The Box Read online

“They’re uncircumcised,” Brandy observed as she traced the end of the stone foreskin with the tip of her middle finger. “Makes them look kind of uncivilized.” She took her hand away from the statue’s genitals and wiped it on her jeans as though she expected it to be dirty. “No. ‘Uncivilized’ is the wrong word. Primitive, maybe, or…I don’t know. I’m not good with words. I mean if they were circumcised, they would seem more modern to me. If these things were really, really old, they might not have invented circumcision yet. Do you get what I’m trying to say?” She turned and looked at Albert, wanting to know if he understood what she was trying so awkwardly to say, but he was staring back the way they’d come, his flashlight fixed on the darkness behind them. “Albert?” She aimed her flashlight in the same direction, trying to see what he was looking at. “Something wrong?”

  “No.” But he wasn’t sure. For just an instant he thought he’d seen something, a shadow moving in the dark, and perhaps a soft shuffling noise, but now it was gone, perhaps imagined. “Nothing wrong.” He turned to her, gave her a reassuring smile and softly squeezed her hand. “Let’s keep going.”

  From the darkness came more pairs of statues, their penises growing more and more erect, now pointing more up than down, but Albert became more aware of the darkness between the statues, the thick emptiness that their flashlights were so slowly washing away. There was something there, something in that darkness, something larger than the statues and far more profound.

  The final pair of sentinels appeared, sporting full erections nearly as long as baseball bats, and in the darkness between them, shapes began to emerge. Albert took one more step and all those shapes leapt together. His heart skipped a beat with fright and he nearly cried out as a giant face appeared before him.

  Brandy uttered a single, four-letter input and stared, amazed. Before them stood the enormous stone face of a woman, carved from the very stone like everything else in this incredible place. Its details were every bit as vivid as those of the sentinel statues. The expression was one of pure ecstasy, as though the woman were in the throes of some great orgasm, so intense that even looking at it seemed to trouble their senses and fill them with a strange sort of arousal. There were pores in her skin, and a faint blemish high on one cheek. Her eyes shimmered, appearing almost to contain real tears. She even had eyelashes, delicate and fine. Her mouth was wide open in a frozen scream of lust, her lips soft, her teeth slightly crooked. Her tongue was rough with taste buds, but with that same, strangely wet texture as her eyes. Her mouth was a door, opening into the wall and the next room. Beyond her tonsils was utter darkness.

  “Amazing,” said Albert.

  “Yeah. Is she what’s got these boys so excited?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know what it means.”

  “She’s so real.”

  “I know.” He shined the flashlight over the surface of the face, studying it, and then peered into the gaping mouth. “There’s something on the other side. Come on.”

  The two of them stepped into the screaming woman’s mouth, careful of the teeth and the lips below and above them, half expecting it to snap closed and devour them both.

  “Oh my god…”

  It was Brandy who spoke. Albert was unable to even comment. They stepped out of the woman’s throat and into another room, this one smaller, but still large enough that the light did not reach the other side. Directly in front of them, a stone woman stared back from the floor, her eyes wide, nearly bulging, her mouth open in a silent scream. She was naked, her back arched, her fingers clawing at the stone floor on which she lay, her legs spread wide apart, her feet in the air. A stone man, as human as the woman, complete with face and greedy, lustful expression, knelt between her spread legs, one hand closed around one of her ankles, the other groping for one of her breasts. They could have been real people, their skin soft and damp with sweat instead of hard, cold and smooth. Behind them, two men stood with a woman between them, all of them naked. One of the men was holding the woman, clutching her elbow in a painful grip with one hand while squeezing one of her breasts with the other. The other man held one of her legs up high while trying to guide his swollen penis into her. They might have been raping this woman but for the expression on her face, ferocious, greedy, uncontrollable in the storm of her lust, her free hand groping for the penis she so eagerly anticipated. Beyond them were more, dozens more, men and women, all of them as realistic as the stone face that led them into this room.

  Albert took two steps forward, his flashlight sliding across the orgy of stone. He’d never seen anything like this, had not even imagined that something like this could ever have been created, not even in poor detail. Arms, legs, heads and other parts protruded from the walls all around them, as if this display continued beyond the perimeter of the room. Every imaginable type of sexual activity was depicted here. There were women and men giving and receiving oral sex with no apparent sexual preference. Others were masturbating themselves or others or both at once. Every sexual position he could possibly think up and a few he’d never imagined jumped out at him, life sized and three-dimensional.

  His light gravitated toward the back of the room, where the orgy was intensified, and he went to it, almost unaware that he was moving. Directly in front of the door that stood on the other side was a pile of stone bodies, each one clawing and tearing, a violent and sexual brawl, where even in stone he could see scratches and bruises as perhaps fifty of these stone men and women fought for something he could not see, something above them, much higher than the ceiling would allow him to gaze upon.

  Atop it all, a single woman rose up, buried to her hips in clawing, groping arms, covered in claw marks and bleeding from her lip and nose. Even one of her fingers seemed to have been broken in the scuffle. She was reaching up to the ceiling, her face contorted into such a deep yearning that Albert could hardly comprehend it in his own mind. Her eyes shined with want, her mouth open, silently crying out for whatever it was that lured her upward.

