Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

She smiled at him with small even teeth. Then she worked her contortions to form the two of them into a new interlocking puzzle. Her body was fantastic. Walt thought she must have bones of rubber the way she was able to arch her back, put her legs under her own arms, bend her waist that way. Eagerly he stared into the mirrors around him, searching for that one set which would herald an unbelievable orgasm.

Yes, there it was, on the ceiling.

“Here it comes,” he yelled in excitement. “Here it co… aaarrrrhhgggg—oh, GOD, GOD, GOD, GOD…”

The small three-letter word was appropriate. He was having the orgasms of a young god. The world was not just moving. It was spinning at ten times its normal speed, hurtling through space a thousand times faster than usual. He held her small naked body to his as if they could fuse together, meld, merge. She let out a high tinkling laugh. Incredibly she was enjoying it as much as he was. Oh, he knew that hookers faked it all the time, that they were good at making the right noises at the right moment, but he could tell she was luxuriating in it—not wildly like himself, but sensitively. It was as if she were enjoying a glass of fine champagne in a hot bubble bath.

“Again?” she said, laughing.

Thrice more they were manipulated by the couples in the mirrors and each time it got better and better. Finally Walt did not think he could stand another one and he suggested they have a cigarette. He went to the box under the bed and found his packet of Camels. He lit one, but she refused, with a little shake of her head. Walt shrugged and lay back on the bed, puffing away contentedly. Four hundred dollars? Christ this had been worth a million. Fantastic experience. Jody would have been proud of him. Or perhaps not? Maybe she would be jealous. That thought was very pleasing to him, since he was the one who had been dumped.

He lay there in a state of bliss, studying a thousand-thousand Walts with lit cigarettes, all in equal states of bliss. He arced his red-ended cigarette through the air, made designs as might a child with a sparkler. The Walts all copied him, faithfully, their lit cigarettes tracing figures of eights, centripetals, and other pretty shapes.

Beside the Walts lay the beautiful oriental women, resting like lilies on black satin sheets. Their arms were by their sides, limp and lovely. Their mouths slightly open, revealing a hint of white teeth between the cupid’s-bow lips, their eyes closed.

Suddenly, as he stared, there was a tiny movement amongst one of the images down the curving line. The stirring of a butterfly. The flutter of a moth.

What now? He frowned. He was enjoying his cigarette.

A search of the couples revealed nothing at first and then he saw her, way, way back down the long sweep of oriental beauties.

She had opened her eyes.

He glanced quickly at the real woman beside him, to see that her own eyes were still tightly closed. He looked back at the woman in the distance. So, this one was staring out at him from her place in the line, way out in space somewhere. So what?

Then he saw that the Walt beside her was unaware of her changed state. That should not be, for he—the real Walt—was certainly aware.

The next move made Walt start with horror. The distant female image had used those long sharp fingernails at the end of a flattened palm. Her hand was like a knife with a serrated blade. In one swift movement she had slit the throat of the man beside her. Blood spurted up in a fountain, dousing the cigarette. The reflection of Walt made a motion as if gargling and pressed his hands to the gaping wound. To no avail. The blood gushed between his fingers, splashing on the black satin sheets.

And her face was twisted in an ugly triumph, as if she had just performed a great duty for herself. She stared out gleefully at the real Walt. It was horrible to witness the savage joy in her expression. It was as if she hated him with a primitive passion, a loathing nursed by ten thousand years of servitude.

He watched horrified as his dying image, deep inside the mirrors, reached out wildly with blood-blinded eyes, seeking a hold on his murderess, only to find its fingers groping between her open legs, scrabbling for a grip on the sparse hair of her vagina. Desperate fumblings, unable to get a hold on that elusive female center. It was her magnet, yet now she used it to repel what she had once attracted. His hand fell back, clawed at his terrible wound, which opened like a second mouth crying for pity.

She threw back her head and silently laughed.

All this happened within the tiniest fraction of a second.