“Privately owned now,” he said, and she wheeled him up a ramp at one side of the steps. It looked to be the only thing kept in good repair.
He unlocked the door, then stopped inside the nave, and before her eyes could adjust to the dimness, dangled a black strip of blindfold. “I’m afraid I have to insist.”
Elle stiffened. His demand reeked of threat — how well did she really know him? Curious women died all the time, led to hellish ends by their hungers and strangers who betrayed misplaced trust. But back out now and she was a coward, a poseur. Adam knew that, of course, could easily exploit her sense of self.
She bent at the waist, let him fasten it around her head, and a cool cathedral night descended upon her. “If you cannibalize me,” she said, “I’ll haunt you ‘til you die,” then she bit firmly on his ear. He just laughed.
Elle rested her hand on one of the grips of his chair as he wheeled forward, let him lead her along as if blind. They passed through swinging wood doors. She shuffled her feet, seeking clues. Further still, and in this dark nucleus of intuition the room felt vast — the sanctuary, but a sanctuary redefined. It smelled of sex and sweat and ecstasies.
Her senses expanded, took in the others that surrounded them. Whispers on the periphery, a crawling sensation of being watched, appraised, admired. The menace of the unknown. Movement — were these others drawing closer?
Adam stopped, had her lower to the floor while he swung from his chair and joined her. His mouth pressed roughly to hers, and his hands rose to strip her clothes away. Moments later his hands were joined by others. Naked, blind, she was laid back on cushions that shielded her from a floor that felt old, nobody’s priority.
“Beautiful,” came someone’s voice, “even if she is whole.”
She submitted to the hands that stroked, caressed, and in their numbers lost track of Adam. He was subsumed into the mass around her. Her back arched, her mouth parted to suck a finger that slipped past her lips. Her nipples stiffened beneath circling palms. Their hands gave a hundred delights, promised a thousand more.
They opened her legs then, swung her ankles wide, and as one checked her wetness, then murmured approval, she heard the rustle of someone else moving into position. She was entered then, and gasped. It was huge, pushing deep, deeper still. What began as a groan became a wailing cry, treading that delicious threshold separating rapture from agony. She was filled near to being split, yet still wasn’t aware of a male body hovering over her. There was no press of hips against hers.
Elle reached down with her hand, felt herself caught by Adam.
“One finger,” he whispered in her ear, and she found him again. “One finger’s all you get.”
Trembling, slowly rolling her hips with the rhythm set up by the massive phallus, she extended one finger. His hand guided hers … and she touched, glided a few inches. Flesh. It was flesh, firm and hard.
“Satisfied?” he asked, and she was and she wasn’t. Nobody could be that big … could he?
It wasn’t for the mind to ponder — she let go of the thought, surrendered to the here and now, the reality of sensation. She drew a deep breath and braced herself, elbows on the floor. Took it. Took it all in. Thrust back with muscled hips and grunts through feral clenched teeth, feeling as if she were at war with this monstrous thing inside her. Riding it until it brought her low and sent her soaring, and her voice pealed from rafters gone dead with dust.
Drenched in sweat, she fell back into someone’s arms, felt her lover withdraw, receding into a blackness that was total, her sole world. They waited until she got her breath, then a hand was on her chin, urging her lips to part. She obliged, eager to surmount exhaustion, prove herself worthy. Whoever these people were, she wanted to be one of them, take what they offered, give what she had. Her lips parted, and her tongue serpentined out to explore what her eyes were denied. She touched warmth.
It was at her mouth.
She smelled herself on the gigantic phallus, tasted herself a moment later. Opened wide, wider, could scarcely accommodate a few inches without her jaw cracking. What WAS it?, and she raised one hand, wrapped her fingers around it, felt firm flesh, muscle…
And it slowly withdrew, teasingly, before she could identify what seemed so familiar, so alien, so tantalizing. Around her, far and near, came soft murmurs of approval, appreciation, acceptance.
Adam’s hands were at the back of her head, gently undoing the knot, and when the blindfold was drawn away she blinked into the light, forgot to breathe. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this.
She found herself in the center of the old sanctuary, beneath soaring ceilings and the watchful eyes of suffering figures in the stained glass windows, some pocked with vandals’ holes. Pews and pulpit were gone, in their place a cushioned playground for these thirty-plus members who had welcomed her, even though she wasn’t at all like them.
Elle looked straight into the eyes of the young woman sitting in the V of her outstretched legs. So this was her lover? There was a thin, wanton quality to her as she reclined on her haunches, meeting Elle’s gaze with a hunger almost masculine. It was a role she played well. Elle followed the contours of her body, from the small breasts to the slim hips, to the tapering length of her left leg. There was no foot, just the smooth bony head formed by her ankle.
At the moment, quite wet.
And she had no right leg at all.
Elle whirled, met Adam’s smile. His pride. And let herself be taken into his arms. At least he had them.
Not so, many of those around her. They were all missing bits and pieces, some more than others. Feet, lower legs, or the entire limb. A few, like Adam, had neither. Others had sacrificed arms along the way. A couple, she saw, were but heads and a single arm attached to naked trunks. They were smooth and they were sculpted, every one of them, and if they looked upon her with anything, it was with longing. Not to be like her again … but to make her one of them.
“You do it to yourselves, don’t you?” she whispered to Adam. “These weren’t accidents.”
He grinned, got Freudian on her. “There are no accidents.”
“I don’t understand,” but then, in looking around at them, an entire roomful of broken statuary, she couldn’t say she didn’t like it. Whatever their reasons, this was commitment, so far beyond the Inner Circle that she could never go back there.
“You will,” Adam told her, then scooted off to new partners, as did the others. Recombinant pairs, trios, groups.
And she watched, a privileged witness.
They could do the most astonishing things.
*
Adam explained later, after the two of them had returned to his apartment. She was very quiet, cataloguing everything she’d experienced but finding that even in her vast erotic repertoire there was no place for this.
She drew herself together on the sofa, hands around a mug of coffee. Feeling loose inside, liquid, where muscles had stretched.
“How did it start?” she asked.
“How does anything start?” Adam said, then laughed softly to himself. “Transcendence. That’s what anyone wants out of life, isn’t it? Some way of getting past it. Or getting more out of it.” He paused, changed gears. “Ever hear of the Gnostics?”