Trilogies (3)

Aran Ashe’s first series of novels, The Chronicles of Lidir: A Saga of Erotic Domination delineate the kingdom of Lidir, a fantasyland dedicated to bondage, teasing, bodily manipulation and torture. It was published by Nexus, a British imprint of Virgin Books, specialising in sado-masochistic pornography for straight male readers. Hence the gender-ambiguity of Ashe’s pseudonym?

The books are, in order, The Slave of Lidir (1991), The Dungeons of Lidir (1991), The Forest of Bondage (1991) and Pleasure Island (1992).



Then came The Chronicles of Tormunil, beginning with The Handmaidens (1995)and Citadel of Servitude (1997), and continuing with Slave-Mines of Tormunil (2002) and Love-Chattel of Tormunil (2003) a few years later, followed by Leah’s Punishment (2008).

Her concerns, on display here even more obsessively than in "Lidir", include spanking, piercing and erotic lactation.


Further research reveals the interesting fact that Ashe also writes as "Valentina Cilescu." Cilescu, author of the bestselling Mara Vampire series of erotic titles, has a number of other pseudonyms, including Anastasia Dubois, Sophie Danson, Louise Aragon, Sue Lightfoot, Sue Dyson, Aurelia Clifford and Zoë Barnes.

The Mara Vampire series (so far) comprises Kiss of Death (1992), The Phallus of Osiris (1993), Empire of Lust (1994), Masque of Flesh (1995), Vixens of Night (1997) and Lusts of the Forbidden (1999).



Choosing Lovers for Justine (1993) was a slight departure from type for Ashe, concerning the adventures of a young submissive girl in Edwardian England.

It has had - as yet - no successors.

Trilogies (2)

The greatest detective who ever lived made a somewhat inauspicious debut in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887.

A Study in Scarlet combined a tale of detection with a lurid story of revenge set among the Mormon pioneers of Utah.

Its successor, The Sign of Four (1890) used essentially the same method to parallel contemporary London with India at the time of the Indian mutiny (1857-58).

The last in this series of "double-stories" was The Valley of Fear (1914) contrasting a brilliant piece of deduction by Holmes with a tale set among the "Molly Maguires," trade-union activists from the mining regions of Pennsylvania in the 1880s.

In each case the frame story is set in the present, whereas the recounted events date from thirty to forty years before (an exception to this pattern can be found in the only other Sherlock Holmes "long story," The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), conceived originally as a tale of the supernatural rather than a straight Holmesian detective narrative.)

Trilogies

Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1993)

The first hundred settlers on Mars immediately start to terraform the landscape, despite the ecological protests of a few "Red" Martians ...

Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1994)

The newly prosperous colony decides to revolt against the homeplanet's sovereignty, initiating a bloody civil war ...

Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1996)

The surface water freezes as a result of all this devastation, leaving a chastened people to make their homes in the permafrost.

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Martians (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1999)

Outside

Don’t get me wrong – I’d been out there a couple of times before. With friends, admittedly. And yes, they were boyfriends, and yes, they were trying to get into my pants (a bit difficult in a spacesuit, you would have thought, but man was born to strive).

This time, though, was different. For a start, I had no real idea whether the air tanks on the suit were fully charged or not. Even if they were, that only gave me thirty hours or so before I asphyxiated. That sounds like a lot when you’re safely at home leafing through a Cosmo, but it’s not so much when you’re stumbling along a dusty crater rim, trying to keep out of sight and avoiding falling in at the same time.

Then there was the nagging question of what I was doing out here in the first place. Mum would go spare if she knew! But then, she had other things on her mind at present, from what I could gather (he wasn’t sharing all the fruits of his research with me, that’s for sure … happy to receive information but not so keen to dish it out, that was my impression of our esteemed P.I. )

Which was one reason I wasn’t anxious to share with him my one and only lead. Not so much a lead as an indication, really. Among all the stuff I was reading about Ovid and his exile there’d been some references to a place called Otherworld.

It sounded like a virtual game environment to me, but the thing was that I’d heard of it before. One of the boys who'd taken me out exploring outside the dome had mentioned it, in fact.

He’d said there was a place called Otherworld within (extreme) walking distance of the dome. He’d never seen it, or met anyone who had, but it was a persistent rumour among the other kids. They all claimed to know little bits and pieces about it, but the funny thing was (he told me – I guess he was still trying to impress me, but by this stage I felt that he’d kind of forgotten about my even being there – that he was talking to himself, really – trying to sort a whole bunch of impressions into one coherent tale), the funny thing was that a lot of what they said seemed to be basically consistent, which made it seem a bit less like Cloud Cuckoo Land or the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

They said there was an old man who lived out there (most said a prospector, but others called him an explorer or even an astrogator off one of the big interstellar expeditions). What they all agreed on was that he was blind.

“He’s blind, but it’s like … he can see better than people with ordinary eyes. D’ you get what I mean?”

“You mean he’s got artificial sight lenses?”

“No. That’s what I thought they meant at first, too, but then I understood that they meant more than that. That he had some kind of insight into things. That he lived out there because he couldn’t stand to be with ordinary people – that he was too wise for everyday petty shit like we all waste our time on.”

“So he sits out there staring at rocks, does he?”

“I guess so, if he really is a prospector. I don’t know. Nobody does. Nobody I know has seen him or spoken to him, but he’s supposed to see things and think about things that nobody else has time for. It’s like he lives on a different time scale, you grok?”

“You mean he has no time for sex or drugs or anything like that?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not him. But I kind of got the impression that if he had sex with someone he’d already be seeing the child in the egg before he’d even had the orgasm. That the whole process would be clear to him from the get-go …”

“So he’s a kind of god.”

“Maybe. More like that than a guru, certainly. He doesn’t want to teach anybody anything. He just sits out there among the rocks and broods on stuff, cosmic stuff.”

“That idea really turns you on, doesn’t it? You’d like to be him, to live like that out in the cosmic wastes.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Right now there’s too much I’m interested in here, but I can see the attraction, I guess.”

“So how do you reach him?”

“Why would you want to reach him?”

“Oh, you think that because I’m a chick I wouldn’t have anything I wanted to talk to him about? That we can’t be as otherworldly and mystical as the rest of you? That I’d want to redecorate his cave with wall hangings and rearrange the furniture?”

“No, I just wondered what you’d want to talk to him about.”

“I don’t know really – in any case, it’s never going to happen, so I guess it’s not really worth thinking about.”

“Not so fast. It could happen.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, I was thinking about it one day, and I started trying to imagine the logistics of keeping up a small base under the surface without anybody knowing – whether it could even be done or not: at least without attracting attention.”

“And could it?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be easy. It’d be damned expensive, for one thing. You’d have to get everything shipped out there, and I suspect people would start to get curious if they saw a bunch of supply trucks disappearing into the desert every few weeks.”

“It’s impossible, then. It must be bullshit.”

“Not so fast. You know that there are lots of old tunnels and watercourses under the surface?They run for hundreds of miles, some of them, and a lot of them have never been explored.”

“Yeah, I learnt that at school, too. They also told us that it’d be crazy to try and explore most of them, 'coz they’re far too dangerous and unstable.”

“Yeah, and I guess most of them are. But what if there are a few that are stable? What if there are some which actually lead to ground water?”

“You mean dry ice? Carbn dioxide vapour?”

“No, I mean water. What if there was actually water under there somewhere?”

“What if there were angels and demons? It’d be nice, but where’s your evidence?”

“That’s just the thing. There isn’t any. Why not? Because none of the prospectors have come back to report it. But how many prospectors have actually gone out and looked for it lately?”

“Thirteen, wasn’t it? The first thirteen?”

“Yes, and how many came back in all?”

“Three. But they saw how the others died.”

“Not all of them.”

