The Valley of Lesbos
by
Carvel Catherway
Publisher: Chaucer
Copyright 2011
1
The view at twenty thousand feet was pretty much what she supposed a view at twenty thousand feet should be. It was worthy of some attention but frankly didn’t interest her that much. It was all she could do to fight back the tears that sprang unbidden or suppress the shaking that took over her hands. She looked at the view now because so doing meant turning to face the little square of Plexiglas; her fellow passengers then seeing only her thick blonde hair, not the reddening of her eyes nor the rolling tears.
And it was worth a look. At that altitude the State of California might have been reduced to an exact model on which even the most substantial topographical features were rendered in miniature: the expense of scrub-strewn desert, stretches of thin brush and the occasional green serrations of the vineyards all set out below in exquisite detail.
The plane made a course correction that lined it up ready for the crowded west-coast air corridors and the horizon swung until the glistening ocean filled the window completely; the reflected sun so bright as to make the woman blink and screw up her eyes. Seen from a height that made the world look less than real even the mighty Pacific was a Lilliputian pond edged by a thin frill of white surf.
The earth tilted a while longer then the aircraft levelled off and the heat-hazed horizon settled to rest. With the sun reflecting directly off the sea at her elbow it was as though there was light everywhere; a brilliant, glittering contrast to the heavy grey skies over JFK into which the plane had lumbered just a few hours before. The woman thought there might even be some truth in the platitude that sunny climes made for sunny lives, even if things in her own life never lived up to the adage.
True since leaving the east-cost gloom the view below had raised her spirits. She was getting daringly close to feeling optimistic about San Francisco; a town she hadn't set foot in for almost three years.... no, she sighed to herself... four. Four long, hard years that aged her more than four. She might have felt a whole lot better if her return was a voluntary one, founded on hope and fuelled by welcome expectations. But not so. It was a place of flight both literally and metaphorically and she hoped that in its tangle of charming streets and busy boulevards she might finally lose herself. She would change her name, colour her hair, cultivate a new persona. Subtle changes perhaps, yet enough to make her someone else.
The cigarette was between her lips, the flame of her butane-lighter about to ignite tobacco - her eighth of the flight having got there without a conscious thought - when fingers touched her elbow, almost scaring shit from bowel. She let out a truncated cry shriller than the event demanded; one which said everything it was necessary to say about the state of the young woman's nerves.
'Christ, you scared me to fucking death!'
'I'm very sorry, ma'am, but no smoking please.'
Was that sorry for scaring the living and breathing shit out of her or sorry for the fact that she wasn't allowed to smoke any more? 'Why?'
The not-so-young flight-attendant pointed to an illuminated No Smoking sign by the side of the door to the flight-deck. Diana Fuller hadn't even seen it come on. The woman flashed a becoming but disingenuous smile and said, 'It's against airline regulations to smoke when the sign is illuminated.'
'Guess I just clean missed it. What's the problem, anyhow?'
'There is no problem. We're about to make our landing approach.'
'Surely not? San Francisco is forty minutes away, an hour plus if we get forced into the stack.'
The woman sighed. Her shoulders slumped wearily. 'I could check with the captain if you feel so strongly, but the regulation is that smoking is not permitted when the sign is illuminated.'
The sign had probably come on because some crew member activated it spitefully. Maybe the stewardess herself. Even the government was becoming increasingly ill-disposed to the tranquillising weed. A spokesman for the new Reagan administration had been expounding vociferously on the issue from the flickering tube of her TV mere minutes before she switched it off forever. And him too, thank God. Today was glorious. Flying conditions were perfect. The crew had given no indication that they were about to vector into a mountainside or attempt a landing on the deck of a Soviet carrier. If she wanted to smoke, she saw no reason why not. Besides, she needed her fix. Nicotine helped calm her. It was either that or the tranquillizers and she could no longer entirely trust herself with those. But surely she could get by for one more hour? Surely one more cigarette wasn't worth a row and attention back on the ground she could do without?
She slid the Marlborough back into the leather cigarette case, the one her dad had bought her for her eighteenth birthday; the last of the few things he'd ever bought her. He'd worked in the merchant fleet. He saw little of her. She had tried to forgive him but it was difficult.
'I guess I'm just a little edgy.'
This time the woman's smile showed a hint of genuine warmth. She’d expected the passenger to turn into a major pain in the ass but fortunately for her the war ended with the first skirmish. She hadn't wanted any trouble, especially not this flight. She'd slept badly, had a headache fit for the new President and her period started half an hour before the plane took off. A heavy one, too. 'May I get you something? A drink, perhaps?'
What the hell, it couldn't exactly hurt. 'Brandy and soda.'
The woman turned away and went aft to the galley. Diana Fuller reflected that she was all the things that flight-attendants were meant to be: infinitely patient, polite but regulation-quoting. Physically, too, she possessed the salient characteristics of the breed. She moved off down the aisle, weaving her way nimbly between the protruding elbows, slim and slight and very agile. Diana observed that her rump was small and enviably taught in the tight-fitting grey uniform skirt. Airline flight-attendant's asses always were. Ever see one with a big butt? She'd signed up for training with a small company herself once but had found that her size - she was five-nine - had rendered her ungainly. She kept bumping into things; tripping and stumbling and spilling. Those shortcomings of dexterity she might have overcome by the expedient of sleeping with the boss but drink got in the way before she even had the chance deploy the one weapon in her armoury that never failed – her staunchest ally, her hot and horny and well-travelled cunt. The whole episode had simply given her a peculiar idiosyncrasy towards female cabin staff.
It took better than ten minutes for the trim little woman with the neat ass – no let's be truthful, cute ass - to return with her drink. The drink was a double, swamped by ice, and thrust abruptly into her hand. It splashed over the sides. She took it without a word.
