Works/What She Wants

I gave myself Medusa hair a few years ago, I'm not sure exactly when. It's not really snakes and it doesn't turn people to stone. It just moves around.

I can always feel it wriggling at the roots, like a scalp massage that never ends. It slides tendrils down my cheek, to coil tentatively around my neck for a moment, like a strangler vine. It sways against my back, between my shoulder blades, and the tips of the tufts barely tickle my ass as they writhe. Sometimes I pull great masses of it to the front, let the long thick strands drop across and between my breasts, so I can feel them undulate on my nipples and over the skin of my stomach. It won't reach much lower than my hips, but I can do that part myself.

It keeps me from getting bored. Sometimes. For short intervals.

I am four hundred and forty years old. I was born on the day of the coronation of Elizabeth I. I have been to places on this globe that no one knows about. I have taught myself everything I have any interest in knowing. I am the child of a mortal arcane and an old god, and I have no idea how long I will live. And I get bored easily.

"A woman is approaching from the south," Pleure says, in the whisper only I can hear. I sigh and pull my fingers through the lowest layer of my hair one final time. It tends to tangle itself, having nowhere else to go.

Once there was a ring of stones on this hill; then there was a castle, then a Roman encampment, then another castle, then a mansion, then another mansion, and then I think another - I lose count. It's hard to say what's here now. The hill doesn't want human-made resting upon it, but, having tried life with and without, I prefer indoor plumbing and a dry bed. So I reached a compromise with the hill. When I found the manor, the hill magic was crumbling it, wrecking it slowly. I got the hill to rebuild the house its way. Now the house is a part of the hill, or the hill is part of the house; take your pick.

This room, for example, was once a great hall, with enormous wooden crossbeams high overhead. The beams all were rotting away. The vaulted ceiling is now supported by the trunks and crossing branches of six enormous oaks, one in each corner. Outside, the trees' canopies make it hard to see that there is a room below. In fact trees and brush hide the manor so well that you have to be very close to the front doors to see that a house is there at all. The hill likes it that way. So do I.

But I suppose I'd be unhappy if the house were completely concealed and forgotten. Then no one would ever come looking.

"Is she angry, Pleure? Curious? Frightened?" Now I'm in the high room, a garret where I can meditate and watch the whole house like a ghost. Like Pleure.

I never intended Pleure to be the way she is. Enchantment gone wrong; that doesn't happen very often. I can't tell if she's happy - she'd never give me an honest answer - but I think so. Sometimes late at night, when I'm being especially restless, she'll wrap herself around me, a thousand invisible hands touching me and massaging me, until I relax. I don't ask her to do this.

Sometimes I will be lying in bed, and she touches me like a lover, but one who can be in many places at once. I never know where the next caress will land, and I jump a little bit, startled again and again. Eventually she gets tired of teasing me. Then I feel her - cool, almost cold, vaporous - expanding inside me, pressing inward, pushing, rubbing, like someone is filling my cunt with fog.

I realize I'm teasing myself with one hand, and I hear Pleure laughing faintly. She can't know what I'm thinking; she may think I'm anticipating the new arrival.

Yes, I'm pretty sure she's happy.

"She is certainly not frightened or angry," Pleure whispers, her voice echoing in my head. "Curious, I cannot say."

I sit on the floor, close my eyes, and watch.

I knew it was superstitious country, but I didn't know the full truth of it until that bed and breakfast last night. I told them where I was going and I swear they were ready to throw me out the door right then. Oh, I heard some stories last night. I asked them if they'd be so good as to hold my bags, but they way they nodded, my things'll be divided up among the village girls by now. Well, I hope they have some young men to admire how they look in their new designer knockoffs. I may not pass through there again even if I do come back.

I'm just surprised there's really a house here, under all this forest. The trees have taken over; some are growing through the roof. Or did someone go a little nuts and build a house that accommodated the trees?

The front doors are huge; ten feet of heavy wood, crossbeams, doors like the front gate of a castle. I knock. My knock is pitiful. It doesn't even resound against all that wood. I don't think anyone's in there anyway. I pull on one of the large wooden handles, and to my surprise the door opens easily. It doesn't even creak. Doors in horror movies are supposed to creak.

I look ahead down a dark corridor, very forbidding, even with the lights along its length. They glow pale green. I step a few feet into the hall, and I feel something brush past me, a light touch. The door closes quietly.

All things are possible, I remind myself. I walk on, slowly, letting my eyes adjust. Then I gasp. The light source is statues, human statues, lifesize. They are hollow and their surface is transparent, glass or something else. Inside them the green fire burns; they are completely filled with it. Their glassy skin diffuses and softens it.