“You mean those two who got separated, early on? What were their names?”

"Flint and Petrie."

"Yeah, the missing explorers. But weren’t their bodies found some time later?"

“No, some bodies were found, but nobody really knows how many people got lost in the hinterland before there were proper settlements here. It was more than a hundred miles from where they’d last been reported, and the bodies were crushed and mangled beyond recognition."

"So you think your man of mystery might be one of the missing two, that they – or he – found water on Mars and decided to stay beside it, to set up a hydroponics farm and just go native?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”

“And your evidence for this is …”

“Entirely circumstantial, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re right, either. How come there are so many stories going around about your old man of the desert if no-one’s seen the lost explorers since?”

“Well, that’s just the point. Obviously someone has seen them – or him, rather. Perhaps only one of them is still alive.”

“He must be pretty old by now.”

“He’d be 110 or so. Still within the theoretical limits of gerontological drugs at the time they disappeared.”

“You’ve really made a study of this, haven’t you? This – what d'you call it – Otherworld?”

“ I have, yes. It really fascinates me, I don’t know why. I suppose you think it’s pretty stupid?”
“No, not at all, actually. In fact, I’m kind of impressed. Non-shallow thinking in guys is an evolutionary trait which I think every woman should encourage if possible.”

“Oh yeah, what about you chicks …”

“But just a second, before we go off onto something else. If I wanted to meet this guy, how would I go about it? You must have some ideas on the subject?”

“Well, obviously, if I knew, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you now, I’d be out there trying to talk to him.”

“Fair enough. I know you don’t actually know. I just want some kind of guess. You're way more familiar with this area than I am.”

“Well, they were last seen around the old water course east of here, so that's where all the searches to date have concentrated on.”

“Searches fifty years ago.”

“Yeah – and more recently. But what I’m thinking is that if they stumbled onto something, it would have been running north to south, the way the ancient water table did.”

“So south of here, then?”

“No. That’s just the point. I think they would have gone north. That’s the only direction where there’s the slightest chance of water still existing under the permasol.”

“In the direction of the pyramid, then?”

“In the direction of the pyramid.”

Night Journey

… Another voice came from an angel called Ismaïl, saying: “Heavenly stairs, show yourselves and descend!” upon which the ladder of heaven descended all the way from Firdaus, the loftiest paradise, until it reached the Temple of Solomon. The arms of the ladder shone with two heavenly lights, red amethyst and green jasper of the greatest perfection. Every believer is going to see that ladder and climb on it. It has one hundred steps and it goes from the temple to the first heaven.

Gabriel called Muhammad [peace be upon him] and the heavenly creature called the buraq carried him up the first step. There Muhammad [pbuh] saw all kinds of angels red in colour. On the second step, Muhammad [pbuh] saw angels in yellow cloth, on the third step the angels were green and all of them were greeting him and giving him heavenly gifts which he took and gave to Gabriel to keep as a trust for the believers on earth. On the fourth step messenger-angels came and said: "Gabriel, keep rising for the Lord is waiting!" And Muhammad [pbuh] saw their subtle bodies shining and their faces glittering like mirrors in the sun.

Then he climbed the fifth step of the ladder and saw a huge world of angels that had no beginning and no end. All of them were praising Allah and their only words were: "There is no God but Allah." He asked Gabriel: "How many are these angels?" for he was awed by their numbers. Gabriel said: "If the skies and the earth and the moon and the sun and the stars and galaxies were crushed into dust and were all piled up, their dust particles would not be one tenth of the angels of this step of the ladder of paradise." Then the buraq climbed up to the sixth step and there a great surprise awaited Muhammad [pbuh], and a great event took place which passed all description. An immense, white-upon-white angel sat on a chair of burnished white gold, accompanied by a great host of angels with wide, awe-struck gazes looking at the divine majesty. The white angel stood up and said: "Muhammad, welcome! I beg you to bless my seat by sitting on it." When Muhammad [pbuh] sat on the chair, it melted with love for him and became a cloud of multicolored light chanting the praise of Allah. Out of every drop of that cloud Allah created another throne and another great angel sitting upon that throne.

Then the buraq climbed to the seventh heaven and Muhammad [pbuh] saw angels whose light replaced the light of his vision, as in the case when someone looks at the sun and his sight is stolen away. At that time, he became able to see whatever these angels were seeing. Then he climbed the eighth step of the ladder and saw nothing but angels in prostration. He quickly climbed to the ninth so as not to disturb them. On the ninth step of the ladder he saw angels which passed description and he stood in awe, unable to comprehend their creation. At that time their leader appeared and said: "Praise Allah! we are dressing you with the secret of our creation and enabling you to understand all things by Allah's permission."

Then Muhammad [pbuh] went up to the tenth step of the ladder and saw the angels that praised Allah in all the languages that had been created since the beginning of creation. Muhammad [pbuh] wondered at the limitless creations of Allah. At the eleventh step, the angels numbered even more than the angels of the fifth step, and out of them an infinite number of colours glowed, different for each single one of them. At the twelfth step, Muhammad [pbuh] found angels with faces like moons and eyes like stars. The light of their faces were covering their words. On the thirteenth step, the most beautiful angels appeared and these were the angels of Allah, praising Allah with soft voices and revelling in other-worldly beauty. Their music did not resemble any other kind of music and if one tone of that music were heard on the earth everyone on it would faint.

On the fourteenth step Muhammad [pbuh] saw the angel Ismail with seventy thousand angels riding on horses. Behind everyone of them was a battalion of one hundred thousand angels created from the attribute of Beauty. It is the duty of each and everyone of these angels to appear on earth at least one time to bring it the touch of his beauty. The fifteenth to the twenty-fourth steps were under the command of the angel Ruqyaïl, great and small, thin and wide. The twenty-fifth step to the ninety-ninth were presided by the angel Qalaïl. His right hand was under the first heaven. Between each two of his fingers there are seven hundred thousand angels continuously praising Allah. For each of the praises that they utter strings of pearls come out of their mouth. The diameter of every pearl is eighty-one miles. For each pearl Allah creates an angel that guards it and keeps it as a trust for human beings until they enter paradise.

Then Muhammad [pbuh] saw a huge throne from a precious element other than gold standing on five posts. Each post has two wings and each wing encompasses the constellation of our world five times. On each wing rest fifty thousand angels, each of whom ask forgiveness for human beings in a different dialect and yet in complete harmony and with an angelic sound that melts the rocks of the seven earths. Out of each one of their tears Allah creates fifty thousand angels more whose task is to ask forgiveness in the same way as these angels do and in many times more dialects than they. Then the throne spoke to Muhammad [pbuh] and said: "I and the angels who guard me were created to carry human beings to their stations in paradise." Then, the throne invited Muhammad [pbuh] to sit on it, and when he sat he felt a pleasure he had never experienced before.

– Gisèle Besson & Michèle Brossard-André, trans. Le Livre de l’échelle de Mahomet: Liber Scale Machometi. Préface de Roger Arnaldez. Lettres Gothiques. Paris: Livre de Poche, 1991. pp.109-13.

Glam Metal Detectives

Phil’s first thought was of Dante’s Inferno. The room was full of naked people, crowding around the most extraordinary assortment of ropes and chains and other instruments of torture.

She turned to rush out, only to feel her arm pushed roughly up behind her back, high enough to almost dislocate the shoulder, and a man’s voice breathing in her ear:

“Not so fast, baby. You’ve got to choose a number first.”

There was a table right in front of them. It looked, incongruously, like a turnstile table. And – sure enough – a little man in uniform was sitting behind it sorting through a box of tokens.

