Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Copyright (C) 1999, Silvio Stoker.  ALL Rights Reserved

   (Everything, mostly Mf, Mfffff+, extreme caution)

   Lives of the Great Waifs Written by Silvio Stoker

   ============================================================ AUTHOR'S
NOTE:

   Please respect the copyright of this work.  I work hard and long on
these stories.  I like it if you chew on them and swallow them, but please
don't distribute them, make money off them, mutilate them, steal from them.

   If this tale tempts you to terrible things, remember that there is an
imaginary world within your very real body, where you may do anything you
are moved to do -- but that the swiftest way to incur the wrath of the
Lords of Karma, who live both there and in the "real" world, is by
violating another's will.

   You may not only lose your personal liberty -- and I do hope that if you
actually act like some of my characters, you are sipping cyanide at this
very moment, or incarcerated -- you will also pay dearly in that free world
of Dream and Vision.

   =================================================================

   C A P T I V I T Y (Lives of the Great Waifs)





   "I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and

   loaded with sin."



   -- Philip Marlowe in Raymond

   Chandler's _Farewell, My Lovely_.

   I

   Ariadne Fish certainly seemed older, and it was only by looking at her
file that Christopher Fuseli learned her true age -- barely fourteen.  It's
not that she _couldn't_ look fourteen; her expression when it wasn't deadly
serious, which it usually was, dissolved into a childish insecurity and
nervousness.  Such moments were rare, however, and for the most part the
gravitas and mystery of her face foiled any attempt to guess her age, which
was not really betrayed by her body, either -- she was quite tall, even
compared to the sixteen and seventeen-year-olds in Christopher's classes,
and very thin, but with wide hips and somewhat big bones, which, with her
ivory face and long, dark, silken hair, her sensual lips and huge
blue-violet eyes, gave her an exotic appearance.  Yet her breasts, which
were often to be glimpsed in the expensive, slutty clothing that she wore
-- it was elegantly slutty, and made her stand out -- her breasts were
barely A-cups, and her skin appeared to be as soft as a child's.

   No, it wasn't her appearance that made her seem so mature, far more
mature than the other seniors, it was her almost uncanny ability to
concentrate, her brilliance, and the way she comported herself.

   Ariadne fell through the cracks.  The Clairmont Academy for Girls had
been bright enough to let her skip two grades, but the counselors were at a
loss when it came to her "lack of social skills." Her classmates resented
her not because she was younger but because she did not hide how smart she
was and how she found them tiresome, immature and stupid.  The teachers --
other than Christopher -- were aafraid of her.  The administration was
perplexed and antagonistic, having even suspended her for three days in the
first month of the semester for violating the dress code (the navel shall
remain hidden) and refusing to go home to change.

   To Christopher, Ariadne was an angel.  She was in two of his classes,
advanced placement English and Creative Writing.  English had too many
students and she sat near the back, making it impossible to watch her, to
study the graceful movements of her hands and the look of sublime attention
in her hypnotic eyes...  but in Creative Writing, where he had only eight
students that year (not because there was no interest, but because there
was too much; Miss Wood had gotten twenty kids, the maximum class size at
the Clairmont Academy, and they had not split them up into equal groups due
to Christopher's sick leave at the beginning of the semester) she was
available to his delighted eyes.  There Ariadne sat in the first row, and
though she did not speak much, and he did not call on her because of her
shyness, he stared.  He stared so much that Lucy Wickham, an evil creature
from the tanning booth, who would have been on the cheerleading squad had
there been one, once snickered.

   The thing was that Ariadne stared back, sometimes looking briefly
uncomfortable and averting her eyes, then returning his gaze with a
directness and sexuality that looked almost perverse on her young face,
shifting in her seat, crossing her legs, fingering the hem of her short
skirt.  Christopher took to remaining behind the lectern for the duration
of the class, to hide the bulge in his jeans.

   The third time the class met, Ariadne was wearing a purple cotton dress
with stylized roses and black stockings.  When they locked eyes, she gave
him a faint smile and...  touched her left breast for a second, a long,
voluptuous second that made Christopher lose his train of thought. 
Fortunately, the cheerleader was absent.  It was after that moment that
Christopher looked up her file.

   Ariadne Fish had turned fourteen in December.  She was an immigrant from
L'viv in the Western Ukraine, had moved to __ Valley from Brighton Beach in
Brooklyn a year ago, and lived with her uncle, one Mavrik Fish, in __.  Her
test scores were _perfect_ in everything except mathematics, but her grades
were very uneven.  Looking at them carefully, Christopher decided that she
apparently did not get along with certain teachers, or was bored by the
level at which the subjects were taught.  There was also a problem with the
medical record -- she had not submitted the required papers, and her uncle
had been warned twice that she would not be allowed to graduate until her
documents were in order.

   Christopher got into his messy little old Karmann Ghia and drove home.
He was forty-two years old, unkempt, without distinguishing features, the
kind of man who would produce a police artist's sketch of everyone and no
one.  Brown hair brown eyes oval face medium build medium height.  Can you
remember anything else about him?  No.

   He lived in a two-room cottage on what had until recently been a rural
road, at the edge of a decrepit apple orchard.  Beyond the orchard, upper
class suburbia encroached: an expensive complex of townhouses, "Willow
Creek," with nary a creek or a willow in sight, two-storey extravaganzas
with three-car garages, and a village which, with the exception of a
hardware store, had been converted to upscale charming pleasant quaint,
with seven antique shops, two overpriced restaurants that served artistic
creations arranged in the center of large white plates, a bookstore
specializing in How Crystals Can Bring Spirituality to Your Lifestyle and a
"historic" inn with the only bar around for miles.

   Christopher stopped at said bar, imbibed two gimlets, and drove the rest
of the way down Granger Road to his humble abode.  There, he fixed himself
coffee, sprinkled it liberally with Irish whisky, and sat down at the large
old oaken table to grade papers.

   Disgusted by the first three, he searched for Ariadne's.  The assignment
had been to write an autobiographical sketch in the first person, five to
ten pages, double-spaced.

   Ariadne's was one page long and in the third person.  Disobedient wench.



   Once upon a time there was a young woman named A.  She was very
beautiful and bright, raven-haired, long-limbed, unnaturally mature for her
tender years.  She spoke Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian, English and French
with equal fluency.  In fact, she spoke better English than the Americans
around her in __, though she had a sexy accent.

   Christopher finished his coffee and poured straight whisky into the cup,
lighting a Camel.  He was suddenly very afraid of what was coming.



   A lived with her Uncle M, who was very nice to her except when he drank
too much vodka, which was every weekend.  Then he would make her dance and
take off her clothes.  When she was eleven years old, he taught her to suck
his cock and lick his asshole.  When she was twelve, he started to buttfuck
her.

   Christopher gulped his whisky.  He felt as if he was being choked.  What
did she want him to do?  Surely she knew that he was required to report
this.



   You would think that A was very unhappy, but A is not a normal girl. 
She does not love her uncle, but she is used to being raped like this, and
it has become almost a form of masturbation.  Lately her uncle uses her
even when he is sober.  A comes home from school, takes off her clothes,
and Uncle M greases up her beautiful bottom and shoves his dick up it. 
Then he puts it in her mouth and comes.

   Christopher was becoming very aroused.



   Lately, A thinks about her English teacher while her uncle does this to
her.  Her English teacher has been staring at her in class, and she wonders
what it would be like to fuck him, to fuck someone who she wants to fuck,
to make love to.  Also, her uncle has never used her cunt (which is a very
beautiful cunt) and she would love it if her English teacher deflowered
her.



   She once saw that he got an erection from staring at her and imagines
him reading this.  Maybe he is masturbating, thinking about her?  If she
was there, she would be his whore and his daughter and his wife.  He could
do whatever he wanted to her.



   A's Uncle M does not speak English well and is very frightened of the
authorities.  If her English teacher -- may she call him C, or would he
prefer Mr.  F?  -- came to her house and took her away, he wouldn't do
anything.



   Besides being a witty conversationalist and excellent cocksucker, A is a
fine cook and domestic servant.  She would be his little slave.



   She hopes that when Mr.  F finishes reading this, he gets into his cute
little car and drives to 801 Blackridge Road and rescues her from her evil
uncle so that they can live happily ever after.  She knows he will, because
he seems lonely and he is not like other people.  She can see it in his
eyes.



   Christopher knocked back another jigger of whisky, put on his jacket,
and went to the car.  Once, when he was sixteen and he and a friend scaled
the fence of a nursery, for no real reason, just to hang out between the
young cherry trees and sip brandy he had stolen from his father, a security
guard had appeared out of nowhere and aimed a gun at them.  Instead of
being afraid, he had felt crystal clear, lucid, in Zugzwang.  He felt like
that now, driving through the quaint artifice of the village to Blackridge
Road.

   What were the choices?  Ignore the...  essay, turn it in to the
headmaster (with its remark about how he got an erection staring at her;
how smart was Ariadne?  Had she included that intentionally?), ask her to
stay after class and, ha ha, reprimand her, or do as she asked.

   "She knows he will..." The house was a new one, red brick, picture
window.  There was a black Bronco parked in the driveway.  He pulled up
behind it, stubbed out his cigarette, and went to the door.  A deep breath,
a knock.

   As soon as Ariadne's Uncle Mavrik appeared at the door, Christopher knew
that her note was a deception, a devious fiction.  The palms of his hands
started to sweat.  Not only did this uncle speak excellent English, he had
a kindly manner and his eyes were those of a generous and caring country
gentleman.

   Ariadne sat provocatively in the comfortable upper middle class living
room, not in her usual elegantly slutty garb but in a black silk robe that
revealed more of her beauty than ever before -- her soft white feet with
long, slender toes, the center of her chest, most of her skinny thighs.  He
expected to see gloating in her expression, but instead there was --
melancholy?  Christopher was suddenly unsure of reality.

   "Hello, Mr.  Fuseli," she said, the hint of a smile playing about her
full, sad lips.  "What brings you here?"

   "Go put on some proper clothes, Ariadne," Uncle Mavrik said.

   There were several chess boards set up throughout the room, and
Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade was playing on the stereo system.

   "I just dropped by...  Mr.  Fish...  I mean, that's your name, too,
yes?" Mavrik nodded.  "I just dropped by to remind you that Ariadne needs
to turn in her health papers...  or she won't be allowed to graduate..."

   "Oh?  Oh!  And here I thought Ariadne was in trouble...  again.  Yes,
yes, of course.  I'm not...  very good at, how you say, red tape."

   Christopher thanked the man, complimented the decor, and beat a retreat.
As soon as the door closed, the culprit emerged from behind a sickly young
yew, still in the robe, barefoot in the dregs of snow, shivering.

   She grabbed hold of his hands.  "I'm sorry...  I'm so sorry... 
Christopher...  Mr.  Fuseli...  please..." Tears streamed down her cheeks.

   "You...  you..." He wanted to call her 'bitch," but even now the word
wouldn't come.  She was too beautiful.  "How dare you?"

   "I'm sorry.  Really I am." She stared at him with her wet, violet eyes.
"I needed to know if...  if I could trust you."

   Then she kissed him.  Not a peck, a kiss, a deep kiss, and Christopher
kissed back, fervently.  Her eyes were wild.  She gave a low, womanly moan
and ran away towards the back of the house across the hardened, dirty snow.



   II

   The next day there was no Creative Writing, but she showed up for
English...  and sat in the first row, having traded seats with Eva Moss, an
intelligent but uninspired, uninspiring girl.  How dare you, Christopher
thought to himself, and then proceeded to snatch glimpses of her.  She was
wearing a dark green velvet dress and black herringbone stockings.

   When the class was over, she hung behind.  Christopher sat behind his
desk, his palms beginning to sweat.

   "May I have a word with you, Mr.  Fuseli?"

   "Yes, Miss...  Ariadne.  Of course.  Have a seat."

   "May I close the door?"

   "No!" It was against policy, as it is at most schools these days, in the
age of harassment lawsuits.  "No, Ariadne.  Sit down."

   She almost started to cry.  "Do you hate me now?"

   "You know perfectly well that I don't hate you.  Cut the act.  You have
put me in a very difficult position...  and, by the way, I will expect the
five-page autobiographical assignment, written in the first person,
tomorrow."

   "Yes, Mr.  Fuseli.  I have it for you...  here." She opened a folder and
handed it to me.  "I...  I didn't mean...  oh, I did mean to put you in
a... difficult position.  Because I needed to know how far you would go.  I
needed to know that you really wanted me...  you do still want me, don't
you?"

