Mythophidia:
A Collection of Stories
Storm Constantine
Mythophidia: A Collection of Stories
© Storm Constantine 1998
Smashwords edition 2010
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, or events, is purely coincidental.
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Cover Artist: Peter Hollinghurst
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Contents
Kiss Booties Night-Night
An Old Passion
Just His Type
Remedy of the Bane
Sweet Bruising Skin
Curse of the Snake
Nocturne: The Twilight Community
Night’s Damozel
The Heart of Fairen De’ath
Poisoning the Sea
Such a Nice Girl
The Oracle Lips
Story History
Kiss Booties Night-Night
The sun, a fevered blister, hung low in a pagan sky of ceremonial colours; purple, red, deepest orange. She stood among the rattling sticks of petrified reeds, on the edge of the slow-moving slick they called the river. Behind her, the manse was dark, but for the winking violet lights of the security systems at eaves and porch. The garden was so beautiful. She never grew tired of it: the rank weeds; the blackened ivy over the walls of the ice-house; last year’s lilies not cleared away, fainting at the feet of this year’s forced growth that had been brought in from the hothouses of the city centre, soon to die out here in the air.
She put a tarless cigarette between her ink-lacquered lips and drew in a stream of chemical fume. Her boots caught the light of a security beam far across the river. Otherwise she was non-reflecting, her skin pale and flat like bleached ashes, her dark clothes a void against the descending night.
Maradissa Ferone, heiress. She played at having a career - buying and selling the more intriguing artefacts from the past that had escaped destruction into the present. She loved the past. Sometimes, she designed parties, which she sold to the sons and daughters of her dead parents’ friends; Creatures of the Contemporary - as they styled themselves - who lived further up-river, where the ugly old factories had been turned into apartments and the river strained and treated to become something sterile, which it was safe to touch, if not to drink.
Maradissa lived alone, although she was not reclusive. She was often sighted in the more expensive night-haunts of the Industrial Park, west of the river. Several times a year, she would throw a themed party at the manse. Many people thought the decay was contrived, but it was not. Maradissa took pleasure in watching the slow dissolution of all that her mother had worked to achieve; the manse, a rotting heritage. This was not a rebellion against her mother, or her mother’s success, but simply a statement that everything was running her way, now. Unlike her peers, Maradissa shunned cosmetic surgery, but for the decorative scarring on her breasts and stomach. She was always the same sex.
Tonight, a hurrying air, a sense of imminence, volted through her as she stood beside the river. Her skin prickled as she watched the roiling surface of the water. When this feeling came, she savoured it. It was fear. It was excitement. Life still held promise in the throes of apprehension. She was dressed, ready to drive to the Park, in period Gothic of the late twentieth century: tight, matte black, and spikes. Her hair was a frothing black halo, teased and stiff and lightless. Smoking the cigarette, she stoked her excitement. Sometimes she had to make it come like this; take in the chemicals, watch the poisonous sunset, psych herself up.
She threw the remains of her cigarette into the river, smoothed her taut black thighs, enjoying the feel of herself. There was power in the fume she had taken, power in the lowering night, the colours on the oily surface of the water. There were no seasons here and the smells of the land were confections. She turned away from the river.
Feeling watched.
She paused, knowing how the smoke could warp her senses. It could kindle a feeling of agitation, of being an actress for an invisible audience. It could bring with it a fleeting understanding of gods.
For a few sanctified moments, the silence of the garden was absolute, then the lilies rustled their thorns. Maradissa walked purposefully towards them. She was not afraid, and still young enough to believe in her own immortality. As she approached, something scrambled away from her; the foliage of life and death rattled loudly. Maradissa did not challenge, made no sound, although it was clear to her that whatever hid among the lilies was too large to be animal. Instead, she plucked an ivy cane from the ice-house wall and struck the place where the rustling had started.
Silence. Something crouched, something feared.
For a moment, Maradissa considered entering into the gripping shadows of the hanging plants. She even put one pointed boot upon the soil, then retreated. She would speak to her butler about it; the sniffers could inspect the grounds. She had no time to deal with intruders, certainly not those that ran from her.
He did not think she was beautiful, for to him she was beyond beauty, a goddess. She was remote and perfect, apparently unaware that her grounds were full of unseen gardening graduates, working to maintain the grave-yard disarray that she loved. Michael had worked in her gardens now for nearly a month, and only during the last week had realised, or become aware of, the strong feelings she kindled within him. At first, he had seen her only briefly, whenever she left the house to climb into her car. He’d been fascinated by her appearance, the bizarre clothes. Other gardeners joked cruelly about her eccentricity. They were scornful, resentful, jealous of her wealth and luxuries. They liked to make lascivious comments, speculate about how well she’d perform in bed. Most were scathing. Their bitter envy made them want to debase her. Michael did not feel like that. His fantasies of her did not involve sex. He wanted to speak to her, worship at her feet. Those feet, clad in shiny black, forced into the pointed shape. It must hurt her.
