Spider, page 23
The elephants shambled through the enclosure, eating hay and eyeing their visitors without much interest. The camels were more skittish with the Creature around, but he didn’t make any sudden moves.
“I started to fight—not to get out of the life he’d given me, understand, but to just have a few things of my own in addition to the way he used me. When he wouldn’t let me have that, in spite of everything I did for him, that’s when the love started to die. But even when it was dead and buried and I finally understood that not all men made their wives do what he made me do, he still kept me on the hook with sex. I couldn’t get enough of it, even though it didn’t satisfy as it once did. That just made me need more and more, willing to do worse and worse things in order to get it. He saw me spiraling and took every advantage. I saw myself spiraling and finally realized I needed to get out.”
“What did he do?” the Creature asked, with complete certainty that someone like Dez would have done something once his favorite toy started looking to escape the toy box.
“Threatened to send the photographs and videos to the Petrosian Church if I left. He knew I didn’t want to crawl back to the church after leaving it in so much disgrace. He promised I’d return not just in disgrace, but I’d probably be outright shunned. It’s bad enough being the prophet’s love child without also being a whore. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t admit to them how badly I’d failed, how low I’d fallen.
“Dez kept me with him with blackmail, hospital visits and sex for another few years before being with him was worse than the idea of going back. I was in the hospital because of things he’d shoved inside my ass and cunt that wouldn’t come out, and I was bleeding and screaming in pain every time he’d try. It was already established at the hospital that I was in the extreme porn industry, so to most doctors who didn’t look too closely at my charts, it probably looked like a sex experiment gone horribly wrong. And most doctors didn’t look too closely back then. To them, I was doing it to myself. But that time, someone came in after the surgery and asked whether there was a problem and whether I needed a way out.”
Elizabeth couldn’t look at the Creature anymore, couldn’t stand to see the reflection of herself in his opaque eyes.
“I was lucky as hell Dez had no interest in binding me to him with a child. He’d had a vasectomy, and I was on birth control for the others. If I’d ever gotten pregnant, I don’t know what I would have done. But I’d started over on my own before. I took the chance on an impulse. Ran back to the Petrosian Church. All I know is that Dez didn’t follow me or follow through on his threat, because the church took me back and never asked too many questions about the life I’d led outside of the community. All that mattered was that I’d repented. Big prodigal daughter party—as big a party as an ascetic church can throw, anyway. Big potluck, good brownies.”
She laughed, surprised by the genuine affection within it.
“No one ever looked at me like a former porn-star-slash-prostitute. I would have known. There’s a way people look at you when they know you do sex work. It’s not a good look. Men look at you like they can ride that ride whenever they want. Women look at you like a threat. Some of them see ‘victim’, but God forbid any of those ‘victims’ try to find more legitimate employment.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I got that from people when I went out with Dez as his hardcore arm candy. But I never got that from the saints. They just thought I was a wild child, back from her unofficial rumspringa to embrace virtue after overdosing on vice. They could handle that.”
“And you never saw him again?” the Creature asked.
“Maybe he thought I’d come running back to him again when the saints couldn’t satisfy my cravings. It was surprisingly easy to kick the sex addiction, though. As long as I did it completely cold turkey, barely even touching myself, I didn’t awaken anything. The booze addiction… Well, I got good at hiding that one, because I was still unhappy in the life available to Petrosian women. But being a nanny is better than being a wife, and I loved the kids. I really did. Even Sharona at her bitchiest, I loved her.”
Of everything she’d said so far, that was the thing that made her tear up. She was tired of cleaning kohl off her cheeks.
“I thought I was done with him, except for the disease he’d left inside me, mind, body and soul. Then he shows up in the red tent and tells me it isn’t over.”
Elizabeth squeezed the wooden barrier so hard, it was a wonder she didn’t get splinters.
“But Bell knows?” the Creature asked.
“He knows. He says I’m safe.” Elizabeth scoffed. “There’s a lot of things Dez can do while I’m still ‘safe’ with Bell. And since Bell’s done this to me”—she gestured at her mostly naked body—“using what Dez did to me, how much can I trust him not to use the rest? It’s only a matter of time, really, before he puts that tent somewhere he can get away with spiders crawling on my entirely naked body. Where he starts making me stick things up my cunt. Where he does what you did to me in the funhouse, but on a regular basis. He’s working up to it, like Dez. He made himself a black widow spider out of a sex addict who’s been in this position before. It’s just a fucking matter of time.”
The Creature’s eyes widened when she referenced the funhouse web. “If I had known…”
“Well, you didn’t. And I asked for it, didn’t I? I wanted it. I still want it. And I don’t know how much of that is me or what Dez did to me or what the sex demons are doing, so that just makes everything more confusing. I’d been doing so well. I thought I’d kicked it for good. But Arcanium isn’t the best environment for dealing with that kind of craving, is it?”
He shook his head. “I am unique, in that being a part of Arcanium has allowed me to shed rather than contend with the parts of my existence that I don’t care for. Before Arcanium, I often had to hunt. I’d leech upon high-crime neighborhoods at night, the closest I could come to the fear of war-torn countries. I didn’t want to venture too far from home back then, even for better food.”
