The Dark Other by Stanley G. Weinbaum (new ebook reader .txt) 📕

disrobe you somewhat more completely than on our other occasion. Thereafter we will proceed to the consummation of our experiment.”

She watched him indifferently, uncomprehendingly, as he crooked a thin finger in the neck of her frock. She felt the pressure as he pulled, heard the rip of the fabric, and the pop of buttons, but she was conscious of no particular sensation as the garment cascaded into a black and red pool at her feet. She stood passive as he hooked his finger in the strap of her vest, and that too joined the little mound of cloth. She shivered slightly as she stood bared to the waist, but gave no other sign.

Again the thin hand moved toward her; from somewhere in her tormented spirit a final shred of resistance arose, and she pushed the questing member feebly to one side. She heard a low, sardonic laugh from her oppressor.

“Look at me!” he commanded.

She raised her eyes wearily; she drew her arm about her in a forlorn gesture of concealment. Her eyes met the strange orbs of the other, and a faint thrill of horror stirred; other than this, she felt nothing. Then his eyes were approaching her; she was conscious of the illusion that they were expanding, filling all the space in front of her. Their weird glow filled the world, dominated everything.

“Will you yield?” he queried.

The eyes commanded. “Yes,” she said dully.

She felt his hands icy cold on her bare shoulders. They traveled like a shudder about her body, and suddenly she was pressed close to him.

“Are you mine?” he demanded. For the first time there was a tinge of expression in the toneless voice, a trace of eagerness. She made no answer; her eyes, held by his, stared like the eyes of a person in a trance, unwinking, fascinated.

“Are you mine?” he repeated, his breath hissing on her cheek.

“Yes.” She heard her own voice in automatic reply to his question.

“Mine⁠—for the delights of evil?”

“Yours!” she murmured. The eyes had blotted out everything.

“And do you hate me?”

“No.”

The arms about her tightened into crushing bands. The pressure stopped her breath; her very bones seemed to give under their fierce compression.

“Do you hate me?” he muttered.

“Yes!” she gasped. “Yes! I hate you!”

“Ah!” He twisted his hand in her black hair, wrenching it roughly back. “Are you ready now for the consummation? To look upon the face of evil?”

She made no reply. Her eyes, as glassy as those of a sleepwalker, stared into his.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said.

He pressed his mouth to hers. The fierceness of the kiss bruised her lips, the pull of his hand in her hair was a searing pain, the pressure of his arm about her body was a suffocation. Yet⁠—somehow⁠—there was again the dawning of that unholy pleasure⁠—the same degraded delight that had risen in her on that other occasion, in the room of the red-checked table cloth. Through some hellish alchemy, the leaden pain was transmuting itself into the garish gold of a horrible, abnormal pleasure. She found her crushed lips attempting a feeble, painful response.

At her movement, she felt herself swung abruptly from her feet. With his lips still crushing hers, he raised her in his arms; she felt herself borne across the room. He paused; there was a sudden release, and she crashed to the hard surface of the couch, whose rough covering scratched the bare flesh of her back. Nicholas Devine bent over her; she saw his hand stretch toward her single remaining garment. And again, from somewhere in her harassed soul, a spark of resistance flashed.

“Nick!” she moaned. “Oh, Nick! Help me!”

“Call him!” said the other, a sneer on his face. “Call him! He hears; it adds to his torment!”

She covered her eyes with her hands. She felt his hand slip coldly between her skin and the elastic about her waist.

“Nick!” she moaned again. “Nick! Oh, my God! Nick!”

XXVII Two in Hell

The cold hand against Pat was still; she felt it rigid and stiff on her flesh. She lay passive with closed eyes; having voiced her final appeal, she was through. The words torn from her misery represented the final iota of spirit remaining to her; and her bruised body and battered mind had nothing further to give.

The hand quivered and withdrew. For a moment more she lay motionless with her arms clutched about her, then she opened her eyes, gazing dully, hopelessly at the demon standing over her. He was watching her with a curious abstracted frown; as she stirred, the scowl intensified, and he drew back a step.

His face contorted suddenly in a spasm of some unguessable emotion. His fists clenched; a low unintelligible mutter broke from his lips. “Strange!” she heard him say, and after a moment, “I’m still master here!”

He was master; in a moment the emotion vanished, and he was again standing over her, his face the same impassive demoniac mask. She watched him in a dull stupor of despair that was too deep for even a whimper of pain as he wrenched at the elastic about her waist, and it cut into her flesh and parted. He tore the garment away, and the red eyes bored down with a wild elation in their depths.

“Mine!” the being muttered, a new hoarseness in his voice. “Are you mine?”

Pat made no answer; his voice croaked in more insistent tones. “Are you mine?”

She could not reply. She felt his fingers bite into the flesh of her shoulder. She was shaken roughly, violently, and the question came again, fiercely. The eyes flamed in command, and she felt through her languor and weakness, the stirring of that strange and unholy fascination that he held over her.

“Answer!” he croaked. “Are you mine?”

The torture of his searing grip on her shoulder wrung an answer from her.

“Yes,” she murmured faintly. “Yours.”

She closed her eyes again in helpless resignation. She felt the hand withdrawn, and she lay passive, waiting, on the verge of unconsciousness, numb, spirit-broken, and beaten.

Nothing happened.