My cock throbs against my trunks. I remove them. I kneel, closer to the entangled bodies, closer to his body, closer to hers, close to—I feel the heat of Sonya’s flesh, feel the heat of Paul’s. I’m intoxicated by the smell of spilled wine, sweetened sweat, the sweet rancidity of heated lust. I’ve achieved a sense that springs from heated intimacy when—as in drinking together but not being drunk—there’s a stark lucidity that shoves reality away, becomes reality, and with that comes a sense of terrible unity in the same overwhelming current, and—alert—I know we’re all flowing in the same clashing tides of blinded lucidity and false reality.
I lean over the bodies.
Paul is holding Sonya sideways and—
“Taste it, man!”
—toward me, close. He’s clasping one of her breasts and—
“Go on, man!”
—giving it to me. A sweetness startles my mouth. I’m licking her breast, licking the dregs of drying wine, the taste of his saliva. The rich flesh presses against my mouth. I savor it, the wine, the flesh, the—
“Yeah!” He smiles the distorted smile.
My head pulls away from Sonya’s breast.
Paul straddles her shoulders. His cock over her mouth, her tongue darts out, moistening its full length, around its thickness, preparing it. In a violent thrust, he penetrates her. Her body quivers. He presses in, more, seeking a deeper depth with each push, pulling out, then lunging in deeper. His hands press her shoulders down. Her lips part as if to draw his to hers. He pulls out of her and aims his cock at her face. He slaps her lips with his cock, he slaps her mouth, slaps across her face, hard, harder, faster. He is grasping his cock with one hand, and the harsh sound of slapping comes more from his hand than the cock it’s holding. She tries to wrench her head away. The hard slapping of his cock and his clenched hand strike harder. Her head, held down by one of his hands, tries to pull away.
All charade, acts performed many times before, embellished each time, a play of control and submission, nothing more, nothing else, allowed by both, angered dirty commands and threats permitted, intimations of violence permitted, Paul’s game of rampant lust … I shake my head to clear steady confusions. No, it’s Paul’s voice that jarred me into the present, his low, guttural demand—
“What the fuck, man?”
—ruptured by words, shouted at Sonya between calls to me:
“Fucken whore … you want it in your whore cunt? … Hey, man! … One cock’s not enough for you, bitch? … Man! … You want two cocks in you, don’t you, bitch, don’t you?”
It’s real, the rage, the angry need, the detestation.
She mutters, sounds.
He smothers her words. “Take it all the way down, you fucken whore! Keep it in your fucken throat—” His voice is a growl, a groan, a voice I haven’t heard before, the dangerous voice of a wild animal in heat.
He shoves his pulsing cock into her mouth. She gasps, gags. Her head attempts to jerk away. His hands press down on her shoulders. Her hands on his chest push—attempt to push—
—pretend to push him away—
Her nails slide over his flesh. He utters a sound like laughter as she makes a choking sound.
“Choke, fucken cunt, keep it in your fucken throat, bitch, keep it there, and you’ll get two.”
Jerking her head back forcefully, she says,” Bastard, bastard!”
“Man, come on, man!” Paul looks up at me with a mean, cruel, maddened smile. He pushes her off him. “Kneel, bitch!”
“No!”
“Kneel! Beg! Beg for my cock!”
“Fuck me!”
“Say it louder!”
“Fuck me! Bastard, bastard!”
He pushes her back, mounts her, opens her legs wide, enters her in a lunge, pulls out, then in deeper.
She squirms under him. “Goddamned bastard!”
“This’ll shut you up.” He raises one hand, over her face, his fingers clench. She twists away from the menacing fist about to come down.
“Paul!” I shout—
—and the fist holds midway down, threatening, and he’s looking at me, smiling, mouth twisted, smiling—
His fist tenses over her, tightening.
I reach for his arm and hold it. It struggles against my grasp. I clasp it with both hands. The fist begins to unclench, unclenches. I release his hand and it falls to his side. His mouth opens into a roar, laughter that seems to come from beyond him. It stops, choked in his throat, and he smiles the distorted smile.
