“My Jefferson,” she said, and maybe he imagined a slight hiss in that name, or maybe not. She approached him in what was nearly a gliding motion. Suddenly she was standing before him as if frames had been removed from the scene. She was as tall as he tonight, and nearly too slim. Her eyelashes were very thick. He wondered if they were also reading the fashion magazines of the 1970s and storing the images away for later use.
She was beautiful, in this disguise. Yet Jefferson knew that sometimes the disguises slipped, and when that happened he felt the fear curdle within himself and something abhorrent stir in the most primitive part of his being. As he looked into her face he thought that her eyes were too pale. They were almost white, and the pupils were more catlike than round. As soon as he thought this, the color of her eyes became more warmly blue and the slits of the pupils rounded.
“Is that more pleasing?” she asked, in a voice that mixed a husky taunt with a little girl’s high, soft register.
Sometimes, also, she couldn’t get the voice right at first.
He thought he said yes. He didn’t know for sure, because this was all dreamlike to him and blurred around the edges and very often he only heard himself speak as if in an echo from an unfathomable distance.
“You are looking much pleasing yourself,” she told him. She fingered the knot of his necktie. Her fingers were maybe a little bit too long and the nails looked like white plastic. “Much pleasing for me to look upon.” The face came closer to his and the intense blue eyes peered deeply, as if choosing a starting point for dissection. “My Jefferson, come to play with his harlot.” Her mouth gave a twitch. “I mean to say…starlet.”
Yes, he thought he answered. Starlet.
Her hands—had the fingers corrected themselves?—fluttered to his face and slowly ran over his cheeks and down to his jawline. Her smile never changed, but it was a cunningly human smile, with cunningly perfect human teeth behind the lips. What most unnerved him was that she never blinked. Never. And maybe she couldn’t, because even though he sometimes thought Please blink…please blink in a kind of panic-edged plea, she did not, and she didn’t mention it though he knew she was always reading his mind.
He could feel her in there, exploring. Always curious. Lifting up the rocks of his life and observing what scuttled from beneath. She knew everything about him, had likely known from their very first meeting. When was that? Time was rubbery, a foreign object. Two months after that day with Regina and the pistol? When he, Alex Smith, Doug Hammerfield and Andy Warren had taken one of the pickup trucks out of New Eden to try to find gasoline somewhere. That night in late June, when the sky was streaked with blue lightning and after a few miles heading south Doug said nervously from the backseat, “Jeff…we’d better turn around. We’ve gone too far. Don’t you think?”
Everything was dark except for flashes in the sky. They had containers in the back and hoses to siphon gas with if they found any. The regular stations around New Eden had long before gone dry and shut down. And the problem was, the men from New Eden were using up too much gasoline in the search for more, having to go further and further away from their refuge. Everything was dark in the world but for the cones of the headlights, and one of those was growing dim.
“Let’s go back,” Alex had said. “There’s nothing out here.”
“Try again tomorrow,” Doug added. “When we can see something.”
“Yeah,” Jefferson agreed. “Yeah, okay.”
He steered the truck onto a dirt road to back up and turn around, and suddenly there in front of them, standing in the glare of the dim-eyed headlights, was a group of twelve faceless, black-garbed Cypher soldiers. The creatures were staring up at the tortured sky, their weapons also upraised.
“Oh shit!” Andy shouted, and Doug shouted frantically Shut up, shut up. Jefferson tried to slam the truck into reverse and peel Firestones, but something slipped, and the gears ground together with a noise to wake the Confederate dead in their moss-covered graves. Several of the Cyphers took note of this, and turned their faceplates and their weapons upon the shuddering truck.
“They’re gonna kill us!” Alex yelled, nearly in Jefferson’s ear.
