Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

Wheeler surprised me by storming behind the bar and confidently mixing Vodka Martinis. “I’m known here,” he assured me. Knowing he was broke, I took out my wallet but he waved it away. “Don’t worry, it’s free.”

Overhearing, one of the girls snorted. “Free. He says it’s free. Nothing is free.”

The second of the two, the one who’d said nothing, was smiling at me, holding her cocktail glass to her mouth. The bar was lit by soft blue and ruby lights, and she struck me as extraordinarily pretty as she waited for me to come back at her friend’s remark. Perhaps because Wheeler had reminded me of the incident, I was struck by how much she resembled Sarah from our days at Aid-Direct.

“You’re a philosopher,” I said.

Taking this as a rebuff, the outspoken one looked away, exhibiting the attributes of extreme boredom; but the other continued to gaze in my direction.

“You’ve made a hit,” said Wheeler, coming from behind the bar.

“She’s nice,” I whispered.

Wheeler nearly dropped his glass. “You like her? You mean you really like her?”

I couldn’t understand why he was so amazed. I checked her out again. Wheeler’s response suggested he regarded her as some kind of reptile. “Doesn’t she remind you of…” Wheeler was looking at me searchingly. I decided to let it go.

“She’s beautiful.”

And she was, at least so she seemed in shadow: long, auburn hair and a china-doll complexion, just a hint of the oriental about her. Wheeler made some sort of gesture to her, because she got off her stool and came over. I got the chance to look at her in proper light.

She was even more striking than my first impression had suggested. It was not until she came over that I realized the two women were wearing some kind of fancy-dress outfits: leotards and sheer black nylon tights. Her eyes were heavily lined with mascara. Wheeler, in a state of some excitement, introduced us, and she slid onto the stool next to me.

“This is Lilly,” Wheeler said, and almost from behind his hand he added, “and I think I’ve found my way out of this town.”

I didn’t know what he meant, and I didn’t much like the way he said it. It reminded me of how little I trusted the man. I thought again of Aid-Direct, and how after he’d gone the depth of his corruption had been made plain. The organization, heavily in debt, collapsed like a house of cards. The executives, those caring-sharing liberal bleeding-heart charity workers began stripping the place before the liquidators came in. Office equipment was driven away by the van-load, the car-pool drained itself overnight, and fabulously inflated expenses were cash-processed before the banks had wind of what was happening. My immediate superior stopped a consignment of rice before it left the docks and sold it on to a wholefood collective, pocketing the proceeds. I have to say that, demoralized, I joined in this feverish stampede.

But I was too busy getting along fine with Lilly to give much thought to Wheeler’s odd remark. Lilly and I sensed immediate rapport. I can’t remember anything I said to her, or she to me, but we had anchored and the next fifteen minutes melted in a miraculous and sympathetic exchange of thoughts. It was only when I offered to buy her a drink that I noticed Wheeler deep in conversation with the other woman. They eyed me intently. I sensed that they were striking some kind of deal, and that it involved me.

The jukebox went dead. Lilly jumped up to feed it with a coin, and it was only then that I noticed the tail protruding from the butt of her leotard, part of her fancy-dress. The other woman too, had a tail, sitting erect on the stool behind her. As Lilly bent over the juke box to make her selection, the tail swished slightly in the air.

“How d’you make it do that?” I asked, coming up behind her. I was feeling slightly drunk from the cocktail and all the raki I’d consumed earlier. The tail was actually flesh coloured, with a furry collar halfway along its length, and another at the tip, as if the regions between the furred collars had been shaved. I grasped the brown, furry tail-end, which was still swishing gently as Lilly fingered Bakelite buttons on the jukebox, and I squeezed the tip hard.

It was the wrong thing to do. Lilly spun round, slamming into the jukebox. “Don’t DO that!” she hissed at me. “Don’t EVER do that!”

She was coiled like a spring, her eyes leaking venom. Astonished by this transformation I mumbled an apology.

“I hate it when men do that!”

“Sorry.” I looked round for Wheeler and the other woman, but they were gone. So too had the shadowy figure clearing up the tables behind us. Lilly and I were left alone in the bar.

“Where did—”

There was a few seconds of vinyl hiss before honeyed saxophone music started oozing from the jukebox. Lilly’s mood was restored, and she sidled up close, enfolding her arms around me. “Come here. Let’s dance. I’m sorry I reacted like that. I’m sensitive. Here, dance a little closer.”

The bar dissolved around us. I abandoned myself to Lilly’s embrace. Her perfume, or maybe it was her natural cassolette, had me inflamed.

An hour later she was undressed in my apartment and I was carefully examining her tail. Her anatomy was normal in every other way. She had the physique of a centerfold, but she also had a tail. This time she let me touch it, but tenderly. She let me stroke it. She let me run my fingers gently along its sinuous curved length.

Three collars of brown tailfur had been left unshaved. These were at the tip, the location of my early offense, in the sensitive middle; and at the coccyx, where the tail joined the body at the base of her spine. The exposed, shaved skin was considerably lighter than the rest of her sallow flesh tone.

“Why do you shave it?” I asked as she stood over me, naked. I marveled at the way she could make it swish lightly from side to side.

She shrugged. “Fashion.”

“Sure,” I said. “Doesn’t everyone shave their tails these days?”

She grew bored with my fascination for her tail, aggressively straddling me and pinning me back on the bed. For the next hour she rolled over me like a heatwave. Her tongue was rough, like a cat’s tongue, and the odour of her body was an intoxicant, like the smell of a waterfront spice warehouse in the old trading days of Candia. I abandoned myself to her, and she to me, though all the time I couldn’t help wondering how her tail was behaving behind her, or beneath her, or beside her. At the moment of her orgasm I instinctively reached around and grasped it above her coccyx. She gasped, sinking her nails deep into my back and tearing lightly at my skin with her sharp teeth.

When I woke in the morning I somehow expected her not to be there. But she was already awake, her head resting on the pillow. She blinked at me sadly.

“What is it?” I said, wiping away a tear with my thumb.

She wouldn’t answer me. She slipped out of bed, dressed hurriedly and then kissed me deeply and passionately.

“I’ve got to go.”

“When can I see you again?” I didn’t want to lose her. “Will you be at the Shades Club?”

“Sure,” she said rather cynically. “When it next opens.”

And she left. I made to shout after her, but there was something stuck to my tongue. I plucked it from my mouth. It was a dark hair. In distaste I flicked it away, but in that time Lilly had gone. My skin tingled in the places she’d bitten me. I had a high temperature.