Booze helped. Helped more than the nicotine. But she made herself promise that this was going to be the first and last of the day.
She took a good gulp then a smaller sip to savour the muted fire. For or a second or so, it seemed that the interior of the plane misted over; as though there might be some problem with the cabin environmental process which caused atmospheric moisture to vaporise and just as suddenly be sucked away again. The feeling was accompanied by a momentary strangeness about the way time itself passed: things seemed to slow down and then speed up, a little like moving through treacle, or that strange state of insurmountable sloth that sometimes paralyses you in a dream. She closed her eyes tight but briefly and re-opened them. The jitters again. Nothing was amiss in their passage through the fourth dimension. The processed air was as passably clear as ever. Jitters and alcohol after those pills. The pills that had helped her sleep last night. God how she'd needed to sleep last night!
Lee McCorrister was seven years younger than herself and worked for a local construction company. He was tall and handsome and thanks to his line of work and an earlier penchant for athletics in high-school - which he flunked - heavily muscled and athletic. He was an orphan, never found out who his parents were, and had been brought up in a succession of foster homes. Unlike so many in those circumstances, however, he'd kept his nose clean and gained a reasonable foot-hold in the company that employed him. That first night presented him as something of a cliché in blue jeans and checked shirt, lacking only a hard hat. But he'd shown himself - ultimately, she remembered - to be a boy with unexpected depths, capable of loving a woman in the way she needed most.
Naïve cunt that she in retrospect considered herself, Diana Fuller hadn't even suspected his problem. She'd accepted without demur his explanation that the little punctures and bruises on his forearms were the inevitable results of rough work. There were brother and sister scars which, with a little leniency of interpretation, supported the claim.
That night was a Saturday. Of course it was raining. The lights of the shops and the fast-food outlets and the bars and traffic all melted into one constantly changing flow of colour reflected in the wet streets. The little bar was quiet for a weekend. Sleepy weather, sleepy night. He'd simply walked up to where she was sitting, admitted he was attracted to her and offered to buy her a drink. And then - rather sweetly, she thought - flushed crimson. Diana smiled back, graciously accepted. The boy became a study of relief personified. Modestly - she liked that, so different to the other guys in there - he'd tried to keep his bill-fold out of sight but Diana had glimpsed the thick wad of twenty-dollar bills and was suitably impressed. She knew that construction workers in the more prosperous developments could earn good money but until now she'd never guessed how much. A case in point, this shy young buck not many years out of school had a wedge like a Manhattan trader
'I think you're a very attractive woman,” he opened. “I mean truly beautiful. If I'm out of line then tell me, but I'd very much like to make love with you.'
It was out of line. Of course it was. Her heart sank. It was crude and bullish and insensitive; a skunk of an introduction and downright insulting. She should, if she were any kind of lady with any kind of self-respect, have slapped him hard across the face and told him to fuck off right there and then. But what made the defence of her dubious dignity difficult was that Diana had long ago abandoned any attempts at being a lady. Plus she was aroused by the cologne-smelling young guy - with whom she already sensed an affinity - to the point that the physical effects on her couldn’t be ignored. Her nipples were swelling under her clothes. She was getting an ache where it mattered most. Her hands were moving and fluttering nervously and she couldn’t bring her herself to avert his gaze. It was as plain as the nose on Lee McCorrister's face that the guy was expressing himself in the way that he best knew how; direct and straight to the point, unburdened by the kind of persiflage at which he would not be very good. She noticed from his jeans that there was no bulge up front and concluded that he was probably as embarrassed as hell at asking her. A practised stud in a pick-up joint like this would be as hardening up by now. Lee McCorrister clearly wasn't. On either score.
'I should kick the shit out of you for talking like that to me.'
'Oh, jees, God... I'm sorry... I...'
'D'you carry?'
'Huh?'
'Condoms. Cock-covers. I'm asking if you have any sheaths, buddy-boy?”
'Uh-uh, but I'll get a pack from the machine back there.' He gestured in the direction of the men's' room. 'You mean you'll... ?'
'I ain’t gonna get a better offer in this place tonight. And besides, you’re kinda cute. Buy me more drinks and talk to me. Seduce me before we fuck.'
Surprisingly he did talk. Diana opened up too. They quickly established that they had much in common and one great difference; he'd admitted that he was comparatively inexperienced. He'd had three girlfriends, made love only to one, and was currently outside of any relationship. She replied in the negative to the almost innocent way in which he'd asked if she were married, and he'd declined with a powerful adamance when she'd asked him if he'd feel more relaxed if he smoked something first. That was to be his first and worst lie.
Another course change, one that made her frown for it took the plane way out over the sea. There was a mild surge of power and it began a shallow ascent. Not right, surely? Why climb before landing? A bomb scare at San Francisco? Forcing them to divert to LAX? Though there had been no announcement. The sky beyond the little rectangle of Plexiglas was clear and pellucid, an aqua-marine tending, in the higher reaches to a breath-taking blue. The mist also returned but this time it had escaped and was consigned to the ground way down below where it rolled in a shallow blanket of obfuscating smog, scouring all detail from the green and brown landscape. It seemed to have risen up from nowhere.
The cute-butt flight-attendant made frequent trips between galley and flight-deck. For the first time she looked harried rather than indifferent.
The guy at Diana's side woke up. 'We landing?'
'Climbing.”
'Can't be.' He checked his watch, then looked around as though seeking a reaction from other passengers. They were unconcerned. Most were doing what airline passengers do: talking, sleeping, reading, listening to music, amusing their kids, drinking. He left his seat and made towards the rear of the plane.
