Needles & Sins

by John Everson

  Most o’ the guys ’re saying now we should stop the city runs. Ain’t none of us want to take the women home, and they don’t amount to nothing but a rash and a pile o’ bones in no time.

  My fathers had it better. Twice as many women to warm back then. I remember waking up in the night and hearing both of them slapping and laughing as they worked on getting the latest ones’ bellies full. They liked to work at it together, then they’d leave the women all snuffling and whimpering and go back to their own room together. Had us a dozen brothers and sisters ‘fore the sick winter. That’s when it all started going bad. Council still shake their heads over it, blamin’ bad women, bad animals, somethin’. But the long ‘n’ short is, half o’ Boystown died that winter, all screamin’ mad, feverish and pus-y. Some had stuff fallin’ off of ’em by the time they died. And the ones that didn’t catch it ‘n’ die wish’d they did, ‘cause we had to live the winter on roots ‘n’ bark. Throwed out all the meat—didn’t know if it caused the sickness or not, but no one was chancing. Weren’t very many women to warm after that winter, I’m telling truth. Out o’ my three brothers and nine sisters, there was four of us left. Now there’s just me.

  Last year 16 men—big chunk of our pop.—left Boystown. Said we was wasting cuz of the water or poison in ground. ‘The death and sickness is in the earth,’ they yelled and tried to make the council move Boystown. But we been here too long. My fathers and their fathers lived in this same house. Great grandads built it. Other men are the same. Their grandfathers and fathers went through the fires of hell to found our heaven, the council said. We ain’t leaving their legacy. Truth—I think the 16 were right and this ain’t no heaven, but I ain’t left neither. They didn’t take no women with them, said they’d find some that hadn’t had their jeans polluted. I thought they was stupid not to just wash their women once in a while, but hey, whatever. They’ll probably die out before they get a new town going. Maybe poison’s everywhere. We sure don’t find many women anymore.

  ««—»»

  Trent came home the day I finished Marta’s seed week. Trent and I made some new fire that night, I tell you. And the council was licking each other’s balls too when Trent and his boys got back from the city—they not only found two scraggly girls, they fell upon a stash o’ canned vegetables. We haven’t had a good store of cans fer winter since I was a boy. Old ones say the cans from before is healthier ’n what we can grow now. I dunno ’bout that, but I remember they taste sweeter.

  Council’s sending another group out tomorrow to bring back the rest of the stash. I’m going with this time, while Trent finishes a week with one of the women. She’s a lost cause, I know. She been through nine other guys and ain’t once got big.

  And she stinks. Trent say it’s cuz o’ the sores on her, but I say she’s just rotten inside. “Wouldn’t even use her fer compost,” I say. She’d poison the garden.

  He laughs and says, “Well that Marta ain’t much better, all teeth and ribs.”

  I gotta agree.

  ««—»»

  Two weeks it took us to get to the city. Scary lookin’ place, I tell you. My father Dan used to tell me people lived there who liked to do the deed with women, but I think he was just telling stories. What he don’t lie ’bout is that almost no one lives there now. Ones ya find there all seem to be broken and fallin’ apart, like the city itself.

  We walk up to the first of the towers and they’s just leaning into each other like evil arches waiting to suck us in. Clouds hang over this place like that thick fog in the early morning; everything is grey—and quiet as death before dawn. Some buildings are tumbled flat on the ground, and we gotta walk for hours to git around ’em.

  There’s rusted hunks o’ metal all around, things called cars, points out Mike, our leader. Cars used to go up and down these paths carrying people places, he say, but I’m not buyin’. With all the crevices goin’ cross the roads and all the trees and funny looking yellow creepy plants growing out of ’em, how would the cars be able to move? We gotta cut through ’em with knives sometimes just to pass single file.

  We was in the city three days ‘fore we found the stash. Don’t know how Trent and his guys found it in the first place—we had to cut in and around half a dozen fallen buildings, and walk ‘neath a bunch that kissed each other in the sky and looked about like they was gonna come down on our heads before we got to the place. And then, it turns out, we gotta crawl through some thorny bushes into a flight of cracked and broken stairs. The stash is underground! Turns out, must a once been a food store here, and this big skyscraper crushed it into the dirt when it tumbled. But there’s still a bit of the old store not totally caved in that we kin get into through these stairs.

  Stinks bad inside, and I hear lots o’ rats and who knows what else movin’ around as we squeeze in through a door stuck half open and crushed near in half by the weight the dead skyscraper’s a’ levering on the topside. Mike points us to a dark pile lying on the floor. It flashes in the light of his torch, blinding me a moment, and then I see it’s a spill o’ cans. We all load up our sacks fast to get the hell out of there. No telling what kind of diseases those rats are waiting to give us if we stick around. And maybe that building ain’t done settlin’ yet, I think to myself as I’m loadin’ my pack.

  Something shifts in a rusty squeal a few feet from my head and I nearly messed my pants. We got outta there in a hurry—cussin’ and pushin’ at each other when we jammed up in the doorway a moment.

