October 04, 2006
Fiction
The Unfamiliar
After her boyfriend Jason dumped her the week before college graduation, Mariah wanted to hole up somewhere and figure out what to do with the rest of her life. She now had a four-year degree in journalism, a big student loan to repay, and no job applications out yet. Jason’s defection had staggered her so much all her plans had fallen to pieces.
Her aunt’s house on the lake seemed like the perfect hideout. Far from everybody who might ask painful questions, close to a place she could swim every morning, and living with her aunt, which was about as close to living alone as Mariah wanted to get. Her aunt never asked questions, and hardly ever talked.
Mostly Aunt Helen spent her time in her study with the door closed, talking on the phone - at least, that was what Mariah assumed at first.
To test this theory, Mariah lifted the hall phone off its cradle while Aunt Helen was talking in her study.
Dial tone.
Then there were those moments when other noises came from the study. Occasionally other voices. Aunt Helen always came out alone, though, and when Mariah peeked into the room afterward, there was never anyone else there.
So, okay, maybe Aunt Helen was crazy. So she talked to herself, sometimes in other voices. She was still the perfect companion for someone who wanted to brood.
“I’m going to meet with the gals tonight,” Helen said on Thursday after Mariah had lived with her a week. Helen gave Mariah a strange look, sort of a pleading-but-don’t-notice-me look.
After a week of living with Aunt Helen’s silences in her presence and conversations when Mariah wasn’t around, Mariah had grown adept at interpreting Aunt Helen’s looks, but this one baffled her. She thought it through, decided Aunt Helen was afraid Mariah would ask to go with her. Mariah said, “I’ll be fine here alone, if that’s all right.”
Aunt Helen smiled. So Mariah had guessed right. Whoever these gals were, Aunt Helen didn’t want to introduce Mariah to them.
“I won’t be home until after midnight,” Aunt Helen said.
“Go,” said Mariah. “Have a wonderful time. What will you be doing?”
Aunt Helen looked vague. “Oh, swapping recipes, probably. Playing cards. Sharing tips on how to take care of things. What we always do.”
“Enjoy,” said Mariah. “I’ll stay here and relax. It’s so nice to be able to relax, Aunt Helen. Thanks again for offering me sanctuary.”
“You’re welcome, sweetie, of course. Glad to do it. You’re an excellent guest.” Aunt Helen smiled again, her best sweetly befuddled smile. “Take care of yourself.” She kissed Mariah’s cheek, grabbed her oversized tapestry handbag, and headed out the door.
Mariah waved.
“Oh, and you could watch television in the living room,” Helen said as she stood on the bottom porch step, “or sit on the porch swing - the fireflies are nice tonight - or take a little night swim if you’re so inclined - the water’s quite warm after sunset this time of year, though mosquitoes are a problem - that would be good. You could take nap. Or fix yourself a snack in the kitchen.”
What was this flood of words about? Mariah wondered.
“If you’re interested in a book to read, there are some exciting novels in my bedroom. Feel free to borrow them. Good night!” She vanished into the warm, gentle darkness.
Fireflies spangled the wisteria vine, and drifted over the meadow grasses. The breeze rustled leaves in the oak trees beyond the driveway. Mariah waited to hear the start of Aunt Helen’s car engine, but it didn’t come. Maybe Aunt Helen was walking to her meeting with the gals. Without a flashlight. Well, she’d lived here for ages, longer than Mariah had been alive, and she probably knew the roads in the dark.
Mariah sat on the porch swing, set it rocking with her bare foot on the floorboards, and considered all of Aunt Helen’s suggestions. Aunt Helen had never tried to direct her activities before. What was that about? She’d catalogged an action for every room in the house . . .except the study.
If Aunt Helen had told Mariah to stay out of the study, Mariah would have been eaten alive with curiosity. Maybe Aunt Helen knew her well enough to know that.
She hadn’t specifically said Mariah wasn’t supposed to go in the study.
Mariah swung for a while. It really was a beautiful night. The moon rose over the trees, full and round, its light dimming the fireflies and silvering leaves, grass-blades, floorboards, and Mariah’s toes. The air smelled of night-blooming jasmine, rank weeds, and lake water.