Jefferson saw no way out but the way he had always known: plow forward and damn it all. He found first gear and sank his foot to the floorboard. The truck crashed into some of the Cyphers even as others were blurring away, into whatever zone or dimension they were able to enter. Brown liquid splattered across the windshield. The dim headlight blew out. “Go, go, go!” Alex shouted. They were speeding along a dirt road at over seventy miles an hour, hitting every bump between here and the lap of Jesus.
Looking back through the swirl of dust, Doug gave a strangled moan.
Jefferson saw in the sideview mirror a rush of white-hot flame coming at the truck, like a floodwater of fire. In an instant it was upon them, too fast for him to avoid; there was no outrunning the speed of that flame, no way to escape it. The fire ate the back of the truck and melted the tires and exploded the gas tank, and as it turned the interior into a blast furnace Jefferson Jericho…
…found himself sitting on a terrace overlooking a green-shadowed garden. At the center of the garden was a silvery pond. Yellow and red fruit that resembled apples, but were strangely shaped, hung from the trees. The air smelled of air conditioning, a little metallic. He realized he was wearing a white robe of some kind of silky material, and on his feet were white sandals that might have been rubber. He looked at his unburnt hands and ran a hand through his unburnt hair, and he gasped aloud at the idea that indeed—in spite of all of his sins—he had been admitted to Heaven. He nearly wept.
And that was when she glided out onto the terrace, wearing a gown that sparkled with a million colors under the artificial sun, and she smiled at him with a mouth that still needed some work, and she said in a voice that was like listening to a dozen voices in a dozen registers at once, “I have been reading. It is written…the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Is that not correct, Leon Kush Man? Or prefer you do Jeffer Son Jericho?”
As Jefferson tried to stand up and, off-balance, fell to the glistening stones that floored the terrace, she stood over him with a blinding white glare at her back, and she lifted her too-long arms toward him and said, “No fear of me. I have saved you. Do I speak well?”
Yes…yes…you speak well…yes.
“I am learned. Learning,” she corrected herself. “So much to…” She cast about for the right word. “Absorb,” she said. “I am a…” Again there was a pause while she gathered her words. “…lowly student,” she went on, her voices rising and falling while Jefferson Jericho thought he had not entered Heaven but had been pulled into Hell. “Ah!” she said, with a faint smile below the unblinking red-tinged eyes. “You must explain to me that concept.”
Somewhere in that time, he slept. When he awakened he was sitting in his blue Adirondack chair overlooking New Eden in the morning light, dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing when he and the three other men had left the night before, and there was a little irritation—like a Tennessee mosquito bite—at the back of his neck. He felt woozy and weak; what was wrong with the sunlight? Where was the sun? The light had a blue cast, and the sky was white and featureless. And the clothes he had on…the same, but not the same. The material of his shirt…the same gray-on-white stripes, but…the fabric had a faintly oily feel, as did the khaki trousers, as if they’d been manufactured from an unknown synthetic.
“Regina!” he called as he stood up and stumbled toward the house. “Regina…baby!”
He learned he’d been gone for two days. Doug Hammerfield, Alex Smith and Andy Warren had not returned. And something had changed about New Eden. It was soon discovered that trying to drive, walk, or bike out of New Eden brought you right back to New Eden. There was no way out. It was an eternal circle, one for Dante’s appreciation. And the damnedest thing was, you were just turned around without realizing it, and there you were…home again, in the realm of the High R
ollers.
At six o’clock in the morning, twelve noon and six o’clock in the evening white squares of what appeared to be chunks of tofu appeared on the dinner tables, along with smooth metal receptacles of a chalky milk-like substance. No one could stand and watch the items appear; they were just there, between breaths and eyeblinks. No one could likewise watch the receptacles disappear and yet they did, even put in a box and locked away in a cupboard. They could not be dented or crushed. The food and drink had a slightly bitter taste, yet they filled the stomach and even became habit-forming. Some said they believed this food gave them the most beautiful dreams, and they began to sleep their lives away.
