‘Good girl,’ he said, looking at her small, red mouth coldly. There was already a swelling and a trickle of blood flowing from where he had bitten her hard on the inside of her lip.
‘Pain is love,’ he told her and watched approvingly when she licked the blood with her tongue. He put her away from him with firm hands, and sent Winter away. When he left, Dakota was fast asleep on the sofa.
We cannot desire that we know not.
- Voltaire, Zaire (1732)
‘Hey, remember when you asked me to find a girl I’d like to kiss?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will it be the same sensations no matter whom I choose?’
‘No, the experience will mirror exactly the reaction you would get from a real encounter with your chosen subject.’
‘In that case I’ve found her.’
All the dancing, ever-moving fractals in Green’s face disappeared suddenly. Their return was slow, the colors murky. ‘Be very careful treading this path. She could be very dangerous to you.’
‘I thought it was only a simulation.’
An indecipherable expression crossed Green’s face. It made him look almost human. ‘Passions open energies.’
‘Even if they do, I can never really have her, can I?’
‘Not her, no.’
Black looked surprised. ‘Is there someone else that I could have?’
‘Perhaps. The future is fluid and mutable. Are you ready for your experience now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is it only as far as a kiss, or do you desire to go further?’
Black’s eyes smoldered. ‘How far can I go?’
‘As far as you like; it’s a simulation.’
‘Do I have to decide now?’
‘No, choices can be made during the simulation. Although when you are in the simulation you will be completely unaware that you are in one, and could get carried away by the moment.’
Black thought for a minute. ‘It won’t harm either of us if I do, will it?’
‘Not her, but maybe you.’
‘I guess I’ll decide during the simulation.’
Green nodded gravely. ‘Have fun, Black,’ he remarked, but there was no attendant wink or encouragement.
Black found himself in a walled garden on a hot summer’s day. He was barefoot, shirtless and lying on a patch of grass under a tree. Winter was sitting beside him in a pair of miniscule red shorts and a white T-shirt. The grass was cool under him. Behind her he could see the house, a large, white bungalow. She smiled at him. He looked at the golden rope that snaked around her neck and hung down to her waist.
‘Will you let your hair loose?’
He watched her fingers make pretty little movements to release the thick plait of spun gold. She fluffed it out and swung her head from side to side like a shampoo advert. Where the dappled sunlight caught it, it turned to yellow light. He reached out to touch it. Pure silk, it was. From there his hand gravitated to the warm, silky skin of her face. He caressed it, so new and yet so familiar and dear. He could feel the excitement coursing hot and fast through his veins. But he would not rush. Slowly, his finger slid to her mouth, lingered on her bottom lip. The softness surprised him.
‘Kiss me,’ he said huskily. His mouth was dry.
She leaned forward, her thin body hovering over his. He put a hand out and tugged her down so she was lying on top of him, her narrow hip bones, as if made to order, fitting perfectly between his. Suddenly: something he had never experienced; an erection. That part of him that belonged to him, but he had never taken any notice of, took on a throbbing life of its own. Hard, heavy, insistent, and with a mind of its own. He savored the exquisite rush. Strange and yet wonderful. Never had he imagined that it could feel this good.
She brought her lips to his. Gently, a feather. Then her tongue was urging his mouth open. Warm, slippery, seductive, sure. The kiss deepened. He felt her hands entwine themselves around his neck. It felt as if she was melting into him! He could hardly tell where he ended and she began. It shocked him intensely when her little mouth greedily captured his tongue and began to suck it. His mind went blank, and he gave in to the waves of pleasure. One after the other, better and better. There was nothing, but him and her and his erection in the middle of that sunlit ocean.
He thought it would never end.
But she moved, pulling away from him, and lay on her side looking down at him. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes, dilated and urgent. Her breath was hot against his cheek. He looked down with fascination and something akin to pride at the bulge in his jeans. Her fingers moved to cup it carefully, precious cargo that he had never suspected he carried. He watched her. How expertly she handled him. She had done this many times before.
‘It’s your first time, isn’t it?’
He nodded, embarrassed in the wake of her experience.
‘I want to show you something, but you have to come into my world for it. Will you come?’
‘Yes.’
She took him by the hand into the house. Through an open door, down a corridor and into a dim bedroom with a high ceiling and many windows. Through the tall windows he gasped at the sight of the Taj Mahal.
‘I won’t be a minute,’ she called, and disappeared somewhere into the house. There was music playing in the background, a haunting Indian melody. He walked to a tall window and stared at the building that seemed to rise majestically out of the ground. No television image he had seen had done it justice. It was an awe-inspiring sight. He guessed it looked so grand and imposing because successive governments had taken care to ensure that no other building around it would ever dwarf it.
He heard a sound and turned around. She was dressed in a skin-tight, leopard print dress and black high-heeled boots. The child-woman was wearing make-up. Her mouth was blood-red. He felt a thrill of excitement run through his body, a growing in his loins. A gentle wind lifted the white curtains.
‘He put out the eyes of the architect to ensure that his great monument to his dead wife would never be copied.’
‘I know. Sort of spoils the beauty, doesn’t it?’
