Nawashi Read online

  “I see.” His hands in the restraints mirrored hers, and both of the straps holding his wrists loosened and his arms came down, flowing into a relaxed curve on either side of his hips. Her arms fell as well, and she gave a little shudder backwards as he stepped towards her, a bubble of force like a self-contained shockwave pushing into her. The candles didn’t even flicker as he moved, but it felt to her as if she were being buffeted by a hurricane wind.

  If Brian had been conscious of what he was doing, he would have lost. But his attention was completely focused; on her, on the conduit of power she’d opened with her ritual which now filled him. If he could have wondered how it flowed into him, or where it came from, it would have broken and tossed him aside.

  But there was no room for wonder at that moment. He took another step towards her, and she let out another small scream as her body went limp. She would have fallen, except that he did not want that to happen—and so she hung there, suspended in the air, as the power between them grew more tangible. Brian felt as though the coursing strength and flow through him would explode out of the top of his heads and hands and cock all at the same time, and it felt great; there was nothing he could not do, and this woman who had been in power over him a moment before was now barely conscious and moaning as she slowly bobbed in the air in front of him.

  He took another step closer, and lifted his hands to reach for her.

  Brian never was able to say what he would have done if he’d reached her. He liked to think that he would have simply shaken her, or at most torn her shift off in return for her violation of his clothes.

  The fact was, though, that down deep he knew that the power that had been flowing through him then was far beyond his control at that time. She had opened up a gateway to an energy that wanted to do more than teach a lesson, it wanted to conquer, possess, and ravish. And he knew, deep down, that no matter how much he hated thinking of himself as a rapist, he would have taken her forcefully and without hesitation.

  If he had reached her.

  Instead, he got hugged by a bear.

  The crash of the window breaking open did not distract him, nor did it wake her. He distantly heard the voice, but it was not until much later that he would remember that it said “Oh, Vash, that is a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself in this time, isn’t it?” in a jovial baritone. His eyes never left her face, now slack with exhausted resignation as she hung in the air before him.

  It wasn’t until the hairy arms circled his body that he suddenly became aware of the man standing in front of him, merry eyes glowing behind tiny red glasses looking at him with friendly speculation. The man’s arms were bare, muscles disappearing into the sleeveless shirt he wore, tribal pattern tattoos seeming to glow along the curves and sinews as the arms pulled Brian tight against the man, and the power seemed to all suddenly drain out through the arms, going… somewhere.

  But it was no longer in Brian, or in the woman, who now did collapse with a sullen thud into the carpet. Suddenly the candles were just candles, the thickness of the air was only incense, and Brian’s legs returned to their state of exhaustion with a vengeance. If not for the arms of the man holding him up, he would have joined the woman on the floor in sudden collapse.

  Instead the man lowered him gently, muttering something on the way down. It took Brian a while to find enough reserves to be able to actually vocalize as he lay on the floor, and so the man had his back to him, re-arranging the woman into a more comfortable position on the floor, when the word finally came: “Who… ”

  The man finished putting a pillow under the woman’s head, and turned with a sigh to sit crosslegged next to Brian.

  “Who am I? I’m Sullivan. The woman behind you is Vashte, and she really should know better. You, on the other hand, are the mystery boy of the moment. But that’s ok. It’s the mystery that makes us all alive, after all.” He sighed, and looked past Brian’s body at the wall with the mandala on it. “But one thing’s for sure. Whoever you are, you just made things a helluva lot more complicated.” He looked down again at Brian. “That’ll keep for later, though.” He drew his hand through the air, swiftly gathering a fistful of nothing. He unfolded the clenched hand before his mouth, and blew a puff of air towards Brian’s head. “Sleep now."

  And Brian did.

  There is a line between waking and sleep. It is a fuzzy grayness of the conscious, a place of waiting and accepting where the rational has no reign. Sounds and even half-seen visions do not intrude on the serenity of the mind in this state; they are simply registered, accepted, and let loose. This state of enlightenment is a pleasant place to be, usually, except for its proximity to the land of dreams. It is a suggestible state, a place where a stray sound of a dog barking can lead to wolves chasing in the woods, the scent of coffee brewing can become a feast with Alice, or a shadow of a tree on the wall can become the knife of Kali’s acolyte reaching towards you to draw once again across your skin..

