"Tell me about Ulla, Cranston," Randy Buck says to his private secretary, standing in the middle of the carpeted floor of his home gym, in the basement of his home, the Estate, wearing only a jockstrap, doing standing alternating dumbbell curls.
A whole rack of dumbbells runs the length of one of the mirrored walls, but Randy Buck has selected the very lightest pair.
Cranston wears his usual attire-a three-piece suit, complete with tie and pocket handkerchief.
This is Randy Buck's first day home from the hospital, to which he had to be rushed from here, following his latest misadventure in sadism-this defeat, like all his others, courtesy of the Baroness.
In the daylight world, he is the owner and president of Buck Enterprises, a holding company which holds under its umbrella a professional football team, a pro baseball team, a nationwide health club franchise and a string of gourmet restaurants.
In that same world, Cynthia Marvel, a.k.a. the Baroness, heads a gigantic cosmetics conglomerate.
But in another world, parallel to this one, overlapping it, sharing its time, its space and its reality, is that strange, bizarre underworld of hoods and leather, whips and chains, S&M, B&D, that world of perpetual darkness and dark doings to which both of them are-so irresistibly drawn-in that world, they are the bitterest of enemies, Randy Buck launching one fiendish plot after another, only to be thwarted by the Baroness.
Randy Buck proposes, the Baroness disposes.
And this time, she has almost disposed of Randy Buck.
Randy Buck, having obtained access to the state's computers, used them to obtain the identities and locations of female convicts on parole and probation in order to contact and lure them to the Estate with the promise of remuneration.
Once there, he intended to subject them to imprisonment, rape and torture in his specially constructed basement dungeon and torture chamber-specially constructed in the very place where he now stands, working out.
Unfortunately (for Randy Buck; very, very fortunately indeed for his intended victims), the Baroness, with the aid of her detective, Ultimo, discovered what he was up to, crashing the "grand opening", twenty of the women plus Sally, the corrupt former head of a halfway house for women convicts from whom Buck had obtained the computer programs, being already captured and chained up, lining the very wall which now sports mirrors and the dumbbell rack.
The Baroness, with the aid of her sidekick and chief of security, Roberta, and vice president of marketing, Nancy, as well as Ultimo, having first neutralized Randy Buck's chauffeur Eric and private secretary Cranston-both of them his henchmen and confidants-chained Randy Buck up and turned three of his erstwhile victims loose on him with whips, Roberta having first given him a couple of deep lacerations across the front of his body for old time's sake, and threw away the key to the manacles, before calling the police and disappearing into the night, along with her other companions.
Cranston, himself unscathed, due to the fact that he had been knocked unconscious by Ultimo before being chained up alongside Randy Buck, bribed the intended victims in order to silence them, and Randy Buck having been discovered severely beaten and chained up alongside most of them, the state police and prosecutors were unable to charge Randy Buck and company with anything; however, his wounds caused him to spend almost three weeks in the hospital.
The most spectacular injuries, of course, were the cuts from the whips-especially the two deep gashes, all the way through and into the muscles; but the most severe injury was that to his brain, his leather S&M hood having served, ironically enough, to prevent his, skull from being entirely caved in by the savage triple beating from the vengeful vixens, but not well enough to prevent an aneurysm, for which he had to have an operation.
In his running battle with the Baroness, this was far and away the most severe series of injuries he personally has sustained.
There have been bodies along the way, of course, a few innocent victims, including his psychiatrist, Gregory Grant, and the doctor's secretary, and some not so innocent-the six paroled sex offenders buried under the rubble of one of Randy Buck's, specially constructed dungeons called the Monastery, four hired assassins wiped out in an exchange of automatic weapons fire on the roof of the
Baroness's penthouse in the city, thirty hooded, booted sadists lost at sea when the Baroness blew up Randy Buck's intended floating orgy of sadism, having first rescued the intended victims-and so on.
But, except for the time the Baroness switched her poisoned drink for his glass at a masquerade ball, requiring him to have his stomach pumped, there have been no really close calls for Randy Buck, certainly nothing to compare with this.
"Tell me about Ulla," Randy Buck repeats, grunting and panting with the exertion even these light weights are causing him to put forth as he swings them alternately close to his chin.
"Ulla's dead," Cranston responds.
"Well I know that, Cranston; I meant, tell me about you and Ulla."
And Randy Buck, sweating profusely, sits down, exhausted, on an exercise bench, slumping, mopping his shaved head and face, neck and ears with a towel.
Cranston says nothing.
"I had a dream about you when I was in the hospital, Cranston, when I was out of my gourd; several of them, in fact."
"In the days of Queen Victoria, there was a mad queen of a large tribe in Africa," Cranston says, "who forbade any of her courtiers to appear in her dreams, under penalty of death.
"Those who disobeyed, she in fact had executed."
Randy Buck smiles at this story, looking down, grinning, shaking his head, the scar on one side of the still naked scalp puffy where he had been reassembled after the operation, a different effect completely from the crisscrossing of pale lines themselves crisscrossed with much shorter lines, like white pictorial representations of railroads on a map, where he has been sewn together, one whip gash at a time.
"The operational word there being mad, Cranston.
"I can assure you that you need not feel threatened. Mad I may be, but my madness doesn't take that particular form; still, truth comes to us in dreams sometimes, don't you think?"
"If there is some insight, some ... intuition within our subconscious, sometimes it will emerge, will ... spell itself out in a dream, yes, I suppose," Cranston concedes.
"Intuition. Insight. An excellent choice of words, Cranston. I had many dreams, many ... intuitions, many insights in the hospital, my whole time there, day and night, until I was almost ready to leave.
"Only my last night there, in fact, did I have what could be called normal dreams. Or perhaps it was just the one normal dream. That's the trouble with normal dreams, you know; one has a tendency to forget them almost at once."
"Intuition, Randy. You said you had an intuition, you said you had dreams about me. And you want to know about Ulla."
"Brilliant summation, Cranston, and I take it you'd like for me to put all that together for you.
"Very well, Cranston, I shall oblige."
And Randy Buck looks up at Cranston, fixing him with his steely gaze, continuing, "You were going to leave me and go off with Ulla, weren't you, Cranston?"
"Had Ulla succeeded, yes Randy, I was."
"Tell me about you and Ulla, Cranston," Randy Buck repeats. "Assume I know nothing, including what I just told you. Begin at the beginning, leave nothing out. Tell me about you-and Ulla."
"You shouldn't allow yourself to cool down like that, Randy; you know the air conditioning here will cause the muscles to cramp and stiffen."
Impatiently, Randy Buck puts a towel over his shoulders, gaze fixed on Cranston, unwavering.
"As you know, Randy," Cranston begins, pacing back and forth before Randy Buck, head lowered as though in deep thought, seeking his words carefully, "you agreed with Dr. Grant's findings, the bottom line of which was, is that you are your own worst enemy, that in all of your plans there are fatal flaws because you yourself put them there.
"You subsequently tried to consciously avoid such mistakes, but without success, because they had become-if we are to credit Dr. Grant's conclusions, and we do-a part of you.
"So you agreed that the best thing to do would be to totally divorce yourself from the next effort at doing in the Baroness, leaving it completely in my hands.
"Not trusting myself since, after all, I am your henchman and this penchant for self-destruction might be contagious, I also decided to stand at arms length from the project.
"To that end, I contacted Ulla, full time dominatrix and part time professional killer, over in Europe, her reputation in certain circles having preceded her.
"I brought her over here and simply told her whom she was to kill, making available to her such funds and facilities as might be required, but offering no suggestions as to how she should go about it."
"She had a free hand, in other words."
"Exactly.
"But, at the same time, you met her-and saw in her the same thing, or much the same thing as I did.
"There was something about her, something, some combination of sheer physical thereness and ethereal perfection that caused us to react in different ways.
"You saw her in her dominatrix costume and only one thought came to mind, right?"
"The Baroness," Randy Buck concedes.
"Exactly. So you thought you saw another way out of your problem, what Grant called your subconscious masochism and the toll it extracts in the form of mistakes in handling the Baroness.
"Which was to let this pseudo-Baroness, this alter ego of the Baroness have her way with you fully.
"So you had her play the domination game with you, both of you in costume.
"I don't know exactly what went on in your bedroom, of course, but-"
"Everything, Cranston. She did it all.
"She had a way of tying up her victim before beating him with the whip, of sort of mummifying him-me-and then cutting lose with her bullwhip that allowed the whip to bite as deeply or slightly as she wished.
"So I could only lie there helpless on the bed, bound quite literally head to foot, as she worked me over, full force with the whip, sometimes landing it on the ropes which protected me, so that all I could feel was the thrill of anticipation and then the force of the blow, sometimes striking in between the ropes, breaking the skin, drawing blood.
"And Grant was right, was absolutely correct about my masochism, you know.
"Because my prick, the only part of me that was fully exposed, stood out like a fucking ramrod, Cranston; I mean, the way she had me tied up, the way she made me feel with the whip, I was feeling excited and somehow ... cleansed, if you can believe it.
"It was as though this was some great secret to great sex, known only to her and myself.
"So she rode my cock as I lay there on my back, a mummy in rope with a hard-on, and her squatting on top of it, impaled on it, rotating round and round on it, those big boobs of hers swinging in my face, me able to see them through the ropes but not to touch her, my arms crossed on my chest beneath the ropes, the ball gag around my mouth beneath the ropes preventing my sucking her tits.
"And she got me off that way, Cranston.
"And I have to tell you that, at that moment, I felt, I felt-strong, stronger than I ever had in my life.
"I really believed that I could take on the Baroness myself, that I could plan my pleasure or her demise, or both, all in one-not that it would be necessary now, this last, because behold a greater than the Baroness was here, right?
"And such was my confidence in her, Cranston, that I truthfully believed that the Baroness didn't stand a prayer!
"Not a snowball's chance in hell, Cranston!
"I was never happier than at that moment, that moment when she abandoned me there, her image intact in that she lifted not a finger to help me, and you finally had to come in and untie me.
"The next day, she went off to do her thing, in response to my inquiry as to her plans fobbing me off with some bullshit about simply telling the Baroness exactly what she was up to, thereby gaining her confidence and, at the first opportunity, killing her.
"A few days later, she was found floating in the Hudson, still in costume, dead of a single stab wound, expertly placed, right through the heart.
"But I seem to be doing all the talking here, Cranston, when the question before the house is that of you and Ulla, not her and myself."
"As you said, Randy, she had this strange effect, and not just on you.
"She was big, blonde, powerful, skilled and deadly.
"There was this, this ... proficiency to her, to her aura, if you will.
"As though anything she wanted to do, she could.
"And I challenged her, Randy.
"Doctor Grant would have had a field day with this one, I think you'd agree.
"I told her, 'You can do anything you want toexcept quit!'"
"So it's true, then," Randy Buck says. "You gave her the challenge aloud-the same challenge you have apparently been giving yourself for some time."
Cranston shrugs, standing still now, turning away.
"Oh, you need not turn away from me, Cranston. "I understand.
"You wanted an end to the madness and the deadly danger. Things had gone from bad to worse because of my insistence on dabbling in the world of the bizarre, my insistence on dragging you into that world alongside me, sharing the danger and the consequences of my fuck-ups.
"All these years, and you are still merely my private secretary, right? The most highly paid private secretary in the world, perhaps, but a private secretary nonetheless, and this notwithstanding your outstanding businesss acumen.
"Unfair, right?
"I have executives at Buck Enterprises who make many times what you do, who not only do not share the danger of my private life, but who have only the barest inkling, gleaned from the media, as to what that private life consists of.
"Whereas you, you must be at the office every dayand, in addition, don hood and boots or cloak and hood for bare-assed adventures in the secret world.
"Double duty, no recognition, and where will it all end, eh, Cranston?
"Or is it that there is some higher purpose to life, to so-called human existence, some higher plane of being accruing to the special status we call the human condition?
"And what's done is done and cannot be undone.
"The innocent cannot have their sufferings reversed, nor can the dead be brought back to life, however many acts of contrition we recite, however hard we pound on our chests.
"Meaculpa, meaculpa, mea culpa, eh, Cranston?
"Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, right?
"And here is this madman, concocting his fantastic and, in the event, half-baked schemes to commit the next outrage-and the next and the next-with you his still willing but increasingly unwilling accomplice.
"And you justify it by saying to yourself-what?
"That you need the money, right?
"Except, what about that fantastic cock, that salami, that monster lob of yours, Cranston?
"Does its need for money cause it to come to life when some costumed bitch spreads her big pussy for you after she's got her blood racing from whipping some other woman suspended by her wrists from a ceiling beam?
"Or perhaps it is thoughts of your bank balance which inspire it to stand at full and rigid attention, just before you shove it up the ass of some frightened young runaway, bound helplessly to a table in a dungeon somewhere, in very reasonable fear of her life?
"No, Cranston, there is a sadistic streak in you, an irresistible thrill, a dark joy, what the Germans call schadenfreude within you that causes you to look forward, with excitement, eagerness, tingling anticipation to whatever comes next in our dark and secret world.
"I know you, Cranston, for all your supposed high intelligence, I know you better than you know yourself.
"You will never leave me, Cranston-never!
"I know that now! I know that, because that, that! is what came to me in the major dream I had in the hospital.
"Because you are waiting, Cranston-waiting for me to give you the answer, to solve the riddle which obsesses you!"
"Riddle? What riddle?"
"Given the existence of God, explain the arthritic saint and the obscene contortionist."
And Cranston stiffens, a thrill of apprehension and wonder running down his spine.
Because-even though he himself would never have thought of putting it in those terms-this is what has obsessed him from the very beginning.
Given a reason for morality, explain the injustice rampant within the world, both that of evil and of blind chance.
The moment Cranston met Randy Buck, applying for the position of private secretary ten years ago, what seems like a lifetime ago, Cranston sensed in Randy Buck the darkness within, sensed it and was drawn to it, was drawn to this figure with the power, the wealth to make it happen, to indulge himself in the evil churning in his brain, to cause it to strike, again and again, in the real world. If.
If God were to permit it, if God were not to strike him down for his thoughts, words and deeds.
Yes, yes, I have sinned against Thee, in thought, word and deed. And just what the fuck art Thou going to do about it?
What must be done, how far must men go, to provoke the divine wrath, to cause the bolt from on high to strike-so that he can plunge backwards into the fiery abyss, all the time laughing and pointing his finger upward, to the eye in the sky, and say, laughing, "Gotcha!", having forced the personal revelation having proven to himself the hard way, having forced at last proof positive the existence of a supreme being.
But it hasn't happened, it isn't happening.
"Remember when you first came to me, Cranston?" Randy Buck asks, seeing Cranston standing there, looking uncertain in the face of this crass, evil, vulgar recovering invalid's uncanny insight.
"Remember when I handed you back your r�sum� and asked you a question?"
"Yes," Cranston replies, looking down at his wingtips, at their elaborately punched pattern in the leather.
"Why should I hire you?"
Yes, Cranston remembers that, remembers the bullet head with the iron-gray crew cut, remembers the deeply tanned skin, the brutal jaw, the glistening green eyes, remembers the feeling that there was nothing, nothing, nothing in between Randy Buck and himself, that the two of them were alone, on some vast, empty plane beneath a lowering, dark red sky, thick, black clouds roiling above them.
"Do you recall your answer, Cranston?"
Yes, oh yes, Cranston recalls his answer-recalls getting up out of his chair and taking off all his clothes, recalls standing there, his cock long and thick and bulb-headed resting on its bed of big, low-slung balls.
And he recalls Randy Buck sitting back in his high-backed, black leather-upholstered swivel armchair, fingers tented beneath his chin, smiling wickedly at Cranston's donkey dong, knowing he had done the exact right thing-and having absolutely no idea what had possessed him to do it.
"Put your clothes back on, Cranston," Buck said quietly, after a long time, a long look, "you're hired."
You're hired.
But the tone-low, throaty, having about it a complacent finality that made its actual meaning, without question, "You're mine."
Yes, Cranston was his, body and soul, from that moment on.
The devil incarnate?
Not hardly, Cranston told himself, but one who, like Cranston himself, was obsessed with the problem of good and evil in the world.
If only he were the devil, Cranston has told himself many times, if only Randy Buck were old Lucifer himself, how simple things would have been!
And none of this might have happened.
None of it-and yet.
The thoughts would still have been there, in his mind.
What's done is done and cannot be undone; that much is true enough.
But what about thoughts?
What about the images which come into the mind?
Because he could have blown the interview, could have mumbled some inanities and, in a polite handshake accepted the fatal, "Thank you for coming in and we'll be in touch."
And walked out of there-the evil within himself coiling back on itself, boiling in his mind, churning and burning and knowing itself imprisoned there, destined to forever remain thoughts so dark, so horrible that they would have made his head ache, banging against the walls of the skull in which they were destined to remain forever imprisoned, eternally unrealized-never made real.
But that didn't happen.
He did not flee the occasion of sin.
On the contrary, he exerted the full powers of his intellect to recognize it for exactly what it was the chance of a lifetime to carry out his deepest, darkest desires by suborning his will to that of another like his own, except that this tatter had it within its power to seize, to wrench from the bounty of nature itself, from the stuff of reality-that of which Cranston, left to his own resources, could only dream.
Dream.
This whole confrontation began with a dream, with Randy Buck's, traumatically-induced dreams.