‘I disagree. I think it’s the most beautiful part of the story. No sense of fake decency or morals stood in the way of his grand obsession. And he was right. There should only ever be one. For whom nothing is taboo and everything is sacred.’
Surprised, he looked into her eyes, made startlingly beautiful by the paint she had applied.
‘I long for a love that has no limits. If I told you that I belong body and soul to you, and that there is nothing you can’t do to me, even hurt me, what would you say?’
Black looked shocked. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘Maybe I want you to. Maybe I want to prove to you that you own me. And the only way to do that is for you to hurt me. If I cry out stop, then I don’t really belong to you, do I?’
‘That’s just plain crazy. I don’t need that kind of sick proof. Besides I’d never hurt you.’
‘Let’s see if you can resist, then,’ she challenged.
And she began to strip. Not enough breast and possibly too thin by his reckoning, but he could not take his eyes off her. She was mesmerizing in a way he could not understand. When there was not a stitch left on her she walked to him and led him to the bed. Her eyes were hot and wild. She lay on the bed and slowly opened her legs, so his entranced eyes would latch upon her exposed sex, juicy and glistening. Then she rolled to her front and rose to her elbows and knees. Turning her head to him she whispered fiercely, ‘Fuck me. Fuck me hard. I like it to hurt.’
When he pulled his eyes to hers he saw that they were changed beyond all recognition. It was as if she was under some sort of demonic possession. From those incredible eyes evil thoughts and instructions were flowing into him, summoning dark forces of sexual desire buried deep inside him. He felt almost electrocuted by the intensity and vibrancy of her call. Instinctively, he knew that her occult lust would create an irresistible thirst that would urge him t
o more and more depravity and perversion until it would be near impossible to stop after a while. Heart and mind he would be its slave.
He had come to her on a romantic impulse, but now his entire being had become a throbbing, clawing need to grab those snake-narrow hips and ram into her, so hard she screamed.
‘Don’t tease yourself with doing it, do it,’ she taunted, a devilish glint in her eyes.
The voice urging him to submit to her corruption was alien and hurrying away from his sight, but finally, he saw that it was living inside him, in the vast and mostly undiscovered world that was his mind, at a depth where his consciousness had never thought to penetrate. Yet, at that moment there seemed to be nothing more important than the aching, undeniable craving in his loins and the secret pleasure of the addict; abandoning himself to the worst excesses of the parasite, just this once. Just this once he would be like everybody else; he would take.
He unzipped his jeans.
But when he put his hand on her body he was suddenly confronted by her past. He saw all the men who had used her. Oh, the shame of it! Grown men who should have known better, forcing themselves upon the poor innocent, her mouth, her tiny openings. Such unspeakably cruel and vile things they did. And the child confused, bound, frightened, suffering, screaming, crying, bruised, bleeding, battered, and finally, one day - liking it. Her only savior - to be a better sex slave. He saw a dirty wall scratched with the words: Winter was here.
‘No,’ he shouted.
And suddenly the world exploded around and all was gone. The girl, the kiss, the erection, the mounting excitement, the depraved thoughts, the shocking images of her abuse. Black felt shaken to the core. It had all been so astonishingly authentic that he had been totally fooled into believing it was real. For the first time he appreciated how easily the human mind could be manipulated, but, more worryingly, how very nearly he had succumbed to wickedness and evil.
‘Well done,’ Green congratulated, his eyes dancing. ‘You passed your first test.’
‘I want to help her. How can I help her?’ Black responded unhappily.
‘She is not who you think she is.’
‘I don’t care. I want to help her all the same.’
Green faced him with a look of resignation. ‘Of course you do. I am in the timeline where you reach out and help. Very well, let’s see where this takes us. After all there are timelines in which she is victorious; perhaps we are in one of them. An ordinary therapist will kill her before they help her as she has more than one suicide alter. And all are programmed to self-destruct if it appears that the core personality is beginning to remember. The only way to help her is to find the core personality, get her to come out of hiding (difficult in itself), reclaim all the other personalities, and own all the horrors and atrocities. I must warn you the re-gathering process is a long, painful one. She will not like what she finds.’
‘Her core personality is not Winter?’
‘No.’
‘Will you help me find her core personality?’
‘I’m sorry, Black, but if I am not very careful then without understanding exactly how, for such is the power of the illusion, I will become entangled in this world, and become trapped like a bird in a cage. I cannot even fight for what is right. What you fight you become. See the trap?’
‘Can you at least tell me how I can find her?’
‘Use your imagination and creativity. It is the most powerful tool at every human’s disposal.’
‘My imagination and creativity. How?’
‘You can create and destroy universes with the kind of power you have inside you.’
‘That’s great, but where and how do I start?’
‘You already have the means in you. You just have to recognize it.’
‘And if I find her, what do I do?’
‘Not if, when. Give her crayons.’
‘Crayons?’
‘Yes, what human children use to express themselves on paper and their parents’ walls.’
‘Why crayons?’
