Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One Page 6

  The Merkin sighed, lanced his needle into the open page with an irritated flick and leaned back on the soft contour of fabric things mounded behind him. Closing his eyes, he let himself be lulled by the faint sounds of the Tent for a while as twilight was ushered onto gnome-lit darkness in the unseen metropolis beyond.

  Closing his script he rose, straightened his suit and left.

  Not long after he was moodily treading the labyrinthine neighborhoods of his laundry, reflexively hewing to the stealthiest route available through folded and stacked clothes, lingerie and bath things and blankets fashioned from every conceivable sort of fabric and piled on hammocks suspended from the ropy undergirding of the theater level above.

  He was far from anywhere important at the moment, deliberately lost. The wares of the laundry towered well overhead, often limiting sightlines to a few paces, and the many-layered canvas floor he traversed changed elevation constantly, generating endless veering horizons to further confound navigation. It was almost impossible to negotiate the mysteries of the laundry without patient exploration and memorization.

  Everything in his immediate view was imbued with a reddish tint by a lonely glow-gnome hanging far off to his right. It was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, the nearest garments that would fit its compact body. Its eyes cast steep shadows through winding drifts of lingerie, once neatly organized, now randomly tumbled to disheveled mounds and slopes the Merkin clambered over almost without notice. No one came here but himself according to his long-practiced skill at tracking; he could read much from the imprint of hand and foot on laundry, especially where it was littered all over. As in the present locale, which hadn’t been maintained for longer than he cared to remember.

  That was due to the unfashionable nature of the apparel archived there, which belonged to an age long past, when color and cut and texture were outlandish by the present reckoning. Even the soap was different then, and the redolence wafting from the abandoned habiliments in his vicinity filled him with a soft nostalgia for lilac and daffodil…

  Where had the time gone?

  He began a long descent through a barely lit tract of skirts that wound and switched about so obtusely as to baffle even the Merkin’s orientation; a place that could only be fathomed by estimating factors like slope and illumination. There were many such territories in the laundry, and the Merkin used them to exclude potential intruders onto his privacy. When he wanted to be truly alone, utterly certain of his isolation, only physical impediments such as these would guarantee it.

  He backtracked from a clogged elevation of toppled blouses, electing not to attempt an excavation to their far side, then tacked left to assay another route. The light had grown warmer, yellowish, and a soapy odor reminiscent of sunlight and fresh air washed his nostrils. He could barely remember the natural world, grass under his feet and trees vaulting high into the sky, so long ago when the City was young…

  He crawled through a long tunnel twisting under low-slung quantities of pleated petticoats, taking the time in one place to shove some of them aside where they almost closed the passage. It was a rite of maintenance he might never profit from, but his fastidious nature had a stubborn lower limit that capriciously intruded from time to time. Fatigued by the effort, he leaned back in the cramped cross-section of the passage to catch his breath. It was sightlessly dark, absolutely silent but for the sound of his own respiration, and the Merkin felt a ripple of sadness impinge on his customary exuberance, prompted perhaps by the loneliness of the locale, a wilderness of raiments he had once loved, now disdained by everyone but himself.

  He moved on after a little, escaped to open air again and took a long breath of it, pungent with perfume from a sprawling pit of towels and blankets, their orange and green and red hues plainly disclosed by the white regard of a robed gnome dangling overhead. He knew this place, or at least its general location in the laundry, had used it before as a reference for secrecy-minded excursions, mostly when he needed to write. Clutching his play script close, he sprinted forward down a long slope, trampling piled textiles underfoot with a skillful, high-kneed gait that kept his legs free from entanglement by their treacherously varying topology. He accelerated almost to a sprint, glorying for a moment in the unwitnessed thrill of total exertion, then slowed as the strata of blankets leveled out and lifted, bringing him to a steep premonitory that overlooked a sodden pit of sweaters and casual jackets and who knew what else. Water lurked underneath.