Dreams of Cranston, dreams of Cranston's leaving him, dreams of a riddle-a riddle Cranston posed to Randy Buck, a riddle to which Cranston seeks the answer with an urgency and a passion the equal of that which he feels when he collaborates with Randy Buck.
"What uh, what was the answer to the riddle, Randy? I mean what did you say-in the dream, that is?"
"We shall speak of this again."
"No, I'd, I'd really like to know what you replied."
"That was my answer, Cranston-'We shall speak of this again.'"
"okay"
"How very odd, Cranston, that I should have asked you about you and Ulla, and here I end up doing most of the talking.
"How talkative of me-or how manipulative, how clever of you. Are you being clever with me, Cranston?"
2
If I Were really of a mind to be clever with you, Randy, wouldn't I first have been clever enough to conceal from you my innermost thoughts?" Cranston asks.
"Or perhaps it's that I'm even more clever in my own crude, non-intellectual way than are you," Randy Buck replies.
"And you must think so as well, or you wouldn't have asked me a riddle to which you don't know the answer. You uh, you really don't happen to know the answer, do you?"
"If I did, you would have divined that as well and given it to yourself through me in your dream, wouldn't you?
"I mean, remember, even important dreams are just that, only dreams, only a reassembling, accurate or otherwise, of fragments of our own knowledge, whether or not we know we know whatever it is that is thus revealed."
"Why do you suppose that Dr. Grant never asked me about my dreams?"
"Because he know you well enough to know that you have both the means and the will to act out your dreams. When he looked at your actions, Randy, he was seeing your dreams.
"Remember, he was the one whose methodology was to have you act out your fantasies. The only difference between you and the rest of his other patients being that they were probably acting out their fantasies for the first time, whereas, in your case, he was seeing instant replay."
"He saw too much, Cranston; way, way too much.
"I mean, you do understand that I had no choice, that I had to have you bring in those men from Detroit."
"Of course I do, Randy; now, getting back to that dream of yours, the one in which I posed the riddle to you-what were the circumstances? You know, the setting. Where were we when it happened?"
"We weren't, Cranston. I mean, there were nocircumstances.
"There was you, there was me, and the rest all whiteness.
"A white floor, a white wall, stretching as far and as high as the eye could see.
"You were standing there, facing me, about fifteen feet away, against this wall.
"As you spoke, you caused the three elements of the riddle to appear.
"You mentioned God, reached up to a pull chain, and turned on this, this ... eye in a triangle, over your head, like the one on the back of the dollar bill, y'know?
"The arthritic saint, you mentioned, and he appeared at a gesture from your right hand.
"The, the ... obscene contortionist, you brought into being on your left-a guy sucking his own cock.
"And the eye in the triangle looked at everything, at all of you, rolling around, looking and looking.
"And I was strong, tanned, healthy, naked, like the rest of you."
"Did you, did you spell out the meaning of the riddle for me, Randy?"
"No, I got ... busy."
"Busy."
"Yeah, I uh, well, the contortionist looked awfully good to me. I mean, you could see his ass hole, big and puffy, right there beneath his balls, like he was just askin' t'be torpedoed, y'know."
"And of course, you did."
'"Ey, like I said, in my dream I was strong, healthy, nothing wrong with me, right?"
"And that's it? You just fucked him in the ass?"
"No, I told you to turn out the eye in the sky because, I dunno, I just didn't want, want ... it watchin' me."
"And did I?"
"Of course you did. I mean, the whole time, you kept telling me that I was the boss.
"So you reached up and pulled the chain. An' the eye disappeared, and so did the cripple. And you were unhappy because you were still there.
"The eye was still there too, except you'd pull the chain so we couldn't see it-even though I knew that it could still see us.
"So t'cheer you up, I had you stand there, straddling the contortionist, so I could suck your cock while I fucked him in the ass. We all came together.
"The contortionist swallowed his own load while his ass swallowed mine an' I swallowed yours.
"We broke formation and he exited, stage left.
"You tried to pin me down on the riddle and the answer and I told you, you could ask me again about it sometime, but not to be a pain in the ass about it.
"Funny thing, huh? I asked about you and Ulla an' here I end up bein' the one doin' all the talking. "Go figure, right?
"Or uh, are you really lookin' t'me t'find the big answer?"
"Kind of looks that way now, doesn't it?"
"In other words, the only way you're gonna get outta the maze is if I lead you?"
"What other options do I have, Randy? I'll never leave you-now."
"That what Ulla was t'you, Cranston-another way out?"
"At the time, I thought she was THE way out for me.
"I thought, I thought-well you have to admit, she came on strong."
"But she was stupid. She was like me, Cranston, certainly no better than me, when it came to handling the Baroness. She was, say, brilliant, except for what? A few seconds? A fraction of a second? What?"
"Longer than that, I fear," Cranston sighs. "Maybe, maybe it was my fault, my wanting to be so, so ... arm's length from the whole thing, y'know?
"A better briefing and who knows? She'd be the one walking around sucking air, and the Baroness would be six feet under.
"The Baroness didn't kill Ulla; I'm convinced of it. It was your erstwhile female confederate, Roberta, who did that.
"So neat. So fast. And whether or not she believed Ulla about defecting to the Baroness, it would have made no difference in the outcome. Not to Roberta; in fact, if Roberta thought that she was telling the truth, that would have been all the more reason for Roberta to kill her.
"The Baroness doesn't need another superstrong female helper, not even one who looks so very much like herself, not in Roberta's estimation, not as long as Roberta is there to do for her, not as long as Roberta is there for fun and games.
"Ulla was dead the second she walked into the Baroness's office; she just didn't know it, didn't have a clue that Roberta was as cold, as vicious as anything she had ever run across or was ever-likely to run across in her forays into the dark world, into the warm, dark world where I, where I-"
"You feeling okay, Randy?"
Randy takes off the towel covering himself and looks down ruefully.
"Yeah, Cranston, I feel okay, or should I say, as well as can be expected.
"It's, it's a hard thing, you know, being the way I was, and being, being ... this way.
"Skinny and flabby, all at the same time, no fucking hair on my head, pale as a ghost.
"Can't even use the fucking sunlamp because the doctor says it'll cause my scars to set instead of fading.
"And Rhino turned me down."
"He what?"
"He showed up at the hospital, took one look, and said I wasn't ready for what he has to offer.
"And I had to admit it, he's right.
"He's into development, and I've got a good month of therapy at least before I can be well enough to start workin' out.
"So he said he'd see me in a month or so and if I was ready, we could begin.
"Meanwhile, he recommended I get myself a professional physical therapist."
"Maybe you-"
"To which I replied that I want to put myself back together again much more quickly than any physical therapist would ever go along with."
"What'd he say to that?"
"He gave me that shit-eating grin of his-you know, the one that makes him look like a bronzed skull wearin' sunglasses-and said that, in that case, he would definitely see me in a month.
"Okay, Cranston, help me do deep knee bends."
Randy Buck stands up, and Cranston notices that, beneath the scars, Randy is not in as bad a shape as he feels.
And indeed, but for an overall dissatisfaction and some weakness, Cranston suspects that his jaw, broken by Ultimo and only recently freed of its wire, causes him more pain than do Randy's stitches him.
Up and down, up and down Randy Buck goes, holding on to Cranson's hand with one of his own.
Twenty and he is back on the bench, knees shaking.
"About you and Ulla, Cranston," Randy Buck pants, mopping his brow with a towel.
"The whole idea, Randy, was that you would be so grateful that, in addition to Ulla's payoff, you'd give me a rather generous severance out of gratitude because Ulla was my idea."
"I might have done that, yes," Randy Buck concedes.
"And she and I would go off to-I don't know, Aruba, maybe, someplace like that-and live happily ever after."
"You uh, you mentioned this to her, then?"
"Oh yes. At the right time. In bed. After I'd just presented my best arguments."
"And she went along with the program?"
"Yes. Or she seemed to, said she did."
"You believed her?"
"I uh, I very much wanted to, Randy. I thought I saw a way out, had a way out, had somebody strong enough to lead me out."
"In the form of a dominatrix and professional killer."
"Yes. Absolutely. Why not?
"Given that what's done is done, what happens when you're done doing it?
"We all live happily ever after?
"We run off together and work on the problem of man and the universe in the sunlight, freed of all earthly cares by the ill-gotten fruits of our labors in the vineyards of darkness?
"That makes about as much sense as anything else in this world, doesn't it, Randy?"
"There y'go again, Cranston, askin' me the riddle, right?"
"I never asked you the riddle in the first place; you asked yourself, remember? I never volunteered for your dreams, Randy.
"Anyway, Ulla had the strength, she had the smarts, she had the beauty-and, at least insofar as I could tell, she had the common sense to know that there comes a time to get out of the game, to pick up your marbles and go home a winner..
"And this would have been as good a time as any.
"She-we-leave you on your throne as prince of this world's darkness, unchallenged and unstoppable-and who knows?
"Someday, after you've exhausted every recourse-steroids, amino acids, goat gonads, whatever-and resigned yourself to being an old man, say, thirty years from now, you could pay us a visit and we could tell you what conclusions we came to.
"And you could tell us yours as well, what you arrived at and how you got there in your atmosphere of unbounded freedom."
"But the Baroness put a severe crimp in all that," Randy Buck observes.
"The absolute severest," Cranston concurs. "Which leaves me, leaves me-"
"Stuck?"
"Okay, Randy, stuck. Yes, that's what it does; it leaves me stuck here with you.
"I tell myself that I'm here because of the money. Which puts me at a very real disadvantage to you, Randy.
"Within the hierarchy, the ranking of priorities of human problems, I place myself one step below you.
"Freed of monetary cares, you pursue the problem of human existence at a more objective level than can I.
"So yes, Randy, it's back to Plan A for me.
"The only way out of the maze, like you say, is to follow you-even knowing as I do that, for the time being, at least, you have no intention of leaving the maze, are in fact the minotaur at its center."
"Seeking to devour whoever crosses its path, eh, Cranston-including you?"
"A chance I have to take," Cranston replies, shrugging. "Or suppose you tell me-do I have another choice?"
"Think I'd tell ya if y'did?" Randy Buck asks. "Randy, I sincerely believe that one day, this madness, this compulsion is going to leave us-both of us.
"I believe that, when this happens, it will happen to you first and then, through you, to me."
"In that order, huh."
"Absolutely."
"And meanwhile?"
"Meanwhile," Cranston sighs, "meanwhile, the dream showed you the way, as you would have it." .
"As I-oh. Oh yes. I see very well what you mean."
"I somehow just knew you would."
And Cranston stands there, hands on hips, as Randy Buck, with shaking hands, undoes the zipper of the fly in front of his face, in order that he can have Cranston's most outstanding attribute in front of his face.
And now, he does have it there, before him, already half erect.
Because they understand one another very well indeed.
So that the dark thrill, the lascivious rise, the swelling of sensual joy has arisen within them both, its inspiration as well dark, negative, the failure to find meaning outside themselves, the failure to find peace within themselves giving way to that feeling with which they have long compensated themselves.
There cannot be a higher meaning to their existence?
Very well then, let there be a lower one!
Let that prurience, that salacious memory within them stir them with itself, with the turning inward of their vision, the turning downward of it, the reaching for that lower truth, that truth which is what it is and does not pretend that it is otherwise within them.
Because yes, they can conjure it from within themselves, conjure more surely, more truly, than could any witch, any wizard summon from brewing cauldron a demon to serve them.
Because this demon is, ironically, a gift from nature itself, from nature and therefore from that which is behind nature.
And oh yes, it is in them, is of them, even though infinitely greater than themselves.
It is always there, an eternal light flickering deep within their far inner distance.
So that it burns within them, inviolate, protected from all harm and all danger, the one cause worth dying for, happy to do so in the knowledge that, without it, life is utterly devoid of meaning, is not worth living in any event, so that, if that is ever at risk, then they have nothing, nothing, nothing to lose by taking any risk for its protection.
Is it any wonder, then, that they have placed all in service to their own sexuality?
Is it any wonder, then, that they will go to any lengths to further the cause of their own experience of the ultimate pleasure?
Is that, then, so difficult to understand, to recognize that the whole world has for them but one intrinsic merit, one inherent purpose, one excuse for being-and that is in service to their summoning of the pleasure beyond pleasure?
And so it is here, now.
It has nothing to do with homosexuality, with bisexuality, with any other label one cares or dares assign to what is happening here, now; rather, this is a question of immediacy, of thereness, of convenience in its most intimate sense.
There is pleasure to be given here, pleasure to be taken here, by two who have of late known nothing but frustration, opposition, pain and defeat in their quest, in the supreme quest for the feeling and the feeling and the feeling of all that, for them, is truly meaningful in life, in living, in existence.
So that they would know it, would know it here, would know it now, would know it with nothing, nothing, nothing standing between them and their knowledge of it.
And Randy Buck takes the broad, bulging, pulsating head of Cranston's cock into his mouth.
And Randy Buck gives him a long, slow, ardent knob job, running the tip of his tongue from the indentation of the ruddy eye, over the taut, hot, rounded surface to the thickly flared flange at the rear.
And now, Randy Buck explores the fish head underneath, the juncture of head and shaft-exactly as in his dreams, his other dreams of Cranston, his dreams of losing him, of losing this.
But now, he will not.
Yes, the Baroness, Roberta, whoever, has actually done him a service.
Ulla was a threat and is a threat no longer and in her bloody, horrible departure from them has served to strengthen the bond between Cranston and himself.
How many times, for how many years has he looked at, has he seen this mighty organ in action, its booted, hooded owner his tool, his myrmidon, his alter ego, available at his beck and call, existing to do his bidding, however perverted, painful, harmful, deadly.
Not another's cock this, but an extension of his, a precious, a prized possession of his very own, his to do with as he pleases.
And right now, it pleases him to do as the contortionist in the great dream did-to suck his own cock.
Yes, yes, his own, surely and no other's, this is! Because, even now, he feels the thrill of his cock, coming to life, feels the workings of his own tongue as it polishes what has to be his own knob, feels it in full and intimate detail.
So that he must, he must ... free it of the restraining, damp jock.
And-there it is, free, even as he is free to do as he is doing.
No Baroness, no Roberta, no state police are here to interfere. He and his cock, his extended cock, are here, safe, together, alone.
And now, Randy Buck is sucking the mighty marauder, is servicing the turgid intruder, is absorbing the strength, the health, the virility of it, is gaining strength with each bobbing of his head, with each wrapping around of his ever-working tongue.
And oh yes, there is truth here, the truth of life itself, the truth that form follows function, and that the function is that of fostering, nurturing, making possible, making happen the supreme pleasureful experience.
That is the one knowable truth, the one fact which is beyond dispute, above debate, outside the sophistry, lies and bullshit of reason.
It is what it is and not otherwise, and not all the discussion in the world will serve to decentralize or diminish its true importance.
And yes, the absolute thereness of it, the absolute Tightness of it, the absolute pleasure of it Randy Buck absorbs right now, crying out in his mind, Yes, yes, yes!
And Cranston knows as well the balm and the excitement, the peace and the agitation of it as Randy Buck claims his own in Cranston, relinquishing now all thought of leaving here.
Here he is and here he belongs, his wagon hitched to this particular dark, evil, smoldering star.
And he is happy, yes happy! to have it this way, Cranston tells himself. Not his fault, not his responsibility if things didn't work out otherwise; and remember, he did try.
But his trying was to no avail, was no better than Randy Buck's trying, his striving to deal with the Baroness.
Not Randy Buck's self-destructiveness and not his own caused this failure, dealt this blow to Ulla, handed this victory to the Baroness-this and all the other intervening ones as Randy Buck strove, again and again, to either get something going of his own or to stop the Baroness.
And yes, they did learn from experience, a sign of higher intelligence, so they say.
They didn't make the same mistake twice, learning instead how many other, new things can go wrong, and in how many ways.
Ulla. The caves of Yucatan. Sally and the data base.
All, all gone sour, all their fault, Cranston tells himself, his and Randy Buck's, both of them paying the price, not of their incompetence but of their imperfection.
How good must one be to protect against or to stop the Baroness; better than they are, obviously.
And yet, she cannot interfere here, cannot stop this. '
As the connection between Randy Buck and himself is made visible, made real, made sentient, symbol and substance merging now as they exploit each other in a manner acceptable to them both.
Because, if they did not, could not stop the Baroness, neither did she succeed in making this impossible.
Look, just look at the man!
Thousands of stitches, a brain operation, weak, anxious, disgusted, tormented-and yet, just look!
Is it animal courage, the courage of an ant attacking a creature millions of times its mass, risking, inviting death to do so?
That's a part of it, certainly.
Is it angry defiance, a triumph over outrageous frustration?
That too, there is.
Is it a test of reality, a bouncing up and down, a pushing of the envelope of the world, yet another challenging to the Power that is to reveal itself in the guise of divine and well-deserved wrath-to see if, at last, that long-awaited punishment is to be visited upon their heads, if the long-invited divine axe is about to fall?
Also very much a feature here, Cranston tells himself.
Ah, but even as he thinks these things, his body is reassuring him, is soothing his fevered, tormented brain, is causing wave after wave of lascivious excitement, of raw libidinous feeling to well up within him.
And within Randy Buck as well.
