Belinda stared into the fire for some time, thinking about what she had in her life, and what she had given up; and whether it would be worse to love someone who was no longer there, or not to love someone who was.
And then, at the end, almost casually, she tossed the envelope onto the coals, and she watched it curl and blacken and catch, watched the yellow flames dancing amidst the blue.
Soon, the wedding present was nothing but black flakes of ash which danced on the updraughts and were carried away, like a child’s letter to Santa Claus, up the chimney and off into the night.
Belinda sat back in her chair, and closed her eyes, and waited for the scar to blossom on her cheek.
<
* * * *
PETER ATKINS
Adventures in Further Education
Peter Atkins was born in Liverpooland now lives in Los Angeles. The scriptwriter of such movies as Hellhound: Hellraiser II, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, Hellraiser: Bloodline andFist of the Northstar, his first two novels were Morningstar andBig Thunder.
The author is currently working simultaneously on his third novel and a screenplay version of the same story, tentatively scheduled for filming in early 2000. The screenplay has been retitled Prisoners of the Sun by its producers, but Atkins is keeping his original title The Source of the Nile for the novel. He also has a collection of his short fiction out from Pumpkin Books which has as its centrepiece his screenplay for the movie Wishmaster which, according toVariety’s year-end charts, was the most successful independent feature of 1997.
As he explains, “ ‘Adventures in Further Education’ was written for Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, an anthology where the upper limit for length was 750 words. I sold the editors five stories - of which this one, at 630 words, was the longest! Like the protagonist, I once had a teacher who tapped his pen on his desk but, unlike Kenny, I didn’t continue the experiment. . .”
* * * *
K
enny tapped the pen on the surface of his desk for the seventeen thousand, four hundred and thirty-sixth time.
There was nothing the matter with him. It wasn’t like it was an obsession or anything. It wasn’t like he didn’t do anything else. Since his sixth-grade teacher had first introduced the idea to him twenty years ago, he’d done all the normal things - he’d graduated from high school, he’d graduated from college, he’d met Tiffany, fallen in love, married, fathered two children, and found himself a perfectly respectable job with a perfectly respectable firm. There was nothing unusual about Kenny except his little hobby. And that’s all it was - a hobby, he didn’t bother anybody with it. In fact, nobody knew he did it, not even Tiffany. It was just a hobby, an interest, an experiment that nobody else had ever had the patience to see through.
Mr Neill had only tapped his pen five times, for example.
“So it’s theoretically possible,” Mr Neill had said, sounding almost as bored as the fifty twelve-year-olds who were doing their best to pretend to listen to him, “that, if you kept tapping this pen on this desk long enough, one time it would just slip through the surface.”
He’d been giving the class a glimpse of the New Physics, a taste of the theories that were revolutionising the way scientists looked at the world, a hint that the matter that made up the forms of this world which everyone accepted as solid and separate was in fact all one and that only probability kept everything as it was and kept our reality apart from a multiverse of others.
Kenny hadn’t been particularly interested in the theoretical and metaphysical implications of what Mr Neill was saying. He was twelve years old, for Christ’s sake. He’d just thought it would be really fucking cool to see a pen slip through a desk and had been disappointed when, after his fifth tap, Mr Neill had put his pen down and moved on to something else.
Quietly, and without drawing anybody’s attention, Kenny had started tapping his pen. And counting.
Seventeen thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven. Seventeen thousand, four hundred and thirty-eight.
It wasn’t the same desk, of course, it was the sixth desk since he’d started. But it was the same pen (dry now of ink, chewed up and useless for anything but its secret purpose), and that had to count for something.
The phone rang. Kenny picked it up, dealt with the call, hung up. He laid the pen down throughout the call and it didn’t bother him at all. After all, he wasn’t crazy. Life had to be lived. Work had to be done. His experiment required patience and tenacity, and Kenny prided himself on possessing plenty of both.
Seventeen thousand, four hundred and thirty-nine. Seventeen thousand, four hundred and forty. Seventeen thousand, four hundred and . . .
The pen slid effortlessly and smoothly into the desk.
Kenny, letting go instinctively, threw himself back in his chair, an adrenal shock of surprised fulfillment shooting through his entire body. He looked up, ready to shout his triumph to the rest of the large open-plan office.
But the office wasn’t there.
Kenny was staring at a kaleidoscope world of shifting, flickering lights, a surfaceless void with an unimaginably distant vanishing point near which huge amorphous shapes twisted and writhed in a constant fury of becoming. Lightning in colours he couldn’t name seared across the infinite and multi-hued sky in jagged shards the size of which he couldn’t conceive. Alien winds screamed their impossible being in warring cacophonies of notes he couldn’t believe at volumes he couldn’t bear.
Had he still had hands, Kenny would have grabbed at his chair (had there still been a chair). Had he still had a mouth, Kenny would have screamed. Had he still had eyes, Kenny would have closed them.
Had he still had his pen, Kenny would have started tapping.
