Sweetness and Light

JOE MURPHY

Jo Jo grinned big for the officers. His cheeks tightened, drawing back until his teeth showed clearly, and his eyes squinted in the harsh jail-cell fluorescence.

‘Jeez,’ said Officer Ben, who was really Officer Benjamin Clark and new to the force. In dumbing down his name, Jo Jo knew, Clark was trying to be kind to a poor little retard. Jo Jo wasn’t retarded. He simply knew how to use his looks.

‘What’d I tell you?’ Officer Dayton nodded, staring from Jo Jo’s mouth to his fellow officer. Dayton, a fat, bottom-feeding rube, dumbed things down for no one. ‘Ever see a mouth like that? Fifty says he can do it.’

‘You got a bet.’ Officer Ben reached for his wallet.

Dayton glanced down the row of cells to be sure no one was watching. After a broad smile, he nodded encouragingly. ‘Go on, Jo

Jo-’

Jo Jo held out his hand.

‘Yeah, okay.’ Dayton pulled out his wallet, took a bill and slipped it between the bars.

A lousy ten. But Jo Jo smiled and tucked the bill into his worn jeans.

To command the rube you had to obey the rube; that was the rule Sweetness had taught him. The payment demanded their respect.

Unimportant as these two were, he needed their goodwill. He was in enough trouble already; Sweetness would be here soon.

Jo Jo walked over to the cell toilet, a stump of dirty porcelain set against the cinder block wall. He stopped to study the yellow and brown-stained rim, then got down on his knees.

Dayton chuckled; Officer Ben did not, but the dark-skinned man’s eyes met Jo Jo’s. Jo Jo turned back to the toilet. He opened his mouth as wide as he possibly could, pausing when his jaws began to ache, in the true spirit of showmanship.

Jo Jo lowered his head and bit down. His teeth ground against the thick stains of the toilet rim. He tasted urine, bleach, and just a hint of faeces. His jaws tightened. The porcelain cracked.

He clamped down harder. A grinding sound filled his ears, magnified through the bone conduction of his massive jaws.

The porcelain crumbled, filling his mouth like a bunch of stones as Jo Jo’s teeth came together. He looked up at the officers; his cheeks bulged.

‘Shit!’ Officer Ben gasped.

Dayton grinned at his buddy and held out a hand. Officer Ben dropped a crumpled fifty into it without ever taking his eyes off Jo Jo. The guy had turned pale.

‘Here comes the good part.’ Dayton winked at Jo Jo.

Jo Jo tilted his head back to open his throat. Keeping his lips closed, he munched the porcelain into smaller chunks that slid down easily. When his mouth was empty he stood and grinned.

He turned his back on the officers. The sound as he unzipped his jeans seemed like a shriek in the quiet. Jo Jo urinated into the toilet, zipped, flushed, and ambled over to the bars.

‘Never seen anything like that,’ Officer Ben breathed.

‘Carnies. At least they used to be. I saw their act three times!’ Dayton laughed. ‘Got a nice little place over on Fifth. His mom tells me they’re retired now. Wait’ll you get a load of her.’

Jo Jo grinned big. Not showmanship this time, but anger, though they’d never know. Sweetness was anything but his mother. Dayton, like most rubes, assumed it from appearances.

Jo Jo’s spindly little body looked more like a child’s than a thirty-seven-year-old man’s. When he was two the doctors had diagnosed him as microcephalic, but that was only because the rest of his head seemed tiny next to his jaws.

By the time Jo Jo realised that he really wasn’t retarded, it was too late to change things. He’d ducked school to hide in the public library. He’d given up Tolkien and Dunsany for the more realistic Charles Fort and Kafka.

When a teacher who actually seemed to care, if only for a year, almost discovered the truth, Jo Jo fled deeper into the inner city, his last refuge a nameless bookstore.

There, an old man eager for the touch of anyone, no matter how deformed, had traded favours. Magazines of glossy nymphs mounting magnificently endowed men gave way to yellowed, pictureless volumes of Sacher-Masoch, and then de Sade.

Finally, the old man’s gnarled arthritic hands had done things even Jo Jo’s body couldn’t forgive. Street life was hell until he’d found the carnival.

The cellblock door buzzed and clanked; the officers turned.

‘Dayton!’ a voice called. ‘The boy’s been cleared.’

‘No shit?’ Dayton shook his head.

