Clive Barker - Mister B. Gone

At first, my sleight of tongue seemed to be working like a charm. Caroline's hands began to investigate my body, giving me license to do the same to her.

You're wondering, of course, what happened to Cawley, the Pox, Nycross, O'Brien, Shamit, and Hacker, aren't you? Of course, you are. And if I'd been less obsessed with Caroline I would have been doing the same. But I was too busy passing on all my kissing tricks.

Her hand moved around my back now, and slowly, tenderly, she ran her fingers up my spine until they reached the back of my neck. A shiver of pleasure ran through me. I kissed her more passionately than ever, though opening my mouth so very wide made my eyes water. Her hand tightened, pinching my neck. I pressed hard against her, and she responded by digging her fingers and thumb into my nape.

I tried to kiss her even more deeply in response to her touch, but she was done with kissing. Her fingers gripped my neck even more forcefully, and pulled my head backwards, obliging me to ease my tongue out of her mouth.

Her face, when it came into focus before me, did not have the dreamy looks others I've kissed had. The smile that had made me fall in love with such noteworthy speed had gone from her face. There was still beauty there, but it was a cold beauty.

"You are quite the little lover, aren't you?" she said.

"You like that? I was just beginning. I can — "

"No, I've had enough."

"But there's so much — "

She turned me towards the vat where the tails were being boiled clean.

"Wait!" I said. "I'm here to set you free."

"Don't be such a cretin, darling," she said. "I am free."

"Do it, Caroline." I heard somebody say, and looking towards the voice saw my beloved's father, the Pox, stepping out of the shadows between the trees. "Boil off that ugly face of his."

"Doesn't Cawley want him for the freak show?"

"Well, he'll be even freakier with the meat gone from his face. Just do it!"

If she had obeyed her father, my face would have been pushed down into that boiling vat. But she hesitated. I don't know why. I like to think it was the memory of one of my kisses. But the point is that whatever the reason she didn't immediately do as the Pox had ordered. And in that moment of indecision her grip on my neck became just a little looser. That was all I needed. I moved suddenly and swiftly, pulling myself free of her and running in one and a half strides until I was behind her. Then I pushed her, hard, leaving it to fate as to where she fell.

Fate was as unkind to her as it had always been to me, which was some small comfort. I saw her legs give out beneath her, and heard her call my name.

"Jakabok!"

And then:

"Save me!"

It was too little too late. I stepped back and let her fall face-down into the vat where the bones boiled. It was so immense and so weighed down by its contents that nothing would overturn it. Not her toppling in, or her flailing wildly as her long, bloodied linen apron grazed the flames and was instantly caught alight.

I stayed, of course, to drink it all in despite my approaching pursuers. I wasn't going to miss one twitch or shudder from this Lilith: the fire between her legs turning to steam as she lost control of her bladder; the bone-busied waters tossing her around as she tried vainly, of course, to clamber back out; the mouth-watering smell of her hands frying against the sides of the vat; the wet, tearing sound that came when her poxy father finally reached her and her palms tore off as he pulled her out of the vat.

Oh, the sight of her! My Caroline, my once beautiful Caroline! Just as I had gone from love to hatred in a matter of moments so had she gone just as quickly from perfection to a thing like myself, only worthy of repugnance. The Pox carried her a little distance from the fire, and set her down to extinguish the remains of her apron. It took him but a moment; then he slid his arm beneath her and lifted her up. As he did so the grey oversteamed meat of her brow, cheeks, nose, and lips slid off the gleaming young bone beneath, leaving only her eyes boiled blind in their lidless sockets.

"Enough," I told myself. I'd had my revenge for the hurt she'd done me. Though it would have been highly entertaining to watch the Pox's anguish, I didn't dare indulge another moment of voyeurism. It was time to depart.

So now you know about my love affair. It was brief and bitter, and all the better for that.

Love is a lie; love of every shape and size, except perhaps the love of an infant for its mother. That's real. At least until the milk dries up.

Thus I was delivered from the love of beautiful women, and traveled all the quicker for its unloading. I had no trouble losing Hacker and Shamit as they attempted to pursue me into the depths of the forest. I was lighthearted, or rather lighter by the measure of two hearts, mine and hers, and I ran so easily through the thicket, bounding up the trunks of the antediluvian trees and jumping from branch to branch, tree to tree, that I quickly lost my confused pursuers completely.

The sensible thing would have been for me to get out of the area there and then, under cover of darkness. But I couldn't do that. I'd heard too many tantalizing hints about what was going to happen back down on Joshua's field come the dawn. Cawley had talked about the burning of some Archbishop, along with, if I'd understood him correctly, a number of sodomitic animals, who were apparently found culpable under holy law for passively allowing these perversions to be performed upon them. A spectacle such as this would surely draw a sizable crowd of Humankind, amongst whose numbers I hoped I might hide while I educated myself in their ways.

I passed the remainder of the night in a tree some distance from the grove where I'd met poor Caroline. I lay along the length of a branch and was lulled to sleep by the creak of the ancient limbs and the soft murmur of the wind in the leaves. I was wakened by the rattle and boom of drums. I leapt down from my bed, taking a moment to thank the tree for its hospitality by vigorously pissing on and poisoning those small upstarts in its vicinity that might have competed for the older tree's share of earth. Then I followed the sound of the drumming out to the fringes of the forest. As the trees thinned I found that I had emerged close to the edge of a boulder-strewn slope, at the bottom of which lay a broad muddy field lit by a purple-grey light that steadily brightened, as though summoned by the vigorous tattoo of the drums. Shortly, the sun appeared, and I saw that there were great numbers of people gathered in the field below, many rising from the misty ground where they'd passed the night like Lazarus' kin, stretching, yawning, scratching, and turning up their faces to the radiant sky.

I couldn't go amongst them yet, of course. Not in my naked state. They'd see the curious configuration of my feet and, more importantly, my tails. I'd be in trouble. But with some mud to cover my feet and some simple garments to wear, I could pass, I hoped, for any human who'd been burned as calamitously as I. So all I needed in order to venture down onto the field and have my first encounter with Humankind were clothes.

I used the gloom of the cloudy dawn to cautiously descend the slope, moving from boulder to boulder as I got closer to the field itself. As I slid out of sight behind a stone twice my height and three times my length were I to have lain in its shadow, I discovered that the place had already been claimed by not one, but two people. They were lying down, but they weren't interested in assessing the length of the rock.

They were young, these two; young enough to be ready for love at such an early hour, and indifferent to the discomforts of their hiding place: the littered stone shards, the dew-wet grass.