by Rhys Hughes
Daniela saw no representation now: she was inside it.
On the other side of the mercantile zone she entered a neighbourhood of crumbling houses and scruffy gardens, the oldest part of the city. Why don’t I go straight home, she asked herself? It was a case of needing to walk off an excess of energy, for she had been given hope of fulfilment at last. She went into a park, her slippers raising clouds of spores from inadvertently kicked mushrooms in the thick grass. She sat on a bench below a branch on which perched a toucan. Elsewhere ripe fruit dropped.
“Zelophilia?” she pondered to herself.
The toucan was pecking at a strange growth on the branch. Now it flew off, evidently disappointed with the object. Daniela frowned closer and saw it resembled one of Morales’ levers. She reached and pulled. Then she realised that it really was a lever. She recalled how two of the levers on the console had turned to dust before her eyes. And the breeze that came in when she opened the door had carried it all off. Clearly some of it had been too heavy to float forever: it had settled here.
And reconstituted itself back into its original form!
She shrugged at the coincidence.
There was a rustling in the undergrowth on the far side of the park. The moonlight filtering through the canopy of trees had been generating random patterns on the ground. The vast majority of these shapes were abstract and meaningless, just like the lights of the clustered shops, but a few were given coherent form by chance. Now something protruded from the bushes: the head of a jaguar! The beast must have slinked out of the forest after the sun went down and secretly entered the park before the moon came up. Probably it would remain here until just before dawn. Hiding from view in this oasis of untamed wilderness, it might learn the ways of humanity, all the better to survive. But the vibrant pattern of moonlit speckles had attracted it out of concealment, called to its most basic appetites with undeniable force, had played a trick on its primitive urges.
It pounced on nothing, on a transient mirage!
Daniela leaned forward, her breathing shallow. What had the beast seen in the matrix of gleams? Perhaps a fawn, moon-coloured and helpless. Now the illusion shivered apart in the breeze, reformed into another abstract. Deceived claws gouged the rich soil, then the jaguar snorted, bounded back into hiding. Daniela stood and walked away slowly, quietly, leaving the park and closing the gate behind her. To be mauled in a jungle is one thing, a risk unavoidable and worth taking. But not in a park.
As she walked home, she thought about her own morning explorations of the arboreal tangle, that permanent dripping hothouse that surrounded the city like a balustrade, the festooned emerald mystery, never silent or still, in which rapid decay and faster life were simultaneous, overbearing, a green scream in the inner ear. She had found something there, the entrance to an underground passage, the mouth of an ancient complex that shouldn’t exist. There were no ruins in this corner of the continent, never had been. No stone cities, temples or even houses: this was academic fact.
But she wondered if the historians were wrong.
That is where she went before dawn, down a path known only to herself, picking her way between thorns and snakes, finally crouching at an entrance meshed with creepers to listen to the voice of the deeps, to a murmuring of a sunken sea, the sigh of a lost continent. It was a natural phenomenon grossly magnified and misinterpreted: a bigger variation of a shell positioned over the ear. Distortion of air currents. But she cared not to heed her rational mind on this point. Better to believe in a world beneath this one, a sanctuary under the bed of reality, in the finest space for eluding obligations.
A week passed. When she called on Doctor Morales again, his door swung open on its own. She stepped inside and saw nobody. But a small wooden box floated towards her and stopped there in midair. This was unnerving but she closed the door and waited. A voice said, “It’s all ready for you. I think you’ll appreciate what I’ve achieved.”
Daniela squinted uselessly. “You are completely transparent already? But I assumed the process would be slow.”
The lid of the box sprang open, activated by a fingernail without apparent substance. “Invisible yes, not transparent. There’s a difference and it’s not a subtle one. Light doesn’t really pass through me. As I explained before, my condition is more akin to camouflage than true invisibility. I would be blind otherwise. The human eye works by focussing light rays. If photons passed through it unimpeded, like neutrinos, no images would be projected onto my retina. All invisible men are blind.”
