John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

This went on for quite a while. He had a sense of being the room and everything in it. Not a good feeling. It occurred to him that maybe his thermally disposed wastes were vapor now and had dispersed to remingle with him. He felt himself, the room, tilt very slightly. He smelled, no, collided with odor molecules, of grape bubble gum. Derry was sitting on the edge of the bed.

Twice in the same day. Seventeen years of drought and then twice in the same day.

This time when his hair was brushed he turned and opened his eyes. She was a little brat. She was probably underage. But he felt a pressure to respond, felt it like the holiest Commandment. Thou shalt not turn it down. He tried to collect himself, to think himself hard, and wondered why it hadn't already happened. Compared to Mary Beth Derry was sex itself and yet he wasn't tingling down there. He tried to think dirty thoughts. He had to keep the Commandment, he couldn't waste another one.

Derry stuck her gum on the couch and began to nibble at his neck, she slid her warm, chubby hand slowly down his chest, across his belly and stroked the underside of his balls and all the wandering molecules of his consciousness came charging back like the Seventh Cavalry to an Indian massacre. She was re-forming all his boundaries with her mouth and fingers, showing him his edges.

"Urn," she said, and "Nnnnhl" and all kinds of little skinsucking noises. Derry made love like she ate dinner, fast and loud. She knew what she was doing, sort of, and did it with almost frantic enthusiasm. Her nightie was off and she slid under Brian's spread blankets and emerged squirming on top of him. His eyes had adjusted some to the dark now and he saw how brown her nipples were pointing out from her single-scoop breasts, chocolate-kiss nipples swollen hard in his palms and lips. Her tongue darted over him and he smelled the saccharine grape wherever it had been. She locked her legs around his thigh like a vise and humped and squirmed till it was slick with her wetness. Then she was down flattonguing the head of him, slow, tasting licks. All the molecules galloped to where the action was and it felt hard as steel, dense as lead and she bit it at the middle, gentle with her teeth. She was up and spraddled and aiming it, holding it with two hands, rubbing the head against her greased lips making excited little-girl sounds and he wanted to ask her to keep it a little quiet but she plunged down around him hot and tight, tight as white on rice and she bounced, bounced like a kid testing her new summer-camp mattress for spring and the bed crunched and Brian clutched at her little buns, squeezing to keep her from flying off. She was doing it by the book and it was a cheap drugstore-paperback and it came to him that she was more excited over some red-underlined passage she was imagining than about him, it came to him that she was making an awful lot of unnecessary noise and Treat might hear. But all that was a little distant. What was immediate was that the molecules in his cock were getting awfully crowded, more and more of them, denser and denser and fast neutrons were beginning to act up and he was approaching his critical mass which was scary and exciting at once, Derry bouncing, bouncing, smacking damp against his belly and thighs and if it blew now he didn't think it would ever stop, just keep coming and coming till he and Derry were a cloud of charged zygotes drifting in the atmosphere and it was pulling on him now, making wet-munching sounds and Derry was making a high giggle and Treat was bellowing.

"Derry!" he was bellowing, "Stay still Derry, I'll come and help you!"

Help her what? Derry lurched off and was away from the bed, still giggling hysterically. Brian rolled out on the floor onto his hands and knees. He strained to see through the dark. He heard rustling from the kitchen area and then saw Treat, saw him coming crouched and wary with a big iron skillet in his hand.

"Derry! You get clear of him Derry. I'll fix him."

"It wasn't me, Daddy," she sniffled from the door to the bathroom, "honest. It wasn't me."

"You go to your room, Derry. I'll take care of this."

Brian tried to crawl silently but his thighs made sticky sounds as they brushed, coated with Derry's goo. Treat made a rush and swung but slipped in mid-stroke on a bunny slipper and went down on his side. Brian leapfrogged the bed and grabbed his pants and sneakers. Treat growled and scrambled back into the darkness to block the vault door.

"Just you try, boy," he snarled, "just you try to get by me."

Brian felt something clinging at the back of his head. It was Derry's gum, tangled in his hair. He slipped quickly into his pants and heard Treat take a few steps forward in, the long tube of darkness. He found the other bunny slipper with his foot and tossed it off to the left. Treat made a move, then stopped.

"Can't fool me, boy. I hear you breathe. I hear your heart beat. There's no way you can hide, I hear everything."

Brian felt no desire to explain. It was beyond explaining, out of control. He tied his sneakers together and looped them over his shoulder. He eased sideways on tiptoe, reached the storage wall and began to yank the morgue drawers out, tossing handfuls of canned goods onto the floor between him and the father. Treat came forward a bit and Brian scooted to the other wall, groped to turn on the water and the can opener and the solid-waste compacter and the electric blender, and trotted back to the bed. He could see Treat dimly now. The old man had his nose up in the air and his arms spread wide, listening for all he was worth and slowly backing out of sight to the vault door again.

"I'll wait you out, boyl" he shouted over the sound of the appliances. "I can wait a day or a week if I have to, but you better give up the idea of ever seeing sky again. You walked into your own grave, boy, and there won't be no rising again."

Brian picked up the blankets and spread them in his arms. If he could net Treat and wrap him he'd have a shot at that door. He heard Derry come out behind him and stand by the instrument panel. He crept forward with the blankets held ready, probing with his toes for food cans. He could hear Treat nervously tapping the skillet on the metal door. He crept within ten feet of the exit.

"I can smell you, young fella," hissed Treat. "I'm onna kill you.,

Brian brought the blankets up high and collected his breath for his pounce and then everything cut dead. The water, the opener, the compacter, the blender, all the instruments peeping from the rear cut off stone silent and were replaced by a single high-piercing whistle. Treat's mouth popped wide open and the skillet clanged to the floor. Brian ducked and covered his head, the instinct of a hundred Hollywood war movies, but the bomb never fell. The whistle didn't deepen in pitch and Brian turned to see Derry giggling by the instrument panel, her hand on a lever and red light flashing over her face. Treat was running, falling on canned goods and smacking thigh and chest into the open morgue drawers and screaming something about spasms and the other side and the Dragon breaking loose. Brian was through the vault door and digging barefoot up the ladder with the bomb-whine chasing him, the airlock whanging shut beneath nearly chopping his legs and up, butting the trapdoor with head and shoulder to scramble to his duffel bag with the sneaker laces strangling him and Treat's voice roaring over the loudspeaker:

"YOU'LL FRY! YOU STAY UP THERE AND YOU BURN, BOY, YOU'LL LIGHT UP LIKE A MOTH IN A THOUSAND SUNS! YOU'LL BURN, BRIAN MC NEIL, YOUR EYES WILL MELT AND YOUR BRAIN WILL SIZZLE AND YOU'LL BURN IN HELL ON EARTH!"

Brian shouldered his bag and sprinted barefoot into the cold, purple night.