Dark Impulse

DARK IMPULSE

by Willailla

       ~I will give them paradise and eternal life, then I will deceive them into disobeying me so that I can torment them in the flames of hell forever~

ONE

       I didn't press the recorded message button.   I knew it would be Victor.  I didn't want to hear from him ever again.  I threw on a pair of jeans, t-shirt and athletic shoes.  Grabbed a pack of cigarettes and shoved it in the side pocket of my sports jacket as I left my second floor apartment.

       The smell of burning leaves was in the air.  Commuters going home from work had already passed, leaving the streets empty.  I lit a cigarette as I walked toward the campus.  The library was practically empty  The fluorescent lights of the glassed in foyer mimicked the light of the leaden sky.

       The girl was there, sitting in a booth by the entrance door.  She checked people leaving to make sure they didn't steal any anything.  There wasn't much of anyone to check.  I glanced at the book she was reading:  A History of Prostitution.

       I'd seen her before on campus, walking around or in the Sub.  A nice dish-water blonde with blue eyes.  Nice body.  She was wearing a button-up-the-front blouse and a gray skirt.

       “Considering a profession not in the curriculum?”

       She smiled.  “It's really interesting.”

       “Hmm.” 

       “My name's Beth,” she said, extending her hand.

       “Vian,” I said.  “James Vian.”

       We shook hands.  Hers was small, soft and warm.

       I felt need spread throughout my loins like  a drop of ink in a glass of water.  There was no controlling it.  Not that I tried.

       “Are you doing research?”

       “No, not tonight.  Just dropped in to see if the library still has books.”  I paused.  “One of the English professors is throwing a party on the east end.”

       “That's too far out.  My boyfriend doesn't have a car.”

       “Hmm.”  Well that fucking ball didn't bounce.  I thought I detected a little peevishness in her voice when she'd said, My boyfriend.

       When I came back from the stacks I was surprised to see she was waiting for me.  We walked out by the fountain next to the library and down some steps to the parking lot.  She moved next to me, and I put my arm around her waist.  We got in her beat up Honda, and she drove me to her apt. on 2nd Street near the campus.  She parked up an alley in a gravel lot and led me up wooden back steps to her apt.

       It was neat and tidy.  The kitchen led in to a living room.  A doorway to the right opened on a bedroom.

       “I have to take a shower,” she said.

       I sat on a green couch facing the bedroom doorway.  She stepped out of sight and, after a moment, walked passed the doorway toward the bathroom wearing a terrycloth robe.  She glanced at me as she did so.

       I smiled to myself.  Obviously she was more than just a little peeved with her boyfriend and, foolishly, was going to use me to get back at him.  What the fuck?  She had a car even if he didn’t?

       I heard the sound of the shower came on.

       I pulled the opaque curtain to the side.  She had firm full tits, narrow waist and a modestly unshaven cunt.  I stepped inside the stall and grabbed her.  She gasped as I placed my hands behind her knees and lifted her up.  The head of my cock brushed up against her cunt.   She encircled my neck with her arms as I pushed into her forcing her back against the tiles.  I bit her neck.  I wanted to tear out the flesh.  I bit down hard on the tits, pulling the nipples out between my clenched teeth.

       Later, that evening we were in bed when I heard footsteps coming up the front indoor steps.  Someone knocked.  I felt her tense.  A young man's voice called out her name and knocked several more times.  I got on top of her.  She humped against me like a wild animal.

       I walked back to my apt. late that night.

       My answering machine was flashing again.  Leave me alone, Victor.  Leave me alone.

       I pressed the button.  It wasn't Victor.

       “James, when you get this message, come.  The door is unlocked.”

       It was Miller.

       I climbed into my ten year old Mustang and headed out to Glendale Estates, an upscale community, and pulled up in front of a townhouse of gray brick and green shudders next to Miller's BMW.  The security guard passed by and waved.  He had seen me before.

       She was spread-eagled, naked, face down on her Queen-sized bed.  Her arms and legs cuffed to the four corners.  There was a white ball gag in her mouth smeared with bright red lip stick.  A leather riding crop lay on her shapely ass.  She looked at me, her hazel eyes wide with fear.

       On the night table was a note with instructions.  I read it carefully then lit it with a silver lighter and burned it in the ashtray.   I undressed slowly.  When she saw the size of my cock she shook her head with a pleading expression.  Spittle oozed from her lips coating the white ball and dripping to the peach-colored silk sheet.

       I sat down on the edge of the bed and ran my hands over her supple body.  I grabbed a handful of her long black hair and pulled her head up until the back of it almost touched her shoulders.  She whimpered, her buttocks quivering.  A little more and I could've broken her neck.  I was tempted.

       I could whip her first then fuck her or I could fuck her first then whip her.

       But there had to be blood.

       I pressed a button on a console that started a video camera.  The whole event was to be recorded.

       I picked up the whip and flexed it.  The leather made a crackling sound.  I teased her with it, stroking her ass gently, pushing it over her cunt, then I started with light taps up and down her body.  I loved the way her muscles bunched in anticipation; the way her ass cheeks drew tightly together.  My strokes became harder; her hands balled into fists.  Then harder, much harder.  Her muffled cries louder.  I worked on the tender soles of her feet until they turned beet red and the toes curled in.  I hit the ass until large welts swelled up—red then purple then bleeding.

       I was like a mad man swinging the crop as hard as I could.  Sweat came from every pore, rivulets trickled down my heaving chest.  I covered her whole body with welts until it looked like enemy territory laid waste by marauding troops.  Gasping for breath, I climbed between her legs and shoved my cock in her ass.  Her cheeks gripped me so tightly that I thought I'd never stop coming.

       TWO

       Harold worked as a night watchman at Dell Manor, a day care center for mentally handicapped children.  I had met him in a bar after coming back from L.A.  And we had hit it off from the first and gotten into the habit of hanging out together with a couple of girls he knew.  Debra was a dark haired beauty with blue eyes and a sexy figure.  She was up for anything anytime—a game player.  Jean was a Plain Jane with auburn hair and brown eyes, never said much, always content just to follow.

       Debra had an apt. on a tree lined lane near a cemetery.  Jean lived with her aunt on a dinky side street. 

       Harold had car trouble, so I picked him up then the girls. 

       Debra’s camera dangled from a leather strap around her neck.  “Let's go to the cemetery,” she said.  “I want to take some pictures.”

       “Photos,” Jean said.

       Debra made a face.

       I parked by the office, and we all got out and started walking up one of those winding avenues all large cemeteries have until we were the only ones about among hundreds and hundreds of tombstones and tombs.  All about us hundreds of game players, once like us, locked forever in their dark coffins or marble vaults, forgotten.

       Debra stepped off the pavement.  “We go this way.” 

       We followed her until we were in an isolated spot out of sight.

       I knew what was coming.

       Jean unbuttoned her blouse.  Debra snapped some photos.  Harold and I stripped. 

       I lay down face up. 

       “Get on top of him, Jean.”

       She straddled me and lowered herself until her cunt was poised just above my cock.  I could feel her cunt hairs brush lightly against the head.

       “Go on.  Put it in.”

       She did, and her cunt was tight.  Slowly, she slid down on me until I was fully in her and she was sitting straddle my hips.  Her face and chest turned red.  She raised her face to the sky with her eyes closed.  She moved up and down on me, moaning softly.  Then faster and faster until her small breasts were jiggling.  “Oh, god; oh, god.” She was wobbling about crazily.  I could feel her cunt muscles squeezing around my cock like a velvet fist.

       I pulled her forward onto my chest.  Her mouth was against my ear, her moans and hot breath.  Harold got behind her and eased his cock into her ass.  Her body shuddered as he pounded into her.

       When we were through, we got dressed and left her lying naked on the ground.

       

       THREE

       Driving back to my apartment, after dropping everyone off, I suddenly realized it would be left up to me to come back and pick her up.  I'd just as soon leave her there to rot, but what the hell. 

       Groaning, I turned the car around.  I should have had a scarecrow to guide me.  All the avenues looked the same.  I hadn't paid much attention.  After a few tries, though, I found the right one.  And it was a good thing I'd come back, for the dumb bitch was walking toward the office.  I guess she hadn't planned on spending the whole night.

       I scrolled down the window and told her to get in.  I gave her my jacket.  Seeing her naked again made me realize she wasn't as scrawny as I'd thought.  She was tall and slender but like a runway model.  She had small tits but they suited her.  Her auburn hair usually hung in a ratty tangle halfway down her back but a good shampoo and brushing would have done wonders.  Had she had more than a plain face she could have been striking.  I guess.

       I drove her to her aunt's.  We went in to the back up an unpaved alley.  Her aunt lived in an old shotgun with tall oak trees all about.  She didn't want to walk naked into the house, so I went with her in order to get my jacket back.

       Her aunt was passed out on a swaybacked sofa.  A half a bottle of whiskey lay on the floor next to her.  She was on her back, naked.

       “You can fuck her, if you want.  She won't wake up.”

       I spread her legs, forcing her knees up to her chest.  She wasn't bad looking for a drunk.  Maybe late thirties, early forties.  She had red lipstick on, and light green eye shadow.  The lipstick was streaked over one cheek.  There were faint round scars on her breasts and belly, which was still taut like a young girl's.

       “Sometimes men burn her with cigarettes.  She has false teeth if you want to fuck her in the mouth.”

       I didn't expect her to be tight, but she was. The old sofa creaked with each thrust.  It smelled moldy.  I came fast, draining my tube.  Jean lit a cigarette from the pack I had in my jacket and handed it to me.

       I pressed it against her left breast until I smelled burning flesh, then the other one.

       When I was dressed, Jean gave me my jacket, and, as I was leaving, settled down in front of the TV to watch a sitcom.

       FOUR

       She was sitting in the booth still reading about the history of prostitution. 

       “I broke up with my boyfriend,” she said.

       “Must've been tragic.” She didn't catch the sarcasm.

       She nodded.

       “Do something for me.”

       “What?”

       “Take off your clothes.”

       “What, you mean right now?”

       I nodded.

       “You're kidding.  I can't take my clothes off here.”

       “Sure you can.  All you have to do is scoot your stool back and crouch down in the booth.  Nobody will see you.”

       “I can't.”

       “It's not crowded.”

       “Mrs. Wright is there behind the check out desk.  She might see, and someone might come in or go out...I can't.”

       “Would you, if you knew no one would catch you?”

       She nodded.

       “Okay, then, take your panties off and give them to me.  You can do that.”

       She bit her lip then eased up off the stool.  She lifted up her skirt and tugged her panties down quickly, balled them up and sat back down, her face flushed.  I took the panties and shoved them in my pocket.

       “Now your bra,” I said.  I flicked open my switchblade and lay it on the counter before her.  You can cut the straps with this.”

       She crunched down in the booth and unbuttoned the top of her blouse.  She cut the bra straps, unhooked the front fastener and sat back up.  She held the bra in her lap and when no one was watching handed it to me. 

       She lay in my arms. 

       “I was so afraid,” she said.

       “Afraid I was going to make you take all your clothes off?”

       “Yes.”

       “You would have.”

       “I didn't think so...but now I'm not so sure.  You make me feel powerless, excited.  I've never felt that way before.”

       The phone rang.  I picked up when I heard Victor's voice.

       “It's about time Jamie.  You shouldn't keep old Victor waiting on pins and needles to hear from you.  How's it going?  Still trying to keep the monster at bay?”

       “I told you, Victor.  I'm no longer in the game.  Find somebody else.”

       “Oh, don't think I can't.  You're not irreplaceable, you know, and I have bosses who expect me to maintain a tight ship--no loose cannons.”

       Victor paused.  I waited for what was coming next.

       “Why waste your talent, Jamie, doddering about when you can get paid for what you do naturally?”

       “I like being free, Victor,” I rubbed my hand over Beth’s breasts and down her belly and stroked the triangle of pubic hair.  She flinched.

       “Fuck this shit, Jamie.  I'm running a business.  A very lucrative business with a very select and demanding clientele.  I can't afford to let you or anyone else slide.  I'm expecting you back in the fold, Jamie.  And you don't want to disappoint me.”

       I hung the phone up when it went silent.

       “Who was that?” Beth asked.

       “Nobody,” I said.  “Just an old employer who wants me back.”

       “Hmm, you must have been good at what you did.”

       FIVE

       It was raining when I woke up.  I got dressed and picked up my umbrella.  Listening to the rain bounce off it, I lit a cigarette. I liked to take long walks in the rain.  It somehow soothed me.  I headed downtown toward the river.  Victor worried me.  You don’t cross him and stay healthy.  Cars went by, their tires making swishing sounds on the wet streets.  One, a gray Porsche, stopped next to me.

       It was Carla.  “Want a ride?”

       “Why not?”  I got in.  It smelled of rich new Italian leather and Carla's French perfume.

       She drove us to a upmarket hotel, The Towers, and gave the car over to an attendant.  We entered an elevator and arrived at a top floor bar with a panoramic view of the smudged sky, the angular city and the smoky river.

       “Something stirred not shaken,” she said to the waiter.

       Carla was a statuesque blonde with green eyes.  She was wearing a skin tight, green leather, low-cut mini dress with straps and a stainless steel zipper running top to bottom in front.

       Carla had a dark side, too.

       “Victor wants you back?”

       “I gather.”

       She lit a cigarette with a gold lighter.  “Why not?  What else can you do?  People like you and I are made for one thing and one thing only.  You can fight what you are, but in the end you'll give in.  I know.  I tried to break away, just like you, but what's the alternative really, to live like the common herd?  That's all illusion.  You're too evolved to want that.  Besides you don’t cross Victor.”

       “I'll make it.”

       “No...you won't.  And how would you live even if you did?”

       I had no answer.

       “You see,” she smiled.  “You're just like me.”  She tapped her cigarette on the ashtray.  “Impulsive.”  She brought the cigarette to her mouth and slowly inhaled, then let the smoke drift out through her nostrils.  “Let’s do something kinky.”

       “Out of curiosity, what?”

       “A very rich man wants his young wife trained.  We can do anything we want to her.  Something perverted.”

       “Anything?” Despite myself, I felt the need growing inside me.

       “Well…within limits.  Nothing medieval you know.  Fucking mostly. We tape it.  That's all he's interested in.  At least that’s what he says.”

       “They're always afraid to say want they really want, aren't they?”

       “Always.”  Carla gave me a speculative look.  “She's very attractive.  Well educated—though somewhat naive like most rich people.  I've already made friends with her.  I'll introduce you to her, then we will seduce her.”         

       The waiter brought our drinks.  Carla took a sip.  “Shame we can’t rip her guts out.”

       

       SIX

       It was a warm fall day.  The sun was out, and fluffy white clouds lingered in a brilliantly blue sky.  Carla had the top down on her Porsche.  Her blonde hair was pulled back in a bun; her beautiful face masked behind dark sunglasses.  We cruised along by the river passing one mansion after another set back on their opulent lawns among majestic oaks behind pristine white fences.

       Carla was dressed conservatively in a pearl white blouse open at the throat, a modest gray skirt and tan slip-ons.  I wore a navy-blue polo shirt, gray slacks and brown loafers.

       At our destination there was the obligatory long winding tree-lined driveway that ended at a two story rustic mansion all stone, glass and thick wood beams.

       The young bride, Gina Corzalka, was around back on her knees in a greenhouse tending to a grouping of yellow orchids.  She stood up when we entered smiling shyly.  She was, as Carla had said, attractive.  Short ashen hair framed an oval face that had a streak of dirt on one cheek.  The eyes were soft gray.  She stood about medium height and was wearing yellow pedal-pushers and a tan blouse unbuttoned on top revealing deep cleavage.

       “Hi, Carla.” She exclaimed with such enthusiasm that you knew she was sincere.

       “This is my brother, James.”

       She took a cotton glove off and shook my hand.  Charming.