Because this is communion between them, is communication between them, is the arrival of perfect empathy between two halves of what is temporarily become but a single entity, a unity of purpose and more than purpose, a unity of imagery with reality, a merger of action and thought with intent, with will, with yet another triumph of sensation over the world.
As they come and come, Randy Buck sucking and swallowing, even as his reflexively pumping fist causes his own jism to erupt, thick, hot, copious, out of his own bulging knob, over his knuckles, the white ooze dropping in thick dollops onto the carpeting below, as Cranston pumps Randy Buck's face, again and again, each thrust producing a fresh spurt of his vital essence, which is savored and swallowed before the next is elicited.
To come and come and, in that coming, however arrived at, to know ultimate truth, which is nothing more than the most exquisite of physical sensations-surely a valid cause for carrying on.
To come and come and know yet again that, if no higher purpose exists, then this is enough, is more than enough to justify their continued existence-to know that they may indeed have lost battle after battle but that they have nonetheless endured to feel this once more and, in that feeling, to know truth and, with that truth, victory.
3
A month later-a month in which Randy Buck has been able to recover most of his strength-and all of his hair.
The sunlamp has restored his tan, from the neck up.
He has not been to his office in the city in all this time.
From time to time, Cranston goes into the office to handle correspondence, bring home for perusal and appropriate executive action those matters which he cannot handle on his own or cannot be delegated to one of the corporate officers or perhaps merely require the official signature of the man himself.
And yet, today, he is getting ready to go into the city-but not to the office.
No, today it is once again time for that most surrealistic of all experiences-lunch with the Baroness, an odd custom which drives their respective henchpersons crazy.
"Not a good idea, Randy," Cranston remonstrates, as he always does, adding this time a special argument against it. "Why tip your hand, Randy?
"As far as the Baroness knows, you're still an invalid, still recuperating-or trying to-at home.
"Why do this thing? Why not leave well enough alone?
"You know you're gonna wanna do something any day now, and if she thinks you're still totally incapacitated, that makes it all that much better for you.
"This is a mistake, Randy; this is exactly the kind of mistake Dr. Grant identified, the kind of mistake we've been making all along.
"Let's learn from experience, Randy; let's not tell her anything we don't have to, which is nothing at all.
"Waddaya say, Randy?"
"I say-you don't know what you're talking about, Cranston.
"This is something only the Baroness and I can understand, can appreciate, can savor the delicious irony of.
"Do you know, Cranston, have you any idea what a triumph this lunch today will be for me, after what I've been through-after what that bitch put me through?"
This last said with suddenly red face and gritted teeth and clenched jaw.
"I know exactly, Randy. I know the agony she has put you through, the danger she has put you in greater than ever before.
"But just look at yourself, Randy; you can't even mention it without getting upset. What are you going to be like when you're face to face with the Baroness herself?"
"Like? What will I be like, Cranston? I shall be, as always, a perfect gentleman. I shall smile and laugh in all the right places, be effusive, even gallant in my deportment toward the Baroness-even as she will play the perfect socialite and woman about town in my presence.
"That's part of the deliciousness, the irony of it, don't cha see, Cranston?
"Except that this time around, it will be especially poignant, since my very being there will be a minor triumph of sorts for me.
"Remember, her thing is to prevail, mine is to endure.
"The hammer and the anvil, that's us, the Baroness and I, Cranston.
"The hammer has tried once again to break the anvil and not succeeded.
"And this is the point I must drive home to herthat she has, in fact, not succeeded."
"Well, Eric will be well armed, just in case."
"Do what you must," Randy Buck sighs.
"Eric will be well armed, Roberta will no doubt be well armed as well.
"So that Roberta and Eric will spend the entire lunch staring one another down while trying to remain unobtrusive, while trying to look for that sudden uprising of hidden assassins from neighboring tables, armed with automatic weapons, or that sudden motion from the Baroness or myself to move Out of the preplanned line of fire.
"But that's not going to happen, Cranston; never has, never will.
"No, both of us enjoy our little get-togethers too much and on too many levels to ruin what is one of the very few highlights of our, shall we say, mundane existences.
"I'll be all right and so will the Baroness.
"Safe conduct there, safe dining while there, safe return, et ensuite, la guerre continuera, n'est-ce
"You know that if it was up to me Randy-"
"Please, please, Cranston, don't be so stereotypical, all right?
"Right now, Nancy is no doubt having this same conversation with the Baroness. Or Roberta. Or both. Whatever.
"And she is probably wishing, as I do, that her people would stay out of things they don't comprehend."
Cranston falls silent, helping Randy on with his sport coat.
They go down the great marble staircase from the second floor of the Estate together, Eric holding the front door open, chauffeur's cap in hand, his odd pallor making him look like a marble statue come to life.
That, or a very well made store mannequin, togged out in livery.
"I'll be back for supper, Cranston. Oh, and I'm expecting Rhino sometime.
"Just have him wait for me, won't you?"
"Anything you say, Randy."
* * *
"You're looking surprisingly well, Randy, I must say," the Baroness says. "And you, Baroness, are your usual ravishing self.
So. How have you been keeping, these days?"
"Just knowing that you are hors de combat makes me sleep better at night."
"Was, Baroness, was hors de combat. But I'm not nearly so, so ... hors as I was."
"I see that. You seem to have lost some weight, but I rather imagine that's all to the good-assuming, that is, that you weren't deliberately carrying that gross, hairy stomach to further add to your villainess appearance when in hood and boots."
"My uh, my special guests have never complained about my appearance, Baroness, their comments being usually more concerned with their, shall we say, accommodations."
"Said comments ideally being wordless shrieks, I take it?"
"Oh, absolutely. I like those the best-especially when they are delivered for good cause."
"And yet, the last time you played genial host, Randy, the results were somewhat less than satisfactory."
"For both of us, as it turns out, eh, Baroness."
"That's very true. It would seem that we both do our respective things with singular proficiency, with me prevailing and you enduring, both expertly, both with the help of experts-myself with Ultimo, and you with the aid of one Doctor Flynn, brain surgeon, New Haven, CT."
"My my, you are well informed, Baroness.
"Have you had a look at my x-rays as well?"
"Dear me, no! I wouldn't begin to know what I was looking at!
"Besides, can you imagine my surprise when I was informed that you somehow managed to survive the ordeal. My goodness, one would have thought that three vengeful harridans would have managed to tear you apart by the time the state police arrived!"
"You should have told your friend Captain Reynolds to take his time getting there, Baroness."
"I doubt that it would have made all that much difference. I understand that they stopped beating you when you passed out.
"What's that, Randy, a page from your book? It's no fun torturing someone if they can't feel it?"
"Mmmmmm, I'd say that's a fairly logical assumption as to what happened, Baroness.
"Otherwise, things would have gone much more your way, I fear.
"You should have had Roberta finish me off."
"In other words, murder you in front of twenty witnesses, the sirens already roaring in the distance.
"No, Randy, I was not about to give the state police cause to investigate a murder which must, in the end, undoubtedly have led to Roberta. And she is much too clever for that as well.
"The all-consuming urge to destroy the enemy is entirely on the part of your camp, Randy, I can assure you."
"Can you really, Baroness?"
"Well of course. I mean, just look at your track record, Randy. Look at it from my point of view. Given the apparent necessity of having enemies, certainly you would be the enemy of choice."
"Then why did you-go as far as you did?"
"Strictly in order to save all those women, Randy and the others like them to come.
"This was the first time that you had a long-range plan to pursue your ... hobby on so massive a scale.
"So I thought that perhaps this was the time to make the punishment fit the crime.
"It never has before, as you well know."
"No, it hasn't, has it, Baroness?"
And Randy Buck tips his glass in her direction, a mocking toast before taking a sip, before adding, "And it didn't this time either, as things turned out, n'est-ce pas?"
"Suppose you tell me, Randy.
"Tell me that I didn't succeed in putting you in touch with your own mortality, that I didn't manage to prove to you that you too are vulnerable-capable of being wounded."
"Poisoning me at the masquerade ball was no joke either, you know, Baroness."
"Yes, but it was more or less a spectator thing, was it not, Randy? Almost like watching a movie, watching them take you away, watching them pump your stomach, watching yourself get better almost immediately.
"Not at all the same thing as watching yourself get cut open, watching yourself bleed-and then finding out that they're going to have to cut your head open in order to save your life.
"No, that wasn't at all the same as the terror and pain of this last time out, Randy.
"A new experience for you, I know."
"Oh yes, Baroness, it does give one pause to stop and think.
"Still, what does it change-for either of us."
"Not much," the Baroness admits. "The big change was made a long time ago, wasn't it, Randy?"
"What uh, what big change is that, Baroness?"
"The change from being this magical creature we call a human being to becoming an animated, self-propelled thing, Randy.
"The change from being one of God's chillun to a lump of meat that thinks.
"That change, Randy. You know-the first time you killed someone, that very first time, when you looked for the sky to fall on you and it didn't?
"How can such things be permitted?
"How can one human being do such a thing to another and get away with it?
"Because if one can-and you found out that indeed one can-then what does that say about you?
"All men are meat, John is a man, therefore, and like that, right?
"So that person equals thing equals mere object, mere artifact. You, me, everyone.
"How very sad for us, don't you think?
"But one would think as well that this would cause us to be kind to each other, would it not, Randy?
"I mean, if nobody else cares, then surely it's all up to ourselves.
"Instead, you persist in victimizing these poor creatures-"
"And some not so poor."
"Yes, I thought that a particularly nice touch, your chaining up your erstwhile colleagues, Samantha Steele and Fiona Fairley, in the incoming tide in the caves of Yucatan.
"Believe me, I was highly tempted to let them drown."
"Then why didn't you?"
"Why because, Randy dearest, that was what you wanted.
"And now, you have two wealthy, influential, and no doubt highly vindictive new enemies, where before you had the same as allies."
"You intend to form an alliance with them, then?"
"One doesn't need a sledgehammer when a flyswatter will do now, does one, Randy dearest?
"What makes you think I of all people need any assistance?
"You're going to have to do a lot better than you have in the past to cause me to take on partners to thwart you."
"This all sounds like a challenge, Baroness.
"You see? You see what a maniac you are, Baroness?
"You don't give a damn about the victims, do you?"
"They're all meat, remember, Randy? We're all meat.
"What does it mean to be a victim?
"It means to be the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all.
"A function of location, timing, identity, as impersonal as a mathematical equation. How can I care more about the victims than they care about themselves, Randy?
"Anyway, how much can one care about ... meat, right?
"Young girls running away, hanging about bus stations and railroad terminals and park benches at night-what do they really think will happen to them?"
"Except that, where I'm concerned, you won't let it, will you, Baroness?"
And the gleam of anger toward her in his eyes belies his pleasant tone and expression.
"Hardly the point, wouldn't you say Randy?
"I saved the lives of twenty women-twenty-one, counting Sally-from your clutches.
"Twenty paroled female criminals and one, the biggest criminal of all among them, a traitor to and abuser of her own sex and the public trust, many times over.
"Was I really supposed to give a damn about them, Randy? Is that why I saved them, because I care."
"Obviously not."
"Obviously not," she echoes. "They were merely a means to get at you.
"And I must admit that, except in the strictly physical sense, and that only to a limited extent, I didn't succeed."
"No, you didn't did you, Baroness?"
The waiter brings their lunch.
"Oh, and bring us a magnum of champagne, will you? New York State will be fine, more than fine for a toast to incompetence."
"Yours or mine, Randy dearest?"
"Both, Baroness, very much both.
"You know how to win the battle, but not gain the victory, while I?
"I allow it, I permit it, indeed, a part of me even sanctions it."
"I see. Then I get no credit at all for my surveillance, my fortitude in the face of often overwhelming odds-none of that, I suppose."
"You get credit, Baroness, for being no different from me. You are no worse, perhaps, but certainly no better.
"What did happen to Ulla exactly, by the way."
"Oh come now, Randy! That's ancient history, before Sally, even before the caves of Yucatan."
"Yes, but still, I'd really like to know. "For future reference. "Humor me, won't you?"
"If you insist," the Baroness sighs. "Ulla came to me with this story about how Cranston hired her to kill me, about how she could see that she had a great deal more in common with me than with your camp-male chauvinist pigs that you are, one and all-plus she was personally attracted to me, very much so, in fact.
"I was willing to send her back to you intact with a note. Nice try, that sort of thing; but Roberta decided that discretion was the better part of smartass and, what the hell, I went along with her.
"Best to humor the hired help every now and again, makes them feel important and all that, right?
"Much the same way you apparently allowed Cranston to have his shot, hence Ulla-have I got that part right, Randy?"
"But of course. Do go on."
"Well, there was no help for it, of course, but that we change into costume before hitting the sheets, Ulla in the guest room, me in my own, before she came to me.
"And of course, things are much more ... appropriate by moonlight.
"And also much more confusing.
"Ulla came to me in the bed-except that it turned out to be Roberta, who immediately shoved the poignard into her heart, killing her instantly."
"I see. One thing I don't understand, though; how was she planning on dispatching you?"
"At first I thought either strangulation or by snapping my neck."
"I can certainly get into that," Randy Buck muses.
"Only when we went to throw her into the river did Roberta discover a garotte, concealed right at the top of her corselet, just below the boobs, either as her fallback or as the intended weapon of choice."
"Also not without its attractions," Randy Buck nods, his mouth a mou of appreciation. "I shall have to tell Cranston about this.
"He'll certainly appreciate knowing all about how the love of his life bought the farm."
"My, my! The love of his life then, is it!
"We were even more effective than we thought."
"Yes, yes you were," Rand Buck admits, "and about to become even more so. Something about salt on an open wound that attracts me."
"Even when that wound happens to be on your closest associate?"
"Especially then. It will teach him several lessons-the first of which is having anything so ridiculous as a love of one's life."
"A point well taken, Randolph."
"How very good of you to say so, Cynthia."
And they clink champagne glasses.
"And you'll make the appropriate expressions of sympathy, I take it?" Cynthia asks.
"But of course! I only wish I could videotape it and send you a copy. My thespian values are much under-rated, I fear. And it would take someone such as yourself to appreciate my performance."
"I can only imagine.
"Does that come complete with pats on the back?"
"My dear Cynthia, it comes with hugs to the bosom, at a certain point!
"I should have the guy in tears, or I shall consider the raccontourage a complete failure!"
"And uh, you'll bed him down afterward, in order to comfort him?"
"Oh, definitely! How else am I going to shove it up his ass literally, having just done so in the verbal sense."
And their laughter echoes in the refined surroundings of the elegant sidewalk restaurant, Eric and Roberta looking on in stoic watchfulness from their vantage points on the periphery of the hedge, Eric leaning on a fender of the Buck limo, Roberta against the hood of a Marvel Industries security jeep, both of them mystified not only by the high old time being had by the two archenemies, but failing to comprehend the purpose of these rendezvous to begin with.
"Really, Cynthia, we'd make a great team together.
"Look what a marvelous time we have planning the torture of poor Cranston."
"Ah, but you see, Randy, we differ too much in our attitudes.
"I can go along with Cranston, because he deserves it, especially in the elegant and subtle form you propose; but these others, Randy-they're just meat.
"What fun is it, what possible amusement do you derive from the torture of helpless victims? "It's so, so ... trite.
"You yourself experienced this triteness, did you not?
"Cause and effect, Randy. You cut them, they bleed. You strike them, they break.
"As would you. As did you.
"So what purpose does it serve, really? What enlightenment comes to you as a result of having done it?"
"Ah, but you see, Baroness, that is one of the main points. You said it yourself.
"Enlightenment. The enlightenment which does not come to me. The terror, the suffering, the anguish, the injury, the death.
"And what has changed? Nothing.
"Except that that which is done is done and cannot be undone.
"Or ever, EVER, put right, you see. Not by me, not by he who-or that which-is higher than me.
"A passage has been made from life to death, and that passage was no more special than a cow's trip through the slaughterhouse.
"Meat thou wert and unto meat shalt thou return. You see? No change, none at all-not in the world, not in me."
"In that case, I wonder that you don't ever tire of the demonstration of this fact."
"Ah, but you see, I am an artist, my dear Baroness!
"One takes canvas, paint, brush-and creates.
"Each creation a painting, but no two alike!
"The details, Baroness, the details.
"And never, never the work of art that counts, but rather the transformation within the artist who created it-that, that is what matters, don't cha see?
"Sex and violence and a last chance for them to have, to share the ultimate experience, to make hay while the sun shines, so to speak.
"Because the dead don't fuck, you see?
"So that, if I can make their last rites a memorable experience-memorable for me, of course, since I have no evidence that the dead remember-then that is an addition to my resume of outrages, yet another provocation, another invitation to the powers that be.
"Is that enough? No? Then how about this time? Or this, or this?
"What does it take to get you to reveal yourself?
"Yes, yes, send me to hell and thereby prove you exist!"
"In other words, Randy, I'm actually interfering with a metaphysical experiment?"
"That's right, Baroness. What the hell's the matter with you anyway? Didn't you ever hear of freedom of religion?"
And they both laugh uproariously at that one.
So that anyone watching them would think that they were the best of old friends, appreciating each others' sense of humor as only old friends can.
And only two of those watching know differently.
"We are so very much alike, you and I, Baroness," Randy Buck says, returning to that theme, driving the point home.
"Yes, we are at that, I fear, Randy," the Baroness says, drowning her fading chuckles in a sip of champagne, then saying, flatly, without expression, "which is why I know how vitally necessary it is that I stop you.
