"I said I wanted to give you something, to help you," she reprimanded him gently. "You have to trust me."
Before he could protest, before the tumbling words could find his tongue, she was gone. The door snicked shut behind her with a finality that jarred the passion from his mind. He felt himself soften, dangling damp and useless against the musty sheets. The depravity of the moment began to seep into his consciousness. The enormity of his situation began to play at the edges of his understanding.
He heard the sounds of reality returning in her wake. Outside the dusty window he heard the hiss of tires passing on the streets below. He heard the voices of the hollow women, calling out to passersby. He heard the honking of horns and the quick pounding of guilty feet. He heard the snapping, crackling buzz of the drooping neon sign–so close to the window that the sign's illumination painted the dingy walls of the darkened room a deep, dripping red. It reminded him of stained glass, of the altar at the church. The voices from without became the buzz of the congregation.
He couldn't cry out. He could not be found like this. She had said he must trust her, and yet she had long since removed the possibility of any other action on his part. She would come, or she would not. If he were found by any other, if she disappeared into the darkness of the streets and he never saw her again, his life would be over. His career. His faith.
He knew she had robbed him. He knew the soul of the hollow women, knew their emptiness–their helplessness. His destiny had been stripped from him; his soul had willingly drained itself into her eager, needy flesh. The desperate depth of his sin seemed to roll from him in beads of sweat, joining with the compounded sins that the room had collected–that the sheets beneath him had known. In passionate shame, he needed her.
He lay in silence, and after a while he prayed–his words beginning slowly, and then speeding until they became incoherent, meaningless. He spoke to a void, to the emptiness of the room. Tears stung his eyes, blurring the room again, this time to private hell of punishment and despair. Sweat dripped across his flesh, and he could not wipe it away. It burned in the furrows left by her nails, eating its way into him, making him one with the sin and burning it into him with pain and fire.
There was no way to know for sure how long he lay like that, how long it took for darkness to rise and claim him. He had strained at his bonds until the soft silk ripped at him like cutting wire. He had fought the itching, sticky sensations, like the feet of tiny insects transiting the length of his flesh, until the urge to scream had nearly overcome his control. Darkness was not a relief. It swallowed him into a nightmare world from which only her wild eyes and chanting voice might draw him back.
He awakened to odd, flickering light. She was at his side, and as he swept his head from side to side, he saw that every horizontal space in the room was covered in candles–red candles. Their flames leaped and danced, sending crazy shadows to race up and down the walls as she gazed down at him adoringly.
When she saw his eyes flicker open, she moved to him instantly, pressing her naked flesh to his tightly. He felt soiled, dirty, and he realized that the pain he felt was a furious need to urinate.
"Please," he said weakly, "I have to get up . . . you have to untie me."
She shook her head again. When she saw him glance down at his penis, saw the swollen mass of it, she leaned down and retrieved something from beneath the bed. It was a pitcher–an insulated coffee pitcher.
"Let me help," she said, grabbing his testicles in one hand and slipping the cold plastic mouth of the pitcher over him.
He fought miserably for control, lost. He watched her smile again as he released in a rush. She held him gently until he finished, pulled the pitcher away and carried it almost reverently into the small bathroom–more like a broom closet with a commode and a small, dingy sink. He watched the doorway intently every second she was away, watched her return with a damp cloth in her hand.
She let it fall to his thigh, and then began to wash him slowly and carefully, not turning to meet his eyes.
"You have to let me go," he said softly. "I have to . . ."
She moved the cloth slowly up and down the length of his penis, and to his dismay, it rose once more to her ministrations. He closed his eyes, thought of the old women in the front pews at Sunday worship, thought of the toilets at the county fair, thought of his father's cold, arrogant face as he'd brought the belt up and back, up and back. Nothing could wipe her from his mind. It was her mind now . . . his prison.
He grew in her hands and she leaned forward to kiss her handiwork, then turned to him finally.
"I've brought you something," she smiled. "I want to help you."
She slid over him again, lying atop him so that her eyes were so near to his that he saw the light of the candle flames dancing across their surface. She straddled him, lowered her head and clasped her hands on his chest. It was a position of supplication, of prayer.
He felt himself rise against her. She was speaking again, softly as before, and without missing a beat she lifted her hips and positioned herself so that he slipped within her. He moaned, but she settled over him, not moving, holding him tightly.
There was another sound. He hadn't noticed it before, but now the girl's words seemed to bring it forth–a creaking, squealing noise. There were words, as well, words that did not come from her mouth, but from the direction of the other sound.
He craned his neck to the side, forcing himself to look, forcing his eyes to penetrate the glare of the candles on the dresser. He saw a dark shape, cloaked in shadows, moving back and forth, up and back.
"Who is that?" he asked fearfully, trying vainly to struggle against her.
The girl ignored him, continuing as she had. When he fought harder, trying to roll her to one side, or to pull himself free, she rode his struggles, matching the rhythmic movement of the shadow in the corner, rocking to the creaking, squealing beat.
She raised her head then, and he saw her eyes. Memory snapped into focus, supplanting reality, and it was not this girl that rode him, but another. There had been nothing wild about that other girl, nothing exciting, other than that she'd been willing to sacrifice herself to him.