       “I think I already know you.  Carla has told me all about you.  Filming documentaries and all that.  Though why you'd want to waste your time filming me I'll never know.”  She rubbed at the streak of dirt on her cheek.

       Carla chuckled.  “Don't ask.  He never reveals his whys and what-fors.”  Carla patted me indulgently on the shoulder.

       “I'm afraid I'm not much of an artist,” Gina said, “I've got my orchids I'm developing for a hobby, but I really don't know much about them yet.  I would really like to hear about your work, the places you've been.  It must be exciting.”

       “Don't get him started or that'll be all he'll talk about,” Carla said.

       “Oh, I wouldn't mind.”

       Carla gave me a look.

       “Anytime,” I said.

       “I know.”  Carla looked at me.  “Why don't you film Gina puttering around in her greenhouse...as a kind of introduction, you know, then how 'bout we go out and paint the town red tonight?”

       “Or green or blue,” Gina said, then grinned awkwardly as if she thought she might have sounded foolish.

       

       SEVEN

       “Where's hubby?” I asked Carla while Gina was upstairs getting ready to go out.

       “Burt?  Somewhere in Mexico, I expect.  He runs drugs into the country for the CIA  with a fleet of trucks he owns.  She, of course, doesn't know anything about it.  Bryn Mawr.  Pampered wealth and all that.”

       There were footsteps and Gina came down the stairs to where we were sitting by a massive stone fire place.

       She was wearing a long-sleeved black mini dress with a Mandarin collar and black spiked heels.

       “Nice,” I said.

       She smiled, and actually blushed.

       “There's only room for two,” Gina said, with dismay, when we came to the Porsche.

       “Well then, let's go bats,” Carla said.  “You can sit on James' lap.”

       “I won't mind,” I said.

       Gina smiled.

       Carla dropped me off at my place to change while she drove off with Gina to the hotel.

       When they returned, Carla was wearing the green leather mini dress.

       I was wearing a loose fitting, purple shirt with black leather pants.

       The dance floor of the Midnight Lounge was packed.  The music was a canny mixture of Latino, rock and progressive jazz.  The ceiling pulsed with a blue light while the dance floor lay in an anonymous twilight.  One could fuck there and not be noticed.

       Men asked Carla to dance, since I was sitting closer to Gina, but she refused them. 

       “I danced a few with Gina, holding her close, my hands on her ass.  Then Carla danced with her.  We plied her with drink until she was woozy.  Then we drove her back home.  In the glow of the dashboard, I pulled down the zipper of her dress and kissed her back.  I felt her body tremble.  She lay her head on my shoulder moaning softly.  When we got there, Carla took the camera out of the trunk.  Gina leaned against me as I took her up the stairs to her bedroom.  Carla circled us like the paparazzi constantly filming.

       “Fuck her,” Carla said, her eye glued to the lens of the camera.

       I took her clothes off and did so.  She was out of it. I guessed Carla had spiked her drink with something.  When I was through, Carla gave me the camera to film her doing Gina, then afterwards we both did her.

       EIGHT

       In the morning when I woke up the light on my answering machine was flashing.  “My name's Alice.  A friend tells me you can be discreet.  I'll be at Mama's Cafe, one o'clock Tuesday.  I'll wear a red baseball cap.”

       I looked at the alarm clock.  It was only eight o'clock.  I didn't like to get up mornings, but I was awake now.  I dressed, had a cup of coffee and headed for the library.  “Are you wearing anything underneath?”

       “No, you told me not to.”

       I nodded.  I didn’t give a shit.  I just liked to torment her. “Come over to my place after you get off.  I've got something for you.”

       I headed for the Sub and ate breakfast.  The girl behind the cash register was showing thigh.  I smoked a cigarette, near the NO SMOKING sign, and waited until there was a lull in the service line then went over to her.  She was cute and had nice tits.  “I heard you and your boyfriend talking the other day,” I said, “when you were on your break, about how he was going to have to drop out of college for lack of funds.”

       She nodded, with wrinkled brow, pulling her head back.  I went on before she could protest.

       “Would you like to make a hundred dollars?”  I pressed my finger against her lips.  “I'll be back tomorrow.  You can let me know then if your interested.”

       Mama's Cafe wasn't crowded, and the booths were secluded.  Alice was a good looker with honey blonde hair fixed in a pony tail beneath the red baseball cap.  I walked to the farthest booth and sat down opposite her.

       “What can I do for you, Alice?”

       She smiled nervously, hesitated.  “I want to be...trained.”

        She was afraid.  Conventional.  Yet wanting what was forbidden.  She was breaking bad.

       “Okay.” I took out a pen and wrote my address on a napkin.  “Think it over.  When you've got your head on give me a call.”

       Beth was waiting for me when I got back to my apartment. I opened the door, and we went in.

       “What did you have for me?” she asked.

       I pressed her back against a wall and started unbuttoning her blouse.

       “I think I'm going to like this something.”

       When I'd removed her blouse and skirt, I ripped them into pieces.

       “What will I wear going home?”

       “This,” I said, going to the closet and bringing out a leather dress identical to the one Carla wore.  Beth was hot, but not as much as Carla.

       Tears formed in her eyes.  “I can't wear that.”

       I hadn't expected that; opinionated women anger me.  “Well, you're going to have to because there's nothing else for you to wear.”

       “I'll wear it for you,” she said, plaintively, “but, please, not in public.”

       “Tough.”  I was vexed.  I lit a cigarette and stared at her, feeling myself become aroused by her nudity.  I grabbed her by the wrist, opened the door and pushed her out on the landing.  “When you're ready to do what I tell you, I'll let you back in.”

       “It wasn't long before she was knocking frantically on the door.  Somebody was coming up the steps.  I opened it.  “You'll do anything I ask from now on?”

       “Yes, yes, please let me in.” 

       The steps came closer.  Soon, whoever it was, would be on the landing.  I waited.  She lunged at me wrapping her arms around me.  “I'll do anything you want,” she whispered desperately.

       NINE

       “You know, Dr. Doolittle, “that's a bad name for someone who is supposed to 'do' for others.”

       Doolittle chuckled and pushed his horn rims up on his Gothic nose.  A nude picture of his trophy wife hung on the wall behind him.  “I love your dry sense of humor, Vian.”  He tapped his pen on a leather bound notepad and cleared his throat.  “Now, to restate, you say you are feeling anger because a woman you're involved with made you feel guilty.  Is that right?”

       “Well, vexed,” I nodded.

       “And you wish not to feel…vexed?”

       I nodded.

       Doolittle placed his finger tips together beneath his chin and gave me one of his impressively piercing looks, no doubt practiced in front of a mirror, then leaned back in his tufted leather chair and scratched the bald spot on the back of his head.  “Hmm, feeling guilty, er, vexed, is a pretty common malady, but one that only affects those who have been misguided into believing there is a moral order in the universe and that their feeling of guilt is a result of having violated this supposed moral order for one reason or another.”

       “You don't believe in morality?”

       “Of course not, Vian.  It's rubbish.  What we call morality is really just a set of beliefs based on mutual need...a sort of social agreement or, if you will, contract.  Mutual need is the key.  The  social contract only works as long as there's mutual need.  Once people no longer have a mutual need morality vanishes.  That is why people lose their compassion for others if they become rich.  They no longer have to depend on others—have no need for others.  You, Vian, are under the delusion that you need others.  That is why you feel vexed.  You are subconsciously afraid that if you don't reciprocate your needs with someone else's needs you will be punished by some universal causality.  It's rubbish.  To alleviate your dire feelings you must get rid of  this childish clinging to mutual need.  It's your misunderstanding of the true order of things that makes you weak.”

       “How?”

       “Only you know.”

       “Like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz?”

       Doolittle grinned.  “Yes.  You already have the means within you to break free of your delusion, but I cannot do it for you.  You must do it for yourself.”

       “And feeling guilty is because--”

       “Because you wanted to fuck your mother, but she wouldn't let you.  She made you feel guilty.  As a result you hated her, but because you also loved her you couldn't take your hatred out on her, so you took it out on other women.”

       “She teased me.”

       “Yes, some mothers do that to their sons because they secretly want to be raped by them so that they will not feel guilty for countenancing an incestuous relationship.”

       “I should have raped my mother?”

       “No easy answer there,” Doolittle said with a shrug.  “Maybe yes, maybe no.  Or maybe you should have killed her.”

       TEN

       I was intrigued by what Doolittle had said.  So much so that I became preoccupied thinking about raping his wife.  Some kind of transference, I suppose.  Her nude pose on the painted canvas was provocative.  I began stalking her.  I followed her to a beauty salon, the theater, shopping--always with the thought of raping her.  If I couldn't rape my mother, I could at least rape her and make her someone's mother.  And why would Doolittle have a nude picture of his wife on the wall of his office in the first place? He knew what a psycho I was.  Having it there was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.  All that talk about rape.  He wants someone to rape her.  Que sera sera.

       I drove to campus and sat on a bench just outside the Sub.  The cutie pie was with two other girls when she came out.  She pretended not to notice me.  They stood on the mezzanine making girl talk.  The girls were making hand signals for her to come with them, but she looked at her watch and waved bye to them.  She waited until they were out of sight then came over to me looking kinda forlorn.

       “Did you mean what you said the other day...about, you know, the hundred dollars?”

       I nodded.

       “Well, uh, what would I have to do...nothing kinky?”

       “Do you want the hundred?”

       “Yes.”  Her shoulders sagged slightly with resignation.

       After we got to my apt. I lit up a joint laced with opium.

       “I can't stay too long,” she said.  “I have to meet my boyfriend at three when he gets out of class.”

       “Relax,” I said.  “Take your clothes off and get on the bed.”  When she was naked, I handed her the joint.  “Take a few hits of that.”

       She shook her head.  “My boyfriend smokes, but I don't like it.”

       “Hmp, go ahead you'll like this.  It's White Widow.”

       There was a doubtful look of her face.  She wasn't wearing any makeup except for a faint eye shadow.  Her tits were full and firm with succulent pink nipples.  “You're not gonna get me high and do something weird, are you?”

       “You worry too much.”

       She tentatively inhaled, holding her breath then exhaled coughing.  “Ugh,” she said, shaking her head.

       “The second one is the deal maker,” I said.

       She took another hit, then another, grimacing.

       I rolled her nipples between my thumb and forefinger.  She handed me the joint, then I handed it back to her.  She was mellowing out.  She had that hazy-eyed look.

       “Aren't you going to take your clothes off?” she asked somewhat dreamily.

       “In a minute,” I said, getting up and walking to the closet.  I took out a camcorder and set it up on a tripod, aiming it at the bed.  She had forgotten the joint nestled between her fingers.  Her hand was on her belly, the bluish-gray smoke curled up lazily in the air.  Ashes flaked off mingling with her pubic hairs.  I got the electric razor from the bathroom and began shaving off them off.  When I was through, I held its vibrating case against her clit.

       “Hmm, that feels good,” she murmured from another time zone.

       I opened the drawer of the nightstand and took out a needle and syringe that I had previously prepared and tied off her arm with some rubber tubing, the yellow kind still used in rehabs.  I tapped a vein and inserted the needle, then lowered the plunger.  “Welcome to Junkie Land 101, bitch.”

       

       ELEVEN

       “Hi, James, this is Alice.  Can I see you, please?”

       I picked up the phone.  “Why not, it's your funeral.”

       She must've been close by for there was a knock at the door five minutes later.  She was wearing the red baseball cap and tight fitting gray sweats.

       “You don't have much furniture, do you?”

       “What, you wanna be a critic or a submissive?”

       “I've never ever done anything like this before,” she confessed.  “Now that I'm here, I'm scared.”  Her eyes searched my face as if I were the Delphic Oracle.

       “You ought to be.  I might kill you.”

       She shuddered, but I think I saw a spark of excitement flash in her eyes.

       I told her to get naked and sat her in a straight-back chair.  I took a duffel bag out of the closet and placed it on the bed so she could see it, unzipping it slowly.  Her brown eyes widened as I took out a leather whip, handcuffs and ball gag.  I cuffed her ankles to the legs of the chair then her wrists to the back braces.  I picked up the ball gag and told her to open her mouth.  She had even white teeth, no fillings.  She must've been hygienic.  I liked that.  I forced the ball into her mouth and, more roughly than necessary, jerked the straps tightly together.

       “You know,” I said, flicking open my razor-sharp     switchblade, “you should never allow someone to tie you up.  It's just not the smart thing to do.”  I lightly, traced the needle point of the blade around the nipples, occasionally drawing blood.  I touched her cunt, which was shaven, and felt its wetness.

       I took my clothes off.  Crazy thoughts were ricocheting off my brain.  A knock at the door probably saved me from a long prison term. 

       It was Debra, Harold and Jean.

       They stared at my erection and gave each other looks.

       “Oh, it's not that.  I'm not beating off.”  I stepped back so they could enter.  “It's party time.”

       I stuffed my pipe full of weed and passed it around.

       “Who is she?” Debra asked.

       “Her name's Alice.  She wants to be abused.”

       Debra touched her cunt.  “She's wet.”

       “Bet she wants to change her mind now,” Jean said.

       “Too fucking late.”  Debra said.  She leaned over a licked blood off her tit.  “Hmm.”

       “That's not smart,” Harold said.  “She might have aids.”

       Harold had his clothes off.  His dick was long and curled upward like a banana.  He started taking the ball gag off.

       “If you scream,” Debra said, “We'll cut your nipples off.”

       Jean was lying on the bed naked, giggling.  “She'd scream for sure, if we did that.”

        I climbed onto the bed behind Jean.  She was on her belly watching Harold shoving his cock in Alice's mouth.  I spread her legs then her ass cheeks and rubbed spit on my cock.  I'm large, so I know it hurt, but Jean wasn't the kind to complain.  She was the passive, non assertive type.  I suddenly realized I was becoming more enamored of her fashion model body.  But something had to be done with the ratty hair.

       Harold pumped vigorously into Alice's mouth.  He had stamina.  I could hump as well as the rest, but I think Harold could have gone on for hours.  He would have made a great porn star. 

       Jean liked to be fucked.  I could tell that, for she raised her ass to meet my thrusts and wadded the bed cloth up into her fists making 'mm' sounds each time I slammed against her.

       I came then refilled the pipe.  Debra sat down on the bed next to us and took off her clothes.  We smoked and watched Harold fuck Alice's mouth.  Minutes passed then Alice began gagging.  Strands of milky come drained from her mouth, over her tits, down her belly to her thighs. It would have made a great money shot, but I'd forgotten to set up my camera.

       Harold put the ball gag back into her mouth.  Debra lay down next to me so that I was between her and Jean.

       “I'll let you fuck me some day,” she whispered, “but only when you want me badly enough to rape me.”

       Jean got up and began licking come off Alice.

       I was losing track of reality and time.  The grass was potent.  Harold lay down on the bed so that Debra was between us.  I watched, in a surreal state, as Jean lit a cigarette from my pack.  I knew what she was about.  I could smell burning flesh as I drifted off into dream land.

       When I woke up my cock was hard.  Debra was on her side looking at me.  I suddenly realized how much she reminded me of my mother:  a domineering tease who wouldn't let me fuck her and become a normal man.  I felt sudden hatred.  I wanted to rape her.  I wanted to devour her.  Rip out her throat.

       Instead, I got up and grabbed Jean by the wrist and dragged her into the bathroom.  I filled the bathtub and got into it with her and began shampooing her hair.  Afterwards I blow dried it and brushed it until it gleamed.  She stood before the mirror staring at it.

       Is this the way you like it?” she said.  She curled a long blonde strand around her finger.

       “Yes.”

       “Then I'll keep it like this.”

       TWELVE

       “Do you like my hair?” Jean asked Debra, preening before her.

       “Fab.”

