The Subtle Ties That Bind

by David Niall Wilson

First published in a revised version from this one in Love in Vein II - reprinted in the collection that bears this stories name.

 

He was dark. Even looking down from the stage, the glaring multi-colored lights drawing the sweat from her skin in oozing waves, he was dark. He sat alone, in the far corner of the club, the farthest booth from the stage, an ebony blotch against the shadows that leaked out around the back wall.

Performance was a rhythm, a pulse she could follow by touch, closing herself off and moving on instinct. The music pounded behind her, pulsing with her heartbeat, pulling the strings. That was how she saw it. There were dancers, and then there were those whose abilities were not wholly their own. She was the music, manifesting its own creativity back into the world that had spawned it. She was a reflected, off world vision, second- hand, from the musician to the netherworld and back. The man in the corner did not reflect at all.

She watched for a flicker of light from his eyes, a flash of smile. There was nothing. He was a silhouette, void of light. She was intrigued. The music wound down, and the strings slipped loose from her limbs, releasing her into a bow that draped her long, white-blonde hair over her like a silken curtain, reaching nearly to the floor.

The scented air parted for her reluctantly; stale smoke, cheap perfume, equally cheap cologne, groping for one another in an olfactory war of loneliness and fantasy. She felt focused. The music was not for her, not for the moment, but she felt the subtle touch of the strings, tugging her forward, tugging her toward the shadows. It should not have been happening.

She slid into the booth across from him, reaching without comment for his cigarettes and helping herself to one. Her eyes remained averted, an illusion of freedom that her very presence negated.

“Who are you,” she asked. No greeting. No pleasantries. No bullshit. “Who are you?”

He did not answer, not right away. She could feel the steps of his eyes across her skin, the subtle imprint of his own fantasies on her psyche. She felt the strings tugging at more intimate places and blew a small cloud of smoke through her nose to try and calm her nerves. Then he spoke.

“I can set you free.” Just that. Nothing but a simple phrase, softly spoken, but with authority.

She fidgeted nervously, crossing her legs under the table and drumming her fingers. “Who are you?” It did not matter. For the moment, he held the strings. She slid free of the booth and moved into the night, his eyes tracing patterns on her back as she went.

* * *

Her apartment was cold and lifeless. She lay in bed, waiting for dreams to wipe away the shadowed walls and the ache of the loneliness. In vain.

His outline — the etched crevasses that marked his features, the profile, bereft of emotion. He held her easily with the image alone. She stared at the spider’s web of cracks that mapped the plaster of her ceiling, reaching finally for a cigarette and lighting it quickly. Her memory of his image did not waver. She closed her eyes; nothing changed.

“I can set you free.”

* * *

The second night, when the lights flickered on and the club closed, she followed him without a word. He slipped from the interior light to the exterior blackness like a wraith. She floated in his wake, subtle lines of force binding her movements to his. She had not slept. She had not eaten.

“Who are you?” She’d asked again. “Where are you going.”

Her answer was his feet, one in front of the other, stepping off into . . . what? She followed, smoking furiously, one after the other. Her eyes were red from smoke and fatigue. She did not have so long to wait.

* * *

There was no color in the room. She lay on his bed – she assumed it was his — and he paced slowly around the room, gazing at her from all angles. She was nervous, but he’d moved the cigarettes out of reach. His gaze lingered on every curve of her body, slid between her thighs and up the sides of her stomach, flickering over sensitive skin like liquid.

“What do you want?” she said, feeling her legs slide further apart, subtly, invitingly. She could feel the arousal coursing through her. Not a single touch. Not a single word. She was his.

“I will set you free.”

She tried to protest as strong hands grabbed her left wrist, as a silken scarf circled soft skin and was fixed to the bedpost. Then the right. Then her legs. There was no pain. The silk caressed her skin and she felt herself moving against it – the touch electric. She wanted more, but he still moved slowly about, caressing her only with his dark, unblinking eyes.

He moved to the dresser, returned. There was a box in his hand, black lacquered and gleaming slightly. He propped open the lid and turned it so she could see. Pins. Needles. Each had it’s own ceramic top, like an old-fashioned hat-pin, and yet not like a hat-pin at all. They were sheathed in a block of velvet.