  Skirting this shadowy farrago, he followed a greenish light angling between two great piles of cuff-flared denim jeans to emerge in a relatively well-ordered territory of clothing that was close to the outer boundary of actively maintained apparel. It was still quiet, but he thought he could hear sounds of distant labor as he strode up a long arc of neat canvas flooring to a crossroad where one of the major thoroughfares through the laundry bordered the hinterlands of outmoded garb. He heard a distant giggle and instantly reestablished his customary, self-conscious deportment. It would not do to be seen in some undignified light by his servants. Soon he was among them.

  The modern territories of the laundry were populated by formally dressed slipper women, eyes lowered and hands busy as etiquette specified. They were found everywhere the Merkin required them, readying wares for his shops in the City, or finding costumes and props for his theater, or implementing a change in fashion for their own bodies—the Merkin regularly altered the style of their attire to quench his ceaseless obsession with female flesh.

  At present those near him were managing an immense bundle of freshly cleansed stockings, maneuvering it into a sink, a flooded depression in the canvas flooring irrigated by the water ceaselessly aggregating under the Tent. Soap bubbles wandered everywhere, some broader than his arms could circle, shimmering transflective orbs whorling with faint chromatic seas. The air was redolent of various perfumes used in his detergents.

  He passed a mannerman, one of a host of special minions who walked the Tent and City streets, vigilant for deviations from the Merkin’s standard of fashion. This constantly shifting code specified formal clothing where his power was strongest; the Tent, park and clothing boutiques at the City’s center. It imposed casual garb on citizens for a wide radius around that, and lingerie to the limit of his influence over the other judges, near the Gnomon’s Tower and Dowser’s Club. The mannermen were big, unsmiling fellows that dressed with intimidating skill, and they could manifest in large numbers at need, making them a feared power everywhere they ranged.

  The Merkin trod past a watchful doorman guarding a tubular fabric ramp called a sleeve. This one served as a major conduit to the second level of the Tent, and he strode easily among throngs of deferential workers heading up for various obligations of their service to him. Navigating a wide, bustling corridor around the Tent’s perimeter, he made his way past another wary doorman stationed at a richly draperied archway to emerge in the theater.

  An informal audience was already in place, chattering in blithe anticipation of the night’s entertainment. The Merkin continued down a long axial walkway to the great round platform at the center where his Stage Manager was attending to details with several dox of smartly clad crew. He straightened at the Merkin’s approach.

  “The scene has been set for the game of hide-and-seek,” he confirmed.

  “Very good, Martial,” the Merkin replied, stepping onto the deck. Everything seemed in place. “Was there any trouble with the auditioners?”

  The Manager shrugged. “Just the usual. They have no problem with the notion of an audience till they’re onstage. But the change in context with their fellow employees in the crowd always unbalances them.”

  “Well, let’s hope tonight’s scenario identifies someone who can make the transition. Then we’ll have a method for finding more,” the Merkin promised.

  Martial sighed dubiously.

  They traded observations for a while till everything was ready. The Merkin made a final inspection of the arrangements. “Bring the
illumination down slightly and tint it more to crimson,” he decided.

  The Manager called up instructions to the curtained loft above the stage using a terse, functionally derived argot and a crew member stationed there promptly adjusted the emanation of various glow gnomes to a more seductive result. This efficient-seeming communication belied a great challenge.

  It was the Merkin’s gift to be understood by anyone hearing his words—in any context of interaction—and his authority over the society of the Tent was rooted in this singular faculty. But his servants were limited in expressiveness to their role in his organization, excluded at some point on a progressively subtler gradient of communication that only Martial could negotiate with a nuance and sophistication approaching his own. The Manager was consequently the one person with whom he regularly interacted, and even then mostly within the shared context of their craft.

