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sex mad roar

01 Sunday Jun 2014

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blitzkrieg she bop

Blitzkrieg She-Bop & Love among the Ruins

The city will fizzle in the night, so vacant
I’m tryin’ to hear you talk …
I’m dyin’ to see you walking around me
the soundtrack to the city is exposed …
— The Clash, Sex Mad Roar (1985)

[The action takes place on a sweltering night in an attic on the High Street, Bethnal Green, at the height of the Luftwaffe Night Terror, in late April 1941. The room functions as a bedroom, with its ceiling sloping down at the back to within a few feet of the floor. There is a dormer window in a recess at back, its glass blacked out. A door stands at right center, bed left of window, bureau down right. The room is in terrible disorder and chaos, with something not of human design hiding in the shadows. The walls are covered in a strange encrusted material, vaguely resembling the chambered nest of a mud wasp, but on a much grander scale]

[LYSSK is discovered hanging upside down among the alien-encrustations as the curtain rises, snoring gently. She is a Xenomorph, powerfully built, one hundred and twenty-four years old]

[TSU XI TSU enters, lighting a candle on the bureau. She is a melancholy-looking woman of thirty-seven. She speaks with a Chinese-Yorkshrie accent; marking the two sides of her heritage]

LYSSK [Still upside down, yawning groggily]:
Tsu Xi Tsu, is that you?

TSU XI TSU:
Ah dint mean ta wake theur up. Nip on back ta sleep.

LYSSK:
I haven’t been asleep. What time is it?

TSU XI TSU [Takes off jacket]:
Abaht fowa o’clock.

LYSSK:
You’re late.

TSU XI TSU [Takes off shirt, scratching under her bra]:
Ah ‘ed ta walk fra uptown.

LYSSK:
How far uptown?

TSU XI TSU [Sighs]:
Way up tarn. ah let um sailors shake uz li’ eur dingy. [She sits in chair at foot of bed and fans herself] Ah dint av sense enuff ta gerr cab fare. Phaw! Theur dooant realize ‘a mafted theur are while theur sit daahn.

LYSSK:
Poor darling.

TSU XI TSU:
It’s onny April bur theur mun av ‘ed t’ gas lit ta mek it as mafted as dis i’ ‘eear. Ah’m sa glad ta gerr ‘ooam.

LYSSK [Drops to the floor, standing near her; a towering presence]:
You didn’t bring anything?

TSU XI TSU:
Not eur red cent, Lyssk. [Gets up and goes to bureau] Ah doun’t kna li’ what’s t’ matta wi’ uz. [Looks in the mirror] It’s ‘a’ darn ‘erpes sooar. If ah ‘ed onny ‘ed sense enuff ta gerr um camphor afowa ah went art.

LYSSK:
But isn’t it healing nicely? I can’t notice it any more.

TSU XI TSU:
O’ course it’s perfectly well. Theear won’t be eur trace o’ it tomorra. Ah shouldn’t ta av tried ta nip on art those twoa days t’ fust o’ t’ week when it wor sa bad. Everybody wor afraid o’ uz ‘n it made uz feel li’ eur lepa. Ah lost uz grip i’ um way ‘n naw ah can’t gerr it back. It orl depends on yursen. [Picks up the candle] If thas sure o’ yursen theur av luck; if theur aren’t, theur dooant. That’s orl ther’s ta it. [Crosses with the candle, which she puts down on the headboard of the bed] If i’d ‘ed eur lahl bit o’ t’ met t’neet i’d av getten um brass arta’ crowd. [Sits at the foot of the bed] Bur cocaine doesn’t brace uz up anymooar.

LYSSK:
Yes, I know.

TSU XI TSU:
Poor owd lass. Av theur bin liggin’ ‘eear orl neet i’ dis ‘ea’ waitin for uz? It’s ‘ard jouce on theur, Lyssk. Ah thowt i’d nip on sixes ‘n sevens t’neet! Uz nerves are just orl ta pieces. Ah did think ah wor goan gerr um brass dis tahhm.

LYSSK [Moves over to a mattress on the floor, half of which is covered in LYSSK’S encrustation-secretion]:
Why don’t you take your clothes off and come to bed?

TSU XI TSU [Gets up and takes a small bag out of her jacket]:
Ah caught dis for theur, onnyrooad. ‘Eear. [As she throws the bag it makes a rat-like squeal. There is clearly something alive inside]

LYSSK [Catching it, hissing happily to herself; a shrill noise, laughter made from fingernails running down a blackboard]:
Yum! Ta!

TSU XI TSU:
Lyssk, ah wish theur wouldn’t ‘iss li’ ‘a’, it’s inhuman. [Goes over to the bureau] Ah suppose theur can’t ‘elp it, bur it gives uz t’ creeps. [She begins to undress]

LYSSK [Wanders over to a dark corner of the room to eat in privacy]:
All right, darling. [Sounds of sloppy munching. Finally the Xenomorph drops the bloody bag on the floor and turns around, wiping her mouth] Do you want the last of the black meat?

TSU XI TSU [Undressing]:
Neya, it doesn’t matta. Ah’m just nervous ‘n irritable. Dooant pay enny attention ta owt assez. If ah dooant gerr um brass tomorra ah just doun’t kna li’ wha’ ahl doa. It’s terrible ta be sa dependent on owt as ‘a’.

LYSSK [Lies down on the mattress and stretches out one leg, inspecting her claws]:
Four days.

TSU XI TSU:
Neya, tonight’s ‘Aturday.

LYSSK:
That’s four days, isn’t it? We finished up that last package Tuesday night. I remember because it was the last time that they dropped bombs on Bethnal Green.

[As if on cue distant air raid sirens start up. They wail in the distance for a long moment while the two listen if they can hear the noise of approaching enemy bombers. Nothing. Unless noted the sirens continue throughout the rest of the play, faint background noise, like radio static or distant traffic, all that makes up an aural landscape of the city]

TSU XI TSU [Shaking her head as if from a dream, walks naked over to the bed, looking down at her lover]:
That’s reet. Ah wouldn’t av believed ah could nip on sa long. Ah dooant see ‘a theur stan’ it, Lyssk, orl neet li’ dis, doin nowt.

LYSSK:
It’s not like I can just go wandering down High Street any time I choose. Don’t worry about me. I can go for a while without the black meat … at least I think so.

TSU XI TSU [Attempts to pull a kimono off the chair, but finds it glued to the surface by LYSSK’S pear-translucent secretions]:
Ah cunt. [Gives up on the kimono and sits down in the chair, taking a cigarette from a package on the floor] Bur then i’ve bin usin it sa much longa than theur av. [Lights cigarette off the candle]

LYSSK [Curling into a fetal ball, stretching out one arm, inviting her lover to join her]:
I had been using it for some time, too, you know; a month or so after we met last summer.

TSU XI TSU:
Ta think. [Clambers into bed, careful not to spill ash, curls between LYSSK’S limbs as if the war-like Xenomorph was nothing more than a giant pillow] Onny eur year usin t’ flesh o’ t’ ‘iant black ‘entipede. Ah wonda wha’ ‘ood av become o’ theur if ah ‘adn’t fahn’ theur?

LYSSK [Running long talons through TSU XI TSU’S hair like a comb]:
What becomes of any queen who gets kicked out of her hive and has nowhere to go? I don’t like thinking about it.

TSU XI TSU:
That’s t’ trouble wi’ theur bugs. Theur are browt up wi’ onny ‘un idea — toa lay eggs ‘n fight — an’ if owt does ap’n ta thee then thas not able ta doa owt else. Thas onny ‘un ‘undred ‘n twenty-four, ‘n thas done.

LYSSK:
I’ll be one hundred and twenty-four in October, I think.

TSU XI TSU:
Lut, you’re fowa times ahda than uz ‘n it still mecs uz feel sa ancient. That’s ‘a theur stan’ t’ streeam t’ way theur doa. Theur are as firm ‘n strong as theur ivva wor, bur skeg a’ uz!

LYSSK:
I would if I could. But I can smell you, taste you and feel your molecules shift ever so slightly each time we make love. I know every micron of you, every fiber.

TSU XI TSU [Stubs out her cigarette and tosses the butt across the room]:
Ah feel sa owd, ‘n jiggered, ‘n discouraged, Lyssk. If ah dint av theur ah dooant think i’d gue on wi’ it.

LYSSK [Tightens her arm about her]:
I will always be with you. You know that, don’t you? Always.

TSU XI TSU:
Ah nivva thowt o’ thy leavin uz. [She puts her free arm up about her lover’s queer, oblong head and strokes the blank part of her skull where her eyes would be had she been human] Ah love theur sa much, Lyssk. Ah love theur mooar than anybody else will ivva love theur if theur li’ ta be eur thousan’ years owd.

LYSSK [Starts her horrible shrill laugh a second time; then quickly remembers how much TSU XI TSU hates it]:
Oh, um, sorry.

TSU XI TSU:
Ahl allus love theur. Bur thas li’ eur babby. Can’t nip on ahtside. Can’t feed yursen. Can’t even fettle sa we can buy wee mooar black met. [She snuggles up to her and presses her cheek to her. The two listen to the endless air raid sirens for a long moment, possibly in the distance is the throb and thrum of German bombers crossing the Channel, but it is impossible to be certain] Lyssk?

LYSSK: Yes?

TSU XI TSU [In a whisper]:
Uz darlin. [She gathers her courage. Long pause]

LYSSK:
Tired, lover?

TSU XI TSU:
Neya, not naw. Ah gerr strength fra theur. Thars getten plenty o’ strength for both o’ wee, ant theur? eh?

LYSSK:
It’s queer that someone like you would want to shack up with a monster like me.

TSU XI TSU:
Aye, you’ve sez ‘a’ afowa ‘n ah keep sayin’ —

BOTH:
“You’re neya monsta.”

LYSSK:
I know, but before I found you I was so alone.

TSU XI TSU:
Theur wor driftin thru orl ‘a’. [Waves hand at ceiling to indicate the rest of the universe] T’ cosmos, or whateva it is theur called it. Driftin, asleep, for thousands o’ years. O’ course theur wor a sen.

LYSSK:
And now I have you, darling. I may be nothing but a bio-mechanical killing machine, but none of that matters if I have your love.

