Chapter 13
The storm was gathering force. It came from the northeast, the dread New England "Nor'easter," terror of sailors out on the dark ocean with its heaving mountains of waves that could dash a ship to its death, where a wind met head on could pound steel into tinfoil with one angry shriek. The rain seemed as ominous and heavy as the ocean itself, an impenetrable torrent that had no end. Lightning streaked down in furious bursts, with the power to murder and-more horribly-force the world to see itself in sudden illuminations from which all nature recoils. No one ventured from home that night, except those brave few who placed duty above their very lives, and those poor sailors already too far gone to be returned safely to shore, and those exceptional individuals here and there on the earth who had sold their souls to the devil.
Catharine climbed the attic steps. As she ascended she heard the storm more clearly through the thinner walls and insulation of the topmost floor of her daddy's mansion. In the dark enclosed stairway shaft, her bare feet moved without stumbling, one above the other. She put her hand against the wainscoted walls on either side of her, and felt the trembling of the house itself as the unseen forces around her raged and screeched outside.
There was a look of serenity on her face, yet those citizens of Placid, Massachusetts, who thought they knew every nuance of Catharine Burgess' face would not recognize her now. All softness was gone. The mask which all civilized people wear from earliest childhood had disappeared from her features.
Catharine's mouth: not for kissing now, not for temperate conversation, not for the gracious smile, not for the warm and loving role of mother, wife, friend ... this mouth was hungry, voracious, raw in its slavering need, about to be sated.
Catharine's eyes: in the dark, no longer lavender and languid, not fluttering shyly or flirtatiously, not armed with the candid look that took everyone by delighted surprise ... these eyes were staring ahead in the dark stairwell, glaring with glimpses of the bottomless eddies of lust, about to be sated.
Catharine's skin: white as only the absence of all color can be white, moist with the secretions of yearning, trembling in the last throes of starvation ... about to be sated, for now and for ever.
She reached the door at the top of the steps and thrust the key deep into the lock. She left it there for someone to find. She remembered promising it to someone ... who was it? ... and then she pushed open the door and let it close silently behind her.
As if on cue from an unseen director too important to worry about corny visual effects, the lightning cracked against the dormer window to light the attic room with a blinding momentary glare. Then all was dark again. Catharine did not hear the thunder clap that accompanied it. The blood pulsed through her veins in rhythm with the rain that pounded so close over her head now. Her physical aching was so overpowering that all conscious thoughts fled from her brain. She knew only the swelling of her membranes and the salivating deep in her throat and the warm wetness of her readiness that lured her to the oval mirror.
Darkness, and silence unbroken by the soundless pleading of her body from deep, deep inside herself.
Catharine turned from the mirror to reach the table next to it, and carefully struck a match. With it, she lit the thick round candles, one by one, until her daddy's antique candelabra was casting its familiar glow from its many burning hands.
"Are you there?" she whispered.
She saw only her own reflection, more beautiful than she had ever been.
"I'll be ready," she promised, in a low growl that rose from her vaginal lips and shuddered through her torso.
Catharine lifted a pale hand to her shoulder, and slid the strap of her gown down over her arm. Holding the loose bodice against herself in a coy, practiced gesture, she raised the other hand and slowly slipped from the other strap. She held her still-covered breasts in both hands. Her clavicle bones and her fine long neck rose gracefully from the lace border. She stared at her own magnificence in awe. Then, unsmiling, reverently, she allowed the gown to fall away from her taut sculptured breasts. Her hands smoothed the fabric across her waist, her firm belly, her golden mound of silken hair, slowly, slowly, exposing her straight thighs and finally, dropping to the floor. Her polished toes coquettishly kicked at the heap of lace. One foot parted from the other to push the gown aside, and her thighs parted slightly as she moved.
She stood then without moving, one leg forward with its ivory-carved knee subtly bent to drive the beholder's eye upward to the moistness that dripped and glistened high up on her inner thigh. The candlelight seemed to put the color back in her skin, an illusion.
She knew she was being watched.
Catharine reached for a milk-glass flask from the table. She did not take her eyes off the mirror. Taking it by its curved handle, she unscrewed the cap and let it fall to the floor, to roll away under a chair in the corner. She poured the thick white liquid into the palm of one hand, and when it had warmed to her own temperature, she raised her hand and tipped the liquid onto her raised neck and throat. It oozed leisurely down onto her shoulders, and with both hands she began slowly to spread it over her soft flesh, around her pulsing throat, across the hollows of her upper chest, under and all around and over her breasts, and down her lean long arms. She poured the rich lotion onto her hand again, warmed it, and then began the rite of oiling her nipples until they were hard and gleaming.
With infinite care and loving attention, Catharine oiled her entire body. She took a long time massaging the warm ooze across her belly and down into her thighs, spread apart to reach the tender inside skin, so sensitive and so secret down there. She lifted one leg and set her foot on the edge of her daddy's chair, so that she could spread the lotion down into the arch and the ankle and between her toes, and up along her smooth shins and back, again, to the soft gold hairs that sprang vibrantly to life as they received the anointment from her worshiping fingers.