There was no rain, no storms, no change of weather. It was always a blue-tinged sunny day with a featureless white sky. The light bloomed in the morning and faded in the evening. The grass stopped growing but remained green, like artificial turf. The leaves on the trees never changed, and never fell. The Fourth of July was Halloween was Thanksgiving was Christmas was New Year’s Day was Valentine’s Day, no difference. New Eden had running water and electricity. Bulbs never burned out. Toilets never stopped up or overflowed. Nothing needed painting, unless you wanted to paint. Nothing in the houses—dishwashers, garage doors, clocks, DVD players, washing machines—ever broke down. When the garbage was taken out, it was removed from the green bins by unseen and unheard maintenance crews.
New Eden had become the most perfect place not of this earth, for Jefferson Jericho and the others had come to grasp the truth through many late night council sessions. Their dream town now existed in some other dimension, some other slice of space and time, protected by the Gorgons from the war that ravaged the real world.
Protected, as well, from the Cyphers. From all pressures and worries of the tormented earth. Food and drink were supplied, and all the essentials of human life down to soap and dishwashing detergent. Even the toilet paper never ran out, but was on a continuous roll that replenished itself when necessary. Some found the paper to be very thin, and smelling somewhat like the disinfectant of a hospital room.
No woman had become pregnant, in the time since New Eden had been transported. No one had died, not human nor pet. Marianne Dawson’s cervical cancer had simply vanished, and Glenn O’Hara’s emphysema had gone away. Though eighty-four-year-old Will Donneridge still walked with a cane due to his hip implant, he was doing fine and walked the streets almost every day.
Many people walked the streets, almost every day.
And some, sleepless, also walked at night. Sometimes the dogs howled at night too, but it was a noise one had to get used to.
Our ant farm, Jefferson thought as he looked upon the creature in her elegant gown of black and gold, with her long black hair and her pale blue eyes that, unblinking, saw and knew everything. Here is our creator.
Whether she was one entity or many in one flesh, he did not know. Whether she was truly female or not, he dared not guess. And what she really looked like, without the disguise…he dreaded the thought and had to banish it as best he could.
Because here she was, his harlot starlet from the stars, and as she stroked his cheeks and played with the heroic-looking cleft in his strong and noble chin, she also began to feed him the mind-pictures that were his undoing. She knew all of his past deeds and misdeeds; she knew the face, aroma, and touch of every MILF and every drug- or pain-addled teenaged girl in every motel room he had ever paid for with his hidden account Visa card. She now offered them up to him, the ferrago of fleshly feasts that had over time become the central obsession of his life, and so potent were these pictures of his passionate past that—alien creature or not, female or not—Jefferson Jericho was responding to these mental images, and this was the true power he had come to know because it was not so much about the sinning as it was about the winning.
You know I compel to disrobe you.
Had she spoken with words, or with her mind? Her mouth had not moved; her understanding of the human language was still fractured, but her understanding of her toy was perfection itself.
Her fingers were working at his tie. He knew she enjoyed undressing him; it seemed almost an ecstatic ritual to her, for as she let his Ben Silver tie drop, took off his coat, and began to unbutton his Brooks Brothers shirt, her eyes were aflame like meteors in the night. As she unbuckled his belt and unzipped his trousers, her face in her ecstasy seemed to suddenly become like soft wax and shift on its bones, and Jefferson had to quickly look away lest he lose his hard-on…but she sensed this in an instant, and flooded his mind so thoroughly with memories of past conquests, moans, and orgasmic shivers from a legion of females who had fallen under his spell, that he quite simply was himself spellbound.
My Jefferson. Take my hand.
He held up his trousers with one hand and with the other took hers. It was, as always, almost the feel of human flesh but not quite. She led him to the bed, where he sat down to allow her to remove his polished shoes and his socks, which she did slowly…again, almost as an ecstatic ritual. Then she—slowly, slowly—pulled off his trousers and his blue-checked boxers, and she commanded him mentally to lie on his back upon the bed while she slid down beside him. Once in position, she began to play with that large part of him that she seemed to find as fascinating as any female who had never flown between the stars.