TSU XI TSU:
Thee seh wee love won’t pay t’ rent. I’ve towd theur orl abaht missen. Ah did fettle ont’ Evenin ‘Un i’ Tangia, ‘n afowa ‘a’ ah used ta li’ on eur farm i’ Interzone. That’s orl ther’s.

LYSSK:
That’s fine. I don’t want you to tell me anything that you don’t want to. [Moves her position slightly] Are you all comfortable?

TSU XI TSU:
Aye, uz love. [Pause] Ah av summa’ ah need ta call ta thee abaht. Wi’ve eur problem.

LYSSK:
We have many problems, lover.

TSU XI TSU:
Ah kna we doa, ‘n yet ah can lie ‘eear li’ dis ‘n it doesn’t seem possible ‘a’ ther’s such eur thin as trouble int’ world. It is sa serene ta lie still, ‘n av theur strokin uz ‘air. Ah dooant want ivva ta move agin. Ah can feel thy ‘eart lampin. Does thee feel ‘a much fasta mine is gonneur than thy’n?

LYSSK [cupping one of TSU XI TSU’S breasts]:
Yes. Yes, I can.

[The sound of distant bombing is heard]

TSU XI TSU:
T’ bombs soun’ li’ eur spirit ‘a’ can’t rest. T’ spirit o’ t’ city gonneur made, ‘a’ goes on burnin ‘n burnin ‘n will nivva gi’o’a, neya matta wha’ becomes o’ theur ‘n uz. Bur when ah’m liggin’ close ta thee li’ dis, touchin theur, ther’s eur soarts o’ electric current ‘a’ radiates fra theur orl o’a ‘cos thas sa ali’. Wha’ wor ah goan seh? Wha’ wor ah callin abaht?

LYSSK:
The end of days? The beginning of love?

TSU XI TSU:
Aye. Ah wor goan seh while ah’m liggin’ close ta thee li’ dis it orl seems sa far away, doesn’t it? It is li’ liggin’ i’ bed ‘n listenin teur t’ clouds. Theear may be deyth ‘n storms ‘n fallin bombs art theear, bur they’re far away. They’re li’ t’ clouds. Thee can nivva touch wee.

LYSSK:
I wished we could get some raw, dripping black meat and forget out troubles for at least a night.

TSU XI TSU:
‘Oor beautiful Lyssk. [Sits up and moves to the side of the bed, finds a cigarette and lights it] Ah tell theur ‘a’ ah thowt ah ‘ood nip on sixes ‘n sevens tonight; ah ant gorreur nerve gallock i’ uz body. Ah woontad ta kna wha’ theur wor doin. Ah thowt orl sorts o’ dingy things. Ah could picture theur gerrin desperate ‘n nip on ea’ someone, somewheear, ‘n t’ police ‘ood ‘unt theur ‘n pur theur i’ eur zooa, or ‘appen doa experiments on theur, ah doun’t kna li’ wha’. Ah could av getten um stuff t’neet, a’ ‘a’.

LYSSK:
What do you mean? How? Who?

TSU XI TSU:
T’ landlut. ‘E wor waitin for uz ont’ stairs.

LYSSK:
Him? Does he still think you live alone? Why would he even mention it when he knows how broke we are? We owe him two weeks rent.

TSU XI TSU:
Neya, ‘e sez ‘e knew eur way sa ah could gerr um.

LYSSK:
What do you mean, darling?

TSU XI TSU:
Theur norrz.

LYSSK:
Do you mean to tell me that man has been soliciting for your favors again? [She hisses softly, her terrible segmented tail twitching violently] I knew something was the matter. Did you … what did you tell him?

TSU XI TSU:
Ah towd ‘im ta fuk off. Wha’ does thee think ah towd ‘im? Ah sez ah wor off t’ rubbish.

LYSSK [uncurls herself and places one of her giant hands on TSU XI TSU’S naked back]:
O, Tsu Xi Tsu. You feel so warm and I am suddenly so cold.

TSU XI TSU:
Well, ah dint want it sa bad, then.

LYSSK [desperate]:
If we had any other place that we could go, I would have got out of this house the night you told me he first came up here and bothered you. But how can we? We don’t have a pound to deposit on a new room. I suppose he knows all that.

TSU XI TSU:
Aye. [Looking around the room with a touch of humor] ‘N when t’ owd clart noggin finally sees wha’ theur did ta ‘is walls ah suspect we won’t gerr wee deposit back. That’s wha’ ah getten ta call ta thee abaht. ‘E’s goan kick wee art.

LYSSK:
“Kick us out”?

TSU XI TSU:
That’s wha’ ‘e sez. Unless–

LYSSK:
Unless what?

TSU XI TSU:
Well … theur norrz. We need eur place ta sleep. Eur place for theur ta ‘ide. Theur see —

LYSSK [Sitting up suddenly, tall and terrible in the shadows]:
What are you talking about?

TSU XI TSU:
Ah think t’ owd bloke will let wee stay if ‘e gets wha’ ‘e wants. ‘E cum up ‘eear ‘n made eur gurt fuss o’a uz ‘n sez ‘a’ ‘e wor mafted on uz ‘n orl ‘a’ rubbish, ‘n ah sin wor stayin a’ ‘is ‘ouse wiyaa’ eur ‘usban’ or eur guardian ‘n not payin rent ‘n it’s t’ war … ‘e sez ‘a’ if ah wor tooa gran’ for ‘im i’d av ta gerr art o’ ‘is ‘ouse, that’s orl. ‘A’ wor afta ‘e offered uz t’ black met.

LYSSK:
Tsu Xi; am I going mad or did you just suggest sleeping with our landlord in exchange for rent?

TSU XI TSU:
‘Appen, theur mean?

LYSSK:
Never let me hear that again. You don’t do that anymore.

TSU XI TSU:
Ah av uz job, don’t ah?

LYSSK:
You work as a hostess in a bar in Soho. That’s completely a different matter. Don’t ever let me hear yu suggest that again, do you understand? I would sooner crack his skull and eat his brains than let him touch you. [Now it’s LYSSK’S turn to angrily get up and cross over to the bureau] By the Lady of the Hive, it’s hot in here!

TSU XI TSU [Walks over behind LYSSK. The height difference is in stark comparison, the Xenomorph’s 7 feet to the human’s 5’3”. TSU XI TSU puts her arms around her lover as far as they can go]:
Darlin, wi’ve ta li’. Wi’ve ta doa summa’. Everee neet we meight dee if eur Kraut bomb falls on wee. Wi’ve neya brass ‘n ah don’t kna ‘a ta gerr enny. If we can’t gerr on … t’ way we bin gerrin on … then ah av ta doa summa’, theur understan’? [Reaches up and pulls LYSSK’S head down to her mouth. A long kiss] Ah don’t care wha’ ah av ta doa, bur ah’m not goan lose theur.

LYSSK:
You’re not going to lose me.

TSU XI TSU:
Oa? Theur gurt dummy. Wha’ does thee think will ap’n t’ moa anyone else i’ orl o’ London village sees theur? If thee don’t shoot theur they’ll pur theur i’ eur zooa ‘n doa experiments on theur. Theur towd uz it yursen. Owt for Churchill’s war effoarts. T’ onny way ah can protect theur is ta keep theur ‘idden ‘n ah can’t doa ‘a’ if we gerr kicked art ontoa t’ street.

LYSSK:
Of course we’ve got to do something. But you don’t understand what you are saying. If it were the last night we’d ever spend under a roof it wouldn’t change my decision.

TSU XI TSU [returning to the bed]:
Then, by Lut, it luks li’ it is t’ last neet, wi’ t’ jouce ah’m avin. [She sits and leans her chin on her right hand, gazing at the candle] If ah wor able ta doa enny kin’ o’ fettle it’d be different. Bur ah don’t kna ‘a ta doa owt else, ah guess. Ah couldn’t neya mooar stick ta enny kin’ o’ eur job than ah could drift thru space li’ theur did. Wea’ar up against it, that’s orl ‘n it’s fine ‘n noble ta call abaht uz ‘onor, whateva ‘a’ is, bur t’ day anyone finds theur, lova, it’s gem o’a.

LYSSK:
But Tsu Xi, love, you don’t understand. [Crosses to bed] Listen to me. [Cradles TSU XI TSU to her] You think that you know me, you think that because I told you how I escaped and got lost, how I drifted for almost a century, that you know me and that you love what you know. It isn’t your fault. But this is the way that I was made. I kill. That’s my primary goal in everything that I am supposed to do. But you changed that I don’t know how, but you did. I have so few ways to show you how much I love you because you are the clean part of me. You are the part that I live for. And you are sacred, do you understand? Holy.

TSU XI TSU [Still gazing at candle]:
Sure, ah understan’.

LYSSK:
Go on. Say that you love me. I love to hear you say it.

TSU XI TSU [resting her head against LYSSK’S massive breasts as if she were a baby]:
Ah love theur. ‘n ahl stick wi’ theur. Bur we getten ta li’, don’t we? We getten ta gerr um brass um way. ‘N if theur can’t gerr it, sa ah av ta. That’s if wea’ar goan stick togetha.

LYSSK:
No, you won’t have, Tsu Xi Tsu. I’d rather be dead. [Places her lover on the bed and stands] I’d rather go out into the street and let Nazi bombs kill me before I’ll see you do that. [Distant sound of bombs getting closer] That horrible old asshole. I think I’ll kill him. [Goes up into alcove and takes hold of the blacked out window as if she were about to open it and look outside. Thinks better of it and turns back toward the room]

TSU XI TSU [sympathetic]:
We getten ta, lova. Wea’ar up against it. Ah’m goan be jannock wi’ you; ‘a’ thin ‘a’ ah getten on uz gob isn’t goan gerr betta. If we gerr kicked art o’ ‘eear today, wha’ t’ ‘ell can we doa? sleep int’ park? Ah guess not. Not while ah gorreur way ta mek easy brass. Why, darlin, ah wish’t tha’d see t’ numba o’ ’em ‘a’ tries ta speyt ta uz everee tahhm ah nip on art. It’s easy, ah tell theur. ‘N ther’s gran’ brass i’ it. Ah dooant li’ ta call abaht it, bur we getten ta doa summa’. We can gerr eur gran’ roa somewheear ‘n keep eur lahl black met on ‘an’ orl t’ tahhm. Ah’m not goan leev theur bur ah need t’ rubbish, that’s orl. [Lies down on the bed and turns toward the wall] I’ve gone wiyaa’ it fowa days naw.

