by Beech, Mark
The security light remained on, as the nymph kept half of her white body in their world.
“I’m taking a bath.” Sylvie’s mundane statement broke the spell somewhat, and Patrick was unsure as to who his wife’s words were directed at. Emma? The nymph? Was she preparing herself? The idea excited him. Patrick ceased staring at his reflection in the kitchen window, fingers plucking the lonely grey hairs in his beard, and refocused on the girl. The fur coat she wore was like no clothing he had ever seen before. Patrick had to blink to make out the ebb and flow of blackness across it; islands of tarnished white clumped here and there, and woven through it all, long, maniacal strands of deep red. Her thin fingers were earthbound out of the sleeves, pointed nails painted black.
That scent. He thought of it again whilst opening another beer. A rich yield that was not of his garden. Like the nymph. She had done nothing to provoke, but already Patrick began to project wild fantasies—twice removed from the women around him—onto her alluring white canvas. They tussled together in the damp earth, far away from mankind’s eyes, until there was nothing except him, and her. Whoever she was.
“Goat-footed, horned, Bacchanalian Pan. Fanatic power, from whom the world began.”
Emma stood beside him, visibly drunk. Her eyes swayed, but did not leave the outlines of his face.
“Emma,” he said. “Not joining Sylvie?”
“I can wait,” she replied. “The nymph intrigues me.”
“Maybe it’s time for someone to make a move, then.”
“That’s just your problem, Patrick,” Emma offered the words to him on her superior smile. “You’ve always considered yourself a mischievous fellow, haven’t you? But only if the garden path is laid out your way. In thee a refuge from our fears we find, those fears peculiar to the human kind.”
“You’re just a cunt, aren’t you?” Patrick said, calmly. The words shocked him almost as much as they did Emma: she had no reply ready, just staggered backwards a little, lost in such a reaction.
“I’ll fucking show you all.” He turned away from her and drank deep from the bottle. The nymph had given him powers, finally. He would have to thank her. Emma’s mute figure drifted from his peripheral vision. And then the nymph, motionless for so long that night, moved her head to the left. To look straight at Patrick. If it were a signal, he took it as one and, aroused by immediate need, he marched from the kitchen, took the stairs two at a time and entered the bathroom without knocking. Steam assaulted him. Sylvie lay deep in the water, her familiar freckled skin glossy and alluring above the milky surface.
“What do you want, Patrick?”
“You.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“For me, you mean?”
“No. This whole night’s strange.” She sounded sober now, as if her time alone had allowed sense to return.
Patrick moved towards the bath, unfastening his jeans. Sylvie sat up, self-consciously covering her breasts as she did. He urged himself onto her, skin slippery in his hands. She moved to push him away. “Not now, Patrick.”
“Emma can join in, if you want.”
“This is not the time!”
“You wanted to fuck a woman.” His jeans and shorts were on the floor.
“I’m not like you, Patrick!” She grabbed his wrists before eager hands reached her chest. He pulled away, began unbuttoning his shirt. The ritual required nakedness. Sylvie moved to get out of the bath but Patrick bore down on her, water sloshing over the rim. She tried to scratch his chest with her softened nails, but Patrick was erect now, ready. He grabbed her by the throat and lurched into the bath, one knee on her soft stomach, eyes focusing only on pert breasts as they dipped beneath the water, rose again. Hands flayed about, but Patrick had to use his own to satisfy himself. Sylvie’s feet thumped against the ceramic edge, a drumbeat fading as he found the strength to finally keep her head under the water.
A few bubbles marked their final intimacy together. Breathless, Patrick watched the last drop of his semen burst the biggest bubble, and then on shaky legs he took his weight off Sylvie and stepped out of the bath. He granted his wife’s body the time to grow still, her hair drifting like red kelp around her placid face. At that very moment, he felt that a thousand painters would have queued all night for the chance to record her terminal beauty.
His impromptu ritual had worked, Sylvie the sacrifice. Patrick considered himself cleansed of the house and those in it; he was both the winner and loser of all the hideous games they had tried to play, and his prize... his prize stood in waiting, out on the furthest reaches of his present dream, there to lead him to another place. A place where there were no mortgages or ten-hour shifts or mind-games or... a place where there were only sunsets and passion and fucking without consequence.
Patrick didn’t bother to get dressed. Downstairs, ignoring the stunned response of Emma, he searched around in the hallway for his keys.
“Patrick?” She asked. “What’s Sylvie doing?”
“Dreaming,” he replied, barely acknowledging her.
“What?” The time alone, facing only the nymph, had cast a fear over Emma. “Patrick, why are you naked?”
“So that my journey won’t be held back by by useless baggage.”
“No. Don’t go out there...”
“Fuck you, Emma. And you say I’m all talk?”
She started to cry, tears intruding. If this was a plea, then Patrick had won. He walked into the living room and instantly saw that the nymph was still there, outside. Waiting. The steady breath of her coat calling him, a gateway to pleasures beneath. Her snowy belly slowly rippling for him in the midnight cold. He wondered how warm she would be to the touch of his tongue...
