And when you pull it out, there’s sometimes a lovely little backlog of tissue in there. Clots of blood and reamed-off bladder lining come slithering out of you like warm slugs. In that moment, you so love your body, and just feel ever-so-sexy.
Your girlfriend, if she deals well with blood, is quite keen to have sex with you, since you’re infertile while all this bleeding is going on. Otherwise, she’s avoiding intimate contact with you on the grounds that you smell weird or you’ll get blood all over her sheets.
If you’re especially unlucky, your girlfriend will be totally unsympathetic to your situation: You go through this every month, John, I’d have thought you’d have learned to deal with it by now. It’s only a little pain, go take some Advil and be a man about it!
Meanwhile, you feel run-down and mostly want to sleep, the inside of your dick is chafed, two pairs of your drawers are stained with blood, the inside of one of your internal organs is peeling off, and sometimes the pain meds just don’t do the job.
And that, my friends, is what it’s like to menstruate.
The Sheets Were Clean and Dry
BREATHLESS, KATHY slipped into the fabric shop. Stavros would be furious if he discovered she’d left the house. Her blouse was sticking to the welts on her back she’d received as punishment for disappointing him. The night before, she’d mistakenly cracked open the ‘82 Chateau Margaux instead of the ‘80 as he’d ordered. An expensive mistake, and she’d paid for it in skin and blood.
Once he’d tired of exercising his belt, he curtly demanded she make a new suit for him by the next Tuesday. She hadn’t any good suit fabric left in the house. But she’d known better than to tell him that. He’d beat her for not being prepared.
Kathy stared around the shop. The cabbie didn’t understand English very well, and instead of taking her downtown, he’d deposited her in Chinatown. She decided to see if a nearby store — Chen’s Fabric Shoppe — had something useful.
“Can I help you?” asked the stooped old woman behind the counter. Her thick white hair was pulled up in a bun secured by two lacquered chopsticks.
“Do you have any wool? Something in a gray, good for a man’s suit?”
“Mmm-hm.” The old woman limped through the shop to some bolts of slate-gray cloth with a fine herringbone twill. “Tibetan wool. Feel very nice on your man.”
Kathy touched the fabric. It was quite nice, soft but substantial and had an excellent drape.
“I think he’ll like it,” Kathy said.
At least I hope he’ll like it, she thought, biting her lip. It was becoming impossible to please Stavros. He’d been so sweet and attentive at first, but now he found fault with everything she did. She’d made the wine mistake because she’d been working 36 hours straight. She’d spent the night baking bread to replace the loaves he’d thrown out because he claimed the wheat was bitter. And then she’d spent the entire day cleaning the fifteen-room house. She’d been so tired when she’d gone down to the wine cellar, she’d barely been able to keep her eyes open.
At least he’d let her sleep after he’d whipped her.
Kathy realized she was clenching her fists, and made herself relax. She had no right to be angry with Stavros. He let her live in a mansion and had taken her on trips around the world. Without him, she’d probably still be stuck in their cramped tract house in Atlanta, picking up after her little brothers and listening to her parents scream at each other when she wasn’t working nine-hour shifts at the dry cleaner’s. Without him, she wouldn’t even know what Chateau Margaux was.
She’d met him when he brought one of his suits in to be cleaned while he was on an extended business trip. The cleaners’ was right by the airport. Lots of businessmen came through the place, but the moment Stavros stepped inside, Kathy knew he was different. It was in his walk, the way he held himself, the way he looked at her. Power and confidence were his pheromone, and the sound of his voice made her instantly weak in the knees. They chatted a bit as she took his suit and wrote down his information, and that might have been the last she’d seen of him if she had not slipped a note into his suit pocket.
He called her that night, and took her to Phillipe’s Restaurant where they dined in candlelight and split a bottle of Dom Pérignon. The fanciest date she’d had before then was when one of her high school boyfriends took her to the Outback Steakhouse before the prom.
