In the night's darkest hour, you walk alone through damp and breezy corners of the forest. Though you carry no lamp, you walk quickly upon unfamiliar pathways, your arms and legs untouched by the sharp protruding branches that surround you. The moon hangs full above the treetops, its whiteness cut into jagged sections by the silhouettes of rustling leaves, silver-black clouds moving like hungry fish across its face. The time is one of double madness, of darkness and of lunacy, but still you walk steadily onward, unmindful of danger, thinking little of despair. You are driven, reader, isn't that the case? Isn't that why you walk? For surely, on a night such as this, at an hour so dark as this one, one is foolish not to stay comfortably abed with wife snuggled soft and warm beside him, the snores of parents and children sounding tranquilly from distant rooms in the house. Surely you are driven, surely compelled. Feel the rhythmic swirl of your cloak as it winds now from right to left, now from left to right about your ankles: there is something of magical trance in its motion, wouldn't you agree?
And your eyes! Surely you can feel their largeness, surely you can see how much of the blackness they take in. And you are naked beneath your cloak, your penis swinging freely from thigh to thigh. Does one go about naked unless under the pull of some sudden compulsion? But too, you are not without your calmness, not without your peace. The breeze is soothing as it lifts your hair like the waves of some great ocean, and the earth is moist and soft between your toes. You can almost think of lying down upon some bed of tangled forest flowers and staring up for hours at the patterns made by leaves and clouds against the moon. But then you hear again the moans in the distance, the creaking of hinges (of door or coffin?), and the scraping of links of chain. Again you hear the parched and hissing laughter, and the ring of steel on stone. Your lethargy vanishes into the thumping of your heart. There are mysteries to be learned tonight-old, forbidden mysteries-and the mysteries have called you from your bed.
Suddenly-a glimmer of light beyond the twisted trees. For a second, you pause, fear and compulsion mingling within you. Then, quitting the pathway, you wade into the thick of the forest in pursuit of the distant light, your cloak flapping now against your knees, now against your calves, your hands turning vague before you as they push aside the dried and sooty branches of bushes and trees that hide the light from your view. With pitiful peeps and croaks, the forest's creatures scurry from their lairs and run from the crunching sound of your footsteps, an occasional salamander brushing against your toes as he makes for some dank-smelling ravine in the distance. Your house-peaceful little house-is miles behind you now, its shutters drawn, its hearth gone black with the death of the last glowing ash. Your half-eaten meal of bread and cheese must lie exactly as you left it on the kitchen's wooden table: knife thrust into bread, cheese cut into three even-sized w-edges, crumbs surrounding the whole like the ring of cosmic dust around Saturn. Might your wife have stirred when you left? Might she have looked up from the empty pillow beside her and called to you through the stillness of the house? If so, she must surely be afraid, for you left the front door open when you left, remember? You heard it swinging on its hinge from the forest's periphery. Surely your wife will think you were abducted by the forest's lurking phantoms. Even now she may be weeping over your pillow, moaning the name of her beloved husband to the night's drifting stars. And your children-will they not be terrified to find themselves fatherless on such a night? Will your parents not tear their hair and recite a thousand useless prayers when they discover you gone? For how would you yourself feel if you discovered your seed vanished into the night without so much as a goodbye? But these are senseless questions, and you are quite right to push them from your mind. You are young and beautiful, your body supple and firm, and when the secrets of the night compel you, it is barely in your power to resist their call. You will return to your loved ones before morning. If they have noticed your absence, you will make some excuse or other. If not, you will creep quietly into bed beside your sleeping wife, run your fingers through her silken hair, and whisper your morning love into the winding furrows of her ear. You will not tell her of your adventure: you will keep it a secret between yourself and the night.
Soft now! The light is just ahead. But for the gurgling of a distant brook and the mournful croak of a frog, the forest is completely still, even the crickets frightened into silence by the haste of your approach. With fingers trembling, you part the branches of a last thorny bush and narrow your eyes to make out the source of the forest's beckoning light. As the gray-blue picture before you begins to come into soft focus, you suddenly lose your footing and tumble helplessly downward toward a spinning blur of silvery foliage, your cloak tearing on roots and stones, your desperate fingers digging wavy trenches in the soil. Then, as abruptly as it began, your fall comes to an end, leaving you sprawled out on your back with eyes turned to the night's burning stars. Raising your head, you look past your heaving chest and rib cage, and find yourself at the -edge of a shining maze of moonlit garden, your right leg buried among the cold leaves of a lofty h-edge, your fingers tangled in a square-cut patch of marigolds, your hair draped over a soggy circle of moss. Before you, surrounded by the garden's labyrinthian h-edges, an old and magnificent castle shows its ancient wounds to the darkness, the night seeming to lend its crumbling stone walls a dull blue radiance, phantom breeze whistling low through its rusty-barred windows, torchlight glowing orange-yellow from its dungeon. The sight of the castle awakens dim memories in you of stories told you by your father when you were a little child. "Some say there is an enchanted castle in these woods," you hear your father say (he stands like a statue before you, tall and majestic in his iron-gray coat), "but if ever you should see it, you must turn away and pretend it isn't there..."
"Have you ever seen the castle, father?" you asked him.
"I?" he answered, staring deeply into your wide child's eyes. "No ... I have never seen it...." And so saying, he turned away from you and walked quickly back to the house.
How strange to find the hidden castle after all these years! How wonderful and mysterious! But listen ... there are the sounds again: a soft moan from the dungeon, the scraping of steel against stone. The torchlight flickers, then flares orange-red. There is the sound of laughter, dry and hissing, then, slowly, the dripping of liquid onto stone. Of blood? Teardrops? The mysteries are close at hand. You rise from the ground and draw nearer the castle, hand quieting the flaps of your cloak. Careful-step lightly over the garden's moss: this garden is the work of a very patient hand. See how the leaves show their veins to the moonlight? How the flowers form such intricate patterns along the bottoms of h-edges? And the grass is so perfect and even-if you aren't careful, your footsteps will certainly show in it. Best to walk only over the moss and over the flat oblong stones that side the h-edges: there's no need to leave evidence of your trespass. How strange that everything is so dewy. Can it be so close to dawn? ... But what a foolish question! Time is of no consequence....
Continually, you lose sight of the castle as you follow the garden's winding maze of h-edges. Continually, you are forced to turn away from it, or find it lost behind of a cluster of round-cut bushes or vine-caressed trees. The sounds of laughter and moaning drive you faster and faster, making your feet dance over flagstones and flowers, your cloak clack as it catches the wind. Ghost-like, the castle vanishes and appears, vanishes and appears, its battlements white-capped by the moonlight, its crumbling balustrades covered in velvety blue-black shadow. Slowly, you turn a final row of h-edges, the petal of a rose brushing stickily against your calf. The dungeon window is directly before you, its blaze of torchlight interrupted by thick black bars and vague pinkish shapes. You approach as quietly as a whisper, too absorbed by the window ahead to shoo a mosquitoe who whines her bloodlust in your ear. Anticipation fills you to your fingertips; even your penis gives an unexpected twitch as it brushes against the inside of your thigh.
You stand perhaps two or three feet from the dungeon window, your knees parallel to its upper casement, the shadow of the window's bars flickering across your thighs and belly. The stones that surround the window are in sharp focus, their -edges licked by yellow torchlight, and you find yourself temporarily lost (or is it that you wish to prolong your anticipation of the dungeon's secrets?) in an infinite network of merging grains and textures and colors. Purple pockmarks vanish into green-black scratches, scratches deepen into grime-clogged scars, and scars slide jaggedly into slabs of time-blackened mortar, the whole of the ancient window casement shimmering with the moon's elusive silver. From your point of view, only the smallest patch of the dungeon's floor is visible: you can see the -edge of a soiled animal skin and the last three links of an iron chain which disappears into the floor, but no more. The scene resembles a pointillist painting to a degree, the light of the torch dissolving by shades into blackness as it travels toward the wall against which you stand. From inside come the mingled smells of sweat and perfume and body oil, all mixing with the forest's dewy pine aroma to produce an intoxicatingly sweet and syrupy scent. The sounds of laughter and moaning and dripping liquid are gone (is it possible that your presence has been detected?): only a muffled rhythmic sound drifts through the dungeon's window now, its soft underbeat all but erased by the rustling of the leaves at the forest's -edge.
You stand for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes at the side of the window, your arms quite tense beneath the heavy folds of your cloak, pulse pounding in your temples. The night's warm breeze flattens the grass around your ankles, reaches upward to tickle your calves, then retreats into nothingness, leaving your legs and thighs alive with tingling heat. Shall you peer in on the castle's secrets? Strangely, you are filled with guilt at the thought of it. It isn't right, you say to yourself, to look in on people without their permission.... But how foolish! There may be no people in the room at all. The noises heard from the forest may just as well have been imagined, may just as well be particles of a realistic dream. The entire castle may be imaginary, for that matter-it seems so old and out of place.... And if the entire scene is imaginary, then what's the harm in looking in on it?
And, even if it is real, why should you resist your inclinations and desires? There's nothing to be gained by fighting yourself.... And yet, you imagine one of your wife's friends speaking to her the next day, saying: "Do you know what I saw last night? On my way home from the neighbor's, I saw your husband peeping in at one of the windows of the old castle. He looked so silly ... just like a little boy..." But this is foolish. Your wife has no friends ... and there are acres of garden and forest separating you from the road ... and besides, no one even knows of the old castle but yourself ... and your father ....
Very carefully now, you bend. You stand close to the wall at the side of the window so as not to be seen. Your cloak falls open, exposing the white of your thighs and the pink-lipped eye of your penis. The wind is high and crazy on your shoulders, the swaying of overhead branches casting your face now in moonlight, now in darkness. Suddenly, as your eyes pass the level of the window casement, you are blinded by a blaze of orange-blue light, and raise your arm instinctively to your face. Then, peering cautiously over the bristling hairs of your forearm, you stare into the chamber that destiny has guided you to.
In the center of the room, a young blonde-haired woman crouches on all fours upon a low platform covered with thick animal skins. She is a pretty woman with large dark eyes and small animal-like ears, her face radiating a kind of primitive strength, her naked body glistening with sweat. Her wrists and ankles are bound in bracelets of a dark green leather, each bracelet connected to the dungeon's floor by means of a think link of chain which disappears in mid-link into the floor's blue-gray stone. Around her neck is fastened a double-ringed collar of the same green leather as her bracelets, a thicker length of chain extending from the back of the collar to the ceiling, and vanishing into one of the ceiling's sooty wooden beams at a point above the woman's buttocks. It is as if the chains have been fashioned with the dungeon (though their shininess would indicate otherwise) and fixed to floor and ceiling with no eye to a future time in which they will no longer be of use. Further, it would seem as if the blonde woman herself has been prisoner of the chains since the creation of the dungeon, for there is no way apparent to detach her from her bonds: there is no clasp or catch of any sort, either on bracelets or on collar, that might serve to separate them from her chains. She is held in perfect balance by the chains, her arms and legs spread wide apart, her head tilted backwards toward her shoulders such that her long-nippled breasts are thrust forward in the direction of the window. Her bestial crouch is the only pose the chains will permit her: she seems unable to move so much as an inch in either direction.
Before the blonde woman stands a slender dark-haired boy, naked but for a purple sash tied in a bow at the side of his waist. Her skin is a light burnt-sienna color, but his smooth, small facial features give no clue as to his nationality. His penis-a thick, green-veined organ ringed with silky hairs at the root-is lodged halfway into the woman's mouth, his testicles hanging full and shiny several inches from her chin. As he slides his penis back and forth in the woman's throat, his buttocks open and close with a slow sensuous rhythm, now hiding, now exposing the outspread hairs that grace the insides of his ass-cheeks. He holds tightly to the woman's ears as he possesses her, the sinewy muscles in his back and shoulders thrown into rigid definition by the force of his grip. It is almost as if he is afraid that the woman's chains will not hold her (though even if the chains were weak, which they are certainly not, the woman gives no indication that she would wish to resist the boy's penetration of her mouth), as if he has been told beforehand to keep a careful grasp on the dungeon's prisoner.
Beneath the blonde woman lies a second naked boy, his belly bunching into knots of rolling muscle as he turns his penis in the frothy channel of her plump-lipped vagina. like the first boy, he is dark-haired and dark-skinned, and he too wears a bowed sash of iridescent purple. Even his penis seems the same size and shape as his brother's, though its darkness is set off by the golden-blonde pubic hairs that cling stickily to its shaft. Just as the first boy holds tightly to the woman's ears, the second boy keeps a firm grip on her hips as he skewers her, his fingers leaving pink indentations in her milk-white flesh, his thumbs curling under her sloping belly.
A third boy-identical to the first two-kneels behind the chained woman and rolls his organ in the apparently well-used channel of her anus, his testicles slapping against the shaft of the second boy's penis as he presses himself so firmly against the woman's bottom that his wispy circle of pubic hair scratches against her open ass-crack. He holds fast to the woman's buttocks as he sodomizes her, his hands spreading the cheeks to their limit, and simultaneously squeezes his knees around the second boy's thighs, as if seeking some sort of reassurance from his brother. His sash has become somewhat undone through continual rubbing against the woman's bottom, and one of its ends trails over the woman's tautened calf and over the jerking knee of the second boy. There is something in the disarray of the kneeling boy's sash-perhaps in the way it falls from his waist to partially conceal the baby-smooth cheeks of his ass-that renders the boy somehow more attractive than the others. One can read his fear of the sash's falling in the somewhat delicate motions of his hips, and in the constant outthrust position of his buttocks. "What will happen," he seems to be thinking, "if the sash should fall from my body?"
All three of the boys keep their eyes closed as they force the blonde woman's openings, but whether this is through embarrassment or through passion is impossible to tell. The woman's body gives up a combination of intimate sounds as the boys work away at her, the first boy's prick making a wet scraping sound as it lodges in the back of her throat, the second boy fetching a sound of boiling broth from her pussy, the third boy forcing deep belches from her intestines. The boys seem to time their movements to the beat of some distant drum audible only to themselves, all three plunging in and out of the woman as one, their muscles flexing and relaxing with acrobatic precision.
Around the dungeon's center platform stand twelve lower platforms, arranged so as to form the numerals of a gigantic clock, each platform covered with faded Persian carpets and multicolored satin cushions. Women lie upon those of the platforms that correspond to the hours of one to six, men upon those that correspond to the hours of seven to eleven. The bed that represents the hour of twelve is obscured but for a corner by the center platform, only the hand of its occupant visible past the platform's -edge. The men and women are dressed in skin-tight black costumes which cover them from neck to foot, leaving only the genitals exposed by means of a triangular cut-out from the base of the belly to the start of the ass-crack. The men's faces are hidden by masks of bright scarlet sequins, the women's by masks of midnight blue, but though their features are concealed, the poised attitudes of their bodies and the plump radiance of their genitals would seem to indicate that they are men and women in their prime, probably between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. Dark-haired boys of the same mold as the ones upon the center platform (but for their lack of purple sashes) work orally on the genitals of the black-garbed men and women, each of the boys crouching between the open legs of his respective master or mistress, and mouthing the proffered organ with hands locked behind his back. The boys use different techniques in their servicing of the men and women, one boy lapping at his master's long penis with quick upward flicks of his tongue while another uses a slow swallowing motion to excite his master's organ, one burying his tongue deep in his mistress's red-haired hole while another nuzzles his lady's clitoris with nose and lips. It is impossible to tell whether the boys' eyes are closed or whether the lowered positions of their heads merely makes them seem so, but it is certain that the boys never venture so much as a glance toward the spectacle upon the center platform. The black-garbed men and women, on the other hand, peer intently at the scene, their heads leaning backwards over the -edges of their platforms in such a way as to provide them an inverted image of the blonde woman's multiple penetration. Their eyes move with an unholy speed as they follow the movements of the sweaty foursome upon the platform, their collective gaze falling almost exclusively on the thrusting organs of the youthful dark-haired studs.
But for the thirteen platforms at its center, the dungeon is practically empty, its only article of furniture being a small stone table on which rests a bowl filled with a dark perfumed oil. (It's possible that the boys in the room have obtained their uniformly dark coloration by anointing themselves with the bowl's thick oil.) The light which burns beside the center platform turns out not to be that of a torch, but of an ancient coal-burning furnace, its walls gone utterly black with the assault of orange-blue flame. The pipes that lead from the back of the furnace through the dungeon's ceiling would seem to indicate that the furnace provides the central supply of heat for the entire castle, thought is surely impossible that so large a building can be adequately heated by the burning of several hundred coals. The furnace's flame combines with the general smallness of the dungeon to create an atmosphere of great intimacy and secretness, the occupants of the room performing their passionate rituals in a world of trembling shadows and liquid orange highlights, their bodies so close together as to make them seem a single writhing entity bent on release.
As you watch the dungeon's ceremony, your penis rises in slow majestic stages until it finally parts the flaps of your robe and stands straight up in the air, a perfect globe of liquid oozing from its circumcised tip. The penis is so erect that it seems at once to be detached from your body, and to concentrate the whole force of your physical being. With a will of its own, your left hand moves toward the awesome organ, fingers yearning to experience its hardness. Yes, go ahead ... touch it ... squeeze it ... feel the way it jumps in your hand, the way its head expands, the way the head's rubbery rim grazes the -edge of your thumb. Now stroke it. Pet it with both hands.... See how the droplet of liquid spills from the tip to moisten the tiny valley left by your circumcision. Watch the buttocks of the naked boys who writhe within the dungeon, the long stiff organs of the men upon the platforms, and the fat vaginas of the women.... Watch the gentle swaying of the blonde woman against her chains as the boys probe each of her cavities. See how the ringlets of her hair dance across her forehead as she swallows the staff of the boy before her. See how her ass-cheeks spread under the assault of the boy at her rear. Smell the smells of mingled sweat and vaginal foam, the dying smell of semen. Feel the twitching of your penis, the jiggling of your testicles. Lose yourself in the sounds of scraping meat, in the sights of sparkling tongues on shining cracks and penises. Feel the upward ooze of an orgasm at the base of your spinal column. Feel it build and build through your belly, groin, and crotch, swallowing your prick in concentric waves of tingling sensation. Stroke it faster, faster....
But wait! Inside the dungeon the woman closest to the window begins a steady thrust toward orgasm as her boy attendant beats his tongue from lip to wet-furred lip of her vagina. See how she stretches her legs up toward you as she grinds against her platform. Now she begins to grunt like an animal and buck against her lover's face, only the whites of her eyes visible to you as she watches the plunging organs of the boys upon the platform, her head tilted completely backward over the -edge of her satin pillow. What will happen to the boy when the woman reaches her climax? Will he simply continue to tongue her as if nothing has happened?
The woman moans as if in labor, her skin-tight costume making a high silky sound as her legs and belly strain against its fabric, her pussy seeming almost to swallow her attendant's smooth-featured face as she locks her legs around his slender neck. Now like a tigress she reaches her climax, the lips of her pussy glued to her lover's lips, her fingers like claws as they move across his back. Her orgasm lends her an almost superhuman beauty, her face twisting into a silent, open-mouthed scream, the sequins of her mask sparkling with a cold blue flame as they catch the light of the furnace.
"Don't ... stop..." she whispers in the midst of her thrashing, her voice neither pleading nor demanding, but merely distant. But then, almost before the words have escaped her lips, she falls quite still upon her platform, apparently exhausted by her orgasm. The boy remains between her thighs for several moments after her climax, his buttocks swaying slightly from side to side, his tongue touched to the center of his mistress's frothy slit. Slowly, he dismounts her, and stands for a time beside her bed, then approaches the center platform with light, measured footsteps, and takes up a solemn position behind the boy at the blonde woman's mouth. Instantly, the boy who possesses the woman's buttocks redoubles his efforts (though he cannot have noticed the arrival of the sashless boy, for his eyes are tightly closed) and drives like a stallion into her anus, tiny droplets of sweat running freely from his armpits to moisten the -edges of the animal skin on which he stands. Breath hissing through clenched teeth, he finally buries himself in the woman's rump and sprays her intestines with his seed, the overflow of his ejaculation running down the cleft of the woman's bottom to drench the pole of the boy who lies beneath her. Then the boy pulls his organ from the woman and rises shakily to her feet, his hands busied with his purple sash as he tries to keep the strip of fabric from falling to the floor. The blonde woman's anus gives up a loud belch as the boy pulls his penis from her, and the woman herself makes a sharp, deep-throated moan as if greatly pained by the sudden emptiness of her bowels. For a moment, the room is filled with the sound of dry, crackling laughter, but then the sound recedes, its source unapparent, into the wet, muffled sounds of tonguing, sucking, and fucking. Abruptly, an old white-bearded man in a tattered white robe steps out of the shadows at the dungeon's rear and faces the scene upon the center platform, his eyes like faded jewels set into thick graying parchment. His arm moves sharply to the left, a soft blur in the darkness, then pauses against what seems to be a sheer stone wall. Briefly, the dungeon is tortured by the scrape of steel against stone, and suddenly, a massive brass-studded door comes into view, opening onto a misty musky nothingness, and the old man smiles and beckons a hesitant naked boy into the room, his hands seeking the boy's shoulders and arms as soon as the new arrival has crossed the threshold. Oblivious to the struggling of the men, women, and boys who fill the room, the old man leads the new arrival past the furnace's flickering flame to the octagonal stone table on which rests the bowl of ceremonial oil. Nodding and smiling, the old man covers the boy from head to foot with the thick dark liquid, his long gnarled fingers moving like burrowing animals in the valley of the boy's buttocks, like clinging vines on the stem of the boy's penis. The boy submits to the man's prolonged fondling with hands locked fast behind his back, his body not his own, but a solemn offering to whatever god the old man stands in place of.
When the boy's body has been thoroughly anointed with the oil, the old man leads him to the black-garbed woman who lies alone on the platform closest to the window-the six o'clock platform-and stands aside to watch as the boy crouches between the woman's legs exactly as the boy before him, and dutifully lowers his face to the intersection of her thighs, his body seeming to relax as his lips brush the thick curling hairs of her open sex. As the woman accepts her new lover without so much as a nod, the old man moves silently away from the newly-joined couple, and takes up a position behind the boy who works at the blonde woman's mouth. He seems an ancient prophet as he stands at the dungeon's center, the flaxen strands of his beard reaching to a point just below his sunken chest, the folds of his soiled robe creating an infinite network of soft, flowing lines and shadows. Turning so that his clotted eyes reflect the orange light of the furnace, he makes a ceremonial gesture with the flat of his left hand, and nods-as if signifying his acceptance-toward the boy who has recently possessed the blonde woman's anus. Head held high, the boy steps away from the skin-covered platform and leaves the dungeon through the door that the old man has opened only moments ago, the furnace's fire flaring red and yellow as the closing door fans it with dusty air. As soon as the boy is gone, the boys who remain with the blonde woman change places around their leather bound captive, the boy at her cunt kneeling behind her to take her rump, the boy in her mouth sliding beneath her to take her cunt, the woman giving up sharp wailing moans each time a prick is pulled from her body. Then, when both boys are locked securely into the woman's openings, the boy who has recently tongued his mistress to climax takes up the vacant place at the woman's face and grabs her tightly by the backs of her small pink ears, his penis rising in three convulsive jerks to full bursting erection. Smiling, the old man slips the absent boy's sash around the new initiate's waist, and giving the boy's behind an encouraging pat, disappears with a slow shuffle into the dark shadows at the dungeon's side.
Now everything is exactly as it was when you arrived at the dungeon's window, three long-legged boys pumping themselves into the blonde woman's holes upon the center platform, a dozen other boys (or so it seems, though the twelfth platform is not visible) ministering to the tumescent organs of the masked men and women around the platform. You watch the scene with almost mindless fascination, your hand clutched fast to the root of your rigid prick, your eyes darting quickly from body to naked body. Behind you, the forest's winds rustle the branches of apple and pear trees, an occasional fruit falling to the garden's flower-beds with a soft crunching thud. The grass is cool between your toes, the soft-leaved branches of a bush beside you occasionally swaying to the left to caress the back of your neck and arm. A thousand thousand questions race wildly through your mind, each crippled by the next before it can fully form itself, all doused by the rising tide of your passion. Soon you will have to give up your post at the window-your glimpse of ... eternity? ... And return to your little house at the other side of the forest ... but first. . .
like an experimenting child, you begin once again to move your hand on the hot shaft of your organ, your cloak falling completely open to reveal your tightened belly and heaving chest. Balancing on your heels, your bring your right hand down to the bottoms of your testicles, and sighing, begin to tickle them like some sort of male coquette performing in an Eastern hotel room, your fingers trembling at the feel of their moist fullness. As you stroke your staff, you let your eyes wander slowly over each of the participants in the dungeon's ritual, and imagine yourself in the place of each one, your entire body thrilling as your brain digests the vicarious impulses which you feed it. Staring at one of the pleasure boys as he sucks on the prick of his master, you imagine the feel of hard flesh in your mouth, the feel of a prick's spongy head in your throat, the feel of being naked on your knees between the thighs of a man. Then, staring at the boy's master, you imagine the feel of having your prick stuffed in so small a mouth as the boy's, the feel of being completely clothed but for genitals. How delicious must be the breeze as it touches the man's glistening pole!
As you let your gaze travel aimlessly around the room, now imagining the taste of pussy, now of prick to your tongue, you come finally to the blonde woman upon the center platform, and feel a delirious madness come over you as you imagine the feel of chains around your arms and legs, the feel of having breasts that shake and a cunt that makes loud noises as its depths are plumbed, of being held in perfect immobility while you are penetrated by three stiff pricks. Again, an orgasm tickles at your crotch, forcing your prick into a series of hollow convulsions. You fixate on the blonde woman as the orgasm builds within you, imagining her straining nipples as your own nipples, her quivering holes as your holes, and gradually, you begin actually to confuse yourself with the woman, to believe yourself to be in the center of the dungeon, surrounded by squirming couples, triply tickled toward orgasm....
Your eyes half-closed, you give a sudden jerk of your head as a semi-impression races across your mind. For a second, you resist the impression, barely able to conceive of its validity, then suddenly, you freeze into a knot of tautened muscle as the image takes a firm hold on you. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see the white-bearded old man moving steadily toward you from within the dungeon, his body half-covered in shadow, his eye twinkling with reflected starlight. You stay as still as a statue as the old man approaches you, your hand pressed hard to your penis, orgasm receding into a painful tension deep within you. In utter silence, the old man walks to the dungeon's window and stares up at you through the thick black bars, his face barely inches from yours, its winding wrinkles outlined by the blaze of the furnace's fire. He seems very pale in the light of the flame, his face a mask of whitish-gray, his lips the lightest shade of pink imaginable. The expression of his face makes it seem as if he has known of your presence all along, as if he has merely been waiting for the proper moment to confront you. You stare paralyzed into his clotted little eyes for what seems an eternity, then begin to creep slowly away from him, panic itching at the -edges of your mind. There's something ... unholy ... about this bearded old mari ... something decadent and unclean. Best to run from him ... to run ....
Before you can back more than an inch or two from the window, the old man halts you with a sudden motion of his bony shoulders. Slowly, he raises his long, white-clothed arms to the windows, and holds a shiny black wooden box at the level of your eyes, seeming to offer it for your inspection.
Leave me alone! you want to scream at him, but before you can open your mouth, the old man holds his mysterious box still closer to your face, and points his crooked index finger at a silver-filled inscription at the box's right-hand corner. In the flash of the furnace's fire, you read the letters of your own name from the box's face, and gasping, reach impulsively for the old man's offering.
"That's my name ... my name," you whisper in an incredulous whine, your hands groping further and further past the window's bars.
The old man steps backward a pace, holds the shiny box just out of your reach. Yes ... of course ... he wants you to come in. He wants you to come into his dungeon...
For long buzzing moments, you crouch motionless beside the window, your arms suspended in mid-air like the branches of an oak, your mind reeling with disbelief. Shall you enter the castle and seek the old man? Who can say what dangers-and what mysteries-lurk within? Who can say what terrible fate this ghastly old man--or the master he serves-may have painstakingly prepared for you? To think! A box with your name on it! How, how can it be?
Rising to your feet, you back hesitantly away from the window, your eyes, and your erection, turning steadily on the old man as his expressionless face fades gradually into shadow at the dungeon's rear. You must go inside. You must have the box. If you don't, you will be doomed to live a life of constant wonder. Nothing will be clear to you until its contents, and its origin, are revealed to you. Nothing will be clear....
As you turn finally from the dungeon's window and begin to search for an entranceway to the castle, you are surprised to find that the skies have lightened to a deep pre-dawn purple-gray, giving the castle's garden an eerie look of shaded washiness. Trees seem merely photographs of trees, bushes to be made of clay. You think of your wife, and imagine her waking and staring out the bedroom window at the dawn that surrounds you. Far in the distance, a bird begins his sad morning chirp, the liquid notes of his song hanging lonely and unanswered in the forest's chilly air.
Your chest contracting with warm anxiety, you pace the castle's crumbling walls like an animal on the prowl, the dawn unfolding by stages behind your back, seeming almost to follow you through the winding maze of the garden. The castle reveals no entranceway, but only an ever-changing series of gigantic geometric shapes, the wide circular base of a turret smoothing now into the sheer rectangle of an unbreachable wall, now into the high triangle of a look-out post, which itself breaks into the hundred-odd squares of the battlement above, everything punctuated by windows of irregular shape and placement, some with bars, some without, all looking in on darkened empty rooms, devoid of any sign of life. High in the air, on the castle's topmost partitions, huge gargoyles stand like sentries against the streaky skies-strange winged creatures with bulbous eyes and hideous beaks-all seeming to stare haughtily downward on our progress through the garden. Often, as you cast a nervous glance skyward, you find yourself convinced that one or another of the gargoyles has moved a wing or a claw, but then too, your imagination seems to be particularly active this morning, for you often imagine that you can hear the sound of distant chamber music, and surely there is no music to be heard in so desolate a castle as this one.
As your search along the castle's walls proves continually fruitless, you find yourself growing progressively more frantic to find an entranceway that will lead to the dungeon. Surely your face must mirror your desperation: can you not feel the droplets of sweat that roll freely down your cheeks, the way your hair blows around and around in a twisted mass, the way your parted lips take in rapid bursts of air? And see the way your penis bobs in semi-erection against your legs. You must look like a madman wandering through this gray depressing garden, like a haunted spirit wandering through the mists of some dreadful limbo. Continually, you find yourself halting in your search, and puzzling over some familiar bit of scenery. Continually, you find yourself jerking your head to left and right, and wondering whether you've passed this or that part of the castle before. Did you or did you not pass this raspberry patch already? And this full-branched cherry tree: have you not seen a flame showing from any of the castle's windows.... Or can it be that the dungeon's ceremonies are at an end, that the furnace's flame has long since been extinguished? You must hurry! If the old man has not vanished already, he is sure to do so soon, Even if he is only a figment of your fertile imagination, how long will it be possible for you to maintain this state of supercharged hallucination? Hurry! You must find the dungeon!
Suddenly, as you turn one of the castle's vine-covered corners, you find yourself standing not twenty yards from a massive brick wall which extends from the side of the castle's wall for as far as the eye can see. For a moment, you are filled with dismay at the thought of being barred access to the rest of the castle, but then, as you turn slightly to the left, your heart begins to pound in your chest as you discover the entrance-way you've so frantically sought-a small arched opening set above three shallow stone steps in the most shadowy section of the castle's wall. From nowhere, the words of Jesus enter your mind: Seek and ye shall find, and you give a sudden burst of laughter at the madness of the thought. Then, pacing quickly through the archway, you find yourself standing at the -edge of a great barren courtyard, your naked feet pressing into dried clumps of cracking earth, your cloak flapping to the touch of a sourceless breeze. like the garden, the courtyard is cast predominantly in the monochromatic gray of the dawn's feeble half-light, the liquid black shadows of night still clinging fast to its corners. In the center of each of the courtyard's walls stands a massive oak door, each leading into a different part of the castle. As you stand at the courtyard's center, trying to decide which of the doors to enter (the westward door would seem to be the most logical choice since you've come from the west, but then, the castle is such a deceptive piece of architecture...), you can almost hear the rattle of long-gone carriages and coaches, can almost see the glitter of diamonds and sapphires as tittering women enter the castle (now lit with the light of a thousand blazing chandeliers) on the arms of regally-attired dukes and barons. The smell of perfume and powder trickles lightly through the air, fans flutter before beauty-marked faces, and suddenly, the entire scene becomes densely real, replete with red-breeched servants and velvet-caped horsemen, giggling maidens and long-haired squires. Then, abruptly, the past banishes, leaving you to stand like a longely child in the center of a deserted courtyard. Ghosts ... all of them ghosts...
Without thinking, you step resolutely forward and enter the door directly before you, your hands very pale on its worm-eaten wood, the morning's first pink beam of sunlight grazing over your shoulders just before you seal yourself in the castle's musty gloom. Instantly, your ears are assailed by the sound of distant music, only this time, the music does not vanish as before. Can it be that you are truly mad? Or are violins actually played somewhere in this crumbling old ruin of a castle? Stealthily, you move forward, the folds of your cloak caressing your penis as if guided by some playful spirit to maintain its semi-erection.
Before you stands a steep stone staircase, its uppermost steps all but hidden in darkness. You ascend the stairway two steps at a time, your feet burning at the stone's coldness, and find yourself staring into a long grimy-walled corridor, the sound of music seeming to come from a dimly-lit archway at its opposite end. like a moth, you make for the light ahead, your hands turning cold and crawly as they grope along the ancient scum that covers the corridor's walls. Suddenly, there is a scraping sound below you, and for a brief second, you stare directly into the tiny red eyes of a large brown rat who runs for all he's worth at the sight of you, and disappears into the impenetrable shadow at the base of the corridor's wall. "Go home," an inner voice whispers at you, but the thousand questions in your mind couple with the pulse of your penis to drive you further down the corridor.
At the corridor's end, you come to a huge deserted entrance hall, a black marble fountain standing dry and useless at its center. At the top of the fountain four marble boys open little cracked mouths to a stream that will not flow, while at the bottom, six dancing fish turn their fat lips heavenward, as if trying to catch the twirling specks of dust that fill the entrance hall's semi-darkness. Two of the hall's walls are covered by gigantic hanging tapestries of medieval hunting scenes, the third interrupted by three small stained glass windows, each depicting a clear-skied pastoral scene in a blaze of blues, reds, yellows, and greens. The music of the violins is louder from the entrance hall than from the corridor, seeming to emanate from behind the double brass-studded doors that stand at the hall's fourth gray wall. You walk slowly toward the doorway, awed by the stillness of the entrance hall (there is almost a museum-like atmosphere to the place, almost the feeling of an empty church), thinking perhaps to ask one of the violinists for directions to the dungeon (though won't the musicians be surprised, even frightened or angered, by the presence of an intruder?), when suddenly, you are startled by a rustling motion of the tapestry to your left.
"Is someone there?" you call automatically, pulling closed the flaps of your cloak as you turn toward the faded tapestry. (What will the castle's inhabitants think to find you dressed so scantily? Ah, fool! What of the cultists in the dungeon? Were they dressed any more appropriately?)
At the sound of your voice, the motion behind the tapestry grows momentarily frantic, then ceases altogether, leaving the hunter depicted on the tapestry's face to stand quite still above the boar he has recently killed.
"Who is it? Who's there?" you cry, extending a trembling arm toward the tapestry. Then, startled at your own rudeness (especially in view of your status as trespasser), you withdraw your hand and plead in the direction of the fallen boar: "Please, if anyone's there ... I'm looking for an old white-bearded gentleman who carries a wooden box..."
For answer there comes a stifled moan, the scrape of flesh against flesh.
"Come out!" you cry suddenly, imagining the old man disappearing into the forest with his precious box tucked neatly beneath his arm. Unable to help yourself, you wrench back the tapestry, and find to your surprise that you are confronting a half-naked girl and boy who make love in the fashion of animals within a small rectangular alcove set into the wall. The girl-a supple, small-breasted creature, her silken gown pushed up to her shoulders-stares up at you with wide, pleading eyes, while the boy-a curly-headed, full-lipped youth with striped trousers dropped to his ankles-continues to turn himself in her back-thrust vagina as if helpless to resist the flow of his passion.
"Please!" cries the girl. "Don't tell them!" Jerking with the boy's insistent pounding, she casts a fearful glance in the direction of the double doors before her. "Please don't tell them!"
You stare distractedly at the girl's soft buttocks as they spread under the boy's assault. Reaching beneath the girl to knead her belly and breasts, the boy suddenly captures your gaze with his, and smiles a wicked large-toothed smile at you, his black eyes twinkling with the multicolored light of the stained glass window.
"I ... I'm looking for an old man," you begin, your words sounding hollow and stupid as you speak them. "He has a box that I'm supposed to have...."
The boy parts the girl's buttocks with his left hand and tickles her sparsely-haired ass-hole with his right.
"Is it your box?" he whispers, his voice half filled with passion, half with slyness.
"Yes," you lie, "it's my box. The old man borrowed it from me...."
The boy squeezes the girl's trembling pink nipples between his fingers, and stoops to give the back of her neck a slow moist kiss.
"Are you sure you must have the box?" the boy asks, looking up as if at some sudden thought. "Wouldn't you rather have a try at this girl?" Smiling, he runs his hands down the girl's sides from armpits to hips.
At the boy's words, the girl gives voice to a soft open-mouthed moan, her eyes rolling upward as she mashes her rump against her partner's taut belly. The boy makes a little laugh and gives a sudden wink in your direction. Your hand turns cold and clammy on the tapestry as despite yourself, you consider the boy's suggestion. Picturing yourself plowing the girl's delicate furrow from behind, you suddenly avert your eyes from the young couple and stare shamefully down at the dusty wooden floor, filled with guilt at your imaged unfaithfulness to your wife. Behind you, past the entrance hall's brass-studded doorway, the violins play a series of long falling notes, and fade into silence as a harpsichord begins its icy solo.
"I'm looking for an old man," you begin again, hoping that the boy will not be insulted by your refusal to share his partner.
"You're sure?" the boy asks. "You can use her mouth if you like. Look..." His eyes half-closed, he leans slightly forward and traces the curve of the girl's lips with index and middle finger, his testicles slapping upward against her crotch as he continues to scoop into her from behind. Shuddering, the girl opens her mouth and sucks wildly on the boy's fingertips.
"I have to find the old man!" you cry suddenly, hating yourself for your gracelessness. "I have to find the old man!"
"Very well," the boy says coldly, indicating the entrance hall's double doorway with an impatient jerk of his head. "Why don't you go in there and ask if anyone has seen this old man? Maybe someone in there can help you..."
"Please!" the girl cries. "Don't tell them about me. I don't behave this way as a rule. Really I don't ... "
"Don't pay any attention to her," says the boy.
"Just go in and ask if they've seen the old man. They'll help you if they can."
"Do you think it would be all right?" you ask in a whisper, casting a nervous glance over your shoulder. "I mean ... do you think they'll mind my being here uninvited?"
"How should f know?" snaps the boy, working both his thumbs into his sighing partner's anus. "But don't you think you could leave us alone now? You're really acting like some sort of Peeping Tom, you know."
"I'm sorry," you murmur, deeply stung by the boy's words. "Really ... I'm sorry..." Your cheeks turning hot with shame, eyes shifting from the boy's face to your own naked feet, you let fall the tapestry and watch the boy pull it distractedly across himself and his lover, never pausing in his careless probing of her pussy.
"Don't tell them!" the girl cries as the image of the hunter's bow falls across her hips. "Please!"
"No ... no, I won't," you murmur, turning from the couple. "Really ... I won't.
As you walk hesitantly through the mustiness of the entrance hall, your vision hazed by the brightening snatches of color of the stained glass windows, you feel the powerful uneasiness that a child feels when lost in an unfamiliar place with some unpleasant task-such as asking a policeman for directions-before him. Beneath your cloak, sweat runs freely down your body, droplet after droplet rolling from your armpits to splash against your sides and drip slowly over your hips. The marble boys atop the fountain seem to mock you with silent wide-mouthed laughter as you step ever closer to the double doorway at the end of the hall, and something in the aspect of the marble boys' faces reminds you queerly of your own son-of your precious starry-eyed son, who must just now be rising from his bed.
"Have you ever seen the castle, Father?" your boy will ask you when you tell him the story (and yes, the turn of his mouth will mock in the way that children mock).
"I?" you'll say. "I?" But then what will you say? Is this strange old castle a fit place for children to believe in?
With infinite slowness, you touch your fingertips to the latch of the door before you, and simultaneously raise your other hand to the tangled knots of your hair in a pathetic attempt at making yourself more presentable. The rusty coldness of the door-latch travels clear up your arm to your shoulder, forcing your bicep into a sudden convulsive twitch. Behind you, the imprints of your naked feet describe the side and base of a gigantic triangle in the floor's thick dust, the intervals of the footsteps greater between the outer corridor and the tapestry than between the tapestry and the doorway before which you stand. The sight of the footprints produces an odd double impulse within you: on the one hand, you feel a silly aesthetic compulsion to complete the triangle by walking from the doorway back to the corridor (but yes ... there'll be plenty of time for that when you leave the castle with the old man's box), while on the other, you feel compelled to obliterate the footprints altogether, to utterly erase all evidence of your presence in the castle. And why is it, you ask yourself, that yours are the only foot-marks in the dust? What of the couple behind the tapestry? Is it possible that they've been behind the tapestry so long that the dust has re-sifted itself over the marks of their feet? But look ... the tapestry is quite still now, the couple either gone or completely immobile behind it. Again, the entrance hall exudes an atmosphere of majesty and awesomeness, the woven huntsman seeming an ancient Norse god as he stands before four reverent boys of marble. The hall seems darker than it was only a moment ago-perhaps a storm is brewing over the forest-and in the darkness, the millions of dust particles that fill the hall seem to hang suspended in mid-air, their frozenness giving you the eerie feeling of being trapped within the frame of some expertly realistic oil painting. Frightened by the hall's sudden unreality (but almost equally frightened at the thought of entering the castle proper unbidden), you slowly depress the tongue of the door-latch, and push the heavy door open to the rising moan of a viola from within. For a moment, there is only a dazzling blur of rich bursting color and the coolness of the entrance hall at your back, but then, gradually, the scene before you comes into sharp focus, and your hands begin to tremble at your sides.
Past the brass-studded doorway, an immense high-ceilinged ballroom glows beneath the light of a dozen pink crystal chandeliers, half a hundred men and women-naked save for spotless white kid gloves and green knee-length boots of the softest Spanish leather-dancing an elegant minuet upon its floor of huge black and white marble squares, many of the men sporting proud throbbing erections, many of the women wet open-lipped pussies. At the sides of the room, an additional number of naked men and women stand in various gracefully posed groups, and drink glass after long-stemmed glass of a sparkling burgundy offered by the red-breeched servants who move like ghosts through the ballroom. Still more naked party-goers-all wearing the mandatory gloves and boots-stand upon a long balcony above the ballroom, several of the women leaning over the marble balustrade to study the movements of the dancers below through opera glasses of various muted colors. At one corner of the balcony, in an area cloistered by tall potted plants, a young man with shoulder-length blonde hair sits upon a purple velvet couch with a dark-nippled brunette at his side, and rubs his hand in a delicate circle over her hipbone, his fingers inching perpetually closer to the -edge of her furry black triangle. The girl's blush seems to cover her entire body. Occasionally, she turns her head from left to right to make sure she and her lover aren't being observed (though she doesn't seem to take into account a tall redheaded woman who stares fixedly at them through maroon-colored opera glasses from directly across the ball room, her scarlet bush pushed plump and moist against the balcony's railing), and occasionally, disturbed by the boy's forwardness, she makes feeble gestures of resistance, but these the boy answers with fervent kisses to her throat and chest, and the girl quickly loses herself to sensation, and ceases her half-hearted protest.
Below the balcony's farthest section, a chamber ensemble-three violinists, two violists, two flutists, and a harpsichordist-sits upon a low ebony platform and works devotedly at its instruments, each of its members apparently oblivious to the voluptuous scene around him. Dressed immaculately in white ties and tails, the musicians seem strange foreign creatures marooned on an island of passion far beyond their comprehension. Trapped in a world of lascivious aliens, they give themselves wholly to their instruments, barely moving their heads as they play, all staring blankly ahead as might a group of ancient birds patiently awaiting extinction. The conductor--a thin mustachioed gentleman with long silver-gray hair and bulging veins in his forehead and hands-leads the ensemble with the passionless precision of a scientist, a single droplet of sweat standing motionless of the tip of his nose. "Perhaps tomorrow," he seems to be thinking, "we'll find a way to go home...."
On a purple satin divan beside the musician's platform, a tall black-haired woman sits beside her open-legged partner-a tall, slender man with a wild shock of honey-brown hair and a narrow downy chest-and twines his long penis around her white-gloved fingers. Smiling wetly, the woman presses her full brown-nippled breast against the man's arm as she masturbates him, and the man responds by sliding his hand beneath the woman's rump and squeezing the left cheek of her ass so hard that the lips of her pussy pucker with each movement of his fingertips. A group of some twenty men and women stand around the teasing couple, speaking in sensuous whispers and sipping glasses of sparkling burgundy, their polished green boots streaking the marble floor with long eel-like reflections. Apparently at the urging of one of the women in the group, the black-haired woman suddenly slides down from the sofa, kneels between her partner's open knees, and takes the whole of his stiffening organ into her mouth with one convulsive swallow, her hands tugging at his testicles as a child might pull at his mother's apron strings. like small children, the men and women around the divan applaud the woman's gesture with gleeful claps of their hands (the sound of which is eerily dream-like, owing to the gloves worn by each member of the company) and light sibilant laughter. Greatly excited by the spectacle of the woman's cocksucking, one of the men in the group-a supple-limbed youth with crisp blonde-brown hairs on belly and legs, and eyes that twinkle like blue sapphiresthrows his arms around the woman before him-a long-legged, golden-haired girl-and squeezes her breasts and vagina while wriggling his penis in the deep cleft of her magnificent equine rump. Within seconds, the entire group is writhing on the marble floor, the men kissing the women's nipples and fingering their pussies, the women twirling the man's penises and planting wet open-mouthed kisses on their necks and chests and shoulders. The musicians continue their minuet without missing a beat, their eyes seeming to go right through the sweating bodies before them to a distant place seen only by themselves. Dancing couples glide past the group with bright approving smiles, an occasional couple quitting the dance-floor to join the heaving melee around the divan.
It is impossible to tell how long the party has been in progress, much less when it will end. Continually, the revellers fortify themselves for further celebration with platefuls of sweet meats and exotic delicacies which are arranged on a series of velvet-covered tables to the right of the room. Continually, red-breeched servants-young boys mostly, their hidden organs plump and long against their legs-replenish the purple velvet tables with steaming platters of freshly cooked food brought from a curtained hallway behind the musicians' stand. The party-goers eat, dance, and make love in a kind of anarchic flux, there being no rules apparently by which the party is to progress to its end. Their bodies glistening with sweat, smells of their passion rising heavy in the air, they plunge haphazardly from one activity to the next, pausing only occasionally to rest upon the velvet and satin divans that surround the ballroom and line the balcony's promenade, and more often than not, they are even then immediately approached by someone desirous of their company. They exist in a world of timeless glitter, surrounded by twinkling chandeliers and sparkling glasses of wine, protected from the stormy dawn by the heavy red velvet curtains that cover the ballroom's six gigantic windows. Even now, the wind outside moans high above the tinkle of the harpsichord, and the musicians are forced to subtly increase the volume of their music until all sound of the storm is erased. It must be dark outside now-dark as night. The trees must now be bending under the wind, their leaves tearing from their branches in great clumps, twisting through the air like dying butterflies. (Is it raining, or is that simply the sound of the viola being plucked by its player?) Surely your wife must be awake now; surely the storm will have wakened her. You see her bolting from her bed, running through the pine-scented hallway of your little house. "Mother! Mother!" she cries. "Your son is gone! Your son is gone!"
Outside, a sudden flash of thunder cracks over the forest. Startled, you jerk instinctively to the right, your hand slipping on the door-latch and sending the massive door crashing against the wall of the ballroom. Instantly, an echoing silence falls over the room, dancers, musicians, and servants freezing in their places, a hundred pairs of eyes burning questioningly into yours. Your throat is utterly dry, your hands like the wings of a sparrow against your thighs. Your penis falls from erection to semi-erection in a series of quivering beats, each of its twitches disturbing the folds of your cloak, filling you with shame at the thought of the exposure of your voyeuristic heat. A slow blush rises to your face, burning your face, burning your cheeks with its tingling fire. Droplets of sweat run from your forehead to tickle the sides of your face and splash finally to your neck, and as you raise your hand to your face to wipe the moisture away (at the touch of the liquid, you think again of your wife, picture her with tears streaming from her eyes), you find that your cheek feels smooth and warm and lean, almost the cheek of a woman.
The tension in the ballroom mounts quickly to a point of unendurability, none of the party-goers moving a muscle, glasses of wine and violin bows held poised in the air, the crystals of an overhead chandelier sending an erratic tinkling through the room at the touch of a breeze from the entrance hall. You find it more and more difficult to avoid the stares of the naked men and women, particularly the stares of a muscular couple in the foreground of the scene who stand motionless in the position of dog-fashion congress. Averting your eyes from the couple, you stare at the specks of forest earth that have fallen from your legs and cloak to the ballroom's cold tile floor. Any second, you expect the entire assemblage before you to break into shouts of condemnation of your intrusion into their secret party. Surely they must be angry at having been discovered. Surely they must be angry. But why don't they speak? ... Why?
"I'm looking for an old man," you shout suddenly, unable to withstand the ballroom's stillness. "An old man with a wooden box. He has a white..."
As if at a signal, the entire company bursts into peals of hearty laughter, the women's breasts shaking like jelly, the men's organs bobbing crazily in the air. Instantly, the musicians resume their melody, the dancers their dance. like children released from the weight of some momentary distraction, the ballroom's glistening lovers return to their love-making, an occasional dying fit of laughter interrupting their explorations of each other's bodies. Once again, servants move through the naked throngs of men and women offering long-stemmed glasses of burgundy and platefuls of steaming delicacies.
Shame courses through your body like a river of burning ice. Here you stand, you say to yourself, in the middle of a fairy tale castle, confronted with scores of men and women who act more strangely than any you've ever seen or heard of, and these daft men and women, in green boots and white gloves no less, have the incredible audacity to ignore you, to act as if you aren't even there. You must be as mad as they are to let them treat you like this. Yes, yes.... Something must have driven you mad. Some strange combination of ordinary events must have caught you unawares, thrust you into a world of temporary insanity. Yes.... It's almost a joke really, searching for an old man with a box with your name written across it: obviously the hallucination of a madman. Yes ... Caught in the web of an unfriendly reality, the schizophrenic distributes significance within his world in such a way as to render the variables of that world more concrete. Where have you heard that phrase? Was it from one of your father's books? Well ... no matter ... it makes such perfect sense. And now, it's time to give up your little fantasy and return to your wife and children and parents. You'll walk through the door and hug and kiss everyone: "I just went for a little walk," you'll say, "and silly me, I got caught in the storm..." And then you'll return to your meal of bread and cheese, and continue eating as if nothing has happened. Your children will sing their children's songs while you eat, and your wife will lean against you from behind and untangle the knots in your hair and wash the dust from your face and feet until you're once again the beautiful young man whom everyone admires so much-the perfect husband, father, and son. Your wife's breasts will be like pillows against the back of your neck, her hands like a hundred little breezes against your cheeks....
