Mythophidia:
A Collection of Stories
Storm Constantine
Stafford, England
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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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.
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.
In the ladies’ wash-room, both men and women clustered around the mirrors, squealing with laughter as they refreshed their face paint. A thin middle-aged man, clad only in leather straps and rather heavy make-up, grinned in Maradissa’s face. ‘Great night, isn’t it!’
Maradissa adopted a quizzical expression. ‘Mmm.’
‘Voyeuse!’ The response was good-natured, rather than critical.
‘No,’ Maradissa responded, and then restrained herself from explaining why she was there. ‘It’s interesting here, but rather tamer than I thought.’
The man gave her a sly look. ‘There are levels of experience,’ he said. ‘You just have to look for them. Visit the Chamber, and then say tame.’
‘There is more?’
The man laughed. ‘There is always more. For those who want it.’
But I don’t want it, she thought. Still, there was no point in visiting this place without examining every option on the menu. She might discover something worth reporting to Evalie and Crickforth.
It took her some time to find the Chamber, because no one seemed willing to give explicit instructions concerning its location, but eventually, deep in the centre of the club, she found the entrance to the shrine of forbidden pleasures. There were curtains of shiny PVC across the doorway. As she lifted them and passed through, she noticed with amusement the health scanner that monitored her heart, before a mechanised voice breathed out an approving welcome.
Beyond, the light was redder, the air steamy. Figures were just moving shadows within the crimson fog. Maradissa heard the sounds; retching, laughter, groans, the slap of something yielding on flesh, something brittle shattering. Tribal music throbbed beneath this symphony of indulgence. On the floor, there was blood.
She felt both revolted and dazed. The light drew her in: through the sounds, through the steam peopled with indistinct forms. Occasionally, a seeking hand might reach out to stroke her, but she avoided their anonymous touch.
Crossing a slick-floored chamber, Maradissa entered a corridor of flesh - dampened latex fabric looped across the walls and ceiling, hanging down in writhing tatters. Here, there were sighs in the air and soft squeals of pleasure. Purple-pink light pulsed at the corridor’s end, and Maradissa advanced towards it - cautiously, slightly in fear, slightly in anticipation. The flesh tunnel opened out into a vast chamber, where ribbons of incense curled around the cupreous scent of blood and the sharper, chemical reek of leisure anaesthetics.
Fascination and horror surged through Maradissa where she stood at the threshold. The smoky air purled in upon itself like a veil drawing aside. Come, sweet flesh. Enter in...
The pleasure of machines. They were part biological, like alien robots, towering, spreading and curious. Metal black. Manikins of subjection were mere bound scraps between the elegant pincers, the intestine coils of slinking alloy, the investigating probes, the scalpel-clawed prehensile digits. Their movement was hypnotic. Maradissa saw a swatch of hair hanging down from within an iron helmet. An arm shuddered pale within a tangle of dark cables. Above her, screens the size of hoardings advertised the forbidden sensuality. She understood that within the minds of these willing victims, the slow excoriation of flesh was twisted into dream-like virtual imagery that bloomed with mythic fantasy. Their pain was regulated to peaks they found acceptable. All was silent but for the slither of metal coils, the occasional mechanical hum. Every human mouth was plugged with rubber.
An undulating limb lifted up like the neck of a serpent from the tangled mass of flesh and machine. It turned an unwinking, glowing eye upon Maradissa, then snaked towards her slowly. A non-human voice breathed, ‘Welcome...’, and in its echoless cadence, Maradissa heard the secret message of pleasures exquisite and undreamed of.
For one brief moment, she almost fell, mesmerised and willing, into the embrace of the fleshless arm. Then her stomach roiled involuntarily, and she had to turn away quickly, a hand to her mouth.
A woman had come into the Chamber behind her, blocking an easy exit. She was tall and fairly attractive, naked to the waist, clad in rubber leggings. Her torso was laced with bloody scars, and she held a thin blade in one hand. ‘Don’t run, my pretty.’ The woman held out her hands to Maradissa. ‘You want to be here. I am the Priestess of Perversity. Come, I will lead you to a nest.’ She gestured at the machines.
