She lay where she was for a moment, trying to recapture the breath that had been knocked out of her. She tested both legs. Neither had broken. When she was sure that she had not broken anything else, she rolled over and walked back to the side. Looking up she saw that the crowd reached the edge and to her horror she watched them pouring over it. Simply walking towards her and not even seeing the drop in front of them. Dozens of burnt and mindless people poured over the side of the burning building. She turned away horrified. In front of her was a door back inside. She took a deep breath, picked up her axe once more and made use of it.
****
MJ limped to the side of the building just in time to witness something so horrible her mind could barely conceive of it - people landing and exploding on the sidewalk like rain. They were piling up along the sides and some were on fire. Falling from the sky like meteors, they piled higher and higher. A few of them crawled away, some broken in half by the fall still crawled from the piles of bodies towards her. MJ felt her mind giving way. This horror, so close on the heels of the ones she had already seen, it was too much. She turned to walk away, feeling as though she was falling asleep. When she turned she saw a man, his whole body engulfed in flame, yet he did not seem to notice. He raised his arms out to her as if he wanted to give her a hug. MJ discovered she wanted to live after all and in that clarifying moment she screamed and raised the python. Something blurred past her.
The flaming man flew backwards with a fireman’s axe buried to the handle in his face.
****
As the sun came up over Manhattan, huge pillars of smoke reached for the sky to greet it. Most of the city was aflame and it colored the rising sun a deep blood-red.
Tayler held MJ tight to her chest. The two of them had managed to make it to a shipping yard and had taken shelter in the hold of one of the great empty ships that stood silent sentry in the Hudson.
When she had first come across MJ and had discovered her injury, Tayler had raged and screamed and nearly gone mad. This time however, it was her lover’s turn to do the saving. In the midst of the chaotic Hell, which the streets had become, MJ consoled her, calmed her and took Tayler up in her arms. Now a strange and gentle if not fatalistic form of serenity had fallen over Tayler’s mind. She held MJ in her arms and knew that she would die. No sadness plagued her mind however and, to MJ’s surprise, in the dirty hold of a derelict cargo ship, Tayler kissed her lover and began removing her clothes.
MJ forgot her pain as Tayler’s hands caressed her. She stripped her naked and ran kisses down her neck and chest. Her fingers slid between her legs and felt the warmth there. She stroked her and kissed her breasts. Unaware of the irony, she bit down gently on each hardened nipple. MJ could not speak. The relief from the horror that had gripped her over the previous night washed over her, as did her ecstasy as she climaxed over Tayler’s probing fingers. Then Tayler slid down her and kissed MJ where her fingers had been. She slid her tongue over her and into her, tasting MJ’s passion. It rolled over her tongue as MJ came again. She kissed her as deeply and as passionately as she had ever kissed her on the mouth.
MJ sat up and pushed Tayler onto her back. Tayler saw that her lover’s beautiful eyes had changed, but she did not care. She had decided and in that decision she did not feel suicidal, she felt joy. Joy and the deepest love she could have ever imagined.
MJ grabbed Tayler's hips, more aggressively than she had ever done so before. Her movements were a little unsteady.
“MJ...” Tayler said and MJ looked at her.
“I love you,” they both said at the same time.
Then MJ was sliding her panties down and off, meaning to do for her what Tayler had just done. MJ slid her tongue into her lover, tasting the same sweet nectar. Tayler’s hands grabbed at the old tarp they lay upon, feeling her lover’s deep kisses between her legs. Waiting for what she knew would happen. Tayler came not only from the tongue sliding over her clit and into her, but also from the anticipation of what would surely happen next. And as that mouth, which she had kissed a thousand times, stopped caressing and started eating, she did not scream. Instead she came again and the moan that reached into the dark hold of the cargo ship was not one of pain, but one of pleasure and joy. She would not lose MJ at all. The two of them would be together now, forever.
