Love and Whiskers

by Olivia Myers

  “Well, I think it’s because it’s exactly what Northrup doesn’t expect,” Imogen said confidently. “Northrup knows that Nigel Spindle can’t fight and that sleeping with his wife is probably the last thing on his mind.” There were chuckles in the classroom—Spindle was gay. “He’s trying to get Spindle under his power by exercising all of this authority over him, sort of like a look-at-what-I-can-make-you-do mentality. When Spindle doesn’t take the bait, it’s proof that although he doesn’t have any of the characteristics his father thinks makes a good lord, he has a developed sense of honor which someone like Northrup isn’t capable of.”

  “Wait,” a voice interrupted. “Just, wait a second.” Imogen knew the voice immediately.

  “Why, yes! Let’s hear from one of our exchange students,” Miss McReddy said, eager for the exchange of opinions.

  Lucille arched her back in her seat and put her boots up on her desk. It was a repulsive sight and Imogen loathed the girl more than ever.

  “Sorry, but I just don’t see it.” There was a pause. Imogen wondered if this was all—if Lucille had simply interrupted her for the sake of it and not because she had anything to say.

  But then she continued: “I mean, the way you’re describing Northrup, the guy sounds like a Victorian Darth Vadar. The man helps the poor for Gods’ sake. His sweatshop is practically a charity.” More chuckles. The class was warming to Lucille’s easy way of talking.

  “And besides, Spindle doesn’t even end up fighting the duel, right? So how can you say he’s being ‘honorable’ when he’s accepting something he doesn’t even mean to do?”

  “His intention is to fight,” Imogen said levelly. “The man can’t help it that his sister’s parrot bit his little finger off the day before the duel.”

  “The parrot doesn’t matter,” Lucille waved the matter aside. “He’d have found an excuse somehow. I mean, can you really imagine this simpering queen, with his speech impediment and his love of lace, blowing a hole in another man’s head? And look at the guy he chose for a second—Siegfried Mortimer. A mercenary. The best gun in Great Britain. Spindle’s not going to fight when he’s got Hercules behind him.”

  “I think we’re getting off topic,” Imogen said, trying to keep her mounting anger in check.

  “I think we’re precisely on topic,” Lucille countered. “Your gist is that Spindle is being a hero by accepting. I’m arguing that he’s as much a coward as ever, he just has good resources.”

  “He’s not a coward!” Imogen cried. “He’s trying to prove himself, but every chance he gets something goes wrong! That’s the whole point of the novel. Actions don’t show character. Sometimes, intentions are all we have!”

  Silence greeted Imogen’s outburst. She regretted at once letting herself get so carried away, but she couldn’t have helped it. She knew that she had spoken rightly and that it was inevitable, given Lucille’s infuriating personality.

  “My,” Miss McReddy said, wearing a generous grin. She was the only one who didn’t look visibly uncomfortable from the altercation. “What passion!”

  Returning to the blackboard she scrawled out next week’s reading assignment before announcing that the class was over.

  “You made me look like an idiot!” Imogen said once she’d caught up to Lucille in the hallway. The wolverine looked at her in surprise and then gave a little snicker.

  “You didn’t need my help for that, baby.”

  “What’s your problem? Did you come here just to torture me?”

  “I thought we were talking about books. You call that torture?”

  “But you don’t talk!” Imogen said passionately. “You argue. You cause problems. Everything about you is confrontational!”

  They were getting stares from other students milling about in the hallway. Imogen was as heated as ever but she was beginning to get embarrassed. She was not the kind of girl who made public scenes.

  “Here,” she said, taking Lucille by the arm and dragging her into the nearby girls’ restroom. Lucille grinned lewdly. “Oh, baby.”

  “We’re just here to talk,” Imogen said. “You’re not even my type anyway.”

  “So you’ve even got a type?” Lucille’s grin became wider. “I thought so the moment I saw you. Can I guess? She’s thin as razor wire, tall, walks like she’s got a pinecone up her ass.”

  Imogen said nothing.

