The Storyteller (12 page)

“Please. I’m sorry! I want you to take my soul.”

“Then I will. After all, I am a therapist. Forgiveness is an important part of any relationship.”

A cloud of smoke rose around Kyla’s feet, engulfing her. Terrified, she looked about, as if too late, she realized once again, she had made a bad judgment call. She had pledged her soul to something that wasn’t human a while back, and now the debt was being paid.

“I’ll see you in the other world soon,” Doctor Cubis leered. “Keep your ass bare for me.”

Kyla shrieked as the smoke covered her and evaporated. When it did so, she was gone.

“See you soon,” the incubus hissed, as he took the camcorder, jerking the plug from the wall and holding it up with one hand.

“See you soon.”

Slowly, Doctor Cubis left through the front door, camcorder in his grasp, as he walked into the night.

Doctor Cubis, like Kyla, was going to an alternative universe.

But then there really never had been a Doctor Cubis.

He snickered at that inside bit of humor, looking back unto the earthly world, which for the moment, he was about to leave.

Chapter Five

Satan’s Little Antique Shop

Loretta Maura didn’t know what to make of things when her husband walked through the door carrying a huge oil painting, complete with frame, under his arm. She knew he was running late from work, with this being the explanation why.

“Michael?” she questioned, but she could go no further. Her husband blurted out an excited response as he placed the painting on the floor and tilted it for her inspection.

“I got this at that little cubby hole store that just opened downtown, Satan’s Little Antique Shop.”

Loretta again took on an uncertain expression.

“Satan’s Little Antique Shop.”

Michael nodded.

“Yeah. Catchy title, isn’t it? I’ve got their matches in my pocket, too. They have a little devil on the cover.”

“Sound’s spooky,” Loretta smirked. “And where are we gonna put this thing?”

The painting depicted a young woman in a strange hairdo, like from the time of George Washington or earlier. She wore one of those frilly dresses from the same era as well, but it was neither her hair style nor the dress that was compelling. It was the painted eyes, which came to life with a malicious glint. If a painting could literally feel lust, this one was it.

“I got it because she looks like you,” Michael grinned. “Take a closer look. She looks like you.”

There was a second person behind the painted woman, meant to be in the distance and looking on. A male figure, also dressed like a throwback to the days of the Constitutional Convention. He was not as attractive a person as a woman of this caliber would have been expected to draw, but it was obvious he had desires for her. The face was likewise lustful, but there was a certain undeniable sadism to him, even if he was constructed only of oil and canvas.

“Where are we going to put this thing?”

Michael groaned.

“You don’t like them.”

“I love them, hon,” Loretta whispered and came forward to kiss her husband on the lips lightly for his trouble. “The only thing is, where the hell are we gonna hang them?”

“In the bedroom?” Michael shrugged.

Loretta shook her head in mock seriousness.

“I don’t want them watching us fuck.”

“Do it with the lights off?” Michael suggested.

The woman in the painting seemed to come to life at what was being said. Her eyes reflected a peculiar fixation with the situation represented by her new owners, while in the background, the wicked looking man beamed with anticipation.

“I think they’re a couple pervies,” Loretta snickered. “Why don’t you put them over there against the wall until we figure out where to hang them? Dinner’s about ready, anyway. It’s simple tonight.”

Salad and sandwiches couldn’t get more simple, but they would do. As the pair sat and talked, the topic turned to the painting once more.

“So what made you want to get that thing?” Loretta asked.

Michael answered with a half eaten sandwich in his mouth. It was decisively unromantic.

“Grand opening. Saw the place yesterday and had to go in. The chick in the painting was in the window, and I got her for you. She was cheap enough.”

“Cheap enough?”

“The painting, I don’t mean the woman. I thought it would make a nice surprise.”

Michael reached into his shirt pocket and took out a book of matches, sliding it across the table to his wife.