Straining inside her, owning her, he shouts at her. “Tell me how it feels, whore-bitch. Tell me how it feels. Tell me! Tell me how it feels!” The distorted face turns toward me. “You scared of the cunt? The bitch wants more, man”—pumping into her—”you scared, you scared?—give her what she wants, man—”
I’m engulfed in a wave of heat, outside and inside, within a current of hot darkness. I see light-slashed silhouettes of naked bodies, naked struggling beautiful bodies. I feel a fierce sexual yearning tinged with meanness and something unrecognized. I stand over naked flesh, breasts, legs, hands, lips, cunt, cock.
Paul forces her body over him, his cock in her. He shouts at me: “What ya waitin for, man?”
Desire implodes. I’m reeling in a tide of rage and desire and rage and lustful urgency as the man pushes the woman up and down on his cock and his voice spews its litany of detestation.
“Cock-hungry whore, cunt, tell me how it feels. How does it feel? You want two cocks?”
I watch bodies soaked with oil and sweat and the glaze of dried wine, naked straining limbs, straining muscles offered up to the heat to be devoured by the dark night.
The man’s face is the face of a demon, and he is challenging me and laughing and I stare at him and our eyes interlock and I break the stare and look at the woman’s bare skin, dark velvet, her face a mask of passionate rage.
His cock batters faster. “Come on, man, we’ll fuck her together, man, two cocks in the bitch’s cunt.” The man’s hands part the woman’s buttocks, and he shouts at me:
“Fuck her in the ass, my cock in her cunt—yeah!—fucken bitch in heat, both cocks in her, man, both cocks, tearing her cunt, splitting her ass!”
I fling myself over the woman’s body that strains over the man’s. My cock slides on oil and sweat, trying to locate the crack between the woman’s buttocks. I raise my hips over her, to lunge. I see the man’s contorted sweat-drenched face.
“Fuck her like a dog!”
I arch my body.
“Fuck her like you fuck a man!”
The woman spews an angry sound.
My cock slips over the woman’s buttocks.
My face presses against hers, my tongue searches for her lips, my mouth probes hers to open it, to bite her lips, to taste blood.
Moisture—
The moisture of wine—
The moisture of sweat—
The moisture of—
Tears!
The woman’s tears—
Sonya’s tears!
“Sonya!” I cry and stand up.
She pulls herself away. Paul lies on the floor. Kneeling, Sonya slaps at his face. “Bastard, fucking bastard!”—she slaps at his body— “fucking bastard, bastard!”—and she bends over him, pushing at his body, shoving him over with the strength of her rage, another slide, quickly, quickly, his face down, his legs open. He lies still.
“Fuck him!” she shouts at me. “Fuck him like a dog!”
Then Paul whimpered: “Fuck me.”
32
I stepped into the boathouse and released the rowboat. I pushed it onto the lake. I grasped the oars. I was on the lake, letting the boat drift, rowing, drifting on the dark water, rowing, drifting, drifting….
Awake, I was standing. The boat had reached the edge of the moribund island. Purple dawn was descending.
With my eyes closed, I faced the deserted island, preparing for what I knew I would see up close: tangles of shadows, gnarled knots of darkness,
the ashen debris of a long-smoldering fire that might seem still to attempt to flare out of decay, a house gutted by flames, walls crumpled into a mound of rotting debris.
I opened my eyes.
In the blue mist of twilight melting into the brightness of the new day, there it stood: the large house intact, the surrounding grounds unviolated. As if the conspiracy of darkness and shadows I had witnessed never existed.
But it had, must have.
I rowed around the island, to the back.
There it was, what I had seen, the devastation, an ashen crumbling cave carved out of the large house by fire that had ravaged only this side of the island. It was all here—only here—ripped shreds of wood, mutilated pieces of what once was, the jetsam of catastrophe.
I rowed away.
I tied up the rowboat in its place. As I ran to my room, silence battered my ears. I threw myself into bed and longed for sleep.