LYSSK: [comes down and sits as daintily next to her as she can]:
You are a strange woman. Can’t you see that you are the only thing I’ve left in this world and every other world we could ever visit?

TSU XI TSU:
Bur theur can’t tek uz away, can theur? You’re stuk ‘eear, li’ we’re stuk i’ London wi’ orl t’ world burnin afowa wee een.

LYSSK:
If I knew how to take you away, lover, I would. Now I just have to protect you.

TSU XI TSU:
Protect uz? Dooant theur understan’ ‘a’ ah saved theur when theur wor sa weyt theur couldn’t even move? ‘A’ theur belong ta uz? Ah saved theur fra dis reeight thin, ah suppose, eur year agoa. Dooant theur see, darlin’?

LYSSK:
There has to be a better way than this to live.

TSU XI TSU:
Neya.

LYSSK:
What do you mean by no?

TSU XI TSU:
Ah dooant see enny reason why we should li’.

LYSSK:
Why wouldn’t we want to live? What’s the point of being in love if you can’t live?

TSU XI TSU [Sits up and embraces her lover once more]:
Lyssk, uz darlin, listen ta uz. Thars bin eur wonderful lass, or relic, or whateva it is thy fowk call apiece otha, ‘n ah love theur as reeight few fowk av ivva bin loved i’ dis world. ‘Cos ah ‘ed lost everythin, theur see, when ah fahn’ theur, everythin. Ah ‘ed thrown everythin away. ‘N thars ‘ed ta be t’ whole world for uz sin. T’ whole world, theur see. Theear int owt else. When t’ black met getten uz ah just went daahn ‘cos ah dint care abaht owt. Ah gev up uz job ‘n just let missen slide. Ah intended ta kill missen when uz brass gev art, ‘n ah dint even care ‘a much ah ‘ed gallock. Then theur fell art o’ t’ sky ‘n orl ‘a’ changed.

LYSSK [Strokes TSU XI TSU’S hair]:
I remember.

TSU XI TSU:
Theur can’t rememba much. Ah can’t thoil ta think even naw ‘a theur wor bea’ up. Bur theur wor i’ sa much peeam theur didn’t even kna ‘a’ theur ‘ed crashed ta earth.

LYSSK:
That’s right. Free fall. There was that nightmare; I remember some horrible dream about smothering.

TSU XI TSU:
‘N sin then, Lyssk, wi’ve ‘ed eur wonderful tahhm. Does thee rememba when we used ta av ta sleep unda t’ temple? Ah love ‘a’ owd temple naw ‘cos it’s associated i’ uz min’ wi’ theur.

LYSSK:
It’s been the best year of my life.

TSU XI TSU:
“Ah mun nip on daahn teur t’ seas agin, teur t’ lonely seeur ‘n t’ sky, an’ orl ah ax is eur tall ship ‘n eur star ta stea ‘a by; an’ t’ wheel’s kick ‘n t’ wind’s song ‘n t’ whi’ sail’s shakin, an’ eur grey mist ont’ sea’s fyass, ‘n eur grey dawn breytin …”

LYSSK:
Er. What was that?

TSU XI TSU:
Seeur Feva, by ‘Ohn Masefield. Uz mutheur use ta read it ta uz when ah wor eur wee lass. I’ve bin listenin fert tide orl uz life, ‘n ah finally fahn’ it i’ theur. Wha’ does thee seh we nip on art wi’ it?

LYSSK:
What do you mean, “go out with the tide”?

TSU XI TSU:
Listen. [Sound of bombing getting very close]. Open t’ winda. Turn ont’ leet. Let’s gi’ t’ Krauts eur target.

LYSSK [Spins around, hissing in alarm]:
Tsu Xi Tsu! What are you saying? [Crouching down before her human lover, the Xenomorph looks as if she were peering into the other’s eyes.] No, not for me.

TSU XI TSU:
Lyssk, wi’ve ‘ed such eur wonderful tahhm. Wi’ve known everythin ther’s ta kna int’ world worth knowin. Wi’ve reached t’ top. Let’s let dis be t’ en’. ‘A can we survi’ togetha? Even if we don’t dee i’ an air raid, if t’ war is o’a wheear can we nip on? Whoa ‘ood let wee be togetha? Eur year is as long as eur lifetime if it is full o’ love.

LYSSK [Incredulously]:
Be serious.

TSU XI TSU [Gently]:
Ah nivva wor mooar serious i’ uz life. Ah can’t gue on wiyaa’ theur, ‘n ah won’t leev theur behin’ ta en’ up um experiment or slev. It’s theur ‘a’ ah love — the lahl strange spirit ‘a’ mecs theur lyssk, ‘n different ta everybody else ‘a’ ivva lived. T’ black met will kill ‘a’ i’ theur, i’ uz. If we’re goan destroy ‘a’ then let’s doa it soona than lata. Think! Dis may be t’ last neet we’ll ivva spen’ together — the last chance we’ll av. Turn ont’ lights. Open t’ winda. Neya tellin what’ll ap’n if we gerr ta see tomorra. Ah don’t ‘od on ta fyass it a sen.

LYSSK:
I am a warrior and a queen dethroned. If I don’t fall in battle then I don’t want to, darling.

TSU XI TSU:
Eur theur afraid ta dee?

LYSSK:
Afraid? No. It just goes against my need to survive.

TSU XI TSU:
Theur lost thy ‘i’. Theur lost thy fowk. Theur can’t feight. Theur can’t even nip on ahtside. Wha’ av theur getten ta li’ for?

LYSSK:
I’ve got you.

TSU XI TSU:
‘Abe, thars slipped. Thars slipped away furtha than ah thowt. Ah meight be gonneur parky turkey o’a t’ black met, bur thars slipped furtha than ah av.

LYSSK:
I’m not that bad off.

TSU XI TSU [panic-stricken, the sound of falling bombs very close now]:
Thas chuffin’ bad off, Lyssk. Dooant theur see ‘a’ thy life is finished? Warrior? ‘Ueen? Theur are nowt. Theur are less than nowt. Wha’ theur chuffin’ are is t’ onny alien thin on dis earth, ‘n ‘eear theur call calmly abaht … um vague ideeur abaht ‘onor. “Dee i’ battle”? Ther’s neya reason for theur ta gue on livin … except thy fear o’ deyth.

LYSSK:
I’m not afraid of dying … for the right reason.

TSU XI TSU [rising up, advancing to the blacked out window]:
‘Ell, let uz open t’ winda then, then. Ah’m not afraid. Skeg a’ uz. Think o’ t’ trouble it takes ta li’. Think o’ t’ effoarts ta keep yursen gonneur on ‘n on. When theur lose uz tha’il just slip ‘n slip. Thars getten ta dee int’ en’ anyha. ‘N when thas dead it won’t mek enny difference ta thee ‘a long theur lived. It will be just as if tha’d nivva bin burn.

LYSSK [Her head following TSU XI TSU’S every movement]:
I don’t understand you.

TSU XI TSU [Edging towards the window]:
Aye theur doa. Ah can’t fyass t’ dayleight, Lyssk, if you’re not i’ it wi’ uz. Ah’m tooa jiggered. Aren’t theur jiggered? Wha’ will become o’ theur wiyaa’ uz ta tek care o’ theur?

LYSSK [Helpless when faced with human rationalizations]:
I don’t know.

TSU XI TSU:
Let’s turn ont’ lights. Then we won’t av ta wake up int’ mornin. Theur ‘n uz but — maybe — bur ah think thas scared.

LYSSK [Makes a noise half way between a hiss and a sniff, curls back into her fetal position on the mattress, her tail swishing angrily]:
Have it your way. Open the windows.

TSU XI TSU [in an ecstatic whisper]:
Oa, Lyssk!

[TSU XI TSU opens the window, the sounds of the outside world suddenly very loud and then turns on the single, naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. She then comes down on tiptoe, trembling; lies next to LYSSK. The room is garishly bright]

LYSSK:
Now what? How long do you think this will take?

TSU XI TSU:
Not long, ah think. Ah doun’t kna li’. Dooant let’s call abaht it. Lyssk, does thee think i’ve getten t’ reet ta tek theur wi’ uz?

LYSSK:
With you? Where?

TSU XI TSU:
Now — li’ dis. Bur ah couldn’t thoil for anybody else ta ‘urt theur, darlin.

LYSSK:
You’re trembling. Are you the one who is scared now?

TSU XI TSU:
Ah’m not scared. ah’m just ‘appy.

LYSSK:
Happy?

TSU XI TSU:
Ah thowt i’d lost theur, Lyssk.

LYSSK:
Um. [Very long pause during which nothing happens save the wail of air raid sirens and the drone of German engines getting louder and louder] I never thought killing me would take so long. Do you think they’ll find enough of us to figure out who we were?

TSU XI TSU:
Wha’ theur wor? Ah expect sa.

LYSSK [hissing one last time, more to herself]:
Won’t that give the boffins something to talk about? I suppose none of my sisters who survived will ever know what happened to me.

TSU XI TSU:
They’ll figure summa’ art. Please dooant let’s call abaht it.

[Another long pause. The German planes are right over head. Still no sounds of bombs dropping. From down on the street an outraged male voice: “Oi! Turn that bloody light out!”]

LYSSK:
Well, someone noticed.

TSU XI TSU:
Lyssk?

LYSSK:
Yes?

TSU XI TSU [in a whisper]:
Uz darlin’! [Long pause. The sound of planes is definitely heading away]

LYSSK [with a loud sigh]:
How incredibly thick are those pilots? Should I go onto the roof and start waving my hands and jumping up and down?

TSU XI TSU:
These raids gue on for ‘ours. If dis wev dunt see wee ah’m sure t’ next ‘un will. Oa, Lyssk, cum on back ‘eear. Wi’ve onny getten such eur lahl while.

[The sound of planes has completely disappeared. Sounds of distant outrage. Feet pounding up wooden stairs]

LYSSK:
From the sounds of it we’ve got the whole neighborhood coming to visit.

TSU XI TSU:
Fert Lurt’s sake, dooant open t’ door! I’m sure eur bomb will fall soon!

