Instead of the note, the next day, stood a muffin, along with the water pitcher on the tray. By noon, his body had forgiven him enough that Jo Jo was capable of leaving his room and cooking some oatmeal.
He rested again until 4.30 pm. Then he rose and fixed chicken Madeira on herbed biscuits, leaving it hot and ready on the table because Sweetness would be home at six. No sooner had he shut the door, returning to his sleeping-bag, then he heard her come in.
Jo Jo shifted restlessly. His body, the amazing thing that it was, had forgiven him truly now in favour of its own demands. Sweetness had needs of her own that he must fill.
In his dark room, he inched closer to the great evil of the bathroom door. A narrow yellow rectangle of light glowed beneath it. Almost a rectangle, certainly the mark of Jo Jo’s wickedness.
In his need, in lust forbidden, he had to see her. It didn’t matter what she looked like now. The scars meant nothing. But as she had burned, now he burned, scorched by the glimpse of her bare feet, all he could view as she towelled herself dry.
Day by day, whenever guilt did not overwhelm him, Jo Jo had gradually filed the corner of the door, just a tiny bit that came off easily when he scraped his great teeth across it. He lay there now, eye to this place, breathless as she moved about.
An ankle, nothing more. Its ruined flesh twisted as she moved. Bristling hairs thrust up through scarred peaks and valleys too remote for a razor to reach.
His breathing stopped as she neared his door; wood creased his forehead, the floor hard against his cheek as he strained to see. Fear cut into him with the thought of discovery.
The door lock clicked and he wanted to shriek. The door remained still. The light went out. Jo Jo rolled onto his back, teeth tight lest the sigh escape. He smiled. As the offered dinner was his signal, so that click was hers.
Hurriedly he showered and cleaned the bathroom. Turning out the light, he stepped naked into the shadowed living room. Reclined upon the armless sofa, lit only by the softer darkness of his back yard through sliding-glass doors, she waited.
In a silence as deafening as the carnival’s roar he came to her. He knelt and only then looked up. Sweetness gazed at him, a soft smile curling the ends of her lips. The moonlight did things to her eyes he couldn’t begin to describe, but would hold in his mind till his mind was no more.
Without ever turning his gaze, he listened to the soft slide of her pink pyjamas as first one slippered foot, and then the other, shifted from the couch. Her toes touched the floor. Her gloved hand whispered down the length of her terrycloth robe and slowly drew up the hem.
She had slit the fabric where pyjama legs joined. White thread hemmed each side of the material. It gleamed in the darkness, contrasting with her tight satin curls. Here alone the scars did not reach.
With all the discipline at his command, Jo Jo’s fingers clenched into knots behind his back. Their touch was forbidden, an act of betrayal Sweetness would not allow. His head bowed.
Her smell entered him and he breathed in until his chest burned. His tongue touched her, parting the perfect musky lips. She gasped. His lips pursed and kissed the soft curls.
Deeper his tongue probed, until it found a nubbly jewel. Her hand touched the nape of his neck; he gave himself over to her guidance. He heard the couch shift, her low moan that came with the arch of her back. Finally, silence. Her thighs tightened upon his ears.
Nothing was said in the bungalow that night. Its mansard roof and white wood walls held the mocking rumble of the rubes at bay. Jo Jo smiled at the breathy sigh of the air-conditioner, the click of its relays when he finally rose and studied Sweetness’s sleeping form.
The sliding-glass door squeaked quietly as he closed it behind him. Naked, he lay face down upon his wonderful lawn.
In the vast expanse of its caress, he found the terrifying freedom to release his need. In the darkness, that so mirrored the moment of a fading spotlight, he let it go.
The next day, he’d just finished trimming the borders around the backyard fence when the phone rang. Jo Jo dashed into the bungalow. Even when she was away, Sweetness didn’t allow him to answer the phone, but if it were her, she might tell him to pick up.
‘You’ve reached the Barnette residence,’ the answering machine said in Sweetness’s voice. ‘Please leave a message.’
Jo Jo frowned at the man’s voice. His shoulders sagged and he glared at the machine.
