"Bruce Holland Rogers - The Apple Golem" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

enough, he thought.
He seized her wrist. She did not resist him. He pulled her sharply against him, fell with her to the floor.
He bruised her flesh with his fingers, pinched and pulled at the green skin of her breasts. He battered her
with his hands, grabbed sharply at her neck to force her against him. She went willingly.
Not enough, he thought. This is not enough.
He coupled with her, battered her, clutched hard at the flesh of her hips. When release came to him, it
was not release enough. He lay still, and she gazed into his eyes as before, malleable. His creature. Too
much his creature.
He pulled her closer, roughly caressed her neck. The apple smell of her skin was strong. He pressed
his tongue against her shoulder, tasting, probing. And then dug his teeth into her, bit down hard even as
she began to pull away. His teeth met. She rolled away from him, and her mouth was open in a soundless
cry as her fingers touched emptiness he had made in her.
Yes, Baltasar thought.
She would not meet his gaze.
***


She would not meet him with her eyes again. She was his. She could not fail to come when he called,
but that frank gaze had left her. If he took her face with his hand, her eyes would dart to the side.
Yes. This was what he had longed for.
***


All that winter, he had her. All that winter, he was free of the thing that had gnawed at him. Nearly
every day, he satisfied his appetite for her, taking small bites from her shoulders, her neck, her breasts
and her legs. Nearly every day, he would call to her and always she would come, but always her eyes
were elsewhere.
***


In the spring, she was a skeleton of silvery apple flesh, darting between the trees where the apple
blossoms were starting. As before, he continued to summon her nearly every day, and every day he
marveled at how she had begun to change. At first, it was only the smell of her, the rich scent of apple
blossoms that clung to her and aroused him as never before. But when the apple tree buds began to
open, when the leaves began to uncurl, the golem's wounds began to heal. The flesh that grew into the
wounds was pink. When he bit it, it did not yield so easily to his teeth, and it tasted not so much like
apple flesh as meat and blood. The apple golem seemed all the more pained, all the more frightened,
when he bit these places. To Baltasar's delight.
***


It could entertain him for a century, he thought. He could go on for a long time, indeed, taking painful
bites from the flesh of his creation.
***


One night, late in summer, the apples were heavy again on the branches. When Baltasar summoned
the golem to the glow of witchlight, when he seized her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes, she
looked back.
Plainly and frankly, she looked back.