       She was lying on her belly, braced up on her elbows, her chin in the palm of her hand.

       Harold's cock was as hard as mine.  I nodded.  Debra saw the look and started to scramble to her feet, but Harold grabbed her wrists and shoved her down on the mattress.  I held my hand over her mouth.  Jean giggled and handcuffed her, then cuffed her ankles to the corners of the bed.  Debra was making furious 'um, um' sounds against my hand.  Harold lifted up her hips while Jean shoved two pillows beneath them.

       Debra's pretty face was contorted into grimaces as Harold rammed his cock into her.  I took my hand away from her mouth.  It was wet with spittle and smeared with lipstick.  She gasped rhythmically as Harold lay into her.  The sound of flesh meeting flesh resounded throughout the room.

       When Harold was through, I climbed on top of her.  It was almost as good as I imagined it would have been with my mother.

       THIRTEEN

       Harold and I smoked cigars as we followed Mrs. Doolittle's gray BMW down the parkway toward the downtown area.  He had one of my camcorders in his lap.

       “How in the hell are we ever gonna grab her.  She's always in public.”

       I had no idea, but I put a smiley face on the matter to reinforce his high opinion of my intelligence.  “Things have a way of working out,” I said, “on their own, given time.  Patience is the key.”  I had a stun gun in my jacket pocket that would have knocked out an elephant, but we'd have to get to her were there weren't any witnesses.  And that was a damn sight harder to do than one might think.

       Then Lady Fortune stepped in like a sudden burst of brilliant sunlight through a cloudy sky.  Mrs. Doolittle's BMW turned onto the lot of the Imperial Motel and pulled up in front of door 27.  She got out dressed in a white mini skirt and red sleeveless blouse.  Her Titian hair hung down to the small of her back.  She was a looker.  Gold sparkled off her wrist as she knocked on the door.  A black guy, who looked like he could've played pro ball, opened the door with a smile on his face.  He put his arm around her waist, and they disappeared inside.

       And Harold had filmed it.

       A day later I confronted her coming out of her beauty parlor.  I told her what I had, and she suggested we go somewhere for drinks.

       “How much do you want?” she said, as I lit a cigarette for her.

       “I don't want money, Lisa, I just want to fuck you.”

       “Honey, you don't have to blackmail me to do that.”

       “Who was the black guy?”

       She shrugged.  “I don't know.  George, I think.  I like anonymous sex.”

       “That dangerous,” I said.

       “That's why I like it.”

       She followed me to my apartment.  Alice was chained to the leg of the Victorian bathtub.

       “Who's that?” she said.

       “Alice.  She's my slave.”

       “Kinky.”

       “Get naked and get on the bed.”  I set my camcorder on the tripod.  “I like to film things.”

       “I gather.  You've already got enough on me.  If Reginald saw me meeting with a black guy he'd kill me.  He's a racist,  besides being the jealous type.”

       She had a fabulous body and a shaved cunt.  I cuffed her ankles to her wrists.

       “You're not going to kill me, are you?”

       “I'm not predictable.”

       “I could scream.”

       “Not while my dick's in your mouth.”

       I unchained Alice and let her warm Lisa up.  She slurped on her nipples for awhile then moved down her belly to her cunt, making wet sucking sounds.  Then I got between her legs and shoved my cock in her.  She was wet.  Her eyes glistened hotly.  I kissed her mouth hard, smearing the lipstick and teased her pink nipples which hardened to my touch.  I held my cock in her without moving, but she tighten her cunt muscles around me and I shot off like a cannon.

       FOURTEEN

       “I need to see Dr. Doolittle,” I said.

       “Do you have an appointment,” his secretary asked.

       “It's an emergency.”

       Doolittle was behind his desk pretending to be absorbed with some papers he was shuffling about.  The painting of his wife didn't begin to do her justice.  Which stands to reason.  Art can never be as good as the real thing.  She had to be in her early twenty while he must have been in his late fifties.  It was little wonder she fucked around on him.

       “Vian,” he said.  “What's the emergency.  Another one of your psychotic episodes?”  He looked bored.

       “No, life's jolly.”  I lit a cigarette. 

       He frowned.  “Then why...”

       I crossed my legs and gently placed my camcorder on the edge of his rosewood desk with the viewer facing him.  “I've heard a rumor that you're a racist.”

       His dark eyes glanced to his left then back at me—always a sure sign someone is going to lie.

       “That's absurd,” he replied, irritated.

       “Then it wouldn't bother you if you found out your wife was fucking a nigger?”

       “Vian, if this is your idea of a joke, it's beyond the pale.”

       I switched the camcorder on. 

       The look on his face grew as contorted with vehemence as if Satan had crawled under his skin and taken over.  He leaned back in his tufted swivel chair and lowered his face like a bull getting ready to charge.

       “Where did you get this, Vian?”

       “Not really relevant, is it?” I said, switching off the recorder before the scene of me and Alice fucking his wife came on.  “You know how women are.  All fucking sluts.”  My tone was commiserating. 

       “And with a fucking nigger,” he said.  The pen in his hand snapped into.

       “If she were my wife...” I broke off.

       He slowly raised his head and stared at me.  “What...what were you about to say?”

       I shrugged.  “Nothing...it's just that... if it were me I'd teach the bitch a lesson.  Of course, that's not possible for a man in your position, with a reputation to uphold, to get involved in something sordid.”  I paused, tapping my cigarette on an ashtray.  “Then again someone could always break into your house, thieves, perhaps, and, you know, find a luscious wife all alone...”  My words drifted off like the smoke from my cigarette.  The good doctor's face broke into a bitter grin.

       FIFTEEN

       I got the gang together.  It was night when we drove out to Glendale where Doolittle's house was situated on a corner facing a large park on two sides.  Behind was a stone cliff and to the side a thick hedge that blocked any view from the house next door. 

       The windows were dark except for one which cast  the flickering glow of a TV screen.  We put on our ski masks and got out, except for Jean who got in the driver's seat and drove off in case security passed by.

       Doolittle had given me the key to the house, so getting in would be easy.  We sneaked up the driveway next to the hedge to the back of the house.  There was a screened-in back porch and the door was latched, so I had to cut the screen and lift the latch.  The key fit the indoor lock.  I eased it open slowly.  According to what Doolittle had told me, about the layout of the house, the room with the flickering light would be the master bedroom which was on the other side.  I turned on a pen light to guide us.

       “What if she's got someone with her?” Debra whispered.

       “How do you spell screwed?” I replied.

       We went through a kitchen into a dining room then some kind of office-library and into a sunken living room.  Beyond was a hallway at the end of which was a traverse hall that had a guest bedroom on one end; a bathroom in the middle and the master bedroom on the other end.

       Suddenly, Lisa appeared at the end of the hallway, her nude body outlined by the luminous glow from the master bedroom.  She flicked on the bathroom light.  In a moment there was the sound of a shower turned on.  Harold and I put our backs to the wall on either side of the bathroom door.  I reached in and flicked the light switch off.  I heard Lisa utter a curse and the shower went off.  There was the pad of wet feet on the tile floor.  I grabbed her wrist as she came to the doorway.  Harold grabbed the other.  She let out a piercing scream, but there was no one to hear it.

       Debra hit her in the stomach, and we dragged her back into the bedroom.  I got my camera out of the duffel Debra had carried and began filming as she and Harold spread-eagled her to the bed. 

       “Let me go you cocksuckers!”

       “Shut up, bitch,” Debra said, and slapped her hard back and forth.  Then strapped a leather blindfold on her.  “Scream all you want, bitch.  It'll only excite us more.”

       Harold got between her legs, so excited his banana cock was jerking up against his belly.  He fumbled a thrust then got it right and rammed home.

       Lisa grimaced, clenching her teeth, her tits jiggling as Harold slammed into her.  Up and down his ass went faster and faster until his body went spastic.  When it was over he collapsed on top of her, panting like a dog.  I took my turn on her then Debra straddled her and made her lick her cunt.

       When we were through, I dialed a number on my cell phone.  “She's ready,” I said.

       About twenty minutes later, Doolittle and Jean came in and Harold and Debra left.  I stayed to finish filming.  Without saying a word the doctor took off his clothes and climbed on the bed between Lisa's legs.  His cock was big and hard.  Enough, in my  opinion, to satisfy any woman.  But Lisa was one of those women who liked to sample a variety of meat.  The doctor wasn't in a mood to be gentle.  He slapped her face hard as he rammed his cock in her then bit down savagely on her tits.  Her screams were piercing.  When he was through with her, he pulled out, dripping copious amounts of come on her thighs.  He went into the bathroom, took a shower then came back and sat down in an armchair.  Jean held the flame of a butane lighter against Lisa's nipples then her clit.  The screams were beyond anything human.  This was truly the cry of the damned in hell.  Doolittle was hard again.  Lust was sculpted into every facial feature.  He climbed back on her and spared her nothing, thrusting into her relentlessly.  By now there was only endless whimpers and cries of agony coming from her. Her wrists and ankles bled as she tore at her restrains.  He hit her with his fists, screaming epithets like a madman—which by now he was.

       He was still beating her when Jean and I left.

       SIXTEEN

       A few days later, according to the local news, the Doolittles's cleaning lady found the nude couple in their bedroom.  Mrs. Doolittle, dead from multiple blunt force injuries, was restrained on their bed while Dr. Doolittle was slumped over in an armchair, dead from a self inflicted gun shot.   Murder-suicide apparently.

       And I had practically all of it on tape.  What the media would have paid for that.  But, the drawback would be in  explaining how I came by such a tape.

       As a nude Alice was fixing me breakfast, there was a knock on the door.  I put her in the closet and answered it.    A slim attractive woman in a gray suit announced herself as Detective Sergeant Williams with the RCPD.

       “I'm doing a routine investigation into the murder-suicide of Dr. Doolittle and his wife.”

       “Tragic, I said.  I heard about it on the news.  The world has lost a great man.”

       Her face remained passive, but I could tell she knew bull shit when she heard it.

       “You were his patient, were you not?”

       “Yes, that's right.”

       “And you saw him on the morning of the same day he killed himself?”

       I nodded.

       “Did he seem upset, out of sorts, in any way?”

       “Hmm, not that I recall.”

       “Hmph, that's odd.  His secretary says, that after you left,  he canceled all his remaining appointments for that day and stormed out of his office.”

       I shrugged.  “Beats me.  But why all the questions about what was just a murder-suicide?”

       “Just routine.”

       She had a nice body.  Like a dancer.  Lush brown hair and grayish-blue eyes.  Faint pink lipstick with a touch of mauve eye shadow.  I wondered if she had handcuffs and a gun.  I was getting turned on.

       “I was wondering...” she said, “just what it is you do for a living?”  Her grayish-blue eyes searched my face.  She was good at concealing her feelings, but it's hard for a woman to resist me.  I am, after all, fairly good looking.  I could see interest in those perfect eyes.

       “I film documentaries.”  I paused.  “Say, would you like to come in?  I'm sure you would be more comfortable sitting down.  I forget my manners sometimes.  Coffee?”

       As she stepped inside I found myself wondering what she would look like hanging naked from a tree limb.

       “Yes, please.  Cream.”

       There was a brief awkwardness as her officious persona was dropped and her social feminine side emerged.  As I made coffee, I saw her glance around the barren room. 

       “I lead a Spartan-like existence,” I said.  “I only splurge on cigarettes, haute cuisine, women, booze, riotous living and fast cars.”

       She smiled.

       There was only a double wide bed with a nightstand, a table against a wall with three straight back chairs, and a laptop on the table.  There were no pictures on the walls.  The thought suddenly hit me that I would like to have Doolittle's painting of his nude wife.

       She pulled out a chair from the table and sat down crossing shapely legs.  She was wearing high heels, and I wondered how she would chase criminals in them.

       I sat our coffees on the table and took a seat across from her.  She sipped hers leaving a trace of lipstick on its white edge, like lipstick smeared on a white ball gag.

       “There's one thing that puzzles me,” she said, after a moment.

       “Oh, really.  “What's that?”

       “Well, Doolittle's wife had third degree burns on her nipples and vagina.”

       “Doolittle burned her?”

       “Um, that's just it.  There was no cigarette lighter or matches about.”

       “That's odd,” I said, nodding thoughtfully.

       “Yes, I thought so, too.”

       “How do you explain it?”

       She raised the coffee cup almost to her lips, paused, her eyes fixed on me.  “There had to have been somebody else there.” 

       I pretended surprise.  “You think someone killed them and made it look like a murder-suicide?

       “Hmm, don't know.  It's a big house.  Perhaps Doolittle left the bedroom for some reason, before he whacked himself, and left the lighter elsewhere.  If he'd used matches to burn her there should have been remnants lying about.  But there weren't any.”        

       “Hmm, sounds like an intriguing murder mystery that would make a great subject for a documentary.”

       She smiled and glanced at my camcorder sitting on its tripod by the closet.  She got up and walked over to it.  Her heels clicked on the wood floor. “Is this what you use for your documentaries?”  She stood with her back arched, the palms of her hands resting on the back of her hips, the fingertips pointed downward.  It was an enticing pose done unconsciously on her part. 

       “No, I just carry that around on the off chance of something unusual popping up.”  The tape I'd taken at Doolittle's was still in it.

       “I'm a complete klutz when it comes to cameras, lighting, focusing and all that.”

       “That's pretty much automatic,” I said.  “Hard to screw up.”

       She popped out the viewer and pressed the play button.  Fortunately the battery was drained.

       “I guess you've been taping a lot,” she said, and flipped the viewer shut. 

       Like all good cops, she had a strongly developed sixth sense.  I was certain that she felt there was a connection between me and what happened to the Doolittles, but what that was she didn't know.  I lit a cigarette and saw her eyes fix on the bluish flame.  Was she wondering what it would feel like on her nipples? 

       When she was at the door getting ready to leave, I asked her if she would like to go out sometime.  She gave me her number.  I knew she would.  I was her only lead.

       SEVENTEEN

       It was late at night when I climbed into my silver Mustang and drove to Glendale.  I circled the Doolitttle place several times.  No lights were on.  I would have to be quick.  I backed into the driveway so my license plate didn't show.  Yellow police tape was strung from the garage to the screened-in porch.  I keyed open the door, snapping on my flashlight.

       This shit was risky, but necessary.  I paused at the door of the master bedroom and took out my lighter.  I couldn't put it some place difficult to find.  They'd probably searched the place thoroughly and wouldn't be likely to do so again.  I rubbed off any fingerprints and  tossed it on the floor near the baseboard at the head of the bed.  It might be too obvious, but, what the hell, shit happens.  Somebody would get an ass chew for incompetence.  I backed out and stepped into the living room.

       The lights came on.

       Detective Williams was standing on the other side of the room at the office doorway.  Smiling wryly.  An automatic aimed at me.

       “I thought you would show up after I mentioned that there wasn't a lighter at the crime scene.  I had a hunch you were implicated somehow when Doolittle's secretary told me how he reacted to your visit.  And here you are with a key to the back door and tossing a lighter into the bedroom.  I told  my colleagues about the missing lighter, but they weren't interested.  It looked like a murder-suicide so that's what they decided it would be.”

       “That's what it was,” I said.  “All I did was film some of it—not the murder-suicide.  I had no idea that was going to happen.  We left before that—”

       “We?”

       Suddenly, a figure emerged from the darkened office door way and struck Williams on the head with a bronze bookend.  She sank to the floor.

       “Good thing I came,” Jean said.  “I got to thinking that I had fucked up by not leaving my lighter here.”

       EIGHTEEN

       We tied and gagged Williams and put her in my trunk.  I took a winding road through the park toward Jean's Aunt's place.

       “I tried to call you,” she said, “but you didn't answer, so I cut across the park to the Doolittles.”

       “Good thing you did.”

       “How do you like my hair?” she said.  “I shampoo it everyday and brush it.”