‘Yeah, the old lady found her ring under the counter. His mother’s here now. Bring him up.’

Officer Dayton shrugged and pulled out some keys. He unlocked the cell. ‘Let’s go, little man.’

Jo Jo nodded eagerly although this wasn’t entirely the case. Officer Ben, the idiot, offered his hand. Smiling, Jo Jo took it and let them lead him from the cell. Finally, he was through with these worthless rubes. Sweetness would take him home.

* * * *

They pulled into the spotless driveway of the little bungalow: a white frame house with a dark mansard roof, as unremarkable as any of its neighbours, but the best Jo Jo had ever lived in.

Oleanders lining the front yard scented the air, and small, neatly cut grass squares extended from them to meet the well-washed sidewalk. Jo Jo kept the shrubs carefully pruned, the grass perfectly clipped, but saved his real efforts for the back yard.

Sweetness killed the engine of their battered Volkswagen. Jo Jo climbed out. He hurried around the car and opened her door.

Sweetness neither looked at him nor spoke as she stepped into a twilight still heavy with summer heat. Her large sunglasses turned towards the front door. The low hem of her blue long-sleeved smock swished against leather boots when she limped directly towards him.

He got out of her way by trotting to the front door, had it open by the time she arrived. Cool air brushed his face. The hum of the central air unit flowed around the click of Sweetness’s right boot, and the thunk of the left with its built-up heel.

She said nothing. Deep in Jo Jo’s throat an ache began. He closed the door that kept out the rubes and came to her in the plainly furnished living room.

Sweetness reached with blue-gloved fingers to remove her shades. A curl of long black hair that framed her face tangled and clung to one earpiece, releasing only at the last moment. Eyes dark as the brown mansard roof stared down at him.

Her head shook slightly, a tremble of disapproval in her soft voice. ‘Jo Jo, what did you take?’

He trotted across the room and retrieved a beige wastebasket lined with a black plastic bag. Getting down on his knees, Jo Jo looked up at her and tried to plead with his smile.

His voice box had long since been scraped, worn and cut away; he could not speak except in the scratchiest of whispers. With Sweetness this angry, he dared not speak at all.

Opening his throat, Jo Jo retched into the wastebasket. Pain spasmed up his stomach, through his throat and into his jaws. Up came the porcelain.

As the last chunk dropped past his lips, Jo Jo retched again. It hurt more this time; it always did. His hand moved below his mouth. A diamond ring, wet with bile, dropped into his palm. He held it up for her.

‘You were careful?’ Sweetness asked casually. She reached down, took the ring and studied it. ‘You replaced it with one of the good cubic zirconiums? No one saw?’

Jo Jo nodded and rasped, ‘For you. Not for the house. Just this once?’

Tiny, almost imperceptible scars around Sweetness’s thin lips softened into a smile. Her eyes turned from the ring to gaze down at him. Dropping the ring into a pocket, she opened her arms. ‘That’s so sweet, baby. Come here.’

Jo Jo hurried to her embrace. His cheek nuzzled the soft cotton of her smock over the knot of scar tissue where her breast had once been. Her arms closed around him.

‘What am I going to do with you, baby?’ Sweetness whispered and held him fast. ‘We’re close enough to losing the house as it is. Insurance money doesn’t last for ever. And how many times have I told you: we don’t bait and switch where we live. We go into Detroit now, or someone will catch on.’

Tears leaked from Jo Jo’s eyes, blotted by Sweetness’s smock as her arms tightened. He whimpered softly.

‘You know what has to happen.’ Her arms fell away.

He clung to her, holding this last moment. Her hands took his shoulders, then tightened, increasingly, until he wanted to howl. Finally, he could stand no more and let go.

‘Bring me a can,’ Sweetness told him.

Jo Jo looked up at her and tried to hold back a sob. His head shook.

‘You have to bring it, Jo Jo.’ Her voice grew harsh and then softened. ‘You have to.’

By her cold caring eyes, he knew this was true. Jo Jo slumped into the yellow-tiled kitchen, to the paper sack by the fridge. Hands trembling, he took out a single tin can, the label gone, leaving only scabs of glue and paper. When he returned she sat upon the armless velvet divan before the big sliding-glass doors that looked out into his back yard.

Because of his quick obedience, she allowed him to gaze into the darkening twilight. He dared not look too long; but when he turned back to her, she too stared into that same evening dusk.

