Weaveworld

2

Elroy picked up another can of beer from the bar then headed out into the garden in search of Loretta. The air was considerably cooler than inside, and as soon as it hit him he felt sick as a flea in a leper’s jock strap. He tossed the beer aside and headed towards the bottom of the garden, where he could throw up unseen.

The coloured lights stopped a few yards from the hall, where the cable petered out. Beyond was a welcoming darkness, which he plunged into. He was used to vomiting; a week in which his stomach didn’t rebel through some excess or other was poorly spent. He efficiently discharged the contents of his belly over a rhododendron bush, then turned his thoughts back to the lovely Loretta.

A little way from where he stood the leaf-shadow, or something concealed by it, moved. He peered more closely, trying to interpret what he saw, but there was not sufficient illumination to make sense of it. He heard a sigh however: a woman’s sigh.

There was a couple in the shelter of the tree, he decided, doing what darkness had been created to conceal. Perhaps it was Loretta, her skirt up and her knickers down. It would break his heart, but he had to see.

Very quietly, he advanced a couple of paces.

On his second step, something grazed his face. He stifled a cry of shock and put his hand up to find strands of matter in the air around his head. For some reason he thought of phlegm – cold, wet threads of phlegm – except that they moved against his flesh as if they were a part of something larger.

A heart-beat later this notion was confirmed, as the matter, which was adhering now to his legs and body, pulled him off his feet. He would have let out a cry, but the filthy stuff had already sealed up his lips. And then, as if this were not preposterous enough, he felt a chill around his lower belly. His trousers were being torn open. He started to fight like fury, but resistance was fruitless. There was a weight bearing down on his abdomen and hips, and he felt his manhood drawn up into a channel that might have been flesh, but that it was corpse cold.

Tears of panic blurred his vision, but he could see that the thing astride him had a human form. He could see no face, but the breasts were heavy the way he liked them, and though this was far from the scene he’d pictured with Loretta his lust ignited, his little length responding to the chilly ministrations of the body that contained him.

He raised his head slightly, wanting a better view of those sumptuous breasts, but in doing so he caught sight of another figure behind the first. She was the antithesis of the ripe, gleaming woman that rode him: a stained, wretched thing, with gaping holes in her body where cunt and mouth and navel should have been, so large the stars showed through from the other side.

He started to fight afresh, but his thrashings did nothing to slow his mistress’ rhythm. Despite his panic he felt the familiar tremor in his balls.

In his head half a dozen pictures collided, becoming one monstrous beauty: the ragged woman, a necklace of coloured lights hanging between her sister’s breasts, raised her skirts, and the mouth between her legs was Loretta’s mouth, flicking its tongue. He could not resist this pornography: his prick spat its load. He howled against the seal at his mouth. The pleasure was short, the pain that followed, agonizing.

‘What’s your fuckin’ problem?’ somebody said in the darkness. It took him a moment to realize that his cry for help had been heard. He opened his eyes. The silhouettes of the trees loomed over him, but that was all.

He started to shout again; not caring that he was lying in the muck with his trousers around his ankles. Just needing to know he was still in the land of the living –