“They do exist?” Daniela asked in surprise.
“Prototypes,” replied Morales.
“Failures? Unseen men locked in eternal night?”
“Yes.” He nodded and she knew this even though the gesture was lost in the parameters of his condition. She felt the lap of a tiny breeze: his forehead, vast and professorial, had fanned the musty air over her. “What do you think of this gift?” he crooned solicitously.
Daniela looked inside the box, reached inside to lift out the object within, held it the palm of one hand, frowned. “It’s identical to my own. I can’t deny that. But it has legs, doctor. Legs!”
“Of course. Six of them. To aid your desires.”
“It’s more insectile that I was hoping for. I don’t mean to be ungrateful but the erotic appeal is rather reduced.”
“The legs are fully retractable, my dear.”
He must have touched a pressure pad, for a circular region the size of a fingertip near the clitoris turned a darker shade of pink and the spindly legs withdrew into the sides of the fleshy lips. The object on her hand was now a perfect vulva, detached, pulsating, sublime. Daniela was about to ask why it needed legs, but the answer struck her as obvious. To return to her each time it accomplished a successful mission.
Doctor Morales clearly guessed what she was thinking. “Yes, it will hurry back from any lover in the early hours of the morning. It has a homing device to ensure it doesn’t get lost on the way.”
“Later today I’ll test it,” Daniela promised.
Dust rose from a nearby workbench. The Doctor had probably waved his hands in a dismissive gesture. “No need to report back here. I’m confident it will work properly. Please trust me.”
Daniela frowned. “Did you try it out yourself?”
The voice that answered wasn’t offended. In fact it chuckled benignly and grew fainter: Morales was walking to the other side of the room. She noticed a large skeleton clock on a mantelpiece above a disused hearth. Its pendulum suddenly speeded up, but there was no increase in universal gravitation. She guessed it was being manipulated manually.
“I’m not like ordinary men. I told you that already.”
“Sorry, I forgot. Shall I leave?”
He didn’t answer her. The clock began to chime.
Instead of returning the artificial vulva to its wooden box, which Morales had simply allowed to fall to the floor, she slipped it into her pocket. It fitted as neatly as a sundered papaya. Sweetly scented, magnetic, it rubbed against her thigh as she walked, making her original template tingle. What would men see as she walked the streets like this? Simply a woman like any other, or one twice as physically potent, a double shelled goddess? How could they know? It was none of their business anyway.
She took her lunch in her local café, read the newspapers and learned that the jungle was still increasing its rate of re-growth. Did Morales have anything to do with that particular mystery? She doubted it. He was just one eccentric genius among many. The city of Umuarama had been invaded, choked and rendered mythical again by the greedy vegetation. People hacked their way with machetes through shopping malls, paddled canoes in their bedrooms. It wasn’t hard, giving up a dominance of the planet that humanity never really had, forsaking the foolish responsibility. Nature could never be conquered or tamed, not by mankind. Our nervous systems are forests too, she thought. It was a glib conceit but pleasing enough.
The hours flapped away slowly. The rain came.
Daniela hastened with her newspaper over her head to the house of Rita. Bedraggled, full of laughter, she greeted her auburn friend affectionately and accepted a glass of rum and lime juice. Rita’s husband, Jorge, was away at work, repairing broken telephone lines.
Rita’s apartment boasted a covered balcony. They went out together and swung on the same hammock and gazed beyond the towers of the city at the walls of the jungle. A cloud of parrots skimmed the canopy. Rita wanted to show her latest design. She had to jump down to do so, hitching her skirt up and gyrating her hips for full effect.
“A beating heart. I wanted one too,” said Daniela.
“Did it go wrong?” asked Rita.
“Yes. Next time I’ll ask for a dancing snake, a charmed serpent, or maybe an unnavigable river full of catfish.”
“Your sense of humour bewilders me, dear.”
