Literary Works: Wish by the Fire

“Ia! Ia shub niggarath! Yog Sothoth!”

The flames danced higher. A sudden spark jumped from beyond the boundaries of the stone that lined the pit, almost as though triggered by the explosion of barely pronounceable utterances. At the center of the pit were stacked an array of branches leaning on each other to form a rough pyramid, doused with gasoline and now only partially visible beyond the wall of blazing redness surrounding it.

“Ia!” I yelled, and a cool wind began to stir the glowing ashes into a whirlpool of faintly suggestive debris. The moment matched my intentions so perfectly that I might have been able to fool myself into believing I had caused it, were I not in the company of skeptics.

“Come on, Chris! It’s getting cold!” my friend yelled, clutching his towel tight around his upper body.

I ignored his plea and continued my chant as the fire found the gasoline that was soaked into the upper part of the propped sticks, sending a flash of flame upwards into the stars. The leaves from a tree hanging above the fire were dancing madly with the flame, a waltz with a deadly partner.

“Vai! Vai burh sanah!” I shouted, thrusting my dried cornstalk into the air.

My friend shook his head in impatience, dropping the towel on a nearby log and thumped onto it, grasping the bottle of sake he had bought earlier that day. He filled his small communion cup quickly, causing it to overflow onto his hand. He didn’t seem to mind, his chills now calmed as he sat downwind of the fire, content and forcing the overwhelming drink down.

“Ia! Ia shub niggarath! Yog Sothoth!”

“Well, when you get tired of that nonsense, let’s get back in and get some writing done.” he called, “Come on, while the ideas are fresh. Those stories aren’t going to write thems…”

My friend suddenly fell over the log, kicking the haphazardly-placed sake bottle into the fire. I stopped my chanting and looked to see what was going on. He quickly and clumsily stumbled over and crawled away from the fire, his eyes locked on it, or something in it.

He stopped and gawked, slack-jawed, at the flames. My gaze went from him to the fire and back, trying to find the source of his reaction. “What are you doing?” I asked, somewhat cynically.

My friend began pointing wildly at the fire. “Something’s there!” he shouted, “In there!”

I walked towards him, eyes skeptically on the fire. “What are you talking about?” I scoffed, “There’s nothing in…”

Suddenly, the fire blew outwards, sending flame and debris to the far corners of the pit. I was startled at first, but soon remembered the sound of glass popping just before the burst. The alcohol could stand no more heat and exploded in a violent flash. I let out a sigh and was about to ridicule my friend, when my eyes fixed on the flame. They shot open suddenly at the sight of a strange light, or rather, two small, yet distinctive red, glowing orbs. The spheres began glowing brighter and brighter, separating themselves from within the raging fire.

We both stood still as stone, watching as a small, dark form materialized in the heart of the flame. It was spherical, like a head now giving the glowing orbs a home, making them eyes. The head began to rise, bringing with it a black body from the flames, its contours hidden, its outlines twisting and distorting, refusing to hold any single shape. The final form grew taller than the flames by at least a foot, its obscure form solidifying into a vaguely humanlike shape.

The thing looked down at us with its red eyes, unmoving as the fire burned around it. None of us moved, my friend and I too frightened to move. I wasn’t sure what the creature’s excuse was.

After the shock resided, I began to think of running away. As if it sensed my motives, a voice echoed from the fire, both high and low pitched, almost painful to listen to. “I am the form of humanity’s darkest desires.” the voice rumbled, “You have summoned me here, and for this, I will grant you what you desire.”

The thing suddenly slipped back into the fire, almost too fast for me to see it. The flames plumed and danced, sending waves of heat onto me, almost more than I could bear. I squinted my eyes against the heat, trying to watch the fire, seeing what it would do next. The fire subsided, but did not calm, and as the flames cracked and popped, a fiery shape, a shape like a human, rose up of the fire and stepped out of the fire pit, stopping next to it. A second form followed, exactly like the first, and stood at the opposite end of the fire pit.

The fiery forms lit the hill with their uneven glow, standing still, burning the earth beneath them. My friend began shaking, but I was calm. Something told me that these two forms were not dangerous; quite the contrary, they were quite friendly.

The flames of the two began to dim, and bodies, human bodies, began to materialize as the flames died. I soon noticed, even before they were total revealed, that these human forms were women. Beautiful women.

I could see their forms from the light of the fire in the pit, glowing brighter than before. Both stood there without a scrap of clothing, their seductive glowing in the firelight. They looked exactly the same, twins, with white, pale skin, long, dark, shiny hair, red, luscious lips, firm, voluptuous bodies, and dark eyes that stared straight into mine, flirting with my soul. They looked at my friend and me longingly, their desires radiating off of their perfect bodies.

They squirmed and fondled, and licked their lips. In unison, they began towards us, swaying their hips, inviting us to them. I straightened up, a grin coming across my face. I started towards them, my heart pounding. My friend grasped the back of my shirt.

