The Book of Revelation Read Online Free PDF Page B

then, her hair still wet.
    “You’re staring at me,” she said.
    He could not deny it. He was captivated by her beauty, and there was nowhere he would rather look.
    Even then, or especially then, perhaps, she had felt his love as a weight, a pressure, and at times it had exhausted her. This is not to say that she didn’t love him, only that his love had preceded hers. His love had been instant, irrepressible and overwhelming, while hers had grown slowly, as a complement to his, as a response.
    But if that was still true, if she sometimes felt his love weighed on her too heavily, and if that weight was then removed, in its entirety, would she, at some deep level, admit to a feeling of relief?
    Or would she feel unanchored suddenly, unstable?
    •
    Towards sunset on that second day the women appeared, each one dressed identically in black, as usual. They were like doors, he thought, doors into the dark. None of which you would ever choose to pass through.
    “We have a request.”
    This was the tallest of the women, the one with the slight American accent. Her voice had an abruptness to it, a strident quality, as if she was used to giving orders. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
    “We want you to masturbate for us.”
    He turned his face away. During the day, while on his own, he had been thinking about the dangers of co-operation, one of them being that the women would never be satisfied, that they would keep asking more of him. This “request,” as they called it, seemed to prove the point.
    But they were talking to him now, their voices seductive, insistent, over-lapping one another, just as they had in that narrow alleyway.
    “We want to see the expression on your face—”
    “The way it changes—”
    “Like you’re lost inside yourself. Like when you dance—”
    He shook his head and turned on to his side. The early evening sunshine struck through the skylight, making a rectangular shape on the bare boards. The rectangle was slightly wider at one end than the other. It looked as if a bright-orange coffin had been delivered to the room.
    The women were still trying to persuade him. Though he didn’t want to listen, he couldn’t shut the voices out.
    “All you have to do is masturbate—”
    “Is it really so much to ask?”
    One of them stepped closer, until she almost filled his field of vision with the folds of her black cloak. For a moment, he felt he might be losing consciousness.
    “Do you remember what happened last night?”
    This was a voice he recognised. It belonged to the woman with the darkly painted nails, the woman he thought of as the leader. It occurred to him that he was already beginning to be able to distinguish between the women. It might be useful if he could give them separate identities, somehow. Name them even.
    The woman repeated her question. “Do you remember what happened?”
    “Of course I remember,” he replied.
    “Well,” she said, “we filmed it all. On video.”
    He looked up at her in disbelief.
    She turned away, walked a few paces. “Of course, it’s mainly for our own pleasure. Our own,” and she paused, “delectation.” She leaned against the white pipes that ran from floor to ceiling. “However,” she went on, “we could always make a copy. We could send it to your girlfriend, for example. You have a girlfriend, don’t you. Or we could send it to the people who employ you. . . .”
    “Why are you doing this?” he murmured.
    The woman who was standing to his left kneeled awkwardly beside him. “Because you’re beautiful,” she said in a curious, low monotone. “Because,” and she hesitated, and then looked down at the floor, “because we love you.”
    The woman standing behind her laughed.
    “Well?” said the woman who he thought of as the leader. “What have you decided?”
    He felt instinctively that she was not bluffing. Though he hadn’t noticed any filming equipment, it seemed obvious that in a room of this type there