That first Saturday night together she and Lee lingered in the bar longer than either intended, mainly because of the unexpected pleasure of each other's company, enhanced by the warm, peaceful ambiance of the place, but also because there was something teasingly erotic about the delay: a long, slow build-up to the inevitable fulfilment of sexual desire. Diana later discovered that there was another reason: one which had become evident when she'd been forced to help Lee overcome his shyness and coax him up between her legs; guide him into that opening into her which even now had grown expectantly wet in anticipation of his presence there.
Back in her apartment, with the drapes closed and the lights low, a country music station bleating out mournful tales of adultery and deceit - his preference, not hers - he'd undressed her before the awaiting bed, his breath catching nervously. Then, without waiting for her to respond, he stripped in an instant to reveal a sensually smooth chest and a hard, thickly-muscled body, tanned everywhere but for the pale outline of those ubiquitous construction worker shorts. Diana observed that the tan was fading as the approaching fall forced him most days into jeans and shirt. Constructions workers always looked best in shorts, she reflected: the young ones who were still slim and knotted in muscle, not yet victims to the acres of wobbling beer-belly that blighted the older exponents of the laying of bricks and the bolting of steel. Biggest surprise was that, again with that construction-worker machismo, he wore no underwear. The thing for which she was most eager thus appeared unexpectedly early. With great promise, it first cast its purple eye upon her nudity erect and standing to attention; an organ that she had already pretty accurately estimated even before she took it between her fingers and stroked its silken mass, was better than nine inches long.
And throbbing in her grasp. She felt its expansions and contractions, the pulsing of blood that added still more to its bulk.
'God, that's so good,” he moaned. “You're such a lovely woman. So beautiful, Diana.'
Cupid threw a handful of icy rain like wedding rice against the window of the apartment as Lee threw back his head and moaned a second time, eyes closed and languid. In the same moment, Diana Fuller sank to her knees and took his stiffened penis into her mouth. Her lips and tongue worked rapidly. With her fingers she rolled back the fore-skin and - like a greedy kid on a popsicle - slurped and sucked at the exposed head. It was broad. Hard. Sweetly wet. She licked up and swallowed down the first glutinous strings of semen. Sticky. Salty. Good!
'No, stop. You're making me cum too soon.'
Then it was her turn to stand, his to command. He hauled her to her feet and his hot, hard erection pressed against her belly. He yanked her on to him. His hands pressed under her shoulders, flattening the warm bare skin against his own. Lee's lips bore down on hers and forced them brutally open. His tongue forced roughly into her mouth. It stiffened and coiled and pushed and jostled and wrestled in a kiss that made the room spin. A kiss so mighty as to hide the fact that the hardness against her belly had waned to rubber: firm rubber, sure, but a slackening rod that was no deliverer of the penetration she so desperately craved.
All the same she whimpered and meekly called out his name. In response Lee made an animal grunt and threw her to her bed with a force that would have made for a violent landing were it not for the cushioning of quilt and mattress: a landing that nevertheless made the old springs squeak and the ancient iron bed-head - which she had herself assiduously re-painted - thud and scrape against the apartment wall. She landed as he intended; flat on her back, legs splayed wide. Vehemently, the powerful young man raised and further splayed her knees until the tendons strained. She slid down the mattress, dragging the neatly pressed sheets with her. They screwed into a ball under her back.
Diana closed her eyes and parted her lips in anticipation of an explosive entry only to find that none came. There was just a cool breeze from the partly open window that evaporated the sweat from her belly. No squirming, steely weight crushing down on her, making her immobile and body-splittingly subservient. Lee seemed to have gone. There came instead a moment of agonising expectancy then, even before she opened her eyes again, fingers were tugging at the labial flaps and prizing open her vagina; a solitary finger worming its way inside, twisting and moving in a slow ritual of exploration. She was about to protest that she wanted more than this - a hell of a lot more, for fuck's sake - when Lee's lips were suddenly at her portal and forming a wide, drooling kiss. There came waves of pressure and suction. Rubbery lips squirmed, lubricated in his saliva, in her flowing love-juices. Teeth nibbled and tormented. A tongue-tip pressed hard on the little trigger of gristle that was her clitoris and worked it from side to side, crushing it against its will into the hard bulk of pubic bone. Diana juddered and shook. Her hands flew out behind and above, gripping tight on the frame of the bed-head. She used its leverage to bear down as though in the act of giving birth. Her belly - so slim that it couldn't possibly evoke natal connotations - contracted into a taut steel cable. She concentrated pressure in those few key centimetres of her abdomen. Pushed back against Lee's lips and tongue.
Her cumming cry that cold and rainy night tore the comparative silence of the apartment like that of some wild bird. All sensation in her body focused on her womanly opening. She gushed and pumped and shuddered out her payload of slime. Diana remembered vividly that the silent kiss had turned into a series of audible laps that verged on the disgusting; that the air had become heavy with the scents of saliva and cum.
She juddered again, came again, reached down between her legs and guided him onto her, splayed and wet in readiness for his entry. An entry that didn't happen. Not right away.
The passenger returned to his seat and muttered something under his breath. He was visibly perturbed. He rummaged in a flight bag then threw it down in frustration. Diana smiled non-committally, took a sip of her drink then, breaking eye contact, resumed her contemplation of the world outside. Inwardly she was aching again for the feel of Lee inside her.
The ground-smog had grown more intense. Now it was as a huge field of rolling white like thick cloud glued to the ground. It might have been imagination or a trick of the light but Diana thought she saw a number of bright blue flashes reminiscent of electrical discharges flare up at random. More disturbing yet was that the smog held none of its usual sulphurous yellow: instead it was a pure, milky white. And all this was happening a long, long way from town. Ground fog in place of regular smog, what the hell. Not exactly the kind of weather conditions for which California was fabled but surely not impossible either?