  “Oh, come on. I’m just trying to get a rise out of you is all. I’ve only seen you twice but I could tell after a second that you’re too uptight. Just relax, baby.”

  “Don’t tell me to relax,” Imogen said, batting away the consoling arm Lucille placed on her shoulder. “Things had just started to go well, and then all of you wolverines came flooding in. This place doesn’t even feel like home anymore.”

  Lucille was frowning. “Wolverine, huh?” she said.

  “Oh my God,” Imogen put her hands over her mouth. “Did I actually say that out loud? Did I—”

  “The less you say now, honey, the better.”

  Imogen’s mouth clamped shut.

  Lucille eyed the restroom furtively, peering beneath the stalls to make sure that they were alone.

  “Well,” she said once she’d completed her check, “there’s always one who knows. And I guess as long as you don’t go announcing anything to anyone else there’s no harm in knowing.”

  “I didn’t mean to say anything,” Imogen whispered. “It just came out. I don’t know why that happens around you. Things I never say when I’m around other people just pour out when I’m around you.”

  “You’re uptight again,” Lucille grinned. And then without any forewarning, she enveloped Imogen in her arms and kissed her fully on the mouth.

  “What—!” Imogen gasped, freeing herself from the kiss. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Relaxing you, baby.”

  “Why the hell did you think that would relax me?”

  “Because it’s nature,” came the carefree reply. “I get that you’re into your philosophy and your metaphysics. That’s cool. But if I start to pleasure you, you’re going to roll over on your back and stick out your tongue, same as every other living creature. You’re made for it, baby. Stop living in denial.”

  Again the larger body pressed against hers. Imogen felt the voluptuous breasts, smooth and soft, but with a wild, animal heartbeat quaking beneath. She didn’t know why she was allowing herself to open to this girl, but when the mouth enveloped hers again Imogen found it nearly impossible to tear herself away.

  “You’re more stubborn than I gave you credit for.”

  “I don’t know how to say it,” Imogen whispered. “This isn’t me, I know. This isn’t what I want. Something’s taking control over me—like hypnosis.”

  “It’s only nature,” Lucille said again. “Forget that stuff about rationality; forget your ideas of relationships. This is your animal instinct. Embrace it.”

  “But—” and Imogen fought for a rejoinder, only to find nothing. Her mind was leaving her, and all she wanted now was to join with Lucille’s lips and to feel the mad heartbeat of the other girl beat in time with hers, marrying them, each to the other’s pleasure.

  Imogen’s lips found Lucille’s and glued to them fast. Through a hunger that came from somewhere deep within her, Imogen forced her tongue into the waiting mouth, desperate to fill her companion with as much of herself as she could manage. Her thoughts were nowhere. Cerise did not exist on the fringe of her mind. There was only the waiting pleasure to be fulfilled. Nothing else mattered now. Nothing else existed.

  Lucille took Imogen in her arms and maneuvered her over to the sinks, forcing her back with her larger body, grinding with her thighs. The contact hurt Imogen. She opened her mouth once in an unspoken cry of pain, only to be immediately silenced by the infiltration of Lucille’s mouth.

  And then, ravenously desirous, Lucille began to descend down Imogen’s body. Her kisses trampled down the blouse, tearing the thin garment o
pen to reveal Imogen’s bare breasts, nipples poking out demurely. Lucille covered them in showers of harsh kisses, soaking the breasts with her hot, animal breath.

  Imogen staggered back, throwing her hands out behind her to support herself against the counter. Each kiss was electrifying. Each grope of Lucille’s hand caused her breath to catch in her throat, only to be drawn out again by the sucking lips of the wolverine working away at her body.

  With a single jerk of her hand Lucille removed the pleated skirt, and like an animal began licking with her eager, wet tongue Imogen’s moist vagina. Never before would she have imagined that the tongue was capable of so much sensation. As soon as it was inside her it became a part of her, a connection to her innermost being: the being that was impulse and feeling, and nothing else.

