Flying crones screeched and dove at Rusty and Jess, their whips flailing. “Hecate, Goddess of Darkness. Hecate, Goddess of the Moon. Hecate, Goddess of Blood.”
“WHAT was that crazy dope you gave me to smoke?” Jess asked.
He shrugged. “Just pot.”
They were sitting in the kitchen.
“Hi, kiddies,” Hope said, charging in. “Nice of you to wait up.” She sailed into the bedroom.
Rusty cast a worried glance at Jess and chased after Hope.
“How’re you feeling, sweetheart?” Hope asked, shedding clothing, dropping it on the floor.
“Nothing happened. I swear.”
“I believe you, baby,” she said, planting a juicy kiss on his mouth. He pulled away. “But I won’t believe you if you won’t let me touch you.”
“Sorry, I’m kind of wired.”
“Well, you better get your crap together. We have an important day coming up. Come on to bed. I’ve got the perfect medicine for what’s wrong with you.”
Sex was the last thing Rusty wanted. He considered begging off, saying he wasn’t feeling well, but he knew how she’d react and how miserable she could make him. He said nothing.
“Come on. Don’t keep me waiting.”
“Uh ... Jess.”
“Hey, Jess,” Hope shouted. “Better grab some z’s on the couch. We’ve got a big day ahead of us. It’s the day Vic Lancaster becomes a superstar.” She fast-flapped the fingers of both hands, over and over, beckoning impatiently for Rusty.
RUSTY was in a wood with Hope and the black wolf and the three-headed silver dog. He and Hope were having sex. Just as they had been before falling asleep.
Seconds before orgasm, the animals pushed in between them, destroying their coupling.
The three-headed silver dog went after Hope. The black dog attacked Rusty.
Rusty’s scream merged with Hope’s.
HE snapped awake with all-too-lucid memories. He would not, could
not, look at Hope.
Hope was smiling. Singing a happy song, she stepped into the shower and shrieked her delight at the ice-cold water.
Rusty glared in her direction and made himself instant coffee. He turned on the TV. Half-asleep, slurping coffee, he flicked from news channel to news channel.
“A man was killed during last night’s storm when he was struck by lightning in his own living room.”
“Charles Hamilton, forty-three ...”
“... bolt of lightning came through the open skylight of his sixth-floor apartment . . .”
“The room was soaked by the rain.”
“In fact,” a man identified as Emmett Nichols, the building superintendent, was saying, “I was under the impression the skylight was painted shut. I don’t remember Mr. Hamilton ever having it open in the ten years he lived here.”
“Wait a minute,” Hope said, coming out of the bathroom, pulling a brush through her tangled hair. “What the hell are they saying about Charlie Hamilton?”
“Who?” Rusty rubbed his bleary eyes, as Jess wandered into the living room.
“What happened to Charlie?” Jess asked. Charles Hamilton was Vic’s second banana.
The newscaster answered all their questions.
“The police said Hamilton appeared to have been killed instantly. His clothes were scorched shreds, and his body burned and bruised by the charge of electricity that surged through him.”
Jess screamed, “Ohmygod!”
The newswoman kept talking. “One officer is quoted as saying, ‘This is weird. There were blood stains in a circle around the corpse. It was as if the electricity boiled the blood out of his body.’ ”
IGNORING Vic’s protests, Hope appointed herself Charlie’s replacement.
Rusty, already her slave, was blown away. She was beautiful, magnetic. From her confidence and ease you’d think she’d been working on TV for years. For Christ’s sake, she even did the warm-up.
“Hello, America. Welcome to Sexploits, the program that lets it all hang out.”
“Ha!” The sound exploded from Rusty’s mouth. Even with the memory of a snarling black dog haunting him, he couldn’t stop laughing. Neither could anyone else in the control booth. Or the audience. It wasn’t that funny, but it was.
The audience laughter was accompanied by deafening applause and foot stomping.
Hope’s beautiful face lit up. “Now, live and in New York, here’s the star of our show, Vic Lancaster.”
Vic appeared, blond and handsome. “Thanks, Hope, I trust you’ll tell the world that I’m an equal opportunity employer.” His punch line was an overstated leer.
He hadn’t let the audience down; they didn’t let him down. The laughter continued and built with each line of Vic’s very ordinary monologue.
HOPE knelt at Vic’s feet. After a moment, she thrust out her hands.
The crone placed the silver bowl and sickle in her open hands. Hope plunged the sickle into Vic’s groin, chanting, “Hecate, Goddess of Darkness, Goddess of the Moon, Goddess of Blood, may you live forever.”
Vic’s wound seemed to explode as a bloody torrent shot into the silver bowl. The blood flowed over the sides and spilled to the ground. The three-headed silver dog, Cerberus, lapped at the spill.
Suddenly, the three-headed silver dog was no longer the dog but the three-headed woman.
The three heads shimmered and became one. The new face was Hope’s, and it was smiling. Her smile was rapturous.
III
Hope opened her eyes; she had fallen asleep sitting up. The first thing she saw was the spiral design on the ceiling above her. It was comforting. She checked her watch. Almost three. Collecting her work, she pulled aside the blanket.
“Hi, sweets,” Rusty said sleepily.
