Ellen Datlow - Alien Sex

“Of course not. I don’t even believe in the Devil!”

“Yes or no?”

“No!”

“No real harm was done the girl, so I’ll take your word for it, this time. And perhaps it’s a point in your favor that you don’t believe in the Devil. According to Sinistrari, those who consort with incubi and succubi while believing them to be demons are as guilty of demoniality as those consorting with real demons.”

“I don’t understand. They aren’t supposed to be demons?”

“Sinistrari states that they’re actually a lower sort of angels, who themselves sin through their lust for men and women. That’s why he considers sexual relations with them as crimes against chastity, but not against the Church.”

“I told you I don’t believe in any of that.”

“And I told you I’d take your word for it this time.” She opened one of her desk drawers, brought out a sachet of herbs. “Here.” He took it warily. “It won’t hurt you. Put it inside your pillow before you go to sleep tonight. And keep it there: if I learn you’ve removed it I’ll have no choice but to assume you’re in conscious collusion with the forces of evil. In which case not only will I fire you, but I’ll do my best to make sure no one ever hires you again. Have I made myself clear?”

“Perfectly clear. Though I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

He sniffed the sachet. It smelled of cinnamon and spices and made his head spin a little, not unpleasantly, when he took a deeper breath.

“What’s in it?” Knowing that by asking he was implicitly recognizing her right to force him to keep something in his pillow so long as it was harmless.

“Sweet flag, cubeb seeds, root of aristolochia, ginger… herbs and spices. The recipes in here.” She pushed a leather-bound book at him. The Collected Works of Ludovico Maria Sinistrari was stamped in flaking gilt on the cover. “You can look it up for yourself if you want.”

It was a challenge. St. Jacques declined it, shrugged. “I’ll try it for a while. Since you insist. But the whole thing’s absurd.”

On his way to his car, he saw Russell Thomas sitting in a lawn chair by the pool, talking to some students. Veronica was away with the swim team—they had a meet in San Jose—and the poet was acting as lifeguard.

Thomas was young, blond, tanned, muscular, everything St. Jacques wasn’t. He had a rich theatrical voice and the total self-confidence of someone so in love with himself that he can’t imagine anyone failing to share his passion. The girls were listening to him in wide-eyed admiration, hanging on his every word: St. Jacques recognized Liz in her white two-piece swimsuit on the far side of the group. He stopped and watched them for a while, registering everything for future reference. Finally, having endured all he could, he left.

On the way home he stopped by a bookstore specializing in mystical and occult books where he’d picked up things for Veronica now and then. The clerk directed him to something called Demons, Demonologists, and Demoniality: An Encyclopedical Compendium in three volumes; leafing through it he found a translation of Sinistrari’s De Daemonialitate. The introduction stated the book was on the Church’s prohibited index, which could only mean that Mother Isobel was already lapsing into heresy in her attempts to deal with him. Pleased, he bought the books.

Back at the house he took the sachet out of his briefcase and sniffed it again before tossing it on the kitchen table. It smelled quite nice, actually. He pulled up a chair and stared at it for a while. It didn’t seem likely that the herbs and spices could do him any real harm, but he couldn’t be sure: the Church had had centuries to devise effective methods for dealing with those it considered its enemies, even if it had worked them out by trial and error. He was tempted to toss the sachet out or empty it and replace its contents, but even if Veronica were loyal enough to refuse to spy on him—something of which he was by no means certain—Mother Isobel would undoubtedly continue dropping by for tea several times a week, and St. Jacques was certain she’d have no trouble convincing Veronica to let her search his bedroom.

In fact, he was pretty sure Veronica would have no real objections to spying on him for her sister. She no longer had any real personal loyalty to him, but only to the institution—and to be sure, the sacrament—of marriage. Mother Isobel would be able to persuade her to see that role and those duties as subservient to a larger, religious responsibility, toward not only God and the Church, but toward her husband’s immortal soul.

He went into the bedroom, dug a little hole in the foam rubber inside his pillow and stuck the sachet in, zipped the pillow closed. As an afterthought he opened the bedroom window, to keep the air as fresh as possible.

Veronica wouldn’t be back before midnight. He started grading papers, but quit halfway through and showered instead, then shelved most of the books he’d bought in the bookcase by his side of the bed. Veronica would never even notice them, though he’d have to find somewhere else for them before her sister’s next visit.

He read awhile, trying to tire himself out so he could get to sleep. Most of what he read disgusted him and he dismissed it as the product of the Inquisitors’ diseased imaginations and expectations, but some things stuck in his mind: the supposed irresistibility of demon lovers coupled with women’s insatiable desire for them, the fact that incubi were sometimes described as having double or even triple penises, as well as the ability to make even their seemingly more normal members expand and contract, throb, pulse, and spin inside women they seduced, so yielding titillations no mere man could ever hope to rival.

All of which, if true, was certainly something to look forward to. He put the book away and turned off the lights, found himself going over and over the erotic scenarios he’d thought up during the day—endless successions of tangled willing bodies, breasts, and thighs, mouths, buttocks, and vaginas—so nervous with anticipation he couldn’t relax. He’d had his erection so long it was painful. The herbs seemed to be stimulating his imagination, not helping him lay it to rest. He tossed and turned, twisted the sheets and covers around him so badly he had to get up and make the bed all over again twice. Finally he switched his pillow with Veronicas but even that didn’t do any good.

About 12:30 he heard her come in. He switched the pillows back and pretended to be asleep.

The bedroom door opened but the light stayed off. “Larry?” she whispered. “Larry, are you awake?”

He could hear her breathing, though she was still standing in the doorway on the far side of the room, smell the swimming pool on her clothes and hair. All his senses seemed unnaturally acute, as though the sachet in his pillow had been filling the room with some airborne stimulant. Maybe that was how it was supposed to work: keep him awake all night so he’d never get a chance to dream.

Veronica slipped off her shoes, tiptoed across the wooden floor. He squeezed his eyes completely shut. She stopped by his side of the bed and he could hear the crinkling of whatever she was wearing as she bent down beside him. He felt her breath on his face—clean and sweet-smelling and warm—heard her suck in two, three deep lungfuls of air, felt her let them out again.

Checking up on him, to make sure he’d put the sachet in his pillow.

He wanted to yell at her that neither she nor her sister had any right. Instead, he lay rigidly immobile until he heard her straighten and sneak out of the room, closing the door softly behind her. Then he stretched slightly, unkinking his tensed muscles, and heard her pick up the hall phone and dial.