The matches bore a tiny smiling devil, complete with goatee and horns. Satan’s Little Antique Shop was written in manuscript form, along with the address and photo. Like the painting of the time-traveling couple, the little demon wore an expression of suppressed amusement. He was not as lustful as the painted couple, but he looked to be harboring secrets. A bizarre thought came to Loretta as she examined the advertisement, blurting it out.

“Wouldn’t it be something if these things all had a curse on them?”

Michael got up and took his plate into the kitchen, with utensils on top. From behind, his voice was reflective.

“Satan comes to Kent, Washington. It sounds like something from
Twilight
Zone
.”

In the distance, Loretta heard him doing a horrendously bad Rod Serling imitation.

“Welcome, dear visitors, and if you will, prepare to learn the fate of a couple in their twenties, married for three years. They’re just a normal couple called the Mauros. The husband has a job. The wife stays at home. They have a car that’s paid for and a house that’s mortgaged. They eat, they sleep, and they love each other, but now things are about to change. Thanks to an oil painting which will give them more than they bargained for, they are about to learn all is not as it seems. Satan has come to Kent, Washington. He is about to bring them into a new and terrifying world. The Mauros are about to enter
The Twilight Zone
.”

Loretta didn’t laugh. Her thoughts were on the couple resting against the wall in the next room. She envisioned them listening in and rolling their eyes at the absurdity of what had been said.

“I’ve had enough also,” Loretta announced as she rose. “Help me clean the table off.”

It was at that moment she was stunned with an unfamiliar and totally unbecoming noise. It was a muffled laugh, not that of a woman, but a man, coming from the living room.

Loretta’s first inclination was to go and see if the painting had somehow altered its expression, like in that one novel where the guy sold his soul to the devil and the picture aged instead of him. She couldn’t think of the title.

“I’ll get the rest of it,” Michael offered from the kitchen. He had evidently not been sucked into the Twilight Zone. “You go see what’s on television.”

Perhaps it had been her imagination running wild? Michael had laughed and somehow she thought it sounded like it came from the living room. That was a logical explanation.

“Nothing but re-runs,” she mumbled. “Remember when Friday used to have good stuff on the tube? Even HBO sucks on Friday.”

Loretta walked to the sofa, took the remote and sat down, scanning the previews, but as she did, her attention continually drifted back to the painting. There was nothing peculiar about it. Nothing had changed. The woman looked balefully outward with the same expression as before. Behind her, the man lusted, perhaps violating her mentally and wondering what she looked like without anything on.

“I wonder what my damsel looketh like without her garments. Doth she have a magnificent beaver?”

She laughed at that, realizing she had mixed a number of dialects and expressions from horribly mismatched time periods together.

“Would the favored maiden like to partake in a game of taking the epic of manhood into her epic of womanhood? Would the fair damsel like to find some distress to be in?”

Once more, there was no change in the painting, but had she expected it? Was she planning to look upward and find both objects of an artist’s creation now glowering with rage at being mocked? Would the painting change or come to life, again like that novel with the title she could not remember? Could she also sell her soul to the devil in exchange for eternal youth? After all, the woman in the painting did resemble her enough to pass, if she was attending a costume party.

Michael’s voice broke her train of thought.

“Would the fair Loretta like to doff her garments? Would Lady Loretta like to partake in a dessert after dinner consisting of the nethermost part of her noble knight’s inner workings?”

“I think knights came before the time of this painting,” Loretta scoffed, looking back at the canvas couple.

Michael also eyed the painting. It was then he blurted out something totally unexpected.

“If you were to do anything new to jazz up our sex life, what would it be?

Loretta was startled by the question, for she thought her life with Michael was already happy enough.

“I don’t know. What about you?”

Michael stared not at his wife, but the woman of similar likeness in the painting. His eyes met with her painted ones and new thoughts came to mind. He saw not his wife’s brown patch of pubic hair, but an abdomen that had been clean shaven.

“I don’t know either,” he grumbled, fighting down the vision. “You first.”