Smiling with satisfaction, you turn from the dancers in the ballroom to face the musty stillness of the entrance hall. No light whatsoever enters through the stained glass windows; the triangle of your footsteps, soon to be completed, is barely visible in the darkness. Outside, the storm is surely raging...
"So ... you are looking for the old man, are you?" comes a voice from behind you. "An old man with a long white beard..."
You wheel around as if struck by lightning, your resolutions fizzling into thin air with the drifting echoes of the voice. Before you stands a tall blonde-haired woman, a faint smile turning the corners of her lips. But for the expression of her face-the drunken liveliness of her sea-green eyes, the cat-like twist of her mouth, the single wrinkle of amusement across her brow-she seems enough like the blonde woman in the dungeon to be her sister. Her breasts are large-almost too large for her frame-their nipples fat and pink and incredibly taut. Her belly is round and full and velvet-smooth, ending in a perfect V of crisp yellow curls, just the tips of her vaginal lips visible between the tops of her slightly parted thighs. She seems some sort of magical queen against the sea of flashing figures behind her, a powerful enchantress-a sorceress-from times long past.
"Why don't you speak?" says the woman, drawing close to you and staring deeply into your eyes. Perhaps I can help you..." Her tone is vague, noncommittal, but even through her vagueness, she is charming and provocative, her eyes like burning stars as they probe you to the core. Directly behind her, a young redheaded girl falls to her knees to mouth her lover's prick. The man submits with, with hands placed lightly on his hips, his eyes fixed on the buttocks of a female dancer to his right.
"Do you know the old man?" you ask finally, your eyes wandering helplessly to the blonde woman's belly despite your continual attempts to turn away.
"You say he had a white beard?" the woman says, the tip of her tongue running over the -edge of her lower lip.
"Yes," you answer, eager to positively confirm your fantasy, and somewhat anxious that the blonde woman will not request that you identify yourself.
"Yes," the woman smiles, drawing your attention (inadvertently?) to her pussy with a slow downward motion of her hand. "A filthy old beard and a filthy old robe, eh?"
You nod your head slowly up and down, half hypnotized by the lightning movements of the woman's eyes, filled once again with anticipation at the thought of actually finding the old man and opening the precious wooden box.
"He fouls that robe with his semen all the time, you know," says the woman. "Oh, yes ... all the time. Sometimes, when he stands back there in the shadows.... He was standing in the shadows most of the time, wasn't he? Yes ... Well, sometimes when he stands back there, he plays with himself for hours and hours, staring at the boys' pretty ass-holes. Do you like boys, sir?" She pauses a moment, obviously amused at your discomfort, then: "No, never mind. Don't bother to answer. Why don't you come and sit down with me? We can share some burgundy ... perhaps chat for a while...." Without taking her eyes from yours, she gestures toward a nearby divan, the hairs that grace her armpits showing as crisp and as golden as the ones that cover her pubic mound.
"Really," you protest, confused by the woman's lack of concentration, "I must find the old man..."
"Yes," the woman interrupts, staring away at a couple who struggle upon the black-and-white tiled floor, the man pushing the girl's legs back over her shoulders and plowing into her from above. "He has a box of yours, doesn't he?"
"Yes, yes," you nod. "The box..."
"Only it isn't exactly your box," continues the woman. "It's his box, isn't it? It only has your name written across its top. Why don't you let the old man keep his precious box? He's probably only trying to trick you with it."
"I'd just like to see what's inside it," you whisper, eager not to be overhead by a dark-eyed servant who approaches the blonde woman from behind, a circular tray of wine glasses held proudly at the level of his chest. "Perhaps it's something important...."
The woman accepts a glass of burgundy from the servant's tray and sips it thirstily, her eyes fixing yours over the rim of the glass.
"You were peeping in at the dungeon, weren't you?" she snaps suddenly, purple wine trickling freely over her chin to form two tiny rivulets direct to her nipples. "You were peeping in at the window, weren't you?" she repeats, her tone growing coy and teasing, "and you saw some things you shouldn't have seen, true? You're quite a naughty boy, you know..." Abruptly, she bursts into laughter, her hands pressed to her rib cage just below her breasts. "Oh, I'm sorry to be laughing at you," she gasps finally, "but you look so silly in that tattered cloak ... and your feet are so muddy. Come, why don't you take off this ugly cloak and join our little party? I'm sure we can find a pair of boots for you ... a pair of gloves...."
Muscles flexing in her calves, she steps forward until her nipples graze the fabric of your cloak, then takes the flaps of your cloak in both her hands and starts to draw them slowly apart. Embarrassed, you resist her undressing, but she only laughs at you, pushes your hands away, and throws your cloak wide open, her hands instantly pulling it down over your shoulders, displaying you as if you were some sort of ingenue model.
"What were you ashamed of?" she cries, staring directly at your flaccid penis. "It's such a pretty thing...." like a child overcome by curiosity, she cups your penis and testicles in her long-fingered hand, and strokes them as if in imitation of a farmer milking a cow. Then, with her free hand, she begins to trace slow concentric circles in the light thicket that surrounds your penis, finally holding your testicles in one hand-weighing one, then the other, then both together-and your penis in the other, and turning them in wide opposite ovals. Her breath is as sweet as the grass as it tickles your nostrils, her belly like a rolling wave as she rubs the head of your prick in her crisp golden bush, forcing it to suck the dew of her pussy's dilated lips. Your prick hardens instantly into erection, leaping and kicking in her hands, poking dumbly against the base of her belly.
"Come," says the blonde woman, whispering with desire as she grinds against your thigh. "Let's sit down on the couch and relax for awhile, shall we? I'm sure this old man of yours won't run away. He's always in the dungeon...." With her fingers, she draws tiny invisible triangles on your buttocks and hips, her breasts firm and warm and up-thrust as they roll against your chest, flattening the wisps of hair that spread upward from your belly. Behind her, the ballroom is an ocean of glistening flesh beneath a thousand tiny crystal suns, the balcony above like a sky of liquid colors. The smells of semen and sweat and vaginal foam mingle with the scents of perfume and exotic foods to produce a maddeningly sexual aroma. The music of the chamber ensemble seems unrhythmic and atonal: you are unable to tell whether they are playing a minuet or a meringue. The blonde woman turns hazy before you, as if seen through the filter of a camera, only the moistness of her lips, the tautness of her nipples, and the openness of her pussy in sharp focus. Slowly (or does it merely seem so?), she turns her back to you, then places your hands on the double swell of her rump, and leads you lazily across the ballroom's floor, the inverted V of her bush peeping coyly out at you from between her legs. The closeness of the dancers is completely intoxicating, breasts and bellies and thighs flashing before you in unending symmetric patterns, massive erect pricks stabbing the air only inches from your thighs, pussies twirling and twinkling like so many dancing dewy forests. Men smile and nod at you, almost as if welcoming you to their exclusive club, and women reach out to touch you as they pass. Filled with the mood of the dancers, you feel yourself grow loose and warm and dizzy, your prick beating a tattoo in the cleft of the blonde woman's bottom as she leads you toward a long red satin couch.
"Here ... sit," she smiles, pushing you gently down onto the couch with hands touched lightly to your thighs. Sinking slowly into the couch's spongy cushions, your cloak spreading beneath you like a great black sea, you stare directly ahead to the ever-changing cluster of bodies beside the musician's platform, your prick stiffening almost to the point of agony as you watch a slender brown-haired man pull his organ from his partner's fore hole, and insert it, glistening with foam, in the narrow channel of her rear portal. Bent forward on the marble floor, the woman lets out a gasping laugh and reaches between her legs to squeeze the man's furry testicles, her eyes on the penis of a second man as it enters the straining mouth of a young girl. Beside you, the blonde woman breaks into renewed peals of laughter, her fingertips tickling at your crotch and thighs. "Your feet are really so muddy," she says. "I can't understand why you don't wear a pair of boots..." Then, turning toward the dance-floor with one hand raised above her head: "Jeanette! Susie! Where are you? Jeanette!"
As if by magic, two small-breasted creamy-skinned girls-a brunette and a redhead-emerge from the blur of the dance-floor with bellies rolling seductively and eyes trained obediently on the blonde woman's knees. They stand before you like two precocious princesses, the redhead with a child's innocent pout on her lips, the brunette seeming greatly exhilarated-her cheeks red, breath rushing through her tiny nostrils-as if by a recent orgasm, neither of the girls seeming the least bit curious as to your presence in the ballroom.
"This gentleman is a new visitor to our castle," says the blonde woman, stroking your prick with both her hands as she speaks. "He doesn't wear boots like ours, as you see, and his feet are terribly dirty." Both girls stare perplexedly down at your feet, the redhead's gaze lingering on your penis before staring back at her mistress's knees, the brunette giggling slightly at the sight of your earth-smeared toes. " ... and I was wondering if perhaps you girls would mind very much to clean his feet before we find a nice pair of boots for him...."
In utter silence, without so much as a nod in the blonde woman's direction, both girls fall to their knees at your feet, and with breasts pressed to the marble floor, begin to lick the dirt from your toes with flashing flicks of their long shining tongues. At the touch of the tongues, for God knows what reason, you think immediately of your wife-of the special look she gives you when you open your pants to show her your stiffening prick-and instantly, you are once again obsessed with the idea of finding the old man in the dungeon. How can you simply sit here, on this soft silky couch, utterly purposeless, and unfaithful besides, while your wife sits crying on the bedroom floor, surrounded by a thousand reminders of your masculine presence ("It's too masculine like this," she said when you had finished furnishing the bedroom. "I have to sleep here too, you know...") and thinking you vanished forever?
"Please!" you cry suddenly, pulling your toes from the girls' tight-fastened mouths. "Please .... "
"What is it?" asks the blonde woman, great concern-and disappointment of a kind-showing in her eyes. "The old man-" you begin.
"Oh, the old man, the old man!" cries the woman, throwing up her arms. "Is that all you can think of? An old man? What is there about a filthy old man that fascinates you so? The old man! The old man! That's all you every say! Why don't you forget this damned old man? He'll only make a fool of you..." She pauses a moment, staring scornfully into your eyes. Then, her tone and expression changing as if with the passing of a cloud: "Why don't you stay here and enjoy yourself with us? Look...." She turns toward the brunette at your left foot and bids the girl rise. "Susie ... show this silly gentleman how you'll entertain him. Help him to change his mind. He thinks he wants to leave our party...."
A look of maddening eagerness on her face, the brunette turns her back to you and bends deeply forward with legs spread wide apart. With a casual experience that belies her tender years, she deftly parts the cheeks of her backside and displays a quivering, plump-rimmed anus, which opens at the touch of her forefinger. The girl's exquisite ass, open like the entrance hall's double doors only inches from your face, blots out the whole of the ballroom with its heavy intimate smell and its intricate pattern of curling upswept hairs. Slowly, teasing you with her exhibitionism, the girl slips her hands downward to the dark back-thrust organ between her legs, and still holding apart her buttocks with the tips of her thumbs, she pries open the furry entrance to her belly with the fingers of both her hands until the pussy's inner meat and glimmering hole are fully exposed to view, then, moving her ass in a rhythmic grind, begins to probe her juicy depths with one slow-moving forefinger, until inch by inch, the finger disappears into her yawning hole to the knuckle.
"Well?" says the blonde woman, rolling your prick against your belly as she searches your eyes for reaction. "Wouldn't you like to stay with us for awhile? We can find you a pair of boots ... some gloves...."
At a touch from the blonde woman, the brunette stretches herself out on the floor beneath you, her body all pink and warm against the black and white tile, and opens her legs in moist invitation to your bursting penis.
With great difficulty, you avert your eyes from the spectacle.
"I'm ... sorry," you whisper, blushing with shame at your rudeness. "Really I am. It's just that I have to get back to my house soon. I really only came to see the old man. You see..."
"Yes, yes ... of course," says the woman, dismissing both the girls with a lightning flick of her wrist. "Very well, very well. Come.... I'll show you the way to the old man...."
The woman, who only seconds ago stroked your prick with her soft white hands, is now as passionless as a doctor's nurse, or as a waitress in a strange tavern, and her coldness fills you with a feeling of smallness and ineptitude. Her face is a mask of expressionless indifference, her lips poised in a natural semi-sneer, her eyes filled with a milky vagueness. Without so much as a backward glance, she leads you around the dance-floor toward a narrow mirrored doorway at the far end of the ballroom, taking great care that you come no closer than five or ten feet to any of the room's naked occupants.
"You want to get home to your wife, don't you?" asks the woman without turning. "You're the man who lives in the little house at the other side of the forest ... the house with the thatched roof and the two dark cross-beams out front...."
"No, no, you're mistaken," you answer quickly, anxious that your identity not be learned. "I live far away from here ... in a distant village. I don't even know anyone around here...."
The woman remains silent for a time, her buttocks bouncing ever so gently as she walks.
"You know," she says finally, seeming to have digested your answer, "there was once a man here who looked very much like you. T don't remember what became of him. I think he went away. Some boy in the hallway asked him to use a young girl's mouth, and the man started to take her, but then the boy began to cry, and the man got to feel guilty and he stopped. He looked very much like you. I saw him through the peephole."
Stopping at the narrow doorway, the blonde woman pauses to examine her reflection in the silver-framed mirror that fronts the door, her hands pressed to her belly as she drinks herself in with a slow up-and-down sweep of her foggy eyes. Standing behind her and slightly to the right, you stare from her reflection to your own, a feeling of sheer foolishness coming over you at the sight of your cloak hanging crazily from your arms, and your prick twitching dumbly between limpness and erection.
"You know," the woman whispers suddenly, "they say the girl in the dungeon looks very much like me. Do you think she does?" Before you can answer, she throws the mirrored door open on a brightly-lit passageway, and stands aside to let you pass. "Well, if you see her down there, give her my regards, will you?"
Utterly confused, you give two sharp nods of your head and step quickly past the woman, your cloak trailing liquidly over the floor behind you.
"Is it far to the dungeon?" you ask, just before entering the passageway.
"Not very," says the blonde woman. "Just follow this corridor straight through and you'll come to it in no time..." Then, closing the door quietly behind you: "Goodbye. A pity you couldn't stay...."
You are alone now in the well-kept yellow-brick corridor, gas flames glowing orange-blue at intervals of every four or five feet along the wall. The noise of the ballroom is completely erased by the closing of the door; there is no sound save that of your own labored breathing. You walk very, very slowly forward, thinking now of the box, now of your wife, and always of the stupefying scene you've just left behind. Have your decisions been the right ones? Perhaps you should have gone home, or perhaps stayed at the great party in the ballroom and dallied with the charming young ladies who offered themselves to you (how terrible to even imagine such faithlessness!) But ... soon it will all be over anyway. You'll have the box-whether the old man tries his tricks or not-and you'll be able to go home with your mind freed of curiosity, even ... yes ... even if the box contains nothing at all....
As you follow the corridor's winding leftward curve (which is so great as to make it seem that you are walking back in the direction of the ballroom), you find yourself suddenly in a much wider section of the passageway, your nostrils disturbed by the vague smell of salt, a series of life-size bas-reliefs carved into the walls on either side of you, depicting sensuous men and women engaged in all the various sexual arts: here, a man enters the vagina of a crouching woman while a second man enters his backside; there, a woman holds the head of a man's penis fast in her mouth while a boy lies beneath her, sucking the juices from her cunt. The bas-reliefs are so realistic-so expertly detailed-as to seem almost to move before your eyes as you pass, their organs seeming to quiver in the flickering light of the gas-jets as if filled with blood. Somehow, you cannot escape the feeling that the figures have been carved in the walls simply to remind you of the scene you have recently rejected.
Past the section of bas-reliefs, the passageway narrows once again, and the gas-jets grow farther and farther apart until finally they disappear altogether, leaving you in impenetrable darkness. "Just follow this corridor," the blonde woman said, "and you'll come to it in no time...."
You proceed with hands stretched out to the walls, slow-moving feet probing each inch of the blackness before advancing on it. The walls are cold and grimy to the touch, the stone floor like a slab of filthy ice underfoot, the atmosphere of the corridor increasingly dank and forbidding. You shiver beneath your cloak, your scrotum tightening into a furrowed double ball. The smell of salt becomes stifling, the silence unbearable. There is a nightmarish sense of timelessness to the blackened corridor, and were it not for the knowl-edge that you can turn and walk back to the ballroom at any time you choose, you would surely panic in its blackness. Childhood fears multiply one upon the other until they rise to fill your mind. You see lurking powerful creatures behind each of the passageway's twists, all of them ready to tear into you with gleaming fangs and razor-sharp nails, to inflict a thousand nameless tortures upon you before letting you drift mercifully into death. Continually, the corridor winds to the left, until finally it begins to seem a gigantic spiral leading unendingly downward. Continually, you are beset by worries of losing your balance, of falling head over heels into some unseen pit beneath you, and consequently, you stumble often, simply out of fear.
As you walk, lost in your private world of anxiety and terror, the steep spiraling corridor begins to narrow around you until its walls scrape against your shoulders and hips. Reaching upward, you find the ceiling-a jagged slimy thing-only inches above your head, and growing lower with every step you take. You walk with head inclined and shoulders bent, your hands struggling to keep your cloak around your body as the narrowing walls of the corridor tug it relentlessly from you. Soon, almost without your noticing it, you are crawling on hands and knees, your entire body trembling with the coldness of the passageway.
What a fool you are, to search for this idiotic box! You must be completely mad, completely without sense, crawling like a mischievous child in this tiny tunnel. But mad or no, you will only go a few feet farther and no more: if you don't find some doorway or other within the next minute or two you'll simply turn (no-you'll have to crawl backwards for a time: there is no room to turn) and go back to the ballroom. You won't say a word to the lying blonde woman who sent you on this wild-goose chase. You'll simply walk through the ballroom into the entrance hall, out of the entrance hall into the garden, past the garden into the forest, and quickly home to your waiting wife. This little corridor, is frightening, ghastly. The walls seem made of human bones. The air is noxious, perhaps even poisonous. Who knows what strange pairs of eyes watch you from hidden peepholes? Who can say how many of the castle's inhabitants have plotted and planned your death? Is that the sound of laughter you hear, or only the sound of your own breathing? Any second, hands may reach around your throat to choke the life out of you, a hidden sheet of metal may descend behind you, trapping you in the little corridor without food or water or air. No prize is worth crawling through this little tunnel, no prize in the world ... But then why do you crawl? You promised yourself that you would quit! Why do you crawl? Why do you?...
The end of the corridor: a wooden door the size of a window, a rusty latch that hits you full in the forehead, forcing a brief scream from your lips before you recover your equilibrium. For a second, you are filled with the sweet breath of triumph-you've found the dungeon! The prize lies just beyond the door!-but your sense of conquest quickly dissolves into a rising tide of doubt and hesitancy. Is the dungeon truly beyond the little doorway, or is it some trap that lies ahead, some pit, or a band of bloodthirsty assassins? "The old man will only try to trick you," the blonde woman said. Who knows what sort of evil tricks he will play? And even if the dungeon does lie on the other side of the doorway, who can say what will happen when you enter it from this tiny corridor? How strange it will be to burst suddenly into that dank-smelling room, to see all those naked writhing bodies around you, to come face to face with the woman upon the center platform, and with the deep-eyed old man. What will you say? How will you explain yourself? Perhaps you should knock first ... but no ... best not to alert them to your presence until the last possible second, for if they have time to plot their course....
Your hand trembles on the rusty door latch. Gut-level voices warn you to turn from the dungeon, to forget the old man and his foolish box, but of course, you resist the voices. Filling with self-consciousness (they will think you a vagabond, a drunken drifter), you once again summon the presence of mind to push back the tangled locks of hair that fall across your forehead, and pull your cloak tightly closed across your chest. Above all, be forceful. Once you have taken the -edge from your opponent, the battle is nearly won. Where was it you read those words?
There is a moment of absolute stillness, in which you see yourself charging forward like a furious lion, your muscles tightening into knots of sheer compressed power. Above all, be forceful. You depress the tongue of the latch, listen to the grating of ancient metal within the door molding. Be forceful. Be forceful. Trembling with excess energy, you give a single wood-splintering push and-
Sunshine, warm and pink and brilliant, pours like syrup over your face and shoulders, forcing you, for the moment, to shield your eyes with your hands. Before you, a shining sweep of sugary beach stretches outward toward infinity beneath a sky of the purest azure, the sun a blinding circle of shimmering orange above the ocean's roaring waves. To right and left, an unbroken succession of sheer towering cliffs show their craggy faces to sun and sea alike, the smaller rocks around them lost in a dazzle of salty spray. like a passionate lover, the sea reaches time and again to embrace the gray-green rocks that contain it, and time and again, the deafening crash of sea against stone leaves the ocean placid and gurgling, sunlight dancing on its peaceful wavelets, a thousand glittering rainbows reaching from rock to wave-wetted rock. The cliffs are worn as smooth as snakeskin at the base by the continual assault of the ocean, the point of high tide marked by an erratic whitish line of collected salt particles, scattered clusters of barnacles showing dark and wavy just below the water's surface.
Completely bewildered, you take in the scene before you with quick stop-motion blinks of your eyes, your body half-in, half-out of your narrow tunnel, hands buried in mounds of burning sand, buttocks thrust upward in the cool darkness of the passageway. How can it be that there is a beach so close to the castle? The coastline should be miles to the west ... unless the castle's secret corridor was far, far longer than it seemed, and not spiral, but perfectly straight. But still, can the corridor have been so long as to stretch from the forest to the seacoast? And why did the woman in the ballroom tell you so blatant a lie? Now there is nothing to do but crawl all the way back to the ballroom through the musty little passageway, and find your way back to your house. You'll never be able to find your bearings from this deserted beach ... and just look; it's at least a fifty foot climb on the top of the cliff above you. You'll simply have to go back through the passageway, though at least you'll be able to give that damned woman a piece of your mind before you leave. But enough: it's no one's fault but your own that you've made a fool of yourself. Imagine trusting such a strange woman, just imagine! You were greedy-you wanted the box for yourself-and your greed has made you into a fool. The old man must have planned it so. How the dancers will laugh when you return to the ballroom! They'll probably pin a donkey's tail to your backside, and follow you, laughing, through the forest. But there's nothing to do but to return. Yes ... best to go ... go....
But wait-what are those sounds? Can those be ... yes ... voices ... little voices. Look ahead: the figures of ... children ... of girls ... the figures of five little girls. Can they be ... yes ... calling to you, waving their slender arms in the air ... But what can they?...
"Mister! Mister! Come here, Mister! Come here!"
They stand like innocent young animals, like does, in the beach's flowing drifts of sand, the brownness of their skin emphasized by the pale green of the rocks behind them, soft summer breeze lifting the strands of their hair lightly in the air. Their voices are tiny in the midst of the ocean's crashing-sounding as if coming from beyond a closed door-their faces and bodies indistinct in the salt-sprayed distance. But what can they possibly want of you? What can they want?
Feeling somewhat self-conscious at having been observed without your knowl-edge (you must look ridiculous crouched on hands and knees in the tiny doorway, you crawl hesitantly out from your narrow passageway, and walk slowly toward the children in the distance, the rays of the sun burning like fire through the thin black fabric of your cloak. As you approach the children, who have now fallen silent and motionless, their features come gradually into focus, their sleek young bodies seeming to sway from side to side with the motion of your stride. The tallest of the girls-she stands slightly before her comrades-is a slender, long-legged child, her shining black hair cut short in a pixie style, tapered into twin points at the sides of her lean brown cheeks. Her face has a delicious tomboyish quality, perhaps radiating from her large whiskey-brown eyes, perhaps from her pug nose or her down-turned lips. She wears only the bottom half of a tiny white bikini-as do the other girls-and a thin golden chain around her neck on which is hung a miniscule golden cross, the contrast of cross and bikini against sunburnt skin lending her a stark, almost poetic beauty. But for the slight softness of her chest, and the ever-so-slight puffiness of her nut-brown nipples, her body seems almost that of a young boy, the suppleness of her arms and legs suggesting a life of continual physical activity.
The black-haired girl's comrades-there are four of them-are uniformly unlike her, all having long flowing curls of the lightest blonde, and eyes of the deepest blue. Though their ages would seem to range from eight or nine to eleven or twelve (the eldest-looking for the blondes is only inches shorter than the black-haired girl), their faces and bodies are very similar, suggesting that they are sisters, or at least cousins, to each other: all have large eyes, small mouths, taut little bellies, and strong rounded calves. Despite the fairness of their hair and the pinkness of their nipples, each of the blonde girls is as dark-skinned as the black-haired girl, tiny areas of whiteness showing at their underarms and at the sides of their toes. Standing in a casual row behind the black-haired girl, they seem oddly like servants or bodyguards, a disturbing unchild-like amusement showing from their clear alien eyes.
You come to a gradual halt perhaps ten feet from where the children stand, and face them with one hand held fast to the flaps of your cloak, perspiration rolling freely down your back and sides. The children stare at you in utter silence, the sea crashing wildly against the rocks behind them, the black-haired girl moving her left foot absent-mindedly in the sand, her toes covering and uncovering a number of broken sun-bleached shells, her narrow heel inscribing a perfect semi-circle in the sand around her.
"What is it?" you ask impatiently, irritated by the black-haired girl's nonchalance, annoyed at having heeded the children's needless call in the first place. "What do you want?"
"You're looking for the old man, aren't you, Mister?" says the black-haired girl after a pause, her voice barely audible over the roar of the ocean, her eyes burning steadily into yours.
"How do you know that?" you ask the girl. "Did someone tell you about me?"
"My name is Rosalie," says the girl, hooking her thumbs in the band of her bikini bottom. "You know what?"
"What?"
"If you want the black box, you have to fuck me first...."
For a second, you are so stunned by the little girl's words that you stand in open-mouthed silence, unable to conjure a single response, thinking only of your daughter. The little blonde girls laugh delightedly at your discomfort, their bellies shaking slightly with their mirth, their eyes seeming to drill through your cloak at the level of your groin.
"You mustn't say things like that," you blurt out finally. "What would your father say if he heard you talking that way?"
The blonde girls laugh hysterically, poking and squeezing each other, ridiculing you with their eyes.
"He wouldn't say anything," says Rosalie. "If you want the box, you have to fuck me to get it. Those are the rules."
"Child," you say, mustering every ounce of patience within you, "you mustn't say things like that. You mustn't even think them. You're only a little girl. It's evil to think of such things...." But despite yourself, you begin to picture the little girl lying beneath you, her legs spread wide, a lascivious smile turning the corners of her lips. You can see your penis rising, its purple head seeking the mouth of her virgin mound.
"If you want the box..." begins Rosalie.
"I don't want the bloody box!" you cry suddenly. "Leave me alone! You should be ashamed of yourself, saying such things!" Too wrought to speak, you stand trembling before the devilish children for a moment, fighting the sexual images that flash in your brain, then turn suddenly from them without another word, and head back toward the cliff that houses the castle's secret passageway.
"Wait a minute, Mister! Wait a minute!" comes a chorus of voices behind you. "You have to fuck Rosalie! You have to fuck Rosalie! Those are the rules!"
"Leave me alone!" you cry. "Go away! Leave me alone!"
"Wait, Mister, wait!" scream the children, following close behind you. "You have to fuck Rosalie! You have to fuck Rosalie!"
Acting on pure impulse, you break suddenly into a frantic run (though you have not yet pinpointed the exact location of the castle's passageway), and clap your hands over your ears to stifle the cries of the children. As you run, you catch glimpses of the children behind you-of their naked legs and chests and their plump little pubic mounds beneath the slick fabric of their bikinis-and a thousand forbidden sexual images rush in on you in a continual flashing stream, frightening you with their technicolor vividness. You see yourself taking the black-haired girl in a hundred different positions, probing each of her tiny openings with phallus, fingers, and toes. You see yourself humiliating her, forcing her to masturbate before her comrades, to crawl on her knees and beg for a taste of your prick. You see yourself beating her, taking her across your knee and slapping her taut little buttocks until they are as pink as her parched boyish lips. The sun beats unmercifully down on your back; your cloak is soaked with sweat from collar to hem. Buried shells and stones tear at your feet as you run, inflicting a hundred tiny cuts on your soles and ankles. The castle's passageway is nowhere to be found-it might be at the base of any one of a dozen cliffs before you. Directionless, filled with unholy impulses, you run wildly back and forth, sea, sand, sun and sky spinning crazily around you, the children always close at your heels. Then, abruptly, everything is quiet behind you, the children halted dead in their tracks.
"Mister..." It is the voice of Rosalie, calm, soft unbearably seductive. "Turn around, Mister," she says. "Look at me...."
With a cry of anguish, you grind to a halt in the sand and turn helplessly toward the whiskey-eyed temptress, tingling waves of anticipation flooding over you as you look upward from her tiny brown toes to the prominent knot of her navel. Slowly, she peels her slip of a bikini bottom down her shapely young legs, lets it dangle coquettishly from her big toe, and finally tosses it with a deliciously open-legged kick, into the sand. But for the pink-lipped slit of her hairless vagina, the strip of white that circles her belly and buttocks seems a second bikini bottom, so smooth is her creamy white skin. Striking a maddening pose-one hand over her plump pussy (but with fingers parted to reveal its moist crack), the other toying with her golden cross-she coaxes you toward her with light tosses of her head, her golden-haired comrades standing in a smiling row behind her, reaching forward occasionally to stroke their leader's flanks and buttocks.
"Come on, Mister," says Rosalie, her tiny nipples stiffening as she speaks. "You know you want to. . . ! "
"Please!" you cry, helpless beneath her gaze. "Please ... You don't know what you're saying. .
Sensing your helplessness, the children advance on you with outstretched arms and flashing thighs, their laughter sounding shrill and hollow over the waves. A mixture of fascination and guilt forming a knot of paralysis within you, you watch four pair of hands pull open the flaps of your cloak, a fifth pair dive for the fruit of your thighs. Rosalie smiles teasingly up at you, her right hand weighing both your testicles, her left curled around the trunk of your penis. With your last bit of resolve, you try to break away from the giggling girls, but Rosalie holds fast to your prick, squeezing it as it pulses in her hand, her fingers unable to enclose it. Wide-eyed with curiosity (or greed?), the blonde-haired girls explore your thighs and buttocks with hot probing mouths and tongues, the smallest of them crouching between your legs to lick the furrow of your crotch, a second spreading the cheeks of your ass with her pointy elbows and sucking slow kisses from the rim of your ass-hole, all of them rubbing their fat little cunts against your naked skin, smearing you with the vagina foam that seeps through the V's of their bikini bottoms.
"It's so long and pretty," coos Rosalie, twirling your prick as a man might twirl a chain. "Why did you want to keep it hidden?"
For several seconds, she contents herself with rolling your prick against her nose and cheeks and forehead, then, with a sudden jerk of her hand, pulls the head of your organ into her mouth, where it makes a moist plopping sound against the back of her tongue. Squeezing your balls with her right hand, she stuffs your prick inch by inch into her mouth with her left, until its thick flesh fills her throat to the brim, forcing her lips wider and wider as it stiffens into erection. Taunting you with her eyes, she swirls her tongue up and down on it with quick, exaggerated jerks of her head, as if imitating an exotic African dance. Her mouth is as cool and moist as the center of a melon, her fingers like so many light-winged butterflies on your balls. Behind her, the sea seems a patchwork of rainbows and reflected sunlight, the sand dunes take on the sensual shapes of thighs and breasts and buttocks. Sighing, you give yourself completely to the tongues and fingers that explore you, rubbing your thighs and knees against the juicy young crotches that roll against them.
"Would you like to fuck now?" whispers Rosalie, letting her lips brush against the dripping eye of your penis. "We can do it down by the water...."
For answer, your eyes falls deliriously closed, and your penis gives a massive twitch against the little enchantress's face. Singing and skipping, the children lead you to the water's -edge, their hands never falling from your body, their pussies hugging close to your legs. Your cloak is pulled completely from your body and thrown down in the sand beside a dried and sun-toasted starfish, leaving you to stand naked and white and burning before the ocean, your belly aching with desire, your prick pointing out toward the horizon. Around you, the little blonde girls roll their bikini bottoms quickly down their legs, their perfect white asses wriggling before you like grapefruits on a cart, tiny pink ass-holes showing like rosebuds in the darkened cracks of their bottoms. Their pussies glistening in the morning sunlight, they fall-as if at a signal-to hands and knees in the sand, their lithe brown and white bodies forming the petals of a perfect four-leaf clover, their asses thrust high in the air. With a sly over-the-shoulder wink, Rosalie climbs over the ass of the girl closest her, and positions herself in an open-legged crouch atop the center of the tableau, her hands and knees braced on the backs of her comrades, short strands of her silky hair blowing lightly over the back of her neck.
"Come on, Mister," she coos, smiling at you through the hollow of her armpit as she wiggles her toes in the ass-cleft of the girl who supports her left knee. "You can do it to me from behind...."
Foamy trickles of sea water caress the soles of your feet as you approach her, tiny red-backed sand crabs burrowing wildly into the muddy sand around you. A sea gull soars magically across the face of the sun, its feathery shadow slithering like black liquid over the tops of the gravy-green cliffs.
Rosalie reaches behind herself and parts the taut little lips of her cunt with steady experienced fingers, long strands of her friends' golden hair blowing over her calves and ankles.
"Lick it first, Mister," she says. "Your dick will go in easier if you lick it...."
Trembling with desire such as none you've ever known, and with self-hatred and fear such as you could never have conceived of, you fall to your knees behind the platform of asses, and like a worshipper at a shrine, peer directly into the convoluted depths of Rosalie's belly, your breath disturbing the barely visible floss that graces the mouth of her sex. Without warning, Rosalie grabs a fistful of your hair, and pulls your face flush with her furrow, the cheeks of her ass contracting rhythmically around the tip of your nose.
"Come on, Mister ... lick it," she demands. "I sucked your dick, didn't I?"
With the lust of a man who has not had a woman in a year, you thrust your tongue deep into her quivering slit, your hands like two large bowls as they spread the melons of her rump. Incensed by the smell of her shining-clean ass-hole, by the taste of her fresh young juices, you swirl your tongue madly in the depths of her hole, your entire body shivering with each sudden lurch of its inner muscles. Juices flow freely down your throat. Your nose is buried in squeezing mounds of flesh. Your prick beats like a club against the smooth thigh of one of the blonde girls.
"Now put it in!" cries Rosalie suddenly, her voice filled with a kind of dispassionate impatience. "Hurry ... Give me your dick .... "
You rise panting to your feet, the sea a bubbling cauldron before you, and direct the head of your prick to the slicked-back opening of the little girl's pussy, your tongue licking trickles of vaginal foam from the corners of your mouth. For a second, you hesitate, visions of death and destruction filling your mind, but then Rosalie turns and laughs at you over her shoulder, her eyes reflecting twin images of your frozen face.
"Don't worry, Mister," she says. "You're not the first-Just close your eyes and put it in...."
Groaning with heat at her words, you lunge wildly forward, your buttocks tightening into two balls of muscle as the head of your prick lodges half-way into Rosalie's twinkling cunt, its flared red ridge pushing outward against the pussy's inner lips. The black-haired girl squirms and wriggles against you, her feet curling into rigid arches, her buttocks grinding in the air. You poke at her, pry her apart with your hands, wiggle your prick to the right and the left of her, try her from every conceivable angle, and finally, with a loud hollow gurgle, her pussy begins to suck in your bursting pole. Inch by inch, she pulls it into her, twirling it and twirling it with the expert movements of her hips. Inside, her cunt is all butter and syrup, its rings of muscle like a thousand twining fingers as they caress your prick from root to tip. For a moment, there is utter stillness, your prick touched to the very back of her pussy, it's shaft forcing wide her belly; then pressing still further inward, you bury yourself to the balls in her firm young body, your hands reaching instinctively forward to caress the halves of her chest. Suddenly, the eye of your prick finds her pleasure point, and driving hard against it, you force high wailing moans from the tomboy's lips, your balls slapping upward to bounce against her belly. The sound of her moaning fills you with a sadistic sort of passion, and you find yourself wanting to hear her moan again and again, only louder, with greater anguish. You want to pay her back for her childish arrogance, to teach her a lesson in sexual proficiency, to show her who's the boss of the situation. You want to fuck her until she can't move a finger, until she goes cross-eyed and bow-legged ... and you want to see her weep, and hear her beg for mercy ....
In and out, in and out, you drive your prick, watching it turn hotter and hotter shades of pink as it scrapes against Rosalie's scarlet inner meat, its blue-green veins showing thick and full at its root. Your hands slip from Rosalie's chest to her hips, then down to the asses that support her. As if bv magnetic attraction, your fingers are drawn to the little girls' ass-holes and pussies, a feeling of utter abandonment coming over you as you begin to imagine yourself covered from head to foot with the juice of their vaginas. like an animal, Rosalie begins to shudder toward orgasm, the moans of her pussy drowning the smaller moans that well in her throat. Go ahead! Show her who's boss! Split her cunt apart! Make her belly sing!
Whinnying and galloping against you, Rosalie soars to her climax, her pussy vibrating with electrical current, her buttocks slamming against your groin, tearing loose twisted strands of your pubic hair. Stabbing into her like a schoolboy, you suddenly bolt into orgasm and fill her with your steaming seed, your eyes rolling up toward the shimmering sun, your feet squeaking loudly against the sand. Eight, nine, ten times, your prick squirts it precious drink into her belly's hungry mouth, forcing her into climax after climax, each fresh grind of her pussy bringing a brighter tinge of pink to her face. Abruptly, the platform beneath you collapses in a tangle of arms and legs. Your fingers trapped in two tight-closed pussies, your prick in Rosalie's belly, you feel yourself pulled in three directions at once, and fall, gasping, to the ground, the slow gurgle of the waves behind you urging you almost instantly toward the blackness of satiation. Around you, the blonde girls continue their explorations of your body as if nothing has happened, their warm little mouths kissing your prick into renewed erection before it has even had a chance to cool. You make no attempt to stop them, or even to pull your hands from their squeezing vaginas, but lie perfectly still on your back, awaiting the first powerful onrush of guilt, the tangled locks of your hair spreading in the pools of sea water that spin beneath your head and shoulders.
"All right, Mister," says Rosalie after a time. "Now I can tell you where the box is. Those are the rules." Her tone is completely matter-of-fact, -edged with just a trace of childish boredom.
"I don't care about the box," you hear yourself mutter through a haze of growing self-hatred. "I don't want to know where it is..."
"There's a man in a village not far from here," continues Rosalie, as if not even having heard your reply, "who will give you the box if you ask him for it. It's all been arranged already. They know the box belongs to you."
"I don't want the box," you whisper, eager for the balm of sleep that seeps slowly in on your body and brain, "and you can tell that damned old man that I have no interest in his silly games. Now leave me alone or I'll give you a spanking."
"You have to go up that stairway over there to get to the village road," continues Rosalie. "See it? See where I'm pointing? Open your eyes, Mister. Look where I'm pointing. Open your eyes ... Open your eyes..."
Grumbling with annoyance, you acquiesce finally to the child's demands and stare through heavy eyelids past the brown-and-white bodies that surround you to the cliffs ahead. Her fingers passed into the hollow of your armpit, Rosalie points to a three-foot fissure between two of the cliffs in the distance, and tugs insistently at the hair of your underarm.
"See?" she says. "See where I'm pointing? If you go right through there, you'll come to a stairway that nobody knows about, and at the top of the stairway, you'll find the road. The village is five miles west of here or so, and the man's name is Amaril. They say he's a bit odd, but I've never met him myself. He'll give you the box without any trouble. He knows it belongs to you...." She pauses for a moment, staring over shoulder at the horizon. "So you see," she says finally, peering down at you with eyes touched by a vague warmth, "everything's fair and square between us now, isn't it? Now we're even Steven...."
Suddenly, a loud echoing explosion shatters the morning's stillness, and fills the salt-sprayed air with an atomic tension. A voice rings shrill and furious over the thunder of the waves:
"Stay right where you are! Don't make a move or I'll cut you down! Stay right where you are!"
Perhaps twenty yards from where you lie, a mustachioed policeman stands half-hidden behind a charcoal-green rock, sunlight glinting off the large brass buttons that front his shiny blue-black jacket, his service revolver pointed directly at your head, dark gray smoke rising from its barrel. Obviously, he has been watching you for some time, accumulating as much evidence as possible against you, but even if he hasn't witnessed your joining with the black-haired twelve-year-old, the spectacle before him now is surely enough to send you straight to the gallows: you lie naked on a public beach with fingers stuffed into the holes of two pre-pubescent girls, your prick standing stiff below the mouths of another two, the weight of your thigh seeming to hold a fifthRosalie-captive. No one will believe that such little girls were capable of initiating the episode, and even if it were believed, even if the girls were proved to be demented to the point of such corruption, is it any less a crime to take advantage of such unfortunate children? Are you not a man? Are you not supposed to have some self-control?
Ignoring the policeman's command, and neglecting to retrieve their bottoms, the girls around you slip one by one from your body, and walk casually away from you, their naked asses glowing pink in the sunlight, their feet splashing at the water's foamy -edge.
"Remember," says Rosalie, pulling herself from beneath your leg and running to join her disciples, "his name is Amaril. He won't give you any trouble...."
As you lie motionless on the beach, waiting for the policeman to emerge from behind his rock, the pattern of the morning's events becomes gradually, and painfully, clear to you, seems almost to unfold itself before your mind's bewildered eye. It was a trap ... all of it ... from beginning to end ... an incredibly elaborate trap. But the object of the trap was not simply to make a fool of you. Oh, no ... It was not even solely to see you hanged, as you surely will be. The object of this very intricate trap was to leave you utterly discredited, utterly infamous, for ever and always. Yes, yes ... It was a plot hatched by some secret enemy of yours, some ingenious enemy covetous of your land, of your wife ... For now, when the drop of a rope has snuffed the life from your young limbs, who will censure a man who moves to steal your property, your woman? Your entire family will live beneath the shadow of infamy. No one will lift a hand to avenge any crimes done against them. Your wife will be raped and humiliated, your parents murdered in their beds, your children sold into bondage ... and who will rise against the perpetrator of these crimes?
But who was it laid this trap to catch and ruin you? Surely it was someone close to you, for he knew of your insomnia, knew that at the proper time a whisper would call you from your house, a light would pull you through the forest.... The box, of course, fully sealed your fate, insured your downfall ... but who, who could have been so jealous of your position as to ruin you so utterly? Who so cunning as to lay so meticulous a trap? Who so malevolent as to repeatedly offer you escape from the maze, knowing, in the end, you would opt for ruin? All ... all was arranged: the old man and the dungeon's ceremony to intrigue you ... the dancers in the ballroom to excite you ... and finally, the children ... the children....
"It wasn't my fault!" you cry suddenly, heart pumping in your chest as you turn toward the policeman, who sneers at you from behind his rock. "It was a plot! Ask the children! The children will tell you!"
Asses wriggling, the children disappear behind a distant dune, a slow-rolling waving erasing all trace of their footprints in the sand. The policeman stares at you with cold, contemptuous eyes, his finger tight around the trigger of his pistol.
"Stop them!" you cry, propping yourself on your elbows. "They'll tell you how it happened! Stop them!"
"Hold it right there!" the policeman shouts, stepping menacingly out from behind his rock. "Move another inch and I'll blow your head all over this beach." Continually, he throws quick anxious glances over his shoulder, as if awaiting the arrival of reinforcements.
"Please," you beg, facing him. "This isn't my fault...."
"No more of your tricks now!" shouts the policeman. "I know all about you, you see. There's no use in your playing these stupid games with me."
like an overfed leopard, he advances on you, his shiny black boots licking up great sheets of sand, a moronic grin turning the corners of his thick well-chewed lips. Bending close to you, he wipes the sweat from his forehead, and licks the moisture from the -edge of his bushy mustache, then, grunting with satisfaction, tips the brim of his undersized helmet forward (its chin-strap gives a little squeal), and nudges you in the ribs with his heel. He seems almost an Oriental caricature as he stand above you, his eyes small and narrow and black, his nose pushed slightly to the left, his ears tiny and soft, warmed to a hot pink by the sun.
"All right, you," he says. "On your feet. You're under arrest in the name of the Central Office."
Shaking, you rise to your feet, your hands moving instinctively to cover the wet fruit that hangs between your legs in evidence of your crime.
"This is all a terrible mistake," you stammer, "a terrible mistake. You must believe me. I've been tricked, plotted against...."
"That's what they all say," smiles the policeman with a disgusted wave of his handl "I was tricked! I was fooled! I didn't know what I was doing! But I think you'll find me far too clever. And I don't mind telling you, it'll do me good to see you swinging from a rope. As a matter-of-fact, if it weren't for my solemn oath, I'd put a bullet through your brain right here and now, and save the pubic the expense of a trial ... See, in my personal opinion, friend, you are the lowest of the low ... the scum of the earth...." He punctuates each of his last four words with a quick jab of his pistol in your belly, his eyes following the convulsive twitches of your prick as you tighten with pain.
"Listen," you plead, "I know how this must look to you, but I swear I'm innocent. I'm a father myself ... a married man with children of my own...."
"Father? Married man?" says the policeman. "What's that got to do with it, friend? Fathers must obey the law. Married men must obey the law...."
"You don't understand," you whine. "This is all part of a plot, don't you believe me? A careful plot. They showed me a box ... a little black box with my name written across it...."
"You're all alike, aren't you?" says the policeman, standing so close to you that you could count the open pores at the sides of his nose. "You think you can just do as you please ... any sort of disgusting thing you like ... and then throw yourself at the mercy of an honest officer of the law, and go on your merry way. Next you'll be offering me a bribe ... a piece of land, some ugly trollop of your acquaintance. Well, let me tell you something, friend: I don't accept bribes, and I don't go with trollops, and I have some very nice land of my own, and I don't listen to fancy stories. My job is to bring scum like you to justice, and that's just what I aim to do."
"Oh, please, please!" you cry, tears welling in your eyes. "Don't you understand? Won't you listen to me? They showed me the box. It had my name written on it. What was I to do? They led me like a child from one place to the next, always angling the box in front of my face. They were all naked, making love. And then I wound up on this beach. The little girls were here. They teased and taunted me. I was so crazy. I didn't know what I was doing. It was the box, don't you see? It was the box...."
The policeman regards you suspiciously for a moment, his eyes like two dark slivers of glass, then, sneering, pushes his helmet back on his forehead, and scratches his chin thoughtfully with the barrel of his pistol. His face burns a quick yellow-pink in the sunshine, the torn top button of his jacket casting a golden reflection upward to the side of his neck.
"You say you were only looking for a box, eh?" he says. "A box with your name written across it?"
"Yes, yes," you answer. "A little black box ... with my name.... That was how they trapped me. That was the bait of the trap. You do believe me, don't you? I'm not a liar. I've never told a lie in my life...."
"It's possible," says the policeman, wheels seeming to turn, somewhat sluggishly, in his head. "Such tricks have been tried before. See here ... Where is this box now? Show me this black box..."
"I haven't got it ... It isn't here," you stutter. "A man in the village has it, a man named Amaril. We can go together and claim it. There won't be any trouble...."
"I've never heard of this Amaril," snaps the policeman. "You're trying to lead me on some sort of wild-goose chase, aren't you? So you can try to escape. It's the same old story. You work up an alibi, then go out and do as you please, commit any sort of crime you like. But where's your evidence now, schemer? Where's this black box? You haven't got it. It's the same old story...."
He breaks off, shaking his head, his lips puckered into a mocking frown, sweat dripping from the handle of his revolver. Behind him, the sea begins its gradual ebb, the receding trickle of wavelets exposing thick clusters of broken shells and frightened red-backed crabs who scurry frantically for shelter.
"But you admit that the box will clear me," you protest. "You admit it will prove my innocence...."
"Yes," nods the policeman thoughtfully. "It very well might."
"Then help me find it!" you cry. "For God's sake, help me find it! My life will be ruined...."
"Come along now," says the policeman. "There's no point in getting excited...." He takes you roughly by the arm, his fingers hot and oily on your sunburnt skin. "I only said the box would clear you. I didn't say I believed there was a box. A man capable of a crime such as yours would tell any sort of lie to escape his just deserts. You just come along with me....
"No!" you scream suddenly, infuriated by the man's thick-headed complacency. "I have to have the box ... My life will be ruined!"
"Now look here, you!" threatens the policeman, waving his revolver like a flag in your face. "You just watch your manners...."
For the briefest of seconds, you submit to the brusque pressure of his hand on your bicep, but then, images of your family's humiliation flashing through your mind, you strike furiously out at him, your left hand snatching the revolver from his grasp.
"You ... you scum!" he splutters, covering his face with his hands and bowing beneath your assault. "I ... I'll..."
Suddenly, he kicks out at you as would a woman, his sharp knee catching you in the pit of the stomach, his fists flying wildly about your chest and shoulders. You flounder under his blows for a time, thick waves of pain crawling from your belly to tighten the shaking balls of your scrotum, then, feeling yourself inched ever closer to the gallows as the policeman begins to overpower you, you strike him once, twice, three times across the head with the butt of the revolver, and give him as mighty a shove as you can muster. Moaning, he falls to the sand, his hands dipped in the blood that spreads from a three-inch gash at the side of his forehead, his torn brass buttons casting their dancing reflections all along your thighs, belly, and penis.
"You've murdered me. . . ! You've murdered me!" he howls. "I listened to your story ... I gave you advice. You've murdered me! Murder! Murder!"
"Please!" you cry, tears of sheer frustration flowing down your cheeks. "I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't want to hurt you. But don't you see? It was the box ... the box ... I...."
"Halt! Halt where you are! We've got you covered!" comes a voice over the waves.
In the distance, two more policemen are running toward you with revolvers drawn, their heavy-booted approach sending dozens of sea gulls flapping noisily into the air.
"They'll get you," croaks the policemen at your feet, blood trickling thickly over his mustache to stain his small yellow teeth. "They'll blow your brains all the way to China. We take care of our own ... friend. We take care ... of our..." Gurgling incoherently, he breaks off into a series of moans and curses, his hand falling to the ground inches from your toes.
Crazy with fear, you toss the revolver wildly to the sand, and turn like a hunted animal from cliff to weather-beaten cliff. Where is the stairway? Where?
"Halt or I'll shoot! Halt or I'll shoot!"
Click-click. Krack-aaa! Click-click. Krack-kaaa!
Bullets cut the air inches from your face, and ricochet, whining, off the rocks behind you. Where is the...?
"They'll get you. They'll blow you ... China ... Take care of..." "Halt or I'll...." Click-click. Krack-aaa!"
There! There it is! How many times you must have overlooked it!
"They'll get ... China ... blow you get ... Kill him! Kill him...."
Scooping up your cloak with a sudden forward lunge, you dart madly toward the shadow-blackened crevice that Rosalie indicated to you earlier. Shots whine like insects in the air around you, bite like hailstones into the sand at your heels. You zigzag from right to left to right, leaping over sand dunes and rocks alike, hugging close to the ground whenever a chance bullet comes too close to its mark. Sun and sky seem to teeter back and forth above you, sea gulls circling like buzzards over your head. Half-blinded by fear and sunlight, you lose consciousness of all save the cliffs in the distance. Larger and larger they loom before you, shifting now to the right, now to the left, as you dodge the policemen's bullets. Then, suddenly, you are at the crevice, bullet after bullet crashing into the cliffs at either side of you, chipping piles of dusty shale to the sand. The stairway stretches endlessly upward before you, a succession of irregular rectangles carved jaggedly out of the cliff's dark inner stone, seeming to lead from the beach to a subatomic point just above nowhere.
