“Uh-huh. Parents.” Kelly looks down at her, amused. Megan blushes. Kelly’s eyes are brown, with little flecks of gold that dart and swim like trapped fish. When Megan stares into them, she thinks of when she locked herself in the garage one rainy afternoon years ago, when she was nine and her cat Sandy had just died. She sat in a corner, watching the shadows coalesce and creep, while in the opposite corner the house furnace rumbled, flames darting and swimming behind the metal like trapped fish. She wanted to scream and run, but she also wanted to open the door and watch the fire. She wanted to crawl inside.
“Do you think she’ll come back?”
“I don’t know. Probably,” Megan lies.
“Your parents must be treating you like a princess, now that you’re their only girl.” Kelly reaches out, tugs at the end of Megan’s neat ponytail draped over her shoulder. Her fingers linger, then slide away, brushing her breast in their wake. The sensation aches so much, Megan can barely breathe.
“Not really,” she finally says. “They’re still pretty broken up about it. My mom barely talks to me. My dad treats me like crap. Besides, I’m not a kid.”
“No. You’re not. You’re all grown up like me.”
A drop of pink falls from the edge of the popsicle and lands on Kelly’s chest. Megan watches, mesmerized. Kelly drops the melting remains to the ground, then pushes her breast up as she lowers her head. The tip of her crimson tongue laps at the sticky droplet, following it all the way down to the elastic edge of her tube-top.
“Sorry about that,” Kelly says.
“What?”
Kelly points, and Megan looks down. Between her legs, the popsicle pools on the driveway, little dots of pink decorating Megan’s pale legs where it splashed up. But that’s not where Kelly’s pointing. A single bright dot rests on the crotch of Megan’s white shorts, just below the zipper.
Kelly grins. “Want me to lick that off, too?”
Megan looks up, her face as hot as the sun.
“Come on.” Kelly’s accusing finger now becomes a hand, and Megan grasps it. With a quick tug, Megan’s on her feet. Kelly keeps pulling her, and Megan stumbles forward, her breast bumping against Kelly’s arm, her crotch against Kelly’s thigh. The older girl leans in, whispering. Megan catches a whiff of sugar and blood.
“I found something, in the empty house at the end of the street. It has to do with the missing girls, and your sister. I think I know where they are. Wanna see?”
This is the moment. This is it.
Mute with love, Megan nods.
They walk in unison down the road. Megan’s legs feel hot and heavy, and all the blood in her body sloshes around, spirals into a whirlpool of throbbing flesh and crackling nerves. Is the engine getting louder? No, just deeper, more intense, as though they are moving toward it. Overhead, birds wheel and cry in a contrail-laced sky of pure blue. Someone’s mowing their lawn, and radios crackle and sing. Yet, they are all alone. It’s just Megan and Kelly, and no other girl, the way it’s supposed to be. Megan sees none of their neighbors as they walk down the cracked driveway of the abandoned rambler, pine needles and dandelions carpeting their way to the faded green front door. Under eaves dripping with peeling paint and spider webs, Kelly grabs the brass handle and pulls. The door opens into cool darkness. Yet, further within the house, Megan sees light.
“Come on. It’s just us.” Kelly steps into the foyer, holding the door open. Megan stands outside, hesitant. Slight fear spikes her lust, dulling it.
“I don’t know. Is it safe? What’s inside?”
“You have to come in to find out.” Kelly reaches out again, and this time her fingers slide between Megan’s legs, cupping the space between. She squeezes, slow, and her thumb travels, presses down. “Come inside.”
Megan’s legs move, how she doesn’t know, as Kelly’s gentle hand leads her through the door. When it closes, she doesn’t know, she only knows that now they’re alone, and lips are pressed against hers, cold and bubblegum sweet. Her shaking hands move up, push the edges of the tube-top away. Kelly’s flesh pours into her hands, pliant as clay. Insects drone and thump against the windows. Megan’s fingers clutch at a diamond-hard nipple, and she moves her mouth down.
Kelly breaks away. “Not yet. I have to show you. Come on. Come on!” She smiles as she disappears into the living room and around the corner, almost dancing as she goes. Megan stands for a second, her body racked with blood-thick quakes. Underneath her feet, the engine purrs.
