Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Jim Baker

SETH RAN HIS EYES slowly back and forth across the door, studying its peeling paint and green corroded brass handle. Bees buzzed in his brain. His fingers tightened on the key he was clutching in his hand, and blood ran down his palm as it dug into the flesh. He felt eyes upon him, and turned. A curtain flickered in the window of the house next door, and he glimpsed a woman’s face. He raised his hand to his face, licked the blood from his fingers, and blew a mocking kiss from crimson lips. He lifted a bony finger and beckoned her, grinning mirthlessly as the curtain closed abruptly. He turned and thrust the key into the lock.

Jane shuddered as she watched him. She felt icy cold, even though the room was filled with sunlight. The gaunt figure had seemed to be surrounded by a cloak of dirt, cold, and misery. Grime clung to him like iron filings to a magnet. Greasy stubble blackened his chin. Long, matted dark hair hung to his shoulders, and his fingernails were filthy black arcs. She squeezed her eyes closed. When she opened them he was still there, staring at the town house next door. She flinched as he swung around and blew her a kiss from bloody lips framed in a white, skeletal face. A long finger beckoned and she flung the curtain down and jumped back.

Seth pushed open the door and stepped inside. The house was chill and dark. He sniffed the damp air, walked down the hallway, and opened a door. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom he saw the outline of a window, shielded by thick curtains. He strode forward and yanked them open, then threw his hands to cover his eyes as bright sunlight bit into the room. Slowly he uncovered his eyes and stood still, his body shimmering.

The shadows formed, as they always did, black and tiny. They began their dance in the corners of the room, slowly growing bigger and darker. They moved toward him. The sunlight retreated as they got larger. Standing motionless, he waited for them to envelop him. He knew she would come. He was content to wait for her, in their warm darkness.

“For Christ’s sake, Jane, stop gazing out of the window. I’ve had a lousy day at work, and the last thing I need is you ranting on about some lunatic next door!”

Paul heaved himself up from the armchair, and stomped to the bar.

“I might as well get myself a drink. You seem to be well ahead already.”

He poured himself a whisky and looked over at his wife, who was still gazing out of the window, a gin and tonic in her hand.

She turned and smiled weakly.

“I’m sorry, Paul,” she said, “you didn’t see him. He was filthy and horrible. Then there was the blood and everything. And he knew I was there. He beckoned me …”

“You didn’t go near him, did you?”

Paul glared his wife at his wife as she hesitated.

“No … no, of course not!”

But something was nudging the edge of her consciousness, a memory of black shadows and of cold and dirt – of intense delight …

Seth was standing in the centre of the room when she entered. He turned to look at her with glittering eyes and her body shuddered with fear, but her feet led her to him. She could smell death on him, mixed with a promise of unbelievable pleasure.

She walked over to his indistinct form, entered the shadows that surrounded him and at once felt warm and unafraid.

He wound one hand into her hair and yanked her head back, holding it in a merciless grip while he kissed her. His lips were icy and hard, his breath was fetid, and his eyes glittered green. His tongue probed for hers and he sucked it deep into his mouth. He stripped away her blouse and her bra and mashed her breasts with a calloused hand. He twisted and pinched her nipples between a grimy finger and thumb. Jane felt jabs of pain that dissolved into bursts of pleasure, rushing up to her brain and down … down to her hot, wet, throbbing cunt. She felt she was screaming, but nothing broke the silence in the pit of shadows that danced ever higher around them.

He dropped his head and feasted on her breasts, sucking on her engorged nipples while his hand worked on the fastenings of her jeans. She helped him, kicking them away, frantic to divest herself of any clothing.

He pulled her down on to the cold floorboards and ripped her panties away. She opened her legs wide and he knelt between them, pushing her thighs further apart with his hands. His head dropped down; she felt his breath on her cunt and then his lips and tongue, licking and sucking the hot flesh. His tongue slid inside her, long and hard and he fucked her with it as her body writhed on the cold floor. Then he took her clitoris between his lips and Jane screamed silently as he sucked mercilessly and rasped his tongue across the swollen button. She twisted her nipples frantically between her fingers; his tongue worked faster and faster as she raced towards her climax. The orgasm was nothing like she had ever known. There was a roaring in her ears and bright coloured lights flashed behind her eyelids as she came in a huge racking burst of pleasure. She felt hot liquid squirting from her cunt and heard the slurping sounds from below as Seth gulped it down …

“Hello, hello, world to Jane!”

She blinked hard and stared across the room at Paul, who was looking at her worriedly.

“Sorry, darling, what did you say? I must have been daydreaming.”

“I thought you’d gone off into outer space.” Paul still looked concerned. “What on earth were you thinking about?”

