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It can’t be denied that he’ll give you a good time. Just hope he doesn’t bring Naylor in on it, though.
On his own, Ben is about as harmless as a vampire can be – but Naylor is his weakness. Naylor is the trigger for him going badly wrong, because he turns Ben’s simple lust to his more sadistic ends.
It was the itch of Ben’s lust that brought him to this city in the first place, when he was still alive and living with his parents in a provincial town and had a job as an apprentice repairman, in those days when they still bothered repairing televisions and radios and kettles. He wanted a chance at the big-city nightlife he’d heard so much about, and he found to his delight that there was plenty of sex available: with the Pill now available, trendy chicks had no excuse to say No. He shacked up in a squat with a girl calling herself Moonbeam who had a seemingly endless supply of pot and LSD and a similarly endless line of parties to go to, parties at which the right people showed up to mingle with the hip young things, or if they didn’t they should have and everyone said they had done anyway, the next day. He thought he was in love with her, just a bit, though that didn’t stop him sleeping with other girls. And she went with other blokes too, of course. She was the one who introduced him to Naylor.
She said he was this totally amazing guy who hung out with the Stones and had insights into history and eternity like no one else.
Ben ended up in a room draped with Indian-printed cotton and reeking of patchouli, on his knees with his cock down Moonbeam’s throat, watching awestruck while this skinny beautiful youth fucked her from behind and she gobbled his dick and made noises like she was seeing Krishna himself. Ben had never shared a girl with another man. He thought it the hottest experience of his life, and he didn’t mind even when Naylor began to bite at Moonbeam’s back and shoulders, sucking her blood. Admittedly, the pot probably helped with that surprise. And Moonbeam didn’t seem to mind either; in fact she seemed to revel in the sensation, climbing to new orgasmic heights. It wasn’t long before Ben was finding out for himself what it felt like.
In the whole wide world, there was nothing at all he’d ever known that was as good as the sensation of Naylor sucking his dick. Teeth and tongue. Blood and spunk. People who derided that sort of thing didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. Sometimes, thanks to that magic bite, he walked round with a hard-on all day. Sometimes he woke so drained that his hollow balls just about clanged together.
For a little while the two of them were Naylor’s favourites. The vampire fucked them together and separately, whenever he felt like it, without asking any leave and without needing to. All shame and propriety vanished from Ben’s life. He’d bend over and spread his ass-cheeks in the middle of a crowded room at the flick of a finger, the crook of an eyebrow. He’d offer his arms and his anus and his cock. He’d ask for nothing in return but the benison of Naylor’s razor-edged kiss.
That all stopped when Moonbeam’s heart gave out, quietly and without any warning, one night as she lay with her head tilted backward off the edge of the bed with Naylor sucking at her crotch and Ben’s cock so far down her throat that she didn’t even cry out as she died. The two men buried her body in a patch of wasteland and then Ben threw a tantrum of recrimination and they fought, very briefly and with devastating effect as far as the human one of them was concerned. Naylor must be credited with some impulse of contrition, because he saved Ben from bleeding out by force-feeding the boy his own vampiric blood. That was how Ben was reborn.
In very short order he decided that he hadn’t loved Moonbeam that much after all.
He was luckier than he knew: it so happened that Reynauld was away abroad that month, and his conversion was revealed as a fait accompli upon the older vampire’s return. Moonbeam’s death never came to Reynauld’s attention at all and Ben was permitted to stay, so long as he swore loyalty like the others.
Ben doesn’t resent Reynauld. But he’s still close to Naylor, and that way danger lies. Ben’s bad at spotting danger, though: he lives his life – if that’s the word – on too much of a high. Ironically, these days he’s completely straight, chemically speaking. Psychotropic drugs don’t work on vampires. He can’t even get drunk – except on blood, of course.
That’s all that’s left to him now: blood and sex.
2: Nine for the Nine Bright Shiners
‘Come on. Oh, God, yes – come on!’
And I do. Like I’m told. Filling her.