He remembered. She had been so young, so simple. He'd had her, then, when she'd turned up pregnant, threatening his burgeoning career as a man of God, he'd sent her away.
"You must leave," he'd said, righteous anger powering his voice. "Your sin drags us both down, and you must find redemption." They had been empty words. He'd wanted her gone.
He'd given her money. There was a clinic in a small town upstate, a town where she claimed to have relatives. He'd never seen her again. Until now. But this was not her. This could never be her.
The girl's gaze was still locked to his, and she smiled down at him. "I've planned for this moment," she said softly, undulating her hips. "I've learned–studied what would please you–become what you need. You are empty, but I can fill you–I can bring you home."
His flesh betrayed him to her, even as he shook his head in negation. The figure in the corner was moving now, rising from the chair and hobbling toward them. He saw the long, straggly hair and the rheumy, yellowed eyes. Her smile was wide, and despite the drool that still lingered on her chin, her expression was animated. Words–prayers–spun from her lips like webs, dropping over the girl, over him, binding them even more tightly.
He felt withered, cold hands on his thigh, caressing his chest; the scent of urine and old sweat invaded his senses. Still he moved against the softness of the girl's body. The heat enveloped him, the candle-light danced and the old woman swayed like a pendulum at his side.
The girl leaned closer once more, clamped down on him and drew him within her so fully that he feared immersion–feared he would never pull free.
"Who . . . are . . . you?" he gasped, dreading the answer, praying he was wrong --- needing her not to stop.
"I told you I would give you something," she whispered, sliding over him like a wave of molten h
eat until their lips were only a hair's breadth apart, until their breath was a single taste–their hearts a synchronous beat. "Something mother was never able to do. I want to make you happy. I've studied, you know," she paused to run her tongue in and out of his ear, up the side of his cheek, down to meet his own. He involuntarily met her advance–drank deeply from her lips.
"I've dedicated my life to this moment," she whispered, "and Mother has prayed. She does nothing else now; the prayer is her life–our life."
She rose above him, enveloping him once more in the heat of her presence, dragging his sanity from him in pulsing bursts.
"Won't you pray with us, Father?"
Revelation
The seventeenth configuration
Of stars,
In conjunction with the proper illumination
Of neon signs on cafes, and bars,
Birthed an epic transformation, An arcane celebration,
A revelation that encroached on the darkness
Claimed dominion.
Souls set free, spirits unbound,
And everything on sale, one night only,
Sitting back on his heels and smiling,
God whispered.
"That is so COOL"
SWARM
Morado woke to pain. It surrounded him, filled his thoughts, and yanked with dark glee at the endings of the nerves in his leg and the right side of his face. He couldn't focus on his surroundings, couldn't make out any distinct sound over the roaring in his ears. It took what seemed hours to realize that the roaring was the beating of his heart, the rushing sound the harsh intake and expulsion of his breath.
As control returned to his mind, the pain localized, sending sharp, searing bolts through his right leg. His face was numb–his right cheek pressed into the soft, moist earth–and when he lifted his head he gave a hoarse shout of horror. Bits and pieces of his skin had remained behind. It had adhered to the ground, a mass of buzzing insects and seared flesh. He could still see–his eyes were intact, but when he brought his hand up to what had been his right cheek, he couldn't bring himself to touch it. He didn't want to know. It was bad, that was enough to know. Any more would eat away at his sanity, and as the reality of his situation began to coalesce in his mind, he realized he would need every iota of that sanity in the hours to come.
Probably, it would not be enough.
He wasn't certain where he was. That fact clicked into place in the forefront of his mind, and he felt the sweat drip down his forehead. He didn't know where the others were, either. They'd been moving inland, away from the base. Every nerve had been taut–every instinct on edge. This was no game. It was good money, but not easy. That was the way of the mercenary. All of the easy assignments fell to those with families and homes; all the suicide missions went to the hired help, to the trained guerrillas with combat experiences and death wishes.
They'd been moving inland from an amphib drop, twelve in all, plus two native scouts. The objective was a village with a name Morado couldn't remember, let alone pronounce. A suspected ammo dump. They'd traveled light, few supplies and fewer hopes of success, but as usual, the money offered had been impossible to refuse. So had the challenge.
Morado knew almost nothing about the others, nothing beyond their faces, or their names, Billy D, Jules, The Hollow Man, Gray, soldiers in the endless war. He knew what was important about them, and that was enough. The war was important. It didn't matter what name it wore, or what language the participants spoke; all that mattered was that it continue, that they remain useful. One thing they had in common, this small band of mercenaries, was that they didn't fit well into polite society–families, relationships, jobs. This was their life, such as it was, and they knew full well it would end up as their deaths as well. That was fine–it was what they wanted.
Morado decided, though, that he didn't want that just yet. Not here, not like this. He pressed his hands into the soft earth and tried to lever himself to his knees. Pain stabbed through his leg, blanking his mind in a white-hot flash and dropping him back, face-first in the dirt. His mind whirled and the agony of his attempted movement was like a thousand daggers plunged one after the other through his skin.
