by Paula Guran
He hesitated and then said. “One day, you will miss her as we do. She only obeyed her nature. She loved you very much.”
I was about to reprimand him for such importunate remarks, but then weariness overtook me. I sighed again. “I know, Medoth.”
“Perhaps you should acquire another little cat.”
I laughed bleakly. “No. I don’t think so.”
I did see Simew again. After some years had passed, she came back occasionally, to visit the servants, I think. Sometimes, I found fowl carcasses they had left out for her in the garden. Sometimes, alone in my bed late at night, I would hear music coming from the servants’ quarters and the joyful peal of that unmistakable laugh. To me, she showed herself only once.
It was a summer evening and dusk had fallen. I went out into the garden, filled with a quiet sadness, yet strangely content in the peace of the hedged walkways. I strolled right to the end of my property, to the high wall that hid my domain from the street beyond. It was there I heard a soft chirrup.
A shiver passed through me and I looked up. She was there, crouching on the wall above me, her hair hanging down and her eyes flashing at me through the dusk. She was clothed, I remember that, in some dark, close-fitting attire that must be suitable for her nocturnal excursions. Where was she living now? How was she living? I wanted to know these things, and called her name softly. In that moment, I believe there could have been some reconciliation between us, had she desired it.
She looked at me with affection, I think, but not for very long. I did not see judgment in her eyes, for she was essentially a cat; an animal who will, for a time, forgive our cruel words and unjust kicks. A cat loves us unconditionally, but unlike a dog, she will not accept continual harsh treatment. She runs away. She finds another home.
My eyes filled with tears and when I wiped them away, Simew had gone.
I never married again.
Getting so close there’s no difference between the two of you. It was a wonderful idea, and yet strangely frightening.
Close to You
Steve Rasnic Tem
“Get closer,” Angela whispered into his ear. “I can’t get close enough to you.”
Hugh groaned with pleasure. “If I were any closer I’d be crawling around inside your skin.”
“That would be heaven . . . ” she murmured, and then was silent for a time, so that he thought she might have actually drifted off to sleep. He shifted his hips a little and felt himself move inside her, and she in turn contracting, holding on. The hidden gesture embarrassed him a little, which surprised him. “I’ve always wanted to make that closeness happen,” she said. “Maybe if we try hard enough we can make that happen.”
He didn’t say anything more. That last thing . . . she was being serious. He felt great that she’d said that. He had the same desire, after all. That was the point, wasn’t it? Getting so close there’s no difference between the two of you. It was a wonderful idea, and yet strangely frightening. Hugh was suddenly cold, and tried to pull Angela even closer.
“Do you love my body?” she asked him a few weeks later. “Of course I do. It’s a wonderful body.”
“I don’t mean like it, the way you like to have sex with it, put your penis inside it. I mean, do you love it? As in you can’t be without it. As in you need its physical presence around you at all times. As if it were music. As if it were air.”
“Angela. I adore your body.”
“How much do you adore it?”
“I go to bed and your body is the bed. I go to sleep and your body is the dream. The smell of it is my oxygen. The taste of your skin on my lips is breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In fact, I don’t want you to bathe anymore. I want you to ripen, I want the taste of you to change, to diversify. The flavor of you should be a varied menu. For there could be no foulness about you, only a difference in tastes, as if I were traveling around the world of you and tasting every exotic cuisine of you.” Hugh was a little breathless.
She made an exaggerated sigh. “My, my! Tell me more.”
“I never want to leave this room again. I want to swim in you, drink in you, eat in you, work in you, live in you.”
“So what do we do for money?”
He paused. “Well, so much for that idea.” They laughed, and made love until dawn.
“It’s been wonderful,” she whispered from the darkness. “But I can’t help thinking, it could be more.”
“You’re getting bored with me?”
“Oh, no. No, my love. Never. After all these months it’s still beautiful, as special as that first time. But don’t you feel the same way sometimes? That there could always be more? That we could be even closer? All my life, I’ve never been able to get close enough, but I always thought if I just met the right person, and we tried, really tried, I finally would.”
The words inside his mouth felt like her words. They had the same softness, the same strength. “And you’d be looking out of my eyes, and I’d be looking out of yours, and neither one of us would be alone ever again.”
Angela came out of the dark and wrapped herself around him. The surface of her skin had a cool distance at first, but as it warmed to his skin it was as if she were adhering to him, sinking into his body. He rubbed his open hands and his forearms up and down her back, and for a moment it was as if he were rubbing himself. He could feel the friction of his own contact, and it spread the warmth throughout his body, but then there was the briefest sensation of panic when he tried to pull away from her just a bit, to break the sweat adhesion of their bodies, just to make himself a little more comfortable, and found that he couldn’t. Couldn’t remove himself from her. He had lost the sense of an edge to his own skin, where it connected to her, and the way her arms and legs had wrapped around his so tightly it seemed she had sprouted more arms and legs somehow, and she had climbed up onto him so that he held her up completely, and she was so light she seemed not to have added an ounce to his own weight.
“Closer . . . closer,” she whispered, her voice inside his head.