Sometimes I feel like all she wants of me is the gush of fluid, that I’m nothing but a donor to her. It’s the tiniest bit demoralising. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I want this baby as much as Penny does. I’m totally committed to the effort. I’ve given up coffee and alcohol and even fish, to my dismay – they’re supposedly caked in pollutants that depress sperm count – and I’ve switched to boxer shorts instead of briefs to keep the Boys optimally cool. I take my mineral supplements: zinc and selenium and vitamin C. It’s just as important to me as to her.
OK, so if I’m honest it isn’t. It couldn’t be. It’s all she thinks about these days. Sometimes I look at her and wonder how the dance-till-dawn party chick I first met turned into this macrobiotic-organic obsessive with the body honed by swimming and Pilates into a lean, mean, baby-bearing machine. Fitness is considered vital in the mum-to-be, these days, it turns out. No one just gets pregnant and carries on any more; it has to be conducted like a military campaign instead. Not that I object to a toned tum and a firm butt, obviously; it’s the look in her eyes that worries me, the way they’re like holes going down into a big dark place. Whenever we meet someone with a pushchair she tries to hide it but I see. I can see her hunger.
* * *
I get called away from the table during a dinner the mayor’s hosting at his official residence. It’s not a particularly formal do, luckily: just a Spanish business delegation and some potential local investors and a couple of members of the European Parliament. Not exactly exciting stuff, but not much potential for messing things up either; they’re all happily chowing down so no one’s going to miss me for a few minutes. Penny has turned up at the front gate, and security have rung through to me.
‘It’s all right,’ I tell them: ‘She’s my wife.’ And I bring her inside. She’s dressed up enough not to look out of place, thankfully, in a little cobalt-blue number I’m rather fond of because of the cutaway back. ‘Is anything wrong?’ I ask, drawing her into a corner of the hall, under a portrait of Gladstone. There are waiting staff at practically every corner so I keep my voice low. It’s odd seeing your wife in a work context. Two halves of my brain are in collision.
‘I’m ovulating, Richard.’
I try not to frown, though I’m secretly exasperated. ‘Couldn’t it wait?’
‘Well, you’re not planning on coming home tonight, are you?’ That’s true enough: with the mayoral elections coming up in a fortnight, once the guests are gone we’re all likely to be in a strategy meeting until the small hours. I’m going to have to sleep over here or else I’ll get back home by taxi somewhere near 4 a.m., at a guess. ‘And I have to be up early tomorrow,’ she continues, ‘to catch the train to my seminar.’
I nod reluctantly. Penny is a freelance consultant for the hotel industry and gives talks all over the country.
She switches tack, from rational argument to tease: ‘Bet you can’t guess what I’m wearing under this dress.’ Her eyes glitter and she moistens her lips with the tip of her tongue. It evokes the first stir of a reaction in the region of my crotch, just as she intends. Tease works.
‘All right then.’ I look up and down the corridor. The diners will be well into the bottles of Krug by now. And it’s not as if I’m the only political adviser the mayor’s got to hand. ‘Down here.’
I need a room with a lock on the door, which means a guest toilet unfortunately: I pick the one furthest from the dining hall. It’s an exceptionally well-appointed toilet of course. It also happens to be occupied, because as I lay my hand on the door I hear a voice within. A man’s voice, deep and measured. He’s talking to someone, although the other voice is not audible.
‘Blast,’ I mutter. I might think about heading to another location, except that Penny takes the opportunity to lean against the wall and brush her fingers up my fly, a furtive tickle that deprives me of the will to move anywhere. Her eyes are bright, her breasts plumped up even more than usual to create a mesmerising cleft. ‘Careful,’ I admonish weakly. ‘We need to be discreet.’
‘How can we be, when I’m gagging for your cock?’ she mouths. I love it when she talks filthy, which she knows, of course. That perfect, preened exterior combined with whorishly low speech makes for a delicious frisson.