"Which is why you know that this is necessary as well, Randy. You know how sick you are!
"Gregory Grant knew how sick you are, which is why you had him killed.
"Captain Reynolds of the state police knows how sick you are and, through him, the state's computer does as well! I know that Cranston erased your file, Randy, but there are some files not even Cranston can figure out how to access, not even with the information that Sally provided you and him.
"So you see, my dear, there is quite a nice little noose closing slowly around your bull neck. Take my advice, Randy, and leave the bizarre behind. Next time, you might not be so fortunate."
4
"Follow the diet, don't go up more than five pounds per session on the upper body routine, ten pounds on the lower.
"You deviate from the schedule, don't do it by more than one day without dropping back on the weights; remember, you're on a split routine but your body doesn't know that, so it's gonna want ta take the easy way out.
"Argenine and ornithine, you take daily, half an hour before, one hour after your workout.
"I'll want to have a look at you in about a month, see what's happening and what isn't, make the appropriate adjustments to the diet and routine."
"Have I uh ... lost anything?" Randy Buck asks Rhino.
"You mean atrophy? Not that I can see. You weren't in a car wreck, after all, Randy. There were no broken bones and anything that was torn got stitched back together again. Scar tissue is the strongest tissue there is."
"Speaking of which-"
"They'll always be there, but you keep putting on the lotion before you hit the rays and it'll be very slight. There's no disruption to the surface contour, so you healed very well.
"Anything else?"
"No, no. Thanks for coming out, Rhino."
"Any time, Randy."
They shake hands, Randy buck and Rhino, tanned skull and wraparound sunglasses giving him a futuristic look, which his black clothing does nothing to contradict.
"Eric, drive Rhino back to wherever he wants t'go."
Eric and Rhino leave, exiting the elaborately equipped gym in the basement of the Estate.
"Cranston, did uh, did what's-her-name get here from the city yet?"
"Debbie. She's in your bedroom waiting for you, Randy."
"She understand what she's to do-and what she isn't."
"Perfectly, Randy."
"How'd she take it?"
"About how you'd expect. After all, she is a professional dominatrix. The usual song and dance. If he wanted a whore, why didn't he get one and like that.
"But I made her understand. I bought an extra thousand worth of understanding, know what I'm saying?"
"Perfectly. How very satisfactory and how very disappointing. I would have respected her ever so much if she had told you to get stuffed."
"People who advertise in sex tabloids are not in the habit of telling well-paying clients to get stuffed, Randy; and it isn't as though she's a virgin."
"No, I suppose not, I suppose it doesn't mean-"
Cranston looks at Randy Buck, standing there in his gray cotton sweat suit, dark patches blotching it here and there from the perspiration of his just completed workout.
"Something the matter, Randy?"
"No, no. Just, for a moment, I had, like, an insight. A thought about-never mind. It's gone now.
"Probably not important.
"You bring my hood and boots down here."
"Right over there, Randy. And uh, Randy."
"What?"
"This is a very big girl we're talking here, Randy. Very big, and used to being very much in charge of the situation.
"And you just had your first workout on the path to complete recovery.
"So if you want me to stand by, just in case-"
"I want you to keep out of the way, Cranston, is what I want.
"I want the young lady and myself to be alone, understand? If I had wanted you involved, if I had wanted-never mind.
"I'll talk to you later, Cranston, about what the Baroness and I discussed, okay?"
"Of course, Randy, but ... of course."
Because Cranston can see that Randy Buck is feeling his oats at the moment.
He has completed his first successful full workout-at much reduced poundages, of course-since his dismantling that fateful night in this very place two months previously.
Just as mirrors and weights and exercise equipment, carpeting and acoustical ceiling tile have replace the brick walls and floor, the bare-beamed ceiling, the wooden tables and metal chains of the torture chamber, just so does he feel renewed.
Cranston can tell, can see the exhilaration in
Randy Buck, evident ever since his return from his lunch with the Baroness in the city.
Something of interest and importance he has to tell Cranston, but it can wait.
It can wait, and there is nothing Cranston can say or do that will hasten the information, will prematurely extract it from RB.
Randy showers in the basement shower enclosure and Cranston goes back upstairs, slumping on the living room sofa, not even bothering to turn on the TV with the remote, bemused, depressed without knowing why, but resigned to waiting for Randy Buck's own good time, when he will once again cause things to happen.
Cranston sniffs in self-derision, feeling like nothing so much as a robot-resting, quiescent, waiting for Randy Buck to turn him on.
* * *
A woman! Randy Buck tells himself, scrubbing himself vigorously in the shower, standing in the clouds of vapor that ascend from the cold tile.
Yes, he is ready for a woman.
Cranston can wait, the news he has to impart old and cold, after all, to be submitted well after the fact for analysis and-he grins at this commiseration.
Yes, that can wait.
He can wait to take Cranston to bed, to stake his claim in reality to that in which it took his dreams to make him realize he has so avid an interest.
A salami like that you don't find every day, not attached to a brain and an attitude like Cranston's.
The man is fire and ice, a rare combination.
As are brilliance and servility.
As, for that matter, are initiative and independence.
But this last he will have to curb in Cranston, will have to make him see that he has no real options in his life at this point, that Randy Buck is his only way to acceptable existence and to-salvation.
Although this last seems a very remote possibility indeed, so remote as to be laughable, which is why Randy Buck is laughing now, mouth open to the needlepoint spray which hoses him.
Because the dream didn't lie about that, he knows.
Cranston looks to Randy Buck, of all people, for the answer to the riddle of the universe.
If Randy Buck doesn't make it, Cranston won't make it.
And of course, they're not going to make it; Randy Buck could have told Cranston that, except that it seems too easy, too pat.
Besides, even the condemned have an interest in revealed truth, so who knows? They could go into the big sleep two very enlightened sadists. Immortality.
Everyone believes in his own immortality, however illogical, however contrary to the inevitability of the opposite such an outlook may run.
The other thing his sadism does for him, this pointing out of the difference between himself and his victims.
He is the torturer, they the tortured.
If they are mortal, then he is immortal.
Because they are going to die, no question.
See, just see! the way their bodies react, the way they react.
Meat. Just so much meat, is all they are terrified, screaming, painfully injured, bruised and bleeding meat.
Whereas, surely, he is something more.
He is to them as is the dreamer to his dream.
We are certainly immortal in our dreams.
We awaken and are; they are dissolved and are no longer.
The dominatrix. The real thing, not some girl in the standard costume, some housewife or aspiring actress playing a part, but the real thing, the genuine article.
Randy Buck's female counterpart. Not his equivalent, he knows, because he has done things which would undoubtedly revolt and terrify even the so-called real thing; but close enough.
This one has no problem with laying on very real stripes, with causing very real bruises, very real pain. And that's important.
And she's a big woman, and Randy Buck-likes a big woman. Samantha Steele, Fiona Fairley-forget them. They're big, but they're history, are no longer available to him, not after he tried to kill them in the caves of Yucatan.
Sally. There's a big woman-who will have nothing to do with him, not after he tried to kill her twice.
And the Ritter woman, warden of the women's reformatory? She never even gave him a fair shot, humiliating him-forget her. He doesn't want to be reminded of his humiliations.
Which is why he was not in the mood tonight to go over with Cranston the details of the demise of Ulla at the hands of his nemesis and her companions, mainly Roberta, his own former employee.
Now there, he tells himself, there's the real thing, the genuine article.
What hood and boots and whip imply, she delivers, and to excess!
But enough of this, he tells himself.
Tonight, he is to have Debbie, his to do with as he pleases, now that Cranston has made the necessary arrangements with her. But that doesn't matter.
However she came to be here, however they came to be doing what they will be doing, what he will be doing to and with her-that will become unimportant.
Because what will ultimately count here is the feeling and the feeling and the feeling.
And he will summon it, will call it forth through her and with her, and they-enough.
Already, Randy Buck's big boinker begins to bestir itself.
And it's too soon.
He wants to do a cold start, wants to relish every moment, every level of his arousal, every phase, every aspect of what he is about to do.
Because this is to be his art, his creativity in action, his creation.
Not the work of art, he reminds himself, but what the artist becomes as a result of the exercise of the creative process.
Already, Randy Buck feels himself a man in transition, senses himself as one in the process of becoming something greater, stronger than his present self.
He completes his shower now, toweling himself off with the thick, terry cloth bath sheet Cranston has laid out for him.
And now, he puts on his boots and his hood.
And hums to himself the old Gene Autry theme song.
I'm back in the saddle again.
But certainly, he reminds himself, certainly not out where a friend is a friend.
Because he has no friends in this world.
He has something better than friends-henchmen who are utterly dependent upon him.
One of whom has a lesson awaiting him, a thing to which Randy Buck looks forward with particularly perverse delight, made all the more delicious by the deferral, the anticipation.
Later for that, he tells himself, stomping his feet, watching his prick bounce heavily in response.
Feels good, he tells himself; feels damn good!
He touches the leather of the hood-a new one, the old having been destroyed when they cut it off his head at the hospital, after, after-never mind.
That's in the past.
He is restored here, has lost nothing, has perhaps gained-something.
Insights. Perspective. A sense of his own mortality. And been left none the worse for wear, been left, perhaps, better off physically than before.
Because face it, he tells himself, he was beginning to develop quite a gut.
But now, that is a thing of the past, his heavy body and thick limbs requiring now merely to be firmed up, and then-well, sure, what the hell, why not?
Why not build himself up spectacularly?
But he sighs now, knowing that he doesn't have the time or the energy to devote to so introspective, so non-interactive an activity.
Because he has ... things to do.
No definite plans at the moment, he reminds himself, but the future is rendered all the more fascinating for that.
He can move in any direction.
Here! Or here! Or here and here and here!
And he suits his actions to his thoughts, suddenly lunging this way and that with karate blows to the air.
He will catch the Baroness off her guard.
What's it to be, then, he asks himself, yet another plot to dispose of the Baroness?
Or should he treat her with the contempt she displays toward him, ignoring her, going ahead with his next plan for sadism on a grand scale as though she doesn't even exist?
No, this last is a problem. Such an approach would be to invite disaster, to open himself up for yet another-never mind.
Later for that.
And not alone, not this next time. Okay, so he has been the master planner of one fiasco after another.
Okay, so Cranston fared no better, did, in fact, worse than he himself would have done under the circumstances, licensing something whose error would have been evident to Randy Buck at once.
Which was the fact that it made no difference at all to Roberta whether or not Ulla was telling the Baroness the truth concerning her defection, the result would be the same.
Because, after all, why take chances?
But this next time-full consultation.
Cranston wants more responsibility? Very well, he shall have it-after he has been properly chastened, has been appropriately punished for his impertinence, of course.
Running off with some cunt indeed!
Who the fuck does this insolent bastard think he is, anyway?
Well, he is about to find out. And after that, Randy Buck is confident, he can proceed with him on an even keel.
But for now, what was her name again? Ah yes. Debbie. For now Debbie awaits.
Can somebody named Debbie be a true dominatrix? Randy Buck asks himself, ascending the broad marble staircase which leads from the entrance hall to the second floor.
But, he reminds himself, that doesn't really matter tonight, anyway, in the strictly physical sense.
Because she is not to be given the opportunity to ply her formal calling tonight. No, tonight, she-
"Ah! There you are, my dear! You must be Debbie!"
And she is big-bigger than he had expected.
Taller than himself, and he goes over six feet.
Wider than himself, even when he was at his widest, a couple of months ago.
But not fat; over-upholstered, perhaps, but without the cellulite, the cauliflowering.
No, those thighs are firm.
And those breasts, two huge torpedoes, their doorbell-like warheads bracketing his presence with their aim.
From beneath the lower edge of the hood, back-lit by the lamps on the nightstands flanking Randy Buck's raised, four-poster bed, blonde hair protrudes from the sides of her black hood.
The corselet pushes her huge breasts up and out while emphasizing her hourglass figure, the dark vee of her crotch is framed by the black garter belt and stocking tops, her thighs are full and rounded but firm, Randy Buck's eye taking all this in as he follows her legs down to the stiletto-heeled black boots.
She shrugs, no reply being required to his statement of the obvious.
"Let me look at you!"
And his heart leaps up within himself.
Once again, Nature has yielded up to him of her infinite bounty.
Samantha, Fiona, Roberta, Ulla, whoever-eat your hearts out!
He doesn't need them, any of them. He never needed them. What he needs, he can get, whenever, wherever, in whatever numbers.
Because reality has never failed to sustain and support him, and it certainly is not failing him now.
He walks around her and she stands there like a statue.
What an ass on her!
Twin, smoothly rounded boulders protrude, framed by garter belt and stockings.
A man could lose himself in something like this! he tells himself.
She does nothing.
Naturally. After all, this is not some prostitute or even some call girl called here to do her thing; rather, this is a dominatrix, is one given to the giving of bondage, discipline, pain.
So that what he is about to do is, in essence, an abuse of the facilities, a using of her for a purpose not intended by her.
So that's fine, her being passive. And in fact-
"Get on the bed."
She shrugs and does so, lying on her back, centered.
Randy Buck goes over to the closet and brings out a coil of rope.
"Is uh, is this a problem to you?" he says.
"I don't have problems," she replies, tone col contemptuous.
And Randy Buck feels a delicious flash of tingling heat go through him, a picture forming in his mind of what such a statement would have earned her from him, other times, other places.
She doesn't have problems, eh?
He could give her problems she'd have to live with the rest of her life-if he let her live, that is.
But, he reminds himself, this is here and now-luckily for her, lucky for her that he is in the mood he is.
Back in the saddle again, he wants to be, the phrase repeating itself to him, over and over again.
Gently, slowly, carefully, meticulously, he binds her hands by their wrists to the posts at the two upper corners of the vast bed.
He notes with satisfaction that her breasts remain round and full, even in this position.
He feeds the rope around one of her knees now, a loop around the joint, so that the knee is bent.
And now, the rope goes around the back of her neck, thence to the other knee, which also gets a loop.
He feeds the rope around the bedpost where he started and ties it off.
"And there we are!" he says, standing back to admire his handiwork. "Comfy?"
She looks at him, expressionless, then turns away, not answering. Obviously, this is not her thing, her scene. Obviously, he has raped her sensibilities, using Cranston, who made her an offer she couldn't refuse-even though, in her own estimation, she should have.
Oh, she does what she does for money, all right-but that's not why she does it. She does it because she really enjoys doing it, enjoys having others in her absolute power, enjoys what is in essence quite the opposite of her present situation. And Randy Buck knows this. But Randy Buck could care less. Because this has nothing to do with her, other than as presence, as object, as her being what she is and being there, being here, available, and with nothing, nothing, nothing standing between her and himself.
Look at those tits, at that big, puffy ass hole, at that big, hairy, juicy split peach of a cunt!
He looks at her a long moment, thinking, wondering, trying to picture in his mind what sort of man has been inside her, has fondled and sucked those tits, has tasted and fucked that cunt and yes, why not, that big bung of hers as well.
Who were they, what were they?
Where and when?
He pictures himself in the hooded robe of an inquisitor, extracting the information from her, his hooded minions standing at the ready to assist him.
What was the occasion of your demonic intercourse?
Where, when, with whom, how often?
Exactly what was done, by whom, to whom, with what technique, with what action and reaction?
What did you do and what did you feel while doing it? Come, come, come, don't force me to use the funnel, don't force my cohorts here to beat the soles of your feet-tell me, tell me what I want to know!
Randy Buck snaps himself out of his reverie.
She doesn't deign to look at him.
Ooh, are you asking for it! he tells her in his mind.
He could have her looking at his every move in stark terror, crying out at his least threatening gesture, begging him for mercy, red-faced, panting and sweating as though in mid-fuck, halfway up the rainbow of her sexual arousal.
Except that this would be the agitation of pain and fear and abject helplessness.
Yes, he could do that-but he won't.
No, he will allow her to keep her attitude.
He will actually allow her to hold him in utter contempt-the contempt, no doubt, given her natural impulses, due somebody who has her as he has her and fails to take what she considers to be full advantage of the situation.
Not, he reminds himself, not that he couldn't suddenly change his mind, not that he couldn't even now have her yelping in pain and surprise as he arbitrarily changes the rules of what is, after all, his game.
He could but he won't.
Because a man must have some discipline about him, must be straight with himself if with no other.
And it is not that he doubts nature's bounty indeed, Debbie here is proof positive of the correctness of his confidence in that regard-but rather that he might, specifically want to use her again, might actually want to question her and yet, at the same time, preserve her in such condition that her answers will make a difference to him.
So yes, let her think him merely a kinky, eccentric multi-millionaire; after all, she has "serviced" such accounts before, no doubt, even though not in this exact fashion.
He will gain her confidence, if not her fear and respect. And she will be to him-what?
Too soon. Far too soon for him to even speculate on that, he tells himself.
Not even the fact that her eyes are closed provokes him now, he notes, to his own amusement-and to his credit. like, who is she kidding?
Does she think he really believes that she is so bored or so comfortable with the situation that she is actually falling asleep?
Or is she, rather, doing this as a defense mechanism, her calm exterior concealing a churning anxiety, perhaps even actual terror?
Yes, he tells himself, that's it; has to be.
Because it is inconceivable to him that some small part of her brain is not projecting warning signals which, try as she might, she cannot ignore.