Restless Spirits
by M. Birds
The last episode never aired. There wasn’t really enough footage to make a coherent twenty-two minutes, and most of Jane’s was unusable. Someone emailed her a rough cut a few months later, trying to put together a picture of what happened amidst the many lawsuits, but Jane didn’t watch it. She’d like to say that it seemed disrespectful after everything that happened, but that would be a lie.
Respect had nothing to do with it. Terror, maybe.
Hundreds of miles away from the place where they first turned the cameras on, safe in her small and well-lit apartment, Jane’s hands shook. There was no blood on them, but she washed them anyway then she poured herself a glass of wine, dragged the file into her recycle bin, and turned her computer off.
****
It’s hard to explain how she ended up on a paranormal investigation show, but it’s easier to explain why she stayed. A PhD in Architectural History hadn’t turned out to be the most marketable education choice; she spent her days working at a book store and her nights hunched over a computer, application after application after pleading application. She could write her CV in her sleep at this point, not that she was sleeping much. When she closed her eyes, all she could see was fine text, all the words she had learned and loved and was forgetting. Parapet. Flying buttress. She took to murmuring them to herself when she was nervous or when she couldn’t sleep. Cantilever. Apse.
Her mom started emailing jobs that she found on-line, the links meticulously typed next to loving assurances (“Maybe this is the one!”) and that’s how Jane found out that “Restless Spirits,” a television show she had only heard mentioned in laughing mockery, was looking for a “young, female actress with a background in architectural history.”
Jane was young. Jane was female. Jane was most definitely not an actress, couldn’t even fake-cry her way out of a parking ticket, but the interviews were being held only a twenty minute bus ride from her day job, enough to do it over the lunch hour if traffic was good. As it happened, traffic was good, and when Jane walked into a waiting room filled with impossibly gorgeous women, she realized she should have worn something other than her black, button-up “Hawthorn Books” shirt. Some of the candidates were blonde, tanned and curvaceous, some androgynous and dark-haired, sailor tattoos curling up their arms like waves. Jane was flat-chested and long limbed; she hunched her shoulders and wore glasses that slipped down her nose. She was a twenty-six year old virgin who had skipped some grades and all of the parties. The moment she entered the waiting room, she was pretty certain that everyone there knew it.
“Tympanum,” she said.
The producers met with each woman individually, a table of well-dressed wolves in suits, headed by an attractive, sharp-looking woman who did all the talking. There was a camera in the corner of the room, running the entire time they asked questions about Jane’s background and experience and interest in the paranormal. When the sharp-looking woman asked if Jane would take off her glasses and undo the top button of her shirt, Jane was already composing the email to her mother in her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice shaking at the slightest hint of conflict. “I don’t think I’m in the right place, I didn’t realize -”
She stopped speaking at the onslaught of icy gazes from the conference table, a million tiny pinpricks of scorn.
“I’m a historian, I’m not an actress. I don’t watch the show, I don’t even believe in ghosts. If you want to talk about the Sassanid Period, I could write a thesis on it, but I don’t look any prettier without my glasses, and I don’t think - yeah, I don’t think I -” She tried to smile, but only managed a wince. “Th
anks, though, for - for the opportunity, I’ll just – I’ll go.”
Two dozen beautiful pairs of black-lined eyes followed Jane from the building, almost stumbling in her haste. She had barely managed to recover from the mortification two nights and two bottles of wine later, when her cell phone rang.
“Jane Green?”
Her name was so bland, she needed a second to recognize it.
“Yes, uh, speaking?”
“I’m Madeline, we met briefly on Tuesday at the audition for 'Restless Spirits'. I’m calling to invite you to a screen test with Elijah Leer.”
Jane had done enough research to know that name. The night before the audition, she had at least looked up the basic premise of the show: a psychic, a historian, and a ‘paranormal technician’ (whatever the hell that meant) wander around a supposedly haunted house in the dark, recording their findings in dim light with the occasional, well-placed “What was that?” and “Are you seeing this?” The lynch pin was Elijah Leer, the psychic front man whose mildly successful books and brooding attractiveness made him perfectly palatable for late night television. The website contained several pictures of him, pale hair and paler eyes looking pretty ridiculous, in Jane’s limited opinion.
