Best Lesbian Erotica 2013 (6 page)

Inside your body, there is a whole code, everything working together, keeping you
you
. Every cell cooperates, participates, lives and dies according to this, so that you stay perceptibly yourself. Everyone knows this, right?

My code is fucked. My code is magic. I don't stay myself. There is no center.

My body shook, convulsed. I lay on the bed. The pain started, like a crazy burn-itch all through me, like a muscle you want to stretch, like a cramp you can't relieve, pain growing and unremitting. I was consumed and I panted in it.

Then compression. Small, small, small. Quivering, twitching. Settling. Now relief. No more pain. No more words. Hunger. Heartbeat. Fast. Run run run. Skitter. Forever. Food. Small opening. Squeeze. Run run run. Fast. Fear, frozen. Big eyes big heat near me. Frozen, frozen, fear. Claws at me, flying. Run run run. Fast fast. Run.

I came back to myself in the basement of my dorm, naked and covered in sweat and small scratches. I moved quickly, too quickly still, and found the simple pullover dress I'd hidden behind the washing machine. I tried to keep my clothes widely scattered and available, but of course it was hit or miss. I smelled my skin and thought back as best I could. I hunted around and found a small pile of droppings with a finger. I hated mouse-times. Mouse-times were dangerous and scary, especially because some assholes insisted on sneaking kittens into their dorm rooms. But really, all times were dangerous and scary, to me, to others. Even woman-times. Maybe woman-times the most, because in woman-times I knew.

I made my way back up to my hall on shaky legs. I slipped into the bathroom and showered, then pulled my dress back over my wet body and headed back to my own room. I fell into bed, piled on covers despite the stuffy heat and slept.

The next day I found a flyer for the Forest House party, jammed in with hundreds of other flyers on a corkboard. It was light pink
,
with a drawing of a woman who seemed to be turning into a tree, her curves winding and sensual, melding with bark and trunk and pushing into the ground. FUN FUN FUN, the flyer said in big letters to the side of the tree woman. FOREST HOUSE FALL MIXER, SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 18TH, 10-??? The poster made me smile, then laugh. I touched the tree woman with a finger and traced her outer lines. What would it be like to be a tree-person, a plant-person? Safer, or
would you have to rush to soil and take root and hope to be large enough not to be stepped on or eaten? Perhaps it was all more or less the same. Still, irrationally, I liked her; felt she had a freedom, a pleasure, something I did not. I took the poster down and hid it in my room.

For minutes together, later that week, looking at the tree woman's form in half darkness, touching my own body and rising and falling, sea-like, I felt something like forgiveness for those crystal-wielding, herb-taking, cunt-licking bitches who prayed, secretly and openly, for the changing of their limbs and the release of animal-selves, animal-muscles.

But even as I opened, ascended, came and came again, I shut off the sensation of forgiveness when it approached myself.

I went to the party. Wore jeans and a Harry Potter T-shirt, with an open black hoodie over it. The shirt was kind of a joke. Women and a few fey-looking men hung around in doorways drinking spiced ales and fruit wines and touching lightly. There were candles, incense, a couple circles of people earnestly casting spells. I saw a woman on all fours by a couch, stretching her back out and making a little growling noise. I took a few steps toward her. She was white, really pale, with reddish-brown hair. A little like Polly, but skinnier. She looked at me, human eyes all dilated, and snarled. I took a step back again.

“She's totally into her wolf totem.” I turned around and saw one of the boys, his face a mass of acne but friendly underneath. “It's kinda freaky at first, huh? But like, don't worry, if she gets really feral, we can touch her with silver and she comes back.” He held out his arm and showed me the thin silver bracelet on his wrist. I put out my hand and touched it, running my finger over the surface. I raised my eyes to his, pulled back the veil a little and smiled.

He left the conversation pretty damn quick after that. The
wolf girl had gotten tired and was curled up at the end of the couch on the floor, wiggling her butt a little like she had a tail. I turned away and wandered through the house, down the hall to the stairwell.

