"Warped," Part III (Final)

Take a shower. Wash your hair. Remove your shoes. Clip your nails. Wear only black, including belt and socks. Bring no books. Come with your hands empty. Come with your will encased in steel.

Isaac was determined to reclaim what he had lost. Dignity, check. Captured soul and angry girlfriend – these he’d fight for like a fiend. Step one: Clip his nails. As many of Greta’s demands as he could remember, he fulfilled fastidiously.

His mother caught the scent of her husband’s aftershave on Isaac as he clattered out the door. “Did our son get a girlfriend?” she asked. Isaac’s father didn’t look up from the paper. “Good for him,” he said.

Isaac's heart was miles beyond the speed limit, but he pedaled slowly to the Greenbaums’ house. He didn’t want to get sweaty, and he couldn’t bring anti-perspirant because that would be in violation of Greta’s rules. Of course, Drew had told him all about how pharamones attracted mates, at last explaining why girls insisted on dating athletes. Still, Isaac had given up on the dream that the ritual was actually code for sex. Somehow that seemed beneath Greta’s creativity.

Besides, the Warp had its own rituals for that. Did Greta expect him to ask her to prom?

Such were the questions that whirled through Isaac as he made slow progress toward the day’s second destiny.

By the time he reached the Greenbaums’, the sun had set, lending Willow Lane a sense of twilight beauty and menace. He could feel eyes watching him from the shrubs, breezes beckoning him in half-sinister tones. He could hear a music no one was playing – and he could feel, in his bones, the reverberations of the ancient ones who withheld his soul, that he might prove his merit.

Isaac parked his bike and smelled his armpit. Showtime.

No one answered the bell; not the first five rings nor the next twenty. He got no response when he banged the gilded door knocker with all his might. He called for Greta. He called for Mr. and Mrs. Greenbaum. Nobody came.

“Clip your nails… Wear all black… Steel-cased will…” Isaac breathlessly recited his orders, but recalled nothing on Entrance Procedure. Was this the first trial? Launch through a window, shimmy up the drain pipe?

Instead he turned the knob. It gave, the door swung, and Isaac entered to win back his soul.

“Hello?”

The lights were off. He closed the door behind him, and considered switching on a lamp, but he feared the ancient ones might take offense. There were no signs or arrows or stone-carved runes pointing the way. But he knew where to go.

Isaac clambered up the stairs. The darkness did not deter him. He dashed through the attic door and began blabbing — loudly, desperately, without bothering to take inventory of his surroundings:

“Greta! Greta, we have to talk. I don’t know what you saw, but it isn’t what you think — I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can explain the whole thing, it was a counterattack, see, a gambit — and if you had said no I’d never have done the thing but you wouldn’t call me back and I didn’t know what else to do and it was Marisol’s idea and they were going to email it to my grandparents and…”

When breath failed him, Isaac blinked and saw where he was.

Greta’s attic, but not as he knew it. Thick, yellowed candles flickered through the dark. Easels draped in black cloth stood all around him. At the far wall sat Greta, perched on the familiar modeling stool.

She didn’t say a word.

“See, it was all part of a plan to get back at Josh,” he continued. “Actually I never could’ve done it without you. I mean, I never could have just gone and talked to… It was all you, Greta. And that, with Marisol, it was just a show, all it meant was – I don’t know, a preemptive strike. Cause I felt like such an idiot and… God. Greta, no one else is like you. No one comes even close. I’m… sorry. Say something.”

“You haven’t removed your shoes,” Greta said. “I instructed you not to enter wearing shoes.”

Isaac blinked. He took off his shoes.

“Better.”

Greta slid off the stool. The fluid movement arrested Isaac; he was a moth, fastened to a lepidopterist’s trophy case. Pinned forever with eyes wide open. Here was Greta, but not as he knew her. A black dress rippled over her glowing white skin. And oh, the skin! No sleeves burdened this dress; it fell above her knee, dove deeper into her chest than any garment she’d ever worn in public before. Isaac blessed the fingers of the tailor who'd sewn it.