Megan finds Kelly in the room off the kitchen, a dusty den lined in fake wood and faded carpeting. She’s on her knees before the sliding glass door, legs parted and skirt gathered in folds around her waist. Megan hangs back, watching in awe as Kelly’s fingers dip and disappear into the thick black curls.
“Do you hear it,” she breathes, her body rocking back and forth in time to the metallic bass below. “Do you hear the machine?”
“I thought I was the only one,” Megan says.
“Help me up.” Kelly raises her hand, and Megan grabs it, pulling the girl to her feet. Kelly wraps one arm around her waist, and they stand, swaying slightly as her still warm finger crooks itself into Megan’s mouth and glides around her tongue, leaving behind a faint trace of salt.
“It’s here,” Kelly says, breaking away once more as she walks across the room and opens a door. Megan sighs in angry frustration.
“Why can’t we—can’t we stay here for a while? It’s nice in here.” Megan smiles, trying to look alluring as she fingers a button on her shirt, sliding it from its embroidered hole. What would her sister have done, or any of the other girls? At a loss, Megan unbuttons her blouse all the way to reveal small, freckled breasts, unsure if she’s doing any of this right at all. “Please?”
Kelly’s only reply is to reach down, and rip off the tube-top in one lightning-fast motion. Her breasts tumble out of the fabric and against her chest, tanned with wide areolas. Kelly drops the top onto the rug, then steps back: down. Megan starts. Kelly steps back down and down, until the darkness swallows her, and only her voice remains.
“It’s nicer down here.”
Megan rushes to the edge of the door, and peers down. A flight of rough wood stairs leads into a basement rec room. More shag carpeting and paneling. From one of the corners, pale red light pulses, casting strange shadows that undulate back and forth. Kelly’s skirt lies in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Megan descends, one creaking step at a time.
At the bottom of the stairs, Megan sees the room in full, bunker-low concrete ceilings with thin windows looking onto the bushes surrounding the house. At the far end, Kelly leans, arms behind her back, against a set of folding utility closet doors that pulse and shake in time to the engine’s reverbs. Her tan skin glows almost white in the ruby light spilling from the wood slats, as if she’s melting into the house. She looks the same as the day Megan first saw her years and years ago, standing like sugar in the pouring rain, dripping smoke and secrets into her sister’s ears. The engine sounds so loud now, so heavy and hard that Megan can’t hear her own heart.
“Is this what you want?” Kelly thrusts her hips forward as she parts her legs. Red light spills from between them, as if whatever lies behind the doors cannot be contained.
“Yes,” says Megan, “but, what does this have to do with Lisa? What did you want to show me?”
Kelly steps away from the doors. Megan’s feet drag across the carpet, catching on nothing. Her fingertips touch the copper knobs, worn with age. Kelly presses against her from behind, pushing her blouse away as she cups Megan’s breasts, pulling at the skin as Megan pulls at the doors. They accordion to the side. Hot fumes hit her face, stinging her eyes as they rise in the cool air. Little bolts of pleasure run through her body as Kelly laps at her ear, her fingers still working, working. From within the closet, a writhing mass sounds out a painful howl.
“This is the engine,” Kelly whispers. “This is us.”
Megan sees nothing at first, only dark red gl
owing from smoke and shadows. Gradually, the malformed outlines of a squat black furnace appear, the largest she’s ever seen. Flames dart from crevices and tears, flick like tongues. Cables thick as her body pierce the furnace from below and erupt transformed from its pulsing sides, spiraling around the beast in ropes of liquid-boned flesh stripped of skin, like a bloody fist squeezing until the prey has squirted from its grip.
“What the—” Megan begins, but another blast of sound cuts her off, and the floor shakes. Bits of white spackle drift from the ceiling onto their hair and arms, stick in the crimson mist spraying the air as one of the cables suddenly splits down the middle. Kelly’s hands move faster, and down. Megan and the cables scream in unison—mouths open, tongues waggling in exquisite pain. The two halves of the cable crash together again, one thrusting inside of the other and fucking its way up until the faces appear together, two dismembered girls kissing themselves into one as they burrow back into the furnace, only to be eaten and extruded again. Another cable begins to split. Megan sees.
“Is it like looking in the mirror,” Kelly asks, “or falling into the sun?”