Even though, he reflects, she actually could, since he has decided that, at least tonight, she has nothing to fear.
5
Randy Buck sucks her tits, kneading and fondling her breasts with both hands, lying on her, upper body reposing between her raised, spread legs, sucking her nipples one at a time, finding it difficult to keep his mouth rounded.
Because he can feel her nipples going erect, rubbery with his tongue and lips, can feel the large, firm glands beneath his hands becoming still more firm.
So that she can lie there, expressionless, lids closed beneath the eyeholes of her hood, but it makes no difference to Randy Buck, none at all; first of all, she's not fooling him about whether or not he is getting through to her.
Secondly, he could care less about how she wants to appear in his eyes.
Because the thereness of her, the ampleness of her is fact, as are her bodily responses, these last no less real than the rest of her.
There could still be, probably are, fear and apprehension within her, hovering there, not nearly as strong as the arousal he is creating within her-something which has to go a long way to allay her fears, or at least put them in their proper proportion.
And now, Randy Buck is warming to his task, is losing himself in her abundance, in her glandular magnificence, going back and forth between her nipples, sucking them up to hardness, then sandwiching his face between her breasts, letting himself become dizzy, disoriented, smothering himself in her bosom.
And now, he slides down her body, down, down, down, until his face is on her crotch.
He takes a big mouthful of her big, hairy snatch, his tongue already traversing up and down her smooth, moist slit, seeking her joy buzzer-and finding it.
So that now he is sucking her knob of a clit.
And now, he is strumming it with the tip of his flickering tongue.
And yes, it is responding, is becoming larger than before, is becoming engorged with the blood of her aroused passion.
Hands on the backs of her thighs, he makes a meal of her cunt, tongue-fucking her, his long, thick, powerful tongue thrusting repeatedly in and in and into her hot, juicy depths while remaining in contact with her clit at all times.
And he has her flowing freely now, her clear, hot pussy juices lacquering his lips and chin as he loses himself in her cunt as freely as before he had wallowed on and in between her breasts.
But now, the imperative of his cock makes itself known, becoming painful in its hardness.
So that he can delay no longer.
So that he who denies himself nothing is not about to put off for another moment getting back in the saddle again.
And he doesn't.
Because even now, he is on her and in her, her cunt seeming to inhale him, even as now it seems to suck him like a mouth as he begins his piston action in and out of her, as he begins his ride in earnest.
And yeah, baby, you may be big, he tells her, in his mind, but so is he.
As he scoops up her thighs from beneath, bracing her thus doubled up still further, impaled now on his cock, her vagina foreshortened, legs pinned by arms and shoulders as his hands once more regain their purchase on her boobs, grasping as much as his hands can handle, because she is more than a handful, that's for sure.
And he is able to suck her tits as he continues to fuck her.
So that there he is, sucking and fucking, well and truly back in the saddle again.
Never has he felt so good-so full of energy, so potent, so very much in control of his world.
She is so very perfect for him, he tells himself-but only because he makes her that way.
What does he care about her past, about her private life?
Who, who can be as perfect with her, as perfectly attuned to her body as is he?
Nobody, that's who. No fucking body.
Because he, he! is giving her the perfect ride.
It just doesn't get any better than this, any better than himself-not for her, anyway.
And she has to know it.
Yes, she simply has to know that his big salami was meant for that hole of hers, was meant to propel her right up the rainbow, no question.
Yeah, baby, he tells her silently, tells her with his body, with the thrusting of his cock, I don't know what you were looking for in this life, but whatever it is, I gotta believe you just fucking found it. Because it just has to be.
Look at them, both hooded and booted, wearing the costume, the uniform of that world in which they both lead their real lives, their true existences.
So that there is no way this Debbie can do any better.
Financially speaking? Forget it!
He can give her more than she could ever dream of getting anywhere or from anybody else.
He has her bought and paid for-if that's what he wants.
Do I want that? he asks himself. Because scant moments before, he was wallowing in the bounty of nature, of Nature.
And yet now he wants to cling to this?
No, not right, not exactly; what he wants is to have her cling to him, to break down that wall of reserve she has arbitrarily seen fit to construct between them.
Yes, let her know, let her understand that, with him, she is not to put up even the appearance of indifference, not ever again.
There are many of her; there is but one of him.
She is the variable, he the fixed element in this equation, believe it.
Hotter and hotter he becomes, for her and yet not so much for her as for the image of himself and her, for the idea of his being paired off with so healthy a specimen.
As he himself is newly healthy, is fully recovered from the effects of his latest sado-sexual adventure gone awry.
Fucking Baroness and her helpers.
Fucking Captain Reynolds of the state police.
But even they can do nothing, nothing, nothing about what is happening right here and now, where Randy Buck reigns supreme and unchallenged.
And who knows? Perhaps this really is what it's all about, in the end, he tells himself.
Man, woman, right man, right woman-what else does he need, really?
But he knows.
Hooded visage looks up at hooded visage.
Even now, he feels the garter belt straps against his biceps, the boots draped against his triceps.
Nor are those his bare feet digging into the bedding down there.
Fine for others to hit the sheets naked; fine even for he and Eric or he and Cranston to do so.
But there is this taste, this hunger within himself which craves the sure and certain knowledge of that surreal, bizarre world which resides within this one.
But for that world, Debbie would not be here and they would not be doing this.
Did he need the rope, did he need the costumes?
Probably not; but it would have been ridiculous not to have had or used them.
Because, in his mind, they would have been there, the two of them, just like this-and with all the trimmings, no question.
And why do that?
Why relegate to fantasy that which properly belongs to, is attainable in reality?
To do that would have been to commit an absurdity. And Randy Buck is many things, he tells himself, but he is never absurd.
Always, always, he relates to his surroundings to the highest possible degree.
And the bizarre is real, it does exist, it is his to command and to control, now and forever, world without end, okay?
He can, he will, he must.
He will lose nothing by all that has happened in the past; rather, he will build on that past, will build the great future of the greater, the new, the improved Randy Buck.
Enough of self-defeat! he cries out, in his mind. Enough of making more of the Baroness than what she is, of actually helping her to defeat himself!
Because that was a beautiful scheme he had going with the stolen data base!
He could have had himself an endless supply of fresh victims, could have literally had them wall to wall, to do with as he pleased-if not for the Baroness.
If not for the Baroness and what his carelessness permitted, actively assisted her in doing to him, to him and to his beautiful, beautiful plans!
Yes, he reflects, they were beautiful, but they were not perfect, had nothing about them of the airtight, closed circuit, sealed, protected nature of what is happening right here and now with Debbie.
They could have, probably even should have-well, no probably to it, obviously this last, in light of what happened-been made foolproof, and they were not.
They were not because of his own masochism, his own treacherous, devious mind which seeks to betray him no less than others have betrayed him.
How can he expect, how can he demand absolute loyalty of others when his loyalty to himself is not absolute, when there is that within him which seeks to betray him, which wants to be caught, which cries out for punishment?
Hopefully, that part of him has learned its lesson.
Because punished he was, this last time around, and that with a vengeance and an intensity which almost managed to end the game for him permanently.
All well and good, wasn't it, me bucko, he asks himself, rhetorically, this business of having that within yourself which wishes you the bad fortune you so richly deserve, eh?
All very pseudo-psycho-smart-ass, right?
But reality, the realization, the making real of that punishment, well, that turned out to be a horse of quite a different color, did it not?
One thing to think about, to watch, to cause pain, is it not, and quite another to actually experience it, to be on the receiving end of it, and we're talking personally, physically here, okay?
So waddaya say, let's not do that again, okay?
Because this, this! is infinitely better than that.
No, for himself, if this lesson has taught him nothing else, then it has surely shown him that there is nothing to be gained by physical suffering.
Okay, so he has done the best with it that he could, he reminds himself; still, what he has he could have had, all that and that other besides, that steady stream of pussy, his to do with as he wanted, if only he had taken adequate precautions.
But he thought, he really thought, after his sessions with Dr. Grant, that he had the old internal enemy beat, or at least in retreat.
Or that he would make one more mistake-a reflex, a leftover, whatever-and then get on with life as it should be lived.
And yet, it's been one damned thing after another, if anything, worse than before.
Disaster after disaster has struck him-and yet struck him not, until this last time.
Yes, perhaps that was the other thing.
Why should he bother trying to foresee every eventuality?
For one thing, the delays this would involve are unacceptable; but for another-at least until this last fiasco-there was his almost uncanny ability to jump between the two worlds of the mundane and the bizarre.
The Baroness defeats him, he escapes, and so what?
Costs him what? Time, money, effort? But he has those things in excess, in abundance. If at first you don't succeed and like that, right? So he merely jumps back into the daylight world and lives to fight another day.
Except that this last time, he almost didn't make it.
Yeah, Baroness, you got me, you got me good, he thinks, ruefully, even as his body rejoices, luxuriates in the abundant solidity of Debbie.
She will never know, of course-more than she already does.
Randy Buck did very well earlier today.
The lunch was, from his point of view, a success.
Because the Baroness was made to see and to understand very clearly that, whatever injuries she might have caused him, they were a thing of the past.
like her victories, his defeats are absurd in the mathematical sense, that is, they bear no relationship to present reality.
She has prevailed and he has endured. And yet, her winning is ephemeral; where are they now, yesterday's victories? Gone!
Memories, private memories, very private memories, history known but to a scant handful, her victories, his defeats.
So much for prevailing.
Ah, but in the endurance department?
Well, she could see for herself exactly where all her dangerous struggles, where all that body count-especially this last!-have gotten her.
It has gotten her-note this well, Baroness-to the lunch table, with her archenemy even healthier and wealthier-and, presumably much wiser-than he was at the outset.
What is Randy Buck missing?
An adequate expression of his tastes in leisure activities, that's all.
At the moment, of course, not even that.
Because he has a big, sexy woman bound in his bed and is having his way with her.
Trite? Perhaps, as to cold, mechanical fact.
But ah, the feeling and the feeling and the feeling at work here, within himself!
And within her too, for that matter, his partner of the moment; but that is inconsequential, is arbitrary, has no bearing on his situation.
So eat your heart out, Baroness.
Because she has failed to put him away.
And because she has failed to put him away, he shall rise again.
The South may not, but Randy Buck most assuredly will; count on it, Baroness. Count on it and shake in your spike-heeled boots. Count on it behind that smile of false confidence, bright red lips over perfect white teeth below your hood.
She gave herself away today at lunch, the bitch, Randy Buck reflects, asking him-face it, fucking pleading with him-to give it up, to suck it in, to leave it in his mind where it all belongs.
Fuck you, Baroness! he tells her, Why should I?
Why should he, for example, pound his pud while conjuring up the-likes of Debbie here in his mind when he can have Debbie herself?
In like manner, why should he merely dream of the beautiful bodies under his absolute control, his to do with as he pleases?
Because of the possibility that, at great personal risk, the Baroness might manage, one more time, to stop him, to prevent his getting started, to interfere with him after the fact?
Big deal, Baroness! Break my toys why don'tcha, risking your life in the process!
Because he has other toys, can have still others besides--but there is only one Baroness.
He can lose as often as he-likes, but the Baroness need lose but once, and it's all over for her.
So that what we have here is a rather bizarre game of targets, in which the Baroness must hit the bulls-eye every time, and Randy Buck can fire as often as he-likes, with the mutual understanding that, if he hits the mark only once, he wins and the game is over.
So that on balance, the prognosis-as they were so fond of saying at the hospital-appears to be in his favor.
If. If he can get Cranston to use that computer he calls a brain, or rather if he can use it himself in the bizarre world with the same proficiency with which they employ it in the world of business.
But of course, he has to straighten Cranston out first.
And Randy Buck grins at the thought of that, pausing once again in his wallowing on Debbie's breasts.
Yes, he will certainly enjoy that, say, after his exercise tomorrow evening.
Definitely something to which to look forward, he tells himself, before once more losing himself in Debbie.
How very fortunate it is, he tells himself, that he lives in a world in which justice is a myth. Because he is happy right now, happier than he has any right to be, healthier and wealthier than he has any right to be, just plain more alive than he has any right to be.
Life and life and life! he repeats to himself, over and over, thrusting into the depths of Debbie's snapper of a pussy, into her responsiveness, even as he continues to knead and fondle her breasts, to suck her tits.
And yes, she is responding, is coming to life in the most erotic context of that expression now.
Because she is rocking and rolling from side to side, even as her pussy seems to suck his cock ever more ardently.
She is alive to him, is responsive to him, even though he did not expect, did not particularly desire this.
Still, he is pleased that it is happening this'way.
Because it has been a long time since a woman has appreciated him in this most rudimentary way.
The last one was who?
Samantha Steele? Fiona Fairley?
One or the other it was-but will never be again.
But again, quite obviously, he has no need of them.
He doesn't need anybody.
He can start from zero and gain whatever his heart desires, no question.
Yes, here he is a man with the right woman, the right man to be with her, and they are doing their thing in perfect harmony.
As now they climb the rainbow together.
As now they go, hand in hand, through level after level, vista after vista of lascivious pleasure.
As now the ultimate pleasure, the pleasure beyond pleasure is awakened within them, its lambent spark fanned to dazzling brightness as it begins to expand, to grow within them both.
And now, it unfolds within them like a huge, elaborate blossom, inexorably expanding, the pressure of its petals exerting itself more and more strongly upon every fiber, every cell of their beings.
Irresistible, it is, even though Randy Buck would be content at the moment to let it go on and on like this indefinitely.
As Debbie too is torn between making it last and that next increment of pleasure, and the next and the next.
So that now, they hover together at the summit, the zenith of their shared capacity to contain that which is far greater than themselves, and which continues to generate itself deep within them both.
And they rise automatically, reflexively, up, up, up-and beyond, free, unattached, flying.
Yes, they are zooming and soaring through the realms of the rosy empyrean of their shared sexual paradise.
As wad after wad of Randy Buck's thick, hot, pent-up jism injects itself into the depths of Debbie's cunt, convulsing now in the throes of her series of multiple orgasms, milking his prong of its load, again and again, their spurts and spasms alternating.
On and on they come, their thought processes a dizzy jumble of raw sexual sensation.
Until, at last, they come back down to earth.
Where at least, Randy Buck tells himself, she is looking at him now.
Her eyes follow him to the bathroom, where he drapes his lob into the sink and washes it off, pleased with its performance-and his.
I'm back in the saddle again, he sings to himself, exaggerating in his mind the western twang.
Nor is he finished with her, he decides; nowhere near it, in fact.
Not bad, the way he's come out of all this, he tells himself, turning this way and that, checking out his reflection in the mirror. He really did need to lose all that weight about the mid-section, no question.
And Rhino was right about the scars. They are flat, are almost indistinguishable from the rest of his tan.
And he knows this sounds stupid, even to himself, but dammit, this is just the way he feels. He has come out of this thing-a winner.
Yeah, dammit, a regular fucking winner! he emphasizes. He seems to himself a much more together person, his thought processes clearer, more, more ... incisive.
He feels rested, renewed, somehow cleansed of the detritus of old excess mind baggage which encumbered him, which clouded his thinking.
Can it be? he asks himself. Can it actually be that he has at last managed to free himself of his masochism?
And he finds himself tingling with anticipation, looking forward like some spectator at a sports event to whatever he is about to come up next to make his life worth living.
But, he reminds himself, first things first.
And Debbie is back there on the bed at the moment, waiting to see what he, her lover, is going to come up with next. And it's not polite to keep a lady waiting.
Still he pauses there, wondering.
How much of a real thing is this Debbie, actually? he asks himself. Because he supposes that it is entirely possible to be a dominatrix, to be very much a part of the world of the bizarre and yet still not be an inveterate, died-in-the-wool sadist.
So that yes, she doesn't draw the line at painful bondage, at passing out stripes, at drawing blood, and yet would balk at causing serious injury or, or ... well, the obvious.
So that she could be merely a halfway figure in all this-not some sham with a velvet whip, but not some high priestess of darkness either.
All he really knows about her for sure is that she is sexually responsive to him-so far.
Besides, he tells himself, he has far bigger fish to fry than worrying about how some douche bag feels about him and about life in general.
He can come to some position on Debbie later, he tells himself; for now, it's time to continue the celebration of his being back in the saddle again, with a body and a cock and a vitality of which he has no cause whatever to be ashamed.
He goes back out there, and of course, there she is, being tied up, unable to go anywhere else.
Except that she really could if she wanted to.
Move one wrist to the top of a bedpost, slip it over the top, and her bonds would be hanging loose.
But she has not, hasn't moved, is lying there quiescent now, tied in position, ready and waiting for him-not struggling or complaining, just waiting.
And looking at him now, watching as he approaches the bed, his swinging beef, he knows, impressive, even limber.
He looks at her, looks at her pussy, stares at it as he seats himself on the edge of the bed, looks at its long, distended pink lips, shiny now with the residue of their shared passion.
Closer and closer he looks at it, watching, strangely fascinated as his melting jism inside her begins to run back out, oozing slowly, thickly toward the puffy, protruding, irregularly segmented promontory of her pale mauve ass hole.
He lies beneath her on the bed now, on his stomach, chin resting on his piled fists, as though studying the sight, trying to come to a decision
6
He CaStS a long glance at her face.
She looks back at him, expressionless.
Time enough later, he tells himself, to discover how mean she is; for now, he would know how raunchy.
So he seals his lips to her pussy.