‘I’m sorry, Ms Barnette, I know you didn’t want us to call you at home. This is Jim Thorton of Greater Lansing Realty. A developer who’s interested in constructing an apartment complex has contacted us. They’re making an extremely generous offer. I know you weren’t interested in selling when we talked before. But please call. Again, sorry to pester you at home. Bye.’
Jo Jo squeezed his eyes shut, legs folding him down on the floor. When he looked again, the machine still sat on the end table. His hand trembled; he reached for the erase button.
No! There was no need! To command her completely he would obey her abjectly. By her own rules, Sweetness would make the right decision. Tonight he would come to her on his belly. This time he would save them both.
Early that evening, Jo Jo opened the bathroom door and got down on the floor. His body ached, twitching at times, a churning inside him as if he’d drunk a dozen cups of coffee. He couldn’t stand it any more.
His cheek pressed against the cold tile of the bathroom floor. With the greatest of disciplined movements, he scraped away a small piece of the wicked corner, savouring the taste of sawdust.
Quickly he scooted into his room and closed the door. Then he inspected his work. It looked a bit wider, but not too much so. He smoothed the edge with his thumb. Her mind would be on the shower anyway. His cheek flattened against the polished wood floor. He could see the toilet and even the towel rack. Perfect!
He heard the front door open. Jo Jo closed his eyes, savouring the scent of duck with black bean sauce and tamarind jus, asparagus with red pepper sauce, and fresh rolls. The whole house smelled of it by now.
His fingers tapped his knee with the thud and thump of her footfalls as she crossed the living room. His eyes opened only with the muted voice of the answering machine.
The hateful message ended abruptly; Sweetness must have pressed the erase button before it was through. Nothing moved in the bungalow for a long time.
Jo Jo gazed out the window at the darkening lawn. Relays clicked, the air-conditioner huffed on. As if this were some secret signal between her and the house, Sweetness began to move. He grinned when she entered the kitchen. Again she paused, but finally continued to her room. His ears strained. Was that the whisper of her clothing as she changed?
She returned to the kitchen and he touched himself, wanting to groan, but not allowing it. It must have taken her hours to eat. By the time he heard the shower come on, Jo Jo was crouched, rocking back and forth on his sleeping-bag.
On hands and knees, he crawled to the bathroom door. Lowering himself, he jammed his face to the floor, eye pressed to the hole. The pink and yellow flowers of the shower curtain rippled. He breathed steam fragrant with strawberry soap.
Sweetness stepped out. Her arm, webbed with thick strands of scars, reached for a towel. The webbing grew to ridges that spread over her chest, forming mashed mountains of pallid lumps in place of breasts. The towel rose to her bald head, to the twisted bits of flesh that were once ears.
Jo Jo’s body squeezed into a single slash of need. His forehead creased into the door causing a sharp tick of noise from the wood itself. Sweetness flinched and stared at the door. She looked into his eye.
Her wail rose up and down, like the harsh, twisted screaming one hears beneath a roller coaster. She surged forward, splintering the door. Jo Jo flung himself backwards, head reeling from the blow.
Outlined in the bathroom light, Sweetness glared down at him, one fist knotted, the other clutching a wad of towel. The scars on her chest writhed as twisted shadows with her rapid breat
hing.
‘Rube!’ Her shout hit him like an onrushing truck. Jo Jo cringed and opened his mouth. Sweetness flung the towel, knocking the poster off the wall. The glass shattered, pieces scattering across the floor.
Sweetness lunged at him. Naked, fused fingers wrapped around his head. She jerked him up, her arm wrapping around him, scars rough against his cheek. The floor shuddered as she stomped through the house.
He could hear them both crying; his hands clutched her arm. In the bright yellow kitchen she jammed him against the fridge, reached down and snatched up a can.
She dragged him into the dark living room. He stumbled, peeling skin from the backs of his toes. She slammed down upon the armless divan; the rug burned his knees.
Her ragged sobs filled the bungalow. Sweetness crushed the can against his lips. He would never make her believe he was sorry. Jo Jo opened his mouth.