[The air raid sirens fall silent. Outrage on the other side of the door. A multitude of voices: “Ay yous insane?” “Turn Frank Bough that Isle Of Wight!” “’Re ya tryin’ ter get us killed?” “Tirn off dat lamp!” etc.]

LYSSK [raising herself up on one elbow to stare at the door]:
How ironic. It won’t be the Nazis that kill us, but our neighbors.

TSU XI TSU [Sits up in bed, truly terrified as more and more fists rain down upon the door. It trembles, about to be ripped off its hinges]:
Nah! Nah! Nah! This isn’t supposed ter ‘appun like this!

LYSSK [pulling her lover close, inhaling deeply of her scent]:
Love, love of my heart, listen. Do you trust me?

TSU XI TSU [In a panic, not sure what LYSSK is even saying]:
Trust yous? O’ cose, ay trust yous wi’ me loife.

LYSSK [Standing up, all 7 feet of her suddenly dark and threatening, her old warrior nature rising to the surface]:
Then sit right there, close your eyes and whatever happens, don’t move.

[LYSSK leaps to the ceiling, to hang upside down in the exact spot where she was sleeping when the play began. The ferocious babel of voices on the other side of the door reaches a pinnacle of indignation and then the door bursts open. Fearful, irate neighbors in night shirts, slips and bathrobes — normal people terrified that the lit, open window would allow their whole neighborhood to be fire bombed — burst in]

WOMAN WITH ROLLING PIN AND CURLERS:
Ah ya tryen ter get us killed?

MAN IN PURPLE DRESSING GOWN:
Wa woods ye dae sic’ a hin’? Ah hae a fowk in thes buildin’, ye ken.

FACTORY WORKER IN NIGHT SHIRT:
Oi don’t want ter die the-nite! Oi don’t want ter die any noight.

[By this time the crowd has moved into the center of the room. TSU XI TSU appears zombified, apparently staring into space as the multitude crowds in around her. In truth she is gazing in awe at LYSSK, still out of sight but watching every move the humans make]

TSU XI TSU:
I’m — I’m soz. Bur — bur —

[LYSSK drops from the ceiling, between the invaders and the door, trapping them in the small room. She rises to her full height — 7 feet — black-green as poison, clawed cable-like arms held out at her sides, her segmented tail whipping back and forth, her shiny smooth head moving into the light. The entire cast turns to stare at her, horror-struck, mesmerized.The Xenomorph takes one threatening step toward them, as if she could gather everything in the room up in her arms and devour them all]

LYSSK [Making her shrill laugh]:
I say, this is a terrible way to end things.

[CURTAIN]

fire storm

08 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Erotic, Feminism, story

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A Note From the Author:

In this story I use the name “Onihime” as a sort of personification of Death, set toward the end of World War II. While the Japanese term Onihime does, literally, translate as “Demon Princess,” the idea that she has some sort of connection with yuri-lesbians is purely my idea. “Yuri” is a term for stories involving love between women in Japanese literature, focusing either on the erotic, the spiritual, or the emotional aspects of girl-girl relationships.

* * *

Outra noite de verão.
Na cidade morta, tristeza;
não lavado pela tempestade.

One more summer night.
In the dead city, sorrow;
unwashed by the storm.

March 10, 1945

Her lover was dying; Mai sat alone with her. Nothing could exceed the desolation of her surroundings on that early summer night. Her beloved Kimiko, a young woman who would soon be taken from her, coughed in her troubled, thin sleep. Mai sat in the dark on the third-floor of a wood-and-paper boarding-house. It was so quiet, even the cicadas had abandoned their song. It was a claustrophobic night. The other boarders had fled the building the day before; all the servants except the cook had been dismissed, joining the endless stream of refugees trying to flee to the country, to the mountains, to anywhere. The landlady was also missing as well; as if she had left on a brief holiday earlier that morning, a journey that spiraled horribly out of control.

The glassless window was open to let in the thick, stagnant air; no sound sprung up from the rows of long, narrow backyards below in the dark. The streets were deadened; all light extinguished. The whole city held its breath; their ears poised, waiting for that unmistakable drone coming out from the deep, dark sea — the heartbeat of those long-range B-29 Super Fortresses — sent, as if from another world, to burn all of Tokyo to ruin.

Mai sat in the dark, plunged in the deepest grief that could come to a young soul, for in all other suffering we can still hold onto a sliver of desire, however brief; except for this, this one grief. Mai gazed dully at the unconscious form of the woman who had been her best friend, her extraordinary companion, her soul mate during five long years of joy; two souls so full of life, so optimistic for the future, now and forever twisted by such a terrible destiny.

Like the Imperial empire itself, it was a wasting disease that had consumed her Kimiko; the girl’s face was literally shriveled; her night gown hung loosely upon two breasts which had never known deformity, a body no longer muscular from cum and orgasms and a life as a factory girl. Dully Mai wondered why the body that she had loved so much, that had brought her so much desire, had been changed forever; why Kimiko’s beauty, too, had gone somewhere else. She had loved her glorious cunt, her magnificent ass, her splendid breasts, as if they were a part of herself; loved Kimiko’s wild-fuck magnetism. Now the body lay limp under the quilt. For a moment something convulsed within Mai. Everything in the world had abandoned her.

She leaned over her lover, listening. Kimiko was in there still, somewhere. The ill-shapen breasts rose and fell, almost imperceptible, true, but they still rose and fell. Where does the soul go from its sodden clay form when one is no longer alive but not yet dead? Was it still conscious in there? Was it simply unable to communicate through such decaying corpus? Did the soul struggle to be heard? Did Kimiko see Mai’s agony? She called her lover’s name, she shook those thin shoulders, suddenly crazed to rip the body open, part the breasts and ribs, the wild urge to find the soul of her soul mate, yet even in that tortured moment she knew that such violence would undo everything.

Violence. Violence would be here soon.

The dying woman took no notice of her. Mai ripped open Kimiko’s gown, pressed her cheek to her breast, felt the long nipple smothered against her cheek. She had once joked that nipple was the only food she ever needed.

“No,” Kimiko had laughed, looking up from between Mai’s wide open thighs, her nose and chin and lips all sticky in the dark. “A girl can’t live on cum alone, but I think we’re seeing if we can try.”

Indeed, they had tried, over and over and over; every night on that little tatami mat while Europe burned on the other side of the world.

How could the connection between lovers be so strong if one of them was not alive at the other end? Kimiko had to be in there; her other, her best part. But the faintly beating heart did not speed up under her lips, even when she took the unresponsive nipple into her mouth and began to suck. With a sob she rose to her feet, went to the window. She feared some psychotic act on her part. She feared her own grief. She feared just how much damage she could do if she lost control just now.

She couldn’t see the charred grass in the backyards from where she stood. Something sinister, like the dread of the approaching raiders, clung to the city. An inky shadow. She returned swiftly to the bedside, wondering if she had remained away a long twilit hour or a couple of minutes, if her beloved Kimiko was dead. Had Onihime, the demon princess that lived in the shadow-world and fed upon the passions of all yuri girls, found their room yet? Mai clasped her hands against her own wildly beating heart, watching with panic-stricken eyes at the graven face which was becoming less defined as the night closed in around them.

Fearfully, she put her ear to Kimiko’s lips; she still breathed. She made a motion to kiss her, then threw herself back in a quiver of agony, they were not the lips she had known, she would never have those lips ever again. Mai’s vision became blurred, closing her eyes, waited for the pain to lessen. When she opened them Kimiko’s face had disappeared; the heat waves from the city silenced even the starlight. Night was here.

She sat there in the hot heavy night, pressing her hand hard against the other’s ebbing heart, waiting for Onihime. Suddenly a queer idea possessed her. Why did she have to wait for Onihime at all? Why was She lollygagging and taking Her leisure to get to them? The heart sounded like the kind of music that was always played in Kabuki theater when the heroine was about to die on stage. Mai had always thought that sort of thing was ridiculous. And it was; every attempt to portray Death in human form always is.

Far out at sea she thought she heard something, only for a moment. A drone of engines, the insect hum of war machines. For a moment the sweat stood on her face; she knitted her brows angrily together and pressed her palm against that wondrous heart, as if to keep guard over. Then the pent-up air burst from her lungs. Damn her, Onihime-kami, where was She?

That noise, that hum, it did not repeat itself. What a curious experience: to be sitting alone in a doomed building, one she knew that everyone else had stolen out from, waiting for an invisible, resolute enemy, with whom the Imperial will could no longer wrestle against. Mai wondered at the demon princess’ frivolousness at such a time and, turning her head slightly, she cried out in horror. Something was creeping into the window-sill. Two round, moon-like eyes glared menacingly back at her just above the black void of the window. Mai’s limbs trembled, she struggled to her feet, looked away but her own eyes dragged themselves back to the window against her will.

She realized that it was not anger that possessed her; she was horribly frightened. Is it possible? she thought. Kimiko used to call me heroic; but then with her it was impossible to fear anything. She glanced apprehensively about; the eyes were gone. A trick, she wondered, a trick of my nerves. Then she wondered if she could be able to see Her when She came; wondered how far off She was now. Not very far, it felt. She had heard about the power of the dead to drive away all mortal courage, had scoffed at that, having no morbid horror of the dead herself. You could always tell when the dead were touching you; that sudden chill, the goosebumps, the way the hair on your scalp felt electrically charged. But this was a different sort of terror. To wait, wait, wait, perhaps for the rest of her life, perhaps only until the midnight, while those awful, unhurried war machines stole ever nearer.

Where was the unconquerable love that had held her all these years with such a strong, loving embrace? How could her darling Kimiko abandon her at her greatest need? Suddenly, far down in the building, on the first floor perhaps, came a sound; a wary, muffled sound, as if someone were creeping up the old, wooden stairs, someone fearful of being heard. The whole still night felt wet, a wave of death-sweat had broken over the city.

Then came another footstep. A pause. Then another.

Mai knew that it was Onihime who was coming to her through the silent deserted boarding-house. The demon princess of girl-love was toiling up the stairs painfully, as if She were old, tired, exhausted with the knowledge of the howling fire-storm that would consume not only all of Tokyo that night but all the gay little girls whose love kept Her well-fed and happy. She reached the first landing, crept down the hall to the next stairs, then crawled slowly up as before. Light as Her footfalls were, they were squarely planted, unfaltering; slow, slow and they never halted.