“Hi,” she said, and I was startled. She came down from the first landing on the stairs, mostly in shadow. I watched her outline: hair, shoulders, hips. She came out into the light on the first floor. She was wearing a navy-blue dress, simple but as tight and sexy as most everything else she wore. She wore it carelessly, wore the swell of her ass and her breasts like they were easy to carry, nothing to bother about. But she was still wearing heels, these a sort of faux-snakeskin in shades of tan. Her feet seemed to shade up from them, the lighter bottom visible against the tan, rising to the richer brown of her top-skin. Her feet were so much safer to look at, but not that safe. Also, it was weird to keep staring at someone's feet.

“I'm glad you came,” she said. I looked at her face, her eyes. Her eyes were not smug. They were open, welcoming, dark.

“I saw somebody being a wolf,” I said, I don't know why. Her smile blossomed out like sun coming through a cloud.

“Yeah, some people are a little showy about the magic stuff. You want a drink, or something?”

“Okay,” I said. She moved easily through the more crowded part of the house then disappeared into the kitchen. I watched her strong, wide back and the sway of her ass. She came back with two beers. I sipped and swallowed the sharpness.

“Look,” she said, “I know you're a senior, right? So you were here before I was, and I figure maybe you used to hang out at Forest House, and—”

“Not really,” I said.

“But you maybe knew Polly.” She was less confident now, staring down into her beer can. “I heard she was kinda—she
could be a nasty bitch, especially to women she was messing around with. So I thought maybe that's why you don't like Forest House. I'm glad you came, and I'm sorry if something fucked up happened to you here.”

My skin started to buzz. Jesus, twice in one week? That was rare. I set my beer down, carefully, against the wall. It was less likely somebody would kick it over that way.

“I gotta go,” I said.

“Oh, shit, I'm sorry.”

“No, it's not—I've just gotta go.” I began moving through the crowd. Right now I felt buzzing, tingling, a sort of pre-painful ache in muscles and joints. Soon it would be more, but I could tell I had time to get out. A stabbing cramp hit as I reached the door and I stopped with my hand on the doorpost, bent, waiting.

“Hey, you okay?” It was the silver-bracelet guy from before. “You should have some water, sit down awhile.”

“Not drunk,” I gasped. I pushed away his solicitous hand and made it out the door. The night was cool, but I was sweating. The ache grew stronger in my feet, knees, ass, back. I ran, a strange, loping gait, aided by urgency but hindered by pain and the stretch in my bones. There was an almost-forest at the edge of campus—deep enough to hide for a while, not deep enough for much hunting, if it was a hunter coming. I could get there.

I panted as I ran, sweat dripping down my neck and my back. I could feel my skin soaking in it, letting it out and marinating itself. I peeled off my hoodie and let it fall. I reached down and pulled off my shoes; my feet were all pins and needles and wanted to be free. My vision was changing, sliding, shifting. For a moment I thought I knew a wolf-time was coming and I laughed to be so suggestible. Then my tongue went heavy in my mouth and my thoughts slanted and I bent over, close to all
fours but not quite touching the ground in front. I was moving faster now, faster than I could in woman-times. I was at the trees and then the pain was blinding for a minute and then I was sleek, sleek, fast, energy straight through, shooting silver out to ground and
pleasure—

Pleasure of movement, pleasure of speed, pleasure of sweat on fur, heavy pleasure, feet quick and smell all over. Nothing to worry, all moving and smelling and listening and pausing. Yes hunger mouth hunger stomach hunger pit hunger. Turning turning smelling stillness eager. Other-kill yes growl gobble spin chase. Smell of not-prey, smell, too-strong, melt vanish go. Marking, smelling, moving. Not-prey still. Smelling. Knowing.

I know. I am still. Looking. Stillness. Looking at her, in her stillness. Alive, right here, surface. Fear and pleasure. Deep. Strong. She opens her fingers, at her side. I want to smell them. Step. Step. Close now. Nose raised. Nose to fingers. Strong smell, deep smell. Sweat and the brass tang of her just-starting menses. I can see her with new sharpness. Must be coyote-time. Woman-time things bleed through in coyote-time. I keep my stillness and her eyes. Then I run.

