Read Online Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker - Free Book Online Page A

ease my tongue out of her mouth.
    Her face, when it came into focus before me, did not have the dreamy looks others I’ve kissed had. The smile that had made me fall in love with such noteworthy speed had gone from her face. There was still beauty there, but it was a cold beauty.
    “You are quite the little lover, aren’t you?” she said.
    “You like that? I was just beginning. I can—”
    “No, I’ve had enough.”
    “But there’s so much—”
    She turned me towards the vat where the tails were being boiled clean.
    “Wait!” I said. “I’m here to set you free.”
    “Don’t be such a cretin, darling,” she said. “I am free.”
    “Do it, Caroline.” I heard somebody say, and looking towards the voice saw my beloved’s father, the Pox, stepping out of the shadows between the trees. “Boil off that ugly face of his.”
    “Doesn’t Cawley want him for the freak show?”
    “Well, he’ll be even freakier with the meat gone from his face. Just do it!”
    If she had obeyed her father, my face would have been pushed down into that boiling vat. But she hesitated. I don’t know why.
    I like to think it was the memory of one of my kisses. But the point is that whatever the reason she didn’t immediately do as the Pox had ordered. And in that moment of indecision her grip on my neck became just a little looser. That was all I needed.
    I moved suddenly and swiftly, pulling myself free of her and running in one and a half strides until I was behind her. Then I pushed her, hard, leaving it to fate as to where she fell.
    Fate was as unkind to her as it had always been to me, which was some small comfort. I saw her legs give out beneath her, and heard her call my name.
    “Jakabok!”
    And then:
    “Save me!”
    It was too little too late. I stepped back and let her fall facedown into the vat where the bones boiled. It was so immense and so weighed down by its contents that nothing would overturn it.
    Not her toppling in, or her flailing wildly as her long, bloodied linen apron grazed the flames and was instantly caught alight.
    I stayed, of course, to drink it all in despite my approaching pursuers. I wasn’t going to miss one twitch or shudder from this Lilith: the fire between her legs turning to steam as she lost control of her bladder; the bone-busied waters tossing her around as she tried vainly, of course, to clamber back out; the mouth-watering smell of her hands frying against the sides of the vat; the wet, tearing sound that came when her poxy father finally reached her and her palms tore off as he pulled her out of the vat.
    Oh, the sight of her! My Caroline, my once beautiful Caroline!
    Just as I had gone from love to hatred in a matter of moments so had she gone just as quickly from perfection to a thing like myself, only worthy of repugnance. The Pox carried her a little distance from the fire, and set her down to extinguish the remains of her apron. It took him but a moment; then he slid his arm beneath her and lifted her up. As he did so the grey oversteamed meat of her brow, cheeks, nose, and lips slid off the gleaming young bone beneath, leaving only her eyes boiled blind in their lidless sockets.
    “ Enough,” I told myself. I’d had my revenge for the hurt she’d done me. Though it would have been highly entertaining to watch the Pox’s anguish, I didn’t dare indulge another moment of voyeurism. It was time to depart.

    So now you know about my love affair. It was brief and bitter, and all the better for that.
    Love is a lie; love of every shape and size, except perhaps the love of an infant for its mother. That’s real. At least until the milk dries up.
    Thus I was delivered from the love of beautiful women, and traveled all the quicker for its unloading. I had no trouble losing Hacker and Shamit as they attempted to pursue me into the depths of the forest. I was lighthearted, or rather lighter by the measure of two hearts, mine and hers, and I ran so easily through the thicket,