Then the door opens. A man comes out, looks at us both, nods with a faint smile and walks away. I think for a moment that I recognise him but the familiarity is fleeting. Penny’s eyes follow him down the corridor. ‘Who was that?’ she asks with undisguised admiration.
I sigh and steer her into the bathroom. That’s certainly one sign she’s ovulating: she becomes a rapacious flirt. Another man in my position might not take it so well. ‘I don’t know him. One of the Spanish group, I should think – they’re in the running for a contract on the integrated transport initiative.’
‘Well, he knew you.’
‘Did he?’
‘He called you Richard.’
I blink, nonplussed. I can’t recall him saying anything to me at all. I can’t actually remember his face right now, come to think of it. He was tall and looked like he might have been Spanish; that’s all I recall. ‘Did you yank me out of dinner just to talk?’ I’m a little brusque, I admit, to cover my confusion. Penny rolls her eyes.
‘OK, love.’ She stalks over to the sink and drops her handbag while I give the room a once-over glance, just in case the conversation we’d overheard had been taking place live and not over the phone. But the room, though spacious for a toilet and slightly over-furnished – an antique armoire against one wall, a small but fiendishly ornate sofa upholstered in brocade, a huge matching gilded mirror over the marble counter that cups two sinks and a large vase of fresh roses – is empty of all human forms but our own. I push the door-bolt to.
‘So what are you wearing?’
‘Come and find out.’ She smiles at me, heavy-lidded, in the mirror. I walk over behind her, Mr Dick already doing his wake-up stretches under my uncomfortable goddamn boxers. ‘Inappropriate Behaviour’ while working is strictly forbidden even if it is with one’s spouse; there’ve been more than enough embarrassing headlines in the press about waste-of-money politicians and public employees gadding about when they should be doing something worthy and abstemious. The fact that this could get me into terrible trouble adds a distinct spice to the occasion. Standing behind her, I watch in the mirror as she lifts her hands and rubs lazily at her breasts, slipping the shoulder straps of her dress to reveal more of those delectable twin slopes – so pale they make me think of snow, so smooth I want to ski down them into the ravine between.
‘Show me,’ I whisper, and my voice is thickening. ‘Get them out and play with them.’
With a languorous smile she obeys, scooping each orb from dress and bra to prop them on the rumpled fabric, circling her nipples with her fingertips. The blushing points harden under the attention. I reach round and assist her, tweaking and flicking the stiff nubs until she surrenders them to me with the sigh I know very well. At the same time I press her to the marble slab, my awakening cock nuzzling up against the cushions of her bum. I enjoy watching us in the mirror; it’s almost like being in our own movie. I can see my hands looking coarse and dark on her cream-coloured skin, catch every flash and flicker of her eyes as my touch sets off cascades of reactions in her body. At this time of the month she’s quick to arouse, already primed. I feel her cheeks squirming back against my pressure. She’s ready for it.
‘As you were,’ I whisper. ‘Keep playing with those.’ As she takes over again I step back so that I can look at that wriggling ass, at her taut legs and her bunched calves, straining on the spike heels of shoes that exactly match the colour of her dress. Sheer blue stockings complete the ensemble. I lift her skirt, and stare. It must have taken some careful work with a mirror: she’s not wearing any panties, but written in blue felt-tip down the last couple of inches of her spine is the neat instruction FUCK, with an arrow pointing down into the crack of her behind. And across her bum cheeks is the broken word CUM SLUT.
Well, that puts lead in my pencil: six inches of solid graphite. My cock bounces out into my hand as I unzip. ‘How did you get here?’ I ask.
‘Black cab.’
‘With no knickers on?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘It’s a very short skirt,’ I muse, lifting her right leg right up to open her wide as I seek entry. My stiffy goes in like a hot knife into her butter. ‘Do … hh … Do you think the taxi-driver noticed?’
‘He might have,’ Penny gasps. ‘He was looking.’