When I came to myself again I was crouched at the far edge of the forest. I sat, exhausted, in my own sweat, feeling moss and dry leaves against my knees and thighs. I stayed there for a moment, letting my breathing come down, muscles quivering under skin. Then I remembered. Had she really been there? Had I imagined? I turned around, slowly, getting to my feet. I could barely see in the early dawn. I couldn't smell a thing, the worst part of woman-time. Humans can't smell for shit.

I figured my clothes were back closer to the campus, maybe shredded a bit but hopefully wearable. I started walking back, slowly, touching the trees as I passed. After a long change, a full night like that one, I was always both tired and strangely rested.
The sun coming up was warm and bright. I watched it coloring in all the night grays of the almost-forest.

Back at my clothes, there she was, dozing against a tree with the remnants of my Harry Potter shirt under her arm. I tried to wear mostly clothes I didn't care about, but sometimes I felt perverse. I watched her, the pull of her party dress over her boobs and her belly, the fabric carelessly riding up her thighs. I looked at my shirt in the crook of her elbow. She opened her eyes. We watched each other.

She held my shirt out and I took it, examining the strain, the rip caused by a claw as I worked my way free. I pulled it over my head. I started to walk away.

“Your pants are over there,” she said, pointing. I saw them and moved toward them. “Wait,” she said. “Don't get them yet.”

I stared at her. “You're not scared,” I accused. “You oughta be.”

“I'm scared,” she said.

“You're into this, it turns you on.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“It's fucking scary shit,” I said. “It's not a game. I turn into animals, all kinds of animals; did you think I was a werewolf like that stupid girl? She's not anything; she's just a human being who likes being trippy and weird.”

“You were a coyote.”

“Yes.”

“But you're not always a coyote.”

“Do I look like a coyote right now?”

“No.” She smiled.

I sighed. I lowered myself to a crouch. I was tired. “I'm lots of different kinds of animals,” I said. “Some of them, I don't even think are real. Some are definitely extinct. I don't always know, when I change, what I am, what the English name is or
the human idea about it. I can't make it stop, usually, and I don't decide when it happens, and there's no rule, that I can tell, except that—it happens when I'm feeling something. Not one thing in particular, just—strong things. And not even always then. I don't know why.” She nodded. I sucked in a breath, dug my fingernails into my palms, and said it fast. “I turned into a bear when Polly broke up with me. And I scratched her. Badly. That's really why she transferred.”

She laughed. I blinked at her. Then I laughed. I landed full on the ground, with a bump, and laughed.

“It was bad,” I insisted when I'd stopped laughing. “I mean, yeah, she was a bitch, she really was, but I attacked her. As a bear. It's not…”

“You didn't kill her,” she pointed out. “I mean, you might have, but you didn't.”

“Bully for me,” I said.

“I mean it.”

“You don't seem scared.”

“I am,” she said. She reached and put her hand on my thigh. She crawled her fingers up and brushed them over my pubic hair, this way and that, her eyes rising to mine. “I'm scared,” she said. She cupped her fingers over my vulva, and I could feel it warm and swell beneath them. “Is this okay?” She waited a moment. “It turns me on because it's magic and because it's yours.”

I was quiet. I felt the throb and pulse push out from my center to her hand. She took her hand away.

“I want to fuck you,” I said, looking at the grass under my fingertips and not at her. “When I see you in class, the smart things you say, you get under the skin of things. And your hair and your feet in those high heels and the clothes you wear. The curves of your ass and your boobs and your belly. And the shape of your jaw and the strength of your back. I shouldn't fuck
anybody, this thing that I am. But I want to fuck you.”

I could hear her breathing as I spoke and then she was on me like a wild thing, leaping and pressing and tumbling me back against the floor of the almost-forest. Her hand returned to my labia and my clit, drawing me up against her like a magnet. My back arched and my hips pushed forward. She bit me and scratched me with her other hand and I giggled helplessly and then grew still.

I felt stillness, circling, and a throbbing hunger, great, fierce, in the center of my body, sucking away my breath and giving it back in bursts. The noises in my throat were strange but human, for all their ferocity. I felt her middle finger dipping and playing at the opening of my cunt, teasing the puckered edge and sending a jolt straight from there to her palm against my clit. My hips surged and bobbed like a toy boat in a rough current, and I came in sudden, pulsing jolts, and then I forced myself back, down, away.