"Halt, you pig! Halt!"
Krack-aaa! Krack-aaa!
You take the stairs two, three, four at a time, your naked feet scraping against stone, the -edge of your cloak clutched tight in your fist. Above you, a thin crack of sky is visible through the halves of the giant cliff; behind, the scent of gunsmoke hands heavy in the air. Faster and faster you run, not daring to look behind you, anticipating any second the rip of hot metal through your flesh. Your lungs ache with your every whooshing intake of air. Your legs feel rubbery and loose. Your eyes turn cloudier and cloudier; you stumble and trip on the cliff's uneven steps, flesh scraping from your arms and shoulders as you careen off the jagged inner walls. Then, after a climb of God knows how long, when you are at the point of sheer physical collapse, you look up suddenly to find the sky widening, stretching close above you, the end of the stairway directly ahead. Leaning wearily against the wall, you turn your gaze hesitantly downward, and discover, to your great relief, that no one has followed you. Perhaps the policemen were unable to find the stairway ... or perhaps they halted to take care of their fallen comrade ... Who knows? But soon they'll be after you again. Soon their bullets will whiz through the air around you, and their curses will fill your ears with the thunder of fear. Even now they may be arranging a careful trap to catch you, circling around the cliffs somehow to take you at some unexpected point in the distance ... and if they don't murder you on the spot (for policemen take care of their own), they're sure to drag you off to jail, and where will you be without your box? They'll brand you as a child molester, perhaps as a murderer if the policeman dies, and as a thug if he doesn't. Your life will be ended ... your family ruined. You must find Amaril ... must find the box....
Panting, you climb the last three steps to the top of the cliff, and find yourself standing beside a red dirt road surrounded by tall weeping willow and mimosa trees, the thick-mossed ground littered with a profusion of jonquils, buttercups, milkweeds, and thistle, muskadine vine growing over the whole like the fingers of the earth mother. Pulling your cloak over your shoulders, you cross to the left side of the road, and secluding yourself well into the depths of the shrubbery, begin a slow trek toward the west, alternately cursing yourself for your stupidity and fortifying yourself, by means of oft-repeated maxims, against the fears that well insistently in your brain. You have done nothing wrong, you keep telling yourself, you have done nothing wrong. You couldn't help what you did ... No one could help what you did. Justice will triumph. The righteous will succeed. Evil-doers will be punished. The meek shall inherit the earth.
The air is steamy and thick as you walk along through the underbrush, the sun like the whip of a cruel taskmaster as it lashes across your back. The weeds and vines and bushes are all but impenetrable, the moss wet and slippery underfoot. For a time, you pacify yourself by listening to the barely-audible murmur of a distant, distant brook, and then, when a half-hour passes with no untoward incident, bringing with its passage a measure of calmness to your hands, and when the thickness of the foliage and the heat of the sun grow progressively worse, you quit the shrubbery at the side of the road, and opening your cloak to let in some air, walk along the road itself, your eyes trained ahead at the endless vista of receding weeping willows, your legs moving through clouds of clinging red dust.
After a walk of another half-hour or so, during which you worry incessantly over whether or not you're headed in the right direction for the village, and whether or not the village actually exists, and whether or not the man called Amaril truly has your box, you are suddenly jarred by the sound of creaking movement behind you, and turning, find yourself staring at a crude horse-drawn wagon, which approaches from perhaps thirty yards in the distance under the guidance of a bare-chested straw-haired farm boy. Your first impulse upon sighting the wagon is to jump into the bushes once again, but checking yourself with the thought of getting a ride to the village, or at least some information as to its location, you tell yourself that the farm boy seems an innocent enough fellow, and closing your cloak, wait for him in the road.
"Whoa, girl, whoa!" calls the farm boy to his sagging iron-gray mare as the horse draws close to you. "Whoa!"
With a studied air of lethargy, the ancient mare comes to a halt beside you, and staring ahead through heavy eyelids, commences lazily to paw the ground, her lips curled slightly back over her huge white teeth, her tail swishing absently through the air. The farm boy salutes you with a half-filled jug of red wine, then drinks from the jug, letting the rich sparkling liquid trickle over his chin and neck to his naked chest and belly, just a drop or two spilling all the way down to his ragged, faded denims. He seems a boy of perhaps twenty or twenty-five years, though the rosiness of his cheeks and the crystal blue innocence of his eyes make him appear much younger. His face is very smooth and lean and high-cheek-boned, his torso rippling with the small light muscles that one develops through continual-but not arduous-physical labor, such as hoeing and planting and picking. Around his neck he wears a leather strap of tiny sleigh bells, which ring tinklingly whenever he moves.
"Howdy," says the farm boy, laying his jug down beside him and brushing strands of his yellow-brown hair from his eyes. "Stranger here, ain't you?"
"Yes, sort of," you answer, frightened that the boy may be suspicious of you. "I'm looking for a man named Amaril. He's supposed to live in a village not far from here. Ever heard of him?"
"Sure," says the boy. "Everybody knows Mr. Amaril. He's a respected man around here ... a solid citizen. You have some kind of business with him?"
"Yes, yes I do," you answer, nervously scanning the road for any sign of police. "Am I headed in the right direction for the village? Is this the way to Amaril's house?"
"Sure is," says the boy. "You want a ride? I'm going that way...."
"Thank you ... I'd appreciate it," you answer, smiling as natural a smile as you are able.
Accepting the hand offered by the boy, you climb aboard his creaking wood-wheeled wagon and seat yourself beside him on the splintery driver's seat, the wine jug rubbing cool against your thigh as the boy gives rein to the mare, urging her to a slow heavy-footed trot.
"I'll bet you come from the other side of the forest," says the boy, lifting his jug to his lips as the cart moves along. "Is that right?"
"Yes, I guess so," you answer. "The other side..."
"I thought so," says the boy rather mysteriously. "I thought so...."
"I saw a castle in the woods," you say after a pause, hoping to prod some information out of the boy. "I'd never seen it before, but then ... all of a sudden, there it was. Do you know the place I mean?"
"Nope," says the boy, very tight-lipped. "Never heard of no castle. No castle around here that I ever heard of...."
You begin to question him further, but then, seeing the closed expression of his face, you shut your mouth and ride along in silence, your body jerking with the motion of the cart, sweat drenching your armpits and back. The boy makes no further attempt at conversation, but drinks steadily from his wine jug, singing to himself occasionally, and periodically reaching up in the air to rip a leaf or two from the low-hanging branches of the trees. Leaning against the back of the driver's seat, your elbows propped on the wagon's uneven -edge, you are able, to some extent, to forget your pressing difficulties, and relax with the slow pace of the mare. Almost drowsily (how long has it been since you've slept?), you watch the moist, thick scenery unfold before you, and smell the mingled smells of mimosa, jonquil, dust, and mare, your ears still trained on the tiny gurgle of the brook to your left. Then, after the passage of an hour or more, when you are just at the point of semi-sleep, and see the forest only as a narrowed blur of browns and greens, the cart-driver shakes you roughly by the arm, and points rather excitedly toward the right side of the road, his hand trembling slightly as he lays his jug down beside him. "Hey!" he whispers. "Lookit!..." Thinking instantly of the police, you start halfway out of your seat before noticing the attraction that has caused the boy to halt his cart: a naked pale-skinned couple-the boy perhaps eighteen years old, the girl no more than sixteen-who make furious love beside the swaying down-swept branches of a weeping willow tree.
The boy is on top of the girl, cradled in the bowl of her belly and thighs, his strong hands covering her breasts, fingers squeezing her large pink nipples. He is a powerful lad-much like the farm boy who sits beside you but for the darkness of his hair and the broadness of his shoulders-and he plunges into the girl with hard ferocious strokes, his penis showing long and thick and foamy as it flashes in and out of her cunt, his smooth downy buttocks jutting violently in the air. The girl is plump and soft and voluptuous, her hazel eyes flashing wildly as the boy plows into her, her lips parted wide with passion, her thighs rippling with muscle as she locks her legs now around the boy's ass, now around his back, and finally kicks them high in the air to open herself as widely as possible to the boy's assault.
Her silky brown hair is spread like honey over the grass and weeds beneath her, a single bright buttercup casting its golden reflection on her cheek as she raises her head to lick at the boy's neck with her long wet tongue. Now and again, the branch of the willow tree sways lightly above her hot-cheeked face. But why don't they run away? Why didn't they hide themselves in the bushes when they heard the wagon's approach? Surely they've noticed you by now. Yes, yes! ... See how the girl stares at you! See how she smiles!
"Come on," says the cart-driver, tugging at your arm. "Let's go use the rest of her. Come on...."
Too shocked to speak, you merely pull brusquely away from the boy and try to avert your eyes from the foolish couple in the road.
"Come on. Come on...." says the boy. "Look-it! ... She's all set for us...."
Smiling, rolling her breasts in her lover's hands, the girl points with one hand to her parted lips, and with the other to the contracting rim of her anus. My God, you think, what sort of creatures are these? Can there truly be women-even rustics-so vulgar?
"Oh, hell," says the cart-driver. "You can do just as you please. I'm gonna take me a little bit...."
Quitting the wagon with sleigh-bell collar tinkling, the straw-haired boy trots over to the side of the road, pulls off his denims to expose a fat red-hued penis, and without a word of protest from the interlocked couple, rolls boy and girl onto their sides, and positions himself behind the girl, with his prick rising long and stiff against her ass-cheeks. Then, reaching in front of the girl with his right hand to help her lover knead her breasts, he takes his prick in his left hand and moistens it in the back of the girl's well-juiced cunt, pausing once to tickle her lover's staff as it digs deep into her belly. As the girl accommodates him by stretching her thigh high over her lover's hip, the cart-driver guides the head of his prick to her ass-hole, and spreading her creamy cheeks wide, drives it easily in.
"Oh, boy!" cries the cart-driver as the girl squeezes his shaft between her buttocks. "Come on, Mister! This little girl is a treat!"
Completely incredulous, you turn quickly away from the threesome and stare down at your own bare feet against the dusty baseboard, but then, when the boy falls silent, you find yourself turning slowly backward, past the mare's taut gray rump, to the shameless scene beneath the willow tree. Their hands roaming wildly over her breasts and belly and thighs, both boys plunge rhythmically in and out of the girl, fetching loud moans from her throat as they advance and retreat in grinding unison, their pricks making soft squishy sounds as they rub together against the girl's inner membrane, piercing her to the center fore and aft. Squeezed and pulled and pushed, the girl struggles to hold both the pricks inside her, her thighs locking tight around the dark-haired boy's waist, her ass-cheeks spreading against the cart-driver's belly. Incredibly, in the midst of it all, she somehow finds the presence of mind to smile at you every half-minute, and to point occasionally toward her mouth in warm invitation to your prick.
As you watch the wriggling threesome in the grass, an odd combination of conflicting feelings comes to possess you, driving you finally to the point of nervous frustration. In the first place, you find yourself both disgusted and confused by the abandon of the group before you (but why is it that in the castle, in a hall filled with naked men and women, you felt so like a lost, ungainly child, while in the light of the day, you play the moralist?): their behavior, like the behavior of the little girls on the beach, is so foreign to you as to make you feel the pinch of madness somewhere deep in your mind. But in the second place, you are excited by the threesome-by the thrashing of their limbs, the sight and smell of their genitals, the corrupt uniqueness of their coital position-and your prick rises slowly from the -edge of the wooden seat to brush lightly against the inside of your thigh. Then too, you are afraid that the police will find you, that at any minute, a terrible trap will close around you, ending your life before you have had a chance to prove your innocence. (Why doesn't the boy hurry? You can't stay here forever....) And on top of all these preoccupations, you can feel a persistent drowsiness tugging at your eyelids, clouding your mind with the sweet suggestion of oblivion.
Continually, you tear your hungry eyes from the group at the side of the road to stare shamefully down at your feet, then turn from your feet to scan the distance for some sign of danger, then close your eyes altogether and lean your head against the back of the driver's seat, only to open them seconds later to stare greedily at the fucking threesome.
Suddenly, the cart-driver gives a loud grunt, and buries himself to the balls in the girl's wiggling bottom, his hands wandering indiscriminately over the bodies of girl and lover, his toes curling into balls of tension, sleigh-bells playing a wild jangling tune. Then, after a moment of furious humping, he pulls his prick out of the girl with the most unbelievable casualness, wipes it off on her ass-cheeks, pulls on his denims, and smiling at the flow of his semen from her ass-hole, returns to the cart. The girl rolls lackadaisically onto her back, pulling her lover with her, and kicking her legs high in the air, continues her steady fucking as if nothing has happened, her hands spreading her lover's buttocks as she gives you a last lingering smile.
"A woman," says the cart-driver, climbing into his seat and taking a quick slug from his wine jug, "is the glory of a man. Why don't you give her a try? She's so good...."
"No, no," you mutter, hardly knowing what to say. "I'd really rather not .... "
"O.K., " says the driver, picking up the reins. "Just as you say. I don't want to press you or anything. Giddyap, girl! Giddyap! We ain't got all day, you know...."
As the mare commences her creeping trot, and the naked couple beneath the willow tree grows tinier and tinier in the distance, your mind begins to drift aimlessly over the strange events of the night and day, and over your even stranger reactions to them, but then, as the workings of your mind come to produce a gnawing tension with you, and your thoughts come more and more often to rest on the subject of the all-powerful black box, you force yourself into a state of idle blankness, and rocking with the motion of the cart, fall into a spreading empty sleep.
PART TWO: THE VILLAGE
Your breasts are soft and warm to your touch, your nipples like furrowed circles of rubber. Your legs are spread wide apart and bent at the knee, a light breeze tickling the sparsely-haired cleft of your buttocks. Your pussy throbs with heat, yearns for the blunt kiss of a giant prick. Its lips are dilated, smeared with vaginal fluid, its clitoris twitching in full erection. You imagine a foot-long prick sliding slowly into your hole, unraveling each wrinkle of your membrane with its heavy steamy head. How lovely it would be to have your belly stretched apart by a beautiful big prick ... how lovely and delicious....
But wait-something is wrong. You are not alone in the dark little room. With the slowness of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, a figure begins to emerge from the blackness. It is? Yes ... the figure of a male. Man? ... Boy? ... Who is it? Why does he not move his head from the shadows?
"Wake up, stranger! Wake up! We're here, I tell you! Wake up!"
The farm boy's words fly into your dream like cold whizzing bullets, tearing huge holes in its fabric, you reach instinctively for your crotch, half-caught in the dream's elusive reality, and find your prick fully erected, its liquid-oozing head peeping out like a hungry animal from the folds of your cloak. Coughing to cover your embarrassment, you pull your cloak quickly over your penis, and sit with arms folded in your lap to conceal your dying heat from the driver.
"Sweet dreams?" the driver laughs, pointing with his pinky to your groin. "Always happens when you fall asleep with the sun in the sky. If I was you, I'd have used that pretty little thing at the side of the road. She smiled at you, didn't she? Smiled a pretty smile...."
Unable to think of any appropriate response, you merely stare vaguely ahead at the mare's iron-gray rump, finding yourself ashamed of your seeming unfriendliness, wishing you could communicate with the boy on terms more your own. Can sex be the only thing he thinks about?
"Anyway," says the driver, "that's Mr. Amaril's place right there. I'd stop in with you to say hello ... but I've got business yonder in the village."
The building he points to-one of several on the street-is an elegant white-walled affair with heavy wooden beams crisscrossing its front (reminding you of your own house) and protruding from beneath its steep-gabled roof. Bright red curtains, neatly drawn, are visible from each of the seven windows that face the street (four on the bottom floor, two on the second, and one-a tiny one-in the attic), and you can see your reflection quite clearly (you seem calmer, far less harrowed, then when you last saw yourself in the corridor's mirrored doorway) in the rightmost window of the house's main floor. An intricately-crafted railing of wrought iron surrounds the whole of the house, its close-set vine-shaped bars casting long trembling shadows over the colorful garden that stretches from one side of the house to the other.
Past the house, perhaps fifty yards beyond its gate, is the center of the village, its streets filled with women in pastel-colored dresses and men in loose flowing shirts. To the left, a group of high-voiced children play at marbles outside the open door of an inn, while at the right, a fish vendor cries aloud the virtues of his wares, often berating himself for the over-fairness of his prices: "I must be crazy," he bellows incessantly in a basso profundo, "to sell these fish at such a price! Look at these fish! Look how beautiful they are! Oh, my Lord, how beautiful they are!" Behind him, a hundred bright-windowed shops and restaurants and hotels seem to fight for space on the crowded street, hand-painted signs hanging one above the other in the air, each with larger, more elaborate lettering than the one preceding it. Music, soft and unobtrusive, flows over the street like a sweet aroma, emanating from a number of lavender-colored loudspeakers hung above several of the shop windows, and here and there a woman will pause before a shop window, her head tilted to the side, and listen to the gentle music for a time before walking on.
As you stare ahead at the village proper, waking consciousness returning to you in slow stages, you find yourself growing progressively more nervous over your fugitive status. Surely the police are close on your trail by now. Surely warrants have been issued for your arrest, descriptions of you broadcast across the land. You must get the box without delay.... Any moment you may be arrested, dragged into prison, executed for a crime that you were helpless to resist....
"Thank you for the ride," you say to the farm boy, casting anxious glances from left to right. "I'm sorry if I haven't seemed very friendly. I've had a trying morning..."
"Nothing of the sort," says the boy, pushing his hair away from his eyes. "Nothing of the sort...." Then, staring blankly ahead as his mare swats a fly with her tail: "Give you a piece of advice though .... "
His voice is low and distant, almost the voice of another man.
"Yes...."
"Don't sleep the night in the village," he says. "It's not healthy...."
"Why do you say that?" you ask him, wondering if he has suspected that you are a wanted man. "What happens here at night?"
"Nothing happens," the boy whispers, his clear blue eyes filled with child-like terror. "Just don't sleep the night here, that's all. I can't explain.... Things happen...."
"What things? What things?"
"Don't ask me any more questions!" cries the farm boy suddenly. "Leave me alone!"
With a sudden thrust of his arm, he literally pushes you from his cart, and giving rein to his mare, drives quickly into the distance, the steady clip clop of the horse's hooves ringing loudly over the narrow cobbled street, the squeaking of the wooden cartwheels resounding from building to quaint little building. Once, when his cart is but a tiny faded rectangle in the distance, he turns back in your direction, but seeing that you still stare at him, immediately turns around again, and guides his lazy mare down an alleyway, disappearing altogether from view.
You ponder the farm boy's words for only the briefest of moments after he is gone, turning them fruitlessly over in your mind, then leaving them to collect with the other gnawing irritations that have gathered at the -edges of your consciousness. Before you, the house of Mr. Amaril stands like a place of sanctuary, its gleaming windows seeming to beckon you forward with a promise of interior comfort, the sun spreading its warm mid-day rays generously over the red beams of the roof. But then, as you face the house with fingers touched lightly to one of the gate's wrought iron petals, you are filled once again with the sort of doubts that possessed you at the castle's entrance in the dim fog of dawn. How can you appear before a stranger looking so ragged and unkempt, your feet not only bare, but dirty? Will not Mr. Amaril think you mad-or worse, a beggar-and have you thrown into the street? With quick shakes of your head, you dismiss these questions one by one from your mind. You have nowhere to go but straight ahead. You have long since passed the point of turning back.
With a last glance over your shoulder, you push the front gate gently open-a clear tinkling bell announces your entrance-and step agilely over the oval flagstones that lead to the house's red brick front portico. The garden is an explosion of color and smell, scores of multi-hued roses opening their petals to sunlight and bumblebee alike, velvet-soft pansies clustered together like groups of little children, their stems swayed ever-so-slightly to the left under the mildest of whispering breezes. You hesitate for a moment at the door, brushing bits of sand and dust from the -edges of your cloak, and making yet another feeble effort at untangling the still-damp curls of your hair. Then, straightening yourself into as presentable a stance as you can muster, you strike twice at the heavy brass door-knocker, averting your eyes from the door's shiny black enamel as you catch a hazy glimpse of your bedraggled reflection.
From inside the house come a series of soft muffled sounds and low indistinguishable words, then a brief silence, followed by the closing of a door. Light even footsteps approach the front door from within (you imagine a young willowy housekeeper coming to the door, her feet covered by frayed silken slippers), then vanish into the morning shouts of the children down the street. Abruptly, the door is thrown open.
The boy who stands before you is stunningly beautiful, almost too beautiful to be truly a boy. His face is at once soft and angular-the face of a delicate young prince-the prominence of his cheekbones and the subtle slant of his coal-black eyes suggesting at least a bit of Oriental blood in his ancestry. His lips are full and pink and sensuous-the lips certainly of a woman-his nose small, the nostrils flared, his hair long and lustrous, the same perfect black as his eyes. He wears a flowing silken dressing gown of the brightest blue imaginable, its shiny fabric covering him from shoulders to knee, leaving his chest and calves exposed. His feet, like yours, are bare, his toes soft and round, light pink at the undercurve. His skin is smooth and creamy and bright, a subtle blend of pink and gold and white and brown, with just the slightest touch of olive between the toes and fingers, his body hairless but for the lightest down on the calves and at the very center of the chest. Though the boy is quite slender, there is a suggestion of plump firmness to his body, a kind of sensuous softness reminiscent of the erotic statues seen earlier in the castle's secret corridor. Can this be Mr. Amaril's houseboy? His son? Mr. Amaril must be a strange man indeed to keep such company as this.
"Yes?" says the boy, a pleasant smile turning his lips back over strong white teeth. "Can I help you?"
You hesitate for a moment, lost in the liquid pupils of his eyes.
"I'm looking for a Mr. Amaril," you manage finally, staring down at the boy's feet. "It's terribly important that I see him ... matter of life and death...."
"And what was it you wished to see Mr. Amaril about?" inquires the boy, his fingers caressing the side of his neck. "Was it about a business matter of some sort?"
"Listen," you whisper desperately, "I don't want you to think me mad ... I know I seem terribly disheveled, but I'm no beggar. It's about a box that I've come to see Mr. Amaril, a box that's of the utmost importance to me...."
"Yes, yes ... the box," the boy laughs. "Of course, that's what I thought. I didn't know if you would make it, you know. Come in, come in. I'm the man you're looking for ... I'm Amaril."
The boy's hand is warm and gentle on your shoulder as he urges you into a sunny, pink-carpeted hallway and closes the front door quietly behind you. Puzzled, you stand motionless in the hallway, your eyes traveling quickly from Mr. Amaril's smiling face to your own reflection in a full-length mirror behind him. This time, the sight of your reflection fills you with a restless uneasiness, with a burning desire to return to the comfortable reality of your cottage where you can bathe and change your clothes and stare at your glowing reflection in the bedroom's table-mirror, warm familiarity of wife and children and parents behind you.
"You are Mr. Amaril?" you ask of the boy, instantly embarrassed by the rudeness of the question.
"Yes ... yes, I am," says the boy, his fingers touched to the stem of a single marigold that stands in a green glass vase beside him. "But you may call me Amaril. I have only one name, you see, and the mister is a trifle formal. Shall we go into the study?"
"You have the box?" you ask him, resisting the sweep of his arm. "The black wooden box?"
"It can easily be yours," he smiles, little finger tracing the curve of his lower lip.
"But you have it?" you demand. "It's in your possession?"
"It can easily be had," smiles the boy.
"I'm afraid you don't understand," you say, a blush rising to your cheeks. "The police are looking for me. I must have the box...."
"On the contrary," says Amaril, "I understand completely. I assumed the police would be looking for you. It's standard procedure, you know. But don't worry. They won't dare to look for you here. I'm quite a respected man in this little community. Everyone knows and respects me. They won't dare to look for you here."
"Give me the box," you half-plead, half-demand of the boy. "I must have it in my hands. I can hardly think any more...."
"I'm sorry," says the boy. "It's not as simple as that. There is a prior condition which must be fulfilled ... a favor of sorts which you must do for me...."
"Please!" you cry, weak as a child. "Please!"
"Please," interrupts the boy. "Don't press me on this matter. I don't want to make it seem that I am the master, and you the slave, but after all, you are in no position to dictate your wishes to me. There is an order to things, after all ... But come, we'll discuss this matter in the study...."
For just a fraction of a second, you are seized by the impulse to murder this smiling golden-skinned boy. In a series of near-subliminal flashes, you see yourself choking him to death, ransacking his house in search of the box he conceals from you. But how can you have such thoughts? To murder a man over a piece of wood! Are you some sort of animal to think such things? And besides, the police would have you in no time ... and what if the box was not actually in the house, or hidden too well for you to find it?
Containing yourself as best you can, you follow the slender Amaril down the lavender-walled hallway to the study's wide double-doored entranceway, your spine tingling from the gentle pressure of the boy's soft fingers throwing open the leftward door, Amaril urges you before him into the study, his hand lingering on the swell of your rump for just a second before quitting your body to close the study door behind you.
The room is very spacious and sun-filled, its walls painted a pale shade of apricot, its purple curtains, drawn open to a reveal a pleasant landscape of bushes and trees, a brook gurgling through a field of posies, tall gray-green cliffs standing like sentinels far in the distance. The study's furniture is done mostly in satin and gilded white-painted wood, two scarlet couches standing face to face over an ornately-carved circular coffee table, an open writing desk facing the window from beneath a succession of neatly-arranged bookshelves, the books-thin volumes of poetry mostly-all covered in pastel shades of cloth. Vases filled with flowers stand in every corner of the room-on the desk and coffee-table, on the windowsill, beside the rows of books-and a number of small figurines-of men mostly, naked and muscular-are scattered about on various ornamental pieces of furniture at the sides of the room.
In the center of the study, a young girl with hair the color of honey lies belly downward on the floor, and draws frantic pen-and-ink sketches in a large ragged -edged bristol pad, her entire body rocking with each of her forceful strokes. Though she is an attractive girl-her body is long and supple, her buttocks high and smooth beneath her sleeveless yellow cotton dress, her breasts large and round, pressed into tight circles against the floor-and though her pose is a provocative one-she lies with legs spread wide, her right leg bent at the knee, the sole of her right foot pressed against the inside of her left thigh, her skin very pale against the deep purple rug-there is something a trifle too child-like and strange in her attitude for you to be taken with her charms, or easy in her presence. The dazed wideness of her blue-green eyes, the open set of her lips, suggest some unfortunate mental deficiency or other, which overwhelms your concern for the black box with a flood of sadness and hopeless sentimentality. She does not stir as you enter the room, but continues her sketching with uninterrupted ardor, humming fragments of tuneless melodies to herself as she applies her sloppy pen to paper. Staring closely at her, too fascinated by her debility to avert your gaze, you are suddenly shocked into exclamation as the subject of her drawing becomes apparent to you. With trembling thick-inked lines, the girl has drawn a gigantic penis on the paper, its huge uncircumcised head pointing upward toward a disembodied mouth that hovers in space with lips parted wide and tongue curled over teeth. For all its amateurishness, the prick is still remarkably detailed, the ridge of its head flared delicately outward, the veins indicated by a series of wavy lines, the testicles drawn full and large and hairy. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the penis is its size: the drawing stretches from one end of the sketchbook to the other-a distance of at least two feet.
"What's this?" you exclaim, too struck by the drawing to conceal your surprise. Even as you speak, you notice a scattered pile of finished drawings beside the girl, all of precisely the same subject as the first, all depicting pricks of tremendous size, but each with one or more distinguishing features, each somehow unique: some show heavy-balled pricks, some small-balled pricks, some are hairy at the root, others hairless, some of the pricks are crooked, others straight, some with plump heads, others with tapered heads, but all-all of those that are visible-with the same hungry mouth suspended in space just above the eye of the organ, all thus conveying a feeling of intense anxiety, of extraordinary sexual tension.
"That's Babette," says Amaril matter-of-factly, seating himself on one of the scarlet satin sofas and spreading his legs across the coffee-table. "She's something of a problem licker, you might say. The truth is, she can suck the male organ almost indefinitely. She's really quite insatiable. If I'd left her in the street where I found her, she probably wouldn't even be alive today: she'd have drowned long ago in a sea of jissom. You should have seen her, poor thing. Her lips were covered with bruises and sores ... Twenty and thirty men would use her at a time ... Jissom was always dripping from her lips ... So
I took her in. How could I leave her to those inhuman brutes out there?..." He pauses to gesture dramatically to the window. "I care for her, you see. I indulge her appetite from time to time ... as much as is necessary, but no more than is healthy ... and as you see, she draws pictures of her heart's desire whenever she's unoccupied. She's a pretty girl, don't you think? Pretty Babette! ... But come ... sit down ... I know you must be anxious to get on to our ... business ... correct?"
Fending off feelings of madness, focusing your entire concentration on the black wooden box, you take a seat on the sofa opposite Amaril and stare ahead at a painting of a nude male dancer on the wall behind him as he rubs his hands rather suggestively over the tops of his thighs. Babette has not looked up at any point during her protector's introduction of her; she continues to draw her frenzied sketches as if alone in the room, her buttocks twitching occasionally, occasionally grinding together, her belly making a muffled sound as it rubs against the purple carpet. Outside, seven birds fly diagonally across the sky in a perfect V formation, their outspread winds like so many tiny fingers across the face of the midday sun. All but inaudible, the distant music of the village wafts lightly through the pale-walled study, seems to hang suspended in the air with the thousand particles of dust that spiral slowly through the room's slanted sunbeams.
"So," says Amaril, taking a cigarette from a dark wooden humidor, lighting it, and casting the burnt-out match in a flowered ceramic ashtray, "you've come about the box, eh?"
"Yes," you whisper, refusing the cigarette he offers you. "Really, I must have it...."
"No doubt," says Amaril, "it will prove you innocent of some crime or other that you've been accused of..."
"Yes, yes," you nod excitedly. "It was all a plot.
They lured me, baited me like some stupid animal.... There was an old man..."
"Ah," says Amaril, exhaling through his nostrils and watching the smoke billow upward toward the ceiling. "The old man.... You would have been wise to avoid him altogether. He's quite a crafty old boy."
"Then you know him," you whisper. "You know of the plot...."
"Well," says Amaril, "this plot may not be as simple as you think, my friend ... It may not be as simple as you think...."
"I don't understand," you whisper, frightened of further complexities. "They tricked me, baited me ... I committed a crime...."
"Yes, yes," nods Amaril sympathetically, "but who is to say where one plot ends and another begins? Who is to say that I'm not part of a further plot against you, an even stranger plot, that the plot against you continues even as you seek its solution?"
Your hand tightens on the arm of the sofa. You see vivid mental images of the young Amaril conniving with your enemies.
"Are you in league with them?" you ask threateningly. "Are you one of them? Are you?"
"No, no, of course not," says Amaril. "Don't be ridiculous. I only meant to say, how can one tell how much of his life is planned by another? Perhaps I am as much of a dupe as you are. Perhaps, unbeknownst to me, I am the puppet of another man. For you see, just as you must have your precious box, there is an object which I must have. Perhaps that seems strange to you, but it's true. I've long since given up deciding how much of my life is plot, and how much real...." His black eyes filled with murky reflection, Amaril stares vaguely ahead at his pink-toes feet, his penis a soft, somehow touching bulge beneath the electric blue silk of his robe.
Utterly confused by this effeminate young man who sits before you and weaves his philosophical tapestry, frightened by the prospect of being caught by the police, you fight a sudden rush of tears to your eyes. Were it not for your fixation on the box-the hideous, horrible box-you would go stark staring mad in this land of madness.
"I don't know!" you cry suddenly, tears gushing from your eyes to burn your cheeks with their hot saltiness. "I don't know! I only want to be with my wife! Who knows what they're doing to her? I'm a wanted man, a fugitive! They'll beat her to find out where I am! They'll beat her! They'll beat her!"
Instantly, Babette looks up from her drawing and stares at you with wide expressionless eyes. (Was it your tears that triggered her, or the mention of your wife, or was it simply chance that caused her to look up at the finish of your impassioned speech?) Humming, she regards you motionlessly for a moment, then crawls slowly toward you on hands and knees, her pale yellow dress riding up almost to the bottom of her rump.
"Ah," laughs Amaril, stroking his parted thighs with both his hands. "Babette is hungry. Babette must be fed. We men are morbid, aren't we, my friend? But Babette ... is Babette?..."
Trembling, the girl pauses before you like a loving dog, her head at the level of your knees, her eyes turning hungry as they caress the veiled outline of your organ. Slowly, she inches forward until her breasts press themselves flat on your legs, then nuzzles your thigh until the flaps of your cloak fall open to reveal the plump blue-veined treasure beneath. With lips parted wide, moisture glimmering in her throat, she advances on the object of her love, finally pausing just above it, her breath warm and heavy on its head as she beseeches you with heat-misted eyes to give her the signal to begin. Shrinking from her, you turn helplessly toward Amaril, a tiny muscle twitching in your left eyelid as the girl inches still further forward to stay close to your prick, her stiffened nipples rubbing against your thighs through the thin cotton of her dress.
"Please," you plead of Amaril, "Tell her to stop...."
"Nonsense," says Amaril. "Let her do as she pleases. She only wants to suck you ... just give her a little nod...."
"Please," you whine, "it isn't right. She doesn't even know what she's doing...."
"Really, I don't know why you insist on making me emphasize your situation," says Amaril. "But if you want your silly box, you'll let her suck your prick. Otherwise, you're free to leave my house at any time. For goodness sake, have some pity on the poor thing.... She's only trying to vary her diet. Just give her a quick nod. There's time enough for you to get your box."
Half-humming, half-moaning, Babette pulls her dress up past her buttocks, and jerks it over her head. Continuing to implore you with her saucer-like eyes, she kneels naked before you, running her hands from the long-stemmed tips of her breasts to the moist opening lips of her hairy vagina, as if making a dumb show of her passion. Her skin is pale and shiny, her belly round and full.
"She-likes to be naked for her little treat," says Amaril, his finger edging ever closer to the swelling bulge beneath his robe. "She'll rub against you like a bitch in heat. She'll cover your legs with her lovely sweet cream...."
Despite your horror at the thought of giving the poor wretch her way, your penis begins to lengthen in slow rolling stages as you behold her nakedness, its distended eye producing a single droplet of crystal fluid, its head beginning to tingle with anticipation. Babette goes wild at the sight of the secretion: she rubs furiously at her pussy, jiggles her breasts up and down, and coos to you in a frantic nonsense language, her entire body shuddering with the force of her obsession. She can barely stand to look at your twitching phallus, so incredible is the fury with which it fills her.
"Go ahead," says Amaril, "give her the nod. It can't hurt you. Your prick is still as a bone. You'll have the box in no time."
Whether out of fear or out of weariness, or out of an inability to cope with Amaril's logic, you finally cast a submissive glance in Babette's direction, and let your head fall once to your chest, your hands turning limp and moist on the sofa's cool satin. Babette moans and sings her delight, her hands describing magical circles of joy around your shining upright pole, her pussy a pulsing ball of fur and meat as she smears it against your leg. With all the labored hesitation of a gourmet, she brings her mouth to the head of your organ. She worships it with her eyes, sniffs it, sings strange fragmented songs in honor of its beauty and power. Then, slowly, her tongue slips out from between her lips and flicks away the droplet of fluid that shimmers at the tip of your penis. like a proud child, she displays your own secretion to you as it rolls like a ball of mercury on the -edge of her tongue. Behind her, Amaril opens his robe and lets his own golden organ pop outward to beat against his softly-sloped belly, his left hand seeking its shaft as his right strokes the small downy testicles that hang beneath it.
Maddened by the taste of your fluid, Babette suddenly glues her lips to the head of your penis and begins to suck it with loud gobbling motions of her lips, her clitoris like a little finger as it rubs against your legs, her breasts as warm as fresh-cooked pudding as they pour over your thighs.
"Now is that so bad?" says Amaril, fanning his prick with both hands. "What's so terrible about letting the poor thing suck on you?" Then masturbating himself with slower, more detached strokes: "Anyway ... as I was saying ... there's an object which you must secure for me if I'm to let you have this box of yours...."
Babette moves her face lower, lower on your prick. Her tongue flutters in her mouth, tickling the organ at sides and bottom. Inch by inch, she pulls it into her throat, sending cold tingles all the way up and down your spine as she lets herself choke on the still-expanding organ, the muscles of her throat contracting like the ass-hole's sphincter around the spongy ridge of its head.
"So," continues Amaril, tickling his testicles, "this object, as it turns out, is a certain curio, a small glass sculpture, which is available, or so I'm told, at a certain curio shop at the other end of the village. I'll describe it as fully as possible to you, so there won't be any mistake...."
Babette's lips form a perfect O at the very root of your prick, her nostrils tickled by twisted curls of your pubic hair, her fingers working frantically in the sweaty cleft of your ass. Grinding against you with pussy and breasts, she pulls your prick in a wide rhythmic circle, strands of her long honey-brown hair trailing over your belly and thighs. You stare from Babette's stuffed cheeks to Amaril's shining penis, then back to Amaril's words like the hypnotic drone of an insect as it intrudes upon the rise of your orgasm.
"The curio depicts a man, woman, and child," says Amaril, "in some sort of country setting, I believe. All are naked, locked in a three-way embrace. The child's mouth is fastened to the woman's vagina, the woman's lips to the man's organ, and the man's lips to the child's little pole. It's really quite pretty as you'll see ... quite expertly done...."
Babette begins to chew on the shaft of your prick, shakes it back and forth in her throat with quick sideways jerks of her head. Your buttocks grind together against the sofa's moist satin, your toes pressing into Babette's smooth calves. Across the room, Amaril beats at his prick with increased concentration, his knees opening and closing, his middle finger slipping to the rim of his ass-hole, penetrating it.
"There are ... many curios ... like this one," says Amaril with no little difficulty. "But this ... curio ... has the words ... Truth is Beauty ... inscribed at its ... base. You must be sure to..."
Babette rolls your entire body in a furious circle with her slobbering mouth, her stifled moans filling the entire room, drowning out the music that plays in the street. With your last scrap of reason, you wonder if the neighbors can hear her passionate grunting. Then your urethra gives a hollow twitch, and sends a burst of air downward toward Babette's belly, then another, then pumps gob after gob of burning semen deep into her squeezing throat. Babette chokes and splutters, sucks spurt after spurt of nectar from your prick, struggles to hold all your precious fluid in her mouth. His eyes fixed on your face, Amaril explodes into orgasm, his large golden spear sending thick pearly wads of semen spinning through the air, spilling over his trembling legs, and dripping finally to the carpet.
"Ah, that was beautiful," says Amaril, licking a drop of semen from his finger. "Beautiful..." He smiles a strange smile at you for a moment, then turns his gaze downward to Babette as your prick goes limp in her throat. "All right, little one," he says to her. "Leave the gentleman alone now...."
Reluctantly, Babette pulls away from your penis, her tongue licking a final ooze of semen from its tip. Swallowing the fluid she has accumulated in her mouth, she turns beseechingly toward her master, crawls to him with buttocks shaking in the air, and begins to lick the semen from his legs.
"As I was saying," says Amaril, totally disregarding the girl who works at his thighs, "there are many curios about that are similar to the one I've described. You must find the one with the inscription, Truth is Beauty, at its base ... and then you shall have your box."
Having licked all the semen from her master's legs, and even the trickle that seeps slowly into the purple rug, Babette begins fervently to kiss and tongue Amaril's penis, the pink inner meat of her backthrust vagina twinkling at you in the room's bright sunlight.
"That's enough, Babette," says Amaril. "Go back to your drawing, little one...."
The girl pretends not to hear him. Humming loudly, she sucks the head of his penis into her mouth.
"Enough, Babette, enough," says Amaril, smiling at you as if embarrassed by the girl's fanaticism.
Still, the girl does not heed him, but takes the whole of his organ into her throat, and tickles its soft underbelly with her tongue.
"Enough, you ugly bitch!" cries Amaril, striking the girl with back of his hand and sending her sprawling to the floor.
Moaning, Babette falls on her back atop the stack of her finished drawings, her elbow knocking over the bottle of ink as she thrusts two fingers deep into her pussy, and two deep in her mouth.
"So," says Amaril, rising from his sofa and pulling closed his robe. "We're agreed then? The curio for the box?"
Filled with pity for the girl who lies masturbating on the floor, you nod your head distractedly at the smiling Amaril, your lips forming a silent reluctant yes.
"Good! Wonderful!" cries Amaril. "Then suppose you take off that filthy cloak and come right in here.... " Turning, he opens a narrow louvred door at the left of the room, and beckons you toward a lavish pink-and-white-tiled bathroom, its sunken tub already filled with steaming water. "And when you've finished your bath," he continued, staring warmly at your naked belly, "you'll find a suit of clothes in the dressing room beyond. I hope you'll find them to your liking. My chauffeur will be waiting for you by the time you're dressed. He'll take you to the shop in question. I'll see you when you've completed your ... errand. Good day...." Smiling, he draws back the leftward flap of your cloak and gives your belly a gentle stroke, his pinky just barely grazing the root of your prick. Then, turning on his heel, he takes Babette by the wrist and drags her, still moaning and fingering herself, from the room.
Too weary to think, you trudge listlessly into the bathroom, drop your cloak from your shoulders, and ease your naked body gradually into the tub's sweet-scented water. Above you, your every pained movement is reflected in the crystal glass of a wall-to-wall ceiling mirror, your knees and belly appearing as shining pink islands as they emerge from the water's glittering bubbles, the head of your penis like a buoy as it bobbles at the water's surface. There are too many riddles in your mind for you to even begin to fathom their solutions. Who is this Amaril? How is it he seems to know so much about your situation? Why does he send you on an errand which he could easily accomplish himself? Why will he not give you your box? None of it makes sense. From the time you've left your house and family, nothing has made sense. Best to dismiss it from your mind. Yes ... Think of something else....
Soaping yourself lazily, watching bits of dirt and grime float from your body, you let your mind drift over peaceful memories of your childhood, over country walks taken with your father, and stories read you by your mother at bedtime. How soft her thighs were, pressed close to your tender face; how soft her words as she enchanted you with stories of magic swords and evil elves....
"Read me another!" you would always cry when she stood to leave, but each time, she would only bend to kiss you lightly on the forehead, and turning, wish you the pleasantest of dreams.
As you lie lost in your world of memory, a warm breeze carrying the scents of the garden to your nostrils, thoughts of the black box press steadily inward on your mind until your growing restlessness forces you to quit the tub. You dry yourself with a thick yellow towel, brush your hair with a leather-backed brush, and walk through the door indicated by Amaril into a tiny dressing-room with walls covered in a garish flowered wallpaper. In an open closet you find a vested herringbone suit with matching cape, a blousy-sleeved white silk shirt, and a pair of highly-shined black boots, everything spotlessly clean, perhaps even new. But for a pair of calf-length socks, there is no underwear provided with the outfit, but whether this is through some oversight, or through some plan of Amaril's, you find yourself unwilling to guess.
You dress quickly, constantly appraising yourself in a full-length mirror that hangs behind the bathroom door, finding constant amusement in how changed a man you look, in the rakishness lent you by the tight-fitting suit. Then, throwing the velvet-lined cape jauntily over your shoulder, you walk back through the bathroom into the study, where you find a heavy-jowled man in chauffeur's cap and uniform standing at attention beside the window. His eyes are small and watery, his lips the color of the purple rug beneath his feet.
"Ready if you are, sir," says the man, bowing low with a click of his heels. "The car is just outside...."
At a nod from you, he leads you from the study through the pink-carpeted hallway, and out to a gigantic old limousine with shiny black top, gunmetal sides, and a rear window no larger than a business envelope. Opening the door for you, he clicks his heels once again (there is something oafish and un-practiced in the gesture) as you slide along the leather-upholstered seat to the far end of the car.
"There's brandy in the compartment, sir, if you care for any," says the chauffeur, closing the door. Then, seating himself rigidly in the driver's seat, he starts the car and drives slowly up the street, his fingers like so many withered little sausages as they curl around the limousine's gleaming black wheel.
But for the slight elongation of the shadows, and the barest tinge of crispness in the air, the village is the same as when last you glimpsed it: children still play at marbles outside the weather-beaten inn, the fish vendor still advertises his wares in resonant, slightly hysterical tones, men and women still pace leisurely through the streets, wandering in and out of whichever shops happen to catch their attention. The village seems a timeless place, its inhabitants given to an endless course of eating, resting, and wandering. Even the music played on the lavender loudspeakers seems utterly continuous, utterly the same: the tune which you heard as you entered the village seems still to be playing now as you drive through it.
After a drive of scarcely more than six or seven minutes, the chauffeur brakes his vehicle to a gentle halt on a fairly empty street in one of the village's more rundown sections, slips awkwardly out of the front seat (each of his movements brings a grunt to his lips), pulls open the rear door, and hands you a small suede sack filled with shiny gold coins.
"You're to spend as much as is required, sir," says the chauffeur, standing at rigid attention as you step out of the car and pocket the coins. "The shop is just up the road aways. I'd take you closer, but the master instructed me not to. Things might not go smoothly, sir, if we were to make the master's involvement in this apparent. I'll wait for you right here, sir. Best of luck!"
With a cursory nod at the chauffeur, you turn and walk briskly up the block, pleased with your dazzling reflection in the shops that you pass. Though the neighborhood is rather depressing-scattered refuse litters the street, and all the shops seem greatly in need of repair-you find yourself relieved, at least, by its emptiness. The police will never look for you here: the shops are practically deserted, the street desolate but for an urchin bouncing a filthy ball against a wall, and an old man who walks quickly away into the distance.
Before you a battered wooden sign, hung by rusty crooked hinges, reads CURIOS-OLD AND NEW in worn Gothic lettering. You turn toward its entrance-a bright red wooden door with cracked panes of glass-and pause, almost smiling, at the incredible profusion of unrelated objects-cameos, book-ends, wood-carvings, candles, glasses, and dishes-offered for sale in the dust-streaked front window of the shop. Surely this place will have Amaril's curio. Perhaps your trials are truly at an end.
"Sir! Sir!" cries the chauffeur as you descend the few steps that lead from the street level to the shop's entrance.
You turn, puzzled by the man's agitation, and by his lack of restraint (for did he not, only a moment ago, suggest rather plainly that this venture must be something of a secret affair?), then jerk suddenly to the left as the music that plays over the loudspeaker behind you is interrupted by an urgent crackling voice.
"Attention citizens, attention citizens!" booms the voice. "There is a criminal at large in the village! Repeat, there is a criminal at large in the village! When last seen, the fugitive was dressed in a tattered black doak, and headed toward the village from the seacoast! Report all strangers to your local constabulary! Repeat, report all strangers to your local constabulary!" The chauffeur continues calling to you in the distance, but it is impossible to hear him over the rumble of the loudspeakers. "This man may be armed and dangerous! Stay off the streets! Repeat, stay off the streets! The six o'clock curfew will be enforced!"
From far in the distance comes the piercing wail of a siren. Heart pounding in your chest, you turn away from the near-hysterical chauffeur and thrust open the door of the curio shop. Behind you, you can hear the scurry of the chauffeur's footsteps as he runs to the limousine, then the roar of the auto's engine as it speeds back in the direction of Amaril's house. Now, it seems, you are on your own...
The shop door closes behind you with the silver-toned tinkle of an overhead bell, but the shopkeeper is nowhere in sight. Beneath the shop's single dim light bulb, an incredible array of items spreads outward from a dirty cracked center case, everything coated with a thin layer of dust, arranged, apparently, without benefit of any sort of plan. On sagging wooden tables at the sides of the shop, stacks of ceramic ashtrays sit atop stacks of hand-carved music boxes, broken strings of beads hang from the shades of hand-painted lamps, antique bottles rest on their sides beside jade and ivory figurines, and a hundred miniature paintings lie toppled among brass and silver candlestick-holders, embroidered doilies, and chipped china teacups. Below the tables, torn boxes of various sizes spill their contents out onto the wooden floor like sacks of grain split open for inspection: back-date magazines lie open atop children's storybooks, hand-painted wood-carvings of elves, emperors, dragons, cherubs, and mice stand guard over fallen cigarette cases, crushed Oriental paper-foldings, and foreign coins of every conceivable size and metal. Clocks-small, large, round, and square-tick madly away from every corner of the shop, each of their faces announcing a different time. From the ceiling hang a thousand baskets, umbrellas, birdcages, canes, musical instruments both foreign and domestic, scarves, vests, and ornamental water-pipes. Inside the center case, orderless pieces of jewelry-cameos, brooches, rings, and necklaces, some imbedded with precious stones, some with semi-precious stones, some with colored glass-are mixed with objects of little or no worth: shattered pairs of glasses, scraps of elastic and cloth, tiny spools of thread, fingerless leather gloves, discarded belt buckles, melted wax fruits, empty typewriter spools, and broken bits of wood and metal and plastic. The arrangement of the shop's articles is so careless, that a score of antique tables and cabinets ne scattered around the center case, partially concealing its contents from view. There is barely enough room in the shop to move from one place to another without knocking over some half-toppled item or other, though a single pair of footsteps has cut into the floor's thick dust at various points around the shop's periphery. The air is stifling, filled with the heavy scent of incense and the danker smell of slow organic rot. You can almost feel the shop's mustiness begin to settle on your body.
"Hello!" you call loudly to a narrow doorway at the back of the shop. "Is anyone there? Service! Service!"
"What is it you wish?" comes a soft, emotionless voice from directly behind the counter, the voice, unmistakably, of a woman.
From behind a twin stack of ancient leather-bound books, two cold green eyes peer out at you, long-lashed eyelids flickering rhythmically up and down. In the gloom of the curio shop, the eyes seem eerily detached from the dark-shadowed face that surrounds them, seem almost to hover in space as did the ever-present mouth in Babette's innumerable phallic drawings.
"I'm looking for a certain curio," you stammer, surprised to find yourself not alone in the room. "It depicts a ... sexual scene, I believe, between a man, woman, and child ... The words..."
"Truth is Beauty ... are inscribed at its bare," comes the woman's voice, cool and liquid. "Is that correct?"
"Yes," you answer, greatly excited. "That's precisely the piece I'm looking for. Do you have it?"
There is a brief silence, green eyes shining as bright as emeralds in the darkness. Then the eyes disappear, there is a rustling sound as of clothing being adjusted, and a tall slender woman appears from behind the cluster of objects. Her flaming red hair pulled back into a taut ringleted bun, she seems almost a study in female exoticism against the backdrop of manufactured oddities behind her. Her eyes are huge-even brighter when contrasted to the livid scarlet of her hair than when seen from behind the counter-her nose long and aquiline, her mouth small, the lips curled into a natural expression which might either be taken for a smile of amusement or a sneer of contempt, her chin small and delicate, her forehead high and smooth. Her slenderness is greatly emphasized by the clothing she wears: a pair of skin-tight brown leather slacks with a strange red triangular crotch piece that stretches backwards between her legs to the center of her rump, a matching leather vest-jacket, its upper buttons open to expose just a quarter inch of the cleavage between her breasts (the taut streaks of leather over biceps, belly, and thighs suggesting a slight muscular tension beneath), and a pair of sleek open-toed sandals, the thongs of which disappear beneath the bottoms of her slacks. The bizarreness of her dress lends her a strange antic air that makes her seem a cross somehow between a fashion model and a circus performer, and as she stares at you, her long red-nailed fingers running over the rim of a wicker basket beside her, you cannot help but feel a certain interest in her, a vague curiosity as to her origins and personal life.
