Excessica Anthology BOX SET Winter (38 page)

But
he was abruptly gone. The potion had worked after all. She felt spiritually and
physically restored. Her soul was back, complete, and her body was unbloated.
Apparently it wasn't who climaxed first, it was that when he soaked himself
three times in the potion he was lost. Had he held off, this night, or taken
the trouble to wash her out thoroughly before indulging his appetite, he would
have won. So she had won after all, largely by default.

She
was flushed with her victory. But another part of her felt guilty regret. That
hideous sex--

She
actually had a hankering for more of it. The demon had sincerely appreciated
and desired every part of her body, from her knees to her breasts, externally
and internally, and caused it to respond in a profoundly guilty yet
appreciative manner. Solita truly loved her husband, but he was completely moral,
which meant sexually unimaginative, and often away from home. She needed more,
without violating her marriage vow. She craved sinful sex. The prospect of
having virtually limitless, totally weird, remarkably imaginative, repulsively
dirty, thoroughly wicked sexual fulfillment with no physical or social
consequence—what more could a secretly lascivious woman want?

The
incubus had evoked desires in her that she had never known she possessed.
Wide-open oral sex, anal orgasm, massive penetration, being filled to bursting
with lava-like semen—she would be ashamed ever to confess receiving any
pleasure from such wild notions. No mortal man could even hope to ream her with
a foot-long phallus that disgorged quarts of steaming ejaculate, and such a
thing would be a medical disaster physically. But in the spirit realm it was
not only possible, it was glorious. The demons of hell knew exactly how to
indulge their basest passions.

In
fact she now realized what she had literally never dreamed of before this
encounter: she was a sexual pervert. The incubus had invoked her masochistic
lust. Simulated sexual brutality and degradation was what really turned her on.
She
liked
being roughly raped and savagely sodomized. Having an
impossibly massive member rammed into her desperately tight orifices, and
ludicrously voluminous ejaculate forced in, making her swell like a water
balloon. Having a penis like a fire-hose nozzle thrust deep inside her,
blasting at full force, blowing her channel up, and not being able to let any of
the viscous liquid flow back out. Painful penetration and pressure in her most
private parts, punishing her for her degraded desire—that was the true
source of her pleasure. Sex was only really fulfilling when it
hurt
,
bodily and emotionally.

She
could never hope to get anything like that from her husband. In fact she would
be humiliated if he even ever suspected what was in her secret heart, or guilty
gut, as it were. And she never wanted it physically anyway, only in her dreams.
She needed the services of the incubus for that. If he was a rat, she now knew
herself to be a female rat.

But
what could she do about it? The incubus was gone, captured by the magic potion.
Had she discovered her illicit urge too late?

Maybe
the matron at the magic shop would agree to share her captive on occasion.
Solita now understood the woman's desire, and shared it; that would surely
count for something. A confined demon, forced to do anything a woman, or two
women, demanded—that could be sexual heaven. So to speak, as there was
nothing any heavenly power would approve about it.

Hellish
temptation and opportunity, with no physical impact. She was ready. More than
ready.

“Mommy,
will the monster come again?”

At
least she could reassure her innocent child, however guilty her own secret
heart. “No, dear.”

“Should
we put in more potion, just in case?”

“No,
that was just to stop the monster from getting in there. There's no need for it
now.”

“So
it won't lick me any more with its big hot tongue?”

Solita
kept her face straight, her voice even. “It won't, dear; it's gone.”

“Are
you sure?” Lita seemed oddly disappointed, when she should have been relieved.
That was curious.

“Yes,
dear. It is safe for you to sleep in that bed now, though you don't have to.”

“How
do you know?”

She
would have to be more candid than she liked. “Because I let it lick me, and the
potion got rid of it.”

“Did
it run its tongue into your wee-wee?”

Damn!
The thing
had
invaded Lita. Fortunately she had no way to comprehend the
significance. Much of her innocence could still be salvaged. “Yes. Into my
vagina and rectum. That's how it got dosed with the potion. I had to let it, to
get rid of it.”

Lita
turned a disconcertingly knowing look on her. “Was it fun?”

The
emotional pavement shielding her from hell began to crack. Lita had liked it!
She had been repulsed and afraid, but also felt the first stirring of desire.
Already. This could mean that she was another potential sexual masochist.