Aunt Helen didn’t want Mariah in her study. Aunt Helen was the perfect hostess. Mariah shouldn’t do anything to upset Aunt Helen.
And yet - what was in that study? Was Aunt Helen truly crazy? Or was she just practicing to be a cartoon voice actress? Maybe the house wasn’t as safe as Mariah thought it was. Maybe she should just check.
She swathed her hand in her skirt before reaching for the study doorknob. What if Aunt Helen somehow knew she had entered the study? Maybe not touching anything would disguise her trespass.
The study was dark, the windows blanketed in thick curtains. The only light in the room came from something round and glowing dimly blue on a high shelf. Still with her hand swathed in skirt, Mariah reached for the lightswitch beside the door and flipped it on.
After all, the study didn’t look much different from other offices she had seen. A big desk - well, okay, she’d never seen a desk with a piece of tanned leather stretched across its top before - and lots of bookshelves, with battered, fat books stacked haphazardly across them. No book looked new or even as though it had been published in the last twenty years. On the high shelf with the thing that glowed in the dark, there were all kinds of small lumpy objects. Mariah took a step into the room. On the high shelf: statues, and jars of things; the glowing thing turned out to be a crystal ball, which still emitted a faint blue light.
A counter beyond the desk, below the double, curtained windows, held open-ended jars full of sprays of dried plants. Some sticks, maybe. A couple held other things, some that looked like dried lizards.
A box on the leather-topped desk held a collection of colored chalks. Faint tracings on the leather showed that Aunt Helen had drawn on it in chalk before, and maybe rubbed out the drawings afterward.
A fat calfskin-bound book tied with a leather thong sat on the edge of the desk.
Okay, you’ve looked, Mariah told herself. There was no phone on the desk. So obviously Aunt Helen had been talking to herself all those times Mariah couldn’t quite make out her voice through the door. You’ve looked. You know she doesn’t want you in here. You want to stay here the rest of the summer, rent free, before you have to figure out how to get a real job. Let’s get out of here.
She walked across to the desk, and, with her skirt-swathed hand, untied the thong binding the big stained brown book on the desk. She let the book fall open, found herself unsurprised when the page it opened to turned out to be written in spiky, old-fashioned handwriting and purple ink.
TO CALL FORTH THE ONE WHO WILL SATISFY YOU, said the heading at the top of the page. Then a bunch of nonsense words.
The one who would satisfy her. Hah. As if.
As if Jason hadn’t always promised he’d stick with her the rest of her life, when he couldn’t even stick with her past his own orgasm. Spurt and snore! She always had to take care of herself after he fell asleep. But she had liked being able to sleep next to him afterward, liked waking up to find he had slipped out of the apartment to go to the Danish bakery to get pastries and coffee for them both. She had liked sharing the paper with him over their impromptu breakfast, and she had loved standing on the corner after her last class of the day, secure in the knowledge that he would swing by and pick her up every time, that they would plan their evening and night together.
All those things she loved doing, and he had said she was smothering him.
Whose ideas had all those things been? She thought they had negotiated. But maybe she had been shoving all her ideas onto Jason, making him feel trapped.
Or maybe he wasn’t the person she had thought he was. Maybe he was just a prick.
She let her skirt fall around her thighs, and pressed her bare hands down on the outer edges of the book to hold it open. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if you could say a bunch of nonsense words and conjure up a truly satisfying someone?
Conjure.
Aunt Helen was off meeting with the gals to swap recipes and play cards.
Mariah took a good look at the dried plants, the strange things on the upper shelf, the leather-covered desk with its outlines of old chalk. Weren’t the chalk shadows circles and letters in some other alphabet, and even a five-pointed star?
Maybe Aunt Helen really was a witch.
Did you have to be a witch to work magic?
Maybe it would be better if you did.
But maybe she should just say something and see what happened.
The one who would satisfy her.
Hah.
She leaned over the book, read the words to herself, then lifted her head and spoke them aloud.
Of course, nothing happened.