  As a result of this situation, the Merkin had no cast. He had long ago identified denizens of the Tent who could follow directions and memorize lines. But the theater was ultimately a creative domain, not a technical one, and the employees who auditioned for his play exhibited an incorrigible staginess, unable to transcend the functional basis of their participation to act and interact naturally. Their narrow distinction of ‘self’ and ‘other’ was grindingly unsubtle in action, hardly sufficient to the aspirations of art.

  There were other ways to cultivate talent however, so in place of reading from the script itself, the Merkin had undertaken to experiment with stage games inspired by his play. In the throes of competition bolder personalities sometimes emerged—a starting point for the casting process, even if it was something of a game just to devise such experiments.

  “Let us proceed,” he directed.

  “Heads onstage! Merkin’s cloud coming down!” shouted the Manager.

  “Thank you!” the collected personnel of the stage roared in acknowledgement, stepping clear of the center.

  Up in the loft one of his crew turned a winch and a matrix of counterweighted hemp lines delivered an unseen mass to the deck; a billowing, couch-like furniture dressed in grey and black linen—his narrator’s seat.

  It arrived with a muted boom and the Merkin settled himself cross-legged into its voluminous embrace, script carefully hammocked in his lap. He surveyed the crowd a last time, saw that all the closest seats were occupied.

  “Heads onstage! Merkin’s cloud going up!” the Manager called.

  He was quickly lofted to a place among the glow gnomes that commanded an unobscured view of the deck without being directly visible to the audience. This arrangement was crucial, as the Merkin was the narrator for his play. No other role granted such influence over the stage, for as narrator he controlled the context of whatever was happening below. This empowered him to flexibly manipulate the interpretation of performances that ranged from competent but predictable to crowd-rousing chaos.

  The stage was presently decorated in the fashion of a pleasure salon. A sultry vermillion glow rained on an assemblage of furniture and accessories suitable to such a place. Ranged about a thick, cherry-colored rug at the center were low-profile couches that wouldn’t obstruct the view from any angle—a constant consideration for theater-in-the-round, where the audience lay in every direction.

  Some of the night’s auditioners were entering the scene now, flirtatious women edging shyly from vestibules situated under the upswept bowl of seats radiating from the stage. There were nearly a dox of them, garbed in gorgeous, ankle-length dresses of varied colors. Each bore a giant marble in her palm matching the hue of her ensemble.

  The Merkin smoothed the fringe at his chin, cleared his throat inaudibly and spoke. Throw gnomes stationed around him amplified his voice to issue grandly down onto the stage and out to the theater beyond.

  “Some know why

  Yet can not speak

  Secrets dwell

  In every well

  But who will hide

  And who will seek?”

  It was his custom to recite an extemporaneous poem before every theater exercise to prepare his wit for the quick maneuvering that was often required. He continued in a more formal tone.

  “To a revel have a small party of women come. Mingling in mutual solicitation, they proceed to trade baubles with one another, hiding them in the feminine vault. No couples are formed.”

  He watched in satisfaction as the auditioners harkened to his singular voice, effecting his desire with an obvious relief to be doing something intentional in front of the crowd.

  Whispering sultry provocations, their hands and lips met in mutual discovery. Marbles winked in the soft ambience of red gnome glow. A dress was raised on a shy brunette and the Merkin watched as her panties were delicately fingered open by an aggressive woman garbed in pink, who slid a matching bauble down to her cleft, eased it inside with a murmur and a kiss.

  The skirt fell back into place, and an imposing slipper resplendent in green braced a compact woman, put her arms around the wide-eyed creature and won her intimacy, filling her vagina with an emerald orb and lovingly rubbing the lips to seal the possession.

  Soon the women were lifting hems and drawing panties to a convivial rhythm, fulfilling the initiatory conditions for hide-and-seek. The Merkin watched baubles come and go from slipper to slipper, winking hues tracing circuits of desire impossible to comprehend even from his lofty vantage. Before long a kind of equilibrium was reached and the slippers caroused in satisfied relation to one another now, each bearing another woman’s marble, ordered by a hierarchy invisible from without. The Merkin heard an anticipatory rustle from the audience and judged the moment right to proceed. The performers would quickly become stage-frightened if he allowed the context of their participation to falter. Unlike any other form of employment, acting required a completely abstract interface to its field of influence.