In
fact it made sense. Lita had spent the first night in the bed, and the incubus
had come to her. If it preferred having a woman without resistance, wouldn't it
seek those who were secretly amenable to its attention? Maybe it attacked only
a certain type, when she made herself available by lying in that bed. So it had
gone after Lita, knowing her nature, and then after Solita, knowing hers. Like
daughter, like mother.

She
had thought she had saved her daughter, but maybe that was impossible. Now what
was she to do?

She
could find no acceptable answer. Rat bait would not work this time. Not when
the evil was as much in the victims as in the perpetrator.

Had
the rat won after all?

ABOUT
PIERS ANTHONY

Piers Anthony, whose web site is
www.hipiers.com
, has been writing and and publishing since 1963,
with 139 books and counting. He was on the New York Times bestseller list in
the 1980s with 21 titles. He and his wife of 52 years live on their small tree
farm in central Florida, which resemble his fantasy land of Xanth.

Ikiryoh

by
Sam Kepfield

In
the last spring of a war that had begun in glory and shouts of
banzai!
and which was now grinding to ignoble defeat, a young girl lived in the capital
of a nation which had not been invaded in four thousand years.

Yuki
Saito was eighteen, and lived in Tokyo with her parents and two younger sisters
Nikki and Ayame. Her father worked in the Finance Ministry, her mother taught
school. Her older brothers had joined the military. Hikaru had died on Saipan. Katsu’s
ship was sunk during the battle for the Philippines a year earlier.

Yuki
and her family were preparing for bed one early spring night when air raid
sirens sounded. They rushed outside into the streets filled with panicked
neighbors, heading for a shelter. She looked over her shoulder, and could see
her parents falling behind in the mob, carrying Nikki and Ayame. They waved
their arms and shouted, telling her to keep running. The explosions and flames
rolled through the city towards them.

A
subway station loomed ahead. The crowd carried Yuki, weeping for her parents,
down into the bowels of the city. As they slammed the doors shut, Yuki heard
screams over the thunder of the American bombs. She did not sleep, and after
the rumbling above stopped, Yuki clambered over debris to street level.

The
city was gone. Only chimney stumps and shells of the occasional brick building
still jutted up from a plain of rubble. Charred smoking bodies lay in the
street. Her neighborhood was reduced to ruins. She gathered wooden and metal
debris from the street and built a small lean-to. It was her home for the next
few months.

Then
the Americans arrived.

They
bore “gifts from heaven,” as some called it—food, clothing, candy and
gum. Yuki was one of the children who swarmed around the trucks and jeeps laden
with supplies. She felt no gratitude towards those who killed her family. She
took their provisions as a matter of simple survival.

The
city was soon swarming with the ugly hairy Americans. Most were friendly, but
Yuki saw the swaggering arrogance of conquerors ill-concealed by the easy
charm. They gave orders by day, and by night led around Japanese women. Many
were young girls, but also war widows whoring themselves to the men who had
killed their husbands.

Yuki
soon found out how thin the veneer of American friendliness was. One night she
was walking back to her shack from a relief station. Passing under a bridge
near the city’s financial district (left conspicuously intact), she looked up
and saw two American sailors approaching her. She pulled up the collar of her ratty
coat and hurried her step.

Ten
feet ahead of her, they stopped, and began talking to her in English. Yuki
didn’t understand. She tried to pass by, but one of them reached out and
grabbed her arm. She tried to break away, but the sailor’s grip tightened, and
he pulled her back. They continued to jabber at her, and one reached out, put
his hand inside her coat, and began feeling her small breasts. She struggled,
but his companion’s grip tightened. They turned to one another, shrugged and
laughed.

They
dragged her, struggling, into an alley. Yuki realized then that they were going
to rape her. They ripped off her clothes.

The
hatred that simmered below the surface from the time she heard of Hikaru’s
death, which had been on a boil since her family’s death six months earlier,
became a white fury. Yuki became light-headed, her knees buckled, and something
left her. She was suddenly outside her body. She entered a mind filled with
lust, and realized that it belonged to the man trying behind her, undoing his trousers
and forcing himself inside her. She searched and found a bright core inside
him, wrapped herself around it, and pulled it out with her back to her body. She
could feel him falter, and his manhood slid from her as he crumpled to the
pavement. She did the same to his companion, standing over his friend,
shouting. He turned to her, fists raised. In an instant, he crumpled.

