The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5 (2 page)

SECRETLY WISHING FOR RAIN by Claude Lalumière, © 2004 by Claude Lalumière. First appeared in
Fishnet.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE GIFT by Dahlia Schweitzer, © 2004 by Dahlia Schweitzer. First appeared in
The Mammoth Book of Women’s Sexual Fantasies,
edited by Sonia Florens. Reprinted by permission of the author.

BELLS ON HER TOES by M. Christian, © 2004 by M. Christian. First appeared in
Naughty Fairy Tales From A to Z
, edited by Alison Tyler. Reprinted by permission of the author.

TWO OF CUPS by Elizabeth Margery, © 2004 by Elizabeth Margery. First appeared in
Clean Sheets.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

SCREEN PLAY by A.F. Waddell, © 2004 by A.F. Waddell. First appeared in slightly different format in
Erotica Readers & Writers Association.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

THIRD PERSON SINGULAR by Richard V. Raiment, © 2004 by Richard V. Raiment. First appeared in
Clean Sheets.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

RICHARD’S SECRET by Saskia Walker, © 2004 by Saskia Walker. First appeared in
Taboo,
edited by Violet Blue. Reprinted by permission of the author.

MILEAGE by Tom Piccirilli, © 2004 by Tom Piccirilli. First appeared in
Down and Dirty, Volume 2
, edited by Alison Tyler. Reprinted by permission of the author.

PRIX FIXE by Riain Grey, © 2004 by Riain Grey. First appeared in
Clean Sheets.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

ZOE CLARK by Tara Alton, © 2004 by Tara Alton. First appeared in
Scarlet Letters.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

BEVERLY’S PASTIME by Sage Vivant, © 2004 by Sage Vivant. First appeared in
Wicked Words 9
, edited by Kerri Sharp. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE SPACE BETWEEN by Helena Settimana, © 2004 by Helena Settimana. First appeared in
Three-Way,
edited by Alison Tyler. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE HUMAN DRESS by O’Neil De Noux, © 2005 by O’Neil De Noux. Reprinted by permission of the author.

COINS FOR THE FERRYMAN by Robert Buckley, © 2004 by Robert Buckley. First appeared in
Erotica Readers & Writers Association.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

All efforts have been made to contact the copyright holders, either through their last-known email address or care of the editors who published them. Should people who could not be reached thus wish to make themselves known, please contact Maxim Jakubowski c/o the publisher.

The years go by and still the fecund imagination of male and female writers of erotica continues to surprise and amaze me. This is the fifth instalment in our annual series in which I’ve attempted to select and present the best stories published worldwide during the course of the preceding calendar year; this in addition to five previous volumes in the series which paved the ground for our turning into a regular, annual event, as well as inspiring, dare I say it, an explosion in the quantity of original and reprint anthologies in our field which still sees no slowing down.

Yet again I was faced by a veritable mountain of submissions, originating in other collections, magazines, webzines and even e-books and I genuinely feel this volume genuinely represents some of the best writing in the genre. I am warmed by the fact that, once more, I am able to introduce a handful of brand new writers to our series. All of whom display a wicked imagination, sexy ideas and believable characters the reader can identify with.

Too many of the stories I have had to turn down, this time around, are sadly no more than mood pieces, climaxing with a sexual scene and the occasional taboo or unusual variation on a theme – some better written than others, some more psychologically credible than others. Or just wild fantasies with little grounding in reality, wish fulfilment episodes with often a touch of vulgarity which for me is a definite turn-off, or lyrical and meaningful odes to bodies and mating lacking in the art of storytelling, and aspiring desperately for the status of poetry and of course not getting anywhere near that level of inspiration.

So stories with men and women of flesh and articulate thoughts have been at a premium, even more so those with an added healthy sense of humour, as I perversely insist on thinking that a smile on one’s lips when dealing with sex can often be a wonderful asset. . . Let’s not always be so serious and earnest about what is after all one of mankind’s oldest and favourite activities.