'These people never tell us the truth,' lamented the passenger. 'You'd think our money would entitle us to the facts.”
She mumbled something incoherent and turned away, pretending to sleep. The images in her mind, her memories, were vivid. She wanted to hold onto them for as long as possible before they started to corrupt.
Faced with the duty of entry, Lee's erection slackened off to nothing. Frustrated but persistent Diana pulled him on to her and fought to steer him in, but there was nothing to direct. He apologised profusely, an act which demeaned him. She peppered him in forgiving kisses, all the while telling him it was all right. Only later into the evening, when the rumble of traffic below had subsided somewhat and the rain had picked up in intensity so that it pattered hard against the window at their heads, did she finally share with him that untidy roll-up; the thing that finally helped Lee to overcome his inhibition.
She teased and toyed with his penis as they smoked, continued to reassure and placate, conscious of the way the anxiety was beginning to evaporate from his voice until, when the sickly weed was doing its work and he finally relaxed, she rolled him onto his back, encircled his penis gently with her fingers and deftly set to work.
First she gripped him with her thumb and all four fingers and just manipulated: massaged and lifted and squeezed, all in no particular hurry. Then, as he began to firm up, she made a ring with her thumb and forefinger which she slid to and fro, speeding up: tightening her grip as she pulled and pushed. Now and then she paused to run her thumb over the tip of the glans and nip his foreskin. Sure enough, foreskin wetted. Penis stiffened.
She took him in her mouth again, going for it, sucking hard. Lee groaned. Then she snatched the butt of the joint from his fingers and tossed it into an ashtray, a moment afterwards pivoting him on top of her, parting her legs and pulling him abruptly in. He hit into her like the pile-driver he probably used at work and because apprehension had kept her dry, the penetration stung in a way that hurt deliciously. Suddenly he was in her. Filling her. Burrowing almost frighteningly deep. Her vaginal ring was not merely stretched but reamed brutally in a way that brought both torment and pleasure, its elasticity tested to the limit. As Lee McCorrister sheathed himself within her so his arms levered under her back in the instincts of sex and he hugged her tight and forced his lips on hers in a kiss that was open-mouthed and ravenous. So, too, when his body arched in the inevitable reflex, did his knees instinctively draw up beneath her. Those last few gasping strokes went deeper still.
In the final seconds, the actual moments of ejaculation, Lee’s whole body went rigid. He hugged her until she became a part of him. He held her there in the ultimate coital pose for ever before convulsing finally and releasing her. Only then did he back away. Diana’s sweat frosted his body. Hers, his. Semen sheeted in the instant of withdrawal, demonstrating the prodigy of his tribute. It's warm, salty stink filled the room.
So much for precautions, Diana thought. So much for a ritualistic sheathing up and sanitary disposal. She trailed her fingers through the gooey milk and resolved that she was going to take more of it into her. Much more. Whenever Lee had sperm to spare she would be its eager thief.
For a moment the lights in the cabin dimmed as though they were about to go out and then, as if in the same instant, resumed normal intensity. A number of her fellow fliers stirred. This time all three flight-attendants seemed harassed, ducking and dissembling their way through a volley of anxious questions, riffling bodily between the waving hands.
Shortly after the lights dimmed the aircraft wobbled. Just once.
These two trivial symptoms were all the passengers saw of the hell that had broken out a few feet away behind the sound-proofed door of the flight deck. The aircraft had begun to lose altitude before the climb which was meant to correct the loss. The measure worked for a while but then the descent started all over again, this time resistant to every angle of flap and every kilo of thrust. Even as the altimeter dipped still further the co-pilot, on the grunted expletive order of the pilot, ran up close to full thrust until the engines screamed. No effect. Still, terrain approached: not so much that the passengers would notice and begin to panic, but enough such that the flight crew were already saying their prayers.
At first the the captain had remarked that it was as if the aircraft were flying in a suddenly rarefied atmosphere: its rudder sluggish and unpredictable, and despite their airspeed, which was now also starting to drop, it was as if the sections were no longer producing lift. The co-pilot concurred. That was the point where the real problems began.
The radio link via which he had been discussing these things with ground control at San Francisco cut dead and was replaced by the faintest hint of static. Instantly the flight Engineer switched to a back-up channel only to find that this had died too, as had a further two back-ups and the VHF distress band. Logging on to LAX had no remedial effect either. The flight computer insisted on reporting that the airport did not exist. To make matters worse all satnav had failed and the digital beacon which would land the plane automatically in the event of an emergency totally disappeared. A satellite clock displayed nothing but a row of flashing dashes, and when the smog at ground level broke unexpectedly the aircrew found they were looking down not at the urban sprawl of the west coast but at... at... virgin forest...
The Captain was a distinguished looking grey haired man who had become a grandfather three days ago. He was planning on hiring a car in San Francisco and driving out to Sans Louis Obispo where his new grandson was reported to be sucking enthusiastically and raising the roof. He'd been saddened by the fact that he couldn't be on hand when his daughter gave birth but had insisted on taking a few days off when he got in town by way of compensation. His mind had been upon the welcome obligation just moments before. Right now, however, he was thinking only of the next few airborne seconds and how to stay that way, for it was as though his aircraft were torn from the established frames of reference for flight above the earth and deposited somewhere where the normal laws of physics didn't apply. He was thinking this, along with the stray and not particularly helpful thought that he'd never actually get to see his new grandson at all, when he gave the engines all they had left to give and hauled back on the yoke until it would tilt no more; thinking these things too as the red warning indicator came on, bringing with it the attendant rasp of the buzzer and the words, Overspeed Imminent, that flashed on an LCD panel.
The guy at Diana’s side emitted a womanish shriek and began clamouring for an attendant. He snatched at the woman who'd brought Diana's drink as she swept past him. But she didn't react, didn't even turn around and promise she'd be there in a moment.
