Page 52 of Across Space and Time

Everyone was staring at Adam with rapt attention. Adam picked up his own apple from his plate, holding it aloft like a goblet. Everyone else mimicked the motion except for Jack, who watched them all with curious fascination. “‘The day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ My friends, eat, and Wake, knowing thy true nature.” He put the apple to his lips and took a bite. Around the table, the others all did the same, the sound of teeth breaking the crisp flesh of each firm apple echoing off the stone walls.

Adam set down his apple with only the one bite taken out of it, but the others continued to eat theirs. Jack turned to Adam with a small smile. “What happens now?”

“The apple will take hold in only a few minutes,” Adam said, sitting back down in his seat.

“And what exactly does it do?”

Adam’s grin beneath his gold mask looked almost feral. “As I said, we shall be as gods.”

“That is quite vague,” Jack said, waving his hand curiously.

“I think you will have to see for yourself,” Adam replied. “Do you know the biblical account of the Tree of Knowledge?”

“I have heard of it,” Jack said.

“Every man wears a mask of duality,” Adam said. “He contains within himself both good and evil. One could argue that the evil side of man is his true nature. The nature he is unable to show the world.”

There was a rustling sound, and Jack looked up to see several of the guests standing and beginning to remove their clothing. Hats and gloves littered the table next to the apple cores on the gold plates. And then off came jackets, shawls, corsets, waistcoats, shoes. Everyone except for Adam and Jack stripped off their clothing to their undergarments and then continued further, until each of them stood as naked as the day they were born in a sea of finery on the stone floor. Jack turned to Adam, opening his mouth to ask another question, when the man sitting closest to him, who was the man who had escorted him earlier into the theatre, suddenly arched his back, his body bowing backward at an angle that looked dreadfully impossible. He let out a sound almost like a howl as his legs began to grow longer and spindlier, claws suddenly sprouting from his toenails as a blackness began to spread over his skin, like a piece of paper absorbing spilled ink.

Another cry rent the air, and Jack looked over at one of the women, who didn’t seem phased that she was standing naked in a room full of men, her shoulders hunching as something suddenly burst from her back like the wings of an archangel, waving around her like a mass of snakes.

And then there was movement everywhere, all of the guests doubling over or falling to the floor, contorting, writhing, their bodies moving in agonistic movements as they began to transform. No two were the same. Jack watched with horrified fascination as the Duke of Westchester suddenly seemed to stretch and then expand, like a rubber hose filling with water, until he was nearly twice as long as he had been and so enormously wide around that he looked like a knobby slug, rolls of skin wrinkling at odd angles like a melted wax figurine. His mouth stretched wide, and a tongue that was larger than his head unfurled from the depths of the gaping maw that was filled with dripping saliva. Jack turned back to Adam, then realized that the man had doubled over, his hand pressed to his eyes over the gold mask he wore, his shoulders tense, making his body tremble.

Adam suddenly looked up at him. Behind his mask, his eyes that had been brown were now suddenly a violent bright purple, with a slitted, red pupil that seemed to be constantly shifting in a way similar to Jack’s own bonfire eyes.

Adam’s lips curled back in a smile that was still human but stretched a little further than a regular smile should, his teeth extended into almost needle-sharp fangs. “What do you think, my dear Jack?”

Jack gazed back at him. “I am not sure what I am supposed to think. You spoke of the duality of human nature.”

“Yes,” Adam said, just a bit of a hiss behind his voice now. “The Waking shows us who we really are. What we most desire. The faces we cannot show on the streets. Here, in Eden, we are the truest forms of ourselves.”

The vile creatures around the table had stopped twitching and morphing now, bodies rent into nearly unrecognizable forms. Many of them were animalistic, though what the significance of each transformation was, Jack was uncertain. Either way, he knew it couldn’t be good. But he gave Adam another cheery smile. “Fascinating! The apple alone does that?”

“Yes,” Adam replied. “In any form, the apple will Wake the desires inside of anyone who consumes it. I would assume even yourself, even if you are not of this world. Would you care to try it?” He gestured to the singular apple that still sat on the plate in front of Jack.

Jack wondered what he might transform into if he consumed the apple. But, he realized, he was not interested in finding out. He was already dangerous enough, with his ability to breathe fire and leap dozens of feet in the air, and he had no idea how much control he would have over himself if he did consume any of the apple at all. “I think I wish to just observe for now. I am curious to see how this transformation affects everyone.”

Adam nodded, waving his hands again, and the creatures seemed to disburse into the various archways, as if they all knew where they were going. “What happens now?” Jack asked, keeping his tone light.

Adam rose to his feet, offering Jack his hand. “I’ll show you. What is your pleasure, sir? What thrills you?”

Jack took the hand, careful of his iron claws, and rose to his feet, taller than Adam even with his top hat. “I’m afraid I don’t really know,” he said thoughtfully. He didn’t know what was happening in the dark archways, but he had to find Hugh to make sure he was safe. “Men?”

“This way then,” Adam said, gesturing to one of the archways. Jack noticed that before he left the table, he took the apple with the singular bite out of it and put it into his jacket pocket. Jack followed after him, unsure what to expect. The hall was lit with the same gas lamps that cast shadows over the wall, even his own shape monstrous in the stretched and undulating flames.

There were smaller archways branching off of the main hall into what appeared to be more private rooms. Jack had good night vision, so he was able to see that each room was a little different in its offering. Some held beds, while others held a variety of what looked like sexual toys and other devices he was unsure about.

There was a large opening at the end of the hallway, and two of the monstrous creatures were coming out of it. Both were pushing people in front of them. Jack realized as they did the people were all men, mostly young, wearing almost nothing except for a single violet drape over their fronts held in place by a thin, gold chain. He quickly scanned their faces, but none of them were Hugh. But he noticed with dismay that all of the violet-clothed men looked hazy-eyed and dreamy, not paying any attention to him and Adam. And he could see that all of them sported erections under their flimsy coverings. Was that the effects of whatever had been in the champagne that Anthony had mentioned?

Adam led him into the large room the two monsters had come from, and Jack found himself faced with about half a dozen men, all dressed in the same purple sash and chain and nothing else. All of them reclined on pillows or sat in chairs, and all of them had the same sort of half-lidded expression that the boys in the hallway had. Jack scanned their faces. Where was Hugh? Had he already been taken? Was he not in this wing? He almost melted with relief when he spotted him. Hugh was also dressed in the violet silk, though it splayed rather obscenely to the side based on the way he was lying on a pile of pillows, giving Jack a look at Hugh’s half-erect cock beneath it. Hugh seemed to be asleep, his eyes closed.

Adam gestured around the room at the assembled young men. “You may have your pick, and you may do as you like with them. As you probably saw, there are rooms off to the side, and there are other rooms too if you wish to move around. If you get too excited and harm them, or go even further, we will take care of it at the end of the night, have no fear.” He said this so calmly that Jack had to look over at him to see if the man was trying to make a joke. But despite the slightly bemused smile on his stretched mouth, Adam looked quite serious.

“Oh, thank you,” Jack said, surveying the room. “Why do they all look so sleepy?”

Adam smiled further. “Ah. Trade secret, but we give them a special concoction that makes them less likely to remember what happens here. It also has the delightful side effect of making them deliciously pliant and wanton. If you wish for more lively prey though, we can also accommodate that, you need only ask.”

Jack smiled, but the words bubbled inside of him like a geyser. Lively prey. “Thank you. Is it all right if I wander about? This whole thing is fascinating, and I wish to see everything I can.”

---