top

"If you think I am going to walk anywhere in that you are sadly mistaken!"

So said Joy, my girlfriend loudly as she peered at the window.

Outside rain sheeted down torrentially.

"It isn't far" I offered.

"We'll be bloody drowned!" Joy said.

She was probably right at that. Not far was a mile and a quarter at the very least. A mile and a half more like it and that from the street corner.

"Lets get a taxi" I suggested.

Sadly Joy was skint and so was I, so we sat in her front room and watched a video instead. One a mate had given me, loaned me really.

"Tell me what you think of it!" was what he'd said.

"This is weird!" Joy stated bluntly when it started. Her voice quavering as she looked at me.

"Goth stuff!" I told her "Just the thing for Halloween! If we're not going to the party that is"

Warily Joy turned to look at the screen and……

……all too soon Mistress Autumn began to draw her rose red cloak across the land. Those things you knew and loved began to wither, those things you'd nurtured began to die. In her bower she sang "Come to me…..oh come to me!" while wives keened on an evening shoreline, casting long shadows like the grim reapers fingers, reaching across gravel and bladderwrack.

She slunk in colours already unready, awaiting rust, awaiting decay, smearing crushed toadstools along the edges of those days which now began much too late for anyone to be able to stop them happening.

Show me the badger's set, the fox's den, the abandoned weaver bird's nest, she moaned in the willows. Show me late summer's lover, droll in mourning, russet skinned, eyes red rimmed, asking for whom the bell tolls but already knowing, kicking, sweeping life's last futile leaves under cover……'

"You're in a strange mood!" Joy murmurs suddenly

"The film is getting to me" I tell her.

"I was looking forward to trick or treating but this is really ……weird!" Joy murmurs.

'……shoving tarnished teaspoons, tainted mugs, the debris of a corpse left too long a time in its bed. A stained pillow permanently dented, creased sheets long past ironing, cobwebs footprints, all the usual deranged things.

Can you see?

Fortune's wheel turns, we slip, hurry, slip again. We may wait or we may fall off, ride the wave or drown. The choice is not ours to make anyway.

Can you really see?

At the gate Mistress Autumn busies herself at her tasks. Needle and thread, knife to spread, soon be dead. Why worry, why hurry? Hunters moon, dying soon. Autumn bought 'em, winter's splinters.

She hums discontentedly, anxious, vexed, if there ever was such a word to hex her.

Midsummer drew pictures on her belly, red and blue like a roadmap, marking all the places where midwinter had fucked her with a blob of ink as red as blood. Then, discontented he berated her, jabbing a fingernail into her skin again and again, sweeping snowdrifts into her hair, filling her nostrils, her ears with pulped dead stuff from ages before, wiping her face all over with a cobwebbed hand before leaving her as always.

Sad and alone she overindulged herself wildly, growing rounder, fatter, as the year progressed, bloated, big bellied, flat footed and ungainly, leaning back into herself as she walked trying not to trip, to slip, to squat or sit……"

"Were you already like this when I found you? Heavy, big and ripely naked, cheerlessly asking "Can you help me, I……I wish for a man in my bed"?"

"Who asks?"

"Only me!"

"You?"
"Yes!"

We circled warily while smoke billowed, two fires burned brightly, juniper and sage enflamed to drive the cattle between.

And some people.

"Can you help me, I……I need to keep a man in my bed……"

Juniper and sage, a twist of orange coloured wool, a snipped off one of her most private curls.

She wrote her name backwards to ensnare him, heart beating wildly when the mirror displayed all she held dear.

Look at her! See her fat belly and breasts! Yeah she was already that way when I found her.

This is what you do with it.

With your spell!

This.

And this!

And THIS!

Flame flared scraps of paper, all gone in a flash. Youth departed cloudless, clueless.

Now, like a dying leaf you can only wait.

But being both impatient and foolish she couldn't. Arousal drove her outside, scolding her, ripping at her, taunting her with suggestions long fingers, clutching her, dragging her away, wide across nights blackened moorland where chill breezes blew her hair straight out in front of her face.

Juniper and sage, growing, bending, quaking in their roots when she drew near.

Now cut the pumpkin open carefully, slick eyes, nose and mouth there, there and there. Keep the seeds, all of them without exception, you will need them later, hot roast to ward off midnight's nightmare.
"Why do you walk alone like this, alone out here and nakedly?"

Spellbound she cried "Because I must!"

Me? I found a jacket for her, torn and buttonless, with a straggle of string to draw it tighter around her waist. The scarecrow no longer needed it. He was dead.

She shoved her arms into it, breasts bouncing, dragging it close ineffectually around herself momentarily.

"Can you help me" she asks "I think I've lost my way somewhere"

She was right about that.

The jacket is long enough to draw a line across her, two thirds one third, equal and unequal at the same time. Darkness and light, smoke drenched and pure.

I watched her as she scrambled up the bank in front of me. Jacket or no jacket her arse was still bare. But she carried the pumpkin carefully, carefully lest the candle extinguished before she got to the place.

At the top of the bank she paused while new breezes murmur some words at the night. Climbing behind her, slipping, scrabbling I catch her scent along with that of scorched pumpkin and hot candle grease.

She steps forwards into the hollow and sets the pumpkin down on the tree stump, exactly as has been done in previous years.

In hollow stillness the flame burns unwaveringly while juniper and sage smokes still stains the night air…...

"Weird!" Joy says "She is……I'm not sure I want to watch any more"

I put my left arm around Joy's shoulders and pull her closer, my right hand automatically closing over her left tit.