'Something is definitely wrong.' he whined in her ear. 'We're in trouble!”
'Calm down, for God's sake. It's OK. We've probably hit an electrical storm or turbulence. It happens all the time.'
'Why won't they tell me? All I want to know is what’s happening, for Crissake.'
'The crew have their hands full. You're not helping. Panic is communicable. We're back into level flight aren't we? The lights are back on aren't they?'
He blinked. 'Yes.'
'So where's the problem? Keep this up and you’ll get yourself arrested. In any case it looks like the flap is subsiding.'
Only briefly agitated the rest of the passengers were settling down again, the cabin staff making the minimum of fuss. One mouthed something to her colleague who shook her head in return. A light pulsed above the door to the flight-deck and the attendant who'd served Diana, evidently the senior of the group, passed within. The others watched her then returned to their fetching and carrying. Cheap plane, years old, hardly ever grounded for maintenance. Of course things went wrong. Inevitably there were problems with relays that stuck and circuits that went paranoid. Minor things that didn't amount to much. The engine whine was constant - albeit high from the extra thrust behind the aborted ascent - and the craft's flight stable, if maybe a little twitchy.
Her mind went back to Lee McCorrister. Her memories of him were sweet and yet very, very painful. She didn't want to be disturbed from them.
They'd arranged to meet each other again in the same Blue Moon Bar later in the week. He was already waiting for her, glass in hand, when she arrived. She noted that his drink was non-alcoholic. A soda. This time, there had been precious little preamble. They sat very close to each other, a proximity which readily became an embrace, and Diana felt the bulge of his hard-on pressing against her thigh right from the start. Back in her apartment they began stripping each other and - too eager even to make it to the bed - copulated on Diana's old sofa, spread out beneath the window that overlooked the street. This time there was no hesitation on Lee's part. He entered her massively before she'd even finished getting her panties completely off; they dangled from the ankle of a leg kicked high in the throes of ecstasy, frilly pink colours raised to his triumph in the battle of sex. That second time Lee had been in full command. He needed no encouragement. He humped heavily and confidently, moving around to burrow ever deeper. When he climaxed - which to her delight was after she orgasmed twice - he kissed her and raked his fingers through her hair, still inside her, before sliding free and moving down to mouth her breasts and the hard little protuberances of her tingling nipples.
A few moments later she reached out to fondle him intimately and found to her astonishment that he was hard all over again. With the pleasure her touch brought, he was back inside almost before she retrieved her hand. Lee bucked and convulsed. A thin film of perspiration formed under Diana’s palms as they roved the steel-hard muscle of Lee's back. He was making love to her as though this were the first time man had had sex with woman, making up for a short-fall in the history of human procreation.
Afterwards they lay panting, he on top of her still, too exhausted to move. They slept a while that way. When they stirred, to Diana's exquisite delight, he went at her a third time, albeit slower and altogether more ponderously; each stroke of his penis a journey of physical empathy, almost reverent in its understanding of her cunt. It was quite dark by then. The only light in the apartment was the winking of red neon from the burger place across the street and the occasional flare of headlights from cars leaving the parking bays that chevroned the cracked sidewalk. With Lee's final straining emission came the words, 'I love you, Diana. I love you!' followed by the last convulsion of a body of whipcord and steel before it quiesced in satiety.
She levered him off her. Relaxed beside him. Her legs gaped open and her belly heaved. She gasped for breath. Her thighs were smeared in sticky, sliding spunk. Her back hurt from the pressure of his fingers where they gouged during the bear-hug that preceded his ejaculations; the hickeys on her breasts where he had mouthed too hard in the inter-coital episodes were beginning to sting and her nipples cried out with the pain left by his sharp young teeth.
Diana desperately needed to tell this young man that she loved him too and would have done so were it not that this was only their second date. Lee was just a kid of twenty who's main need in life was sex. Not a relationship. What ever he might aver to the contrary, not that. When he said he loved her he probably just meant he was cumming into her.
Silent, Diana pecked him on one cheek, prised herself down between his legs, and licked the cooling spunk from his belly. She licked it too from the thick tangle of hair where it seemed almost to foam; the sweet, supple penile tissue where it clung like an outer membrane. She straightened and forced his hands between her thighs and made him smear his essence over her breasts and belly. She turned about: made him stroke her rump; the smooth, curvature of her dorsal plain. Diana Fuller insisted they go to bed that way, sex-stained and dirty. They hit the sack and settled under a heavy quilt that shut out the rainy night. When the sun woke her she climbed upon him again, finding him sleepy and dry. Once more Diana took him into her mouth and set to work, not quitting until cock-flesh cramped and Lee's flat belly quivered and she swallowed down the last squirt his testicles had to offer; thinking that he tasted like cream this Lee, that she wanted to sustain herself on this ambrosia and nothing more.
Throughout, Diana badly needed to return his declaration of love. That she loved him was true enough: loved him like she'd never believed it possible to love anyone; loved him at first sight like the guy she'd been waiting for all her life. She wanted to tell him that with so much of his sperm inside her it was impossible for her not to conceive and that she was glad she was destined to do so. She wanted to tell him she'd be happy to walk down the aisle with him that way if need be, naked and smeared in his warm ejaculate, proud of the things he'd done to her.
But the only aisle was the aisle of this twenty-year old aircraft. It was taking her away from the life that might have been.
That illusory life with Lee.
Because among the tiny and insignificant lies Lee had told her one big one.
Just one.