Yuki
was left hugging a wall, naked, shivering and confused. She sank to the ground,
feeling the cold rough concrete under her buttocks. She stared at the two
sailors for a long time. They were dead.

Confusion
became terror. Someone would be along here soon. If she were found here with
two dead Americans, the possible consequences terrified her. Her hopelessly
torn clothes were rolled in a bundle, and she took one of the blouses to wear;
it fit her like a short dress. She ran back to her small shack in the
shantytown.

The
next day, scavenging for food or items to trade at a market, she replayed last
night’s events. Unarmed, she had killed two healthy men, by draining their life
energy. She kept looking over her shoulder, afraid that she had been seen, and
that American MPs would be behind her. But no one came to arrest her.

Yuki
also noticed that despite her hunger, she had more energy this day; she
surmised it was from the two sailors last night. Even with the added energy,
survival was a struggle. Yuki’s spent days scrambling for food. Even with
American generosity, distribution was spotty. Some days she got enough to eat,
some days she got nothing. Broken tree limbs and wooden debris from buildings
served as firewood. She wandered about a ruined city surrounded by a dejected
and defeated people.

The
black markets offered what she needed, but she had no money. She strolled by
the markets, eyeing the food hungrily and the clothes with longing. There was
no economy, though, and no way to earn what she needed. The only jobs were as
servants for the Americans.

No
way, save for one, as old as man himself.

She
recoiled at the idea. Prostituting herself was bad enough, but to the Americans—the
only ones who seemed to have any money—was more vile than she could
imagine. Except –

Except
that it might accomplish another one of her goals.

So
she found herself in the Ginza district, where she had heard that the U.S. Army
had established a “recreation and amusement center”—a legal whorehouse. Yuki
arrived shabbily dressed and barefoot. She was told that her duties would be
servicing American soldiers. In return, she would received food, clothing and
shelter. Yuki reluctantly agreed, and she was hired. She lied about her
experience.

The
station was sparsely furnished and smelled of new wood. Her room had only a
lone futon with sheets. She was shown to a shower, given a new silk robe, and
shown to her room. Within ten minutes, a burly GI was escorted to her room. There
were no formalities—he simply unbuckled his pants, slipped off her robe,
and mounted her. Yuki gritted her teeth and bore it, the anger welling inside
her. She imagined him bayoneting her brother Hikaru, who had played with her
and read to her when a child. The anger grew, she grew weak, and felt the
spirit leave her and enter the GI. The rage she felt was not as strong as
during the rape; he lived. He finished, pulled up his pants, and left.

The
spirit left with him. Yuki panicked—was her power gone? Was she now
helpless before the American brutes? She began crying, thinking she had been
consigned to eternal whoredom for no reason, no chance for revenge. It lasted
for five minutes, until the next GI was shown in. He was smaller and less hairy
than his predecessor, but was rougher with her. To her amazement and delight,
she felt the rage rise in her. She fed it with images of her parents and
sisters incinerated by the bombs, her brother Katsu entombed in a steel coffin.
The spirit left her and entered the American, as he came inside her.

And
so it went. The first day, she repeated the monstrous exercise fifteen times. Between
them the Americans said no more than a handful of words, which added to her
anger. She wasn’t even a person, worthy of conversation. She was an object. In
return, she put out a minimum of effort. They didn’t notice, didn’t care.

The
next day was the same. And the next. And on it went. She grew weak, even though
she was eating better and sleeping better than she ever had. Five days later,
she felt a stirring in her as a sailor thrust away at her. A spirit had
returned, stronger than ever before. She was energized by the lifeforce it had
drained from the Marine who had taken her on the second day. The sailor
finished, and another spirit went out with him.

After
a month, Yuki had saved a neat little sum. She spent little on cosmetics and
fripperies. She was saving enough to get out of this hell. The going rate was
15 yen, and she got half. She had shut off her emotions in order to survive.
Some girls were not so lucky. Ume, a small quiet girl who had been a typist
during the war, committed suicide after a week. Others stayed longer, but the
turnover was huge. By January 1946, Yuki was a veteran. All the while, more
spirits returned, bringing life energy to her, leaving the Americans greatly
weakened, in some cases dead.