       “Spiffy.”

       Jean's aunt was sitting at the kitchen table smoking and reading a movie magazine.  Her false teeth were in a glass filled with liquid cleaner next to her elbow.

       “Where's the key's to the farm, Marie?”

       “You're not going out there this late, are you?”  She sucked on the cigarette, her cheeks hollowing inward.

       “Yeah.”

       “On the mantle.”

       Jean went through a bedroom toward the living room.  I waited with the aunt.

       “I don't suppose you could lend me a few bucks for a bottle, could you?  I'll fuck you for it.”

       The lights from houses thinned out the farther we drove from the city until the landscape was black and the highway a narrow dirt road.  Then we pulled into a dirt driveway next to a white frame house with and open porch.

       “This belonged to my daddy,” she said.  She lit a kerosene lantern as we got out.   I opened the trunk.  Williams had revived.  Her grayish-blue eyes stared up at me.  I picked her up onto my shoulder.

       “We've got chickens and pigs,” Jean said, as she led me through a gate and down a path toward a block house silhouetted against the black landscape.  We stopped by a pig pen next to it. “See that big old hog there,” she said, raising the lantern above her head.  “That's Hugo.  He was my daddy's favorite.  He won a blue ribbon at the state fair.  My daddy taught me how to butcher pigs and ring the necks off chickens.  And lots of other stuff.  He was a survivalist.  He believed a person ought to know how to hunt and grow their own food in case there was ever a nuclear war.”

       Rain began to patter on the tin roof as we entered the block house.  Jean flipped a switch and florescent lights bounced off a blood stained floor and ceiling onto a long stainless steel table.  Steel hooks hung from tracks in the ceiling.  A pulley with chain was suspended from another track.  Large sacks of salt were stacked in a corner on top of pallets.  A screened-in fan was built into one wall.  Another had meat cleavers, skinners,  bone cutters, saws and several other tools I didn't recognize  hanging from pegs.

       I put Williams on the table.  Jean pulled the automatic from the waist band of her jeans and placed the barrel against  her head.  “We're going to untie you, lady, but try one fucking thing and I'll blow your goddamn brains out.”

       “You know,” I said to Jean, as I began untying Williams, “I think you ought to use a little make up.  Eye shadow, lipstick—a pink like she has on, maybe.  Nothing heavy.  And have a dentist clean your teeth.”

       “What's wrong with my teeth?” she said, crestfallen.

       “Oh, nothing really, nothing.  It's just that they're a little yellow.   You probably don't brush them like you should.  Maybe too much coffee or pot.”

       I removed the gag from Williams.  Jean placed her thumb on her lip and pushed it up.  “Her teeth are really white.”

       “That's because she takes care of them.  So could you, and yours would be just as white.”

       “Get up,” Jean said to Williams, when I'd untied her.

       Williams hung her legs over the side of the table and eased herself onto the floor.  “You'll never get away with this,” she said.

       “Oh, we will, yeah,” Jean said, casually.  She jerked the gun upward.  “Take your clothes off.”

       Williams glanced around the room; at the blood stained walls; the meat hooks hanging from the ceiling; the cutting and sawing utensils. Her eyes were wide with fear.

       “What are you going to do...to me?”

       “If you have to ask you don't need to know.”

       Slowly, with trembling hands, she took off her jacket then unbuttoned her blouse.  She lay them on the table and unhooked her bra, kicked her heels off, stepped out of her skirt and slid down her panties.  All these she placed on the table--and with a sudden swipe, Jean brushed them off onto the floor.  Williams inhaled abruptly, her tits swelling upward.

       “Now put your elbows on the table.”

       She had a really nice body.  Sleek and perfect.  I could imagine her dancing Swan Lake.  I took my clothes off and hung them on a peg.  I wanted to feel her skin on mine.   I positioned myself behind her and eased up.  The touch of her warm smooth ass against the head of my cock was electrifying. I spread her ass cheeks and slowly forced my cock into her cunt.  She arched her back and tried to pull away from me, but Jean grabbed her wrists and bent her over the table.  I rammed into her so hard that she cried out.  I was in and out of her like a piston in a race car. 

       She was gasping as hard for breath as I.

        When I was finally done, I collapsed on top of her. 

       I felt come dripping out of her onto my thighs.  She twisted her head from side to side as if she were trying to shake what had happened from her head.  My body rose and fell on top of her, from the force of her breathing, like a surfer riding the swells.

       I pulled out of her.  My cock was quivering, glistening with her juices.

       Jean released her.  She remained bent over the table.  Suddenly her legs gave out from under her, and she sank to her knees then sprawled over onto the floor.

       I picked her up and laid her out on the table.  She placed her forearm over her eyes.  Her thighs were wet.  I climbed onto the table taking her legs up until her knees touched her tits.  My cock had stayed hard.  I leaned forward sinking deeply into her perfect flesh.  She lowered her forearm.  Her eyes were aglow.  Teeth clenched.  Her hips rose to meet my thrusts with a fierce anger.  Her breath came in labored bursts from her nostrils.  Her tits rising and falling rapidly.  I couldn't hold back.  I came so hard it was like shooting ground glass.

       As I withdrew, her eyes bore into me.  With what thoughts I couldn't imagine.

       I sacked her over my shoulder.  Jean led the way.  The pigs were suddenly alive with squealing.  I kissed her perfect body and tossed her into the muddy pen.

       NINETEEN

       There was a knock at the door.  A better-than-average looking guy of medium height, wearing a hooded sweat shirt and jeans, was standing there.

       “I'm Barry, Tracy's boyfriend.  She told me you had some really boss weed.”

       I recognized him from the sub.  Cutie pie's guy.  Pre-med.

       “And you--”

       “Wanted to buy an ounce.  Trace said it was mind altering, course she's never smoked before.” he chuckled.  “But she said you said it was White Willow and that's some wicked shit.”

       “Hmm, is Trace with you?” I asked, using the familiar.

       “Yeah, she's down in the car.”

       “It'll cost you four an ounce.”

       He tried to intimidate me by looking annoyed.  “Man, that's kinda steep.” 

       “That's because I don't deal in chicken shit amounts.  You want it cheaper buy in pounds.”  I paused, looking conciliatory.  “But I know how it is--going to college and all.  Must be expensive.  You're a smart guy.  So you've got Tracy footing part of the bill.  Now she's alright for that, but when you get through med school you're gonna need a wife who is sharp and sophisticated—someone who can further your career socially and politically.  So you can get the better class of suckers--er, patients.  The Knob Hill crowd.  And let's face it, Tracy's not that someone.”

       “Man, what the fuck are you saying?”

       “Wait a minute,” I said, and shut the door.  I got an ounce of weed out of the closet and went back to the door.  I handed it to him.

       “I'm saying I'll take it out in trade.”

       I watched him go down to the car and get in.  Several minutes passed then Tracy got out and Barry drove off.  I left the door open.  I heard her footsteps on the stairs.  She came in.  I shut the door.  There were tears on her cheeks.  I unbuttoned her blouse then unhooked her bra.  I got down and unlaced her joggers, pulled them off then the socks.  I stood back up and unbuckled her belt and unzipped her jeans, pulling them down along with the panties.

       I took my clothes off and led her to the bed.

       There's no thrill greater than fucking someone's girl friend, especially when she has just realized she's being pimped.  The only greater thrill would be to fuck a prepubescent girl.

        She lay down on the bed without being told to do so.  She didn't move when I entered her.  At first.  Then she started raising her hips, rotating them, moaning, until, finally, she was gasping.

       I gave her some weed to smoke after wards.  Then when she was properly sedated, I injected her with cocaine while my dick was in her.  She went wild.

       

       TWENTY

       “She doesn't remember us fucking her,” Carla said.

       “What the hell did you give her?”

       Carla chuckled.  “Nothing exotic.  Just a couple of roofies.”

       I was wondering what Carla would do if I pulled down the zipper of her green leather dress.  I think if we ever did have sex it would be like matter and antimatter colliding.

       We were in the lounge-bar on the top of The Towers.

       “Her husband wants us to kill her.”

       “What, has the drug pusher grown tired of her?”

       Quite the contrary.  The tape I sent him, of us fucking her, must have put him in a masturbatory frenzy.  He wants something now that will put him over the top.”

       “A snuff film.”

       “Yep.  No greater thrill on earth than to kill the one you love.”

       “People are sick.”

       “Thankfully, cause they pay well.” Carla smiled and took a sip of her martini.

       “Did he mention how he wanted it done?”

       “He's a business man.  Business men have no imagination.  He'll leave that part up to us.”

       I stirred my drink.  “I think I have an idea that will send him over the top.”

       “Of course you do.  You're the best.  That's why Victor wants you back—once you get this rebellion out of your system.  But you'll have to go it alone, I'm afraid.  I'm all tied up with another commitment.”

       I parted from Carla and rode the elevator down alone and drove off in my Mustang when the valet brought it around.

         The next day I headed out to Gina's with the top down.  I passed a young girl, with backpack, in cut-off jeans walking the opposite way toward town.  Nice looking.  Blonde with a nice ass.  I inhaled deeply.  A balmy breeze blew in from the river.  There was the heady smell of nature's freshness all about.  It was one of those few remaining warm, sunny fall day.  The trees were turning their colors and beginning to litter the pavement.  I slowed down, turned around in a driveway and headed back toward town.

       The cut-off jeans were cut short.  I'll bet mama and papa didn't know how short.  She had her thumb out hitching.  I stopped.  She gave me a friendly smile and tossed her backpack in the back seat.

       “Didn't you just pass me going the other way?” she said, settling in, wrinkling her nose and squinting against the glare of the sun.

       Irrevocable need had taken firm control of me.  I smiled.  “I was on my way to a friend's when I remembered I'd forgotten something.”

       She laughed softly.  “That good.  I thought for a minute you were one of those guys my girlfriends had warned me about when I told them I'd be hitchhiking home.”

       Then why'd you get in the car, you dumb bitch?

        I laughed, “Well, your friends are right.  It's not safe to hitchhike.  Especially for an attractive girl like yourself.  There are a lot of sickos in the world.”

       I knew when I turned off the highway onto a dirt side road she would become suspicious and ask me why, so to forestall all that crap, I zapped her with my stun gun.

       She went spastic then limp; her head fell toward her shoulder. 

       My cock hammered at my jeans demanding to be set free. I shot down the first dirt road I came to wheeling the car into a clearing then behind some brush that sheltered it from view.

       I stared at her for a moment.  I felt what a hungry lion must feel when it is ready to pounce upon a helpless gazelle. My hormones raged.  I was nature's thrall.  My mouth dripped.  I dragged her from the car and ripped off her blouse then the rest of her clothes until she was naked.

       I had my cock out.  I rammed it in her fucking like mad until I felt that blissful surge of release.   My body shook as if I'd delirium trimmers.  Sweat poured from my face.  My t-shirt was soaked.  I gathered up her clothes and threw them in the back seat next to her backpack and left her lying on the ground naked.

       When I got to Gina's I checked my pants to make sure I didn't have come on them.  But my shirt was wringing wet.  I threw the hitchhiker's stuff in the trunk.

         Gina was reclining in a lounger, by the pool, wearing a skimpy bikini.

       “James, it's so good to see you.  Did Carla come, too?”

       I shook my head.  “She had an appointment to keep.  I was passing by and thought that since it was such a nice day you might want to go for a ride.”

       “You've answered my prayers,” she said.  “I was getting bored.”  She held up a glass with a finger of whiskey in it and tapped it against the bottle it came from.  “Another one of these and I'd be plastered.”

       “No, problem.  Since I'll be driving you can drink all you want.”

       “Let me go change,” she said.  She stood up, staggered and fell back onto the lounger.  “Oops, I think I've had more than I thought.”

       I went over to the lounger and handed her the bottle.  “You hold on to that, and I'll hold onto you.”

       I walked her around to the front of the house and opened the car door.

       “James, I can't go like this.  I'm almost naked.” She weaved back on her heels waving the bottle out to her side as if it gave her balance.

       “Don't worry, we'll be out in the country, in the car, nobody will notice.”

       She looked fetching in the bikini.  It was made out of thin material.  I could see the imprint of her nipples.

       She got in holding the bottle between her legs.

       “How do you like my bikini,” she said, after we got under way.

       “Sexy.”

       “It's the kind the sun's rays can penetrate.  That way I get a total tan just like if I was naked.”

       “Where we're going you can be naked if you want.”

       “Will you make love to me?”

       I looked at her and smiled.

       “I liked the way you kissed my back when we were driving coming from Midnight's.  I wanted you to make love to me, but your sister was there.  That whole night's kinda hazy, though.  Did we?”

       I smiled.

       “I know I'm a married woman and shouldn't talk like this, but...”

       I glanced over.  She'd passed out.  She was a major slut underneath it all.  All women are.  I wanted to smash her face in with my fist.

       Jean was waiting for me when I got to the farm.

       “How do you like it?” she said, holding the sides of her head in her hands and tilting it from side to side.

       She'd put make up on.  The plain face was gone.  She actually looked glamorous now.

       I nodded approvingly.

       “I did it like the stars do it.  The whole method was in a magazine by a famous makeup artist.

       I handed her the bottle and lifted Gina onto my shoulder.  We headed down the path to the abattoir.  After I lay her on the table I went back to the car and got my camera equipment out of the trunk.  When I returned, Jean was trying on Gina's sandals.  She was naked. 

       I hefted the camera onto my shoulder.  The fluorescent lighting sucked, but would lend an even more gritty realism, coupled with my amateurish handling.  Reginald would definitely get his nut off on this one.  I knew I would.

       Gina began to stir.  I focused in on her face to get her reaction when she became aware of where she was.  Jean took a knife from a peg and cut away her bikini top and bottom.  She played the point of the knife around each nipple, down the smooth firm belly to a shaved cunt.

       Gina's eyelids flickered then remained open, her eyes unfocused.  Her head lolled from side to side as she tried to shake off the woozy effects of alcohol.  Then her pretty gray eyes opened wide as reality seeped in.  She took it in all in at once:  me, Jean, the camera, the instruments, the blood stained walls.  No doubt she felt the cold stainless steel table top against her naked flesh.

       She screamed.  The sound penetrated the block walls to the waiting pigs outside who began squealing with restless anticipation.  I sat the camera on its tripod and helped Jean secure her limbs to the legs of the table with metal cuffs.

       I climbed on top of her and began fucking.  She  jerked frantically at the restraints, arching her back and screaming continuously.  When I was ready to come, I pulled my dick out and shot gooey strands all over her tits and belly.  Jean stuck her head between us lapping it up like a dog while Gina moaned and cried out piteously one moment, then, with the next, cursing and pleading insanely at the restraints that held her captive.

       Jean hooked a chain to the pulley then wrapped the other end around Gina's ankles, removed the cuffs then hoisted her up so that she hung upside down, her fingers almost brushing the ground.  She placed the blade of the knife against Gina's cunt and brought it down, pulling hard with both hands.  A  rain of blood and guts splattered her naked body.  I put the camera on the tripod again and fucked Jean while Gina's blood dripped upon us.

       TWENTY ONE

       I had been smoking some opium and having the most marvelous dreams when Beth arrived.  She was wearing the green leather dress.  The rule was she had to wear it whenever she was with me—and nothing underneath.  She complained that men gawked at her when she walked down the streets.  But the thought of other men wanting to fuck her turned me on.  Strange how it is why some women are so compliant.  It can only be because they want to be used.  And I suspect knowing that men want to stick their cocks in them must be a real turn on, too.

       She sat down at the table.