Maybe she had pronounced the words wrong. Or maybe this was all bullshit. Just a bunch of loony old ladies with no purpose in life getting together to pretend they had power.
Mariah studied the writing, saw that some words had accents. She spoke the words again, accenting the syllables as indicated. Yes, it sounded different this time. But it was no more effective.
She squinted at the title of the spell. TO CALL FORTH THE ONE WHO WILL SATISFY YOU. Below it in small, almost faded green letters was a legend: REPEAT THRICE. What did she have to lose? She said the spell a third time.
Warmth bloomed at her back, and a smell like woodsmoke drifted through the air. “What will you give me?” murmured a gentle voice in her ear, the breath of the words warming her cheek.
She turned and saw smoke coalesce. “What?” she said. Had she set the house on fire? The smoke flowed and gathered into a human shape. A naked, muscular, male human shape. The skin color shifted from smoke gray to warm brown. The face took shape: he had a nicely defined jaw, sharp cheekbones, slanted amber eyes, and his lips looked luscious as he smiled at her. His hair was orange red. Flickers of flame rose from it, twisted into smoke in midair. He held out warm brown hands to her. “What will you give me if I satisfy you?”
“What?” she said again. She blinked three times. Had she really seen a man appear out of smoke? Or was this some guy who’d been hiding in the study all along? Sure, a naked guy hiding in her aunt’s study, just waiting for her to say some kooky spell out loud, when the odds were she wasn’t even going to come in here at all. Hah. As if.
He drifted closer without a sound. She glanced down. Maybe he didn’t produce footsteps because he was floating an inch or two above the floor. He moved without shifting his large, beautiful feet at all. Speaking of feet - well, speaking of size and shape - this guy had just gotten here, and already he was happy to see her.
Her hands itched to reach out and caress him.
“Uh,” she said, “what do you want?”
“I want to share your satisfaction.”
“Uh,” she said, “how would that work?”
“If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
“Um. Sounds good to me.”
“Excellent.” He cupped her face in his hands. His touch was warm and smooth and gentle. He stroked his thumb slowly over her lips, slid it into her mouth, and she sucked on it, her top teeth moving across the ball of his thumb, her tongue stroking along the smooth square of his thumbnail. He tasted like heat and smoke and just a little like steak. Oh, how strange, how delightful, she thought, as he leaned forward and kissed her forehead, then each eyelid. Her hands reached of their own accord to close around his hot, silky shaft, and he moaned with pleasure.
He eased his thumb out of her mouth and touched his lips to hers. His mouth tasted like peppermint, sweet, so sweet, and burning. His tongue slipped into her mouth, snaked over her own tongue, stroked the insides of her cheeks. She sucked on his tongue, and it changed shape in her mouth to something broad that perfectly fit the space in her mouth, but left room for her to breathe. She moaned around it and sucked.
His hands had left her cheeks, slid down to cup her breasts. Or was that right? She also felt his arms embracing her, and something pulled her closer to him as she worked her hands up and down his shaft. She smelled something burning and looked down. Her clothes singed and dropped from her breasts and stomach as he moved his hands over her, but she felt warmth, not flame, at his touch.
He worked her nipples with some of his hands, sent exquisite streaks of pleasure through her that loosened heat and moisture in her lower self. Some of his hands massaged her head, and some, smoky and unbound by the constraints of human arm length, wrapped around her to wander over her back and buttocks. “Open for me,” he whispered, though how he could whisper with his tongue in her mouth, she couldn’t tell. But oh, she was ready for him to enter even deeper. She opened her legs - somehow, her feet no longer touched the ground - how could that be? But he held her in his arms, however many arms he had, and he wasn’t properly in touch with the floor either. She opened her legs, and he nudged her knees farther apart. He took her hands in his, pulled them from his penis, massaged her fingers and brought her hands up to press them against his chest. Her palms flattened against the hard nubs of his nipples.