But Daniela only laughed sceptically and listened to the drumming of the thick raindrops on the tarpaulin. Her friend rejoined her and they lay entwined for a full hour in rapturous silence.
Then Daniela twitched and asked, “Did you ever hear about a government project to create cheap energy using the moon? Something incompatible with the existence of women? I don’t know any more details. It may sound surreal but my source was reliable.”
Rita squirmed around to face Daniela. “Sorry, no, and I don’t think Jorge has said anything to me about it. He drinks with an engineer who worked on the space program. I can’t help you.”
“Wasn’t Isabel involved with that kind of research?”
“Not sure, dear. You can ask her if you like. Is it important to you? She’s coming here tomorrow for a séance.”
Daniela raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t think you—”
Rita stroked her friend’s breasts expertly, but Daniela’s nipples stiffened with reluctance: the jealousy element wasn’t sufficiently strong. Yet she tried to enjoy the caress on a minor level.
“I’m not. But Isabel is thinking of converting again.”
“Which way?” Daniela asked.
“From Umbanda to Candomblé this time. I told her not to treat religions like fashion accessories but she’s less frivolous about it than I thought. Gave me an impassioned defence of the existence of spiritual energy. Her spirits may deign to turn up here briefly, if I’m lucky. Come along, my dear, by all means, or are you too busy again?”
Daniela nodded. “Sorry, my beautiful friend.”
“I understand. Don’t worry.”
They swung for another few minutes. The rain eased. Daniela yawned and insisted it was time to leave. Rita nodded, smiled, and told her to let herself out. They kissed on the lips lightly.
In the kitchen, Daniela found the fruit bowl.
She slipped the artificial vulva between a guava and a cupuacu. It nestled itself snugly there, unobtrusive in its tropical element. Then she went out and closed the door gently behind her.
The first step of her synthetic infidelity had been taken. Acutely aware of this fact, she lay awake and stared at the ceiling. The realisation weighed on her conscience and body like increased air pressure, pushing her deeper into the bed. Her window was open and faint music drifted on the warm breeze, a late party or lone madman with drums, somewhere distant. She waited and tried to make a psychic connection with that equally remote organ that was part of her but also something alien. She felt nothing. As time passed, brief dreams flickered on the screens of her eyelids, a jumble of useless scenes, some sort of endless enfolding, though whether of soft erogenous flesh or hard tectonic plates she couldn’t determine. She blinked. Something had entered her room. It scuttled across the floor towards her.
She felt it climb onto the bed, mount her belly, settle there with a sigh that was moist, as if nostalgia or satisfaction had been liquefied. She reached with her left hand, groped for and found it. Yes, it had returned of its own accord, just as Doctor Morales had promised.
But had it accomplished its mission? Daniela felt her pulse pounding in a counter rhythm to the distant drums as she stroked it, held it next to her ear. She couldn’t hear the sea through this shell: the murmur was something else entirely. A story that was clear enough to her. After Rita’s husband had come back from work the vulva had crawled out of the fruit bowl and gone to him. And Jorge had welcomed it in the way Daniela hoped, without alarm, distaste or restraint. She knew this as she listened.
Her free hand reached down under the single thin sheet, her fingers grazed the stubble of the sunburst, went lower. Still with the conch to her ear, lightly stroking herself, she surrendered to her own specialised brand of lust. It was sweet beyond anything experienced before. The first true consummation she had known. Zelophilia was a lake of intensity for her, and now the pebble had been cast, the ripples spreading outwards.
She allowed herself to be lapped, engulfed, drowned.
Then with a sharp gasp, her body arched, held itself rigid for moments of timelessness. The burst of energy dissipated, her muscles relaxed. Like a man who feels shame after using an inappropriate masturbatory aid, a fruit or doll, she pushed the shell away, but there was no self-loathing in the motive behind her action. She was simply sensitised to such a degree that more contact with the medium of her fulfilment was painful instead of pleasurable. She sank into a profound sleep that lasted beyond dawn.