And
then the order came to close the houses. Yuki gathered what she had earned and
searched in vain for housing. In the meantime, she bought a few clothes and
began plying her trade on the streets.

Yuki
read the issues of the
Asahi Shimbun
posted on kiosks around the city. She
picked up copies of
Stars and Stripes
from trashcans. She saw a few
notices of GI deaths, and smiled to herself. With no housing, so she slept
where she could—in a park, in a ruined building, in a warehouse. Baths
were hastily taken in the river.

One
dark evening after a month, she walked down a street in the Asakusa District,
home to most of the city’s theaters and burlesque shows. Yuki had been to a
market on a night off. She was tired, and it was a couple of miles to the
deserted office building where she had been staying for the last two weeks.

She
saw a beautiful woman leaning against a light pole, a
panpan
, or “woman
of the evening,” as Americans called them. Unlike Yuki, she appeared to be on
duty, given the short cut of her skirt and blouse. Her hair was long and pinned
behind her ears, falling long down her back. Her face was delicate, and rouged.
They eyed each other, and Yuki felt a shudder run through her. The other
woman’s eyes went wide, and she recovered.

American
soldiers streamed out of a theater. Yuki pulled her collar up and hurried past
them. She had gotten halfway down the block when she heard voices behind her. Yuki
turned, and saw five Americans in Army uniforms approaching her.

“Hey,
honey, you want to have a party?’ leered one of them, a blonde man with his hat
at a rakish angle.

“No,
thank you,” Yuki replied in English.

“We
can make it worth your time,” the blonde man said, flashing a large wad of
bills.

“No
thank you,” she repeated, trying to get around them. She was wearing a
conservative floral print dress, and didn’t think she looked like a prostitute.
Typical Americans
, she thought disgustedly,
thinking their money can
buy anything
.

The
men advanced. “Well, you had your chance to get paid for it, honey.” A huge
hand clamped on her shoulder, and dragged her into the alley by the theater,
down past the back of the theater and into a recessed area. Yuki began
screaming, but another huge hand covered her mouth. More hands tore off her
skirt and blouse. She was spun around and thrown face-first against the brick
wall.

No,
no, not again
, she screamed inside. Her eyes fluttered, and closed. The
spirit wakened, stronger than ever. It built up like a static discharge,
roiling inside her and growing more rapidly then she had ever known. She
focused and the spirit flew from her so violently that she hit her head against
the wall. Blood trickled down her cheek.

A
scream behind her, and she heard the GI collapse. Hands whirled her around and
slammed her back against the wall. One of the Americans was unbuckling his
trousers. The spirit rushed back into her, making her faint momentarily. As she
revived, she felt a hand between her legs. Her rage boiled over again, loosing
another spirit. The second man grabbed his head and screamed.

The
other three were confused, scared and angry. Two of their comrades lay dead
with horrible expressions of pain. Yuki had caused it. Two of them held her,
while the third attempted began to strike her. His first blow landed on her
cheek, making Yuki see stars. It was too much—three against one. One of
them unholstered a .45.

“Don’t
matter if she’s alive or dead,” he grinned sickly. The others nodded, and the
man pointed the gun at her. Yuki closed her eyes, and cringed as it went off,
deafening her. She felt no pain, opened her eyes. The man with the gun was
dropping, as were his companions, grimacing as they fell.

Yuki
turned and not ten feet away stood the woman she had passed slumping against
the brick wall, her knees buckling. Yuki flew to catch her.

“Domo,”
the woman said. “I’ve never handled three before. It is very exhausting.” She
straightened.

“Never
done three before?” Yuki was confused.

The
other woman looked at her with old eyes. “
Ikiryoh
.” Yuki gave her a
blank stare. “Your spirit of anger.”

“That’s
how you –“

“Yes.
You have it, too. I could tell. There is a sort of kinship between us. I felt
it in you, and when they attacked you–“ she pointed to the dead Americans—“it
was like a loudspeaker.” She narrowed her eyes, and took a good look at Yuki. A
hand reached out to face. Yuki flinched, but the woman’s fingers found her face
and caressed her cheek. Yuki began flushing, the touch so unlike what she was
used to. “You are too young for this.”

“Who
are you?” Yuki asked, drawing away from her, feeling fright along with an
unfamiliar emotion making her heart beat faster.