“Hi,” she answered. “Pew. One of us stinks, and I think it’s me. I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep.” She yawned. “I’ve put in one tough day.”
But when the phone rang, Hope fell on the bed and grabbed it. “Hello.”
“Hope Brady?”
“Yes.”
“Harold Garment here.”
“Yes?” Harold Garment was Vic’s doctor. “What’s wrong?”
“It grieves me to tell you, Ms. Brady, Mr. Lancaster died early this morning.”
Her body went numb. She felt sorrow and elation. Poor Vic. But now the show was hers alone.
The physician seemed to be in shock. His speech was disjointed, his voice strident. “... incomprehensible. I couldn’t control the hemorrhaging. Spontaneous hemophilia. I don’t understand. I don’t . . .”
MONDAY night, an exquisitely gowned Hope hosted Sexploits. She was a triumph. The tabloids dubbed her “the Queen Slut of Smut.”
Hope had found a home. From e-mail and telephone reaction during and afterward, predictions were that the Slut’s audience share would break all records. The president, in a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union, was quoted as saying he thought Sexploits was a wonderful program.
RUSTY understood something very important.
Hope was protecting him. She was his shield. From here on, everything was going to be all right. He had to believe. That’s what this was all about. Hope had everything. And he had Hope, who was the servant of “Hecate, Goddess of Darkness. Hecate, Goddess of the Moon. Hecate, Goddess of Blood.”
Was Hecate satisfied? Sure, why not? Hope would serve Hecate. And he would serve Hope. If that’s the way it had to be, that’s the way it would be. He was a survivor. Yes, he was.
Rusty turned. He thought he saw Jess standing in a corner. He wished he could tell her. But that was stupid. Jess was gone.
One day she walked out of the office and never came back.
HOPE’S blue eyes had changed. One was icy green, the other shiny black. With awe and fear, Rusty approached her. She was speaking a foreign language to the chauffeur as he helped her into the long, silver gray Cadillac limousine.
Her green and black eyes gleamed as she stared at Rusty. She couldn’t abandon him now. Not after he’d come so far with her. He didn’t care what she was. It didn’t matter. As long as she didn’t leave him behind.
The back door of the Caddy opened. Hope’s lovely blonde head appeared. “Come on, Rusty, move it.”
She wasn’t going to leave him. Rusty jumped into the car. “Thanks,” he said, all out of breath. Desperate for her to know how devoted he would be, he grabbed her hands and kissed them. “We’ll be great together, I swear.”
She pulled her hands from his and lifted her right forefinger to her lips.
He sat back and adjusted his tie. This wasn’t going to be bad. In fact, this was going to be incredible.
HE saw the truck when they stopped for a red light. It was a glazier’s truck with slanted racks on the outside to carry glass.
Like the one he remembered, this truck also carried a mirror on the side facing them.
RUSTY saw Hope and a man in the mirror. They were both naked and bloody. It was an obscene tableau framed on one side by a black wolf, and on the other by a behemoth, three-headed silver dog.
He thought he recognized the man writhing in agony on the gory ground as the blood spouted from his body. The animals, eager to pounce on the dying man, lapped at the dark, wet ground.
Hope knelt beside him, licking the blood that dripped from her lips.
The man’s blood.
In the mirror Rusty saw the head of a snake-haired crone floating in midair.
Medusa’s ancient and jowled leather face glowed. She was smiling.
The man lifted his head, and Rusty saw the agonized face.
It was his.
The Awareness
By TERRIE FARLEY MORAN
The awareness came on a Tuesday afternoon.
was editing an article for a genealogy newsletter when I felt a disturbance in my soul and knew with calm certainty that, before this sun cycle was complete, my banshee keening would join the howl of the wind or disturb the silenc
e of an unruffled atmosphere. In this time-honored way I would announce the passing.
Every American descended from Rory Dev O’Conor was in my charge. No death would go unrecognized. It had been ever so.
I boiled a cup of tea and waited, sitting on a footstool covered with a needlepoint so faded, its image of a rural Irish cottage was barely visible. My emerald eyes, a sure sign I’d inherited my father’s mortal blood, closed of their own accord. All who come from the land of the sidhe have eyes the gray-blue of the ocean slapping at the base of the Cliffs of Moher. Among the banshee, we of mixed heritage will always be recognized by our eyes.
I sat motionless until the time came.
I stood and touched my right fingertips to my left shoulder and my left fingertips to my right shoulder. Time and space became one and the same. I was floating thirty yards or so above a rooftop garden. An old woman, kneeling on a pillow, was weeding with careful concern. She would not require my voice this day. I hovered patiently and reveled in the fragrance of the clematis vines and the sight of a few late-blooming sunflowers, faces turned west to their namesake as it ambled its way across the sky.
The roof door opened. The shimmering glow of looming death preceded the hulking man who slumped through the door. His tousled hair was a darker red than my own and deeply flecked with gray. I felt his name invade my heart with great urgency. It would not be long. A hum started in the back of my throat, easing into a low moan. The keen rose, octave by octave, until my voice was one with the angels in heaven, and sadness covered the immediate earth. My tears sprinkled from the sky like bold drops from an unexpected sun shower.
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