   She ran her fingers along the underside of her pale, slender arm, as
though...  masturbating.  Christopher felt his penis harden.

   "I destroyed your...  note, Ariadne.  We are never going to discuss this
again.  I have work to do now, so..."

   "Christopher...  please.  I only wanted to be certain that you
weren't... playing with me.  I want you...  I swear.  I _need_ you." She
was talking in a loud whisper.  People were passing in the hall.

   "Never, Ariadne.  You have a minute till the bell.  Go on."

   Looking terribly hurt, she left the classroom.  Christopher had the next
two periods free, and instead of going to the teachers' lounge, where Miss
Wood and Mrs.  Walker generally held forth about declining morals and the
acceptance of Christ, Christopher went out to his Karmann Ghia and decided
to drive home for some lunch.

   It was a thaw, now, the grass bright green in places, winter wheat where
there was still farmland, the sort of fertile scent that accentuates
loneliness.  It must have been in the upper fifties, and Christopher put on
his suede jacket and sat on the steps of his cottage, facing the orchard.

   It had been three years since his divorce, and barring a single,
regrettable one-night stand with a woman who would have been the village
whore were the village still a true village and not a simulacrum of such, a
bedroom community for the computer company at the other end of the Valley,
they had been three years of celibacy and solitude.

   He had accustomed himself to it.  In the first year of being single
again, he lived like a pig, drinking a lot, not taking out the garbage,
eating TV dinners, reading three newspapers a night until sleep took him.
On the first anniversary of the divorce, he resolved to change, climbed on
the wagon, forced himself to fix proper meals (this was harder than
abandoning the bottle; even when Cici and he had barely been speaking,
there was a kind of communion at supper -- if the marriage-bed has lost its
central place in a union, the dinner table can, for a time, replace it),
stopped smoking, ceased to buy newspapers and tried to read the books he
had never had time for, kept a journal ("Day 177 without drink...") and
resumed correspondence with a handful of distant friends.

   On the second anniversary of Cici's departure, almost a year ago, he had
integrated profligacy and asceticism, allowing himself a maximum of five
drinks per evening, eating out more often than not, continuing the journal,
reading the New York Times for an hour each night, then classics...  and
sinking inexorably into a pit of self-pity.  Without the pressure of an
enforced purity, the emptiness of his existence glared at him, a wasteland
of interminable work days, long, lonely weekends, tables for one at
moderately priced restaurants, fitful sleep, is it time for the next drink
yet, sorrow.

   What saved him -- what kept him from putting a gun in his mouth -- was
the occasional interesting student.  With the possible exception of the
cheerleaderish Lucy, there were no really stupid girls at Clairmont, but
neither were there many of the sort he liked.  It dawned on him that when
he did like one, it was an almost sexual affection...  it _was_ a sexual
affection.  It never, ever crossed Christopher's mind to actually act upon
these feelings (other than the nightly Rape of the Hand); no, it was enough
for him to soak in their virginal proximity, spend extra time with their
papers, encourage them to write more, keep a diary...  and learn about
their inner feelings, which was why the first assignment in Creative
Writing was the autobiography.

   And now this.  Suddenly, beyond intention, he had driven across town
into Ariadne's...  deceptive arms.  And for why?  _Virginal proximity_,
indeed.  He had believed her letter, believed that this lovely, brilliant
girl was...  a ruin?  And a ruin is easy to enter.

   Christopher went into the house and got the five-page assignment she had
handed him, poured himself a tiny measure of whisky, barely covering the
bottom of the glass, sat down at the crumb-covered, oaken table, and read.



   Once upon a time there was a beautiful young woman named A.  Oops, yes,
the first person...  once upon a time there was me, A.  I was born in
L'viv, in the Ukraine, which used to be Lvov when it was the Soviet Union
and, before that, Lemberg -- oh and Lwow when it was Polish.  My father was
Jewish, my mother Russian, and Russians are not liked very much in that
part of the Ukraine.  Jews are not liked very much in most of Eastern
Europe.

   There followed three pages about her upbringing, ballet classes, her
early interest in literature, and her determination to come to America,
where her Uncle Mavrik lived.  There were some nice descriptions of the
beauties of decaying L'viv, her mother's death from tuberculosis a few
years ago and her father's finally agreeing to send her to his brother in
Brooklyn.



   I can tell you all about L'viv, but I saw almost nothing of New York,
because Uncle Mavrik treats me like a child.  It was forbidden for me to
leave the apartment alone, and part of the reason he moved up here and
enrolled me at Clairmont was to protect me from the world.



   I can't stand it, Christopher, and I can imagine what you're thinking:
that I am a disturbed adolescent and want to be wild and am waiting
impatiently to turn sixteen so that I can run away and do crazy things?



   Do you believe in love at first sight?  Oh, I know you do.



   I want you to take me away, Christopher.  To San Francisco, or Savannah,
or Gary, Indiana.



   I guess you don't trust me now -- what I did was stupid, and when I talk
to you after class, I know you will be angry and cold towards me.



   But I'm a woman, Christopher, not a girl.  You might not believe me --
yet -- but I _know_ things, things that are going to happen.  I had a dream
about you...  about us.



   I dreamt that we loved each other and made each other happy.  I know you
are a sad person...  it is maybe a lost love?  I know, too, that if you
stay here, you will always be sad.



   If you run away with me, we can do anything, Christopher.



   It ended with instructions to meet her at the corner of Blackridge and
9W at nine o'clock; she would be waiting with her things.

   Christopher poured himself another whisky, a large one this time. 
Childishly certain, she was, an adolescent romantic.  He knew nothing about
her.  And he was trembling.

   He was trembling because he realized that he would indeed go to meet
her. He called Miss Wood to ask her to take his afternoon classes, told her
that he had fallen ill, and sat sipping his whisky.  He would go.  Not to
leave with her -- to talk to her, to tell her how silly she was being, how
he did care for her...

   Christopher realized that his criticism of Ariadne -- the childish
certainty, the romanticism -- was what he missed most of his old self, was
what he lacked now.  He surveyed his slightly disorderly little house.  You
look at this, he told himself, and you think about staying here for the
rest of your life, about dying here, and you don't look forward to it,
Christopher Fuseli, except the death part, you do look forward to not
having to get up and go to work and make dinner and drink yourself to
sleep. So up and ruin it!  Take off, Christopher, head for the open road...

   But he couldn't think about ruining her life.  She was fourteen years
old, for God's sake, six months away from graduating if her uncle ever
turned in the papers.

   The more he drank, the more he realized that it was her youth he wanted.
It would be the next best thing to getting his own back, wouldn't it?  A
strong-willed girl...  who had already outwitted him...  who seemed to know
what she wanted.

   Christopher idly scanned his possessions, wondering what he would take
with him if he was to leave with her.  There was almost nothing he was
attached to.

   Five whiskies later, at eight-thirty, he drove to the corner of 9W and
Blackridge.  There was a Texaco, but it closed early.  He pulled into the
parking lot, heard the ding-ding within, and waited.

   Five minutes early, she appeared out of nowhere and knocked on the
passenger window.  He unlocked the door, she climbed inside, throwing a
small suitcase into the back, and Christopher Fuseli had committed the
irrevocable.  She was tense and nervous, and he was scared, uncomfortable.
He had always been a slow seducer, and was now in the strange position of
having practically agreed to be lovers with this...  woman.

   When they pulled up in front of Christopher's cottage, she kissed him,
nervously, then freely, deeply, lingeringly.  His fear was washed away, and
for a bare instant he felt her certainty, and it gave him such strength and
conviction as he had not possessed since falling in love with Cici.  He
thrust his tongue into her mouth and stroked her sweet-smelling hair, then
finally pulled away.  She sighed sensually, and they got out of his little
car and went into the house.  Christopher carried her suitcase.

   "You've forgiven me," she said, inspecting his books and taking off her
black wool coat.  She was dressed in a sleeveless, green silk dress,
inappropriate for winter...  but it was a thaw.  She wore open-toed shoes
with one-inch heels, her long legs in black silk stockings.  Ariadne leaned
back against the bookshelf and lifted her dress with one hand, sucking her
thumb with the other, holding the hem against her lower belly, exposing a
black garter and tiny black g-string.  Christopher stood petrified.

   "Ariadne...  let's...  let's talk.  Please."

   She looked frightened and frighteningly aroused.  She took the dress
off, threw it on the floor, and, thrusting her hips forward, her bony
shoulders against the bookshelf, ran her fingers down her body, staring at
him, her tiny black bra loose on her budding breasts.

   "You're not going to tell me how beautiful I am?"

   She turned around and displayed her dimpled buttocks, her crack barely
covered.  Christopher crossed the room and kissed her again, and then he
was lost.  Stroking the bulge in his jeans, her tongue darted into his
mouth, and Christopher fondled her breasts through the silken bra, fingered
her hips, kissed her neck, licked her collarbone.

   "Fuck me," she whispered.  "Fuck me, my love."

   She disengaged herself and lay down on the dirty oriental rug in the
center of the room, her pale, slender legs spread, and Christopher
struggled out of his jeans and underwear, shaking, while Ariadne removed
her g-string.

   He would have felt...  hurried, wrong, awry, had it not been for her
beauty; it was breathtaking, insane.  Her snowy skin was luminous, her ribs
and hips fabulous, unnaturally prominent.  Woodland pools, her eyes, or a
brush stained with cobalt dipped into turpentine, cold.  She touched
herself like a masturbatory waif, as if her long, slender fingers were made
for self-love by some languid god.  He took off her shoes and one of her
stockings and kissed her soft feet, licked her legs, and climbed on top of
her.

   "Fuck me, Christopher...  fuck me..." She grasped his penis and touched
the tip to her dewy slit, still sparsely downed with dark hairs.  Holding
his breath, he plunged.

   There was no resistance.  Ariadne was not a virgin.  She pulled him into
her and Christopher fucked her, groaning.  Moaning, Ariadne wrapped her
legs around him and stroked his back.

   This was a woman, not a girl.  She rocked her hips and bucked against
him, she tore her bra from her tiny, aroused breasts and kneaded her hard
nipples, she undulated voluptuously, she fingered his anus, staring up at
him with lewd, self-absorbed eyes.

   Christopher felt disappointed and disappointing.  He felt that he had
already lost his career, his house, everything -- for this...  this little
whore!  Confusion and nausea swept through him, his cock softening.

   Ariadne got a strange look in her eyes and deftly, swiftly stroked his
half-hard cock, moaning softly.  Grunting, Christopher pushed her hand
away, stood up, and went for his cigarettes.

   She began to cry, and Christopher sat down at the table, smoking, and
watched her, sad and at the same time aroused by the specter of a stunning,
adolescent girl weeping on his rug.

   Still sobbing, Ariadne began to stroke herself, and Christopher felt an
unknown rush of perverted, catastrophic lust rush through him, as if a
thick, gleaming tusk curled up from his prostate, dripping with come and
venom.

   "Come over here," he said, his voice ringing with an unfamiliar
authority.  She rose gracefully to her feet, her sobs diminishing, and came
to stand before him, covering her pubis with her hand, ashamed of her
wanton display.  She looked pathetic, tears running down her cheeks,
wearing one stocking, her elaborate little bra hanging loose over her
immature titties.

   "Don't you...  like me?" Her heavily accented voice was moist, dark.

   "You miserable little slut."

   Ariadne winced as though she had been struck, but looked at him
pleadingly.  "Christopher..."

   "Get dressed.  I'm taking you home."

   "Noooooo!" She started bawling like a little girl and fell to her knees.
"Please...  please don't..."

   "Stand up, slut."

   A hint of arousal appeared in her confused, conceited, humiliated eyes.
She got unsteadily to her feet.

   "Put your foot on the chair." She raised one foot to the chair and
grasped the back, still covering her cunny.  "Play with your hole." She
looked as if she would die of embarrassment, slowly stroking her wet slit.
"Do you stick things in yourself, too, Ariadne?"

   She stared at him, her bright blue eyes suffused with desire and
defiance.  "Christopher..."

   "Did it turn you on to write me that letter, Ariadne?  About being my
little whore?  You are a little whore, Ariadne."

   Lust swept through her despite herself, unnatural lust, lust for
herself, devoid of any objective other than her own pleasure.