Automatically Mai pressed her hand upon Kimiko’s breast, trying to find that precious heart; its beats were almost too feeble to locate. That beat would cease altogether in moments, just when the demon princess who made those creaking footfall noises would enter the room and stand before the bed.

Not a sound came from the outside world, save the song of the gremlins in the armaments, the wasp-buzz of engines, the yawning of bomb bay doors swinging open. Even the cicadas had begun to sing this song; but inside the quiet building the footfalls were becoming louder, until thigh-high leather kick-boots were pounding up the stairs, echoing across the world.

Mai had counted the steps — ten, eleven, twelve — as they moved with slow precision, noting their hollow reverberation that sounded like the blood pumping in her veins. How many steps left before She reached the door? The noise turned the corner of the hallway; it advanced, slowly, down the hall; it paused before her door, a whirlwind of fire, a diabolic presence nothing could stop.

The floor was trembling as knuckles knocked upon the frame of the wooden, sliding door. Windows and glass all up and down the city street shattered. Thousands and thousands of small fragments of splinters flew in every direction. Mai felt glass slivers penetrate her thighs. She could feel the blood steaming out into the hot night from her wounds; tears beginning to roll down her legs.

Black smoke filled the skies of Tokyo.

The knocking became more demanding; the very walls vibrated. The sounds of terrifying, deafening explosions rolled across the cityscape. A stabbing pain filled Mai’s skull. Blood was flowing everywhere, her ears bleeding furiously. Deaf. The shock of the sudden pain and stillness scared Mai more than the creature standing in the open doorway to their room. A girl only a few years older than Mai herself, with piercing black pits for eyes, was breathing rapidly. She parted the folds on her kimono and Mai could see she wore nothing underneath it. Her hair was so black it seemed to suck all the light from the corridor outside. Her breasts were nicely shaped, identical, in fact, to Kimiko’s, back when they had been in their prime. Her lips moved but Mai could not understand the words. She realized that the other had shamelessly buried one hand between her legs, her fingers moving at a slow, leisurely pace. Tender. The girl closed her nothingness eyes for a second while her lips moved wordlessly.

Onihime purred as her hand moved faster. Though Mai couldn’t see her exploring her own wet, cum-sticky folds, the demon princess seemed well-versed enough in pleasure; but with an unquestionable hunger that Mai had never seen before, not even in Kimiko.

Onihime whimpered as she gently twisted her clit and all tenderness that desire can bring evaporated into the incendiary, petrol-fueled air. The girl fiercely pinched her nipples, screaming with joy as her hand began to furiously finger-fuck herself — deep — deep — impossibly deep. The hum of falling bombs were all around them. The demon princess’ wrist gleamed with her own cum, a netherworld glow, what God’s tears would look like, if only such a thing as a God existed.

Mai’s voice was on the verge of screaming as the burning air was sucked out of the room. She sounded like she was about to cry or sob; an inhuman sound only the devils and lovers of demons can make. The city was aflame, flailing about, writhing in agony, screaming piteously for help, but beyond all mortal assistance. The wall of flame rolled over everything; there was a horrific beauty to this last orgasm as the two women screamed, caught in the aftershocks. With a last, wild, spontaneous cry Mai flung herself across her beloved Kimiko as the walls came tumbling down.

the night witches [2]

13 Monday Feb 2012

Posted by in Erotic, Feminism, story

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Author’s Note:

My spiritual mother, Colonel Marina Raskova, founder of 588th Night Bomber Regiment — what the Germans in WW2 called “Das Nachthexen,” the “Night Witches” — once asked me, “what is the purpose of prose if not poetry?” She delighted in French Avant-garde theater, Dada art, surrealistic poetry, and so do I. If stream of consciousness bores you, dear reader, you might want to read elsewhere. It is true that erotic war literature can be problematic, I understand, especially for people who live comfortably enough where they will never have to face such moral dilemmas. My mother never had that luxury in 1941 as the Nazis were invading the Soviet Union: Operation Barbarossa. This story is dedicated to all of us who learned how to survive.

* * *

“I want you to pose naked for me.”

“What, Sargent Rudenov?”

“Comrade Aleksandra, did you not just knock on my door and enter?”

The younger pilot blinked in the well lit room that served as Sargent Yevgeniya Rudenov’s, flight squadron leader for the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, personal quarters.

“Yes, Sargent Rudenov.”

“Comrade Aleksandra, did you not just ask me if you would be flying in tonight’s sortie?”

“Yes, Sargent Rudenov.”

“And when I said no, did you not say ‘what can I do to fly tonight’?”

“I’m sorry, Sargent Comrade. Did you just say–”

“Yes. That I want you to pose naked for me.”

Aleksandra looked at the decorated Hero of the Soviet Union, Order of the Red Banner and Order of the Red Star sitting before her, trying to make some sense of the offer.

War had stripped Rudenov of her girlish charms, leaving her with a curious, rugged sensuality that everyone – women and men – in the regiment noticed. They say in Russia that there are only two types of females: girls and elderly babushkas. Where does one find the link between caterpillar and butterfly? Who has ever witnessed such a transformation in a world that holds motherhood so cheap? “In what mysterious pupa,” one traveler asked, “do Russian women prepare for the next stage of their lives?” The answer is easy: war. War burns away all the virginal blushing embarrassments, the banal madonna-whore complex, the artificial accouterments of a bourgeois society, leaving behind only queer middle-age women who know how to survive.

“Comrade Aleksandra, you have been in camp over a month. We have lost twenty-four pilots and navigators during that time. Girls just like you who came into this very room saying they would do anything to get the chance to drop bombs on the Germans. And now here you are, their sister, obviously, standing before me saying you’ll do anything to get the chance to fly in a Polikarpov,” Yevgeniya smiled at the obvious confusion and discomfort this was creating in the younger girl. “You tell me that you would do anything?”

“Yes, Sargent Rudenov.”

“Well then, you can convince me about that by posing naked for me, right now, yes? So you choose, the night is young, the plane do not leave for another three hours. Come day break, where would you like to be?”

Yevgeniya stood up from her desk, walked over to a small cabinet and removed a large, chrome camera. Aleksandra looked nervously at the older woman, she reminded her of a nun she once had at school. She could feel her heart beating loudly in her chest. It was a cold night. Somewhere outside a crow, the messenger from the other world, cawed in the dark.

“I’m sorry dear, I hate to rush you. Perhaps you’d like to think about this back in your barracks?” She started to door as if ushering the younger woman out.

“No! Please, Sargent Rudenov.”

Yevgeniya looked at Aleksandra as if surprised she had spoken.

“Are you sure I can’t just–” But here the younger girl was at a loss as to what she could offer. It was either posing for photos or being grounded for who knew how long. “Who would see these photos if I agreed?” The girl stammered, looking at the ground, blushing violently. “I’ve never been naked before … anyone one else.”

Closing the wooden door to her quarters and pulling the latch, Yevgeniya looked the young pilot up and down. She smiled at the girl’s nervous plight. “How did you ever make it through eighteen years of life and never once have the urge to let other people see you for what you are?”

“Sargent Rudenov?” Aleksandra asked, drawing a deep breath.

“My dear girl. I have a dozen other pilots also wanting to fly tonight with far fewer hang-ups than you seem to possess. The pictures will be shown to very few, but please understand I will demand that you are to be naked. You will be posing in extremely … titillating ways for me.”

“But you’re a woman!” Aleksandra blurted, then bit her lip before she said anything else moronic. Yevgeniya’s omnivorous appetites weren’t exactly state secrets.

“Yes, Comrade Aleksandra, I am.”

Yevgeniya smiled as she returned to her desk with her camera. Aleksandra’s head was a whirl of emotions, her legs felt as if the would give way under her. She wanted to cry. She wanted to run back to her barracks and throw herself into the arms of her bunk mate, Alyona, who took such good care of her. It was cold in the small room and the girl rubbed her arms.

“I’m sorry it’s a bit chilly in here, Ukrainian summers are never warm — drink?” she didn’t wait for the girl to answer but poured her a shot of vodka, which she took gratefully. She immediately drained half, then coughed before putting the glass down on the table. Aleksandra watched as Yevgeniya took the camera up and felt sick with nerves at the reality of what she was about to do. She drank down the shot her commanding officer refilled her glass with.

“Nervous?” the older woman smiled at Aleksandra as she nodded. “Well don’t be. You’re a very lucky pilot. One day I’ll tell you what I had to do to win this.” She pointed to her Order of the Red Star. “And you are so very pretty, I love your uniform, it shows off your charms so well. Have you ever been an artist’s model? My mother had a friend in Paris, Rene Vivian, who looked just like you.”

Aleksandra shook her head, looked down at her dress, then heard the camera click as she smoothed it over her hips and blushed again. In reality it was the same standard uniform all the women were issued. But, she had to admit, at least it was a dress. On the first day of training Aleksandra, as well as all the other recruits, had been ushered into a large storeroom, where, piled on the floor in separate heaps, were bundles of enormous boots, rough woolen vests, standard male underwear – nothing to suggest that the 588th Night Bomber Regiment was an all-female unit. In other piles were ugly male tunics, wool trousers, overcoats. Aleksandra walked past the lieutenant who had brought them to the room and picked up two boots at random. They were mammoth. Later that day the sound of hysterical laughter could be heard all over the building as the recruits attempted to fashion themselves uniforms. Woolen vests dangled down below the knee, trousers were hitched up almost to the chin, and greatcoats — the pride of the Soviet armed forces — spilled across the floor behind them like monstrous veils for some unholy wedding ceremony.

It was nearly a month later that a package from Moscow brought the girls their dresses – drab, ugly things, true – but at least they were dresses and they could be made to fit. Aleksandra glanced nervously down at the low neckline that she suddenly felt now showed off far too much of her ample cleavage. Small metal buttons ran down the front to her waist.

Click.

“Yes, I think we can keep the boots on, they’ll show your legs nicely, it’s a shame there isn’t a single stocking left in the entire Union. War makes beggars of us all.”

Yevgeniya seemed to be thinking for a moment. Aleksandra stood waiting, shivering from cold, nerves, wondering what on earth she was supposed to do next.