Maradissa shook her head and tried to push past the woman, but the priestess grabbed hold of her arm. ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s your first time, isn’t it?’ Her voice was soft with reassurance.
‘Let me past,’ Maradissa said, roughly pulling her arm from the priestess’s hold. ‘I’m not meant to be here.’
The priestess’ expression changed slightly, hardened. She pulled back her lips into a sneering laugh and pressed the blade she held to her stomach. ‘Open up!’ The scalpel-thin knife sliced into her flesh.
‘You’re sick!’ Maradissa hissed, and made to push past her. She averted her head, not wanting to look at the fresh wound, afraid there would be no blood.
The woman blocked her way again and laughed. ‘Sick, huh? What are you doing here, little girl?’
Maradissa glanced up at her, could not help noticing the thin wet stream on the woman’s upper belly. ‘I just... got lost.’
The priestess shook her head. ‘Oh, really? I don’t think so. You came here to see, didn’t you? You’re curious. Want to see how the big girls and boys play. That’s OK. If you want to look, I can show you around.’
Maradissa was momentarily paralysed by fear, unsure of whether the woman was right in her assumptions. Then, firmly, she shook her head. ‘No. Thank you.’
‘It’s all right.’ The priestess smiled warmly. ‘Everyone has a first time.’
Maradissa swallowed, tasted bile. ‘I’m not like you. Let me past.’
The priestess gestured at her. ‘Oh, no? Look at you in your pretty, kinky gear, your little painted face! You’re not that different from us.’
Maradissa recovered her composure, raised her hands like a barrier. ‘You’ve got it wrong, she said. ‘Excuse me, please. Or is assault part of your repertoire?’
The woman narrowed her eyes. ‘Only if you want it.’
Maradissa uttered a short, dry laugh, rolled her eyes. ‘No, thank you. I’m not into pain.’
The woman put her head on one side. ‘Aren’t you?’ She reached out and slid her hand down Maradissa’s side. ‘I think everyone is, if they’re honest. We’re honest. This is reality. We are healthier because of it. Come on, loosen up. Enjoy yourself. Don’t waste your visit. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t really want to be.’
Maradissa backed away, affected her most haughty tone. ‘I’m not interested, actually. Please, excuse me. I have friends waiting and they’ll come looking for me soon.’
The woman folded her arms, the knife blade pointing into the air. She gave Maradissa’s clothes and jewellery an assessing glance. ‘Oh, I see. It’s a little rich kid come to gawp at the freaks, is it?’
‘Yes, I’m rich,’ Maradissa agreed, unable to resist admitting it. ‘So what? You’re no healthier than I am. You must hate yourself to cut your body like that. I happen to like my body, and I respect other people’s’
The woman sneered. ‘Oh yeah? And that perfect nose is your own, is it? That faultless figure? You’re into knives, girly, everyone’s into knives!’ She uttered a chilling screech of laughter, then pushed Maradissa back into the flesh tunnel, with the retort, ‘Go home to Mummy and Daddy. Your kind isn’t wanted here.’
Maradissa was burning with nausea and humiliated anger by the time she found Evalie at the bar. The injustice of being judged a surgery-junkie was almost as bad as what the Chamber had concealed in its bloody mists. She was not like them. It wasn’t true. They were freaks. She was not. ‘I’m going,’ she snapped at Evalie. Crickforth had disappeared. ‘Stay if you want!’
‘You’ve been ages,’ Evalie said, getting off her stool. ‘What happened? Are you OK?’
‘No,’ Maradissa said. ‘I want to go home.’ For the first time in two years, she felt conscious of her age, and realised she was missing her mother.