That is enough for me: she knows how to push all my kink buttons. I’m in and I’m thrusting, pushing her forward over the sink, plunging the depths of her lubricious hole. Her four-inch heel skids about on the marble benchtop. I know better than to try and take it slow, or to reach for her clit. She doesn’t care about coming, she just wants me to come. That’s why she’s put so much effort into this. She grips the curve of the sink and shuts her eyes, lips open in an O of sympathy for her impaled sex.
God, she feels good. Tight, yet so welcoming.
And as I pound away, as my whole body clenches toward ejaculation, I look past her face in the mirror and see another behind us both. A woman’s. She stands on the upright back of the French settee, her bare toes gripping the gilding and her arms stretched behind her to touch the wall, like a Rolls Royce hood ornament: the Spirit of Ecstasy. I know she can’t really be there, that there’s no way anyone could be in the room with us. It’s an optical illusion conjured by my horny mind as it catches in the fire of orgasm. A wraith-woman moulded from shadows, dressed in only a veil through which her delicate body glows, her hair a cloudy nimbus floating about her head. But that’s all I glimpse, because just then my climax shakes me and I’m pumping my cum into my wife’s hot cunny, and the whole room goes nova.
When I come back down to myself there’s no one but us two in the mirror. And no one else in the room, of course.
Penny fishes a pair of knickers from her handbag almost before I’m out of her, then goes to lie down on her side on the couch. Thirty minutes letting gravity help the little swimmers on their way, that’s the rule. She smiles at me when I go over and kiss her temple, but the smile is wan. ‘That was lovely,’ she says. ‘Thank you, Richard.’
It was great, I want to say. Didn’t you enjoy it? You don’t look like you did. It was great … but weird. Where in my head had that girl come from?
‘You OK, Pen?
‘Of course.’ I can see it in her eyes, which don’t really focus on me. They’re like empty wells but at the bottom gleam burning coals: the hope that this time it will take.
Like I say, sometimes it’s a bit disheartening.
* * *
Christ, if she actually caught me going on like this she’d kill me. I’m supposed to be 100 per cent supportive. It’s not as if I actually have to do that much except get my leg over with clockwork regularity and provide the seed. I’m supposed to enjoy that bit, aren’t I? And of course I do. Penny’s invested in a whole range of fancy underwear and some kinky little costumes – a French maid, a pirate lass, a naughty nurse – so that my co-operation can be guaranteed. I’m getting more sex now than in years. Every other day throughout her cycle, to be precise, with a week off when the red flag of yet another failure paints her pantyliners: mornings preferred because there’s a higher sperm load, and if I’m always in a bit of a rush before work that’s not a problem; there’s no need to linger and coming back for seconds is not encouraged.
* * *
I’m in a taxi on the way home, thinking about our little assignation as I look out at the deserted streets, and wondering when was the last time we had sex just for the fun of it. I’m not complaining; I’ve no right to complain. Penny has made it her business to find out everything that turns me on and she applies it with ruthless efficiency and not the tiniest smidgen of shame. She’s lifted from me the onus of actually giving her pleasure and made it clear I only need to think about my own orgasm; that’s enough to satisfy her. Isn’t that what every overworked man wants?
Well, maybe.
And I can’t help suspecting that the second that blue cross shows up on the plastic wand, all the feathers and fishnets are going straight in the bin. Luckily Mr Dick isn’t much interested in the long view. He just goes ‘Stockings? Wow! Count me in!’
The streets slip past with unfamiliar swiftness: small shops and tree-lined avenues. It’s the dead time of the night and anything that does close down has done. The entrance to my local Underground station is barred with a metal grille, but the illuminated sign warns me I’m nearly home. I shake myself from my reverie as we pull up outside my apartment block. It’s only a year old and it gleams darkly against the sodium glow of the sky. It won an architectural award, did Mavin Wood Towers. It’s a nice place to live. They had to cut the wood down to build it, of course.
