Honey is Sweeter than Blood (13 page)

Perhaps it was for the best, the way things ended.  I needed to move on.  But I cried, the day I ventured into the basement and found Celia slumped sideways in her tub, her head already mottled a bruised purplish/black, her upper body the same, but the rest of her, submerged in her bath, gone as white as paper, the skin sloughing off and floating as shreds of tissue.  The bath fluid was not burbling.  The circulation unit had run down.  Damn it! I had been down to see her only three days earlier.  The energy she had generated before her death was still in the house’s system, hadn’t been depleted yet, so we hadn’t realized anything was amiss.  I cursed myself for not looking in on her every single day…

I didn’t dare move close enough to stroke her head, but I wanted to.  The smell was gagging me.

I felt guilty, wondered if it were something I had done inadvertently, but later my father confirmed that it had simply been the circulator blowing out, starving Celia’s hungry cells, as if her (external) blood had gone rotten.  She had been weak, he went on, vulnerable, for being so old.  No one else cried for her; my father just cursed at the expense.  And he bought a new power cell for the house…but a more updated version, like you probably have.  It was little more than a blob, as if Celia’s head had been cut off and her face removed.  A fleshy pulsing ball, in a new red tub with a new circulator.  Needless to say, I never lifted it out of its tank to rest it on the floor.  Not even a mouth to use, and no legs for those sexy black stockings, which I’ve kept sentimentally to this day.

Shortly after losing Celia, I had another brief fling with a coworker at Rosen Paper, the print shop I worked for (and still do, though it was bought out by a large corporation about six years ago).  What good is being around these people day in and day out if you can’t fuck some of them? After Kelly, I was determined not to get all worked up and suicidal again…I would take what I could and be thankful for it.  That was easier said than done, because I didn’t just want a sex partner, but a real relationship.  Still, I went into my next affair bravely and a bit wiser.

This young lady worked in the typesetting department.  For the sake of anonymity, I’ll change her name (because I still work with her).  And since I am free to give her any name I like, why don’t I call her…oh, Madonna?

Madonna was married, but like Kelly was dissatisfied, or just greedy for greater sensation, a few thrills.  For the longest time I simply ogled her; she had a heart-breakingly sensual body, and almost unnervingly feline movements.  Make that leonine; she was one tough girl.  These days she’s lost a lot of weight, but I think she’s too skinny now, too bony.  I hate that.  And she waxes her eyebrows into these thin, unnatural lines lately, which I really detest.  When I first met her it was 1984, and she had a nice cuddly soft sexy layer of baby fat, and her eyebrows were very full, dark, accenting her eyes, as was the fashion in the ’80s and I really, really miss that.  God I love those Brooke Shields/Helena Bonham Carter/even Frida Kahlo brows.  Women these days want to look like drag queens trying to look like women.  :(

Well, Madonna had them at that time, thank God, and she was more of a natural looking blond than the platinum blond she is now (another thing I hate).  I would just sit at my light table (I was a paste up artist, a dead art these days, like chiseling hieroglyphics or illuminating manuscripts) and stare at her bare midriff all day long.  That single black eye would squint at me, as if winking back at me slyly.  I think it was her navel’s lusty, secretive gaze that informed Madonna of my hankering for her.  One night after work (we were on second shift at the time), some of us were around in back of the plant drinking beers and Madonna offered to drive me home (I usually rode to and from with my friend Rick).  I think my other friends knew what was going to happen, and me, I just couldn’t believe my good luck.  {:^)

We fucked in her car like two people wrestling each other to the death.  We were so slicked in sweat it was like fucking Celia again on that drenched tarp on the floor…except for the big, big difference that Madonna fucked me back.  After that night, we did it everywhere.  In the dark room, where film and contact prints were loaded into the processor.  In the night-dewed grass behind the building.  In my apartment (I had my own apartment by now, above my parents’, in the old family house).  Not at her place…Sean would have gone off the deep end if he had ever caught me.