“No, lets just play with what you’re wearing. You really are so pretty, I love your breasts.”

Aleksandra blushed again despite the chill of the room. Alyona would say the same thing, but that’s what bunk mates were suppose to say, was it not? Late at night, once the candles were doused and the barracks were dark and quiet save for the occasional moan and snore and stifled low-down dirty groan during those long summer night. Her arms came up to cover her chest.

Click.

“What panties are you wearing? Lift your skirt, show me.” The camera came up to Yevgeniya’s eye again. Aleksandra froze.

“Show you my …?”

“Lift your skirt, soldier. I will not send a woman into the air who refuses to follow instructions, she will kill herself and her navigator so do as you’re told – that is a direct order!”

Aleksandra jumped, as if she had been slapped, pulled up her skirt, gathering it quickly around her hips.

“Slowly, Comrade, slowly.”

Click, click, click.

Aleksandra felt foggy, stupefied, feeble-minded. Holding up her skirt while a commanding officer took photos of her pathetic, government-issued panties. She glanced down, looked at her unshaven legs, her feet in their ugly black boots. May that stray Nazi artillery shell everyone jokes about find its way over to this tent right now, she thought.

Click, click.

“Pull you’re panties higher up your hips for me, Comrade –” She lifted her skirt a little more with her free hand, then pulled her white cotton higher up her hips, making a W where the fabric cut across her girl-lips.

“Hmm, much better.”

She had Aleksandra lift her foot onto the wooden table, holding her skirt out to the side, asked her to smile, all the while the girl, still blushing, still embarrassed, did everything she was told to do.

“Turn around, yes – now, bend forward, lift your skirt high, higher, push your ass out, yes, like that.”

Aleksandra sighed, there was still that girlish need to cry inside her. What was it that Lady Macbeth desired to be so that she could commit the acts that made “her kind blush at”? Ah yes, “unsexed.” But if one is not born a woman, one is made a woman, why blush at all? If femininity is indeed an artifice, why not embrace Eros as deeply as we embrace Pathos? She let her skirt fall, reached for her glass. Yevgeniya poured her more vodka. Smiled at the young pilot’s inner-struggle.

“Comrade, listen to me. You’re in a bad situation. You want to fly but your pride stops you doing something so simple that it’s even recorded in the Bible as the first trick Lilith taught Eve before God made Adam and broke the two girls up. Fighting this only making it worse. You could at least try to enjoy it.”

“But–” Aleksandra stammered, drunkenly looking into the shot glass as if it contained secret answers. “What do you mean ‘Lilith and Eve’?”

“Listen, let’s make this easier for you shall we? You are going to pose for some naughty photos for me, if you want to fly there is no way out, you have to learn to take orders. If you don’t want to pack your bag tonight and go back to your Worker in Moscow or whoever it is who pays your bills, parasite. Now, I want you to take off your top before we go any further – now, soldier!”

Aleksandra felt a tear slide down her cheek, fumbled with the tiny metal buttons of her dress shirt, then glanced up at her commanding officer, only to pull the shirt wide, revealing her bra, a luxury for the women. Finally she pulled each cup down to free her breasts. The moment they were exposed, her nipples immediately puckered and hardened in the cold air, making her embarrassment obvious.

“Push your tits out, flygirl, be proud of what you have, Comrade Aleksandra.”

Doing what she was told, Aleksandra flushed, partly from the vodka and partly as she felt her exposed skin studied by lecherous eyes. She then drew in a surprised breath as Yevgeniya reached out, softly stroke each nipple, feeling the weight of each breast before drawing her blunt fingernails over the crimped skin of her aureoles, tugging softly, drawing on each nipple. When Alyona did this, that was fine, she was her bunk mate. But this? Aleksandra fought to stop herself covering her chest.

“My dear, you are beautiful.”

Aleksandra watched as she brought the camera in for a close-up of each.

Click, click, click.

The girl simply stood there in the cold with her arms crossed beneath her breasts, swaying slightly.

“Ooo.”

“Hohhot.”

Yevgeniya bent down towards her left breast and Aleksandra felt the wet warmth of her mouth close around her so terribly erect skin.

She couldn’t help it. Aleksandra glanced down, watched as the older woman did the same to the other nipple, entranced, unable to move as tiny earthquakes traveled through her. She was gasping as Yevgeniya rose in front of her, didn’t resist as she bent forward, kissed the girl softly on the lips.

“Now, you will do as you’re told, won’t you, Comrade dear? Please, turn around, bend over.”

Aleksandra did as she was told. The vodka must have gone to her head. She turned, her breasts, swinging free, felt swollen, the nipples cold, hard, as her squadron leader’s spit dried upon them.

“Bend over more, dear.”

She did, put her hands down on the wooden table to support herself. She felt her skirt being pulled up over her back, didn’t resist as her panties were drawn down around her knees. She felt flushed and drunk as the camera clicked behind her. Yevgeniya took her free hand, brought it Aleksandra’s to her ass.

“I want you to hold the cheeks of your bottom apart, Comrade.”

Aleksandra glanced around at her.

“What? please — don’t make me –”

“Please, what?” Her commanding officer arched an eyebrow, smiled at the younger girl.

“Please, Sargent. Don’t ask me to – ah! piz’da!”

Yevgeniya’s hand had come down sharply on her naked, fleshy ass, sending a jolt stinging through her.

“I’ll spank you again, flygirl, if you keep being naughty.”

Aleksandra made a face and put her hands back on her ass.

“Now be a good girl, pull your cheeks apart.”

Aleksandra rubbed her warm bottom, reluctantly pulling her cheeks apart, instantly feeling how her anus was exposed to the cool air, as well as how wet her pussy was suddenly getting.

“Hmm, I love blonde hair, it’s almost as if you were shaved; so naked, so exposed.”

Aleksandra did feel exposed, as well as the older woman’s hand slide between her legs to touch her pubic hair.

“Ah, Comrade, you naughty girl. Hold your cunt open for me, push out your bum, more, yes, now keep your legs straight.”

Aleksandra did as she was told, heard the camera click, inches away. It would have been more comfortable, some part of her drunken brain thought, if she could let her panties drop to the floor, take off her boots, they made her feel tomboyish, almost as she had been surprised while sitting on the loo. She started as Yevgeniya’s free hand caressed the inside of her thighs, closed her eyes, bit her lip, still holding her ass cheeks apart as the other hand moved closer to her pussy, all the while she pushed her bum out further and further, inviting the camera to record all.

One slim finger gently pushed past the wet resistance of her vagina. She felt it enter her slowly, inch by inch, stifled a small groan of pleasure. “O, Alyona love,” the younger woman barely whispered. If Yevgeniya noticed she said nothing as her finger slipped in further, then finally again several times before it was joined by a second.

“You have a lovely wet cunt, Comrade. Keep your lips spread for me.”

Aleksandra tried to do as she asked, even though her legs were beginning to spasm, but then had to bring her left hand down to the table to support herself. She yipped as she was rewarded with a hard slap to her ass. The fingers returned to fill her, the feeling of being finger fucked hard consumed her. Yevgeniya’s free hand was tickling her exposed anus. She flinched at the first touch then pushed back to welcome the intrusion, but suddenly everything stopped.

“Why is it, Comrade?” Yevgeniya asked, looking up at Aleksandra, the shadow of her labia in the lantern light throwing shapes across her wild upturned face. “That when I ask you to show me your cunt you blush and act like an English Capitalist’s bordering school daughter, but the moment I lay a finger in your ass you are a pup in heat? Is this the secret to unsexing you?”

“No — it’s just–”

“You want me to fuck your ass with my finger don’t you?” It was neither a question nor a command. It was simply a statement of truth. The pressure of Yevgeniya’s finger returned as her other hand continued to play with the young pilot’s hot aching pussy. “Don’t you Comrade darling?” she insisted, a throaty whisper. “‘That I may pour my spirits in your ass; and chastise you with the vulgar valor of my tongue to all that impedes me from this golden hind’ — Would you like to feel my finger in your ass?” She slowly withdrew the fingers from Aleksandra’s pussy, then trailed the girl-juices over to her gaping anus. Aleksandra let out an involuntary moan. Yevgeniya’s hand came around to the others’ face and she forced her pussy-sticky fingers into the open mouth, smiling as Aleksandra greedily sucked on them.

“Comrade Aleksandra, would you like me to fuck your mouth as well? Now tell me why you want me to put my finger into your ass but not to see your delicious curly-q of a cunt.”

The fingers returned to her pussy, Yevgeniya’s thumb began to rub, to tease against her anus while her other fingers rubbed against her clitoris. “Tell me Comrade!” Her other hand came down in a stinging slap on her gaping ass.

Slap!

“Oi vey! Yes, Sargent Rudenov –” Aleksandra yipped. She felt her left breast fondled, then the nipple was pinched, cruelly, followed by several hard slaps

“Please — do what you want with me –” Aleksandra didn’t care anymore. If this was how wars were won, then she had found a role that consumed her. She was grateful she wasn’t going to die ignorant that such pleasures existed. Why do they not teach these things in school?

“Tell me what you want.”

“To fly a Polikarpov –”

“To fly a Polikarpov? What would you do to get a chance like that? Something like this?” At that, while the three fingers from Yevgeniya’s hand continued to slip in and out of her cunt, she felt an extra finger from the older woman’s other hand slide into her anus.

“Yes!” the girl managed to gasp out.

“Then ask me to put it in your ass, flygirl.”

“Please, Sargent Rudenov! Ma’am, put your fingers in my ass!”

“No. Not on your first flight, little nestling, but,” — and here the fingers pushed but did not slip in — “for tonight I’ll put two fingers in for you.”

Aleksandra groaned, almost collapsed but caught herself, straightened her legs, pushing her splayed-open ass out higher. Yevgeniya was a cruel mistress when she wanted, bore down with her weight, smiling as the young pilot finally screamed out, her orgasm ripping like wild-fire through her, phosphorescence in the dark, finally collapsed onto the table. The squadron leader for the 588th Night Bomber Regiment removed her fingers from Aleksandra’s canvities, while the girl gazed foggily around, dimly wondering why the world was still spinning from her tail dive.

“Comrade Aleksandra, na kaleni, shalava.”