On the way home, Evalie sympathised with Maradissa’s revulsion, but was too eager for details, seemingly unaware that by describing what had happened, Maradissa felt she was somehow legitimising it. The words should not be spoken. She dropped Evalie off at her parent’s estate. ‘Stay here tonight,’ Evalie offered. ‘Don’t go home alone.’
Maradissa shook her head. ‘No. I’ll be fine.’
‘Then, I’ll come and stay with you, if you like.’
‘Ev, I’ll be fine. Honestly. I was just taken by surprise back there, that’s all. It’ll soon be forgotten.’ Maradissa didn’t want anyone to know how upset she was. She smiled and waved and drove away.
At home, Maradissa sat in her salon and drank some brandy, which she rarely touched. She was aware of feeling soiled. The house seemed cold and empty. She played some music disks, but the lyrics seemed too pertinent. Images filled her mind; the laughing, painted faces, the exposed bodies, then the hidden pleasures of the inner chamber and the Priestess of Perversity’s grin as she opened up her flesh with a blade. Disgusting! How could people be like that? What was there in human nature that made it manifest? Something primitive. And yet, when Maradissa dreamed that night, she was held in the embrace of a metal lover without a face, who invaded her hungering body with devices too large for her to accommodate. She felt her flesh tear, but the pain was translated into a different sensation, like smelling the most exquisite perfume, tonguing the most exotic liqueur. Then she was screaming against the invasion, gathering an occult strength. She transformed herself into the metal lover and what shivered pale beneath her precise force filled her with an aching tenderness of feeling. She awoke disorientated, her body tensing to the receding pulse of erotic thrill.
Once she had dressed, Maradissa called Leony. ‘I’m not feeling too good,’ she said, keeping the mirror shadowed. ‘Make sure I’m not bothered, will you?’
‘Do you need anything?’
‘No. Just privacy for a while. I’m tired’
‘Overdoing it, huh?’ Leony laughed. Sometimes Maradissa went into retreat after lengthy, non-stop parties. ‘Listen, that intruder you spoke about last night. I’ve looked into it. A new staff member. Didn’t understand the sundown regulation. It’s all fixed now. I briefed his supervisor.’
‘Fine, fine. I just don’t want to be pestered.’
‘Feed and medicate yourself properly.’
‘I will.’
Michael had been horrified when his supervisor had confronted him about why he’d stayed behind at the manse the previous evening. Red-faced, he’d blurted an excuse about wanting to get a particular job finished. ‘We have set work schedules,’ the supervisor said, her eyes hard. ‘You don’t get paid for over-time.’
If she’d guessed Michael’s true reason for lingering in the garden, she did not press the matter. Michael felt bereft, cheated. The supervisor didn’t understand that Ms Ferone wanted him in her garden, and because their potential relationship had to be secret, the mistress could not reveal the truth.
All day, he worked near the house, peering through the windows at every opportunity. He saw his idol drifting from room to room, a glass in her hand. She seemed distracted - obviously agonising over her decision to report his presence to the supervisor. She had made a mistake and would have to rectify it herself. Michael was powerless, her pawn. Sometimes, it seemed as if she was aware of his eyes, hidden in foliage beyond the windows, for she would start as if at a sudden sound, and glance through the panes. He longed to stand up, show himself, but knew that was not part of the ritual. He knew he would have to engineer a way to remain in the gardens after sundown again, but not yet. There would be a sign when it was time.
That evening, Michael had to go home with all his colleagues. He found he was glad to get back to his apartment, because he could lie on his bed and think about Maradissa. He imagined the click of spike heels upon the hard floor beyond his door, the tap that might come upon the laminated wood from sharp, lacquered nails. He imagined her coming in across the threshold, standing over him, saying, ‘You are mine.’
