Crook & Flail

by Maira Isabel Pita

  She lifts her head to look at him as he reaches down and hooks one of her legs on his free arm. He lifts it high and she gasps, her head falling back against the dresser as her body opens up just that crucial little bit more.

  “Mm, yes, baby, take it!”

  “Oh, no, no,” she cries, “stop, please stop!”

  He makes a devastatingly sexy sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan of satisfaction. “You know what to say if you really don’t want it!”

  The word “red” perches on her tongue because he’s right—she’s too small. But her breathless cries don’t shape themselves into words at all. The fulfillment is so intense it nearly knocks her unconscious.

  “You’re not thinking about him now are you, Lucia? You can’t and you know why you can’t? Because you’re being fist fucked, that’s why!”

  Blinded by an ecstasy much more potent than anything her clitoris can give her, she lifts her head again, and from this angle it looks as though much more of his arm is thrust up inside her than is actually possible. He slowly turns his fist from side to side, his knuckles caressing secret parts of her body that have never been touched before as his remorselessly hard wrist moves in and out of her, fucking her. “Oh my God,” she gasps, “oh my God!”

  “Mm,” he says, his expression as hard as his arm. “Mm!”

  “Oh no, no, Mark!”

  “You know what to say!” He grips her firmly behind the knee and pushes it down toward her breasts, opening her up wide.

  She lets out a small scream of orgasmic terror as he shoves his fist all the way into her vagina, nearly killing her with pleasure.

  He withdraws his hand with a cruel swiftness that leaves her completely dazed. “I’m afraid my cock won’t be enjoying your little slit this morning after all.” He lets her leg fall and, grabbing her beneath the arms, pulls her up into a sitting position.

  It is a relief to take the weight off her wrists and hands, which helps console her a little for the great loss her cunt just suffered.

  “Lie on your stomach on the floor,” he commands, opening his jeans as she slips weakly off the dresser. Her ass is a little sore from last night but she sinks to her knees obediently and takes the impact with her right shoulder as she lets herself fall facedown across the carpet. She starts to spread her legs but he snaps “Keep them closed” as he sits on her thighs. He removes his jeans. “Looks like you’re getting fucked in the ass again, baby.”

  Her moan contains a world of emotions. She wants to feel his cock in her butt again but she is afraid it will hurt much more today as he thrusts himself between the innermost flesh of her thighs and up into her pussy. He grinds his hips against her for a delicious moment then pulls out, slick with her warm juices. She bites her lip as his fingers dig into her bottom’s soft cheeks and pull them open and then nearly blacks out from the exquisite pain as he thrusts hard into her ass. He plants his hands alongside her shoulders on the carpet and pounds his erection so deep into her hole she feels as though he will cleave her in half if he keeps it up.

  “Red!” she cries. “Red!”

  “I don’t think so, princess!” He beats the endearment into her. Yet he does have mercy on her by coming, achieving agonizing dimensions even as his cool cum helps soothe the burn.

  * * * * *

  After he leaves with her last bottle of water Lucia brushes her teeth and refreshes her lipstick then does her best to ignore the balcony, from which she is tempted to dive into impossible daydreams again.

  She lingers over the marble counter in the bathroom, idly fingering her makeup like a very little girl trapped in her playpen.

  She buys only the most expensive brands now, lipsticks that flow on like bloody cream and eye shadows that glisten with powdered fish scales. The night she met Richard at his book signing she was wearing lipstick that cost a $1.00 and a short black dress she had bought at a thrift store for $6.00. Her black tights had cost $2.00 and her ankle-high black leather boots $8.00 on closeout. Her entire outfit had been worth less than the lipstick she is wearing now. But that was nearly five years ago, when she was a different person. Her blood cells have died and renewed themselves countless times since then and so many more thoughts and feelings, perceptions and desires, have flowed through her it amazes her their currents aren’t yet visible on her skin.