   On brittle, human leather stretched across this alluring abyss, priests
walk in tightening circles, conjuring this opening closed.  Heavy Gothic
edifices hold down the edges of the beaten skin, while below it, the
darkling world is wet, wanton, twisted.  Seed splashes into the previous
century, and the mind is dislocated like a limb.

   She was playing with her breasts now, her fingers dipping into her
fuckhole, her eyes unfocused, her breath shallow.

   "Is that good, Ariadne?"

   "Mmmmm...  uh-huhhhh...  yesss...  Christopher..."

   "Bend over the table."

   Her shame had been transmuted wholly into need now.  Ariadne lay her
upper body down on the oaken table and frigged herself.  Christopher went
to the bathroom and got a jar of petroleum jelly, stopping and getting her
a slim pillow, placing it under head and handing her the lubricant.

   "Have you been fucked in the ass, too?"

   "Christopher...  I...  I've...  I've never been with a man...  is... 
that why you don't like me?  I lost it...  playing with myself..."

   Christopher took his shirt off, thoughtful.  Nothing about her was what
it seemed.  She was a chameleon.

   "I like you like this, Ariadne.  Do you play with your asshole, too?"

   "Y-yes...  please...  you're making me feel...  bad."

   Christopher slipped his belt from his fallen pants and flicked it
against her bottom lightly.  She clenched and unclenched her slender
buttocks, moaned wetly, and rubbed her hard little clit.

   "Do you like it when I make you feel bad?"

   "Yes," she said, very quietly.

   He made her stand with her feet further apart and flicked the belt
against her cunny.  Ariadne jerked and squealed, but didn't close her legs,
gripping the table.  "Did you like writing about greasing up your little
butt, Ariadne?" She started to cry but didn't stop masturbating, her middle
finger snaking into her wet hole.  Christopher lashed her tight buttocks
twice, hard.  "Do you like to be hurt, Ariadne?"

   "Yes..."

   "Grease yourself, whore."

   Sobbing and shivering, she opened the jar, took a gob of lubricant, and
touched it to her crack with trembling fingers.  "Please... 
Christopher..."

   Christopher lit a cigarette and poured himself the last of the Irish. 
"Get dressed then, let's go," he said.

   "Wh-why...  why do you want to hurt me?"

   "Get dressed."

   "Noooo...  yes...  fuck my...  ass..." Whimpering, she pushed the gob of
glistening jelly into her pink little anus.  Christopher greased his
throbbing, eight-inch cock and slapped her vulva with his fingers until she
was panting and shuddering with pain.

   "Play with yourself," he whispered.  She obeyed without reluctance,
squirming, and Christopher placed the bulb of his penis against her
sphincter, took hold of her hips, and stabbed his shaft into her rectum.

   She shrieked and struggled as Christopher raped her bowels, her upper
body flopping against the table as he drove his dick deep into her,
mercilessly, in long, swift thrusts.

   He pulled out and whipped her back with the belt until she was sobbing
incoherently, then rammed his dirty cock into her womb.  He grabbed her by
the hair and made her fuck him back, then dragged her to the floor and
forced her to suck him until he came in her mouth, slapping her face and
kicking her cunt while he held her by the wrist.

   "Swallow it...  swallow it and hold the edge of the table."

   Gasping, she obeyed, clutching the table.  He tore her bra all the way
off and brought the whip down across her budding breasts.  Her legs
jackknifed and Ariadne gurgled, her pale body jerking spastically.  He
lashed her again, then aimed his prick at her mouth and let loose a stream
of acrid urine.  It splashed against her face and Ariadne let go of the
table, collapsing onto the floor as he emptied his bladder on her beautiful
body.

   When it was over, he felt worse than he had ever felt in his life.  He
staggered to the kitchen for the bottle of Glenmorangie that the Headmaster
had given him and had remained untouched, poured a big glass and guzzled
it, listening to Ariadne's weeping from the other room, looking down at his
soiled member.  What had come over him?  It was as though she had been his
own innocence, torn, and the long estrangement from Cici, and three years
of lonesome festering...  and he had done this to _her_, to a beautiful
fourteen-year-old woman who...  who wanted him to _love_ her!  He felt
incapable of love, as if his genitals were a sewer.

   He heard Ariadne looking for the bathroom, finding it, running a shower.
He wanted to tell her he was sorry, but felt that it would be like the
commandant of a prison camp apologizing to his victim as she fell into the
pit.  He poured yet another Scotch, got dressed and waited for her.

   She reappeared, wrapped in a white towel, looking like a hurt little
girl, and curled up on the sofa in the corner of the room.  Christopher
poured her a little whiskey and brought it to her, stroking her pretty
feet.

   "L-look...  what you...  did to me," she said, turning around and
showing the welts on her back and butt.  Christopher kissed them, licked
them, then gently tongued her sore anus.  She shifted her ass and whimpered
quietly.

   "You're so pretty there," he whispered, fingering the raw opening.  "Can
I touch you like this, pretty baby?"

   "Yes...  please...  yes..." Ariadne drew her long legs under her and
spread her gorgeous cheeks.  Christopher wet his finger in her cunnus and
slipped it into her bottom.

   Christopher raised her ass and put her hand between her legs, fucking
her butt with two, then three fingers.  Ariadne masturbated feverishly,
shivering, and finally came, moaning, her eyes full of childish terror and
desire.  He slid his fingers from her ass and made her lick them, then took
her in his arms and kissed her.

   She giggled.  "Now I have to take another shower!"

   "Do you want to take a bath together?"

   "Yes!" She was supernaturally beautiful, her eyes deepened by orgasm.

   "Go run the bath...  I'll get some wine."

   She ran off to the bathroom.  Christopher uncorked a bottle of
Mouton-Cadet, found two clean glasses and some candles, lit them around the
bathroom, handed her a glass of wine, lit a cigarette, undressed, climbed
into the bath.

   He felt curiously empty, as if he was an adjunct to his little bride's
masturbation.  A couple of hours and the mystery was gone.  He wondered at
his own violence -- where did it come from?  He hadn't had an unhappy
childhood, had suffered no abuse.

   It was as if he was a skeleton, the bones whittled down to reveal
disturbing patterns, like worm tracks beneath tree bark, loops and spirals
of what he was capable of in love, of what he was not capable of, _change_.
The dirt of sex, mixed with the attraction (purity, troth, fidelity,
nobility...) -- horribly opposed.  Why?  He tried to remember what he had
first thought about, sexually.  Amorphous.  Blurry bodies in dream, staring
into fond eyes, touching.

   "What are you thinking about?"

   "Nothing."

   "Are you...  disappointed?"

   He gazed into her serious, adult pupils.  "No...  I...  I feel like an
old man."

   "You can tell me you're disappointed, Christopher," she said quietly. 
"It's...  different...  when I want you...  what I need to hear, then." She
touched his knee.  "We have to be friends, too.  Friends can tell each
other anything."

   "Bonnie and Clyde, huh?"

   She smiled.  Looking just at her eyes, she appeared to be in her
twenties.  "You thought I wasn't a virgin?  Is that what made you angry? 
Or do you...  do you just like to hurt me?"

   "I don't know anything anymore." They sipped their wine and stared into
separate candle flames.  After a long time, they got out of the bath and
dried one another, then went off to bed.  She touched his penis, but
Christopher took her hand away.

   "Fuck me, Christopher," she whispered.

   "I can't," he said, and turned away from her, but Ariadne draped her
long leg over him and kissed his shoulder.

   "Please...  fuck your little girl...  Christopher..." She was
masturbating, her wet breath on his ear, rubbing against him.  "Please... I
need it..." He turned around and slapped her titty, hard.  She squealed and
nodded her head, spreading her pale legs.  He spat in her face.  Ariadne
whimpered and stroked his cock, moving the head against her slit.  "Put it
in me...  I need it...  Christopher, I need it...  I need your cock in
me..."

   He shoved it into her cunt and rolled her on top of him.  Ariadne rode
him, desperately, hard, drooling, reaching behind her to stroke his balls,
then took him deep inside her, tensed, shuddered, and came, gurgling.

   Shaking, she raised herself up and squatted down on him, forcing his
shaft into her tight, raw asshole.  "I need it like...  this...  now... 
too...  Christopher...  good...  in me...  owwww...  my...  little... 
butt...  fuck...  is it...  good...  ohhhhhh...  ohhh, yesssss...  like
this...  like a...  whore!"

   Christopher pulled her down onto him and let her masturbate while he
fucked her ass, pulling on her pale nipples roughly.  She moved his hands
to her throat and Christopher squeezed, ramming his dick into her rectum,
grunting, pushing her down on him, and coming, coming, his semen blasting
into her bowels.

   She rasped and lay shivering beside him, then.  "Stay in me... 
please..." He wrapped his arms around her and the odd pair slipped into
sleep.  It was a moonless night, her luminous skin the only light there
was.



   III

   He dreamt about Naxos, the island where Theseus abandoned Ariadne and
Dionysus consoled her, or Dionysus took Ariadne away from Theseus and made
her His consort, depending upon which story you believe.  Only it was not
Naxos, it was some sort of elaborate, dilapidated theme park, and the
minotaur had not been slain, but served as Ariadne's steed.  It was a
gruesome, ungainly creature, with useless, membranous wings and a woman's
hind legs in black silk, and its rider was beautiful, naked, blood dripping
from her lips.  In the dream, Christopher was chasing her through a
decrepit funhouse, slipping in blood, picking himself up and running after
her.  She knew that he was after her, and would turn and smile upon him as
the clumsy beast rounded the corners of the labyrinth.

   "I thought the labyrinth was on Crete," he said to himself, "but this is
Naxos.  Why is the labyrinth with her?  Why is the beast not dead?"

   As soon as he said this, the funhouse dissolved and instead the space
was a huge, wet, crimson cavern, like a gigantic mouth.  Ariadne sat on
some scarlet cushions, playing with herself, and her Uncle Mavrik lay
beside her, wearing a crown of grapes, his erect phallus smeared with her
blood.

   "What are you doing here?" They both spoke simultaneously, in Ukrainian,
but Christopher could understand.

   "I'm...  I'm her husband," he answered.

   They both laughed, the bloody, perverse couple, they guffawed...  and
Christopher woke up, sweating, the sheet wrapped tightly around his neck.
Ariadne was not there.

   He got up slowly and went into the other room.  She was wearing the
black silk robe he had seen her in when he went to rescue her.  She had
brewed coffee and sat at the table, writing in a blank book, in tiny,
meticulous script.

   He poured himself a cup -- she had made it very strong -- and sat down
across from her.  She was lovely in the morning light.

   "Did you have a bad dream?"

   He felt alone, more alone than he had felt when he lived alone.  It is
only the first morning, Christopher.  Why didn't you touch him, console
him, if you knew he was having a bad dream, Ariadne?

   "Yes," he finally said, lighting a cigarette.  "I dreamt about your
uncle.  I dreamt that you and your uncle were lovers." She didn't look at
him, fiddling with her pen.  "Are you?"

   She took a cigarette, still avoiding his eyes, and struck several
matches before she got one to light.  "He raped me," she said, quietly.

   "I am going to take you home if you don't tell me the truth."

   "I don't _want_ to.  I'm not telling you anything." She burst into tears
and ran into the bedroom, slamming the door.

   Christopher finished his coffee, then went in after her.  Ariadne lay
nude, one leg draped over the side of the bed, caressing herself, sobbing
quietly.  Her cunt was swollen and bruised, and the two lashes he had given
her chest were visible as welts in the shape of an "X."

   He sat down on the edge of the bed and touched her thigh.  She moaned
and moved his hand to her opening.  He fingered her hole, then lightly
slapped her mouth.  She clasped his wrist and sucked his fingers.

   "Please tell me, baby."

   Ariadne pulled him into bed with her, grasping his cock.  "Is it good in
my butt?"

   "Tell me, Ariadne."

   "Christopher...  hurt me...  hurt your little girl..." She ran the
fingers of both hands along his shaft, towards her, until he grabbed her
wrists.  "Yes...  please...  yessss..." She rocked her hips, his cock
against her wet cunt.  "Use my asshole...  please...  pleeeaaaassse..."

   "Tell me!"

   "I'm...  I'm a whore, Christopher." She was crying, her slit sliding
against his erection.  "Please...  in my ass...  I come that way...  like a
whore...  yes...  yesssss...  ohhhh...  it hurts..." He slammed his dick
into her behind, repeatedly.  "Yessss...  harder...  owwww...  aennnnh...
aennnnh...  aehhhhh...  ahhhhhh!  Arrrrrhhhh!  Oh, God!  Oh God yes... 
aennnnh...  coming...  ohhhh...  I'm coming...  don't stop...  aaaahhhh..."