The head of his magnificent penis pressed against her lower lips, and she strained to pull him into her, but he teased her, pushing in a little, then withdrawing. She arched and struggled, tried to push herself down onto him. She wanted him inside her, wanted to trap and hold him, but he was holding her in all his arms, all those skillful hands wandering over her, teasing here, tickling there, squeezing elsewhere. He held her just where he wanted her, his tongue still a hot wet presence in her mouth, tapping and flicking the roof of her mouth, his eyes wide and amber so close to her own, so beautiful. She struggled to swallow him and couldn’t. She felt the sweat rise on her skin; his hands gloried in sliding over her. Finally she lay quiet in his embrace, and then he lowered her down onto him. He filled her perfectly, all the way, just the shape she wanted to pull inside her and hold forever - just there. She shivered, and clenched around him. Now I have you, she thought, and I’m not letting go.
“Oh, yes,” he murmured, and braced himself against something, and thrust even deeper into her. Then he was pumping into her, and she was riding him, and riding the waves that swept over and through her, higher, higher, waves that sent her shuddering in wide red whorls of pleasure and delight, and he pinned her there, pulsing and throbbing, in the sphere of stars, fountains of hot red fire rising through her. He was in her and around her, his taste on her tongue, his heat against her skin, his many fingers tapping in time to her racing pulses as she exploded with joy.
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes.”
It was unbearable, unbreakable. How could she stay here? How could she take another moment of this unutterable bliss?
He hugged her closer, and she shattered.
•
She woke on the floor of her aunt’s study, still throbbing with the aftershocks of pleasure. Ashes sprinkled the floor around her, and her inside passage itched and burned with pleasurable heat. She felt stretched and achey, but completely satisfied.
She pushed up on her elbows and gazed down at herself. Her skin was patterned with charcoal handprints. Her clothes had disappeared. Her mouth was full of sweet.
“But - “ she said. “Oh, but - where are you? Who were you? Come back.”
The grandfather clock in the living room bonged. Mariah lay back and listened as it struck. Twelve strokes.
Twelve!
Aunt Helen had said she’d be back after midnight. Aunt Helen had tried, in her roundabout way, to make Mariah stay out of the study. Why? To deny her this pleasure so intense that everything else faded?
Mariah struggled to her feet. She staggered to the desk and stared down at the spell. TO CALL FORTH THE ONE WHO WILL SATISFY YOU. She needed a copy. . . .
She glanced at the floor, saw ashes everywhere. Ashes! Ashes of her clothes? These handprints on her skin, would they wash off? Oh, she needed to clean up before Aunt Helen came home!
But she needed to copy that spell first. No, there was no time. If she could make it look as though she’d never been in the study, maybe she’d get another chance -
She closed the leather book and tied it up in its thong, then raced out of the room. She fetched a broom and dustpan and swept up the ashes and threw them in the kitchen trashcan. Ashes of what? Her former clothes? Or their passion? Where had he gone? What was his name? She mopped the floor with damp paper towels.
After she was sure she had cleaned up all traces of her invasion, she closed the study door. Now for the shower. Oh, these strange powdery gray handprints all over her, evidence that something had touched her. Touched her everywhere, she thought, twisting to see her back in the mirror. Splayed-fingered handprints on her butt. Oh, yes, he had held her tight, whatever he had been. However many hands he had had. . . how was it that he had so many hands? Maybe he was some kind of Hindu god. If she rolled in a white towel, would the handprints come off, leave her a map of their passion, proof that he had ever been there? Could she get his fingerprints and track him down? Ridiculous. She bet nothing with six or eight or ten arms would be in the criminal database. Not without at least a mention on the cover of the National Enquirer, which she’d studied every week at the supermarket, wondering about the depths journalism sometimes sank to.
With a story like hers, though, maybe she could make a deal with the Enquirer. She heard they paid well. What a start to her journalism career.
Forget it. Whatever had happened, she wanted to keep it to herself. She ran the shower good and hot and stepped under the stream of water.
The water hung in the air, and his face formed from it, crystal and clear, only the eyes colored, glowing amber above his clear smile. “Share happiness again?” he said, more and more of him forming around her as water poured from the showerhead.
“What’s your name?” she whispered. His embrace felt different, wet, hot, all-encompassing, exciting.