They all look - not happy, exactly. Ecstatic, like they're in the middle of something that's pushing their pleasure buttons too much for their brains to process. I touch one of them - a female figure. I touch her on the chest, below the breasts, where the point of her sternum would be.

I got a bad electric shock once. It was fun. A rush as your heart is accelerated without your permission, a feeling of something warm flowing into your body, the way your skin tingles so hard it hurts.

I was sitting on my ass in the hallway, putting the pieces together and wondering if the tip of my finger was burned - it wasn't - and why was I still alive? I didn't even see the spark. I should try it again.

Later, I tell myself. If nothing better comes along.

She doesn't seem to have a purpose. The ones who are here for revenge or exorcisms walk down that long cave of a hall quickly, talking bravery to themselves. The ones who are here to submit walk slowly, reverently, but they don't explore. She's wandering around, touching, smelling, examining.

I have no idea what she wants.

All my lanterns knew what they wanted. For them the flesh only got in the way; they wanted raw orgasm straight to the mind, not filtered through skin and muscle. Not an approach I would take myself.

A huge room with what looks like big cylindrical pillars in each corner. I can't see the walls very well; the only light is the circular fire in the middle of the room. A pit with a stone wall, it looks like a well, except you fetch fire in a bucket instead of water. The smoke drifts up to a ceiling I can't see. Maybe there isn't one.

The fire shimmers and I stare at it, unable to resist watching its pretty patterns. It flickers and twists and I can't take my eyes from it. No, I tell myself. There would only be pain.

I get away before I'm tempted. I walk down a hall, open one door of several. A bedroom. Carpet you could swim in. Antique furniture overcarved and overdecorated, all ornate trim and curliques. An enormous canopy bed with a quilted silk bedspread and silk sheets. I can't decide if it's tacky or sexy or both.

I feel like someone's fingers keep brushing me, the same touch I felt at the front door, like someone in a crowded room is bumping into me accidentally. I look down. My blouse has come open. I button it, glad no one's around to see me flash them. I walk to the other side of the room, unsure what I'm doing here now that I've arrived. I feel cold. In a nearby mirror, I see my blouse open again, my bra peeking out white and pale.

I button it again. This time I feel the brush of the hands for sure. I look down and watch with my own eyes as the buttons unfasten themselves. My blouse slips off my shoulders. When the hands unclip my bra, I reach around and grab it before they can remove that too.

"Stop that," I say. I fasten the bra again - and now my jeans are being unzipped. "No, no, no!" I say as if scolding a bad child. I grab my jeans at the waist to keep the hands from pulling them down over my hips. Zip them closed. My bra is off before I can get my hands back up to my chest.

I sigh, crouch down and take off my shoes and socks. Then I slide my jeans down over my hips and wriggle out of them. I step aside and leave them in a pile with my other clothing on the floor. Not good enough, apparently. My panties begin to droop, hands tugging at their elastic. I spread my legs apart just a little and those are down my legs and off. "Happy now?" I ask. The pile of clothes lifts itself from the floor. My clothes fold themselves in midair as they land on the seat of a nearby chair in a neat stack.

Then the bedspread turns itself down, sheet and spread folded back to expose silk pillowcases. I imagine a chambermaid bustling around the room briskly. "I'm not sleepy," I say. I wander into the adjoining bathroom.

The sink is shaped like a woman. A full-sized, utterly realistic nude, looking like she had been told to stand here and then chromed on the spot. Her blank eyes level with mine. She holds the enameled basin, her arms cradling it at waist level. A faucet handle sticking out of the top surface of each breast. She is smiling. I shake my head at the audacity of it - how dare she be pleased with herself? Doesn't she know what she is? Can she pretend to enjoy having water flow from her nipples, hot and cold running breasts, being a piece of furniture? Doesn't she have any dignity at all?

I take a deep breath. I'm not sure why this bothers me. But I can't bring myself to turn either faucet. The tub has two women. They are kneeling at either end, holding the tub itself on their laps, their arms resting on its rim. One woman is sitting upright, with faucets in her breasts. The other is leaning forward so her breasts are resting on the rim. If you lay back in the tub, your head would lie on her breasts; she would only have to bend forward a little to kiss your hair with her chrome mouth. One of her hands is turned palm up, a pristine cake of soap resting in it. Waiting for the next guest. I suddenly need to leave the room.

I wander out into the hall. I'm shivering. I go back to the central room and stand as close to the fire as I dare. My nipples are uncomfortably taut. I turn to warm the other side.

I think the bathroom fixtures offended her. She doesn't seem easily shocked; she didn't even flinch when Pleure undressed her, just annoyed. I don't know why the fixtures would have bothered her, though, if the lanterns didn't. Very inconsistent.

It's a good thing she didn't try one of the other rooms. That's one of the last to be furnished; I haven't even finished the bathroom fixtures, much less the bedroom furniture. Shortage of materials. Not everyone wants that sort of release.