“Ah, two new girls. That brings us up to a baker’s dozen …”

Looking down further, Phil could see a pair of bare feet protruding from underneath the green felt table-cloth. Whoever’s feet they were was evidently crouching under the table, and … Oh my God: the little fellow’s face did seem a trifle flushed, his speech quite slurred. Now was his predicament in any way unusual. Everywhere she looked there seemed to be bodies thrusting up against each other – voluntarily, one might have assumed: except that most of the bare-arsed girls had their arms bound cruelly behind them.

“Choose.”

Putting out her hand, she took a blank ivory tile from the box.

“We’ll need an item of clothing to attach it to, my dear. Perhaps your string?" said the little man in uniform. "Justine, would you do the honours, dear?”

A slender girl backed out from under the ticket table, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“My God, she looks just like Luce!” was Phil’s first thought, until she saw the large tattoo across her bird-like chest: a single, lidless red eye.

The naked girl reached up to remove Phil’s string.

“Justine!” said Pat.

Frowning, the girl continued slipping off Phil's panties as if she hadn’t heard. Evidently claiming acquaintance was not the thing to do down here. Attaching the g-string to the ivory token (which had, Phil saw, the number 13 embossed on it), she dropped it into a drawer full of just such frilly feminine undergarments.

Meanwhile the waiter, Bruto (as Pat was calling him) denuded her of her remaining covering, with what seemed quite unnecessary roughness. When this was complete, he tethered her by the wrists, adding a coil of elasticised rope around her elbows, which had the effect of bringing her shoulders back and forcing her chest out.

When the same operation had been performed on Pat (her few, futile attempts at struggling and cursing resulted only in a stinging slap on the behind), the two of them were frogmarched, still in their high heels, to the small group of similarly naked women in the middle of the room.

When she saw the long line of stocks, the leering men, each with a naked girl on his arm, above all, the hangman’s nooses dangling from high up in the ceiling, Phil began to scream.

Club D

D for Dolcett. That's all they’d tell me. Not even what the name meant, who "Dolcett" was. The owner, I suppose.

It’s strange at home, now. We’ve all had sex with one another (except for me with Mum – ewww), so it’s hard to know just who should sleep with whom.

Mum doesn’t approve of my sleeping with Pat, as she says she doesn’t trust her - and, besides, I’m too young. But then, if she bunks down with Pat herself, that leaves me with her boyfriend, and she’s even less keen on that (it’s true I’ve had sex with him, but we’ve never actually spent the night together – not sure I’d like to, but then again, not quite sure I wouldn’t). So that pretty much leaves each of us on our own. Except that, in practice, she ended up with him and I ended up sneaking off to finish up the night in Pat’s arms again.

But then they got all dolled up and went out.

“Don’t wait up,” they said. “Don’t worry if you don’t hear from us … We’re on assignment.”

Yeah, right. On assignment. A right pair of Glam Metal Detectives, they looked – not an inch of non-see-through material on either of them (Mum looked great, I had to admit … Pat, on the other hand, was just sex on legs. I had to pinch myself to stop from going over and kissing her right then and there).

So there I was, tossing and turning, all on my lonesome, with only my little toys for company – and you know, they’re great and all, but they’re no substitute for the real thing.

And I got to thinking.

Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places on the official sites?

If you want to make something unfindable – or rather, if you want to make it unfindable for everyone except the people who have the key, how do you go about it? You publish under a false name, at a fake address – yeah, yeah, all that’s fairly standard. But how do you hide from repetitive search terms?

I guess you can have an agreed-upon code – that’s possible. “Apple-blossom” stands for “machine-gun,” and so on. But how do you tell people which words mean which things?

I remember one day when I still used to go to school, one of the maths bots got sidetracked one day and started to talk about secret codes.

He said that you had to count on someone intercepting your secret messages, and that if they had enough text, sooner or later they would crack it through letter-frequency or some such technique.

“Imagine you have a steel box with a secret message in it,” he - it - said. “You lock it up with your own padlock and key and send it to the friend you want to read it. But he can’t open it, of course, because it’s locked and he doesn’t have the key. So instead of spending lots of time trying to pick the lock (which is what anyone who intercepted the box would do), he simply puts his own padlock and key on it and sends it back to you. So now you have a steel box with a secret message inside and two locks on it. But the important thing is this. You unlock your padlock with your key, and return it to him, and he unlocks his padlock and key and that way he can read the message. In other words, there is a way to exchange a message without ever exchanging the secret key that unlocks it.”

He went on to explain that the difference between encrypting a message and locking it in a steel box was that it doesn’t make any difference in what order you unlock two padlocks, but it usually does make a difference what order you decode them in. The point is, though, that keys are easy to intercept if you have to send them to people, but they’re much more secure if you don’t share them with anyone.

So let’s say that these stories on the Internet are the message in the steel box. They’re being sent out to anyone who wants to read them, but that most or all of those people have no idea of the key, or even if there is a key. They’re locked and invisible because no-one knows they’re there – and even if they do know, they have no idea what’s in them.

Sending the box back with your own padlock attached, though, what’s that? I guess that every time someone reads one of the stories, that could send information to the original host / author … that way he or she would know that someone had at least received the message.

The way to find them, then, would be not really to look for them at all – rather, they’d cross your path or they wouldn’t, you’d find them and be intrigued by them (if that's the kind of thing you're intrigued by).

And yet this agency on earth must have found them and got worried by them, if they decided to send an agent to Mars (that’s if any of that story is actually true, of course). So they must contain something subversive. Unless the mere fact that they were so difficult to find was in itself evidence of subversion.

I shook my head to clear it. This was getting me nowhere – just chasing my tail round and round the mulberry bush.

So what was all that stuff about the woman obsessed with her own arse? “Burmese Days,” he called it?

Burmese Days proved to be no use. It was the title of an old novel written by a man called George Orwell, which was (the index told me) the pseudonym of one Eric Blair. It was about a man called John Florey, who got into trouble because his native mistress wouldn’t leave him alone when he tried to get married to a white woman. He committed suicide as a result.

Burma is the old name for Myanmar, one of the border countries between India and the Chinese conglomerate.

“Arses” was no help either – just endless pictures of girls’ (and guys’ – and even aliens’) behinds. Ars longa vita brevis: Art is long and life is short. That was in Latin, written by a man called Horace. Strange name for a poet – Horace Horsecollar.

Latin – tons of Latin authors listed: Apuleius, Catullus, Caesar, Livy, Ovid, Propertius, Virgil. Any specialise in writing about love and sex? Most of them, it seemed. They all had married mistresses and spent their time whining about it.

One of them actually wrote a long treatise on how to pick up girls – and then a sequel on how to get rid of them. Oh, and then he got sent into exile for writing disreputable poems …

Exile to the border regions: mistresses, love affairs. I started to click on a few more links from him. Pictures, statues, texts of the poems …

There was a certain fascination about it all, one had to admit. He’d got the emperor’s granddaughter (or was it his daughter? Opinions seemed to vary. They were both called “Julia,” anyway) to go to bed with him. Or maybe it was just that she liked reading his poems. Or that her lover/s had used the poems as an instruction manual on how to seduce well-brought-up, aristocratic girls. Anyway, there was some connection between her committing adultery and him being sent off to the Black Sea.

“As far away as Mars.” That’s what one of the write-ups said. Could that be it? Was that the link? Was Burma – Myanmar, rather – a mask for Mars? A place as far away to the ancient Romans as another planet is for us?

I shook my head. This was all very well, but I hadn’t got any close to finding … whatever it was I was searching for. The reason my Mother and my lover were going undercover to some freaked-out nightclub. The answer to all our troubles – for this guy who'd come into our lives, at any rate: the one who was using us as bait to flush out his quarry.

There had to be some way to turn the tables on him, get him off our backs. Unless he really was our friend, unless the person or people he was hunting really were worse than him.

Until I found that out for certain, I preferred to believe my enemy’s enemy was my friend.