For three days later Maradissa refused to go the Park with any of her friends. She needed solitude, and spent a lot of time meditating, trying to face up to the demons spawned from the episode at the fetzer nite. She dressed herself in a loose purple robe, kept her hair clean and straight down her back, wore no make-up. She found she wanted to bathe frequently, as if there was something to wash away. It was as if she’d witnessed a terrible atrocity, and had to exorcise the trauma of it. Her mind was drawn to reinvent images of what the Chamber had contained, her thoughts colouring in more detail. Her meditations of calming scenes would mutate without her noticing it into hideous fantasies that left her feeling soiled and ashamed. Self-disgust prevented her from seeking outside therapy. The experiences exhausted her, numbed her with an unfamiliar weakness. She was used to feeling strong and in control.
Hiding in her manse, Maradissa ignored the calls piling up behind her mirror’s surface. Let Leony deal with them, offer excuses for Maradissa’s silence. She had more important things to attend to. She fought with her demons alone. The fetzers haunted her dreams, the secret fetzers of the inner Chamber. She dreamed that the Priestess of Perversity came looking for her. She scratched the windows of Maradissa’s manse with sharp, metal claws, murmuring, ‘You want me to come. You want what I can give, what I can teach you.’
There were dreams, too, of tying faceless bodies down upon weird contraptions of wood and leather, anticipating with dread and desire an unknown torture that soon she would possess the knowledge to inflict. And the priestess was there to tell her, ‘You see. You do belong with us. You just didn’t realise in what capacity.’
During the day, she battled constantly with a feeling of being watched, sure there was an invisible presence beyond her windows staring in at her, compelling her to become aware of it. She chided herself for thinking it might be the Priestess, or some psychic emanation of the woman. Fleetingly, she remembered the incident in the garden before the fetzer experience. That must be it. A gardener looking in at her. Perhaps she should call Leony, but she felt too lethargic to bother. There was no sense of threat from the scrutiny, only an air of intense interest. Then, the night would come again, and Maradissa could not convince herself that it wasn’t the fetzers who were watching her, bodilessly observing some weird kind of transformation taking place within her mind. The Priestess had cast a spell over her in the Chamber and now waited for her magic to take full effect. In the dark, contorted fetzer spirits surrounded the house.
One morning, Maradissa woke up angry. She would not be driven mad by what she’d witnessed in the Chamber. All the nightmares since were no more than phantoms of the mind. She leapt up from her bed and threw out her arms at the wan morning light beyond the windows. Enough! With this inner shout, it felt as if something inside her shattered and came out of her in a wave of emotion. She felt light-headed, as if there was more space around her. There were parts of other people’s realities that were ugly, but they were not part of hers. She had fought the spell of the Chamber and won, defeated the demons of dark desire.
She called Evalie on the magic mirror.
‘How are you?’ Evalie asked. ‘I’ve tried to call for days, but all I got was the butler. Everyone’s been worried about you.’
‘A virus. I’ve beaten it!’ Maradissa said cheerfully. ‘Now, I need some entertainment. Out tonight?’
‘Yes! Yes! Pick me up?’
‘OK. Usual time.’
Michael knew that tonight had to be the night. It was impossible for him to linger behind after work, so at lunchtime, he’d pretended to be ill and took the rest of the day off. His goddess had seemed so miserable for days. His heart had ached to see her pale, forlorn face peering from the windows of the house. But that morning, he’d caught a glimpse of her and had seen that her spirits had lifted. She’d been smiling again, that cool, aloof smile, and had no doubt made a decision.
As the gardeners’ bus rolled off towards the Colonies, Michael was hiding near the gates to the Ferone manse. He waited until the bus was out of sight round a corner and then slipped between the metal portals as they ground ponderously shut. He knew that security systems would soon be in operation, but trusted that Maradissa would be aware of his presence and delay their activation. As her devotee, he was ready. He’d been alert for signs and now would act.
In the garden, Maradissa was dressed for the night. Spike-heeled boots, a catsuit of glistening black. She smoked beside the river. In her heart, a new feeling. The familiar kindling of excitement, the potential of the future, but tempered by serenity, a sense of separateness. Nothing could touch her now. She’d been reborn, stronger and more aware.
