July 01, 2008
Fiction
New Wine and Old Skins
We are gathered at supper when Creeping John comes creeping, wearing his shirt of hair and leather belt, toes overgrown, pointing his crooked finger. He stands on our front lawn beneath the citrus tree. His shouts rattle the kitchen windows: “You brood of vipers!”
Only my twin brother, popping olives into his mouth, is unaffected. He laughs and pours another glass of wine. My mother, enraged, gnaws harder on her fowl until she chomps clear through the bone. She flings the chicken leg aside and turns on my uncle. “Oh, Gerald, take care of it!”
My uncle does nothing but sweat in silence, gnashing his teeth. My mother throws down her napkin in disgust and leaves without excusing herself. Long after Creeping John’s ranting has shaken our plates, my uncle sits at the table, sobbing quietly into his unfinished dinner, defeated.
•
My brother’s girlfriends are varied and numerous. They have names like Anisette, Philadelphia, Bitsy. They eat fruit, stockingless, in front of our TV while my brother and his friends smoke pot and play cards. His latest calls herself Pantina. Her large bottom and voluminous breasts make her look at least a decade older than her status as a student at my brother’s community college would suggest.
“What’s she like?” I ask my brother.
“A juicy pear,” he answers, but his mind is elsewhere.
•
My mother and I go shopping. Creeping John follows us through the mall, trailing nettles and dripping wild honey. My mother grabs my hand and speeds up, weaving through the crowd in attempts to shake him, but in her red polyester-rayon blend pantsuit she is easy to spot.
His words follow us, fast on our heels: “Repent, repent!”
At the housewares department, it has become too much for her. My mother turns on him, her eyes like stinging wasps. She picks up the nearest object – a pancake spatula – and hurls it at our advancing persecutor. It does no damage, but sticks in the hairs of his shirt as if it were flypaper.
His words echo down the aisle: “I am the voice crying out in the wilderness!”
•
There is an ominous quality in the heat of the summer air. The fruit hangs heavy in the citrus tree. I go wandering in the evening with nothing on but a white cotton nightgown. Uncle had a gazebo built for my mother in the midst of the vineyard, and I head there to sit by the fountain. Rounding the bend in the path, I see a seated figure huddled at the edge of the clearing, his back to me.
I recall that once my brother saw Creeping John in this very spot devouring grasshoppers, the bits of wings like dry onion skins between his teeth.
Curious, I approach quietly so the trespasser cannot hear me.
It is Creeping John - but he is not feeding on insects. He’s got his manhood in his hands; it flops in his lap like a live salmon. I watch him stroke himself.
He catches me witnessing his tainted deed.
“Away with you!” he shouts.
I run back to the house. Tearing through the living room where my uncle and mother sit pacified in front of the TV, I bound down the hallway to the rooms where my brother and I reside. Only when I am safe in my bedroom do I pause to catch my breath. Quietly, I go to my brother’s door, and knock. There is no answer. Through the doorway, I hear the sounds of he and his girlfriend having sex, the thwack of their sweaty skins slapping against one another.
“Oh, mmmh mmmh,” he is saying.
Pantina cries out his name, over and over.
I lock myself in the bathroom and turn on the bathtub faucet to drown out the sounds of their lovemaking. I think of Pantina’s flushed cheeks, pendulous breasts and jiggling buttocks as my brother rams her from behind.
I finger my own breasts, smallish, button-like.
I climb into the bath and slide myself under the stream of water, tentatively at first, then opening my legs wider and wider. I discover muscles in my pelvis I didn’t know I had, and flex them. Planting my feet against the shower wall, I hoist myself up, arching my back to meet the steady cascade. I rotate my hips faster against the torrent of water. “John,” I whisper, “John.” I picture his face, his bearded bristly face. I imagine running my hands through his hair, pushing his head down, down, level to my cunt, and him licking me clean.
•
My mother and I are watching TV after dinner. There has been no supper-time visit from Creeping John for over a week. Outside, some fruit falls off the tree and bounces once or twice on the porch. My brother and uncle argue over my brother’s rights to borrow the convertible for the evening.
“Let him have the car, Gerald,” says my mother.
My uncle assents. He is weak at heart. Something is eating away at him from inside outward. I suspect it might have to do with the frequent phone calls he has been receiving in secret, late at night after my mother has gone to bed.
After my mother goes upstairs, the telephone ring once. On my way to the kitchen for a glass of water, I hear my uncle in his study, speaking in hushed tones. There is another phone next to the pantry. Quietly, I lift the receiver.
“But, John,” my uncle is saying, “What can I do? It is done.”
Silence on the other end of the line. I hang up.
•
I awake close to midnight, aware that someone is outside the French doors on the far side of my bedroom. Rarely does anyone enter that way; brambles and poison oak block its access from the garden. “Uncle,” I call out. But there is no answer. Perhaps it is my brother, returning home drunk and stoned, his keys misplaced. I get out of bed to let him in. It’s Creeping John. I see him clearly through the glass. And he can see me. I stand before him in my white cotton layers. Holding his gaze, I strip. My socks come off, one by one. Then my filmy, white cotton cardigan. Next my T-shirt, and my pajama bottoms. I toss aside my bra – barely an A cup, and wriggle my underpants over my substantially fuller hips. The whiteness of my breasts and belly is striking in the moonlight. I allow him to take this in. He stands transfixed. His hot breath leaves a dewy circle on the windowpane. I turn so he can see the globes of my buttocks. Bending over with my face turned over my shoulder toward him, I allow him the full view.
I slide one finger inside myself. Without tearing my eyes from his, I remove my finger and lick it. I taste myself – lemon and honey. My sex swells, blossoming open like some rare orchid. I rub my throbbing cunt. My fingers, wet in my own juices, glide over the velveteen folds. A thin line of liquid leaves a glistening snail trail down my inner thigh. I push two fingers into myself, and then a third. My aching cunt soaks them up and spits them out, over and over, faster and faster to its own wild rhythm.
“Fuck me.” I mouth the words through the glass, “Fuck me.”
Creeping John staggers backward, pointing his crooked finger. “Unclean!” he bellows. He turns and flees, stumbling through the underbrush.
I hear the screech of tires on gravel, the desperate bleat of a car horn, a thump and a thud. I run outside without wasting any time to dress.
There sprawled in front of my brother’s car is the body of Creeping John. The head, by some diabolic act, has been lopped off in the collision and now lies at the roots of the citrus tree amidst the rotting fruit.
“It was an accident!” shouts my brother, jumping out of the front seat of the convertible.
“Oh my God!” cries my uncle, awakened by the ruckus and arriving at the scene, “This can’t come to any good!”
“It was an accident!” stammers my brother. “He came from out of nowhere like a rabid animal! He ran right in front of the car!”
Naked, I crouch down and take Creeping John’s head into my hands. I run my fingers through his hair – thick and matted like that of a wild dog – and whisper into his ear, “I am the voice crying out in the wilderness. Not you.”
• • •
has been published in Clean Sheets and The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4. She enjoys writing fairy tales and other short fiction as well as erotica. She lives in New York City.