Well, they ended up divorcing later on, anyway, though luckily I was never found out.  And fortunately, I never fell in love with Madonna despite my immense physical attraction to her.  I knew she was way out of my league.  But she was good to me, didn’t just use me as a boy toy; actually invited me onto the set to watch the making of her
Papa Don’t Preach
 video (and though I said I don’t like her hair platinum, I did in fact like her hair platinum but cut very short during that period).  God, that had to be her hottest video; I was salivating in the sidelines and that night we were screaming like tortured people when we came.

Once in a while we still go out drinking on a Friday night, but with other coworker friends joining along.  Our affair sort of fizzled out at the same time her marriage did; Madonna tried to focus all her energies on saving her relationship with Sean but by then it was too late.  She’s learned to typeset on the new Mac system that was introduced when that big corporation bought Rosen out, and she still makes her videos and the occasional movie on weekends.  It’s great when you can remain friendly after an affair, especially when you have to see each other every day.  I’m grateful for the fun we had, and it did a lot for my self esteem.  But it was for the best that it ended when it did, because in 1986 there was a new worker at Rosen, and she would become my wife.

In need of a girlfriend as I was, I took note of every new female employee at Rosen…and Rose stood out all the more when I heard her voice one day and realized she was deaf.  She obviously took note of me, as well; we both asked our coworkers to find out about the other.  While I was still trying to summon the courage to introduce myself to her, she introduced herself to me.  Encouraged by her interest, I asked her out…and to my delight she accepted.

On an early date, Rose and I were strolling through a local cemetery (my mother used to take us kids there for picnics, so graveyards are like parks to me, sometimes melancholy but never morbid) when she asked me if she could be my girlfriend.  After years of trying so hard, fretting and obsessing, just when I felt ready to give up altogether, my partner seemed to come seeking me out.  We had our first kiss in that boneyard, as if to mock the rotting lips beneath us with our youth and the future that had just opened ahead of us.

Rose is dark-haired, with nice full eyebrows and let’s just say she isn’t bony, though I’ve always found her body cute and lately she’s lost over forty pounds and is looking really good, and that’s after fourteen years of marriage at this writing.  But there were a few things I had to get past, besides her deafness, in the beginning.  A number of her deaf friends have more than one physical challenge…some are crippled to a greater or lesser extent, for example.  But not only have I grown accustomed to Rose’s physical unconformities, I’ve come to quite enjoy them.

Even before the early date when we first went to bed (it was my birthday; a very considerate present), I knew about her nipples.  Poor girl; she could no more hide them than she could her deafness, despite wearing a bra, and always a heavy sweater over her shirt or blouse.  I would see the twitching movement of her breasts, like twin sleepers tossing under their covers in the throes of a shared nightmare.  Some have mocked her for it…though I’m sure a lot of men have found these movements enticing, as they tried to visualize what her unique breasts looked like uncovered.

When I found out, it was still a shock despite her having explained her problem to me.  Out of both Rose’s aureoles sprouts a small hand, the size of a newborn infant’s, the nails so delicate they are almost nonexistent (though I’ve helped her trim them lest she scratch me, as gingerly as I would trim my son’s nails when he was a baby).  These hands are very soft, and a pinker color than Rose’s pretty alabaster flesh; the same color of the aureoles.  In the palm of each hand grows a nipple, and these become erect in the normal way.  My son, in fact, was able to feed from them, though Rose would swat the hands gently if they squeezed Colin’s nose.  They’ve squeezed mine more than once.  ; )

Their frenetic movement is involuntary, and often occurs even when Rose is sleeping, as if translating her dreams.  In fact, they appear to be using a sign language.  But it isn’t the ASL (American Sign Language) Rose uses.  No one has ever been able to decipher it as a language (oh, once in a while we’ve seen a certain word mixed in with the gibberish, just as you’ll produce a simple word or two if you bang long enough on a keyboard with your eyes closed).  The same situation occurs with the mandible-like limbs that grow from either side of her genitals.