   He pulled out of her ass and grabbed her head, ramming his dick against
the back of her throat.  She gagged, and Christopher came, sticking his
penis into her throat, choking her.

   They lay, breathing heavily, entwined, him tasting his semen in her
mouth.  "Do you want to...  pee in me?  Do you want to pee in your whore?"

   "I want you to tell me about your uncle, Ariadne."

   She wept again, writhing.  "I...  I told you...  leave me alone..." He
held her close.

   "Please.  You want to go away with me, remember?  Tell me what happened.
Let me know you, baby." She stared at him with fearful eyes.  "I...  I want
things to be...  different.  I didn't want to start like this, Ariadne.  I
don't want to...  to do this to you.  I do want to, but I want you to want
it, I want you to be...  my wife, okay?  I'm confused.  I don't know what
to do, baby.  And I think it's because you're lying to me.  Now tell me."
He stroked her hair.

   She suddenly started to shiver, then clawed at her breasts, sobbing. 
"I'm...  not...  good enough...  to be your...  wife...  I...  I never
should have come!  I'm...  I..."

   Christopher took hold of her wrists to keep her from hurting herself and
held her down.  "You're good enough.  I love you.  No matter what you tell
me, I'll still love you.  Ariadne.  I love you."

   She kissed him, wildly, her eyes crazy with need and fear.  "Fuck me...
please...  fuck my cunt...  I'll tell you if you fuck me...  please..." He
slid slowly into her womb.  "Yessss...  is it good?  Tell me...  tell me!"
She was nearly delirious.

   "It's beautiful...  it's beautiful, baby."

   "Baby...  do you want to make a baby in me, Christopher?  Do you want to
make a baby in my dirty hole?"

   "Yes," he said, without hesitation.  "Yes, Ariadne."

   She started to cry again.  "I had a baby, Christopher.  My daddy's
baby." He moved in and out of her, tenderly.  "I fucked my daddy.  I
seduced him.  He didn't want to and I told him I would tell my mother that
he raped me.  He made me pregnant and he killed himself, Christopher.  And
I put the baby in the toilet, Christopher.  I killed it.  Do you want to
make a baby in me?  Do you?  Because that's what I'll do, Christopher. 
'Cause that's what I am.  And I made my uncle fuck me, too.  That's what I
am...  my uncle and anybody who will fuck me.  That's what I am.  I..."

   Christopher kissed her, still moving inside her.  "I love you, Ariadne."

   She stared at him as if in shock.  "I'm not lying...  that's what I did.
You don't believe me.  I killed my father and my baby."

   "I believe you.  You were...  how old?  It's not your fault, Ariadne. 
And even if it was.  You're guilt tripping yourself to death.  Your father
killed himself, you didn't kill him." Christopher kissed her again.  "He
should have been happy to fuck you, Ariadne."

   Her eyes held a grave devotion now.  "You're...  you're sick," she said,
but she didn't mean it.

   "Then so are you.  We're together now.  I want to be.  I love you."

   Ariadne pulled him into her.  "I love you...  I love you...  deeper...
deeper, lover..." It was utterly different now.  Her body opened to him,
loved him, drew him in.  She started to come, wailing, her eyes rolling
back into her head.  Christopher screwed her slowly, making her come three
times.  "Come...  in...  me...  Christopher...  tell me...  ohhhhhhhhhh...
please...  tell me...  tell...  ohhhhhh...  tell me...  you...  want... 
ohhhh...  tell me you want me to have your baby, Christopher, tell me
you... want me...  Christopher!  Tell me!"

   "I'm going to come, darling...  in your womb...  to...  make a baby...
Ariadne..."

   "Yes...  I...  ah...  ahhhh...  ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!"

   He felt her spasm and ejaculated, spurt after spurt of semen flooding
her young, depraved body, and collapsed on top of her, taking her tongue in
his mouth.  She kept rocking her hips, and Christopher stayed hard.

   "More...  fuck me more...  I want your baby...  keep fucking me... 
please...  fuck me...  fuck me till you make me pregnant...  fuck me..."
She was drooling and shivering, her eyes the color of twilight.  "Fuck
me... make a baby in me...  ohhhhhhh...  oh yeah..."

   She was coming continuously.  Christopher held her ankles and pounded
her ruthlessly.  "Yesssss...  I need...  aennnhhh...  a baby in my... 
slut...  hole..." She was insane again, foaming at the mouth and tearing at
her tiny breasts.  "Yeah...  yeah...  fuck it...  enhhhh...  a little... 
whore baby...  in my...  aennnhhh...  toilet...  hole...  ohhh...  aohhh...
aonnnhhh...  owwwwhhhhh...  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!"

   He came again and slapped her tits.  She was writhing miserably, slick
with sweat.  "Fuck...  me...  ahhhhhh!  Fuck me, make a...  ahhhh!  Baby
for...  me...  I'll kill it!  I'll kill your baby!  I'll kill it!"
Christopher spat in her face, then punched her in the cunt.  Ariadne jerked
and threw up violently, choking on her vomit.

   Christopher turned her around, pulled her knees apart, and shoved his
fingers into her cunt.  Gasping, Ariadne clutched the sheets as he forced
his entire hand into her vagina.

   "Let's stretch you open for your little baby, huh, Ariadne?"

   "Yessss," she rasped, "uhhhh...  owwww!  owwww!  Ughrrghhhh... 
owwwwww...  oh God..."

   He stabbed his finger through her cervix.  "Is this where your baby's
gonna be, Ariadne?" She shrieked and quivered uncontrollably as he mauled
the passage with his hand, punching her insides until she passed out.  He
withdrew his hand and blood spurted from her hole.

   Christopher had a morning drink and revived her.  She was delirious from
the pain, and would not stop bleeding.  He fed her the blood, watching her
turn a sickly bluish shade.  They kissed.

   At noon the telephone rang.  He listened to the insistent, evil buzz
until it ended.  The Headmaster, no doubt.  He had destroyed himself, and
drank to that.



   IV

   It took her almost a month to recover, during which time they tried not
to damage her body despite her pleas that he cut her, burn her, beat her.
She loved and hated herself with a savage intensity, and they did not
depart -- she had only wanted to run from her Uncle Mavrik, and now that
she had found a new man to seduce into her abysmal twilight of masturbation
and self-mutilation, she was no longer afraid of anyone other than herself.

   She slept late, her pale body hideously contorted, bathed in sweat.  He
put plastic under the bedsheets, because Ariadne wet the bed.  When she
realized that he would not tell her what to do, she began to spend her
mornings as a demented child, sucking her thumb and playing with herself in
the urine-soaked bed.

   Her suitcase turned out to contain not only her splendid clothes but
also several dolls, and Ariadne often spent several hours playing with
them, talking to herself and masturbating.

   The fit usually came in the mid-afternoon.  Once she cut up one of her
dolls, and several times she destroyed his things, but usually she would
hurt herself.  If he watched her, she would curse him, burst into tears,
and beg him to fuck her and hurt her.  If he stayed away, she would try to
damage herself -- once she stabbed herself with a pair of scissors, another
time she swallowed all of the weak sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet
and he had to induce vomiting.  She would stick things in her cunt, hold
her hand above a candle, try to strangle herself or bang her head against
the floor.

   Then Christopher would fuck her.  She would be insanely aroused, coming
again and again until she lay exhausted.  He would bathe her, clean the
room, change the sheets, and after the bath she would lock herself in the
bathroom and put on make-up and dress.

   When she appeared again, he would comfort her.  It was an unseasonably
warm February, and they would often sit outside, drinking wine.  They would
cook dinner together, spend the evening writing and reading and listening
to music, take walks in the dark orchard, end up making love tenderly and
slowly drift off to sleep again to resume the cycle.

   By March, the welts were almost gone and most of her bruises had healed.
The day of reckoning came on a Saturday.

   Christopher rose first, as always, made himself a little breakfast and
worked on what he hoped would turn out to be a novel.  He had always
written stories, never showing them to anyone -- things in the manner of
Clark Ashton Smith, mostly -- but now hoped to write a surreal account of
his relationship with Cici, partly to be doing something, working, partly
for catharsis.  He had called the Academy late that first afternoon,
Ariadne bleeding in the tub, and told Miss Wood to tell the Administration
that he would not be returning.  No one was surprised -- his behavior had
been erratic that year, and several of his colleagues had often smelled
liquor on his breath after lunch.

   There was his savings -- the year he had spent as an ascetic had allowed
him to add fifteen grand to that, so that there was now about forty in the
account, and he wrote a letter requesting his retirement money.

   Drinking coffee and finishing his egg, he heard moans and went to look
in on his child-wife.  Ariadne was lying on her back, diddling herself, her
face smeared with feces, eating her poop.  She had a faraway look in her
eyes, and when he spoke to her she answered in Ukrainian.

   "Come on, baby...  let's clean you up."

   She wasn't listening, lost in some part of herself.  Christopher got
into bed with her and masturbated her until she came and peed on his hand,
giggling and slobbering.  Then he fetched a washcloth and cleaned her face.
She struggled and whined, crying for her dolls.  He brought them to her and
went back to his writing.

   At two o'clock or so he heard a thud and pitiful gurgling sound.  He ran
into the bedroom.  Ariadne was hanging and gasping, the noose made of his
ties caught wrong, a chair tumbled under her.  She had fixed herself to a
small eye in the crossbeam.  He quickly got her down and held her rasping,
shivering, clammy body to his.  She kicked and wiggled, escaped his grip
and ran from the room towards the kitchen, desperate to hurt herself, kill
herself, whatever it was that she needed, unseeing, frothing at the mouth.

   Christopher tackled her and held her down on the rug where they had
first fucked.  "Lemme...  go!  I hate you!  Lemme gohhhh...  lemme..." He
pinned her and kept her down until she started to cry, and in a few minutes
she was fumbling with his fly.  She stank of waste and arousal, tears
staining her beautiful face.  Christopher undid his pants and she guided
him into her.

   "Pretty baby," he whispered.  "It's so good in you...  my little baby's
all wet...  baby..." She stuck out her tongue and played with her breasts,
rocking her hips.  "Are you going to come, honey?  Is my baby gonna come?"
He stroked her clitty with his thumb.  Sobbing, Ariadne arched her back and
came, shivering.

   "Mm...  mm-mm...  make a baby in me...  make a baby in me..."

   "I will, honey...  you're so pretty...  such a pretty baby..." She
wrapped her legs around him and Christopher thrust into her slippery hole
until he shot off and she came again, blubbering.  He drew a bath for her
and carried her to it, stripped, and climbed into the tub with her,
stroking her slit and teasing her breasts.  She was coming like crazy,
squirming in his lap and panting.  Christopher slid his finger into her
anus.  "Can I fuck you in there, pretty baby?  Are you that kind of girl?"

   "Y-yes....  yesss...  yesss..."

   He used some massage oil and entered her rectum.  Ariadne squat-fucked
him, frigging her fuckhole.  "Tight little...  whore...  baby, I need to
come in your cunny so I can...  make a baby...  suck me, sweetie...  clean
me..."

   She turned around and blew him, whimpering, then kissed him and took him
into her womb again, clinging to him.  At last he ejaculated inside her
once more, his hands cupping her buttocks, her tongue buried in his mouth.

   He lifted her off of him and stood, his cock grazing her lips.  "I want
you to drink my pee," he whispered.  "Do you want to?" She nodded, tears in
her eyes.  "You hold it and swallow it when you can, okay?"

   Diddling herself, she opened her mouth and drank his urine, aiming the
stream for as long as she could swallow, choking, shifting it to her
breasts, back to her mouth, again, rubbing her slit frantically, coming,
collapsing back into the tub.

   Christopher kissed her, turned on the shower, and left her alone to
recover and preen.  He dressed, opened a bottle of wine, got two glasses,
sat on the back porch and smoked, staring into the dusk of the abandoned
orchard.

   This was the most beautiful part of the day -- its end -- when Ariadne
emerged from the bathroom as from a chrysalis.

