Temptation Close

by Scarlett Rush

  ‘And then Monet got transferred to the next cell?’ She was glad that he smiled at this and didn’t take umbrage.

  ‘Not quite. The painting thing came via a less direct route. Not long into my stay I was ill with some kind of terrible lung disease that was dropping the inmates like flies. I was in the infirmary for nearly six months. I somehow survived, although I can still get a bit short of breath sometimes, which is why I tend to travel everywhere by motorized vehicle, rather than sprinting there. It still seems odd them trying to make me better just so they could lock me up and be cruel to me again. In the hospital bed next to me was a civil engineer from Canada, there on some spurious charges of fraud. He was the one who taught me not to believe a trial, fair or otherwise, was awaiting me around the corner. He had been locked up without formal charge for three years. Justice in that part of the world is a little different to here.

  ‘Anyway, he had acquired three books from a visiting missionary. The titles were a bit strange but you took what you could get. He said reading them had kept him focussed and sane. Sadly they weren’t going to keep him alive. He gave me the books on the day he knew he was going to die. He wrote a little will on a scrap of paper, signing it in front of the hospital orderlies and telling them the books now belonged to me. As soon as they carried him out dead they took them away from me.’

  His expression hadn’t changed much. There was perhaps a suggestion of wistfulness but whatever true pain these memories were rekindling he kept at bay.

  ‘None of this sounds much fun,’ Nesta said, aware that it was her pressing that had caused the wounds to be re-opened.

  ‘It was no great shakes. I won the books back off the orderlies in a poker game a week later and when I was transferred back to my cell the nice guards let me keep them. One of the books was about meditation, one was on the slightly oddball subject of teaching yourself hypnotherapy, and the last one was a thick, beautifully illustrated hardback entitled A History of Painting from the Renaissance to the Impressionists. I must have read each one cover to cover more than a hundred times. Sometimes I couldn’t even sleep with the excitement of getting stuck into the books as soon as first light came. It beat trying to shoot down insects with elastic bands and crapping into buckets.’

  ‘So you taught yourself how to paint, just from looking at a book?’

  ‘Well, all the books helped but, essentially, yes. I used to practise relaxation techniques on the guards, learned out of the hypnotherapy book. I got one to give up smoking but he wasn’t best pleased so I had to re-hypnotise him to have him start up again! The guards all thought I had some incredible powers. The Officer in Charge found out and insisted I used my magic to make him better in certain areas - you know, shooting and having sex, crucial things like that. He used to come into my cell and sit for an hour, which meant the guards had to clean it up and ventilate it, so I wasn’t complaining. I even got to use their toilets and showers on those days.

  ‘Much in life is mind over matter and he had a very susceptible mind, so it was plain sailing. Although English was their first language it helped that my Bantu was so good I could implant all sorts of things without him realising. Shortly after one visit he got the strange idea that every time he had sex his manhood would shrink a little. He thought a witch doctor from the nearest rebel village had put the spell on him. He demanded I cure him and it didn’t take much to remove the thought. He repaid me by bringing in a stack of blank paper and some pencils. He even managed to get a couple of coloured crayons that he’d no doubt robbed from the village school. He thought this was all his idea and I wasn’t going to convince him otherwise.

  ‘It turned out that I was pretty good at drawing. I had vaguely known this from art class at school but I surprised myself at how adept I was. Studying the various artists’ differing techniques gave me something to work with. Not long after another session with the Officer in Charge he decided I should have some more material, including some brushes and basic paints in metal tubes. I found that the meditation helped me concentrate my mind and form vivid images, so I didn’t need to see actual scenes to be able to paint. I could fix them in my thoughts and keep revisiting them for details. I even found I could alter the images, make them slightly more impressionistic or abstract, which helped form the style I use today.

  ‘I spent hours and hours learning to be better, left to do my thing without distraction. I almost thought of my incarceration as a blessing, although I think I might have convinced myself of that during my meditation. By the end of my time there I was rather good at art. Plus I was being brought full-sized canvases and any type of paint and brushes I wanted, and the Officer in Charge almost never had a shrinking penis, despite the continued efforts of various witch doctors to cast the spell upon him.’

  Nesta laughed. It seemed very far-fetched but at the same time she wanted to believe him. It was just nice to hear him speak. He did so with ease and fluency and humour. She couldn’t think of anyone else who could tell a tale of dreadful incarceration, failing lungs and sadistic guards, and still make it entertaining. It was all too easy, if you thought about it. The reality was he probably spent years in prison concocting a version of events that would seem almost magical. Then again, something about him suggested this was all quite possible. There was something about him that was indeed magical. He did have a way of convincing you.

  ‘So they let you free because you were so good at painting?’

  ‘No. They let me free because I convinced the Officer in Charge to do so. It took a lot of effort and a lot of painstaking preparation but patience paid off in the end. I was under a twenty year-sentence - although I don’t actually remember ever going to a court for any trial - so I needed to make the plan work. I implanted the idea that the next phone call he received would be from his Commander-in-Chief, telling him that I was to be freed immediately to help against the rebels. I suggested a few things that were needed to aid my passage out of there. He believed it was all top secret and no one was to be told. Next day he bought me a Land Rover filled with maps and supplies, plus the personal effects they took from me when I was first captured - those that hadn’t been sold. These included my passport, which was a major bonus. He smuggled me out of the cell and even locked my guards in there so they couldn’t go after me.