Trois filles de leur mère

Bronzino, "Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time" (1545)

MADCHK
– licence plate


ORIENTAL PARADE


The purse of you
tight-lipped
bike shorts
goose-pimples
Attention aux marins
sorry, sailors

Who so needs a hug?

•

BRENTWOOD HOTEL


Hoofing it?
slow down
The little darlings
one kick & you’re out
dream girl / stroke stroke
the secret garden

Run away to sea


•

FINISHING SCHOOL


Was her name Shannon?
no, Fallon
on Dynasty / you know
the slutty one
Time to lay some pipe
he chortles / simpers, rather

Three fillies one mare

The Investigation

"You'll never guess what my daughter told me, Pat.”

“What?”

“That you’d been fucking her behind my back.”

“What!”

The younger woman sat up suddenly, the red tints of the Martian sun falling on her magnificent smooth body, oiled and exercised and honed to physical perfection.

“She also told me you’d been giving her drugs.”

“And you believed her?”

“Sure. Why not? I know you’re into girls … and you can hardly claim not to be partial to a little chemical enhancement of your … adventures.”

Phil gestured at the to empty glass phials on the dresser beside the bed.

“I didn’t hear you complaining! You were squealing like a stuck pig when I went down on you …”

“Maybe so, but the fact remains that it’s against the law.”

“Against the law! Since when did you become such a goody two-shoes? I was getting tired of both of you anyway – I’ve met a new girl who’s a lot more to my taste. Actually, I was going to tell you about her before I left today. Her name’s Justine, and she is so hot you can literally scorch yourself against her skin. I’m thinking of lending her to my husband so she can fuck him to death and get him out of my life once and for all …”

“Ha, ha. Very funny. I always knew you were a bit of a bitch, but you’re an awfully attractive bitch, I have to say. Luce obviously thought so too, or she wouldn’t have let you have your way with her.”

“Have my way with her! The little slut was gagging for it – she had to beg me for weeks before I’d agree to touch her, even. I don’t think you really know that much about your daughter.”

“More than you think. More than you do, I’m afraid. Anyway, getting back to the point. You’ve broken the law by fucking my underage daughter, but then she’s only within a few months of being of age, so I suspect the courts might be lenient with you on that one. More to the point, though, you plied her with class A drugs – and that I think they’ll take a more serious line on.”

“I’ll say you helped me. I’ll say you held her down while I shot her up – that you were madly in love with your own daughter …”

“I do love my daughter – like any mother does. I certainly love her too much to leave her in the claws of a vicious predatory dyke like you.”

“What about you? You didn’t put up much resistance. How many times have you begged me to get you off?”

“Yes, I was sorely deceived in you – an eager, trusting divorcée, disillusioned with the male sex, I was easy prey for an accomplished seducer like you.”

“I’m leaving now. I don’t have to listen to any more of this shit. You can carry on this conversation with my lawyers – as you start the ten years you’ll have to spend in court to make any of it stick …”

“Not so fast. You’re not going anywhere, sweet cheeks, so you might as well sit those buns down again. You can play with yourself as I talk if the pressure to be up and doing gets too much for you.”

“This is blackmail. You’re blackmailing me!”

“Why yes I am. Feels good, doesn’t it? Fucking my daughter I can almost understand, though it makes me sick to think of your hands all over her. Pumping her full of drugs is what makes me really want to kill you, though. Luckily there’s a third way. You see, there’s something you have we want.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Me and my boyfriend. He’s the one who’ll be fucking me from now on – while you do our legwork for us.”

“And Luce?”

“We’re working on that. A short course in what it means to be a woman. Luckily the detox is for a few weeks rather than the years of child-abuse you had in mind. I think you’d better forget about Justine, too – perhaps your husband would be better off with her, after all.”

“But …”

“Let me start off by telling you a story. Chime in at any point when I get to a bit you know …”

Chantage

He used me! He so fucking used me!

I didn’t really think twice about the chances of him filming us – I mean, when you’re about to get into your girlfriend’s pants for the first (and so far only) time, who spends too much time worrying about spy cameras looking in?

So at first I couldn’t really see the big deal when he sat me down beside him on the big couch in his living room and started to screen the 3-D footage on his wallscreen (pretty state-of-the-art equipment for an itinerant writer, really – I guess I should have looked a bit harder at the outset – seen past the grunge to the money underneath).

It was a shock to see how I looked – so abject and whiney, a real wench. She looked sensational, though, a complete sex-goddess. I didn’t even fight too hard when his hand crept up my skirt and onto my cunt. If he hadn’t started it, I might soon have started rubbing myself down there anyway, like an old dog against a chairleg.

“What will your mother think?” he asked, after a while. “Does she know you’re gay?”

“What d’you mean? You wouldn’t show this to her, would you?” Yes, humble reader, that’s the best I could come up with in the way of snappy rejoinders and quickfire cut-and-thrust ...

His hand kept up the relentless rub and tweak motion he seemed to have decided was most likely to make me come. So far he was pretty much on the button there, too, damn him!

I tried to push away the hand. Suddenly it was as if my whole insides had filled up with ice.

“You wouldn’t! Why would you? Girls have been having a good time with other girls for centuries. It’s not a crime. She’d probably be just as shocked if she saw some film of what you’re doing to me now …”

“Maybe you’re right. Shall we dial her up and see? I could invite her around to watch you in big screen comfort, or maybe just send her the file on her home communicator. That way she can view it in bed, or maybe flick it on to your father if you think he’d be amused as well.”

I started to cry. My God, I haven’t cried in years. But the thought of all those people, the people I love most, watching me crawling around on a bed, begging my lover to come in my mouth, just dropped the whole bottom out of my world.

I was whining and crying and writhing all at the same time, but there was no getting away from him, the bastard. He always took care to cuff my hands before we began our sessions.

Only so far all they’d involved had been a little touching and feeling up before I went down on his big soap-smelling dick (I guess he didn’t want me to gag on his scent this early in the game).

The truth was, a truth I can hardly bring myself to admit to myself, that the whole thing was a little exciting as well. I felt totally out of my depth, true. I wanted to curl up in a corner and cry for my mummy. But there was another part of me that could see that there was something really cool about all this – as if I’d grown up at last. I was the kind of chick who got blackmailed over sex tapes … my gorgeous youthful body would writhe in people’s imaginations the way I was writhing now. Even Pat might stop patronising me now and treat me as an equal – a real adult lover rather than an overgrown Barbie sextoy.

“What do you want from me?” I managed to gasp out at last, as his hands tweaked at my taut nipples.

“Ah, good. The right question at last. I knew I hadn’t misjudged you … that you were too smart a girl not to see all the angles. Of course it’s very pleasant to manhandle you like this – and I’ve very much enjoyed your oral ministrations over the last couple of days – but clearly obtaining a young girl to play with wouldn’t involve nearly so much planning and work. All I’d really need to do would be to hang around the entrance to your school with a fistful of credits and a backstage pass to Xanadu to have enough company to last me till Doomsday. Yours is not a particularly discriminating generation.”

“So why did you set up all this?”

“Clearly not to punish you (or your parents, for that matter) for your being gay. That’s between you and your maker. It’s true that you might have made a more discreet choice of girlfriends, but then, given your inexperience, I must confess to being rather impressed at your ability to get her to go out with you at all. I know that young girls tend to fall for older, sophisticated women, but it’s interesting to see that the reverse of the equation operates even with someone like her.”

“Someone like her? Is she the one you’re interested in?”

“Of course! You couldn’t possibly imagine that it was you and your mother I wanted to check up on … The two of you are model citizens so far as I’m concerned. I know you think that you’re quite a bad girl, but your pussy is as squeaky clean as the rest of you so far as I’m concerned.”

