Incubi

Prologue

Aorista, the man thought.

“Did you say something?” the girl asked.

Her breasts were erect chiffon orbs. She lay back on the bed, displaying the trimmed, dark plot of her sex. The man gazed openly, and again he thought: Aorista.

“I said you’re very beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful too.” Desire drenched her voice, or distilled it. “Don’t make me wait,” she murmured, and squirmed a little.

The man stood at the foot of the bed. “Let me look at you awhile first. You’re beautiful, and I want to look.”

She settled back and closed her eyes. She was beautiful, and her beauty sang to him. In the room’s raw light, her white nakedness poured over his senses like hot wax. He could consume this vision; he could lap it up as a famished cat laps milk. It was not lust which exhorted his arousal, it was passion for all that she was, the beauty of her spirit as well as her flesh.

Flesh through blood, his thoughts whispered to him. Body through spirit.

She began to touch herself. Her hands slid up her belly, ran over her breasts, then slid back down, ranging over silken, white skin. She was so white — the man felt astounded. The color of innocence, he thought. The color of all colors. She could be a sculpture of purest marble or a canvas by Rubens. She could be anything, he thought.

She opened her legs. “Is this what you want to look at?”

“Yes,” he said.

She parted the pink cleft with her fingers. The opening shined like sunlight on a lake. “Please, please,” she whimpered.

At once, the man was on his knees, tasting her. She moaned. The man spread the white thighs further and rubbed his mouth over the moist entry, licking. He thought of beauty and creation, avatars and darkness, life and death. He thought of love.

For there could only be one real truth in the world, couldn’t there? Love? It had to be love.

He laved her into a fever pitch with his tongue. Her hips flinched and she whined. Her excitement poured out of her.

Then, abruptly, the man stood up. The shadow of his erection played over her breasts, a serpent roving a white vale.

“All the truth that you can bear,” he said, “is yours.”

Her eyes caressed him. He could see the anguish there, the desperate passion. It filled her breasts. It stuck her big dark nipples out like plugs. Yes, passion. It beckoned him.

In each hand now he held a length of cotton rope.

“May I tie you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she breathed.

Flesh through blood. Body through spirit.

Yes, the only real truth.

Love.

And it was with love that he next began to open her with the black blade. “I am risen,” came the voice, but whose voice was it? His own or his god’s? Father, he dreamed as he cut. Her flesh parted serenely, like new-churned butter. His erection pulsed down as he extracted the warm organs, kissing each one, then very delicately placing it aside.

Aorista, the man thought. The precious word hung in his mind like the breath of an angel. His arms were glazed red to the elbow. He rejoiced in the word.

He glanced up at his shadow on the wall.

But whose shadow was it? His own?

He smiled with love.

Then he dipped his fingers into the girl’s blood and began to write.