"The piece that you are seeking," says the woman, "is a particularly rare article. You understand, of course, that the sale of such ... obscene items ... is forbidden by law .... "
"I'm prepared to pay any price you name," you state calmly, withdrawing the pouch of gold from the pocket of your herringbone suit.
"Don't be foolish," says the woman, running her fingers over the bars of a rusted birdcage that hangs by a rope from the ceiling. "Money is of little consequence in this matter. Tell me, just how important is this obscene curio to you? Why do you want it?"
"It's quite important, actually," you say. "Almost a matter of life and death, I'm afraid. You see..."
"Don't tell me the story," interrupts the woman with an impatient gesture of her hand. "I've heard them all, really I have. You want the curio for a friend, or for a friend of a friend, or even for the friend of the friend's friend. In exchange, the friend will give you something that you seek-a bottle or an envelope or a box, some stupid article of importance to no one but yourself. You'll present the bottle or the box or the envelope to yet another party-someone you probably don't even know as yet-with the expectation that you will thereby prove something or other to the world at large, and thereby lighten the load that you carry on your back. It's a lovely story, and I really have no interest in the specifics of it...."
As she speaks, the woman paces slowly about her unkempt shop, touching various objects as she passes them, pausing occasionally to stare at you through an empty picture frame or through an uneven row of tarnished candlestick-holders. Always, her words are punctuated by the frantic ticking of the room's hundred clocks, and by the tense squeaking of her tight leather clothing. Half-hypnotized by her droning voice, you stare vacantly at the slow roll of muscle in her buttocks and thighs, the rhythmic undulation of her hips and belly lulling you even deeper into blankness.
"So this is a matter of life or death, as usual," continues the woman. "Then you would probably be willing to kill me for this curio, eh?"
You start to protest, but the woman interrupts you.
"Don't worry," she says, opening and closing an orange umbrella, "you won't have to murder me to get it. I'll make it much simpler for you...." She pauses for a moment, taking you in from foot to head with a single sweeping glance, then turning to stare out the front window, a vague kind of reflection coming into her eyes. "You see," she continues, "I've been sitting behind this dirty counter all the morning, and all morning long, I've been dreaming of ... tongues. I've been dreaming of how nice it would be to have myself licked by someone's nice long wet slippery tongue. You know, my nipples and my belly and my pussy and my toes and my backside. No one ever comes into this filthy old shop. There's nothing for me to do here. I only keep the place open for poor fools like yourself who come in searching for the same stupid curio all the time ... and even then, I usually say to them, 'I'm sorry, the curio is not for sale,' or 'I'm sorry, I don't have that particular article in stock,' and then, of course, they tell me their pathetic stories, how they must have the curio, how the curio will save their lives or their wives, their names, their fames ... whatever nonsense they've got in their poor heads ... and I'm so weary of their stories. I have no interest in curios ... only in tongues ... and so I tell you, I'll give you the curio ... it's time I was rid of it ... only give me the use of your tongue for a while. My God, no one's been in here for weeks. Day after day, I sit behind the counter and wait, dreaming of tongues ... No one comes in. By the time I close the shop, there's not even a soul on the street. If it was a penis I was after, that would be a simple enough desire to fulfill. I could lie on the floor and use one of the candles here, or better still, buy some piece of fruit from the fruit vendor. But how does one construct a replica of a tongue? So come ... come with me behind the counter for just a few minutes, and the silly piece of glass you're after will be yours...."
You stand as motionless as a block of wood as the woman, half-hidden behind the counter's stacks of books, beckons you toward her. You are neither confused nor disgusted nor frightened by the woman's proposition, but rather, find yourself filled with rage at her utterly passionless speech. For the second time today, images of murder and destruction fill your mind, the present images far more violent and gory than the earlier ones elicited by Amaril. You see yourself stabbing the redheaded woman in the face and neck and belly, bludgeoning her to death with any one of a number of objects that fill her seedy shop. You can almost feel her blood running warm over your hands, can almost hear her gurgling screams for help, for mercy, for forgiveness. It is not her proposal in and of itself that so enrages, you, but the murmured matter-of-factness with which she states it, making it seem as ordinary a request as asking for the time of day, or a light for a cigarette. What sort of people are these who inhabit this village, to presume upon your most personal freedoms whenever they perceive you to be at a disadvantage? Are they all mad-escapees from the same insane asylum-or simply so low in nature that they are not even aware of the contemptuousness of this sort of opportunism?
"Well?" says the woman. "Shall we seal our bargain? Come ... I'm getting restless...." Her breasts heave slightly as she speaks, the leather of her vest pulling taut across her chest.
"How can you be so indecent!" you cry suddenly, gilt--edged teacups rattling on the table beside you. "How can you take advantage of someone this way? I come to you openly ... I ask nothing unreasonable. You treat me like an animal, like a..."
"Please," says the woman, shaking her head very, very sadly. "Spare me the rest of it, spare me. I don't want to hear it. All you poor fools are alike. You want, you want, and you want, but you don't want to give anything but your money. I don't even want to discuss it. It's getting late. I haven't even had lunch yet, and what with this criminal on the loose, every restaurant in town will probably close within the hour. So good day to you, whoever you are. Good luck with whatever it is that's bothering you."
Brushing past you with arms swinging powerfully at her sides, the redhead makes her way cat-like through the maze of articles that fills the dimly-lit shop, slicks off the grimy light-switch at the side of the door's cracked molding, and flings open the door.
"Wait!" you call helplessly, barely willing the word to your lips. "Please .... "
Her back to you, the woman pauses in the doorway for a time, her body framed in afternoon sunlight, scarlet hair glowing rich and lustrous with pink and orange and yellow highlights. Then, slowly, she turns, slowly closes the dusty-paned door behind her. A smile-neither of triumph nor of cruelty, but of simple satisfaction-turns the corners of her lips. Her long toes wriggle slightly beneath the thick leather thongs of her sandals. But for the ticking of the clocks, the shop is utterly still, a strange atmosphere of intimacy growing out of its gloom.
"Good," whispers the woman, seeming to sway slightly in the darkness. "Very good...." Then, after a pause: "I love you...." Her hands trailing lightly over faded peacock feathers and outlandish plumed chapeaus, she walks past you once again, and disappears behind the book-stacked counter from which she originally emerged. "Come," she whispers. "Come back here ... I love you...."
Her words, her tone of voice, her slow fluid gestures, all combine to strike a strange unplayed chord within you: you feel a kind of pity-for yourself? for the woman?-grow out of your anger and rise to fill your breast. You walk through soft-edged sheets of emotion toward the sound of the woman's voice.
Behind the glass counter, in a deep-shadowed corner of the room surrounded by tall piles of empty crates and boxes, the redheaded woman lies with arms and legs outstretched upon a soiled fraying cot. On the floor beside her, a box of moldy crackers lies open on its side amidst a cluster of broken jewelry, a steady stream of cockroaches carrying bits of food from inside the box to their hiding places beneath the pile of crates. On the other side of the cot, a tattered notebook stuffed full of loose papers turns yellow beneath a layer of dust, the halves of a broken pencil placed neatly at its top.
"Do you want to know my name?" asks the woman in a tender voice, kicking her legs high in the air to expose a large faded stain on the cot (of semen? vaginal foam? blood?) beneath the intersection of her thighs. "Come sit down beside me ... and I'll tell it to you...."
Seating yourself at the -edge of the cot, you cannot help but breathe in the redhead's strong mingled fragrance of perfume, sweat, and desire--an intoxicating musk-and-almond-and-lemon-oil smell, at once heavy and light, that seems to surround the woman like a spreading invisible cloud. In the thin slants of light that seep through the clutter of objects on the counter, the redhead's skin seems brighter, pinker than before, her eyes once again like emeralds as they smolder in the shadows.
"My name is ... Aurelia," whispers the woman, a child's smile coming across her lips as she pronounces the name. "Here ... look at me...."
Slowly, she unbuttons her leather vest-jacket and lets it fall open over the stark ripples of her rib cage. Beneath the vest, she wears a shiny black leather brassiere which does not conceal her breasts, but pushes them up and outward by means of two thin crescent-shaped strips at their undersides. Her breasts are small and firm, like two ripe peaches, her nipples erected into long-stemmed circles of pink furrowed flesh. Her belly is narrow and deep-naveled, just the slightest slope of flesh disappearing into the low-cut waistband of her slacks at a point be low her angular hipbones. Beneath the streaked leather of her slacks, her pussy seems almost to squirm in the darkness. With a series of quick squeaking tugs, she unsnaps the red triangular crotch-piece from her pants, and opens wide her legs to expose a quivering cunt shaved clean from belly to ass-hole. Seen in all its nakedness, the cunt is an intricate, fascinating thing: you can almost lose yourself in the double folds of lips and the fat flesh of the clitoris, all compressed in the narrow channel of the smooth-sided slit like a flower of meat awaiting the kiss of an alien sun. Below the V of the pussy, the ridge of flesh between cunt and backside stretches taut from cheek to cheek, the ass-hole opening and contracting between its twin moons of polished pink. Sandwiched between the leather of her trousers (only a large enough strip has been cut away to allow free access to both furrows and a bit of the skin that surrounds them), Aurelia's hairless crotch seems more a precious spectacle than a double pleasure duct-a lewd spectacle to be sure, but a spectacle nevertheless. Delighted with your attention to her treasure, the redhead pulls her knees back almost to her breasts, and wiggles her pussy before your eyes. Strangely, you are touched by the gesture.
"What's the matter, lover?" she laughs. "Haven't you ever seen a shaved cunt before? Honestly, how can a woman feel anything with all that silly fur over her hole? Come ... take off this silly cape of yours.... " Raising herself slightly from the cot, she unfastens the cape's silver buckle and pushes the garment slowly from your shoulders until it falls from your back to the insect-ridden floor. Her left hand caressing your neck, she draws you slowly toward her, then gives you a soft kiss on the cheek as her breasts warm your chest through the cool silk of your shirt. "You can begin with my lips," she says softly. "Just lick them with the tip of your tongue ... Then you can go down to my titties...."
Tingling with anticipation, you let your tongue slip slowly from your mouth, and touch its tip very hesitantly to the redhead's lower lip. Holding your head with both her hands, Aurelia moves your face in a small circle, forcing your tongue to cover every corner of her mouth, twining her fingers in your hair. You feel such strangeness in the woman's embrace that is seems almost as if you are detached from the scene, as if you are watching yourself and the eager proprietess from a great, great distance. Only the salty taste of her lips, the gentle prodding of her nipples, gives you any sense of physical involvement.
"Now my titties," says Aurelia, pushing your face downward over her neck and chest.
Again your tongue slips out from your lips. Again your head is manipulated (Aurelia holds you tightly by the ears) so that your tongue rings first one, then the other of the redhead's trembling nipples with saliva.
"Ah, that's good ... that's good," sighs Aurelia, as if soaking her feet in hot water. "Now the tips ... Do just the tips...."
Her nipples are like the points of a lemon, hard and bumpy and narrowed at the ends, her leather-clad legs as slippery as oil as they wrap around your thighs. Her belly rolls with each flick of your tongue, sweat running freely from her downy red armpits as she forces your head back and forth from breast to breast and nipple to nipple.
"Down," she says, pushing you impatiently. "Go down..."
Obediently, you ease yourself downward toward her cunt, your legs sticking out past the -edge of the cot. Though a twinge of ambivalence still lingers in your chest, the role of submission is easier, more familiar to you than at any time previous, the events of the morning having apparently taken their toll of your independence. After only a second's hesitation, you lower your face to Aurelia's meaty slit and breathe in the heavy fragrance of her deep secretions. The cunt smells as if it has been filled on and off with juices for most of the morning, all its high aroma compressed within the confining leather of its covering: its smell practically leaps out at you, tart and piercing, vaguely terrible, and yet constantly alluring. You part your lips, let your tongue slither eel-like from your mouth.
"Not yet, silly," laughs Aurelia, pushing you away. "That's for last. Do my toes first...."
Without so much as a whimper of protest, you slide down off the -edge of the cot and kneel at Aurelia's feet, your hands seeking the buckles of her sandals.
"Leave my leathers alone!" cries Aurelia. "Leave them alone! Just lick my toes, that's all. Just lick the toes...."
Mechanically, you begin your task with the little toe of the right foot, licking around the sides of the toe to the moist crack between it and its neighbor, then on to the next toe and so on. Then, when you've completed the toes of the right foot, you move on to the left, starting with the big toe and moving downward. The toes are dirty and dry-skinned at the bottoms, giving you the feeling of licking parchment or rough cloth, but when they have been properly covered with saliva, they glow with a subtle pink softness that reminds you of baby mushrooms shining in the forest's dew.
"Now the cunt, now the cunt," whispers Aurelia, a ringlet of scarlet hair falling across her forehead as she rolls her head from side to side.
On hands and knees you crawl like a child between her open leather thighs. Aurelia pulls her legs way, way back, and holds herself by the crooks of the knees as she did before, her ass and pussy cracks forming a single unbroken leather-encased line.
"Start at the back," she whispers, "and lick all the way up to the top ... I like that the best...."
As you press your lips to Aurelia's rear furrow, odor of pussy, perfume, and anus mixing in your nostrils, your prick begins to throb with a kind of reflex excitement, its shaft lengthening slowly against your thigh, then pressing upward against the wooly fabric of your herringbone trousers. Oddly, you are embarrassed by your heat: if seems to you improper to become excited over so cut-and-dried a business proposition as the one at hand. Closing your eyes, you lick methodically upward, trying to lose your passion in thoughts of wife and children, in fears of the police. Your tongue slides over the ass-hole's rim, over the ridge between cunt and ass, over the pussy's tight-closed hole, over the thick folded outer lips, over the clitoris. The pussy quivers, sparkles with moisture. Twice you lick. The ass-hole winks between grinding cheeks, the pussy-lips part slightly, exposing just the -edge of the hole, the clitoris stiffens into a nubby little nipple. Three, four times, you lick. The ass-hole widens, the pussy trembles and falls open, its lips slicked back like the pages of a book. Aurelia moans, muscles rolling beneath the leather of her slacks. Your penis strains against the fabric of your trousers, its moisture oozing slowly down your leg.
"Faster ... do it faster" .moans Aurelia. "I'm coming ... I'm coming...."
Leather scrapes against your cheeks. Warm slippery flesh surrounds your nose and mouth and chin. For a moment, you feel yourself suffocating in Amelia's pussy, your penis aching with confinement. Then, suddenly, you rise to your knees, open your pants, and fish your throbbing organ out into the air. Neglecting even to remove your shoes, you throw yourself down on the wide-eyed redhead, your left hand guiding the head of your prick to the mouth of her quivering hole.
"No, no! You mustn't!" cries Aurelia as you penetrate her with just the tip of your prick. "You're just supposed to lick me is all! You're just supposed to lick me!"
She bucks against you like a wild pony, her belly making a loud thumping sound as it slaps against the fabric of your shirt, her legs kicking high in the air, her hands beating furiously at your shoulders and chest. Pinning her wrists behind her head, you arch your back in such a way as to make your penis inch along the upper wall of her pussy, then, with a sudden squeeze of your buttocks, drive deep into her, your damp pubic curls scratching like wool against the naked flesh of her mound. She lies helpless beneath you, long red hair coming undone and cascading over her pale shoulders, tears welling, then receding, in her eyes, her entire body caught between tension and relaxation.
"You ... mustn't...." she whispers in a voice filled with wonder. "No ... you mustn't...."
Fired by the thought of her helplessness, you bury your face in the loosened strands of her hair (how sweet it smells!), and drive your prick into her to the hilt, your balls making a dull thudding sound as they fall against the insides of her ass-cheeks Her pussy first unfolds to your assault, then squeezes itself shut around your penis. Her breasts strain upward to your chest, her nipples sliding along the silk of your shirt. like the halves of a pillory, her leather-clad legs lock around the backs of your thighs, spreading them wider and wider apart. She moans and grunts, melts to your attack, covers your ears and lips and neck with wild open-mouthed kisses. You plunge in and out, in and out of her, your chest and belly pressing ever more fiercely against her torso, until finally there is nothing but pure delicious honey-smooth friction, urging the fluid to rise from your balls.
"No, you mustn't!" cries Aurelia, suddenly serious. "You mustn't! You mustn't!"
Her heels kick crazily into your ass-cheeks. With wild powerful lurches, she tries to roll you from her body. Her pussy squeezes harder and harder on your prick, lips closing like the fingers of a fist at its root. Together, you burst into orgasm, her pussy sucking ever more forceful spurts from your prick, your prick forcing greater and greater contractions from her pussy. The shop's musty air seems electrified, filled with ever-multiplying combinations of smells and sounds and motions. The cot groans like a man about to die (you see the policeman lying bloody on the beach), actually wobbles from leg to leg beneath its writhing burden, until finally, after an eternity of release, all is still.
For long lazy moments, neither you nor Aurelia dare to speak. The redhead lies with her face turned away from you, her left forearm held fast over her eyes. In the darkness, she seems almost a marble statue, so still is her body, so faint the heaving of her chest. Ts she sad? Does she hate you? Perhaps you shouldn't have forced her.
"Well," says Aurelia after a time, her voice returned to its passionless monotone, "I suppose you want your curio now..." Sighing, she rolls you from her body. "Lord but your hipbones are sharp," she says. "You ought to eat more meals than you do or something. You're skinny as a rail...." Standing, she bends to retrieve her crotch piece from the floor, then wipes her cunt clean with two of her fingers, and snaps the crotch piece into place. Her vest still open over her breasts, she bends a second time, reaches under the cot, and comes up with a circular glass object, about four inches in diameter. "Here it is," she says, handing it to you. "I've always kept it under the cot in case I ever weakened. It's a pretty piece, isn't it?"
The curio is almost exactly as you imagined it would be-a remarkably detailed scene of a man, woman, and child, all slender and naked, lying beneath a leafy tree and sucking lovingly on each other's genitals. Even in the dim light of the curio shop, the piece has a strange prismatic effect, intense reds, yellows, and blues lining each of the figure's exterior -edges. It is a rare and beautiful piece to be sure, but still and all, hardly the sort of thing that a man would have to send an emissary to obtain.
Suddenly, as you scan the curio's base, you feel your heart begin to palpitate, a high whirring sound begin to fill your head. A quarter inch below the body of the woman in the scene, the curio is inscribed, indelicate script, with the words: Nothing is True.
"This isn't the one I wanted!" you cry. "The one I was to get was supposed to say Truth is Beauty across its base...."
"What's the difference?" laughs Aurelia, buttoning her vest. "The scene is the same."
"You said you had the one that said Truth is Beauty," you protest. "That's the one you were to give me...."
"There must be some mistake," says Aurelia coldly, walking around in the little space behind the counter as she speaks, reaching out continually to straighten this or that trinket. "I don't even have the curio you're speaking of. The man in the shop across the street owns that Truth is Beauty piece, though I doubt he'd want to part with it. There's a man right here in the village who's been trying to get it from him for years."
"Look here!" you shout, sitting up on the cot. "We discussed this rather plainly before I gave you your little payment here. You said you had the curio...."
"Please," sighs Aurelia, "spare me. There must be some mistake ... and please don't berate me for not living up to my part of the bargain. You didn't exactly fill your part to the letter", either. And as for our discussion, now that I think of it, I don't remember actually telling you that I had the curio. I don't remember that at all...."
"Now just a minute!" you shout.
'Wo, you just a minute!" screams Aurelia. "I'm tired of your yelling and complaining. Do you think the world owes you a living or something? Things happen, that's all. No one's responsible ... No one's to blame..." She stops suddenly, arms falling slowly to her sides, and stares miserably down at the floor. "What's the use anyway?" she sighs. "You poor devils are all alike. Listen ... I'm going out to lunch. Please do me the kindness of being gone by the time I get back. I don't think I want to see you any more...."
So saying, the redhead steps agilely out from behind the counter, glides through the maze of objects that fills her shop, opens wide the front door, and disappears, to the sound of unobtrusive music, into the street, leaving you to sit rather stupidly in the middle of the cot, your trousers tangled around your knees, shirttails dipped in a spreading pool of vaginal foam and semen, penis still twitching at a point somewhere between erection and flaccidity. Anger boils, then dies within you; your emotions are really of no use to you in this ghastly little village. The curio is in the shop across the street. You've wasted half the afternoon in the wrong place. God knows what you'll have to do to get the curio from the man who owns it. But ... what's the use of thinking? Best to get dressed, to continue as if nothing has happened.... That's the only way....
Rising slowly to your feet, you pull up your pants, wipe off your prick on the flap of your shirt, tuck in the shirt, and pick up your cape from where Aurelia has dropped it, much to the surprise of a gigantic cockroach who runs wildly out from beneath it, and disappears, before you can tromp on him, into the back of a discarded cuckoo clock. Just as you step out from Aurelia's little private section behind the counter, the front door of the shop is thrown forcefully open, and the shop filled with half a dozen heavy-set policemen, all wearing ill-fitting sweat-dampened uniforms.
"You there," calls the fattest of the policemen-a gray-eyed, red-cheeked man with the face of a Pekingese dog plastered into the fat of his head, "are you the proprietor here? You own this place?"
"That's right," you nod with barely a second's hesitation. "Can I help you?"
"We're looking for a dangerous criminal," say three of the policemen at once, all turning instantly to cast critical glances at each other.
"I'm sure I haven't seen any dangerous criminals," you volunteer, pushing strands of dampened hair away from your forehead. "At least, not that I know of...."
"He's a man of just about your height and weight," continues the dog-faced man, lifting a china plate to his eyes, then balancing it on three of his pudgy fingers. "Probably about your age too. Dressed in a ragged black cloak. Kind of crazy-looking, you might say...."
You feign deep thought, hand stroking your chin, eyes turned up to the chipped plaster of the shop's yellowing ceiling.
"No, officer," you say at last. "I can't say that I've seen anyone who fits that description. Actually, I haven't seen anyone at all today .... "
"You say you're the proprietor here?" says the policeman, eyeing you suspiciously. Behind him, the other policemen walk aimlessly around the room, constantly knocking things over with their big bellies and ham-like behinds. "What time did you open for business this morning?"
"Oh ... let me see ... About eight o'clock, I think. Yes, about eight o'clock."
"Eight o'clock!" cries the policeman, wet pink tongue moving behind chapped lips. "Why so early? You must know the rule on that. I ought to bring you in for questioning...."
"I couldn't sleep!" you protest, a nervous iciness filling your body. What's the harm, I said to myself, in opening a bit early? "Really, I..."
"Should we search him, chief?" interrupts a low browed ape-like man. "Make him strip naked?"
"Shut up, you," barks the dog-faced policeman, jabbing the man in the ribs with his thumb. Then, turning to you with sly smiling eyes: "He only wants to poke around in your ass-hole a little. Gets his fun that way.... You say this shop's been open all morning? You've been open all day?"
"Yes, that's right," you whisper, too tight-chested to speak loudly. "All day..."
"And you say you're the proprietor here?"
"You've asked me that twice already," you protest.
"Don't get smart with me, Mr. Whoever-you-are!" snaps the policeman, his cohorts gathering behind him to throw hostile, suspicious glances in your direction. "You won't impress me one bit with that kind of stuff. You're a citizen of this community and you have a solemn obligation to co-operate in matters that concern the welfare of the community you live in. Don't you ever forget that!"
"We better search him, don't you think, chief?" says the ape-like man. "A man who talks like that..."
"I told you to shut up!" barks the dog-faced man. Then, re-establishing, with no little difficulty, his train of thought: "Now ... you say you own this shop ... and you opened up at eight this morning ... and you were here in the shop all day ... and no one came in here all day ... is that right?"
"Yes, sir," you whisper. "No one was in here all day ... no one...."
The policeman scrutinizes you for long agonizing seconds, his eyes moving oddly in time to the slow ticking of a purple alarm clock beside him, a dozen decorations glittering on his chest with every swing of his powerful arms. His men are tense and excited behind him, their hands nervous at their sides as they look you over from head to toe.
"Well," says the chief finally, "You've got an honest face. I believe your story ... but you'd best mind your manners from here on in ... and no more of these eight o'clock openings ... hear? If you're a citizen, then act like one." Then, turning to his men: "Come along then boys. We've got a job of work to do, you know...."
In awkward double-file, the policemen make for the door, the chief pocketing a silver candlestick holder and a chainless watch before following behind his subordinates.
"Good luck," you call as he approaches the door, anxious to make some final sign of your loyalty before he leaves. "We don't need any luck," says the policeman, smiling to himself. "This poor devil on the loose is the only one who's going to need any luck. He murdered one of my best men today, trying to resist arrest. When we get done with him, his wife and children won't even recognize the poor bastard. I've got a mind to turn him over to my men for a couple of days ... let them use him as they wish. Hanging's too good for the man we're after. Well ... good day to you. See that you keep your nose clean. Remember your obligations...."
Just as the huge policeman passes through the shop's narrow doorway, a young wild-haired man dressed in a tattered black cloak comes rushing into the shop, and fixes you with a wide terrified stare. Incredibly, the police make no attempt to interrogate the man, though he looks as much like yourself as any man you've ever seen, but stand in a huddle outside the shop's window, arguing animatedly among themselves, and pointing this way and that, as if trying to determine the most thorough way of conducting their search. Sirens wail in the distance. The public loudspeakers play continuous warnings to the citizenry to stay off the streets, to keep their doors locked and barred, not to speak to any strangers, to report without hesitation any suspicious activity that they should happen to notice.
"I'm looking for a certain glass curio," whispers the young black-cloaked man, throwing continual nervous glances over his shoulder at the cluster of policemen outside. "From what I understand, it depicts three people-man, woman, and child, I think-engaged in some sort of sexual business. I think they're sucking each other off, if I'm not being too terribly blunt. The curio has the words Nothing is True written somewhere on its face. I'm told that it can be purchased here. Do you have it?"
As you stare back and forth from the man's pale smooth-featured face to the group of policemen outside, two thoughts run simultaneously through your mind. First, you see the young man as an easy means of obtaining the curio that you desire without having to go out on the street yourself, and thus risk further interrogation by the police: you'll merely offer to exchange the curio he wants for the one in the shop across the street. There's no reason why he shouldn't agree.... It's certainly an even enough exchange. Your second idea is more an impulse than a thought, a strange kind of semi-desire stemming, most probably, from the string of humiliations you've suffered during the day: in a series of quick mental flashes, you see yourself forcing the young man to some unpleasant servile task, perhaps something as simple as shining your boots or kissing your feet, perhaps something as debasing as sucking your prick or licking all the sweat from your body. It isn't the idea of the act itself which excites you-though the young man's body is well-formed, and his cheeks have an appealing tinge of pink to them-but rather, the idea of the psychological relationship implicit in the act, though whether it is the thought of the young man's helplessness, or of your own power, that excites you, is impossible to say.
"Yes," you say to the young man, trying to keep yourself from smiling. "I have access to the piece you describe. It can be yours rather easily. Only tell me, how badly do you need?..."
"Let me save you a speech," interrupts the man, stepping close to you and fixing you with a steady burning gaze. "I'll do anything to get this curio. I'll suck you off or lick out your ass-hole or cover you from head to foot with saliva if that's what you want. You can even fuck me in the ass if you like. I don't care. My body's like a cesspool anyway, what with all the people who've been using me. We can just go into the back of the shop here and do whatever you like. I must have the curio. I'll do whatever you like! You can whip me, I don't care. Here, do you want to see me naked?" Hands shaking, the young man pulls open his cloak to reveal taut thighs, belly, and chest, plump red prick hanging like a sausage from a thicket of golden-brown pubic hairs. "Take me if you want me," he says, almost beside himself with emotion. "Only give me the curio when you're through...."
Filled to your fingertips with shame, you turn trembling from the young man's nakedness, slow nausea clawing at the depths of your belly.
"No, no," you whisper. "That isn't what I was thinking of.... That isn't what I was thinking of at all. Do you think me some kind of beast who takes advantage of people? I only wanted you to do me a small favor, that's all ... just a small favor...."
"I'm sorry," coughs the man, closing his cloak and patting strands of his wild hair into place. "I'm sorry if I've offended you. Tell me the favor ... tell me. Really, I'm sorry. I've been so upset in this little village...."
Outside, the policemen poke each other in the ribs, stamp their feet, and point up and down the block. They seem a flock of plump indecisive geese as they argue, none of them able, apparently, to hit upon a plan of action that is suitable to the others. Behind them, the orange-red sun sinks behind the roof of a shop that sells-CURIOS: NEW AND OLD.
"You see the shop across the street?" you say to the young man, pointing through the cluster of policemen. "The man who owns that shop has a curio exactly like the one you've described to me except for its inscription. Instead of Nothing is True, this piece reads Truth is Beauty at its base. If you can obtain this curio for me ... I don't want to leave my shop during business hours, you see ... I'll give you the piece you seek. I'll give it to you for nothing."
Just as you finish making your proposition to the man, the high tinkle of the shop-door's bell announces the arrival of green-eyed Aurelia, who enters the shop with a cellophane-wrapped sandwich clutched in her hand, and appraises the scene before her with a single cold sweeping glance. Half-smiling, she turns in the direction of the policemen outside and raises her eyebrow as if to say, "With just a single word, I could have you jailed as an impostor ... or worse..."
"I'll do what you ask," says the young man, turning to stare first at Aurelia, then at the arguing policemen. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Please don't leave your shop until I return. Please. I must have the curio..."
Too frightened to speak, you nod absent-mindedly in the young man's direction, your eyes glued constantly to Aurelia, silently begging her to keep her peace. The young man turns, straightens his shoulders as if trying to make himself seem as natural as possible, and walks quickly from the shop, his cloak brushing against Aurelia's leather-clad knee as he makes his exit. Instantly, the policemen collar him, surround him in a circle of serge-covered fat and shiny brass buttons. One of them leans close to question him. He shakes his head in answer. A fist flies into his face, followed by a heavy black boot to the stomach. The young man's groan is tiny through the window, his face wavy in the warp of the glass. One of the policemen holds him by the hair while another slaps him four, five, six times across the mouth. A question is barked. The young man shakes his head. Two fists pound into his cheeks from either direction. Blood spatters over his chin and neck. A club crashes down on his head, then another and another. A question is barked. The young man vomits blood. A knee crashes into his groin. Another. A question is barked. The young man swoons, tears streaming from his bloody eyes, and falls to the ground, hugging the feet of the ape-like man who wanted to undress you only moments ago. The ape-man pulls back his foot and kicks the fallen man full in the face, then stoops to help the rest of the policemen drag him to his feet. Punching and kicking their senseless captive, the policemen drag him off to the left, the ape-man pulling open the man's bloodstained cloak and giving his shriveled penis a vicious slap just as the group disappears past the -edge of the window.
Aurelia turns her back to you and makes a show of arranging some brightly-painted papier-m�ch' animals on the sagging table before her, her sandals scraping against the floor as she moves slowly from one dusty animal to the next, the red strip of leather over the cleft of her ass reflecting the last golden sunbeams of the afternoon. You watch her with hands thrust deep in your pockets, your cape hanging unevenly from your left shoulder. You breathe very deeply and slowly in a continual effort to ward off the faintness and nausea that the scene outside has provoked in you.
"You're the man they're looking for, aren't you?" says Aurelia after a pause that seems all but eternal. "You're the criminal who's made all the trouble for our little village. That's why you were impersonating me, isn't it?"
You stare blankly down at the scatter of footprints in the floor's thick layer of dust, images of horror and helplessness dancing rapidly before your mind's eye. You see yourself turned over to the bestial policemen, beaten and humiliated, murdered without a trial. Aurelia unwraps her bulging sandwich, drops the crumpled cellophane to the floor, and begins to nibble daintily at the crust of the sandwich's bread, the shop filling with the smell of garlic and hot pepper.
"You know," she says, licking a crumb from her lower lip, "I could have you arrested-probably killed-just by raising my voice. The policemen are my friends, you know. They'd do anything I asked...." She pauses for a moment, munching thoughtfully on her sandwich and smiling at the face of a smiling papier-m�ch' hippopotamus. "But I don't want to turn you over to the police," she says finally, stepping close to you and straightening the hem of your cape. "Then you'd never stand a chance of getting your silly curio. You'd have no hope, and how does a man live without hope? No, no.... I have a much better idea." Her voice is so utterly flat and toneless as she speaks as to make it seem that she has delivered this particular speech many times before, her eyes so dull as they stare into yours as to make it appear that she does not even see you. "You'll come to my house," she continues, theatrically stroking her belly, "and spend the night with me. I'll feed you ... give you a place to sleep.... Then, in the morning, we can discuss the terms of our new relationship, set conditions for your freedom and so on and so forth. Things will work out well. I'm not a cruel woman, you know."
"Please," you interrupt her, "I'll do whatever you like ... only grant me an hour to purchase the curio I'm seeking and bring it to the man I'm supposed to give it to. After that, I'll return to you. I'll wait on you hand and foot ... only..."
"Only nothing," laughs Aurelia. "Either come with me now or I'll turn you over to the police ... and please don't waste my time with any of your hysterical moralizing. You're an impostor and a criminal, and you've just stood by and watched an innocent man half-beaten to death. And anyway, you won't be able to get this silly curio tonight. The man in the shop across the street always closes up by this time. He won't be back until morning." As if at a cue, the redhead turns suddenly toward the front window, and points toward a little gray-haired man who locks his shop door with a large double-pronged key, and walks slowly up the block. "See?" she says. "There he goes now. You won't get the curio tonight, my friend. Perhaps tomorrow I'll let you hunt for it. We can set up some little game wherein I'll let you hunt for the curio if you find something or other that I've hidden ... a box or something like that. Anyway, either come with me now or face the police ... one or the other. Now what do you say?" For several minutes, you stare vacantly at a droplet of sweat that trickles down the valley of the redhead's breasts toward the V-neck of her leather vest. Through the shop's dirt-streaked window comes the renewed blare of the lavender loudspeakers on the street: "Citizens be warned! Citizens be warned! A dangerous criminal is in your midst! Repeat, a dangerous criminal is in your midst! Stay off the streets! Stay off the streets! Curfew begins in twenty minutes! Anyone found on the streets after curfew will be shot on sight! Repeat, shot on sight! Your police force is working diligently in this matter! Already, hundreds of suspects have been brought in for questioning! But we have reason to believe that the criminal is still at large! Report all unusual occurrences, all contacts with strangers, to your local constabulary without delay! And stay indoors! Remember your obligations!"
There are no alternatives here. Even if you were to murder Aurelia, which you probably couldn't, you'd never stand a chance of reaching Amaril without being caught, and even if you were to reach Amaril, he'd probably withhold the box from you for lack of the curio. It gives you a headache just to think about it all; for seconds at a time, you find yourself forgetting what it is you're looking for and why it is you're looking for it. You can barely think of things like home and family without turning sick at heart. The only thought that holds your attention for any span of time is that of the police: if they find you, they'll torture and kill you. It will be a brutal and horrible death. At all cost, you must avoid capture by the police. So ... you'll go with Aurelia, spend the night with her. Perhaps, in the morning, when the streets are filled with people once again, you can begin your search anew. You can escape from Aurelia ... tie and gag her if you have to, to keep her from reporting you to the police ... and return to the village for the curio.
"I'll go with you," you whisper to Aurelia, nodding your head very slowly in her direction. "I'll go with you...."
"Good!" cries Aurelia delightedly, as if having expected you to refuse. "How lovely! You won't be sorry, really you won't ... and by morning, I promise you'll be closer to your goal. But come ... let's go. The curfew will be starting any minute...."
Gobbling a last bite of her sandwich, then throwing its remainder to the floor, Aurelia takes you by the hand (her fingers are long and cold and pressing), and leads you out of the stifling little shop into a soft gray twilight, her sandals clacking loudly against the pavement as she drags you toward a battered yellow sports car in "the distance without even bothering to lock the door of her shop. The streets are shadowy, deserted, and windblown, bits of discarded paper spiraling in the air, all the windows of the apartments above the shops tightly locked and shuttered. From north and south, the rising wails of a dozen sirens approach and recede, approach and recede, an occasional distant gunshot or muffled groan shattering the night's frozenness with the suggestion of encroaching doom. Only the dim orange glow of the sparsely-placed streetlights interrupts the spreading fall of night's blackness, the lights of shops and dwelling places alike having long since been extinguished. As you pass beneath the conical beam of one of the streetlights, Aurelia stops you, her hair a brilliant fire in the artificial light, and touches her hand very gently to your cheek.
"You mustn't look so glum," she whispers, her eyes and voice overbrimming with concern. "I won't let them get you. I'll keep you safe."
Moved by her words (she is, after all, your only means of salvation), you take her by the arms and lean your head softly on her shoulder in a gesture of mingled gratitude and despair, the muscles in your hands relaxing slightly at the touch of her leather vest-jacket.
"Come," she says, smiling. "We haven't much time...."
Taking you by the hand once again, she leads you to the door of the yellow sports car, opens it, and slides ahead of you into the driver's seat, her ready key turning the ignition before you've even had a chance to close the dented door behind you. Inside, the car is done completely in dark leather, everything from seats and flooring to dashboard and roofing covered in the same smooth-grained hide.
"We'll be out of this stupid place in no time," says Aurelia, shifting into first and epresssing the gas pedal all the way to the floor.
The car lurches forward with a deafening roar, leaves the shops and streetlights behind in a steaming blur of light and shadow, and screeches through the heart of the village with headlights glaring into the faces of snarling policemen and cringing curfew violators alike. Suddenly, wailing police-cars appear from all directions, their revolving red-and-yellow bubbles turning the street into a nightmare of color, loudspeakers over their windshields squawking a dozen different directions: "You are under arrest.... Aakk ... You are ordered ... aakk ... to halt your vehicle ... aakk ... Place your aakk over your heads ... aakk ... or you will be aakk on sight ... You are wanted for questioning ... aakk ... You are under aakk ... aakk ... Hold your hands in front of you and ... aakk your vehicle...." like piranha, the patrol cars dive toward the little yellow sports car, a hundred foot-patrolmen zipping behind them like so many flies after a piece of manure.
Aurelia laughs hysterically, her foot never relaxing on the gas pedal. Steering with one hand, she sticks her head out the window, hair blowing like seaweed in an ocean, and depressed the bar of the horn twice with her thumb. The horn makes a strange distinctive sound-almost the sound of a cow's moo-and instantly, the patrol cars turn away from the sports car and screech to a collective halt at the sides of the street. Above the roar of the sports car's engine, you can hear the sound of the policemen's wild deep-throated laughter. "It's only crazy Aurelia," a policeman shouts as you go whizzing past him. "Just crazy Aurelia...."
"They're my friends," Aurelia smiles as the sports car clears the -edge of the shop district. "They don't really mean anyone harm. People just don't understand them, the poor silly things. They're not so bad once you get to know them. How would you like to walk around with a behind as big as theirs?"
Revolving orange searchlights fading into the distance, the redhead slows her car to a steady thirty-miles-per-hour, and turns down a narrow tree-line road, her face glowing golden in the darkness as she lights a thin mauve-papered cigarette, filling the car with scented odor of imported tobacco. Outside, moths the size of bats swoop ever downward into the double beams of the headlights, hills and valleys and tangled bushes and trees rolling by the windows in an ever-changing yet ever-constant progression of shape and texture and color. The sounds of crickets and scurrying forest creatures are dimly audible over the decreased whine of the engine, the distant sound of a gurgling brook filling you with sadness for home and loved ones.
Suddenly, lightning splits the sky, thunder rolls over the forest. A deluge, dense and slicing, pours forth from the heavens, gigantic droplets of rain splattering against the car's windshield, pounding on its roof, dancing on its rusted hood. The forest disappears into a sheeted haze of liquid, a cool dampness filling the car through the cracks between windows and roof.
"Do you like the rain?" asks Aurelia, turning on the windshield wipers and snuffing her cigarette out on the floor.
"I don't know," you answer, thinking of other things. "Sometimes. It depends..." Nodding her head as if to say, "I understand perfectly what you mean," Aurelia turns the car onto a winding dirt road gone hazardous with puddles. The car jogs crazily along over bumps and holes and stones and twigs, windswept branches scraping wildly against its sides and roof, maple and birch leaves falling in great clusters over the windshield.
"We'll be home soon," Aurelia whispers, her breath fogging the glass.
Gradually, the falling of the rain becomes numbing and hypnotic, filling you with a kind of paralyzed vacantness of mind and heart. Conscious only of the motion of the car and the splashing of the rain, you can feel yourself edging ever closer to sleep, your eyelids growing heavier and heavier. Nothing can be done until morning. It would be so nice just to lie down ... to think truly of nothing.
"Look!" cries Aurelia, pointing ahead. "That's where I live. That's my house."
Starting slightly, you stare through the rain-streaked windshield to a wide grassy field lit golden-green in the jumping glow of the car's headlights. In the center of the field, a large ramshackle stone-and-wood house stands atop a rolling hill, yellow light bulb burning dimly over its massive oak door. At the side of the hill, an oval pond shines silver-black in the light of the moon, a thousand shivering ripples spreading outward from its center under the slicing attack of the rain. Filled with a sense of coziness and security by the house before you, you lean your head against the back of the seat and try to picture yourself lying snug and sleepy beneath a heavy patchwork quilt, your mind freed completely of its questions and fears at least until the dawn.
Aurelia halts her cat at the foot of the hill-approximately thirty yards from the house-and jumping out of the car, makes a mad dash for the front door, her leather vest and slacks shimmering with rolling raindrops, her hair blowing into a wild mass of dampened silk. Following her, you find yourself drenched to the skin by the time you reach the house's shingle-shaded portico.
"Wasn't that wonderful!" cries Aurelia, squeezing your arm as she shakes herself like a puppy dog. "Oh, the rain is so wonderful! Come ... come into the house. You're soaked!"
Throwing open the front door, Aurelia leads you down a long darkened corridor toward a dimly-outlined doorway in the distance. As you walk behind her, your boots make soft squishing sounds with the water that fills them, droplet after droplet of rain falling from your cape to create a steady pitter-patter against the hallway's bare wooden floor. Through the dampness of the house comes a stale, somewhat intimate smell reminiscent of the curio shop's pervasive mustiness, only stronger, more stifling. Pausing in the darkness, Aurelia flicks a wall-switch to her right, and throws into dazzling multicolored brilliance the expansive low-ceilinged living-room before her.
"Here we are," she chirps pleasantly. "Home sweet home..."
If anything, the living-room of the country house is even more unkempt than the curio shop, though its furnishings-done exclusively in leather-denote a far greater sense of luxury than did the curio shop's single battered cot. From wall to wall, the living room's furry black carpet is littered with the remains of a hundred hectic parties, a thousand lazy afternoons: half-filled cocktail glasses stand in mute circles around each of the room's half-dozen midnight blue leather couches, records, in and out of their jackets, stretch across the room like the remnants of some day-long child's game. In one corner of the room, a black-and-yellow dartboard, overburdened with darts, has fallen tipsily to the floor, pulling a large chunk of the red-and-white striped wall along with it. The clothing of men, women, and children is literally draped over every article of furniture in the room, soiled underpants hanging from the wall-length bookcase, jackets, ties, dresses, and brassieres falling in an endless stream from the arms of the leather sofas and chairs, clinging stickily to the tops of small circular glass coffee tables. Green plastic bowls, half-filled with crackers, nuts or candies, dot the room in as elaborate a network as do the uncared-for records, some lying spilled on their sides, some inverted completely to form small green islands on the black sea of the rug. Ashtrays of various sizes and shapes, all filled to overflowing with cigarettes, cigars, apple cores, and plum pits, send their smell of rotting staleness wafting through the room to mingle with the fading smells of human passion. Photographs (or are they paintings?) of naked boys and girls hang limply from each of the walls of the room, some attached by only a single tack, each of the subjects posed so as to display his or her genitals in as conspicuous a manner as possible: here, a young dark-haired boy smiles out at you with hands placed suggestively on his hips, belly thrust forward so that his oversized penis (is it partially erect, or can it be so large in its flaccid state?) seems almost to hang out of the picture, while there, a plump blonde-haired girl bends forward with open ass pushed out toward you, each pink wrinkle of her pussy's inner meat standing out in clear delineation. Against the room's far wall-this wall covered completely in blue leather-stands a larger couch than any of the others, its cushions laden with crumpled bedclothes and pillows. Lipstick-smeared coffee cups, empty packages of cigarettes, and torn stained pajama bottoms form a jagged semi-circle around its front, while empty bottles of wine and books with pictures of naked men and women on the covers are stacked haphazardly on its back. Atop one of the couch's pillows rests a dog-eared copy of the Bible, torn match-book covers marking various places toward the book's center.
"This is where I live," says Aurelia, drying her hair with a soiled pair of men's underwear. "Every other room in the house is bare. I'll show you if you like, but first take off your clothes. You'll catch your death in those wet things."
"No ... that's all right," you mumble. "I'd rather not...."
"Oh, please!" cries Aurelia, throwing the underwear to the floor. "You made love to me not three hours ago. What are you embarrassed about, for God's sake? And don't you understand? When I ask you to do something, I'm not asking, but telling in a nice way. Why must you make everything so difficult? You're living on borrowed time, for God's sake. Don't you understand that?"
"I'm sorry," you whisper, too weary too resist. "It takes some getting used to, I guess...." Slowly, you unbutton your shirt and drop it, with your cape, to the couch nearest you. "Is there something here to eat, by any chance?" you ask at a sudden twinge in your belly. "I haven't had anything to eat since yesterday."
"Of course, of course," says Aurelia, watching you unbutton your trousers for a second, then turning to a leather-covered cabinet behind her. "All I have is cheese, though," she says. "I don't own a refrigerator, so I just keep it right in here. Would you like some Gouda? Parmesan? Edam? Bleu Cheese? Camembert? Gorgonzola? I have a hundred different kinds, you know...."
"Anything," you say, standing naked across the room, thinking of the meal you left half-eaten on your kitchen table to wander aimlessly through the night.
"All right," says Aurelia, walking toward you with a plateful of moldy cheese and stale bread in one hand, a small bottle of red wine in the other. "I'll give you an assortment." Handing you the cheese and wine, she bends to pick up a fluffy pink petticoat from the carpet, and begins to dry you very gently with it, walking around and around your body to get beneath your armpits and into the cleft of your rump. "You're very pretty, you know," she whispers, patting your chest. "You're so smooth and skinny. You're almost like a girl, you know, except for this fat thing here between your legs." She dries it very carefully, running the silky petticoat from root to tip and back again, then down to your balls. "Has anyone ever told you that before? That you look like a girl?"
Too busy with your food to pay full attention, you give Aurelia only the vaguest shake of your head in response to her question, the sounds of your own chomping all but drowning out the sound of her voice. You eat voraciously-as if devouring your last meal-wine bottle balanced against your chest, left hand moving quickly from bread to cheese to bread. You hardly taste your food as you eat it, but swallow as quickly as possible in an effort merely to fill your belly, to rid it of its hollowness. Just the physical sensation of chewing and swallowing is reassuring to you: it makes you feel almost as if your life will eventually return to a state of normalcy.
"Come on," says Aurelia, taking you around the waist as she lifts the wine bottle from your hands and swigs from it. "Let me show you the rest of the house. It's so spooky!..."
Wine trickling down her chin, hair loose and damp over her shoulders, she leads you toward a narrow pink-painted doorway, pausing only to kick this or that discarded object out of her way. Following close in step with her, her leather-clad leg brushing incessantly against your naked thigh, you stuff your mouth with a last piece of cheese, and rest your half-finished plate on the arm of a convenient sofa, your sac tightening slightly with anticipation as your temporary mistress throws wide the door and leads you into the semi-darkness of a bare wooden hallway.
Swigging from her wine bottle, Aurelia strokes rhythmically at your back and buttocks, tickles softly at your crotch and ass-cleft as she leads you past room after barren moonlit room, the sound of splattering raindrops following after you like the footsteps of so many drifting ghosts.
"The house was cheap enough," says Aurelia, leading you up a creaking, worm-eaten flight of stairs, "but heating it was so expensive ... I just decided to leave it empty. How can you heat such a big house?
Upstairs, water leaks through the roof and splashes through the cracks in the dirt-hazed windows, a thousand multi-sized foot prints forming random patterns in the dust that covers the floor. Spider webs shine from every corner of the house, their hairy black makers hanging in motionless wait for new victims, silhouetted in the light of the crescent moon. Everywhere there are most desolate rooms, the emptiness of the house filling you with a dreary nostalgia for times never known, the steady clack of Aurelia's sandals against the floor lulling you ever closer to a walking sleep. Aurelia strokes you, teases you with her dancing hands, her fingers darting between your legs to graze your testicles and squeeze the insides of your thighs, her thumb wriggling like a snake around the rim of your anus.
"Come," she says, leading you down a second creaking stairway. "Let's go outside and watch the rain."
At the foot of the stairs, you find yourself once again in the darkened corridor at the front of the house, brightly-lit living-room glowing with color at your back. Aurelia leads you out through the front door to the stone-floored porch, and motions you into a leather-covered chaise lounge that stands against the wall of the house facing outward on the grassy field. Then, seating herself beside you in a circular wicker chair, she peels off her vest and crotch-piece, and stretches her arms and legs out toward the sheets of rain that fall from the roof of the porch onto the glistening stone of its decaying colonnade.
"Isn't it wonderful!" she cries, rolling her hairless crotch in the air. "Isn't it wonderful!"
Her small breasts bouncing above their taut supports, ass-halves gleaming like polished marble between their leather encasement, the redhead jumps from her seat and struts gleefully back and forth along the terrace's edge, childishly thrusting now her buttocks, now her legs, now her belly into the dense downpour around her, quenching her thirst both with wine and with handfuls of rainwater. Watching her through a veil of weariness, you drift helplessly toward sleep, an occasional glimpse of the redhead's naked pussy causing your prick to stir pleasurably against the inside of your thigh, her strange dance making it difficult, at times, to tell whether you're sleeping or awake.
Then, abruptly, the rain stops. Before you, the forest takes on the look of an enchanted fairyland, trees and bushes, grass and flowers shimmering with the light of a million moon-kissed droplets of water, every galaxy and constellation in the heavens shining with the purest silver-white flame imaginable against a background of the sheerest deepest black. The air is clean and stinging, refreshing to breathe, an almost tangible substance really, filled with the sweetness of life. Below the house, the oval pond falls still and peaceful, tiny wavelets licking at its pebbled shore as excess moisture drips from the overhead branches of a maple tree to send soft ripples rolling outward from its center. From far in the distance come the sounds of the forest's animals as they resume their nightly wanderings: the screech of the hoot-owl, the low flapping of bat wings, the scurrying of mice and salamanders, the rising chirp of crickets, all mixing together to fill the air with a symphony of midnight sounds. Prancing before you, Aurelia begins to take on the look of a magical princess, half demon, half fairy. Her clothing begins to seem not so bizarre as exotic, her behavior less strange than enchanting. She is like a child-pink and quick and bright-eyed-or better still, like a child's dream of magnificence.
"I have an idea," she says softly, stroking you from your lounge chair with hands at your armpits and flanks. "Let's go and sit by the pond. It's so beautiful to sit down there. Come...."