Then, the feeling of being watched sneaked up on her senses. She froze for a moment, a brief image of the Priestess of Perversity padding across her mind. Ridiculous. It was the gardener again. Immediately, she realised that the first time she had sensed him had not been because he’d been unaware of the regulations. It was so clear. He had been watching her, and watched her still. Slowly, she turned around, and saw him, this time, hiding in the lilies. A pale face through the dead and living leaves. She felt irritated, a little flattered perhaps, but resented the intrusion into her private time. The fume had empowered her. She was not afraid, and could defend herself against anything.
‘Come out here!’
The man did not move. She could see the round holes of his eyes; he looked transfixed. An unfamiliar sensation shivered through her. When she walked towards him, she saw he was young. She had expected an older man.
‘What are you doing here?’
He cowered down among the dead lilies, his hands steepled, trembling, before his face, as if in some kind of religious obeisance.
Maradissa laughed. ‘Why are you frightened? Don’t be absurd. Explain yourself!’
He seemed to find his courage then, and made to scrabble backwards through the leafage. Maradissa grabbed his arm, and it was as if his flesh turned to fluid in her hold. He did not resist her, but hung there limply, leaning against her legs. Maradissa pushed him away. ‘Get off my premises. You’ll lose your job for this!’ She expected him to give her an appealing glance, say something. Instead, he lay there in the crackling foliage, beautiful and vulnerable. She saw, in his eyes, his feelings. How long had he watched her before he’d gathered the courage to stay after hours? He’d been reprimanded, but now risked dismissal, if not prosecution. What was he waiting for? What did he want from her?
Maradissa paused. It seemed that time condensed into a single moment, of which she was queen. She was conscious of her long limbs clad in shiny fabric, the slavering, fanged maw of her sex.
She straddled his fallen body, the heels of her boots digging into the soft soil. He lay still, waiting, his hair spread out over the crackling leaves. She imagined tearing the thin fabric of his shirt away, exposing his breast, like an empty canvas awaiting the marks of her nails.
Maradissa laughed uneasily, took a step to the side, stood over him. She felt dizzy. Time to go. She must dismiss him, go back to the house, call Leony, report the trespass. Evalie was expecting her and life must go on - it must!
The boy curled onto his side, still looking up at her with strange beseechment. He made no sound.
Maradissa extended one foot, placed it upon his face, so that her heel pressed against his trembling mouth. He reached up with grimed fingers, and the scent of leaf-mould was released, primal, almost anaesthetic.
He took hold of her foot, licked the leather. ‘Kiss booties night night,’ he said. And her heel drove into the soft flesh of his mouth.
An Old Passion
Well, of course she threw a garden party as soon as the place was decent. She had to show it off, and who can blame her? I went with Cathy, because Ted wouldn’t go with me. ‘She was unbearable when she was only slightly rich,’ he said. ‘Now, we’re talking about torture, an afternoon in Hell.’
‘I’m sure it won’t be that bad,’ I said, but privately I agreed with him. I’m not sure what made me go, really. I knew my skin would be crawling with annoyance by the end of the afternoon, but I suppose I was just curious. My friend had acquired a stately home. She was living in it. I had to go and see.
Helen had gone to school with Cathy and I, and because we all still lived in the area around the village where we’d grown up, we’d kept in touch. Cathy and I had married the sons of farmers, as our parents had expected, while Helen had gone off to college and run wild for a while. She had come back to the village now and again throughout her teens and early twenties, adopting every city fad that was going, showing off to us, her provincial sisters, stuck out in the sticks. I don’t think we ever really liked her. You can’t actually like a person like Helen, so familiar yet so distant, but we were always curious, always entertained.
Something went wrong when she hit quarter century, although she never confided in us about it. She came home, skulked dramatically round the village for a few weeks in dark glasses, looked tragic and wore wide hats like a film star. Then it was forgotten, whatever it was, and she was her usual bragging self again. Still, she stuck around after that, wheedled her way in with the new money, who drank in the pubs on the edge of the village.