She came toward him slowly, haughtily; the divine enforcer of the ancient code. A piece of Isaac longed to crack the tension with a joke, but a smarter piece of him bit his tongue. The other pieces of him shivered. It was like being under a spell, when everything around you blurred together and reality seemed to slide slightly off its course. It was not a girl who stood in front of him, it was an idol.

They were only a few inches apart. She peered at him – into him – like an oracle. And the world as he knew it dropped away; basketball team, Marisol, Cat’s Cradle and all.

“Why have you come here, Traveler?” she intoned.

It took a second, as the sheen of Greta’s skin was still causing Isaac’s nerve endings to crackle, but the words caught up to him.

“I’ve…” And as he gazed at her in the mystic half-light and breathed words into the ponderous quiet, something shifted inside Isaac. He felt an ember of excitement such as he’d only known at the climax of a Scott Card novel or his first kisses with Greta. It gave him vigor.

“I’ve come for what is mine,” he finished.

“By what right can you lay claim to that which you let be captured?”

“By the right of my will.”

“Your will,” Greta scoffed. “Your will may be your own, but your soul belongs to me.”

Isaac couldn’t remember what came next, so he said, “Like hell it does.”

The smallest grunt of frustration escaped Greta’s throat. She shook her head slightly, but with great meaning. Better ad libbing next time, then.

“Why have you come here, Traveler?” she repeated.

He remembered now.

“I’ve come to test my will.”

Greta circled him slowly, close as a shadow but never touching him. “Can your soul be of such great value?”

“To me, it is.”

“Perhaps you should have guarded it more closely.”

“I didn’t know the rules. I was deceived.”

Greta whirled in front of him. “Willful human!” she spat. “Do you think the ancients will abide defiance? Do you think you can endure the test?”

“I… well, yeah.”

Greta glared.

“Test me with all your might; I’ll show the ancients just what human will is made of,” he snarled. Isaac shook; his ardor swelled.

“The trials are not for the faint of will,” Greta murmured. “Nor the faint of flesh.”

“Only tell me what I must do.”

The strangest, evilest and most alluring smile curled over Greta’s transfigured face. She turned from him and strolled to her stool. She took a seat, leaned back and crossed her legs.

“With pleasure,” she said.

Isaac didn’t recall receiving any lines after this point. This was where the ancients took over; he was blind and powerless. He looked around at the labyrinth of covered canvasses. Might as well take a stab.

“Am I… Do I guess which one holds my — likeness?”

“You do not ask questions!” He was startled by the rage in her command. “You stay silent. You listen. You obey.”

Worked fine for Isaac.

Greta regarded him with a long, lazy look. And then she said:

“Remove your socks.”

Huh. Isaac had been hoping for something a little more climactic, but he did as he was told, quickly and quietly. He didn’t swerve his eyes from Greta’s, and as he held her gaze, a feeling of anticipation and daring blossomed inside. When his feet were freed, he even rolled his socks and placed them neatly in his shoes.

Greta coolly examined her nails.

“Move three paces forward,” she ordered without glancing at him.

Isaac wasn’t sure how long a ‘pace’ measured in Greta-units, but he took three generous steps toward the stool and stopped. She seemed satisfied.

“Kneel.”

He dropped to the floor. Try as he did to stay focused, he couldn’t help thinking, I wonder if she’ll take off her clothes. And, I wonder if she’ll try to sever my ear.

Greta slipped off the stool again. She approached Isaac, and without preamble grabbed his hair and jerked his head up. She searched his face, and, when she found no objection, released him. Then she reached for his wrist. She studied his fingernails before flinging it down.

Isaac was dumb.

Greta moved past him and made for a cabinet in the corner. His eyes followed her, until she snapped her head round and barked, “Eyes on the floor, time-bound slave!”

Isaac bowed his head.

“You have come far,” came Greta’s voice from the other side of the room. “You have done well.” He heard her footsteps approaching. “But you have many trials still to bear.”