That was the other thing.  I had seen the subtle squirming in her pants before, another embarrass-ment for poor Rose.  The movement became more pronounced, agitated and excited it would seem, through her underpants when she first undressed for me.  When I saw her fully naked, those praying mantis-like limbs pawing madly at the air to either side of her vagina, with dark pubic hair growing halfway up to their tiny elbows, I found them both ghastly but oddly exciting.  They seemed to want to communicate Rose’s desires to me in a secret code.  And when I ultimately entered inside her body, they scrabbled at my belly, but didn’t scratch it or cause much discomfort.  And when I went down on her, those two insect-like projections seemed to clutch at and stroke my face.

She’s been told she could have the hands removed from her breasts, and more easily, those strange digits from around her vagina, but she’s refused.  She wouldn’t want to be made hearing, either.  She’s proud of her culture and of who she is.  And I’m glad, because I like her as she is just fine, too.

Much as I love to flirt at work, and I once kissed yet another coworker when I was drunk (Rose forgave me when I confessed), I have had no other sexual partners for these past fifteen years.  But as I make this erotic confession and record, I am really finding myself more and more stimulated, almost to an unbearable extent.  Rose is sleeping as I write this.  I could wake her up, but I realize I’m feeling very intimate with you.  After all, I’ve been telling you all this very candid stuff.  And you’ve been listening.  Do I flatter myself to think you might find my experiences titillating? That you might find
me
 titillating? I only know that I’m feeling increasingly drawn to you.  I’m feeling that I want to take our intimacy even further.  It won’t be cheating on Rose if it’s my words that caress you, will it? After all, she can’t hear them anyway (I know that was a mean joke).  Is it infidelity, if I seduce you with these printed symbols that my single hunt-and-peck typing finger thrusts into existence with a steady, ardent rhythm?

Even now, you feel this finger of mine tracing a gentle line down your throat.  I just saw you swallow nervously.  Don’t be tense.  There…I soothe your trembling throat with soft kisses.  As my tongue traces the seashell channels of your ear, my hands slide behind you to squeeze your ass.  Can you feel my breath quickening against your neck? I step back, and undo your zipper, slide your pants down your legs.  I turn you around, and urge you to lie down on the sofa on which you were sitting whilst reading this book.  I lie upon your back now, and you feel the head of my rigid arrow nudge against your shy little anus that seems to clench tighter like a wincing eye.  But I persist against your nervous wriggling; believe me, I wouldn’t rape you, but I know you want this…that you are only being a little timid, because this is our first time.  I press in deeper, deeper, until I am entirely inside you and I kiss you on the back of the neck before I begin pounding myself into you, harder, harder, my abdomen slapping your ass, until we both come with cries like gulls soaring high above a churning ocean and I fold atop you, spent, and pant hotly against the nape of your neck.

Thank you, I gasp huskily.

I know you feel uneasy, I know I rushed things, but I’m sorry.  And I truly am extremely grateful.  I do hope you’ll look on this as a positive experience.  After all, although I don’t seek collaboration when writing, as I mentioned earlier, you have helped me to put a fitting end on this afterword.

Perhaps you’re a bit embarrassed, to have become part of my book.  Please forgive me…but as John Donne said,

“I am two fools, I know

For loving, and for saying so

In whining Poetry.”

You may close these covers now, my love.

About The Author

Jeffrey Thomas is the creator of the popular Punktown universe, in which he has set the novels
Blue War
,
Deadstock
,
Health Agent
,
Everybody Scream!
, and
Monstrocity
, and the short story collections
Punktown
,
Punktown: Shades Of Grey
(with Scott Thomas) and
Voices From Punktown
. His Hades series includes the novel
Letters From Hades
, the sequel
The Fall Of Hades
, and the collection
Voices From Hades
. His Delirium Books titles have included
Terror Incognita
,
Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood
,
Aaaiiieee!!!
,
Thirteen Specimens
and
Ugly Heaven, Beautiful Hell
(with Carlton Mellick III). Other notable books from Thomas are the novel
Boneland
, the original
A Nightmare Of Elm Street
novel
The Dream Dealers
, and the Cthulhu Mythos collection
Unholy Dimensions
. Thomas lives in Massachusetts with his gorgeous wife Hong, adorable daughter Jade, and handsome son Colin.