This one doesn't seem to want much of anything at all.

"Show her the wardrobe, Pleure."

Another hall. There isn't enough house for all these halls. I am about to say eenie-meenie-miney-moe, but someone tugs my arm. It's my invisible nuisance. "What?" I ask. Another tug. I shrug. Then it shoves me from the other side. "I don't want to go that way." Another shove. "Oh, all right."

Down the hall in the direction I came. A door opens by itself ahead of me. How courteous. It's a room full of racks of clothing, shelves with folded clothes, shoes in bins, all sorts of outfits. "Well," I say, holding up a latex bodysuit. Hard to imagine anyone actually squeezing into it. Within sight are indecent-exposure skirts, high-heeled leather boots, feather boas, indiscreet evening gowns, bondage attire, corsets. "Isn't there anything in here someone can actually wear?"

The latex suit wriggles. The hanger moves in my hand. I drop it on the floor, jumping back. I watch it carefully, like something dangerous. The hanger and suit float into the air, dust themselves off, and insert themselves back into their place on the rack. The invisible housemaid likes everything tidy.

"Fine, then." Some of these clothes are astonishing. Even if I could wear them, even if I had the audacity to wear them, there wouldn't be any place I could go in them. Although some of the shoes are tempting. I sit down on a bench next to the shoe bins, such an obvious invitation to try on a pair that I can't resist. Knee-high vinyl boots, shiny, lined with something soft and fuzzy. Thick chunky heels. Welcome back to the age of the swinger.

They fit perfectly. They caress my feet as if molded in place around them. The lining is warm and rubs nicely against my calves as I walk up and down the floor, a few experimental steps.

Then the boots move - just a little shift, a shimmy, like a muscle flexing. It's not the housemaid. I lift one leg and pull the boot right off, one yank, and toss it across the room into the shelves. It bounces on the metal with a -bong- noise and thuds on the floor. The other one lands on top of it. I'm already on my way out of the room.

I am beginning to think I've made a mistake coming here. It doesn't seem to have what I want.

I would be angry, if I thought she had done any real damage. I watch as Pleure picks up the boots, dusts the poor things off carefully, puts them back in their place. No one should be abused like that. And they had waited so long to be worn, too!

I confess myself stumped. She can go through every room in the house and find nothing but the same. As much as the idea surprises me, I may not have anything to give her. She'll never see most of the people in this house - they don't exist in a way she'd be aware of, or even in a way as substantial as Pleure. But if she could see them, see the places each of them has built, I don't think she'd like any of those either.

I'm about to give up when I find it. It's the last door, I tell myself, that I will bother to open. If I see another room with nothing to offer me, I plan to go back to the entrance hall and just do what I should have done to begin with.

But this room looks unexpectedly promising.

A wall of iron maidens, some closed with the faces of beautiful women, some open to reveal their spiked insides. A rack shaped like a spread-eagled man, penis erect, with restraints instead of hands and feet. A chair, also shaped like a man, straps at wrists and ankles. If you sat in it, you would have to take his aroused brass organ deep into your ass. I fidget a little at the thought.

Most of these contraptions are not what I want, not at all. Only the iron maidens fit the bill. I step into one. I touch the point of one spike experimentally. I can't close it from inside, but I'm not worried; I know my invisible friend will see me and oblige.

The heavy doors begin to swing shut, pushing me backwards to avoid them until I can't avoid the spikes behind me. They press into my back in a hundred places. I clench my jaw. The doors close in and the front spikes sink into me. The thin line of light between them narrows and vanishes and there is a clang and I scream.

I scream but the sensation isn't pain, it isn't anything I recognize as pain anyway. It's being bitten by a thousand mouths, being licked by a thousand tongues. Being penetrated by a thousand cocks, little vaginal wounds in grid pinprick patterns on my skin, each a red shining dot of heat and dangerous joy. I am dripping sex, not blood. My ecstasy is flowing out of me and pooling on the floor of this metal place, warm around my feet. I want to faint, collapse, but I'm impaled like a specimen insect. I can't move. I can't speak. I can't even whimper. My whole body is stuck still, my brain completely overwhelmed.

Now I open my eyes. I'm lying on the floor in front of the iron maiden, which is open, like I've fallen out of it. Sweat is cooling all over my body. My cunt is slimy. I'm dripping and shaking, and when I realize where I am, I shout out all my frustration, as loud and as long as I can. Then I curl up and start to cry.

"It's all right," a voice in front of me says.

I look up. It's a tall thin woman, beautiful but severe. Hollow cheeks, dark eyes. Her hair is alive. It moves in an aura around her head, like she's standing in a cloud of static electricity.