The footsteps stopped just behind him.

“Take off your shirt.”

As Isaac stripped off his clothes for the third time, he noted that for a night of supposed trials, this was going remarkably well. Or perhaps this was how she planned to test his will? Pure malevolent temptation? Whatever, if the ancients needed him naked, he’d get naked.

He flung his shirt aside with something close to relish. At this apparent desecration, Greta’s face turned so livid he feared she might slap him. Instead, she swept the garment from the floor, crossed the studio and flung it dramatically out the window.

Isaac’s mouth opened, but didn’t release a sound. A voice in his head uttered: Dang.

“Eyes on the floor,” she repeated through gritted teeth.

She was hovering over him, he could feel it. And then he felt her seize his arms, and soon he learned what she’d been rummaging for in the cabinet. A length of cord. She bound his wrists behind him.

“Tell me why you need your soul back.”

“Because... Because I won’t be whole without it.”

“Of what value is it to the world that you be whole?” She tightened the knots.

The question caught him off guard. “I…”

“Perhaps you’ve overestimated your worth.”

“I haven’t,” he protested. He cleared his throat in an effort to deepen his voice. “I don’t care what the world thinks. I don’t care if I’m the only one it matters to... Maybe the world doesn’t care if I’m whole or half, but I do, and… that’s enough.”

She circled back to the front of him, and despite her repeated commands he lifted his eyes to her face. He couldn’t get enough of looking at it.

“Mortals have such vast egos.”

There must’ve been spiders in the attic cobwebs. Isaac felt hundreds of eyes fixed upon him.

“Rise.”

Easier ordered than obeyed. Bound and unbalanced, he fumbled slowly to his feet. Greta closed the gap between them. Without removing her eyes from his, without expression or the briefest blink, she unclasped the buckle of his belt.

After a prolonged contraction, Isaac’s stomach landed somewhere near his feet. This is actually happening. Sure, his non-subconscious incarnation had yet to experience it, but what could possibly be so trying about oral sex?

She slid the belt through his loops and let it dangle from her hand. And then, instead of reaching for his genitals as Isaac could not help hoping, she loped back to the stool and draped the belt across her lap.

“Why have you come, Traveler?”

Why haven’t I come? Whined a voice that Isaac was fairly certain did not reside in his brain. He shook it off.

“My soul,” he muttered.

“What is it worth?” Her eyes pierced him. “What are you worth?”

Was this the torment? Endless repetition of the same interrogation?

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Anything.”

Greta leaned forward. One hand propped up her chin and the other gripped his belt and swung it back and forth.

“Prove it.”

A sliver of understanding began to prick at Isaac.

The belt swung with the solemn leisure of the pendulum on the Greenbaums’ grandfather clock. Isaac wondered if the pressure he felt inside constituted a phenomenon previously unknown to medical science. Greta’s eyes held an unmistakable question.

“Let me,” he answered.

This was when the clocks wheeled; everything sped up. Swift as a panther, Greta leapt from her perch and carried the stool to the center of the studio. She whirled back and dragged Isaac off the floor with a sharp grip on his upper arm. He followed, hapless, breathless. And he made no protest — no sound at all — when she drew him over the stool.

It wasn’t exactly comfortable, with his hands tied and his body bent. The part of him that was still a teenage boy had vague impressions that this whole thing was getting thrillingly depraved; but the part of him that had given way to the world of his and Greta’s imagination was spellbound and tense.

Greta began to slowly pull off his slacks, and wicked as the sensation was, Isaac no longer expected oral pleasure. He felt her pause and heard her catch her breath. A second later, though, she had assumed her regal tone.

“Beg for mercy and it shall be granted. Beg for release and I’ll let you go. Beg for anything, and your soul stays lost forever.”

Fair is fair.

“On with it,” Isaac dared.

He could hear Greta’s breathing grow heavier. He could hear the candles burning and the stars spying. The molecules around them were alive and watching.