He had been talking all evening, barely above a whisper, so that for nearly anyone else he’d be nearly impossible to hear. But he was convinced she heard every word, even though she had said nothing in reply. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to do: convince her, reason with her, balance the fantasy with some hard facts about the limitations inherent in human flesh. He made no arguments, no assertions, but rambled all night long, lulling himself, seducing himself, reacquainting himself with those realities.
“To see out of your eyes. To breathe what you breathe, taste what you taste. I think everyone wants that, to be so close, but it’s a dream, isn’t it? I mean, human beings aren’t made that way. That’s why we’re such a sad bunch: what we desire most in our lives is impossible because of our very nature. And we can’t push past our own physical natures. Can we?”
The question hung in the darkness between them until morning.
For a week they left the bed only to use the bathroom or grab something from the kitchen, take it back to the bed, feed themselves, feed each other, smearing each other with whatever was soft enough to mash and spread, licking it from skin, nibbling it off smooth rises, chewing it out of hollows. After another week they made calls to the stores, paid by credit card, and had food delivered in boxes by the front door, sneaking out when they thought no one else could see, because they didn’t want to share their nakedness with anyone else. Or perhaps, he thought, they were too embarrassed about the way they looked now, the way they smelled, the rawness about them.
“Hu . . . hu . . . Hugh! Can’t breathe!”
He heard the fear in her muffled voice, but he was too tired, or too reluctant, to move his mouth away from hers, even though his own lips hurt, his throat was a deep well of pain, and he thought maybe his gums were bleeding. Certainly he tasted blood almost all the time now, every kiss highlighted with it.
“Hugh!” She exploded out from under him. In desperation or orgasm he could not tell, no
r did he think there was much difference for them anymore. She sat on the edge of the bed, face in her hands, shaking. He started to rub her back. The skin wrinkled, reddened. She made a small cry and edged away. “I . . . I can’t . . . kiss you anymore. It hurts!” She said it angrily.
“I’m sorry, I should have stopped.”
“No, no honey.” She twisted around and clutched his hand. He noticed that the back of her hand was red, skinned, beginning to break down. “I like, or, no, I want it. I really do. Maybe just a little rest.”
She lay down next to him and they were careful not to touch at first. Her breath came in short, ragged explosions, with occasional tears. He reached out cautiously, one finger pressing gently into the side of her hand. She laid her hand on top of his. After a while he couldn’t hear her breathing anymore. He rose on one elbow and twisted his head toward her. Her hand didn’t move. He stared hard at her chest, her throat. The skin looked pebbled, abraded, a faint trace of scabbing beginning to show. He couldn’t see her breathing. He moved over her, straddled her. He laid one hand on her shoulder and shook it gently. Nothing. He looked down at her pubic hair, the extensive swelling of the labia, the dried pink line. His penis began to swell. He thought it might hurt to put his penis inside her, she would be so dry. He bent over to kiss one nipple, and still she did not move.
“Angela! Angela!” he screamed. Her eyelids shot open. She started to cry, and he kissed each one of the tears, tasting them, lifting them with his tongue. “Angela . . . ” He entered her name into the air as she guided him into her.
They could move only for short, vigorous periods. They rested for an hour or so between tries, always pressed together, their skin painful to the touch, but so painful not to touch. The fire of pain was a part of them both and could not be isolated. The sex was strong and desperate both inside and outside their dry, flaking skins. He entered her wherever he could find an opening, but there were never enough openings to get all of him inside. “I want you closer,” she pleaded again and again, but her mouth seemed misshapen, the words malformed, although he understood everything she said. “I can’t get . . . inside you,” she said and beat her fist against his chest in one spot over and over as if to force an opening.
When he woke up she had a kitchen knife in her hand, moving it back and forth across her tongue. He looked down at his belly. She’d started building a hole there. Not “making,” he thought. More than that. Building. She was building a bridge between them.
He suddenly wanted to urinate, but he couldn’t get up. He couldn’t remove her mouth and tongue from him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone to the bathroom. But he knew he had. He couldn’t remember the last time he had left this bed. And perhaps he hadn’t.
“We animals, we worship meat. We worship our food,” he said. “It brings us back to where we came from, and after such a long, lonely journey.”
She had her tongue in the hole. She looked as if she were trying to get her entire head in there. He wanted to tell her that she couldn’t, that it wouldn’t work. A physical impossibility for human beings. He wanted to be the voice of reason again. For her. He thought she needed it. His life, his body had no more room for reason.
After a time he opened his eyes. She was covered with him.
“Close to you . . . close to you . . . ” she murmured. She tasted just like him. He thought it must be the taste of her that kept waking him up.
He woke up again. “Close to you,” she repeated. She kept jabbing him to wake him up. It hurt. She kept putting her finger into his hand. “Here,” she said. Her sharp finger. He looked down at the knife in his hand. “Here,” she said again. She pulled his head down until he could see the pubic hair. He tasted himself. “Here.” She drew a line down from her pubic hair, down from her vagina. “They do it so babies can come out easier. ‘Episiotomy,’ they call it. So babies can come out. And never go back. Not ever.”
Dully he looked at her. He just wanted to lie down. Inside her. “Here,” she said. “Here.” And helped him guide the knife.
