The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza (15 page)

“Wish what?” I asked and peered past him and the archway to the scene inside. Almost immediately I looked away. “Oh,” I said suddenly understanding.

“Wish you didn’t have to go in there,” he whispered.
 

Inside this offense, bodies, naked and sweating, strained and pressed against each other. When I could bring myself to dare to look again, I saw clearly, hands caressing, groping, mouths kissing—licking.

“Oh my God,” I whispered and turned away again. My heart thundered in my ears as my blood rushed hot and embarrassed to my face.
 

“Carmen,” Ray said.

I couldn’t even answer him, couldn’t even think about entering this offense while he stood here, waiting for me—watching me.
 

“You need to go in and you’re going to have to hurry.”
 

I nodded my head without looking at him. His hand picked up mine and held it for a moment before he brought my palm to his lips. “Try to keep your head in there,” he said.

I took a breath and gave him a tight smile. “I will,” I said forcing a light tone. “Be back out in a flash.”

“Okay,” he nodded and dropped my hand.
 

When I turned and faced the arch, my body trembled. I kept my eyes low and avoided, as best I could, looking directly at the bodies in front of me, and stepped over the threshold.
 

Immediately, I felt it. Like a warm vibration at my core, a hot liquid running through my limbs. My lips opened and a soft pant escaped me.
 

My eyes closed. I wanted to be touched.

I felt like hunger. No—starvation. My body was starving for touch. And then, as if this feeling alone had the power to draw in a remedy, someone touched me and it felt like lightening traveling down my arm.

My eyes flew open.

In front of me, a beautiful boy with dark hair and piercing eyes smiled down at me as his finger finished tracing a path from my shoulder to my wrist. Without a word, he twined his fingers with mine and tilted his head like a question mark. When I didn’t resist, he stepped closer and used his free hand to brush my hair from my neck.
 

I wondered, for a moment, if this was what feeling drunk was like, and then melted into his arms.

His mouth was hot beneath my ear.
 

His hands ignited a fire as they swept down my back and landed on my hips. When he pulled me into him, I reached up and took his face in my hands and our mouths met. My tongue played against his lips and then stretched deep into his mouth. The more we kissed and pressed against each other, the hungrier I felt.
 

Suddenly, a red couch appeared beside us—or was it always there? My brain felt fuzzy and far away. Where was I again? The boy fell into the soft swell of the plush cushions and pulled me down after him.
 

My hands landed on his muscled chest—he was naked, and with a glance I noticed that his exposure was complete. Brazenly, without embarrassment, I stared at the whole of him, every last inch of him—and wanted him.
 

He smiled, as if he could read my desire in the air around us, and pulled my body down on top of him. His fingers pressed into the small of my back, his mouth opened against mine, and I could feel his hard desire against my now naked thigh.
 

I was naked too?
 

The shock of this jarred my mind and as this strange exotic boy continued his unrestricted exploration of my body, my eyes opened to the scenes beyond us, to the others around us, and what I saw stopped my rapid heart in mid beat.
 

Bodies, most looking like little more than lumps of flesh, stretching towards each other. Melting, yawning limbs without form, mouths gaping, tongues licking, eyes rolling—masses of skin rubbing against one and other, all in varying degrees of becoming less and less human.

A hot shiver ran over my breast. When I looked, I saw the boy, no longer beautiful in my eyes, his grotesquely long and pointed tongue wrapped around my bare nipple.

I screamed and pushed his mouth away.

His eyes, bare sockets, empty holes turned absently towards my face for only a moment and then forgot what, or even if, there had ever been anything beyond himself. His hands, webbed and club like, ran down each side of my body and tried to pulled me closer.

Panic expelled any lingering lust from my thoughts and I held up both of my hands against his chest trying to keep him as far from me as possible. His skin was soft and cold, like workable clay, and when he pulled harder and tried to close the small distance between us, my hands disappeared into him, folded into his flesh until only my wrists were visible.

Like the others around us, our bodies were tangled, mixing—molding into one senseless mass of nerves that rolled into and over on themselves. Trapped in ecstasy that was never satisfied.
 

“Lust,” I breathed, finally understanding exactly what this particular offense was about. But how to escape it?
   

Disgusted by the mere sight of him, I turned my face away and struggled to free myself from his taffy like embrace. With every pull of resistance, I felt his body harden, like drying cement, my hands seemed permanently set inside of him.

His mouth stretched towards mine.
 

“No,” I cried and tried to squirm away from him but his shifting flesh countered my every twist, driving us closer, burying me deeper.
 

His hands had taken root at my waist and were creeping deeper and deeper into my body. A hard ball of horror swelled in my throat and I choked on the rising sob of fear. I didn’t know what to do, how to get out, I was sinking further and further into this place—I would be trapped here forever.
 

With eyes so wide they felt ready to burst, I stared at the monstrous perversions all around me. The strength I’d been using to fight with the boy drained from my body and my muscles felt limp against their bones.
 

When his thigh brushed against mine, I felt it attach like an anchor to mine. The skin began to fuse between us.
   

Instinctively, I fell back, my body still trying to escape what my mind had practically surrendered to. We were now so enmeshed, so almost one thing, that the boy’s body simply moved with mine. Flailing backward, tripping over feet and legs that were not only my own, we tumbled backwards with him landing on top of me completely.
 

Near my ear, he moaned. For a second I wondered if our fall had injured him, hoped for a brief second that there may be an opportunity to escape. Then he arched his back and I felt a shiver run over him, his enormous mouth opened wide with euphoric intoxication, and he came down on top of me, burying me with his weight. His skin began to spread out over us like a suffocating blanket and I cried.
 