Their courtship lasted eight months. He treated her like a princess, and Kathy was entranced by how absolutely cool Stavros was. He gave her the kind of lifestyle she’d only read about in her mother’s romance novels. Only after she became his wife did she finally discover that the perfect sangfroid he displayed to the world required volcanic ventings in private.
Her mother had always said a woman should count her blessings. So what if Stavros forbade her to leave the house without him? So what if she couldn’t go to college, or have her own friends? He was an important man, and had worked hard for his money and position. As he always said, he deserved a good woman to make sure everything in his household suited him. He needed her. He only hit her because he loved her, and wanted her to be a better person.
Kathy realized she was digging her nails into her palms. She took a deep breath and smiled at the old woman.
“I’ll take ten yards of this, thanks.”
“Anything for you? You make man happy, you make something make you happy.”
“Oh, no, I—”
The old woman produced a bolt of the black satin, so lustrous it seemed almost to glow. Kathy stroked it with her index finger; it was the smoothest, softest cloth she’d ever touched. Slightly warm, even.
“Silk?” Kathy asked.
The old woman nodded. “From spiders in the Mekong Valley. Fabric made for bed sheets. 800 thread count. Woven tight to trap dreams.”
Kathy stroked the material again. Slowly. To lie naked on sheets of this satin would be absolute heaven.
She immediately tried to tamp down her desire. She couldn’t think of herself; she had to consider what Stavros would want.
“No, I really shouldn’t,” she stammered, pulling away.
The old woman’s gaze now rested on some fading yellow bruises on Kathy’s wrist; they were surely from Stavros grabbing her too roughly, but she couldn’t remember when it had happened. Kathy tried to pull her sleeve down to cover them, but it was too short.
“You make something make you happy,” the old woman insisted. “Nothing make man unhappier than unhappy woman. It take a lot of strength to take care of house; you need good sleep. Silk bedsheets just the thing to keep you strong.”
“Well…” Stavros seldom slept in her bed, but she could always use the satin for his suit jacket lining. Yes, he’d like that very much, she decided.
***
Kathy worked long and hard on the suit and when she finished, it was a wonder to behold. The luster of the satin lining seemed to spread to the twill, and when Stavros put it on he glowed with power and confidence.
He posed frowning in front of his mirror, turning this way and that, searching for some small flaw. His frown deepened when he could find nothing to criticize. Finally, his face relaxed into a neutral smile.
“Fine job,” he said, then gave her a quick kiss on the cheek as he headed toward the door. “I’ll be back in two nights.”
When he was gone, Kathy went back to her sewing room. She pulled out the rest of the satin and set to making her sheets. The fabric came together easily, almost seemed eager to join under the needle. She re-made her mattress with the new bedclothes, pulled the goose down comforter up to her chin, and fell asleep.
***
She woke with a cry on her lips and an orgasm in her loins. She’d dreamed that Stavros whipped her with a great cat-o’-nine-tails. Each lash brought as much pleasure as a kiss to her vulva. He beat her harder and harder ‘til the walls were covered in bits of her flesh.
She rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Her naked body was drenched in sweat, but the
sheets were dry.
***
The next night, she dreamed it was Stavros on the rack, and she with the whip.
Silk bedsheets just the thing to keep you strong.
She beat him, again and again, flaying the flesh from his body until he came and died in the same shuddering groan. Then she fell on his body, tearing out handfuls of his sweet-salty flesh that she devoured in greedy mouthfuls. She ripped loose a bloody rib, and pleasured herself with it, driving it into her own body until at last she came.
Kathy awoke with a horrified start and stumbled into the bathroom, her belly aching. She’d started her period in the night, a whole week early, and was bleeding profusely. She swore softly; surely she’d ruined the sheets. After she put in a tampon and went back to bed, she discovered that the sheets were clean and dry.
***
Stavros stumbled in early the next evening, rumpled and red-eyed from his flight, still wearing the suit she’d made him. His eyes burned with the dark glow of his jacket’s satin lining.
“I dreamed of you,” he accused hoarsely. “On the plane, at the meeting, I could think of nothing but you. Go upstairs.”