The gasping jet engines roared up to a scream that made the metal floor vibrate beneath her feet. A judder ran through the fuselage which for a moment, in the depths of her reverie, made her think she was humping McCorrister again. There was a reek of jet-fuel. A sudden kick in the small of her back flung the half-drunk brandy from her grasp so that the plastic vessel rolled to the floor. The engines ran up to a howl that made her cover her ears with both hands until - just as it seemed that the god-awful noise was going to split open her skull - it stopped. In its wake came an eerie vacuum of silence, rapidly filled by the yelling of the people around her.
Just as the engine noise ceased, so the cabin lights went out again, all of them, and this time stayed out. The in-flight movie died and the ashtray on the back of the seat in front vibrated into a blur. The aircraft gave a sickening lurch forward, yawed unaccountably, then dipped its nose into a sixty-degree dive that - if the on-board instrumentation had still been operating and thus able to record it - would have registered as having taken place in a little under three seconds.
From behind there came a groan of tormented metal and something seemed to snap, as if great tension were suddenly released throughout the length of the plane. A young attendant was torn off her feet and slammed head-first into the forward bulkhead and - her thin neck snapping like a twig - killed instantly. A screaming child was catapulted into an overhead compartment, bounced from the head of a terrified woman, killing her outright, and lay silent where it fell. Its body slid down the aisle with the aircraft's turning moment in that awful instant of hiatus before...
...the plunge began.
It was a descent like the world's worst roller-coaster ride. Diana Fuller was slammed back in her seat by the incredible gee forces and pinioned there so she could hardly breathe. Vapour cocooned the outside of the plane and what little daylight there was left to enter through the twin parallel lines of the tiny fuselage windows was further diminished. The interior of the plane became a kind of weird twilight which added to the mayhem. Then, as more internal systems broke down, fog formed once more; this time inside the cabin. There was a terrible pressure in her ears. Blood streamed from her nose and ran from her ears. A second later the de-pressurisation left Diana Fuller completely deaf and from that point on the terrible events all around her took place in a peculiar silence, as though she were watching a soundless re-run of the aircrash rather than actually experiencing it.
She saw the guy in the aisle seat beside her unbuckle his belt, his mouth open wide in a silent stream, the front of his trousers darkened by a large and spreading urine stain. He was battling against the terrible force of acceleration to leave his seat. For a moment, as he made to stand, he was flattened back against his seat, bent backwards over the headrest, and then was gone, vanished from sight, hurled to the back of the aircraft with a force that crushed the life out of him.
The body of the child killed moments before flew in his wake. It fluttered its way in a sprawl of dead limbs between the occupied seats, bumping into them and bouncing off. It caught up momentarily on some as though paying a strange post-mortem visit. The passage of the child's body was like that of strewn newspaper caught in the wind. For a few seconds it visited Diana, landing awkwardly on the seat occupied a moment before by her presumably now dead companion. It was a boy of four or five years of age. He was dressed well in a pale green sports shirt and dark track-suit bottoms. For a second or so he looked at her, almost as though he might be about to make conversation. His head lolled to the right at a hideously unnatural angle, flapping around as though it were insecure, his black hair was ruffled and his pale blue eyes looked directly at her. Vacuous eyes. Dead eyes. The illusion that he might be about to speak was augmented by the parted lips and the way they seemed to move as though forming words. Then he too was gone, continuing his acceleration-borne journey.
Next it was a descent that was way past any hope of recovery as the aircraft accelerated to a speed beyond that for which it was designed. For a few seconds the force of acceleration equalled that of gravity and loose objects became weightless: liberated cups and trays floated randomly, magazines, a couple of paper-back novels, a woman's purse. As the aircraft continued to accelerate so these objects began a simultaneous like-minded drift to the ceiling and finally settled there, pressed against it.
The angle of the dive got steeper. The plane began to screw and twist from side to side. Vibration ran up to such an intensity that it shook Diana's body as though her seat had turned into an electric chair. Lockers burst open and their contents instantly shot up and to the rear of the dying plane. Beneath her feet metal twisted and buckled. The lining of the fuselage seemed to get farther away. The plane began to corkscrew, suddenly lightened and imbalanced by the fact that the starboard wing was now completely torn off. The result was absolute disorientation: it was impossible to tell whether the plane was the right way up or had turned turtle; for what felt like a long period of time impossible to be sure that it had not even flipped longitudinally and was hurtling to the ground tail-first.
And the hideous acceleration just kept on building up.
Fragments of debris swirled past the window. Something that might have been a heavy bolt impacted against it and made the Plexiglas star a million times so that it was no longer possible to see out. There was an unexpected brightening of the light on board followed by a terrible rush of air from behind which sent her hair flying out. Vessels burst in her eyes, releasing blood into her retinas. Everything in her field of vision turned red. For the merest instant she blacked out, wishing it might have been longer. The plane had sheared in half. She was about to be smashed to pieces, the bits of her body inextricably mingled with those of her companions. She envied the young stewardess; envied the dead child who had come to say goodbye.
Diana Fuller knew she was screaming even though she couldn't hear a sound for her mouth was open and there was continuous sensation in her vocal chords. She knew she had urinated copiously because her pants and the nice yellow dress she had put on specially for the flight were saturated. She believed she had massively lost control of her bowels too for the stickiness at her rear and the stench of shit rising above that of the jet fuel couldn't mean anything else.
But maybe it didn’t matter so much now. Nature had chosen to ease the suffering of death and allowed her give up her senses one by one. The deafness became absolute. The red veil filtering her vision intensified as though intentionally shutting out all sight of the destruction around her. She felt the rent of metal but did not actually see the seats a few rows ahead sheer away from the disintegrating fuselage and plunge into the void. She felt the heat of the fire from the fuel tanks on the remaining port wing but could not see the orange flames making their way to her across the fuel-soaked air-sections ; clamouring behind the starred glass, signalling that they were coming in to consume her.
