In her email, Isis wrote, "Oh, Spacemummy, come abduct me."
"The Mummyship isn't done yet. But just in case, send me your coordinates," I replied.
She sent me an address to a small town in Pennsylvania. I'm sure she thought it was a joke, but I was determined to solve my loneliness problem and, hopefully, gain a crewmember at the same time. I took what ship I had, some stolen playground equipment and sheet metal, and fixed it to the back of my Toyota truck, which leaked a little oil, but ran fairly well. Since I didn't sleep (though I would lie down for a span of hours and dream on a very irregular schedule), I got a lot done. As finished as I could be with limited material and talent, I set out in the middle of the night to avoid undue interest from my neighbors.
I got plenty of comments on the freakmobile. At the Kansas border, a fella at a gas station asked me, "Are you a veteran?"
"Of the Garbage Wars," I told him.
"You oughter put this thing in one of them car shows. Looks like a spaceship."
I thanked him sincerely.
Then I got pulled over in Missouri by highway patrol. "Are you aware that pieces of your vehicle are flying off on the road?"
"I'm sorry officer."
He looked at me with pity. "Aw shucks. This thing is barely roadworthy. But since you're disabled, I'm going to let you pass on the condition that you fix it so the structure don't come loose."
"I appreciate that, officer." I tried to smile but it probably looked like I wanted to eat his face.
"Don't have another accident," he said, assuming too much.
"I'll try."
I pulled over at a rest stop and applied duct tape to anything loose and continued on. Somehow I got to Pennsylvania without further incident. I'm fortunate that most people in the U.S. tend to leave you alone, particularly if they think you're disfigured. It's too scary for them to empathize. At night, however, you never know what these folks might do with a little booze in them. They might mistake me for a zombie and unload a shotgun on me. There's a lot of fear and ignorance about the undead these days.
I pulled in front of Isis' house at 3 a.m. The town was small, the type where no one was awake at that hour, except her. A light shone from her living room window. On the porch, I could see through a crack in her curtain. Kinky hair piled high on her head, she was on her computer. I rang the bell.
She jumped up and peeked out the curtain. First she saw me, then she noticed the Mummyship. I greeted her with my most disarming look, the closest thing to a smile, which was just to open my mouth wide and shake my head slightly. She began to jump up and down. She opened the door, still jumping.
"Spacemummy, you linen bolt, you freakrag! Come in!"
"What're you up to?"
"Oh," she gestured at the computer, "I was just writing some code which will harvest data in a meaningful way off Deadweb using Nodehumper. It's glue, more than anything."
"Fascinating," I said, mostly clueless.
"Spum," she smiled, taking me by the arms.
"Isis." She had the volumes of wavy, unkempt hair surrounding her olive complected face, with a sharp nose and chin. She could have been any one or mixture of ethnicities.
"I don't know what to offer a dessicated spacetraveller. A bath seems inappropriate. I can't really say, 'I'm sure you're anxious to change clothes.' You don't eat or drink."
"Sometimes I do, for entertainment purposes."
"Ha, ok..."
"And Dogstar has taught me to put different organic compounds in the canopic urns to produce effects, such as inspirations, epiphanies..."
"Sounds so complicated. I'm glad I didn't get in the bag."
"Oh yea?"
"Sorry, I mean no offense. It just seems like so much change." I gave her a pathetic look. "I really fucked that up."
"No, no. It's fine. I'm used to strange reactions."
She brightened up and quickly moved past the uncertain mood swing. "You're here!" She hugged me. "It's just so weird to have someone from that world," she pointed to her computer, "materialize into this one."
"I know. I hope I compare. I mean, I hope I'm not a cardboard cutout in comparison to how I seem there."
She shrugged. "I made a rule not to let my two worlds collide, but I'm glad I made an exception."
"Show me around?"
"Oh, of course. There's not much. That's the cat. Her name is Bat, but we often just call her Cat or Batcat. Kitchen in there. No big deal. Bathroom. Not sure you'll need that. That's Charlie's room, Charlie is a girl. We probably should be quieter; she's in school. And this is my room."
Somehow we instantly got sucked into the tiny two-dimensional realities of her photo albums. "On my mother's side, that's Helmut and Zannie. They're my great, great grandparents. German immigrants, members of a utopian christian religion that got chased out of Saxony."
"Tremendous."
"They were considered sex perverts by both the Lutherans and the Catholics. They were unabashedly proud of their bodies. They believed that God had intended people to be nude as much as possible, to work and worship without vestments. And they were very sex-positive, unlike the Shakers. But they weren't even as successful."
"They're wearing clothes there."
"Yes, well, they wore them when they went into town. That's where the photo was taken. At a shoppe. That's what they did in those days."
"Don't worry," she turned the page. "Here's your nudity. I guess someone on the commune bought a camera. That's the whole gang."