   That Saturday she came out barefoot, dressed in a dark, diaphanous
skirt, a creamy silk blouse and a dark jacket with stiff shoulder pads and
a narrow waist.  Her hair was up, a few tendrils hanging down across her
noble forehead, and she had applied her make-up with an artist's subtlety.
She wore a little leather anklet on her slender left ankle and a sapphire
choke around her long neck.  Except for an occasional faraway look and
seductive, perverted shudder, and a slight childishness to her sensual
lips, she was now, to all appearances, an elegant young woman.

   "You look fantastic," Christopher said.  She glowed and turned slowly
around, displaying herself.

   "I left my shoes off...  so you can see my feet...  I know you like
them," she said, putting a pale foot in my lap and giggling, a hint of
sadness in her laughter.  "You do, don't you?" Christopher kissed her foot,
pulled her into his lap and kissed her.  "Tell me you like them..." She
began to cry, suddenly.  "Tell me how pretty I am...  please..."

   Christopher stroked her thigh, then gently ran a finger along the
indentation in her panties.  They were soaked.  "You're beautiful,
Ariadne...  did you get all wet looking at yourself?"

   "Uh-huh," she whispered.  "Please...  I can't be grown up tonight... 
take me to bed and play with me?  Please...  be my daddy..."

   "Let's take a walk, sweetie."

   "Noooo!  Please...  I like it when you...  when I'm a little girl... 
for you...  please..."

   She was wringing her hands and weeping.  What color there was in her
pallid face was gone.  "Honey, please don't.  I like how we are...  you can
be little in the mornings, and in the evening you're a big girl, okay?  I
love you both ways, but I don't want you to be like this all the time. 
Okay?"

   She nodded, tears dripping onto her skirt.  "How come you don't hate me
when I...  I do that?  I hate it...  I like it...  that you let me...  I
always did this.  Never so long.  Whenever I could.  Before my uncle got
home, after school.  Played with my dolls.  I'm...  I'm sick..."

   Christopher kissed her again, tonguing her mouth.  "I want you to tell
me about your father tonight."

   "Do you really love me?"

   "I adore you, Ariadne.  Totally.  All of you."

   So suddenly he was upon them!  Their words and embraces so enveloped
them that the odd lovers did not hear the car drive up, were oblivious to
the man walking through the house, and were only snapped up into terror
when the back door crashed open and Uncle Mavrik towered over them, a heavy
pistol in his hand.

   Ariadne clutched Christopher, trembling and trying to bury her head in
his lap.  Mavrik grinned and put the pistol to Christopher's forehead.  For
what seemed like forever they said nothing.  Gone was any kindliness
Christopher had seen in this man's eyes.  Mavrik lightly tapped him with
the nose of the gun, then stepped back and grinned cruelly, still training
the pistol on him.

   "Put on your shoes," he said to the girl.  Ariadne was crying
hysterically.

   Christopher's breath was shallow, rabbity.  "You're not taking her," he
at last said.

   Mavrik laughed and combed his silver hair back.  "How you say, 'over my
dead body?' Shut your fucking mouth."

   Ariadne disengaged herself from Christopher's perspiring arms, stood,
and staggered weeping into the house.  Mavrik turned to follow her, and
Christopher leapt up and tried to take him down.  He was too slow and weak,
and the uncle spun and hit him and sent him crashing to the porch.  He put
his heavy boot on Christopher's chest and grinned again, then stomped once
on his face.  Darkness came.



   V

   He could not remember clearly how he came to, dragged himself to the
hospital, had his broken nose repaired, rested in the whiteness next to a
man who had been shot twice, was released, drove home.  He could not
remember morning, other than that it had been a typical day, beginning with
the Christian Brothers, taking a lugubrious segue into Chilean Merlot,
returning to Christian Brothers and now dipping almost deliriously into Ron
Matusalem ("Don Claudio Alvarez LeFebre...  worked to create the Heart of
the Blend").

   Christopher glared at his unshaven face and bloodshot eyes in the dirty
mirror...  Ariadne's clothes were still scattered on the floor, and sat
down at the oaken table laden with empty bottles of the aforementioned
affordable potions and read her diary yet another time, hanging on certain
sections as always.



   I'm not afraid that Uncle Mavrik will take me away anymore.  Even if he
finds us (Us!  It is so good to write 'us'!), I know that Christopher won't
let him.

   He swallowed a swallow of the golden rum with the device of the golden
swallow emblazoned on the label and lit a Camel.  Most of her diary was in
Ukrainian, and some of the English parts were too hard to read, the
handwriting crabbed, swift, illegible.  He spent hours attempting to
decipher it, and had even bought a Ukrainian-English dictionary.



   Little baby wants her poophole fucked.  Christopher won't hurt me bad
anymore but he buttfucks me so hard I come like he was hurting me.  I spent
the morning being a little girl like always, playing with my whore dolls
and diddling my cunny while they tell me how pretty I am.  It's getting so
it's not even playing anymore, I feel little, all of me, and then something
happens and I want to hurt myself and I need him to fuck me good and he
does.



   I think I'm pregnant again.  I told him about one baby.  I want to tell
him everything.  I want to tell him what I did to the boy baby.  I need to
tell him before I have this one because I want him to watch me kill this
one.



   Yesterday I thought about letting it live and trying to be a mother. 
Maybe I'll be a mother until it's old enough to feel what I do to it. 
Maybe Christopher can rape it.



   Christopher pretends that it's my daddy's fault I'm like this.  I guess
if I was normal it would be.  What he doesn't realize is that I was like I
am now before my daddy ever touched me.  Half girl half woman and a whore
and a murderer.  I wanted to be fucked before I had hair on my cunny, I
wanted to be hurt.  I wanted to be his fantasy.  I know it is him because
he loves me even though he knows deep down how sick I am and...  he likes
it.



   We both pretend that I'm getting better and letting me be a little girl
is going to make me better, but really Christopher likes little girls and I
come like wild when I'm acting eight years old and he buttfucks me.  I'm
not going to get better, I'm going to teach him to kill.



   The adult part is more the pretending part.  Sometimes that seems real,
too.  I've been reading about child abuse and reflecting like a grown
woman. I dance for him and he loves me because I'm beautiful.  I'm
beautiful to him because I'm a sadomasochistic pervert.



   I love him.  I would love him even if we never killed, if we only
pretended.  Because we're alone together.  I made a little drawing of us,
it looks like testicles.  I am in my bubble and he is in his and both our
bubbles are in a big bubble and there is nowhere else.

   Christopher finished the rum and read the last entry before going out to
get more alcohol.  A story within the diary was printed in almost
calligraphic letters with the fine-point fountain pen that she used:



   VI THE TRUE STORY OF ARIADNE FISH (A Hardboiled Fable)

   The title was printed in something resembling Fraktur, and appeared as
perfect as a letterpress face.  Ariadne had deft, long-fingered, angelic
hands.  But the text was so depraved and smutty that it gave Christopher
chills even as it aroused him, that it made him swim in the terrifying
waters of Uncle Mavrik's eyes, treading water in the numbing cold.



   I want you to read this, my love.  This is what I am writing when we are
together in the evenings.  You are reading Coleridge and pausing to stare
at me and my fuckhole is wet, Christopher, because I can see your hard-on.



   I love our evenings together, love sitting here as your wife, love how
much you want to fuck me.  I want to fuck you, Christopher, all of me wants
to fuck you, yet I also love playing like this, dancing for you, posing for
you, letting you devour me with my eyes.



   I love to be devoured by you, Christopher.  I love to devour you, at
night.  Sometimes I feel like that's what we're doing, devouring each other
and spitting each other out, like a very deep kiss, fellatio, cunnilingus,
sucking and eating, spitting and vomiting.  I want to piss in your mouth,
too, but I'm afraid to ask you because right now we're in this phase where
I must seem eight years old half the time.



   I want to tell you the truth, but I have realized that it is easier to
tell you as a story, Christopher.  Easier for both of us.  I'm mysterious
to you because I'm so many people.  I have many faces like Helen, Destroyer
of Ships, or Mata Hari, or Kali, or Hecate, or the sacred harlot in the
Temple of the Gate.



   I didn't grow up with my father, I grew up with my mother, who was a
prostitute and a drug addict.  My father was addicted to her, but my
mother's pimp kept him away.



   My father loved me.  Whenever he saw me he bought me presents, clothes
and dolls and later books and records.  He paid for my ballet lessons, too.
By the time I was seven, I knew I turned him on.  At first he didn't do
dirty stuff to me, but he got a boner when I sat in his lap or kissed him
goodnight.  When I would stay with him, he would tuck me in and touch my
chest and run his finger in circles around my nipples.  He told me that I
was beautiful and kissed me with his tongue and called me his little virgin
and then he started telling me that everybody wanted to stick their thing
in me and he used words I didn't understand.

   Christopher read on, getting out his erect penis, giving up on going for
rum.  He found some cooking wine in the refrigerator and the dregs of a
bottle of Diesel Grain Alcohol, took the diary into the bedroom, and read
on:



   When I was eight, he told me my mother was a whore.  I asked him what
that was.  He said it was a dirty little girl who liked it when men put
their things in her.  He asked me if I was a dirty little girl.  He was
really drunk and put his finger in my mouth and told me to suck it.  I was
scared, but I trusted him.  He told me to take my clothes off so he could
see if I was a whore.  He moved his finger in and out of my mouth and told
me to look at him like I did when he was kissing me.  I started to feel
funny between the legs and daddy touched my little slit.  He said I was a
dirty little girl and took out his penis.  I started to cry because he was
being so strange, sweating and talking funny.  He kept calling me a whore
and started stroking his cock and then he put it in my mouth and came.  I
choked and spat and he grabbed me by the hair and hit me and told me to
open my mouth and pissed in it.  I puked and he said I'm sorry I'm sorry
I'm sorry.  He diddled my cunny and told me that he loved me and that I had
a pretty little fuckhole.



   The next day he bought me lots of really nice, sexy clothes at a hard
currency store and some jewelry and took me to a museum and a nice
restaurant.  In the evening he had me try on my clothes and we drank
champagne.  When I was drunk, he started telling me how pretty I was.  He
told me I was different from other girls because I was so beautiful and
already a woman.  He said I should never tell anybody how dirty I was.



   He said men would always buy me clothes and things because I was a
whore. He said girls like me always cried when they saw a cock for the
first time because they knew it was going to hurt them, because men liked
to hurt whores.  He said that if I was a good whore, men would be nice to
me after they hurt me.  He put on a record of Swan Lake and I danced for
him.  A friend of his had given him some chacha, which they drink in the
Caucasus -- it tastes like a cross between plum brandy and kerosene -- and
let me sip it from his mouth.  He touched me through my panties, and when I
spread my legs he put his tongue in my mouth and stroked my crotch.  It
started to feel really scary, he was grunting and I could feel his boner.
He slipped his fingers under the elastic and masturbated me.  It felt so
weird.  I was afraid of him.  He put his middle finger in my mouth and made
me suck it, sticking it in so I gagged.  Then he put it in my cunny and
poked my hymen.  I started to cry again and my daddy called me names and
said he would have to hurt me if I acted like a little girl.  He told me I
should take my clothes off like a big girl, or he would have to tell my
mommy how dirty I was.



   He put the record on again and told me to do a striptease.  I knew what
it was because Ruslan, my mother's pimp, talked about it when they thought
I was asleep.  I was less scared because I was drunk and I knew that if he
was asking my to do a striptease that meant he thought I was sexy and grown
up.  But I could hardly dance because I was drunk.  I took my clothes off,
though, and my daddy told me how gorgeous I was.



   He took me to the mirror and had me say 'I'm a whore' over and over
again and play with myself.  After a while I felt strange again, like
something was going to happen in my cunny.  He made me stand with my feet
apart and put his hand on my chest and poked at my fuckhole again.  It was
moist.  He said I was really a very dirty girl, put the finger in my mouth,
and all of a sudden he slid it into my poophole.  I felt like I couldn't
move.  I was trying not to cry.  It hurt and he was squeezing my throat. 
He dragged me to the dining table and had me bend over.  He made me suck
his other middle finger and took out his cock.  He said I had to kiss it
because he had bought me all of those presents.  He put part of it in my
mouth and put my hand on my cunny.  Then he stroked himself and slid his
wet finger into my poophole again.



   I started to lick and suck him like a big girl.  I diddled myself and
wiggled my bottom and he fucked my butt with his big finger and he kept
calling me a cocksucker and a whore and I was trying not to vomit and
suddenly I couldn't breathe and I felt like my cunny had the hiccoughs and
like I was peeing and he stuck his finger deep into my bottom and grabbed
my hair and shoved his cock against the back of my throat and I was coming
and crying and choking on his come and he wouldn't let me go and kept
stabbing it into my throat and squirting and I was afraid he would pee but
he slammed my head down on the table and then he started whipping me.