He does this slowly, to see if there will not be some twinge of revulsion, some reflex grounded in fastidiousness.
There isn't.
She accepts this with apparent equanimity, even though Randy Buck seriously doubts that she regularly has guys boff her and then follow this up with an oral clean-out.
She is one cool customer, Randy Buck tells himself, and a hot number to boot.
And he does a good job on her, his tongue reaching everywhere, from her hot juicy depths to the knob of her clit.
Only after he has cleaned her out thoroughly does he move south, toward the next anatomical object of his attention and affection.
Yes, even now he is pressing on the backs of her thighs, his mouth sealed to her puffily protruding bung.
Even now, he is sucking it, chewing it, rimming her in earnest, his tongue going round and round over the bumpy surface.
And now, he stiffens his tongue, shoving it in, in, into the irregular opening, feeling the heat of her interior, feeling the ring of muscle at the entrance yield before the onslaught of his long, thick, stiff lingual appendage.
And now, he is fucking her in the ass with his tongue.
In and out, in and out he moves his stiffened tongue, using his neck muscles, keeping his tongue stuck out as far as it will go.
And feeling the heat of his face beneath his hood as he becomes sexually aroused again.
And feeling his cock turn warm, feeling it twitch to life, springing to rigid attention, bobbling stiffly beneath him as he crouches there on knees and elbows.
And now, he pulls his face back from her ass hole, sitting back, haunches to heels, baton rising stiffly from his lap at a sharp upward angle.
And now, he is leaning over her, one hand planted beside her in the bed, the other buttoning the knob of his lob into her ass hole, distended and salivalubed and ready to receive him.
So that now, he is fucking her in the ass, facing her.
Leaning over her, he is, his stomach pressing on her cunt, on her open cunt lips, on her knob of a clit.
So that, as he fucks her in the ass, he rubs her clit with his stomach, an exact, coordinated movement.
In and out, in and out goes his cock in her ass hole, now become a smoothly rounded, toothless, sucking mouth, his stomach rubbing her clit forward and back as he goes.
Face to face with her, he is, so that they are looking at each other through the eye holes of their hoods.
And he watches her becoming aroused, becoming easily aroused, in fact, her face flushing a deep crimson, her eyes bright and glassy behind the hood, the redness spreading rapidly to her chest, to the crowns of her boobs.
And yes, cries of genuine ecstasy begin to escape her mouth.
All these years! he tells himself. All these fucking years, and at last, he finds a woman who appreciates him as a man, as a real man, doing the things a real man is supposed to do to real women.
Can it be? he asks himself. Is it actually possible that all this-all the struggle, all the bullshit, everything that he has put himself, his henchmen, his hirelings through, all those people who didn't manage to live through the experience for one reason or another, the constant fencing with the Baroness-all that was simply to lead him to this point in his life?
Look, just look at her, for crissakes!
What more could he ask for, what more could he possibly want?
She's got it all, and right now, she's giving it all to him.
She is giving in her taking, taking in her giving.
A frenetic ballet, they are performing, are Randy Buck and Debbie.
So what is she, then? Randy Buck asks himself, erecting on the spot a defense mechanism in the form or gratuitous cynicism. What is she-a nympho?
Or, if not a nympho-a psychological condition, or so he understands-then a woman whose nervous system is geared up, oriented toward her clit, her plumbing, so that all it takes is a salami-anybody's salami-and she is instantly with the program?
But he doubts this.
Because, were that the case, then she would not possibly have been able to maintain her frigid demeanor at the outset of their meeting.
No, she would surely have given herself away, under those circumstances.
So then what? What could it be?
His money! She's after his money!
This house, the furnishings, the chauffeur, the private secretary-this she wants.
A piece. All. Whatever. For herself.
But no, this is no fake and no attempt at fakery.
Rather, this is the real thing-for him!
He's never had this before, never even come close. Not even in his younger days, his college days, his fucking jock days did he have a piece that was this good, this hot, this hot for, for-say it, dammit! Go with the goddam flow, ass hole!
Okay, okay, okay, he tells himself. He has never had a woman this hot for him-not in a sexual way, at least.
He can name half a dozen women in his sleep who would just love to kill him, to do him in, preferably as slowly, as painfully as possible.
He can even name a few who would be only too happy to dispatch him instantly, to vaporize him on the spot.
But this, this! is something new, something unique in all his experience, absolutely.
Maybe, he tells himself, maybe it's the hood.
And that's okay, that's perfectly fine with him. He-likes to wear his hood and boots when he fucks.
So yeah, sure, why not? They can do it this way all the time, if that's what she wants.
And speaking of unique, how about this, what he's doing to her here and now?
Fucking her in the ass while frigging her clit with his stomach, not wasting any of the motion, and her eating it all up and begging for more with this fantastic body of hers.
How good can it get?
And yes, dammit, he will say it, will admit itit just doesn't get any better than this.
Not for him and, certainly, not for her.
And Doc Grant and Cranston and the Baroness?
They're all, all full of shit, okay?
Because this, this! is where it's at, is what's happening, is what it's all about, what it's been all about right along.
It's all so very clear to him now!
He just wanted to have his rocks popped in a satisfying way.
It's that simple-no mystery, no big psychological workup required.
It's all for the feeling, is what it is, what it always was, what it always will be.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen.
As now, at long last, in the unrecognized search for truth, he has stumbled unexpectedly upon the answer, his personal answer to the mystery of his own existence.
Because this, this! is what Randy Buck is all about-this. And not the football or the baseball teams, not their stats, not the win-loss record, not the TV rights, not the player contracts. And not the fucking health spas where a bunch of narcissistic ass holes kill themselves trying to look grotesque, and not the fucking gourmet restaurants where fucking pigs in human form make a federal case about what some fucking shit tastes like.
Nor is it about hoods and boots and whips and chains and torture and terror and pain and suffering and death.
It all comes down to, to-this!
And the rest is symbol and substitute, is bullshit and frustration.
So simple, it was, it is!
So then why, why couldn't he see this, any of it, before?
Because no woman ever did this with him, because of him before-no woman ever took his cock up her cunt or up her ass and lost herself in the sensations that he, he! was creating for her, for himself, for the two of them combined into a single sexual entity, into a union in the truest, deepest sense of the word.
That just didn't happen.
Maybe, maybe if he hadn't been such a hard-ass.
Perhaps if he hadn't been so cynical, even from his youth.
Or if he hadn't overlooked the kinder, the gentler, the quieter girls, the ones who were too shy or too polite to push themselves forward, who instead gave out only the barest, most esoteric hints-things for which he never had either the time or the patience.
So that he was always with the brassy party girls-all show and no feeling or, if feeling, then obviously not feeling for him, obviously merely using him as, behind their closed eyelids, on the view-screens of their minds, some other jamoke took the credit for his hard work.
When, then? When had his resentment at the meaningless nature of the world led him down, down, down into the darkness, the netherworld of the bizarre?
What, what did the hoods and the leather and the darkness, the chains and ropes and whips, what did they do for him that these others did not?
At first, nothing; he had to admit it.
It was all show, all sham, all a put-on, a kind of elaborate Halloween party with sex-sick sex, kinky sex-thrown in.
Didn't do a helluva lot for him, those humble beginnings.
Except that he, he! was able to look behind, to look beyond mere appearance, to discern within the charade the heart of the darkness, to recognize it, to pursue it.
To a different crowd, different crowds, crowds whose existence in the darkness was quite separate, very distinct from their lives, their identities in the world of light, or rather of the mundane.
Down, down, down into the nether darkness did he sink, seeking there the true power of that darkness, seeing outside himself that correspondence to the darkness within.
And finding it.
Finding it in caverns where lurked the hunter and the hunted, the victim and the victimizer.
With himself becoming the most feared torturer, some even said killer of them all.
And yet, he had not killed back then.
Lacerations, fractures, but that was about it.
So that yes, there was good cause to fear him, no question; with others the hapless victims might stand a prayer. With him, however, the rape and the torture, not necessarily in that order, was a foregone conclusion.
So that there were complaints. And even that crowd no longer wanted to know him.
Because, after all, the bizarre and the mundane share the same reality, such that, at the point at which they overlap, the bizarre becomes vulnerable to the mundane.
And death is death and cannot become life again.
And what's done is done and cannot be undone.
And when a person dies in the bizarre world, they die in the real world as well.
And woe betide the one who causes death; because the law of the mundane world will neither forgive nor forget it, and the penalties will have to be paid upon apprehension.
So that Randy Buck could only flee deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness, his taste for blood whetted by the very strictures his erstwhile, halfhearted companions would have placed upon him.
But if he was humble in anything, then it suited him to have his humility take the form in a belief that his tastes were not all that unique, that there were in fact others-plenty of others-of like mind, who would be only too glad to join him in the underworld of the truly bizarre.
And so it came to pass.
And his success in the world of the mundane grew and grew, his wealth right alongside it. And he built a monument to himself-an edifice truly worthy of housing his world within the world, the funhouse of his fantasy made real.
And this he called the Castle. More specifically, daring to give a hint to the world of the mundane, Buck's Castle.
And the fun and games to be had there, as he watched from his console of viewing screens the chase, the hunt, the rape, the torture as the membership, known only as the Club, indulged themselves in B&.D, S&.M-the REAL real thing.
Until yet another element was added to his life-the Baroness!
She who would seek to test him, to thwart him at every turn in the underworld of the bizarre.
Yes, she would seek-and she would succeed!
She became his archenemy, his nemesis, and this on his own terms, beating him at his own game.
Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but always, always she managed to put a stop to whatever it was he had going for himself by way of what, to him, makes life worth living.
The Castle? It ran for a year and a half, before the Baroness destroyed the Club and he was forced to give the building away to the state for an orphanage, along with a generous annuity for maintenance, if he was to avoid a scandal which would have cost him, at the very least, ownership of his pro sports teams.
That was his introduction to the Baroness and to the pattern which was to rule his private life, from then on out.
But now, here and now, he finally sees a light at the end of the tunnel.
At last, he sees that which will cause him to give up that sick, twisted, perverted world of darkness and of dark and deadly doings.
Because he doesn't need it!
No more torture chambers!
No more demonic couplings with harridans the-likes of Samantha Steele and Fiona Fairley!
All that is to be a thing of the past, something he has-dare he say it at his age?-something he has outgrown.
He has moved beyond that, above and beyond that, in much the same way, no doubt, that Cranston had intended to leave him with Ulla, had intended to leave him in his darkness as they advanced onward and upward, into the light.
Yes, he can actually understand that now, for the first time.
Not, he reminds himself, not that he fancies himself transformed.
Woe betide this woman's husband or boyfriend or anyone else who stands between her and himself!
Their lives are forfeit.
The new Randy Buck can be just as deadly, just as determined as the old-especially in this, a much better cause-better because more clearly defined, more clearly rewarding.
Because look, just look! how she is staying right with him, thrust for thrust, even breath for breath!
Tell him he has to get along without this, only try some such shit and watch how long you last!
And he finds himself having to calm himself down, lest the rage at this possibility cause him to lose his hard-on.
But quickly, effortlessly, he puts all thoughts from his mind other than that of the sensations he feels welling up within him, his lust, his desire for Debbie unbounded.
As her rectum sucks his cock.
As he slides up and down on her clit like it was a ball bearing.
Onward and upward he goes, through level after level of their shared arousal, leading her, propelling her, step by step, onward and upward toward the light, toward the supreme pleasure, fostered by their coming together to form a true unity, to create of themselves an entity so perfect, so complete as to require nothing outside itself.
As her cries of ecstasy fill the room, again and again, so loud that Cranston is drawn to the heavy double doors to check it out, withdrawing at once, incredulous that his boss should have somehow stumbled upon a woman who, to all appearances, is looking for exactly what he has to offer, sexually speaking.
They are as one now, the millions of nerve endings of his prick in intimate communication with those of her rectum, even as his stomach continues to send surge after surge of sexual electricity coursing through her joy buzzer as though it were a beacon sending forth erotic signals to the farthest reaches of her body.
Yes, he has gotten through to her with pleasure more deeply, more completely than he ever managed to get through to any of his victims through torture, for all his expertise.
But all that is behind him now, he reminds himself.
Because it's been a long, tough fight, but he has arrived.
Thanks to Debbie, he realizes-which comes as a mild shock to him, that he, who has never needed another human being for anything, who has always reached out and grabbed whatever he did need or want, whether person or thing, and making very little distinction between them-he has reached a place he never thought he would be.
And the Tightness of it is as balm upon the perpetual, teeth-gritted rage and frustration which seethe within himself.
So that now he knows a deep, inner peace, even in the midst of his sexual excitement.
As he fucks her in the ass, all the way.
And now, he is coming and coming, wad after wad of his jism injecting itself into her bowels.
And she too is coming, her clear, hot pussy juices overflowing, merging with the sweat on his stomach as he continues to rub her clit to completion, to the point of multiple orgasms.
Thus do they come together once again.
Thus do they explore the rosy empyrean of their shared sexual paradise once more.
Thus do they zoom and soar through the tingling, effervescent champagne of the peak of their existence.
Thus do they slowly descend, to land together, back on earth.
And now, his last spurt, her last spasm passed, he clings to her, resenting now her inability to respond, constrained as she is by the very ropes with which he himself has bound her.
A stupid thing to have done, he sees now, a vestige, a residue of a past life, a dark life, a wrong, a wasted life.
But of course, he vows to himself, all that will change now, will change at once, dammit!
No longer will he be Randy Buck, arch-sadist!
He is a new person.
Not so much the turning over of a new leaf, this, as it is a reading down of the page, a kind of enlightenment.
Well, Cranston, Randy Buck tells his private secretary, in his mind, you were looking for, were hoping for such a miracle?
Lo and behold, it is upon us!
And Cranston was absolutely correct after all, Randy Buck realizes, to have looked to him, of all people, for the key, for the way out.
Because, against all odds, he has the answer!
He holds his position, fully inserted, awaiting detumescence, perfectly willing to remain thus, embracing her, until it happens.
He does, and it does, his cock sliding out of her ass.
At once, he busies himself undoing the ropes which bind her, noting as he does so that she has accepted them with perfect grace, not struggling against them with all the abrasion that causes.
He unties her, impatiently wrestling with the knots he had so firmly tied before.
Stupid of him, really, he realizes. Stupid waste of time and effort, meaning nothing in the end-unless, of course Debbie actually prefers it that way.
Whatever she wants, in all things, he decides.
Compared to the hassle his life has been thus far, nothing will ever be too much trouble for him again, especially where she is concerned.
Damn knots! What the hell was he thinking of?
At last he has her untied, noticing the smile on her face-reflecting how long it has been, when was the last time he put a smile on a woman's face, and finding that he can't remember such a time, try as he might.
Certainly, Sally's lascivious leer had nothing in common with a smile.
Certainly, the Baroness's features, across the table from him, putting on her part of this ridiculous charade they go through from time to time, cannot be considered a true smile-any more than was her look of fierce joy when she got the drop on him two months ago, before turning him over to those three women after Roberta's softening up strokes in order that they could flay him with whips.
At least, he reflects, that's one person to whom he owes no explanations, will render no apologies, no excuses.
Because his struggles with her were not the battles between good and evil, but rather between two forms of the same evil, the one thriving on, deriving excitement from, frustrating the other, caring, he knows, no more than he does-did-who gets hurt in the process.
A whole new ballgame now though, Baroness.
He intends that he shall never see or speak to the Baroness again.
What would be the point, after all?
She belongs in one world-the world of darkness-he in another now, and with nothing in common between them, nothing over which they could possibly have occasion for contact, unless it be the sharing of a table at some charity affair, chamber of commerce, whatever.
He longs to embrace Debbie, but hates to disturb her, so peacefully is she relaxing there now, her expression that of utter contentment, even with the hood concealing the upper half of her face.
Hood, he repeats to himself. Yes, he must get rid of this stupid hood.
Savagely, he rips it off his head, ignoring the spray of perspiration that flies into the air all around him from this abrupt action.
And these moronic boots.
What kind of a dumb fuck would wear boots when he hits the sheets, anyway?
He seats himself in a chair, struggling with the laces, needing to get them off anyway, if he is to take a shower.
The boots, then the socks, and he flexes his toes in the deep pile of the carpet.
How very rude of me, he tells himself, not offering Debbie the first shower or, better yet, taking one with her.
"You uh, you asleep darl-I mean Debbie?"
No sense rushing things, he tells himself.
But still she doesn't move.
He shrugs, thinking that that's exactly what she is, telling himself, Yeah, stud, you really know how t'relax a woman, all right.
Smiling, he goes over to her, bends down to awaken her with a kiss on the lips-and only then realizes that she is not breathing.
7
Randy Buck gets off the bed and stands there, looking down at the dead body.
He smiles, which expands into a broad grin.
And now, he is laughing and laughing, appreciating, as only a sadist can, the really great practical joke that has been played on him here.
The Divine Comedy, the Italian renaissance poet Dante called his epic.
And that's what this is-a bit of divine comedy.
He has been built up, set up-and the rug pulled out from under him, expertly and with exquisite timing.
He, who has always been at pains to keep from being victimized has, for the first time in his life, been cast by an unseen hand in the role of victim.
He is like a character in one of those morality plays disguised as entertainment one used to see on TV.
The Twilight Zone.