  As he stared at this, Albert became aware of his own desires. His own penis was as hard as those around him, throbbing painfully against the front of his jeans. He was breathing hard, almost panting.

  “Albert…”

  He had almost forgotten about Brandy. He turned to find her standing just behind him, her eyes locked on that same, violent orgy. She was breathing in quick, shallow pants, her breasts rising and falling beneath her sweatshirt. Her knees were slightly bent as though she urgently needed to pee. With her free hand she rubbed at the crotch of her jeans as though coaxing a dull pain. The flashlight trembled, ready to fall. He went to her, meaning to steady her, but she flung her arms around him and kissed him with such ferocity that he was shoved backward against the motionless yet flailing stone foot of a woman who might have been choking to death on a man’s entire, swollen penis and loving every agonizing second of it. He heard something strike the floor and was barely aware through his confusion that it was Brandy’s flashlight.

  The pain in his back was no match for the one in his head. It was like his brain was rotating inside his skull. The things he saw made his eyes ache and his genitals throb. His yearnings were more than he could bear. In moments he and Brandy stripped each other bare and were writhing on the floor, caught in the same sort of furious sex that the stone statues depicted all around them. The world spun and the statues twirled with it, the pornographic images bombarding them as they did what no one on earth could possibly describe as making love, for it was pure animal lust without romance or even a preference for who their partner was, as long as that partner could satisfy that endless burning within.

  They did it not just once, but continuously. With each orgasm, Albert was maddeningly unsatisfied and bursting with fierce wanting for the next. He kept thrusting, willing his softening body to respond, forcing himself to do it over and over again, long after his body began to ache with the exertion. He was barely aware of the object of his lust. She cried out with her own hungry wanting and met his violen
t thrusting, clawing at him, begging him not to stop, even when each heavy thrust began to drive nails of pain deep into her body. Their voices rose into the echoing darkness as they were both raped by the strange, overwhelming lust that somehow emanated from this gray room of stone perversions. At some point Albert kicked a statue and felt an icy wave of pain wash up his foot, but he barely noticed it. At some point Brandy ripped out a lock of his hair, but he barely felt that, too. And at some point he was vaguely aware that one of the statues was moving among the others, but that did not matter any more than the pain. All that mattered was the lust.

  Gradually the light receded and darkness swallowed them. And as the light fell, so did the fires within them. With one final, quaking orgasm, they both collapsed in utter exhaustion on the cold floor, hardly more than sweat-slicked piles of naked and quivering flesh, and slipped into weary sleep.

  Chapter 10

  As he awoke, Albert was first aware of the darkness. It baffled him, confused him the same way that the cold feel of the hard floor under him and the chilly air on his damp skin confused him. For a moment he could not remember where he was, but his memories swam back to him as surely as did consciousness. He remembered Brandy and the room with the stone orgy and the thing they’d done together as though the very sight of those statues was enough to fling them into furious, sexual wanting. He remembered the sex and the confusion. He remembered something else, too, something he’d seen while in the throes of an orgasm that wouldn’t satisfy him: a shadowy shape moving among the statues. Suddenly it dawned on him that it was dark and terror burst from every fiber of his being.

  He scrambled to his feet and then stood there, naked and shivering, listening to the darkness, trying to hear the breathing of an invisible intruder. But there was not a sound but his and Brandy’s breathing and the thudding of his own heart. The silence was as eerie as the darkness, but it was also comforting. They were at least alone. He thought about waking Brandy, but he knew that if he could find the flashlights first, then she might be less afraid when she awoke. He turned, trying to find his bearings, and a piece of stone struck him in the corner of his eye, sending a flash of pain through his already throbbing head.

  He cursed and stumbled away, only to be jabbed in the back by something else. Solid stone statues surrounded him. Although they looked as soft as real flesh, they were definitely not. He stopped and stood for a moment, wondering what to do, and as he blinked away tears of pain from his stinging eye he became aware that he could see, although only barely. There was a dim glow from beyond the next door.

  He made his way toward the light, feeling around the statues with his arms held up in front of his face, waiting for another rogue limb to jab him, perhaps putting out an eye way down here in the darkness. As he crept through the crowded stone orgy, he found that he could see the outline of the doorway. The light was slightly brighter in the next room.

  Rectangular, about ten feet across by fifteen feet wide, this next room was empty. The intruder wasn’t here. Neither were there any statues, pornographic or otherwise. He could make out two corridors. One was on the far right side of the opposite wall, leading forward. The other led left from the far corner. The light was coming from this direction.

  Quickly, and without looking back, he moved toward the lighted corridor and peered down it. About twelve feet into the passage another corridor branched off to the right. About four feet beyond that was a sharp right turn. There, at that right turn, the light was brighter still.

  He began to walk toward the light, desperate to get his flashlight back, but as he approached the first passage, his bare foot struck something and he froze. Around him, the tunnel was filled with the soft sound of light metal skidding across smooth stone. For a moment he stood there, unable to move, certain that something dark and malicious must have heard the noise and would soon come rushing toward him. But no such horror could be seen.

