![[cumsoak]](images/Curseof.gif)
Location: Devon, England
I'm from a big city so, while traveling abroad, I visit small cities where I feel misplaced. The longer I stay anywhere, the more wrong everything becomes, although after a few generations I'm sure my family would fit right in.
Instead, I remain a transient outsider, invading isolated communities; and my novel appearance and genial disposition gains only tenuous hold on people's sufferance and hospitality.
At the time, I was seeing a witch named Jenny whom I met at different stops during my travels by train through the Devon countryside. I met other women, and considered socializing with them, but in the back of my mind I knew I was taken.
Coming from a different social stratosphere, Jenny didn't travel third class with me, but I'd expect her and she'd always show, and when she did I would be more happy than expectant, more expectant than surprised, and more surprised than upset -- until I discovered why I didn't recognize her until she identified herself. Thereafter, I was just upset.
My recollection of faces can be fuzzy, but that worked to her advantage, because she would occupy different bodies. In fact, I was the conduit that directed her to them.
Our most disastrous reunion occurred in Bristol while I was the house guest of a lovely family consisting of a father, a mother, a grandmother, two sons and a daughter. They were very regional and community centered as families are after inhabiting the same countryside for generations. They lived in an attached block of flats on a steep-hilled street near the railroad station.
My arrival was innocuous enough. I was traveling alone, recording moment to moment impressions in my innocuous journal, when the great Bristol gorge engulfed the train. I got out to grab a gander before continuing to Bath, but the sun was setting as the train pulled out without me.
The station overlooked a ball field where father and sons were playing cricket. The game was going badly and the boys were not showing us themselves at their best. Even their father's indulgence was straining.
I was admiring the setting sun when they spotted me in the overgrowth near the fence. I waved, looking pretty disheveled after my endless hours on the local train. They asked me to join the game. Tired and hungry, I almost declined, but seeing a blanket of clouds pulling over the sky, I entered the field. There I played for a few minutes, to endear myself, until it rained.
I always try to carry enough money for a good meal in a climate comfortable room in the local Mobil five star, but I accept hospitality when offered. With train changes and traveling arrangements still needing to be made, I accepted the offer to stay with the family indefinitely.
I was totally in green that day -- it was all I had to wear, green pants, socks, shirt, hat -- so I felt odd.
At their home I met a beautiful women, Liz, 29, home from college, still a virgin and as ripe as the morning dew. Her virginity was her main topic of conversation whenever we were alone, yet the interest she stirred was a constant source of surprise for her. I sensed a subtext of her wanting to lose it soon.
One night we turned on the television in her bedroom and fell asleep, as it watched us.
It was three A.M. She was asleep in the brightly lit room while I sat there, aware of her and awake, having just woken up, feeling rather warm and cuddly. Where did the time go? I was restless and she was rolling over, exposing her netherness. Yet she slept peacefully, and the light seductively highlighted her derriere as I entered her.
We shared an exciting early morning of slow lovemaking. When she failed to regain conscious cognizance, I sensed a recognition, followed by the realization, that Jenny had taken her place.
She said, "That feels very good Jimmy. I wonder if you could use your hands. Lick here. Do you know how good that feels?"
When finished, she said, "Remember, Jimmy, there was only you and me here tonight."
I asked, "But where is their daughter?"
She said, "Gone. Poof. I burst her. Go out to the gray misty morning. The floating ash of her is outside falling to the ground. Stick out your tongue. Taste her residue of blood and ash in the drizzling rain."
With the Eight A.M. chimes came a rude interruption. The constables on patrol had come for me. "Where is he?" they asked.
The grandmother answered the door. "He's on the second floor."
They ran up the stairs, creaking and shaking the groaning wood floors.
"There he goes," they said as I jumped out the upstairs window onto the tree.
I said, "You'll never get me, coppers."
Jenny lifted me out with her. I was always frightened by what I could do with her, and by the things she could help me do. As I flew, a persistent residue of blood and ash in the rain smeared my arms and stained my shirt.
As rain hit hard against me, I hit heights stopped by the trees. Seeing me trapped up there, the police yelled, "Get him."
The cricket brothers came running out of the house, caught sight of me and yelled up for me. "He's family. Why is he running away? Liz likes him."
They stopped me at the train station and brought me back to find their daughter in the bedroom, safe and sound and pining for me. The replacement was a total success.
"It was a mistake," the brothers said. "We're sorry, officers. She's fine. He's blameless. She was up there all the time."
They led me back to the bedroom. When the door closed and we were alone, she said, "Fooled 'em, you lecher." Soon we were in bed again, slip sliding away. Father, mother, grandmother and sons, were leaning against the door to Liz's bedroom on the second story of the house. They burst in on us.
The mother said, "Liz, Liz? That's our daughter, but she's no virgin."
The father said, "You're animated but it's not the same. Now you're over ripe, not fresh NO MORE. Where is she? Where's my Liz? What have you done with her?"
Jenny said, "She's fizzled away -- gone to her destination."
"What are you saying?"
Jenny said, "This was my coup de Gras."
They yelled, "Take this changeling to the British Hospital!" I went along as Jenny's second.
A Doctor Antony, a doctor of anatomy, applied a scalpel blade to the back of her neck, saying, "We have to scalp her to check. See? This is not your daughter. She's not the same. Ugh. Nurse. Clean up this mess."
Over the din I heard her whisper the words, "Let me say again, there was only you and me here tonight,"
They took me to another clinic and threw me into an industrial sized sink.
After the investigation, Jenny and I were folded into bags. The police filled the sink with hot water and put the bags in there. Fire and mass murder followed.
In retrospect I wish I could understand her. She asked if I was happy to see her. She said all the things I wanted to hear. She missed me. She'd been thinking about me. She said a lot had happened since we were together last, and I told her I wanted to hear about it. When I asked her about Liz and her family, she said, "I'm sorry, Jimmy, but they weren't showing tolerance. It's your fault for finding her. Stay still, stay hard and don't come. I'm closing my legs now."
My eyes were tearing.
She said, "Know this, excited exciting gentleman. If I swell anymore you're circulation is gone. It's a nice body, huh? Now that you've found it, I will occupy it."
"What do you really look like, my Duessa?" I asked as she enfolded me.
"Pretty revolting. Someday I'll show you and give you a real treat."
Blood and Ash, October 6, 1997, for New York Foundation for the Arts, Artists' Fellowships Application.
© 1997 Cinema VII
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