Hips and buttocks and thighs rolling exaggeratedly, she leads you down the porch's stone steps toward the maple tree that stands beside the pond. The hill's grass is a forest of tickling wetness, the earth like a baby's pablum between your toes. To the right, Aurelia's sports car seems a comical machine, its headlights like the eyes of some lonely huddled beast.
"Here," says Aurelia, pushing you to the ground at the base of the pond's maple tree. "Lie down ... lie down. Rest...."
Submitting to the pressure of her fingers, you stretch yourself out beside the pond with toes pressed lightly to the trunk of the tree, your left hand lying still at the water's -edge, flattened blades of grass beneath you sending delicious shivers from your ankles to your buttocks to your neck. Laughing, Aurelia dips her hand in the pond and moistens your lips and forehead with its cool crystal water. Then, bending forward, her hard nipples pressed against your arm, she plants a long wet kiss on your lips, her tongue slipping through your teeth to search deep into your throat, her left hand moving in a wide circle around your penis as she parts her legs and lowers herself onto her stomach to rub her pussy against the grass. Without ever removing her mouth from your body, she slides her face slowly downward over your chin and neck and chest and belly until she comes to the -edge of your pubic thicket, then licks the flesh of your belly and thighs with just the tip of her tongue until the expanding head of your prick practically leaps into her mouth of its own accord, squirting a droplet of liquid onto her tongue almost as soon as it gains entrance. Moaning, she sucks you long and hard, her buttocks rising and falling in the air as she humps madly away at the grass, her left hand wiggling in the crevice of your backside. You stare silently up at the swaying branches of the tree as she sucks you, your eyes following raindrops as they fall from the leaves, the stars like an infinite blanket at the periphery of your vision. Very vaguely, out of the corner of your eye, you can see her head bobbing and bobbing and bobbing on your prick.
"Will you do me a favor?" Aurelia whispers after a time, your penis half in, half out of her mouth.
"Yes," you whisper, too taken with the evening's mood to even think of making a negative response.
"I want to chain you to this tree," laughs Aurelia almost sheepishly. "It's a whim of mine. It makes me feel ... hot ... to see a man in chains. Is it all right with you?"
Disturbed at Aurelia's proposition, unable to decide whether or not you can trust her, you try to think of a polite way out of the situation, but even as you think, Aurelia crawls to the tree on hands and knees, draws a heavy iron chain from the shadows at its base, and snaps a rusty leg-iron on your ankle, locking it closed with a shiny metal key which she withdraws from the pocket of her slacks.
"Don't worry," she says, pushing you down as you try to sit up. "I'll take it off when you get tired of it ... and in the meantime, it'll hardly bother you at all. You can move around as much as you want, you see. There's loads and loads of chain." She indicates a shadow-hidden pile of chain at the base of the tree, caressing it with her hands. "It makes me so hot" she whispers, "to see you all chained up like this...."
Before you can raise your voice in protest, the redhead dives back across your belly, her sandaled feet splashing at the -edge of the pond, and begins to smother your prick and testicles with fervent open-mouthed kisses. Immediately, you lose yourself in the cool deepness of her mouth, tingles spreading upward from your groin to tauten all the muscles in your belly and chest. The leg-iron doesn't hurt anyway. It just makes your ankle feel somewhat cold and heavy ... and Aurelia does seem more passionate for its presence. How very strange she is.... How like a child....
Using your prick as a turning point, Aurelia rotates her body inch by inch to the right until the leather over her calf brushes coolly against your cheek and the tips of her nipples press lightly into your belly and hipbone. Then, never losing a stroke in her cock-licking, she raises her right leg in the air and straddles your head with her knees, the silver-pink flesh of her belly blotting out stars, sky, and tree in a single sensuous roll. Slowly, she -edges forward on your body, rubbing her breasts against you, until her mouth pulls your prick straight up in the air. Her cunt hovers above you, open and wet, smelling both of the grass and of its own flowing juices. Between the half-spread cheeks of her ass, you can see a thin strip of stars above, the center of the strip intersected by a single drooping branch of the breeze-blown maple tree. A droplet of water falls from a leaf to splatter against Amelia's shining ass and drip slowly onto your chin. Beside you, the pond makes a rhythmic whisper as it licks at the pebbled shore, an invisible frog at its far side croaking his monotonous message far into the night. The cunt above you trembles and approaches your face, dark smell of vaginal foam blotting out all smell of the grass and air. Its pudgy pink wrinkles grow clearer and clearer until they form a world of shapes above your nose, tiny hole winking between slabs of membranous meat. Still closer comes the cunt, its lips scarcely a quarter of an inch above your own, its stiffened clitoris just barely grazing your chin. Another second and ....
The roar of an engine cuts across the field, murdering the night's erotic stillness. Headlights, bright as the eyes of God, glare into your face from above Aurelia's buttocks. The police have found you.... They'll have you helpless in the field.... They can torture you to their hearts' content ... bury you in the forest....
Aurelia sits up over your face, plastering her cunt across your mouth and nose. The roar of the engine grows close, unbearably close, then disappears with the beams of the headlights. Through the sandwich of Aurelia's flesh, you can hear heavy footsteps approaching, a thousand blades of grass squeaking their pain to the stars. How terrible to be caught like this! Your prick twitching dumbly against your belly, this evil woman mashing her pussy against your face.... Yet what can you do? If you move, they'll surely shoot you ... and if you don't ... You can almost feel the heel of the first boot cracking into your ribs. Any second now ... any second....
"I don't have it," says a voice. "I don't have it. The poor fool I sent to get it never came back. My chauffeur tells me he went into the wrong store. I promise I'll have it by tomorrow. One way or the other, I'll have it by tomorrow...."
Above you, Aurelia laughs, her pussy shaking against your face. Then, raising herself on her knees, she quits your body altogether, and sits beside you in the grass, her toes dipped once again into the pond's lily-cluttered water.
"Is this the man you sent?" she says, gesturing toward you with a slight thrust of her belly.
Before you stands Amaril, resplendent in black velvet suit and bright red cravat, his hands clasped anxiously before him, a look of only semi-surprise on his face. Utterly dumbfounded, you lie motionless in the grass, your eyes moving vacantly from your master of the morning to your mistress of the night, your brain twisting and stumbling over the hinted complexities of your dealings with these two strange creatures.
"Yes, that's the man," says Amaril, his lean boyish face hovering above yours. "I thought he might have gone into your shop ... but ... Listen ... I'll have it for you tomorrow. I have a new plan. I'll have it by tomorrow at the latest." He pauses, seemingly at a loss for words, then, bending close to you, pokes you sharply in the ribs. "What's wrong with you, you dunce!" he cries. "What in the name of God is wrong with you? The set-up was perfect, you imbecile! We won't have another chance like that in years! It would have gone smooth as ... AcchM" He turns away, too disgusted to speak, and begins once again to implore Aurelia with his eyes. "Tomorrow," he says, "tomorrow I'll have it without fail. By this time tomorrow, the curio will be in your hands...."
Aurelia interrupts him with a wave of her hand and stares down at you with clear twinkling eyes, a slow smile of amusement pushing at the corners of her lips.
"Look how confused he looks," she says to Amaril. Then, turning back to you: "What's the matter, little one? What is it that puzzles you?"
For a time, your mouth moves silently around a thousand different words. Then, hesitantly, you speak.
"I'm afraid I don't ... understand ... any of this," you whisper to the swaying branches of the tree above you. Then, turning rather fearfully toward Amaril: "You didn't want the curio for yourself?"
"Of course not, you dunce!" cries Amaril. "What do I want with a stupid piece of glass? I only needed it to give to Miss Aurelia."
"But why?" you ask. "Why couldn't she get it herself?"
"The old man would never have given it to her," laughs Amaril, pulling a leaf from the tree and sucking on its stem. "He wouldn't even give it to me. He found out somehow that I was in league with her, and then...." He ends the sentence with a shrug of his shoulders. "And anyway," he continues, "Aurelia wished me to acquire the curio. Am I to question her wishes? If I don't do as she says, she'll never give me what I seek."
"What you seek? I don't...."
"A map," says Aurelia, smiling as she strokes your cheek. "I have a certain map that Mr. Amaril requires. It tells the location of some silly object that he's in need of. It's all very complicated really...."
"But why don't you just give him the map if he needs it?" you ask, struggling to fathom the puzzle. "It seems to me..."
"Give him the map!" cries Aurelia. "Are you crazy? Give him the map, indeed! Would the man who holds my papers give them to me without the curio? Would the man who holds the curio give it to Amaril without you-a wanted criminal-in exchange?"
"Me?" you gasp. "I don't...."
"Of course, you, you stupid bungler!" cries Amaril, shaking with rage. "You were to be arrested as soon as you returned to my house with the curio. The old shopkeeper was to make the call. In return, the Chief of Police was to give him some object which he needed ... a book or something, I think it was..."
"But you ruined that very nicely," says Aurelia, taking the whole thing much more lightly than Amaril, "by coming into my shop instead of the old man's. I couldn't have signalled the old man about your presence. He would have thought it a trick and had you arrested without giving Amaril the curio. Then where would we be? And besides, you got me all excited there in the shop. I could hardly think of anything but your tongue. I only wanted to get you to lick me...."
"But then ... everyone is in someone else's debt over some object or other," you whisper. "Everyone needs some ... thing . . a book, a map, some papers ... but why? Why do they need these things?"
Amaril shakes his head from side to side, his thumb stroking the -edge of his scarlet cravat. He seems an elf against the background of the crystal forest.
"You poor, poor fool," he says sadly, "you poor, poor fool...." Then, screaming: "Why in the name of God do you need your precious wooden box! Answer me that, you moron!"
How strange! In the rush of information, you had forgotten all about the little box (or did you forget it earlier, under the massage of Aurelia's tongue, or while walking through the ghost-rooms of her house?), and even remembering it, it is difficult to hold in your mind. The box ... the box ... You've come to get the box.
"But I'm a wanted criminal," you protest. "I must have the box. If I don't get it...."
"A wanted criminal!" laughs Aurelia, running her fingers over the tips of her breasts. "Without our evidence, we're all wanted criminals...."
"But you're respected citizens, both of you!" you cry. "No one is after you...."
"Follow our method," says Amaril, "and you'll become a respected citizen in no time. Take an apartment. Show yourself during the day. The police can't keep track of everyone, you know. But no matter how respected a citizen you are, the Central Office will catch up with you some day ... and where are you without your evidence?"
"The boy who came into the shop when I was out to lunch," says Aurelia. "He was a respected citizen ... the town vagabond, as a matter-of-fact. He must have come in when he saw the police, thinking me arrested. He'd been after that silly curio for years ... but I wouldn't give it to him. He had nothing of use to me. The police waited until he left the shop. They don't like to carry on their business in front of people. And just look what happened to the poor boy! A respected citizen, without his evidence..."
"But you have the box," you demand of Amaril. "You do have it. You could just ... give it to me...."
"Who's to say if I really have the box?" says Amaril softly. "Who's to say if Aurelia has the map, if the old man has the curio, if you are truly a wanted criminal? Perhaps I have the box, perhaps I don't. There's only one way you can find out ... only one way any of us can find out." "But then..."
You stop suddenly, afraid to speak, afraid that you will lose your mind with the next wild burst of thought. For a time, you feel yourself caught in the folds of a buzzing, vibrating limbo. Nothing seems real, nothing physically tangible. Tree and pond and field and forest blend into a flat one-dimensional painting, everything frozen in an attitude of stylized beauty. Aurelia becomes a pornographic statue beside you, her feet tucked under her buttocks, her clean-shaved pussy tickled by a single tall blade of grass. Amaril becomes almost a part of the tree he leans against, his arms like drooping branches, the folds of his suit like the wrinkles of the tree's ancient bark. To the right, yellow sports car and dark limousine stand like brother and sister against a background of total blackness, the strangeness of their construction perfectly mirroring the strangeness of the scene around you and the slivers of thought that dance randomly through your brain. From behind you, you can hear the moaning of the wind as it wanders through the empty rooms of Aurelia's house. Your body feels heavy, weighted to the ground, your arms like lifeless blocks of wood. You can barely feel the blades of grass crushed beneath your back and buttocks and legs.
Then, with a violent swoosh, the feeling of unreality passes from your body and brain. The air feels clean and tangy again and you breathe it deeply, enjoying its flow through your nostrils, throat and lungs. The entire forest seems to glow with the throb of life: you can feel the insects crawling through the grass, the grass sucking in the precious drops of rain. Everything--everything-quivers, pulses, writhes with energy. Your body becomes a joyous thing, filled with juice and sensation and power and beauty and grace. See how the joints move? Feel the rhythm of the heartbeat? You are alive! Alive! For the love of God, you are alive!
A laugh pokes its way upward from your chest. You resist it, but it escapes despite you. Then another and another and another until you are practically choking with laughter, until it is the only sound you can hear, until the entire forest seems to shake with your hysterical laughter. How absurd it all is, how absurd! Here you lie, flat on your back, in the company of two utter lunatics who not only rave and rant to you about the most ridiculous nonsense you've ever heard in your life, but actually expect you to join in their madness, while all around you, the world is literally bursting with life! Boxes! Curios! Pieces of paper! How mad to lose yourself in that endless quagmire! It's time you were getting home to your wife and children, even if only to kiss them one last time before being taken by whatever madmen are running this crazy show. And what can death be compared to the madness of Amaril and Aurelia? A sting? An unpleasant tap? Better to live, and die, than live a life of constant dying. You're alive ... that's all that counts ... alive!
Shaking, stumbling with laughter, you rise to your feet beneath the confused stares of Amaril and Aurelia. Ahead, the forest beckons you with its shining beauty, every branch of every tree like a finger waving you onward. Your muscles tighten into balls of power. Your legs begin to tremble with eagerness.
You spring forward, leap high into the air-the chain pulls to its limit, yanks you face forward to the ground, leg-iron biting deeply into your ankle, knees scraping on hidden stones. Too stunned to move, you lie still as death in the grass, your hands clenched into slow-relaxing fists, a strange gurgling sound issuing from the depths of your throat. All your sudden vitality crumbles into dust; every fibre in your body fills with the paralysis of fear, and worse, of sheer despair.
"I was afraid this would happen," you hear Aurelia whisper over the lapping of the pond. "He's gone mad ... quite mad...."
"A shame," says Amaril, very close. "He's terribly pretty, really..." You can feel his hand, warm and moist, tracing the curve of your spine all the way down to the crack of your ass. "I suppose we'll have to turn him over to the police."
"Unless ... I mean, we could keep him," whispers Aurelia, her fingers probing your mouth. "We could keep him here all to ourselves. No one would find out. He's so ... sexy ... like this...." She pauses for a moment, tickling you under the chin, then leans close to you and whispers in your ear: "Raise your head, pretty one.... Raise your head. Let pretty Aurelia use your pretty mouth..." Then, seeing that you will not, or cannot, comply: "I said, raise your head, fool! Raise your head!"
Grabbing a fistful of your hair, she snaps your head suddenly backwards, and straddles your face with her long shapely legs. For a moment, she smiles down at you between the stiffened tips of her breasts, then slides her pussy upward from your chin until its parted lips completely enclose your nose and mouth, its slippery clitoris twitching against your nostrils.
"Tongue!" she cries suddenly, slapping the back of your neck. "Give me your tongue!"
like an automaton, you let your tongue loll from your mouth to be sucked instantly into the redhead's quivering pussy. She rolls and squirms against you, pulling your head in wide crazy circles, locking her powerful thighs around your neck and filling your mouth with her thick secretions. You can feel the inner muscles of her pussy tighten and relax, tighten and relax around your tongue, pulling it ever deeper into her seething hole.
"Do you mind if I join you?" comes the husky voice of Amaril. "I've been wanting a crack at him since I met him this morning..."
"All right," whispers Aurelia, bending forward to rub her breasts against your shoulders, "but then later you'll have to give me a tongue bath, all right?"
"All right," whispers Amaril.
"My ass-hole too," says Aurelia.
"Yes, yes," says Amaril. "Of course I'll do your ass-hole."
"All right," says Aurelia. "You can share him with me.
As you listen to the muffled sounds of Amaril's undressing, Aurelia continues her assault on your face by stretching wide the lips of her cunt and rubbing them back and forth against your cheeks and chin and eyelids until your face is completely covered with her sticky foam. Then, laughing with delight, she pushes your nose deep into her cunt and massages it with her contracting membrane, her ass-cheeks squeezing your chin as she whips your forehead with her fat, dripping clitoris. Suddenly, there are hands on your buttocks, spreading them wide apart, exploring their moist tender cleft. Amaril's knees are straddling and squeezing you, the light down of his thighs tickling the backs of your legs, his small testicles rolling in the valley of your crotch. His massive organ beats heavily against the left cheek of your ass, inching ever closer to your furrow. You feel your ass-hole opened, its walls stretched wide. A pain strikes at your center, making you feel that at any moment you will lose control of all your bodily functions, and squirming to escape the pain, you bury your face in Aurelia's hairless treasure, your left hand clawing futilely at moist clumps of grass, your right at a fistful of sharp pebbles. Deeper and deeper the pain slips into your intestines, burning you and probing you and bending you. You can feel Amaril's penis as clearly as you might see it-the head like a solidified sponge deep in your guts, its ridge like a ring of hard rubber, the shaft a network of bone and vein covered over with a warm slippery meat. Your sphincter muscle is forced to contract with each of Amaril's plunges, then forced to relax with each of his partial withdrawals (it's as if you are encouraging him, squeezing him as might a coquette), and with each painful contraction of the muscle, your prick lurches involuntarily between your belly and the earth beneath you. Then, gradually, as your penis reaches full erection, the rhythm of the pain within you-the rhythm of pain and its partial absence causes a kind of rough pleasure to take hold of your loins, and you find yourself rubbing against the ground, half willfully and half involuntarily. Your mouth filled with Aurelia's juices, buttocks kneaded by Amaril's strong hands, you begin a slow grind toward orgasm, rolling your ass violently against Amaril's belly as your tongue seeks vainly for the bottom of Aurelia's cunt. Above you, you can hear the wet sound of Amaril sucking on Aurelia's breasts. From far in the distance comes the screech of a hoot-owl.
Suddenly-before you are ready to spill your seed to the ground-Aurelia's pussy begins to shudder against your lips, her clitoris twitching like a leaf in a breeze, her moans reaching" deep into the night. Grunting and heaving, Amaril follows his mistress toward orgasm, his thighs holding you completely immobile, his belly and balls slapping fiercely against your bottom. Your intestines feel about to burst with the expansion of his organ, your mouth stinging with the pressure of Aurelia's cunt. Then, all at once, you feel your belly immersed in a burning fluid, Aurelia's pussy turning into a mass of quivering jelly against your face. You feel yourself melting into liquid at both ends, drowning in the orgasms of your greedy lovers.
After a time, Amaril pulls his organ slowly from your anus, wiping it against your thigh before retreating from your body altogether. Filled with emptiness, your ass gives up a loud belch as it squeezes around the sticky vacuum left by Amaril's departure. Aurelia slides gracefully away from you, stretches her leather-clad legs to the stars, and lies completely still. As the insistence of your unfulfilled climax recedes into a painful frustration, you stare directly down at the blades of grass beneath your face, your breath swaying the blades closest you as a great wind might sway the trees of the forest. Before you, a tiny bug makes his way up one of the taller blades, struggling to reach its top. You breathe, and he falls, but undaunted, crawls to another blade. Again you breathe, and again he falls ... but where is he now? What's happened to him?
Amaril touches your calf, runs hand down to your heel, then up to the left cheek of your ass.
"Let's use him again, shall we?" he whispers to Aurelia. "I want a chance at his mouth...."
"All right," says Aurelia after a pause. "I'll take his prick. He fucked me before, you know ... in the shop. He sort of raped me...."
As the tiny bug appears once again on yet another blade of grass, Aurelia and Amaril roll you over on your back and position themselves according to their desires, Amaril squatting over your chest with his balls rolling against your chin, Aurelia spreading herself over your thighs, squeezing her leather-supported breast with one hand as she gives your prick a quick shake and guides it to her hole with the other. Amaril rubs his prick against your cheeks until it retains its former firmness, then, opening your jaw, slips it slowly between your lips, its head rolling against the roof of your mouth as its urethra presses against your tongue. The prick is sticky and bitter as it probes you, its flesh coated with the excess of Amaril's semen and an invisible layer of your own excrement. How strange it feels ... how large and hard and warm and thick. Is this what your wife feels when she bends to suck your prick at dawn?
Aurelia sinks downward on your prick, swallowing it with three convulsive gobbles of her pussy, her buttocks squeezing your balls in their warm hollow as she rubs the top of her hairless slit against your springy pubic thicket. Her muscles rippling along your pole from root to tip, she begins a slow twisting circle with her thighs, dragging your prick from one side of her cunt to the other, and covering your testicles with the thick overflow of her foam. Again you feel an orgasm tickle at your spine; again your buttocks begin their grind toward release, your hips their steady roll.
Cradling your head in his hands, Amaril moves your lips rapidly up and down on his heavy prick, now choking you with its shaft until you can feel his heartbeat against your tongue, now tickling your lips with just the pliant dome around its eye. You stare helplessly up at the stars as he uses you, feeling half a man, half a woman, and all a captive, leg-iron biting deeply into your ankle as the motions of your captors stretch you past the limit of your chain. Again, the rhythm of the pain feeds your fire, making the upsweep of your heat all the more exquisite, its down-sweep all the more desperate. Above you, a cloud passes between stars and branches, filling your mind with images of rain.
"What will you do for me if I lick your ass-hole?" whispers Aurelia to Amaril, her hands sliding over your belly to tickle at the cleft of the boy's ass.
"Anything! Anything!" cries Amaril. "Only lick it ... I'm almost coming just at the thought."
"All right," whispers Aurelia, rubbing your prick against the very back of her cunt as she inclines herself forward. "I'll think of something later ... but remember ... you said anything..."
"Yes, yes ... anything," pants Amaril, burying his prick in your throat as he crouches forward to leave the redhead ample room. "Just lick it ... lick it...."
Aurelia's breasts press warm and smooth against your chest, their leather straps pressing hard against your nipples. You can hear the wet clicking of her tongue against Amaril's flesh, the tiny rustle of Amaril's silky ass-hairs. "Deeper, deeper," moans
Amaril, pumping furiously in and out of your mouth. "Oh, my God ... how it feels!...."
Aurelia moves her belly in double-time against you, shaking your prick like the lever of a wild metronome in her cunt. You feel yourself coming closer and closer to orgasm, your prick digging deeper and deeper into the redhead's pudding, your buttocks grinding together clear above the grass. Then, suddenly, your mouth is filled with Amaril's semen, your throat completely stuffed with his bone-hard flesh. You struggle like a schoolboy for your climax, choking and sputtering as you slam upward into Aurelia's pussy; but Aurelia, in her efforts to fill Amaril's ass-hole with her tongue, yanks you inch by inch from the tree that holds your chain, overwhelming your heat with unbearable agony as she captures her own orgasm and pumps it to its climax.
Again, your captors leave you unfulfilled as they roll from your body and tumble joyously through the damp grass, halting, with arms and legs intertwined, perhaps twenty feet from where you lie. Immediately, it occurs to you to masturbate, but as you bring your hand to your stiff burning organ, you find that your fingers will not suffice to release you, and so lie perfectly still in the grass, filled with frustration, shame, and fear, each star in the sky seeming to accuse you of weakness and stupidity.
"Remember your promise," you can hear Aurelia say to Amaril. "You have to lick me all over now...."
"I know," says Amaril. "I know .... "
"My ass-hole too," says Aurelia.
"Yes, yes. Of course I'll do your ass-hole," says Amaril.
"Well?" says Aurelia. "What are you waiting for?"
And after the passage of only a second or two, the air is filled with the sounds of Amaril's careful tonguing and Aurelia's luxurious sighs. Leg-iron weighing heavy on your ankle, prick beating relentlessly against your belly, you begin helplessly to cry.
Much later, when Amaril lies snoring between Aurelia's thighs, and Aurelia herself is caught in the folds of a deep motionless sleep, a very strange and unexpected thing happens: a dark-haired girl, no more than fifteen years of age, walks naked from behind the house's hill, wades through the calm waters of the pond, and kneels down beside you with forefinger pressed to her lips, as if to say, "Shh! ... They mustn't know I'm here..." Eyes as dark as the night, skin as pale as whipped cream, she seems more a pixie than a girl, and more a princess than a pixie, her long black hair flowing over her white shoulders like the waves of a waterfall suspended in space, tiny silver pendant hanging like a magical amulet between her small-nippled breasts. Too stunned to resist her, you watch in trance-like fascination as she lowers her glowing face to your belly, eases her mouth around your aching organ, and in a matter of minutes, sucks from your penis the orgasm which you have twice been denied. Smiling, she pauses to swirl your semen in her mouth before swallowing it. Then, when she has cleaned you thoroughly with her tongue, and kissed you once upon the forehead and once upon the toes, she rises slowly to her feet, and with a look that says, "Don't worry. You'll see me again," disappears wraith-like into the forest, her perfect shining buttocks fading last from view.
But who is this girl, reader? Who is this girl who comes to you in your moment of greatest need, and with her body and eyes-with her very aura-brings you reassurance? Who is this dark-haired girl who subtly promises you success when all you can see or feel or think is failure? Who? Who is she? Why has she come to you?
Slowly, as you lose yourself in the trailing ghost of the girl's gentle mystery, a powerful drowsiness rises to overcome you, bringing with it the hazy thread of some remark-some ... warning?-that you've heard during the day, but which, in the day's rush of events, has dissolved into non-verbal echo. The last thought that occupies you before falling asleep is of your wife. In some dim corner of your brain, you feel a bitter resentment toward her: a nagging voice within you keeps reminding you that everything you've done-all the pain and humiliation you've suffered-has been for her sake, to keep her from harm and difficulty. Somewhere deep, deep inside you, you find yourself wondering if she has remained faithful to her striving husband, and falling asleep, you dream of her.
PART THREE: THE CITY
The room is a blur of golden-pink softness through the haze of your eyelashes, the sunlight seeming almost to push aside the bright orange curtains as it streams through the tall double windows before you. Your pussy feels warm and wet and empty; your breasts, tender from sleep, long to be squeezed and tickled and kissed. The dream of your husband has excited you: images of his humiliation (some concocted, others true to the dream) continue to flash through your mind long after the last dust of sleep has trickled from your eyes. You see him stretched now on his belly, now on his back, his virgin openings prodded by an organ twice the size of his own. If only you could store more of these dream images in your mind ... If only you could remember how the dream began. How beautiful and helpless he looks! How sweet are his small rounded buttocks. But ... where is your husband? Why is he not beside you to stroke your burning cunt and lick the moisture of sleep from your trembling nipples?
The pillow beside you is uncreased, the quilt drawn flat and even across your husband's portion of the bed. Did you wake once before to find him gone? Or was that merely a sequence to the dream? It's happened before though, hasn't it, that you've slept through two whole nights and a day? But that would mean that your husband has been gone for an entire day and night ... and that doesn't make any sense at all. He's probably only taking one of his walks in the woods-one of his long solitary walks. Unless the dream was not a dream, but an omen, and your husband is truly in the hands of strangers. Such things do happen. You've dreamt of such things before. But surely someone would have wakened you, alerted you to your husband's absence. Yes, he's probably only taking one of the walks he loves so well. Any minute now, he'll walk in the bedroom door, sweaty from his exertions (how lovely a man's sweat smells ... how rich and thick), take you in his strong slender arms, and lose himself in all your open nakedness. You can tickle and tease yourself until he returns, preserve the sleepy desire that fills you by imagining his splendid ivory penis parting the sticky forest between your legs....
Gradually, the room comes into soft-edged focus, sunlight glinting off the bed's polished brass posters and casting the -edges of the vanity's mirror into prismatic bursts of color. The pale yellow walls seem almost to drip with sunny brightness, the thick pink carpet to absorb the excess of the wall's shining warmth. Overhead, the ceiling's delicate apricot color is interrupted by the sun-stretched silhouettes of the windowpanes, each pane glowing with crystal brilliance at its center, then fading outward toward the shadow of its casement, the shadows of the panes growing longer and wider as they approach the side of the room in which you lie. Looking out at the bedroom, pleased by it as always, you laugh suddenly as you remember your husband's objections to the manner in which it was furnished. "Look here," you can hear him saying, his voice filled with all the childish seriousness that is the province of young men, "I have to sleep in there too. You can't make it all so soft and feminine...." Poor silly bug! Doesn't he know how a woman-likes to feel?
Luxuriating in the slow laziness of the morning, you stare for a time at the tiny pink reflection of your nakedness in the gleaming brass of the bedpost before you, your eyes fixing automatically on the tiny dark triangle at the center of your reflected image. Is it your imagination, or can you truly make out the faint ruby of your pussy's lips in the post's curve-distorted picture? like an eager experimenting child, you pull your legs from beneath the heavy quilt, and open them as far as they will go ... Yes, yes! Even the inner lips of your thick-furred organ are reflected in the center of the bedpost: you can see them as two tiny strips of pure sparkling scarlet. How very pretty they look ... and how hungry....
Turning from your reflection, you stare down over the taut-domed hills of your breasts, past the deep-naveled slope of your belly, to the damp curling hairs of your bush, then still further down to the insides of your thighs and calves, to the arches of your long-toed feet ... You are a goddess! A golden goddess of love and desire ... In all the world, the greatness of your passion is unrivalled.
Slowly, you bring your hands to the sides of your breasts, and squeeze your breasts together until their dark-circled nipples all but touch, and the valley between them becomes a single line of sticky flesh. With just the tips of your forefingers, you press inward the points of your nipples, then release them to watch them stiffen into still longer, tighter stems, a series of delicious tingles spreading outward from your nipples to envelope your breasts with trembling warmth. Moaning softly with your own teasing, you suddenly grasp the wholes of your breasts in your hands, and squeeze them with all the strength in your fingers and palms, your belly giving an abrupt involuntary shudder as you watch the tautened flesh of your breasts pour outward between the spaces in your fingers, your nipples standing straight up in the air like pink penises. How good it feels! ... How ready you are!
Still holding one hand firm over your breast, you let your other hand slip slowly downward from your bosom to the soft round island of your belly, your fingertips running ever so lightly from rib cage to hipbone, your thumb tracing the curve of your navel, middle finger stretching just to the -edge of your dense pubic thicket. Careful now ... don't rush things. Wait a moment before going for your cunt. Draw it out a bit first.... Yes, that's it.... Tickle the insides of your thighs, the bottoms of your ass-cheeks. Touch the outer tufts of your forest, feel the springiness of the skin beneath. Now blow ... blow downward through the valley of your breasts to the center of your dampening bush. Watch the hairs sway beneath your breath, feel the breeze waft lightly over the sticky flesh of your slit. Open your legs wider, wider.... Place your hand like a blanket over your cunt, an inch, then a half-inch, then a quarter-inch above it. Rub just the hair, just the hair. Harder ... harder ... harder ... Now . .
Your hand closes hotly, greedily over your pussy, its middle finger sinking softly into the intricate meaty folds of the slit, ring and index fingers squeezing closed Over the plump hairy outer halves. Your left hand plays wildly with your breasts, moving quickly from one to the other, rubbing and tickling and squeezing and shaking them. You watch yourself squirm beneath the caresses of your hands, your belly undulating like the waves of a stormy sea, your hips rolling in rhythmic ever-widening circles, your pussy rising and falling, opening and closing with the powerful contractions of its inner muscles. You work your hand downward, downward over your pussy, until its middle finger slips snake-like into the furrow of your bottom to caress the fur-ringed rim of your rear opening. Now lift the hand again.... Let it stroke every inch of your plump triangle.... Open yourself with fourth and index fingers ... wider ... wider ... until the lips are spread back to their limit ... until the cunt is a plate of meat -edged with curling twisted hair.... See how the meat glistens and gleams, how the tiny hole disappears into nowhere. Now bring your middle finger to the mouth of your hole.... Circle it. Tickle it. Tease it. Now, when you can wait no longer, penetrate yourself as slowly as possible.... Let the rings of muscle within you suck your finger inward at their own sensuous speed.... Watch your thighs and belly roll with heat as you skewer yourself, your pussy close like a trap over its willing captive.... Stare at your reflection in the bedpost: see the spectacle of a full-grown warm-bodied woman probing herself like a naughty child.
Grunting with passion, you dig your finger deep into your hole, stretching it in wide straining circles as you search for its deep-buried pleasure-point, pausing occasionally to imitate the fast in-and-out motion of your husband's prick. The sheets are warm beneath your grinding buttocks, the rolling of your hips pulling them into tight diagonal streaks, fetching soft muffled sounds from their clean white fabric. Above the sound of the sheets and the sound of your own labored grunting, you can hear the children playing at one of their games across the hallway ... the children who slipped headlong out of the very cunt you are so busily fingering. You can see them dancing naked into your bedroom, crawling over your legs and licking your breasts and belly with their pink little tongues, then joining you with trembling fingers in the exploration of your cunt.... From downstairs come the sounds of your parents watching some morning television program in the kitchen, the thought of their presence in the house filling you with a still more delirious naughtiness. What would happen if you were to go downstairs naked, stroking yourself? How delicious that would be....
Imagining yourself in all sorts of incestuous situations, you begin to probe yourself with a second, then a third finger, damp tufts of hair tickling you at the knuckles, thumb flicking upward to shake your clitoris. The smell of the silken hair that cascades over your shoulders mixes with the rising odors of your pussy, anus, and toes to produce a single animal aroma which increases your heat with every breath you take. You begin to think yourself an animal-the most beautiful and sleek of animals-and with the thought, you begin the wild grind toward orgasm. Your left hand moves from breast to breast, then down over your flanks and under your buttocks. You squeeze and pinch at yourself, poking and prodding at your bottom's plump-ridged opening, twirling the insides of your cunt into a lathery mass of meat. Why doesn't your husband come to you? Why doesn't he throw open the door and strip himself naked and climb on top of you and fuck you like a stallion? Why doesn't he grab you by the arm and pull you out into the hall and pound his prick into you from behind in full view of parents and children? What would he do if he could see you like this, whipping yourself into a frenzy, grunting and panting and moaning with self-desire? Any second now he'll come in.... Any second now he'll ... you'll ... any ... second ... now...
The door flies open-a total stranger creeps cat-like into the bedroom, his feet making no sound whatsoever as they depress the tufts of the thick pink carpet. Tall and slender, dressed in dark leather jacket and slacks, he calls to mind the stereotype of the assassin as he peers cautiously into the hallway, then closes the door soundlessly behind himself and leans against it, breath rushing freely through his nostrils and mouth. You lie frozen in mid-climax upon your bed, fingers paralyzed in the depths of your anus and cunt, breasts utterly still, eyes sweeping up and down from the stranger's shiny black boots to his lean dark-complected face, lingering on his pale pink lips, on his strong hairy-backed hands. How frightening ... and compelling ... he looks ... How powerful his legs are, how flat his belly, how dark and narrow his eyes. He is like ... an animal.
"I'm sorry to burst in on you like this," whispers the stranger, his voice grave and husky, "but it's of the utmost importance that no one but yourself know of my presence here." He seems hardly to notice your nakedness or the hot pressing hands that cover you front and back. Rather, he turns his gaze incessantly from right to left as he speaks, as if trying to hatch some sort of plan in his mind. "I'm afraid I have a bit of unpleasant news for you, Madame," he says, nostrils flaring as he finishes the sentence. 'It seems that your husband has been captured by a hostile foreign power, and been accused of some sort of terrible crime.... He's still at large at present, but a vigorous search is being conducted by the enemy.... They may take him at any moment, you see. It's only a matter of time.... All the details aren't in yet, but from what we can gather, we believe your husband to be completely innocent of any charges brought against him.... You can understand the need for secrecy. Were word of this to leak out, there would be terrible reprisals, perhaps even open conflict.... Naturally, the Central Office is doing all it can ... but these renegade groups are hard to deal with ... and unfortunately, most of our agents are known to the other side. Just yesterday, one of our best men was arrested and beaten to death outside of a shop in the heart of enemy territory...." He pauses a moment, gray-black eyes peering deeply into yours as he thoughtfully adjusts the collar of his dark green turtleneck sweater, his full pale lips open around an unspoken syllable. "Madame, do you understand me?" he says finally, his bushy black eyebrows knitting in puzzlement. "I say, your husband is in danger...."
Helplessly, you find yourself staring at the stranger's belly, your eyes caressing the outline of the long bulge which rests against his left thigh.
"My ... husband?" you hear yourself whisper, hands trembling in your furrows. "My..."
Silent as a phantom, the dark man strides across the room to your bed, takes you by your bare arms, and stares intensely down at your face, his thumbs cool and strong as they press into the downy hollows of your armpits.
"Your husband" he practically hisses, the -edge of his jacket brushing against your belly. "Your husband is in danger...."
You see nothing but the beauty of the man's face, feel nothing but the magnetism of his body. Even the twinges of shame which claw at your breast can make no dent in your passion. Impulsively, you clutch at the man's strong flanks, run your hands beneath his jacket and sweater, and rake your fingernails down the sides of his back. For a moment, the man seems utterly flustered by your attack-a tinge of red comes to his stubble-darkened cheeks, his lips fall open to reveal a set of strong white teeth, a small comma of jet black hair falls across the top of his forehead-but then, gradually, a look of understanding-almost of pity-comes into his eyes, and his face quickly resumes its natural expressionlessness. With a last cautious glance toward the door, he sits down on the bed beside you.
Moaning, you pull him down on top of you, your hands working clumsily at his belt buckle as your legs lock tightly around the back of his thighs. Bracing himself on one outstretched arm, the man comes gallantly to your assistance, opening both belt buckle and leather trousers with three deft motions of his hand. At the sight of the dark fur beneath the man's slacks, you redouble your efforts at undressing him, your hands dripping with sweat as they tug at his pants, your legs already beginning to urge him in the movements of copulation. Suddenly, his penis falls free and rolls half-erect against your belly-a long hairy organ shot through with red, blue, and purple veins, its dark spongy head bulging like an overripe plum. You grab the drooping thing in both your hands and squeeze it between your palms like a hunk of dough. A soft, seemingly involuntary sigh escapes the man's lips as his penis grows in your hands. He stares wistfully down at you for a second, as if begging you to reconsider, then buries his face in your long silken tresses and rubs his hairy chest over the aching tips of your breasts, his penis stretching and stiffening against your belly until it reaches terrifying proportions, its circumference roughly equal to that of a cucumber at the center. Licking wildly at the man's neck, wanting desperately to hear him moan, you squeeze your hands around the root of his prick until its pulsing head fills your navel with a pool of shimmering liquid, then force the thick organ downward to your waiting slit, where you roll it back and forth from lip to lip, jerk it up and down from clitoris to ass-crack, and finally bring it to the mouth of your burning hole.
Hesitantly, as if afraid to hurt you, the man gives you the head of his prick. Your pussy sucks greedily on it, juicy membrane stretching wide to accommodate its flared ridge. Inch by inch, the organ slides into your belly, smoothing out each crevice and wrinkle that it touches, until its great head reaches bottom, and its balls slap against your ass-cheeks. It feels like part of you, this fat prick, like it should be in you always, always filling you and stroking you and forcing your belly wide. The man's breath is hot on your ear, his legs strong beneath your calves. Rolling him with your hips, you push his pants downward to his knees, pull his jacket and sweater up toward his shoulders. You want him naked ... completely naked ... his fur pressed against your skin ... his sweat mingling with yours ... You want him to ... love you.
"Fuck me," you whisper breathlessly, rolling your belly against him, rubbing your clitoris back and forth in his thicket. "Fuck me..."
Mechanically, the man moves his prick inside you, its distended eye playing havoc with your pussy-nerves, prodding you instantly toward climax.
"Fuck me ... fuck me," you moan, grabbing the man's buttocks in your hands, searching for his anus with both your middle fingers.
The man grunts and digs his prick deep into your hole, lets it twitch upward against your pleasure point, forcing you to bite your lip to keep from screaming. Your finger sinks deep into his ass-hole, fetching a low moan from his lips. His mouth turns hot and wet against your neck, his prick like a burning brand as it rips into your cunt.
"I want you ... to ... come ... with me," you gasp, your cunt chewing frantically on the bone within it. "Come with..."
Semen gushes from the man's prick, filling your cunt to the brim, running thick and steamy down your crotch to spread beneath your grinding buttocks. Your pussy bursts with sensation, its muscles quivering with climax after spine-tingling climax, its clitoris twitching against the man's pubic bone. You can feel the man's hands digging under you, raising your cunt like a bowl for his prick to eat from, the thousand hairs of his belly scratching against you like the feelers of tiny passion bugs. The room is a blur of pink and gold and apricot, the sounds of parents and children running together to form a single nonsense sound, a distant disconnected drone.
Suddenly, your lock on the man's legs is broken and your pussy makes a loud gurgle as it is emptied of its prize. The man sits beside you on the bed, pants down to his ankles, green sweater falling to cover his belly, wet fruity prick bobbing half-limp between his legs, dripping a mixture of your fluid and his onto the -edge of the pure white sheet. You stare at him for a moment, still struck by the angular intensity of his face, the brightness of his eyes, then turn to your own reflection in the brass bedpost, and finally roll over onto your belly at the far end of the bed, your head buried between your pillow and your husband's as you cry your welling shame into darkness.
The man touches you, runs his hand gently from your shoulders to your buttocks. Instantly, you turn to him, breasts shaking with your sobs, cheeks hot and wet with your crying.
"I don't want you to think..." you begin, whispering. "It's just that...."
"I know," whispers the man, giving your shoulder a gentle squeeze. "I understand..."
"Oh, my poor, poor husband," you moan suddenly. "My poor, poor husband.... What have I done? What have I done? Am I a beast? A beast?"
"Would you like to be with your husband?" asks the man, standing to dress himself. "Would you like to go to him?"
"Oh, my God yes," you whisper, sniffling, choking back your tears. "Where is he? I'll go to him immediately...."
"He's quite a ways from here," says the man, standing tall and erect before you, "but I have a vehicle secluded in the forest. I could have you with him within an hour or two. I'm rather familiar with enemy territory."
"Then let's go," you whisper. "Let's go at once, once...."
"Good enough," says the man. "We'll leave as soon as you're dressed ... but don't take too long. We haven't much time, you see...."
Rising, feeling somewhat self-conscious at standing naked before the man, you walk to your dresser, grab a thin pair of panties from your top drawer, and pull them quickly up your semen-splattered legs, then walk to your closet and throw on a crumpled tan raincoat and a pair of brown leather sandals, your pussy still gurgling occasionally as you walk about the room.
"I'm ready," you whisper, buttoning the raincoat across your naked belly and chest. "Let's go...."
"Very well," says the man, moving soundlessly toward the door, "but listen ... Your parents and children must not know anything about me or your husband. They aren't even to know that you're leaving---"
"Of course," you whisper, fully accepting the need for secrecy. "We can take the back stairs."
"Yes, I know," says the man, inching the door open. "Come..."
Following close behind the man, your eyes glued to the sinewy muscles that roll beneath the leather of his jacket, you walk as quietly as possible through the darkened hallway to the back staircase, then down the stairs to the rear door, your ears straining for the vanished sounds of your children's playing, for the laughter of your parents as they watch their morning television programs. Finger to his lips, the dark man beckons you onward, his eyes darting quickly from left to right as he pulls open the blue-painted door and leads you out into the sunshine.
Before you, the forest is a kaleidoscope of sensation, a hundred chirping birds filling the branches of every tree, a dozen whirling shades of green, yellow, orange, brown, and red composing the color of each trembling leaf. The ground is moist and springy-perfect for a walk-the sky a sweep of blue above the tops of the trees; The sun warms your skin, and the air cools it, the sheer stunning beauty of the day almost relieving you of the tension and shame that the morning has brought.
The dark man leads you deep into the brush, his black boots gleaming atop fallen leaves, his hands vague-lightning quick-as he turns back branches to allow you to pass. He is utterly silent as he walks, possibly out of embarrassment over the incident between you, but just as possibly out of some natural bent to his character. He casts not so much as a glance in your direction as he walks, but rather, stares steadily forward with narrowed expressionless eyes, his hands moving defensively outward at any unaccustomed forest sound. Once, as a squirrel darts suddenly outward from beneath a pile of leaves, the man gives the poor creature such a brutal instinctive kick, that the life goes out of the animal's tiny eyes long before it hits the ground.
After a journey of perhaps two or three miles, the man parts the branches of a last thorny bush and points ahead to a wide grassy clearing. In the center of the clearing stands a small helicopter of the very latest style, its plastic bubble reflecting the sunlight full in your face, its thin rotary blades swaying slightly in the breeze. Without a word, the man leads you forward, his hand rather forceful on your shoulder as he steps lightly into the clearing and begins a brisk trot toward the helicopter. Then, halting beside his shining machine, he opens its plastic oval door, lifts you into its bubble (your raincoat rides all the way up past your rump), and climbs in beside you, motioning you into a brown leather seat while he takes the red leather seat next to it. Even as you fasten your seat-belt, the man's right hand is busy on the rubber-padded control panel, his thumb pressing the ignition button as his left hand pulls back the stick. For a moment, there is a grinding noise deep in the helicopter's belly; then, with a brief creak, the rotary blades begin to move, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until the grass is flattened beneath their rolling storm, the branches of trees and bushes pushed back from the clearing like the hairy lips of a pussy being slicked away from the hole.
The helicopter rises mightily into the air, soaring above the tops of the trees until the forest becomes an abstraction of greens and browns dotted with the tiny squares of cottages and barns, each square identical to the next. The sky stretches endlessly before you, clouds turning pink and tangible and deeply furrowed just above the top of the helicopter's bubble. Straight ahead in the distance, a snow-capped mountain juts high into the air, its cloud-touched peak speckled with just the faintest traces of icy-branched evergreen trees, its sides lined with a dozen glistening streams of crystal mountain water.
"Where are we going?" you ask the dark-skinned man, smoothing your hair over your shoulders and straightening the hem of your raincoat as you speak.
"To your husband," says the man, half-shouting over the drone of the helicopter's engine.
"But where is he?" you ask, picturing him in all sorts of terrible situations.
"I'm sorry," says the man, "that's classified information. I can only promise you that you'll be with him soon enough."
"But what am I to do when I find him?" you ask, suddenly terrified at the prospect of finding yourself helpless in a hostile foreign land.
"Bring him back, of course," says the pilot, slipping a pair of sunglasses from his jacket pocket and sliding them onto the bridge of his nose.
"But how?" you ask, confused and annoyed at the man's reticence. "What am I to do?"
"This will all be made plain to you in time, Madame," says the man. "It will be far easier than you think." Then, as an afterthought: "You're the only one who can do it, you know. The country is depending on you."
Questions begin to multiply rapidly in your head, relieving you, at least, of your burden of shame, but since all revolve around the points which the man is unable, or unwilling, to discuss-Where is your husband? What can be done for him? How will you avoid capture once in enemy territory?-and since you are anxious not to offend the man who has not only offered you his assistance in the matter of your husband, but has also compromised himself (surely it was a compromise) to fulfill you in your moment of need, you remain perfectly silent, hands folded in your lap, eyes turned vacantly ahead.
Onward and onward, the helicopter flies, over hills and mountains, villages and towns, above and beneath the clouds, until finally, after several hours of travel, a great shining city comes into view over the ridge of a circular mountain range, and the pilot lowers his craft over the multi-shaped roofs of its buildings.
"Are we in enemy territory now?" you ask, staring fearfully out of the side of the helicopter at the gleaming architectural wonders below. "Is my husband in this city?"
"Please," says the pilot, glaring at you from behind the lenses of his sunglasses. "Don't ask me any more of these questions.... I've told you, I can't answer them ... When I came to your house to offer my help, and you wouldn't be satisfied with less than the service of my body, I didn't ask you any questions, did I? Now please ... Everything will be clear to you in time."
"I'm sorry," you mutter, feeling a blush rise to your cheeks. "I didn't mean to..."
"It's all right," says the pilot coolly.
At the city's exact center stands a huge circular building with large triangular multicolored flags jutting outward from its roof, each flag imprinted on both sides with the words: COME TO GAMICLE'S CIRCUS! THE GREATEST CIRCUS IN THE UNIVERSE! Whistling a strange melody to himself, the pilot lowers his helicopter to the center of a white-stripped circle at the side of the building's roof, and without turning off the engine, gestures toward three men-a short fat red-cheeked man dressed in a luminescent red-and-gold striped satin jacket, and two powerfully-built bare-chested men beside him, wearing blue-and-purple-striped tights-who stand before a square brick door-enclosure perhaps fifty yards from the landing site.
"You'll be in their hands now," says the pilot, his eyes turning misty with reflection. "They're competent people, highly-skilled and so forth.... Everything will go smoothly...."
Clutching a porkpie hat to his balding head, the red-cheeked man runs awkwardly toward the helicopter, his assistants walking in brisk double-time close behind him. Bowing and smiling and nodding, he opens the door of the plastic bubble, and half-helps, half-pulls you out of the cabin, turning his tiny bloodshot eyes incessantly upward toward the helicopter's whirling blades as if afraid that by some sudden fault in their operation, the blades will descend on him and lop his head off.
"Gamicle's the name! Welcome to Gamicle's Circus!" he cries, starting to tip his hat, then thinking better of it. "Welcome, welcome, welcome to the most thrilling and spectacular show in the universe! Something for everybody! Bring the kids, bring the old folks! But come to Gamicle's circus! Be with you in just a minute, my dear...." Brushing you aside as you struggle to keep your raincoat closed in the wind, the red-cheeked man leans into the pilot's cabin, withdraws a small neatly-wrapped package from the pocket of his gaudy coat, and slaps it into the pilot's outstretched hand. "Wonderful job!" he cries. "Wonderful job!" he cries. "Wonderful! I'll recommend you for a promotion at the very next meeting of the board! Wonderful job!" Then, giving a dramatic salute as the pilot turns away and pulls back the helicopter's stick: "Well, luista luego con vive le guerre au gratin! Con mucho gusto, mon amour! Drive carefully, boy! Drive carefully!"
Just as the helicopter lifts off the ground, the pilot leans out the side of its plastic bubble (is the smile on his face directed at you or the red-cheeked man?) and shouts something inaudible into the wind. Then the helicopter rises straight into the air, veers sharply to the left, and travels quickly into the distance in the direction from which it came. As you watch the helicopter disappear over the cloud-hazed mountain range that circles the city, a sinking feeling takes hold of your body, forcing you to lean against the roof's brick coping for support. Your only bridge between your homeland and this foreign city is gone.... You are stranded in the middle of unfamiliar territory with queerly-dressed strangers at either side of you.... Can these men possibly be secret agents of your own government? But then why do they maintain their cover identities? Why do they not make themselves known to you?
"Well," says the red-cheeked man, slipping his arm around your waist and leading you toward the metal door at the far end of the roof, "I just can't tell you how wonderful it is to see you ... I just can't tell you how wonderful it ... and only fifteen minutes to show time too..." He gives the oo of too the pronunciation of a full u. "To tell you the truth, I didn't know what I was going to do. The girl got sick, quit on us. Where was I going to get a replacement? Nobody'd pay to see a local girl."
"What are you talking about?" you demand suddenly, your stomach turning queasier and queasier as you halt dead in your tracks. "Where's my husband?"