  After a moment, he let go his held breath and began forward again. He bent and picked up the object he’d kicked, puzzled. How did Brandy’s glasses get way out here?

  Same way the flashlight left the room.

  He glanced back over his shoulder at the room he was leaving behind. He hoped Brandy would be safe until he returned. He didn’t realize the light was so far away. Perhaps he shouldn’t have left her alone, but it was too late now. He might as well get the flashlight first.

  He crept on, his bare body shivering with fearful anticipation. He wished he could see better than he could, but with each step his vision improved. He peered up the first corridor as he passed, but could see only darkness. His flesh tingled with fear. He could too easily imagine someone standing in that darkness, watching him, calculating his movements, waiting for his guard to drop.

  He made the turn at the end of the corridor and gazed ahead. The tunnel went on out of sight into the darkness. About twenty feet ahead, the tunnel branched to the left. The light was strong there, but there was something ominous about the darkness beyond that turn.

  What the hell was he thinking coming down here? He’d actually been willing to come here alone! What would have happened then? What would have become of him? He hurried on, trembling with anxiousness, bracing himself against whatever horror was certain to come charging out of that darkness beyond the light.

  But nothing came after him. He turned left, into the light, and there was his flashlight. It was lying motionless on the ground. Beside it, another passage went right. Beyond it, about fifteen feet away, the corridor broke into a tee and went both left and right.

  He rushed to the flashlight and snatched it off the ground. He half expected a trap, but he could no longer stand not having it in his hand.

  He gazed up the tunnel to the right. There were no more passages to be seen in that direction for as far as the light would reach.

  All these corridors… This was some kind of maze. And the flashlight seemed to be leading him toward this passage.

  A part of him wanted badly to see where that passage led, despite the fear he felt, but he could do no such thing. He needed to get back to Brandy.

  He made his way back to the previous passage, gave the tunnel to the left a brief glimpse with the flashlight and then continued back the way he’d come. He did not like this at all. The whole idea of not being alone gave him chills all the way to his soul. The fact that this presence managed to steal his flashlight intensified that chill until his whole body trembled with anxious anticipation.

  “Albert?”

  He heard her voice as he rounded the turn in the corridor. She’d awakened before he could return after all.

  “Albert? Where are you?” There was panic in her voice, and he could hardly blame her. He should not have left her back there.

  “I’m here, Brandy.” He broke into a sprint and hurried back to the room where he’d left her.

  Brandy froze in the flashlight beam like a deer in headlights. She was on all fours, crawling around on the cold floor, searching for her clothes and her glasses and of course for him. She was still stark naked, her golden hair dangling around her startled face, her blue eyes wide and frightened, tears streaming down her cheeks. Beside her was the flashlight she’d been carrying. The lens was broken and it offered no light. Albert vaguely remembered the sound of it hitting the ground when she threw herself at him.

  Not a stitch of their clothing could be seen.

  “Albert?”

  He was staring at her there amid the statues, her naked breasts accented by gravity, her nipples erect from the chill, her bare buttocks up in the air, her whole body covered in gooseflesh, and again he was stricken with that bizarre and fierce arousal, that animal lust.

  He closed his eyes, squeezing them hard against the strange urges he felt, and in just a moment he felt himself calming. What the hell was wrong with him?

  “Albert, is that you?”

  Again he opened his eyes. Brandy was getting to her feet now, modestly covering her breasts but not that other part. That pa
rt of her was fair and golden, a small tuft of lovely blonde, a place forbidden to his eyes, but unlocked in a moment of strange lust. Suddenly he was aroused again, as stiff as the last pair of sentinels in the previous room.

  He turned and bolted from the doorway, turning away from Brandy and the room entirely.

  “Albert!” She began to cry again, utterly terrified, and Albert felt sick to have left her in the dark like that. “Albert! Don’t leave me!”

  “It’s okay. I’m right here.”

  “Come back!”

  “Come to me!”

  “Albert, please!”

  “I can’t!” He growled with frustration. He wanted to go to her, but he couldn’t, and he didn’t even know why. “What the fuck!”

  “Where are you?” She was getting closer now.

  “I’m right outside the door.” He shined the light at the door, not looking at it. “You can see the light, right?”

  “Yeah. Sort of. But I can’t see anything else. My glasses.”

  Albert looked down at her glasses. He was still holding them in his hand. “I’ve got your glasses. Come to me, okay Brandy?”

  “Okay.” She sounded pitiful. “I’m coming.”

  He could hear her footsteps. She was just inside the door, but moving slowly, likely feeling her way around the statues that had bruised him up a good deal on his way out.

  At last she stepped through the doorway. Her arms were still crossed over her breasts, as though unaware that her bottom half was showing as well. She spotted Albert and flung herself into his arms. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “I don’t know.” He held her that way for a long time, letting her weep against his bare shoulder, trying not to think that she was naked or about what they’d done together. He kept his ears open and watched both the doorway behind and the tunnels ahead, keeping an eye out for whoever or whatever had moved their stuff.

  “Why did we do that?” Her words were nearly inaudible, muffled against his shoulder and by her own sobs.