He can even see Rod Serling, removing a cigarette from his mouth, exhaling a stream of the smoke that eventually killed him, standing under a stage streetlamp, saying, "Presented for your consideration, one Randolph Arlington Buck-tycoon, sadist, murderer-at last finding the love of his life, the one who will lead him out of his world of darkness.
"Unfortunately for Mr. Buck, where she will lead him-is into the Twilight Zone."
Because he can see the whole thing-he really can.
Having gotten away with every possible crime, many times over, he will finally be nailed for a murder he didn't commit-tried, convicted, sentenced.
He can see himself, laughing as he just did at the cosmic joke which has been played upon him, at the irony of justice triumphing at last through injustice, accepting it all with a good-humored resignation.
"Unfortunately," he says aloud, looking upward at the unseen Presence which has seen fit to thus deal with him, "this is not the Twilight Zone, and I am not the hapless, helpless protagonist.
"So you're really going to have to do a helluva lot better than this by way of revelation, if I am the intended audience, as well as the butt of the joke.
"If you exist and if you're watching, watch this!" He picks up the telephone and punches in a number.
"Baroness? Randy Buck. I need to reach your friend Reynolds, right away ... That's right, the captain of the state police ... I'd rather discuss it directly with him, face to face and in person, if you don't mind ... Very well, that's fine as well, so long as he gets right up here ... Yes. Call me right back if there's a problem ... Yes, yes, only later ... and ciao to you too."
He hangs up, pleased that they had lunch earlier, that the mellowness of that is a residue in her mind, thus causing her to accept this minor but mysterious request from her arch-enemy, in the name of civility.
It has to be her friend Reynolds.
Only he will have the know-how to handle the situation.
He disposes of his boots and hood, and the rope, simply placing them in his closet for the time being.
No sense having this be any weirder than it already is, right?
The telephone rings and he picks it up at once.
"Reynolds here. What's the problem."
"There's been a death. You'd best get over here."
"On my way."
Randy Buck puts down the receiver, smiling at the good captain's predictability which, together with his respectability, will inevitably serve to rescue him from this, this ... contretemps.
Meat. That's all she is, all she ever was, just like all the rest, just like everybody else, just like himself.
For a moment, for a little while back there, he thought he saw, thought he had something more.
But he was wrong. As witness the corpse, lying there, the woman who was and is no longer, having made a rather smooth transition from life to death.
Well done, Debbie, he tells her.
Her timing was excellent, was in fact perfect, saving him from error, from the possibility of error, from the mistake of seeing something that wasn't there.
Already, he can hear the siren in the distance-more than one, in fact, at the very edge of his hearing, their direction of both location and travel indistinct at this point.
But soon, soon they will emerge into the center of his awareness, coming closer and closer.
He slips into a robe and slippers, going downstairs, Cranston emerging from den to entrance hall, his look puzzled.
"Open the main gate, Cranston, and leave it open," he instructs.
Obediently, Cranston pushes the button beside the door.
"What's uh, what's happening, Randy?"
"Debbie. She's dead."
"Really."
A statement, not a question, this last, as Cranston makes a mou of concentration, looking away from Randy Buck, as though trying to figure it out, what's happened-and, Buck sees very clearly, why.
Cranston looks back at Randy Buck, expressionless, but the apprehension showing in his eyes, as he asks him the wordless question.
"No, Cranston, I didn't. She simply ... died.
"Get Eric up and have him get the coffee brewing. This threatens to be a long night."
"Should I call-"
"Izzy? Absolutely not! The last person I want here is my lawyer!"
The sirens become louder and louder, suddenly shutting off, red and blue lights reflecting on marble and brass from the outside, through the ornate, leaded glass transom and side panels of the great front door, which Randy Buck opens himself.
"This is Sheriff Lounsdale," Reynolds says, gesturing to the figure who comes in behind him. "I radioed him on the way over."
"We've met," Randy Buck says. "Fundraiser, last fall, as I recall."
"Right," the sheriff replies, wary, relieved that Randy Buck has not offered to shake hands, under the circumstances.
"Why didn't you call 911?" Reynolds asks.
"You'll see when we get up there.
"If you'll follow-"
"Just a minute. Sheriff, have your guys and mine come in here."
The sheriff whistles out the door. Immediately, two more state troopers and a sheriff s deputy appear.
"You, call for forensics. You, get the yellow tape and put it across the staircase here, then see nobody crosses who's not supposed to.
"Okay. Now."
* * *
Reynolds sighs at the sight of the costume Debbie wears, before looking at Randy Buck, who shrugs, saying, "That's why no 911. I don't want reporters following the call, not do I want the local ambulance crew to have something all this interesting to discuss.
"You touch anything here?"
"It's my bedroom, Captain. I've probably touched everything here at one time or another."
"No, no. Did you touch or move the body or rearrange anything once you uh-just what did happen here.
"Wait! Don't tell me until you've been read your rights."
"That's hardly neces-"
"I'll be the judge of that, Buck!"
And Reynolds has the sheriff do the honors.
"Am I under arrest, then?"
"Not yet. Suppose you tell me what happened here."
And Randy Buck sticks to the facts, beginning with Cranston's calling her in response to her ad in a sex tabloid, going on to a fairly accurate, unnecessarily detailed recounting of the events of the evening.
" ... and just after we got off the second time, she died."
"Uh-huh. Anything more you want to add?"
"She was a helluva piece of ass?"
"I think I can leave that out," Reynolds says, putting away his notebook, the sheriff imitating him with a once second delay.
"They're here from county, Sheriff," the sheriff's deputy says, adding, "crime scene team's here from state."
"Everybody in, but be careful!"
Then, to Randy Buck, "That black bag-yours or hers."
"Hers."
"Any idea what's in it?"
"None whatsoever."
"Okay boys, dust it, then open it."
Flashes from the camera sporadically add to the light of the bedroom.
"Well, well, well!" the detective examining the contents of Debbie's doctor-like black bag exclaims.
"What've we got?" Reynolds asks.
"Drug store," the man replies, adding, "Check it out! Digitalis, nitroglycerine, insulin and of course syringes, little industrial strength pain killers, this one I'm gonna hafta look up t'see what the fuck it is-this was one sick lady!"
"Doctors' names on everything?"
"Sure are! Doctors is right! In the field of medicine, this gal was a team sport!"
"Who's uh, who's doin' the honors over at county, Doc?"
"That'd be me.
"Any problem with immediate autopsy?
"I wanna wait right here with Mr. Buck-sort of help him over the shock, right, Mr. Buck?" Reynolds asks, grinning.
"I'd feel better if we could have a talk, yes. That's why I ... sent for you."
"What's uh, what's-" the sheriff begins, looking from Randy Buck to Reynolds.
"Randy and I are old acquaintances. We go back a long way, right, Randy?"
"If you're gonna be discussing the crime here-" the sheriff begins, realizing his goof at once, looking disgusted with himself.
"There's been no crime that I know of, Sheriff," Reynolds says, quietly, adding, "If you see something I don't, or if you've got any more questions-"
"No, no. In fact, I'll be running along.
"And uh, sorry for your loss ... Randy."
"Wasn't my loss, actually; but thanks for the concern, Sheriff."
"Any time," comes the reply, without thinking.
"Well we certainly hope not," Randy Buck replies, as Reynolds looks down, shaking his head, laughing.
"Ready for the meat wagon," the coroner says.
"Okay, move it," Reynolds responds.
Quickly, the bedroom is cleared, the body, covered with a sheet, trundling by Randy Buck and Reynolds.
"Big, strong gal like that, who would have thought it?" Randy Buck asks, rhetorically.
"Yeah, who?" Reynolds echoes, his tone cynical.
"Y'see? Y'see? That's exactly why I didn't tell the Baroness a damn thing!
"She woulda thought the same thing you are!"
"Oh? And just what might that be, Randy?"
"That I killed her. That I found some new way of making murder look like an accident."
"And did you?"
"Why don't you ask the coroner?" Randy Buck sneers in reply. "By the way, can I use my bedroom now?"
"Sure, why not? You might wanna change the sheets first, but that's just a suggestion." And Reynolds leaves.
* * *
" ... and that's just the way it happened, Cranston. "Reynolds'll keep a lid on it, I'm sure, especially once he discovers that there's nothing to tell. "What was I-oh, yes.
"I was gonna tell you all about how Ulla went out.
"The Baroness and I had quite a nice little chat at lunch today on that very topic.
"As you might have suspected, it was actually Roberta who killed Ulla.
"Ulla came from the guest room of the Baroness's penthouse into the Baroness's bedroom, into the Baroness's bed, all properly costumed, as they so love to be when they do it, for some reason."
"They?"
"The women of our world, of course, Cranston. "Only problem being that they all look more or less alike, because of the hoods, the corselets, the pushed up boobs, the garter belts-and so on, and so on.
"In any event, it was a dark night, moonlight streaming intermittently through the skylight of the bedroom, Ulla gets into the Baroness's bed-and discovers, in a split second of awful enlightenment-that it's not the Baroness, but Roberta over whom she has so amorously leaned, lips puckered.
"Poignard through the heart, in mid-pucker, it was. Quel dnouement, quel contretemps, quelle tragdie, n'est-ce pas?"
"Then she was dead the instant she went into the bedroom," Cranston muses, looking down at the floor.
"No, my friend," Randy Buck counters, "she was dead the instant you hired her."
Cranston looks at Randy Buck sharply, eyes wide, but almost at once recovers his composure.
But Randy Buck is relentless, continuing, "She was dead the instant you decided not to brief her."
Making it still further Cranston's fault.
And amplifying, "She was dead because she never knew that, even if they bought her cover story one hundred percent, Roberta would not take that kind of a chance-as you very well know, Cranston, don't you?"
Cranston's shoulders slump.
"As you know-and as Ulla herself would have known, should have known, if she was as good as she was supposed to be.
"What's the first thing an assassin must do, Cranston-the very first thing?
"What's rule one in that profession, Cranston?
"Put yourself in the target's shoes!"
"For crissakes, Cranston, she coulda got that from watching television!
"The first thing the killer does is to observe his mark, to determine what he does and where and when, to get inside his head, to understand how he thinks!
"And you mean to tell me that, in Roberta's position, somebody comes to her with a story like Ulla's, true or false, Ulla would give a shit, one way or the other?
"Oh, but that's right. I'm overlooking one thing here-Ulla was in love, and people in love aren't particularly renowned for keeping their eye on the ball.
"Hey, there's a thought! Maybe she wasn't dead from the instant you hired 'er after all. Maybe she was dead only from the moment you two-oh! I'm sorry! That was rather ... insensitive of me, wasn't it, Cranston?"
And he sits down with Cranston on the edge of the bed, arm over his shoulders, as Cranston looks down morosely at the floor.
"Y'see, Cranston, it's only too true what they say. A leopard really can't change his spots.
"And you asked Ulla, asked yourself to be something she wasn't, something you're not, something we're not.
"If we were meant to be lovers, Cranston, our lives would have taken a far different path. And as we are, that's how we were meant to be, don't cha see?
"So you laid a distraction on Ulla, you used your best argument here-" patting his crotch, "to convince her that the both of you were one step removed from the end of the rainbow.
"You could already see the pot of gold, Cranston. You could see it, you made her see it-but it simply wasn't there.
"Hard to see what's happening in front of ya, when you've got stars in your eyes.
"And the Baroness and Roberta-they were sharp, sharp as ever, sharp as always.
"And you two just couldn't wait, could ja?
"Hell, you two were already beyond the deed, in your minds.
"And I? I knew nothing. I trusted you, trusted my cold, analytical, brilliant assistant, trusted the world-infamous assassin from the world of darkness-trusted you not to fuck up.
"Well, it was a lesson, Cranston. Keep your eye on the ball 'til the whistle blows. Time enough for the victory celebration afterward, once there's something to celebrate."
"And now, it would seem, there's nothing left to celebrate," Cranston says, eyes downcast, tone dejected.
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Cranston!
"Don't cha see? You've lost nothing, Cranston, nothing at all!
"Ulla was the one in the field, supposedly the best, supposedly getting paid to be the best-and fucking up by the numbers!
"Who the fuck was she, that she could afford the luxury of emotional involvement when she had a job t'do?
"She betrayed us, Cranston-all of us, herself included. And she paid the penalty.
"Cost us nothing, your little lesson. I forgive you! How could I not, considering my own brilliance as a commander in the field, right? Am I right?"
And Randy Buck shakes Cranston by the shoulders, laughing in hearty, indulgent self-deprecation, until Cranston cannot help but grin maliciously at the thought of Randy Buck, stymied, again and again by the Baroness.
"There's that famous Cranston sense of humor!" Randy Buck says. "And here we are, the two of us, alive and well and safe from all harm, here in the real world, sharing the bounty and the reality of that world.
"So what is there to feel bad about, Cranston? "Tell me, because I'd really like to know."
"Nothing, really, Randy."
"Come on, pal, get those duds off and I'll make ya feel good!
"Hell, I must be a terror in bed! I already fucked one person to death tonight!"
And they laugh as Cranston strips and Randy Buck removes his robe.
You're mine, son of a bitch! Randy Buck tells Cranston with his thought waves. Now and forever, world without end, you are mine!
Because he has just trashed Ulla's memory.
She'd dead? Fuck 'er, it was her own damned fault. Piece of meat, piece of shit, Ulla.
Whereas here, here! is life.
And Randy Buck sucks Cranston's cock, sucks it up hard, as Cranston lies there, slow to respond at first, but at length forced to do so, just as Randy Buck knew he would be, would cause him to be.
Because yes, hell yes, this, this is life!
And form follows function.
And when the form is that of Cranston's heavy equipment, there is, there can be no question as to what that function is-as Cranston, with his great powers of intellect must be the first to realize.
As Cranston gives up on that other path as being that of a foolish conceit, an infatuation, a fatal impracticality.
So that this, this! is the only way open to him, his only option.
Which is with Randy Buck, which is through Randy Buck, which is-in Randy Buck.
As Randy Buck pulls his face back from the prodigious prong and goes at once onto knees and elbows, giving Cranston his ass.
And Cranston says to himself, Yes, hell yes, what else is there, why not?
And rims Randy Buck at once, sucking his big bung, chewing on it, probing the yielding ring of muscle with his tongue.
And Randy Buck knows that he has once again scored, has triumphed in a closed loop, in a circle too intimate to admit of the Baroness's interference.
And yes, this is indeed a valid victory of sorts, Randy Buck reasons, this overcoming, not of Ulla herself, but of that whole incident, that whole defeat.
Yes, defeat into victory, into a complete achievement of the objective, which is none other than Cranston's undivided loyalty.
Because he told himself this before, somewhat sarcastically, but now, for the first time, Randy Buck can truly say that the Baroness has done him a favor, getting rid of Ulla, and doing it in such a way as to discredit her very memory.
Yes, Cranston will never pull that shit again.
Because it is a sign of intelligence that we learn from experience, and Cranston is nothing if not intelligent.
And if to that intelligence we add devotion, and if to that devotion we add one helluva salami-well, what else could Randy Buck ask?
Even his experience with Debbie has made Randy Buck see that it was not mere jealousy that drove him to thus urgently long for Cranston's undivided allegiance; rather, it was the truth about Cranston, about Cranston and himself.
Not for nothing do they have their private lives situated in the dark underworld of the bizarre; they are where they are because that is their nature.
Certainly, Randy Buck has the means to lead whatever private life pleases him.
So that this is something beyond mere pleasantness, something beyond mere taste.
It is in the nature of a compulsion to do and an obsession to thrive, to thrive and to succeed in a world of their own creation, of their own rule.
Oh, it could very well be, Randy Buck muses-amused at his ability to maintain his train of thought even as Cranston pulls back his face, preparatory to ramming him-it could very well be that he will work his way through this present compulsion, this present obsession, it could be that someday he could exhaust it of its content, of its ability to compel, to fascinate.
But unless and until that day comes, he will keep faith with himself and demand of Cranston that he do the same.
Cranston buttons his plum of a knpb into Randy Buck's ass hole, grips his hips firmly v ith both hands and, rotating his hips, corkscrews in and in and into the depths of Randy Buck's bowels, the battering ram of his cockhead parting the channel of his rectum as it stretches and fills it.
Fitting Randy Buck onto his mighty marauder like a condom, is Cranston.
Filling him with the symbol and substance of their shared maleness, is Cranston.
Because he is in Randy Buck, and yet Randy Buck is also in him, within him, occupying his mind as surely and as thoroughly as his cock fills Randy Buck's body-that newly reconstructed, newly tanned body which is even now getting ready for its next dark adventure, its next battle with the Baroness.
What will it be, Cranston wonders-some outrageous piece of rampant sadism for their amusement and pleasure, a challenge to the Baroness to discover and interfere with it, or will it be yet another attempt to rid himself of his nemesis, once and for all?
Yes, Cranston tells himself, he will have to watch this body very closely indeed, watch it become stronger and stronger, until Randy Buck is ready to go back into action.
Because he will have to catch Randy Buck at that precise instant, if he is to monitor him, to advise him and thus prevent Randy Buck's self-destructiveness, his masochism, from inserting into his plans, from creating within the project, whatever it is, that flaw, unintended and yet designed to give the Baroness her opening.
Because Cranston doubts that Randy Buck will survive another such encounter as the one he has just had, in which the Baroness showed herself perfectly willing to see him perish, thereby dispelling the possibility that the Baroness was actually holding back, taking it easy on Randy Buck.