<
* * * *
KATHE KOJA
Bondage
Kathe Koja lives in theDetroit area with her husband, artist Rick Lieder, and her son. Her Bram Stoker Award-winning debut novel, The Cipher, appeared in 1991, since when she has published Bad Brains, Skin, Strange Angels and Famished, plus the short story collection Extremities.
Her short fiction (including several collaborations with Barry N. Malzberg) has appeared in such magazines and anthologies as Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dark Voices 3, 5 and 6, Still Dead: Book of the Dead 2, A Whisper of Blood, Little Deaths, The Year’s Best Horror Stories and Best New Horror 3 and 5.
According to the author, “My own sense is that ‘Bondage’ is as close to a pure morality play as anything I’ve done.”
* * * *
S
he was shaped like sculpture: high bones, high forehead, long fingers silver-cool against his skin as they lay side by side in the deep four-poster, princess-bed draped in lace and gauze and “Don’t ever buy me a ring,” she said; those fingers on his belly, up and down, up and down, tickling in his navel, playing with his balls. “I don’t like them.”
Even her voice, as calm and sure as metal. “Why not?” he said.
“They’re just -” Fingertips, nipping at his thighs. “They’re bondage gear.”
“Bondage, sure. Like a wedding band, right?”
And her shrug, half a smile, one-elbow rise to reach for her drink: that long white back, faint skeleton trail of bones and “What do you know about bondage?” her smile wider now, canine flash. “B & D, S & M. You ever do that, any of that?”
Have you? “No,” he said. “I’m not into pain.”
“It’s not about pain,” she said, “or anyway it doesn’t have to be. Bondage and discipline,” tapping his chest for emphasis. “Who’s on top.” She drank what was left in the glass, set it back on the floor, climbed atop him so her breasts were inches from his mouth. “Like now,” she said.
Her taste of perfume, of faintest salt: long legs hooked high above his hips, strong and growing stronger, wilder as she rode him, head straining back, back, as if she would twist that long white body into a circle, bend it like sculpture, like metal and stone and when he c
ame it was too soon, fast and over and she was looking at him and almost smiling, lips spread to show those little pointed teeth.
“Not so bad, was it?” she said. “Woman superior?”
“But that’s not the same thing,” he said, still breathless. “Not the same thing at all.”
* * * *
Next day’s dinner, some Tex-Mex place she loved: plastic cacti, the waiters in ten-gallon hats and reaching for her bag beneath the table, reaching and: a box, gift box embossed black-on-black, SECRET PLEASURES and “Here,” she said with half a smile. “For you.”
“What’s this for?” he said.
“No reason. - Go on, open it,” and he did, something soft and limp inside and, curious, he unfolded that softness, spread it flat on the table between them: supple white leather oval, no true eyes, gill-slit where the mouth should be and “Pretty cool, isn’t it?” she said. Tangle of black strings, one black grommet on each side, simple as desire itself. “Do you like it?”
“Where’d you get this?” The box in hand again, examination and “From a sex store,” she said, “downtown. Thumb cuffs and cock rings, nipple clamps. Piercing jewelry.” Touching the mask. “And these.”
And a server there to refill their water glasses, frank stare at the mask on the table: “What’s that?” Eighteen, nineteen years old, faint drift of acne across his forehead beneath the ludicrous hat. “For Halloween?”
“No,” she said before he could speak, “no, it’s for sex. A sex toy,” and the boy laughed a little, hasty to fill the glasses and be gone and “Why’d you have to say that?” he said, annoyed. At the work station see the boy with another server, their tandem turn to stare and she laughed, reached to take the mask and place it back inside the box.
“No reason,” she said. “Just part of the game.”
* * * *
And later in bed, kisses and nipping fingers, playful hands on his thighs but he was waiting, he knew it would come and: reaching for her glass she retrieved as well the box, SECRET PLEASURES and the featureless face within, white face waiting for flesh to fill it, carry it, make it move and “Go on,” she said, “I bought it for you, put it on.”
“I will if you will.”
“You first,” and she helped him adjust it, tie the dangle of strings so the mask lay comfortably close, leather so soft it might have been a second skin: Who am I? wiped clean of all expression, no mouth to sulk or smile and “Mmmmm,” her hands now on his face, petting, stroking the mask. “You should see how you look.”
“I look like nothing,” he said. Strange to feel the movement of muscles when he spoke, feel his lips against the mask like some alien skin. “Everyman.”
“The bogey-man,” and she laughed, leaning back, back against the pillows, cheekbone flush and reaching, reaching to bring his face to her breasts: “Your turn,” she said. “Your turn to be on top.”
It grew hot, inside the mask; he didn’t mind.
* * * *
“Your turn.” Raining outside, monotony of thunder and she crabby in quilts, ugly nightgown and “Your turn,” he said again, dangling the mask by its strings: caul from some secret birth, some unborn self and “Go on,” he said, feeling his hardon press his trousers as facial bones might press the mask: a slight straining, the pressure of rising heat and the mask did not fit her quite as well, hung slightly beneath her chin but he tightened the strings again - “Ow,” more annoyance than real pain, her voice softer somehow because dampered, muffled by the slit which did not completely meet her lips. “It’s too tight,” faint her voice but he left it that way, no portion of her features visible, nothing but faceless white.