"Wow. Such, uh, healthy people."
"I don't know who half these people are and I'm related to the other half. The old codger is Helmut. Zannie had already passed away when this photo was taken. But that there is my great grandmother and father."
"Both fine-looking sorts."
"I think they're hot. Some people might think that it's weird to say that about your family, particularly dead people. But I think they were sexy."
"I don't think that's weird."
"And that's what I like about you." She put her arm around my shoulder and pulled my head in closer, hunched over the book. "You know, Spum. I thought you would smell, well, maybe not bad, but a little gamy. I am pleased to find you smell quite good."
"I do? Thanks. Mummies are like cats, very hygienic, tidy and clean."
"Your odor is complex. Heady." She said, sniffing a great nosefull of me. "It's kind of intoxicating."
"Now, that I find astounding."
"Woo, yea. You want some pot?"
"Uh, not really. I mean, ever since I got mummified, I've found I don't need it. My mind feels afloat all the time. It's like I'm only partially here. Sometimes I feel like I'm tripping."
"Ok, but you don't mind that I do."
"Of course not."
She smiled and reached into her bedside table drawer. Along with a paper folder of stationary and other knicknacks, she had her weed. She took out a little one-hit pipe and filled it from a bag. She took the smoke into her lungs, held it then breathed it out into my face, laughing.
"See that baby in her arms? That's my great uncle Kelsie. And the shy, little girl behind her is my grandma. She married an archaeologist from Oaxaca, Mexico. In fact, he suggested my name."
"So your name really is Isis. Wow, I thought..."
"He was half Zapotec, a beautiful man. Oaxaca is a wonderful place. You should go to Mexico sometime. You could show up for the Day of the Dead." She cracked herself up into coughing spasms.
"These photos are an interesting history."
"Yea, my grandma wanted me to have them, cause I'm the only one interested in this stuff. The family never talks about it."
"What happened to the, you say it was a commune?"
"Yes, and very matriarchal besides. It fell apart in the 30s, first because of the hysteria over the commies, then the Nazis. They were the exact opposite of Nazis, but people just wanted an excuse to get rid of them. You can only imagine. The nearby towns and all those rural christian types and the Mennonites loathed them. They tried just being very private, isolated, but people would stumble in. Salesmen. Evangelists. The rumors spread that there were kraut sex fiends living there. After a visit from the police, then the FBI, people dispersed and moved all over the place."
"It's a shame."
"Do you have many photos?"
"Not really."
"Can I see your face?"
"Uh, ok."
"I'll gently unwrap you. Where do I start?"
"The end is tucked into my neck. It winds up over my face, then down."
"It's all one piece?"
"Yea."
She carefully untucked the bandage and stood up to get a better angle. "What do we have here? A little friend." She held out the scarab she had found under the bandages near my neck.
"Yea, my friends. They just started showing up in my house. I don't know where they came from. There's more every day. They're busy little things."
"I'm just going to put this guy in here for a little while." She placed him very carefully inside the bedside table along with her pot, pipe and lighter and shut the drawer. "He can have a hit off the pipe if he likes." She turned to me. "Our mystery unravels. I see some red hair poking through there."
"I'm a redhead. Or, I was. Heh. I was born in the sign of Aries, too. I'm also a firehorse, in Chinese astrology. That makes me a volatile person, I suppose, if you believe all that stuff."
"And I do."
"I'm not sure if I do."
"It's a very interesting confluence. It explains a lot about you. Your willingness to jump into situations, so to speak."
"Ah."
"There's the nose, leathery, but surprisingly intact."
"What did you expect? Advanced decay?"
"I dunno. I guess all the images I've seen were of ancient mummies. Like the ones in my grandfather's books. You look almost pleasant, like a handsome starving person. Yes, the look in the eye, the hunger. Very similar." She gazed into my eyes until I thought I might need to turn away.
"I didn't come here because I thought I could get laid," I said.
"I know."
"I just wanted to meet you. I get lonely."
"I know." She continued to look into me. "Can I kiss you?"
"Um. Urk."
She kissed my nose, then my withdrawn, leathery lips. "Spum, I don't mean for this to get weird, but..."
"Go ahead and see where it goes. But I'm warning you: you might change your mind as you unwrap."
She nodded her head and continued her work with a faint smile. "You know, the Rosicrucians and other groups in England, mostly, would bring mummies from excavations in Egypt and unwrap them before small crowds. It was a society thing, to indulge their curiosities with such desecration."
"I'm not sure if I believe that corpses are sacred. I mean, any more than anything."
"Well, your mummified forebears would disagree."
"True. But mummification was also a move for their continued survival, at least as they saw it," I philosophized.
"It's amazing how all the muscles work. And you can see them so plainly. You didn't have chest hair?"
