by John Everson
I let her go when we broke the surface, and she immediately dove away from me, choking and crying at the same time.
“You’re crazy,” she yelled, and swam ahead as I chased her.
Chased her right to the statue.
She was as awed as I had been.
For a moment, she seemed to forget my coercion, as she rose from the water to stand at the feet of the giant. My flash played upon her dripping buttocks, and I was suddenly overcome. I believe it was the giant and not myself. But something happened to her too. Because when I walked up behind her and reached my hands around her waist to feel her up, she didn’t push me away. And when I ran those same hands down the trail of her belly, into the light down of her pubes, she changed her stance to accommodate.
When I turned her to face me, she had a blank, lost look in her eyes. Concussion or possession, I don’t know, but without any suggestion from me, she suddenly knelt and put her mouth to work. Something she’d never done for me. Ever.
I was in ecstasy, but she wasn’t finished. Smiling a retarded sort of grin, she stepped into the water between the giant’s legs, and got down on her hands and knees. Only her hands were clutching the giant’s phallus, and her rear was waving in a gesture that not many men could ignore under any circumstance.
I took my wife for the last time there, in a cave, her hands on another’s organ. A rod of stone. And as I found the best release I can ever remember having, a swarm of golden tadpoles shot from the rock between my wife’s hands and darted around us slickly kissing our every pore. I almost loved her again in that moment.
And then the spell wore off.
And she screamed.
“Oh my God, what have you done!”
The tads were not letting up this time, and Rachel soon showed me why.
“I can’t move my hands!” she wailed, and holding her arms up, I saw they were entwined together with hundreds of tiny lemon filaments.
In that instant, I saw again the vision I’d seen before, and again a rocky spear fell nearby to remind me of my promise.
“Come on,” I said and tugged her back into the channel. “Let the current take us back.”
In seconds we’d resurfaced in the main cavern. I heard it then.
The heavy thunder that rose above the sound of the gurgling river. It came from her cavern. It sounded like the croaking of a thousand bullfrogs. And as we swam to the shore, it grew louder.
I pulled her out of the water, and then reached down to pick up the twine I’d used to mark my progress. Before she knew what I intended, I looped the twine through her glued hands, and tied her fast. She could move to the water’s edge and stand in the lip of the exit, but could go no farther.
“What are you doing? You can’t mean to leave me here!”
I looked into her face, and tried to remember why I had once loved her. Instead a strange sensation rumbled through my stomach.
Hunger.
Insatiable, painful hunger. It grew with the sound of the now not-so-distant croaking.
“I do,” I said, and like the last life-changing time I’d said it to her, I really did mean it.
Something huge and glisteningly green broke the surface of the water as I turned from her and ran to the exit.
I forgot my clothes this time, but it didn’t matter anymore, did it?
I’m all packed now, and ready to leave. I want so badly to walk up that trail once more, and bathe in the waters of the lusty cavern. But I don’t know if Rachel only bought me time, or bought me endless license. If the former, my meter is up. Last night as I lay alone in bed, my belly rumbled contentedly, as my sheets became stained with uninitiated pleasure.
This morning I stood at the base of the mountain, in the dry stream bed where I’d first discovered the hidden tunnel. The otherwise white stones were marred in spots with something sticky. Something dusky red. A shred of the t-shirt I’d ripped off Rachel was caught in a bush nearby. And every few feet, glistening and shriveling in the sun, were thin, sticky threads.
Yellow threads. Like corn silk.
As I stood there contemplating the evidence of my betrayal, I felt a rumbling in my stomach. And a stirring in my loins. Suddenly I wanted to rip off my clothes, run up the hidden tunnel and plunge into the secret pool again.
But I didn’t.
Sometimes being a coward has its advantages. It helped me run.
But can I stay away?
And if so, can they follow me?
As I turn the car onto the first paved road in 20 miles, I can swear I hear croaking behind me. Not too far away. And not diminishing.
I can feel their hunger.
I heard on a talk show that a huge percentage of couples have at least one partner cheat on the other, and a large proportion of that cheating happens in the workplace (makes you think about Windexing your desk each morning, doesn't it?) Sometimes the price of strangling a relationship with inattention and sexual subterfuge can lead to calls you don't want to have. The kind of call that's untraceable…
Long Distance Call
hristina twisted on Jack’s lap to allow her to silence the disruptive ring. The outer office was eerily dark, back lit by the yellow glow of the elevator hallway. It was as if they were performing for an audience – the only light centered upon their bodies. Green glass softened the glare of the banker’s lamp on Jack’s desk. Softened but not obscured, the warm light threw shadows across the filing cabinets, projected the tawdry silhouette of their two bodies in motion across the side wall – bigger than life and twice as tantalizing to would-be peeps.
“It’s your wife,” Christina harrumphed breathlessly. She twined the phone cord around her middle, forcing him to pull her closer if he wanted to stretch the receiver to his ear. With one thick, hair-camouflaged paw, he pulled her in close, and while still subtly moving inside Christina, Jack greeted his wife.
“Hi honey, what have you been doing all day? I tried to get through and the line was always busy.”