Gamicle's assistants draw close to you, arms held rigidly at their sides, eyes trained on Gamicle, as if awaiting some customary signal.
"Your husband!" cries Gamicle, stamping his foot. "Please don't talk to me about your husband! We're men of good will here. We respect each other. None of this husband business, my good woman. Just because you were hired without an interview doesn't mean you can go ranting about your personal problems, you know what I mean? We're men of good will here...."
"Wait, wait a minute," you stutter, breasts heaving beneath your coat as you try to shake off the dizziness that rushes in on your brain. "The pilot said you'd help me to find my husband. Isn't that what I'm here for? I mean..."
"Pilot!" shouts Gamicle, stamping his foot again. "What in the name of God do pilots know?" He stares at you angrily for a moment, pudgy fingers working busily on his belly, then turns to the taller of his assistants-a thick-lipped dark-haired man-and pushes his porkpie hat back on his head, his scarlet bow-tie sagging with his round little shoulders. "Can you imagine that?" he says to the man in an incredulous whine. "The pilot lied to her ... lied to her. Is there no such thing as an honest pilot? Ah, well ... I did tell him to find someone no matter what. T suppose he couldn't find anyone else, poor lad ... But still ... to tell lies! Ah, well..." He pauses for a moment, muttering to himself of the world's injustices, then turns back to you, a polite smile creasing his heavy-jowled face. "Look here, Miss ... or Madame ... or whatever it is ... I'll be perfectly frank with you, my dear. We've got a show to do here. The people have already bought their tickets. Girl quit on me yesterday and you're her replacement on the Wheel of Joy. You're signed, sealed, and delivered, so there's no turning back for you. I'll be perfectly frank with you, my dear. If you come along quietly, we bill you as The Loves It Girl. If you scream and raise a fuss, we bill you as The Defiant Enemy Captive.... Either way, you go on the wheel."
"I think there must be some mistake," you protest, not knowing what to say. "You'd better make some sort of arrangements to have me..."
"Now some people say the wheel hurts," Gamicle goes on, "but between you and me ... that's a load of bull turd, you know what I mean? That wheel is scientifically designed by the most creative minds in the world. Everything goes into you smooth and comes out of you smooth.... There is no way ... I repeat ... no way ... for your mouth or your cunt to be ruined by this machine. You'll be a little dizzy afterwards ... but that is all!" He pauses for just a second, pulling a thin cigar from his pocket. At the instant the cigar touches his lips, the shorter of his assistants rushes forward with a flaming cigarette lighter. "Now as for your husband," Gamicle goes on. "I don't know the man personally, but I'm sure he's a solid citizen. You go along with us here ... do a good act ... and I'll send somebody around to look for him. You give me his name, I'll send somebody out ... and that's a promise! When Arthur Gamicle gives his word..."
"Are you mad!" you scream suddenly, almost embarrassed by the absurdity of the question. "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you?"
You back slowly away from the sad-faced Gamicle, your eyes searching futilely for some means of escape. All around you, flapping pink, yellow, and orange flags urge you to COME TO GAMICLE'S CIRCUS. Droplets of sweat fall from the light down of your armpits to splash against your sides and hips. Your belly is tight with anticipation; continually, you are forced to contract the cheeks of your rump so as to keep from passing wind. The world has gone mad, and all its horror stories have turned into truth. You stand helpless on a rooftop, naked beneath your coat, before a sheer madman who leers at you from behind the pudgy face of a stupid child, and speaks to you of things so mad and terrible that you are only glad he speaks no more plainly than he does ... and yet, he is in power here.... Can he be the enemy? Or was all a lie? Is your husband safe at home, just now returning from his morning walk? But then, what of the pilot's story? And ... no ... best not to think about any of this ... best not to think.
Turning wildly from right to left, you see nothing but the blue of the sky, the reflection of sunlight off the glass frontings of the adjoining buildings, and the thousand crazy waving flags that scream their silly message in your face. Gamicle stands like a malevolent gnome before you, the glint in his bloodshot eye telling of a world too strange and sordid for you even to imagine. Beside him, his assistants seem ancient statues erected in celebration of masculine form and power, and you feel the full helplessness of your womanhood in their presence. Your nipples tauten so terribly with fear that they strain against the fabric of your raincoat, sending tingles of pain running through your breasts. A droplet of sweat glides easily down your back and halts, tickling you, halfway down the furrow of your bottom. Suddenly, you break into a directionless run, the straps of your sandals biting deeply into your instep, your breasts and buttocks bouncing wildly beneath your unbuttoning coat.
Abruptly, two pairs of hands take hold of you, lift you high in the air, fingers digging deep into the flesh of your belly and breasts.
"Put me down!" you scream, flailing at the hard-muscled men who hold you. "Let go of me! Put me down!"
"Wonderful!" cries Gamicle. "Wonderful! The Defiant Enemy Captive, brought to you direct from the land of the enemy! See how she screams! See how she resists!"
Strutting, the little fat man resumes his jaunt toward the metal door, his assistants following close behind him, holding you completely immobile against their smooth oiled bodies.
"Undress her, boys," laughs Gamicle without turning. "Strip the bitch naked. The show must go on...."
Holding you tightly by the waist and chin, the bare-chested men wrench the raincoat from your body as if it was made of paper, and tear the panties from your hips with but a single snap of elastic. The shorter of the men smiles briefly during the ceremony, but other than for his smile, neither of the men seems even remotely interested in your naked body, or curious as to your lack of proper clothing. Then the taller man lifts you like a sack of potatoes in his arms, doubling your parted legs against his sides, while his partner pulls the sandals from your feet and casts them to the tar-covered roof. You feel yourself blush from head to foot as a sudden breeze wafts between your legs, painfully emphasizing the complete openness of your pussy and rump.
"Put me down! What are you doing! Help! Someone! Help!"
Gamicle turns at the door enclosure, halts his musclemen, and gives you a quick once-over appraisal with hands and eyes.
"She's got great tits," he says in a highly professional tone as he gives each of your breasts a quick squeeze. Then, tickling the halves of your rump: "And a great behind.... They'll love her tits and her behind...." Suddenly, he plunges his thumb into your bone-dry pussy and gives it a brutal, agonizing twist. "Better loosen her up a little, boys," he says to his henchmen, pulling out his thumb and wiping it off on his satin jacket, then opening the door before him with a genteel kick to its bottom. "Bring the dew to her little treasure, as they say. If she's not properly lubricated, who can say what the wheel will do to her, eh?"
As the men drag you forward into the brick enclosure, the shorter man begins to tickle and pat and poke at your pussy with deft, passionless fingers, his left hand working continually at your clitoris as his right slides from ass-hole to pussy, tickling the juice to your lips despite all your horror and revulsion.
"Put me down!" you scream over and over again, struggling uselessly against the strong arms that hold you, blushing brighter and brighter shades of pink as your pussy's juice drips freely to your thighs. "How can you do this to me! Are you animate? How can you do this to me!"
"The Defiant Enemy Captive!" cries Gamicle, waving his hands in the air. "See how she struggles! Hear her pitiful cries!"
Inside the roof's enclosure, a brief pink-and-yellow hallway covered with peeling posters of naked men and women leads to a large fluorescent-lit glass-doored elevator, which opens at the touch of Gamicle's pudgy finger to its round red button. As the men drag you screaming into the elevator, Gamicle presses the button for the first floor, straightens his jacket and bow-tie, and pauses, whistling, to admire a floor-to-ceiling three-dimensional photograph of a couple making love, then turns to you, greatly pleased by your struggling, and plunges his thumb into your pussy once again.
"Very good, very good!" he says, licking the foam from his thumb. "Just a little bit more and she'll be ready to go...." Then, speaking to the shorter of his assistants in a low confidential tone of voice: "Wait till you see the guys I got for this act.... I never saw anything so big as what these guys got...." Humming to himself, striking silly little poses, he turns away from the man to dance a brief jig in the corner of the elevator, then suddenly, turns back to you, a look of utter seriousness on his fat little face, his eyes filled with an almost fatherly concern. "I'm sorry for all this, Miss," he says, pulling his hat from his head and crumpling it in his hands. "Really, I'm sorry.... But I had to have someone. The show must go on. Really, I'm sorry."
"Please," you whisper, two, three, four fingers sliding deep along the walls of your cunt, "tell them to put me down. It isn't right...."
"I'm sorry," whispers Gamicle.
As the elevator descends, its whirring diminished by the loud circus music that plays through the speakers at either of its sides, various phrases light up on a metal panel above the door to denote the passage of each of the building's floors. THE GARDEN OF BOYISH DELIGHTS flashes a blue-lit phrase on the gleaming panel, and through the elevator's clear glass door, you catch just a passing glimpse of hundreds of men and boys-brown, white, and yellow-skinned, some naked, some dressed, some half-and-half-walking through an artificial garden toward a darkened doorway in the distance. Then, ISLE OF LESBOS flashes a yellow-lit phrase, and the scene of the seventh floor is repeated, only this time with girls and women, most wearing only leather G-strings and knee-high boots, some of the younger ones completely naked, one or two showing faded whiplash scars across their backs and buttocks. Downward and downward the car travels, past TORTURE CHATEAU and CHILD PARADISE, your belly tightening with each passing floor until finally you are unable to keep yourself from passing wind, and fill the car with the odor of your knotted intestines. Both Gamicle's assistants laugh slightly as you fart, but the smaller man doesn't so much as hesitate in the fondling of your pussy, which is now completely open and filled with foam, its lips slicked back to your thighs, its membrane quivering involuntarily. Then, as WHEEL OF JOY lights up in pink and orange letters on the metal plate, Gamicle places his porkpie hat jauntily on his head, and strikes his most illustrious pose at the elevator door.
"Here we are," he says as the door opens on a huge throng of people in the pink and purple hallway beyond. "The public awaits us,..."
Outside, hundreds of men, women, and children mill through an elaborate side-show of groups and couples making love toward a huge mosque-styled doorway at the far end of the hallway. At each of the side-show's high platforms, a barker dressed in red or orange velveteen jump suit calls out the particular attractions of the spectacle behind him in loud, coarse bursts of language, often pointing to the attraction in question with the tip of a long black cane, or even walking up on the platform itself to display the show people with his hands.
"Looky, looky, looky here!" cries a dark-eyed barker who stands before three naked brown-skinned men who work away at each of the openings of a beautiful blonde woman. "Imported from Africa ... the three biggest poles on the continent ... and the blue-eyed girl who can't have any fun without her African boyfriends.... Looky how she squirms!
She's been coming for hours, folks, and she'll come for hours more...." He points to the thick brown organ of the man who uses the blonde girl's mouth. "Looky, folks, looky ... Six inches inside, six inches outside.... The girl just loves it like this! Her dream come true! Bring the kids up, let 'em have a looky.... Let 'em see just how it's done. Three black poles, three pink holes. That's brotherhood, folks. Pictures only one dollar a set...."
The people flock from one attraction to the next, some dressed in strange futuristic clothing, others wearing only luminescent body paint, some completely naked but for a brightly-colored feather or two stuck in the rectum or behind the ear. Now they watch a Eurasian girl make love to two Newfoundland dogs, now a Negro girl masturbate herself with a long wet banana, now a chain of six naked boys fucking each other in the asses, the first boy in the chain plunging his prick into the hairy cunt of a girl whom he lifts by the backside, and now an Oriental girl who crawls on hands and knees before a group of ten men, sucking each of their pricks in turn, pausing to display her semen-filled mouth to the audience before swallowing. Everywhere, the barkers shout and point and fondle, their tight velveteen suits glowing strange mysterious colors beneath the multicolored lights above:
"The hairiest cunt you've ever seen, ladies and gentlemen. Let the kids have a look and they'll always remember you for it...."
"The girl with the ass-hole that can hold any pole.... They say it's been used by a thousand men...."
"And when I tell you this boy can come a hundred times, I mean a hundred times.... Look at this sauce of his ... still thick and hot after a dozen orgasms right here on this stage. Come here, girly. Have a taste...."
"Yes, folks, she can take ten inches down the throat without batting an eyelash.... They say the
Semite girls like it in the mouth ... and this little honey proves they're right...."
"Pictures only one dollar...."
"She'll show you how to take care of your dog...."
"Look how she loves it...."
"Only one dollar..."
"Look at the bumps on this prick...."
"Now just take a whiff of this little cunt...."
"One dollar, folks, just one dollar..."
Everywhere, men pause to tickle their wive's pussies, or kiss their children's tiny genitals, or stroke the breasts of women who are utter strangers to them. Wives fall on their knees to lick their husbands' pricks or tongue the buttocks of passing men or boys, or the pussies of passing women. Young couples make love in every corner of the hallway, most in standing positions with the girl propped against the wall, but a few in the position of animals, and an occasional couple tussling full-length on the floor, all the couples touched and squeezed by children and adults alike, some joined by other couples, or single boys and girls, to form brief but intricate tableaus of writhing interconnected flesh. Children sit on the heads and shoulders of their parents and masturbate frantically as they turn from one incredible spectacle to the next, some reaching out to touch the hairless little organs of other children as they pass according to the whims of their parents. And yet, all the sexual activity in the hall-but for that of the participants in the side-show-is utterly casual and lighthearted, everyone merely teasing and exciting his neighbor without engaging in any prolonged climax-directed act. There are no difficulties, no conflicts here; all are merely enjoying themselves, all smiling as they half-dance through the hallway in time to an Arabian melody piped through hidden speakers in the pink and purple wall. They are entranced, vague-eyed with sensuous pleasure, their bodies rolling and rippling with delight, glowing with vitality, twinkling with beautiful belts and necklaces of multicolored jewels.
As you are lifted from the elevator and carried, pussy forward, into the swarming hallway, the true terror of insanity clutches for the first time at your brain. While on the roof of the circus building you felt yourself caught between the reality of home and the semi-reality of Gamicle (who, after all, was but a single man, and at least as apt to be mad as yourself), you now feel utterly submerged in a sea of strangeness, the darkest, least-conscious fantasies of your secret mind multiplying and blossoming before you in real flesh and blood to an extent unconceived of even by your imagination. Gamicle's words seem pale and meaningless when compared to the spectacle before you; you feel yourself torn, uprooted, from every tenet of reality you've ever held. Can the scene before you be real? Do you truly live in a quiet little house in the country? Do you have children, a husband? Who ... who is mad?
Suddenly, as you catch sight of the words, WHEEL OF JOY, written in flashing orange neon above the arched doorway at the hall's far end, you let forth a scream of anguish far stronger, far more shrill and wailing, than all your previous screams combined. All around you, people turn in wonderment to gaze upon your face and body, their stares lingering most often on your eyes and on your out-thrust cunt.
"The Defiant Enemy Captive!" cries Gamicle at the top of his lungs. "The show of shows is about to begin...." Strutting, he tips his hat to the ladies, bows to the gentlemen, tickles the children under their chins. "See the Defiant Captive strapped to the magic Wheel of Joy.... Hear her screams of protest! Thrill to her frantic struggling! And see if the magic wheel can tame this strong-limbed pagan!"
Feeling nothing but the heat of the eyes around you, seeing nothing but the flashing letters of the neon sign, you scream your madness and terror louder and louder through the crowded hallway, every muscle in your body straining against the arms and hands of the men who hold you.
"Do you think it's for real?" whispers a pink-and-yellow-painted woman in the crowd, vacantly tickling the organ of a heavily-bejeweled man beside her. "Do you think she's really from the other side?"
"I don't know," says the man, spreading the ass-cheeks of a naked green-haired girl before him. "But look how she squirms...."
"She's pretty," says a woman in silvery boots and breast cups, bending beneath her lover's rear assault. "Look how deep her eyes are...."
"Mommy," says a little boy, pulling his mother by the lips of her pussy. "Why is it so wet and gooey between her legs? Why is it so..."
"Shh, dear," says the child's mother, adjusting the bright purple plumes that protrude from the cleft of her buttocks. "You'll embarrass her.... All the enemy women are like that.... When they can't find a man, they stuff themselves full of carrots and rub against a tree...."
"They say the men can't satisfy them," whispers a polka-dotted man behind her, pulling his fat organ from the mouth of a girl who has targets painted on her breasts, belly, and buttocks. "Supposed to be scared of them, the men ... weak ... always running away..."
Even the side-show performers pause in their churning to watch you as you're carried open-cunted toward the archway, the Negro girl waving her banana in your face, a barker pointing his cane in the direction of your pussy and shouting: "Scream all you want, you enemy bitch! When the wheel gets through with you, you'll be screaming through your cunt!"
"Come one, come all!" cries Gamicle, walking through the archway and disappearing into semi-darkness. "The show's about to begin.... Will the wheel tame her, or will the wheel kill her? Step right up and find out.... The magic Wheel of Joy is about to spin!"
As Gamicle's assistants carry you beneath the flashing archway, the entire company of spectators squeezing close behind you, you find yourself in a huge shadowy arena filled with tier after circular tier of plush velvet seats, each seat spaced at least three feet from the seats next to it. Hundreds of men. women, and children already occupy the seats of the lower tiers, and as you are carried into the arena, they all turn to stare at you with wide curious eyes, their combined whispers filling the auditorium with a locust-like sound, their faces and bodies glowing eerily beneath the room's suspended blue and purple lights. In the center of the arena, a silvery wheel, solid but for several oddly-placed holes at its middle, rests within the frame of a second wheel which is sunk into the base of an expansive velvet-covered platform. A tall slender small-breasted girl-her head completely bald, her face very angular and intense-stands beside the wheel, naked but for two golden coins stuck miraculously over her nipples and a thin golden strip over her slit which hides only her pussy's inner meat from view, leaving its crisply-haired halves completely exposed. As you are dragged screaming toward the wheel, the girl stares fixedly at you, as if trying to tell you something with her huge brown eyes, but you are far too busy with your struggling to pay any attention to her. Before you, a daisy chain of naked squirming boys and girls stretches around the base of the platform, each of the girls bending forward to service two pricks at a time, one in mouth, one in pussy, the boys forming an unbroken sandwich around them, rocking back and forth in perfect unison, arms around each other's shoulders, hips pressed tightly together. At a wave from Gamicle, the chain of bodies parts before you, the boys and girls closest to you reaching out to touch your legs and buttocks as you are carried briskly toward the platform.
As Gamicle ascends to the platform by means of three shallow steps affixed to its side, a brilliant red spotlight cuts through the purple-blue dimness of the arena to glare off the satin of his oversized jacket and turn his pudgy face into a hideous satanic mask. Everywhere, people scramble for seats, most of them stripping off whatever bits of clothing they wear before sitting down, not a few masturbating themselves as they stare eagerly toward the platform. From the sides of the arena, perhaps a hundred naked boys and girls-all slender and small-muscled with hair cut to a uniform length and pubic mounds shaved clean, all with the words, COME TO GAMICLE'S CIRCUS, printed in bright orange letters on their bare backs, and all wearing shiny coin-changers around their waists-begin to circulate among the rows of velvet seats with hands pressed provocatively to their bottoms and bellies, calling, "Lick your cock, Mister? Only a quarter...." or, "Eat your cunt, Ma'am? Only a quarter...." Far in the back of the arena, above its final tier, a tuxedo-jacketed bandleader raises his thin baton, and a score of musicians in the green and orange bandstand before him strike up a thunderous chord of introduction. Grunting, Gamicle's musclemen heave you onto the platform beside their master and stand one at each side of you, their steely hands twisting your arms painfully backwards so that any movement on your part will suffice to break your wrists.
"Purree-zenting!" cries Gamicle through a handheld microphone. "The Defiant ... Enemy ... Captive! And the magical ... electromagnetic ... Wheel ... of Joy!"
The audience goes wild with applause, several of its members already availing themselves of the services of the pleasure boys and girls.
"And brought to you at great expense and personal sacrifice," continues Gamicle, "special for today's event ... two of our side's most magnificent soldiers ... two men of incredible proportions ... two men who will astound and amaze you with their natural wonders ... from the continents of Asia and South America respectively ... the amazing Mr. Li and the incredible Yallo Yarillo!"
Abruptly, a glaring orange spotlight flashes toward the arena's main archway, revealing the figures of two smiling men--a small Oriental and a broad-shouldered Spaniard-naked but for military boots, caps, and utility belts, who march down the arena's center aisle with high precise kicks of their legs in time to a crashing drum roll from the bandstand, both their gigantic organs standing straight up in the air, slapping from hip to hip as they march. Again, the audience bursts with applause, dozens of women and girls rising from their seats to cheer loudly for their heroes, screaming, "Show her how it's done, Li! Make her beg for more, Yallo!" Then, as the athletes stand posing before the platform, bowing and showing off their penises at right and left angles, Gamicle gestures with one hand toward the men who hold you, and with the other toward the wheel.
"Gentlemen, if you please," he says, stepping from the platform, microphone in hand, and disappearing into shadow at the platform's base.
Instantly, you are lifted high in the air and carried to the silvery wheel, the girl with the gold coins over her nipples continuing to stare at you with the same meaning-fraught intensity, her hands resting lightly on her hips as she watches Gamicle's assistants position you on the wheel.
"What are you staring at, you awful bitch!" you scream at her. "Stop these madmen! Stop them! They're killing me.... They're..."
You break off into a series of anguished moans (each one of which is amplified through a transistorized microphone at the wheel's side, and sent echoing through the arena to the boundless delight of the audience) as the assistants bend your torso and thighs through three of the wheel's center cut-outs, and twist your calves back through its two remaining holes, so that when they are done, your head, torso, and legs protrude from one of the wheel's faces, and your ass and feet from the other. Then, as the bald-headed girl straps you firmly into place, pinning your arms and thighs and feet securely to the wheel by means of several strips of leather which hang at the wheel's sides, Gamicle's assistants quit the platform and disappear in the direction of their master, leaving you locked into the center of the wheel, immobile but for your head, your pussy opened wide and thrust directly backward, your nipples pointing downward to the floor. The bald-headed girl spends several seconds testing the straps at your feet and at the backs of your thighs, then moves to the front of the wheel to fix a final strap to your neck and chin so that you are completely paralyzed by leather and metal, your face lifted toward the audience at the same level as your rump, your twisted arms and legs aching with muscular strain. Suddenly, pretending to make some adjustment on the final strap, the bald-headed girl bends very close to you, her profile striking and Egyptian as she turns away from the microphone and touches you lightly on the shoulder.
"Don't be afraid." she whispers, covering her mouth and pretending to cough. "It'll all be over before you know it. Then I can take you to your husband. It's all been arranged.... As soon as it's over, I'll rescue you. Don't worry...."
Giving your straps a final tug or two, she steps quickly to the side of the platform and kneels beside a small control panel set into the floor, her golden coins twinkling in your face as she readies her hand above a large green switch.
The mention of your husband fills you with an anxiety even more devastating than that which you feel already, and at the same time, fills your mind with unanswerable questions and multiplying possibilities. Can the pilot truly have been an agent of the Central Office as he claimed? Is it possible that he works in conjunction with this baldheaded girl who wears coins over her nipples? Perhaps his reticence was caused by his knowledge of the torture you would have to undergo before finding your husband.... Yes ... it was simply that he didn't want to frighten you away from your search.... Or is all a pack of lies, and the baldheaded girl a liar in league with the lying pilot? Only one thing is clear: whether for good or evil, all has been previously arranged.... Everyone but yourself knows his part perfectly.... But then ... who is the arranger? Who ... who ... is the mastermind?
As thoughts of your husband, and the pilot, and the torture before you wander through your mind, all mingling together somehow to revive your shame at the morning's strange episode (so intense is your shame that you feel partially eager for the torture of the wheel as punishment for your crime), the athletes below you complete their bowing and phallic exhibitionism, and mount the velvet platform at the stairway to your right. Before you, past the rolling asses of the boys and girls in the flesh sandwich below, the members of the audience lean forward in their seats, the bodies tense beneath the blue and purple lights, their anxious eyes like so many pools of liquid. Even the pleasure boys and girls turn sideways to stare at you as they suck their customers' organs.
From behind you, a second drum roll echoes through the arena. The red spotlight is replaced with a larger, more blinding light of the purest, purest white. The man called Yarillo disappears behind the -edge of the wheel tugging thoughtfully at his mustache, his knee-high boots gleaming silver-black in the beam of the spotlight. Mr. Li positions himself open-legged before you, his calm Oriental face creased with just the trace of a grin as he waves the head of his organ beneath your nose to a thunderous ovation from the audience. Slender and smooth-bodied, he seems hardly more than a mischievous child as he touches his penis now to your armpit, now to your forehead, but owing to the size of his plaything, his air of childishness makes him seem only that much more terrifying. Your eyes sweeping upward from the prominent knot of his navel to the three gold stars on his cap, you feel wave after wave of fear rise within you, each washing away more of your questions and thoughts than its predecessor, until finally, were it not for the restraint of the wheel and its straps, you would be shaking from head to foot with terror.
"And now," comes the hushed off-stage voice of Gamicle, "the moment you've been waiting for.... May I have complete silence please, ladies and gentlemen?..."
Mr. Li advances toward you quarter-inch by quarter-inch, his prick looming like a Roman candle at the level of your eyes, blotting out the whole of the arena with its shining blue-yellow head, each of the tiny black hairs on his pubic mound shining like a universe unto itself in the steady glare of the spotlight. Suddenly, you feel hot wet hands on your ass-cheeks, and a burning pain sears deep into your belly, high happy laughter sounding from the other side of the wheel.
"Leave me alone, you bastard!" you scream as Yarillo's prick drives relentlessly forward in your pussy. You picture Yarillo standing behind you with the crudest of smiles on his thick heavy lips, his nut brown body glistening with his sweat as he stares continually into the audience, calling to its members for approval with his wild brown eyes. "Take it out, you bastard! Take it out or I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"
The audience rocks with laughter as your cries echo through the arena, a hundred naked couples writhing with ecstasy at the periphery of your vision. Yarillo's iron cock drives deeper, deeper into you; you can feel the membrane of your cunt stretching and tearing beneath the organ's assault, the untouched depths of your being probed and prodded, opened wider and wider. Then, as the prick reaches your very core-and still plunges onward-a hysterical scream issues from your lips, and Mr. Li, taking advantage of the situation, stifles your screams with his prick, shoving it deep into your throat and turning it in a wide circle against your lips. Instinctively, you bite it, try to force it from your mouth, but only succeed in hurting your teeth and bringing a slight laugh to the lips of Mr. Li, which echoes, with your blubbering groans, through each of the arena's loudspeakers, followed by the loud gurgles of your pussy, which are amplified-or so it seems-through a second microphone placed on the wheel's other face.
Slowly and steadily, the men's pricks dig deeper into your throat and belly, filling you with pain in a single straight line from hole to hole. You can feel every contour of their pulsing organs, every vein in the shaft of Li's pole, every puff of flesh in Yarillo's sliding foreskin. You imagine the pricks bursting through your throat and cunt, and touching within you, a great spark of electricity zapping from one to the other just before the moment of impact. Your straining openings feel to you like nothing more than sewer ducts, your most private and intimate crevices like so many public playgrounds. Dimly, you project yourself into a fantasy future in which you are used at will by all the mad citizens of this enemy city. You see them filling you with penis after penis, taking pleasure in your agony, holding contests to see who can penetrate you most deeply. Then, just as you pass the point of checking (can Li's prick have truly penetrated past the base of your neck?), and your cunt passes the point of gurgling-there is no area of space, no matter how tiny, through which any air can pass out of your hole-you feel Yarillo's testicles thud heavily against the halves of your crotch, and Li's roll like peaches over your chin. You are skewered like a pig, penetrated to your furthermost reaches: another quarter-inch of prick, either at belly or throat, would surely murder you. Your body feels as if it has grown an extra bone. Were the pain but a drop less, you would easily faint.
Through a veil of shame and agony, you can hear the metallic voice of Gamicle:
"And now ... the incredible Wheel of Joy!"
There is the click of a switch, and a slow grinding sound below you. The audience is completely hushed. The band strikes up a labored merry-go-round tune. Slowly, as if frightened of its own terrible deed, the wheel begins to turn. For just the slightest fraction of a second, the motion of the wheel is surprisingly pleasant-like the childhood experience of a Ferris wheel-but then, as your aching cavities begin to turn around the pricks inside them, you are swallowed in a sensation so strange as to transcend either pleasure or pain, and place you in a world of pure physical bewilderment. Very slowly, you can feel yourself complete a. half-revolution. Mr. Li's testicles roll over your cheeks downward toward your eyes, the blinding crystal spotlight glowing like a sun around them, electrifying each of their crisp black hairs. Yarillo's foreskin drags in a circle at the back of your cunt, his urethra smoothing out every wrinkle in your membrane as your pussy spins around it, his balls rolling from your cunt-halves to your ass-cheeks.
Magically, the wheel increases its speed: you spin through three, four, five revolutions in the space of a minute. Twinges of pleasure and pain alternate within you as the pricks of Li and Yarillo work cyclically into ever-changing angles. Your cunt grows wetter and wetter as it churns around Yarillo's penis, your clitoris twitching as it rubs against his balls, pussy-lips widening and narrowing with each quarter-spin of the wheel. Your mouth turns like Saturn's ring around Li's bursting organ, your throat contracting involuntarily around its shaft as the ridge of its head burns a circle of pain in your neck. The arena spins wildly around you, spotlight rolling away the faces of the audience and the asses of the boys and girls in the daisy chain, sliding rubbery testicles rolling away the spotlight, faces and asses rolling away the testicles. Blue and purple lights make broken circles around you in time to the sensations of your holes and the crazy circus music of the band. In the distance, for only seconds at a time, you catch glimpses of the baldheaded girl, coins seeming to dance on her nipples, her eyes flashing directly into yours. Dimly, you can hear her words echoing in your mind. Did she truly speak to you? How funny she looks ... how naked and strange ... like a bird shorn of her feathers....
Faster and faster the wheel spins, burning you and turning you in ever-widening pools of sensation. You lose all sense of up and down, begin to feel as if you have always been spinning on the wheel, always impaled upon the pricks of Li and Yarillo. Lights, walls, faces, asses, balls, pricks, and eyes are all but a speedy blur of sight and smell and touch, a circle of confusing sensory information, at once animate and inanimate. Are those testicles that you feel, or faces? Do pricks turn inside you, or spotlights? What is it that turns? Or is it everything? Yes, yes ... everything.... There are circles inside you and outside you.... All ... all is spinning.... But why doesn't everything fall? Do the pricks hold you up, or the spotlights, or the faces? Does the wheel hold you, or you the wheel? ... Or ... yes, yes, yes ... You are the wheel ... and the wheel is you ... You are the circle that holds up the faces that hold up the spotlights that hold up the pricks.... You are everything ... the circle of ... unless...
Suddenly, the things inside you grow larger and harder and longer, seeming to fill your entire body like a single gigantic pole. From two directions, hot gusts of wind blow directly into your center, shaking you with fear of a storm. The air is filled with grunting and panting, with the smell of the ocean's bottom. Then, as things move so fast that they seem to be standing still, your insides are drenched, splattered, filled with cupfuls of bubbling liquid. Your entire body goes loose and crazy, loud farts escaping your ass-hole, foam covering your thighs, moans dribbling over your chin, sweat running freely from your armpits. You feel yourself a universe coming apart at the seams, planets flying in all directions, a great star exploding and exploding at your center. You want to spin forever and forever and forever, filling the cosmos with the fiery fragments of your love.... Then:
A kind of gravity hurls itself at you, covering you with pain. You feel yourself hurtling through thicker and thicker walls of molasses into layers of dirt and sand and feces, and finally into a tomb of stone. You can't tell if you are moving or still: there is only a nightmarish swaying of indistinguishable sights and sounds, a bone-wrenching vibration of all the particles in the universe. Suddenly, deep within you, two great plugs are pulled, leaving your insides to slosh limply back toward their original places. Everything in you and around you is emptiness and sickness, death and decay. The yellow penis before you is like a drooping length of hose, the passion-filled faces around it like so many carved grotesqueries. The audience's wild applause sounds hollow to you, like the beating of a million dry vulture wings. Only the baldheaded girl is the same as before, her eyes cool and steady as they gaze into yours from the opposite end of the platform. Will she help you? Does it matter?
Mr. Li blots out the arena with his sweaty yellow stomach, and one-by-one, unfastens the leather straps that bind you, his partner doing the same at your rear. Then both men push and pull at you until your feet come free of the wheel, Yarillo tugging at your ass-cheeks as Li pushes brutally at your head and shoulders. Nauseous, you fall helplessly to your back on the velvet-covered floor, unable to move or speak or even to think, your hands clutching feebly at air as the white spotlight continues to spin above you. Suddenly, you are lifted high in the air, your legs spread wide apart. Holding you between them, Li and Yarillo strut proudly around the stage, pulling open your pussy to expose its outward flow of semen to the audience, then tilting you forward to make strings of their fluid fall from your mouth.
"The Defiant ... Enemy , . . Captive!" cries Gamicle from the darkness, "tamed ... by the Wheel ... of Joy!"
The audience is wild with screaming and cheering, parents and children alike standing on their seats to applaud the work of the athletes and the success of the machine. The bandleader leads his musicians in a deafening finale, his arms turning into blurs of shining tuxedo fabric, his baton a curving line of silver above his head. Shamed beyond shame, you turn your face to the deep velvet carpeting of the floor and let your eyes fall gently closed.
Suddenly, there is a loud commotion in the rear of the arena. The audience gives a single gasp of surprise, then begins talking very excitedly. The band stops playing. The house lights are turned up.
"All right, nobody move," comes a voice. "Everyone stay in your seats...."
Opening your eyes, you find yourself staring at a thin gaunt-looking man dressed in a worn gray suit and black fedora, who walks briskly toward you from the arena's center archway, a battery of uniformed policemen following close behind him, quieting the audience with impatient gestures of their arms. The thin man steps through the daisy chain of bodies around the platform without so much as a sideways glance at its members (though several of the men behind him pause to squeeze the girl's asses or thump the boys' pricks with their billy-clubs) and mounts the platform with two stiff strides of his spindly legs, his hands thrust in his pockets as he comes to a halt before you. His eyes are the palest, coldest shade of blue imaginable, sunk deep into their shadowy sockets, his nose long and broken, his lips thin and dry, his complexion the color of an overcast sky.
"Put her down," he says to Li and Yarillo, pushing his fedora back past his forehead. "Put her down on the floor...."
The athletes comply immediately, leaving you half-sitting, half-lying on the platform's velvet, your head wobbling from side to side as you try to muster the strength to address the silent detective before you.
"Please..." you finally manage, "help me. These people ... they..."
The detective stands motionless above you, pulse visible in the side of his neck as he lets his gaze sweep upward from your belly to your lips.
"They ... forced me..." you gasp. "They...."
The detective draws in his breath, gives a little sigh. Past the brim of his fedora, a fly circles lazily in the air.
"Please..." you whisper. "Please..."
"Well," says the detective, suddenly swatting the fly between his hands and dropping it to your belly. "Still up to your old tricks, eh? Still think you can fool the world..."
The uniformed policemen form a circle around you, all staring down at you with narrowed steely eyes, hands stroking their billy-clubs.
"You thought you could fool us on the beach," continues the detective, leaning his elbow on the motionless wheel, "and you thought you could fool us in the curio shop ... and you did.... You did fool us.... But once Central got their hands on all the information, it was all over for you, sister ... all over...."
Hazy dream images flash through your mind at the rate of fifty a second, all as strange and confusing as any of your experiences of the morning. Yet ... it can't be.... It can't be ....
Struggling, you raise yourself on your elbows to stare dumbly into the detective's withered face.
"I think ... some mistake," you whisper. "Mistake ... these people..."
"I know, sister," says the detective. "I know all about it.... First it was the box.... They tricked you with the box. And then you weren't yourself at all. You owned a little curio shop and you didn't know anything about any criminal activity.... And now we've made a mistake, is that it, sister? Well, let me tell you something, sweetheart.... We're not as dumb as you seem to think we are. You're the one who made the mistake ... when you first got the notion that you could do whatever you pleased and get away with it.... But Johnny Law's no dope. You're going to pay for your mistake this time, sister ... and I mean in spades."
"My husband," you whisper, eyes darting from right to left as the circle of policemen closes slowly around you. "You want my husband.... He's the one you're after. I didn't do anything. They..."
"Sure, sure, your husband," laughs the detective, turning to his subordinates. "You hear that, boys? Her husband's the one we want!"
The policemen shake with laughter, slapping their nightsticks against their thighs.
"Well, let me tell you something, sister," says the detective, examining his fingernails very intently. "Your husband's the one who turned you in. Got disgusted with you, I guess. And I'll tell you straight out, I can see why he did it.... You dirty rotten bitch! How can you lie through your teeth like that? Turning in your own husband..."
There's a stumbling, jerking noise to the left, and suddenly Gamicle is on the stage, his fat fingers working busily at the sides of his satin jacket.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he huffs. "Take this terrible bitch away, for the love of God. You can't tell what sort of sinful women you're hiring nowadays. They come to you from the other side, looking for work or excitement.... You can't get a hold of their records.... Gentlemen, please, take her away. The show must go on.... Here, here, lieutenant...." He withdraws a fistful of orange tickets from his jacket pocket. "Bring the little lady, bring the kids. Everything free of charge ... completely free of charge.... Only take this terrible woman off the premises. She'll give my show a bad name...."
"O.K., Mr. Gamicle, will do," says the detective, pocketing the tickets. Then, turning back to his men: "Get her on her feet, boys. No need to be too gentle. She deserves whatever she gets...."
Filled with madness and fury, you thrash on the velvet floor like a child throwing a tantrum, long strands of your silken hair twisting across your eyes and mouth, your toes and calves knotting with tension.
"It's my husband!" you scream, pounding the floor. "My husband! You want my husband! He's the criminal! My husband, my husband, my husband...."
"Pacify her, boys," whispers the detective. "Give her a touch of the wood..."
Above you, a dozen billy-clubs are raised high in the air. Then, at the sound of a distant click, the entire arena is plunged into blackness. Shouts and screams fill the air, punctuated by the incessant bumping of bodies and squeaking of seats. Above the noise of the commotion, Gamicle's voice rises high and whining-the cry of an oversized mouth with a toothache: "Protection, lieutenant, protection! There's foul play afoot! Get the lights, somebody! Get the lights! Where is that light idiot anyway!"
"Get your hands on her, boys!" comes the voice of the detective. "Don't let her get away!"
A single pair of hands takes hold of you-one over your mouth, the other beneath your armpit-and drags you quickly to the right. There is a brief scraping sound beside you, then the thud of wood on velvet, and then you are pushed and pulled and jerked and shoved until finally the floor seems to disappear from beneath you and you feel yourself half-tumbling through space. The hands, hot and pressing on your waist and rib cage, lift you gently downward until your feet touch a stony substance, then let go of you, lingering on your hips and thighs before leaving.
"Wait here," comes a voice. "Don't move a muscle. I'll be back in a second...."
From above come shouts of: "I got her, chief! I got her! I got her tits in my hands!" "Let go of me, you idiot! Are you crazy! William, stop this man!" "Naah, I got her over here! This is her over here!" "Don't let her get away! Don't let her get away!" and finally, "Is there no sanity left in this world? Is there no such thing as an honest light technician?"
Then there is the thunk of wood from directly above, and all the shouts recede into a tiny muffled hum. Hands take hold of you again, warm and stroking on your arms and flanks, and you can feel a slope of naked skin pressing lightly against your belly.
"Don't worry. It's only me," comes the voice. "The girl with no hair on her head. My name's Calista.... Everything's all right now. They'll never find you.... We're underneath the circus...."
Trembling in the darkness, you let yourself collapse in the baldheaded girl's arms, your chest shivering to the touch of the golden coins that cover her nipples. She holds you gently to her body, as might a mother hold a daughter, her hands stroking your tangled sweat-dampened hair, her cheek cool and smooth against your ear, and like a child, you begin to cry against her shoulder, the sum of your misery trickling from your eyes to flow freely down her back.
"I don't understand," you moan, burying your face in the girl's neck. "I don't understand ... I just don't understand...."
"Shh, shh," whispers the bald girl, stroking the back of your head. "I know how you feel. They're all crazy here. But someday you'll look back on the whole thing and laugh ... really you will.... Everything will be fine soon ... you'll see.... You'll be with your husband again and everything. Come ... do you feel able to walk? There's a place we can go to where we can relax and have a bite to eat. Think you can make it?"
"Yes," you whisper after a time, straightening yourself and wiping a tear from your cheek. "Yes, I'm all right."
"Then come," says Calista. "Take my hand and let's go...."
Complying, you follow the girl through the darkness toward a tiny spec of light in the distance, your back shivering in the tunnel's coolness. Continually, she warns you of approaching obstacles such as cables and crates, continually whispers encouragement over her shoulder when you pause out of dizziness to lean against her back. Then, after a walk of some twenty or thirty minutes, during which you cut your feet often on slivers of glass and bits of metal, and bump your arms and hips against jutting sections of wall, the spec of light widens into a rectangle, then into a larger rectangle, and finally into an open doorway that leads outward onto a grimy alley filled with lopsided trash cans and broken crates and cartons. The bald girl stands framed in the doorway's pale sunlight for a moment-a strange child-creature with muscles moving sensuously in her broad lightly-tanned back, her high-cheekboned face filled with an ancient alien beauty, full lips curled back in a primitive semi-smile, huge brown eyes flashing with computer-like perception-and then, turning in your direction, points toward a gleaming chrome-and-leather motorcycle which leans against the alleyway's opposite wall.
"Have you ever ridden a motorcycle before?" she asks you.
"I can't go out there," you whisper. "The police ... They'll be looking for me everywhere...." The bald girl laughs, her nipple-coins twinkling in the sunlight, brown eyes narrowing into two tiny smiles.
"I promise they won't be looking for you," she laughs. "That's all over and done with for now. There won't be a cop in sight.... They're so stupid. We know all their movements, you see. Come on, the ride'll do you good...."
"No, really," you protest, resisting the girl's strong hands. "The police ... and anyway ... I'm naked...."
"So am I, silly," says Calista. "Nobody minds that around here. And I promise you there won't be any more of those dumb cops. Come on...."
Half-dragging you, she leads you out into the alleyway despite your protests, jumps onto her motorcycle, and kicks down on its starter until the engine catches with a frightening roar.
"Get on," she says, nudging you with her elbow. "Don't you want to get away from this nutty circus?"
Still reluctant, you climb onto the back of the motorcycle's double seat, your pussy clinging stickily to its leather, and stare at the busy street ahead as Calista revs up her machine until its fumes rise to fill the back of the narrow alleyway. Above you, huge loudspeakers call out the attractions of Gamicle's Circus and multicolored flags wave their monotonous message to the sky. The sun is warm on your back, the air humid and heavy around you, coating your skin with a thousand tiny droplets of perspiration. In the distance, cars and trucks and busses, all of low, futuristic design, whizz madly through the pink-tinted street, and strangely-clad pedestrians half-walk, half-dance down the promenades to the liquid tune of a jazz piece which seems to descend on the city from the clouds. Whenever the claws of madness and confusion begin to reach for you, whenever you begin to mistrust either your senses or the girl who sits before you, you focus all your thoughts on your husband, and on the crimes you've committed against him, and tell yourself a thousand times a minute that you'll soon be with him, that you'll be able to begin a lifetime of penance for your crimes, and that whatever horrors are foisted upon you in this city of madness are surely only punishments, delivered by a higher hand, for your wickedness and deceit.
"Hold on to me," calls Calista over the belching of the motorcycle's engine. "Hold on tight...."
Hesitantly, you place your hands around her smooth belly. She smiles at you briefly over her shoulder, then lifts her slender thighs to the motorcycle's shiny trunk and turns the accelerator all the way to the left. The motorcycle shoots forward at an incredible speed, leaving the alleyway behind in a blur of grimy grays and browns. Barely pausing at the alleyway's -edge, Calista rushes headlong into traffic, narrowly missing a low blue convertible as she guides her motorcycle sharply to the right and zooms up the street at no less than eighty miles per hour, her naked back and head gleaming like gold in the afternoon sunlight, tiny muscles rippling in her arms as she shifts from one gear tp the next.
The wind is like an ocean against your face, whipping your hair high in the air and cooling your skin to a tingling dryness. Everywhere, people turn to applaud you as you pass, some as naked as you are, others wearing ornaments and body paints similar to those of the people in the circus, still others dressed in wild prints and batiks, and a few wearing dark somber business clothes. Buildings pass like so many architect's dreams, each more thrilling than the next in its combination of geometric shapes, all made of sweeps of steel and glass, and decorated with brilliant mosaic tile at base and sides and roof. You find yourself lost in the visual wonders of the city, and in the physical sensations of speed and close companionship. The tint of the streets changes from pink to blue to yellow, and back to pink again. Playgrounds filled with naked children and huge sculptured animals pass at the rate of two or three a minute; parks and gardens-all filled with blossoming flowers and lovers who play with each other's bodies-dot the city at right and left, surrounding the gigantic buildings with trees and bushes and winding lanes. Fountains sparkle everywhere, some cut into the shapes of dancing children or bathing women, others molded into the-likenesses of huge erect ever-gushing penis-es, and here and there, men and women pause to remove their clothing and lay down their packages and run or jump or merely sit beneath the fountains' bubbling waters.
Calista's belly is warm against your hands; you can feel a kind of love flow from her body into yours, and from yours into hers. The wind seems to wash you clean of worry, to fill you with a sense of freedom and beauty and joy. All the sensations of your body-the feel of chrome against your calves, and leather against your crotch, and wind against your bouncing breasts, the feeling of speed and nakedness, the smell of flowers and motor oil, the sight of Calista's widespread rump, the small sound of music and the huge sound of the motorcycle's engine-are thrilling and delicious, making you feel as if you could ride with Calista forever, forever free of madness, and forever filled with love. Often, you press your cheek against the bald girl's back and laugh your freedom to the wind, and each time, Calista turns to glance at you over her shoulder, laughing and smiling with you, wiggling her rump against the motorcycle's seat to the sound of applause from the parks that line the street.
At the outskirts of the city, Calista turns her machine to the left and drives along an empty cliff road that overlooks the ocean, tiny droplets of sweat dripping from the light fuzz beneath her armpits as she follows the winding twists of the road and simultaneously gestures toward schools of dolphins who dive and emerge, dive and emerge among the distant white-capped waves. Wide-eyed, you stare continually out at the sea, your breasts pressed flat against
Calista's back as you study the glint of sunlight off the waves, your arms locked around her rib cage so that her breasts shake against your forearms. The salt air fills your nostrils and tickles your lungs with its freshness, making you feel still more beautiful and alive than did the shining city behind. Seagulls glide lazily overhead, as free and magnificent as any creatures who live, and watching them, you begin to fee yourself a bird-a beautiful carefree bird who flies with the wind and wanders naked through the world thinking neither of past nor future, but simply feeling the present.
After an endless, timeless ride along the -edge o the sea, Calista turns her machine down a narrow incline to the right and brakes to a halt beside a low cluster of small brightly-painted dome-type buildings-resort cabins from the looks of them-that stand on an expansive ridge of yellow concrete beside the beach. Quitting her motorcycle, she leads you beneath a high pink and orange sign that reads PLEASURE STOP, toward the first and largest of the buildings, a red-and-white-striped affair with an open archway at its front and two yellow, shaded porticoes at its sides.
"This'll just take a minute," she says, smiling. "Then you can rest or do whatever you like...."
Inside, the building is filled with plants and flowers and sunlight, its walls decorated with luminescent photographs of naked boys and girls running and jumping against a background of sand and sea. At its center, a thin raven-haired woman sits naked behind a circular plastic desk, her fingers tapping against her thighs in time to a wild guitar solo that plays from stereo speakers concealed among the plants.
"Yes?" she says as Calista approaches the desk. "Can I help you?" Her eyes are filled with a kind of liquid laziness, her full lips moving very slowly around her words.
"We'd like a cabin," says Calista, slipping her arm around your waist. "Something that looks out on the ocean..."
"Very well," says the woman, making some notation on a pink slip of paper before her. "You can have number five. Will that be a twenty-four-hour rental?"
"No, no," says Calista. "Just until tonight ... " "Food?" says the woman. "Of course," says Calista.
"Pills? Boys? Girls?" says the woman. "Anything special?"
"Probably not," says Calista. "I'll let you know."
"Very good," says the woman. "Enjoy yourselves. Call if there's anything you need...."
"We will," says Calista, leading you out of the building.
Outside, Calista ushers you past an oval pink-tinted swimming pool, empty save for a number of abandoned rubber floats, toward the farthest of the resort area's bubble-topped cabins. As far as you can make out, the entire area is deserted: there isn't a sign of life in any of the cabins that you pass. Everywhere, empty vinyl lounging chairs turn their cushions to the sun, discarded sunglasses and beach hats lie useless on circular plastic tables, open thick-striped umbrellas cast their shade on nothing but yellow concrete.
"Here we are," says Calista, leading you through the archway of cabin number five. "No worries ... no problems ... Nothing to do but relax and enjoy the rest of the day...."
The interior of the dome is more like an ingenious condensation of a palace than a simple road-stop cabin, its floor covered with a thick orange carpet, its far wall interrupted by a long iron-railed terrace which faces out on a magnificent sweep of beach and ocean and rock. The walls of the dome, like the walls in the main cabin, are covered with ceiling-high photographs of naked boys and girls, a miniature garden filled with lush exotic plants and flowers obscuring the feet of the photographs' subjects along the left side of the room. A three-step stairway at the right of the dome leads to a split-level sleeping area complete with black sleeping masks at the -edge of the blue foam bed and a selection of magazines-all with groups of naked men and women on their covers-spread out on the low plastic night-table. Below the sleeping area, an open shower-enclosure is sunk into the wall, two bright scarlet towels hanging from the black plastic rack at its side. Before the enclosure, and slightly to its left, a blue-bowled toilet stands completely exposed to view, with no sign of any sort of screen or door that might be used to conceal it while in use. At the sight of the toilet, Calista immediately removes the golden coins from her nipples and the golden strip from her slit, and squats down on the shining-clean bowl to let go a long hissing stream.
"What a relief!" she cries, rubbing her thighs. "I've had to go for hours...."
Somewhat embarrassed at watching Calista urinate (though secretly pleased at the coziness of it), you turn away from the shower area and seat yourself on a yellow body-contoured lounging chair facing out at the ocean. Then, as Calista wipes herself, a graceful suntanned boy, wearing only a small purple pouch to cover his genitals, enters the room and places a large tray of fruits and vegetables on a low table beside you, his buttocks rolling suggestively as he leaves the room without so much as acknowledging your presence.
"They have such pretty people out here at the beach," says Calista, flushing the toilet and seating herself beside you in a lime green lounging chair. "I always come out here when I have some time to myself. It makes me feel good just to watch these pretty boys...." She lifts a banana from the tray of fruit before her and tugs thoughtfully at its peel. "Eat," she urges you. "You must be hungry...."
Nodding your agreement, you lift a large peach from the fruit tray and take a hesitant bite from its center. At the first trickle of its juices down your throat, you begin to gobble the peach voraciously, filling your mouth with its succulent meat, and mashing its smooth fuzzy skin against your lips. Your hunger released (or is it merely that the act of eating removes your concentration from the thoughts and questions that push steadily in on your mind?), you stuff yourself with fruit after fruit, staining your breasts and belly with dripping juices, pausing only to wipe the back of your hand across your mouth. Calista smiles at you continuously while you eat, reaching across the table occasionally to smooth strands of your windblown hair away from your forehead, her high cheekbones moving sensuously as she nibbles on the tip of her banana.