Then the taxi-driver switches on the interior light and all the cab windows turn to mirrors, and I see her in the reflection. She’s in the seat next to me, her feet drawn up on the upholstery: the girl from the bathroom mirror. She’s very pretty but completely colourless, like she’s been sculpted in ash, and only her eyes look truly real. I jump nearly out of my skin this time, and turn without thinking to swipe at the place she sits. My hand bounces off the empty seat cushion.
‘You OK, mate?’ The cabby sounds suspicious.
‘Uh,’ I say. ‘Yes.’ I shove notes into his hand and don’t wait for any change. I’m out of the taxi without another glance at my reflection, and as my feet touch the pavement I suddenly remember the identity of the man who came out of the bathroom. It’s like a door opening in my head. Of course I knew him. I’d seen him a number of times around the mayor’s office. Reynauld.
‘Oh, fuck,’ I say to myself, suddenly sweating with anxiety. The bastards know how to mess with your head like that. They can do more or less what they like, I gather. I’m not directly involved in liaison, but everyone in city politics knows about them.
I hurry to the front door of the block. It’s made of smoked glass and, as I reach for the number-plate to type in my security code, I see that behind my own dark reflection there’s a woman standing on the pavement under the streetlight. The woman. She’s veiled from head to foot, but the light goes straight through the gauze to outline her delicate body. She’s not moving, she’s just watching me.
With a convulsive movement I yank open the door and pull it to behind me. There’s resistance and I feel a frisson of panic, but it’s probably only the hydraulic spring. I’m inside and safe.
They can’t come inside unless you invite them, isn’t that right?
* * *
I’m doing my best to help the process along. I want to be a dad. I mean, I guess I do. I accept it’s going to change my life, it just doesn’t seem real yet. If it were up to me we’d both just bumble on as usual and leave it all up to chance, so it’s a good thing Penny’s got her teeth into the matter, I suppose. She always gets her way in the end.
Of course, even Mr Dick can be cussed and rebellious. Certain things are on the Forbidden List now, with the inevitable consequence that I’m constantly thinking about how much I want to do them. Like, no more hand-shandies; I’m not allowed to waste good cum.
How strange is it that masturbation is now an unattainable privilege?
* * *
I step out of the bath and towel myself down as the water drains. Somehow I manage to catch my own eye in the mirror. I’ve been a bit wary of mirrors since seeing that wraith-woman, but there’s been no sign of her since that first night and I’m feeling reasonably secure here. I’m at home for the weekend and it’s daylight, even if it is a watery winter light. It was probably all a figment of my imagination anyway, I know. If you’re awake and working for twenty hours in a day it’s no wonder that you start dreaming on your feet.
The bathroom’s tiled and accessorised in black and white and the towels match; my body is the only object in the mirror with any colour to it. I look at myself critically, but I’m pretty pleased, let’s face it. I look fit. I’ve kept the stomach bulge and the man-boobs at bay. I’ve still got a full head of hair, cut in a style that says ‘prime’ and not ‘middle-aged’. My cock and balls look just fine. I focus on the latter, hanging low in their sling of flesh, a bit struck all of a sudden by the magical potential of their bag of tricks. Whole new lives nestle in those spheres. Million of potential futures. If I was the last man alive I could repopulate the whole country, the whole world, given enough women and enough time to fuck them all. The thought makes Mr Dick swell a little, and I cup my balls encouragingly. ‘Come on, Boys,’ I whisper, giving them a little squeeze. ‘You can do it.’
It’s my day off: we’ve not had sex this morning. And now I want to stroke off, but it’s not allowed. I lift my cock away from my scrotum, feeling the slight pull as the damp skin separates. My cock responds to the touch by filling up a little, bobbing free of gravity. I shift my hips, restless. My scrotum is gathering to wrinkles. I want to jack off. Just solo, with no expectations and no consequences. A nice leisurely wank without the weight of Penny’s need. But I feel guilty; she wouldn’t know, of course, but I’d still be letting her down. I stroke the long curve of flesh and feel the swell surge down to the head. Aw, hell. Now it really is a semi.
‘Richard! I’m off!’