  Sighted someone in the street on the way back. Mike got spank happy and started running after yelling back at us: ‘We get us another woman and the council let us off a seed week fer sure!’ But wasn’t a woman. Mike got a blade in the arm when he tackled the “woman” and it took three of us to get the thing off of him after.

  It was so dirty and covered with long mangy grey hair that we had to cut its clothes off ’fore we was even one-hundred-percent sure it was a man. Weird looking pink-ended knobby pole ’tween its legs, but it was. It screamed and babbled at us, called us faggots and freaks and Mike finally used its own knife to gut it while we held the arms and legs. Stunk inside as bad as out, and we figured it wasn’t even worth carting home for fertilizer. So we left it where it lay, steaming red guts seeping across the weedy concrete, and set for home double speed. Mike needed some medicine for that arm.

  ««—»»

  Council was happy to see the cans, and Trent was happy to see me—we’d had only one night together in two months! We was kissing and groping right there in front of everyone, turned ’em on so much some of the other men started in too. But just as pants began to drop right there in the middle of the Boystown square, Councilman Troy come out of the food house and yells fer listenin’.

  “Okay!” he bellers, “put yer rods away and come to the Food House. We gonna celebrate with filling our stomachs before you go fillin’ whatever else. And we got not one, but two women to do it for us tonight. They can’t fill their own bellies, so they goin’ to fill ours.”

  This was met with cheers all around and the men whose pants were already on the concrete was grabbing and hobbling to get ’em up. Everyone in Boystown piled into the Food House, but it still didn’t look near as full as when I was a boy. Troy called Trent and I up to the boilers. Food’s scarce these days.

  “As the last men to fill these women, you have the honors,” Troy announced with a ceremonial grab at our crotches. We smiled and accepted the trussed women delivered to our arms. Trent didn’t look as if he even wanted to get his hands soiled with Gret, the stinky woman he’d last had and proved barren, but I wrapped my arms tight around Marta, who squirmed and twisted as she always had beneath my pounding groin.

  I crushed her pointy boobs against my chest ‘til I heard something snap, all the while miming a good in-out boff with my hips. The men were cheering me, and those black holes in her head stared at me in a vicious hate like a wolf caught with its foot in a trap. I laughed, and held her suddenly limp body out from m
y own.

  I heard a splash and a squeal behind me, and I knew Trent hadn’t wasted a minute. It was time.

  Silverware banged in a tribal rhythm against the Food House tables, and I whispered one last rib in Marta’s ear. For just a second I felt funny, bad about it.

  Then I thought better about dinner and having Trent to myself and all, and I pushed her into the boiling cauldron. She sunk like a rock at first—disappointing the crowd some by makin’ no sound—and then floated back to the top, her normally pale skin an amazing red.

  Later that night, as we moved together in bed, I ribbed Trent that while there was plenty of meat left untouched on his Gret, my Marta had disappeared like lobster. I was rightful proud of her. He rammed me pretty hard for that, but it felt good. He asked what I’d said to her before pushing her in.

  “Just a little joke we had between us,” I hedged, subtly urging him on.

  “So spill it,” he huffed, sounding as if he was about to do just that himself.

  “I just reminded her that I was doing the job men have to do.”

  “What’s that,” he said, nipping my neck.

  “Warmin’ the women.”

  He groaned then and gave me his warmth. Maybe the book that said you can’t choose who you love was only half wrong. I didn’t choose to love Marta, but Trent I’ll love forever. Through fire itch, seed weeks and all. And maybe someday I can even give him a child. Won’t be by Marta though, I think.

  And I don’t quite know why, but in the heat of passion, I shiver.

  — | — | —

  MARY

  “Hail, Mary!”

  The voice came from somewhere behind her. Or in front of her. She wasn’t sure. Mary looked up from the well and squinted. The sun bleached everything beyond a few feet to a wavy blur, and she couldn’t see anyone who appeared to be looking for her attention. People moved by the village square quickly, dust kicking up in hazy apparitions with the speed of their travel. Nobody wanted to stay out under the blaze of a noonday sun for very long. Mary shook her head, feeling the sweat staining the veil on the back of her neck and hoisted the water jar to her shoulder. She didn’t intend to stay out here any longer than she had to, either.

  “Hail, Mary!”

  The voice again. This time from her left, by the carpetmaker’s tent. What would he want with her? The carpetmaker nodded his tapered black beard at her, but showed no untoward interest. Mary nodded as well, and walked past him, into the alley. It stank of urine and camel dust. She stepped slowly, but still saw no one. At last, she turned and looked back the way she’d come. The back of the carpetmaker’s tent seemed small now, and the alleyway long and tight. There was nobody here, and if there was, it certainly wasn’t a very good spot to be meeting them, midday or midnight.

  “Mary.”

  The voice startled her and with a slight shriek, she fumbled the water jar. It slid from her delicate balancing grasp and crashed to the packed dirt of the street, cracking into shards of jagged clay and spraying water across Mary’s robes and face.

  “Who…who’s there?” she cried, equally afraid of the unseen voice as of her mother’s wrath for a broken jar.

  “You can’t say my name,” the voice answered. “But you can call me any time.” Its tone was rich and deep like silky chocolate, with a sly note of humor. It caressed her ears with velvet and warmed her belly with its promise of sugar.