“Fear, fear, everything is fear with you.” she said. “Would you even be here with me if I wasn’t the messed-up phobic I am?”
He lowered his eyes, looking away. “It’s not all you are, but you wouldn’t be who are you if it weren’t for your fears, little Spider. Without them, you likely would never have interested Bell enough for him to draw you into his circus, much less caught my attention.”
“Dez and I might have visited a place like Arcanium together on a date. Seems like the kind of place he’d take me.”
“From what you’ve told me, he probably would have found a way to bring you to one of the Funhouse events,” he mused. “Seems like something he’d have heard about and wanted for you.”
“The whats?”
“Arcanium is occasionally invited to private events or conventions. A Funhouse event brings the spirit of the haunted funhouse but the eroticism of the big top and Oddity Row performances. Sasha and Mikhail turn their influence up as high as they can, and our oddities and performers offer more sexual fare, mixed with the usual darkness of Arcanium. We’ve had only one since you arrived, but demand should pick up soon.”
Elizabeth struck the barrier, startling one of the elephants. “Damn it. I knew it. He doesn’t want the model. He wants the goddamn porn star. I knew he was going to do this. Hell, Dez knew he was going to do it, too. If he’s going to play the blackmail card, maybe Bell does owe him for the rights to his whore.”
The Creature rested a warm, heavy hand over the one that smarted from hitting the wooden beam. “The Funhouse performances are not compulsory. Some of the oddities do not participate, even ones forced into Arcanium against their will. I certainly don’t. That sort of funhouse, horror elements aside, offers me very little.”
She swallowed back frustration. “I don’t care. The fact he wants me to play that part again, that he chose me because of what Dez did to me…”
“You would be quite a different woman, Elizabeth, if you hadn’t suffered. It is as much a part of you as your fear.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it or what it’s done to me.” She crossed her arms again, but this time in a less defensive way. “If I could amputate what saints and sinners have done to me, I’d be the first to find a knife, even if it made me more unpalatable to you. I’d like to stop feeling like I’ve taken a bath in a septic tank.”
“Is it so distasteful?” The Creature shook his wings out, retreating from the animal enclosure. “As you believe I want one thing from you, does the Spider seek the fly for one purpose alone?”
Elizabeth blinked. She hadn’t been thinking of him at all when describing the spiritual scum that had coated her skin ever since she’d run away from home. Of all her mistakes, he was probably the most innocent.
“Wait.” She pushed herself away from the fence and shook her head, taking his forearms in her hands. “That’s not what I meant. I’ve sometimes felt that way when you were with me, but it wasn’t you making me feel it. You didn’t hurt me, okay? You followed Bell’s rules to the letter.” Elizabeth paused. “But what if Bell didn’t have those rules?”
“Do you wonder if I would have crushed you beneath me and incited the fear to feed upon while I took all of you?” The Creature kept his tone even, but tension made his words shudder like a cello string. “Do you think that’s the kind of monster I am, the kind of man?”
“That’s not what I meant either.” She sighed. “I don’t assume you’d force me out of malice, but you might have been…driven by an urge you weren’t accustomed to controlling. Maybe you would have noticed how I responded, whether or not I was on board, and you’d push, telling yourself ‘she’ll enjoy herself anyway’—”
“No.” He sliced through her rambling with a decisive blow. “I’ve said before that I don’t have a sex drive like most human men. There is no proliferation of my species, no reason for the male to whip himself into a frenzy, no reason to subjugate our women. And given how well the men of this circus restrain themselves under Bell’s laws, given the right incentive and despite the effects of the sex demons, I suspect the argument for biological helplessness is more contrived than many people would admit.”
“Speak for yourself.”
This time the Creature was the one to keep her from backing away, taking her hands before she could.
“You’re not helpless, nor are you a slave to your cravings. I’ve yet to feel threatened by your appetite. Even under the influence of a traumatic addiction, little Spider, you’ve never forced yourself upon me.” He offered her a hint of a smile. “You might attempt to persuade, but when I refuse, you don’t pursue me with a nail-studded baseball bat or slice the leather of my wings and bind me to a pole to force me to submit to your whim.”
“You’re bigger than me.”
“Do you want to bind me down and torment me despite my reluctance? Are my greater size and strength your only deterrent?”
There was warmth in his voice now. It only deepened when she shook her head.
“And Bell’s law isn’t mine.” He stroked his thumbs over her eyebrows with affection, then slipped his claws under the edge of the wig to relieve her of it. Her scalp breathed a silent sigh of relief as he handed the wig back to her. “It’s not easy to deny you, but you allow me to, and I allow you to as well. It’s not easy, but it’s not so hard, is it?”
She lay the wig over the railing. “Would you say the incubus and succubus are active tonight?”
The Creature tilted his head in curiosity. “What do you think?”
“Doesn’t feel like it, but sometimes it’s sneaky.”