Wrapping the black towel about my hips, I exit the bathroom. In the hallway Penny is making last-minute adjustments to her make-up in front of the narrow wall mirror. ‘How do I look?’ she asks as I approach.
She looks great. She always looks great. Even in her winter clothes she’s sexy: she’s wearing burning red lipstick and a trenchcoat number that just screams of 40s repression and daring, and patterned stockings under that. Well, they might be tights but I can’t help seeing them as stockings. I embrace her from behind, my cock pressing with incorrigible hope into her through layers of towel and clothing. ‘You look lovely.’
Penny sighs slightly. ‘Save it for later, tiger. I’ve got a train to catch.’ It might be a weekend but she’s got an exhibition to attend and a stall to run.
I’ll be quick, I want to tell her, but I know better than to argue. It would just upset her schedule. I content myself with a goodbye grope and kiss before seeing her off and locking the front door. Then I look in the mirror, shaking my head at myself with blokish sympathy. I can see the bulge Mr Dick is making under the towel.
I need a wank. I mean I really need a wank. It makes me feel irritable and bold. I drop the towel on the laminate beech floorboards and strum my cock with slow, defiant strokes.
You going to show up then, ghost-girl?
Nothing stirs in the reflection behind me. Of course not. It’s broad daylight and I’m safe in my own home. I begin to stroke in earnest. God, this is good. My cock is growing stiff and straight and tall, pointing at the glass. My balls are bunching to a fat mass like a fist. I put my hand on the wall and rise up on my toes a little, enjoying the clench of muscles that seems to focus my whole body’s attention at my groin. My eyes are open but I’m not really seeing. Instead I picture Ruth, the grumpy clerical secretary at work. I imagine her walking around as we sit in a focus-group circle, circulating the handouts. She always wears her blonde hair in a chignon and a skirt that is tight on her big thighs: in my fantasy she’s wearing seamed stockings too. She gets to my place, walking inside the circle of chairs, and as she turns from me I stick my foot out and trip her up. Down she goes on her hands and knees, files scattered everywhere, her head ending up nearly in my lap. She’s so surprised she doesn’t even get angry; she just stares at me with her eyes wide and her mouth set in a luscious O. I take advantage of the moment to whip out my thick cock and stuff it between her lips, so deep that for a moment she chokes. I grab her hair and use it to pump her head up and down on my huge length, and after a moment’s resistance she crumbles and begins to suck obediently. Everyone else seated round the circle makes gasps of lecherous appreciation; it’s such a fine sight and we’ve all fantasised about what that big surly mouth could do if put to proper use. They’re getting out their own cocks too; they mean to follow my example and take their own turns once I’ve come. And I’m going to come right now. ‘Take it,’ I grunt, spurting into Ruth’s mouth, down her eager, gobbling throat.
All over the mirror.
Afterwards I go into the kitchen and find a J Cloth and some glass cleaner under the sink. But when I get back into the hall there’s no spunk on the mirror at all. Not a drop. Just the mothprint of a pair of lips, halfway down the glass as if someone had knelt there and kissed the hard surface. It’s almost invisible unless you’re looking for something. I spray the smudge and rub hard with the cloth but it’s no good: the kiss is on the other side of the glass.
* * *
Worse than the prohibition on beating off is the one that says No Blowjobs – not even as an opening move, because saliva inhibits sperm motility or something. Which is especially cruel as Penny used to give head so good that it’d make my brain melt. I miss that. I fantasise about oral all the time. Even when I’m on the job, I might be humping away on top but I’m imagining sinking my cock between her lips, smearing her high-gloss scarlet lipstick all the way up my shaft, feeling the lap of her agile tongue on all the right places. Or I’ll be banging her from behind, those ass-cheeks which appear so neat when she stands looking huge now, uplifted under my hands with that black satin corset cinching her waist, and I’ll be thinking about how good it would be to slip into her tight pucker instead and waste all my jizz in the wrong hole. Because that one’s way off limits now too.
