Furnace

by Livia Llewellyn

  I have no answer, for him or myself. Just let him have his say. It’s worth it. My hand travels up his hardening cock, to the plump tip. I rub at the small hole, working silky liquid out over the soft skin. He gasps, but shifts away, his cock sliding out of reach. Lips move to my nipples, then lower. As I fall back onto the pillows, his wet mouth courting my cunt into delicious submission, it finally sinks in: this is a competition. An event. He’s going to make me come like the animal I am, then walk away before I can give him one second of pleasure: because he’s the one in control. And I’ll be left naked in the dust, pleasure and pain ringing my bones like bells.

  I’ve broken everything. I always win. Isn’t that what he said?

  He wraps himself around me, sinks into me, and once again I drown. He doesn’t come, and he won’t tell me why. Hot tears and pain follow the orgasm; but this time he holds me, rocking me like a child as the night bleeds into pink dawn. Exhausted, liquid-limbed, I sink into delicious half-sleep, floating through fragments of dreams. The land lies all around me: I am the Cascades, ice-capped peaks covered by his star-shot skies. And somewhere in between, three words thread their way through us, a radio whisper of the heart drifting from one slumbering body to the other. Let me submit. I reach the black lands of sleep, a frisson of fear pushing its way in with me, as I realize I don’t know where the words came from—from me or him, from the mountains or the sky.

  …one thousand seven…

  Sunlight and bird song. Before I stretch out, open my eyes, I can tell he’s already gone. The wake of his leaving fills the whole house with bittersweet calm.

  A thin plaid robe lays on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t there last night. Folds pressed into the fabric tell me it hasn’t been worn in years. I slip it on, and raise a sleeve to my nose. His faint scent clings to the fabric. I smell him on my skin as well, and in my hair. My tongue glides over my lips. He’s there, too.

  I pad through the living room, reverent this time, as if I’m in church. The windows are shut, and dust motes hang in the air like dead stars. From the kitchen, a clock ticks out the seconds. I follow the sound. Midday sun drenches the room, bleaching the curtains white. I smell strong coffee and the sulphur whiff of eggs. A mug sits next to the pot—I pour a cup and lower myself into a chair, still a bit stiff from last night. I don’t feel bad, though. I haven’t felt this calm, this balanced, in years.

  He left a note and a map on the table, under a wax-red apple. I slide the note toward me, and read. Neat cursive letters in blue pen rest on the lines:

  Working the fair today. There’s a plate for you in the oven. Take what you need from the fridge.

  I’ll be home around eight.

  A plate in the oven—I swing around, catch the handle and open the oven door. Warm air hits my face. A plate covered in aluminum foil sits on the rack. I grab a dish towel and pull it out, peel the foil away. Bacon, eggs and toast. He made me breakfast.

  I pour another cup of coffee, and start to eat, staring at the note all the while. No “thanks for everything”, no “it was great”. Well, it’s not his way. I unfold the map. He’s drawn a dotted red line from the middle of nowhere, through Kittitas up to I-90. A note, an apple, and the way out. After all his protestations, he wants me gone. He wants me—

  “Home,” I say to the ticking clock. But the word doesn’t sound right anymore. Maybe because, when I think of home, I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to see.

  My dad once told me that no man could live in an oasis. He could stop and drink, rest a bit, but then he had to move on, find his way home. This is only an oasis, I say as I wash the dishes and place them in the plastic rack. It was a place to lay in the shade, away from the burning sun. I stand in the shower, curtain open, staring at the wreath on the wall. It was only a place to get a little rest, before pushing on. The braids grow fat with water, and I don’t undo them. My eyes blur—from the soap. I smooth down the sheets and plump the pillows, pressing each soft feather mound to my face before laying it on the bed. He’ll sleep on them tonight.

  I have to go.

  I could have snooped through all his things, but I don’t. He deserves better from me. But on the way out, I peek into the second bedroom, unable to resist. A flick of the light switch reveals boxes and cartons, an old steamer trunk, musty sheets covering tables and chairs. I lift a sheet, revealing a short bookcase.

  Here he is.

  Trophies, plaques and ribbons, all proclaiming the same thing, for the same event. FIRST PLACE. FIRST PLACE. FIRST PLACE. The dates—he won some of these in Ellensburg, the same years I lived here. We fought and bled and slept in the same little town, under the same starry skies. I let the sheet drop.