Christ, he grated, pressing his teeth tightly together and clenching his fists. The realization that both of his hands and arms seemed to be functioning normally gave him a ray of hope, even as the searing pain in his leg threatened to drive him into unconsciousness.
He opened his eyes once more, and he saw the butt of his M-16 a few feet away. He snaked his arm out slowly, keeping his lower body as immobile as possible. It was just beyond the reach of his groping fingers. With a deep breath, he steeled himself against the pain, and began to crawl. The first inch nearly did him in, but as his mind became aware of the limits of the pain, he was able to establish a boundary between himself and the blackness, to incorporate the pain into the focus of his movements.
Another inch. His fingers brushed the rough plastic of the rifle butt, and he rested for a long breath. Insects swarmed over his face, and though he had no feeling, he could see them, could sense them violating his ruined skin, and he moved again. He had to get to his feet.
He managed to grip the rifle firmly, and he dragged it slowly toward him, pulling it tightly against his right side. It was obvious that his leg was going to be of little use–he was going to have to prop himself up and find a way to move on. The longer he stayed–wherever he was–the more chance of being discovered. The natives would bayonet him in place until the insects finished him and hang the remains among the vines as a warning to others who followed. Rest was not an option.
He looked about himself quickly. Their scouts had been moving ahead of the main force, hacking a way through the underbrush with machetes, but there was no sign of any of this from where he lay. He was surrounded by low-hanging vines and ferns. The hollowed out space where he'd landed–that was the only way he could explain his presence there–was hidden from the jungle on all sides. There was no sign that anyone other than himself had ever been there, let alone in the last few hours.
He worked up his courage, practicing the breathing exercises the "Hollow Man" had taught him, pushed the pain back into a small, dark recess at the back of his mind and willed himself to rise. The Hollow Man claimed to be into Zen . . . claimed to be a warrior of the spirit. Morado didn't know from spirit, but he knew when something worked, and he'd never seem an expression of emotion on the Hollow Man's face, even when he'd seen the man take a bullet to the thigh.
He pressed the rifle into the ground, taking as much weight as possible off of his right leg and praying that his left was uninjured. He managed to get upright by a combination of pulling on the branches overhead and levering himself up with his rifle, then he stood very still, focusing his concentration on the torture that was to come.
His memories were clearing, and he let his mind drift back. He needed to remember what had happened if he was going to find a way to survive. The scouts had been gone for an exceptionally long time. He remembered that. He also remembered how they'd all begun to feel nervous, as if there was something hanging in the air above them, waiting to pounce. It could be that way, sometimes, a foreign country, jungles far from anywhere, and only a few distant partners, lost in their own little worlds, for company.
Then he remembered the explosion. He nearly staggered and fell as the images hit him full force. Mines. They'd walked directly into a field of mines, no warning, no word from the scouts, just death and fire. Morado had been near the rear, and the bodies of the others had taken the brunt of the explosive force. He'd had time to see the light, to hear the sound, before it lifted him from his feet.
The images grew surreal, faces flashed past him, cries of pain and curses filled his mind. The Earth skewed, the sky where the ground should be, then trees. He felt the moment again where his right leg had come in contact with the trunk of a tree, slammed around it, flipping him upward again, and then down . . . down into a pool of suffocating dar
kness.
Mines. Either the scouts had set them up, or they, too, were dead. There were no other ways it would wash. His whirling mind was faced with the realization that, for some odd, impossible reason, the men who'd brought them here might have purposely led them to their deaths. War was an unforgiving god. There was no time to worry over the variables, like why. No time for anything, really, except to move, and to move as rapidly as possible, and to hope that there was something or someplace ahead of him that would allow him to survive. If not, he hoped there was a suitable place to die.
The path hadn't been far away, and he found it only moments after he began his slow, painful journey through the jungle. He'd used his knife to cut a crutch from one of the surrounding trees, and though it bowed under his weight, it held. He was able to move. When he reached the trail, however, he stopped.
They weren't there. The hole left by the mine was where he'd expected it. There were shreds of clothing, bits of weapons and packs lying about, but there were no bodies. The others were simply gone. He searched the area as well as he could, fearing every moment that he'd hit a second mine and end his problems, or that whoever had set them up in the first place would return and take him away as well, but he found no indication of how the bodies had been moved. There were no breaks in the underbrush to indicate anything had been dragged through, and the path itself showed their trail up to the point of the explosion, but nothing more. There were no footprints continuing along the line they'd traveled, and there was no indication of retreat.
Gone.
As he stood, leaning on his makeshift crutch and trying to put it into focus, the humming, buzzing hoard of insects that had followed him from his little clearing took advantage of the moment to swarm over his face. The sensitivity in his skin was beginning to return, and he felt them as a moving itch, felt them bite and violate his flesh. He brushed his hand across them rapidly, fighting off a sudden wave of nausea, and made up his mind. He would move forward, continuing on the line of travel they'd begun. If any of the others were alive, they might be there, and if not, there was the village. If he could get in quickly enough, he might be able to find shelter of some sort. More likely, they would kill him on sight, but that was a better option than dying as bug food in the jungle.
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