The can crumpled hard enough to force a front tooth from its socket. Sweetness twisted the can and skinned flesh from his palate. Again she twisted, then jerked it back. A torn edge flayed his tongue.
Once more, she forced it in until her knuckles filled his mouth, two more teeth lurching from their places. Somehow, he managed to swallow. Twisted metal slashed down his throat.
‘Take one last look, little man.’ Jerking his head back, she held him by the neck so that he could view the terrible thing his wickedness had made of her. ‘One last look and one last taste.’
Spreading her legs, she forced him down between her. The last thing he heard before the naked scars of her thighs covered his ears was a harsh, sobbing whisper. ‘I’m selling the house.’
Bloody lips and gums pressed against her labia. What had he done? Even as he tried to stop it, the fear rushed through him, knotting his gut, spasming his legs and then pistoning them out again, forcing Sweetness down on the divan.
Up came the can. Rage clasped his hands to her scar-ridged buttocks, the loss of everything that mattered opened his throat, and the need for a last moment of vengeance forced the metal from his lips and deep, deep into the one place the scars had never reached.
Jewels of agony scattered through his mind with the breaking of his pain-hinged jaw. Sweetness arched her torso; the force of her legs snapped his back. Her bladder and bowels released. Blood splashed over his face.
They lay together in the blackness of the bungalow. They lay in a silence more deafening than the roar of any carnival. For a long time nothing moved. Nothing could move, bound by the rules of their love.
Pat … Pat … Pat. A soft wet sound began below him. Some time later, Jo Jo realised it was her blood, dripping from the divan to the carpet. This final secret signal brought him from his daze. Body numb and useless from the neck down, he discovered an unexpected smoothness upon his cheek. He might still save them both.
With an agony no different, no greater than the life Fate had demanded, Jo Jo Light managed to turn his head. His lips brushed a small space of clear skin upon her inner thigh - a miracle that had somehow escaped the scars. He kissed her.
Would Sweetness accept this small offering? Was she even alive?
Her leg relaxed its grip to whisper over the naked skin of his back before falling to the floor. Her hair rustled; a spring in the divan creaked, marking the turn of her head; he knew where she gazed now, what the moonlight would do to her eyes. He realised her hand lay upon his hair when it moved, turning his head only a little, but just enough.
Together, they looked out into a darkness that held the moment of a dying spotlight. By her grace, he stared out at his wonderful lawn.
Joe Murphy lives with his wife, up-and-coming watercolour artist Veleta, in Fairbanks, Alaska. He has been writing seriously for nine years, whenever their dogs - Lovecraft, Dickens and Lafferty - and their cats - Plato, Kafka and Sagan - allow him to get near the keyboard. His fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Horrors! 565 Scary Stories, Bones of the World, Book of All Flesh, Chiaroscuro, Crafty Cat Crimes, Cthulhu’s Heirs, Demon Sex, Gothic.net, Legends of the Pendragon, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, On Spec, Silver Web, Space and Time, Strange Horizons, Talebones and TransVersions. Twelve previously published stories are now on the Internet at Alexandria Digital Literature and he is a graduate of the writer’s workshops Clarion West 1995 and Clarion East 2000. ‘I was attending Clarion 2000 in Michigan when I wrote “Sweetness and Light”,’ recalls Murphy. ‘I was rather nervous about the piece. What would the other writers think of me? Was I some kind of pervert? I talked the idea over with Suzy McKee Charnas and she encouraged me to go ahead. Once done, I was still uncertain about the piece, however with still more encouragement from Samuel Delany, Maureen McHugh, and even more encouragement from Gregory Frost, I cleaned it up and submitted it. I grew a lot as a writer thanks to Clarion.’