  Lucille slid further and further into Imogen, sending the body of her lover into spasms of sharp pleasure while her fierce hands groped Imogen’s thighs. Imogen’s flesh was on fire. The flames curled and whipped through her until she lost contact with her own body and became substance in the hands of Lucille. Her speech fled. Her powers of sense, except for the sense in her clit, became nothing. She did not feel the counter, nor see the lights reflecting off of the tile. There was only the furious, achingly pleasurable presence between her legs.

  “I’ve never experienced anything like that,” Imogen said once she’d recovered her ability to speak. She was draped in the girth of Lucille’s thick arms, still breathing heavily although Lucille had long since ceased to pleasure her.

  “It’s all about forgetting yourself,” the bigger girl answered. “Becoming instinct and response instead of all that calculation. I think you’d be a lot happier if you remembered it in the future.”

  “But you can’t live life that way,” Imogen protested. Lucille raised her bushy eyebrows. Despite her thick build and her rough features, Imogen’s observations about Lucille the first day at the café had been right. There was elegance in her face: the cheekbones were soft and pronounced, the eyes were full of the powdery grey color of a winter sky, the lips were full and gently curving. And as Imogen had felt when Lucille’s tongue had been inside her, there was indeed something hypnotic about it. About its perfect symmetry, its intensity, its concealed danger.

  “I mean,” Imogen clarified, “we couldn’t have relationships if we all lived that way. We’d all just bite and scratch each other to pieces, trying to find the best way to our own pleasure.”

  “Which isn’t an iota different from the way humans behave now,” Lucille laughed. “Your little honey-darling poets like Cowper may try and make you believe that pleasure’s something glittering and perfect, dangling there in the sky. But you’d better believe that if I took his little pecker in my mouth I could twist him around my little finger. Humans have their ‘relationships’ because they don’t have the strength or the patience to keep each other pleasured constantly.”

  It was Imogen’s turn to laugh now. Lucille might talk vulgarly, but she wasn’t uncouth. She understood deeply and expressed freely, unconscious of the community in which she was speaking. It was as if for Lucille, when she spoke nothing existed for her at all except for the subject. Imogen was reminded of the feeling of complete surrender she’d felt in Lucille’s arms. Was that what if felt like to be inside the other girl’s mind? Was that what she meant about animal instinct?

  “I thought I could read you quite easily,” Imogen said. “I thought you were easy to figure out.”

  “I am easy, baby. That’s what frustrates you. You’re so tightly wound you don’t understand a simple thing when it’s right there in front of you licking your clit. Try shaking off all that tension once in a while. Live like a wolverine.” Lucille barked laughter.

  “Like you, Lucille?” Imogen said with a smile. “Maybe one of these days, maybe when things have settled down. But I belong somewhere else right now. My girlfriend…”

  Imogen had given no thought to Cerise when she’d been with Lucille, and now the recollection of what she’d done brought nausea to the pit of her stomach. What had possessed Imogen to betray her? Was she still chagrined by her feeling that Cerise was keeping something from her about the wolverines? Had she been seeking revenge?

  “Listen, I understand about all that. You stick to your pack. Wolverines are the same way. And come to think of it,” Lucille said, making for the door, “I’d better get out of here before I’m late.”

  “Late for what?”

  “Secret of the pack,” Lucille winked. “But I suppose I’d better tell you something before your curious head gets you into trouble. Wolverines can only change when there’s moonlight—the stronger the light, the stronger the wolf. Well, we’ve got the first gibbous moon tonight that we’ve seen in months and me and the gals are dying to get a bit of exercise. Just a little romp around to stretch the paws. Our headmaster is leading us.”

  “Your headmaster sounds like a talented man.”

  “Talented is one word, baby,” Lucille said, and suddenly became serious. “But really, the man’s a genius. He’s going to lead the whole wolverine world into a beautiful, new future if given half a chance. And it’ll all begin at St. Nocturne’s,” Lucille finished with a smile. Imogen was smiling too. It was entrancing to hear the other girl speak with such force and passion. She couldn’t help but get excited as well.