And at that the fucker pulled his hand out of me, inhaled the fragrance on his fingers, tasted it, then gave them to me to suck.

Somnambulism

Jacques-Louis David, "Mars Disarmed by Venus" (1824)

… Sleepwalkers are suggestible, and are therefore quite likely to engage in activities they have heard about or perhaps watched earlier that day. This can, at times, include embarrassing behaviour lapses, such as attempts to relieve themselves in public, chewing on non-existent food, dusting or sweeping without a duster or other cleaning implement – even engaging in inappropriate sexual intercourse.

There is a tendency not to remember anything which has happened during bouts of sleepwalking, so onlookers need not fear subsequent embarrassment from any encounter or conversation. They should, however, confine themselves to short questions or statements when dealing with somnambulists, as any requests for longer or more complex information will probably be greeted with silence or inaction.

It is a fallacy to believe that sleepwalkers are incapable of committing crimes or indiscretions – people have even committed murder in their sleep. However, acts such as these are fortunately very rare.

– Home Encyclopedia of Psychology, ed. Greg O’Bannon (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 448.

Backstory

"Well, the first thing is that I’m not from here, not from Mars.”

“That much I’d already guessed, but never mind, here goes.”

Phil slipped off a sandal. They were sitting in her living room (Lucy was staying with her father this weekend, so the coast was, for once, clear). The doors were double-locked.

“Where are you from?” she continued.

“Earth.”

Off came the other sandal.

“The next thing is that I’m a Private Investigator, not a writer.”

Phil couldn’t help herself. She started to snigger. “A private dick, eh? Here to terrorise the local population into giving you information …”

“I’m waiting.”

“Okay, okay.”

Off came a hairclip. She shook her long hair down.

“I’m looking for a writer, though.”

“Who?”

“You just don’t seem to be getting the rules of this game …”

“Oh, all right, but this is going to take forever at this rate!”

She reluctantly slipped out of the tight tunic top, baring a neat white sports-bra.

“Nice,” he observed appreciatively.

“Don’t get too fond of the real estate, Mister. That’s as close as you’re likely to get.”

“The writer I’m looking for doesn’t have a name. Or if he does, I don’t know what it is.”

“Does he live around here? Is that why you’re looking for him here? What does all this have to do with me?”

“Clothes!”

She slipped off her wrist-communicator.

“I’ll take your questions in order. We don’t know if he lives around here, but this is where he was last heard from.”

“Who’s we?”

“My wife back home. Who do you think? Nah, only joking. I’m not married. That’s two bits of information you owe me for, though.”

“Oh, for Goodness sake!”

Phil was running short on garments. She’d felt it would be ridiculous to wrap her body in every piece of clothing she had in the world, simply in order to pump her new next-door neighbour for information, but now she was beginning to regret her impulsiveness. A few more accessories and pieces of jewellery would have helped considerably. It didn’t matter that she didn’t usually wear such things except on special occasions.

“I don’t suppose you’d let me go into the next room and put on a few more clothes?” she ventured, hopefully. “I didn’t know you were going to be so literal-minded about this thing.”

“What do you think?” he replied with a leer, as she removed the two earrings she had had the foresight to put on.

“Anyway, to continue your previous line of questioning. I’m not married and I don’t have a steady girlfriend, so there’s an opening there for an enterprising young woman if she cares to take it up.”

“I’m not taking off any more clothes for that! You have to tell me something I want to know!”

“Okay, fair enough. We is the people I work for – an agency on Earth which works to locate people who my employers consider potentially disruptive. I could tell you more about them – their name, the address, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Ha hardy ha. Very funny,” she said, slipping off the tight little bra. She was topless already, and what had she learned that could be of any use?

“Now, getting back to the writer. This is where you come in – why I’ve decided you might be of use to me as a potential source of information.”

“You mean as a spy?”

“Yes, if you like. I told you the plot of that story, “Burmese Days,” at dinner the other night.”

“You mean that was a real story? Not some bullshit you made up to get into my pants?”

“Nope, real as rain … and now, if you don’t mind.”

She slipped off her skirt. Just leggings and knickers left now. She’d have to use each of them to their full advantage.

“But what’s so subversive about a woman obsessed with her own ... behind? It sounds pretty silly to me.”

“It is pretty silly. But stories are not always what they seem. They can have hidden meanings encoded in them – they can stir people up to think about things we’d rather they weren’t thinking about.”

She took off one of the two scarlet leggings.

“You called this writer “he” earlier on. Are you certain it’s a man? I mean, how can you be certain if you don’t know his name or anything else about him.”

“Quite right. We don’t know it’s a he, though there are various indications in the stories to imply that it probably is. It’s someone who posts things in odd places, and tends not to leave tracks … even the slyest foxes slip up sometimes, though.”

Sighing, she took off the second legging. There was now nothing between her and this leering man except a fairly exiguous pair of panties. At least they were white and only partially see-through! She was glad now that she’d taken her daughter’s advice and had a bikini wax the last time they were in Central City together.

“What I’d like to ask from you, then, is to keep your ear to the ground – listen for indications that your friends have been reading any of the postings this guy puts up. Reports of odd comments and conversations, that sort of thing.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, not quite all,” he answered, gesturing towards her last piece of underwear.

“Oh no you don’t! You tell me that last thing and I’ll decide if it merits taking them off.”

“Very well, then, it looks like I’ll have to trust to your sense of fair play, my sweet. We’re not sure if this writer is human, and we have reason to think that, if he is, he’s blind.”

“Blind!”

“Yes, blind.”

“But how do you know that?”

“Phil, you know the rules …”

“You really are a pig, you know. There! Satisfied?”

Standing up, she removed her knickers with a quick sliding motion, and gave him a brief twirl of her naked self.

“Now what, anyway? You’ve stripped me naked – you haven’t really given me all the answers I need, though.”

“No, that’s very true. To be honest, I’d anticipated quite a few more stages to this process, which is why I may have been a bit niggardly to start with.”

“Are you saying I’m easy?”

“No, no: not at all – just refreshingly fresh and open in your approach to what is frankly a fairly dog-eat-dog world. For a start, I haven’t even told you your daughter’s connection with all this”

“Lucy! What about Lucy? What are you saying?”

“Ah well, there you have me at a disadvantage, my proud beauty. I’d like to tell you, but you don’t really have any bargaining chips left.”

“Tell me about Lucy, you fucking bastard. What have you done with her?”

“Nothing at all. I haven’t done anything with - or to – her. Would that the same was true of everyone in your circle of acquaintance!”

“Do you want me to fuck you, is that it? Is that all you’re doing with all this rigmarole? Because if that’s all it is, go ahead, fuck me – but tell me about Lucy first.”

“That’s better. Now you’re beginning to get into the spirit of the game. And it is a game, you know. Fucking comes much further along, though. I call the game “Indignities” (though no doubt other people have other names for it). For every question of yours I answer, you have to submit to an indignity at my hands.”

“You fucking slimeball.”

“Possibly, possibly, but that doesn’t change the basic rules. It might harden my attitude towards you a little, though (so to speak) – you do have to bear that in mind when strategising your game-play.”

“Okay, I’ll play your fucking game, you scumbag. What’s first?”

“Well, first come the handcuffs, I’m afraid. It’s one of those games of rapid escalations and long periods of lull designed to put you off your guard.”

The Bargain

I went over to see him next day, after the dinner party debacle. I had a proposition to put to him, one I thought he’d like.

He opened the door looking all bleary-eyed and dishevelled, and still dressed in a robe, although it was past mid-morning.

“Hi! Man, you look like crap. What have you been doing with yourself all night?”

It pays to start off strong, I find.

“Oh hi … Luce, isn't it? I’m surprised you’re still talking to me after what happened last night.”