He rubbed his cheek on hers. He felt smooth and wet and solid at the same time, an impossible slick texture that made the hair on the back of her neck prickle and rise. This time his shape was even less human than last time, flowing streams that ran up and down over her, everywhere, though nothing ran down the drain. He was as close to her as a hot bath, wrapped around her like a down quilt, but more active. Everywhere on her skin he pulsed and thrummed, submarine sounds more felt than heard, waking sweeps of pleasure that arrowed through her. She closed her eyes, drowning in the sensation of being touched everywhere by warm wet rapture.
“My name,” he whispered in her ear.
“You went away,” she said, panting between words, “and you didn’t tell me who you were or how to find you.”
“You want to find me?” The throbbing against her skin speeded up. Shudders of delight wracked her. She reached down to finger herself, but the water swelled against her clitoris, swelled and grew harder, pulsed in mind-altering rhythm.
“Mmm,” she moaned. She breathed high and hard and spread her legs apart, and he flowed into her.
“My name,” he whispered again, then breathed a string of syllables into her ears. “Oh, my exquisite ocean of bliss, my delightful source of nourishment. Only say my name, and I will come for you anywhere, anytime. You taste so good.”
He was all around her, insistent, stroking and pressing and sucking her until she writhed in pleasure.
Later, she blinked back to herself to discover she sat on the floor of the shower, cold water pulsing down on her from the showerhead. She was so warm inside she thought water should turn to steam as it hit her. She felt so tired she could hardly stand up and shut off the shower.
Oh, God. He had told her his name, but it was so long and strange she couldn’t remember it.
Not that she’d want to say it again tonight. She barely had the energy to dry off, brush her teeth, and collapse across her bed.
•
A timid knock sounded at her door. Mariah groaned and rolled over onto her back, then put her arm across her eyes to block morning light.
The knock sounded again. “Mariah?” Aunt Helen asked. “Honey?”
Mariah groaned. She lifted her head, saw she was naked on top of her bed. “Just a minute,” she called, and her voice came out creaky. She struggled to her feet, staggered over to the closet and pulled out a bathrobe. In the mirror on the closet door she stared at her image before she pulled on the gray terrycloth. She looked. . . clean. Very, very clean. No more handprints all over her body. She leaned closer, nose to nose with her image. There was a faint pattern on her skin: swirls, almost invisible against her tan, a little more obvious where her swimsuit covered her. A tracing of river waves.
She shivered and pulled on the robe.
Mariah opened the door a crack. “Aunt Helen?”
“Are you all right?” Aunt Helen asked.
“Tired.”
“Ah.”
Mariah swallowed, worked up enough spit to speak. “Did you have a nice meeting with your friends?”
Aunt Helen blushed. “Yes. Dear, what did you do with yourself while I was gone?”
Mariah lowered her gaze. Aunt Helen was her host. Mariah had broken unspoken rules. If she told, would Aunt Helen kick her out? How could she confess to anybody what had happened? What had happened, anyway? In the light of day, she was convinced it had all been a wildly erotic dream. Nothing like that could really happen, could it?
“Did you go into my study?”
Heat swept over Mariah’s face. Aunt Helen had been nothing but kind to her. Where were the easy lies of her adolescence, when she had told her parents she was studying at someone else’s house while she was really out riding in cars with her friends, smoking pot, drinking, exploring each other’s bodies?
She couldn’t lie like that anymore.
Mariah nodded.
“Oh, dear. I was afraid of that. Did you look in my big leather book?”
Mariah nodded.
“Did you - try anything you saw in there?”
Mariah nodded.
“Oh, dear,” said Aunt Helen. “Did it work?”
Mariah nodded again.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear, oh dear. I had a feeling you would have a natural aptitude for the craft. Did you tidy up afterward?”
“I swept the floor. I thought I got it all up.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Did you send whatever you summoned back where it came from?”
“I - “ Mariah shook her head. “I don’t know what I did, but I sure didn’t do that. I don’t know how.”