Jane struggled to remember but whatever it was remained stubbornly just below the surface of her memory and she shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

She rubbed the hot, wet flesh of her thighs together and gave a little shiver of pleasure.

Seth stood in the shadows, for the moment replete. The juices of the woman would not sustain him for long. But the next time she would bring seed from her man. After that, he would need the man himself.

He smiled.

Jane woke early. She had slept badly, disturbed by dreams of shadows in a dark room of a cold house. There was something she had to do, but couldn’t remember what. As she lay, struggling with her memory, Paul rolled against her. The warm touch of his body acted like the turning of a switch. A craving filled her.

She sat up and hauled the bedcovers away, kicking them off the bed with her feet. Paul woke and looked blearily at her as she pulled her nightdress over her head and threw it aside.

“Janey, what the hell …”

He got no further. She straddled his knees and wrapped a hand around his semi-erect cock.

“Janey …”

“Hush, baby. Lie still.”

He fell back on to the sheets as she played with his cock, jacking it slowly between her fingers. It grew hard and she brought her other hand up to it and tickled the sensitive skin under the head with her fingernails, then tickled his balls until Paul groaned with a mixture of pleasure and frustration.

She moved up the bed and kissed him, her fingers still working.

“Come on, sweetheart. Put this big hard cock right up inside me and fuck me stupid.” She rolled on to her back and pulled him with her so he fell between her open thighs. Paul was still half groggy from sleep, but her excitement transmitted itself to him and the bedsprings twanged as he thrust furiously into her.

Seth stood on the other side of the bedroom wall listening to the sounds of lovemaking. He smiled and the shadows danced high as Paul’s long drawn-out gasp announced his climax. Now the woman would have something more to bring him.

Jane sat at the kitchen table, staring into her empty coffee cup. Paul had gone to work, sated and confused by Jane’s frantic desire for sex.

He had come very quickly the first time, and fallen back on the sheets, desperate to sleep, but Jane had demanded more.

She had worked on him with fingers and lips until he was hard again. Then she straddled him, rode him to a second orgasm, and milked every last drop of sperm from him while he moaned with pleasure.

But she had felt nothing. No ecstatic waves, no orgasm. Nothing.

She stood and walked out of the house to return to the source of pleasure that still plagued the edge of her memory.

A week went by.

The summer evening was drawing to a close and the sunlight was fading from where they sat in the patio garden.

“He’s watching us again.”

Jane stared at her husband.

“He’s at the bedroom window. Watching us.”

Paul sighed inwardly and took a long drink from his glass of wine.

“Jane, it’s his window. We can’t stop him looking out of it.”

“Don’t patronize me! I wasn’t going to say, but since you seem to think Svengali next door can do no wrong, let me tell you he had a go at me yesterday!”

“Had a go at you?”

Paul rose and put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“What happened?”

“He came out when I was in the front garden. He stared at me and started this mumbling, like a chant. Then he screamed something horrible about me.”

“What do you mean, about you?”

“He called me a cunt and a whore!”

She started to cry.

Paul stood up.

“Right. I’ll sort the bastard out!”

He marched into the house and fuelled his indignation with a large glass of whisky.

Seth moved away from the window as the sun died. The woman had reacted as expected. Salvation was on its way.

Paul raised a hand to hammer on the door. It swung open in welcome, and dark silence beckoned. Mindlessly, he stepped over the threshold, climbed the stairs, and pushed open the door at the top.

Seth turned to face him, and held out his hand to guide him into the shadows. He stroked Paul’s hair and his face with his dirty hands. His thin lips smiled mirthlessly and his eyes glittered in anticipation.

Paul stood motionless as Seth undressed him slowly, dropping each garment on the wooden floor. He caressed Paul’s stomach and thighs with his fingertips, and then brought his calloused palms together to clasp his cock, which stood upright, rigid, swollen, and red.

He rolled the column of flesh in his palms as he kissed Paul lightly on the lips, and then dropped to his knees in front of him. Paul shuddered as Seth took the head of his cock between his lips and began to suck.

The shadows darkened and quivered, as Seth took more and more of the cock into his mouth. He sucked harder and harder, his fingers pumping at the shaft, until the climax hit Paul and he groaned as he shot burst after burst of hot seed into Seth’s mouth.

The shadows vibrated crazily and slowed as Seth sucked the last drops. He stood, kissed Paul again on the lips and played gently with his soft cock, which began to grow hard once more. The shadows grew tall and enveloped the pair in darkness.

“You were a long time. What did he say?”

Paul looked blurrily at his wife.

“Nothing. He wasn’t there.”

“But … where have you been, then?”

Paul shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Jane stared silently at him.

Tiny black shadows began to dance in the corners of the room.