  “What is this riddle?” she asked, turning slowly in a circle, staring at the clay of the bare walls on either side of her and still, seeing no one.

  “Why would I riddle my future bride?” he said. Mary’s eyes went wide. What game was this? Why, oh why, had she stepped out of the public square?

  “Leave me!” she exclaimed and turned to run back to the well.

  “Love me!” he replied, and suddenly Mary’s feet went out from beneath her, and her spine was pinned by a bullish weight against the cool clay of a house.

  “Wha…” she cried, her voice escaping in a surprised whoosh, and then something warm and wet pushed against her chest, her neck, her lips and then…she was lost in him, oh him…too much sensation and not enough. With each of his touches she could taste sweet fragrant violet flowers in her head and syrupy golden bee’s nectar on her tongue. Searing rainbows of too-perfect perfumed lust flooded into her mouth, her eyes, her spirit. She could fly a caravan’s journey in an instant and feast on the entirety of the king’s finest banquet in a blink. He overwhelmed her and filled her, and then emptied her and made her beg for more.

  He awoke in her an all-consuming appetite, an endless unsated hunger for all things sensual. Her arms raised above her chest and the invisible yet heart-stopping beauty of him pinned her in a tight prison to the rock but she couldn’t fight him, wouldn’t, because he tasted of heaven and smelled like the spring of life. His touch sent chills of ageless ecstasy through her bones and her startled “no” turned into a lax childlike circle as her body sucked in his ethereal probing tongue and penis.

  And then, all at once, he was not there, and her arms were released from their ridiculous stretch high above her head and instead of nursing on the teat of nirvana she was nursing on dry hot air, her body open and exposed to the distant stares of the marketplace.

  Tears streaming from her face, Mary ran from the alley and the square, ran home to say she had tripped and dropped the water, ran from the fear of what demon had possessed her…and the more tingling fear that she wished he’d return.

  In her bed that night, Mary lay awake, still feeling the marks on her back of her mother’s wrath. And imagining the feeling of the demon’s tongue. What sweetness could be wrong, but what sweetness that no eye could see could possibly be right? Oh, she wished for him, and her legs tensed and bent at the thought. Her stomach fluttered at the memory of his stroking touches and she whispered to herself, “Oh god, please, come back.” Then she shook the lust from her head and pledged “No, never again. I cannot do such evil. Will not. He is no god, but the devil, a tempter. He will ruin me for men.”

  Mary’s eyes widened like black moons in her head as her body was suddenly pressed hard into the threadbare woolen blanket beneath her.

  “I’m so pleased that you wished for me, Mary. I told you to call me anytime.”

  Something brushed a lock of dark hair from her forehead and the voice, so thick, so heavy, so crushingly beautiful told her, “Oh Mary, you are one of my finest creations. And together, we will make another.”

  Her robes writhed like snakes and began to undo themselves, and Mary panicked, struggled against the lulling torpor of his sensual Valium. She pulled the rough material back over her full, exposed olive-skinned breast and shook her head at the demon’s strategy.

  “No,” she whispered. “No, I’ll not be the concubine of a demon. They will stone me. I am unmarried. I have no man. You cannot take this from me.”

  His laughter was like music in her ears and the fear was pushed from her by the feel of his hands slipping beneath her tunic.

  “You are mine to take as I please, Mary,” he said, his voice menacing, and yet, with an edge of bright butterfly to it. “And I do please. I please very much.”

  His hand slipped beneath her robes again to caress one taut nipple, and she shuddered in ecstasy at his touch. Her nerves were electrified beneath his hand; torrents of pleasure shot from her chest to her groin and she moaned aloud.

  “Yes, my pet,” he soothed. His lips then brushed hers, and, mouth open to his tongue, Mary swam just beneath the sea of oblivion. But a part of her strove to see through the darkness, to see what face this being had that could break her defenses so easily, that could make her normally staid person melt with need. She could see nothing between her face and the dark ceiling, but she squinted into the shadow anyway, hoping for some glimpse. Reaching up a trembling hand, she tried to touch the space where his body would be, if he were mortal. Her arm passed through the air and he broke his invisible kiss to laugh.

  “Mary, if you wish to
see me, why didn’t you just ask? If I am to be your eternal husband, I can certainly allow your eyes to pass over me.”

  With that, he swam into existence, a golden-skinned god of shining oiled muscle and perfect skin. He seemed to bring his own light into the room, and she could see the warm glow of his chocolate eyes and the glossy sheen of the coiled curls that dropped from his head to tickle her neck. His chest was bronzed and taut, the nipples delicate and chased by a light carpet of dark curls. Her eye followed those curls past his bellybutton to the long, heavy stem of his manhood—or if he was to be believed, his godhood rather.

  He was beautiful. If she had had a doubt before about giving herself to this creature, it was gone as she drank in his perfect body. His lips pursed in a knowing, pouty smile, and he asked, “Do you find it to your liking?”

  Tears streamed down her face from wanting, and wanting to resist. Her garments fell to dust and he rolled to trap her beneath his godlike form, and traced a sigil of power across her breast with his tongue.