  Under the lengthening shadows of the twilit-flooded trees that bordered the pathway from the school to town, Imogen walked carefree, with a new bounce in her step. Her experience with Lucille had been as eye opening as it had been surreal. It had revealed to her a new world filled with character and color where before she had seen nothing, experienced nothing but a bitter taste in her mouth. The fact that it had been so brief and that it would not be repeated again—she had been careful to stress this point to Lucille—made it only that much more valuable.

  She still did not know what she would tell Cerise, but she was confident that once she was at the Rose the words would come to her. She did not feel shame at what she’d done. She’d been under a spell, lost to herself and functioning solely by instinct. She’d made no rational decision to betray her girlfriend and in her heart she felt as close to Cerise as ever. Maybe even closer, for with Lucille she’d discovered an unknown corner of her own character: a part of herself that, now she knew it existed, she could offer freely. The freedom of complete submission. The freedom of obliterating herself.

  There wasn’t a moment to lose, she thought as she made her way down the medieval cobbled roads, in the direction of the bomb-shelter basement that was the Red Red Rose. She would tell everything right then, just as it came pouring off her tongue. She would say that Cerise had been right all along about the wolverines. It simply took a bit of exposure for Imogen to warm up to them. How wonderfully simple everything seemed now!

  There were not many shops or businesses open late, especially down the dark lane where Cerise kept her club, but one of them was The Corner Shop where her mother Helena worked as a stripper. Having been familiar with the club and with the girls for over a decade, Imogen felt nothing strange about dropping in to say hello or to let her mother know her plans for the evening, which was precisely what she was doing now.

  She entered through the dimly lit side door and passed through the dressing rooms. The air was thick with cheap perfume but the rooms were conspicuously quiet. It was perhaps too early for any clients to be in the audience, but usually by this time in the evening the women had begun their preparations.

  Something about the situation didn’t feel right.

  Imogen called her mother’s name and receiving no answer called louder: “Helena!”

  Still no answer. Imogen felt a faint stirring in her chest—a presentiment of danger. Her steps quickened. She passed the dressing rooms and scanned them quickly but thoroughly from the peripherals of her eyes, all the while making her way steadily towards the front exit.

  A few buzzing, amber-yellow lamps threw light down the hallways, lined with
dully-sparkling mirrors. Through this bare light and through the thousand reflections of herself,Imogen passed, quicker and quicker, aware of the skin-prickling sensation that every one of her reflections was being watched, that each time she passed beneath a lamp her presence was made lucidly clear. Her ears stirred to the faintest sounds and at last she heard that which she’d been dreading ever since she set foot in the club: a stranger’s footstep.

  As quickly as she could, Imogen dashed for the front entrance, throwing open doors in her way, leaping over a pile of discarded costumes. But her efforts were in vain. Before she knew it, an arm was on hers, cold fingers digging into her flesh, leading her away from her goal. Her eyes fought for vision, whirling around but finding nothing save her own reflection. Imogen cried out: for whom she did not know. She was alone with her assailant.

  A brief, horrifying moment passed. Imogen closed her eyes and fought the hand leading her but the strength of the other was too much and she collapsed, weightless and exhausted as they turned into one of the dressing rooms. The door creaked shut behind them.

  “You can open your eyes, darling,” a voice whispered steadily. So full of fear and anxiety was she that Imogen could not bear to open her eyes again until the voice spoke a second time.

  “Cerise?” she said, incredulous. The vampire was like an apparition: eyes dark as though smeared with blood, skin paler than its natural tone. Imogen recoiled from the frightening sight, and then threw herself into Cerise’s arms.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, her voice weak with fear. “What’s happened? Why are you here?”

  “Imogen—I need to know something. Can you answer me when I ask you?” Imogen nodded. “Have you seen any wolverines this evening? Any at all?”

  “I don’t understand…” Imogen began again, but stopped. The expression in Cerise’s face was paralyzing. “Only about an hour ago,” she admitted.