   He made me lie on the floor and diddle my cunny while he whipped my
chest.  When I tried to cover myself he spat at me.  He whipped me until I
couldn't feel anything and then I pooped and that felt good and I came and
I cried and he spat in my face and he said he didn't know his little girl
was a toilet whore and pissed on me.



   He left me there and went to drink more chacha.  I felt like a dog hit
by a car.  My eyes burned from the pee and my throat was sore and worst of
all I thought he hated me and that it was my fault.  He kept playing Swan
Lake and after a while I got up and washed the floor and took a bath and
got dressed in a little shiny pink dress he bought me and braided my hair.



   Daddy put on a record of gypsy songs and got raging drunk.  I undressed
in front of the mirror like a dirty girl.  My chest and my nipples hurt so
much, I put ointment on them and that felt good.  Then I got into bed and
played with my dolls.  I took their clothes off and told them they were
whores and pretended that they told me I was pretty and sexy and I crawled
under the covers and frigged my cunny.  I felt so dirty, I felt like I was
a disease.  I closed my eyes and fingered my slit and didn't hear daddy
come in until he got into bed with me.



   He was stinking drunk and sweaty and very sad.  When he told me he loved
me I started to cry because I thought he would never love me again.  He
kissed my eyelids and then my mouth and I put my tongue in it and I put my
hand on the bulge in his pants.  I was scared he would hurt me, but he took
off his clothes and got under the covers with me.



   He started to cry and told me that his father did things to him when he
was little, that his father dressed him as a girl and fucked him, that I
should never have babies because I would hurt them like he hurt me.  I
tried to hug him but he pushed me away and said that I was unholy and that
no one would want to make babies in me and no one would want to be my
husband because I was a sick little whore who did dirty things with her
father.



   I told him that I would never tell anyone, but he said that everyone
could tell, that I smelled like a whore, that I was garbage and wasn't good
enough for anyone anymore.  I started to cry and said I only wanted to be
good enough for him.  He got on top of me and started hitting me.  I begged
him to stop and daddy started rubbing the head of his cock against my cunny
and asking me if it felt good.  When I said yes he punched me in the
stomach, grabbed my ankles and shoved his cock up my behind.  The wind went
out of me and he kept slapping me across the mouth and he grabbed my hips
and forced his dick as deep as it would go and slammed my body against his
again and again.  I felt like I was being torn open like a little bag of
sunflower seeds, like he was sticking a big burning stick up me. 
Everything was blurry except his eyes and the cramps made me feel like I
was a balloon full of rocks.  I started to puke and I couldn't breathe.  My
poophole got slippery from the blood and daddy took me by the throat and
flipped me onto my tummy.  He pushed my legs under me and stabbed his cock
into me asshole again.  I was passing out.  He grabbed my wrists and sort
of shook me back and forth, twisting my arms.  My head was banging against
the headboard.  He rammed his dick into my guts and I felt him squirt
against my intestine and he pulled my left arm so I thought he would tear
it out of its socket and then I felt like I was falling through a vacuum
and blacked out.



   VII



   I woke up in a hospital.  My daddy and my mommy were sitting by the bed.
He told me that I'd been raped by a man in the park on the hill in L'viv. I
was confused until my mommy asked me if I could remember who did this to
me. I said it was a big old man with long white hair.



   After I got out of the hospital and talked to the detectives, Ruslan, my
mother's pimp, started being different to me.  He bought me underwear --
little string bikinis and stuff -- and told me to hide them from my mommy
or she would hurt me.  I remembered what my father had said about everybody
being able to smell how dirty I was.



   They wouldn't let me see my daddy anymore because my mommy said it was
his fault, letting me walk in the park by myself.  He didn't even try to
see me.  I was sad.



   Ruslan told me to call him daddy.  Once I heard them talking about me
when I was supposed to be asleep.  Ruslan told my mommy that he knew a
photographer who would take pictures of me and that they could get a lot of
money.  My mother slapped him.  I heard him hitting her.  He said her
daughter was just like she was.  My mommy said that I was still a virgin,
that I had only been raped anally.  He calmed down and I heard him doing
dirty things to her and he told her that they would be nice pictures, art
pictures.  My mother refused and then I heard him raping her.  My cunny got
wet and I took off my pajama bottoms and diddled myself while he fucked
her. She started begging him to put it in her ass.  Then my mommy screamed
and I heard him grunt and after a while she was moaning.  He kept asking
her if she liked it in her shithole and she was shrieking yes, yes, yes.



   I masturbated my poophole for the first time.  (I can see you reading
this, Christopher...  are you hard for me?) I rubbed my clitty and slid two
fingers into my bottom.



   'No...  it's filthy...  noooo!' My mommy was screaming and crying. 
Ruslan hissed that her cunt was dirty, that dirty kids came out of it, that
Ariadne was as dirty as she was.  Something broke and I guess she was
trying to get away.  I heard glass smashing and a thud and then she was
quiet.  I could still hear him fucking her, and then his groans.  Then I
heard him coming towards the bedroom.



   I took my fingers out of my poophole and pretended to be asleep, but I
was shaking.  He turned on the light and tore the covers off the bed.  I
was so scared I peed.  He laughed at me and called me a bed-wetter.  He
handled me like one of my dolls.  He flipped me onto my back.  I looked up
at him.  He was huge and naked and ugly and his half-hard cock was slick
with poop and juices.  He had blood on his hands and arms.  I covered my
chest and Ruslan saw the poop and cunt milk on my fingers.



   He laughed again and called me little lover-girl.  I was so scared I
didn't know what to do.  I touched his cock.



   'That's right, lover-girl.  Suck it, you stupid little bitch.' He lay
down on his back and I crouched between his legs and put it in my mouth. 
He was really big and I could only get the head and a few centimeters in my
mouth, tasting my mother's shit.  He pushed my head down, trying to stuff
it in.  I scraped him with my teeth and Ruslan hit me, hard.  I started to
cry.



   He pulled me on top of him and slapped my butt, spread my legs and stuck
his fingers in my cunny.  I thought he would rip my hymen, but he didn't.
He said my cherry was worth a lot of money, and that he didn't fuck sick
little puppies.



   'Lick my asshole, lover-girl.' He raised his legs and spread his
muscular cheeks, pushing me down.  His shithole was the most disgusting
thing I had ever seen.  It was caked with shit and there was a strange
conical wart on the rim of the opening.



   I wasn't crying anymore.  I felt dead.  I kissed the hole, then lapped
at it.  It was bitter and I tried not to breathe through my nose.



   'Ooh, yeah.  Does that taste good, lover-girl?  Jerk me off, you little
whore.' He used a word I didn't know, and yanked my hair when I didn't do
anything.  'I said, stroke my cock, slut.' I wrapped my fingers around his
huge dick and slurped at his ass.  I thought he would never squirt.  He
told me to wet my finger and put it in his butt.  I sat cross-legged and
finger fucked him and jerked him off, watching his face.  His eyes were
closed and he was snorting like an animal.



   'Drink it...  drink it...  drink it...' I put my lips around the bulb of
his cock and sucked stroked and wiggled my finger in his asshole and...  I
started to like it.  His throbbing prick was almost as big as my forearm.
It made me feel like he needed me, making him feel so excited.  I drooled
on his shaft and licked my mommy's poo from the underside of the head and
tongued the opening and slipped another finger into his butt and he started
to grunt and grabbed my head.  I opened my mouth as wide as I could and he
forced it in and I almost came when I felt his boiling jizz hit the back of
my throat and he filled my mouth with sperm.  I didn't gag, I kept trying
to get him deeper into my mouth and tried to rub my cunny on his hairy leg
and couldn't and took my fingers out of his anus and frigged myself
desperately and came, almost passing out.



   Ruslan laughed and pulled me on top of him.  I thought he would beat me
up, but he patted my bottom like I was a dog and said I was a good girl.  I
wanted to be his dog.  I was in love with him.  I didn't know I was just
his fuck toy.



   We heard noises in the kitchen and Ruslan dragged me in there.  My
mother was leaning against the wall.  Her forehead was all cut up and there
was broken glass everywhere.  Ruslan told me to clean it up.



   While I was doing that, Ruslan told my mother that I liked giving him a
blow job.  My mother didn't say anything, so Ruslan told me to tell her.  I
said I wanted him to make babies in me.  Even my mommy laughed at me.  I
thought they were laughing because no one wanted to make babies in me, and
started to cry.  Ruslan picked me up and rocked me and told me I was sweet
and pretty and made me feel good again.  I was so in love with him I didn't
know what to do.  I remembered my mommy begging him to fuck her in the ass,
and I said I wanted him to buttfuck me, that I needed his dick in my butt.



   He laughed so hard he started to cough.  My mother staggered over to me,
took a swig from the vodka bottle, and spat it into my face.  Ruslan patted
my behind and told me to go play with my dolls.



   My mother never talked to me after that except to call me names and tell
me what to do.  She was sick, and got very skinny and was coughing blood.



   Ruslan took me to the photographer a week later.  He was a twentyish
Polish guy with a ponytail by the name of Casimir.  There were two other
girls -- a ten-year-old and a twelve-year-old.  The ten-year-old's name was
Nadia.  She was tiny, flat-chested with wavy hair the color of gold you see
in Rembrandt, and was really stuck up.  The twelve-year-old, Anna, had
cupcake breasts and thick, straight, auburn hair.  She had a babyface and
was nervous as all hell.  Both of them looked really beautiful and I
started to feel bad.  I guess I was jealous.



   Casimir piled us all into an imported minivan and drove us out to a
stately mansion from when that part of the Ukraine was Poland.  He called
us his three little virgins.  Nadia giggled, Anna got even more nervous,
and I felt dirty.



   There were a couple of men who I guess were Japanese that met us, and
the biggest man I have ever seen in my life, very tall and fat and muscled.
He said his name was Vlad, but he didn't introduce us to the Japanese men.



   We had a huge breakfast and even some champagne, which Anna wouldn't
drink.  There were all kinds of food I had never seen before, and Belgian
chocolates, and I got a little tipsy and was very happy.  Vlad kept saying
we were beautiful and sexy young ladies.  The Japanese men left and Casimir
went to set up lights in another room.



   It was the most beautiful house I have ever seen.  It was like paradise.
Vlad took us to a big room that was full of expensive clothes for girls. 
He picked out dresses for us -- elaborate silky things with lots of
embroidery -- and gave us each a pair of panties.  Then he told us to
change.  Anna burst into tears.  Vlad hugged her -- she looked like she
wanted to jump out a window -- and took off her clothes while Nadia and I
stripped.



   Anna had a lovely body like a gymnast's, slightly tanned except for her
budding breasts and bottom.  Vlad kept telling her that no one would hurt
her, that she was a model now, but she kept blubbering about how she wasn't
a prostitute and wanted to go home.



   Nadia was really skinny and pale like me.  She even had an outtie belly
button like mine.  Her pubic bone was very pretty, and her hairless slit
was the color of ripe rhubarb.  When she was naked she walked across the
room to get some lipstick, but it was really to show off her body.



   My dress was blue like my eyes and Nadia's, Anna's dress was copper, and
Nadia's was shiny forest green.  Anna's eyes were chestnut with gold
flecks. I couldn't see her cunny because she was trying to hide it.  I
wanted to know if it had hair like my mommy's.  I was jealous of her
because Vlad kept hovering around her.



   The panties were all filmy.  He put make-up on us, less on Anna, I think
because he was afraid she would ruin it by crying.  Nadia looked like a
fairy tale princess.  She cooed when he told her that, but when his hand
brushed her chest, she got tense and her smile looked frozen.



   When he did my face, his fingers brushed my nipple through the silk.  I
moaned.  He gave me a long, hard look and shooed us into a big fancy room
where Casimir had set up a lot of lights and white umbrellas.  There was a
large four-poster bed covered with a gold satin bedspread and several huge
stuffed animals and a few dolls, a big, ornate wooden chest, a green velvet
couch and a polar bear rug.



   'I want nice girls, you bastard,' Vlad said to Casimir.  'They are nice
girls, aren't they?' 'The dark-haired one is some kind of street girl.' I
felt like throwing up.