“Jack, I’m so alone.” Her voice trembled, seemed to come from miles and miles away. Christina thrust a blushing nipple between the phone and his lips but he only frowned and shook his head. He still cared for his Angela, even if she’d been living in another world these past months.
“I’ll be home soon,” he promised, eliciting an exaggerated pout from Christina’s cherry lips.
“Why is Christina there so late, Jack? It’s after 7 o’clock. What are you doing with her?”
He answered too fast. Scared now.
“Nothing honey. I mean, she’s helping me with this project, that’s all. I’ve got to get it finished by Friday.”
Angela’s voice seemed to be drifting. Its normally full, throaty rasp was reedy, insubstantial.
“I’ve known, Jack. Always.”
“Known what, hon? Angie, you’re not taking too many of those Valium, are you? You sound funny.”
Christina was rocking, ignored on his lap. She could feel him slipping steadily out of her, no longer keeping it up. Her face fell in disappointment.
“Ooooh. Uh. Uh. Uh.” Angela had begun groaning and grunting on the other end of the line! Sounding like she had when they’d first gotten married, and had enjoyed the wanton push of each other’s fleshy bodies. Like she hadn’t sounded in months.
“Ohhhh Jack. Is this what you want? I know how to do it gooooood for you, baby. I’ll be your little slut, Jack. That’s what you want, isn’t it? A slut? Maybe some phone sex? Oooooh Jack. Go ahead now. Finish what you started.”
Jack’s desire dove rapidly into the impotent range. Something was majorly wrong. Somehow she must know about Christina – and the way she’d been lately…
“I’ll be right home, honey. Hold on.”
“Known,” Angela whispered.
Jack thought maybe she was crying. “I’m ready now. I’m waiting for you Jack. Me and Eddie. We’ll be waiting for you.”
The line went dead.
Jack handed the phone back to Christina
, who cradled it absently behind her, not taking her eyes off the man beneath her.
“How does she do it?” she railed, blue eyes flashing in frustration. The past five times they had managed to get the office to themselves to make love, the phone had rung just prior to completion of the act.
“I don’t know,” Jack shook his head and gently helped Christina up from her complicated squat through the arms of the chair. “But something’s wrong. She sounded really strange, and she…”
His voice trailed off, eyes clouded in confusion.
“What? What did she say?”
“She said she’d known, and then started making sex noises. I don’t know what’s come over her. It’s been eight months since she made love to me, and then it was like she was doing me a favor.”
He smiled lopsidedly at her, a puppy dog’s look after tracking muck from the yard across white carpeting. “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll make it up to you.” He hesitated, about to say more, then shook his head. “I better get home.”
The house was dark when Jack’s headlights swung into the driveway. He was genuinely concerned now. He loved Angela; had never dreamed he’d cheat on her. But then, last year, she had started to change. He blamed the books. After her brother Ed had driven off Hwy. 32 and into a tree, killing both himself and some woman he’d picked up in a club earlier that night, Angela had started checking out occult texts from the library. She couldn’t accept her brother’s death. But the books were only the beginning. Hunting for a way to contact her Eddie, Angela had begun frequenting a New Age bookstore downtown that sold crystals and incense and all sorts of gimmickry.
Jack had kept this quiet at first, assuming wrongly that time would heal – that she would see that this hocus pocus crap was just that – crap. Eddie was dead and was going to stay that way.
But she didn’t see. Instead, she delved deeper and deeper, attending seances, bringing home all manner of creepy, spaced out weirdos. Jack had tried to put an end to it, but by then it was too late. He’d lost her long before. The final blow came when one night, as he’d crept up behind her at the sink to cup a breast in each hand and blow in her ear (always a sure bet to have them both naked and coupling within five minutes) she’d swatted his hands away. Turning to look into his eyes, she’d calmly announced: “No more of that, Jack.”
He’d stepped back, staring at the freckles on her cheeks, hungry for those black ringlets across her forehead to brush his belly.
“Huh?” was the most intelligent answer he’d managed.
“No more sex. I think I’ve been unable to reach Eddie because I’m not pure. I have to be… white, clean in body and soul to reach the other side.”
That had been it. That was the last night Jack considered that he had a wife – since then his house had been filled with herbal scents and empty words. A woman lived with him, but she was not Angela.
Jack turned off the car, grabbed his briefcase and stepped into the garage.
Everything was still. The reverberation of the car door slamming seemed to echo forever in his head. He stood a moment in the inky black of the garage, smelling the cold musty scents of dust and mildew. He needed to fix that fracture in the east wall, he thought absently. Leaking again.
Jack fumbled for the knob, and pulled open the door to the house. It was even more quiet inside. She must have gone out somewhere, he thought, and swatted his hand up the wall for the switch. The light at the top of the stairs blazed to life, revealing the five steps up to the front door foyer, the black and white pattern tile there, the spider plant hanging from a long macrame sling near the door.
“Honey? Angela? You home?” he called. His voice fell flat in the darkness, seemed swallowed up by the night. No answer. Shaking his head in consternation, Jack mounted the stairs to the foyer.
Something squeaked.