Alongside our Mammoth Erotica virgins, many of our most experienced and popular writers of erotica also make a welcome return to our pages, all tackling the thorny theme of sex between consenting adults in ever-more innovative ways which will have you frowning, wiping the sweat off your brow, smiling or even wide open-mouthed. Whoever thought one could conjure up so many situations and improvisations around the facts of life as we know it? But in fact, do we actually know it all? It seems we don’t and I am confident that next year, I will have learned more from the world of erotica and I look forward to the continuing education.

Good erotic writing can be sexy, provocative, intelligent, even educational, but always fascinating.

Welcome one more time to the playing fields of the Gods . . .

Savour.

I never thought I’d go into one of those salons to make a quick buck, but there comes a time in everyone’s life when all bets are off. It was that time for me. The hours of viewing at the videoport at home were starting to get on my nerves. I needed money to get the hell out of there, but Mom was out of the picture – gave all her money to some guy who looked like he just walked out of a wax museum. Dad, of course, would pass me a few if I asked him but I knew the price would be high – extended weekend visits with him and his henna-colored dog (yes, he does treat his dog’s fur with henna) plus lectures on the coming destruction of the planet. No. Thank. You.

Besides, I had been feeling restless. That tension in the back of my neck was back again and I wanted it to go away. No point in going to the clinic since the pills they always gave me to release the muscle spasms were archaic, a throwback to the days of my grandmother when sleeping pills and tranquilizers were all the rage. Even if they are “newly engineered” “purer” and “safer,” as they claim, it’s still all the same – a blanket for the brain. I want access to the modern school of medicine, where they treat the cause, not the symptom. They zap your brain for about two minutes, I’m told, with electricity, and stimulate all sorts of reverse psychology that fights the anxiety. It has nothing to do with the electroshock therapy they used to do in the old days. Much more advanced than that. They use lasers. It’s supposed to be brilliant, but still experimental. I saw a documentary short about it at the videoport in my doctor’s waiting room. But the treatment’s not open to the public yet, being practiced only by a few up at the Lehigh Medical Center at Yale or someplace like that.

And the salons are supposed to be really well run. A friend of mine (actually, a former friend) worked there for a time. She wasn’t one of the personal service workers, just someone who handled the paperwork and check-in. She was a seasoned professional, and organized to a T, and I’m sure she did an A-l job with the clientele. After we lost touch, I found out she had left the salon to work as the administrator of a cooperative farm in Birmingham, Alabama. I thought it was probably a good career move when I first heard about it but, now that I’m at the salon, I’m not so sure.

This salon job is turning out to be one hell of a trip – and not the type I would advise others to go on. It pays well, and my days are an endless siege of varied stimulation from all angles. Sometimes I leave exhausted but most of the time I’m light and airy and I flit around the streets like a moth. I have nothing more left to give by the time my shift is over, and the emptiness is cool and vast and weightless. The wet streets look slippery, but they are not, and I can move effortlessly while the wind cleanses me of my day’s work.

If I can call it work. It’s not work for me. I love it, and I live for it. And I live for that special person – I’ll call him Jose, because I once thought I heard him exclaim “
¡ Ai, caramba!
” when he was coming. Ever since then, he’s been Jose for me. He comes in most weeks on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and he usually chooses the Full Anonymity wing, which is where I work. Because of the rules, I’d never seen him, but for some reason I always pictured him as having short, curly dark hair and big teeth. I pictured them shining as he sat and flossed at night.

The set-up at the salon is top-notch. The cleaning crew does a great job, spraying everything down practically constantly with that odorless anti-germ stuff. I don’t think even the tiniest germ would have a chance in hell of surviving more than five minutes in that place. I haven’t had so much as a cold since I started this job.