Mercifully, nor did Diana Fuller see the chunk of broken trim that came hurtling towards her and impacted clean in the centre of her brow, making the red vision black, pushing her into yet another void; the void that might have been...
…unconsciousness...
…or preferably death...
…at last ...
…thank God.
2
Sky.
Black night sky.
She lay blinking up at it, mesmerised.
To be truthful it wasn’t actually black at all but a wondrous thing; an infinite, seething coruscation, a firmament of stars, planets and nebulae so precise that it was as if the sky had become a gigantic planetarium displaying the Milky Way in all its candid grandeur, down to every last speck.
She thought these things as she contemplated it from her bed of soft grass; careful not to move around too much in case the delicious tranquillity that had settled over her shattered like the dream she feared it might only be.
Overhead, unimaginably huge and ancient gas clouds – which she correctly interpreted as inter-stellar nebulae - made towering structures of vaporous permanence; cliff faces carved into the heavens. If she stared hard enough she could actually distinguish the discs of planets moving around their distant alien suns while other stars, bright spheres of white and yellow fire, endlessly travailed their own arcane paths. The majesty of creation itself might have been revealed that night; the Milky Way turned more wonderfully than it had ever done before and it appeared to be doing so for an audience of one. There was no-one else around here. At least no-one she had as of yet detected.
That was when the true paradox of blackness struck. The sky only seemed black because in contrast to the brilliance of the stars the interstellar void was black. Black as sable. Blacker than any night sky in the light-smearing smog of any city, meaning she couldn't she couldn’t be close to a town, even though she'd lived in those places all her life. To add to the mystery nor were the patterns of stars exactly familiar; the obvious constellations, Orion, the Plough, the Great Bear, were nowhere in evidence. It seemed that the cosmos had rearranged itself into some amazingly complex structure in which every pattern of stars harmonized geometrically with every other. The harmony of the spheres? She almost giggled. One could easily get a complex over this, beautiful sight though it was. But wouldn't that too be just one complex on top of another? The new thought ached. She couldn’t remember but thought perhaps it might.
So she sighed and relaxed back into the grassy bed, mildly irritated that she couldn’t figure out the second thing that made the sky so special: so different to the stars she'd gazed at a million times before. It was something easy, she intuited; something downright basic but she couldn’t quite get a handle on it. There was no major mystery about something so routine as a tranquil night sky; except for, and there was no denying it, its incredible beauty this time round, the unfamiliar patterns, its clarity and... for...for... for...
...hell... yes!...
It hadn't even been dark the last time she'd looked! That was.. .well.. moments ago! It hadn't been dark because it was still only early afternoon and she'd been thinking she'd never seen a bluer, more glorious sky. The sky had stayed that way, just as bright and just as perfect, even as something happened which had contrived to deprive her of her appreciation of its beauty.
That was something bad, very bad indeed, even if she didn’t know quite what just yet.
Diana Fuller gave a deep yawn that trailed off into a whimpering sigh and stretched out. It was tempting to nestle back into the cosseting warmth and go to sleep there, a desire made all the more acute by the fact that trying to remember made her head hurt like hell. She sighed a second time, and coming in on its concluding cadence, a soft breeze ruffled the tall grass and made its stalks and strands bend in secret whispers. The breeze caressed her cheeks with soothing fingers and confided in her that everything was going to be all right: that she was welcome here. Would be properly cared for. Nursed. It told her not to move around too much because movement causes pain and it is therefore better to lie still, to sleep, until pain is gone.
Wise advice for in addition to the terrible headache that seemed to be splitting her skull her hip was alternately numb and throbbing while, contrarily, one leg was devoid of sensation one moment and alive as though with a thousand gnawing insects the next. Her ribs hurt and twisting pain locked up the small of her back with grim, agonising tenacity. Nausea held her in its unceasing grip. All the same, Diana sensed that the nature voices said sooth: that there was indeed something intrinsically benign about this strange environment. Wherever and whatever it might be she would be just fine here.
Now the breeze changed direction and took time out to rake through her hair and kiss her hurting brow. She lay back, heeding the unheard voices, and watched sleepily as tall fronds of grass bent shadowy across the heavens, like busy fingers making adjustments to the stars. She tried to resist but her eyelids began to droop, the pain to seep away. The night sang a lullaby of breezes and silences against an almost tactile darkness that was growing ever more mellow. More complete.
She knew that song. It was a siren of death.
Diana Fuller struggled to get to her knees but the effort failed because the moment she got off her back the ship of pain that was anchored to her skull turned full rudder and slammed back into harbour, bringing pain to the shattered berth that had once had been her cranial vault. Agony worse than anything before! The perfectly detailed cosmos began an on-going rotation to the west without actually going anywhere, quickly blurring into a huge tapestry of indistinct grey, then more pain came to join in. This time it shot through her hip like a spear. The numb left leg collapsed and rolled her helplessly onto one side. She had no option but to lie there, slowly gathering reserves, eyes closed against a coruscation of blinding retinal flashes and bilious green spangles that must end in… end in... what?
Maybe she slept again for when the spangles cleared time had wound on. She'd shifted position and thereby altered her angle of view substantially. This time she was looking directly at the moon: a disk of brilliant silver in the crystal sky; an over large theatrical parody that bore down as though a hundred-thousand miles closer than the reality, its mountains, valleys and white dusty seas all plainly visible. It emitted a light that was a close rival to daylight and in some respects superior for it was pure and cool; a soothing ice-cream sheen that illuminated the surrounding terrain in a gleaming silvery-white, quite delightful to behold.
And what a terrain! The shift of angle had made all the difference for whereas previously her view had been obscured by the rise of a knoll, now everything was revealed.