“Are you crazy?!” he yelled, terror shaking his voice, “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“Why would we want to do that?” I chuckled, amused by my friend’s fear.

My gaze never wavered from the two women. I broke free from his grip and walked steadily towards them, my smile stretching across my face. My friend might have said something else, but it was unimportant. I reached the one on the left and went to embrace her, but she lunged forward and held onto me, forcing her lips onto mine. Part of me was in disbelief, but the rest felt that this was expected.

I thought I heard the sounds of footsteps frantically scurrying away, kicking up dirt and twigs as they went. The woman on the right turned away from where my friend was and focused on me, the only person in the world now. The woman I was kissing forced her tongue into my mouth, our passionate kisses beginning to overshadow the presence of the other woman, who began running her hand under my shirt.

I began kissing my partner’s neck as she began to gasp loudly with pleasure. She pushed me back and torn off my shirt as the other girl worked at my pants. I groped my partner furiously as I licked and bit her neck, and the moment the last article of clothing was off of me, all three of us collapsed to the ground.

I began suckling and firmly squeezing my partner’s breasts, her breathing and moans growing louder. The other woman ran her hands all over my body as I lowered my head down my partner’s, but she quickly flipped on top of me and I entered.

She moved up and down me, moaning and screaming as my breath grew short. The other woman began kissing me, then licked every inch of the two of us, enhancing our pleasure. We kept this up until I felt the climax that was building in me burst, all three of us sharing the same rhythm of heavy breathing. My partner fell off of me and the other took her place, and we started again without hesitation.

I only vaguely noted that the floor of dirt, pebbles and moss that was underneath me now felt smooth, like nothing. The glowing outline of the trees was gone, only the fire was visible. It was the three of us and that wonderful fire, all coming into one glorious orchestra of pleasure.

I’m not sure how much time, or how many times had past when I awoke, lying on the ground, looking up at the starry sky. The fire was still burning brightly, though not nearly as much as before. I groggily shook my head and rose to my feet, drowsily wondering where the two women had gone. I thought for one horrible minute that it was all just a dream as I patted at my dirty clothes, but grinned as a wave of assurance swept over me. So what if it was just a dream? It was a wonderful dream, and that was all that mattered.

As I stumbled around, I wondered where my friend had gotten to. I knew I had to make fun of him for leaving me out on the hill like that, but I began to realize that it was very strange that he wasn’t here. I looked around and thought to call out for him, when a crash cut through the silence of the forest, echoing off the trees.

I turned and saw my friend starting at me, eyes wide with what looked to be, but couldn’t have been terror. He stood, frozen, not moving an inch as a tipped bucket of water drained itself quietly next to him. “Why did you leave me asleep out here, you jerk?” I teased.

He remained unmoving, not drawing a breath, staring at me as if I wasn’t supposed to exist. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!” I clichéd.

“Chris?!” he shouted, “No, you can’t be here! You can’t!”

I was confused and a little angry. “What are you babbling about?” I demanded.

My friend began to look like he was going to lose it. “Two months ago, when we were out here, those women, when they came out of the fire, I ran away, and when I…”

“Two months?!” I interrupted, “What do you mean two months?!”

He paused and looked at me in a way that incited a dread that I had never experienced before. “Two months ago, when you were chanting and that thing, that black thing, came out,” he explained, trying to hold back hysteria, “I ran away when those women were on you. When I came back…”

He broke off his train of thought and stared blankly behind me. “When I came back,” he continued, “I found you! You were dead! Burned alive! Nothing but a charred skeleton!”

I stared at him with a mix of distress and amusement. A joke, but for some reason, it didn’t seem funny. It seemed true. “That’s absurd!” I insisted, gripping to reality, “How could I be here if I was burned to death!”

My friend eyed me with a fearful gaze. “I don’t know!” he screamed, nearing panic, “When the trouble settled down, when the police stopped accusing me of killing you, I got the nerve to come back here and sort things out.”

Confusion snuck onto his face. “And when I lit the fire and went to get some water, you were here, now!”

I couldn’t absorb any of this. “What do you mean the police thought you killed me?” I asked, nearing my own panic.

“They thought I killed you.” he began, almost resentfully, “Who else? I was the only one there, and they sure as hell didn’t believe my story, until strange things started happening, other weird deaths. They stopped bothering me after that.”

We stared at each other, or the sky, or the fire, or whatever, anything to distract from the unanswered questions and notions. I can’t be sure how long it was when the fire started to die down, but as it did, I slowly began to notice that the forest, the sky, and my friend seemed to die with it, fading into a blackness that I couldn’t do a thing about. My friend called to me and tried to grab for me, but he slid through my hands as if he didn’t really exist. Eventually, everything faded into complete darkness, and the moment all light had escaped, the fire burst into a bright radiance, and I was left in a world where it was just that fire and me.

As I desperately pondered what was going on, the two women appeared from some corner of the void and embraced me, slipping off my clothes again with a seamless grace. They laid me down and we began our sensual dance again, though this time, it wasn’t as good.