  An open box sits high in a pile—I pull it down, and flip through a series of photos in cheap frames. A young man, jet-black hair framing a stern and determined face, riding bull after massive bull. Behind him sits a sea of faces: judges and grandstand crowds, with floodlights shining down on man and beast. Odd to see so much power and rage, muted behind framed glass. In one photo, the bull’s kicked back so high, his hind legs are higher than the rider’s head. But none of the photos show the rider falling. He’s marking out his eight seconds, every goddamn time. The rage in the photos is the rider’s, not the bull’s. This is a man who always wins, who never lets go of the reins.

  And yet he let go of me.

  I pack the photos into the box, and balance it back on the pile. I’m careful to close the door behind me, just like it was before. My watch says two o’clock, I have to be on the road. A good six hours of driving are ahead of me, and I want to cross the pass before dark. The lights are off, the windows shut, and everything’s tidy in the kitchen. I take the note and the map, leave the apple behind. I struggle to lock the front door, then realize it doesn’t, and probably never did. There’s no need for it out here. Amazing.

  Throw the bag on the seat, rev the engine, and don’t look back. It feels good to be on the road again, to be free. So it didn’t turn out quite like I planned—when did anything? Buildings whoosh past in a blur as I speed through Kittitas, up to I-90. It was an adventure, something I’ll remember when I’m old, when there’s nothing else left to remember. One last bead from the string, flame-bright like the eyes of some rough stranger, caught in the palm of my…

  …

  …I’m standing by my car. It’s parked on the lookout, a half-oval of dirt next to the highway, high above the valley. From here I see Ellensburg, see the glimmer of the Ferris wheel, the sparkle of windows and headlights caught in late afternoon sun. Kittitas lies to the east, green jewel in a strand of ancient land left scrubbed by the Cordilleran floods of ten thousand years ago. To the left sits Cle Elum, another small tree-dappled town. And in between, rivers of roads, a patchwork of farms and ranches. The land teems with life from the horizon’s edge up to the snowy Cascades.

  This is no oasis. This is an empire.

  I’ll be home around eight, the note in my hand says. I’ve been staring at it for three hours now, almost four. My skin burns from the sun. I’ll be home. He’s a careful man, economical with words. That much I know to be true. Three things he wrote that I needed to know, and left the map for leaving. What purpose, then, in telling me when he’ll be home? Why should I care if he’s home around eight? That’s when I’m supposed to be back—. I won’t make it now. He’s won again. Has he ever lost?

  Night’s closing in. The sun’s still high, but the light’s changed. I look beyond the mountains and see nothing, feel nothing. The only thing I feel is in my hands—on a slip of paper, in a single cryptic sentence. Turning around, I reach through the open window and pick up the map. A dotted red line with two round ends. The circles look like the eyes of a bull, burning through paper streets. An animal who’s always won, who’s never been allowed to surrender. What would his fantasy of love be, then? What would be the unattainable for him?

  Let me submit.

  Traffic’s a bitch. The fair’s closing, and horse trailers
and RV’s clog the streets. I inch my way through Ellensburg to Kittitas Highway, then gun the motor till I’m back at the house, tires spraying gravel across the scraggly lawn. The windows glow pumpkin orange from the setting sun. Early evening winds whip the braids across my face as I unlock the trunk, root through boxes. At the bottom: thin leather straps and bronze workings, attached to six erect inches of polished wood. I could be wrong. What if he hits me—or worse? The note is damp with sweat. I clutch it, pray I’m right as I stumble up the steps into the house.

  Everything’s as I left it. I open the windows, turn on a light. He’ll see my car, I can’t hide. I don’t want to. Let him know the rider has mounted, the event’s already begun. I leave the bedroom dark. By the light of the setting sun, I slip off my clothes, strap the harness around my hips, and climb onto the middle of the bed.

  The clock ticks, the wind sighs. Shadows stretch across the room. I wait, patient—the apple at my feet. The clock hands near eight. An engine, faint in the distance, growing nearer, until it throbs through the open window, then cuts. I don’t breathe.

  Footfalls against the earth, running. The slam of the door, the pound of boots like hooves against wood. He’s rushing down the hallway, down the chute—

  …one thousand eight…

  There’s a dream I had long ago, a girlish fantasy I’d almost forgotten—and now I remember it again, tonight of all the lonely nights I’ve lived. I wait alone on the flat white plain of the arena. My flame-eyed stallion stares me down, lips curled back in rage or shock: I am unmoved. Arms outstretched, erect, I look away. I know that by seeming not to see or care, I make myself the unattainable, the thing he longs for most in all the world.