She stepped back, shaking her head, even though she was electric with sudden desire. “I’m bleeding a little—”
“Then I’ll make you bleed a lot!”
She ran, and he chased her through the kitchen and up the stairs. She let herself be caught outside her bedroom. It wasn’t right to have sex in her condition, but oh God, she wanted it so bad!
He dragged her to the bed, tore off her clothes, and they had savage, frenzied sex. They sweated and bled and came until they were practically empty, and throughout it all the sheets stayed perfectly dry. Stavros was still worked up into a white-eyed, mouth-frothing frenzy that neither orgasms nor ordinary pain seemed to satisfy.
“I want to fuck your heart,” he said, reaching over the edge of the bed to pull something shiny out of his jacket pocket. A slim double-bladed dagger knife. “I want to feel it twitch around my cock.”
Death was more than she could submit to. She grabbed Stavros’s wrist and they wrestled for the dagger on the slippery bed.
Kathy fought and kicked, trying to pry the blade from his fingers. Stavros hit her across the face with his free hand—
—and she remembered her first kiss from the redheaded boy who sat beside her in her middle school English class.
He hit her again—
—and she remembered the sweet pain of losing her virginity; she could no longer remember the boy’s face clearly, but she’d never forget the smell of his aftershave.
A third blow fell on her shoulder, and she felt her muscles start to tremble and weaken—
—then she remembered her childhood dreams. The dreams she had as young girl before the gauntlet of adolescence and the dulling grind of school and work made her lose herself. She had not dreamed of being Rapunzel waiting for her Prince, she had dreamed of donning armor and slaying dragons; she had not dreamed of being Lois Lane fainting for her Superman, she had dreamed of being Catwoman on the prowl.
And she certainly had not dreamed of slaving as a rich man’s bitch; she had dreamed of battling pirates for their gold.
Silk bedsheets just the thing to keep you strong.
With a scream, she heaved Stavros over onto his own blade. He gasped as it plunged deep into his chest. Dark blood flowed over the bedclothes.
The sheets writhed and shimmered and drank down the gore.
Kathy watched, mesmerized, as the moisture was sucked from his body until he was a husk, then ashes, then dust, then nothing. Five minutes after she’d killed him, nothing remained on the sheets but the knife and a few gold fillings from his teeth.
The sheets rustled, the serpentine hiss of the satin whispering to her softly:
I will keep you strong if you bring me what I need…
The next evening, she put on her best cocktail dress and headed out to the downtown bars to look for a luscious young Lothario.
Maybe he’d buy her dinner first; that would be nice. She was hungry.
But more importantly, so were the sheets.
Burning Bright
NTURI HID in the darkness beneath the southern palace wall and stared up into the grey, drizzling sky. The fog-shrouded top fifteen meters above supported the antiaircraft field generators. If the information she’d paid dearly for was correct, she’d have about 40 centimeters of clearance between the top of the wall and the lower edge of the field. If not, she’d be a feast for the czar’s tigers or the rats, depending on which side of the wall her charred body fell.
Am I insane? She wondered. Is any love worth this?
The cold air was saturated with the mingling smells of garbage, factory soot, and sweet grease from the bakeries a few blocks away. Her wrists and forearms ached from her recent surgeries. She peeled her black thinskin gloves off with her teeth and flexed the new muscles in her forearms. Artificial bone stilettos, hard and keen as steel, slid out along the edge of each hand. The ivory blades were a sharp contrast against her caramel-colored skin. Retracted, the weapons hid neatly in grooves on the surface of her ulnas, rendering them invisible to most standard bioscans. With all the tribal tattoos Nturi already sported, the centimeter-wide slits on the ridges of her wrists could be explained away as decorative scarification and might be overlooked in a strip search. The blades were meant as a last-ditch defense; though she’d planned the breakin carefully, she had to be prepared for disaster.