When Jefferson’s mind began to betray him, the Gorgon mistress injected him with fresh memories. She made the dalliances of twenty years ago as real as the moment, and all he could do was drift in a territory of heated sexual dreams while she pulled and stretched and twisted him between her hands as if testing the strength of the material he was made of. Then suddenly the frames skipped once more and she was undressed, and her not-quite-human-flesh was pressed hard against him. When he dared to look into her face in the yellow candlelight he saw unwanted shadows there and he quickly looked away, but all the time she was feeding him his own past, the parade of images from a life of lustful debauchery, scenes contained within the walls of countless motels and apartments and the occasional back room of a strip club. She gave him back the world he had made for himself, and he was proud of his accomplishments, proud of his power to move at his whim any female object, proud of his abilities and attributes and gifts from God, proud of his silver tongue and golden persona, proud proud proud until he was nearly bursting aflame with pride.
The flame lit him up. She was trying to kiss him but she didn’t know how to kiss, it was all open mouth that belonged to a hollow mask but he couldn’t think that, couldn’t go there that this creature mounting him was not human and oh oh back to a steamy shower in a Motel Six with a German exchange student named Jana who had come in wanting a good deal on a used Jeep Wrangler, and the wetness and softness and murmuring enveloped him and stole him away.
He was inside her now, pounding her as he would have any human female, a mindless rhythm that built to an explosive release. She was damp within, and it passed through his feverish mind that this was false too, part of the disguise, some kind of artificial lubricant developed in an alien lab…and then he was plunged back into a memory, examining a birthmark in the shape of a cat’s paw on the left breast of a blonde woman named Georgia May who used to work at his bank in Little Rock.
As he turned her over on the bed or she turned him over, which was difficult to say who did what because the frames were skipping, Jefferson plunged deeply inside her and heard her give a soft hissing noise. He kept driving into her with all his strength and with all his past amours tumbling through his mind. He had endurance, he could keep this up until he decided they both had had enough; it had never been love, with anyone, it had always been the winning of something or someone, the praise, the attention, the admiration that had kept him going from one to the next to the next. And so too, did he perversely enjoy this admiration from his starlet harlot.
Then, as sometimes happened, as Jefferson plunged into his Gorgon mistress, a hot fleshy thing clamped upon him, there in her wet depths, and held him fast. He felt
a shiver of panic, of terror, that passed away in the wiry embrace of a small-boned Asian stripper named Kitten who always smelled to him of burning leaves. And then, as sometimes happened in the heat of their encounters, small tentacle-like things began to slide around the backs of his thighs to hold him more firmly still, and here he squeezed his eyes shut and gave himself up fully to the memories she offered, for even in the bedrooms of the past, Jefferson Jericho could feel her coming apart at her seams, and things slithering out of her false body to snake-grip his own.
No memory she offered up, however lush, was enough to overcome this part of it. But she tried, and as she pumped his mind full of decadent opiates of his own making, a tentacle wound around the base of his balls and tightened there while another flicked and played with them, and deep inside her the fleshy thing clamped hard once…twice…a third time and he came to the tune of a blonde vagabond named Marigold sitting on a bed naked playing “Greensleeves” on a beat-up acoustic guitar.
The thing inside his Gorgon mistress—as strong as another hand—milked him. The tentacles writhed and whipped. He had never seen these things, but he knew what they must be. She was gracious enough to put them away when she was done with him. When she had wrung him out the fleshy clamp released him, and in a dazed and drifting dream-state he wondered if they were using his seed to make hybrids of human and…what? But it was no matter to him now, for though he feared this creature, and when she called him by that device planted in the back of his neck, he had to go into the bathroom and throw up, he was so afraid…he had to admit in the long-lingering afterglow that she was one great lay.