She heard only the ticking of her daddy's clock. The storm spewed its fury all around her, but she was oblivious.
On the floor below, Richard Burgess tossed in his sleep, but he did not wake up. Down the hall, little
Jennifer had fallen back to sleep with the help of her thumb, which she sucked noisily and hungrily as she dreamed.
The clock ticked steadily and the candles burned slowly. Catharine stood before her mirror as a goddess about to receive homage. Elegant, glistening, lovely. She waited.
The pain of her longing flashed across her face as the clock churned, ready to strike.
One. '
She stepped back from the glass and sank into the huge chair. Her legs were spread wide and her swelling, pounding flesh was about to catch fire. She stared into the mirror, and saw that a cloudy substance seemed to be moving in, obscuring the refracted candle glow and making even her own image fade into foggy gloom. She leaned forward from the chair, trying to reach out, to see more clearly.
From the depths of the mist that moved dreamily behind the mirror, she began to perceive two small glowing emerald-green embers. And then the breathing began. Rasping, unbearably sensuous moans of male hunger, as great as her own. Two like kinds mating in the earthshaking power of instinct calling to instinct ... she could no more turn from this lover than steel filings could run from a magnet. The breathing and the green eyes, coming closer and ever closer to her own, found her groaning and writhing and pleading to be taken.
Her hand clutched at her cunt, not to cover it but in answer to the throbbing need to be touched there. Her eyes stared into the gorgeous, glittery, animal eyes. They were cold and voracious, hard and penetrating. They were victorious, triumphant, gloating.
Even as her hips moved with tremulous heavings on her daddy's big chair, even as she thrust her hungry cunt forward, open, to be filled at last, her ego recoiled at the knowledge that she was conquered, and she screamed.
Thunder shook the house. Richard turned suddenly in his nightmare, and pressed himself, hard, into the soft down of the mattress. Jennifer slept through the sound, her teddy bear having worked its way down under the covers to be gripped tightly between her legs.
Catharine watched in helpless horror and lust as the surface of the mirror crackled and seemed to shatter, and the creature stepped through it. At first, in the haze of her vision, she saw only the glittering eyes and the jewels on his fingers that caught the candle fires and shot them back in piercing stabs of color. She heard nothing, and was blinded by the shining pinpoints of light that engorged and seemed ready to burst and were suddenly upon her.
He was green all over, his hands under the sparkling rings were as fluid and slimy and green as kelp. His hands were huge, and open to embrace her. His face was cast in the glittering light from his emerald eyes, his mouth made murmuring sucking sounds, and his tongue flicked back and forth, up and down, in and out. His body was slick and smooth and the color of seaweed undulating in stagnant tidal pools left behind by the sea to rot in the moonlight. His odor was salt and sperm, musk and oil, nectar and sweat, reptile and aphrodisia. Her nostrils flared with the desire to inhale him so deeply she would never be free of his stink again. She never wanted it to stop. She never wanted to be free again. She breathed and panted and gasped and squirmed as he slowly, slowly moved the few feet from the mirror to her sprawled and waiting body.
His cock was huge and slimy. It was not pinkish, as Richard's had been, nor purple like her daddy's. It was like a jungle tree, taller and greener and thicker with clinging damp foliage than any other in the world. Its tip was dripping drops of green honey that slurped with promise of sweetness to pour down her throat and up into her pussy and her ass-hole and over her oiled skin to cover her finally, eternally, in a shield of jism that would protect her forever from wanting. His cock marched ahead of his small twisted body and her hands left herself to grope desperately for it. Her mouth worked hungrily. She opened herself to him with every pore of her body.
With animal ferocity, he spun her around. His hands were hard and his bejeweled claws cut into her ass to draw blood. She felt her spine crack as he bent her forward and penetrated her from behind. She was his.
Her throat and the corners of her lips ripped raw and bloody from the effort of trying to scream. Her eyes rolled wildly and she saw herself in the mirror as the lightning crashed furiously again and again and again in glaring colorless blasts of cruel, stark light.
She saw her face, straining to leave its drawn skin, contorted into a mindless agony of pain and pleasure. She saw her bleeding flesh under the thorny hands of the demon, who rode her with bestial grunts of mastery. He held her down on her belly against the cold rough attic floor, but she felt only the throbbing giant organ that gutted her and probed her and forced her to take more, more, more, more ... again and again, he plunged brutally deep inside her. She saw his tar-green flesh against her own, his cold eyes flashing like the jewels on his claws. She screamed with the pain and the undreamed-of pleasure. She screamed with the pent-up voices of all the humans on earth who never know or feel such ecstasy. She screamed out all the "noes" and "yesses" of all the frustrated girls and women on the earth. She screamed in joy at the bursting forces of life and death in her virginal cunt, and she screamed in terror at the unfairness of the struggle. She screamed in orgasm and she screamed in sheer pain. Again and again and again...
Blessed darkness swooped her down into unconsciousness at last.