Every evening before sundown, a bus came to pick up the gardeners and take them back to their apartments in the Colonies, but for the last two days, Michael had lingered behind when his colleagues went off-duty. He’d worked out that as the mistress of the house never entered the gardens during the day, she must do so after dark. And he was right. Hidden among the ragged foliage, he could watch her undisturbed for a glorious half-hour or so, before the security systems were activated. She was regal, mistress of her domain as she stalked around its boundaries.
His trespassing had terrified him at first, for he knew the very least penalty for discovery would be dismissal, but he could not resist this private pleasure. If he was careful, she need never know. But then, he wanted her to know. One day, he might even dare to make his presence known to her, an abject slave to her power. In part, he wanted to invoke her outrage. He had never felt this way before.
Now,
he knew that she had sensed him in his hiding place. He’d watched her lean body become tense: so much shiny gloss in the ragged crepe of the dried leaves around her. He’d scuttled backwards into the comfortless arms of an ancient rhododendron, and here he had crouched down, peering through the thick leaves. She had walked towards him. He had smelled her perfume, the scent of her cigarette and the reek of the lacquer with which she styled her hair. He had never been able to study her so closely: a black and white ghost in the twilight. Her mouth, he realised, was small, its lack of generosity further emphasised by the severe black lipstick. This slight fault only made her more alluring. She’d stood, poised, a lithe cat ready to pounce, and he’d been frozen before her; terrified and longing for her predator eyes to fix upon him. Then, relaxing her muscles, she appeared to dismiss whatever sound had alerted her and wandered back towards the house.
Michael fell to his knees upon the damp earth. His heart pounded madly. She had known he was there, but she had not chased him off. Neither had she shown fear, but he’d not expected that, in any case. She had become a conspirator in his fantasy.
In the hallway of the house, Maradissa drew on her long black gloves and spoke to her magic mirror. In it, no reflection, but an image of her butler Leony, who lived some distance away in an apartment that Maradissa owned.
‘Something in the gardens tonight,’ Maradissa said, admiring her long fingers in their velvet. ‘Not invited. Check it for me?’
Already Leony was reaching for the pads that would activate the sniffers. Late. They should have come on before sundown, but Maradissa’s loitering by the river had probably deferred them.
‘Nothing unsanctified,’ Leony said, looking at a display Maradissa could not see. ‘Staff working late?’
Maradissa pulled a face at the mirror. ‘They watched me.’
Leony laughed. She was allowed certain privileges. ‘What do you expect?’
Maradissa smiled back, thinly. ‘No one stays here after sundown unless I request it. See to it, Lee.’ She made a pass across the mirror with her gloved hands.
‘Your word, oh mistress, is my command,’ said Leony, a diminishing genie in the mirror as it clouded and darkened and veiled its magic.
Before the sniffers were released to patrol the grounds, Michael had slipped like a shadow over the wall. It took a long time to walk back his apartment, and once there he felt too unnerved to eat his evening meal. As it lay cooling in its delivery slot, he lay on his bed, his stomach churning, and prayed to his goddess. She must hear him. He was her soul’s servant.
Maradissa met her friends, Crickforth and Evalie, in the bar called The Bat Cavern on Eldritch Boulevard, at the edge of the park. It was a haunt favoured by all those whose espoused Maradissa’s chosen fashion period; a lot of black was seen around. Crickforth and Evalie were drinking bright green cocktails from triangular glasses.
‘Babba, you just have to see!’ Evalie announced as Maradissa slid onto the fishnet-covered seat beside her.
‘See what?’ Maradissa peeled off one of her gloves and put it beside her drink, lifted her glass with the ungloved hand.
‘The most divine freaks!’
Maradissa looked at Crickforth. He had suffered a mild stroke recently, which had frozen the left side of his face. His parents had cut his allowance, owing to the fact that a new fashion drug had been responsible for the stroke, and were punishing him further by making him wait for corrective surgery. Crickforth, always an optimist, was using his deformity as a fashion accessory at present. He limped a bit and wore one black leather glove, a patch over his drooping eyelid. ‘She means the fetzers,’ he explained with half his mouth. ‘There’s a Fetzer Nite on.’
Maradissa sipped her drink. ‘Oh? So what?’ She delivered an admonishing glance to Evalie.
Evalie poked Maradissa’s arm. ‘Oh, where’s your sense of adventure? The fetzers represent your time, my bab, your time. Of course, you’re interested.’
Maradissa shook her head. ‘They most certainly do not represent my time, as you put it. What are you implying?’
Evalie would not be deterred. ‘But it was all the thing back then. ‘Eighties and ‘nineties chic! Fetish nights, glamour-wear.’
‘A little more than that,’ Maradissa said, quietly.
Her remark was ignored. ‘Mara, we must go and see them.’
‘We wouldn’t get in.’