‘Come here, baby.’

Jo Jo came to her, bowed his head and offered the can. Her arm slipped around his neck, squeezing him into a headlock. With her other hand, Sweetness snatched the can from his fingers.

Jo Jo gasped, prelude to a sob. Sweetness used that moment, as he’d known she would, to ram the can between his teeth. His jaws closed upon the metal, gnashing through it, until the sharp edges of each rending cut into his gums.

The can twisted in her grip, ripping apart. Jagged edges lacerated his tongue and the insides of his cheeks. A sharp prong slashed down his throat and there was nothing he could do to keep from choking -except swallow.

Mewling, bubbling up blood, Jo Jo doubled over, falling to the floor. Agony tore through his throat and twisted his gut. He lay there, coughing, wheezing and fighting to breathe around the pain.

Sweetness waited until he looked up, her face blurred through his tears.

‘You don’t learn any other way, baby.’ Sweetness shook her head and rose. ‘You know the rule. Do my will or eat a can.’ She stooped and a blue-fingered glove, spotted now with blood, stroked his cheek.

‘Take the wastebasket and go to your room. But because you did what you did out of love ... I forgive you.’

She didn’t wait to see if he obeyed: there was no need. He listened to the swish of her smock as she crossed the carpet, then to the clack and thud of her boots on kitchen tile. The door to her room squeaked closed.

Anything but tin. In his career Jo Jo had eaten almost everything: wood, iron, bricks, cinder blocks, anything Sweetness had used in their act, or that the rubes could carry into the tent with their callused, sweaty paws. Just not tin.

Jo Jo lay on the thick red carpet until the worst of the pain subsided. He managed to turn his head and gazed out at the back yard. The evening darkness reminded him of the last fading glimmer of a spotlight just before things turned black.

He wanted to shudder, knowing Sweetness had yet to discover the real evil he’d begun here in their home. That would hurt too much. Instead, grimacing, he climbed to his feet, fetched the wastebasket and crept into his room, closing the door.

* * * *

Jo Jo remembered little of the night. A small mercy, because of the terrible struggle to work the can out of him. Only part of it would come up his throat again. The rest, of course, he would gradually push out the other end.

The worst was over; but he wasn’t done. His body would not forgive him until it began to heal. Curled upon his sleeping-bag, he didn’t really mind so much. He had everything that mattered.

In the quiet of their bungalow, he listened to the sounds of her morning. The thud and thump of bare feet as she entered their adjoining bathroom made him smile until he looked at the bathroom door and remembered the evil.

She hadn’t noticed last night when she’d showered. Jo Jo prayed she wouldn’t now. He held his breath, listening to the toilet flush, and followed her with his mind, sighing when her footsteps took her to the kitchen. He was safe.

From the kitchen, he heard her enter the hall. It hurt, but he grinned at the clink of the tray she set outside his door.

Sweetness was bound by her own rules; she would not enter his room.

When she finally left for physical therapy, he crawled to the door, reached up, grunting, to turn the knob. He pulled the black plastic tray inside and dragged it with him back to his sleeping-bag. A folded paper square lay next to a green pitcher.

I love you.

She was magnificent! Jo Jo shivered with painful pleasure at her spidery print. He settled down on his sleeping-bag, curling happily around the tray and the note. He tilted the pitcher to his lips and warm sugary water filled his mouth. Now he had all day to rest, to heal, and to look at their poster.

The two-feet-by-three rectangle shimmered in its glass frame, catching the early sunlight from the window. Centred on the wall before him, the poster was the only other object in the room.

Tarkinton’s Grand Carnival Presents

Sweetness Barnette, The World’s Strongest Woman

With Jo Jo Light, The Human Vacuum Cleaner.

See Them And Be Amazed!

Truly, Sweetness was amazing. In those days, she would stride out at the beginning of their act in her chain-mail bikini. Her six feet, six inches of size, her rippling, weightlifter’s muscles, put all the rubes to shame.

Bricks crumbled in her slender fingers. She ripped phone books in half. She even lifted the Volkswagen Beetle, their road car, completely off the ground. The stupid rubes never caught on to that trick.

The day wore into darkness as he gazed at the poster.

When he could see it no more, Jo Jo turned to the window, to his wonderful back yard.

Putting down the Volkswagen, Sweetness would pull him from the back seat. Stiff, encased in his silver lamé costume, hands and feet bound, Jo Jo really did look like a human vacuum cleaner.