Gorged to capacity, a heavy uneasiness takes hold of you, forcing you to shift your gaze continually from Calista to the ocean to your own dimpled knees. Question after inevitable question rushes in on you, gradually turning the warmth of the sunshine into an oven-like heat, the rustle of the breeze into a turbulent wind. But then, before you can speak your mind, Calista touches her hand to your shoulder and stares deeply into your eyes.
"Go ahead," she says, her lips moving slowly and gently, "ask me all your questions. I'll answer whatever I can."
"Where is my husband?" you blurt out immediately, feeling great guilt at enjoying yourself at this pleasant resort while your man is in danger. "When will I see him?"
"Your husband is in a village several miles from the city," says Calista. "You'll meet him tonight sometime, at a point halfway between city and village. It's all been arranged."
"I've felt so bad about him," you whisper, letting out your breath. "I've just felt so bad...."
"I know," says Calista, getting up from her chair and sitting at the -edge of yours like a nurse. "You made love to the pilot, didn't you?"
Stunned, you bring your hand to your lips.
"How did you know?" you ask in a breathless whisper. "How did you know about that?"
"Oh, don't feel bad about it," smiles Calista. "Everybody makes love to him. When he comes within a mile of a woman, she gets hot. That's because he's been here so long ... on the other side, I mean. You can see what the people are like here.... It gets to you after a while. It must be in the air or something, I don't know.... But speaking of the pilot, I want you to know that we were all very sorry about that whole business in the circus, but it was really the only way to work things out. You see, if the pilot hadn't turned you over to the ringmaster, he would have lost his job. Then he'd have no cover, you understand, and he'd be arrested on the spot.... So he had to do what he did...." She pauses, rubbing the skin of the banana against her cheek, then stands and begins to pace about the dome, rubbing her feet in the plush orange tufts of the carpet and touching the petals of flowers with her fingertips. "You should have seen what I had to do when I came here," she says after a time. "They put me up on ISLE OF LESBOS, and ever hour on the hour, I had to eat a meal of strawberries and oysters from this big black woman's pussy.... It was terrible.... I used to break my jaw trying to get to the back of her...."
"Why did you come here?" you ask, anxious not to hear any more about her ordeal, and at the same time, wanting to learn more about her. "Did you want to be of service to your country? You know..."
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no," laughs Calista. "I came here looking for my brother, just like you're looking for your husband, but I haven't had any intelligence about him for months now ... so in the meantime, I help out people like yourself. It's the least I can do, really ... I mean, if our government was willing to help me, I should be willing to help other people, shouldn't I? And really ... I've quite gotten used to it here. It's almost ... pleasant ... sometimes ... except for the police..."
"Oh, those awful, awful men!" you cry, remembering the look of the skeletal detective. "Oh, how awful they were!"
"Yes," nods Calista, tracing the outline of a naked boy in one of the luminescent photographs, "they are a disgusting bunch. But we had to wait till they got there, you see ... to take the heat off your husband.... We phoned them anonymously with a silly fish story about how the criminal was really a woman disguised as a man. They're so stupid.... They'll believe anything. So once they-checked it out at the circus-once they decided the story was true-we knew your husband would be safe for a while."
"Well, thank God for that, anyway," you whisper, trying rather unsuccessfully to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together, but anxious not to offend Calista by questioning her too deeply. "But just tell me one more thing," you say finally, staring at the bald girl's little buttocks as she pads around the room. "You say I'll see my husband tonight?"
"I didn't say you'd see him," says Calista. "I said you'd meet him. It may be dark or something ... I don't know." She breaks into a laugh at the end of her sentence, greatly pleased at her childish joke.
"Anyway," you say, laughing nervously with her. "How am I to meet him. I mean..."
"Three men will come for you," says Calista, sobering. "Our three top agents ... They'll drive you straight to the meeting place. It's all been arranged. It's all very simple."
"Well then," you murmur after a time. "I suppose there's nothing to do now but wait."
You sit perfectly still for a moment, staring vaguely out at the ocean, Calista's naked thighs passing lazily back and forth across your field of vision, then, still somewhat dazed by Calista's information, and rather desperate as to how you will spend the time between now and the hour of your departure, you rise slowly to your feet and cross the room to the iron-railed terrace, where you stand for yet another moment staring out at the endless stretches of sand and the jutting cliffs at either side of you.
"I think I'll go for a little walk," you announce to Calista. "I have to be by myself, I think."
The bald girl steps close to you and plants a tender kiss on your forehead, then gives you a smarting slap on the rump.
"Go," she says good-naturedly. "Have a good time. And don't worry about anything. It's all been arranged."
Blushing from Calista's tap (How strange her physical expressions of affection make you feel!), you give her a shy, thankful smile, and step quickly down the terrace's concrete stairway into the burning white sand below, your breasts and buttocks bouncing crazily as you give a sudden running leap in the air in an attempt at clearing your head of its confusion. Then, slowing your pace, you walk proudly through the ocean's thick salt breeze, tossing your silky mane continually over your shoulders and kicking up sheets of sand with every step. Dimly, you find yourself wondering if Calista is watching you from the terrace, smiling at your exuberance. Can it be that you're putting on a show for her? Is that why your stride is so electric and exaggerated, your buttocks thrust so magnificently outward, your head held so erect? And if so, is the show put on only to assuage her worries over you ... or to convince her that your beauty-your strength and carefreeness is equal to hers, that you are truly fit to be her friend? Ah ... but it doesn't matter. You have only to feel the sun on your breasts and belly to know that none of it matters.
Accustomed to your nakedness by this time, taking pleasure in the breeze that wafts between your legs to tickle the short hairs of your crotch, you stride steadily downward toward the ocean, hypnotized by the rhythms of your body-the bouncing of your ass and the straining of your muscles-and by the glittering dance of sunlight on the waves ahead. The sand dunes are like the stark curves and contours of a young man's body, the breeze like a ghost-flow of evaporated semen. Half-believing in your feigned lightheartedness, you try to picture what the ocean would be like made of semen instead of water, and laughing to yourself, decide that it would be pleasant to swim in such an ocean. Curiously, you begin to envision a world in which all the men would be forced to sit at the -edge of the sea in some distant land and masturbate continually in order to keep the sea filled with semen. All the women would live on the opposite shore, enjoying each other's company to the fullest, and would have only to bathe in the ocean in order to impregnate themselves. All male children, of course, would be sent at birth to the land of the men, and taught at the earliest age possible how to play with themselves. It would be a strange world without men, but is it any stranger that in all your married years, your husband had never brought you the feeling of comradeship that the baldheaded Calista has given you in only a matter of hours?
Feeling vaguely guilty at this last thought, and at your leisure, and still at your indiscretion of the morning (can it be true that the pilot's nearness caused your heat?), you walk lazily along the shore, letting your feet sink slowly into the mud, and the waves lick gently at your heels. Then, cutting an erratic path between ocean and beach-now walking calf-deep, now thigh-or waist-deep in water, now on sand, and now on mud-you study the patterns of shells and stones both underwater and on the shore, stooping occasionally to lift a particularly interesting stone or shell in your hand, only to drop it several minutes later when another curiosity comes into view. Feeling now the warmth of the sun, now the crystal iciness of the water, now the water up to your bush and the sun all down your back, you pick up shell after oddly-colored shell and stone after smooth-worn stone, occasionally collecting them in both hands until they become a burden, occasionally rubbing them against your nipples or navel to experience their sun-warmed or wave-cooled textures, pausing at fairly regular intervals to avoid the claws of this or that crab, or to study the flickering movements of a school of silvery fish. You feel not so much the freedom of joy which you felt on the back of Calista's motorcycle (after the ordeal of the wheel, almost anything would seem joyous), as the freedom of perpetual interest in the mass of timeless nature that surrounds you-a freedom which merely relieves your fear and tension, as did the meal of fruit in the cabin. Yet so great is your absorption in the seascape, that even when, after walking for a distance of perhaps a mile or two along the beach, you spot a group of naked boys sunning themselves upon a rock, you feel no anxiety whatsoever in their presence, and when one of them spots you, and the entire group comes running to where you stand, each one shaking his penis and running his fingers suggestively over his belly, calling, "Like to fuck, lady? like to fuck?" you not only are not afraid of them, but are actually pleased by their attention, and pause for a moment to consider their proposition, for they surely have the most beautiful male bodies you have ever seen. Of course, it is the thought of your husband which prevents you from spreading yourself in the sand before them, but too, you think briefly of Calista before refusing their invitation. Strangely, you find yourself thinking that to fuck these pretty brown-skinned boys would in some way be a violation of your friendship with the baldheaded girl, and so, shaking your head politely, you continue down the beach, leaving the boys to return to their sunning amidst a chorus of innocent praise for your rump and thighs and bush.
Oddly, the farther you walk from the cabin-dome, the more Calista's answers to your questions cease to satisfy you, the less the beach is able to hold your interest. Guiltily, you find yourself questioning the accuracy of certain of Calista's replies, and-barely able to admit it to yourself-the truthfulness of others. In the first place, how is it possible that the story about the pilot is true? How can it be that a man can generate sexuality from a distance? Though, to be fair, you did feel a kind of magnetism in his presence (unless this was merely the effect of your own desire) and really, how else would Calista have guessed about the affair? Unless, of course, she spoke to the pilot-over a radio perhaps-while you were still on the roof with Gamicle. Can it be, as you suspected earlier in a moment of extreme paranoia, that Calista and the pilot are truly in league against you? But why? For what?
And in the second place, what is the significance of the business with the police? Why did Calista finger you as a criminal? Even if it was truly to help your husband, why yow? Why couldn't she have picked someone else? An enemy woman perhaps ... as the bait? Unless the police can tell their own people from yours ... unless there's some subtle difference between yourself and the enemy women? But even so, can the police really have been so stupid as to believe that you could disguise yourself as your husband? Really, that's tantamount to confusing a woman with a man. And yet, the detective seemed so sure that you were the criminal ... seemed almost to know you. Can the police be so stupid?
Suddenly, as you remember the final scene in Gamicle's Circus, you are shaken by an inner echo which calls, "It's my husband! My husband! It's my husband you want!" and you sink wearily down atop a sand dune looking out toward the sea, and bury your face miserably in your hands. How could you have betrayed him like that? It was as if, had he been before you, you would have literally sacrificed him to save yourself. It was the same as sacrificing him. You yourself branded him a criminal at that moment.
You accepted the enemy's verdict of him, even if only to preserve your own sanity, and in so doing, betrayed him as would the lowest coward that crawls along the face of the earth. And truthfully, did you not resent him at that moment, and even before, on the wheel? Did you not see him, for even the smallest of seconds, as the entire cause of your predicament? Don't you, even now, despite all your guilt and shame, feel a tinge of resentment toward him?
But enough of that, for soon you'll spend a lifetime of love making it all up to him. Calista is the problem at hand, and the only essential question is as to whether or not she can be trusted. On the one hand, she seems incredibly kind and gentle, and certainly, she was courageous enough to risk her own neck to rescue you from Gamicle's Circus. Yet on the other hand, she seemed so unconcerned when speaking of her missing brother, as if hardly to care about him at all. But really, can you afford not to trust her? And other than for her choice of tone in speaking of her brother, which may well have been only a kind of necessary stoicism, has she done anything to justify your suspiciousness? How can you be so critical of someone who's befriended you? What sort of terrible woman are you, to resent your husband and mistrust your friends? Someone should give you a good beating-just to make you thankful of all the good things you've got.
As you sit on the beach, lost in self-denigration, reviling yourself with name after filthy name, the sand turns gradually cool beneath your rump, and the sun becomes a shimmering globe of deep orange-red suspended a quarter of an inch above the distant line of the horizon. Suddenly filled with anxiety over missing your rendezvous, you jump to your feet, brush some grains of sand from your crotch-hairs and from between the cheeks of your ass, and half-run down the beach in the direction of the resort domes, finding yourself continually surprised at the vast distance you've covered in your walk, and not a little disappointed at the absence of the beautiful naked boys who called to you earlier.
As the sun all but disappears behind the sea, the beach seems not an interesting place, but a frightening one. The waves are powerful and demonic as they rush toward the shore, their deafening crash against the rocks seeming to warn of a distant tempest. The very color of the sea is changed from its former crystal blue to a thick greenish-black, the murkiness of the waters suggesting the presence of all sorts of slimy lurking creatures beneath. The wind is strong and slicing as it cuts across your breasts and belly, rustling the curls of your pussy now to the left, now to the right. The tide rolls in and in and in, frightening you with the thought of being caught between ocean and cliffs, and drowning without ever having a chance to redeem yourself. The color of the sky begins to seem unreal-a dark electric blue which casts the cliffs in an equally unreal greenish reddish beige, and makes them seem oddly one-dimensional.
On and on you walk, moving ever closer to the cliffs, panting from lack of breath, jerking nervously to the right with each sudden crash of the waves, as if expecting some monstrous tidal wave to rise any minute from the depths to wash you utterly from the face of the earth. Twice, you are seized by the fear that you are lost, though obviously, since your walk was in a single direction, this cannot be the case. Then, when the sun has faded totally from view, and the beach is lit by only the faintest purple afterglow of twilight, when your body is covered from head to foot with goose bumps, and your nipples are so erect as to send short jabbing pains through your breasts, when you have barely six feet of room between cliffs and ocean and are forced to walk through pools of icy water and over sharp wet rocks, you spot the twinkling yellow lights of the resort domes in the distance, and mustering all your strength, break into a frantic run.
As you reach the dome that Calista has rented, the waves are already licking at its concrete foundation. Filled with love for your friend, associating her in some way with your salvation, you run up the flight of steps to the terrace, slide open the glass door, and step quickly into the cabin's main area, your feet burrowing deep in the tufts of the warm orange rug. Calista is nowhere in sight. It occurs to you instantly that she's deserted you, or worse, that you've missed your rendezvous. Then, as your eyes dart desperately around the room, a soft moan from the sleeping alcove suddenly draws your attention, and imagining all sorts of hideous complications, you bolt forward for the alcove's stairway, knocking Calista's half-eaten banana from its table as you run.
Calista lies alone atop the alcove's blue foam bed, completely naked as before, her legs spread wide apart, two fingers buried in her pussy, a picture magazine of naked men and women open at her chest. She stares moist-eyed at you as you enter the room, neither masturbating nor removing her fingers from her cunt, seeming to want you to speak first.
"Oh, I was so frightened!" you cry, falling to your knees beside the bed. "I was so frightened. First I was on the beach and it got dark before I thought it would and the tide was coming up and ... Oh, it was terrible! Then I came in and I didn't see you. I didn't know what had happened ... and then I heard you moan...."
With her free hand, the bald girl grasps you firmly by the back of your neck and gives you a powerful massage, her fingertips digging deep into the muscles of your shoulders and back. You stare gratefully up at her as would a puppy dog, basking in the glow of her affection. Yellow fluorescent light gleaming off her naked skull, her lips parted to reveal the white of teeth and a glimmer of her tongue's moisture, her nostrils widely flared, she seems a strange blend of primitive and future woman, a strange mute creature who communicates her wants and needs through her fingers and eyes, and masturbates publicly without the slightest trace of shame.
"Have you ever made love to a woman?" asks Calista in a whisper.
You lower your eyes at the inevitable question, a kind of wind rushing through your head. You knew it would come to this. Somewhere inside you, you knew.
"No," you whisper hoarsely, barely able to hear the reply as you speak it.
"I want to make love to you," whispers Calista in a voice breathless with urgency. "I want to do it with you very much."
Completely choked with emotion, and half-paralyzed by self-consciousness, you merely lay your head down on the side of the bed for answer, and try to picture what it would be like to make love to a female-especially to so splendid a female as Calista.
"Come, lie down with me," says Calista, pulling you up on the bed with both her hands, the fingers of her left hand moist and sticky, filling your nostrils with the acid smell of her pussy.
Lying beside her, her arm beneath your neck, her thigh pressed full against yours, you feel a maddening warmth rush over you, making your hands start to tremble and your mouth turn utterly dry. Afraid to look at the girl, afraid that you may faint at any minute with nervous excitement, you keep your eyes tightly closed, your hands folded across your belly. Is she looking at you? Is she about to touch you in some forbidden place?
"You know," whispers Calista very softly, "when you went away before, I thought I might never see you again. I thought you might get to mistrust me and run away. It could've happened. And all I could think of was that I wanted to make love to you, because then we'd be friends forever. And now, you know, I never will see you again ... When the agents come to take you to your husband, it'll be the last I ever see of you ... I love you, you know. It'll be sad to see you go...."
"I love you," you whisper, filled with the bittersweet beauty of Calista's words. "I love you so much."
Trembling, you open your eyes and lose yourself in the waves of love that radiate from Calista's shining face. Briefly, the bald girl squeezes you in her arms and gives you a fierce kiss on the lips, then lets go of you, reaches over to the plastic night-table, and withdraws a yellow pill from a small glass bottle that stands beside the picture magazines.
"Here," she says, handing you the pill. "Swallow this. It'll relax you. I don't want you to be all nervous and shaking."
Taking the pill in your hand, you hesitate before swallowing it, frightened of introducing some unknown substance to your body.
"You don't trust me, do you?" says Calista, blushing crimson and turning away from you in embarrassment.
"I trust you," you whisper, swallowing the pill. "See? I trust you."
"I love you!" cries Calista, taking you in her arms. "You're so beautiful. I love you."
Her hands wander down from your buttocks to squeeze and knead your buttocks and flanks. Turning, she rolls half on top of you, her thigh pinning your legs, her breasts pushing against your rib cage, nipples gliding along your flesh. You close your eyes again, trying to gauge the effects of the pill you've swallowed, but as you do, Calista presses her mouth a second time to yours, and thrusts her long slippery tongue deftly between your teeth to probe deep into your mouth and throat. Gasping with the suddenness of her approach, you feel your tongue rubbing wildly against hers, your lips turning moist and pliant against her mouth. Mashing her face against yours, Calista sucks your tongue from your mouth into hers, nibbles at it with her teeth, tickles at its underside with her lower lip. Her left hand moves smoothly over your thighs and belly, opening your legs, teasing your pussy with just the lightest finger-touches, her right hand curling under your back and through your downy armpit to manipulate the goose-bumped globe of your right breast. Magically, your hands go upward to her gleaming pate, your fingers exploring the smooth bony ridges of her skull as your thumbs turn downward to tickle the lobes of her small fragile ears. Somewhere inside you, a soft tingling begins, spreading gradually from your center to make each motion of your arms and hands a long sensuous journey. Calista's touches become unbearably delicious and prolonged. You feel each glide of her fingers as a probe toward your pussy: the closer the fingers get to your cunt, the more you tingle with anticipation, the farther they get, the more you pulse with desire. You begin to roll your body beneath her, trying to direct her toward your cunt with the movements of your belly and thighs, and soon it begins to seem that your pussy itself is directing her to touch it, that your pussy is controlling every movement of your limbs. You begin to see your pussy as an airport-as a hangar-and Calista's hand as a beautiful multi-winged plane.
Deep in your belly, you can feel the walls of your hole growing open and wet. Above you, you can see the stars through the cabin's clear plastic dome, each pinpoint of light seeming to mirror the pleasure points of your body. The yellow fluorescent lights at the sides of the dome seem to throb with the flow of your desire, picture magazines turning into a wash of slick shiny flesh at the corner of your eye. You see yourself traveling through worlds of beauty under the manipulations of Calista's hands and mouth, and dimly, you find yourself wondering if it is the effect of the drug which makes you feel such love and ease, or purely the effect of your own mounting heat. Can a drug make you feel like this?
Suddenly, Calista's hand is on your pussy, squeezing and opening it. Her thigh rubs up and down on your legs, spreading them wider and wider, filling your loins with sensation. Her mouth slips down from your lips to fasten on the nipple of your left breast, to nibble it and suck it deep into her mouth. Her bush comes alive against your thigh, rubbing and rolling against it, smearing it with juice and tickling hairs, providing it with a feel of ultimate smoothness such as only your fingers have known before. You feel yourself poked and prodded toward action, and like a hesitant child, you touch your fingertips to the girl's small hard-nippled breasts, stroking both of them lavishly before moving your hand downward over her rib cage and belly to the hairy treasure beneath. Does her pussy force your hand to its lips? Are the waves of delirious sexual energy which fill the room truly emanating from the bald girl's cunt? Or is this too the effect of the drug? Where does the drug leave off, and you begin?
like a vise, your hand closes over Calista's cunt, palm crushing its springy hairs, middle finger slipping easily into its moist pink valley. Calista opens her legs wide, bracing her left foot on the inside of her right knee, thrusting her belly out at you as if to say, "Here! See how beautiful it is!" You can feel her fingers exploring the deep furrow of your buttocks, her nipples just barely grazing the side of your breast. Slowly, you peel back the lips of her pussy, feeling each squishy parting of her flesh as the unfolding of a universe. Her face explodes with color and texture beside you. Now she is the color white of the stars, now the yellow of the lights, now the blue of the soft foam bed, now all the colors of the spectrum, each blending with the next, revolving around her nose and eyes and ears. A droplet of moisture above her lip is filled with a thousand squirming eyes, each staring downward at your breasts and belly, and pulsing with voyeuristic excitement.
Calista's fingers slide upward from your rump, circling the bud of your ass-hole before advancing to the mouth of your pussy. Her index and ring fingers stretching wide the lips of your cunt, she slips her middle finger slowly into your hole, teasing it and tickling it as only a woman could know how. As if by magnetism, you feel your fingers drawn to her opening, and gasping with the movements of her hand, you enter her with both your index and middle fingers, twisting her pussy exactly as you would twist your own. It's as if Calista is a part of you, and you a part of her-as if there are two of you and two of her, one of your selves masturbating the other, and one of her selves doing the same. Her breasts and your breasts roll and bounce together, the nipples interconnected. Her belly is your belly and your belly is hers, and at the center of everything, there is the all-important, all-consuming cunt-the single burning cunt. The concept of prick is completely foreign to you. There are only women in the world, only pussies. There is only woman, only cunt....
Calista twists herself around and slides down your body, her lips slipping from your navel to your thighs, her hands reaching behind you to squeeze the melons of your ass. Her woolly cunt is in your face now, calling silently for your mouth, opening and closing to flaunt its scarlet beauty. Her head is between your legs, her breasts pressing hard against your belly. Moaning, you feel the touch of her tongue to your clitoris, and helplessly, you plunge your face into her glistening bush, your hands holding fast to her slender hips. Love explodes in your chest at the feel of her slit. You lap hungrily at her foamy meat-at your own delicious meat-reveling in the taste of your kind, and in the intricacy of the vagina, never before seen or felt so closely.
Calista flicks her tongue deep inside your hole, whipping its membrane to a creamy froth as she slips her hand between your legs, wets her finger in the back of your cunt, and slides it quickly to the rim of your anus. As she penetrates your rear opening, you can feel your pussy begin to shudder around her tongue, sucking it deeper and deeper with each contraction of your ass-hole's sphincter muscle. You begin to suck wildly on her clitoris, marveling at its sculptured grace and simplicity, your hands, under Calista's unspoken direction, traveling slowly to the moons of her rump, fingers seeking her ass-hole, palms caressing her cheeks. like a flower, her ass-hole opens to you, accepting your little finger with three quick convulsions of its sticky-smooth walls. The intimacy of this double penetration brings the tears to your eyes, and for the second time today, you see yourself as a goddess of love and beauty and emotion, only this time, as a dual goddess, composed half of yourself and half of Calista, each of you dependent, and loving your dependence, on the other. The entire cosmos becomes feminine, composed of female tongues and fingers wandering in tender female openings, smooth female breasts pressing into soft female bellies, hairless female buttocks grinding beneath deft female hands. There is none of the hardness of the male, none of the bluntness of the prick, none of the heavy hairiness of the masculine chest and arms and thighs, none of the inanity of bloated thudding testicles. What hardness there is, is the elegant hardness of the female, the tautness of nipples and clitoris, the studied pressure of self-knowing mouths and tongues. The female is the animal of the future, devoid of the brutality of the male animal, given to a mystic religious sexuality far too simple and elaborate for the male to ever comprehend.... The ... woman ... is ... coming.... The ... woman ... is ... coming...
You feel your body molded to the contours of the bald girl, your finger and tongue working in flawless coordination within her exquisite body. Her head rolls sleek and naked in perfect rhythm between your thighs. Moaning into her cunt, you feel her orgasm travel upward from her belly to crackle through her mouth into your pussy, pushing your own orgasm up through your throat to fill her hole with its quivering vibrations, both your orgasms merging into one, shooting in a wild circle from pussy to mouth to pussy to mouth. You feel yourself jerking in mid-air with climax after climax, dying and being reborn with each throb of the bald girl's body, filling the universe with the beauty and magnificence of your...
"Think we can borrow her for a minute?" says a voice.
Instantly, the mouth is gone from your pussy, the hands from your rump. You are rolled brusquely onto your back, pulled from the body of your lover. You feel the cosmos splitting apart, your body filled with a cold dry vacuum. Three men are staring down at you, each dressed in a slick black raincoat, each smiling as he examines your nakedness with hands and eyes.
"This one'll be a pleasure," says the tallest of the men-a square-faced blonde with glinting gray eyes and thick rubbery lips. "Remember that last one? I don't know how in hell we managed it. Boy!"
The man closest him-a small brown-haired man with a faded purple scar beneath his left eye-nods and laughs his agreement, rubbing the hairy back of his right hand against his pug nose as he tickles the lips of your pussy with his left. The third member of the party-a poetic-looking youth with a handsome smooth-featured face and slender delicate hands ignores his comrades after giving your breasts an exploratory feel, and busies himself with setting the dials of an ornate leather-cased camera which hangs from his neck by a long brown strap.
"Is it all right if I watch?" says Calista, rising from the bed.
"Sure," says the blonde man, scratching the lobe of his ear. "You can even help us out."
You find yourself unable to comprehend what is happening to you, unable even to understand where and precisely who you are. You know only that everything is different than it was, and that some sort of terrible danger is imminent, but when you try to move your limbs-to avoid the hands that probe your most private places-you find that your body responds very poorly to your brain's commands, your arms moving as if through thick paste, your legs sinking to the bed's soft foam as soon as you try to lift them. Faces swim and swirl about you, near and yet distant, real and yet dream-like. You can't remember why it is that you have such difficulty with movement and perception, though gradually it becomes apparent to you that your situation has been meticulously planned beforehand, that everyone in the room except you knows exactly what is happening and what will happen next. Deep, deep within you, you can understand that you've been betrayed, and while you see Calista as the instrument of your betrayal, you can also see your husband, through the haze of your narcosis, at the root of it. He is a male, and these are males that manhandle you. It was for him that you came to this perilous place.
"Let's take her out by the pool, O.K.? " says the poetic-looking man, his head filling the room. "I'm getting tired of all this indoor crap. All looks the same...."
"All right ... whatever you say," says the blonde man.
Hands lift you in the air, grabbing at your breasts, buttocks, and thighs, pressing all your open nakedness against the cool dark fabric of the raincoats. Are you in Gamicle's Circus again? Are these men going to put you back on the wheel? Or are they detectives, preparing to take you outside to murder you? Or are they henchmen of your husband's, acting under his instructions to do away with you?
Through the jangled blur of motion that is the inside of the resort dome, the face of Calista, your lover, stands out against all the others. Her eyes are completely cold and expressionless, her lips still covered with your pussy's dew. She didn't love you. She never loved you. She tricked you, lied to you, betrayed you. She's going to sell you as the pilot sold you. She loves the pilot. She loves your husband. She's made a fool out of you. She's laughing at you. Everyone's laughing at you ... laughing and laughing ... at you ... at you ... at you....
"Quiet, you!" comes a voice, and a hand slaps you hard across the bottom.
"I'm sorry," comes the voice of Calista, only mildly contrite. "I'm really sorry ... but it had to be this way. You'll see. Everything I told you was true. I promise you it was all true...."
"Oh, you bitch," you hear yourself moan. "Oh, you rotten rotten bitch...."
"Well they have to have evidence!" screams Calista as you are dragged out of the cabin. "They have to have evidence! How are they going to have a trial if they don't have any evidence? You want to be with your husband, don't you?"
Outside, the entire resort area is lit by blinding yellow arc lights recessed into the sides of the pleasure domes. A crowd of perhaps fifty naked boys and girls is held back from the side of the pink-tinted pool by a cordon of uniformed policemen, one of whom shouts continually through a large orange megaphone: "Stand back, folks! This is official police business. Stand back, folks!.... "
like a bundle of hay, you are dropped to the ground beside the swimming pool, cool concrete pavement scratching at your belly and breasts, strands of your hair twisting across your mouth and eyes. Suddenly, the blonde man and the scar-faced man drop their raincoats to the ground and stand naked before you, their plump semi-erections waving in the air. Then, as the photographer steps several paces backward, the scar-faced man pulls you roughly to hands and knees, rubs the head of his organ in your drying crotch, and with one violent burst, enters you to the balls, his round little belly pressing tightly against your buttocks. Feeling yourself turn sick and faint and dizzy all at once, you struggle desperately to pull away from the man, but find that he holds you fast at the hips, and that movement, even were it not for the man's hard grip, is all but impossible. Then, trying to scream for help, you find your vocal abilities also greatly diminished, possibly as a result of your outburst at Calista: only the tiniest little hissing sound issues from your lips, making you feel like some sort of helpless, gurgling infant lost in a world of adults.
Suddenly, the blonde man's hands are on your nose and chin, prying wide your jaw. With a sudden upward lurch of his thighs, he pops his blue-veined prick expertly into your mouth, dangling it down toward the back of your throat as he caresses your shoulders with the insides of his knees and holds your hands motionless beneath his feet. The photographer walks around and around the scene, snapping flash-lit photographs from every conceivable angle, pausing only to push strands of your hair away from your face or to position either of your captors in more photogenic attitudes. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see the eager group of spectators at the other side of the pool, all chattering excitedly among themselves, pushing continually forward on the battery of police, seeming the sort of crowd that gathers around some spectacular car crash or similar disaster, their quick darting eyes taking in every detail of your helpless debasement. To your right, Calista stands as still as a statue, her skull gleaming golden beneath the arc lights, pink reflections of the pool's calm waters dancing on her legs. Why did she do it?
"O.K., " says the photographer, turning a dial on his camera. "I got plenty of this one. Try something else. Get her up the ass or something."
Laughing, the scar-faced man pulls his organ out of your pussy, spreads the cheeks of your ass, and driving hard, enters your ass-hole, the ridge of his prick splitting open your membrane as he buries himself deep in your intestines. Then, holding you around the stomach, he lifts you easily into the air, nudging your legs apart with his knees to facilitate the entrance of his comrade into your pussy. Squashed between the two men, you can feel their pricks rubbing together within you, pinching the thin membrane between pussy and anus as the men twist and turn for better leverage. You see their hands as the feeler of insects, their faces as masks worn in a death ritual. Their breath, hot and dry on your neck and chest, is like a wind of fire, turning your body into a barren desert.
"Hey, baldy," calls the photographer to Calista. "Why don't you get in on the action there? Give it a little verisimilitude, you know what I mean?"
"All right," says Calista. "What do you want me to do?"
"Oh, lick her crotch or something," says the photographer. "Do whatever you want...."
Dutifully, Calista kneels between your legs and begins lapping back and forth between your pussy and ass-hole, letting her tongue linger on each of the pricks that pierces you. Again the photographer struts around and around the scene, now bending for a low-angle shot, now standing on tiptoe for a high one. The crowd becomes greatly animated at this new humiliation, many of the younger boys and girls in the group surging forward to have a closer look. "Please step back, folks!" shouts the policeman through his megaphone. "Nothing going on here of interest to the citizenry. This is official police business...." Even over the hollow drone of the megaphone, you can hear the resort's raven-haired proprietress whining, "Can't you guys do your nonsense someplace else for a change? I got a place to run here, don't you know that? For crying out loud, every other day you guys are here with some new nuttiness.... How'm I supposed to make a living, answer me that, will you?" All around her, little children peer at you in mute fascination through the legs of the policemen who hold back the crowd, some holding tightly to the hands of others as they watch you, others turning continually from the scene of your rape to cautiously examine their own tiny genitals.
"O.K., " says the photographer, winding the film of his camera. "I got plenty of that one. Let's just try one more, O.K.? Something simple, you know what I mean?"
Again, you are dropped to the floor, this time flat on your back. The two men mill around you for a time, as if trying to decide what to do with you, then fall on top of you all at once, the blonde man kneeling between your legs and slipping his prick once again into your pussy, the scar-faced man squatting over your belly and rubbing his organ in the valley of your breasts. Then, at the photographer's urging, Calista straddles your face with her thighs, and accepting the head of the scar-faced man's prick in her ass-hole, mashes her burning pussy against your lips. Smothered and crushed beneath the threesome, you feel yourself turning into a lump of inanimate meat, your flesh seeming to melt under the combined heat of your captors. There is no inch of sanity left through which you can escape the madness of this enemy land. There are no friends or officials to whom you might turn for help. There is no word spoken in this country which can even half be believed ... no law written which can keep you from the animals who run amok here. Your breasts are being mauled by this scar-faced man, your pussy torn apart by his comrade, your lips mangled by a girl who spoke to you of love and listened close when you spoke of the same ... and no one-neither police nor citizens will lift a finger on your behalf.
"O.K., beautiful," calls the photographer. "Let's get going!"
"Wait a minute!" pants the scar-faced man as
Calista and the blonde man quit your body. "Just ... give ... me ... a ... second...."
"Come on!" says the photographer. "We're running behind schedule."
"No! Wait ... wait!..." comes the hoarse reply.
Wrapping your breasts painfully around his prick, the scar-faced man begins to use you with incredible rapidity, his balls rolling up and down the center of your rib cage as his prick jabs now into your neck, now into your chin, smearing you with the clear sticky fluid that drips from its eye. Suddenly, he gives a tremendous bellow and splatters your nose and mouth and cheeks with his semen, the head of his prick twitching and spitting in the air for a good thirty seconds before drooping against your chest.
"Come on," says the photographer as the scar-faced man wipes his prick off on your lips. "We're late, I keep telling you. Will you come on?"
"Don't I get a shot?" asks the blonde man, rubbing your slit with his toe. "Only he gets to come in her? I don't count?"
"Oh, please!" shouts the photographer. "You'll get her in the car, all right? You know what happens if we don't get there on time."
"O.K., O.K., " says the blonde man. "Let's go then. I'm not the one that held us up."
Pulling you to your feet and tossing you over his shoulder, the blonde man carries you quickly past the swimming pool to a shining white limousine parked beside Calista's motorcycle at the resort area's entrance. In the distance, the people at the side of the pool seem like so many extras in a science-fiction movie, the resort domes and pieces of poolside paraphernalia like so many weightless props. To the right of the scene, Calista stands by herself against a glaze of arc lights. She seems a lonely, fragile creature as she stands open-legged at the poolside-her head so terribly bare, her body so slender-and through layers of pain and drug-induced drowsiness, you can almost feel a kind of pity for her as you recall the pleasant moments spent in her company, riding on the back of her motorcycle, lying beside her in bed.
"Goodbye!" she calls as you are dragged out of sight behind the limousine. "Remember me! You'll see I didn't lie!"
Then the door of the car is opened and you are thrown into the back seat between the blonde man and the scar-faced man, and the whole of your experience at the resort area-and a good deal of the rest of the day-is blotted out by the roar of the limousine's engine as the photographer slides into the front seat, starts the car, and speeds crazily into the night.
Instantly, the blonde-haired man is on top of you, pushing your knees back to your breasts as he screws his organ deep into your tortured hole, his gray eyes gleaming in the darkness as he reaches beneath you to squeeze the melons of your ass. Your head on the lap of the scar-faced man, his prick rising upward through your hair, you feel yourself jolted incessantly against the door handle as the blonde man plows into you, your forehead scratched by its cold shiny metal. Above you, shadows stretch and flicker across the roof of the limousine, suggesting the forms of insects grown out of proportion and demons from the darker corners of your mind. Numb with pain and fatigue, you barely notice the friction of the prick within you, and even when the blonde man spills his burning seed into your belly and turns you over to the scar-faced man, you are barely aware of any disturbance, of any change in your physical state. One after the other, the two men possess you, now stretching you on your belly to use your ass-hole, now propping you on your knees or rolling you onto your back to use your pussy, while in the front seat of the car, the poetic-looking photographer smokes cigarette after cigarette, and listens to a lyrical jazz piece on the limousine's radio. Outside, scenery passes in a blur of jagged motion, cliffs melting into trees, and trees into fields as the car zips steadily along, while inside, the limousine fills with the smells of semen and vaginal foam, which mix with the odor of the car's leather seats and the acrid stench of the photographer's cigarettes to produce a stifling aroma of decadence and depravity.
Then, after a journey of perhaps an hour and a half, when the men in the back seat have possessed you at least a half dozen times between them, and when your voluntary control of your body has returned to such a point that you are now able to cringe with pain and terror and nausea, the limousine rolls over a creaking wooden bridge into the mouth of a great dark cavern, and after creeping along the cavern's floor for perhaps a quarter of a mile, comes to an elaborately-structured tunnel of the most modern design which stretches for as far as the eye can see into the distance.
As the men in the back seat put on their raincoats and prop you up in the middle of the leather seat, the photographer snuffs out his cigarette, turns off the radio, and guns his car into the tunnel, turning his gaze quickly from right to left as if searching for some prearranged signal. You stare blankly ahead, hypnotized by the blur of the tunnel's yellow brick walls and by the regular passage of its circular ceiling fixtures, thankful that the men have taken their hands off you. Then, suddenly, an overhead metal sign comes into view, flashing the words, PROCEED TO LEVEL 3, in blinding red letters, and the photographer turns the limousine sharply to the left and drives up a long winding steel-and-concrete ramp at daredevil speed.
The car comes to rest in a huge shadowy loading area of some kind, crates and boxes stacked to the ceiling at its sides, and the blonde man opens the door of the car, grabs you by the armpits, and without a word, throws you to the loading area's grimy floor, slamming the door quickly behind you. Then, as a second overhead sign-this one in green letters flashes, PROCEED TO LEVEL 5, the limousine speeds away to yet another ramp at the loading area's far end, and disappears with a burst of gasoline fumes into the upper levels of the building.
For a moment, as you lie crumpled on your side on the floor, it occurs to you that you have finally been left to die, but just as the prospects of dying begins to please you, two solemn-faced black-uniformed men step out of the shadows at the side of the loading area, and without speaking, lift you in their arms and carry you through a crumbling stone archway, down a flight of rickety stairs, to a long dimly-lit corridor. It seems hours that you are carried through the musty little corridor, and longer still that you are lifted down a second creaking stairway and through a wide, fluorescent-lit hallway. Filled with a numbing drowsiness, you neither think nor speak nor resist the silent men who hold you, but simply stare along at the chipped cream-colored plaster of the walls and the tired wine color of the floor's peeling tile, and wait for the mist of sleep to overcome you. Finally, when you are only one-third awake and losing ground every second, you are carried through two heavy swinging doors and propped against the wall of a small hospital-like office, the two black-garbed men standing one on each side of you.
The office is a cold impersonal room filled with olive-drab filing cabinets and bulky metal tables, its walls painted in a dreary sky blue, adorned with grotesque depictions of pheasants in flight. Lit very poorly by two recessed fixtures in the ceiling, scuff-marks showing in its colorless linoleum floor, the office seems more the anteroom of a morgue than anything else, its death-like atmosphere greatly enhanced by the strong odor of formaldehyde which seeps into the room from an open glass-paned door at its side. In the center of the room stands a massive metal desk piled high with books and papers, and behind the desk sits a tall, rather corpulent man with flaming red hair and beard, who peers at you behind the lenses of his black-framed glasses as he adjusts the side buttons of his pure white intern's smock. As the black-garbed men let you sag into the cushions of a convenient armchair, the red-bearded man motions them impatiently from the room, steps out from behind his desk, and taking your hand in his, gives it a vigorous squeezing shake.
"Congratulations!" he cried joyously. "Congratulations, congratulations! I hardly know what to say, I'm so pleased! You know. I've been following your case with particular interest, and I just can't tell you how pleased I am...."
His mouth is a wrinkled little circle of pink as he speaks, his eyes huge and brown and watery behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He seems barely real to you as he prances about before you, his beard the color of the sun at sunset, his face a ghastly shade of white beneath the office's flickering fluorescent lighting. Neither knowing nor caring what he's talking about, you turn away from him to watch the slow trickle of semen from your vagina, your head slumping forward occasionally, your belly still twitching with pain.
"I must say," goes on the intern, "I've never seen such a flawless performance ... such a really flawless performance. And your husband is doing his part too, isn't he now? Yes, he is.... Yes, he is...."
Blinking your eyes, you move your lips silently around the word, husband.
"Oh, yes ... marvelous chap," says the intern. "All the reports are excellent, really excellent. And you, my dear ... I hardly know what to say." He picks up a sheet of paper from his desk and studies it with flashing eyes, his left hand slapping against his thigh as he reads off the list of your achievements. "Pilot ... Helicopter ... Circus ... Police . . Bald girl ... Resort ... Drug ... Evidence ... Everything perfectly done. Really miraculous, really!" He pauses a moment, apparently greatly disappointed that you don't share his enthusiasm. Then, continuing in a forced tone of professionalism: "So ... I suppose you'll be wanting to get on with the trial, eh? No sense in delaying things, am I right? Now that the past is behind us and all that. So ... let's see what we can do for you, shall we?" A worried look comes into his eyes as he stares down at a scarlet telephone that sits at the center of the desk. Hesitating for a moment with his hand on the receiver, he finally lifts the phone to his ear, and staring nervously up at the ceiling, waits for some signal at the other end of the line. "We'll just see what we can ... Yes, yes ... hello. This is the Admissions Office. I'd like to put in a call to the ... ah ... tower. Yes, yes ... I will, I certainly will...."
Drumming incessantly on the table, he smiles a grotesque smile of reassurance at you as he waits for his connection.
"Ah, yes," he says finally. "Admissions here, sir. We have that enemy girl in here right now, sir, and I was wondering if perhaps it would be possible to arrange a trial."
"Well, yes, I know it's late, sir...
"Yes, I know you're tired .
"Well, of course I know you've got a lot of work. I...
"Yes, I know you need your rest, sir..."Sir, we all think you've been doing a wonderful job...
"Yes, yes. She went with the bald girl just like you said she would. Just as soon as the police came in...
"Yes, it was a beautiful touch, sir, having them come in right then. As you say, sir, it really did give things that extra ounce of assurance.
"Yes, sir, tomorrow will be fine, sir, just fine.
"Thank you, sir.
"Yes, sir.
"Good, sir.
"Goodnight, sir."
Sighing, the intern hangs up the phone. "Well," he says, "I'm sorry, but you'll have to spend the night in jail. He won't be able to have the trial ready until tomorrow. Really terribly sorry about that...."
Shaking his head and muttering under his breath, the red-bearded man sits back down in his chair and presses a small button at the side of his desk. Instantly, the black-garbed men reappear, silent and expressionless as before, and take up positions at either side of you with arms folded rigidly across their chests.
"Take her to the cell block, will you please?" says the intern. "The trial won't be until tomorrow. And good luck, Miss. We'll all be rooting for you, you know...."
Lifting you from your seat, the attendants lead you quickly out of the room and through another series of long winding corridors. Then, half-dragging you up a steep spiral staircase, half-carrying you through a succession of massive metal doors, they bring you finally to an iron-grated doorway with a block-lettered sign overhead that reads: OBEY THE RULES-THIS IS A MAXIMUM FREEDOM INSTITUTION-DO NOT ABRIDGE THE FREEDOMS OF THE INMATES UNDER PENALTY OF PUNISHMENT, and pushing open the grating, which bears no lock of any kind, lead you inside.
The interior of the cell block seems more appropriate to a carnival than a prison, each of its high windowless walls painted in garish stripes of pink, blue, yellow, red, and purple, its floor covered with scores of thick Persian rugs, its cells, which are of different sizes and shapes, and arranged so as to form an insane, winding maze, filled with all sorts of gaudy bric-a-brac-dolls, jewelry, water pipes, scented candles, Indian bells, Japanese lanterns-and hung with all manner of obscene photographs and paintings. Even the bars of the cells are painted in bright electric colors, and each of the open cell doors decorated with beads and charms and bits of colored paper. Throughout the length of the cell block, beneath the soft glow of suspended multicolored lights, perhaps a hundred naked inmates of both sexes and all nationalities make calm rolling love, either in pairs or in groups, to the whining strains of a blues song which plays on a large stereo record player at the cell block's center. As one of the inmates spots you and alerts the others to your presence, they all rise in a body and advance slowly through a dense cloud of hashish smoke toward the entrance at which you stand, the men with pulsing erections bobbing between their legs, the women's pussies dripping wet with foam. It is the look in the eyes of the inmates which moves you to speech for the first time in many hours.
"Please," you beg weakly of the black-garbed attendants, clutching at their arms as the wave of bodies approaches. "I don't want to stay here. Let me stay someplace else."
The attendants pull away from you and move backwards toward the iron grating, fear showing in their eyes as they scan the group before them.
"No, no ... please," you beg. "Really, it's not me you want. Really, this is all so silly. It's my husband you want. Listen ... he's in a village not far from here. I know he's in the village. Look ... I'll help you find him ... Really, I'll even help you find him...."
The attendants step out of the cell block, closing the grating in your face. Trembling uncontrollably, you try to follow them, but one of the inmates-a tall bushy-haired man with a bright red penis and murky black eyes-blocks the way.
"You just got here," laughs the man. "Why do you want to leave?"
Turning to his comrades for approval, he grabs you by the breasts and squeezes them hard, his thumbs pressing the nipples deeply inward.
"Oh, please," you moan, trying to break free of his grasp. "You don't know what I've been through. You don't know! Oh, please ... please...."
"You're abridging my freedoms," chides the man in a singsong voice, reaching downward to grab a fistful of your pussy, "but if you'll behave yourself like a good little girl, I won't tell the guards on you, all right? Isn't that fair? You're not the only one around here with feelings, you know."
The man's grip is as strong as steel, his prick like a blunt spear as it jabs into your belly and hips. Behind him, the rest of the inmates seem pastel-colored demons beneath the glow of the overhead lights, their bodies pressed so tightly together as to make them seem a single passionate being adorned with fifty pricks and fifty pussies. Feeling yourself trapped in the web of a nightmare more deadly than any you've yet faced, realizing fully the ineffectualness of any words you might speak, you suddenly slump forward in a desperate pretense at a faint, your head rolling against the tall man's hairy chest, your arms falling limp at your sides.
The ruse does you no good. Clustering around you like hungry scavengers, the inmates drag you into a nearby cell, and laying you down on the floor, take you first one at a time, and then in groups of twos and threes and even fours, the men using your mouth, pussy, anus, and armpits, while the women use your nipples and mouth and fingers and clitoris to bring themselves to orgasm. For the first ten minutes of the ordeal, you scream and struggle with all the strength that's left in you, but then, as the minutes wear into hours, and the hours into an eternity of numbness, you merely relax into whatever positions the inmates force you to, and accept the rubbing of their organs in silent submission, thinking only of your poor children, and of what they'll ever do without their poor mother.
Gradually, you are covered from head to foot with semen and pussy juice, your anus and belly so clogged with thick male seed that you can barely feel the friction of the pricks that penetrate you, your throat so clogged with secretions that you are occasionally unable to tell whether you are being choked by a prick or by the juices of the organs that have gone before it. Faces flash before you like so many photographs-now a black face, now a white one, now a yellow, red or brown; this one cruel, that one smiling, this one intense or pained or casual or bright-each giving way quickly to the next, some appearing often, others seldom. And it's the same with the hands that explore you, and the pricks that probe you, and the pussies that rub across your mouth and breasts and thighs. Everywhere, there is desire, except in you. You alone are the object of desire. You are neither animal nor woman, neither of past nor future, but an object, plain and simple. Whoever desires you, in this prison of desire, owns you ... for your body is only so much common property.
Much later, when the last of the inmates has had his fill of you and retired to a corner of his own for a night of snoring slumber, and when all the lights save one-a pale light of azure blue-have been shut off until morning, and your mind has turned to racing thoughts of suicide, a young boy-far too young to be an inmate here-slips quietly into your cell, his eyes twinkling with a soft distant light, and bending above you, licks patiently at your aching flesh until every drop of semen, foam, and sweat has been cleaned from your body and sucked from your mangled openings. He works ever so silently and diligently, as an elf-child might work, turning you now on this side, now on that, now on your belly and now on your back, pausing only to swallow the secretions that he licks from you as they accumulate in his mouth. Even in the dank darkness of the cell block, his slender body glows with a lithe pulsing brightness, scent of ambrosia rising like a cloud from his skin to fill the room with its healing fragrance. Then, when he is finished with his task, when your body shines almost as brightly as his own, he kisses you once on the forehead and once on the toe, and rising, leaves your cell as swiftly and silently as he came, his small rolling buttocks fading last from view.
But who is this boy, reader? Who is this boy who can lick dried, coagulating secretion from your body without so much as a wince? Who is this boy who comes to you when your mind has turned to thoughts of death, and lulls you to sleep with the lullaby of his tongue?
Don't trouble yourself about it just yet, reader. You'll know soon enough. I promise you, you'll know soon enough....
"It's not me you want," you mutter, just before falling asleep, and sleeping, dream of your husband.
PART FOUR: THE TRIAL
You awake from your dream with but a single thought in mind: your wife has betrayed you. In what dark corner, untouched by the thread of your dreams, did she make the deal which set her free and substituted you in her place? Who was the accomplice that plotted with her and cajoled her and finally abetted her in the deed? What thick potion was used to subdue you? Whose strong arms carried you from your grassy field to this prison cell? But ... no matter. It was your wife who engineered the plot, and it's your wife who must pay her dues to the penny. Never again will her cunning mind hatch schemes against you. Even now, you can feel your hands closing around her neck, her body turning cold and stiff against yours. But to see her body perish for the sake of her mind ... her lush woman-child's body ... There's a sacrifice! If only the mind alone could die ... the center of her evil ... without dragging with it her snow white limbs. But, things being what they are, it's better to sacrifice her body, beautiful though it is, than your thirst for revenge. Your thirst cannot be denied.
Footsteps sound in the distance above the heavy snores of the. prisoners. There is the clang of a metal door, then another and another. The footsteps draw very close, four or five pairs of feet clicking with marked precision in the corridor just beyond the cell block. You look for something to cover yourself with, but finding nothing, sit rigidly up in bed with hands decorously over your sleep-lengthened penis, your eyes blinking slowly as you notice a number of livid scratches at the tops of your thighs and at the sides of your chest. Was she not content merely to sell you into bondage? Did she have to cover you with scratches to prove her contempt for you?
The door to the cell block opens with a creak and a bang, and five maroon-uniformed guards enter the room, black boots gleaming with polish, and walk directly to your cell, breaking their stride only to step over the sleeping bodies of men and women who have collapsed, fucking, in the corridors between the cells.
"Well?" says the captain of the guard-a thin man with a lantern jaw and a pointy little mustache. "What are you waiting for? Everything's ready downstairs."