       I told her I had two presents for her, and I put them on  the table.   One was in a small square box.  The other in a long narrow box like a single long stem rose might come in.  She opened the small box first.  It contained a five carat diamond ring.  She bounced in her chair with joy.  She slipped it on her finger, kissing me and saying yes, yes, yes. I hate sentimental nonsense, but stupid women demand it.  Anyway it was a necessary part of my plan.  For every sunny day there must be a cloudy one.  She opened the long box and stared at the contents with a puzzled look on her face.

       “It's a branding iron,” I said.

       “But I don't understand,” she said.

       “I want to brand you.”

       She was silent.  I unzipped her dress and put her on the bed.  I heated the branding iron over the flames from a Sterno can.  When it was red hot I pressed it to her belly.  I rubbed salve on the burns and told her to get dressed.

       I drove her to Mama's Café.  We took a booth.  A couple of women sat at the bar.  A drunk was slumped over in a chair.  Two black guys were shooting pool, a couple others watching.  I saw them watching Beth when we came in.  The dress was an invitation to fuck.

       I left her to go watch the black guys play.  The two who were watching walked past me.  They got in the booth with Beth.  When the game was over, the loser paid up and joined the other two.  I played poorly and lost.  My mind wasn't on the game.  I walked back to the bar and got a beer.  They had unzipped  Beth's dress.  One was fingering her.  Another was squeezing her tits.  They put her on the table and the fourth guy began fucking her.  The two women, next to me, egged the men on with lewd instructions delivered with lascivious laughter.  I watched for awhile then left.

       TWENTY TWO

       James Joyce once said that, If there is anything there's a hell.  And who could disagree?  Does anyone really believe that nonsense about there being a Heaven for this deviant human race?  We were created by nature, an idiot god, and instilled with an impulse.  Some naive persons mistakenly believe this impulse was placed in us for the purpose of continuing some whacky god's wondrous plan.  But, no, we are born between piss and shit like any other animal—hardly an entrance for supposedly divinely inspired creatures.  Nature is the predicate, the impulse,  and has no plan.  It is indifferent to us.  How we are guided by this impulse,  whether to reproduce or to rape, to kill or plunder, is of no consequence.  In the end the impulse which brought us into existence will destroy us.

       This was a thought that occurred to me, drifting like a leaf in the stream.  I always find thoughts like this popping up in my mind unbidden.  Really annoying because nothing matters, and so thoughts don't matter.  But we have no control over them.  We just have to put up with them.  If an omnipotent being existed it would have no thoughts.  It would not be conscious, for if it were it would not be omnipotent.  Consciousness exist only as a coping mechanism to overcome obstacles.  An omnipotent being has nothing to overcome.

       I fixed myself another bowl of opium and smoked.  On my laptop I got the latest news.  A young girl had been found wandering along River Road apparently the victim of a rape.  Name was being withheld until parents could be notified.

       I smiled noticing they had left out the fact that she would have been naked.  Of course the little bitch would tell them everything she knew.  Which was probably nothing.  I doubt she even knew what kind of car I drove.  Any bitch dumb enough to hitchhike couldn't know much.  I doubt she'll tell them how much she enjoyed my big cock going into her.  The little slut.

       I relived the moment in my mind.  Ripping her clothes off; exposing that sweet young body; sucking those pink soft nipples; then spreading the legs; staring down as my cock slid into her cottony patch of blonde hair.  God, I made myself hard all over again thinking about it.  What must she have thought while I was doing her?  She wasn't a virgin.  Some long-dicked boyfriend had had that sweet pussy.  I probably should have left her clothes.  Then she wouldn't have told anyone she'd been raped.  But I wanted to leave her naked to humiliate her.  So she couldn't hide the fact that she'd been raped.  She would carry the shame of it the rest of her life.  But nights will come when she will lie awake remembering it, and her tingling body will become feverish, her breath rapid.  Her soft fingers will tweak her swollen  nipples and clit and she will come ecstatically, gasping for breath.  Lo, I will be with her always, like a phantom, always raping her over and over for the rest of her life.

       I was coming down from my high  when I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs.  I peeked out the door and saw a young couple struggling up the stairs with a double-wide  mattress to the vacant apartment across from mine.  The woman was built.  Shoulder length dark-brown hair and brown eyes.  The guy was of the nerdy type.  Glasses, a burr hair cut, narrow shoulders, baggy pants and a t-shirt with pens clipped to the pocket.  I looked out the front window and saw a U-Haul It. 

       I showered, brushed my teeth and slipped on jeans and a light sweater and went out on the landing. 

       “Looks like we'll be neighbors,” I said, stating the obvious as they came out of the apartment.  I offered to help them.

       “Boy, we could sure use it,” the man said.  “This is Kathy, my wife.  “I'm Roy Dennis.”

       We shook hands.  “I'm James Vian.”

       As we went down the stairs I stared at Kathy's nice ass in cutoff jeans.  She was wearing a halter top that left her mid section bare.  Whatever attracted her to Roy sure wasn't physical.

       I grabbed a coffee table, and Roy picked up a computer while Kathy followed with a bundle of clothing.  It didn't take long to unload the U-Haul It.  In the bedroom, I helped Roy set up the double-wide bed, then we all sat around their dining table drinking coffee.  After some idle chit chat—during which I learned Roy was working on his PhD in Physics and that Kathy was going to teach high school as soon as she finished her student teaching—I got up to leave.  They promised to invite me over for dinner as soon as they'd got everything in order.

       When I was back in my apartment, I snorted some coke and jacked off with Kathy on my mind.

       TWENTY THREE

       “Your writing is good, James,” Sarah Collins, the teaching assistant said, “but I can't read it to the class.  It's too obscene.”

       “Isn't obscenity relative?” I said, trying to sound like I gave an academic shit.  “Once Joyce, Lawrence and Miller were considered obscene—not to mention Elvis.”

       She smiled at the Elvis remark.  I knew she would.  I wanted her to.  She had a nice smile, nice even teeth.  As white as milk.  Behind pink kissable lips. Her reddish-brown hair was fixed in a swirl, and an oval face glittered with two perfect hazel eyes.  She was wearing a waist length jacket over a tan blouse and a knee-length skirt that hugged her figure.   As she sat in her swivel chair, with her legs crossed, it had risen half way up her thighs revealing shapely legs narrowing down to delicate ankles and pink nails sticking from open-toed sandals.

       The deviant in me pulsed.  Her perfume gave me a rush.

       “Yes,” she said, “but they didn't write explicit scenes of bestial rape, torture and murder.”

       Beautiful she might be but frightfully conventional.

       “And yet,” I said, offering up more shit, “governments and corporations, in reality, countenance these acts on a daily basis during war, and even in peace, and few protest.  Yet to fantasize about them is forbidden.”

       “But you seem to be proselytizing, James.  It's almost as if you delight in such acts.”

       I couldn't answer that truthfully, for I was following the dictates of my impulse—we all were, but she was unaware of hers.  She lived, as most do, in a smiley face world, and far be it from me to try and enlighten the brain dead.  It's always best to avoid stupid people; they're dangerous…and had she been ugly I would have, but she had a body that was like a magnet and mine made of iron.

       I knew she was working on her dissertation from previous  conversations.  And she had talked about how hard it was to scrap together enough money to get by.  I had noticed a couple of boxes full of books and papers next to her desk, and I asked her if that was stuff she was working on.

       She nodded.  “Could you help me lug it out to the car?”

       It had begun to sprinkle.  Brown leaves, like scraps of rubber, covered the campus sidewalks and lawns.  I carried the heavy box.  She led the way to the faculty parking lot.  I stared at the sensual sway of her hips from side to side, and listened to the click-clack of her heels on the concrete that seem to be saying, 'take me, take me.'

       She opened the door of a red gas saver, and I put my box inside.  She closed the door and hesitated.

       “I probably shouldn't ask this, but in your story your, uh,  protagonist is described so well as a porn star, that I...”  She paused.  “Gosh, here I go...well, I was just wondering if you'd ever done...that kind of thing?”

       I nodded.  “When I was in Cali.”

       “And you really made that kind of money?”

       “Oh, yeah.”

       “Four thousand dollars for a few hours work?”

       “Yeah, pretty much.  Depends on what you do, but pretty much.”

       “I didn't mean to pry.  My lips are sealed.”

       “It's all right.  I don't mind.”

       TWENTY FOUR

       I headed back to the student parking lot, got in the Mustang and lit a cigarette.  I sat for awhile watching the rain drops slither down the windshield, seemingly willy-nilly, but their path completely determined by innumerable factors.  I was thinking about the way she'd said, 'thousand'  Her breath had prolonged the 'thou.'  I started the engine and turned on the wipers.  What would it take, I wondered?

       I drove to Carla's.  The elevator was one of those outside jobs.  The city spread out in epic proportions the higher I went.  Carla had one of the penthouses.  I had to punch in a code to reach it.  She opened the door wrapped in a yellow towel and another turban style on her head.

       “James, you're just in time to get drunk with me.”  She smelled of expensive bath soaps.  Her tits swelled at the edge of the towel holding it up with their firmness.  Her alabaster legs  were as if sculpted by the hands of a master, and her lips still held a trace of cherry perhaps kissed away by the lips of a devotee.  We could have sat on the patio overlooking the city, but the rain was bouncing off the glistening wet tiles now.  So I plopped down on a silver, plush, stretch sofa.  She fixed me a Scotch, neat, and sat down close enough to me so that I could feel the heat of her body.  She drew her legs up, tilting toward me on one hip.  She sipped on something pink and frosty with a straw.

       She traced my hair line with a red manicured nail.  “What brought you out of such a wet stormy day, James?”

       “A thought.”

       “A thought?” she said, with an amused looked.

       “A favor.”

       “Well...”  She pursed her lips.  Green eyes twinkling. 

       I explained what I needed without a why.

       TWENTY FIVE

       Sarah had talked about her fiancé during one of my critiques.  He was a medical doctor who taught a graduate course on campus.  I stationed myself on a bench near his parking space, and Carla parked her BMW next to it just before he was to arrive.  The hood raised up, she got out dressed in a purple blouse open at the throat, short gray skirt and black heels.

       It wasn't long before the doctor arrived.  He was driving Sarah's red car which puzzled me.  Was there economic trouble in River City?  He got out instantly noticing Carla and the raised hood.  I was too far away to tell what they were saying, but it wasn't hard to guess.  Carla pointed to the engine and raised her arms in the I-don't-know gesture.  He nodded, said something, and Carla nodded and swept her hand motioning toward the car.  The doctor got in and cranked it, and it started.  Carla raised her arms in a hallelujah as he got out smiling.  No doubt she was saying something like, 'You're a life saver.'  Etc., etc.  He put the hood down.   They talked some more, both smiling.  He looked at his watch and nodded toward the Life Science building.  She said something and he wrote something down on a piece of paper.  She headed back to the car waving to him, and he waved back.  As she drove past me she raised her thumb.

TWENTY SIX

       I finished breakfast and poured myself another cup of coffee and lit a cigarette, sucking in the acrid fumes deeply.  It was raining and I was thinking about taking a long walk down to the river.  A door opened and closed across the landing.  Footsteps went down the steps.  I looked out the front window.  Roy was getting in their brown mini van.

       I sat back down mulling over what Sarah had said about my writing.  That I was proselytizing.  But I think that she is wrong.  You have to be a true believer to proselytize.  You have to believe that what you believe is true, is important.  You have to want to convert others to your belief.  For their good—but that's not me.  I am not a true believer.  I have my beliefs, but they are no more valid than the beliefs of others.  And I don't care.  Nothing matters in the least.  Believe what the hell you want.  I have, more properly, an attitude rather than a belief.

       I have no interest in writing, have no talent for it.  I am a sociopath.  I have nothing to say to human beings.  I am a predator.  I took the writing course because Sarah was teaching it.  I was like a tiger sensing prey.  I wanted to tear her throat out, rip her to pieces.  Hate is the only real emotion I am capable of. 

       I smoked listening to the rain patter on the window panes.  I wondered how Carla was coming along with the doctor.  He didn't stand a chance with her.  No man did.  Carla is the perfect woman, but for her and me it would be matter and antimatter.

       There was a knock at the door, so faint that I wasn't aware of it for several moments.  I was naked, so I slipped on a pair of trunks.

       It was Kathy.  She was wearing a thin housecoat with snap button up and down the front.  There was a fervid look on her face as she brushed by me and walked to the bed.  Her breasts began to rise and fall noticeably as she unsnapped the housecoat.  She was naked underneath.  She lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling.  I took off my trunks and got between her legs and started kissing her neck and tits.  She didn't move, but her breathing became audible and quickened.  I was the answer to all the trashy romance novels she'd ever read, but she found herself afraid to respond like the wanton heroines in those novels.  This was all new to her.  Actual reality was too overwhelming, but she had wanted it over her fantasies enough to  knock on my door.  And I will gladly fulfill those fantasies, for  in doing so I will possess her.  And in time she will lick my come off the floor.

       I moved down her belly kissing its firmness.  I kissed the inner thighs teasing all around her cunt.  Closer and closer, brushing my lips lightly over the hairs just enough to send delicate shudders of delight through her.  She was breathing rapidly now, gasping for breath.  Her fingers laced my hair, her hips straining upward.  I touched her clit with the tip of my tongue, nibbled and sucked.  She cried out, her body trembling.

       I placed my hands beneath her hips and raised her up.  I entered her forcefully, pushing and grinding.  I slammed into her as if I wanted to crush her.  Anguished gasps became ragged snorts between jittery cries and incoherent pleadings.  I exploded into her, driving and hammering my erection as deep as I could force it.  Her flesh sucked my flesh.  She tightened around me, pulling me in.  My come came and came in an endless flow.  I collapsed on top of her. 

       When she was gone, as quietly as she'd come, I opened the closet door.  Alice was tied naked to a straight-back chair, gagged and blindfolded.  I think she was beginning to realize that the games she wanted to play were not games.  And I think she was beginning to like it.  Women are more decadent than the average man could ever imagine.  The more innocent they appear the more vile they are.  They are willful and will only submit to strong men.  But they are never to be trusted or pitied.  Husbands are always surprised to find that their wives cheat on them.  'Why,' they'll say, 'I always treated her with love and respect,' foolishly not realizing that if they'd used the whip instead, their wives would never have strayed.  Women do not want love, they want the seduction of the whip.  But most men have been deceived by their mothers who secretly want to emasculate them with faux affection while sadistically denying them the deep penetrating release all men what from their whore mothers.  Only the whip will make their cunts receptive.

       Alice was proof positive.  Right now she squirmed ecstatic in anticipation of what I would do to her.  Her pink nipples were hard and the seat of the chair wet with her need.  I untied her,  stood her outside, and tied the rope around her neck then placed it over the top of the door.  I pulled her to her feet and had her stand on the chair while I tied the end of the rope around the inside door knob then closed the door.  I stared at her lovely nakedness.  The rope pulled tightly at her neck, stretching it.  I kicked the chair out from under her.  Her body slammed back against the door.  Her hands shot up grasping frantically for the rope.  Her toes strained downward trying to reach the floor, then she doubled her legs up pushing the soles of her feet against the door desperately trying to raise herself up.  I picked up a section of lamp cord that I had cut especially for the purpose and began flailing her naked body.  Red welt appeared on her breasts, her belly and thighs as I whipped her viciously.  She would have screamed, but the rope around her neck strangled off any sound she could make.  She banged her body wildly against the door, spittle dribbled down her chin onto her breasts, her face grew red, her eyes wild like an animal's.  I struck her again and again with the rubber coated cord causing her body to lurch out of control.  Red welts enveloped her arching nakedness. 

       Then her struggles diminished.  When she was hanging listlessly I opened the closet door and untied the rope from the knob, letting her crumble onto the floor.  As life began seeping back into her, I grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to the bed.  She was as limp as a rag doll as I positioned her on her stomach.  My cock was hard, the foreskin curled back on the thick stem.  I spread her legs and stared at the tight asshole and the shaved cunt.  I paused savoring my anticipation.  I took a pillow and shoved it under her hips.  I leaned over her feeling the warmth of her body radiate up against me.  Slowly I pressed my cock against the pink ring of her asshole.  There was a tight resistance that inflamed my passion.  She arched her back as I slid into her.  Her thighs trembled.  Each thrust forced air audibly from her mouth. “Oh, oh, oh.”

