In the shed, a big lamp was lit, making a luminous halo, a circle of crude light defining the stage. I saw a pulley there, suspended, where chains could slide. He tied me to them, my arms stretched toward the ceiling, as high as possible. My feet just touched the ground.
Two men in hoods appeared. I recognized one of them as the commissioner. They whipped, burned, lacerated, and mutilated me. They dug into my insides with their blades. My blood flowed abundantly. They had taken precautions to cover the ground with sawdust. Don’t worry: only the first gashes really hurt. Afterward, the pain becomes so intense that one no longer feels it. The spirit escapes from the matter to float in an elsewhere where nothing can touch you.
I’m almost certain that the fat commissioner had an erection like a donkey. But not the man from Albuquerque. His eye was riveted to the camera, filming my agony. He was just doing his job.
The angel of death.
He spread his wings – that was my last vision – and, taking me once again in his arms, lifted me up and took me away. I was finally in flight.
Her last thought was that she had made him promise to send a copy of the film to her husband. He would not hesitate to pay dearly to recover the original and destroy it.
“Thanks to me,” she had said to the angel, “you’ll have a lot of money. Perhaps you can even stop.”
The angel had placed his lips on hers (a good-bye kiss, gentle like the down of a fledgling) and, with a smile, replied:
“It’s my life, you know!”
She had smiled back at the angel. And that was how she departed.
The Four Elements
Claude Lalumière
Air (Hiding)
The gloves are designed to look like a hand. Pink, with a subtle tint of olive; fingernails painted blue.
A blonde wig lies next to them on the floor: shoulder length, with a bounce that stops short of a curl. High-heeled shoes. Blouse. Skirt. Tights. Bra. Cotton panties. More pseudoskin: a one-piece mold that mimics her features, and then spreads to the neck, the chest, the shoulders, below the nape.
She’s in a playful mood.
I pick up the panties and slip on the blindfold that I keep in my pocket for games like these.
I bury my nose in her panties. Cotton is so much better at absorbing her odour than silk or lace. Her smell is heady, powerful: she’s at most a day or two from her period.
I drop the panties and start my search. Step by step I cover the entire house. I open every closet. I palpate every nook and cranny. The whole time I’m sniffing. Sniffing her pussy. That smell! It’s everywhere I go. My balls tingle with anticipation.
Is she even here? Maybe I shouldn’t have rubbed my face in her panties. Maybe that’s all I’m smelling.
“Darling . . .?”
Someone rams into me and knocks me down.
“Silly! I followed you the whole time – you couldn’t win.”
She yanks off my blindfold, but there’s nothing to see.
My fly is zipped open, my cock pulled out. Moist warmth envelops my erection.
Her smell is overpowering. I open my mouth and stick out my tongue. She presses her pussy against it. I manage to find her hips and tilt her so my nose slides into her juices.
When I come, I see the faint milky outline of her tongue, her palate, her teeth, her cheeks – the insides of her mouth. My invisible woman.
Fire (Metamorphosis)
Her footprints are seared into the tarmac, leading to the woods bordering the road. I follow the trail of burnt leaves, burnt wood – that rich blend: subtly fruity, pungently ashy.
There she is: sitting on a boulder, naked. Her face tells me she’s confused, scared – like the others I’ve tracked down.
She doesn’t notice me. The symptoms are too overwhelming. Coarse, ragged breathing. Dizzy, sweating, and shivering all at once from the heat, nausea, and weakness.
Gently, I say, “I can help you.”
She tenses, panicked. Perspiration runs down her skin. Then fire bursts from her pores, enveloping her. When the flames subside, she balls up into herself, crying.
I say, “No. It’s beautiful. Exciting. Fantastic.”
“Beautiful?”
“Yes. Reach between your legs.”
She hesitates. But she opens her thighs and places her fingers on her sex.
“Touch yourself. Focus the heat.”