Sweetness would stride around the ring, holding him by the silver handle centred in the small of his back. He sucked in the crumbled bricks, pieces of iron bars, halves of telephone books, and whatever the rubes would throw - everything except tin cans.

When their act ended to the applause, whistles and jeers of the idiots, the stagehands killed the spotlight. In that split second of privacy, the light too dim for the rubes to see, too black for the stagehands to rush out, she would pull him against her.

The soft skin of her wondrous breast upon his cheek, bound and helpless in her arms, he would nuzzle her, grinning. And always she would say, ‘Great job, baby.’

Jo Jo sighed and gazed at his marvellous yard. Perhaps it was the way the high charcoal fence blended with the emerald-lustred lawn; maybe it was caused by the distant merging shadows of houses and evergreens. Not since the carnival had he found such a darkness.

‘I could have saved you,’ he whispered.

If only he had been with her in place of that idiot rube, with his big bankroll and horny hands. Or in a car behind them when the accident happened. Jo Jo would have dashed down the embankment to rip through metal and flames, to pull her from the car. Instead, the fire had destroyed her superb flesh, her divine muscles, and killed, for all time, their amazing act.

* * * *

Instead of the note, the next day, stood a muffin, along with the water pitcher on the tray. By noon, his body had forgiven him enough that Jo Jo was capable of leaving his room and cooking some oatmeal.

He rested again until 4.30 pm. Then he rose and fixed chicken Madeira on herbed biscuits, leaving it hot and ready on the table because Sweetness would be home at six. No sooner had he shut the door, returning to his sleeping-bag, then he heard her come in.

Jo Jo shifted restlessly. His body, the amazing thing that it was, had forgiven him truly now in favour of its own demands. Sweetness had needs of her own that he must fill.

In his dark room, he inched closer to the great evil of the bathroom door. A narrow yellow rectangle of light glowed beneath it. Almost a rectangle, certainly the mark of Jo Jo’s wickedness.

In his need, in lust forbidden, he had to see her. It didn’t matter what she looked like now. The scars meant nothing. But as she had burned, now he burned, scorched by the glimpse of her bare feet, all he could view as she towelled herself dry.

Day by day, whenever guilt did not overwhelm him, Jo Jo had gradually filed the corner of the door, just a tiny bit that came off easily when he scraped his great teeth across it. He lay there now, eye to this place, breathless as she moved about.

An ankle, nothing more. Its ruined flesh twisted as she moved. Bristling hairs thrust up through scarred peaks and valleys too remote for a razor to reach.

His breathing stopped as she neared his door; wood creased his forehead, the floor hard against his cheek as he strained to see. Fear cut into him with the thought of discovery.

The door lock clicked and he wanted to shriek. The door remained still. The light went out. Jo Jo rolled onto his back, teeth tight lest the sigh escape. He smiled. As the offered dinner was his signal, so that click was hers.

Hurriedly he showered and cleaned the bathroom. Turning out the light, he stepped naked into the shadowed living room. Reclined upon the armless sofa, lit only by the softer darkness of his back yard through sliding-glass doors, she waited.

In a silence as deafening as the carnival’s roar he came to her. He knelt and only then looked up. Sweetness gazed at him, a soft smile curling the ends of her lips. The moonlight did things to her eyes he couldn’t begin to describe, but would hold in his mind till his mind was no more.

Without ever turning his gaze, he listened to the soft slide of her pink pyjamas as first one slippered foot, and then the other, shifted from the couch. Her toes touched the floor. Her gloved hand whispered down the length of her terrycloth robe and slowly drew up the hem.

She had slit the fabric where pyjama legs joined. White thread hemmed each side of the material. It gleamed in the darkness, contrasting with her tight satin curls. Here alone the scars did not reach.

With all the discipline at his command, Jo Jo’s fingers clenched into knots behind his back. Their touch was forbidden, an act of betrayal Sweetness would not allow. His head bowed.

Her smell entered him and he breathed in until his chest burned. His tongue touched her, parting the perfect musky lips. She gasped. His lips pursed and kissed the soft curls.

Deeper his tongue probed, until it found a nubbly jewel. Her hand touched the nape of his neck; he gave himself over to her guidance. He heard the couch shift, her low moan that came with the arch of her back. Finally, silence. Her thighs tightened upon his ears.