More faces appear in the coils, luscious-lipped, wide-eyed faces screaming in toothless ecstasy: neighborhood girls. Megan mimics them as she kicks back. Kelly holds her tight, pushes her forward. Her hand moves down, under Megan’s shorts, working the tender skin. Megan’s hands grasp for the doors, then grasp for nothing at all as the rising pleasure slows her down. All those girls, all those wet bone bits…a face stretches out from the mass, blistered tongue snaking along the naked length of Megan’s leg. Lisa. Her eyes are melted sockets, her nose pulp, her touch sublime.
“No—” Megan says, but the tongue lengthens, snakes up between fabric and flesh, taking over where Kelly’s touch recedes.
“Yes, that’s it,” Kelly says. Megan grows limp in her arms, and she feels Kelly coaxing her forward, sliding her along the tongue into her place in the machine. “Just a few steps more, and we’ll be together, all of us, forever—”
“No, not all of us! Just us, JUST US!” Megan snaps her head back, hitting Kelly’s face with a sharp crack. Kelly cries out, a scream as full of pleasure as pain. Still, she loses her grip, and Megan falls free. Bits of shag come up in her hands, needle-hard like slivers of sawed-up bone. She sinks her hands into the putrid muck, clawing her way across the shifting carpet of rotting limbs and clothes back to the stairs.
“I waited for you,” she cries over the noise. “It’s only supposed to be us, no one else!”
Kelly looks puzzled. The tongue slithers around her leg, resting its tip in the soft black hair. Behind her, the engine of flesh and bone screams. “But it is only us, Megan. There’s no one else here, not really. It’s only ever been us.”
“Liar! They’re all here, all of them! Fucking cheater!”
“I can’t be here without them. Without them, I won’t come, and I won’t stay. You can’t have it both ways.”
“I want it my way!” Megan slaps a hand against her chest, leaving a print of dirty brown behind. “I waited for you, and now you have to stay!”
Kelly rolls her eyes. “God, Megan, Lisa was right. You’re such a spaz.”
Megan crawls up the stairs, back into the quiet den. She rushes through the house to the bathroom, and turns on the tap. She soaks her face and head in the water, picks dirt and flesh from her fingernails and fingernails from her knees. The water pours over her, and she closes her eyes, sleeps for a few peaceful minutes. The sounds of the engine recede. When she wakes up, Megan slicks back her hair and buttons her blouse. The girl in the mirror is clean. She’s calm. She’s good.
“It’s only supposed to be me,” she says. “Kelly and me, and no other girls at all.” Only after she leaves the house, though, does her reflection agree, nodding in time to the faint pulsing sounds of girls rotting under the house.
“She thinks she’s doing bad things,” the mirror whispers. The girl-shaped shadow in the basement wanders back and forth among the bits, smiling as it replies.
“That’s what I love about her.”
Summer, 1969
Megan hears the engine the night her older sister runs away from home, just a week after school was let out for the summer. She knows Lisa was angry because Mom and Dad wouldn’t let her ride with some hippie college boy in his Volkswagen camper all the way cross-country to the Woodstock concert, even though she’s seventeen and thinks she’s a woman. Lisa spent that whole week raging against the world, and every night Megan fell asleep to her sister crying in the next room. Like rain, Megan grew used to the sound, and it stopped bothering her. Lisa was mean to her, anyway, and still treated her like a stupid baby even though she’d be thirteen next month. Let her sob, Megan told her pillow. It was only fair—Lisa made her cry too many times to count.
And then, tonight: no crying at all. Megan wakes from a dead sleep, sits straight up, and listens. No rain, not even a wind rustling the trees in the yard. Megan reaches out in the dark, her fingers spreading as if gathering up the night—somehow she can feel her sister’s absence, as real and thick as the blanket against her legs. In the distance, the low rev of a car sounds out as it traverses the roads beyond their little Tacoma neighborhood. Megan waits for it to fade. She lies back on her bed and listens, one hand sliding under her t-shirt and cupping a small breast.
“Lisa’s gone,” Megan whispers. “I’m the woman now.”