I fantasise about coming on her breasts. She has fantastic breasts, neither flabby nor flat but a good handful each, still as firm and perky as a younger woman’s, with the most beautiful big nipples that go hard as pink icing rosettes when I tease them. The areolae crinkle to the texture of cookies. Remember those Iced Gem biscuits you used to be able to buy? That’s what I think of when I’m sucking Penny’s nips. They’re that sweet. Her skin is the colour of rich cream and there’s a scatter of tiny moles or freckles from her left shoulder to her nipple, like the splatter flicked from a paintbrush, like droplets of dark cum already spilt in homage to her beauty. And her breasts are full enough that I can straddle her torso and slip my shaft into the valley between them as I cup and squeeze them together, making a sheath for my length. I remember leisurely tit-wanks that seemed to go on for ever, her tongue lapping the head of my knob as it popped out of the ravine to wink at her. I fantasise about doing that again. About taking myself in hand as my orgasm approaches. About feeling the cum gather in my balls and surge up and out to rain on the uplands of her breasts, obliterating the freckles, painting her creamy skin in my whiter shade of pale.
I want to come on the small of her back, and on her bottom and her thighs. I want to watch my spunk slowly dry on her hot skin and ease away the flakes between my fingers, feeding them between her lips to melt upon her tongue like communion wafers. I want to see her kneel before me one more time, the shiny brown swing of her bobbed hair framing her face, her mouth open like a baby bird begging to be fed, her tongue pink and eager to taste my spilt salt.
I miss her.
* * *
I wake in the middle of the night, or perhaps don’t wake at all. The covers are thrown back and I’m sweating, I’ve been having restless dreams and perhaps this is just another of them. There’s a glow emanating from the mirror over Penny’s dressing table, the reflection of the bedroom light, but it takes me a moment to realise that our own bulb isn’t on. And as I contemplate that, my head still full of sleep, the mirror-ghost appears and, stooping forward, steps out through the frame. Just like the girl in that Japanese horror movie, only without the jerky corpse/insect shuffle; she’s consummately graceful in fact. She stands on the dressing table with her bare feet not stirring the myriad bottles of perfume and moisturiser and pigment. Naked.
Naked, except for a veil of gauze that wraps spiralwise about her body in that way fabric only ever does in paintings, hiding nothing. I can see the tremble of her breasts as she breathes. Then with a light step she lands on the footboard of our bed. There’s no bump, no sensation of descending weight. I feel nothing. Thank God, I think: this is a dream.
She looks down at me with a slow, sweet smile. She’s beautiful, my mirror-ghost. Almost girlishly delicate, with a hairless sex, but with curves to her hips and breasts that are far from childlike. And the eyes in her piquant face are ancient and knowing, her lips lush with promise. She is a fairy maiden, a nymph risen from some still and secret pool. If only she weren’t so pale she’d be astoundingly beautiful, but she’s the colour of the Portland Stone statues that grace the pediment of the mayor’s residence; not a warm and creamy pallor like Penny’s, but a delicate grey. I’m reminded of the allegorical figure of the City who sits with her scales and her portcullis in either hand. Even her eyes are colourless, and her erect nipples are white like quartz pebbles.
Down to her knees she slides, slow as oozing cement, eyes huge and fixed on my uncovered form. I think maybe I should protest. But this is only a dream, nothing to worry about – and if it isn’t a dream then I’ll have to wake Penny, who sleeps beside me, still muffled under the duvet.
I can’t wake Penny. It’s too much. She can’t be expected to deal with this too.
With softly creeping movements the mirror-girl inches her way up my legs, her lips almost brushing the hair that stands erect on my spooked skin but her shining eyes fixed on me. Her own hair billows around her head like smoke: it’s a grey like the rest of her but streaked with rust. I think she must have been a redhead once. The lips in that pointed face are incongruously full, almost swollen. The tongue that laps out between them is the palest shade of pink and as she kneels over my crotch and takes me in her mouth I catch a glimpse, the merest hint only, of teeth.