  In Brian’s case, it was the sound of fucking that broke the thin membrane between his induced sleep and a muzzy half-wakefulness. It was the unmistakable liquid sound of penis entering vagina rhythmically and regularly, the soft thwap of thighs meeting and separating, the slightly heavier and faster breathing of two people in aerobic congress. It caused a brief lucid dream, of the club the night before. But in this dream the goth boys and girls were not wildly dancing and gyrating; their clothes had been altered, revealing their genitalia, breasts, and asses, the pale globes and curves reflecting a sickly green or amber or fuschia glow in the lights. In the dream, Brian saw them begin to engage with each other, mechanically adjusting their bodies to spread cheeks or labia or lips, kneeling or perching as necessary, moving with a jerky, resigned motion, fingers and cocks and tongues sliding lackadaisically into and around the proffered orifices. The lights moved, and Brian could tell the music was still playing, but he could not hear it, could not even feel it.

  As they moved in their slack orgy, he realized a strange thing: none of them were looking at their partner (or partners, in many cases). Their eyes showed no recognition of anyone outside of themselves, no realization or joy in the connection of their bodies, even as the pace of the unheard music increased, the tempo of their fucking speeding up gradually. Brian found it inutterably sad and a bit horrifying at the same time, and turned to try to find a way out—and almost tripped over the slender waif kneeling in front of him, her lips open in a blank hunger as they reached for his cock. He tried to push her away and found his hands tangled in leather straps, and heard the voice of the Indian woman from the night before suddenly loud in his ears…

  “Dammit, Sullivan, he’s harshing the buzz. Fucker.”

  Brian jerked his eyes open suddenly, still on the kilim rug where he’d been laid by the bearlike man. He turned his head, an effort that seemed to shake loose his scalp due to a brain grown large and sodden with sleep, and his eyes slowly focused on the source of the voice and the sounds. The bear—Sullivan, he now remembered—was sitting nude and cross-legged, with the woman from last night (Vashti? Something like that) straddling him, legs wrapped around his waist. Her hair swung from side to side down her back, revealing soft musculature curving into her ass, rising up and down slowly and rhythmically. Brian could see the slight pale shade of the condom on Sullivan’s cock as it disappeared and reappeared beneath her.

  Her hands were placed on his chest, palms on either side of his sternum, and his decorated arms encircled her like a ballet dancer en face, his palms flat and fingers spread over each shoulder blade. Neither of them were looking at him; in fact, they were the exact opposite of his nightmare, their eyes locked into each other as they moved.

  Sullivan didn’t blink, but his mouth opened in a wry grin. “Shut up and breathe in your healing, you careless bitch. You know he deserves this more than you do.” His fingers flexed on her shoulder blades, and Brian blinked as the tribal tattoos flowing down them seemed to glow, somehow, pulsing with the rhythm of their fucking.


  Her breath deepened then, and after a few more beats on an inhalation her eyes widened slightly as suddenly on a downstroke she froze, her thighs trembling, the breath slowly coming out of her as she relaxed her body into him.

  He continued to hold her for a moment, his hands softening from the formal posture on her shoulder blades to a more conventional hug, and he joined her in a deep, resigned sigh. Brian saw her murmur something into his ear before she began to disentangle her legs from his waist, and saw him shake his head, smiling at her for a moment, before he turned a more serious thoughtful gaze to meet Brian’s eyes.

  “He’s the one you should be asking that of, Vash, and you know it.”

  The woman sighed, and swivelled on her cross-legged seat to look at Brian on the floor. Her face looked slightly annoyed, and he had the distinct impression that he was something of an embarrassment for her. She wore her nudity with no self-consciousness at all, though her nipples were still crinkled from her orgasm. “Yes. I suppose I should. Though in my defense—“

  “You have no defense, Vash. Rule number one.”