The engine’s soft hum washes over the house, filling the space that had belonged to Lisa, like a girl-shaped bass and pistoned song of love. It isn’t a car engine, but it isn’t one of the freight trains running down the coast to the sea. It’s closer, deeper, and it doesn’t stop. Megan thinks of Kelly, Lisa’s best friend, and how angry she’ll be that Lisa ran off to Woodstock without her. Kelly’s sixteen, but she’ll still cry, and Megan will take her into the wooded far corner of the backyard and slip her arms around her, rubbing her hands up and down her soft shivering back until Kelly realizes that Megan is her new best friend. Kelly knew how to French kiss, and had taught all the older girls on their street. Maybe now that Lisa’s gone, Kelly will teach Megan, too—out of gratitude, under the evergreens, after the tears are gone and replaced with stars. Megan’s other hand creeps into her panties; like the engine, she throbs. She falls asleep that way, to the sounds of her contented sighs and the vibrations of that far-off mystery machine.
Over the following days and weeks, the metallic thrumming never quite goes away, even though no one else seems to hear it. The neighborhood hums with summer life: mowers battling overgrown lawns, basketballs pinging against concrete and wood, stereo music drifting through backyard parties. And yet, Megan still hears it, threading into the low conversations between the adults in the neighborhood, sniffing at everything and everyone. Every early evening after putting dinner in the oven, her mother pours a large glass of whiskey and step out into the front yard for a smoke—Megan watches from the porch as the red dot of Mom’s cigarette bobs over to the fence, where Mrs. Crabtree waits with more gossip, a red flame of her own at her Avon-orange lips. Teenage girls are running away from all of the neighborhoods in University Place. Lisa isn’t the first, and she won’t be the last. They speak the words to each other, and Megan can almost see the vibrations of that distant engine hovering around their lips, licking away at her mother’s desire to find her oldest girl. Her mother is cream, Megan decides. They’re all warm summer cream in this blacktopped bowl, and something is skimming them away.
Megan has her own routine. Every early evening, she wanders into the front yard, casual and limpid-limbed, and stands at the grassy edge, one hip jutting out as she surveys the small suburban kingdom. From there she sees clusters of boys and girls playing games, wheeling about on bikes, flirting and fighting. They converge and part like swarms of fireflies, fast and hot. Usually she doesn’t see what she’s seeking. Tonight, though, at the end of this burning day in July, Megan sees the girl who fires her taboo fantasies, haunts her waking dreams
.
Kelly, Queen Kelly of the Cul-de-Sac, leans against the mail box of the empty rambler at the far end of the street. It’s the only house on the street that no one lives in, ever since the old woman died a few years back. The FOR SALE sign still dangles from a moldy post, as ignored as the building behind it. Kelly doesn’t ignore it, though, and tonight, for once, she doesn’t ignore Megan. She raises a hand, beckoning. Come here, she mouths, as she balances a cigarette on her wide red mouth. Megan’s heart beats faster, and ozone fills the air. The engine’s sounds lap at her lips, and everything turns faster, brighter.
“Me?” Megan chokes out as she takes a few stumbling steps toward the slender-hipped girl. Most of the older girls in the neighborhood smoke, stealing Virginia Slims from their mother’s purses and lighting up in secret along the sides of houses. Kelly smokes in full view of all the parents and kids. But her light brown skin burns with a smoky sheen all its own, and short black hair frames her face in a thunderstorm of curls, curls that caress sharp features as she nods. Yes. Megan’s stomach cramps in nervous anticipation. Her dream moment, just like she imagined. Maybe they’ll sneak into the house. Maybe they’ll be alone. Images of naked flesh wash over her, bodies filling the rambler’s rooms with wet little sighs and sounds, and her legs buckle. Megan pushes the thought away, hard. No one can know, not even the girl of her dreams.
“You stand at the edge of your yard every day,” Kelly says as Megan draws near. “Looking for something?”
“Yeah.” Megan stares up at the trees, nonchalant. “Maybe.”
“Looking for Lisa.”
Megan shrugs. “Maybe.”
“Maybe. Hmm.” Kelly leans forward, and Megan catches scents of Jean Naté and sweat. “Got a light, kid?”
“No. I don’t smoke.”
Kelly steps away from the mail box, and raises her hand. “Didn’t you see me, you freak? I said come here!”
Megan turns: further up the street, Julie Miller stands, flicking a lighter on and off, a curious smile at her lips. An ice-water anger sieves through Megan’s chest. Kelly hadn’t been calling out to her. Julie struts forward, flicking the light in time to the engine’s heated throb, as if she hears it, too.
Engines of Desire: Tales of Love and Other Horrors Page 11