While Cathy and I met our husbands and duly began to produce families, Helen secured jobs from her new friends, drove around in a new car, bought a cottage, did it up (quite well, too), and kept on partying. Sometimes, she’d visit us and gently scorn what she called our ‘giving in to tradition’. Of course I envied her, who wouldn’t. She was graceful and wild and witty, and had fun.
‘Where did we go wrong?’ Cathy asked one day, after a morning get together, as we watched the dust of Helen’s car disappearing down Cathy’s driveway. ‘God, I hate her, the bitch! Where did we go wrong?’
Then we laughed together, went back inside, and had another gin. Our lives weren’t that bad, really.
Helen was thirty-two when she met Roland Marchant. He was the one she’d been waiting for, the son of an industrialist, busy being propelled up the ladder of affluence by Daddy, oozing wealth and smarm. Helen met him at some do or another she’d gone to with friends and, with an unerring huntress’ sense for a prime kill, set her sights and brought the prey down. Shall we say it was a short engagement? City bred, he was interested in village life, in country life, and I suspect it was more at his insistence than Helen’s that she brought him visiting. He thought the farms were quaint and wanted to try driving a tractor. Ted, and Cathy’s husband, Rupert, were strained but polite. Fortunately, the tractor lark never got beyond the evening of Scotch and Roland’s loud voice. Well, no one reminded him about it.
‘I don’t know what’s worse,’ Cathy said. ‘A rich boor who’s pompous and condescending, or a rich boor who’s devoted to being everybody’s best buddy.’
Still, we accepted the antique brandies, and such like, and were always coolly friendly.
Deermount House came on the market because the Pargeters couldn’t keep the place up. Sons and daughter had moved away and had no interest in the family pile; the roof was caving in. Roland fought off developers, hoteliers, theme park entrepreneurs, conference centre planners and outbid the lot. He acquired Deermount House lock, stock and barrel. The Pargeters took very little away with them, other than an unspeakably large stash and a sense of financial relief. Roland and Helen would live there. They would be neighbours. Oh, wonderful.
When Helen came to tell me the news, I couldn’t stop myself saying, ‘Isn’t it a bit big for just you and Roland?’
Helen laughed. ‘Don’t be absurd, Anna! It’s a fucking mansion. How can a mansion be “too big”? You simply have to live bigger.’
I could almost hear her knuckles cracking at the prospect.
The garden party recreated some idyllic post war age as Helen imagined it. It was all bunting and vicars with megaphones, that sort of thing. The gardens were a mess, actually, utterly run to seed, but Roland had had the lawns rotor scythed, so it didn’t look too bad. The first thing Cathy and I noticed about the house was the new roof. It looked rather peculiar, so clean and regular, atop the sagging facade of the house. Rather like an old woman wearing a teenager’s hat. We presumed the rest of the building would soon succumb to cosmetic surgery, its wrinkles nipped and tucked, so that it matched the roof.
It appeared that everyone from the village and surrounding farms had come to be nosy. Children shrieked, piped band music stuttered, vicars cajoled. The river, caressed by ancient willows, oozed slowly through the gardens, like an ancient snake that knew its own territory. There were swans, of course. Summer as it had once been, perhaps.
Then Helen came gliding up the lawns towards us from the river, backlit by gleaming water. She looked divine in a flowered sundress, required large hat, silken blonde hair and ready red smile. ‘Darlings! So glad you came!’ she screamed.
God, it was embarrassing. Yes, we were jealous.
‘You must see the house!’ Helen insisted, and we had to follow her inside.
Once there, the spirit of the place claimed us and envy and irritation gave way to awe.
‘Helen, you’ve done wonders!’ Cathy exclaimed, craning her neck to try and take in the appallingly massive vista of the stuccoed ceiling in the main hall.
‘Oh, it wasn’t me,’ Helen said, almost apologetically. ‘Roland got designers in, architects, the lot. I just sat around waiting for them to finish. Didn’t have a word in it.’