  She looked pained and embarrassed again, glancing up at Sullivan and this time unable to hold his gaze for more than a moment. She sighed again, and lifted her eyes to Brian’s. He still felt unable to move, seemingly disconnected from his body. His head seemed only partially attached to it, like it was a balloon that would disengage and flatulently zigzag around before collapsing in a corner, nothing but a scrap of skin.

  “I am responsible for my selfish actions last night, and would make amends. How can I help you, Man?” There was a soft remonstrative noise from Sullivan at that, and she sighed again, repeating her question with a slight difference. “How can I help you, Brian?”

  Brian realized that he was being offered: the same kind of treatment he’d woken to. He also realized that in spite of the completely overt sexuality she was exuding, skin still stippled around her neck from the rush of her orgasm, labia puffy and open at the same level as his head, in spite of that, he had no desire at all to come anywhere near this woman. In spite of her apparent penitent attitude, he could still sense an undercurrent of dislike in her for him, a measure of contempt that she could not quite hide in spite of her genuine apology.

  “No… nothing… ” he whispered, throat harsh, then swallowed once. “Th-thank you anyway.”

  Sullivan chuckled. “Spoken like a true Man, eh, Vash?” She didn’t have to sniff, the look she flashed him at that point was anything but penitent. “Still, boy, we can’t have you in this condition. I understand your reluctance to accept her aid, though I have to tell you, when she’s of a mind to, she’s a far better healer than I. Maybe I can do somewhat to bring you back up to speed, though; she charged me with enough to jumpstart a horse.” He gracefully rolled up over his kneecaps, going from a cross-legged position to kneeling next to Brian’s chest.

  Brian still couldn’t move anything but his head, and was mildly bemused by the fuzzy lack of control anywhere on his body. He had a moment of mild alarm, wondering if the larger man was going to heal him the same way he’d taken care of Vash (wouldn’t THAT be an interesting way to explore bisexuality, eh?) but instead Sullivan’s hands came down briefly one after another on his forehead, throat, sternum, lower stomach, and finally his left hand cupped Brian’s flaccid cock and testes briefly, the warmth of his palm feeling strangely comforting.

  “Ok, that’s bracketed the targets, now to fire for effect… ” the man said matter-of-factly, and his hands came down again, fast and hard this time, with an exhalation of breath at each touch.

  Brian’s body arched spastically and jerked at the first touch to his forehead, as his brain’s fuzzy semi-awake state was blasted away with a sudden force. Before he could recover, Sullivan’s right hand came down on his throat, and another exhaled blast of power—there was no other word for it—made Brian’s teeth feel loose and for a moment he was keenly aware of every cervical vertebrae stretching from his shoulders up into his skull.

  As Sullivan continued placing his hands down the body, the power ripped through Brian’s fatigued muscles like a wind, searing them and leaving him shaking. The final cupping of his genitals left him hard again, which would have made him self conscious but for the clinical way Sullivan simply grunted in approval, like a Doctor completing a medical exam.

  The big man sat back, looking at Brian. “So. How about some coffee? You should be good to go now. And you have some explanations coming your way.”

  II

  “You, my friend, are up shit creek right now. I would feel sorry for you, but it’s really not worth it. You’ll either measure up or get killed really fast, so I’ll just save my pity and see what happens.” Sullivan delivered this matter-of-fact statement as he dumped sugar into his coffee, as if commenting on the aroma. They were heading towards the back room of Mimazu’s, a local coffee hangout frequented by students and leftover hippie types. Brian was familiar with the place from his time as a freelance writer… back when times were good. He forced his mind away from that, and tried to figure out what the big man meant.

  He decided that the guy was trying to scare him, and mirrored his cavalier attitude with a shrug. “Eh, I’ve had worse dates.”