When she awoke, she frowned. For the first time in many days she hadn’t gone for her early jungle walk. Yet this omission didn’t bother her now. Were the lips of her peripatetic cunt riper with whispered secrets than the mouth of the subterranean passage? But they weren’t the same thing at all, any parallels were coincidental. Neither was a symbol of the other. The passage spoke to her of another world, made impossible promises about it: but the vulva was a messenger of success in this reality, a herald. She must take great care not to make such category mistakes, she realised.
She rose and prepared for the day ahead. A schedule of friends to visit in order needed to be created. Rita had been first, for she was highly favoured, but there were dozens of others, each with husbands or boyfriends, potential traitors to domestic trust. Daniela savoured the anticipation. Her yoni would have its chance with all of them, an interface of multiple betrayals, sticky with the juice of illicit penetration. Her sexual energies had been building up inside too long: when they exploded the blast would take conventional morality with it, leaving innocence intact only in the forest.
Ivan had said it first, years before she had confessed her perversion to him. Back then, he had caught her by surprise every time with his abrupt insights, before she learned to accept his mystique.
“Your restlessness will destroy civilisation one day.”
“What an odd thing to say!” she cried.
But no, she knew he was right even then, that the greedy agitation moving inside her, flowing through her being like the mighty tributaries of an immense river, would demand a revaluation of all values for those around her, for the spreading concentric circles of humanity.
Daniela, the luscious harbinger of a new world.
Ultimately that is exactly what happened. It couldn’t have been otherwise and she often recalled Ivan’s words in the sensuously heady weeks following her initial experiment with Rita’s husband.
Her program of zelophiliac consummation progressed without hindrance. No targeted man failed to engage with the vulva when it approached him. No wife or girlfriend caught her lover in the act. The risk provided a secondary thrill for Daniela. She didn’t doubt the object would be instantly recognisable to her friends if they caught sight of it. She had shown off her finely sculpted parts to them all, in a variety of contexts.
Always it returned to her before dawn, engorged, ripe. On one occasion she decided to resume her stroll in the jungle, taking it with her. On the edge of the city, questing roots cracked the empty roads and quivering tendrils of mists poked like testing tongues over the threshold. The only way out of the urban island was by river. Even the airstrip had been lost to
the accelerated growth. She swung her machete rapidly.
Enormous blooms dipped and rose as she passed, hummingbirds flitted around her ears. Life, death, decay, rebirth: the cycle was working close to maximum velocity now. Down the barely perceptible secret trails she went, hacking vines that dripped sap onto her clothes. She reached the entrance to the subterranean corridor. There was a mound of earth and the mouth gaped at a steep angle. She crouched and listened. The impossible sea with its own tangle of currents still sighed down there.
She placed the vulva down on a broad leaf on top of the mound, like an offering to some atavistic deity that Isabel might claim to believe in. Although it looked normal enough, there was something different about it. An alteration in the pulsation of its softness. Daniela touched it prosaically with a finger. It widened even as she watched, throbbed, shuddered, continued to dilate. Had it been damaged somehow? Was it malfunctioning? Then something began to emerge from the opening. A tumour? Daniela leaned forward with concerned curiosity, frowning. Her shell was hatching.
“A flower within a flower!” she gasped.
The extrusion continued until it seemed she was gazing at a superimposed image. No, this wasn’t diseased matter at all. It was a birth. The original vulva had disgorged a second, half its size. For an instant they unwittingly engaged in a tribadic caress, then the new one slipped to the jungle floor, extended its legs, tried to stand but fell over. Daniela stooped to retrieve it. She laughed at the logical absurdity of what had occurred.
One of the men had fertilised it. One of the husbands.
But which one? The father couldn’t easily be traced, for only rarely does a yoni resemble the man who helped create it.
Ivan might be able to work it out. Nobody else.