       She squirmed beneath me.  The warmth of her nakedness fueling my greedy lust.  She brought her heels up and hammered them  rhythmically against my ass.  Her hands circled back grabbing my head and pulling my face down to lick and suck the back of her neck.  Her fingers tugged my hair with each thrust.  She was audible, moaning and taunting me with raw, abandoned obscenities to fuck her harder.

       I twisted her over onto her back.  She stared at me with feverish eyes, holding her mouth opened wide as I plunged my tongue into it, our tongues tangling frantically.  I shoved my cock into her cunt causing her to cry out with animal intensity.  Her hands were all over me, pulling, squeezing, scratching.  She hooked her legs around my hips, pulling me farther into her.  Her head swung from side to side as I pounding into her with loud flesh slapping sounds.

       Her warm wet tongue found my ear.  Her teeth gripped a lobe as her hips rotated and surged beneath my thrust.  Her hands pulled at the long tangles of my hair; showered kisses over my face, begging me with hot murmurs to fuck her even harder. 

       I fell over on my back and grabbed the back of her neck pulling her mouth down onto my cock.  She sucked forcefully with moist slurping sounds while jerking the base of it with a hand.  Come  filled her mouth overflowing from her lips.  She swallowed greedily then licked come from her hand and my groin.    

       TWENTY SEVEN

       A week passed then the local news exploded with news that a Dr. Martin Stendhal had been arrested for possession of illegal drugs with intent to sell.  I knew the name.  It was the one Sarah had told me was her fiancé’s.  So Carla had succeeded, as I knew she would.

       It was a gray cloudy day.  I stood looking out the front window smoking and watching the occasional pedestrian walk by.  I wondered for a moment where each one came from and where each one was going.

       I knew where I was going.  I dialed Sarah's office on campus.  There wasn't any answer.  I didn't think there would be.  She would be at the courthouse trying to arrange bail, no doubt.  She would be stressed out—and vulnerable.  She would need a shoulder to cry on.

       There was a tap on the door.  I wasn't eager for another round of sex with Kathy—not with more exciting prey in the offing.

       But it was Carla.

       “I was wondering why you wanted Stendhal framed,” she said, sitting down at the table and lighting a cigarette,” but when I saw the grieving clit at the court house I understood.”  Carla smiled.  “You want to fuck her, and you think you'll be able to with the fiancé out of the way.

       I chuckled.  “I owe you, Carla.  Tell me how you pulled it off.”

       “It wasn't hard.  A few pills in his wine, an ounce of coke in gram baggies and a 911 call.  When the fucker came to, he was in custody.  The judge denied bail.  He's considered a flight risk, but the dumb fuck doesn't have any money.  Most of his practice is devoted to charity work.”

       TWENTY EIGHT

       I waited a few days then I showed up at Sarah's office.  She was sitting at her computer staring at a blank screen.  I knocked.  She looked up.  Her face drawn.  After a moment, she nodded.  She was wearing a dark blue dress suit.

       “I'm not doing any critiquing today, James.”

       I waved my hand side to side.  “No, I just...I heard about your fiancé.  I just wanted to tell you if there's anything I can do to help let me know.”

       She nodded, tightening her lips.  “I really appreciate that, James, but there's nothing anyone can do, I'm afraid.  I just got back from the court house.  We can't even make bail.”

       “Yeah, I heard.  That's heavy.”

       “Why on earth not?” She verged on teary-eyed.

       I shook my head.

       “He could be in jail for months awaiting trial.  They have a huge backlog.  He can't even afford a lawyer.”

       “That's tough,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic while I fantasized whipping her naked body with a cat o'nine tails. 

       “I don't even have my car.  He was using it.  They impounded it when they found drugs in it.”

       “Damn.  Well, I don't want to ring any alarm bells, but do they know it's your car?”

       “No, at least I don't think so, but it doesn't matter who's car it is.  It had drugs and a weapon in it...and...and it's all so crazy, so it would have been impounded anyway.”

       “Yeah, but that's not what I meant.  When they find out it's your car they might arrest you.”

       “What?”

       “Yeah.  Drugs.  Your car.  And they might find out at any time.”

       “But that’s…what can I do?”

       I looked thoughtful for a moment.  “I know a lawyer who can tell us what you need to do.  I'll go get my car and come back and pick you up.  Where do you live?”

       “1467 Osborn Lane, Apt. 2.  Why?”

       “The police will go there as soon as they find out the car's yours.  You'll have to stay somewhere else.”  I was thinking on my feet.  I had to know her address.  The police wouldn’t be coming for her, but I wanted to make her think they were.

       On the way to my car, I called the police and told them a woman was being raped at 1467 Osborn Lane.

       By the time I drove Sarah to her apt. two police cruisers, with lights flashing, were parked out front questioning people.

       “Well,” I said, pulling to the curb, “it seems they found out it's your car all right.” I shook my head in mock exasperation.  Like I gave a fuck.  Ha.

       The look on Sarah's face was one of complete devastation.  The look, I suspect, one would get when they realize that the reality they thought was so firmly fixed had vanished leaving only an abyss.

       “This can't be happening?” she uttered dazedly.  Her hand gripped her purse leaving the knuckles deadly white.

       “Unfortunately it is.  You can stay at my place while I see the lawyer.  You'll be safe there.”

       She nodded numbly.

       I had no intention of going to a lawyer.  After I dropped Sarah off at my place, I went to see Carla.

       She was naked getting a massage by a muscular black man on the balcony.  I poured myself a whiskey and waited until he left and she came in, still naked, and stretched out on the silver sofa.

       I raised my glass in a salute and sat down in an armchair.  “I have to give it to you, Carla” I said, perkily.        

       She gave me a sly smile.  “T'weren't nothing to it, pard.”

       “But what puzzles me is why no bail for an ounce of coke?”

       She smiled deliciously, like a cat that had just swallowed a canary.  “Well, I didn't tell you quite everything, James.  I arranged to have one of Victor's operatives place a scope rifle in the trunk of his car...along with a detailed itinerary of the president's next campaign route.”

       I chuckled.  “You evil bitch, and it is actually Sarah's car.  They'll probably disappear both of them down the rabbit hole since the NDAA's been signed into law.”

       “That just goes to disprove the old adage, you can have your pussy and eat it too.  When you get tired of her, turn her in.”  Carla had a dreamy look on her face.  “I wouldn't want to be an attractive woman renditioned to one of the Stans or Egypt.  The things they do to women there, yum, yummy, yum.”

       “Yes, thank god all governments are corrupt as hell or else people like you and I couldn't exist.”

       “Only the innocent need worry.”

       TWENTY NINE

       When I got back to the apartment Sarah was sitting on the edge of the bed crying.  I sat down next to her and put my arm around her.  The smell of her perfume was heady.  I could feel my dick stir.

       “Don't cry, Sarah,” I said, then pulled out one of those old asinine adages.  “It's always darkest before the dawn.”

       “And a candle always burns brightest before it goes out,” she said between sniffles taking a tissue from her purse.

       Fuck you, bitch.  “There, there,” I said, squeezing her so that her breast pressed against me.

       Through our clothes I could feel the heat of her body.

       “Did you see the lawyer?”  Her hazel eyes were desperately hopeful.

       “Yes.”  I gave her a disgruntled look.  “But I'm afraid the doctor is being held as a terrorist.”

       “But...what?  That's crazy.  Martin's not a terrorist.”

       “Ah, of course not...” I hesitated, as if trying to be tactful.  “But he did have a sniper's rifle in the trunk of your car and a map of the president's campaign route.  It looks bad.”

       There was a fumbling attempt for some shred of sanity  suffusing her face.

       “But Martin's apolitical.  He's not interested in things like that.”

       “Perhaps you didn't know him as well as you think.”

       She got hot at that.  “I know he's a good man.  My god, he's turned down a lucrative career to help the poor--”  She broke down in tears.  Her whole body shook.

       “Perhaps he saw so much injustice in world that he snapped.  It can happen to the best of men.  Especially good men, sensitive men.”  I patted her shoulder and hugged her closer.  “But there's something more important for you to realize.”

       “What's that?” she asked, her eyes bright with tears.

       “The car can be traced to you...”  I left it hanging.

       A question formed on her pretty face.

       I patted her thigh, softly.  “The police, the FBI, will be searching for you as an accomplice.  Your photo will be on TV, in the papers, everywhere.”  This time I was telling the truth.

       “Oh, my god.  What am I going to do?”

       “Leave it to me.  But, first, we've got to change your appearance.  They'll be looking for a woman with reddish-brown hair and brown eyes.  We'll make you a blonde and get some blue contact lens.

       THIRTY

       I had to have some pussy.  I could have raped her.  There was nothing to prevent me, but I wanted her to want it.  It would be more exciting that way.  To totally degrade her.  To make her crawl on her knees for it.  To beg.  But in the meantime I had to have some pussy.  I had a tumescence that wouldn't quit.

       Three days had passed.  She was asleep on the bed wrapped in my red bath robe fresh from the shower.  Alice, who was a beautician, had dyed her hair.  And the contact lens were in a box on the nightstand for when she would have to go outside.

       I lit a cigarette and stared out the front window.  Roy was getting in the brown van.  It was Sunday so I knew he wasn't going to work.  I went across the landing and knocked.  There was no answer.  I tried the handle.  The door opened.  I walked into the living room that was the mirror image of mine.  A shower was running.  I heard splashes.

       There was a shocked look on Kathy's face as I pulled the curtain aside.

       “James, how...are you crazy?” Her face was anxious.  “Roy will be back in a minute.  He just left to get some cigarettes.  You've got to leave.”   Her dark hair was plastered to the sides of her face.  Beads of soapy water sluiced down her body as the rush of the shower pelted her. 

       I took my t-shirt and trunks off.  She was scared,  but there was a hot look of excitement in her eyes as she stared at my cock.  She cowered against the wall as I stepped into the stall.  I gripped her thighs and lifted her up.  She whimpered softly as I entered her.  I forced my tongue into her mouth.  Soon she was making throaty sounds and stopped pushing the palms of her hands against my chest and eagerly wrapped her arms around my neck gasping and sighing wildly.

       I lifted her up then brought her down repeatedly on my thick, straining erection, her warm moist tightness driving me wild.  I engulfed her tits sucking on the nipples making her groan between ecstasy and pain.  She kissed my face and neck with total abandonment, and when the sounds of Roy's returning footsteps could be heard she became even more delirious, unable to stem the raw passions controlling her.

       She came with violent shudders, her hands squeezing my shoulders.  As she slid off my cock her legs gave out from under her and she collapsed to the floor.  After a minute or so, I got her up and told her what to say.  She wrapped herself in a towel and went out of the bathroom.  I heard her tell Roy to go back to the store. 

       “Here, you can smoke mine,” Roy said.

       “But you know I don't like those menthols, honey.”

       “Oh, all right,” he groaned.

       “Love you.”

       “Me too.”

       As I started to leave she dropped the towel and pressed her damp firm body against me, but I’d had enough of the greedy slut.

       THIRTY ONE

       “This is horrible,” Sarah said, gazing at a picture of herself being plastered all over the TV news. 

       “Wanted by the FBI for possible complicity in a plot to assassinate the president,” a talking head was saying.  To insure the police would be looking for her, I had made an anonymous call and implicated her.

       I turned the set off.  “I know it looks bad but the lawyer I told you about is one of the best.  He'll get things straightened out.  In the meantime you just have to hang tight.”

       Her pretty face was lined with worry.  Even so I was impressed with how gorgeous she looked as a blonde.  She was shorter than Carla but well matched.

       “It has to, James,” she said, in an anguished voice.  “I can't go to prison for the rest of my life.  I couldn't take it.”

       Her distress excited me, and I knew I would have to fuck her soon.  And I think I knew just how to arrange it so that it would not look as though I'd done so.

       THIRTY TWO

       Ben Goldstein was a criminal lawyer—and I stress the word criminal.  Smooth, slick.  Gray hair combed straight back like a twenties' gangster.  Gold rimmed glasses.  Clean shaven.  Armani suit.  Gold signet ring on little finger.  A sonorous baritone voice calculated to win over any jury.

       “I rarely go to trial,” Goldstein said, looking at Sarah.  “Only lawyers on TV do that.   Too unpredictable.   Far better to bribe the judge.”  He chuckled, fiddling with a Montblanc fountain pen as he leaned back in a tufted leather swivel chair behind his desk.  “But in this case we couldn't go to trial even if we wanted to.”

       “I don't understand,” Sarah said.  “Why not?”  She was wearing the plum colored blouse and gray skirt I'd bought for her--since the police had confiscated all her belongings at her apartment.

       “Well, before you arrived, just now, I received word that your fiancé has been disappeared.  He no longer exist.”

       Sarah was motionless for a moment.  “But what...how is that possible?  What, what do you mean he doesn't exist?”

       “Hm, just that.  He's been designated a terrorist.  As such he no longer has any legal rights; no access to legal representation.  He'll be held incommunicado.  His location undisclosed.”

       “But how is that possible in America.  That's unconstitutional.”

       Goldstein smiled whimsically.  “This isn't a free country anymore, Miss Collins.  Since 9/11 we've been living in a police state.  But more to the point, you are considered an accomplice, and if caught you will be disappeared also.”

       Sarah looked at me, her eyes full of disbelief, uncertainty.

       “What can we do?” I said.

       Goldstein rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger.  “Well, I know people who can supply you with a new ID:  passport, birth certificate, driver's license and such.  But it will be expensive.”

       “Is there nothing else to be done?” Sarah asked.

       “Nothing,” Goldstein answered.  “You might evade the police for a while, but eventually they'll find you.”

       “That's it,” Sarah said, as we drove back to my apartment.  “My life is over.”

       “We'll get you a new ID,” I said.

       “And where will I get the money for that?  And even if I did what will happen to Martin.  I have no life without him.”  Tears glistened on  her cheeks.  She put her face in her hands.  Her shapely body shook.

       I was touched...momentarily.  But whenever I feel a noble impulse I always count to ten.

       “I know it's hard,” I said, “but you have to think of yourself.  Martin wouldn't want you to give up.”

       She raised her head and looked at me, eyes full of puppy dog tears.  “But you speak as if Martin were dead.”

       I pinched my lips and tilted my head slightly, feigning the I-give-a-shit-look.  “Well, where the government will send him, he would be better off dead.”  Her eyes widened in horror.  I wanted to scare her.  “Those who are rendered to foreign countries are often tortured to death.”  I saw her smiley face world crumbling around her.

       “Surely to god not,” she gasp.

       “Oh, yeah.  It's always been the fate of political prisoners—only now it's done openly.  But,” I added after a pause, “there are ways to get around these things.  The right amount of money here, the right amount of finagling there and the charges against Martin could be quietly dropped when media attention has dwindled.”

       A glimmer of hope shown in her expression.  “Could it be?” she murmured.

       “Grease the right palms,” I said.

       “But where can I get that kind of money?”        

       I smiled.

       THIRTY THREE

       It was a lot of trouble to go through for just a piece of pussy, but it's never about the pussy per se, is it?  It's about delight in the destruction of virtue.  That is the premise one draws from Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses:  that there is no greater thrill than to destroy someone's virtue.   Happy endings are for the weak who insist upon being fed tripe.

       I lay on the bed smoking and listening to the rain tap against the window.  The lights were out all over town.  Rolling blackouts or something.  Another Enron-like scam probably.  Occasionally a flash of lightning would light the room up in a bluish fluorescent glow making the darkness seem even blacker afterwards.