When a thousand tiny heads of his flesh began stretching out towards me, reached out to completely envelope me, I screamed.
 

Wild, desperate panic, a raging fire in my brain, my head, the only part of my body I could still move, shook spasmodically from side to side. My screams pierced the air all around us.

But no one else seemed to even notice.
 

Ray would notice.

Ray was watching.
 

My eyes, frantic and almost insane, found the space where I knew the entrance arch was, even though it was invisible on the inside of the offense.
   

Ray was there, standing, waiting, watching me disappear and helpless to do anything about it. Even though I couldn’t see him, I felt him, desperate—he would do anything to help me if he could.

But he could not.

When the first stretching heads of his flesh found mine, I felt them begin to burrow into my chest. More tears erupted from my throat but I shut my eyes against them.
 

With what few seconds I had left, I needed to think, not panic. All the offenses had a key—what was the key I needed here.
 

“I want you,” his words groaned at me. “I want you so much.” When he shifted, my own skin shifted as well, the sensation made bile rise up in my throat.
 

“I don’t want you,” I sobbed.

A release. So tiny I almost thought I imagined it, but it was real, I felt my fingers able to move, only slightly, inside of him.
 

How had that happened?

“I don’t want you,” I whispered and felt several of the small attachments between us slide from my skin, like a doctor removing a needle but it wasn’t enough, most of me was still tangled and undefined. “I don’t want you,” I said again and watched the rest of the small connections wither and recoil.

Now how do I separate from him completely—what was the answer?
 

This offense was about lust. The minute I had walked in I had wanted it, my body had practically screamed out for it and it didn’t matter who showed up, I was completely enthralled in the physical pull of the attraction.
 

All around me were people, no,
things
having sex. Sex with strangers. Sex without love.

And then I knew, exactly, what the key to this offense was. My eyes again flew to the place I knew Ray stood watching.
 

The key was Ray.

I knew exactly what I needed to do to free myself from this nightmare—and still, I hesitated.
 

When I saw the small pieces of flesh again reaching for me I took a breath and forced the words from me, “I love someone else,” whispered past my lips.
 

My hands came free, like boots pulling from a muddy bog, the slurp and suction was loud and difficult, but I was finally able to see them again.
 

“I love someone who loves me back.” My voice was bolder, more sure. ‘Loves me for me, not just because he wants me.” The boy’s legs separated from mine. All that remained were his hands buried deep into my sides.
 

I stared at the place I knew Ray stood and declared the truth out loud. “I love you. Somehow, I have always loved you and I know, with all my heart, that I am your everything.”

The feeling was awful, like the boy had been gripping my organs and then was suddenly forced to release them. My stomach heaved and my intestines twisted, but the rolling mass of flesh and desire was pushed from me completely. I watched, horrified, as it contracted back onto itself, writhed like a slug on the ground before me, and then began to slowly reform into the beautiful boy I had first seen.
 

He was blind to me now, and as the last of his leg changed from a disfigured lump of skin into the sculpted shape of a muscular calf, he turned from me and began kissing another girl, lost and wandering, wanting and longing, they both began to quickly melt into each other.
 

Breathless and weak, I got to my feet just as the space to escape opened before me.

There, on his knees, tears streaming down his face, Ray waited for me to return to him.
   

I didn’t want to touch him. Thankfully, he didn’t try. As if he knew, again with that uncanny ability to somewhat know what I was feeling and needing, Ray gave me space even though I could see from his face that it pained him to do so.
 

Still stunned and shaking from my encounter in the last offense, I could see that Ray was too. He had almost lost me, he had come very close—he knew, and he was helpless to do anything but watch me recede into the nightmare.
 

He said nothing, only stared at me, waiting for the chance to sweep me up into his arms and hold me close, press me to him—just like that boy.

Not yet. The visceral, suffocating memory was still too fresh, too real. Right now I needed air. Space. Boundaries between myself and everything else.
 

I existed, independent, free. I pulled air into my own lung and exhaled through my own mouth. After several moments of this, I nodded my head once, I was okay, and extended my hand for Ray to take.

That would have to settle him for now. Anything more physical than that was liable to spiral me back into a panic. “We should keep moving,” I said because I could see that Ray was unable to. He didn’t want to push me on or see me again almost lost.

In the distance, the moon hung just above the dark tree line near the gates—the choice to not go on was not ours to make.

We moved, slow and deliberate through the raw scrub landscape. Our feet pressed into the front of our shoes as we continued down, not able to stop and not wanting to reach the next obstacle. The collection of faints trailing after us had grown and seemed like a cloud now hanging over my head—a constant reminder of what waited for me should I run out of time in this place.
 

Without any trees to block the view, I could see the next archway ahead of us. Like a strange stone monument erected out of the dessert it stood waiting for me to reach it. A wave of dread rolled through me and Ray’s grip tightened on my hand. I felt tired. The effort to keep picking up my feet and moving them forward took everything I had. I worried about having the strength to make it through the next offense.

But I didn’t say so.

Still far away, the voices from inside reached us easily and the closer we got the louder they became. Standing at the arch and looking it, a hard and stony pit settled in my stomach.
 

Rage.

I stared into the scene of blood and violence before us. Angry, shouting faces. Fists swinging like hammers into the heads and backs of others using their feet to stomp and kick. Bodies laid broken and trampled, piled into hills that squirmed with further attempts to bite and claw out eyes.

The tears on my cheeks felt cold in the wind. “I can’t do this,” I said.

Ray said nothing. He folded me into his arms and held me up while I fell limp against his chest. I wished, more than anything, that I could stay inside the protective circle of him forever. His hand pressed my head gently to his chest and I felt his lips in my hair. “You’re stronger than you know Carmen.”