Did she mind about that? I wondered, mentally filing the thought to repeat to Cathy later.
‘But you simply have to see my new man,’ Helen said, her eyes shining.
Cathy and I exchanged a glance, and Cathy shrugged. New man? Our minds were open.
Helen led us upstairs to a long, well lit gallery that overlooked the gardens. ‘All the paintings have been restored,’ she told us. ‘I found him only a few days ago. He’s divine.’ She had paused before a painting, gesturing at it with some reverence.
‘Who is it?’ I asked.
‘Rufus Aston,’ Helen said grandly. We were clearly supposed to know who that was.
‘A Pargeter ancestor?’ Cathy suggested.
‘Oh no!’ Helen answered. ‘He was a poet. Haven’t you heard of him?’
No, we hadn’t. Had anyone? He was beautiful, I suppose, although the chins of long dead people always seem too weak for my taste. Perhaps that is the fault of long dead painters rather than their models. The poet’s hair was a resplendent red, his eyes dark and limpid, the mouth a little too generous, although not that wide. I estimated, with my untutored eye, he had lived in the nineteenth century. Helen confirmed this. ‘Yes, I’ve been researching.’
‘Did he live here?’ Cathy asked, politely. I dared not look at her for fear of grinning.
‘No,’ Helen explained, ‘but he stayed here quite often over a period of several years. Best of all, he died here!’
Best of all?
‘Oh,’ said Cathy and I together.
‘Isn’t it romantic?’ Helen enthused. ‘I’m reading up about him like mad, though it’s hard to find things out.’
Well, Rufus Aston was obviously the latest fad. Helen’s enthusiasm would be poured into him, and continue to do so, until it overflowed and her attention surged elsewhere.
We didn’t see much of her for a few weeks after the garden party. We were busy with the harvest, and Helen, presumably, with renovating Deermount House and its grounds. Roland had asked Ted about buying horses, hiring grooms. Cathy’s aunt, Mags, had been taken on as a cook. From her came the gossip. She felt that Roland and Helen were not like real people. They never seemed to argue, and spoke to one another as if they were acting in a play about domestic bliss. Such sunshine, such idyll. Is it any surprise, then, that they were threatened by thunderstorms? The weather always has to change.
Helen came calling three weeks after the garden party. She sat at my kitchen table, while I washed the breakfast things at the sink. I thought she seemed a little on edge, which was unusual for her. ‘Everything all right?’ I enquired.
Helen scowled at my youngest, who was hanging on to my skirts and attempting to disrupt our conversation. She, of course, would never want children.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Everything’s fine. I’m a bit exhausted, naturally. The job’s never ending! Still, Rolly and I wouldn’t have missed taking the place for the world. We love it.’ She lit a cigarette. Her nails were immaculate. I doubted she ever applied hand to paint stripper herself. ‘Do you know, I think I must be luckiest woman alive.’
I winced, and smiled at her in what I hoped was a convincing fashion.
‘Roland is buying me a mare,’ she said.
I took a few moments to consider the wonder of a woman who had married the most incredibly rich man and was actually in love with him. It seemed that way. Her eyes went moist when she mentioned his name.
‘You were never much into riding,’ I said.
‘I have the time now.’ Helen leaned down and produced a bottle of gin from her large bag. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Anna, come and sit down. Leave the washing-up. Have a drink.’
I obeyed her, instinctively sensing she wanted to talk. I even shooed the boy out into the garden. ‘Well?’ I said, sipping gin.
Helen laughed. ‘Well, what?’ She leaned back in her chair, struck a pose with the cigarette.
‘What is it you want to say?’
Helen leaned forward and squeezed my arm where it lay on the table. ‘Oh darling, you country women are just so intuitive!’
That was the sort of remark I was used to putting up with. I declined to respond.
‘The thing is, I’ve discovered some magic, some real magic.’
‘Oh? Witchcraft in the old grounds, then?’