‘Slaves are always under hypnotic suggestions to forget what they have experienced. The brain only appears to comply, but secretly records the event. The crayons will help bring the memories back. One by one they will come pouring out onto the paper.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it. The rest she will do herself. I told you before she is a very powerful shaman squeezed into a small girl’s body.’
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1967)
‘You’ll never believe what happened to me today.’
Black gazed up at his mother expectantly. She used merry chatter as an armor, but he could see that she was secretly worried about something, something other than his impending death. Not only did he see it in her eyes when she forgot to be happy; he had heard her having nightmares. Last night she had sobbed and shouted, ‘Get out, you ugly, little man.’
‘I was at this new shop buying a hairdryer for Lady Carrington, and the girl at the till suddenly congratulated me. Apparently, I was their one thousandth customer and I’d won a water filter.’ Bumi lifted up the bag she had brought into Black’s room and showed him the water filter. ‘Looks good, doesn’t it? The manager, such a sweet man, explained that it filters out even fluoride, which he said is put into the water, but shouldn’t be. He told me it’s the main ingredient in rat poison. Imagine that! I wonder why they put it in the water system. Anyway, Lady Carrington didn’t want it and she said I could keep it. So now it’s ours.’ She beamed.
Black looked into Bumi’s eyes and formed the question, What’s the matter, mother?
And the thought must have reached her, for a split second it stopped her in her tracks, but then she flashed another bogus smile, and soldiered on with her monologue.
When she left to install the water filter, Black made a mental note to ask Green what was distressing his mother. Then he returned to trying to figure out what Green could have meant when he had said, ‘Use your imagination.’ Meticulously he went through every conversation he had had with Green and suddenly it occurred to him.
Of course. Green had taught him how to do it in the desert. Lucid dreaming. He would find her in his dreams. With his mother gone to sleep he followed Green’s instructions, and awakened in what looked like a deserted three-dimensional mural.
He had entered the internal world of the core personality.
Under a dull gray sky, a black and white checkered floor served as the base for a confusing jumble of staircases, all of which seemed to lead nowhere, either simply stopping in mid-air, going off in horizontal directions, or ending in mirrors. At a glance it was impossible to know whether one was coming or going. Something squeaked under his foot. A headless doll. He saw that the floor was strewn with broken toys, some so gruesomely mutilated that they made him feel quite uneasy.
A gust of wind blew an abandoned metal bed onto the tiled floor. It had steel manacles, and a shelf underneath that was full of dangerous-looking, blood-caked instruments. Its wheels creaked eerily. He shivered at the sight, and was nearly startled out of his skin when he heard a strange cry coming from behind him. He looked back and a screaming monkey, its long teeth bared, was running toward him. Without thinking he ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction. He slipped into an odd enclosure, which turned out to be a graveyard. He looked back to check how near the monkey was and stepped into air.
He had fallen into a freshly dug grave with an open coffin inside. And landed on a bed of writhing snakes. He was so petrified he froze. The coffin’s lid closed with a loud thud and the darkness became alive with movement and sound. Snakes in search of warmth slipped and slithered onto his bare skin. From outside the coffin came first the scary sound of hammers nailing down the lid, then soil being shoveled onto it. He was being buried alive. Overcome by a primordial terror of certain death, he began to gasp for breath, until Green’s voice sa
id in his head, ‘This is her world. These things happened to her. But it is only a dream. Physical laws need not apply.’
Physical laws need not apply.
Quickly, he grabbed hold of a thick snake in his hand. ‘Poof,’ he said and the snake disappeared. He touched the lid of the coffin. ‘Poof,’ he said and it disappeared. You can fly. You can do anything. He sprang lightly out of the six-foot hole. He looked at the gnarled dead trees around him. ‘Become a meadow full of life,’ he said and suddenly the empty boughs were covered with green leaves. The graves became full of tall grasses and wild flowers. He could smell the flowers and hear the lazy buzzing of the bees.
He looked to the gray sky. ‘Sunshine, please,’ he said, and the sun drenched his landscape golden. He built swings and benches. He changed the black and white floor to a myriad happy colors. The hospital bed became a gazebo with climbing roses. Pleased with his creation he decided to look for her.
‘Find her,’ he said, and in the distance he saw a black, shiny cube sitting on a briar. He went to it. There was no entrance. She was a prisoner. He thought up a pathway and a door to the cube, and entered it. She was on the floor hunched over something.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
She did not look up. ‘I have to watch that the sand in the hourglass does not run out. If it does I will die, and I’m afraid to die.’
Black moved closer. The hourglass was so small that it was barely a minute before she had to turn it. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. If she ever did, or was accidentally distracted, it would surely run out. It was the most pitiful thing he had seen. He knelt down beside her and yet she did not dare turn her face away from the hourglass.
‘Become much bigger,’ he said and the hourglass grew right before their eyes. ‘There, it will now be an hour before you have to turn it again.’
She fell back and looked at the enlarged hourglass suspiciously as though it was a trick of some sort. She seemed almost afraid of it. Then she turned to him with huge eyes. She looked the same as Winter, but he did not recognize her, or she him. Her eyes narrowed. She came forward slowly, her hand outstretched, and touched a bead in his hair.