I woke and remembered footsteps, someone entering my room and fleeing when I stirred. I stumbled back into sleep, and woke again as if I was being yanked out of a deep dark depth—and I saw it propped against the typewriter on the desk, a book. I got up. I read the book’s title:
The Origin of Evil
by
V. K. Edelstein
I lifted it, ominously heavy, and set it flat before me on the table. Inserted within its pages was an old newspaper or magazine article—difficult to tell which, since it was old, though preserved, cut out, and carefully folded—and there was with it a yellow sheet on which were scribbled words. The sheet had been crumpled as if discarded but pressed back and restored. The footsteps I had heard—they belonged to whoever had brought this book and its inserts to me; I did not remember the inserts when I first encountered the book in the library.
I opened its first pages and read:
Foreword
The matter of evil, most often referred to as “the problem of evil,” has been a subject explored throughout time. Every religion has examined it. Philosophers have added volumes. Authors and poets have dramatized it. All have claimed to have found an answer. Some have claimed the answer.
It is not my intention to deal with the beliefs advanced by established religious or philosophical doctrines. Those are widely recorded and analyzed.
In this book, I shall delve only into theories rejected by establishmentarians, beliefs dismissed as derived by cults, invented and perpetuated as myths, shunned as superstition—often as the work of the Devil himself. A main determination in my choices for exploration is that they have spawned notable followings and disciples, adherents that prevail.
I opened the book. The placement of the inserted article signaled this page for attention. I read:
Professor Emanuel Elgard of Hamburg University is the proponent of the theory of the Indomitability and Endurability of Evil, a theory that became widely popular at the inception of the twentieth century. Subsequently it has predominated as the dogma of a secret society with many devoted adherents. In dealing with Dr. Elgard’s ideology, or theology as its disciples claim, I shall only quote in order to preserve the tone of the author’s presentation, since even devotees of his philosophy consider it at times arcane, elevated in language, elements they claim are intentional, including its flights of verbiage.
In approaching his beliefs thus, I will ensure accuracy.
I now venture into Dr. Elgard’s philosophy:
“What happens to Evil when Its flames are snuffed? Does It hide? Does It wait to spring out again? Like matter, Evil can be neither created nor destroyed. It is an entity. It exists in perpetuity. It was and is and will be. It remains festering in the soil of great violence.”
Those words—I had read them. No, I had heard them. Paul had uttered something like that when we arrived at the edge of his island. He had spoken—quoted—them as he stared toward the vacated island. He had laughed the words away, deriding them as “lofty shit.”
I pushed the book back. I was in no mood—a headache was pulsating at my temples—to read any more. I have always disdained mysticism, including its esoteric language, although in college I admired the brooding of the sixteenth-century metaphysical poets.
Heat had not abated. Sweat was running down my body. I staggered to the shower. Only when the cold water drenched my flesh did I realize I had remained undressed since last night. Last night … contorted bodies tossing.
I dried myself. I put on the army fatigues I had brought. As if it was pulling me back, I returned to the book. I read where I had left off:
Alerted about other fertile soil, the seeds of violence already planted, and invited to invade, as the Daemon summons His willing victims …
I halted, jolted by the aroused association: “… willing victims.” That resonating phrase had become hateful to me since Paul had connected it to me. Did he really believe its implication that it granted him license for cruelty? I needed to disbelieve that. I needed to believe that his advocacy of that implication was a prop for his self-vaunted image as indomitable.
More words from the enraged book:
Evil prepares to sweep forth to new territory, Its new awaiting destination, moving ever closer like an Omen on black clouds that burst into shadows of shadows that exist with no need of light, and It will soar on the wings of the Daemon from Its previous dregs of decay, leaving it abandoned, some might claim cleansed—
My impression of the house on the island had been of catastrophic darkness, but only earlier a flood of new light had cleansed that view. Confusion was easily explained: I had viewed the distant island from several vantages and altered light…. I had to stop imposing meaning on this esoteric verbiage.