‘No, nothing like that.’ She adopted an earnest expression, lowered her voice. ‘I think Rufus is trying to contact me.’
‘Rufus?’ I had forgotten about the poet, and imagined this must be an old flame.
‘Don’t you remember the painting I showed you?
‘Oh yes.’ I paused. ‘Hel, are we talking ghosts, here?’
‘Nothing so banal,’ she answered. ‘A ghost is just a picture, a memory. Rufus is stronger than that. I’m sure I’ve seen him.’
‘Oh Helen! Where?’ I am not a sceptic, but not for one moment could I imagine a worldly woman like Helen being in tune with something spiritual.
‘In the gardens,’ she replied. ‘Anna, I couldn’t tell anyone else about this. Rolly would think I’d gone mad and start to worry, and Cathy would just laugh.’
‘You’d better tell me about it,’ I said.
I was, as usual, curious. Helen was always interesting. She had caught sight of a man, whom she now presumed to be Rufus Aston, in one of the more tangled corners of the gardens. Every morning, she walked her new Labrador puppies in the grounds, and it was always then that she saw him. Never at night, never at dusk, but in clear morning sunlight. He would be standing amid the shoulder high grasses, as still as a stone, but with an air of absolute alertness. ‘He doesn’t look like a ghost, he’s completely solid,’ she said. ‘And he watches me. The thing is, it doesn’t scare me.’
‘Are you sure it’s not just some young man who’s taken a shine to you?’ I asked. ‘Why do you think it’s Rufus?’
‘Because it looks like him, silly. The clothes, the hair, the face. It’s him.’ She took a drink, swallowed. ‘I know it is. But what does he want from me?’ Only then did her brow cloud, but it wasn’t with fear.
We talked about further research. Even I became a little infected with her enthusiasm. Helen didn’t know where the poet was buried, or even how he died. Only that his last moments had been spent at Deermount House, although whether he had expired within the walls or out in the grounds: she didn’t know. I believed her utterly. There was no question of it.
‘Perhaps I should hold a séance,’ she said.
I frowned. ‘Oh, I don’t think... I think that’s asking for trouble. No, don’t do that.’
‘I trust your instincts, darling,’ she said, standing up. ‘Well, I must be off. Keep the gin. I’ll let you know what I find out.’
I tell Cathy everything, but I didn’t tell her about Helen’s visit. Probably because I believed Helen and, as she had correctly pointed out, Cathy would laugh about it. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Ted, who would genuinely have been interested. Perhaps I should have done.
We held a Halloween party for the children at Cathy and Rupert’s. While the kids screamed round us in garish costumes, Cathy and I sipped port in the flickering light of pumpkin lamps. Our men had sloped off down the pub. I felt warm, at one with myself. The pagan new year.
‘Have you seen much of Helen?’ Cathy asked.
‘No,’ I answered. In fact, I hadn’t seen her since the morning she’d told me about her apparition. ‘You?’
‘Nothing. Mags thinks she’s out of sorts. Perhaps we should visit.’
‘Out of sorts? What’s wrong with her?’ Just for a moment, my blissful mood froze.
‘Oh, nothing serious, I don’t think. Mags says she’s distracted. Apparently, she’s got a new set of friends, though where she dredged them up from, heaven knows. Mags thinks they’re weird. The place is crawling with them. They’re ghost hunters, or something like that. Helen actually held a séance up there, you know.’
‘No! Cath, why didn’t you tell me?’
Cathy looked surprised at my outburst. ‘I only found out today. Why? What do you know?’
‘As much as you do. Remember the painting she showed us, the new man?’
‘You think she’s trying to call his ghost up?’ Cathy, predictably, cackled.
‘It could be dangerous, Cath. I think Helen’s fragile, for all her panache. Deermount House is such a big old place, and she’s rattling round in it, on her own with dear Rolly, who’s about as sensitive as a plank. Perhaps she’s becoming too imaginative. You know how easily impressed she is. What if these new friends of hers are a bit, well, shady?’