She does. She moans, closing her eyes. I take off my clothes. I masturbate, too, relishing what will soon happen.
“You should celebrate these changes in your body. These hot flashes, they’re not the end: they’re a beginning.”
Her breathing intensifies. She’s close.
I say: “Let me join you.”
Her gaze lingers briefly on my hand stroking my cock. She nods.
I pick her up in my arms. She’s burning – scorching – hot, but her fire cannot consume flesh. I lay her down on the ground.
The leaves and twigs under her burn and sizzle, releasing that delicious aroma.
I touch her face, admiring the beauty of the lines etched by age and time.
I enter her. We move together. I whisper into her ear, and she comes. Flames enfold us both. My skin tingles with pleasure so intense it is almost pain. Her heat rushes into me. When I come, for a moment, I too am fire.
Earth (Nephesh)
She hears them leave. Still, she waits. Hiding. She hears the clatter of rain. Some time later, she emerges from her hole in the ground, her well-concealed cellar. The sun hurts her eyes.
The stink of death hits her. Blood. Shit. Piss. Rot. A brew of odours she will never forget.
She thinks: Words carry power.
Yirah. Fear.
Sawnay. Hate.
Met. Death.
Pogrom.
Everyone she’s ever known: dead. Slaughtered. Mutilated.
It is too much for tears, she thinks. But she is crying. In silence, lest she be heard.
She leaves the village. She walks aimlessly until she collapses in the drying mud.
She rubs the mud on her face. She inhales its earthy odours. They scrape at the stink of death lodged inside her.
Her hands work the mud and the soil. She kneads the earth. Molds it.
Words carry power, she thinks again.
Emet. Truth.
No. A more appropriate word occurs to her.
She looks down at her handiwork. The shape of a man. A man with broad, strong shoulders. With a powerful, heavy chest. Endowed with an enormous zayin, created erect under her hands.
She touches between her legs. Her time has come. Her blood. Not the blood of death, but the blood of life. She squats on her creation’s mouth and lets her menses flow into it.
Life. Nephesh.
With a bloody finger she carves the word on its forehead, then whispers it in its ear.
The creature stirs.
She impales her wetness on its zayin.
For a time, while they squirm together in the mud, while she loses herself in the smells of the earth and the sensation of the massive zayin grinding inside her, she desperately thinks of life.
Later, she will think of the death her golem will visit upon her enemies.
Water (Scars)
He closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. A melancholy smile spreads across his face.
I love to look at him: his square jaw, his dimpled chin, his thick eyebrows, his mane of golden hair.
He’s smelling the sea. They say smell is the sense most strongly linked to memory. A lifetime ago, the sea was his.
I touch his face. My lips brush his lips, and then his ear. “Watch me. And wait for me.”
Basking in his gaze, I take off my shirt, slip out of my shorts and underwear.
I walk towards the waves and plunge into the ocean.
When I emerge, my fists are carrying seaweed.
Rejoining him, I hand over the seaweed, and then I lie on the sand. On my back, my legs spread.
He decorates my bo
dy with the strips of seaweed.
He removes his clothes. His cock is huge and dripping. For me.
I moan.
He rubs the seaweed into my wet skin: my face, my neck, my arms, my breasts, my stomach, my legs, my toes. He runs his face against my naked body. I hear him breathe me in, smelling the ocean on me.
I’m so eager for him.
One last strip of seaweed he brushes against my cunt.
He buries his face between my legs, pushes open my labia with his tongue. He takes a deep breath of my smells mingled with the sea’s, and then releases his hot breath over my clit.
I gasp.
He moves up to kiss me. As his salty tongue finds mine, his cock spears me.
He nuzzles my neck, sniffing furiously. His thrusts are strong, savage. I come, pulling at his hair.
After his orgasm, I tenderly kiss the scars on his neck, the remnants of his gills.