I look up at her, wanting to either cry or break into giggles - what a stupid thing to say! Instead I stand up and walk past her. Run past her.

Run, run, to the entrance hall. I pick a statue. She's beautiful. I'm sure she'll be fun to hug. I embrace her, and again I'm not even aware of the shock until it's already happened and the top of my brain has exploded and my heart has vibrated itself into little throbbing pieces.

And when I open my eyes, I'm dripping sweat and vaginal goo onto the floor again, sitting and panting, and I want to scream again, but she comes up and puts her hand over my mouth gently.

"No more loud noises, please," she says. "Just tell me what you want."

She removes her hand and waits. She is clearly ready to wait all day.

"I thought you offered people release," I say. "They come in, you give them what they want. But you don't."

"I try to help everyone who comes for what I can give them," she replies. "But I think you're looking for something else. Tell me what you want."

"I want to die," I reply.

"That's what I was worried you'd say."

I stare at her.

"You're in the wrong place. You've come for the wrong things."

"You won't kill me?"

She shakes her head, almost looking shocked at the request.

"But - but what about all the people who -"

"Who've never come back out? They've found what they came for. Release. Pleasure. A permanent bliss that they couldn't achieve any other way. An existence of continual ongoing orgasm, a private fantasy world. Each in the way that suits them. Like my lanterns here."

I shudder and stand up. "I'm sorry I wasted your time, then. Am I free to go? Do you have to keep me here forever now so I won't talk, or something like that?"

"Everyone who stays here is voluntary." She is watching me, studying me.

I head for the door, in a hurry as if she might change her mind at any second. "You might want to put on your clothes first," she says.

Good point. She steps aside to let me pass. Apparently the maid service is over for the day. I walk into the big room, past the fire, into what I hope is the right hall. She follows me.

As I am pulling on my pants, with her standing in the hall doorway, she says, "Why do you want to die?"

"Why wouldn't I?" I reply.

"It's not common," she says.

"There isn't anything that interests me enough."

She waits for me to continue.

"In the iron maiden ... that was the most amazing thing I've ever felt. Then I felt it again in the front hall. It was less amazing. Next time, it'd be even less amazing. I'm tired of looking for things to keep me amazed. I'm tired of having to search. I shouldn't have to search. Life should be amazing all the time. You know what's amazing? How many people are willing to settle for what they get. Amazing, and depressing, and all I want to do is die. Pathetic, right?"

I finish buttoning my blouse and push past her. I reach the front door, worry for a minute that it will refuse to open. But it does, too easily for its weight. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, the house is saying. Well, the feeling is mutual.

Sex. Who would have guessed that in all the stories, that's what the people disappeared for? What good is a haunted house if it can't kill you?

She doesn't stay for my answer. I can't blame her - it takes me five minutes to collect myself enough to say anything. I dry my eyes. "Pleure."

"I'm here," she whispers.

"Pleure, I'm leaving. The house is yours now. You know how to do what needs to be done."

She says nothing.

"I'm sorry I can't take you with me," I say.

She says nothing.

I want to try to console her, apologize somehow, but I can't. There's no time. I'm out the door, frantic to catch up to the little fool before she throws herself in front of a car or something.

She's only halfway back to the village. I was worried needlessly. "Wait!" I shout to her.

She turns. Then she considers running. Then she wonders what she could possibly be running from. So she waits.

"I want to make you an offer," I say when I catch up. Short of breath. I'm not superhuman.

"What do you have that you can possibly offer me?" Too cold. She's on the edge, or very near it.

"You wanted me to tell you you were pathetic. I can't."

She blinks at me. This is not what she expected. "I can't tell you that, because I've felt the same way for a long time. A very long time. Longer than you can probably believe. I do the things I do - well - for reasons you'd understand. So I'll keep being amazed."

"Does it work?"

"No. Not for very long."

"So you're just as bad off as I am," she says. "Great. That's wonderful but, I have to tell you, not the least bit encouraging. In fact now I'm even more upset than I was -"

"Shut up," I say, holding my hand over her mouth.

"I've been alive for four hundred and forty years," I say. "If I've learned anything in that time, it's how to be unpredictable. Surprising. Even amazing."

She pulls away from my hand. "I don't want a lover," she says. "I've done that. Some have even been surprising. It's not good enough."

"I was thinking," I say, "that it might be better if you weren't offered a choice."

Her eyes widen.

"Isn't that unexpected?" I say.

She starts to fume, all ready to spit out an angry answer at me. But then she stops. Stops and doesn't move at all for a few seconds while her brain churns.

Then she lowers her gaze, looks at the ground, and nods.

I take her arm.

I don't say anything else as we walk to the village. Neither does she.

Copyright © June 2009. Do not distribute or reproduce.