“It’s just to see how the two of you interact, whether there’s any chemistry, you know,” the voice on the phone continued, and Jane felt the bizarre desire to protest; hadn’t she walked out of the audition, made a complete fool of herself?
“He liked you, Miss Green - or can I call you Jane? He liked you, Jane. That was the worst audition I have ever witnessed in my career as a producer, but here we are. Are you free tomorrow around three?”
“I -” Jane couldn’t even remember what day it was tomorrow. “No, I’m - I have to work -”
“I trust you can swing by and give them your notice on the way. This is a great opportunity for you, the kind that doesn’t knock twice. I’m supremely confident you’ll have no trouble in the chemistry department, and I’m married to him, Jane, I should know.”
“Um -”
“Excellent, we’ll see you then. And please try to wear something a little more flattering than your MacDonald’s uniform, or whatever that was. It’s a visual medium after all, same address as last time, bye.”
The line went dead.
Jane only had collared shirts in her wardrobe, but she picked out the least boring of the bunch, ironed it that night. She didn’t call her mother until the next evening, after she had quit her job and met Elijah Leer and was gone, baby, gone.
****
“Restless Spirits Episode 509: Greenhaven.”
Transcript:
Elijah (V.O.): Greenhaven was once the largest institution for the mentally ill in the North West United States. From 1830 until 1973, wealthy families sent their loved ones here to receive treatment for not only mental illnesses, but other forms of perceived deviance - violence, criminality, homosexuality, and just general disobedience could at one time earn you a first class ticket to Greenhaven. Needless to say, the early experimental treatment methods for these ‘conditions’ were not something approved by the medical profession today, earning Greenhaven the nickname ‘The Butcher Shop’, and leading to its reputation as one of the most haunted places in America. I’m here with a team of paranormal experts to get to the bottom of the more than twenty reported sightings that have taken place since Greenhaven closed. Let’s see if we can find any Restless Spirits.
****
The episode had felt wrong from the start. Easy to say that now, but even then, Jane had felt the urge to call in sick, or not show up, or say something, make some sort of protest. Throughout her research on the building, she had felt a cold-fingered sickness creeping up her spine, heading for her throat. She had been with “Restless Spirits” for almost three seasons, and she hated the psychiatric institution episodes most of all. For one, it was deeply disturbing to witness the ways in which people had been abused for decades, the twisted sadism disguised as clinical curiosity by hundreds of doctors and nurses. Just as bad was the way these episodes fed into the public conception of the mentally ill as dangerous and frightening. Jane’s older brother was bi-polar, and he had dealt with this shit since he was a teenager. Jane had witnessed the effect of stigma firsthand, and she always hated the lurid fascination their audience seemed to have with “insane asylums.” There was something special about Greenhaven, however, something she felt the first time she entered the word into her search engine. It had housed so many patients, it was impossible not to stumble over the worst kinds of abuses. In the early 1900s, there was a special “Women’s Wing,” where medical professionals had gone to great lengths to cure such problems as hysteria, infertility and excessive masturbation. The tools with which this had been accomplished were available now only on hard-core fetish sites, but the pictures were enough to make Jane need a shower. She was a student of architecture; she was meant to be writing about arches; why the hell did she have to be witness to this kind of degradation?
“Baluster,” Jane whispered, “Dosseret.”
They arrived at Greenhaven in the late afternoon, sufficient light to shoot some exteriors before it got dark and spooky enough for the cast to go inside. Even in the sunshine, the large heritage building looked foreign in the barren landscape, black-barked leafless trees standing in contrast against the gray sky. Jane watched Elijah film his introductions, just for a little while and from a great enough distance as to not be noticed. If she was being honest, she had never thought this sort of thing would happen over a blond. A blond, for God’s sake, like a Ken doll. Jane had read enough Austen and Brontë to know he should be dark-haired with furrowed brows and a sharp, unhappy mouth. He shouldn’t have hair the color of honey, and pale green eyes, and freckles - freckles, of all things. It was beyond ridiculous.