The air hissed, and a lick off a bonfire landed on him. He’d expected it, he’d braced himself, but he gasped from shock nonetheless. It happened again, three times, rapid and strong and sharp.

Greta paced around him, black belt trailing snakily from her pale hand. Isaac’s throat was drier than the planet Arrakis; his eyes were thirsty but he couldn’t blink, couldn’t look away from Greta. He wished she’d stop. He wished she’d go harder.

This sort of thing wasn’t exactly uncommon in the realm of speculative fiction. On more than one modeling-and-reading session, Isaac’s cheeks had colored over a particularly vivid description of physical punishment. He’d never looked to see how Greta reacted.

“Tell the ancients why this soul of yours matters so very much.”

Perhaps that had been an oversight.

Greta whipped his belt down again. And again.

“It just… does,” he gargled.

And yet again.

“I remain uncompelled.” She thrashed him at a rabid pace, her precision unsullied by her fury. Isaac held on and held still. He sucked at the air vampirically. And when she stopped, he felt rather sorry.

“You gave it away willingly,” she reminded.

“I didn’t know how it worked,” he argued. “Just like I didn’t know about this… particular… ordeal.”

Greta laid on another swift stroke.

“The ancients aren’t exactly forgiving of ignorance.”

Her next assault exiled all lines and protests from Isaac’s mind. It obliterated his mind altogether. He was his body more than he had ever been, everything that wasn’t pain and elation and heat and the urgency of skin was zapped up by a vortex.

Isaac was no stranger to abuse. This was new.

Greta knelt in front of him and searched his face. He thought he saw a flash of concern in a teenage girlfriend’s eye, but the cold wrath of an ancient arbiter soon masked it.

“It’s only a soul,” she whispered soothingly. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to give up?”

“Not. Happening.”

A mournful sigh. Isaac clenched his eyes. He didn’t have long to wait.

The ritual possessed him. It was hungrier than before; a cyclone gathering urgency and speed. Valiantly though he bore it, his knees still buckled as each bite gnashed harder than the last. When he closed his eyes he saw sparks and hands and paint and large clear eyes, heard the laughter of goons and felt the unglossed lips of a beautiful oddball; when he opened his eyes, all shapes smeared together. He tried hard as he could to control those parts of his body that proved hardest to control. He tried not to pant like a dog.

A whisper breathed against Isaac’s ear: “I like it when you gasp.”

At that moment, his whole body dissolved into the wooden stool, and the transmogrification of his molecules was complete.

“You’re up for more, then?”

Or not quite.

When the arbiter handed down her next set of trials, something changed. The sensation became less shocking-shuddery and more scathingly painful. There was a hard, ruthless edge now; a merciless progression. Instead of measured strokes doled out like questions in a test, it was a long stream of ritual justice that descended.

“All you’ve got,” he challenged.

She was perfectly willing to oblige.

“But why do you really deserve to be restored?” she started again, landing a particularly vicious cut on the top of his thighs. A vague thought occurred to Isaac: I can’t believe she’s doing this with my own clothes.

“Wouldn’t you prefer – ” another searing crack – “to be invisible?”

“No.” More a grunt than a reply.

“I’ve heard otherwise.”

“Well, you’re wrong.”

“Really? Well… ” Her fingers latched gently to the seam of his underwear. “Let’s make you a little more visible, then.” She dragged them down, nails lightly scratching the surface of his legs as she did so.

It was Greta’s turn to gasp. A small gasp, but enough to make Isaac realize that his hindquarters must’ve greatly expanded their usual color palette. He felt a twinge of pride, a prickle of concern and a mighty desire to survey his battle scars himself.

“This is hurting you quite a lot,” came a voice that was certainly trying to be the mystic arbiter’s, but carried more than a hint of Greenbaum.

“This? This is like… an ice cream fucking sundae.”

The back of his shins absorbed a swift kick. “Ancient sacred ritual!” she hissed.

“Sorry. I mean… I… Yes. Pain, trials. Very painful trials.”