“Oh, dear.” Aunt Helen’s eyes sharpened. “I thought there was a smell of wild magic still around the house. Well, we’ll have to banish it. Who knows what it’s been up to since you set it loose? Do you remember the spell you used?”
“It was in another language,” Mariah whispered.
“Of course,” said Aunt Helen. “But there would have been a title, something to make you want to say it. Which one was it? ‘Come and Converse’? That’s a favorite of mine since the Bowens moved away. I’ve gotten quite in the habit of using that one. Silly, I know, when I’ve got you I could be talking with, but my friend who comes across the veil and I, we’ve had a long while to grow accustomed to each other’s company, and - oh, not that one? Did you do a summoning for fortune? Probably not, those accomplish a task and they’re over. You called something over from the other side, didn’t you? Come show me what you did.”
Mariah followed her aunt downstairs and into the study, where her aunt spoke softly to the big leather book as she untied it. Aunt Helen laid the leather thong open and stepped back. “Show me,” she said, her voice strict and unfamiliar.
Mariah put her hands on the book.
Tidy up. Put away your toys.
But he wasn’t a toy, was he?
If they put him away, would she ever see him again? Now that Aunt Helen knew Mariah was a snoop, would she ever leave the book out where Mariah could study it again? Copy the spell? What if she told Aunt Helen the wrong spell?
God, the sex. Cataclysmic, mind-blowing. Sure made her forget all her troubles. Her lower self twitched just thinking about it.
She sighed and flipped pages until she found the spell to call forth the Satisfying One. Could she memorize it with just a look? But Aunt Helen was watching, and the words were too strange. She laid the book flat and stepped back, her face hot.
“Oh, that one,” said Aunt Helen, whose face flushed too. She turned the page and looked at what was written on the back. “But that’s self-limiting. One satisfaction per summoning, and then off it goes again, nice and neat.”
“There’s two pages?” Mariah asked.
“What?” Aunt Helen darted her a glance, then flipped back to the previous page, stared at the bottom. “You stopped there?”
Mariah nodded.
“Oh, dear,” Aunt Helen said. “So that’s been unfettered since last night? I wonder what kind of dreams my neighbors have been having. Oh, dear. We’d better tame it right away.”
Mariah’s robe tightened around her breasts, squeezed them gently, released, squeezed. The rough cloth rubbed back and forth over her nipples, raising tingles. The tail of the robe’s belt snaked inside, muscular and supple, and pressed at the groove between her legs. The whole robe came alive, the nubby material massaging her, immobilizing her with delight.
“You must unsay the spell,” Aunt Helen said.
The robe grew a hood, which draped itself over her head. “Say my name three times,” something whispered in her ear, “and I’ll stay with you forever.”
Her body purred and hummed and revved. Forever! Wow! So the opposite of Jason!
“Mariah? Mariah!” Aunt Helen said in her new strict voice.
Just this, joy forever? The rest of her life? Everything around her a potential partner? Hot, wet lips suckled at her left breast, then her right, shocks and shudders of delight.
“Tidy up. You can always summon it again,” Aunt Helen said.
Mariah staggered to the desk, trying not to notice that he was inside her again, fevered throbbing that sent her pulse racing.
“Read this aloud three times.” Aunt Helen pointed to the passage on the second page of the spell.
The hood dropped lower, tightened over her eyes. She reached up and pushed it back, held it back as it struggled to embrace her head again. She felt hot and shifty, close to shooting up into the sky. She read the rest of the spell aloud, even as he stroked and rubbed her. Read it again. Then a third time.
Her robe died.
Her body hummed, poised on the brink. Hummed. Stuttered. Staged down, itching and aching and irritated.
“Good,” said Aunt Helen. “Go back to bed. When you wake up, we’ll start formal training.”
Mariah stumbled twice on the stairs, crawled under her bedcovers with the robe still wrapped around her. “Tell me your name again next time,” she whispered, “and I’ll see what I can do.”
• • •
had a brief career writing for the late, lamented Foggy Windows Publishing company. She wrote a short sf story for HEAT VOLUME 1, and a science fiction erotica novel which fell victim to the collapse of the program and has never seen print. She’s ready to bust loose again.