He paused, listening, his heart pounding loud in his chest. It had just occurred to him that someone could have broken in to the house – and hurt or killed Angela. Someone could still be here!
The squeak continued, a steady sound, like a tree limb sawing back and forth against a window in the wind. It hadn’t been there when he’d stepped into the house. Slowly, trying not to make a sound, he placed a foot on the next stair of the landing. Ten stairs up to the front room/dining room/kitchen. The sound grew louder, more frenzied. Another stair. And another. He held his breath.
“Screeuuken screeeeeeuuken,” the noise accelerated.
Jack closed his eyes; took a deep breath. Steeling his nerve, he ran up the next six steps. And stopped.
The noise was Angela. She was dangling several feet in the air, held to the decorative ceiling beam by a taut length of phone cord. The receiver hung at her breast, still attached to the cord looped several times around her neck. The phone base anchored the noose up around the beam. Angela was naked, and looked quite dead. The hall light reflected off something wet on the floor beneath her. Angela’s eyes bugged in Jack’s direction, but her lips were pulled back tight. If she hadn’t been dead, Jack would have said she was smiling.
Jack felt numb; his mind refused to function. He was simply too astounded to absorb this. He walked like a zombie to where she hung, and reached out to grab one white, naked leg to still her pendulum motion. He withdrew his hand suddenly, in overwhelming disgust. She was cold. And damp.
He sat on the floor, staring at the lifeless corpse that had so recently been his wife. And hated himself for his first thought: “Well, at least Christina and I won’t have to sneak around anymore.”
He felt like a pupil at the feet of some philosopher. Only her feet were not on the ground, he thought, and suddenly began to laugh. It’s not funny, his mind screamed at himself and he only laughed louder. And then the tears came, and he cradled his face in his hands.
Something dropped with a dull slap to the floor and Jack snapped to attention. Whoever had done this to her was still here, he thought, as something nudged his knee. He almost wet his suit pants then and there. Jack reached shakily to the floor by his leg, and quickly found the object. It was cool, smooth, tubular. And sticky at its end. He lifted it from the ground, and stared at Angela’s vibrator in disbelief. It had rolled from across the room. The phone end table, he thought. It must have fallen from there. There was still a sheet of paper curled on top of it. He got up to see what it was, knowing before he got there that it would be a last note from Angela.
He guessed right.
Dear Jack,
I’ve gone to find Eddie. Hope you’ll be happy with Christina. Give this to her for me?
Love, Angela
He stuffed the note and sex toy into his pocket.
Why had it fallen just then? he wondered, a strong case of the creeps stealing over him. Why had she begun swinging AFTER he’d started up the stairs. Goosebumps poked through the hair on his arms and he realized it was time to take action. 911. That’s what he had to do. Call 911.
The line was busy. He picked up the kitchen extension and got a steady beeping tone. He’d have to go next door to call. Nodding at this sage decision he stepped back into the front room and looked at Angela again. She was ghastly. White as milk, except for the purpling at her feet and neck. Then he noticed the phone was still plugged into the wall. That’s why the line had been busy all day! She’d left it plugged in. He didn’t have to go next door. He bent over and unplugged the line from the wall socket, went back to the kitchen, and made the call.
But as he waited for the police and ambulance to arrive, one thought nagged at him. If she’d killed herself this morning, and tied up the line all day, how had she called him an hour ago?
“She was awake when you left this morning, Mr. Trenton?” the policeman asked, cocking an eyebrow that seemed more than willing to expand into a hairpiece if allowed.
“Yes,” Jack replied softly. “She seemed fine.”
“And what time did you go to work?”
“7:30, same as always.”
“Did you talk to her at a
ll during the day?”
“Well, I tried calling her at lunch, and then later in the afternoon – I had to work late.”
“But did you reach her?”
“No. But she called me.”
“When?”
“Around seven tonight?”
The officer stopped writing and looked up slow and intently at Jack. The coroner had already guessed Mrs. Trenton’s death as occurring between 8 a.m. and noon, give or take an hour.“
“Tonight you say?”
Jack noted the tone. Officer Starley had suddenly become very interested.
“Yeah, she called to see when I’d be home.”
“You were working later than usual?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she ever give you any indication that she would try to kill herself?
“No. She was getting more into occult stuff lately, but… no.”
“And had you had a fight recently?”
Jack pictured the cold quiet life that had become his over the past few months. No fights. No speaking, really. “No.”
Starley scribbled in his book. When he looked up he was smiling.
“That’s all for now, Mr. Trenton. I’m truly sorry about your loss.”
Starley shook Jack’s hand and left the kitchen, pausing momentarily to look up at the high beam Angela Trenton had so recently been umbilicaled to. It was likely that she’d used the chair by the wall to climb up, wrap the phone around the beam and her head, and jumped. But then again, her husband was hiding something. Murder? He didn’t know. But he always got an itch when someone was concealing. And right now his body was itching all over.
“Ohhh yeah, c’mon baby, ride me!”
Christina’s nails scraped against Jack’s naked back as he thrust and moaned with her exhortations. “We’re gonna get there this time,” she almost screamed.
And then the phone rang.
And rang.