       “It's like being back in the days before electricity,” Sarah said, “or at the end of the world.”  She was sitting on the edge of the bed wearing cutoffs and a tank top.

       “Wanna go for a walk?” I said.

       “In the rain?”

       “Yes.”

       “Okay.”

       I grabbed the umbrella.  The rain was heavy, but there was no wind, so it covered us.  It was balmy.  She moved up against me.  I put my arm around her waist.  We headed toward town, toward the river.  It was odd not being able to see the skyscrapers, leaning against the blackened sky, except in blinding flashes of lightning.  The booms of thunder that always followed reverberated through the streets off old residential homes from the Victorian age.  The ground seemed to shake.  It was late.  Few cars passed by, their tires hissing on the flooded street. 

       When we got to town candles glowed in some of the clubs.  We entered one.  A few patrons sat at the bar.  And one or two in the booths.  I ordered two club sodas, and we picked out a booth near the entrance.  Rain washed against the plate glass window.

       Two gang bangers, oversized clothing and black head wraps, came in ten or fifteen minutes later, soaked.  They shuffled about kinda loose jointed looking about.  They ordered a couple of beers and sat down.

       “Yo, man, it be fuckin' on down out dere.”

       We finished our drinks and continued our walk and  hadn't gone far when I felt cold steel pressed against my back.

       “Yo, bitch.  What say you be showin' us niggas your pussy.”

       In a flash of lightning I saw one of the gang bangers holding Sarah with a knife at her throat.  The other one was pressing what was no doubt a gun barrel against me.

       They navigated us into an alley and made Sarah strip.  The one with the knife made her get on her hands and knees.  I watched in fascination as he fucked her, the strobic flashes of lightning creating something like a phantasmagoria.  The second nigger fucked her then made me fuck her.  I think I came harder than I'd ever done in my life.  How sweeter still the forbidden fruit plucked from another's garden.

       It was impossible to find Sarah's clothes in the darkness.  The alley acted like a sluice.  They had probably vanished down a drain.  I gave her my t-shirt to wear.  With heads bent against the downpour we battled endlessly against the current back to my apt.

       Sarah showered even though the rain had thoroughly cleansed us, although probably not as much as she could wish.  I showered too.  The prickling needles of warmth felt good.  When I came out, Sarah was lying on the bed naked curled in the fetal position.  I lay down behind her and pulled the blanket over us.  Sometime into the darkness, wind rattling the windows, rain tattering down, Sarah moved to me pressing her warm flesh against mine.  Her hand gripped me guiding me into her.

       

       THIRTY FOUR

       She had accepted her lot.  When you no longer have a choice, life, once full of complications, becomes simply a matter of going with the flow.

       “I'll do it,” she said.  She was wearing my red bathrobe sitting across the table from me sipping a cup of coffee.  I was wearing only a pair of khaki shorts and a gold necklace with a pendant that said 'FUCK YOU' in Hebrew.  I took some photos of her in the nude.

       THIRTY FIVE

       I parked on the small gravel lot of Thermopylae Studios and found Gregory Pope examining the unshaven cunt of one of his actresses on a bedroom set.

       “Bitch had fleas,” he said, as he walked me to his office, a partitioned room in the back of a Quonset hut.  “Probably got'em from all the doggy shit she's been doing.”  He raised two fingers as we passed his black secretary reading a magazine.  Inside, he flopped down behind a metal desk and propped his feet up.   I took a seat across in a swivel chair that had seen better days.

       Not for the first time I glanced around the disheveled room, the metal shelves along walls full of bent canisters, make up shit spilling from kits, random piles of whips and chains, black, brown and pink dildos, boxes of tampons and assorted junk used to fill sets stuffed in boxes stacked on the floor.

       The secretary brought coffee in paper cups and a couple of packets of sweetener along with tiny squeeze tubs full of whatever passed for milk inside them.

       “This shit will kill you faster than anything,” Gregory said, shaking sweetener into his cup.  Fucking aspartame causes all kinds of cancer.  That old fucker Secretary of State Rumsfeld had stock in the company that put the crap on the market.  It's in everything.  It's like the government's out to kill our asses.  But let the bastards see a tit and they scream like it's the holy fucking end of the world.”

       He lit a cigarette.  “What can I do for you, Jimmy?”

       He never got my name right.  I showed him the pictures I'd taken of Sarah.

       “Mm, mm, nice looking piece of ass.  I can use her.  I've got a rape with five niggers coming up.  She'll do nicely.  Have her cunt shaved.”

       

       THIRTY FIVE

       I went back on campus to see Beth.  I couldn't tell if I'd actually branded her or just dreamed that I had.  And I was curious to know.  That's the  problem with fucking opium dreams.  They can be as firmly fixed in memory as real events.  Life is fucked up enough without that.  But then there was also the problem of Sarah fucking up my life.   As long as she was staying at my apt. I couldn't have anyone else over.  But there wasn't anything I could do, for I wasn't through with her yet.  And it was still necessary for her to believe I was working in her interests for the present.  It made me hard just thinking about how I had deceived her, destroyed her life, but she hadn't reached the  bottom yet, the one I had planned for her.

       But as I was going up the library steps I froze.  The girl in the cut-off jeans I'd raped off River Road was coming out.  This was sure to fuck up my day.  She was still wearing short, tight cut-offs—and bra-less under a white tank top.  I guess the little bitch hadn't learned that you don't advertise what you don't sell.

       She walked straight toward me.  Staring straight at me.  Two campus cops were standing outside the administration building—across from the library.  Well...a lawyer once told me that if you rape a woman you'll get twenty-five years, but if you kill her you'll only do five.  Lesson to learn?  She rushed toward me as I reached for my switchblade, but she was on me before I could get it out.

       She wrapped her arms around me—and began hugging me.

       “I forgive you,” she said.  “God is love.”

       I could feel the firmness of her tits and the warmth of her body through the thin cotton of the tank top and an erection build.

       She placed her hands on the sides of my head, pressing like a vise.   Slowly, the pressure of her hands lessened and a beatific smile formed on her face. 

       She took pen and paper from her purse and scribbled something down, stuck it in my shirt pocket and walked off briskly, her sandal heels clicking on the flagstones.  Her phone.

       THIRTY SIX

       “I will if you want me to,” she said.

       I was hallucinating.  I hadn't branded her.  Her naked body was unsullied.  I lay next to her smoking.  What the fuck.  I was losing it.  I was unable to tell what was real and what was unreal.  Was there any fucking difference?  Isn't everything a fucking illusion?  I mean we live our whole fucking lives out of sync.  By the time we perceive something it has passed into memory.  It no longer exist.  And since we are only memory, we do not exist.  Fuck.  I guess pain is what makes us buy the illusion.  If Superman can't feel bullets, he can't feel anything.  A man of steel knows nothing's real.  Without pain we would know the illusion for what it is.  I think I think.  Dreams end and we say they are only dreams.  But life ends too, and is it anymore than a dream and death but an end to pain?

       THIRTY SEVEN

       There comes a time in some people's lives when they realize it's all bullshit.  And that realization can affect them differently.  Some will withdraw into their shells and live lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau said.  Or others will go postal and kill everyone in sight.  Some will become fanatics of one sort or another.  But there's no telling who will become what or when.  But surely all are insane.

       Omar said, Make sport of that which makes as much of thee.  And that's kinda the road I took.  The one less traveled.  I mean after all it's all just bullshit.  Why take it seriously.  It's not like it's our game.  We have no stake in the course of universal ping pong.  We are not even a blink in the eye of time.  We are no more important than a fly's fart.

       But then what do I know?  I was never deep in anything but pussy.

       THIRTY EIGHT

       LOLA'S GANGBANG

Scene one:  middle class living room.

       Lola:  Darling, how long will you be gone?

       Nate:  Just for the weekend, sweetheart.  Mr. Briggs wants me to attend the regional sales conference.

       Lola:  I'll miss you.

       Nate:  Me, too.        

       “Not bad, Jimmy.  The cunt didn't flub her fucking lines.  Course being able to act ain't essential in this kind of shit.  Assholes into porn aren't the brightest fucking bulbs on the shelf.  Things like acting and plot confuse them.  It's got to be endless fucking and sucking.”

       Sarah was casting worried looks at me from the set.

       “In fact,” Gregory said, “I might cut the first scene and go straight to the rape.”  He lit a cigarette.  “When I first started out in this business a wise old pro told me to start every scene with a dick going into a pussy.  Plot, character development or dialog and you'll lose 'em.  And I've found that to be true.”

       Not bad advice, I was thinking.  I was already getting hard just thinking about Sarah’s rape scene.

       “Does the cunt know what we're going to do to her?”

       I shook my head.  “I wasn't specific.”

       “Good.  It'll add realism to the rape scene if she's not programmed.  I like to put out a quality product, even though I know it's a waste of time.  But what the hell.  If a man can't take pride in what he does, what's he got, huh, Jimmy?

       “Nothing good,” I said.

       “Goddamn right.  If nothing else I can keep it for my own private collection.”

       Some gaffers rearranged the set until it was a bedroom.

       

Scene two:

       Lola comes out of the bathroom into the bedroom wrapped in a towel.

       Five black men are waiting for her.  They are naked, stroking their hard-ons.

       Lola:  oh, god, no.

       Bk 1:  we gonna fuck you.

       Lola:  oh, no, please don't.

       Bk 1:  yo, bitch.  We are.

       Bk 1 throws her on bed after pulling off the towel.         

       Bk 2:mighty fine pussy.

       As Bk 1 pounds Lola's pussy the others gather around the bed whacking off.  When Bk 1 finishes, Bk 2 fucks her, then Bk 3, 4 and 5.  Eighteen minutes apiece.  Each dumping their load on her belly for the money shot.

       “Fucking great, wasn't it, Jimmy?”

       “Masterpiece.”  One of the blacks had kept chewing gum through the whole shoot.  What rapists come on the victims belly?  But, hell, I'm not an art critic.

       “We'll add bongo drums later,” a technician said.

       “You know, it's funny, Jimmy, but films with niggers fucking a white woman sell like hotcakes in the deep South and the Bible belt.”  Gregory lit another cigarette off the one he'd been smoking.  A reflective look passed over his face.  “You know I might cut out her entrance into the bedroom and just start with the nigger shoving his cock in her.  Don't wanna lose 'em.”

       Sarah was so sullen on the drive back to my apt. that I almost beat the shit out of the ungrateful bitch.

       THIRTY NINE

       What would de Sade say about the rising price of gasoline?  That was the thought going through my mind as I forced Sarah onto the bed face down.  I stared at her shapely nakedness as my cock jerked into an erection.  The honeymoon was over.  Now she would satisfy my raging need.  And going to the police wasn't an  option for her.

       I rammed my cock into her at the same time reaching under her, cupping her tits, pinching the nipples.  Most men naively think women want to be aroused through gentle, skillful lovemaking.  Would that I could disabuse them of that twerpy notion.  Women want to be taken in a white hot heat of raw savage passion.  They want to be raped.  A man who worries about satisfying them through tenderness is going to be a very sorry fuck indeed.  Women want rawness--to know they're wanted so badly that the man cannot restrain himself. 

       Make a woman come once and she'll tolerate you.  Make her come three times and she'll be your fucking slave.

       Ironically many women thrilled to my cruelty mistaking it for unrestrained passion.  When, in fact, all I wanted was to hurt them—crush them like a bug under my foot.

       I fucked her.  She lay passive.  My cock swelling even as I was in her.  I pushed deeper.  The cheeks of her ass full, warm and firm against my belly.  I pulled her head back by the hair.  How little effort it would take to snap her slender neck like a twig.  A line from Blake's poem came to mind:  “Did he who made the lamb make thee?”  Yes, what kind of god created me—would that such a bugger existed?  Certainly not the one religions proclaim.  It would be a dark impulse indeed.  De Sade said, The purpose of life is to spew fuck.  What other impulse so simply stated sums up our purpose?  All that motivates the universe, one dark impulse.  Spreading like a blot of ink throughout eternity.

       She began to squirm about.  My cock was like a joy-stick up her ass.  I bit her neck.  I could have ripped the flesh out with my teeth.  She gasped.  She cried out, whether from pain or desire I couldn't tell.  Her body shuddered.  She tensed, groaning between agony and ecstasy.  A premium liquid shot out my cock filling her tank.

       It never ceases to amaze me what gluttons for punishment women are.  She lay nestled in my arm, a soft hand on my chest, as I smoked. 

       “If you stay with me it'll be by my rules.  Otherwise I'll sell you to the street.”

       She nodded.

       I took her to the closet and tied her to the chair, pushing  a ball gag into her mouth and tying leather over her eyes.  As a final act of isolation, I plugged her ears.

       FORTY

       

Reporter:  Senator Bradford, sir, could you explain why we have placed sanctions on Iran?

Bradford:  Well, Bob, as you know Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons.  The judicial use of impediments to their said attempt to do so will frustrate their achieving any foreseeable conclusion in that endeavor.

Reporter:  But, Senator, what proof is there that the Iranians are attempting to develop nuclear weapons?  Isn’t the real reason for sanctions because Iran is about to sell its oil for euros instead of petrodollars which would bankrupt the US?”

Bradford:  Oh, that’s balderdash.  Rest assured, Bob, the evidence has been clearly and firmly substantiated by the most reliable  and impeccable sources—beyond doubt, that Iran is building a nuclear arsenal.

Reporter:  But, Senator, hasn't it been demonstrated, time after time, that sanctions only hurt the people and not those in power?  For example, our sanctions on Iraq killed over five-hundred thousand people—mostly children.

Bradford:  Well, I'm not sure where you're getting that information from, Bob, but I can assure you that the most astringent efforts have been implemented to insure that the sanctions will be guided by the most propitious endeavors to assure that such a circumstance will not be totally unresultant or alleviated in the foreseeable interim.

Reporter:  Thank you, Senator Bradford.

Bradford:  Anytime, Bob.

Reporter:  And now we turn to presidential hopeful, former Governor Jeff Thompson of the Patriot Party and conservative radio commentator Blaine Mulligan.

Reporter:  Governor  Thompson, you've come under some heavy criticism from such conservatives as Mr. Mulligan for your radical stances.  For the benefit of our audience could you give us a brief rundown of your platform?

Anderson:  Certainly, Bob.  Basically I believe that instead of killing other people around the world we should end all the illegal wars we are engaged in, bring the troops home and put them to work on placing solar panels on every home and building in America.  Not only will that take people off the power grid but it will cut down our dependence of foreign oil.  Secondly, the trillions of dollars we have wasted on wars from Vietnam on could have given us free health care and educations for every American indefinitely.  But all we really have to show for all our illegal wars are tens of thousands of bomb craters and millions of lives senselessly wasted.  And thirdly, how in the (bleep) are we going to restore meaningful jobs to Americans as long as we keep outsourcing them to a foreign country? Such a policy can only turn America into a third world country. And electric cars---

Reporter:  I'm sorry to interrupt, Governor, but time constraints force us to move on.  And Mr. Mulligan how do you respond to the Governor's statements?

Mulligan:  Well, where to begin.  I couldn't believe I was hearing such nonsense from a presidential candidate.  I shudder to think what would happen to us if we ended our noble war in Afghanistan.  Hardly illegal, for it was a response to terrorists who invaded our country simply because they hated our freedom.  What, we're supposed to pull our troops out and let terrorists once more invade our country?  Maybe Thompson doesn't mind if they rape his wife and daughters but I'll be darned if I'll let 'em do it to mine!  And meaningful jobs?  Heck, there's plenty of good jobs out there.  We've just got a lot of lazy good-for-nothings who'd rather live off welfare while ridin' around in Cadillacs.  And solar energy?  Bah!  We've got enough oil and gas right here in America to last hundreds of year.  I'm afraid the former Governor just wants to scare people.  And electric cars have to get their electricity from power companies that get theirs from coal and oil.  Where does Thompson think it comes from, the sun?   Hah, hah.  Nothing’s free Governor.  That's Commie talk.

