The club had three levels; she finally tracked him down on the uppermost one. Even on a rainy Wednesday night it was crowded, the sound system blaring Idris Mohammed and Jimmy Cliff. He was standing alone near the bar, drinking bottled water.
“Hi!” she shouted, swaying up to him with her best First Day of School Smile. “Want to dance?”
He was older than she’d thought — thirtyish, still not as old as Bierce. He stared at her, puzzled, and then shrugged. “Sure.”
They danced, passing the water bottle between them. “What’s your name?” he shouted.
“Cleopatra Brimstone.”
“You’re kidding!” he yelled back. The song ended in a bleat of feedback, and they walked, panting, back to the bar.
“What, you know another Cleopatra?” Janie asked teasingly.
“No. It’s just a crazy name, that’s all.” He smiled. He was handsomer than David Bierce, his features softer, more rounded, his eyes dark brown, his manner a bit reticent. “I’m Thomas Raybourne. Tom.”
He bought another bottle of Pellegrino and one for Janie. She drank it quickly, trying to get his measure. When she finished she set the empty bottle on the floor and fanned herself with her hand.
“It’s hot in here.” Her throat hurt from shouting over the music. “I think I’m going to take a walk. Feel like coming?”
He hesitated, glancing around the club. “I was supposed to meet a friend here…” he began, frowning. “But—”
“Oh.” Disappointment filled her, spiking into desperation. “Well, that’s okay. I guess.”
“Oh, what the hell.” He smiled: he had nice eyes, a more stolid, reassuring gaze than Bierce. “I can always come back.”
Outside she turned right, in the direction of the canal. “I live pretty close by. Feel like coming in for a drink?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t drink, actually.”
“Something to eat then? It’s not far — just along the canal path a few blocks past Camden Lock—”
“Yeah, sure.”
They made desultory conversation. “You should be careful,” he said as they crossed the bridge. “Did you read about those people who’ve gone missing in Camden Town?”
Janie nodded but said nothing. She felt anxious and clumsy — as though she’d drunk too much, although she’d had nothing alcoholic since the two glasses of wine with David Bierce. Her companion also seemed ill at ease; he kept glancing back, as though looking for someone on the canal path behind them.
“I should have tried to call,” he explained ruefully. “But I forgot to recharge my mobile.”
“You could call from my place.”
“No, that’s all right.”
She could tell from his tone that he was figuring how he could leave, gracefully, as soon as possible.
Inside the flat he settled on the couch, picked up a copy of Time Out and flipped through it, pretending to read. Janie went immediately into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of brandy. She downed it, poured a second one, and joined him on the couch.
“So.” She kicked off her Doc Martens, drew her stockinged foot slowly up his leg, from calf to thigh. “Where you from?”
He was passive, so passive she wondered if he would get aroused at all. But after a while they were lying on the couch, both their shirts on the floor, his pants unzipped and his cock stiff, pressing against her bare belly.
“Let’s go in there,” Janie whispered hoarsely. She took his hand and led him into the bedroom.
She only bothered lighting a single candle before lying beside him on the bed. His eyes were half-closed, his breathing shallow. When she ran a fingernail around one nipple he made a small surprised sound, then quickly turned and pinned her to the bed.
“Wait! Slow down,” Janie said, and wriggled from beneath him. For the last week she’d left the bonds attached to the bedposts, hiding them beneath the covers when not in use. Now she grabbed one of the wrist-cuffs and pulled it free. Before he could see what she was doing it was around his wrist.
“Hey!”
She dived for the foot of the bed, his leg narrowly missing her as it thrashed against the covers. It was more difficult to get this in place, but she made a great show of giggling and stroking his thigh, which seemed to calm him. The other leg was next, and finally she leapt from the bed and darted to the headboard, slipping from his grasp when he tried to grab her shoulder.
“This is not consensual,” he said. She couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.
“What about this, then?” she murmured, sliding down between his legs and cupping his erect penis between her hands. “This seems to be enjoying itself.”
He groaned softly, shutting his eyes. “Try to get away,” she said. “Try to get away.”
He tried to lunge upward, his body arcing so violently that she drew back in alarm. The bonds held; he arched again, and again, but now she remained beside him, her hands on his cock, his breath coming faster and faster and her own breath keeping pace with it, her heart pounding and the tingling above her eyes almost unbearable.
“Try to get away,” she gasped. “Try to get away—”
When he came he cried out, his voice harsh, as though in pain, and Janie cried out as well, squeezing her eyes shut as spasms shook her from head to groin. Quickly her head dipped to kiss his chest; then she shuddered and drew back, watching.
His voice rose again, ended suddenly in a shrill wail, as his limbs knotted and shriveled like burning rope. She had a final glimpse of him, a homunculus sprouting too many legs. Then on the bed before her a perfectly formed Papilio krishna swallowtail crawled across the rumpledduvet, its wings twitching to display glittering green scales amidst spectral washes of violet and crimson and gold.
“Oh, you’re beautiful, beautiful,” she whispered.
From across the room echoed a sound: soft, the rustle of her kimono falling from its hook as the door swung open. She snatched her hand from the butterfly and stared, through the door to the living room.
In her haste to get Thomas Raybourne inside she had forgotten to latch the front door. She scrambled to her feet, naked, staring wildly at the shadow looming in front of her, its features taking shape as it approached the candle, brown and black, light glinting across his face.
It was David Bierce. The scent of oak and bracken swelled, suffocating, fragrant, cut by the bitter odor of ethyl alcohol. He forced her gently onto the bed, heat piercing her breast and thighs, her antennae bursting out like quills from her brow and wings exploding everywhere around her as she struggled fruitlessly.
“Now. Try to get away,” he said.
Chico Kidd
Cats and Architecture
Chico Kidd’s day job is in advertising, for which she has won several awards, all, oddly enough, in the field of publishing.
Her first novel, The Printer’s Devil, appeared in 1995 from Baen Books (under the name of Chico Kidd rather than A.F.), while almost all her short stories were finally collected together in one volume by Ash-Tree Press in Summoning Knells and Other Inventions (2000). She also writes stories in collaboration with Rick Kennett in Australia featuring William Hope Hodgson’s character, Carnacki the Ghost-Finder. The Ghost Story Society published a collection of four stories in 1992, and this has been substantially expanded for the recent Ash-Tree collection, Number 472 Cheyne Walk.
‘You could call “Cats and Architecture” a transitional tale between the old (and rather old-fashioned) “A.F.” stories and the present series,’ Kidd reveals. ‘You could also call it an epiphany. Or a revelation. I suffered from writer’s block for more than five years. It is a terrible affliction. This story started out as a typically Jamesian piece, and I’d been struggling with it for a long time. And then Captain Da Silva appeared, with a past and a personality and a lot of baggage I wasn’t conscious of inventing. And since then I’ve been writing as if a dam has burst.