Nothing was said in the bungalow that night. Its mansard roof and white wood walls held the mocking rumble of the rubes at bay. Jo Jo smiled at the breathy sigh of the air-conditioner, the click of its relays when he finally rose and studied Sweetness’s sleeping form.

The sliding-glass door squeaked quietly as he closed it behind him. Naked, he lay face down upon his wonderful lawn.

In the vast expanse of its caress, he found the terrifying freedom to release his need. In the darkness, that so mirrored the moment of a fading spotlight, he let it go.

* * * *

The next day, he’d just finished trimming the borders around the backyard fence when the phone rang. Jo Jo dashed into the bungalow. Even when she was away, Sweetness didn’t allow him to answer the phone, but if it were her, she might tell him to pick up.

‘You’ve reached the Barnette residence,’ the answering machine said in Sweetness’s voice. ‘Please leave a message.’

Jo Jo frowned at the man’s voice. His shoulders sagged and he glared at the machine.

‘I’m sorry, Ms Barnette, I know you didn’t want us to call you at home. This is Jim Thorton of Greater Lansing Realty. A developer who’s interested in constructing an apartment complex has contacted us. They’re making an extremely generous offer. I know you weren’t interested in selling when we talked before. But please call. Again, sorry to pester you at home. Bye.’

Jo Jo squeezed his eyes shut, legs folding him down on the floor. When he looked again, the machine still sat on the end table. His hand trembled; he reached for the erase button.

No! There was no need! To command her completely he would obey her abjectly. By her own rules, Sweetness would make the right decision. Tonight he would come to her on his belly. This time he would save them both.

* * * *

Early that evening, Jo Jo opened the bathroom door and got down on the floor. His body ached, twitching at times, a churning inside him as if he’d drunk a dozen cups of coffee. He couldn’t stand it any more.

His cheek pressed against the cold tile of the bathroom floor. With the greatest of disciplined movements, he scraped away a small piece of the wicked corner, savouring the taste of sawdust.

Quickly he scooted into his room and closed the door. Then he inspected his work. It looked a bit wider, but not too much so. He smoothed the edge with his thumb. Her mind would be on the shower anyway. His cheek flattened against the polished wood floor. He could see the toilet and even the towel rack. Perfect!

He heard the front door open. Jo Jo closed his eyes, savouring the scent of duck with black bean sauce and tamarind jus, asparagus with red pepper sauce, and fresh rolls. The whole house smelled of it by now.

His fingers tapped his knee with the thud and thump of her footfalls as she crossed the living room. His eyes opened only with the muted voice of the answering machine.

The hateful message ended abruptly; Sweetness must have pressed the erase button before it was through. Nothing moved in the bungalow for a long time.

Jo Jo gazed out the window at the darkening lawn. Relays clicked, the air-conditioner huffed on. As if this were some secret signal between her and the house, Sweetness began to move. He grinned when she entered the kitchen. Again she paused, but finally continued to her room. His ears strained. Was that the whisper of her clothing as she changed?

She returned to the kitchen and he touched himself, wanting to groan, but not allowing it. It must have taken her hours to eat. By the time he heard the shower come on, Jo Jo was crouched, rocking back and forth on his sleeping-bag.

On hands and knees, he crawled to the bathroom door. Lowering himself, he jammed his face to the floor, eye pressed to the hole. The pink and yellow flowers of the shower curtain rippled. He breathed steam fragrant with strawberry soap.

Sweetness stepped out. Her arm, webbed with thick strands of scars, reached for a towel. The webbing grew to ridges that spread over her chest, forming mashed mountains of pallid lumps in place of breasts. The towel rose to her bald head, to the twisted bits of flesh that were once ears.

Jo Jo’s body squeezed into a single slash of need. His forehead creased into the door causing a sharp tick of noise from the wood itself. Sweetness flinched and stared at the door. She looked into his eye.

Her wail rose up and down, like the harsh, twisted screaming one hears beneath a roller coaster. She surged forward, splintering the door. Jo Jo flung himself backwards, head reeling from the blow.

Outlined in the bathroom light, Sweetness glared down at him, one fist knotted, the other clutching a wad of towel. The scars on her chest writhed as twisted shadows with her rapid breathing.

‘Rube!’ Her shout hit him like an onrushing truck. Jo Jo cringed and opened his mouth. Sweetness flung the towel, knocking the poster off the wall. The glass shattered, pieces scattering across the floor.