Jane tore herself away, wandered through the front courtyard, trying to understand the strangeness she felt. The building cast shadows, she decided eventually, where there weren’t supposed to be shadows at all. It must be some kind of trick of light, an overhanging ledge that wasn’t visible at first glance, something like that. Jane watched the light shift over the many windows and wings of the institution, and as the sun faded, so did her confidence. Since her time with the show, she had been in countless run-down hotels and abandoned mansions, walked around in the darkness with only the thin beam of her flashlight to keep her from falling down a sagging flight of stairs. She hadn’t been afraid then. Well, there was the first episode, but that had been a set up from the start. After that, she became hard as brick, cold as beach glass. After that, she never screamed, never panicked, never heard a noise or saw a rush of movement she couldn’t explain. Madeline criticized her for it, said it was “bad television,” and that the “male viewers like a little fear, a trembling lip, a gasp, they go crazy for that shit.”
Jane hadn’t been afraid then.
She was afraid now.
“You doing okay, Green?”
Rocky, the tattooed tech expert had wandered over to her, faded “Nirvana” t-shirt clinging to his wiry frame. Despite his dyed blue hair and countless facial piercings, Rocky was a Golden Retriever - endlessly enthusiastic and affectionate. Beloved by everyone who knew him, Rocky always left Jane feeling slightly off balance. She was not used to such uncomplicated kindness.
“This place is pretty freaking eerie, right?” Rocky continued, “But I’ve seen worse. Check this out.”
He proudly waved his new Ghost Box at her, a small recording device meant to pick up “paranormal frequencies” too faint for human ears.
“Catches stronger AM frequencies than the last model, and the playback is twice as loud. You and Elijah start making out in the attic, I’ll be able to hear you in the basement, I shit you not.”
“Don’t say that,” Jane said, already feeling the heat across her cheekbones, the blush that was the bane of her existence since middle school.
“You’re cute when you’re bright red.”
&
nbsp; “Go away.”
“You’re cuter when you’re angry,” Rocky said with a laugh, ducking to avoid a weak slap to his shoulder.
“Jane, you ready for sound?” one of the production assistants called over to her, and she nodded, almost thankful for the escape.
“See you on the other side, Green. And try to keep the screaming to a minimum; it’ll fuck up my levels.” Rocky gave her a wink, and walked back toward the vans where his gear was still loaded, the only one on set allowed to touch it. Rocky had been hunting ghosts since he was a kid, owned the Geiger Counters, infrared cameras and EMF meters long before they put him on TV.
He threw one last look over his shoulder at Jane, and if she had had the slightest psychic inclination, if she had even believed in that garbage, she would have known. She should have known. Should have said something, done something to stop it -
But she wasn’t the psychic of the group. Elijah was.
And he did nothing.
****
The first time she met Elijah, she was struck by how ordinary he looked. Not at all like he had in the photographs with the mood lighting, just a normal guy in a t-shirt and jeans. He was tall and finely muscled, with the body of a swimmer rather than a psychic. He smiled at her with just the corner of his mouth, and as she shook his hand she felt like laughing, or screaming or something. Here it was, after being safe and remote her whole life - here was the thing that would ruin her. A blond with beautiful eyes and a beautiful wife.
They made small talk on camera, and she was struck by his low, gravelly voice, and the way he shrugged his shoulders and ducked his head whenever he talked about himself. He told her how their last historian had left to host an E-News show, and she promised she would never do that. He asked her what her greatest fear was, and when she said “Cancer,” he gave a short, sharp laugh of surprise. That night, when Madeline offered her the job, she said it was because Jane surprised him.
Bloody Sexy Anthology Page 3