“Hey man, no sweat. Actually that’s partly what I came here to talk about. Are you really seriously into my Mum?”

“Ummm … You’d better come in. Please forgive the mess.”

Maybe the guy was a writer after all. Certainly the place was cluttered and weird enough – print-outs, charts, pictures, pinned up on every surface. It must have gone downhill considerably since the other day when Mum came by or there’s no way she’d ever have invited him to dinner. Only straight arrows need apply to get between Mum’s legs. The way she blushed when the discussion finally cranked around to her own womanly arse! (Not bad, either, though it’s creepy to think that way about your own mother).

He cleared some of the detritus off a chair, and motioned to me to sit down.

I sat.

“Look, I’ll come straight to the point. I get the impression that you’re some kind of pervert, given what the computer tutor said about you online …”

“What did he say?”

“It. It’s an android. Nothing much, to tell the truth. Just that your stuff was kind of rank, and that we’d be better off not reading any. That’s not the point, though.”

“What is the point? Are you worried for your mother, associating with such an odd and dubious character?”

“Well, it’d kinda make sense if I was, wouldn’t it? What with your arse obsession and all – Ma’s arse, under the Moons of Mars and all that. I’ll bet you’ve heard them all … but no, that’s not what I’ve come to talk to you about.”

“Do you want to show me your arse?”

“What is it with you and arses? Aren’t there any other parts of a woman you’re interested in? Her mind? Her personality? Tits, even?”

“I’m interested in all women's parts.”

“So am I.”

“Come again?”

“I like women, too. That’s why I’m here.”

“You’ve come to see a dirty old man because you want to own up to him about your perverse love of your own sex.”

“Fuck no! I don’t need a father confessor. I’ve got no problem with liking getting it on with women. My problem is far simpler than that.”

“How can I help?”

“That’s what I hoped you’d say! My problem is that I don’t have anywhere to go with my girlfriend, and it’d be really great to have the use of your room.”

“But …”

“Before you say anything, think about it for a minute. I can’t have sex with her in my own room at home, because my mother might come walking in at any moment. And we can’t do it at her place because she’s married and her husband might ditto.”

“Married!”

“Yes, married. Not all dykes lead an exclusively dykish existence, whatever you may think. She has a husband and she still has sex with him – quite frequently, I suspect, from some of the marks on her arse.”

“Marks?”

“Not handprints and things. He doesn’t spank her or whip her or anything – just the usual things: rugrash, lubricant and so on.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Fucking – as you say – hell. So how's about it?”

“You want me to lend you my flat as a safehouse, so you can slake your lesbian lust on the object of your affections.”

“Got it in one. A trifle flowery perhaps. But I guess that’s how you writers are.”

“ You don’t believe I’m a writer, do you?”

“Hey man, whatever gets you through the day. Now, in return, I’m prepared to offer not to queer your pitch with Mum – in fact, to talk you up on any and all occasions. As, contrary to most adult opinion, she does listen to me.”

“Well, that’s a very generous offer, but …”

“She’s already given you the bum’s rush, has she? Joke, get it? Too early still for that to be funny, I guess. Well, in that case …”

“No, no, no – I can’t discuss the nature of my present relations with your mother, but let’s say that they’re still in flux – in process, even.”

“So do you need my help or don’t you?”

“I’m not sure that I do. Absence of hindrance would certainly be handy, though. I don’t doubt your influence over her wavering views of me.”

“I’d probably be doing her a favour to tell her to cut you out of her life altogether, but I still do have this little problem myself – and to tell you the truth I feel it’s getting pretty urgent. I mean, how long can you hold on to your honey if there’s nowhere the two of you can get it on together?”

“A cogent point. Which brings me to my counteroffer. One blowjob for each use of the room.”

“You’re joking, right? You know I’m not into guys.”

“You or your friend. I’m not particular.”

“Oh no. There’s no way you’re even meeting Pat, let alone spunking all over her tonsils. She’s way too fine for that.”

“I’m afraid that’s my final offer.”

“You fucking creep! Don’t you guys ever bargain for anything else?”

“I can see that you’ve already been associating with a fine representative sample of the masculine sex. I’m afraid that it is something that tends to be on our minds quite a bit.”

“Well, drop ’em then. Time’s a -wasting.”

“You mean you agree?”

“Of course I agree. I’m not a child. I’m just grateful I’m getting out of here without having to let you fondle my arse.”

“Don’t speak too soon, child – perhaps we should institute a sliding scale of charges …”

Burmese Days

The cicadas were loud that year
stubbed round the house
we pecked at scraps
from a pizza box

I saw the harbour gleaming
like a tooth / the filaments
unravelling
your eyes
in the window
like a wolf

Looting was unforeseen
the infantry
would mop that up

The integers squared away
the indigiens sealed
up / in their stupor
plastic box

Dinner

Phil’s dinnerparty was, she had to admit, a little disappointing. He’d arrived on time, winebottle in hand, been perfectly polite, commented favourably on her outfit (carefully chosen to fall between the stools of the overformal and the too casual), but the conversation had just not sparked, somehow.

That is, until her daughter had taken a hand. She’d been sitting there like a stuffed dummy all through the meal, as the two of them fenced delicately over his reluctance to reveal a single detail about himself, his work, his past, or any other detail of his existence on any of the three worlds.

In fact the only words she’d uttered up to that point had been “Call me Luce,” after introductions had been effected. Phil had never been particularly happy with this shortening of “Lucy” – it sounded too much like loose. Which was, however, the opposite of the impression the young girl gave this evening, tight and taut and unforgivingly woundup in her skintight adolescent uniform of g-string and shirt.

Her guest’s admission to having written at least one story, title unspecified, had at last spurred Lucy out of her lethargy, however.

“I just can’t believe that you’ve forgotten the name of your own story.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“What’s it called, then?”

Burmese Days.

“Burmese Days?”

“Precisely.”

“What’s it about?”

“A woman.”

“A Burmese woman?”

“No. A woman in Myanmar just before the collapse – when the junta was still in power, before the great estates were broken up.”

“Is she a politician?”

“No. To tell the truth, she’s mostly fascinated with her own arse.”

“She’s up her own arse?”

“Well, yes, I guess she is in a way, but the point of the story is that she has an obsession with her own arse – loves it, loves dressing and undressing it, displaying it, exercising it, sculpting it, and so on.”

“Was she based on someone you know?”

“Not particularly, I don’t think. Of course a lot of women are very body-conscious.”

“What about Mum? Do you like her arse?”

“Lucy! That’s enough.”

“Why? It’s a fair question. He’s told us he wrote this story about a colonial chatelaine who wanders round worshipping her own arse. It stands to reason that he’s got an interest in the subject. He’s probably been checking yours out since the moment you first met. Not to mention mine …”

“Lucy! Go to your cubicle!”

“But Mum …”

“Lucy, one more word and you’ll be grounded for a month …”

“Okay, okay. I was only making conversation.”

Standing up, the young girl flounced out of the room, taking care to bend over ostentatiously whilst kissing her mother good night, in order to show to best advantage her taut adolescent butt.

As soon as she’d gone, Phil began to apologise.

“What must you think of us? I really don’t know how she gets hold of these things.”

“No, she’s right, actually. I can see that the story does sound a bit … explicit when you put it like that. I guess the point is supposed to be that the central character’s obsession is a kind of mirror of her soul, of the soul of colonialism – self-obsession, self-creation. But choosing a woman and her body-image as your subject-matter certainly can give rise to a lot of misunderstandings. And you do have a very fine behind, by the way, in case you were wondering.”

“Well, no, I wasn’t, to tell you the truth – but thank you.”

“You’re sure? I mean, you really are an exceptionally attractive woman. I’d like very much to see you again under … more propitious circumstances. Maybe for a date? Dinner and a movie … something like that?”