"It will get better!" I tell her "in a minute"

"I can't work out whats going on"

"Wait and see!"

The sofa creaks as we move together our faces lit hideously by the colours on the screen. Joy enjoys all that funny Goth stuff really.

'……Mistress Autumn drags at the earth with her claws, tearing turf and scattering stones. She is in her element here, now, tumbling tombstones, long dead flowers, wreathlike, wraithlike, adorning her hair.

"Shall I lie?" the sacrifice asks.

She knows how and when and where but still she asks.

"You must!" Autumn tells her "Naturally"

"Then I shall!" she declares "and my body will be your altar for this evening, all the altars you will ever need!"

It's a table tomb, one we've used before, but before this night never as effectively.

The sacrifice lies lengthways the scarecrows jacket still around her, half hiding her, enhancing her body, until Autumn cuts the string……

Joy wriggles, making little noises when she breathes, dribbling lightly onto my arm.

"Where did your mate get this?" she asks.

I feel her tremble.

"Ripped it off an original CD most likely" I tell her "It was famous for……for something or other a while back I think"

"For being weird I bet!" Joy says.

"Yeah!" I say "It is, isn't it"

I didn't tell her I was actually in it.

She knows I like to feel her when we are sitting close together like this and I know she likes me doing it so, after a moment I take my hand off her tits and move it down between her legs.

"……Mistress Autumn unveils the moon, sliding strands of cloud away with her fingertips.

"Who was it you did the spell for?" she asks.

The pumpkin grins toothily, flickering orange and yellow, feathers of smoke emerging here and there. On the altar the sacrifice shivers, cold stone biting at her back.

"For my lover!" she says.

"Ah yessss……for your lover……!"

Joy shifts slightly, enough to loosen the waist of the panties she is wearing. She makes small noises, half giggling half gurgling, easing herself lightly as my fingers slip in.

Our movements become mechanical, simple yet with complicated connotations. Perhaps, I think, she will get hold of me in return.

Shhh!" Joy says when I unzip my trousers.

"I thought you didn't want to watch the film?"

Joy murmurs something inconsequential, her breathing ragged as I finger her deeply. Then, wriggling and lifting her backside suddenly she slips her underwear down over her knees.

"G…go on……!" she says breathily.

……on the threshold Mistress Autumn waits patiently. The wheel is turning slowly, ponderously, as slowly as it always does. Unstoppable. Glowing with anticipation she shakes out the cascades of midnight, grey flecked and dusty, her long, long, lifelong hair.

"For your lover?" she asks.

"Y……yes!"

Mistress Autumn laughs.

"There are spells and Spells!" she announces "Have you come well prepared for this one?"

"Y……yes!"

"If you are sure then!"

"I……am!"

"Then come to me!" Mistress Autumn commands. She flings her arms wide, throws back her head.

In front of the tomb the turf begins to lift……

Joy buries her face in my shoulder when the hand appeared out of the soil. She makes small croaking noises in her throat as if she was choking but doesn't try to stop me doing anything. With one eye she stares at the screen sideways fearfully, shivering for several different reasons.

I want to do several things with her all at the same time, want her undressed, naked, tits bared.

I tug at her and she shudders. "It's coming!" she says.

"What is?" I ask.

She shudders "The monster!"

Its you that's coming, I think to myself as I shove my fingers in and out again and again.

……Mistress Autumn revels in her glory. She's summoned the being and brought it to life. Pebbles rattle as they fall against each other, soils shifts and slithers. Grey blue and putrid the thing struggles to rise.

"Come to me!" Mistress Autumn demands of it……

Squirming with a horrified fascination Joy stares at the screen. Something rips, breaks, a button, a zip, the hook of her brassiere.

Just for fun I move as if to bite her neck.

Her body bounces on my fingers when she screams, breasts stiff nippled against my other hand. I could almost taste the blood gushing out of her neck.

It was fun while it lasted, making that video and no-one died really, I can promise you that.

The girl who played the lead will never be the same though. Something we did must have affected her. Its coming up to that part now, I think. That part now, I think.

I think!

"Oshit!" Joy yelps "did you see…she……she……they……did you see what they did!"

"Its only a film!" I tell her.
……………

Joys mother came home early because of the rain, clattering straight into the front room without knowing we were there.

"Ooooh M…mum!" Joy quavered very shakily.

"I thought you were going to a party" her mother said.
"We were but it……it got cancelled!" I lied expertly. "Something to do with the weather I think"

Joy's mother peered at me shrewdly. She knew I was lying, she could tell instantly.

"Yes!" she said, as if agreeing.

"Better not let your Father catch you like that!" she suggested, turning to Joy who'd made no attempt to cover herself up. "Quick, get yourselves upstairs, he'll be home any minute!"

Good old Mum! I couldn't believe it! The least I'd expected was a belt round the ear.

"Go on!" Mum urged, thrusting an assortment of clothing at me. "And for goodness sake be quiet in there!"
……………

Joy quivers uncontrollably, the visions she's seen already giving her nightmares. Her body is limp, almost unresponsive but I fuck her anyway, leisurely and lazily as she lies across her bed.

Limp and as good as lifeless but I fuck her anyway, it is one of the few pleasures I have left.

Behind me her little chair with our clothes thrown on it stands crookedly propped up against the door. It will keep the monsters out while I finish what I am doing. Some of the monsters anyway. Because monsters come in all shapes and sizes don't they?

And for Joy the worst one was already in the room with her.

© Aahlu. Samhaine 2010.