  Sullivan looked up sharply, his eyes bright under raised eyebrows. “You aren’t taking this seriously, are you?” He shook his head, answering his own question. “No. I can see you’re not. You’ve already put it down to ‘psycho bitch from hell’ and are just remembering the physical bits.” He smiled for just a moment, but only in his eyes. “Admittedly, her physical bits are worth remembering. But it’s typical that you would just block out that firestorm of power she called up and you took over.” He shook his head again. “Jesus. Lit up the street for blocks in every direction. If I hadn’t’ve been on the way home… ”

  Brian thought for a moment, past the images of her naked body and the flames and tried to remember what had actually happened. Her hands flicking over his body with the knife, blood glittering down his body black in the candlelight, her eyes meeting his across the blade as she lifted it… and the strange way something in him had moved when her focus had slipped, stepping into that thick sense of power… Focused inward on his memory, he suddenly felt the pattern of cuts on his torso grow hot. He tried to relax, and the heat grew from a flush to a painful searing. He opened his mouth involuntarily, about to yell, his coffee cup spilling to the floor, when Sullivans hand wrapped firmly around his wrist and he again felt the draining sensation as the power flowed out of him. “Whoa, there, Tiger. You have even less control than I thought. Better that you stick to thinking about the physical bits for now, after all. Doesn’t she have great nipples? She used to name them, Perky and Crinkles. Before she got all ‘momma kali’ this and ‘evil Man’ that.” He made faces and said the words in a harsh falsetto like the witch in the Wizard of oz.

  Brian laughed in spite of himself, bending over to pick up the coffee cup. Sullivan had produced several napkins from the small table between them, and mopped up the coffee.. “Probably for the best. I don’t think caffeine would do this… whatever… much good.” He looked up at Sullivan suddenly, as a thought occurred to him. “Shit. We never actually had sex, but this is some kind of disease, isn’t it? I knew that knife wasn’t sterile… ”

  Sullivan grimaced, not in amusement, but more like a sour acknowledgement. “STDs are the least of your worries now, me bucko. Not that you can’t catch them—hell, ain’t no way around that—but you’ve got much bigger problems to deal with. You notice how you suddenly went all glow-worm like just thinking about the connection between you and Vashte?” At Brian’s thoughtful nod, Sullivan held up his hand “Don’t go thinking about it too much again! Just listen.”

  “What you got a taste of there was power. That’s my word for it, and it’ll do for now. Call it prana, orgone, or happy tingles if you want, it’s the same stuff. It’s basically the force that causes us to want to mate—not the chemical reactions, in the brain,
all the stuff that goes along with that. The actual will to do it, as opposed to simply the need.” Sullivan sighed, and sipped his coffee. “I’m getting too esoteric on you, too soon. Fact is, you’ll figure out your own idea as to the what of it sometime after you figure out the how of it. Or else, as I said, you’ll be dead. Or so far gone as to not care anyway.”

  Brian couldn’t help himself, and quipped, “Great, so if I live long enough, will I ever get to the why of it?”

  Sullivan again gave him that sharp look, touched with a bit more anger. “Listen, do me a favor. Stop making jokes about it. I can make jokes, because I know what the fuck I’m talking about. I’ve held my friends as they screamed in their death, I’ve fed their catatonic bodies until they died, and I’ve watched women and men both who I loved destroyed by far less than what happened to you tonight. So when you have that much water under your particular bridge, you can joke, but until then, shut the fuck up and listen so that maybe I won’t have to go through it again with you.” He paused to see if Brian would try another joke, but was met with a calm and slightly petulant silence. “Good. I know you’re probably making all kinds of jokes inside right now, but at least you have the sense to actually keep them there.”

  “Alright. So there’s this power, that everybody’s got a touch of. And just like sex, some people are better at it than others. Genetics, upbringing, health, whatever, they simply are. These are the people who, when they walk into a room, cause folks of either gender to sit up a little straighter, breathe a little quicker. People like Marilyn Monroe, poor girl. And me, in fact.” He motioned across the room to where a man seated at a table with a laptop was staring, not at the screen, but at Sullivan, whose sudden returning glance startled him. Blushing, he looked back down at his laptop and resumed furious typing. Sullivan gave a tired but wicked grin.