“Well …”

“Come on. What do you have to lose? From what you were saying earlier, you don’t know so many people in this part of the grid. Neither do I. I’d really like to get to know you better.”

“To get to know my arse better, you mean …”

“Well, that too – but I was really thinking of getting to know you.”

“Look, I’ll be frank. I know that’s a bit unusual when this is the first time we’ve really talked, and this isn’t even a date. I’m a little frustrated that you won’t tell me anything about yourself. You’ve been fencing and evading all evening, and I don’t know why you would do that unless you really have something to hide. And if that’s the case, well, I’m sorry – you seem very nice, and I like you, and God knows I have been lonely living this far out from the city – but I just can’t get involved with anything mysterious or … illegal.”

“You’re afraid I’m on the run? Is that it?”

“Basically, yes.”

“And you don’t believe in my story?”

“Not really, no. I tend to agree with my daughter. I think you’re more interested in my arse than you are in that Burmese woman’s …”

“Touché. Well, I’ll tell you what. You’re pretty much showing me the door, so I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll answer each and every question that you have, as frankly as I can, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Tit for tat. You’ve got to show me a bit more of yourself for every question I answer.”

“You mean tell you things about myself?”

“No, of course not – I mean take off an item of clothing for every question.”

“I think you’d better leave now.”

“Fair enough. I didn’t think you’d want to go through with it, but you can’t blame a guy for trying. And what you’re asking is not that dissimilar, really, although I'm sure you don’t see it that way. No hard feelings, I hope?”

“Look, it’s not as if I’m a prude or anything. I’ve been naked in front of plenty of men before – before my husband and after … but even if I wanted to show you my arse right now, you’ve got to remember that I’m a mother, too. What kind of an example would that be setting for my daughter?”

“Your daughter looks as if she can look after herself, from what I could judge tonight.”

“Okay, that’s it – you’re out of here.”

“All right, all right, I’m going – but I’ll be thinking of you and your sexy sweet arse … you can bet your bottom dollar on that.”

Luce

Mum is such a ditz – a total spasmoid, actually. I could see her humming and putting on her face to impress this slimeball from across the way, when anyone could see there was only one thing he was after.

“Writer” – yeah, right. Mum thinks that I can’t find my way round the blocks she’s had set up on our home terminals, but actually my cousin Freddie showed me how to sidestep them a couple of years ago, before the big break-up.

It’s true he made me pay for the information. I had to inhale his gross nerd tubing every day for a week before he’d let me in on the big secret, but it was worth it in the long run. What’s more, he skited so loudly at school about his vacuum-sucker cousin that it gave me quite a rep right up till senior year.

Which is just as well, really, since it isn’t really boys who do it for me. I found that out a few months later, when Miss White was showing us freefall stretches in athletics class. Her body looked so smooth and clean and good enough to eat, not like that wrinkled gherkin Freddie had been feeding me (I’d never let him put it in me, though there had been a good deal of begging to that effect at one time or another). Now Miss White – Frieda, I found out she was called – could have fed me anything and I’d have come back wanting more. I was fifteen years old.

That was before the divorce (Mum finding Dad in bed with his dance partner, banging her brains out in the middle of a weekday), before the big move out here to the outer domes (full of “wholesome family values” the Real Estate broker claimed – more like terminal settler neurosis if you ask me).

So I never got to proposition Frieda White (I’m still intrigued to know what her answer would have been – if she was bi at all she’d have to have been at least curious to try it out with an adoring younger girl. Dangerous if you’re caught, of course, but so delightful to train them up in the right ways from the get-go).

Dome 98 hasn’t proven to be quite the sexual desert I’d foreseen when we first moved here, though. For a start the kids at school here are basically hicks, so I shine out like a beacon of metropolitan cool among them. Slim chicks with short black hair and an attitude are in short supply in this freeze-dried world of wall-to-wall blonde bimbos, so the local boys were basically at my feet from the beginning.

The only trouble is that I didn’t want any of them. Some of the girls in my class were pretty enough, but unfortunately it seems to be the older, sophisticated women that I go for, and there aren’t that many of them on the staff.

Which is why I persuaded Mum to let me switch to online tutoring. The contacts you make are all electronic, admittedly, which is why it usually equates with social death. But you see I’d made an interesting discovery in the meantime. That some of Mum’s coffee-klatsch friends are pretty cool.

There’s one in particular, Patricia (“Call me Pat.”) I’d call her Pat and she could call me Lez – or slavegirl, for that matter.

Pat’s blonde, too, but kind of fierce-looking. She totally ignored me the first time that we met (usually Mum’s friends make a big fuss of me and try to interrogate me about boys, study, etc. all in a desperate attempt to seem cool). Pat was the real thing – cold as ice and not an ounce of fat on her long, toned, leggy body. She might have been an adolescent boy for all the bits she had sticking out of her, but smoother and sweeter and sexier than any man.

One time she came by when Mum wasn’t in, and I managed to ask her in by pretending that she’d be back any minute. Then I started fumbling around in my bag for my communicator, and “accidentally” tipped all my stuff out on the floor. “Accidentally” because the biggest item of all was a great big metal vibrator, with bum-tickler and ridges and all mod cons, top of the line and guaranteed to please any pussy.

Subtle, huh? I picked it up quickly (the blush was real – I wouldn’t know quite how to fake one, actually. I’d been planning the whole thing for weeks, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous as hell when it actually came down to it), and started to apologise.

“Oh, God, Pat, I didn’t mean for you to see that. You won’t tell Mum, will you? She thinks I’m still a virgin and dreaming of Jesus …” (which is basically true, I suspect – maybe not the Jesus part, but I’m sure she doesn’t credit me with any sexual feelings beyond a mild curiosity about boys’ wee-wees, judging by some of the clothes she wants me to wear).

“I won’t breathe a word, Lucy.” (My God, she actually knew my name! Just hearing it breathed out from between those perfect lips made me want to die). “But, you know, I’m not sure that you should be using one of those things at your age. Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“No,” I replied, hanging my head.

“If you’re having these kind of sexual feelings, I hope you have someone to talk to about them? Someone at school, perhaps, if you don’t feel you can tell your Mum.”

“I’m doing school online now, and I’d just die if I had to talk about it over a screen.”

I could see that Pat was getting a bit interested now. She was still trying to pretend to be the responsible motherly older woman, but I could see that she got off slightly at thinking about a seventeen-year-old who played with herself so much that she carried her toys round in her purse with her.

“Is this the only thing you use? Don’t you find it a bit painful?”

“No, not really. I’ve never had sex with a boy, except for blowjobs, but I’ve got some other things I use to warm myself up.”

“Warm yourself up! God, girl, I’d never even seen one of those things before I turned twenty-one!”

“What happened then?”

“I’m not sure I should be talking about this – let alone with you, my best friend’s daughter.”

“Oh come on! You can’t start a story like that and then not finish it. I’ll show you all my other toys if you’ll tell me what happened when you were twenty-one.”

That got her attention. I bet if I’d felt between her thighs just then I’d have detected just the first tender buddings of moisture.

“There’s nothing much to tell, actually. On my twenty-first birthday my boyfriend (who’s now my husband) bought me a sex toy a bit like this, and we used it on each other that night in bed.”

“Used it how?”

“I can’t believe I’m talking about this with you! How do you think?”

“Did he rub it over your breasts?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tease your pussy with it?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did he stimulate you from behind!”

“No, of course not! Why, is that what you do with yours?”

“Would you like to see?”

“Of course I don’t want to see! Who do you take me for? Do you think I’m one of your gym teachers?”

“I think you want to see me naked, to watch me playing with my little pussy in front of you. Don’t you?”

“No!”