“That’s it – ” The voice this time was unmistakably Greenbaum, but the stunning collision of blows was without question the work of a wrathful primeval sprite. Isaac gulped back the snark and took it.

“It’s not as easy as you thought it would be, is it?” Greta had developed a rhythm whereby belt lashes served as punctuation. “It never is, you know. Things of value have their cost.”

The leather found its mark once more; Isaac wondered groggily if Greta was attempting to paint a picture on him, in the medium of bruise.

“You thought you could just come here, demand we relinquish what you’d already surrendered, and not even give us a good reason? It’s not enough, Traveler, to say you’ve earned your soul.”

She held the whip still for a moment, and leaned over him in that predatory way.

“Tell us why.”

“I…”

She snapped the belt down, as if to preempt any waffling. “Be… specific!”

“Everyone needs a soul!”

“That smacks of generalism.” Emphasis on ‘smack.’

“I need it to be a person.”

“Is that what you want? You could be a wraith, you know. You could be smoke. You could disappear.”

“I don’t want to be invisible! I can’t be invisible…”

“How come?”

This dialogue, monumentally frustrating to Isaac’s battered nerves, was interrupted by agitated strokes. Sometimes, though, Greta would stop her onslaught to glide the leather softly over his ridged, mottled skin.

“I…”

The pain besieged him; wrapped him like heavy winds that thrust him headlong into a cloud. It wasn’t a cruel pain, though, not like Josh’s fist or Aidan’s laughter; it wasn’t trying to smash him apart or liquefy him. It was carrying him, to a brave new world, a galaxy far far away, a place no Isaac had ever gone before...

The vortex zapped back the sounds. He saw the sun shining, and a girl with loose hair and long limbs look up from a chalk drawing. He watched her crinkle her nose, stare at the sky, examine him, smile, laugh. He watched her laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

“Why do you need it?” Howled the arbiter.

“Because…”

“Why?” With a fierce blow.

“For the girl I love!”

The air around them seemed to choke.

“For her… to be worthy of her…”

“What her?” Breathed Greta.

“Her… She… ” Isaac had endured his trials, but at this point he was heaving over the stool, hanging on with all brash fiery will to his last shred of control.

“A girl you couldn’t begin to imagine,” he gasped. “She has hair like… ” Isaac wished he were a poet. “She has the hair of a genius,” he finished with false confidence.

“A genius?”

“She has the hands of a master. She’s an artist. Everything she sees is… layered, and extraordinary; it’s like she has six extra brains to think with that nobody else has. She can always surprise you. No one knows her. See, she pretends to be this inaccessible little demon, but really – really she’s kind. And extremely hot.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, devastating. And she’s brave. Strong. Don’t you get it? Anything less won’t cut it. She deserves somebody whole, mind and body, will and soul – for her I can’t be invisible and I can’t be half a man – for us. I… That’s why, goddamn it. Us.”

The only thing audible was a cascade of heavy breathing, but it was impossible to tell anymore from which set of lungs it came.

“Then…”

That’s it, this is it, she’s giving in this time…

But instead of the expected victory, Isaac received three more blazing lashes, the most brutal of the whole lot. He choked, he jerked; he did not beg. And then he felt Greta’s shaking body collapse on top of his.

Her hands traveled over his bare, sweating shoulders with a softness belied by urgency. Her breath on his skin felt like balm, like dew on a dry leaf.

“To be honest, the mortification of the flesh interests me far more than the fate of souls,” she whispered.

The fingers wandered down his spine.

“What a very good soul, though… What a quality choice of soul.”

“Greta…”

“Not yet,” she murmured. Her hands found his hips, his cheeks, his bruises. They ran soothing warmth over his goosebumps. The trailed up his arms and across his back; up and down; soft vertical brushstrokes. A longing to touch back throttled Isaac. Finally Greta disentangled herself from her victim.

First he felt her untie his wrists. And then he felt her lifting him tenderly from his prone position, and guiding his hands to his pants.