  And after time passes, the wild thing approaches, shy fear subsumed by curiosity, kissing my hands, my feet. I wipe the sweat from his skin, run my fingers over his body, passion flowing where once only loneliness lived. We dance in the empty center, bodies weaving rhythms hesitant, intricate—until, slowly, gently, I’ve mounted him. Now I’m astride the lean torso, hot muscles shuddering under my legs. He bucks beneath me, fights the pain, fights my weight against his heart. Yet I hold on, I will his fear to pass.

  And pass it does, in the shower of pearl-studded pain: because he wants to be under my command, he wants to be broken. But it’s only when I’ve ridden him pain-wracked to the ground, and still he pleads for the pleasure of my touch, do I know I’ve won. In the calm center of submission, when all that binds him to me are the reins of trust and love, I press against his tear-streaked neck, and whisper in his ear:

  “Now you’re mine.”

  Publication History

  “Panopticon” was first published in The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction #4, November 2010

  “Stabilimentum” was first published in Shadow’s Edge, ed. by Simon Strantzas, Gray Friar Press, 2013

  “Wasp & Snake” was first published in The Lion and The Aardvark: Aesop’s Modern Fables, Stone Skin Press, 2012

  “Cinereous” was first published in Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages, ed. by Steve Berman, Prime Books, 2013

  “Yours Is the Right to Begin” was first published in Suffered From the Night: Queering Stoker’s Dracula, ed. by Steve Berman, Lethe Press, 2013

  “Lord of the Hunt” was first published in Aklonomicon, Aklo Press, 2012

  “In the Court of King Cupressaceae, 1982” is original to this collection

  “It Feels Better Biting Down” was first published in Nightmare Magazine: Women Destroy Horror, guest edited by Ellen Datlow, 2014

  “Allochthon” was first published in Letters to Lovecraft, ed. by Jesse Bullington, Stone Skin Press, 2014

  “Furnace” was first published in The Grimscribe’s Puppets, ed. by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., Miskatonic River Press, 2013

  “The Mysteries” was first published in Nightmare Carnival, ed. by Ellen Datlow, Dark Horse, 2014

  “The Last, Clean, Bright Summer” was first published in Primeval – A Journal of the Uncanny, #2, ed. by Geoff Hyatt, 2014

  “and Love shall have no Dominion” was first published in Demons: Encounters with the Devil and His Minions, Fallen Angels, and the Possessed, Black Dog & Leventhal, 2011

  “The Unattainable” was first published in Cowboy Lover: Erotic Stories of the Wild West, ed. by Cecila Tan, 2007

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the many writers and editors who have published and championed my work over the years: Robert Levy, Brian Keene, Ellen Datlow, Steve Berman, Laird Barron, Jesse Bullington, Cecila Tan, John Skipp, Robin D. Law, Nate Pederson, Robert Shearman, Simon Strantzas, Joseph S. Pulver, John Joseph Adams, Geoff Hyatt, Mike Davis, John Langan, Michael Matheson; and Paul Tremblay, who turns into a pickle if you say his name three times in a mirror. And now you know his terrible secret—you’re welcome! Thanks also to my Patreon supporters for giving me a forum for creating some rather spectacularly filthy fiction. Apologies to my parents, Paul and Mary Llewellyn, who will once again have to pretend to the neighbors that they aren’t mortified by my career choice—sorry! And special thanks to Ross E. Lockhart and Word Horde; and to Elinor Phantom, who I’m sure had something to do with the publication of this collection—cute dogs always seem to be in charge.

  Titles Available from Word Horde

  Tales of Jack the Ripper

  an anthology edited by Ross E. Lockhart

  We Leave Together

  a Dogsland novel by J. M. McDermott

  The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the

  Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron

  an anthology edited by Ross E. Lockhart and Justin Steele

  Vermilion

  a novel by Molly Tanzer

  Giallo Fantastique

  an anthology edited by Ross E. Lockhart

  Mr. Suicide

  a novel by Nicole Cushing

  Cthulhu Fhtagn!

  an anthology edited by Ross E. Lockhart

  Painted Monsters

  a collection by Orrin Grey

  Furnace

  a collection by Livia Llewellyn

  The Lure of Devouring Light (April 2016)

  a collection by Michael Griffin

  Ask for Word Horde books by name at your favorite bookseller.

  Or order online at www.WordHorde.com

  About the Author

  Livia Llewellyn is a writer of horror, dark fantasy and erotica, whose fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her first collection, Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors, was published in 2011 by Lethe Press, and received two Shirley Jackson Award nominations, for Best Collection, and Best Novelette (for “Omphalos”). Her story “Furnace” received a 2013 SJA nomination for Best Short Fiction. You can find her online at liviallewellyn.com.