“I want to get naked for you. You don’t have to do anything – you don’t even have to watch. I’ll get off just on doing it in front of you.”

She was silent this time. I could see she hadn’t been this turned on in quite a long while, but something in her was still trying to fight it.

I wasn’t wearing any underwear, and my skirt had a bow at the side, so in a jiffy I was standing stark naked in front of her.

“Your mother …” she muttered.

“We can go in my room,” I said. “There’s a hidden bolt I had a friend install. Anyway, she won’t be back for hours. She has a meeting at the lawyer’s today in town.”

“You fucking little liar! I’d never have come in if you’d told me that in the first place.”

“I lied because I’m in love with you – since I first saw you, actually. Don’t you like me even a little bit?”

“No,” she lied. “Little jail-bait bitches don’t do it for me at all.”

“You won’t mind watching me play with myself, then … that’s all jail-bait bitches do, because they’re too disgusting for anyone else to want to touch them.”

By now my fingers were working away inside me. She watched me with a scornful look on her face. “You little slut! How many times have you done this before?”

“Played with myself, you mean?”

“No, tried to seduce people with this pathetic act?”

“Never. This is the first time. I’ve never even wanted anyone before the way I want you. I want you to order me round, to make me your slave … I’d do anything for you – lick up your shit, anything.”

I don’t care what your sexual orientation is – chances like this don’t come up every day. I don’ know if she felt any interest in me to start with, but there was a cruel streak in her which kind of responded to the idea of a sexslave, I suspect – especially a slutty little seventeen-year-old who whacked off to your image every night but was still technically a virgin. Kind of covering all the bases, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, she eventually deigned to come into my room, and though she wouldn’t remove even the slightest item of clothing, she used a number of sextoys on me, penetrating my arse, my pussy and even my mouth with a variety of machine tools. From that moment on, I suspect, she was hooked.

That’s all a bit beside the point, I guess, which is Mum and her crush on the big writer who’s just moved in opposite, but I guess I had to try and get you to understand that I’m not just talking out of my butt when I say I know a thing or two about sex. More than she thinks I do, anyway.

Which is why I was thinking I was going to have to take this dinner under advisement, if I didn’t want to end up with a new proxy Stepdad. The problem was, you see, that I couldn’t find a single thing he’d written – and I’d looked in some pretty out-of-the-mainstream places ...

Hysterical Blindness

or Conversion Disorder. This term refers to a rare psychosomatic medical condition, rather than to any physical impairment of sight. It is generally motivated by a highly traumatic event of some kind (examples might be seeing a loved one run down on the road, or surprising a parent or partner in flagrante delicto).

The emotional turmoil which results can cause sufferers to block off any further visual impulses from reaching the brain. Under laboratory conditions, though, they will still react appropriately when violent or disturbing images are mixed in with a group of more neutral test pictures. This indicates that they do indeed “see” them, but simply will not allow themselves to acknowledge the fact.

Treatment must therefore be directed at the underlying causes of this unwillingness to see. The patient will very often blame it on a fall, or “masking” trauma – such as an argument or trivial disagreement of some kind – rather than the actual motivating factor.

Fantastic narratives of great complexity are sometimes concocted to avoid facing up to the devastating concomitants of such traumas. Curiously enough, these fantasies are often predominantly visual in nature, a contradiction which may go unacknowledged even after it has been pointed out by a physician.

– Home Encyclopedia of Psychology, ed. Greg O’Bannon (London: Macmillan, 1986), p 332.

The Invitation

Part One:

Neighbours

A number of years ago I invented a parlor-game called Trinities.

Each player had to take someone … and describe them in terms

of a household of three persons, who can be of any age

and of either sex.
– W. H. Auden

Phillippa had been speculating about her new next-door neighbour for some days now. Ever since he first moved in, in fact. She’d watched the burly robots rolling in and out of the residential unit with their neverending stream of cling-film cartons, whilst pretending to dial up something innocuous from the wallstove. One of them had collided with a doorjamb, knocking over its tottering load, only to reveal a pile of musty old faux-plastic printouts. Was it possible that that was what all of them contained? Could anyone be quite that hardcopy-focussed?

There’d been a certain amount of discussion about him (it seemed it was a him) at the dinnertable, too. Lucy, her smart-mouthed seventeen-year old daughter, had remarked that one of her online tutors had reported that a writer was moving into the area.

“Amy asked if we’d be accessing any of his posts, but old pooh-face put the little suck in her place,” she said, shifting the protein-tube to one side of her mouth in the manner affected by the coolest of her girlfriends. “He said that we’d be better off not accessing any of them, since they were full of filth and bad language … that sounded pretty good to me, but it turns out that none of them are on P.A.”

More and more fascinating! Phillippa (Phil to her friends: though never, curiously enough, to her ex-husband, who’d insisted on addressing her as Pie – Pecan Pie, Honeypie, Cherry Pie, depending on his mood and the state of his digestion - throughout the course of their sixteen-year legal coupling) began to think she’d have to find an opportunity to meet this mysterious purveyor of words too venomous to be included on the public networks. Luckily Lucy’s hacking abilities hadn’t developed much beyond the odd downloaded fantasy game as yet.

These smaller domes were, admittedly, notoriously smallminded and intolerant of difference – but in that case why would any freethinking webposter shift to one in the first place? Finally she’d decided to go over (with a home-dialled pie – there was, one had to admit, a smidgeon of truth in the nickname her husband had chosen for her) and introduce herself. At the very least it would have the effect of assuaging some of her curiosity.

“Who knows? I might even invite him to dinner if he seems at all presentable …”

Actually she’d pretty much determined on issuing such an invitation if he showed the slightest disposition to accept it. Phil was much more bored by her life out here in the sticks than she was prepared to admit even to herself, let alone to the remnants of her always select circle of friends and acquaintances. The move had been more to get away from her ex (and his new, super-swishy and successful younger astrophysicist girlfriend) than for any more potent reason, and this small provincial dome in the plains outside Chriseis City was proving as dull as the direst of his prognostications.

“I give it six months at the outside before you’ll be begging to come back, Cutey-pie, and you know it’s too far for me to take the tube every day to visit Lucy. Every ten-day, for that matter …”

“Then you shouldn’t have started screwing your freefall dance partner,” she’d been tempted to riposte, but had contented herself with a Buddha-like smile. Distance from him, though unobtainable in any definitive sense, was certainly one coherent motive for shifting so far out from the central core.

That had been the pattern of most of their marriage, actually – dire warnings from him, which had mostly turned out pretty accurate, but which she’d felt compelled to ignore because of the insufferable air of self-satisfaction which invariably accompanied them. Her Cassandra complex, he called it. So far she’d been able to resist the temptation of looking that up or – worse still -- asking him to explain just exactly what he meant by it. He would so enjoy telling her, the pompous little prick!

So that was why, at 09.45 hours, Southern hemisphere-time, on a Third-day morning, Phil found herself standing, apple-pie in hand – in both hands, actually, since she’d been unable to find a bachelor-sized pie-recipe online – outside the front door of her new, as-yet-unseen neighbour, getting up the nerve to try his frontdoor buzzer.

Welcome to my World (3)

Mission to Mars, dir Brian de Palma, writ. Lowell Cannon, Jim Thomas & Graham Yost – with Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Connie Nielsen – (USA, 2000)

Marooned on the surface, where can one find refuge but the pyramids of Mars?

Red Planet, dir Antony Hoffman, writ. Chuck Pfarrer & Jonathan Lemkin – with Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore – (USA, 2000)

Exotic (even artificial) species flourish in the new environment, without their traditional predators.

Ghosts of Mars, dir. John Carpenter, writ. Larry Sulkis & John Carpenter – with Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Statham – (USA, 2001)

But the land has its own resources, hidden in the red dust.