Behind him, Emma spoke. “You’re making a mistake, Patrick,” she said, so quietly between the drying tears.
“Sylvie wants you,” he replied, not turning back to her but instead unlocking the patio door. He anticipated Emma attempting to stop him, but with a final sniff the cold air forced her back, out into the hallway. Did the nymph smile as the door opened? Patrick was not sure. He stepped out, closed the door and locked it. The frost wilted his excitement, but it would return. He would prove his debauchery to Emma as she wept over Sylvie’s body, rut into ecstasy this creature, this being, which the women could never have...
Throwing his keys into the darkness, Patrick looked over to see that the nymph had disappeared from the night light’s border. A shiver deflated him momentarily then, gingerly at first, he began to caper across the grass and stones, noting that he still had on one item of clothing: black socks; nylon hooves on which to enter the woods. Beyond the wall of night, she would be there, in the trees that were no longer his. A place where Sylvie’s death, Emma’s warning, no longer mattered. Exasperated by his crisp strides, the security light faded soon after Patrick had traversed its threshold and pranced, freezing, into a shadowy clearing. Behind him, a muffled cry of discovery came from somewhere in the house; a final report from elsewhere, no match for the treasures he was about to experience.
Stood in front of the oak tree, the nymph was more striking in the flesh than she had ever been from far behind glass. Oval eyes of clearwater grey, mist falling from parted lips. Without hesitating, Patrick skipped forwards and slipped his hands into the folds of her coat, fingers resting on smooth hips. She said nothing, did not resist. The coat offered no warmth, though: there was no lining within. And a smell rose from it, a scent that caressed his memory. Patrick tilted his head to kiss her, lips cold against his. She did not embrace him, merely lifted a small hand to examine his face, as if sightless. He moved to entwine his fingers in hers but she rejected them. Briefly, he saw that her nails were not painted black, but were coloured by something else, something of the earth and body. But of no earth nor body he had ever encountered. They kissed again, although her tongue did not venture into his world. Patrick breathed in that scent, its richness lighting a fire of remembrance. He ran his mouth down her neck, wishing that he
r furrowed fingers would explore elsewhere than his hair. He was still soft, his penis only touching her clothing, nowhere else; and the coat felt rough, unfinished: fur matted with the dried weepings of some beast. Examining closer, Patrick saw that it was stitched together crudely, a patchwork of sporadic skin, harvested from a score of anonymous beings, fastened by those strange, lambent red strands. Her dirty fingers embraced his head and he felt the grit of damp earth roll on his skin. Far behind them, the house’s security light came on.
Patrick tried to turn to see who was approaching, but he could not. The nymph looked up at him, a mask of pity and hatred on her face. She did not speak and, as her strong hands increased the pressure on his skull, neither could he. From deep within his wet guts, the sickening nausea of a horrible mistake began to rise; and in the illuminated garden, nothing came to help him. Instead, a dozen silent shadows tore themselves free from the darkness around the clearing. Malevolent scene-shifters quick to end this laughable play, to reduce the parts to oblivion. The nymph held Patrick’s head tight now. He could not move for pain, could not turn to see her attendants flowing towards the house. Could only hear faint noise beneath the tumultuous waves of his dying: the violent destruction of glass, of door frames splintered like bone. Emma’s terrified pleas as the nymph’s loyal shadows engulfed the house—
Her wrathful eyes, grown from an earth he could never comprehend, reflected nothing but the truth of death as she crushed the life from Patrick’s skull. They drank in the tears of blood that fell in torrents from his face onto her white breasts. They savoured every drop as Patrick’s pathetic body sagged and twitched in her lethal hands, and his last thought fell deep and red onto her trophy coat. It was a thought of remembrance, of realisation. A thought born and dead in the second it took for the nymph’s crimson fingers to twist his beard skywards towards the saffron-coated knife, older than them all.
She considered dipping her fingers into the water, but it was not an action suitable for a night like this. All over the house, black shadows flitted in gleeful destruction. The feast of life was what she threw them in return for their absolute devotion. The woman was indeed beautiful, and she would not corrupt the pure surface of her grave with red fingers: blood of that fool satyr downstairs. He had come to her like they all came to her in the end, thinking that she would give her body to one so pathetic and weak.
The nymph glided softly across the wet floor and closed the bathroom door behind her. Spawn of her black hall were waiting silently on the landing, but she waved them away; dawn would come soon, and they had gorged themselves enough on the others. She had tossed them Patrick’s headless corpse earlier and then sat on a nearby chair, half watching its violation as she effortlessly weaved the scalped beard into the saffron-scented meadow of death that was her trophy coat.
