Incubi

Chapter 13

The darkness damped the room to perfect silence. Her lover, unknown as yet, slid beside her into bed.

Veronica gasped, in passion.

His hand gently molded the contours of her breasts, then slid to her sex. It touched her with such precision she thought she might come at once; the hand seemed to know her. A blurred face lowered, lips touched her lips and kissed. The room’s dark hid her lover’s face like a veil.

What’s…happening? she thought lamely. A tightness spired at her loins like an overtorqued spring. The hand continued to play with the tender groove of her sex, investigating.

Who was this man in her bed? Veronica moaned, short of breath. Marzen, she concluded. Or Gilles. She pulled the naked figure atop her, felt a warm, hardened penis slide across her belly. Her nipples swelled up so much they ached; she felt the veins beat in her breasts. She sensed an earthy purgation, the preliminary release of feelings that demanded to be loosed. “Who are you?” She panted, adjusting herself. She felt frenzied, desperate to be penetrated.

“Darling,” whispered the voice.

Now Veronica gasped, in shock. A cloud passed, letting moonlight fall into the room. She knew the voice, she knew it was all wrong, all impossible. The moonlight now revealed his face.

Jack’s.

Impossible.

Yet it was him. She looked up and saw beyond doubt the face of the man she used to love. His long hair hung down in strings. The clean sweat of passion made his flesh shine, and his big forlorn eyes gazed directly back into hers.

It was. It was Jack.

“Oh, Veronica…”

She felt locked in heat and incomprehension. Jack reached down, put the end of his penis into her vulva.

“Jack, I—”

“I still love you,” he cut off.

He eased into her and slowly began to thrust. The feel of the entry, and its immediacy, robbed her voice. It robbed her sensibilities too. At once she didn’t care that this could not be explained. She was with Jack now, and he was making love to her. That’s all she needed to know.

His thrusts gained rhythm. She looked down and saw his penis appearing and disappearing into her flesh below the tuft of fur. Her impending orgasm seemed to chase her, cutting distance.

“Do you remember?” he asked. The strings of his long hair dangled. He seemed sad.

“What, Jack?”

“Do you remember when we were together, what it was like?”

Her voice shredded the word. “Yes.”

“Do you remember the plans we made?”

Veronica couldn’t speak now; her throat felt shivered shut. It was true. They’d made lots of plans — all ashes now. Suddenly tears welled and blurred with memory like blood in water.

He leaned down, still slowly stroking. He licked the tears out of her eyes. “What happened? Why did it all fall apart?”

The question crushed her. She could never answer it.

“We could have it all back again,” he whispered like a plea. “We could start over. It would be better this time, I promise.”

What could she say, even if she could not speak?

His head drooped between his shoulders. The deep sadness darkened his words. “We were meant to be together.”

The same sadness beat into her with his thrusts.

“Sweetheart,” he began to whimper. Soon his thrusts raced. Their loins slapped. He collapsed onto her as he came, shivering. She could feel the repeated, hot spurts.

She didn’t want him to be sad, but what could she do? Their relationship had trapped her, robbed her of the experience she felt convinced she needed to be whole. Maybe she did still love him — she didn’t know. But what she did know was that she wasn’t ready to resume anything.

“I still love you,” he groaned. The last of his orgasm leaked out, trickling in her.

She rubbed his back, his face in the crook of her neck. Her ankles unhooked. All she could see in her mind was what he must see every day in his loss — all his love that now had no place to go.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said.

“Forget it.”

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you what you want to hear. I can’t lie to you. I’m not sure what I want, or what I need.”

“I know,” he said.

God, this was awful. How had it happened? He must have found out where Khoronos lived, and come here in desperation. But then she thought, What the…? She could still feel his semen in her, but it felt…lumpy. No, it felt moving.

Then the sudden impact: the stench. She hacked, gagging at the sudden stench like a fish market dumpster in the sun.

Bile began to pulse up her throat.

Her horror smothered her scream. Jack leaned up on his arms, but it was not Jack now who lay between her legs — it was a raddled corpse. Perforated slabs of flesh hung off vermiculated bones. Its skin was green-hued gray, its eyes were holes. Veronica pushed up at the cadaver’s face—

— then half its face slid off its skull.

The corroded mouth struggled to form words but only voiced a deep, phlegmy rattle. It tenderly touched her face, bones showing. When it tried to talk again, out poured a slew of pus and putrefactive slop onto her breasts. She flailed under the thing’s diminished weight. Rot-warm skin slid away everywhere she pushed up. She pulled on an ear and the ear came off. When she shoved up against its bloated belly, her hands sunk into a substance like raw warm hamburger.

“Please, don’t…,” the thing finally managed. More corpse-vomit urped onto her chest. Small things twitched amid the rank slush — maggots — and at once Veronica realized exactly what the cadaver had ejaculated into her with its semen.

Grue lay splattered on her: a chunky, stinking porridge of parasites. She bucked again, heaving up, and flipped the cadaver off the bed.

It feebled to hands and knees. Steam rose off its dilapidated flesh as maggots squirmed their way through hot gray skin. Eventually the thing rose to its feet in wet crunching movements and turned its head to her. Veronica crawled back on the bed. The cadaver beseeched her in its loss, holding out worm-riddled hands as if to divulge a crucial wisdom.

“There’s me in you now,” it gargled. “Me. In you. Forever.”