   We all sat in the bed and smiled, even though Anna still had tears in
her eyes and I felt like dirt.  Nadia posed like a real model.  Vlad gave
us each a banana and told us to peel them and eat.  Anna started crying
again and Vlad cursed her.  I don't think Nadia knew what kind of pictures
these were.



   Vlad told us to let our dresses ride up so they could see our panties.
When Anna started bawling, Vlad told her that if she didn't shut up and do
as she was told they would take her to Japan.  She lifted her dress and
sniffled.  He gave her a handkerchief.  Nadia looked confused.



   I spread my legs and sucked the banana.  Vlad came over to me and
slapped me in the face.  'We'll tell you when to spread your legs, you
dirty slut.  Save it for your own shoot.  I don't want those kinds of
pictures now.  Got that?'



   He moved our legs around and artfully arranged our dresses and we ate
the bananas and Casimir took photographs.  Then Vlad told Nadia to put her
hands on our thighs.



   'I don't want to touch a dirty slut,' she said.  I bit my lip and tried
not to cry.  Vlad told us that if anyone disobeyed him again they would be
sold to the Japanese men.  I think he was lying but I felt too sick to
disobey anybody.



   Nadia's hand felt really good on my leg even if she did hate me.  I was
used to people touching me who hated me.  I wished Vlad would tell her to
touch our pussies.



   He ordered us to take off our dresses and tickle each other.  Nadia said
she was not a child and didn't want to.  Vlad came over to the bed and
ripped her dress off.  She started to cry a little.  'What are you then?'
'An actress,' she answered, miserably.  He said that an actress had to
listen to the director and that she was the prettiest girl here and the
most talented and that he depended on her.  Nadia looked like she had just
won the Cannes Film Festival.



   We played and tumbled around and the camera snapped and then he told us
to take our panties off.  Anna started bawling again, Nadia slipped her
panties off like she was a Hollywood starlet and I slid mine off, the
camera snapping the entire time.



   Vlad grabbed Anna by the chin.  'Listen, little baby.  I tried to be
nice to you.  No one's going to rape your precious little body.  If you
keep giving me trouble, I'm going to stick my dick up your asshole.  Do you
know what an asshole is?' Her eyes went dead.  Nadia looked upset.



   He took pictures of us in all kinds of ways where you couldn't see our
cunnies in the picture.  Then he said it was time for a break and we had
lunch.  He served us some punch that had alcohol in it and made Anna drink
some, too.  Vlad and Casimir drank vodka.



   I sat next to Anna and touched her leg.  She pushed my hand away, but
Vlad saw it.  He walked over to me and spat in my face.  'You little
hooker. Don't touch my girls.  Don't touch anything until you're told.  I
think you're repulsive.  I don't think you should be eating at this table.
I think you shouldn't eat at any table.  You should eat on the floor like a
fucking dog.  Wipe the spit off your face and go sit in the dressing room.'



   He gave me his handkerchief and I went to the room with all of the
clothes.  I wasn't crying.  I'd never been with a man who didn't want to
fuck me before.  I felt very strange.  Hollow.  And then I felt...  wet,
like I wanted him to say those things to me and rape me.  Rape me and hurt
me and make me come.  There was a doll in the dressing room and I started
playing with it.  I pretended it was me and I was pretty little Nadia and I
ripped it apart and frigged my cunny.  I lay on my back, coming, and tore
one of the doll's legs off and stuck it in my fuckhole and broke my cherry.




   Christopher!  I was lying in my urine crying like crazy and bleeding and
saying what I always say to you about making babies in me.



   I had the doll's leg in my poophole when Casimir came in.  He looked
away and said it was time for my photo shoot.  He threw me a bunch of rags
and walked out.



   I cleaned myself and the floor and threw the doll away and went into the
big room.  Anna was sitting on the chest, looking like she was in shock. 
Vlad was on the bed, playing with Nadia's cunny and telling her how pretty
she was and how he would give her lots of money.  She was in a daze.  Anna
was talking to herself.



   Casimir was fiddling with the lights by the velvet couch.  He told me to
go take a shower.  When I came back, Vlad was fucking Nadia.  She looked so
tiny under his rolling blubber.  She was sobbing and he was telling her she
was beautiful.



   Casimir posed me like a piece of meat.  I hugged dolls and held a banana
like it was my dick and spread my cunny open and sucked my toes.  I blew
kisses and licked my lips.  Vlad came over and spat at me and Casimir took
pictures of me smiling with saliva running down my face.  I held up
magazines of little girls like me being raped and sucked my thumb.  Casimir
wanted me to fuck myself with the banana, but Vlad said that he had nobody
to sell that to and didn't want things like that in his house.  He told him
never to bring him anything from the gutter again and put on his coat and
left.



   We got dressed and Casimir drove us back to L'viv.  I tried to talk to
Anna, but she was like shell-shocked.  Nadia kept staring at herself in the
rear view mirror.  When we were driving along the streetcar tracks I asked
her how she liked being used.  She sneered at me and said that Vlad had
promised her she would be in a movie.



   Casimir dropped me off at home.  There was an ambulance outside.  My
mother was dead.  Ruslan was drunk.  I didn't cry about my mother,
Christopher, I didn't even feel bad.  All I could think about was that now
I would have Ruslan to myself.



   He was sad, though -- I think because he had lost his income, not her,
really.  He gave me some vodka and smoked and talked about how filthy the
apartment was and I put my head in his lap and unbuckled his belt.



   'Hey, little lover-girl.' He petted me and I got his pants open and
sucked him.  He pushed my head down and lifted my dress and yanked my
panties down...  and saw the blood on them.  He pulled me by the hair and
stuck his fingers in me and threw me on the floor.



   'Fucking bitch!  Do you know how much money I could have gotten for your
stupid virgin hole?' He started to kick me.  'Get the fuck out of here...
go to your room before I break your ribs and nobody wants your pussy... 
bitch!  Cocksucking bitch!'



   I told him I loved him.  I was throwing up.  He took the vodka bottle --
they're half-liter bottles there -- and said he would show me love.  He put
his foot on my stomach and started stabbing the neck in and out of my
cunny. 'Get your legs up...  get your legs up...' He shoved the bottle
halfway into my butt before I passed out.



   After that, Ruslan never fucked me.  He would hurt me sometimes -- and I
came, sometimes, when he hurt me -- but otherwise he treated me like
something between a dying pet and garbage.



   Except when he whored me.  He was afraid of that, at first, because I
only just turned nine and he was scared that someone would turn him in. 
But he soon found that he could get a lot of money because I was so little.



   The way he did it was he made friends with Casimir, who knew some of the
foreigners who bought kiddie porn.  In a few weeks he had contacts in the
hotels -- there weren't too many that foreigners could stay at -- and he or
Casimir would learn through the grapevine if anyone was interested in
little girls.



   He cleaned himself up and bought some nice clothes and fixed up the
apartment.  He acted as if he had found a new love.  Then he started to
invite the men over.



   I felt like a monkey.  The customer would sit on the couch and Ruslan
would give them a bottle of somethng snazzy and ice and glasses and put on
some disco music, they would give him three hundred dollars, he would
leave, and I would come out of the other room dressed in a school uniform
and dance and strip down to my string bikini.  Then I would go over to
whoever was sitting there and do what they told me.



   I would tell them I loved them and they would tell me how pretty I was,
take off my bikini, and then they would fuck me in the mouth or cunt or ass
or all three.  Most of them couldn't speak Russian or French or anything
and so we didn't talk.  After they came they would usually run away.  It
went on for a whole year.  I got gonorrhea and I spent most of my time
playing with my dolls.  Ruslan thought I would run away, so he never let me
out of the apartment.  He wouldn't buy me books and he fed me bad food,
making me cook it.  That's when I started to get really skinny, and have
been since.



   When I was almost ten when I met Leopold.  I came dancing out of the
other room and he was sitting on the couch smoking.  He was Senegalese but
lived in Paris.  He was very tall and gaunt and as black as night, with
big, watery, pink-rimmed eyes and a goatee that made his face look even
longer than it was.  I had never had a black man before.



   I had just taken off my shirt when he got up and turned off the music. I
stood there swaying -- I always drank a little before whoring, because I
hated it so much.  I was afraid he would hurt me...  and I secretly wished
he would.  He touched my bikini top and said, why do you wear this if you
have no breasts, in French.  I learned French from my daddy.



   I took off my top and stuck out my chest.  He fingered my left nipple.
Then he bent down and kissed me.  I dropped my skirt and pulled my panties
down around my thighs and told him that I loved him...  but I meant it.  I
started crying that I loved him and sank to the floor, clutching his leg.
'I...  love you...  I love you..." He pulled out his cock.  It was the
biggest I have ever had, almost nine inches, but slender.  I started
sucking it like I was worshipping him.  Leopold stroked my face and then my
throat and slid it in.  I gagged, but he gently forced it down my throat. I
couldn't breathe.  He held me by my upper arms and fucked my throat. 
'Petite fille...  jolie petite fille...' Just as I was about to black out
his come blasted down my throat, scalding, thick.  He extracted his shaft
and lifted me to my feet.  Then he kissed me again.  I was gasping and
couldn't stand up.  He laid me down on the couch and knelt beside me,
caressing my chest.



   'Poor baby...  everybody hurts little baby...  such a pretty little
baby...  you like to be hurt?' He slid a long black finger into my cunny
and in a few minutes I was coming like I never had before.  I started to
tell him that I loved him again.



   'Shhhhh...  you need to be hurt?' I nodded, I don't know why.  Leopold
got a black attache case and took out a little gadget.  It was metal and
ebony and looked sort of like a mousetrap with two little ampules and
veins. He held it to my mouth and asked me to stick my tongue out. 
'Farther, farther...' A spring snapped and something pierced my tongue.  I
tasted blood.  I did not scream, but I started to shake.  'Sweet baby...'
He started to lick me.  I had never been licked before.  He ran his tongue
into my slit and poopole, deep, and just as I started to come, he stabbed
my clit with what must have been a long, thin needle.  I shrieked horribly,
my tongue trapped in the contraption.



   He took a jar of a thick, dark, aromatic grease from his attache case
and smeared it on his right hand.  He told me to lift my legs and slowly,
carefully, worked his fingers and then his hand into my rectum.  Something
started to drip from the thing holding my tongue.  The taste made me
shiver. Leopold pinched my nipples and drove his fist into my bowels.



   I screamed and screamed and he fisted me harder and harder, then held
still, dipped his other hand in the grease, and slid his other hand into my
cunt.  I was sweating and shivering and he did not let up, forcing his arms
into my little body, a finger entering my uterus.  It seemed like it went
on for hours...  and then I was coming, losing control of my body, jerking
and quivering like a girl made of aspic.



   He took his arms out of me and took the tongue-thing off.  My mouth
filled with blood.  He sat me down on the floor, my back against the couch,
and pushed my head back.  Then he climbed onto it, squatting over me.  I
was quaking and my insides felt as if they had been washed with acid.  I
licked Leopold's tight anus...  and he was defecating in me.  His shit went
down my throat.  I was suffocating.  He laid me back on the couch, my head
over the edge, and slid his cock down my throat again, fucking me hard, and
came, and came again, again, my body full of his feces, his semen gushing
inside.



   He pulled out so that I could get some air...  gasping, choking...  and
slid back in again, and again, and again, letting me gasp, and again, and
again, cleaning his cock in me.  He made me suck him.  Then he urinated,
his piss splashing down my throat, his cock sliding into it, out again,
back in, out, in, in deep, until I passed out.



   Leopold made me sniff something that revived me, and I started to puke.
I felt like I was vomiting my insides out.  He caressed my heaving, skinny
little body with his long, gentle fingers, and when there was nothing left
to puke, he made me lick the scum and sweet-tasting grease off his hands.
He had strange hands; they became very slender when he bunched his fingers
together, and his thumb was more like a finger, and Leopold slipped his
fingers down into my throat like boneless eels.



   'Sweet baby...  what do you want, pretty baby?  What do you want?  Quoi,
hein?'



   'I want you to...  fuck me...  fuck me...' Leopold's long penis slipped
through the collar of my cervix and he worked me gracefully up and down on
his beautiful shaft, then lifted me and plunged into my dilated anus.  It
felt like it curved around my intestine, and after an eternal reaming he
took my wrist and slid my fingers into my cunny and I came, I came
ruthlessly with my entire body, as if my brain was a cloud.



