Tremble: Erotic Tales of the Mystical and Sinister

“Ms. Honeywell!? I’m not a real estate agent! I need to talk to you, it’s urgent! My name is Gavin Tetherhook—”

The door was flung open again, catching Gavin still bent to the letter slot.

“The Gavin Tetherhook?”

Saturday Honeywell stood with her hands on her hips, her ample

figure swathed in a black cotton kaftan embroidered with the stars of the southern hemisphere and a local indigenous slogan which, translated, read Fat White Rich Woman—a fact Saturday was ignorant of, but had she known would have found vastly amusing.

A fog of patchouli, stale sweat, and coconut oil (Saturday marinated her hair in it once a week) almost knocked Gavin off his feet. From her lower lip hung what appeared to be a rolled-up vine leaf, the “cigarette” emitting a strong smell of cloves. The paleobotanist exhaled a lungful of smoke in Gavin’s face. The property developer stumbled back, then, recovering, drew himself up to his full height. He was dismayed to see that Saturday towered over him by a good inch—which made her six foot five.

“The one and the same,” he said curtly and handed her his card. He was further disgusted by her grimy fingernails, all of which appeared well-chewed. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the thing she was smoking, “pot?”

“Unfortunately not. It’s a beedie—a clove cigarette very popular in Indonesia,” she replied, staring down at his card. “Well, fuck me dead.” She looked back up at Gavin, a withering appraisal that seemed to him to encapsulate both strong disapproval and wry humor. “The enemy was demeaned to visit the Indians, so to speak,” she continued. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yeah, Saturday Honeywell, paleobotanist.”

“And head of the committee to save the Kellen wetlands. Why the hell would you be visiting me?”

“I need help.”

Surprised, she smiled slowly, already calculating the ways she might take out her revenge on the property developer, who, after all, had been the bane of most of her professional life. She looked more closely at the immaculately groomed man standing before her. He was better looking in the flesh than in the photos, she observed ruefully. One of those genetically blessed individuals with an obvious penchant for control, but there was a slight fragility behind the eyes, an anxious knotting of the hands that betrayed a hidden vulnerability that made her hesitate for a moment, curious about what could be disturbing such a bastion of confidence. Then the memory of Gavin’s flushed smug face adorning the front page of the Courier-Mail after winning the right to develop the Kellen wetlands floated into her mind.

“You? Don’t make me laugh.” She began closing the door again but Gavin had already placed his foot in the doorway.

“Please, I’m desperate.”

“No way—desperate?”

“It’s an issue I have no understanding of, a supernatural issue. Stanley Jervis of the Queensland Museum said you might be able to help.”

“Supernatural? You’re joking.”

“I wish I was.”

Saturday paused, reappraising the situation. If he was genuine and there was some problem, the knowledge of such a vulnerability could be very useful the next time Mr. Tetherhook decided to develop an environmentally sensitive site. Concealing her revulsion, she held open the door.

The living room was lined wall to wall with books whose only organizing principle seemed to be by dint of association, so that the feminist tome Women Who Run With The Wolves sat next to Mother Dog—A Treatise on the Matriarchy of Wolves, while The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas nestled happily next to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A dusty Victorian tome lay on the floor, its leather cover embossed with the intriguing title The Orgy—Pompeii’s Hidden Glory: A Catalogue Collated by Mr. Alistair Sizzlehorn Esquire. Gavin took heart; perhaps Ms. Honeywell wasn’t as politically correct as he’d feared.

If you could judge people by the way they filed their books, Ms. Honeywell’s life had a frenetic but semilogical order, Gavin thought, refusing the offer to sit down as every surface appeared to be covered with gray balls of cat fur. The felines responsible lounged regally on every available surface, six all counted, moggies of varying sizes. The cats watched Gavin with a supercilious arrogance bordering on outright disdain. Not that Gavin cared; he was too busy trying to ignore the fact that Ms. Honeywell evidently preferred not to wear underpants, a detail made obvious by the way she had collapsed into a huge battered leather armchair, her kaftan riding up to her knees. Oblivious, Saturday Honeywell stared at her bête noire, who, until this moment, she had assumed had no idea of her existence.

“Oh, for God’s sake sit down!” she barked, concealing her own nervousness with aggression, an unfortunate characteristic that had not helped her popularity among her fellow botanists.

“Sorry, but I’m…” Gavin floundered, the darkened crevice between Ms. Honeywell’s legs hovering at his peripheral vision like some horrific demon whose face he dared not look into.

“Allergic to cats? I thought so, you look like the type who thinks his shit doesn’t stink! Erasmus—hop off!”

Saturday threw a large tome at what Gavin had thought was a statue of a large cane toad. The amphibian in question—indeed a huge horny cane toad of some vintage—croaked angrily, then sprang off the wicker rocking chair he had been squatting on and bounced wetly into the recesses of the shadowy room. The cats remained unconcerned, Gavin observed.

“Erasmus, in case you didn’t know, was a great philosopher, the early father of humanism—not that you would care, being the local embodiment of the Antichrist and everything that places profit over people,” Saturday continued smugly.

Gavin perched himself delicately on the edge of the rocking chair, his feet firmly planted before him as ballast.

“Now listen, girlie,” he began, his patience snapping.

“Girlie! I’m forty years old, mate. That makes me a woman, which you’d know if I sat on your face—not that you’d ever get the pleasure!” she fired back.

Momentarily stunned by the image, Gavin leaned back. Immediately the rocking chair tipped in a deep lunge, sending him into a rocking motion that instantly diminished his status further.