  Calculating what time it is now in Boston, she wanders back into the room, picks up the receiver and requests an overseas operator. She then holds her breath waiting for the miracle of another phone coming to life continents and oceans away.

  A machine picks up after the fourth ring.

  She hangs up without listening to the message and a terrible sense of urgency possesses her. There has to be something she can do to “call” Richard and somehow help him bridge the gap between dimensions. If the voice can travel thousands of miles in less than a second then why shouldn’t his disembodied energy be able to communicate with her? These thoughts alone wire her to receive him and the excitement they awaken in her might be his presence ringing her through her nerves.

  The phone’s casual defiance of disembodied communication haunts her imagination. Her rational mind, however, has already accepted the fact that power is the reason for what is happening to her in Egypt but not in the way she hopes—the power granted by the money Richard left behind is the heart of the matter, not the immortality of his soul. No one really cares about that except her.

  Chapter Eight

  “Oh God, I don’t know if I can get used to this,” Lucia remarks while slipping on a pair of designer sunglasses. “Every day here is so bright!”

  She and Mark are standing on a wooden platform over the river watching Doug and Lori approach in an old motorboat. Their peaceful glide toward shore is somewhat marred by the tortured coughing of the motor and Lori’s smile looks a little fixed. As usual, she is dressed down in an army green T-shirt and knee-length khaki shorts. To hide her fat thighs, Lucia thinks uncharitably.

  Doug doesn’t appear to have changed his clothes since she last saw him.

  “Greetings!” Mark calls out to them. “Re is resplendent on the horizon!”

  Doug looks oddly confused but Lori’s smile softens as she turns the boat gently sideways.

  Mark leaps into the boat over a coil of decaying rope that resembles a snake shedding its skin, then turns and grabs Lucia by the waist to lift her down, a gesture that makes her feel lovely and precious.

  Once they are seated, Lori steers the coughing vessel back around, a small red feather fluttering from the end of her braid.

  The river is quite broad at this point and in its center white sails glide by even as a few yards away a motorized raft crowded with tourists also pulls away from the shore.

  Seated across from her, Doug folds his reed-thin legs beneath him and stares awkwardly into space like an ancient scribe robbed of his clay tablet.

  “So, what wonderful things are you planning to show us today, Doug?” Lucia asks him.

  “If you really want to see anything,” he replies severely without looking at her, “you can only visit one or two places.”

  “We want the abridged version,” Mark says firmly.

  The Egyptologist frowns at the horizon. “I’ll try to contain myself.”

  “We really appreciate your time,” she assures him.

  He glances at her. “You’re going to burn.”

  She is wearing a sleeveless one-piece suit of white linen that clings to her figure, its short skirt camouflaging practical shorts. Her straight dark hair and bangs complete the Egyptian look. “No I’m not,” she assures him, “I have my mother’s Italian genes. I tan, not burn.”

  “Well, that explains it.” He looks straight at her finally. “Mark said you were from New England but I knew that couldn’t be true.”

  “It’s where I grew up.”

  “Yes, but genetically you’re Latin.”

  “I told you he was a brilliant scholar.” Mark’s attention is focused on the mot
orized raft bearing a large crowd of tourists across the water.

  Lori, apparently, is exercising the captain’s right not to socialize.

  “So where are we going, Doug?” Excitement is beginning to lick at Lucia’s heart like the Nile lapping around the boat.

  “I suppose that’s up to you.” He seems to relax. “What would you like to see? There are the tombs of the kings of course, eight of which are open to the public, as well as nine noble tombs.”

  “I don’t suppose I could see Nefertari’s tomb, could I?”

  He literally squirms. “They’re working in it.” He dismisses the idea.

  “I know they are, Doug, but I’m sure you of all people…”

  “Oh all right! But first you absolutely have to see the tomb of Seti I. You do know who Seti I was?”

  “Oh yes, he was a marvelously handsome pharaoh whose mummy is still rather good looking.”

  Mark rolls his eyes as Doug glares at her.