Sweetness lunged at him. Naked, fused fingers wrapped around his head. She jerked him up, her arm wrapping around him, scars rough against his cheek. The floor shuddered as she stomped through the house.

He could hear them both crying; his hands clutched her arm. In the bright yellow kitchen she jammed him against the fridge, reached down and snatched up a can.

She dragged him into the dark living room. He stumbled, peeling skin from the backs of his toes. She slammed down upon the armless divan; the rug burned his knees.

Her ragged sobs filled the bungalow. Sweetness crushed the can against his lips. He would never make her believe he was sorry. Jo Jo opened his mouth.

The can crumpled hard enough to force a front tooth from its socket. Sweetness twisted the can and skinned flesh from his palate. Again she twisted, then jerked it back. A torn edge flayed his tongue.

Once more, she forced it in until her knuckles filled his mouth, two more teeth lurching from their places. Somehow, he managed to swallow. Twisted metal slashed down his throat.

‘Take one last look, little man.’ Jerking his head back, she held him by the neck so that he could view the terrible thing his wickedness had made of her. ‘One last look and one last taste.’

Spreading her legs, she forced him down between her. The last thing he heard before the naked scars of her thighs covered his ears was a harsh, sobbing whisper. ‘I’m selling the house.’

Bloody lips and gums pressed against her labia. What had he done? Even as he tried to stop it, the fear rushed through him, knotting his gut, spasming his legs and then pistoning them out again, forcing Sweetness down on the divan.

Up came the can. Rage clasped his hands to her scar-ridged buttocks, the loss of everything that mattered opened his throat, and the need for a last moment of vengeance forced the metal from his lips and deep, deep into the one place the scars had never reached.

Jewels of agony scattered through his mind with the breaking of his pain-hinged jaw. Sweetness arched her torso; the force of her legs snapped his back. Her bladder and bowels released. Blood splashed over his face.

They lay together in the blackness of the bungalow. They lay in a silence more deafening than the roar of any carnival. For a long time nothing moved. Nothing could move, bound by the rules of their love.

Pat . . . Pat . . . Pat. A soft wet sound began below him. Some time later, Jo Jo realised it was her blood, dripping from the divan to the carpet. This final secret signal brought him from his daze. Body numb and useless from the neck down, he discovered an unexpected smoothness upon his cheek. He might still save them both.

With an agony no different, no greater than the life Fate had demanded, Jo Jo Light managed to turn his head. His lips brushed a small space of clear skin upon her inner thigh - a miracle that had somehow escaped the scars. He kissed her.

Would Sweetness accept this small offering? Was she even alive?

Her leg relaxed its grip to whisper over the naked skin of his back before falling to the floor. Her hair rustled; a spring in the divan creaked, marking the turn of her head; he knew where she gazed now, what the moonlight would do to her eyes. He realised her hand lay upon his hair when it moved, turning his head only a little, but just enough.

Together, they looked out into a darkness that held the moment of a dying spotlight. By her grace, he stared out at his wonderful lawn.

* * * *

Joe Murphy lives with his wife, up-and-coming watercolour artist Veleta, in Fairbanks, Alaska. He has been writing seriously for nine years, whenever their dogs - Lovecraft, Dickens and Lafferty - and their cats - Plato, Kafka and Sagan - allow him to get near the keyboard. His fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Horrors! 565 Scary Stories, Bones of the World, Book of All Flesh, Chiaroscuro, Crafty Cat Crimes, Cthulhu’s Heirs, Demon Sex, Gothic.net, Legends of the Pendragon, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, On Spec, Silver Web, Space and Time, Strange Horizons, Talebones and TransVersions. Twelve previously published stories are now on the Internet at Alexandria Digital Literature and he is a graduate of the writer’s workshops Clarion West 1995 and Clarion East 2000. ‘I was attending Clarion 2000 in Michigan when I wrote “Sweetness and Light”,’ recalls Murphy. ‘I was rather nervous about the piece. What would the other writers think of me? Was I some kind of pervert? I talked the idea over with Suzy McKee Charnas and she encouraged me to go ahead. Once done, I was still uncertain about the piece, however with still more encouragement from Samuel Delany, Maureen McHugh, and even more encouragement from Gregory Frost, I cleaned it up and submitted it. I grew a lot as a writer thanks to Clarion.’