She slid the blades in and out, testing the new muscles. Her newly-healed flesh itched, and the slide was a good satisfying scratch. In and out, in and out…
Heat rose in her eyes and chest. Closing her eyes, she retracted the blades and ran her hands over the smooth concrete of the wall, imagining it was Alexander’s muscular body. Even as an eighteen-year-old, he’d had the most wonderfully sculpted chest and abdomen. But he’d be five years older now, more fully a man.
Nturi shuddered and clenched her fists, pressing her knuckles into the stone. “God, Alex, why did they have to take you away?”
He hadn’t told her how he’d come to Guevara, not right away. She’d known he was an offworlder the moment he walked into New Vanuatu village, and everyone guessed from his accent that he was Novizvezdan. He said little about his family or his history, even after they began courting. But after they’d exchanged vows at the shrine and had the shaman tattoo the Goddess’ blessing over both their hearts, after they’d shared their first night in the marriage bed, he told her the truth.
She remembered how her heart beat fast when he drew out the royal signet ring with the double-headed eagle of the Romanov Empire. I am the second son of Czar Mikhail.
It all seemed a fairy tale: her beautiful pale offworld husband was a prince. He was born to be a duke on the empire’s central world, Novizvezda Prime, but as he grew older he realized the brutality his family had wrought on the races they had conquered. He was sickened by what the Romanovs had done and by what he was surely bound to do as a nobleman. Soon after he turned fifteen, he escaped Novizvezda on an interstellar freighter and didn’t stop running ‘til he reached the far colonies.
They had five happy months as newlyweds before the fairy tale shattered. Nturi was helping her little brother harvest piqueberries in the misty mountains outside the village when thunder ripped the air and the summery sky suddenly turned to midnight. She remembered looking up, seeking the sun, only to see a vast round blackness framed by a corona of lightning in the fractured air. Her guts turned to ice when she realized it was a giant warship settling down to hover above her village. An instant later she realized that only the Novizvezdans had the resources to build ships of such monstrous scale. And there was only one possible reason the Novizvezdans would come to Guevara.
She abandoned her brother and raced down the mud-slick, viney footpath, ran ‘til her heart pumped pure acid, ran ‘til she thought her lungs would explode in her chest.
But she could not run fa
st enough. It was all over by the time she reached the village. The warship was spinning back up into the sky. The door to her father’s house had been kicked off its hinges. Her mother wept amongst smashed furniture. Her father was dead, his chest sunken and blackened by a microwave burn.
And her husband was gone.
Her mother told her how the soldiers in their red and gold uniforms had come through the door, how her father had tried to stop them, only to be shot down like a dog. They’d torn the house apart ‘til they found Alex hiding in the basement, then dragged him to the ship.
“At least they’re gone now,” her mother had said. “We can try to rebuild our lives.”
But her mother was wrong. The Novizvezdans were back the next fall in ships bearing troops and strip-mining equipment. The small Guevaran army was defeated practically overnight, and soon the lovely skies turned a sulfurous yellow from the blasting and smelters.
Nturi could not bear to watch her family’s vineyards fall beneath the grinding earth-movers, could not bear to watch her mother crumble deeper in despair. So she followed her lost husband’s example and stowed away on a ship heading offworld.
She’d been determined to find Alex. She’d had so much with him, lost so much because of him… she would have him back by her side as her husband.
Novizvezda Prime was the richest, most advanced world in the entire quadrant — how hard could it be to reach? But it had taken her two hard years to make it to the planet, and three even harder years as a cat burglar’s apprentice to gather the skills, money and information she needed to attempt the unheard of: break into the royal palace.
Nturi took a deep breath and dug her climbing gloves out of her utility vest. Five years of sweat and sacrifice and loneliness had come down to this. There was no other way for someone like her to contact her husband; he was kept secure behind layers of guards and bureaucracy. She barely even saw his image on the news. Most recently, she’d seen an article announcing his engagement to an offworld princess to seal a diplomatic bargain, and she knew she had to make her move. She would be reunited with her husband, or she would die trying.
Lucy A. Snyder - Sparks and Shadows Page 4