Aleksandra felt her hair being pulled, forced to her knees. Yevgeniya dragged her across to her chair, sat down, pulled up her own military issue skirt. Aleksandra watched in a daze as the older woman dragged her forward, forcing her face into her own wet pussy. There was a cruel side to Yevgeniya, as anyone who must send soldiers out to die in the hundreds every month. She grew tired of Aleksandra licking softly at first but then became excited as the girl began lapping at her with enthusiasm.

She turned over, pushing out her chunky, muscular ass. “Lick my cunt, my bum, flygirl, do it properly.”

“Yes, Sargent Rudenov,” Aleksandra mumbled, looking up, wearing a fur mustache.

Sometime later, far later, Aleksandra banked her Polikarpov biplane toward the west, sweeping over the sleeping purple and silver countryside, and put her fingers into her mouth. That was a good taste. A very good taste. But this would be even better. Guided by her navigator, using her stopwatch and map, Aleksandra approached the target at a height of just over three thousand feet, then, on cue, cut her engines, gliding like a witch through the dark. The wind rushed through the struts, she concentrated on her instruments, keeping on the compass mark, her navigator whispering through the com-link instructions. The navigator finally thrust her arm over the edge of the open cockpit, dropped two parachute flares into the slipstream. They they spun away, ignited, suspended from their little parachutes, casting a savage glorious blue light over the alien landscape. They were right over the target.

To be a war pilot, to feel this fantastic sense of achievement, that was worth everything. The girl could clearly see the buildings in the cold dark night. The Germans hadn’t heard the plane coming because of their gliding approach, but now the searchlights came on, the sirens, the black flashes of flak starting to probe the sky for them. Aleksandra didn’t want to spoil her aim so she simply flew straight through the puffing cloud ‘plosion until she was right over the target. The Po-2 bucked in the gusts from some of the artillery shells, but kept on. Then Aleksandra yanked the release wire and dived away from the searchlights, pulling upward as the whole world below her blossomed into bloom.

the night witches [1]

12 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by in Erotic, story

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Author’s Note:

My spiritual mother, Colonel Marina Raskova, founder of 588th Night Bomber Regiment — what the Germans in WW2 called “Die Nachthexen,” the “Night Witches” — once asked me, “what is the purpose of prose if not poetry?” She delighted in French Avant-garde theater, Dada art, surrealistic poetry, and so do I. If stream of consciousness bores you, dear reader, you might want to read elsewhere. My mother was the lover of the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, and from that union I was born. Federico was shot by fascists for being a queer poet on August 19, 1936. Marina perished in a fiery plane crash on January 4, 1943. I am now an orphan and dedicate this story to the queer poets and women warriors the world over. Paz, mãe e pai.

* * *

PROLOGUE:

[a dream, half wild: the breasts of tiresias]

“So here we are once more among the smell of petrol and menstrual cramps and sulfur and shit. We’ve found our ardent country, our ardent country girls. Comrades, girls, my girl, we have a stage, a theater of war. The Ukrainian Steppes are ablaze. To our dismay, on Saturday June 21, 1941, our pilots fell out of the sky like rain, men on fire and so the Panzer tanks rolled on. White tigers. They say theater no longer holds any greatness and so little truth in virtue but I have also found a stage, Lily. Stalin ordered us thirteen hundred into the air and thanks to Comrade Raskova, my very own Yes Ma’am, No Ma’am, Lick Your Clit, Ma’am, we have killed the tedious nights before the war. Don’t you think that we’ll die like all other men die, Lily?”

“Except we’re not dying, Anahit dear. You’re just talking about the sin, but you never mention the saviors. We’re still flying in the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, you know. When the hour is struck it will be women who will be raining down, lit matches, hair ablaze. I have been at war like all other men, one night while flying over the western front, gazing up into the pulsating stars in heaven, a thousand rockets rose from the trenches to greet me. I heard the shells’ voices but no explosions.”

“Yes, I’ve flown over the flashes of enemy guns, too. Their angles are all on fire. And at each billowing orange bloom the stars were darkening in the sky, one by one. I think this is how constellations die.”

“Do you really think constellations can die that easily?”

“I never thought girls could die that easily.”

A shadow passed over them.

The two girls stopped, squinted into the empty, dry sky.

A biplane, its engine rhythmically puttering, crossed overhead. The pilot, her hair trailing behind her in the slipstream as she glided along for a landing, dipped and curved into the lap of a gentle valley, flashing brilliant in the light.

The scene in the valley of Engels was a striking one. Low ranges of gently sloping hills, green by the mill, widened out and here, secluded, their factories had not yet been bombed to ruin, their villages not yet razed, the whole world above the tree-line not yet set on fire with phosphorescent fuses that sucked the oxygen out of everyone’s lungs. The Regiment’s training base, spread out over a dead lee-level of swamp and twice-trampled grassland, was enclosed by high-barbed walls, irregular ovals of wire and mesh, torch-light and spot-fire and burning pits of crude with large clumps of trees in the center, witch’s oak, a multiplicity of large hangars; small, mostly queer-shaped buildings all scattered, peck-a-hen, about.

There were a few idle wide roadways, mud spills and loose pages, with smaller avenues intersecting, hairy-like legs and larger fur-down open spaces, bordered by tarp and tarpaulin tents, at either end of the oval.

On a bulletin board in front of one of the hangers stood a placard, tacked with thumb-prints that read like the signatures of clouds, at which several young women in baggy khaki flight-suits, wearing aviator skull-caps and those glorious chunky goggles, all pinked lip, were gazing, remarking and fingering otherwise. There was no pandemonium that this placard had to tell, war apparently, for all its sleepless moons and daily bling and night sallow blindness, had dulled the senses of the pilots and mechanics and navigators. What was written was as follows (officer stamped twice): ‘They’re putting out the stars with shellfire — qui vive at 7 pm. tonight. Specific orders will be issued to each at that time.’

The words ‘Members of 586th Fighter Regiment – will be on the’ having been crossed out by some waggette, adding the very conversation Lily and Anahit had been talking about. Curious.

“I suppose this is coming from that bigmouth megaphone at supreme headquarter or whatever they’re calling that lonely bull paddock two miles away from here, who will no doubt be driven in a Party car to stare at our planes, check off names on a clip board and have something interesting to say, smelling of brute and vodka,” remarked the short athletic girl, throwing an arm casually over the shoulder of her smaller companion, tweaking her nipple that, even in heavy elevation gear, threatened to expose itself to the cool Barbarossa morning. “Do you think this means that we’re going up in those crazy old biplanes they’ve foisted on us?”

“What, just because all the male pilots have refused to fly in them? They have refused to give up their shiny Yakovlev Yakety Yaks, no doubt. Then that will be a fine reason to make us take their ancestral relics up for a spin or two,” replied the smaller girl, a sprightly youngster, dark-eyed, curly-headed, round-faced.

“Well, all the world is a stage, they say, especially when you’re burning up over Leningrad at 30,000 feet in your very own popcorn popper. I say, any landing in which I am once more among you huddled groundlings is a finger-fucking good landing, eh, Anahit?”

“What?”

“Were you thinking about playing with your pussy just now?” chided Lily, jokingly.

“Er …”

“Mention the words ‘finger fuck’ and you are so cute in your embarrassment.”

The two strolled off together as others, also in bulky flight suits, gathered about to read, sigh, then turn away to their own private musings.

“I wonder if they’ll ever build us a bigger stage one day.”

“What, big enough for your pussy?” laughed Lily Litvyak, the athletic nestling. “‘All the world is a pussy’ – no, it doesn’t have the same ring in Russian now, does it?”

“Shush, you foul girl,” Anahit Abandian furrowed her brow. “No. But if war is a story, all we have to write is our own wry action scene and who does not love when the tone of a story turns from pathos to ironic burlesque? and with reasonable use of the improbable we can turn any actress into an, er, what did you call me yesterday? Ah yes, a ‘big ol’ hairy bush pilot,’ since we’re all to be going round soon, we all go round and around, and suffer the enemy’s squeals and the blare and rupture of eardrums at 30,000 feet, and I ask you, dear, the moment you mount the stage and pull that wire and drop your bombs, haven’t you ever thought for a second that this stage is spread out before us not just mankind to witness our feats of daring-do, but for the whole universe to see?”

“All that monologuing just to complain about having to fly in a Polikarpov Po-2?”

“Po-2, Sewing Machine, Popcorn Popper – why do the Germans call them popcorn poppers?”

“Because they can hear us popping away over head even during a December wind storm.”

Anahit nodded. Lily pinched her girlfriend’s forearm, having grown tired of the nipple. The air was cold and damp, the mist thickening by the minute.

“You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go up to that bigmouth megaphone and say, no, mister colonel, you won’t make me fly in one of these old junk heaps. I will fly as I please, hup hup. You pilots have been doing what you want long enough. After all I too want to go and fight the enemy, hup one hup two.”

But Litvyak was thinking, scanning the ghostly fields and hedgerows. Finally she announced decidedly: “You know what, dear heart, after being a soldier I want to be an artist. Yes. Perfectly perfectly. I also want to be a doctor and a psychiatrist. I want to make Europe and America trot and tremble before me.”

The other shook her head dubiously, for a second her expression held something slightly predatory, a delicious look in a creature so small, but it melted away almost as suddenly as it appeared and she replied, “Yeah? Well, I want to be a philosopher chemist mathematician princess firefighter. Give me a plan and a plane that I can drop bombs from and I’ll bomb the Nazis for you, Madam Artist, Comrade Klitt.”

Litvyak, of course, disclaimed any need for a design, an idea or a plan, since engines of chaos need only but a direction to let loose their bloodhounds of hell, and Anahit felt that her girlfriend was putting on airs (the downside of a liberal Soviet education), as usual. When they parted Lily watched Anahit walk away, delighting in the sight of her massive, round girlie bum wiggling under her high altitude uniform.

* * *

A half hour later, Lily stood under the shower, contemplating the type of soap needed to wash grief right out of her hair and what a terrible metaphor it was. If grief really was so easily washed away it wouldn’t be grief. Dominika’s and Galochka’s plane had been caught in the German searchlights only two days ago, Galochka was carried from the plane, a bloody lump soaking her seat, Dominika, burned, her whole arm broken when she brought the old crop duster down in the dark.