  “The women take their places at random on the couches and prepare for the consideration of men,” he intoned. They quickly complied, settling their dresses decorously on the cushions and primping elegant coiffures.

  The Merkin watched as three imposingly suited men entered the stage on cue and took places on the circular rug in the center. They exhibited an intent masculinity, boldly surveyed the women ranged around the salon, eyes lowered and legs demurely crossed now.

  “The men caucus to determine the first subject of interest and the order of solicitation. Each is then granted a turn to seduce her by discipline or delight till she yields her secret to one of them. No stimulation to climax occurs.”

  There was a low consultation among the men as they gestured from one woman to another, debating their choices until two of them established a majority, settling on a voluptuous lady in yellow, breasts bulging over the frilled pleats of a glamorously ornate dress. All three men approached her and she met their ranked formation with an anxious smile.

  The Merkin flipped a small glass capsule filled with sand that he used for stage timing.

  “The first man takes his turn.”

  The minority man stepped forward and attempted to impose his personality on the situation. “Lift your dress,” he rasped, behavior channeled by the structure of the game. The woman bashfully raised her hem to reveal the delicately tapered bulge of yellow-clad genitalia.

  “Slide your panties up to expose your vagina.”

  “Yes, sir…” she whispered and settled back on the divan. Lofting her stockinged legs high, she slid supple fingers into her lingerie and offered her pubis to view with a dramatic sweep. The man leaned over to look, menacing and solicitous at once. Her clitoris blushed in the warm light of the salon.

  He meditatively took it to thumb and forefinger, held her thus for a moment, communing with her womanhood. Then his grip tightened.

  “Render your secret to me,” he rigidly intoned, pulling rhythmically at the flesh. Her breath caught as she was cagily provoked by this rough treatment of her most vulnerable site. His free hand initiated a sly, rim-orbiting seduction of
her sphincter.

  “Show it,” he coaxed, insistently unhurried as he made his mark on her interest.

  The Merkin watched intently until the last of the sand had trickled through his timer, signaling the end of the man’s opportunity. He flipped it to initiate a new one.

  “The next man takes his turn,” he boomed.

  The second of the three inquisitors employed a quite different philosophy of investigation. His big hand swept down to spank the woman firmly on her labia.

  “Open!”

  She squeaked, instantly captivated by his glowering regard. Her eyes narrowed in speculation, then flashed painfully as she was humorlessly cuffed again. The Merkin saw her pubis blush to a dusky shade of pink, a moist flower peeping between thighs feebly wandering in the aftermath of his ungentle smartening of comportment.

  “Open wide!” he demanded more forcefully, and swatted her crotch fluently in emphasis, three fast strokes. She snarled, gaze fixed on his rigidly hovering hand, locus of a dualized misery and excitation. He quit her company on the implicit threat of a second encounter.

  “The last man takes his turn.”

  The woman next found herself negotiated by a sophisticated pudendal artificer who refined the methods of his predecessors to a wily alternation of empathy and contempt. Her plump vulva was rubbed and tweaked with a calculated fondness, worked by fingers that plied the ache in her clitoris with a patient, finger-tipped circumduction, traveled the weeping seam of her vagina to massage away the heat of her earlier mistreatment.

  “…much easier to just let it happen… relief when it’s finished and your privacy is restored… just spread your legs and close your eyes and…” The Merkin heard snatches of his whispered persuasion, a constantly reasonable appeal that swiftly eroded her self-control.

  She slowly smiled, infatuated by his touch, only to encounter a vicious antipathy a moment later as he slapped her assumptively on the twat, spanking away any friendliness that had developed. Then he was kind again, a smiling, pussy-pampering suitor leaning in to gratefully inhale the fragrance of her bauble-packed sex.