Christopher Priest: The Watched

A dim understanding was growing in him. He had always felt an unvoiced need to resist the fragrance of the flowers, dreading what it might do to him, but now Ordier saw that he had to succumb. He gulped in the air and the perfume it carried, holding it in his lungs and feeling his skin tingle, his senses dull. He was aware of the girl, of her presence and sexuality; the bruised eyes, the frail body, her innocence, his excitement. He kneeled down, reached forward with his hands, searched for her in the petals. The scent was suffocating. He moved forward on his knees, wading through. The petals swirled about his sides and his elbows like a light, foamy liquid, scarlet-colored, desire-perfumed. He came to one of the ropes beneath the petals, and followed it with his hand toward the center. He was near the girl now, and he tugged on the rope repeatedly, feeling it yield, imagining it bringing a hand nearer to him, or spreading her legs marginally wider. He waded forward hurriedly, groping for her. There was a deep indentation in the ground beneath him; Ordier, leaning forward to put his weight on one hand, fell instead, and pitched forward into the soft, warm depths of the mound. He shouted as he fell, and several of the petals entered his mouth. He reared up like a nonswimmer who falls in shallow water, showering flowers around him in a pink and scarlet spray, trying to spit the petals from his mouth. He felt grit between his teeth, and he reached in with a finger and wiped it around. Several petals clung moistly to his hand. He raised it to look more closely at them, and Ordier saw a sudden glint of reflected light. He sank down again on to his knees, and picked up one of the petals at random. He held it before his eyes, squinting at it. There was a tiny gleam of light here too: a glittering, shimmering fragment of metal and glass.

Ordier picked up a handful of the petals, felt and saw the same glistening presence on every one. He threw them up and let them fall, and as they flickered down, the sun reflected minutely from the scintillas embedded in the petals. He closed his eyes. The scent of the petals was overpowering. He staggered forward on his knees, the petals rippling around his waist. Again he reached the depression in the ground beneath the petals, and he fell forward into the flowers, reaching out for the body of the girl. He was in an ecstasy of delirium and desire. He floundered and beat his arms, threw up the petals, kicked and struggled against the suffocating weight of the flowers, seeking the girl. But the four ropes met in the center of the arena, and where the girl had been bound there was now a large and tightly drawn knot. Exhausted, Ordier fell on his back in the petals, and let the sun play down on him. He could feel the hard lump of the knotted ropes between his shoulder blades. The metal heads of the encircling statues loomed over him; the sky was brilliant and blue. He reached behind him to grasp the ropes above his head, and spread his legs along the others. The wind was rising and petals were blowing, drifting across him, covering his limbs. Behind the statues, dominating the arena, was the bulk of the folly. The sun’s light played full upon it, and the granite slabs were white and smoothly faced. In only one place was the perfection of the wall broken: in the center and about halfway up was a narrow slit of darkness. Ordier stared up at it, seeing behind it two identical glimmers of reflected light. They were circular and cold, like the lenses of binoculars. The petals blew across him, covering him, and soon only his eyes were still exposed.