  ‘I’m sure it probably cost him quite dearly when the truth came to light, but it was a cost I was prepared to pay. In the end I just casually drove away and kept driving right over the border. When I thought it was safe to return I simply got on a plane, with no luggage other than a book entitled A History of Painting from the Renaissance to the Impressionists.’

  ‘Coming home from the adventure of a lifetime to dedicate yourself to art,’ she smiled.

  ‘I thought it would cleanse my soul. And I now don’t trust my lungs or the justice system anywhere other than here, so I thought it best to give up my old ways and start anew.’

  ‘So you really are looking for a new model to sit for you?’

  ‘If one of you lovely ladies is going to strip off for me then the least I can do is paint you. Fancy it?’

  ‘Never in a blue moon,’ she smiled broadly. ‘It’ll take a lot more than that to coax me out of my clothes.’

  ‘Then I shall have to try harder,’ he said.

  She shook her head and feigned disgust, shoving the bag of sweets into his hand before turning to leave. ‘See you at Roni’s on Wednesday evening. Remember the fancy dress,’ she said, marching away up his drive, hoping his eyes were still on her but not daring to turn around to find out. She felt light and elated, the blood buzzing in her body and heating her cheeks. He was charming; he always charmed her. So much so that she hadn’t even remembered to ask what such a charming man could have done to earn himself twenty years behind bars. He made it sound like he was innocent but then claimed a crafty, manipulative and ultimately life-endangering method of escape. Always black
and white with him, always spinning so you never knew if goodness or badness was his true self. And what about the hypnotism thing? Was it really possible to learn a foreign tongue so well you could implant such strong notions without your victim suspecting anything? If so, how difficult would it be for him to implant the notion that he was the most exciting person she had ever met, or even that he could tease her private parts just by speaking certain words?

  There was that time of silence on their very first meeting, when he had looked deeply into her eyes. Maybe more had gone on then and he had made her forget it all, brought her back from a trance as if only seconds had passed. Danger and delight, all in one; no way to spot where one side of him ended and the other began. No, she wouldn’t be his model, never in a million years. No way would she fritter her hard-defended sense of morality and walk right into his trap. But the thing was she still couldn’t fear him enough not to want to see him again immediately. She still couldn’t fear him enough to stop herself teetering on the edge, knowing that with just the slightest of touches she could fall.

  Mizzle

  The hairs rose all over her Bethan’s body at the memories stirred by this dark passageway. She was practically propelling her children along it by the time they emerged into the open space. Flames flickered and lit the faces there, some turning to witness her arrival, others still gazing intently into the fires set before them in a semicircle. There were cloaks and pointed hats; dark clothes merging into the evening’s blackness. Slowly, more could be made out. Her eyes grew better accustomed to the dancing orange glare amid the gloom. She had been met with mizzle as she left the cosiness of her house, but this had suddenly abated having come amongst these others. She could see the heavy vapour evidence of her recent heart-rush in the still night air.

  A distended hollow orange head with evil eyes and a jagged-toothed smile leered at her, lit from the inside. Burning wood snapped and crackled, sending out hissing wisps of evaporated sap. A shrouded figure approached and looked up at her with a skeleton face. It held out two thin sticks. Impaled upon each were pink blobs, like little rounds of naked flesh. The two children she had brought with her took the offered sticks and were taken away by the skeleton to toast their welcome marshmallows. Her youngest was still safely tucked up in bed, overseen by her husband, who she had left lying on the sofa, picking his teeth and occasionally slugging on a beer.

  Chimineas had been carried from the other houses, as was the custom now. They had been set out to flank the main fire, built from off-cut branches, old cardboard and donated logs, that was set upon the rectangle of paving slabs usually occupied by Roni’s outside table. That had been moved towards the house, in front of the sliding patio doors, to bear the bowls of sweets and the trays of snacks and nibbles. The children grouped around the different flames, all in fancy dress: little devils, witches and skeletons. All the mums were there, all making some effort at a costume. Roni and Nesta’s husbands chatted and drank from cans by the trampoline, away from the action. Alicia’s husband stood staring into the heart of one chiminea, apparently lost in thought, seemingly untroubled that his daughter beside him was sobbing now that her marshmallow had ignited and charred beyond the edible.

  Bethan moved in slightly but still hung on the periphery, not able to immerse herself into the various groups despite their smiles and greetings. The faces that caused her jitters were not present but still she couldn’t be calm. The uneasiness wouldn’t leave her and she was sure it would burst forth and be evident if she were made to speak. She would stay on the fringes and police her offspring, catching the snippets of conversation from the other mum’s, as if that made her a part of them. She would try to absorb the good feeling all around, since it was such a fun night for the kids, although she knew until it was over she wasn’t quite safe.

