Incubi

Chapter 32

Ginny cranked out the last page from the Smith Corona XL that Khoronos had provided. Her story was done. It was only about 1,500 words, but she’d redrafted it obsessively. Even with her novels, it was not uncommon to rewrite eight or ten times. Art did not come easy for some; most of writing was rewriting. And to hell with all this word processor stuff. Ginny couldn’t imagine writing with anything but a loud, clanky typewriter. It was the activity that spurred her, margin bells ringing, keys clacking, the carriage whipping back and forth as her muse poured out of her fingertips. All her friends at her writers’ group told her she was crazy not to own a computer. “Oh, but Ginny, you’ll save so much time!” “I’m not interested in saving time, I’m interested in creating art,” she’d come back. “Oh, but Ginny, it all goes on disk! You just push the print button when you’re done! Laser jets! 256 RAM! 20-gig hard- drive! How can you live without one!”

“I will not sell my muse to technology,” Ginny would then say, and if they kept it up she would politely point out that her books sold millions of copies while theirs sold thousands. To put it another way, Ginny was sick to fucking death of hearing about fucking computers.

Her story was called “The Passionist.” Eight hours of writing left her feeling like eight hours of road work; she’d proof it later. She drifted downstairs, blinking fatigue out of her eyes. Just past nine now, it was getting dark. No one was downstairs. She’d peeked in on Veronica only to find her dead asleep. As for Amy Vandersteen, Ginny hadn’t seen her since yesterday.

She went out on the back porch and smoked. A cigarette after finishing a story was better than a cigarette after sex. The rush lulled her almost like pot and she looked dreamily up to the sky. The stars looked like beautiful luminous spillage; the moon hung low. Since coming here, since meeting Khoronos, she found beauty everywhere she looked. She saw wonders. Her vision had never shown her such things before.

She went back into the kitchen and microwaved a bowl of Korean noodles, which she found bland. She hunted through the spice rack for something to spark them up. Curry. Chili powder. Chopped red peppers. Below the rack, though, stood an unmarked jar. Ginny opened it and sniffed. The stuff looked like confectioners’ sugar, but when she tasted some on the end of her finger, there was no taste at all.

“Try some,” advised Gilles, who sauntered into the kitchen.

Ginny looked at him. God, he’s gorgeous. All he wore were khaki shorts and a red sweatband on his brow. “It doesn’t taste like anything,” she said.

“It’s like oysters. It makes you feel sexy. Try some.”

Ginny giggled and did so. It still tasted bland, but it amused her the way Gilles was watching her, head tilted and arms crossed under the well-developed pectorals. “Where’s everybody?” she asked.

“Erim and Marzen are meditating. They are very spiritual people. Spirit transcends flesh. Did Erim ever tell you that?”

“A million times,” Ginny said. “Synergy. Transposition.”

“Yes. Do you know what all that means?”

“I don’t know.”

“You will.”

Even his weirdness was attractive. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the fresh Band-Aid on his chest.

“My offering. I don’t expect you to understand that.”

His offering? Oh, he was weird, all right, but she didn’t care. The magnificent body and sculpted face were what she cared about. When she turned to rinse out the noodle bowl, his hands were on her back, kneading her stiffened neck muscles, teasing them loose. “God, that feels good,” she murmured.

“What does God have to do with it?”

“It’s a figure of speech, Gilles. Jesus.”

“Him too?”

His practiced fingers stifled her laugh. She wore no panties or bra beneath the sundress (Ginny didn’t like constraints when she wrote; at home she sometimes even wrote nude); she could feel his contours against her buttocks as he continued to massage her neck. This was all too obvious, though she did not object. Why should she? “I want to touch you,” he said then, and turned her around. What a line, she thought. Now she faced him, backed against the counter. She ran her hands up his chest and grinned.

“I want to touch you,” he softly repeated.

She felt perfectly slutty raising the hem of her dress. His hand slipped over the downy hair at once, then lowered to investigate her sex. The long finger made her moist right off.

“So you’ve finished your story?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. She was fascinated just watching, just looking down and seeing the hand play with her.

“What is your story called?”

“‘The Passionist,’” she breathed.

“A title born of truth, of yourself? You are very passionate,” he said.

Shut up, she thought. Had she subconsciously written the story for him? Her stories were allegories, her characters symbols of emotions. Perhaps she’d written the story for herself. Anything we create is part of what we are, she half thought as Gilles’ finger probed. The last line was this: Come away with me and my dream.

But what was her dream?

The kitchen was dark. Ginny felt slick and hot. Had the white spice really turned her on? She knew it was Gilles. Flesh, she thought suddenly, and absurdly. She wanted his flesh, not his spirit. She was only being honest with herself: his passion could take a hike, for all she cared. She wanted his cock.

He took his hand away and put the finger in her mouth, making her taste herself. She lowered his khaki shorts. Immediately his flesh was hard in her hand. That’s all a cock really is, she symbolized, amused. A handle that women use to lead men through life. She led him down to the floor by it. He stepped out of the shorts. Ginny pulled her dress up as Gilles arranged her on her hands and knees. “Like this?” he inquired.

“Yeah” she whispered, almost impatiently. The wan light from the living room was all that lit the kitchen. She could see the outline of his shadow above the outline of her own — she looked ahead as he inserted himself. The separation of images captivated her. She watched his shadow. He pushed her dress further up her back, then splayed her buttocks to penetrate more deeply. The angle and depth felt so good it almost hurt.

Ginny continued to think about things as he continued. She thought about love and lust. A few days ago she thought she might be able to love Gilles, but that seemed so foolish now. Love was foolish; it was an emotional play-act where the final exit was always the same: failure. Veronica had branded Ginny’s ideologies as cynicism, but then Veronica was a head case to begin with; she wouldn’t even admit she was still hung up on Jack. Love seldom worked. Wasn’t Veronica proof? All love did in the end was tear people apart.

The notion that her ideals might be flawed never occurred to her. Ginny was at home with her ideals. Love had blown up in her face enough times. Men had used her, so now she would use them back, with her body and her looks. Seeing Gilles’ shadow make love to her, without seeing his face, heightened the philosophy.

“You are beautiful,” Gilles whispered. His hands gripped her hips. His rhythm picked up. He wasn’t making love to her as much as he was probing her. Probe me all you want, she thought, biting her lower lip. Just don’t love me. If you love me, I’ll burn you.

His rhythm slowed a moment. Ahead, his shadow seemed downcast. Was he sad? Perhaps he had a lover somewhere, and he felt guilty now. Men could be such pussies. They’d realize their falsehoods and continue to be false anyway.

Then he said: “You are beautiful and you are true.”

More passionist crap, Ginny thought. It frustrated her. The only way he could go on was to try something romantic. Did he think she was an idiot? She reached back and tickled his testicles, to goad him on. “Don’t stop!” she whispered. Why was he hesitating? His shadow stood crisp and motionless in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.