  “He was the first great king to rule Egypt after Akhenaten threw everything into chaos,” she continues. “He re-established order and built a gorgeous temple to Osiris in Abydos. I remember seeing pictures of him as a little girl and having a major crush on him. He also completed half the Hypostle Hall at Karnak and did away with the overly decadent artistic style initiated by Akhenaten, thank God. The paintings from Seti’s time are exquisitely beautiful and elegant.”

  “Yes.” Doug nods. “If you have time for only one tomb it has to be Seti’s. Every square inch is covered with excerpts from funerary texts and fascinating ceremonial and astronomical material. Yes, we’ll definitely go there first!”

  Lori glances back at Mark. “I think you’ve created a monster.”

  This is a meaningfully symbolic crossing for Lucia, so she is glad no one speaks as the boat approaches the West Bank and docks with a sensual thud against the wooden pier.

  Lori leaves it in the care of a very sober-looking black-skinned man in a green- and white-striped galabiyya, and then she and Doug lead the way to a dusty old white Volkswagen parked in the scant shade of a palm tree. The car makes Lucia think of a huge ivory scarab.

  The barge that crossed the river parallel to them is disgorging a colorful stream of tourists. Most of them hurry to board small buses while a few catch the more expensive alternative of cabs.

  Holding her hand firmly in his, Mark scans the crowd with eyes as cold as a falcon’s surveying the terrain for prey. His protective attitude thrills her, as does the fact that she is about to see tombs she has read about all her life because Richard will experience them through her, the magical hieroglyphs benefiting his spirit by way of her love for him.

  Lori remains the designated driver. Doug sits beside her in the front seat and caresses the back of her head as she shifts gears. “She’s such a great help to me,” he remarks wistfully. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  “I organize his notes and keep his files up to date,” Lori explains. “He could lose a pyramid by himself.”

  The desert quickly encroaches upon the dry greenery and Lucia suddenly can’t wait to enter the golden purity she has been admiring from her balcony for days.

  The narrow road they follow curves sharply between rocky cliffs that leave only a narrow path of sky visible overhead, like the celestial Nile the Egyptians believed in.

  “You should see this place at night!” Lori raises her voice so it carries over the wind roaring in through the open windows. “It’s like driving on the moon!”

  Lucia wonders if she and Richard are taking a first haunting step for mankind, then the astronomical conceit of such a thought disturbs her.

  “How familiar are you with the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Lucia?” Doug asks her abruptly.

  “Not very, I mean, it’s so confusing. The copy I had was translated by Wallis Budge.”

  “A complete idiot!”

  “I agree. It didn’t make any sense. All I know is its real title, The Book of Coming Forth by Day.”

  “Well, for the most part,” Doug clears his throat, “the compositions adorning the royal tombs aren’t taken from the Book of the Dead. They actually derive from the early Pyramid Texts and all of them deal with the transformation of the soul in the region of the Duat after death. The compositions in the tomb you’re about to see are called The Book of What is in the Duat, which contains The Book of the Gates, The Book of Day, The Book of Night.”

  “And a bunch of other books,” Mark cuts in irreverently.

  “You would do best to perceive them as manuals of spiritual instruction for the disembodied spirit.” Doug blithely ignores the interruption. “In elaborate symbolic form, they show all the steps that must be taken to ensure life in eternity. But the Duat is not a place in any physical sense, you must understand. The Duat is the actual state of being in which these transformations take place. Anyhow, the Book follows the progress of the solar principle, or of the king’s spirit, through the twelve hours of the night. The damn thing is divided into three registers and although we know the nature of the text is transformational we still can’t grasp the exact meaning of all the odd little figures in it.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s nearly impossible to capture the different levels of meaning taking place simultaneously in hieroglyphic texts,” he continues a little less sternly. “The Egyptians had no intention of making the complex simple.” He sounds as though he approves even though it makes his work more difficult.

  Lori slows down as they leave the cliffs behind and enter an open stretch of desert, where it seems very strange to come upon a parking lot.

