Raine. Elizabeth Amber
Jordan repeated. “But are you certain that’s what they are? They’re so small.”
He waved her question away. “Don’t quibble with my medical expertise. I know what I see! When?”
“About ten months ago,” she replied.
His cold, veined hands lifted her phallus—limp now—and twisted and turned it, examining. Calipers were brought out of his toolcase to measure its length and girth at rest.
By now, she was inured to such examinations. Or so she told herself. Disassociating herself from what was happening, she continued to locate animal shapes among the ceiling’s water spots.
“From this angle the creature could be male or female,” a tipsy voice said from somewhere behind her. The two Venetians were apparently well on their way to becoming drunk. And from the sound of things, they were busily viewing the portraits the artist had made of her.
Jordan knew which particular drawing they were studying. It was the only one that could be described in that way. It was a rear view. She’d posed for it on her knees, her head bent low to rest on her folded forearms. In that position, the puckered ring between the cheeks of her buttocks gapped slightly. But they were right. It was one view in which she appeared normal, yet it was impossible to tell her gender.
“And who would know the difference in the dark?” came the first man’s slurred rejoinder.
“Not a buggerer like yourself I presume…” Jordan quipped, twisting to fling the words toward them.
The man’s companion slapped the fellow on the back, guffawing. “I do believe you’ve been insulted, il mio amico.”
Too soused to take affront, his friend only raised his glass in a sloshy toast. “A bung is a bung is a bung is amongus,” he singsonged.
Jordan was immediately angry with herself for reacting. Her eyes sought the ceiling again, but the water stains failed to recapture her attention.
“No change in size from last year,” Salerno announced. Having measured her flaccid shaft in all dimensions, he scribbled a notation in his book. Then he asked the question she’d known would eventually come. “On what date did your penis first engorge?” His pen hovered over the page, waiting.
When the dreams had begun to plague her in earnest. When they’d become so frequent and compelling that it had become difficult to discern the difference between wakefulness and slumber. On the night dark masculine voices had begun to whisper carnal suggestions to her, causing her to writhe and gasp. Causing her shaft to harden and lift and to spill its ecstasy, despoiling her bedsheets. But she would tell him none of that.
“Well?” he prodded, scrutinizing her. “Is the question so difficult?”
“Ten months ago, the same as when the lumps formed in my labia,” she answered truthfully.
“I’d like to measure it at full attention,” Salerno told her. “Stroke it into tumescence for me.”
She glared at him, appalled, but he took no notice.
“Shall I do it?” he inquired helpfully when she didn’t obey. “Or one of the others here? Or would you prefer that I bring in a female to provoke it? There are doubtless plenty of whores prowling the streets, even on a night like this.”
Salerno would do exactly that, she knew. He was oblivious as to how revolting his suggestions would seem to her. Even if she explained, there would be no way to make him understand. He was as ever incapable of empathy with another human being.
“Whores?” one of the drunkards echoed, his interest perking. “Where?”
He and his tipsy companion roused themselves to gather with the others around her, intrigued by the prospect of new entertainment.
“I’ll do it. But I require privacy,” said Jordan.
Salerno tsked and blustered, shaking his head. “This is no time for false modesty. I want to observe the process to see if it proceeds normally. Where’s that tub of ointment?”
The bishop located the pot and extended it toward her.
She frowned at it.
“Do you require assistance after all?” the bishop asked.
“Not from the likes of you.” Jordan snatched the cream, swirled two fingers in it, and then curled her torso into the most concealing hunch she could manage. Closing her eyes, she blocked out her observers.
At ease, her phallus was only slightly longer than her palm. She worried at it for a few moments, searching her mind for inspiration. A vision of the shadowy, taller man who’d earlier come into the theater with the bishop sprang to mind. Her shaft invigorated. Six silent men watched her stroke herself to hardness.
“Ah, to be young and have a cock that rises so eagerly,” said one of the drunkards, toasting her.
Two droplets of red wine splashed on her thigh. She stared at them. The splotches looked like—blood. This, too, was just as she’d seen it in her dream.
Her gaze darted around the room, searching warily. Where was the third part of the dream? Where were the ribbons? When would they come to her? And from which direction?
Salerno shoved her hand aside and took the measurements he required. “Five point one inches.” He scribbled in his notebook, and then replaced his silver tool in its velvet-lined case.
The two drunkards watched as the bishop’s hand took over her movements on her shaft, squeezing toward its tip. She put a hand over his to stop him, but his fist tightened on her cap, forcing the slit at her tip to separate like a tiny mouth.
“An excretory canal for urine,” supplied Salerno, leaning over to observe.
“And sperm?” The bishop gazed directly into her eyes. She felt a brief flash of recognition. But she was certain she’d never met him. Surely he only resembled someone else she knew.
With a mighty shove at his chest, Jordan pushed him away. “Don’t touch me.”
“Answer him,” said Salerno, his pen poised once again to note her reply.
Though her blood boiled, she made a show of studying her nails, affecting boredom. “Yes,” she replied.
The Sicilian stroked his beard. “Then do you suppose the subject could actually father a child?”
Salerno eyed her speculatively. “Difficult to say. I suppose a whore could be brought in to test the theory in actual practice.”
“I’ll not impregnate any whores for you,” Jordan protested, pulling herself into a tighter ball and wrapping her arms and the cloak around her knees. “Even if I’m able to. Which I’m not.”
“You deny that you possess testes? A phallus? You deny all evidence of your God-given maleness?” asked the bishop.
“No! In a physical sense I’m not completely male or female. And I accept that. I simply wish in my heart to live as a woman in this world.” How good it felt to say it aloud.
“Are you sexually aroused by men?” asked the Sicilian.
“Yes.” She glanced at the overabundance of sweaty black hair that swelled from his collar and between the strained fastenings of his shirt. “Well, not all men.”
“Disposed toward men,” Salerno noted in his black book.
“So you wish to engage in sodomy?” the bishop inquired.
“Thank you kindly for the offer,” said Jordan, “but—”
The bishop hissed between his teeth, raising a hand as though to strike her before catching himself. “Blasphemous creature! If you must wear the Carnivale mask, it should be the moretta. Lips as foul as yours should remain forcibly buttoned.”
The moretta he referred to was a mask that covered