  The previous year she had been caught totally unawares - although, of course, she was nowhere near as guarded back then as she was now. Eva had suddenly arrived, having made as good an effort on her costume as any of them. She had come as “Clam Stroker’s Dracula”, a fact she loudly announced despite all the children present. She had been resplendent in an all-grey Victorian gentlemen’s outfit of britches, tailcoat, silk waistcoat and cravat, plus the all-important top hat. Her hair hung loose beneath it but she had crimped it slightly to give it more body. She wore a false moustache in brown, plus a little triangle wisp of a beard to sit just below her bottom lip. Completing the look was a pair of round spectacles with blue lenses, which all night she peered over at the ladies with affected lust-hunger, just to tease them.

  Bethan had found it unsettlingly erotic although she hadn’t been in the firing line of the melting gazes, even after putting herself into positions where she might be. Despite having no such tendencies in this direction, she found it typically disheartening that she was being overlooked. However, having popped back home briefly to fetch a favourite teddy, on her return she found herself walking straight into Eva, who was lying in wait for her in that dark passage that led from the back gate to the garden. The vampire seductress barred the way forward with outstretched arms and then slowly leant forward to press her cold nose to the younger girl’s forehead. Bethan had stood like a rabbit in the headlights as she felt Eva breathe her in.

  ‘Do you know, all lesbians give off a particular scent,’ the vampiress had said. ‘They can’t help it. It’s the hormones they produce. It’s a lovely sweet fragrance, a little like heather honey. It is only very faint and most people cannot detect it, but I always can. Even if you hide your true sexuality from yourself, you can never hide it from me.’

  Eva had then run her nose very slowly across the forehead and down the side of the face to the ear. ‘I can smell it on you,’ she had whispered, and Bethan had nearly collapsed. ‘You know that if I bite you now and draw just a single drop of blood, it will make you just like me.’

  Having whispered this, Eva then used her curled tongue-tip to gather in the little fleshy morsel of Bethan’s earlobe, and held it between her teeth. Slightly harder pressure was applied, just a little nip as Bethan gasped and tried desperately to stop from shaking. It was possibly the single most erotic thing she had ever experienced.

  ‘I will wait for now,’ Eva had said quietly, releasing the lobe and leaving her wetness upon it. ‘But the next time you are alone at night I am going to come and feast upon your delicious cunt, and turn you into one of my kind forever.’

  Then she had turned on her heel and left, and Bethan could hear her own faltering breath loud in the still darkness. Of course there never was any follow up. Nothing further happened, no matter how often the trepidation in her skipping heart kept Bethan awake. Eva had barely looked at her since. No doubt it was all part of the Halloween spirit, the boundary-crashing taking of the flesh into the mouth and the leg-trembling rudeness of the words she used all just part of the act. Nothing more should have been read into it. But then Bethan hadn’t actually been left on her own all night, so the faint hope still existed that if she ever was, the promise would be fulfilled.

  In a very small way that gentle nip on her ear had already partially done what Eva had claimed it would. Having never previously fantasised about being with another female, after that Halloween, in the small hours as her husband lay snoring beside her, Bethan had on several occasions thought of Eva coming to her room to gorge upon her and deliver her to a different world. Of course, she said to herself with bitterness, anyone who came to feast upon her there would have to blow the cobwebs away first, so long was it since it had received any outside attention.

  There would be no repeat of this episode tonight. Eva’s appearance last year was seemingly a one-off, with Bethan overhearing from Nesta that the pink-haired girlfriend was in town, and other forms of excitement were no doubt being enjoyed. It was a blow, but not an unsurprising one. Halloween was for kids, and Eva didn’t have any, nor did she ever appear particularly fond of them. That also meant the lik
elihood of their newest neighbour making an appearance was equally slim. Despite this the nerves still jangled, although they were being tempered by another emotion. What was it - disappointment? She had assumed that Halloween would be the obvious night for Hunter to act against her. Perhaps it was a little too obvious, in fact, so maybe he would strike when she was less ready.

  Her mind was still leaping haphazardly around as it had been since that first day she saw him and realised there was more to him than others could detect. She knew it was driving her slowly mad. She was on edge all the time, jumping at nothing, hoping to be spared but desperate to be taken. The fevered, sleepless nights that Eva’s tantalising whispered threat had induced were back with a vengeance, this time ten-fold because he was a man - or more accurately a creature in the form of a man. He had strengths she couldn’t even begin to fathom, let alone defeat. So many shadows flitted around her darkened room each night. So often the gusting wind would send a spatter of rain against the window to sound like pointed fingernails scratching at the glass, to unleash the nerves and send them rushing rampant.

  Each metallic tick from the cooling radiators, each creak of the joinery would leave her jarred and expectant, sending her breath skittering. Each would have her go onto her back to fling apart her hot thighs beneath the sheets in readiness, only to have her move onto her side to clamp them firmly together again, flushed with the shame of the itching wetness between them and the horror of actually yearning to leave her children without a mother. There was almost no discernible transition between sleep and consciousness, the vivid thoughts becoming more blurred and surreal as she finally drifted off, but still the clarity in her head remained, so that when she awoke it took minutes to realise that the dreams were not reality.