“Get dressed,” she said. “And close your eyes.”

Isaac did as told – though he only obeyed “get dressed” in as far as his underwear and trousers were concerned. He closed his eyes and tried to listen for Greta’s movements, to wait for her scent to surround him again. But he was still dazed and his senses muffled. Her body eluded him.

This happened. It was real. Ow. Drew won’t believe it. Ow, ow, god. I’m not telling Drew. Drew, get out of my head. Remember, how this actually happened? Ow. Where is she?

And then she was close, the heat was unmistakable.

“Open,” she commanded.

When he did, he found that the heat was caused by a candle flame, thrust precariously close to his chin.

“I’ve restored your soul,” she whispered solemnly. She thrust the candle in his hands, and fell back.

Isaac blinked, held up his light, and took a look around.

His own face surrounded him.

The drapings had dropped from all the easels, revealing a dozen portraits of Isaac, the Once Invisible. On his stool, reading. In the school parking lot, reading. Dashing across a starscape, sabre aloft. In a field with Greta. So this is what the center of a kaleidoscope feels like. He couldn’t blink his eyes.

This was not him. The guy in these pictures was not social refuse or hopeless molecules. He wasn’t a sad-note genre-dork or punching bag or pee-jar target. In one of the paintings he recognized his black eye – she made it look noble, she made it look like a piece to a story. An epic. The guy in these pictures was relaxed and resilient; he had a knowing look; hints of wit around his smile. He wasn’t normal, certainly, but the way she painted him you could tell he was warped in all the right ways.

“You said… You said it was just one…”

“Oh, Isaac.” She smiled kindly. “I finished that assignment an era ago. How long do you think it takes me to paint a picture?”

Now he could blink. “So. All this time. Just a big scam to seduce me.”

“I couldn’t afford to lose you as a muse, could I.”

“These are incredible. You’re a genius.”

She giggled and removed the space between them. “You mean, my hair’s a genius.”

“Shut up!” He kicked her with his toes.

“Did you know you made such pretty sounds when you’re in pain? No wonder those ogres like beating you up so much.”

“But it’s not nearly as fun when they do it.” He kissed her nose.

“Hey. Ritual trials are not supposed to be fun.”

“Well, too bad you suck at ritual trials then.”

She yanked his face down to hers and kissed his mouth aggressively. “Watch it, minion.”

“Wait! I thought I was your muse.”

“When you’re flippant I demote you to minion.”

Everything became quiet then. Greta’s hands were closed around his back, his hands held her elbows, and suddenly he felt very self-conscious as they looked at one another. He couldn’t think of a thing to say, a place to go, a laugh to break the quiet – and she, of course, kept staring with that intensity only she could accomplish.

“I like you a lot, Greta,” he said. He winced at the echo of his stupidity, but when he squeezed his eyes open, he saw that Greta hadn’t found it stupid at all.

“Thank you,” she said. She reached a finger to his face and trailed it gently along his forehead, over his eyes and nose, to his lips and chin, where she rested it thoughtfully.

“Isaac… ” She pulled her finger back to her own mouth, and bit it. “You are wonderful in all the ways that you are.”

He knew exactly what she meant.

“However…”

“What?”

“If you find that you absolutely must engage in prolonged public kissing to uphold your masculine honor, could you arrange it so the lips belong to me?”

Isaac’s cheekbones flushed more startlingly than his fresh welts. He swallowed.

“Yes. Yes, sure. Definitely. I will do that.”

They held onto each other tighter.

“Good then.”

Isaac ran his hand through her brilliant, wild hair. In Greta Greenbaum’s eyes, he saw forgiveness and admiration; he saw fear and friendship. He watched them, the eyes that had always seen him, seen all of him, and all that he could be; he watched them until he saw them glimmer with a different sort of feeling, until they closed from the pressure of craving, and watching became kissing, and kissing became traveling — a starlit journey across the newborn universe that they alone could inhabit.

***

[the end]