And now, communicating with him, vibrant shaft to sucking, clinging rectum, Cranston lets his mind drift, surrendering to the pleasure of the darkness within Randy Buck.
8
"That's right, Baroness, the woman actually died of illness.
"Not saying that Randy Buck did nothing to aggravate her condition, but it was probably no more damage than the normal male would cause in the course of intercourse-to coin a phrase-in her condition."
"So now I suppose he's strutting around like a peacock, bragging about how he managed to fuck a woman to death, stud that he is."
"Not when I saw him, he wasn't. He was playing it straight, right up and down the line, with me, with the sheriff. Full cooperation, anxiety about publicity, the whole nine yards.
"He seemed, somehow-I don't know-depressed. like somebody in the aftermath of tragedy, after the shock wears off. Seen it often enough to recognize it."
"How about this, Carl?
"Remember that corpse found floating in the river down here?"
"You mean the one that was wearing the same, the same-you surprise me, Baroness."
"How so, Carl? If an investigation could be launched connecting the two deaths, based on similarity of costume-"
"That's why you surprise me, Cynthia. The FBI was able to identify her as Ulla somebody-or-other, a suspected hit person from Europe.
"And we both know what that was all about-just as we both know who did what about it and to whom, know what I'm saying?
"The file on a murder never closes, so it wouldn't take much to reopen the case, if that's what you want.
"But the woman at Buck's place died of her illness, or should I say illnesses, no question.
"We reopen the Ulla thing, it's only gonna lead in one direction, and not the one you want it to."
"Very well then," the Baroness sighs, "forget it.
"You're no fun at all, Carl."
"Death never is, except to the-likes of Randy Buck and-never mind."
"Why Carl! And all the time I thought you considered me a kind of honorary good guy."
"Baroness, you've been seen having lunch with this sicko creep.
"Based on your information, we've been able to disrupt, interfere with a number of suspicious situations involving him-without, however, arresting or even detaining him.
"He gets in trouble, he calls you, right away.
"Suppose you tell me, Cynthia: Just what is it that I'm supposed to think about all this?"
"He killed Dr. Grant and his secretary, you know, Carl."
"He had them killed, according to you, Baroness. "
"Same thing, Carl."
"Only if we can connect him to the killer or killers."
"Hey, I can't do it all for you, Carl."
"Thanks for the cheap shot, Baroness; wait'll y'need something. No, wait. I'm glad you brought that up.
"We had Randy Buck cold this last time. All it took to nail him was that phone call from you.
"But no, that wasn't good enough-not for the Baroness and her hooded harridans, right?
"Twenty-one counts of kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment, four counts of assault, no contest, hands down-enough to put Randy Buck away for the rest of his life, right?
"So we get there and what do we find?
"Randy Buck and his faithful companion Cranston chained up with eighteen naked women.
"Buck is unconscious and bleeding from severe blows to the head and lacerations all over his body.
"And we're supposed to convince a prosecutor that this was the guy in charge?
"So if Randy Buck is walking around sucking the free air today, Baroness, we both know who he has to thank for it.
"Or you don't see it that way?"
"We had to move quickly or he could quite possibly have killed someone by the time you got there with the cavalry, Carl."
"Na, na, na, Cynthia; that's not Randy Buck's style, and you know it.
"First he's gotta get his jollies off, fucking them, torturing them, scaring them.
"We had the time, but you had to have your own bit of fun.
"Y'know, Baroness, you're just as bad as he is, except that you happened to pick him and his buddies as your toys of choice.
"Frankly, I'm wondering just how much longer you expect me to go along with the program.
"Hell, I'm a state police official, Cynthia! I have a responsibility to-"
"You know who and what Randy Buck is, Carl; and you know that without me on his case, you'd be finding bodies-horribly mutilated bodies-in numbers that would make any previous massacre look like some kid's Halloween party."
"So knowing this, Baroness, why can't you cooperate? Why, when all else fails, do you insist upon ruining our ability to arrest him?"
Silence.
"Let me tell you why, Baroness. It's because this whole thing is nothing but a fucking game to you, a game of cat and mouse between you and Randy Buck, played out, unfortunately for the rest of us, in the real world.
"You wanna talk massacre, Baroness?
"Between you, the body count of which I'm aware, is about fifty-most of them being accounted for by you yourself.
"You think those thirty people on board Samantha Steele's yacht who didn't make it into the lifeboats, you think they deserved to die when you blew up the ship?"
"They were wearing the costume, they were playing the game, hunting down their naked prey in order to torture them to death, Carl; suppose you tell me."
"Okay, Baroness, since you insist, I will tell you.
"You had merely to inform the Coast Guard of the goings on board a vessel of United States registry-so don't hand me the international waters bullshitand allow them to apprehend her; instead, you proceeded to take the law into your own hands, risking the lives of three hundred people-including your own, your companions' and those of the intended victims and destroying the vessel.
"Thirty people, Baroness-thirty people whose only crime, at that point, was to be wearing the exact same crazy costume you and Randy Buck so love to prance about in-thirty people were lost at sea, thanks to you.
"And here I am, having direct personal knowledge of what you did.
"Is this any position in which a state police official to find himself?"
"A higher justice was served, Carl."
"You just don't get it, do ya, Cynthia? There is only the one justice in operation in our society."
"Can't say I care for the quality, Carl."
"And it's not a matter of personal taste, dammit!"
"Listen, Carl, it's been real, chatting with you and all that, but this is getting us nowhere.
"May I call on you for assistance in future?"
"If I say no, bodies will start hitting the ground, I suppose," Reynolds sighs.
"Well of course they will, darling; after all, we're dealing with a maniac, are we not?"
"More than one, I suspect. Ciao, Baroness."
And the line goes dead.
"What a singularly unpleasant fellow," the Baroness remarks, looking at the dead telephone before putting it down.
"But useful," Roberta qualifies.
"True, true," the Baroness agrees. "Still, I can't help but feeling a growing coolness between us.
"If only he weren't quite so, so ... incorruptible."
"Yes, Cynthia, then you could use your best arguments on him."
"Speaking of which-using best arguments, that is-would you believe a dominatrix named Debbie died just after going two rounds in the sack with our favorite villain?"
"Oh, no! Geez, he must be strutting around that palace of his with his cock stuck out a mile!
"The sadist's dream, huh? The salami as instrument of torture and death."
"Carl says not. He says Randy Buck seemed genuinely taken aback, try as he might to cover up his reaction."
"She meant something to him, did she, then?"
"I've no idea. Perhaps I should give him a ring and sound him out."
"Oh, right, like you're really gonna get straight answers outta that creep!"
"No, but the crooked ones can sometimes prove just as interesting, in his case.
"In any event, it would seem the woman had several medical conditions which contributed to her demise.
"His being there at the time could have been sheer coincidence. I was hoping to turn it into something else, but straight arrow on the phone there shot that down."
"I still can't believe those bitches didn't kill him when we gave them the chance."
"They tried, but the police arrived too soon and Randy Buck's hood, if you can believe it, saved his head from fatal injury."
"Who said these costumes weren't functional as well as decorative, huh?"
"I wonder what Randy's doing right now, now that he has the good news that he's officially off the hook?"
"He's breathing, and that's enough to make me not like it, whatever else he's doing," Roberta replies.
"Now that he's obviously mended, now that he's back in the saddle again, I don't think it will be too much longer before he'll be starting some kind of nonsense," the Baroness observes.
"And why do I get the feeling that you wish it would happen tonight?" Roberta asks, as they sit in the living room of the penthouse, lights out, watching the skyline of the city, all lit up and glowing magically, the distant lights reflecting faintly off the surfaces of their leather hoods, their bare breasts, pushed up and out by their corselets, gleaming dully, like the charms of marble statues in a garden by moonlight.
* * *
Yes and yes and yes! Randy Buck shouts, in his mind, opening himself up without reservation, giving his ass completely to Cranston's turgid invader.
Make me know it, Cranston! Make me know the power, our power!
And Cranston, as though hearing and obeying, redoubles his efforts.
A long time, before the beating, a very long time it has been since Randy Buck last availed himself of what Cranston has to offer physically.
Only with the crazy dreams, the all too real dreams, the dreams that were much more than dreams, in the hospital, before they opened his skull to correct and eliminate the aneurysm from the beating did he once again desire to know, to have, to be in contact with Cranston's considerable cock.
It was not, it is not a homosexual thing, he tells himself; rather, it was the notion, the idea, the anxiety that he might lose Cranston that caused him to focus on having sex with him.
Just as, originally, at the show and tell, the initial interview when he hired Cranston, the sight of it did not arouse actual desire for intercourse but rather the desire to possess, merely to have this at his disposal, to call it, in the objectively possessive context, his.
And now, that possession has been confirmed and more than confirmed, secured, nailed, locked, Randy Buck stakes his claim.
Having nothing left to prove by way of what a macho stud he is (Did he not, after all, fuck a woman to death in this very bed. He takes possession of Cranston's cock in the literal sense by becoming fuckee as well as fucker, with a great sense of power, of completeness and satisfaction.
Not the idea that he is taking it up the ass from a cock, but that it is specifically Cranston's cock, therefore and thereby an extension of his own masculinity.
Which, in essence allows him to satisfy his masochistic bent through the actual carrying out of the traditional derisive advice, "Go fuck yourself!"
Because this is exactly what he is doing-fucking himself.
And who knows? Maybe, just maybe this will satisfy his penchant for self-destruction, will make whatever it is within him that cries out for punishment cease its sabotaging of all his plans, of his very life.
If. If he can work things out this way, then he will be all right, then the Baroness will be just one more cunt, nothing to worry about.
Yes, he really is back in the saddle again, the new, improved Randy Buck.
Another couple of months of working out under Rhino's supervision and he will be physically up to some considerable exertions beyond those of the bedroom.
And for now, here, here! is intimacy, here is communication with the essence of masculinity, his own, Cranston's, maleness in general-the aggressive element, the agent of action, the agent of change, the agent of ... his cruelty.
And he sees a parody of himself, of his hooded self, bull-necked and evil, leering at the world, his eyes glowing yellow-green almonds of raw luminescence.
Because who, who will be able to stop him in his plans, his determination to impose his will upon the reality of the world?
As his cock twitches to full, vibrant life, bobbling stiffly beneath him with each jarring thrust of Cranston's mighty marauder.
What should he do first? he asks himself. Eliminate the Baroness?
But why do that, if she no longer has the power to stop him?
Why take the chance, though?
But it's not a question of that, but rather of confidence in himself.
And now, Cranston slows down, is giving him the long, slow ride, is making it last.
Which is right, which is the way to do it, to hold the forces within him, the power surging through him, on steady feed, to clear his mind, to gather his mental forces, to show him the way.
I am the way and the light!
Meaning his own image, that bestial, powerful, dark, evil presence within himself which will brook no opposition, will tolerate no contradiction, will ride roughshod over any and all who oppose him. Now. Now that he's back in the saddle again.
As Cranston rides him.
As he in turn rides the world drawing the power, the power of his virility from the mighty cock which so avidly but steadily pistons in and out of his ass.
Ride me, Cranston, ride me! he shouts at him in his mind. Ride me so that I can ride the whole dark universe!
* * *
It is a melting with her own reflection that is that and something more, something other.
As she and Roberta embrace, large breasts pressing together above their corselets, eyes staring at eyes through their hoods.
Is their similarity a thing of contrivance, mere affectation, or is it genuine? the Baroness asks herself, only to realize that the question has no meaning, is superfluous, is itself an affectation, is something trivial, posed after the fact, the fact of the reality of the moment, of the thereness of herself and Roberta, of those lines of emotional force-whether affectation or heartfelt matters not which have determined events.
Maybe it's boredom, or perhaps frustration which is thus expressing itself. What difference does it make, anyway?
It is what it is. And what it is, is happening, is real, is now.
And what it is, is commitment as well, commitment to their own sensuousness, their own voluptuousness, to the flame of sexual pleasure resident within them both.
Naught loves another as itself, so it is said.
And there is present here a naturalness and a comfort, as novel, as familiar as their urges, as the sexual desire within them, that desire to see the image of themselves in action and to make that image real.
The action is everything with them, in this, the bizarre, dark underworld, parallel with the world of daylight, ever-present within them, even as they are now present within it. The bed.
The bed in which Ulla was killed before she could kill the Baroness-if she was in fact going to kill the Baroness.
But that too made no difference, because, Ulla too was overtaken by events.
Because she was either superfluous or treacherous, and in either case expendable, having no place in their world, in either of their worlds.
Because they are creatures of light and darkness and Ulla was of the dark, having no place in the light.
She was the agent and the emissary of darkness itself, whether neutralized or armed, and thus deserving of dispatch to eternal darkness, in the name of prudence.
Because what do the creatures of darkness know of the light?
Is that not the problem with Randy Buck-that the light has lost its savor for him, presents no further challenge, holds no further interest? ( But Randy Buck is not here now, is far from here, is even now completing his own reassembly, will thus not be ready for some time to pursue his career in darkness.
Because the Baroness could tell.
He was hanging by a thread, was Randy Buck, recovered only cosmetically, nowhere near ready for any kind of strain.
And the thing with Debbie had shaken him, had shown him his own mortality reflected in her death.
Never again can Randy Buck view death in the same light as before, she reflects. He has been too close to it-and vice versa.
No longer is it an impersonal weapon in his arsenal of horror, but a two-edged sword, one to be used but never fully trusted, to be watched at all times.
Because she had given death the green light, had told the grim reaper that it's okay to cut down Randy Buck with his scythe-something that was never okay before.
True, she had almost buried him at the Monastery, had almost poisoned him at the masquerade ball, had almost drowned him at sea, had almost shot him in the caves of Yucatan-almost.
But here, in the basement of his own home, only here had she left him at the mercy of three malevolent, intelligent enemies-the difference between facing a hurricane and facing an armed opponent.
The one is impersonal chance, the other actively directed destruction.
So that he has the message.
The game can never again be the same-not for him, not for her.
Let him make of that what he will, the Baroness tells herself-and turns her thoughts to infinitely more pleasant things.
As Roberta bridges her body in reverse, a knee planted on either side of her.
As Roberta burrows her face in the Baroness's snatch.
As the Baroness reaches up, placing both hands on the belled flare of Roberta's hips, lowering her in position, placing her cunt right where-
The magic begins.
Which is the magic of like with like, of reversed mirror images of action and of sensation.
Action and reaction, two sides of the same coin, the one on the heels of the other, so closely that they seem simultaneous.
And the thoughts which lead to the action/ reaction seem to happen at once with the deed.
Because as above, so below.
As they eat each others' cunts, strumming each others' joy buzzers with flickering tongues, tongue-fucking each other, their long, thick, powerful tongues avidly plunging in and out of their hot, juicy pussies.
As their powerful vaginal muscles squeeze, suck, cling to the ever-working tongues.
Yes and yes and yes! they cry out in their minds, opening themselves up, mind and body, to the floodtide of lascivious sensation they are generating within themselves, within each other.
As they form a closed circuit of sexual electricity which fuses them together.
As they rise higher and higher up the rainbow of their shared arousal.
So that there is nothing, nothing, nothing between them, nothing separating them, dividing their unity of purpose, of will, of being.
As they boost themselves, each other, the single entity they have become, up, up, up the rainbow of their shared arousal.
Higher and higher they rise together, through level after level of lascivious sensation, each more delightful than the last.
As delight becomes ecstasy, ecstasy rapture.
Not the other's but in some mystical, magic way her own cunt is she eating, her own clit is she flickering her tongue against.
And boots and hood and garter belt are they intimately aware of at all times.
Not in this world, but in that other, in a world of their own within that other, that dark, bizarre world are they summoning that which is greater than themselves, greater than their world.
The pleasure beyond pleasure have they awakened in themselves, in their alter egos.
And it blooms within them, explodes within them, its pressure wave a perfect ball, exanding outward in every direction from within their innermost selves to the outer reaches of their being, an irresistible force which they do not want to resist, which they welcome hungrily, eagerly.
And which blows their safety valves.
So that now, they are coming and coming in their shared series of multiple orgasms, one after another, each more exquisite than the one before.
As the powerful contractions of their vaginal muscles milk their tongues of all the pleasure they contain for them, which is more, much, much more than they themselves could contain.
So that yes, they are in flight above the world in which light is an illusion, sailing freely through darkness lit only by the distant, twinkling stars, by the swirling, exploding galaxies in a universe of immeasurable power, of untold, unknown and unknowable violence.
And only slowly, very slowly, do they float effortlessly back down to earth.
Where Roberta dismounts and lies beside the Baroness in the moonlit darkness-that moonlit darkness where, half a year previously, they had done away with Ulla, that creature of darkness in which there was no light.
And the air is filled with the ghost of the aura of their spent passion, its musky perfume lingering, invisible.
Not the action with which they would have preferred to begin the evening, what has just transpired, but rather that with which they would have preferred to end it, a celebration of victory.
And yet, this too is a victory of sorts for them, is it not?
Because their enemy has been neutralized, has been put out of action by them in such a manner that he has yet to regroup his forces of will and calculation.
Almost, Roberta tells herself. They almost got the bastard their last time out, coming closer than ever before.
Next time, she tells herself, next time, she will leave absolutely nothing to chance, not leaving his presence until he has left this existence.