“Lie down,” he said.
“Oh, not here,” yet without true complaint, she was not attending, she was feeling the mask with her fingers, curious to press against cheekbones and chin and “You know I tried this on before,” more than half to herself. “But not so -”
“Lie down,” he said; he was already naked. Thunder like the echo of a beating heart, giant’s heart in rhythm with his own; pulse of blood and rain on the roof, a clutch of claws, her body bent obedient on the landscape of the quilts: and afterwards, half-turned from him: “You hurt me,” she said, touching herself, pale hands between her legs. “Don’t be so rough.”
The mask on the floor like a self discarded; no one; anyone. Everyman. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.”
* * * *
The next time he lay below her, masked and silent: don’t move, that was the game, no matter what don’t move: clamped thighs, her juddering breasts and she bit him, bright teeth in the shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise: nipping and pinching with her nails, scratches on his chest, his back and he had to fight not to shift or move, not to push her away, to lay absolutely still even as he came, sweep of red pleasure and she above in reckless motion, hair sweat-wild and tumbled, panting as if she had no air and “Oh, yes,” collapsing down to lie beside him, one leg stretched companionably across his two, thigh high on his hip and without moving anything but his fingers he pinched her, quick and brutal on her inner thigh and in perfect reflex she slapped him, very hard, across the face, both sound and impact deadened by the presence of the mask.
Neither spoke.
Some time after that he fell asleep, woke much later to find her curled far across the bed and himself still in the mask: sweat dried to an itch across his cheekbones, the differing itch of his overnight beard, fingers clumsy with fatigue against the strings.
Waking to true morning he found it crumpled on the floor, spoor and element of dream made to follow the sleeper all the way to the waking world.
* * * *
“I’m sorry,” she said. She might have been crying, earlier, in the shower; she had kept the bathroom door closed; her eyes were clear but swollen, pink and sore around the lids. “I never meant to hit you.”
I’m sorry too. “Let’s forget it,” he said. “Okay?”
* * * *
The next time they made love they did not use the mask: plain faces, closed eyes and although it was good - with her it was almost always good - still he missed it, the heat within that stasis, visible and not, here and not-here: but said nothing, did not mention it at all.
He wondered if she missed it, too.
* * * *
Dinner: carryout Thai in little lumps, he had waited too long to leave the office, stuck twice in traffic in a heavy storm; so much rain, lately. The food on his plate gone slick and cold, eating alone, clicking through channels and outside another sound, her car in the driveway: half-rising to open the door, let her in and “Hi,” wet and breathless, hair stuck to her face, raincoat spatter and “Oh good,” she said, “you got dinner.” Side by side on the sofa and now that she was home he opened a bottle of wine, two bottles, still on the sofa and he started to undress her, blouse and bra, hooks and eyes and “Wait,” she said, voice lightly slurred and warm from the wine. “Just wait a minute,” and gone then as he stripped, lay back on the sofa, rain on the roof and all at once the white face, peering at him, mouth expressionless but beneath, he knew, a smile.
“Peekaboo,” she said and inside him the sudden surge, heat pure and rising like mercury, like the tempo of the storm and “Let me wear it,” he said, up on one elbow, rising to reach for the strings, “and then you can —”
“No,” from above him, pale and remote. “It’s not your turn.”
That stare: he could not see her eyes and inside him then a differing surge, something grey and chilly, like metal, like falling rain.
* * * *
SECRET PLEASURES: between a video store and a deli, glass door opaque and inside the rachet and thump of industrial music, steel-toned racks to display the shiny harnesses, leather hoods and thigh-high boots and below the counter a glass case of jewelry, piercing jewelry like little iron bars, dumbbells, hooks and circles and “Can I help you?” from a tall thin boy in leather, boots and jacket, head to toe and “Masks,” he said. “I want to see the masks
,” and after all it was very easy to say, no doubt the clerks had already seen it all, this boy with his thin cheeks and ragged hair leading him to the display carousel, to show him what there was to see: buckles and loops and ribbon ties, leather and rubber all faces he might wear, desires he might claim if only for a night and “That one,” he said, pointing with the tip of one finger. “Let me see that one.”
Red leather harsh as meat exposed, no plain oval but the true mask, face-shaped and stitchery like scars, strangely peaked at the eyebrows and “What’re these supposed to be?” he asked, touching the peaks. “Horns?”
“Those are darts,” the clerk said. “To make it fit tighter. See?” and positioned to his face, buckled on and the clerk stepped back so he might use the mirror: eyes kept closed for a moment, wanting tactile information, wanting the feel of the mask before any decision sight might make: this one much tighter than the other, stiffer, more formal; this mask would not fit her at all - and he opened his eyes to the mirror, to see himself a stranger: sex become power, desires become demands, demands made as orders and when the clerk told him the price he shrugged a little, more than he meant to spend but what difference did that make?
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology] Page 13