She knew what it meant when she dared look between its rack-thin legs. No penis remained—

“My gift, my love.”

— and if it wasn’t between its legs anymore, it could only be—

Oh…my…God, the thought poured in her mind. She choked back vomit and parted her legs. With thumb and fore-finger, she extracted the soft, rot-sodden penis from her vagina. It swung, dripping, off her fingers; a white grave-worm squiggled out of the tiny peehole. Veronica shrieked and flung the organ away.

“This is what,” Jack’s corpse grated, “all love comes to. It falls to pieces in our hands.”

His scalp and the rest of his face slid off his skull, but only after the peeling lips uttered the final testament: “I…still…love you, Veronica.”

Then the cadaver collapsed to a pile of steaming rot.

Veronica rolled off the bed. She was naked, beslimed, crawling for the door. The door! The door! was the only thing in the world she could think.

Then the door burst open.

Heat and intense orange light filled the hall, and next the figure of flame stepped into the doorway.

The heat beat down on her. The figure’s penis burned white-blue like a blowtorch flame. It hissed. Slowly, then, the burning man extended its fiery hand, as if to invite her away.

Hands were on her, shaking her then, shaking her awake as she screamed and screamed, impossibly, in bliss.

“Jack? Jack?”

He sensed smothered light, and heard his name reach down as though he were hearing it through a closed coffin lid.

His eyes snapped open.

“Are you all right?”

Faye Rowland leaned over him, squinting in worry.

“What?” he said.

“You were screaming.”

Screaming? He tried to clear his mind. He was in bed. The nightstand lamp had been turned on, and the clock read 3:37 a.m.

“You were having a nightmare,” Faye Rowland said.

He felt stupid looking up at her. His mind felt like a spilled puzzle. Then he thought: Jeeeeeeesus. He remembered the dream.

He’d been standing in Jan Beck’s morgue. The steel door had slammed shut behind him. Before him lay Shanna Barrington’s naked, white corpse. He pounded on the door, but it wouldn’t open. When he turned, of course, Shanna Barrington’s corpse was getting up off the morgue slab. She stood, looking down, and began to pick the stitches out of her autopsy section as if unbuttoning a blouse. The seam came apart. Bagged organs fell onto the floor.

She looked at him again, sunken-eyed. Her blue lips smiled.

Jack screamed.

The corpse’s face had changed. To Veronica’s.

“I had a nightmare, all right,” Jack said now. “A doozie.”

Faye Rowland sat down on the bed. “You were screaming bloody murder up here. It’s funny, though. I had a nightmare too.”

Jack lit a cigarette. “I’ll tell mine if you tell yours.”

Faye Rowland laughed and pushed her long hair back. All she wore as a nightgown was a large T-shirt that came down to her hips. “I used to be engaged to this guy. A couple weeks before we were supposed to get married, he called it off.”

“Bummer,” Jack said.

“I dreamed that he was lowering me into a hole full of fire.”

“And?”

“That’s all. That was my nightmare.”

“Aw, shit,” Jack scoffed. “Mine was much better than that.” But when he told it, it sounded silly.

“That’s all. That was my nightmare.”

“That’s the name you were screaming,” Faye said. “Veronica.”

Great. Jack smirked and blew smoke at the ceiling.

“We all have our wounds.” Her large breasts showed through the big T-shirt. “But at least they make life interesting.”

“Sure,” Jack said.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Why not?”

She only half looked at him. “Do you still love her?”

What a question. “Yes,” he said.

He stared past her, seeing nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked that. I don’t know why I did. I guess I’m just curious about you.”

“Forget it. At least we know we have something in common.”

She laughed again slightly. “Yeah, we’ve both been dumped.”

“My friend Craig — you met him, the keep at the bar — he says that getting dumped only means you’re better than the other person.”

“Typical male rationalization. No offense, but men have a tendency to change the truth to suit them.”

Her quickness to dispute him was admirable. Is that what I’ve done? he wondered. Made my own truth? “Women rationalize too, you know.”

“No, we don’t,” she said. “We adapt.”

He looked at her more closely, and at this entire situation. He was naked beneath the sheets, and here sitting on his bed, was a girl he’d met yesterday. Her big T-shirt made a relief of her own nakedness. Her body looked plush, soft. He wondered what it would feel like to just lie down with her and hold her. The idea of sex with her was too alien. Images of Veronica would come back. Jack wasn’t the purest person in the world, but he hoped he was honest enough not to use someone for the sake of a dead fantasy. He liked Faye Rowland. She was truthful and straightforward. She was a survivor.

The complete inappropriateness of this was what made it appropriate. He wasn’t even surprised. She stood up and turned off the light. In the darkness he saw her skim off the nightshirt. He held the sheet up for her, and she got in. He put his arm around her.

“It’s been a long time for me,” she said.

“Me too.”

Her hair smelled faintly of soap. She lay right up next to him. “We can if you want to,” she said. “But—”

“Let’s just sleep. I think that would be better.”

“Yeah, we’ll just sleep. It’s nice, you know, to just sleep with someone.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I like you.”

“I like you, too.”

“I guess I just—”

“Shh,” he whispered. “I know.”

She lay her head on his chest, her breasts pressing. Her body felt so warm; the gentle heat lulled him. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

She was asleep. Jack drifted off a minute later, caressed by the softness of her body and her heat.

Their dreams would be better this time around.