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Haifisch
CONRAD WILLIAMS
I first saw Jens Korff on the hottest day of the year. I had been delayed on the journey into work because the tube train had ground to a halt mid-tunnel when a passenger tried to lever open one of the doors. We were stuck down there, between Warren Street and Oxford Circus, for forty minutes. Some people fainted. One woman tried to get undressed. A fight broke out when a man refused to share his water with his fellow passengers. Nobody told us what the problem was. In the end, we started moving again, but six people from our carriage had to go to hospital to be treated for heat exhaustion. I arrived at the office cursing London Underground with the kind of hardcore swear words unheard of outside a comprehensive school playground. I felt like a sponge with all of its moisture crushed out of it. I felt like shit.
And then I saw him. Maybe it was because nobody had shown any shred of courtesy for anybody else down in that hell-hole that was the Victoria Line. Maybe it was because he just looked so miserable, so beaten, that I went to help him. I was late anyway, what could another few minutes matter?
He was trying to get his wheelchair up the kerb and onto the pavement. He used the camber to generate some speed, but it wasn’t enough to get off the road. A woman walked straight past him. A man slowed, gave him a sympathetic look, but continued on his way. By the time I reached him, he had managed to flip the wheels of the chair on to the pavement but the slope up to the surface proper was proving too steep for him. The wheelchair kept slithering back towards the road. He was a game bastard; he didn’t give up.
‘Here you go,’ I said, and pushed him into a position where he could comfortably take over. He turned around in his seat, looking up at me from beneath the hunch of his shoulder. Though he was squinting into the sun, I could see enough of his eyes to tell they were black, like dull, little buttons. The crinkles around them deepened, as if he were smiling, but his mouth remained a flat line.
‘Thank you,’ he said, his voice lispy and quiet, almost shy. Sank you. It sounded foreign, German perhaps. ‘I make this journey once a day now, for the past two weeks. You’re the first person to help me.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said, stepping away. My mind was on the meeting that had started without me. They’d be checking their watches and rolling their eyes now.
He closed his eyes. Shrugged. ‘Maybe it is. To me.’
A blanket, the tartan pattern of which had been completely reworked by daubings of egg, soup, curry and coffee, was a stiffening comforter for his legs. His shirt was bedraggled and missing buttons, but his tie was crisply knotted and his hair neatly shorn and oiled. He smelled mealy. He smelled of death, the kind that doesn’t realise what it is yet. Death was tasting him, I thought. And death always likes the flavour, in the end.
He nodded curtly and spun away from me, working the wheels with arms that were densely packed with muscle, at odds with the frailty of the rest of his body. I caught sight of a tattoo on his forearm, of faded blue lettering: alice.
I work in the tape library of a film production company, doing a job that a monkey could do; a not particularly clever monkey at that. But it was all there
was when I went for it and I have a car and the rent to pay. It’s better than digging holes in the road and the people I work with are friendly. They pay me more than the job deserves and there’s a fair pension. So I’m not moaning. I spent more time chasing girls than I did A-grades so I got what I deserve.
I had a bad day at the office, that day. All the envelopes I stuffed had to be re-stuffed because I forgot to include an important piece of paper with the mailing. And then, when I put them through the franking machine, they were all upside down. Which doesn’t really matter in terms of getting them to where they need to be, but in terms of professionalism, it’s up there with domestic airport security in the States. I wish I could blame it on the nightmare journey in, or the relentless fist of heat, but it was the old man in the wheelchair who was putting me off my stroke. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. And then Barney came in from the loading bay with a million parcels that needed sorting and delivering to the various departments before 5:00 pm and old men in wheelchairs became about as relevant to me as Nicaraguan coffee yields.
The next day was a Saturday. I spent it as I spent most of my Saturdays, hanging around outside the local cinema, trying to summon the nerve to ask the girl at the ticket booth if she’d like to go out for a drink with me. She wasn’t what I would call beautiful; I always think of beautiful women as being aloof and knowing. Natalie was pretty. Meaning: innocence and openness. She had a clear complexion and apple-green eyes. Her mouth was perky, as though primed for a kiss. I was just absolutely sold on her and I knew that if I didn’t get in there fast, someone would beat me to it, if they hadn’t already.
I went in, strode up to the booth and said: ‘Do you want to Spider-man?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I mean, would you like to come to see a film with me?’
‘I’m working.’
Dark Terrors 6 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 35