Bethany Barefoot
Tara Alton
I hated weddings. Nothing good for me has ever come of them. For example, the last wedding I went to, I ended up alone at a table with my great-aunt while all the couples swooned about on the dance floor. Their closely pressed bodies seemed to be saying aren’t we the lucky ones as the white paper streamers delicately fluttered on the ceiling.
Meanwhile, my great-aunt was going on about some freaking tea party she claimed she had for me in Florida when I was four years old. I don’t remember Florida. I don’t remember her, except for meeting her in the receiving line two hours ago. What did I get from attending this blissful event? A paper cut from my place card, a cranky buzz from cheap champagne and a regretful comment I slurred to my great-aunt at the end of the night.
“I won’t be you,” I called out in her direction. I didn’t know what that meant, because I hardly knew her. I think it was directed more at what she represented, an old crone sitting alone at a wedding banquet table with her odd great-niece.
I would rather do these things instead of going to a wedding. Get a tetanus shot, which always gives me a huge bruise because I tense up. Go for a gynecology exam, with a student doctor in tow, who would do a second far more clumsy and embarrassing exam than the original doctor would. Finally, clean up cat puke.
I know you’re asking why all the fuss. It’s because I have to go to my sister’s wedding. Actually, it’s her second time around, but she still wants all the drama and fuss because she likes to show off how clever and stylish she is. She was so taken with her first wedding that she actually wrote and self published a How to be a Bride book. She tried to sell it in the back of bridal magazines and lost thousands of dollars in advertising. Not one order came in. Occasionally, she threatens to dust it off and send it to a real publisher, but she never has the time, not with her new budding career as a newscaster.
I’ve been in such denial about this wedding that I’ve made myself late. I’ve missed the wedding ceremony, and now I’m struck rigid with fear in the reception hall parking lot. Things are not looking good. I bought her a crappy, last-minute, hastily wrapped gift. It was a silver frame from a greeting card store that anyone off the street could buy. What makes this worse is that I’ve agreed to live with her and her new husband for a few weeks until I can get on my feet.
In addition, I have a confession to make. The other reason I’m late is because of a self-inflicted finger fuck. I got all excited writing porn. I know I should say erotica or even better literary erotica, but this was the down and dirty. I wrote about butt cheeks and short hairs bobbing all over the page until I had to do something about it. I mean, why not. This could be the last time I get off before moving in with my sister.
If my sister truly comprehended what I wrote about, she would have a massive shit. Once upon a time, I did hint about my choice of subject matter, but she didn’t get it.
“What is there to write about?” she asked. “There are only a couple positions.”
I felt sorry for her last husband and her new one if that was her way of thinking. Wanting to avoid any further elaboration about my writing career, I told her I write literary stories and submit them to publications with names like Coffee and Mud-house.
Meanwhile, I’m working on collecting writing credits as Bethany Barefoot in magazines who use body parts for names. I would like some non-body part credits, but I haven’t been accepted yet in any high-crust anthologies with intelligent themes. If only something nice would happen to me and put my raunchy imagination to sleep for a while. Have you ever fantasized about something for so long that you wore it out, and now you had to add something new every time to get some zing? Well, I’ve been adding too much for too long.
How was anything nice going to happen to me while I sat in my car wearing a cut-off, floral print bridesmaid dress? I couldn’t wear my black sexy dress because I discovered an hour before I was supposed to leave that it had become a litter box in the back of my ex-roommate’s closet.
Forcing myself out of my car, I grabbed my sister’s present and headed for the entrance.
Leave it to my sister to book the trendiest, upscale chapel with a banquet hall attached. I felt my knees almost knocking together with nerves as I noticed the glimmering lights on potted trees and elaborate bows on white chair covers through the windows. I didn’t see any Jordan Almonds or after-dinner mints nestled in little white paper cups, which was a shame because I liked after dinner mints.