"It burned off in the bag."
"Ah."
"There wasn't much to begin with."
"Freckles on your arms, just like the ones on your face. You were kind of a Celtic, Irish type."
"Yea."
"Just like the bogpeople."
"Who?"
"In the peat bogs of Ireland, Denmark, Holland, because the Celts really go around, they found people who had been mummified by the acids in the bogs, humic acid, I think. Most of them appeared to have been ceremoniously sacrificed."
"Interesting, You know a lot about mummies."
"I am an afficionado. I studied some archaeology. You might say I have a 'thing' for mummies."
"How fortunate for me."
"Stand up. Ah, I see you keep your penis wrapped up against your abdomen."
"Because it's always hard."
"How fortunate for me."
"Garsh!"
"Lie down."
"So commanding. I like that."
"It's the matriarchal sex fiend in me," she joked, She fetched a bottle on her chest of drawers. "I made this mix of oils myself. Almond, olive, flax, with some scents."
"Wondrously odious." She rubbed the oil into my chest. "So you don't find my body to be the least alarming, if not frightening?"
"On the contrary." She anointed my face and neck.
"Too thin?"
"Newp." She began to stroke my package. "Does this do anything for you? Hmmm. Flexible."
"Uh yea."
"Real pleasure, not just conceptual?"
"Urk. The body feels, well, all except for my nuts. Those just just kind of hang there like dice in a skin bag. But my body feels different. The sensations, while sometimes intense, are only on the surface, flowing like electricity."
"The orgone."
"Yes."
She stopped to step out of her pants. "Just like grandma. I don't believe in underwear."
"How utopian."
She climbed on the bed and straddled me. "Here's to Utopia." Hovering over me, she traced the lips of her vagina with my cock. Then she rubbed it on her clitoris in a circular motion.
"Mummies are patient lovers," she said with satisfaction.
"Well, I've got eternity." All my awareness seemed to be gathering in her hand.
"So you say." And then the room disappeared.
My awareness dived inside of Isis. The sensation of my body retreated to my pelvis and gathered there, sensing her hips. She pitched and rolled on top of me like water against dry shores, as the Nile, as fog among the reeds. I was only vaguely aware of her hands on my chest, pressing down, her loosened hair in my face. The body seemed only to be a convenient place for this rush of consciousness. I could only move my hips which pushed back against her. Her kisses felt like rain on the pins and needles of my face, nearly numb. I released a low moan that could've come from the movement of tectonic plates below ground.
Isis tightened around me and slowed. I felt her pitch forward, flexing in spasms. A very quiet, "Oh, oh, oh." punctuated her orgasm.
My sensations harmonized with hers, as a rising tone which rang through my body, a bright blue chord that seemed to strike the mummified cells of my body as a billion-keyed moog synthesizer. My first mummygasm. I wasn't sure I could do that kind of thing any more.
My awareness gradually collected back in my body, as if silt from her delta, becoming aware and awake. She was whispering to me, "Now, I want you to come."
"I did," I croaked.
"I had no idea. That doesn't seem quite fair."
"It was the single most pleasurable thing that I've ever felt."
"Well, I need to catch up." She bounced harder against me. "I hope you're not getting tired."
"No, this is nice. I feel like a prize at the fair. Hit the bell, win a mummy."
"More like a ride at the fair."
"There's no line. Keep riding."
Later, she turned out the light and lay against me, whispering, "You know you can't stay."
"Yea. I was hoping you might come with me."
"That's not going to happen, at least not yet."
"I was afraid of that."
"Don't be afraid. You won't be alone forever. I've got work I need to complete. And you have a ship to build. Cause I gotta tell you, that thing out front is ready for the demolition derby. Hardy spaceworthy."
"Yea."
"In the meantime, you need to get out more. Tell people anything, that you're a burn victim and slowly you'll find people who are undeterred by your appearance. Then you can knock them out and take them aboard the ship."
"Sounds ideal. But I don't know how I'm going to complete the ship without technical assistance." I heard some rustling. "Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"The scraping."
"That's been going on for awhile. I think it's your friend in my drawer, the scarab guy."
"I forgot all about him. Let's see how he's doing."
She turned on the light and opened the drawer. The scarab looked up at us. He sat astride the pipe. It appeared that he had taken her lighter apart and reconfigured the pieces to attach it to the pipe. The stationary folder had been cut and folded into very aerodynamic-looking wings. With one of his back legs, he kicked the wheel on the lighter, igniting the fluid, propelling the pipe and rider out of the drawer up in a whooshing arc six feet across the room hitting the far wall. The small craft began to drop only to be suddenly saved by Isis' plastic weed bag deploying and slowing its plummet. It still hit with a thump.
"Holy shrikeshit," I said.
She looked at me. "I think that solves your technical problems."