I think it was primarily because I mentioned my ex-friend’s name that I got the job in the first place. That, and because I have such a terrifically large mouth and protruding jaw. I’ve always known it, and hated it, but now I feel kind of special because of it. When I was a kid, I heard that they could break someone’s jaw and reconstruct their mouth to make it right, but no one especially wanted to do that for me, so I set out to break my jaw myself. I tried jumping off of the wall that jutted out beside our condo unit but, at the last second, I put my hand out to break my fall onto the pavement and ended up breaking my wrist instead. I made a few other half-assed tries, but most of them ended in a lot of pain, so I gave up.

But my mouth got me this job, which just goes to prove what I’m learning more as time goes on – everything has its time and purpose. What’s a liability today may be my saving grace tomorrow, so don’t ever say “Never.” You just don’t know.

At first, I was uncertain about the Anonymity Section of the salon, but the staff suggested it for me. They said it was often a good start for new people because there is no need to look anybody in the eye. Hell, you don’t have to look at any part of them actually, except maybe their balls, but you can keep your eyes closed if you want.

The set-up here is ingenious. I’d like to get into the brain of the person who designed this place. Such creative brilliance. Such endless attention to detail. I’m in awe.

This is how it works: each service worker is assigned to a “Horse.” The Horses are our specially designed units. Each one is adjusted to the particular body dimensions of the individual worker. They’re called Horses because when a service worker lies on one she is on all fours, like a horse. But it’s incredibly luxurious and comfortable. Every part of the Horse is padded with vasacloth, which makes it impossible to feel any friction or skin discomfort. And I love the way the middle of the Horse, the part that supports my entire abdomen, from hips to rib cage, prevents me from placing any actual weight on my knees or elbows. They rest on vasacloth surfaces, but they’re really just dangling there, not holding me up. There are two holes in the torso support for my breasts to hang through freely. I’m told the person who designed the horse was a great mathematician and anatomist. She even designed it to prevent any backaches from lying in this position over a prolonged period.

An equally soft Face Bowl supports our heads. It has no middle so I can breathe freely but it holds up the weight of my head. When they fitted me for my face bowl, they had me lie on the horse and they adjusted it to the angle most comfortable for my neck. The technician was impatient, though, and she made me nervous, so I think the angle isn’t quite right. I hope I don’t get that technician again when I request an adjustment.

Once a service worker is comfortably on her Horse, she can press a button to have the Anonymity Partitions come down. One comes down from the ceiling and rests across her lower back, blocking any view of the front of her body from anybody who may come in behind her. The other is a cool, soft blanket that unrolls lightly over the front part of her body. The temperature is always kept at a strict 75 degrees.

These horses are arranged in a row. The effect is such that any customer who requests Rear View Anonymity will walk into a long room with a line of female backsides for him to survey. The Horses are designed to keep our knees dangling with a slight outward angle, so our cunts are open nicely. On my days off, I paid to come into the Rear View Room and I must say the effect is riveting. Some of the genitalia are wrinkled and pink, some are small, some are large, some have blonde hair, some dark. And the legs are both incredibly similar and various at the same time. They all look like female legs, and there is continuity in the way they line up along the side of the room, each on its knees. But at the same time, there are differences. Some are slender and angular, others meaty and muscular. And the color variations are enormous – every hue from dark chocolate to creamy vanilla.

The bottom view is not so much to my liking; it’s the view of the hanging tits. Customers who enter this room see a long line of tits hanging from the enclosure where the women are encased. It sort of looks like a big box jutting out of the wall. A customer can reach out and fondle the tits as he walks along the edge of the enclosure. If he finds a set of udders he finds interesting, he can press a button and a cot emerges from underneath that box. He can then lie down beneath the tits, adjusting the height with an automatic button, so that he can suck, lick, and fondle to his liking.

It’s particularly exciting for me as a service worker on busy days, because I may be chosen for rear and bottom view service at the same time. Of course, each customer doesn’t know that the other is using me at the same time as another, which is kind of weird. I can have Jose behind me (which is where he always is) and any other Joe beneath me fondling my boobs. The double stimulation is great, but I find that my mouth waters when I get this double business. I can’t seem to control the saliva, and my face bowl gets damp and unpleasant. I don’t know what to do about that problem.