Loretta stared beyond the painted woman, toward her male admirer and warped thoughts came to mind. She saw herself strapped with ropes to a wooden cross, with her ass turned outward and her body pressed against the device that held her tight. The man in the painting was approaching her and he had a whip in his hand. This was just too twisted and she shook the fantasy away.

“Well?” Michael prodded.

Loretta shook her head, dismissing what she had seen in her mind’s eye. The painting, however, met her gaze with a knowing expression. It had linked with her and knew her secrets. It was then Loretta responded in an inexplicable way that was not quite her own. “Spanking. I’d like...I’d like some spankings before sex.”

Michael tilted his head toward his wife and then back to the painting, showing bemused interest.

“You get that idea from them? You know they look like they’d be into that sort of thing, beyond all that prim and proper Victorian stuff.”

“Are you sure they’re Victorian?” Loretta questioned, drifting from the subject at hand.

“Of course they are,” came the response. “Can’t you see them in some dandy parlor? I can picture them holding hands by the fingertips and prancing to violins or that tinka tinka music. Can’t you?”

Loretta shook her head in a clear negative.

“No. I can picture them doing weird shit, like binding each other and tickling each other with feathers and then beating the hell out of each other like some dominatrix stuff.”

Again, Loretta focused in on the painting and the bizarre scene returned. The woman was bloody from the blows of the whip and the man creating such excruciating pain was enjoying it. This however was not what she meant. She remembered back when she was a teenager and the last few spankings she’d received. Aside from the pain of having her bottom blistered, she’d felt arousal unknown to her before. That was a long time ago, but somehow this painting knew. It knew. The dots of oil paint turned real and two living supernatural beings were able to stare into her soul.

“I think they’re French.”

The words were far away, coming from a cloud moved by the wind before a storm.

“Does this mean she’ll suck his dick?” Michael’s voice came, but it too, was far away.

Once again, the vision came to her. The man in the background was now in a cell of some kind, raving in French. She didn’t understand anything he was saying, but she just knew the nationality without being told. She was right in her dissertation.

“Everything? I think they did everything.”

The couple both stared at the painting now, each caught up in a surreal secondary world the other did not see.

Michael saw himself watching as Loretta stood in the shower, with the water running and the curtains open. He was getting splattered too, but the sight before him was so stimulating he did not care. He would be taking off his clothing in a few minutes.

“Shave it all,” he demanded. “I want you smooth and clean.”

“This is stupid.” Loretta protested, but one determined look from her husband made her realize there was no disputing what was to be done.

Her abdomen was covered with shaving cream and with one of those disposable razors; she carefully went about making herself smooth.

As Michael thought of watching his wife turn herself into one of the models he used to jack off to pictures of before their relationship started, Loretta saw herself in an uncompromising position as well. She was lying naked across a wooden chair, facing downward with her arms on the floor and her toes touching for support. Her husband, dressed like the man in the painting, was about to discipline her with his belt.

“Now you’re going to get it good,” he informed her. “You’re going to be whipped to tears.”

Loretta turned to offer him a pleading glance, but his voice was stern.

“Don’t look at me. Look down. There’s nothing to see by looking at me. Down! Look at the floor. There’s nothing to see up here. The only thing you need to worry about is what you feel, and in a second you’re going to be feeling plenty.”

Michael brought the belt hard against his wife’s posterior and she yelled with the pain. A burning sensation tore not only through her buttocks, but her entire body, as if every nerve ending she had was suddenly sparked into life.

“Count them!” he commanded.

“One,” blabbered Loretta, already starting to react in misery to the punishment she was receiving.

“One.”

Again, the belt came down, making a whap that could be heard throughout the entire house, and Loretta shrieked when it happened.

“Count them,” came the harsh command.

Loretta’s voice was shaky as she blurted out the desperate toll.

“Two!”

“Two of what?”

Loretta opened her eyes and stared at her husband, when an inspiration sparked through her. The words left her mouth uncontrollably, before she could stop them.