  Doug keeps talking as they get out of the car. “I’ll be better able to explain the texts to you once we’re inside the tomb.”

  Small and unadorned except for the burial chamber, Tutankhamon’s tomb nevertheless appears to be the first stop on everyone’s list, the long lines to get in reminiscent of Disney World.

  The sky is strikingly blue above the light-brown desert sand and tomb-studded mountains undulating for as far as the eye can see. Lucia spots a gaping black rectangle marking the entrance to a tomb.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Mark’s shirt is almost the exact color of the sky, which makes the conscious intensity in his eyes even more striking.

  “It’s so quiet here,” she observes in an appropriately hushed voice, “even with all these people around.”

  “Imagine what it’s like at night. Ancient tomb robbers had some serious cojones.”

  “Oh God, I’m sure you can see all the stars. Are there any hotels around here, Mark?”

  “Yes, but none that would even remotely suit you, princess.”

  “Why? They should have nice hotels on the West Bank where there’s so much to see.”

  “Baby, once the sun begins to set you’ll be happy to get the hell out of here, trust me.”

  Doug waits until every last tourist emerges from Seti’s tomb before leading them in, but not until he gives the native man on guard an appropriate amount of baksheesh to keep everyone else out until they are finished.

  On the left wall of the first corridor Seti I is depicted as a Falcon. Doug casually explains the royal bird symbolizes the human spirit. It is chilly in the well-lit passage that thrusts deep into the earth past several more aspects of the Solar Principle, including the figure of a man with a ram’s head.

  They have explored four chambers, in which Doug did not stop lecturing for one second, before the tomb splits in half. One corridor veers to the right while to the left a narrow staircase leads up into a room that looks as though it is still being worked on.

  “The paintings in here are unfinished,” Doug’s reverent voice scarcely disturbs the silence, “and are fascinating in that they reveal artistic techniques. You can see here and here that the original drawings were sketched in red then corrected in black by the master artist. What we’re looking at are the Ninth, Tenth and the Eleventh Hours from The Book of What is in the Duat.”

  Th
ey return to the fork in the corridor and descend through two more passages. On the way Lucia recognizes the ceremony of the Opening of the Mouth. A priest in a leopardskin cloak stands before Seti’s upraised mummy holding an object resembling a bent metal rod in front of the dead king’s face. Yet according to Doug the priest hadn’t literally opened the mummy’s mouth. The rite was symbolic and granted the disembodied soul the power to enjoy all of life’s sensual pleasures again.

  “We take the world in through our eyes and think about it just as we swallow food and digest it,” he explains. “The dead soul on whom this ceremony was performed was able, from that moment on, to absorb all truth and all nourishment directly, without need of the brain or the body.”

  They reach a small room where the tall and handsome Seti makes offerings to all the major gods, including Osiris, Isis, Horus, Hathor and Anubis, and this beautifully colorful little space opens onto a large, pillared hall.

  “The sarcophagus which originally stood in the back of this chamber is one of the great masterpieces of New Kingdom art,” Doug informs them. “Unfortunately, it’s tucked away in some obscure little museum in London when it should be right here where it belongs. It’s carved out of a single massive block of alabaster, covered with representations from The Book of Gates in exquisite blue hieroglyphs.”

  “It sounds beautiful,” Lucia says, drifting into a small alcove.

  “In here,” Doug follows her in eagerly, “we see the Seventh Hour from The Book of What is in the Duat.”

  “Really? Explain it to me. In detail, please.”

  “You really want me to?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Well, in the Seventh Hour Isis appears at the prow of the Solar Barge and her magic words keep it going when it’s confronted by Apopis, the eternal enemy of Re and the forces of light.”

  “The Seventh hour is when Apopis confronts the dead soul?” Lucia suddenly feels as though the weight of the earth around them is resting on her shoulders. “And Isis helps him?”

  “Yes, she renders the evil serpent powerless when he tries to stop the dead soul from achieving his divine flesh.”