Her hand massaged her sore muscles, stopping at her belly, enjoying the feeling of her hip bone against under hot water, then slipping down to her bushy honey-milk bush. Bush pilot, indeed. She took the shower head and directed the water across her nipples, moving it closer to her skin. After a whole night of constant vibrations from the airplane’s Shvetsov M-11 air-cooled, five cylinder, radial engine between her open thighs, the hot water felt like a hand, or, perhaps, a three foot long tongue.

As she moved the Joie de vivre down, with her legs spread, Lily directed the spray to her pink tippled-tip clit, moving the shower head up and down, exciting constantly excited nerves. A finger slipped into her wet gap, airy void. She finger fucked herself furiously, as if no one would ever touched her again for years and years, as if she was about to perish in flames. She moaned, glad there wasn’t anyone else in the barrack’s shower room, just this once. She lay against the cold wall when her legs started shaking into orgasm, the gift of the gods, a feeling like screaming, like burning, like twisting naked in the air, falling from her plane’s canopy, turning over and over in lust, the heat in her cunt exploding. She finally gushed, spreading her girl-cum over each of her fingers, the palm of her hand.

The water splattered hot in the shower, turning cold then hot again, pressure washing away any proof of her solitary exercise.

* * *

Later, when dinner was over, Lily Litvyak found her way to where the squadron commander was checking off the different machines, assigning each killer machine the various pilots and navigators. All this on a yellow pad, in one of the hangars, with no one else near. Lily passed her squadron leader, Yevgeniya Rudenov, who nodded. In Hangar Four were two Polikarpovs, all in trim order. The Colonel stared at one of them, grumbling to himself.

“What will I do?” he mused, half aloud, through his Wilhelm II mustache. “I forgot that Dominika’s arm was all shattered into little bits and the like and poor Galochka with that great big hole in the top of her curly head. Sending girls up into the air, chyort voz’mi! What was Uncle Josef thinking?”

“Begging your pardon, Comrade Colonel!” A short, athletic young girl with hair like sunlight through silk on a Sunday afternoon was beside him, standing respectfully at attention in her bulky uniform. There was always something slightly unsettling for the older man knowing that under these khaki, bulky, unisex uniforms the female pilots were naked save for their government-issued panties – black-market bras being the only way most of these girls could acquire them, what with the selling of cotton for breast control being prohibited just now for the glory of the war effort. “Why not let me take Galochka’s place? Give me a chance!”

So commanding — so deferential — Lily’s attitude, her curt Moscow manner, her firm flat shoes, the obvious feminine shape under her uniform, her dirty vanilla panties, her — Colonel Dragomira blinked for a second, said nothing, simply stared at the girl.

“But – but, lysyi didko, you’re too young, too inexperienced, too – too -”

“Comarade Colonel, please, go and ask Dominika! You know what her judgment is. If I am to have a navigator, let Dominika go with me.”

“Dash your bally impertinence, you young skip and ruggamuffin!” Dragomira had once seen a rather droll British comedy, ‘All Riot on the Western Front’, where the marvelous Donald Calthrop went around saying that exact line, in fact, it was his only line. The Colonel had memorized it by heart and hoped that one day there would come a time he could use it, even though he and Lily did not understand a lick of the English language themselves. He smiled to himself and asked, “What do you know about Polikarpovs, anyway?”

In five minutes of seductive engine-talk, expertly fingering various parts of the green pleasure machine, Lily had convinced her superior. Furthermore, by ingenious manipulation of certain bolts with a wrench, a pair of tweezers and a gob of greasy spittle, she readjusted a valve in the petrol tank which she had heard Dominika grumbling about before her last flight. This she did with such deft speediness that the Colonel nodded his approval, standing so close to the young pilot, adding: “Where did you pick up so much mechanical knowledge, Comrade Litvyak?”

“At the Nova Slobodskaya Flying Club, in Moscow.”

“Well now, go and see our poor Dominika. If she is not well enough to go with you, er, have you anyone else in mind?”

* * *

Half an hour later Lily Litvyak stood by the cot of a gray-faced girl who lay groaning discontentedly. At sight of the young Moscow pilot she tried to raise herself up to a sitting position, revealing her whole right arm still bound up in splints. Lily noted that the pain of moving made sweat stand out on her forehead.

“Lily dear, my comrade is! I welcome so much you.”

Dominika was a native from Tajikistan. There was a lot about her Russian that could be desired and sometimes it took Lily a few moments to simply decipher what it was her friend was talking about. When Lily briefly explained why she was there, what the Colonel had told her, Dominika fell back, gave a horrific groan and said: “Thank you, comrade!” Here she chuckled. “No use to you now, I would like to go, I want to go! But I am no use to myself, not at all! But you be sure to bring my baby back safe now, you hear? my Polikarpov — Ah! What a great baby my Polikarpov is!”

Lily smiled and gave her friend a kiss on the forehead, the only spot on her entire body that was not giving the Tajikistan girl pain, promising to do her best.

An hour later Lily, accompanied by her new navigator, Tamryn Zolotov, stood before Colonel Dragomira in his pigeonhole-sized office, while a stream of flightsuit-clad young women filed in one by one. Dragomira waved them all to their chairs, then turned to Lily.

“I saw Comrade Dominika myself,” he said grimly. “She wanted to go but it will be a week before she can use that arm. I spoke to Major Bershanskaya about you. She was reluctant, but owing to the inexperience of so many of you Moscow pilots, she stressed that you two must be careful, dare I say, cautious even. Can you bring the plane back, Comrade Zolotov, if anything happens to Comrade Litvyak?”

“Yes, sir, I think so. I’ve often flown before, alone.”

“Under fire by sausage eaters?”

“We shall soon find out, Comrade Colonel.”

Dragomira gave them both one long look, then turned away to address the other pilots and navigators with a soft, “here go hell come,” under his breath.

* * *

Shortly after a bugle call the following order was posted on the bulletin board in front of the hanger for all concerned parties to see.

“Members of 588th Night Bomber Regiment will carry out the following order at 10 a.m., 12 midnight, 2 a.m. At each time three machines, each carrying eight 25 pound bombs, will bomb respectively Charlie Foxtrot and Charlie Lima India Tango. Each member of the squadrons assigned will be ready at Hangars No. 4, No. 7, No. 9 at times noted. That is all.”

Each aviator, with her navigator, had been privately notified by the Colonel in person. These night raids were mostly for the purpose of keeping the Nazis nervous after a hard day of getting shot at, anything to lower their morale even lower than it was. Usually the points selected were the shell-torn fields outside of villages where the Nazis had been sent for a brief period of rest before advancing into cannon fire once more. Then the witches would come. The Night Witches, Die Nachthexen, around the time the exhausted men were just beginning to lie down in their billets, dreaming of home or whatever it was Nazis thought about. Then the bombs would begin to fall, tents would explode into fragments, men crawling about in the dark on their hands and knees, a whole night’s rest lost to general turmoil, fire and death.

When Lily and Tamryn clambered into their waiting Polikarpov — bombs already stowed, wheeled out in front of their hangar — everything was quiet. The other women moved about, ghosts now, shadows of women facing an inky unknown. A few minutes later the first of the night raiders climbed up into the swirling darkness, the only noise being the wind and the whirring putt-putt-putt of their engines. Watching for the signal of the leader of the squadron, they all banked sharp and headed to the front.

Over the ruined farmland, star-shelled from continual artillery fire, their infantry could be seen below. There were women soldiers down there too – tank teams, snipers, explosive experts – Stalin was using everything in his power to push back Hitler and his drive toward Moscow. Following their flight leader, the Night Witches kept at a sufficient altitude, hugging the darkness, avoiding glints of light, dodging occasional search lamps, all without speaking a single word.

“You’ve been out here before, Litvyak?” Zolotov spoke at last. “How much further are we going?”

“We’ll be there in two minutes. Hold on, I’m going lower. Get ready our bombs.”

“Rodger Dodger, girl friend.”

Below lay blackness, broken at one point only by a few dots of orange light that marked where German troops sat, smoking in the dark, their lit cigarettes custom homing signals on which these women were to let loose their bombs.

“Now!” whispered Lily to her navigator. Others were at work as well. The enemy tents below, already in half ruin, began to detonate with sharp explosions, lurid flashings, an inhuman uproar of human cries. It was evident that the raiders had struck the right spot.

Just then a blinding gleam of spotlight flashed aslant into Lily’s eyes. Pulling hard on the throttle, she darted the plane aside suddenly, giving her whole attention to the machine. The Polikarpov zigzagged, dodged, spun, while the scene below was soon illuminated by the flashing roar of hostile artillery. A shell blossomed with a deafening explosion so close to their plane that it was evident that the artillery had sighted them during Litvyak’s last lower loop. Pulling back on the throttle, the old biplane began to climb into the upper atmosphere, little whiffs of cumulus clouds lessening the danger of further shells.

“Did we make it?” Lily yelled over the roar of the wind.

Receiving no answer, she glanced behind her. To her dismay Tamryn’s slender figure lay drooping again the side of her cockpit, her head knocking this and that in the slipstream. She tried to crane her neck even further back, reach her navigator, and in doing so heard something pop in her back and immediately her muscles began to scream.

Tears running down her face in pain, Lily scanned the sky. The two other Polikarpovs had vanished in the darkness, undoubtedly bearing for a higher strata and safety in their flight back to their Engels aerodrome. Meantime German spotlights were stabbing through the inky night. The swift reports of anti-aircraft fire could still be heard in a most dreamlike manner. Tamryn groaned, trying to raise her head. There was blood everywhere.

[to be continued]

Das Nachthexen Sonett: 01

07 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by in Erotic, Feminism, Poetry

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Lily, unless the gifted Anahit
lies at your side, sleepless you must now be.
To watch a lover burn up, like mincemeat,
over No Man’s Land. How your poor empty
bed must recall the groans then moans? Again
all these odes to war. Nine muses, you say?
Sappho the Bisexual makes it ten.
Poet of Wars and Clits. Old Boss DJ
still spins your tracks. “I am what I say.” Poor
Sappho, you are bones and dust. Lily’s love
lays, burned in a field. Not even the sky
can drink up all her tears. What fool said war
was good sport? Let her grave be of foxglove,
wild plums; even bisexuals must die.