She seemed to be lying in some sort of unbounded meadow or grassland. It stretched uninterrupted to a line of trees around a mile distant that marked the edge of a dense forest. Away to her right the meadow shelved away gradually before coming to an abrupt halt at a broad crag where reflected moonlight glinted brightly from a chalk cliff face. Closer to home, a cheerful little copse of elms and oaks boarded an enormous lake that stretched mirror calm into the distance. On the far bank a further ridge, this time dark and jagged, marked a significant change in terrain: not a place of grasslands and pampering breezes here but more akin to desert; harsh, barren and unwelcoming.
She turned her head. No ship this time, but pain attacked her neck like the executioner’s axe. Yet the reward justified the discomfort amply. Everything behind was bathed in that gorgeous moon glow; a world of downy, sericeous grassland blending in the far distance into open moor. Way over to the horizon there was yet another imperfect line that might have been more hills, though seemingly more grand this time; a mountain range, imposing and remote. A fantastic, dream-like, breath-taking place.
But wasn't this a time to act, not admire?
Diana rolled onto her knees, dug her knuckles into the earth and levered herself to her feet. The mere act of standing proved an undertaking of monumental torment but upright she was and surprisingly not even swaying so much, though her legs tottered wide and unsteady like a toddler who'd found his feet for the first time. The universe spun briefly again then came to a halt. A continuous buzz that until a moment ago she hadn't even been aware of faded from her head. There was the tang of vomit in her mouth and she noticed that warm, slippery puke was sliding down her chest.
Diana filled her lungs with the sweet air and made herself breathe regularly, a practice that for the first time in her life needed conscious thought. She ran a hand through her hair, probed her throbbing scalp and did her best not to cry: the erstwhile work-of-art-hairdo was a tangled mess smeared through with a gooey substance that could only be blood. She sniffed her fingers and the distinctive rich and coppery smell removed all doubt. Nor did the damage stop there for her dress hung from her in tatters, torn away at the shoulder so that one breast was exposed in the thin lace cup of her brassiere, and a rent had appeared at the waist exposing her pants and an expanse of slim white belly. A large square of fake silk dangled from the hem where something had ripped it away. The dress had set her back close on a hundred-ninety dollars; that she did remember. It was the first time of wearing because she had bought it specifically for an event she could not remember.
A quick search of the grass in her immediate vicinity confirmed that there was no trace of her personal things; the ladies pads she never went anywhere without, her purse - meaning that she was deprived both of her slender reserves of cash and her over-hot credit cards. There was a strange, amnesiac’s anxiety at the back of her mind too that kept insisting that something else of great importance was also gone. The feeling scared her.
And now that she was on her feet again sensation showed no mercy in the manner of its return: circulating blood roused idle nerves in the hitherto numb leg in a savage bout of pins and needles; she shuffled involuntarily, as though in so doing she might avoid this fresh discomfort, and on attempting to correct the dishevelled remnants of her dress discovered that a hideous dark bruise extended from crotch to knee. She whimpered. It was impossible to tell in the two-dimensional moonlight if the skin was broken or bleeding - until a timid fingertip exploration brought a whole new layer of pain. Intact but bruised like a watermelon. It even hurt where the gossamer material of her ripped dress whispered against it. This was the leg which had initially refused to budge and whatever had happened to it clearly wasn't good. A terrible pulsing pain came from deep inside that might signify a fracture and so taught was the skin from the bruising beneath that it seemed liable to rupture at any moment. Her hip wasn't right, though the mere fact that she was able to move indicated there was neither break nor dislocation. Her foot felt like nothing at all. The damaged leg might as well have ended in space. She felt under the sad tatters of her dress and below the stubbornly resilient lace-work of her bra to find that bruises and swollen tissue covered her ribs from one side of her body to the other. Diana yelped as she touched her tentative way along but so far as she could tell no ribs were broken.
One side of her neck was bruised and inflamed and much too sore to examine. Gloop on her fingers from the brief probe showed that blood had flowed there only recently. She tried to offer the usual supplication, ‘Oh shit,’ but all that came out was an incoherent gurgle.
Those were the physical symptoms. They were bad enough, yet there were others which were potentially worse. The loss of memory. She had no comprehension of where she might be or for what purpose and no recollection of how she came to be here. Only the basics remained: her name was Diana Fuller, she was female and a full-grown adult. This scant knowledge, precious though it might be, was the sum total of her wisdom.
And there was worse to come.
Fear, pain and shock - or maybe it was just the body’s natural purgative response - worked their misery and her gorge rose. She gagged twice, almost blacked out with pain, then blazed vomit. At first a thin ganglion of lava forced up through her throat then it was followed by a rush like a burst dam. She let it go. Heard it spatter and dribble around her. There was a hideous stench. Strings of acid dangled from her mouth and she instinctively wiped them away with the back of a hand. Her mouth tasted foul! Now that her stomach was evacuated it felt like some old tin-can rusting away in her guts. Her headache pounded, reminding her along with the foul taste, that the thirst she had until now failed to recognise was intense. God, was she dehydrating? How long since she last took fluid? The acid taste of vomit redoubled thick and sour.
But the lake beyond was a living and kindly thing that understood and even knew her name for it called out to her, offering inaudible words of encouragement. It spoke to her as a might a nature spirit. The lake was inland and so must be fresh. A small wood swept down to the very edge and ended in a cluster of healthy willows. Healthy specimens didn't grow near polluted water. Diana was needy in other ways too. Her skin was defiled by gore and dirt and the odours of faeces and urine rose up disgustingly from her mid-section. Besides, those injuries needed to be cleaned and bathed.
There was nothing – and no-one – around. The night was balmy and pleasant. The lowland terrain meant that there would be no icy run-offs. Besides, she somehow simply knew that the waters of the lake would be mild.