Descending the stairs now, she spied the body of the other woman in a dark corner of the hallway, its outline expanded by blood. Even from far outside, this one had seemed somehow different than the bearded fool and the beauty they both appeared to have been fighting over. Recognition warmed in her
as Emma had spoken words that were silent behind the glass; words that slipped from her lips to confound the satyr. Now this woman’s lips were one of the few parts of her body that remained intact. The nymph let her fingers briefly touch an intact breast, and then followed them as they moved beyond the body to objects nearby: a bag and, next to it a small, bloodstained paperback book. Picking it up, the nymph turned the pages with indulgent amusement, almost as of she were humouring Emma’s obsessions: her desires had been no different from the man’s, but perhaps they had been born from a deeper longing, something hidden in the depths beyond pure sex.
The nymph rarely spoke, and never to the satyrs she harvested. Decades could pass between solitary words, but as her eyes fell on familiar text, something compelled her to read aloud to the ghoulish shadows that, sated, had begun to gather in the hallway.
“Thy coloured members, men by night inspire,” she began, her voice deceptively soft. “When seen in spectered forms with terrors dire. Now darkly visible, involved in night. Perspicuous now, they meet the fearful fight—”
One of the shadows suddenly reached for ragged meat that was once a leg, but she warned it off with a glance and it swiftly fell back into line with the others.
“Terrestrial queen expel wherever found, the soul’s mad fears, to earth’s remotest bound. With holy aspect on our incense shrine, and bless thy mystics, and the rites divine...”
She closed the book and softly placed it upon Emma’s remaining entrails, moving still further to plant a kiss on those dead lips. For a second, the nymph’s tongue explored the Hades of Emma’s mouth, wondering what might have been. But then she looked up: her shadows were fading. Dawn would soon creep across the red floorboards, the natural light exposing their night terrors for all to see.
The Lady in the Yard
Rosanne Rabinowitz
“Mutant Sue!Mutant Sue!How do you do?”
With a quick ‘fuck you’ gesture to the assholes, Suzy gets off the school bus.
She knows they’re still watching as the bus pulls away, so she walks slowly with her head held high.
She can’t bear the thought of going straight home.
“How was school?”
School was shit.
Instead, she takes the path through the woods that leads to the old bungalow colony. Suzy’s family stayed in a place like this one summer, just before they left the Bronx. This place used to be full of people, but now the bungalows are falling down. Once a new highway was built New Yorkers preferred vacations in the Catskills.
She comes to a rusting merry-go-round and a set of swings on the other end of the path. When they first moved here, Suzy used to push herself around on it, though it was slow and emitted shrieks of scraping metal. Now she gives it a kick, just to hear it squeal.
Then she makes her way to the swimming pool. The fence around it is covered with morning glories that bloom and wither and bloom again, along with sumac and ivy and honeysuckle. She pushes open the rusty gate, and goes in.
Goldenrod and fireweed sprout through the cracks at the shallow end. At the deep end, rainwater collects in a pond. Old junk rusts in the stagnant water, while water lilies poke misshapen heads above it. The lilies are pale green as if their cells don’t know leaf from blossom. Others are acidic pale orange.
When they first moved in, she found tadpoles in the pool. As the summer wore on they turned to frogs and filled the night with frantic croaking.
She sits down on the skeleton of an old lounge chair and rolls a joint. She’ll have one, just one joint for the day. She sometimes hangs out with the pot-smoking kids at school, but she takes care. Getting high is only a means to an end, a way to find the borderland.
The pot-head kids tolerate her, though she barely says a word after a nod and muttered hello when she joins them in back of the school parking lot. It’s only because she brings them good pot from a guy in Hackensack she met at the state orchestra tryouts, with just a small mark-up. She uses the bit of money she makes from selling pot to buy books.
But she won’t get dope for them ever again, not after today. Did they stand up for her? No... just that jerk going on about his precious boring Grateful Dead. Then her friends joined the laughter.
Tears come to her eyes, but she won’t cry. She’s just so angry at them all. Damn. It’s all because of that book. She digs into her bag, the fringed patchy suede draw-string thing that she once thought was so cool, and takes a book out. After one look at the cover and its drawing of a six-toed footprint, she flings it into the water.
She regrets it as soon as the last ripples close over it.
She loved that book. She’d bought it out of her hard-earned pot-selling money. It’s not the book’s fault. It’s her fault things turned out so crap. She should’ve known it would end this way. Anything to do with toes...
She searches for a stick. She can poke about in
the water and find the book, then push it to the shallow end. Then she’ll take it home and dry it and clean it up.
But she can’t find anything long enough. Maybe she’ll find a better stick at the very back of the pool enclosure.
In the beginning this area was full of thorns and prickly leaves, covered by more morning glory vines. Then she picked up her father’s gardening gloves and weed clippers and hacked her way through that mess to the clearing.
It had been a lawn once, where people sat and played cards and drank their Bud. There must have been children running about, slurping their lemonade and smearing ice cream on their faces.
Now it’s a mini-meadow, with yellow and orange flowers. Queen Anne’s lace, buttercups and sprays of purple flowers, surrounding more old lounge chairs.