‘With your contacts?’ Evalie chided. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Maradissa shrugged. For outrageous sights, they could visit any number of bars in the Park; there was always something to look at. The fetzers were something else. They thrived on debasement; or on debasing. Nowadays, there were therapies to see to that. Sexual and social neuroses could be worked out in group VR; safely. Maradissa had studied thoroughly the periods that interested her, but she was selective in what she adopted, or adapted, from the past. It was only a matter of time before the fetzers were persuaded to abandon their obsessions. Already, complaints had appeared on the bulletin boards. Whatever the fetzers had chosen to drag into the present, they had embellished and exaggerated it. Maradissa was aware of the rumours. It was unhealthy, and no protest about how it was all a kind of harmless fancy dress could convince those who saw it as a crack in the social seam. ‘I don’t think we should risk corrupting Crickforth,’ Maradissa said, with a smile.
Crickforth grimaced. ‘It wasn’t my idea!’
‘Mara, don’t be tiresome,’ Evalie said. ‘Have you no curiosity? It’s bizarre the fetzers got a licence for tonight’s meeting. Strings were tweaked, obviously!’
‘Not really,’ Crickforth argued, wiping spittle from the dead corner of his mouth. ‘It’s best to keep these things regulated.’
‘Well, whatever,’ Evalie said with a careless wave of her hand. ‘We could at least watch them going into the club.’
Maradissa considered this suggestion. The mere thought of the fetzers made her feel annoyed - or angry - she wasn’t sure which. Her father had once said to her, “You risk becoming what you resist”; to have a strong aversion to a thing somehow gave it power. ‘Where’s it being held?’
‘Key-mart’s multi-storey,’ Evalie answered lightly, sensing compliance.
The night club had once been a car park, in the days when there had been a plague of cars. Below it, the converted aisles of the supermarket housed counsellors’ booths, the tables and machines of sex yogis, and the darkened cells of light-therapists. Sometimes Maradissa and her friends took enlightenment drugs there or discussed non-existent dilemmas with earnest thin people. Naturally, the therapists and counsellors and self-appointed gurus had taken exception to the fetzer meeting taking place above their shrines, and had staged a non-violent protest outside, which everyone was ignoring.
The sidewalk was packed with neo-goths, zippers, body art flappers and haute couture junkies of every stripe. Chemical spliffs were passed freely among the cheerful throng that watched the fetzers walk up the ramp to the doors of the club. Most of the fetzers were in normal dress, clutching carryalls with a change of costume inside. They hurried past the on-lookers with set expressions. Others, mainly middle-aged male transvestites, who were into it for laughs rather than illicit pleasure, paraded and minced and made lewd gestures at the crowd, which was catcalled appreciatively.
Maradissa despised them all. To her it was an embarrassing display.
‘We must go in,’ said Evalie.
Maradissa glanced at Crickforth, who shrugged. ‘Could be fun.’
Maradissa shook her head, exhaled a tolerant sigh and then pushed through the crowd.
With her Ferone Corporation credit cards, Maradissa sailed past the door-keepers, Crickforth and Evalie in tow. People in the crowd, who knew them, shrieked out amused and gentle obscenities, at which Evalie, bringing up the rear, made dismissive signals.
Inside, it was cold, with localised areas of intense heat. Maradissa shivered. The air was red. ‘Changing room?’ asked a uniformed receptionist.
r /> Maradissa afforded him a scornful glance. ‘Bar.’
In the event, Maradissa found it hard to be disgusted. The fetzers were playing at it. The occasion was no worse than a Gothic Renaissance night at the Pit Vault, only the costumes were sillier, and the music rather more vapid. Two men crawled past her on all-fours, leashed to a tall woman in badly-applied makeup, who was possibly a man. One sniffed Maradissa’s feet. ‘Now puppies!’ said the leash-woman, and tapped her charges affectionately with a whip that appeared to be made of embroidery silk. The puppies looked at one another and giggled; such a fun game. Maradissa eyed them condescendingly, while Evalie hooted in pleasurable distaste.
After a while, the plethora of exposed genitals, naked breasts framed in straps and metal, bare tattooed buttocks and costumes of extreme brevity lost their shock value. Maradissa sat at the bar and gossiped with Evalie about people they knew. Crickforth was discussing the benefits of a new amenities centre in the Tech Park up-river, with a man who was encased in black leather from crown to toe, but for an open zip which exposed his mouth, and a hole at groin from which a flaccid penis hung.
‘We could be anywhere, in any bar,’ Maradissa said, interrupting Evalie mid-sentence. ‘This is just another theme club. Only the clothes, or lack of them, make it different.’
Evalie nodded. ‘Still, I wanted to come. I wanted to see.’
Maradissa slid off her stool. ‘Can’t help wondering what I’ll find in the wash-room, though!’
‘Want me to come with you?’
Maradissa rolled her eyes. ‘Ev, please!’ She pushed her way into the crowd.
The fetzers were friendlier than members of other cult-groups Maradissa had met. Her own neo-Gothic culture tended towards cliquishness and aloofness. Here, everyone she passed smiled and greeted her as if she had known them for years. It seemed foolish to maintain a frosty attitude.