I prayed everyone was already soused enough not to notice me slipping in. I stood in the doorway, trapped by fear. I didn’t recognize anybody. Was I at the wrong place? Did I get the date wrong? For a second, I was giddy with relief, but then I noticed the bride’s table was curiously empty. Oh, God. The receiving line had started, and there was my sister.
Slinking over to the gift table, I squeezed my present onto the edge, thinking I should have rethought the wrapping. Although I had managed to buy a gift and a card, I hadn’t remembered to buy wrapping paper. Therefore, I had dug out bright green parrot paper from a drawer at home. Now, the present screamed its jungle theme from the bland sea of cream and beige.
My nerves were so bad that I grabbed a glass of champagne from a nearby table, received a dirty look from its owner, and gratefully inhaled half of it. The bubbles went straight up my nose. It burned. Blinking back the tears, I considered a hasty retreat to the bathroom, thinking I could avoid the receiving line from hell all together, but I had to do this. I was moving in with her tomorrow. Where was all this dread coming from anyway? I loved her, for Pete’s sake. She was my sister. I just wasn’t convinced how much I liked her.
Chugging down the rest of the champagne, I put down the glass, plastered a smile on my face and got in line.
“Bride’s sister,” I said, with a firm handshake to the first person.
The parent spot for us was empty. Our mom was locked away in a nut house. Our dad was dead.
I was getting dangerously near the bridesmaids. Who were these girls? I recognized Crystal, the weather girl from Lisa’s station. She was wearing her plastic TV smile, and she looked at me as if I was a freak.
“So what is the forecast for today?” I asked, thinking it would be an icebreaker.
She gave me a murderous look. Jeez. Couldn’t she take a joke? Why was my sister even friends with her? She seemed like such a fake person, and yet she was the one standing next to my sibling.
I looked away. I was a stranger here. I should go. I should leave.
“There you are,” said Lisa.
In my panic, I had let the line propel me forward.
Lisa hugged me.
“You look incredible,” I said, staring amazed at her manufactured cleavage. She was too squeamish to get fake boobs so it had to be a push up bra.
“You should have come earlier,” she said in my ear. “I had a corsage for you.”
Our gazes met. I saw the crazy look in her eyes that mom used to have. We called it Mom’s crazy fish eye. Why had I been kidding myself? The shrill Lisa who could hold a grudge for mo
nths was still alive and well.
I had been so wrapped up in Lisa that I hadn’t even noticed the groom. I was shocked. I had expected another version of henpecked Simon, and I vaguely remembered Lisa saying he was a construction foreman, but I never imagined this. This guy was oozing masculinity with his intense, smoldering eyes and fantastic build.
“Jeremy, this is my sister,” Lisa said.
Lisa went on to embrace the next person, leaving us facing each other.
I stuck out my hand. He took it, pulled me forward and planted one on my mouth, dead on. I felt a spark, a little firecracker of zing between us. I saw the surprise in his eyes.
As I finished the rest of the line, I barely registered the other introductions. The groom had flummoxed me. I kept glancing at him. He kept watching me.
Free at last, I headed to the bar where I asked for two glasses of champagne.
“No. Make it three,” I said.
The waiter looked as if he didn’t want to give it to me.
“I’m the bride’s sister,” I said.
With my three glasses in an awkward hold, I replaced the one I had stolen and went to find my table. I started looking near the front where I would assume Lisa would put her family. Maybe I would be sitting with her in-laws. Amazingly, I didn’t find my name. Still searching, I reached the rear of the room where I found it. I was seated at the last table near the restroom with my cousins. I was at the reject table. I knew this because I had helped her plan her first seating arrangement, and that was what she called it. Trying to conceal my disappointment, I smiled at the people who loosely called themselves my relatives.
“How is everyone?” I asked. “Where are the kids?”
“It’s a kid-free reception,” said my cousin Helen.
“Are you kidding?”
Helen nodded. I glanced around. I hadn’t even noticed my nephews were missing.
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