Her eyes rolled with momentary fear, but the motion of the struggle it caused brushed the silk across her wrists, worked it up her ankles — but not far enough — and the fear melted to desire.

He plucked a pin and moved closer, holding her thigh with one strong hand.

“Do not move.”

She watched as he ran his finger softly over her skin, felt the tremor of nerves as he found just the right spot, felt the sudden prick of the sharp metal biting into her skin, felt nothing. He had already moved to her other side, her other leg. The caress, the bite of metal, nothing.

She could almost hear the snap of the strings as he clipped them, one by one. Arms next, ear lobes, the soles of her feet. She could see the black heads of the pins protruding from her limbs, but she felt nothing. Nothing but the heat, growing, emanating from the very center of her being. The silk no longer caressed. His hand lay gently on her breast. She did not feel it. She saw it, she knew it was there, she felt only the heat.

“It is a focus,” he said at last. You find release through here,” his hand drifted between her thighs, one soft brush of fingertips. She lost control. Her vision swam, and she could not steady her mind. Her body was stationary, relaxed, except for the orgasm that rippled through her soul. Gasping, groping for reality, she tried to speak.

“Wh . .who are you?”

He touched her again, more fully, and she lost consciousness, the waves of pleasure pounding away against her insides like a relentless tide.

* * *

She awakened in a larger room. She lay in bed, still, perhaps a different bed. The pins were gone, her limbs her own. She was not alone. On another bed sat a woman with long satiny red hair and eyes like a doe. She did not smile.

“Where am I?”

There was only silence. Then he was there, at her side. She trembled. The memory of his touch held her as he moved closer and pushed her back onto the sheets. “What do you want?” she asked again. He did not speak.

He held up his hand, one of the pins held out for her inspection. She trembled again. Without waiting for approval, or reaction, he moved his hands directly to her thighs and slid them up slowly to tangle in the curls of her pubic hair. She watched him wildly, wishing for a cigarette, wishing for the sensations she’d felt, what, hours ago? Days? He massaged her slowly, and she felt herself growing warm, moist. Her lips parted and she moaned, an animal sound. He ignored her. There was the soft caress, the lingering touch on that most tender of spots, and the bite of steel.

She gasped. The sensations were cut off so sharply that her eyes immediately filled with tears. The loss was incredible — overpowering. She whimpered, moving a hand down toward his own –toward the pin.

“You cannot remove it.” The words were without passion. Without hope or compromise. Empty. She knew without trying that he did not lie, and the tears burst free. She felt the salty liquid burning its way down her cheeks. She felt the texture of the sheets beneath her. She felt the cold touch of his eyes on her flesh.

“There is more than one focus,” he said. “Each sensation I important. It is late, now. You must dance.”

* * *

She felt the music coursing through her. Her arms and legs were tied in bonds of gossamer, gracefully twisted about as the music played its 3-D symphony with her soul. The chords tingled down her skin, rippling across her muscles, her tendons, subtly strumming the tune of her motion.

She watched it all from the distance of the artist, watched also the dark silhouette against the back booth. She dreamed of a different sensation, a different focus. Begged for it, pleading with eyes and heart and bitter tears that would not pass her eyes.

The music slowed, releasing the strings, and she drooped toward the floor, less a bow than an act of supplication. Her corn-silk tresses caressed the wood of the floor, and she could feel the grain through nerves previously unheeded. Below, tucked into a fold of skin that would not release her, she knew the pin violated her skin. She felt nothing.

The lights receded. There was only darkness, and against it, his shadow, moving forward, closing the distance between them.

“There is more than one focus,” he said. “I will set you free.”

She saw him reach out, saw his fingers — black slivers of shadow — slide over her skin — through it. She felt him pluck gingerly at her mind, her thoughts, her dreams; Felt him linger, searching; felt him move unerringly to the center of her being; felt the bite of steel.

She felt the snap as the strings burst free, untangling, whirling, a kaleidoscopic vision, yet more than a vision, a release — and end. There was nothing.