"What are you talking about?" you ask him, rubbing the traces of sleep from your eyes. "What's ready? Go away."
"Your trial, fool, is about to commence," says the captain, leering at your between the pink and yellow bars. "It can easily be held without you, but since they mean to make of you something of an object lesson, your presence has been requested."
"Then give me some clothes, will you, Captain?" you cry, jumping up eagerly at the mention of the trial. "One of these thieves here has taken my clothes."
"Are you mad, my good man?" asks the captain, smoothing his mustache. "In the first place, you didn't come in here with any clothes, and in the second place, what sort of trial would you expect us to have if the defendant was to wear clothing as do the magistrates? You wouldn't be able to tell the accused from the accuser, now would you? So come ... enough of your nonsense. Just come along and let's get it over with."
Hot with anger, determined to face your persecutors naked or otherwise, you quit your colorful open-doored cell and walk toward the cell block's exit with an escort of two guards at either side of you, the captain walking proudly ahead. Everywhere, naked inmates lie curled on top of one another in groups of two and three and four, their mouths and hands only inches from each other's genitals, their arms and legs intertwined. At the far end of the room, a rising young man gives a brief stretching yawn, then plunges his erect penis into the cunt of a sleeping girl. In the cell beside his, a dark-haired woman busily fingers her pussy while licking the penis of a sleeping man.
"Animals," spits the captain as he leads you from the cell block. "Nothing but animals...."
Shivering in the dampness of morning, you are guided down corridor after corridor, ushered through door after clanging metal door. Continually, you think of your wife, of the revenge you will extract from her if ever you are able. You hold your hatred snug and warm inside you-a pulsing pulpy ball of bile that glows at your very center, quelling all your fears and confusions, and filling you with purpose. There is no madness, offered by village or prison, policeman or judge, which can frighten or disorient you, no threat of punishment which can make you tremble. You'll die like a man if you're to die, savoring images of uxoricide until the end. And if, by the slightest, most incredible of chances, your life is spared, your vengeance will be swift and shrewd and terrible, a delicious event, prolonged for hour upon hour of sweet dying agony.
The guards lead you down a succession of long winding stairways, the last of them lit only by dim widely-spaced torches, to yet another series of corridors, these unlit save for the gray trickle of dawn which enters through their tiny rusty-barred windows, and finally to a narrow unlit passageway-a secret passageway, it would seem-which stands at the side of a briefly-glimpsed grand hall. Penetrating the darkness with a small flashlight which he holds in his right hand, the captain of the guard leads you forward for an indeterminable distance in the passageway, warning you occasionally of flaws in the stone flooring, and laughing at the angry squeals of hidden rats, until finally he comes to a narrow wooden doorway set into the corridor's roughly-mortared wall.
"In there," he says to you, turning to direct his guards back toward the grand hall. "They're waiting for you."
You stand alone in the darkness, listing to the receding clatter of the guard's footsteps, wondering whether a courtroom or an executioner's chamber awaits you beyond the wooden door. From somewhere far, far below, you hear a single hideous moan-a moan of untold agony and suffering-and you think immediately of your wife, praying that they've taken her too, that it is she who moans beneath the torturer's heated blade. Beyond the door, all is still as the grave. But for the occasional squeal of a rat, the passageway falls into utter silence. Just as in times past, you stand before a door which holds your destiny on its other side, only this time, there is a difference: this time, you have nothing to lose. Touch the knob. Feel its coldness. Now turn it. Yes, yes ... turn it. And throw it open forcefully to show them you are unafraid.
The door bangs loudly against the wall behind it, its echo filling the air. Before you, an immense courtroom stretches hazily into the distance beneath the glare of a dozen crystal chandeliers, a blood red carpet covering its floor from wall to wood-paneled wall, deep red curtains drawn tightly across its tall windows to bar the entrance of so much as a single ray of sunlight. High above the floor of the courtroom, on three separate wood-beamed tiers, stand three large jury boxes, one at the right of the room, one at the left, and the third dead center, facing the doorway in which you stand. In each of the jury boxes, thirteen men (or women, for all you can tell) sit upon straight-backed high chairs, all dressed in flowing black robes and pointed black hoods which leave only their hands and eyes exposed. Before the center jury box, three tall magistrates (or so they would seem) sit behind a high wooden stand, all wearing robes and hoods of the purest, most blinding white, each sitting with hands clasped genteelly before him. Below the courtroom's tiers, behind tall wooden barricades that stretch clear around the courtroom, an additional two or three hundred people (witnesses? thrill-seekers?) sit in endless even rows upon seats of faded velvet, all dressed in scarlet robes and hoods which match the color of the carpet perfectly, most fidgeting nervously in their seats as if anxious for the whole business to be over with, not a few leaning backwards with heads resting on their shoulders, loud snores escaping their open lips. In the center of the room, perhaps twenty-five yards from where you stand, six men scurry wildly around a dark wooden table littered with sheaves of crumpled papers, three of them dressed in blue robes and hoods, three in yellow. They push and shove at each other continually as they race around the table, those in the blue robes tearing papers out of the hands of the yellow-robed men, those in the yellow robes responding in kind, screaming curses at the blue robes as they throw whole stacks of paper to the carpet and trample them underfoot.
Suddenly, as one of the magistrates notices you (a good thirty seconds after the door has banged against the wall) and points a long shaky finger in your direction, the entire assembly-but for a few sound sleepers-rises to its feet as a single body and bursts into spontaneous applause. Slowly, the center magistrate leans over his wooden stand and quiets the assembly with a wave of his white-robed arm.
"Very well," he says, his voice deep and rumbling. "Very well. Be seated everyone, be seated. The court is now in session." He gives an impatient gesture in your direction. "Well? Well? What are you waiting for, swine? We haven't got all day, you know. Approach the bench, approach the bench."
"Hurry, you idiot," hisses one of the yellow robes, fanning the air as he urges you forward. "Why couldn't you get here earlier? I've had to prepare the entire defense without you."
Ignoring him, you step bravely down the long center aisle of the courtroom toward the magistrate's tier, your penis slapping from thigh to thigh beneath the curious stares of the red robes at either side of you. Then, halting beneath a tinkling chandelier, you stare defiantly up at the magistrate who has addressed you, your hands held brazenly on your naked hips, your lips turned into a contemptuous sneer. There is nothing but hatred in your heart, nothing but the dream of revenge in your mind. None of these costumed fools can scare you; none of their madness can dissuade you from your cause.
"You are found guilty of crimes against humanity," calls the center magistrate, reading from a scroll stretched before him. "How do you plead?"
"What crimes against humanity are you speaking of, you pompous fool?" you shout at him. "Are you talking about those five little trollops you sent after me on the beach? I should have murdered them after
I fucked them-like I murdered that dumb cop-just to show you what I think of your silly schemes!"
"What are you talking about, swine?" shouts the judge, shaking his finger at you. "What does this court care if you waste your time fucking children on a beach? I say you're found guilty of crimes against humanity! How do you plead?"
"What bloody crimes are you speaking of?" you scream at the white-robed man. "And why don't you take off that silly Halloween suit so I can see who's behind all this monkey business?"
The red robes burst into incredulous laughter, shaking their hooded heads as if to say, "Poor fellow. How silly can you be?" Behind you, you can hear the blue and yellow robes muttering under their breath.
"What? Take off my hood?" cries the magistrate, turning back and forth to the men that flank him. "What sort of a court would this be if everyone's identity was known to the guilty man? You might murder us all once the trial was over and done with. Now I tell you for the two hundredth time, swine. You are found guilty of crimes against humanity! How do you plead?"
"I refuse to answer," you state calmly, "until I'm advised of the specific charges you refer to."
"Oh, my Lord," cries the magistrate, throwing up his arms in sheer exasperation. "You will make difficulty where none is indicated, won't you? But, very well. It's against procedure ... but I'll take the matter under consideration."
He turns to confer with his fellow white robes as all three of the yellow robes come running up to you with questions spilling from their mouths.
"Where were you last night?" cries the first, taking you urgently by the arm.
"When I ask if you loved your wife," says the second, "you must say, 'No, but I stayed with her out of duty until she made love to that aviator.' Do you understand? Until she made love to that aviator. All right?"
"We have it that you've made love to this Amaril fellow," says the third, eyes twinkling behind his hood. "Tell me, if I'm not being too personal, what were your thoughts at the time? Did you want him to be more brutal with you? More tender? Did you wish he'd had a somewhat larger organ? A smaller one?"
"Let's get on with it!" comes a cry from the red robes. "Is this a trial or a hearing? Let's have some action!"
"That's right!" shouts another red robe. "We didn't come here to listen to a bunch of questions! Action! Action!"
At either side of the courtroom, the red robes stand atop their seats to revile white and black robes alike with loud profanities, two hundred tight-clenched fists shaking wildly in the air.
"Order, I say, order!" screams the center magistrate, rising from his chair. "After careful deliberation, we've decided to set a precedent here by allowing the guilty man to hear the specific charges brought against him. Never let it be said that the seat of the law is not progressive." He turns to the jury box at his left and gives a grandiose gesture with both his hands. "Proceed, gentlemen!" he cries.
The thirteenth juror in the box, who sits apart from his comrades at the rear of the platform, rises slowly to his feet and opens a gilt-edged book which rests on a small lectern beside him.
"We, the members of the jury," he calls, "find the guilty man guilty of wife and child desertion, and recommend the capital penalty, in all clear conscience."
As he sits, the thirteenth black robe in the center jury box stands to read from an identical book, his hands shaking with rage as he addresses you.
"We, the members of the jury," he cries, "find the guilty man guilty of criminal madness, and in all clear conscience, recommend that he be put to death."
"We the members of the jury," cries the thirteenth man in the third box, on the heels as it were, of the second man's speech, "find the guilty man guilty of espionage, and demand the immediate enforcement of the death penalty for his crime."
"Kill him! Kill him!" cry the red robes.
"Well?" says the center magistrate. "You've heard the charges. How do you plead?"
"You're all crazy!" you shout, pushing strands of your hair away from your forehead. "I never committed an act of espionage in my life, and as for my wife..."
"Come, come, my dear boy," says the center magistrate. "It's a well-known fact that you were seen spying about near the old castle."
"The old castle!" you cry. "What was there to spy on there but a bunch of crazy people in a dungeon? What kind of espionage is that?"
"Sir!" huffs the white robe. "You're speaking of our government now. I warn you to choose your words carefully."
"The government!" you cry. "Are you mad? The government!"
"The very same," nods the judge. "The Central Office. The Protector of Our Nation."
"Be careful what you say," whispers a yellow robe behind you. "You'll help them prove that you're mad."
"Quiet, fool," whispers a second yellow robe to the first. "Let him talk. If he's mad, he can't possibly be a wife deserter."
"But if he's mad," whispers the third, "he may be a spy. It' a trickier matter than it seems."
"Where's my wife?" you demand suddenly of yellow, white, and red robes alike. "Is my wife in this court? I want to see my wife."
"My dear fellow," says the center magistrate very wearily, "you can't expect us to divulge information of this sort during the trial. It would prejudice your case, don't you see that? The gentlemen of the jury would become involved with gratuitous questions on the subject of your love for your wife, her love for you...."
A blue robe runs up from behind you, fights off the yellow robes, and grabs you by the arm.
"You hate your wife, don't you?" he hisses. "You want to kill her, isn't that a fact? Tell us, tell us how evil she is ... how cunning...."
A second blue robe runs up behind him and wrenches him away.
"Will you leave him alone, please?" whines the second blue robe. "How are we going to get him on desertion if you prove he wanted to kill her? Leave him alone, I tell you."
"Kill him!" scream the red robes. "Child-beater! Woman-hater! Murderer!"
"Quiet in the court!" shout all three of the white robes, pounding on the bench with their gavels. "Quiet or we'll clear the court! Quiet!"
Then, when the red robes have returned to their seats, and the yellow and blue robes have taken vaguely military formations on either side of you, the center magistrate resumes his monotonous questioning, his hands held imploringly before him.
"For the last time," he says. "You've been found guilty of crimes against humanity. We've enumerated the various charges against you at your request. Now ... how do you plead? How ... do you plead?"
"Not guilty!" you shout.
"To which?" asks the judge.
"To all three!" you shout.
One of the blue robes throws an entire sheaf of paper in the air in a gesture of obvious disgust. The entire company of red robes bursts into peals of uncontrollable laughter.
"See here," says the center magistrate. "You can't plead not guilty to all three. If you're not mad, you must be a wife deserter, and if you're not a spy, then how do you explain your being here if not in terms of madness? You simply must plead guilty to at least one of the charges. Things will go ever that much more quickly."
"I'm guilty of nothing!" you cry, turning from red to black to white to yellow to blue robes. "I've done nothing at all against anyone! I've been tricked and betrayed and cheated by everyone I've met, and my only crime was one of innocence and trust! Not only do I plead my innocence to this court, but I demand revenge from it on my wife. It's my wife who should be here before you, not I. It's she who's the plotter and the betrayer. But then ... you're all in with her, aren't you? All part of the plot to drive me mad, or sentence me to death, or whatever it is you want to do with me. Well ... why don't you do it and get it over with? I'm tired of arguing with you. I'm tired of all this foolishness."
While at first, you speak loudly and passionately, at the end, your speech is a dry trickle of barely-audible sentences. The morning, however brief, has left you utterly exhausted, utterly drained of will. You haven't even the energy to ridicule the court that sits before you. For all his pompousness, the center magistrate serves barely to amuse you. The robed figures who fill the room seem neither comic nor pathetic nor horrendous, but simply flat and boring and contrived-particles of a stale reality which is of no interest to you whatsoever. The courtroom becomes simply a place-a large room with a bright carpet and twinkling chandeliers, filled with things and people of no particular consequence, who, through some freak of chance, happen to hold in their hands the remainder, however tiny, of your destiny. Even thoughts of revenge on your wife cease to occupy you: there seems to you little to be gained by her death, and hardly any hope of ever finding her again. Very calmly, you sit down upon the blood-red carpet, and explore its texture with the palms of your hands. Best to sit back and let things take their course. There's nothing you can do to influence anyone's decision here. The quicker they get done with it the better ... and in the meantime, at least the room is warm ... and why stand when you can sit?
"Highly unusual," mutters the center magistrate, studying a dusty leather-bound volume before him. "A plea of innocent to all three charges. I believe we'll have to have a presentation of evidence here. Yes, that seems indicated."
"Oh, my God," groans one of the yellow robes at your right. "I was hoping to get out of here by noon."
"Well," whispers a comrade beside him, "I hear they're pulling out all the stops for this one. They say he's their last hope."
You hear their words through a thick cloud of indifference, even the suggestion of mystery about the proceedings insufficient to arouse you. Yawning, truly feeling the pull of a powerful drowsiness, you stretch yourself full-length on the carpet and run your left hand up and down from belly to crotch, content with the feeling of your own skin, pleased with the springiness of your penis.
"Do you hear me?" calls the center magistrate, leaning over the -edge of his bench, apparently not the least bit offended or surprised at finding you lying on your back. "We're going to have evidence! We're going to have witnesses! Will that satisfy you, swine? Will that make you happy?"
The entire body of red robes rises to its feet and cries loudly toward the middle tier: "Take me! Take me! Call me to testify! I saw him! I saw him! He's a spy! He's a murderer! He's a madman!"
"Quiet, quiet!" shouts the magistrate, pounding on the bench. "The attorneys for the prosecution will call those of you they need. We haven't the time to hear you all, you know."
"Your Eminence," says one of the blue robes to the magistrate, turning from a brief huddle with his colleagues, "it seems that we're having a bit of difficulty in choosing our witnesses, strange as that may seem. You see, it turns out that all the witnesses for the wife and child desertion case are prejudicial to the madness case, and all the madness witnesses are prejudicial to the espionage case, and so on. None of us will let the others present their evidence first. And anyway, we can't be sure of just who our witnesses are, what with these robes and hoods and everything."
"This does seem a difficulty," mutters the center magistrate, staring helplessly down at you as he fidgets with his pencil. "But look here, we've never had this sort of difficulty before."
"Well, Your Eminence," says another of the blue robes, "we've never had a trial go this far before either, you know. Now I recommend that we stick with the verdict we've got. I mean, what's the sense of thrashing this whole thing out in public?"
"Action! Action!" shout scattered groups of red robes, rising out of their seats. "We want some action! Is this a trial or a hearing!"
"Your Eminence," says one of the yellow robes, approaching the bench, "though it grieves us to the heart to do it, we'll go along with the prosecuting attorneys on this thing. We don't like to let it go without a fight, but in the interests of justice, we're willing to forego all the formalities this time."
"Action! Action!" scream more of the red robes. "Kill the magistrate! Kill the spy! Kill the jury!"
"Look here," whispers the magistrate from above, "there must be something we can do to satisfy these people. The guilty man is getting bored. The witnesses are terribly unhappy. Don't you have any sort of evidence we can show? Some sort of ... I don't know ... Anything...."
The blue robes whisper among themselves for a time, then turn excitedly toward the magistrate, all talking at once.
"There is something..."
"We have photographs...."
"Conclusive evidence of guilt...."
"Beyond a shadow of a doubt...."
"Wonderful! Wonderful!" cries the magistrate, rising out of his chair to address the assembly. "Ladies and gentlemen!" he cried. "The prosecuting attorneys inform me that they will now present their evidence to the court-a number of photographs which you will find both fascinating and unique, conclusive proof of the guilty man's guilt. Gentlemen, if you please..."
The blue robes retreat to the long table at the center of the courtroom and pull out a blue plastic slide projector from beneath it, casting half the table's stacks of paper to the floor to clear away room for the machine. Then, as one of the blue robes fits the machine with several small cardboard-edged slides which he withdraws from a leatherette case, another of them walks to a light panel at the side of the room, and the third sets up a large stand-up screen at the courtroom's rear. The red robes are hushed in their boxes, each of them turning anxiously from projector to screen to light panel, most of them seeming to have forgotten you in the courtroom's sudden surge of activity. In a corner beneath the left tier, the yellow robes whisper excitedly among themselves, one man whining continually, "I've got to get out of here, for crying out loud, I've got to get out of here," and another throwing nervous glances in your direction every three seconds or so. Above them, the center magistrate seems greatly pleased with himself: he turns continually to his fellow magistrates and to the jurors beside and behind him, nodding his gratuitous thanks for their appreciation, and raising his hands as if to say, "Really, it was the simplest procedural method at hand. Any genius would have done the same."
You watch the scene unfold around you with no particular interest in its development, but with only the most casual eye toward the details of the court and its occupants. One of the blue robes, you notice, staggers a bit as he walks as if slightly tipsy. One of the yellow robes is wearing two different-colored socks. Everyone seems to find it difficult to breathe beneath his hood: everywhere, fabric is sucked in and out and in, hands are raised to mouths in an effort to ease the situation, some of the red robes even going so far as to pull their hoods downward to enable them to breathe through the eye-holes. It gradually dawns on you that despite everything, you're the most fortunate man of all in the wood-paneled courtroom. In the first place, you are naked, untroubled by robe or hood. Your nudity begins to please you so much that you rub your buttocks and thighs rather deliciously against the rough tufts of the carpet, and finally roll back and forth from belly to back in your place, hardly noticing or caring that your prick rises into a plump semi-erection. In the second place, you have neither hopes nor desires-nor even needs at present-and thus cannot possibly be disappointed by anything that happens in the courtroom. Let the judge worry about procedure, the spectators worry about entertainment, the prosecutors worry about conviction, and the defense attorneys worry about acquittal: you are past all that. It's enough for you to touch your hair or your lips or the tip of your nose to be happy. Just the calm flow of air into your lungs is as pleasant a sensation as you can imagine. How very lovely to feel this way!
"Ready, Your Eminence!" cries the blue robe at the light panel.
"Will the guilty man please face the screen?" hisses the magistrate. "This is being done as much for your benefit as anyone else's, you know."
Following the path of least resistance, you roll over on your side, prop your head on your palm, and stare ahead at the blank screen at the back of the courtroom.
"Very well," says the magistrate. "Proceed."
The lights are doused, throwing the courtroom into blackness but for the haze of light on the screen before you. A button is clicked, and a color photograph comes gradually into focus on the screen, its -edges blurring into clouds of pale color on the dark wooden wall behind it. Despite your vacantness, you give a slight start at the sight of the picture, for it depicts your wife, completely naked beside a pink-tinted swimming pool, sucking on the organ of a tall blonde-haired man while being entered from behind by a small round-bellied man who holds her tightly by the hips. The red robes ooh and aah and whisper among themselves as they stare at the slide, the rustling of their garments filling you with a vague uneasiness. Though the photograph does not move you to speak, it does awake in you twinges of anxiety and confusion and irritation. Why is this photograph being shown in court? What bearing does it have on any of the nonsense under consideration here? Is your wife viewing the photograph from some dark corner of the courtroom? Is she enjoying herself?
Just as you begin to peer closely at the slide, trying to glimpse some shred of meaning from it, it is replaced by another, more vivid photograph, this depicting your wife lifted in the air and sandwiched between the two men of the first photograph, the blonde man plunging into her belly while the small man penetrates her anus. Beneath the two men, a bald-headed girl crouches on hands and knees, her feet dipped in at the edge of the pink swimming pool, and looks eagerly at your wife's crotch, her eyes transformed into two shining spheres of light by the explosion of the flash. Strangely, you are obsessed with the idea that your wife is being raped in these photographs, but searching your memory for some clue to the feeling, you find yourself tampering with a mental wall that forbids your interference, and warns you, with a sudden burst of violent images, to cease your probing immediately. Slowly, the feeling of betrayal returns to you, crowding out all thought of possible complexity. Your wife has turned you over to your persecutors-this much is fact in your mind. The rest is merely a dim dream which is not for you to concern yourself with. Details, in this senseless world, lead endlessly to other details. The specifics of your wife's adventure are for her to know and live with: they are none of your problem. You are a man ... a man.... You are a man. You know nothing of your wife but that which God has granted you to know. You know nothing of your wife.... You know nothing....
As the third slide flashes on the screen-this of your wife on her back beside the pool, receiving the organ of the round-bellied man between her breasts, the blonde man's penis in her pussy, and the bald girl's pussy in her mouth-one of the blue robes begins to speak, silencing the rustling of the red robes with a sudden clapping of his hands.
"These photographs which we present to the court as exhibits A, B, and C respectively," says the man, "are conclusive proof of the guilty man's guilt in the matter of each of the various charges brought against him. Firstly, in regard to the matter of criminal insanity, let me point out that the defendant appears in these photographs as a woman, his entire body structure having obviously been altered by the sheer unbelievable grandness of his delusion. Notice, if you will, the growth of breasts and vagina, and the absence of the guilty man's penis, in each of these photographs. Next, in regard to the matter of wife and child desertion, may I make clear that at the time these photographs were taken, the defendant was not with his wife and children, but was sporting with the two gentlemen and the baldheaded woman seen in these photographs, thus, obviously, proving a case of desertion in the extreme, a case, I might add, of desertion with pleasure. And finally, though it seems hardly necessary to mention it to any loyal citizen, the two gentlemen seen in these photographs are governmental officials of the highest rank, privy to the most secret of secret governmental documents, and the defendant, since he is obviously not enjoying their company, as evidenced by the peculiar twist of his hand in this last photograph, and also by the fact that he is not known to us as a homosexual, and thus would not enjoy the company of men in any event, is obviously engaged in the traitorous act of espionage, most grievous of crimes that a man can commit against his country. With these photographs, the prosecution rests its case, demanding, as is customary, the death penalty for these heinous crimes. Thank you."
The blue robe ends his speech to thunderous waves of applause from the entire assembly. As the lights are turned on, even the yellow robes are seen to clap their hands weakly in grudging admiration of their opponents' achievement. The red robes cheer long and loud for the prosecution's team, their bodies pressed tightly together as they scream their approval, their garments shining with sweat at the armpits and bellies.
"Well, well," says the center magistrate when order has returned to the court. "That was wonderful, just wonderful! I wish to thank you gentlemen one and all." Turning, he fixes you with his shrouded eyes. "Well?" he says, "What do you have to say for yourself, scoundrel? How will you explain away the evidence?"
"Those were photographs of my wife, you imbecile!" you shout at him offhandedly. "You know that. How do you expect me to take any of this nonsense seriously?"
"Very well, very well," mutters the magistrate. "If that's all you've got to say for yourself, very well...."
"You see!" shouts one of the yellow robes, running toward the judge. "He's obviously mad! I demand that he be acquitted on charges of wife and child desertion!"
"Quiet, you idiot!" shouts a second yellow robe. "You're ruining my case! He's a wife deserter pure and simple!"
"Enough, enough, gentlemen!" cries the magistrate as the third yellow robe joins the field of combat. "The prosecution has been good enough to furnish us with evidence of its contentions. Will you be good enough to do the same? If not, we can end this matter here and now."
The yellow robes confer among themselves, turning occasionally to throw anxious glances in your direction and to quiet the red robes' booing with irritated motions of their hands. After a time, one of the yellow robes approaches the bench and addresses the judge in an apologetic whine.
"Well," he says to the magistrate, "there is something we could show. It may not be exactly to the point, however. That is to say, it may have no direct bearing on the defendant's case, you see. It's merely evidence of something that happened, you understand, whether during the time in question or not, we can't really say. As a matter-of-fact, we don't even know if this ... shall we say, event ... which we have evidence of, actually took place, or if the defendant, sensing that he was in difficulty, staged it, in an abortive attempt at proving his innocence, either prior to, or after, committing his crimes.... I can hardly stress enough that this evidence is of the most questionable nature-a possibility among possibilities, one might say-and that if the court doesn't wish to view it, we will eagerly accept the prior verdicts of the various juries in this matter. Really, in my opinion anyway, this evidence is nothing more than a sloppy bag of tricks, put in our hands by a man of rather dubious scruples, to say the least, and..."
"Show the evidence! Show the evidence! Show it! Show it! Show it!" cry the red robes, chanting in unison.
"You hear the cry of the citizenry!" shouts the magistrate, gesturing lovingly toward the spectators. "Show your evidence! The public can't be fooled!"
Mumbling apologetically, the yellow robe moves off to the courtroom's center table, lifts an ancient movie projector from beneath it, and sets the machine down beside the slide projector on the table-top as one of his colleagues guiltily hands him a metal reel of film. The third yellow robe moves lethargically to the light panel at the side of the room, and at a signal of readiness from the man at the projector, douses the house lights once again.
"This film," comes a voice from the darkness, "put in our hands, as I've said, by a man of dubious reputation, is meant merely to illustrate the possibility ... and I stress that word..."
"Show the evidence! Show the evidence!" chant the red robes in the darkness.
"Get on with it, man!" cries the magistrate. "The public will not be denied!"
"Yes, yes, very well," murmurs your defense attorney, starting the projector.
Complacent, but vaguely curious as to what sort of foolishness is to be shown on your behalf, you turn toward the screen just as a scene of two naked dancing youngsters flashes into view. For a moment, you are struck by a subliminal feeling of strangeness-you sense something ... familiar ... about the scene and then suddenly, you break into a loud exclamation of surprise as you come to the realization that you are watching your own parents-your mother and your father-on the screen. To be sure, they are not as you know them, or even as you knew them as a child, but they are, just as certainly, your parents. Your mother cannot be more than eighteen in the film-her eyes are so clear and blue, her golden locks so silky, her belly so round and smooth, her mound so lightly-flossed-but still and all, she is your mother, right down to the tiny beauty mark on her forehead, the wide set of her lips, and the ripe fullness-even at that tender age-of her breasts. Your father seems even younger than your mother (strange that you never thought that the case), his beardless face suggesting an age of no more than fifteen years, his dark twinkling eyes radiating an almost unbelievable innocence. How long his penis for so small a child! How slender and graceful is his body.... But can these be your parents cavorting naked before a camera? They must be actors of some sort, cleverly disguised to resemble your parents. Yes ... it's all part of the plot ... all part of the hoax.... But no! It's your house they're in-your father's house. The kitchen is the same down to its overhead crossbeams and its massive wooden table, down to its polished pewter plates and its hanging beer steins. How can this be? How can your parents behave this wav before a camera?
Mouth open, you watch your mother bend forward with her back to the camera and spread the snow-white cheeks of her rump. Smiling over her shoulder, she exposes the whole of her rosy slit to the audience, then straightening and tickling her clitoris, takes your father's penis in her hand and gives it a violent shake. Mugging for the camera, your father takes his partner's breast in his left hand, her pussy in his right, and licks his lips exaggeratedly, as if acting on a cue delivered by someone off-screen. Your mother then pushes him to the floor-to the same cracked linoleum floor-and turning her back to him, forces his young lips to each of her smooth ass-cheeks, smiling at the camera all the while and feigning great excitement. Then, as the boy rises, both youngsters turn their backs to the camera, part their buttocks, and point eagerly toward their tiny ass-holes, as if inviting all present in the courtroom to inspect and penetrate them.
Staring at the antics of the children on the screen, you feel your initial shock wear gradually into a feeling of great, overpowering sadness. How awful that your parents were abused thus as children! What ugly-minded sort of creature could possibly have lured them into this kind of performance? What reasons were given, and what rewards promised? Or is it possible that the children, caught in the throes of some adolescent frenzy, arranged the scene themselves, and performed for no other motive than the fanning of their heat? Either way it's sad ... all too unbearably sad. And who do these silly yellow-robed men think they are, to show such a film in a courtroom, as evidence of anything? How do they dare to humiliate you like this, to humiliate your parents? Why can't they leave things well enough alone and let the past stay dead and buried? Are they sadists that they want to see you suffer before you die?
Just as you are about to raise your voice in protest, a very singular thing takes place on the screen before you: you watch yourself-yes, truly yourself, exactly as you look today, as naked as you stand at this moment-enter the sunlit kitchen and place a hand on your mother's pale shoulder. For just a second, you stare in mute fascination as the blonde-haired girl turns to you and licks your prick from tip to root, then, suddenly, you jump to your feet and bellow your madness and disbelief to the rafters, your entire body shaking with rage as you watch both your youthful parents lick busily away at your penis and ass-hole.
"Make it go away!" you scream, running toward the whirring projector. "Make it go away!"
"Guards! Guards!" comes a voice from above you. "Hurry! Guards!"
There is a commotion in the darkness about you-the banging of doors, the thudding of heavy feet-and suddenly, you are surrounded by five uniformed men who close tightly in around you and lay cold clammy hands on your naked skin. Held at throat and arms and thighs, you stare helplessly ahead as your screen image places both boy and girl belly-downward on the kitchen's wooden table, and fingering the boy's ass-hole, begins to rub his prick in the moist hollow of the girl's vagina. How can this be! How can this be! Your mother and father before you on the table, your prick slipping slowly into your mother's pussy! A nightmare! A nightmare! But how does one film a nightmare? How can the film exist?
From the spectator's boxes comes muffled moans and sighs, the rustling of robes, the tender squish of opening flesh. You can feel the pricks of two of the guards rising in stiff erection against your legs, one of the men rubbing himself against you as your screen image pulls his organ from your mother's cunt, displays it, glistening with foam, to the camera, and pokes it, with a bit of difficulty, deep into your father's ass-hole while simultaneously stuffing two of his fingers into the golden hole he's just quit.
"Stop! Stop it!" you scream. "Make it stop! Make it go away! I can't stand it! I can't stand it"
"Quiet, quiet!" comes the magistrate's voice. "Can't you let things take their course?"
"Now this film," begins the yellow robe at the projector, "if one imagines it to be a true account, and as having taken place during the time period in question, will tend to prove the possibility of the guilty man's innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt."
Spreading your father's plump little ass-cheeks, kneading them with the fingers of your left hand, you plow mercilessly into his anus, scratching his crack with your pubic hair as you move his entire body in a wide jerking circle. Your mother writhes like an eel beneath your fingering, her ass wriggling high in the air as she lets her feet dangle inches above the floor, her lips moving around obscene syllables as she smiles at you over her shoulder and reaches behind herself to get at your jiggling balls. Empty plates rattle soundlessly on the table, spilling their crumbs onto the wood to form random shifting patterns. Who has been eating in your kitchen?
"In the first place," continues the attorney, "in regard to the matter of wife and child desertion, it is clearly shown that the guilty man is in his own house, enjoying the company of his own family. And so, if the film is taken to be an accurate account, it is the guilty man's wife, and not the guilty man himself, who is guilty of desertion, for she is nowhere to be seen in the picture."
Sweating, you pull your prick from your father's ass-hole and jam it back into your mother's cunt, the dark-haired boy kneeling behind you to lick the rim of your ass-hole as you reach forward to squeeze and pull at your mother's taut-nippled breasts.
"And in the second place," continues the attorney, "insofar as the matter of espionage is concerned, the guilty man is shown to be far too occupied with the business before him to be engaged in any sort of so-called spy activities against his mother country. If the film is taken at face value, which as I've said, it should probably not be, the guilty man is, in fact, simply making love to his parents, thus proving the possibility of his innocence once again, and once again, it would seem that the guilty man's wife is the guilty party, for where, in this cinematic presentation of events, is she? Committing some act of espionage,-likely as not."
Your eyes are wild with frenzy, your hair tousled and damp. Grabbing both your parents by their asses, you pull them roughly down to the kitchen's linoleum floor, and with them, form a circle of incestuous lust. Parting your mother's marble-smooth legs, you bury your face in the wet light-haired meat of her cunt, as she, in turn, presses her lips to your father's prick and balls, and your father touches his tongue to the swollen tip of your prick. Asses grinding, the three of you squirm on the floor, licking and sucking and chewing and nuzzling each other's genitals and ass-cracks, squeezing and tickling and stroking each other's bellies and thighs. You feel yourself about to explode into pieces with the tension of the scene.
"And in the third place," continues the attorney, "insofar as the matter of madness is concerned, if one accepts the film as an honest, unrehearsed performance on the part of the guilty man, one is forced to concede the possibility that he is in full possession of his faculties. In fact, as can be observed, he seems particularly expert at making love to these two children in the film. Notice, for instance, the careful attention he pays to the clitoris and outer lips of the vagina, and the rather intricate motion of his hips used to probe the boy's somewhat narrow mouth. It is indeed possible that these are not the actions of a madman, and once again, I must call into doubt the innocence of the guilty man's wife in this regard, for only a madwoman, or a saboteur, or a husband and child deserter, or all three, for that matter, would be absent when her husband's organ awaits her pleasure."
Jerking back and forth on the floor, you fill your father's mouth to overflowing with your semen, your prick w-edged tight in the back of his throat, your climax-driven tongue forcing the start of an orgasm deep in your mother's belly. Sputtering, choking, and gobbling on your prick, your father pours his seed into your mother's churning mouth, reaching down between his legs to hold her by the ears until his flow is done. Your mother bucks and twists and gyrates on the floor, reaching behind herself to finger her own ass-hole as her pussy quivers and contracts around your plunging, lapping tongue. The courtroom is alive with moans and grunts, the air heavy with the smell of sweat and the sound of skin scraping against the velvet. One of the guards ejaculates against your leg while another rubs his sheathed organ up and down in the cleft of your ass. Everything is seen and felt through a thick layer of madness and rage, even the twitching of your own prick seeming miles and miles removed from you. Or is it your prick that twitches? Are you the man on screen or yourself? There's a strange feeling deep in your belly ... another at your chest....
"And so," continues the yellow-robed attorney, "the defense concludes its case, urging you once again to consider wisely before accepting the validity of this phony film. Thank you."
You stand and wipe your penis off on the buttocks of your mother and father, then, facing the members of the court, squeeze a last drop of semen from your organ's tip and hold the liquid in the palm of your hand for the inspection of anyone interested. The kitchen door opens behind you, and two more naked children enter the room, both younger than your mother and father. The girl is dark-haired and the boy is blonde; both have the fresh plumpness of the pre-adolescent about them and ... yes ... they are your children, they are your children. And they're walking toward you ... and they're smiling at you ... and they're rubbing their hairless little genitals ... and they're kissing your prick and your balls and your crotch and your buttocks ... and you're smiling at them. Are you smiling? And they're lying down on the floor beside your mother and father ... and they want you to join them in another circle ... and you're smiling at them ... and there are just their faces ... just their faces ... yearning and innocent ... and there are just their eyes ... wide and clear and steady. And where are you? ... and where are you? ... and there's just white now, flickering white ... and there's just black now ... and why don't you go to them? ... and where are they? ... and...
The courtroom flashes into color beneath the brilliant glare of its crystal chandeliers. At the sides of the courtroom, the red robes sit huddled together in groups of twos and threes and fours, their hands hidden beneath each other's cloaks, the smell of their body odors floating heavily through the air. The guards hold tight to you, their erections beating against your naked thighs and buttocks. For a moment, there is a sheer unendurable silence. Then:
"Case dismissed!" cries the magistrate. "Case dismissed! Case dismissed, case dismissed, case dismissed!"
Suddenly, all the court members-lawyers, magistrates, jurors, and spectators alike-rise screaming and cheering to their feet, filling the air with a million bits of brightly-colored confetti, jumping up and down on their seats, waving their hands high over their heads. Then, as if at a signal, every last single soul in the courtroom tears off his robe and hood, and you find yourself staring at a wild assembly of naked men, women, and children, the men and boys sporting powerful erections, the women and girls damp open pussies. Incredibly, you find that the faces in the courtroom are familiar to you: there stands Aurelia in the center jury box, and there, beside her, Amaril. There is crazy Babette among the spectators, there the cruel police around her. There are the little girls from the beach, there the dancers from the ball, there the couple from the castle's entrance hall, and there the couple from the roadside. The center magistrate is the fishmonger from the village, the farm boy from the red dirt road sitting at his right, the young man from the curio shop at his left. There is the group from the prosecution's photographs: the blonde-haired man, the round-bellied man, and the baldheaded girl. And too, there are men and women here whom part of you struggles to remember and part to forget: a tall slender man with bushy eyebrows and stubble on his cheeks, a thin, sallow-faced man with cold blue eyes, two large-muscled men, a fat rosy-cheeked man, an Oriental and a Spaniard, both with gigantic penises, a group of men and women with bodies painted in stripes and polka-dots, and an assortment of boys and girls distinguished only by their pure sensuous beauty. And there, sandwiched between friends and acquaintances from your country cottage, are your own parents and children, your father and your son waving their erections in your face, your mother and daughter fingering their wet pussies as they smile down at you. Only your wife is not here ... only your wife....
Suddenly, before your wide uncomprehending eyes, the entire assembly breaks once again in groups of various sizes, and begins making love like a circus of rutted animals. Aurelia steps over rows of velvet chairs to kneel at the feet of the baldheaded girl and lick her twitching clitoris. The fat rosy-cheeked man runs up behind the drooling Babette and plunges his pudgy little prick in her asshole just as Babette leans forward to take the prick of the dark-skinned Spaniard in her mouth. Amaril lifts little Rosalie high in the air and brings her down roughly onto his bright pink prick while the slender stubble-cheeked man stands open-legged behind him and enters his ass-hole with sharp bucking thrusts. Two of Rosalie's little girl friends crawl back and forth on hands and knees taking turns sucking on the Oriental's huge prick, while the two remaining blonde-haired girls lick busily at the ass-hole of the round-bellied man from the photographs who, in turn, squats behind Aurelia to plow alternately into her cunt and ass-hole while the redhead laps at the juicy pussy before her. The police mingle with the dancers from the castle's ball, two and three of them at a time using the openings of a single woman, others using the men by the mouth and ass-hole, still others falling to their knees to lick the organs of the painted men and women.
Everywhere, cocks and cunts and ass-holes glisten with foam and sweat and saliva. Everywhere, asses grind and pussies quiver. Everywhere, women are bent into strange staining postures, fucked beneath the armpit and behind the knee, explored by the hands and mouths and pricks of a dozen men at a time. Everywhere, men romp from one pussy to the next, from one mouth to another, hardly noticing the tongues and penises that explore their ass-holes. Everywhere, gins cry for stronger lovers, for more lovers, casting aside small picks for larger ones, alternating between men and women, pricks and tongues, in their frenzied pursuit of pleasure. The courtroom is an ocean of rolling rising flesh-of hair and meat and gristle and membrane, of sights and sounds and smells. And at its very center-at its vortex-stand your parents and children, your mother bending forward beneath the rear assault of your son, your daughter bending beneath the rear assault of your father, the lips of daughter and mother touched together, while father and son join hands above them.
You'll simply have to leave, won't you? You'll simply have to go out for a breath of fresh air or two, and a quick jaunt around the courtroom. Yes, that would do the trick ... a brisk trot around the courtroom. It isn't right for you to stay here. It isn't healthy. There are pains in your belly ... such sharp pains ... and pains in your chest ... and in your brain. Something queer is happening to you ... something very queer. You simply must be leaving.... You simply must be leaving.... You must be leaving! It isn't right! It isn't healthy! You have to go! You have to go!
The guards hold you fast, their brass buttons rubbing against your skin as they force you to stare upward at the naked fishmonger, who rises majestically from his chair, erection bobbing before him, and faces you with hands clasped over his voluminous hairy belly.
"Congratulations, my friend!" cries the fishmonger over the din of wet sucking noises that surround him. "My heartiest, my most ebullient congratulations! Few men before you have come through with such flying colors! We are not like you, and you are not like us, but you've wrangled and jangled with the best of us, fought us and misunderstood us every step of the way! You've murdered and lied and sneaked and skulked, and always we've admired your cheek, your wit, and your charm! And now, with the past behind us, and all challenges met and succumbed to, it is my duty-yea! my honor to proudly proclaim you Head of State, Commander and Chief of the Central Office! Hail the Commander! Hail the Chief! Hail to the Central Office! And always remember, my leader, in times of trouble and doubt, that a woman ... is the glory ... of a man!" Then, turning to the guards that hold you: "Take him away! Prepare him at once! A woman is the glory of a man!"
Wracked with pain, barely able to think, you are dragged by the arms and legs to the left side of the courtroom, forced between two of the spectator's boxes-between two bodies filled with humping pumping bellies, breasts, and buttocks-and brought face to face with your own wild reflection in the silver-framed mirror of a narrow wooden doorway, when suddenly, in the midst of your madness, it dawns on you that you are in the ballroom of the ancient castle in which you began your furious plunge toward defeat. Yes, yes ... the door is utterly the same ... the tiers ... the red curtains ... the chandeliers ... all the same but for a rug thrown over the marble floor, the addition of a few wooden boxes and such, the replacement of-couches with seats. Have you ever really left the castle? Have you ever really breathed outside its walls? And now ... are you destined simply to repeat your wild adventure? To spin forever on an endless wheel of madness?
Suddenly, the mirrored doorway is thrust open from behind, and a small white-smocked gentleman steps out from the yellow brick corridor within. His eyes seem very large behind his round rimless spectacles, and his lips are very moist and thick. In one hand, he holds a large hypodermic needle filled with a clear orange fluid.
Whether at the sight of the little man, or at the sight of the corridor behind him, you break into a sudden fit of uncontrollable hysteria, laughing and crying at the same time, screaming obscenities into the air in voices not your own. The little man smiles politely as he plunges his hypodermic deep into your belly.
"A woman is the glory of a man," he says, just before you face into oblivion.
PART FIVE: THE CENTRAL OFFICE
You are crouched on hands and knees upon the dungeon's center platform, your wrists and ankles bound in bracelets of a dark green leather, your neck in a taut collar of the same material, both bracelets and collars connected to the floor and ceiling respectively by means of a thin link of shiny chain. You are held completely immobile by your chains, your arms and legs spread wide apart, your head snapped rigidly backward. The grimy fur that covers your platform is scratchy against your knees and palms and toes, the dungeon's air cool and damp to your naked flesh.
It is dark outside: through the dungeon's rusty-barred window, you can see the stars twinkling brightly above the leafy tops of the forest's trees. Inside, the dungeon is lit by only the feeblest glow of its charred ancient furnace, the deep shadows of its stone walls and floor interrupted by the barest flicker of a cold blue flame. The forest's smell of pine and honeysuckle mingles with the dungeon's heavier odor of sweat and semen to produce a strange jarring aroma, at once stifling and elusive, temporal and eternal.
All around you, men and women dressed in sequined masks and skintight suits of black which leave only their genitals exposed, lie upon platforms covered in Persian rugs and satin pillows, and submit to the oral advances of eager naked boys, their outstretched bodies forming the demarcation points of a gigantic clock, only one half of which is visible from your vantage point. One of the women in the group is more familiar to you than the others. Though she was more slender and more expressionless when last you saw her, the blonde woman who writhes directly before you on the platform nearest the window (and writhes a bit more animatedly than any of the others) is unmistakably the woman who, days or months or years before, was chained to precisely the same platform which you are chained to now. As she locks her legs around her silent lover's neck, her eyes burn far more brightly than does the furnace's flame.
Your body is not your own, but your wife's. You yourself reside somewhere behind her eyes, exerting only a sensory influence on limbs that are strange to you. Somewhere in your wife's strange body-somewhere among its pointing breasts and its punctured belly and its too large, too soft rump-rests your wife's consciousness, warm and pulsing. Even as you take in the details of your surroundings, you can feel the steady push of her physical being trying to force you from your tiny nest in the head, trying to color your mental impressions with impressions more pleasing to her body. Unfamiliar physical memories crowd in on you, confusing you as to your past to the point where you are willing to accept any fleeting image as a part of your history. The muscles of your arms and legs move-what little they can-to your wife's will; your eyes turn upon her impulse. Yet thought, for the most part, is yours, and feeling is an intricate process shared between you. You are somewhat content with the knowledge that your wife's discomfort must be as great as yours: for every pull of her consciousness on yours, you can exert an equal null on her. You are no more trapped inside of her than she is outside of you. The betrayer must differ with the betrayed....
At the creaking of a metal door behind you, you sense, rather than see the presence of the dungeon's white-bearded old man and his three young charges. Your wife too senses a kind of tension in the air: you can feel the juices beginning to flow in your pussy, the slow contraction of the sphincter muscle, the stiffness of your nipples into long tight cones. There are footsteps behind you, slow and ritualistic, and the sound of oil being smeared on skin, and then the old man is standing before you, his beard long and flowing and filthy, his face more pocked and scarred and wrinkled than the dungeon's ancient stone. He smiles at you-or so it seems-and his smile seems to say, "Now aren't you glad it's done with?" Then, turning from you, he disappears into shadow at the dungeon's rear. He does not have the box. The box, it would seem, is gone.
Slowly. with ceremonial precision, the three naked boys walk before you and mount the fur-covered platform on which you are chained. All are dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed as before; all wear purple sashes tied at their waists. Your wife turns hot and happy at the sight of them. You can feel her taunting you with the rise of her pleasure, and in response, you send quick images of pain to her belly and crotch, hardly caring for your own suffering so long as she is thwarted. She struggles to increase her anticipation, sucking pleasure from your discomfort. You double your efforts at pain, taking pleasure in her frustration.
The dark-skinned boys position themselves around you-one behind you, one beneath you, and one before you-and begin to rub their long oiled organs into erection against your lips, buttocks, and belly. Then, when all three penises are fully erect, the boys grab you firmly by ears, hips, and ass-cheeks, and at the sound of a dry scraping clap from the dungeon's shadows, begin slowly to enter you. Their organs are like brands as they burn into your openings, painfully emphasizing the femaleness of your condition. Your wife's pleasure grows and grows, her pussy-muscles squeezing tightly around the prick in your belly. her intestines contracting around the prick in your ass, her tongue lapping wildly at the prick that fills your mouth. You feel yourself jolted and shoved from your niche, prodded by the tentacles of your wife's heat. Rage boils and bubbles within you, consuming what little is left of you with impotent hatred, when suddenly, as your wife forces you to stare into the eyes of the boy who possesses your mouth, you come to a startling realization: the boys who make love to you are not boys at all, but soft yielding girls in the bodies of boys. Yes, yes ... girls with long female penises ... girls without breasts ... but girls ... girls who desire you and not your wife. See how it shows in her eyes! See how she pours her love from her mind into yours! How beautiful! How beautiful she is!
In the midst of your revelation, you come to a sudden semi-understanding of the political nature of this not-so-strange dungeon where your fortunes and misfortunes have begun and are to be ended. You come to see yourself as the citizenry entire of the universe-truly the Chief of the Central Office-and girl-boys who enter you as the executors-the executives actually-of your fate. Around you are stretched the male and female members of the judiciary, to which you will someday retire (for the citizen of the past is always the judge of the future), and of course only their genitals are exposed, for the genitals are the organs of the body capable of the most intense feeling. Above them work the young congressmen-the obedient members of the legislature-from whose ranks the future executives will be drawn, and of course they suck busily, busily away at the members of the judiciary. for what else is a con pressman's tack? And then ... who is left? The old man? A priest obviously-as you suspected long ago-standing in place of some god who will not show his face ... in place of the god who has masterminded, and is the supreme architect of your fate. But who? Who is the god?
Lost in your discoveries, you temporarily forget your wife and her machinations, until finally, with a violent internal bucking, she tries to throw you completely from her body, quite literally, to murder you. You struggle wildly against the stranglehold of her heat, and find, in struggling, that by concentrating on the femaleness of the boys who possess you. you can weaken her grip on you and force her. at least partially, to desist. Making psychic love to the girl-boys who enter your body. you find that the pleasure you take in your lovemaking is exactly equal to the pain caused by your wife's physical enjoyment. and conversely, that the pain you are able to cause your wife is exactly equal to her pleasure. You have reached the point of equilibrium, and have locked yourself into the nothingness of eternity. There is nothing but the constant flow of energy. The furnace blazes like a miniature inferno, its yellow-white flames licking upward to fill the dungeon with the light of day. heat flowing through its pipes to warm every single room in the castle, before you. on the dungeon's lower platforms, squirm enough young men to keep the machine flowing smoothly for ... how long? And as you well know, there are many more where they came from, just beyond the door. And when your time is done-when they've found someone to replace you-you'll wear a sequined mask and skintight black suit, and be practiced on by the sashless novices ... until? But it doesn't matter: there is an eternity between then and now...
Just as you are about to relax into your new life of equilibrium, you notice-or your wife notices-a movement outside the dungeon's window. Through the window's rusty bars, a man smiles in at you, his eyes lit with a devilish fire. He's a strange-looking man with a long broken nose and a chipped front tooth, and as he stares at you, you cannot help but feel a certain maliciousness-a certain contempt-which radiates from the pupils of his eyes. But wait ... what is that he shows you? Is it ... yes ... the box! The stranger holds the box before you! There, there ... see your name! And look ... look how he taunts you with it, caressing it with his fingertips, opening it to peer smilingly inside. Look how he holds it to his chest and cradles it in his arms. Why does he taunt you so!
Ah, but that's not the question, reader. The question is: who is this man and who taunts you so? And you don't know, do you, reader? No, of course you don't. Well, I'll tell you, you poor silly dunce, I'll tell you who it is .... It is I....
It is I, reader, who have snared you. I who have shamed you. I who have tortured and tormented you. I who have turned a universe against you, and ruined your life in a million million ways....
It is I, reader, who have beaten you until you could stand no more, then soothed you that I might beat you again. I who have let you taste the winds of heaven only that the fires of hell would singe you all the more. I who have driven you mad, who stand in the midst of your madness, who stand before you now.... It is I, reader.... It is I.... It is I.... It is I ....
You see, it's been my whim to excite and to punish you, my sickness to lure and corrupt you.... And now that my whim is quite satisfied, and my sickness quite cured ... I bid you a heartless good night.