The Nunc Dimittis is the traditional Gospel Canticle of Night Prayer (Compline). It begins: Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace.
(Now you are releasing your servant, Master, according to your word in peace.—Luke 2:29)
Nunc Dimittis
Tanith Lee
The Vampire was old, and no longer beautiful. In common with all living things, she had aged, though very slowly, like the tall trees in the park. Slender and gaunt and leafless, they stood out there, beyond the long windows, rain-dashed in the gray morning. While she sat in her high-backed chair in that corner of the room where the curtains of thick yellow lace and the wine-colored blinds kept every drop of daylight out. In the glimmer of the ornate oil lamp, she had been reading. The lamp came from a Russian palace. The book had once graced the library of a corrupt pope named, in his temporal existence, Rodrigo Borgia. Now the Vampire’s dry hands had fallen upon the page. She sat in her black lace dress that was 180 years of age, far younger than she herself, and looked at the old man, streaked by the shine of distant windows.
“You say you are tired, Vassu. I know how it is. To be so tired, and unable to rest. It is a terrible thing.”
“But, Princess,” said the old man quietly, “it is more than this. I am dying.”
The Vampire stirred a little. The pale leaves of her hands rustled on the page. She stared with an almost childlike wonder.
“Dying? Can this be? You are sure?”
The old man, very clean and neat in his dark clothing, nodded humbly.
“Yes, Princess.”
“Oh, Vassu,” she said, “are you glad?”
He seemed a little embarrassed. Finally he said:
“Forgive me, Princess, but I am very glad. Yes, very glad.”
“I understand.”
“Only,” he said, “I am troubled for your sake.”
“No, no,” said the Vampire, with the fragile perfect courtesy of her class and kind. “No, it must not concern you. You have been a good servant. Far better than I might ever have hoped for. I am thankful, Vassu, for all your care of me. I shall miss you. But you have earned,” she hesitated, then said, “You have more than earned your peace.”
“But you,” he said.
“I shall do very well. My requirements are small, now. The days when I was a huntress are gone, and the nights. Do you remember, Vassu?”
“I remember, Princess.”
“When I was so hungry, and so relentless. And so lovely. My white face in a thousand ballroom mirrors. My silk slippers stained with dew. And my lovers waking in the cold morning, where I had left them. But now, I do not sleep, I am seldom hungry. I never lust. I never love. These are the comforts of old age. There is only one comfort that is denied to me. And who knows. One day, I too . . .
She smiled at him. Her teeth were beautiful, but almost even now, the exquisite points of the canines quite worn away. “Leave me when you must,” she said. “I shall mourn you. I shall envy you. But I ask nothing more, my good and noble friend.”
The old man bowed his head.
“I have,” he said, “a few days, a handful of nights. There is something I wish to try to do in this time. I will try to find one who may take my place.”
The Vampire stared at him again, now astonished. “But Vassu, my irreplaceable help—it is no longer possible.”
“Yes. If I am swift.”
“The world is not as it was,” she said, with a grave and dreadful wisdom.
He lifted his head. More gravely, he answered:
“The world is as it has always been, Princess. Only our perceptions of it have grown more acute. Our knowledge less bearable.”
She nodded.
“Yes, this must be so. How could the world have changed so terribly? It must be we who have changed.”
He trimmed the lamp before he left her.
Outside, the rain dripped steadily from the trees.
The city, in the rain, was not unlike a forest. But the old man, who had been in many forests and many cities, had no special feeling for it. His feelings, his senses, were primed to other things.
Nevertheless, he was conscious of his bizarre and anachronistic effect, like that of a figure in some surrealist painting, walking the streets in clothes of a bygone era, aware he did not blend with his surroundings, nor render them homage of any kind. Yet even when, as sometimes happened, a gang of children or youths jeered and called after him the foul names he was familiar with in twenty languages, he neither cringed nor cared. He had no concern for such things. He had been so many places, seen so many sights; cities which burned or fell in ruin, the young who grew old, as he had, and who died, as now, at last, he too would die. This thought of death soothed him, comforted him, and brought with it a great sadness, a strange jealousy. He did not want to leave her. Of course he did not. The idea of her vulnerability in this harsh world, not new in its cruelty but ancient, though freshly recognized—it horrified him. This was the sadness. And the jealousy . . . that, because he must try to find another to take his place. And that other would come to be for her, as he had been.
The memories rose and sank in his brain like waking dreams all the time he moved about the streets. As he climbed the steps of museums and underpasses, he remembered other steps in other lands, of marble and fine stone. And looking out from high balconies, the city reduced to a map, he recollected the towers of cathedrals, the starswept points of mountains. And then at last, as if turning over the pages of a book backwards, he reached the beginning.
There she stood, between two tall white graves, the chateau grounds behind her, everything silvered in the dusk before the dawn. She wore a ball gown, and a long white cloak. And even then, her hair was dressed in the fashion of a century ago; dark hair, like black flowers.
He had known for a year before that he would serve her. The moment he had heard them talk of her in the town. They were not afraid of her, but in awe. She did not prey upon her own people, as some of her line had done.