       

Reporter:  Thank you, gentlemen.  Former Governor Jeff Thompson and radio talk show host Blaine Mulligan.

       FORTY ONE

       I sat at my table drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.  I turned my computer off and made a summary:

       Peace bad.

       War good.

       Renewable bad.

       Nonrenewable good.

       Prosperity bad.

       Stagnation good.

       Then I made a summary of my summary:

       Good bad.

       Bad good.

       The future of mankind?  I chuckled.  Blaine Mulligan was leading in the polls, but some pundits sensed indications that Thompson views were catching on with the young disgruntled voters, the elderly and unemployed.  But, as always, it would be the moneyed elite and corporations who would cast the deciding votes.  And they were backing Mulligan.

       “What is truth?” someone once asked a prominent Jew.  And he had no answer—being, himself, a politician.

       I was glad to be on the side of men such as Mulligan, as a practical matter.  For as long as such men ruled the world my kind were safe.

       I opened the closet door and stared at Sarah.  Her head was turned toward me.  I knew she couldn't hear, but she'd, no doubt, felt the vibrations of my steps.   I wished I had an isolation tank to put her in where she would lie suspended in warm water naked, weightless and unable to sense any sensations at all.  It would be interesting to see how long it would take to drive her insane.  Or, perhaps, fix a tiny vibrator to her clit so that the only sensation she could feel would be of sexual stimulation.  With all other sensations blocked such stimulation would be a hundred fold intense.  Or the thought of doing some Pavlovian experiment on her intrigued me.  I wondered, for example, if it would be possible to make a human salivate at the ringing of a bell or sound of a word--or make someone come.  I would need an isolated location.  One where I could get rid of a body when I was through with it without danger of being observed.

       One can know pure joy only when one is free to explore the imaginings of his heart.  Yet society, which creates such imaginings, cannot exist unless these imaginings are suppressed.  And, so, good and evil become merely practical concerns.  The less freedom one has the more value he has to society.  Thus rulers, who derive their power from an orderly society, must always make sure the individual has as little freedom as possible. And the rulers as much freedom as possible.

       The pervert must risk all to be happy.  And this is the reason for all revolutions:  to replace one pervert with another.

       FORTY TWO

       The first pussy I ever fucked was when I was eight in the New Mexico desert.  I remember her name was Joan, and she was a blonde with blue eyes.  Tall and slender.  Taller than I.  We were in the same class.  It was in Las Cruces.  We lived nearby on the edge of the desert.

       Willy, my best buddy, Paul, Freddy and I were members of our gang, Las Pandillas, Spanish for gang.  We had a dugout fort in the wall of an arroyo that stretched on for miles.  Willy was the leader, a few years older than the rest of us and a natural artist.  We would huddle in the dugout on weekends, when we didn't have school, and Willy would draw pictures of Mrs. Grant, our teacher, naked.  They were life like; he did them with colored pencils.  As soon as he had one done we would all jack off to it. 

       Paul looked like his sister, Joan.  They were twins.  Willy would draw pictures of Joan in various provocative nude poses, and we would jack off to these.  Paul didn't hesitate to join in.  One day, as we huddled in the dugout with our BB guns (back from a hunt where we had shot a raccoon), Willy asked Paul if he'd ever fucked Joan.  Paul said that he had almost fucked her once when their parents had gone to a party.  They had drunk some whiskey their parents kept in a cabinet and, according to Paul they got to wrestling around until he began undressing her.

       “She let you?” Willy said.

       “Yeah, but when she lay on her back and I got on top of her, I couldn't get a hard on.”

       “Do you think she'd let us fuck her?”

       “I don't know.”

       Willy pulled some pills out of his pocket.  “Do you think she'd like these?”

       “What are they?”

       “Something that'll make her feel a hundred times better than any whiskey she'll drink.”  Willy handed him a few.  “If she says she wants more tell her she'll have to come to the dugout.”

       A couple of weeks passed when one day in class I noticed that Joan was acting strangely.  The teacher asked her to solve a math problem at the board.  But she was too groggy to walk straight.  So the teacher took her to the nurse's office.

       Willy told me later he'd been fucking her regularly, keeping her high on the pills.

       About a week later, Las Pandillas were waiting at desert's edge for Paul to bring Joan.  When they arrived, Willy tied her hands behind her back and blindfolded her.  “We don't want you to know where our hideout is,” Willy said.        

       She was wearing a summery yellow dress with a green  floral design.  Straps that left her shoulders bare. And flip flops.  Her shiny blonde hair hung down to her waist.  When we got to the dugout, Willy untied her hands leaving the blindfold on and took the dress off.  She was naked underneath.  My cock was fully hard by this time.  Willy took a camera out of his pocket and took some pictures of her then had her get on her hands and knees.

       I remember vividly how her young lithe body looked that day.  The slender arch of her back as Willy got behind her and spread her ass cheeks.  The pink ring of her asshole.  The long blonde hair cascading down the sides of her face to the dusty floor of the arroyo.  The black band of the blindfold around her head, Apache-like.  I remember how Willy's dick moved down the crease of her ass then the sinking of the bulbous head in her puckered cunt lips.  The way she bit down on her lip.  Willy rocking back and forth, hands gripping the white flesh of her body, dragging red streaks across it.  His fingers groping, indenting grooves.  How her body jolted rhythmically back and forth to his thrust and withdrawals.  The faint sounds that came from her mouth.  I remembered unzipping my pants and pulling my dick out.  A slight breezed cooled upon it.  It was strained to the limit.  Making tiny jerks.  I squeezed it with my hand, caressing it, waiting my turn.  A tiny bird sat on the branch of a mesquite watching.  I remembered looking up at the blue of the sky, the white shredded clouds frozen in time.  The Oregon Mountains.  The shark-toothed Sugar loaf capped with snow.  The moistness of my palm around my dick. 

       Willy told me to stick my dick in her mouth.  I didn't know exactly what to do, but I guess Willy had done it to her that way sometime before, because she accepted the swollen head of my cock eagerly, moving her mouth down the length of it as far as she could.  I could feel her moist tongue laving it.  She gagged each time I tried to shove it farther into her mouth so that I had to be content getting only half my cock sucked.  Each time I partially withdrew my cock it glistened with her saliva.  Willy kept fucking her like a pile driver, in and out.  I later learned he could fuck and come four or five times before his cock gave out.  My cock was bigger than his though.  Freddy and Paul fucked her when we were done.  It was unbelievable.  Pussy was like finding the key to a magical kingdom.  I had that day discovered something that gave life meaning.  Not just pussy but the power to take what one wanted.  Instead of wasting my life trying to unravel the Gordian Knot, I had learned to cut through the bullshit and take what I wanted.  Leave the day to day struggle for success to those in the common herd.  As Keats said, If it doesn't come easily it shouldn't come at all. 

       We took turns beating her ass with our belts.  Weekends she became our constant prisoner.  We would take her to the arroyo and fuck her.  Willy would take photos of her naked, of us fucking her.  Willy knew how to develop film like a professional.  He was naturally gifted.  Probably a fucking genius.  Freddy and Paul were followers, lacking imagination.  Sex didn't turn them on as much as it did Willy and me.  We would take Joan to his house, when his parents were gone, and fuck her in his bedroom.  When she complained, at first, we threatened to show the photos he had taken of her to everyone.  But we didn't have to threaten her long.  I'm sure now, as I think back on it, that she got off on being our sex slave as much as we did in making her one.

       When Willy's father got a job offer the family moved to California.  Willy left me his collection of photos.  I kept them.  Holding them over Joan's head and continued to fuck her all the way through high school.  I later learned she had gotten pregnant, but I was gone by then.

       FORTY THREE

       I had taken a walk down to the river and watched the coal barges tug by.  There was a light rain pinging the water.  In the distance a siren wailed for its sick society.  Water lapped at the bricks.  A gaseous sheen lay on its surface.  Undulating.   Detritus encrusted the rim like a malignant fungus.  The river filthy black.  Full of poison.  Excrement.  Piss.  Tampons.  Used rubbers.  A bloated rat nudged the shore, rocking gently.

       This is reality.  What comes out of the tap is illusion.  What is it that makes a man want to stick his dick in a hole?  What is the mechanism of desire?  What sick shit we are.  Celine, you were right.

       When I got back to the apt. three men were waiting for me.  My gamboling was over.

       FORTY FOUR

       A three hour private jet to D.C. and I was ushered into the Director's office.

       “Hello, Jamie.”

       “Victor.”

       He offered me a Cuban from a  humidor on his desk.  I lit a cigarette and sat down.

       “You been a naughty boy, Jamie.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't care how many sluts you amuse yourself with.  It's in the nature of the beast.  But it wouldn't do the bureau any good for the Eloi to know what the Morlocks are up to.”  Victor gave a jaded sigh.  “It’s all shit, isn’t it, Jamie?  We use propaganda to lead them to the slaughterhouse, but nature is a death factory, too, constantly spewing us out as fodder for the earth.  The reason most don’t realize it is because the cattle cars are beautiful sunsets.”

       Victor reminded me of Woody Allan.  Bold-framed glasses with thick lenses that magnified his blue eyes like planets seen through a telescope.  His fingers were long and delicate like a woman's.  All in all an incongruous figure for a man in charge of the largest spy agency in the world.

       “The sheep never look up.”

       Victor smiled.  “True for the most part, but there are always a few who haven't drunk the kool aid.”  He leaned back in the leather swivel chair. “ We're fighting ten covert wars, Jamie, and instigating dozens of conflicts around the world; all of which are very lucrative enterprises for the rich and powerful who invest in them--”

       “Not to mention the drug trade,” I said.  “Opium from Afghanistan.  Cocaine and pot from Columbia.  All the trillions of dollars in profits laundried through the stock market, casinos and international banks.”

       “Yes, and sequestered in off shore accounts.  The wealthy few own ninety percent of all the capital in the world.  Countries are merely vassals belonging to a global fiefdom.  Can you imagine, Jamie, what might happen if the sheep ever looked up and realized this?  That the wars they so patriotically fight and die for are merely staged events to fill the coffers of the rich?”

       “They never will.”

       Victor chuckled.  “And it's our job to see that they don't.”  He leaned forward, pushed his glasses up and tapped his fingers progressively on the desk.  “But occasionally someone comes along who threatens to burst our little bubble.  You've heard of Jeff Thompson, the Patriot Party's candidate for the presidency, no doubt?”

       I nodded.

       “Well, he's beginning to stir up some shit...exposing the globalist takeover.  People are beginning to listen to the bastard.  The President wants a second term.  Thompson is beginning to fuck that up.  All his talk of ending perpetual war, creating jobs, health care for everyone, free education, etcetera is catching the nation's attention.  The media can only divert the people for so long.  Hungry people who are unemployed will begin to wonder why we spend all our resources on war and outsourcing.  He must be stopped before that happens.”

       “And, let me guess, you want me to take him out?”

       “Exactly.”

       “Uh, uh.  I'm tired of risking my life for the bureau.”

       “I don't know why you complain.  The pays good.”

       “Yeah, but you can't spend it if you're dead.”

       “Exactly.  You can't spend it if you're dead.”

       FORTY FIVE

       I flew back commercial.  It was still raining when I left the airport and hopped a cab.  I went to see Carla.  She was wearing an iridescent green caftan that matched her eyes. 

       “You know, of course, Victor will never let you go—none of us.”  She handed me a Scotch neat and sat down next to me on the silver couch.  “I know, I tried to leave once.”

       I sipped the Scotch, relishing the smooth burn.  “What happened?”

       She gave me an ironic smile.  “Do you like my face?”

       “Yeah.  What's not to like?”

       “You wouldn't have liked it if they'd used it for a razor strap.   You don't fuck around with Victor.”    

       “I walked out.”

       “Um hmm.  For now, sugar, but he's just giving you time to reconsider.  What did he want you to do?”

       “He wanted me to whack Jeff Thompson, the presidential candidate.”

       “Hmph.  There's worse things in the world.”

       “Uh huh, but eventually I'll be the one who gets whacked or offered up as a sacrificial lamb if the political wind shifts.”

       “We could run away together.”  She pressed up against me.  I could have lost myself forever in the heady woman smell of her.

       “We'd have to get rid of our tracking implants.”

       “That's no problem now, but soon there are going to be liquid implants.  There won't be anyway to remove those.” She sipped on something in glittering ice.  We could pool our money and go live on a tropical island.  Spend our days on a white beach sunbathing, nights in calypso bars.  Think of all the young virgins we could torture together.”

       “Sounds too good to be true.”

       “Still,” she said, rubbing the tip of her index finger along her lower lip, “agents will be watching you to see whether or not  you're going to do what they want.”

       “And if I do I'll wind up dead—a sacrificial lamb.”

       “And dead if you don't, either way.” She got up and fixed me another drink.  “Here's what you do,” she said, handing it to me.  “Call Victor.  Tell him you'll do it, but if he insist you do it his way, you'll know you're being setup.  However, you will have bought yourself some time.  Meanwhile I'll arrange to have our implants removed; purchase false Ids; and hire a private airline to fly us out of the country.  But if he says you can do it your way then kill the cocksucker, take your payoff and we'll still get out of the country, disappear.”

       FORTY SIX

       I borrowed an umbrella from Carla and walked home in the rain.  I didn't want to have to think anymore.  The patter of rain on the nylon roof soothed me.  The splatter of rain on the streets absorbed all my thoughts.  I was merely a camera without film, viewing all, recording nothing.  Several times I saw a black sedan hanging back, and knew I was being tailed.  But I didn't care.  Fuck 'em.  I was too smart for the dumb bastards.

       When I got back to the apt. I untied Sarah.  She said she was thirsty, so I dragged her into the bathroom and shoved her head into the toilet.  I pulled my cock out and shoved it in her while flushing the toilet, holding her head under water.  Her movements became frantic.  I held my cock in her, pressing hard into her as she squirmed about.  I shot off with the most invigorating sensations.  When I was through coming I pulled out letting her flop about on the wet tiled floor like a fish out of water.  I made her take a bath.  She stank having pissed herself while tied up in the closet.

       

       FORTY SEVEN

       Victor wanted it his way.  Carla phoned and said Goldstein couldn't help us.  He'd been gotten to.  She was philosophical.  When the shit hits the fan there's nothing you can do.

       Thompson was planning to take JFK's route in Dallas.  Talk about political symbolism.  Make the sixties crowd associate him with an icon.  Just another phony ass politician.  Victor had a sense of humor.  I'll give him that.  He had fixed it up with the DPD and the leading politicos to put me on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository.  Victor probably had a hard-on at this little joke knowing that I would know he intended me winding up like Oswald.

       I got in on a night flight and took a room near Dealey Plaza.  I went to one of Ruby's old clubs and had a beer.  There were pictures of Ruby on the wall posing with celebrities, strippers and bigwigs.  A lot of off duty cops still frequented the place.   They're as easy to spot as Mafiosi.  I drank up and walked.   The trees on Elm Street had been trimmed back recently giving a clear view of the street.  The whole thing  reeked of an obvious setup, but the planners weren't worried.  After I did my business the media would put out the 'lone gunman' bullshit again and a gullible public would eat it up.  But then perhaps I'm being too harsh.  Does the public really give a shit?  Thompson would be just another 'could've been' footnote in history.  He would be lionized like King.  Both lucky enough to die before they were revealed to be as corrupt as everyone else.  And books would be written about them.  And dozens of conspiracy theories put forth in them.  Fame gives little comfort though.  What good does it do to be remembered after your dead?   As Maupassant said, Fame is merely a name misspelled on a tombstone.

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