I read more:
Resistance to Evil violates man’s nature, once he has perceived Its beckoning. To deny Its power, to interfere with Its ineluctable progression, is not possible. It is to be accepted and welcomed and joined….
The quagmire of prose, wandering phrases, repetition—all spoke of a hallucinating, sick mind, the terrifying raging of a madman. How was it ever taken seriously?
I felt dizzy, as if I was trapped within the zigzagging colors and lines of the painting over the desk—I had just looked up at it; the towel I covered it with last night had fallen. Last night … angry flesh, beautiful angry flesh….
I flipped through more pages, grasping a word here, a phrase there: “the miasma of rot … waves of roaring silence advancing … the flowering of evil seeds … mournful flowers of sweet decay … flowing from the site of devouring fire …”
I pushed the book away decisively. But its words festered: “… fertile soil, seeds of violence planted …” I closed my eyes, rejecting the overpowering urge to force connections with this hysterical foreboding.
I would leave it exactly as I found it, signaling to whoever had placed it here that I had ignored it. A stupid prank! Stanty! Goddamn that son of a bitch, his fucken prank. He saw me in the library looking for that crazy fucken book….
Urgent coded information …
The effects of last night, the heat, the liquor … naked bodies glowing with oil, knifed into white gleaming slashes by the moon.
“Seeds of evil planted … fertile soil … a new awaiting destination …” Just the ridiculous spewing of an insane mind.
I needed to leave this room, go outside; yes, and all would be as it had been, just like other times.
“Incipient Evil waiting to erupt within the sultry heat …”
Perspiration coated my skin like a sheet of steam.
I glance once at the book I had closed. It lies there, dark, commanding, radiating its message of violence swept forth within dark clouds shattering into black shadows of shadows without light…. The murmuring undercurrent I had once detected.
Absurd. I was tired, reeling from last night’s liquor. I had allowed my own fevered mind to range. My head was clearing. I felt like laughing at myself for the seriousness with which I had been responding to this raging madman Elgard.
With a sen
se of frustrated resignation that I should feel compelled to continue to attend to this cache of strange information, and despite fearing that what I would uncover might compound rather than clarify new questions, I reached for the printed article, and—noticing immediately that dates and location had been inked over, rendering the account timeless—I read:
33
Catastrophe on Island Remembered
Two Survivors Still Missing
After years, mystery and rumors still surround the fiery catastrophe that erupted on a private island on an unnamed lake outside the village of . The only two survivors, an unidentified young man and a young woman, remain unaccounted for despite repeated attempts to locate them. The debacle claimed the lives of all twelve guests—including, it has been claimed without authentication, defrocked Cardinal , missing since the notorious scandal involving of and the from sent him into undisclosed exile. Unverified accounts, all that remain, assert that he was the secret owner of the island bought under a false name. Whether the fire burst out in a natural way or was set by someone on the island is unknown at the time this account is being written on the supposed anniversary of the tragedy.
The fire ravaged a section of the house where all the guests convened, entrapping them. Some broke out by shattering windows and tried futilely to reach the lake. “Fire must have spread with the speed of a demonic creature,” according to Captain (now deceased), the first official responder to the fire. Access was impeded by the location on the lake and by the attempted and blocked influx of the curious rowing to the island alerted by flames seen miles away.
Despite the ensuing chaos and futile attempts by firefighters to reach the conflagration, Captain was able briefly to question the two young witnesses apparently employed on the island and therefore quartered in a part of the house left astonishingly unaffected by the fire.
In his hurried report of his encounter with the two survivors, Captain maintained that “the boy and the girl appeared surprisingly composed though on reflection they were in a state of shock, staring down blankly. The only explanation for the fire the girl was able to convey, in words I wrote immediately and exactly lest I forget, was that ‘gray fog thick as smoke would not lift, heating the shadows.’ The boy added his own babbled words, declaring that ‘it was the heat of the dark clouds that turned into flames as if the lake was on fire and burning smoke was racing away.’” The fact that Captain was himself in shock may explain his confused recollection, which some have questioned.