He laughed. “Yes. However, if I had to guess, the sex demons are either sleeping or on one of their hunts outside the borders of Arcanium. There is residual influence, nothing more.”
She folded both sets of arms behind her. The gesture felt girlish, strangely elegant when doubled, but it meant she no longer tried to conceal or protect her torso. It felt almost like removing her robe. Really, the leather bikini was mere suggestion at clothing—strange how such a minor distinction determined whether she was viewed as a model or an obscenity. Stranger still how people had once thought she was a saint just because she covered all her tattoos.
“What if I asked you?” she said.
“Asked me what?”
“For more than just a feast tonight.” She swallowed.
“After revealing certain uncomfortable aspects of your past, I understand if you’re feeling vulnerable…stimulated…hungry.” He seemed to caress another part of her with his gaze after every descriptor. “But you confuse sex with comfort.”
“As long as I’m having sex, there’s no reason it can’t also be comfort.”
“You don’t want that. You don’t want to give yourself to me only to regret it later, as you have time and time again.” The Creature covered her shoulders with his strong hands. If he’d intended to push her away, he failed. But he also didn’t yank her against her body, though the flex of his forearms suggested it had crossed his mind.
“Your regret tastes bitter to me, Elizabeth. You will accuse me of taking advantage of you.” He lowered his head until his brow almost touched hers. When he licked his lips, he lingered a little too long over the prick of bared teeth. “And you’d be right.”
“So you’re saying I’d hate myself in the morning.”
“And me. You’d hate me. You’ve been so candid tonight. I would not want the silent treatment to resume in the morning because of a moment’s passing desire, not when I believe you need not a lover but an ally in this circus, one who is neither prisoner nor performer—not quite impartial, but not an inside man either.” He smiled when she raised an eyebrow. “You’re one of the few of Bell’s people to avoid the rest of his troupe, and you’re the only one to mingle with the most despised. Your judgment of Bell and those he calls his own isn’t much of a secret.”
“Guilty by association, as far as I’m concerned.”
Elizabeth’s hips canted forward of their own accord. She bit her lip when she brushed against his cock. The Creature closed his eyes then gently pushed her away from him again. At parties in the Petrosian community, the elders had called it ‘making room for the Holy Spirit’. Elizabeth was struck with a strong urge to laugh, but she feared it might sound hysterical.
“I understand why you find refuge with them, although I don’t like it. I don’t like them. I would rather you occupy your time with the Tattooed Man, the Torsos, the conjoined twins, the aerialists. They are quite human, some of them as tragic in their wishing as you. I think you will come to appreciate the oddities more when the prisoners prove an insufficient representation of humanity.”
Elizabeth rested her prime hands on her hips, though she kept the secondary set clasped behind her back. “You don’t even know them.”
The Creature’s lips thinned. “I know their fears.”
“Well, I know what it’s like to make a terrible decision and hit rock bottom then keep hitting a lower rock bottom every time.”
“Your ex wasn’t punishment for your sins, Elizabeth,” he said quietly. “Systematic torture and brainwashing could hardly be considered a fitting sentence for such a human transgression as being a rebellious teenager.”
“My sisters managed to avoid such human transgression. They stayed with the church. They never imagined leaving it. They’re happy.”
“You see them as happy.” He touched the claws of one hand to the tip of his tongue as though to savor. “If I were to taste them, I imagine I would find strife you haven’t begun to imagine. It wouldn’t mean that they aren’t happy, but perhaps they have their own suffering.”
“Or perhaps their older sister scared them straight.”
“The world is not divided between the safe church community and the darkest dungeons of hell, little Spider. Simply because you’ve been trapped in one or the other does not mean there are not places in between, and those are the places where I’ve fed the most.”
He relinquished the taste of his claws to run all of them over her scalp, making her shiver. He seemed to become distracted by her lips as his hands closed behind her neck. They were close again, gravitational pull inexorable. She brought her palms to his abdomen, smoothing up to his chest and trembling. She lifted her eyes as his forehead found hers again.
They angled to kiss, but she hesitated.
And he hesitated as well, slight grin widening with a touch of bitterness. “With both far sides of the divide pulling you on the rack between them, it is no wonder ambivalence frustrates you so.”
She raised her mouth to his again. “We’ve kissed before without me breaking. I’m vulnerable, not fragile.”
“I know.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth, expertly avoiding her attempt to capture him. Then he kissed her forehead, reluctance like pain in his expression. “I want you, Elizabeth. And I would have you, wherever you wanted me to take you. But you’re afraid you don’t want me. He insinuated himself through your desire until you are unable to tell where you begin and he ends. His hold is not inextricable, but I won’t confuse the issue. I will continue to feed from you to ease your fears, but do not ask me to kiss you, touch you, love you, until you are sure it is you—and you alone—who wants it.”
Elizabeth sighed, but she couldn’t force him back against her when he was determined to widen the space between them. “I had no idea Bell’s rule extended that far.”
“It doesn’t. I’m imposing this condition.”
She picked up her wig and cradled it in her arms like a kitten. “Figures I’d attach myself to the only monster in this circus with scruples.”