   I couldn't stand up I felt like a starfish.  He carried me to the
bathroom and washed me like I imagine a priestess to be bathed by a
worshipper.  I love you I love you I love you I kept repeating.  He dressed
me in the fancy blue silk dress of Vlad's and my nicest black stockings and
pretty shoes and said he wanted to take me to dinner.



   He had taken a lot longer than my typical customer and Ruslan walked
into the room in a dense fog of vodka.  He groveled before Leopold, or
rather Leopold's wealth, concealing his hatred of dark people, told him
that I was not to leave the apartment, and smacked me.  In a very few
seconds Ruslan lay on the floor with his belly quartered and part of his
liver in his mouth, before I could even scream.  And so I did not scream.
Leopold smiled at me, his white teeth glimmering, wiped his dagger and
returned it to a belt beneath his open shirt, borrowed one of Ruslan's
shirts, washed his arms and magnificent hands, put on his tie and bright
mustard-colored jacket, closed his attache case, and kissed me.  'Shall
we?' He put his arm around me and guided my scrawny, unsteady, empty body
out the door.



   VIII



   Christopher, let me be honest and tell you that I loved him more than I
love you.  I felt like part of his body, like a palmate harp of diaphanous
phalloi for him to fondle and make come.  The more he hurt me, the more I
loved him.



   He was as fearless as he was conspicuous and simultaneously invisible.
He took me to the best restaurant in town and treated me, Ariadne Fish, the
nine-year-old anorexic starfish, like a lover.  In public, he stroked my
thighs and posed me like a beautiful trophy, instructing me to sit so that
everyone could see up my dress, unbuttoning it so that my bony little chest
was visible.



   I loved to be humiliated by him, displayed.  He ordered civapcici, a
Balkan sausage, and had me lick and suck each piece before I ate it. 
Everyone watched us, and they all knew that I was nothing but a pathetic,
perverted, prepubescent cocksucker who would spread my skinny little legs
for anyone and anything, that I was nothing but a filthy, pretty slave girl
whose poophole was used by big dirty dicks more than it was for voiding
waste, that I was nothing, Christopher, nothing but a childishly seductive
toilet hole.



   Leopold was the only one who knew I was a person.  He knew that I had a
facility for languages, that I was a fantastic dancer, that I was a
prodigy, a poetess, a baby goddess.  You know that, too, but unlike
Leopold, you doubt it.  Leopold never doubted what he saw, and he saw more
than anyone.  I would rather have been Leopold's smegma than a girl.



   He also saw my emotional catastrophe.  Unlike you, Christopher, he did
not let me wallow in infancy.  One of the first things he said to me as I
caressed and tongued and sucked my sausages and exhibited my flat little
chest was that I was not allowed to be a child except to make men want me.



   No one challenged him, not in that restaurant, not ever.  Later he was
not as obvious about demonstrating me, but Leopold was never frightened of
those around him and the only time I ever saw anyone try to cross him was
when Ruslan ended up disemboweled on the floor.



   I don't know which approach is better for women like me, Christopher.  I
think I spend my days as your messed up little girl because he never let me
be.



   We drank wine and when one of the other diners stared at me desirously,
Leopold had me stare back at the man and held the bottle while I sucked the
neck for a few seconds.  The man ran away like a rabbit on speed.



   'Have you menstruated yet?' 'No.' 'Would you like to have a child, when
you do?' I felt as if I had died and gone to some very erotic paradise.  I
love you I love you I love you I said.  'We shall see,' he said.  He wet a
finger in my mouth and circled my left nipple with it.  I moaned.



   'I am going to use you for a few years, educate you, torture you, and
knock you up.  You'll have babies like you shit, understand?  You're a
calf, Ariadne, a mooncalf, milk-fed veal, the cow who jumped over the moon.
Tu comprends?' I nodded.  'You can learn a lot, and you can become a great
artist, and that's because I think your dirty body is prettier when it has
the aura of intelligence.  As soon as you get eggs in your fuckhole,
they'll be fertilized.  You'll hatch your pretty little babies and I'll do
what I want with them, understand?  Tu comprends, you little cocksucker?'



   I nodded eagerly and he made me say oui.  Oui, oui, oui, I love you I
love you I love you.  He paid and buttoned my dress.  'The atmosphere is
thickening,' he said with a smile.  'We had best get your filthy body out
of here before you end up being reeducated in an orphanage and there are
policemen bleeding all over the floor.' He was very proud of himself.  He
made me walk first, then grabbed my arm and told me to walk like I wanted
to be thrown down and fucked.



   The next couple of years were like a gruesome fairy tale, Christopher.
Leopold paraded me down the main street of L'viv.  Already then I felt like
a deformed poodle, disinterested in food, interested only in being petted
and fucked.  He had me stand on streetcorners and suck my thumb while the
passersby either turned away or looked at me like I was toxic waste or
wanted to rape me.  He sat me down at a sidewalk cafe and acquired the
obquitous banana, making me sit and suck it and show my thighs.



   When it got dark he told me to go up to a trio of drunken Russians and
say, 'The little mermaid needs to be raped.' They sneered and laughed and
spat and took me into a pissy alley behind a pivbar and Leopold came back
there, too.  The drunks were scared of him, but he put them at ease.  I
just kept repeating 'rape me please sir' and Leopold took off my clothes
and they all used me at once while my feet scraped against the pavement. 
They ran off after they came, and Leopold pissed on me.  He put my dress
back on my drenched body and took me barefoot back to the main street.  A
militsiya man looked at me, looked at Leopold, and turned away.



   He took me to a big apartment with peeling paint and lots of electronics
and three gloomy men, Germans, I think, and in one of the rooms were a
bunch of coffin-shaped boxes.  'Get in,' Leopold said.  It was lined with
plastic bags, but there was a little straw to breathe through.  When they
closed the lid, there was another straw like for a gerbil's water-bottle.



   I was in there I don't know how long, Christopher, the box thrown from
side to side of whatever whomever was driving in, cold and sick and hungry,
lying in my own waste.  I was let out once after what must have been three
days, but it was only to rape me.



   The van -- it was a van, a Soviet microbus -- was parked in thick,
mountainous woods.  There was a moon just past full.  Another casket-like
chest was next to mine, and when the driver, a burly, mustachioed man who
looked Mediterranean and spoke no language I knew, unsealed it and pulled
out the female, I was so distraught and dazed and hungry that I didn't
recognize it for a moment.



   It was Nadia.  I felt the most arousing wickedness well up from between
my legs.  She was still phosphorescent with mirific self-regard, like a
bloated star in the clear midnight sky above that lonely forest, but her
beauty had been destroyed.  Her delicate upturned nose had been broken, she
dragged her emaciated, blonde-pallid body around the back of the van like a
frightened squirrel fed black walnuts laced with quaaludes, her now
eleven-year-old fuckhole was a torn, bloody mess, her pretty little fingers
dangled uselessly like maggots, the tiny swellings of her breasts were
scarred and burnt, and, like mine, her bottom was caked with her feces.



   Apparently the Mediterranean man knew her, for after he dragged us from
the van and threw us down on the forest floor, he told Nadia that she was
oh so beautiful.  She struck seductive poses with her ruined little body
while he buttfucked me.  I came several times, the man shoved his prick in
her mouth and ejaculated, then had us lick him clean, watching her deformed
fingers brush his shaft.  He urinated in my mouth and put us back in our
coffins, telling Nadia that we would be at Eurodisney soon, shut the lids
and drove on.



   I guess that the woods were in the Ardennes, for it was not long before
we arrived in Paris, in a squalid quarter I later learned was
Belleville-Menilmontant.  The room where they let us out was bare and dingy
except for expensive Bokhara rugs and large pillows embroidered with gold
and cerrulean and vermilion designs on silk in the shade of a recent
bruise. My eyes only slowly adjusted to the light, and my ears filled with
the clicking sounds of some Caucasian language, and what I took to be
Arabic.  Exquisitely handsome naked men reclined on those dear pillows,
mostly North Africans, a few who seemed to be speaking Chechen, one who
appeared to be a Bedouin.  When I accustomed myself to sunlight, I saw into
another room.  Leopold was there, attired in a resplendent saffron robe. 
He looked like an enlightened tyrant from some deranged Austrian's fantasy
about the Congo.



   The other room was furnished in a more European manner, with heavy,
disturbingly imperial antiques, and Leopold was flanked by several men who
looked like bookkeepers from Oz.  Fresh-faced, near-sighted, and nervous,
with annoying spectacles and goofy grins, they spoke American but were
decked out like nomads in a B-movie.



   I said that I never saw anyone cross Leopold, but I was about to see
what befell those who disobeyed even hinted instructions they were only
dimly aware of.  He stood and addressed the Mediterranean man, who was
hovering in the doorway.  'Vene, Beppo,' he said.  Leopold's voice was like
tar poured into a glass of milk.  'Vene.'



   Beppo began to tremble like a girl.  Nadia was crawling around on the
floor asking where Disney World was.  Leopold petted her idly, then drew
his dagger and made Nadia suck the blade.  It was a beautiful weapon, long
and slender and obviously very fine and old.



   'I said come here,' Leopold boomed.  Beppo fell to his knees and begged
for mercy.  None was forthcoming.  In a leap and turn as elegant as
Nureyev's, Leopold slit his throat.  A moment later Beppo was naked, his
stomach cut open, entrails stuffed into his mouth.



   No one made a sound and not a soul reacted except Nadia, who started to
cry, and the Americans, who gasped.  Leopold held the dagger to my lips and
I cleaned it for him, lovingly, taking the point into my throat.  He gazed
upon me...  _with affection_, Christopher!



   'Tais-toi,' Leopold barked at Nadia, then told her to shut up in Russian
when he realized that she didn't understand.  Even that beautiful and
insanely stupid runt fell silent when faced with Leopold's command.  Every
word my lover ever said lingered like the bass notes of a majestic organ in
some salty Hanseatic cathedral.



   He took my hand and I got unsteadily to my feet, dizzy.  I wasn't hungry
anymore, or I was hungry only for him.  The breathtakingly handsome men
stared at him, some with fear, some with respect and dignity, even the one
drawing on a bulbous hookah.



   'This is Ariadne,' Leopold said.  'My wife.' He kicked Beppo's head. 
Blood flowed from his stuffed mouth.  'No one touches her unless she
desires it, ever.  Regard Beppo.  If her allure is too potent for your
smoke-wreathed genitalia, gentlemen, remember Beppo.'



   I was to be his wife!  I wanted to fly around the room like a bennu
bird, Christopher, but I also found, in that instant, myself or a
simulacrum of self, and realized that if I was to be worthy of him I would
have to be...  regal, Christopher, powerful.  So I invented my concentrated
look, the one you adore me for.  It is not false, it appears when I pay
attention, when I focus, and just then I trained my mind on figuring out
what this place was, what the laws were in my lover's transitory realm.  He
lead me into the European room and seated me between the clownish
bookkeepers.



   In the corner of the room that had been invisible from the other was a
large steel cage containing three little naked girls, maybe six or seven
years old.  They were handcuffed together and seemed to be drugged, huddled
together and trying to hide their privates.  All three were blondes and
looked like miniature Nadias.



   One of the Americans made the mistake of speaking.  'Uh, the girls,
sir...  sir, we...  we have to go.'



   Leopold beamed like a black Jove.  'This ain't McDonald's,' he said, in
perfect American (he was a formidable polyglot, as am I, Christopher). 
'How do you say it?  Hold your horses?' The Yanks were sweating,
Christopher, perspiring like starved hogs in a sauna.



   'I don't have to be subjected to this...  this barbarity!' The one who
said this did not get up.  He had a pointy nose and the rims of his glasses
were candy-apple red.



   Leopold grinned and put his hand on my shoulder.  I smiled at him, not
like a whore, like a succulent wife.  'Who are these men?' I felt like he
wanted me to ask questions, to be his queen, and I was right.  I was
already learning to trust my intuition, Christopher, which worked so well
later, when I found you.



   He took an amber cigarette holder from the table, inserted what appeared
to be a Russian cigarette, lit it with a flourish and grinned again.  'They
are from Silicon Valley,' he answered, in barely accented English.  'The
little pansies work for a gentleman who likes little Ukrainan girls.  He
needs a lot of them because he strangles them after he rapes them.  That is
not barbarity because pansy here' -- he gestured at Red Glasses --
'pretends not to know about it.'



   Red Glasses looked like a deflated enema bag.  Leopold rose, went to the
kitchen, and returned with two ice cold bottles of Dom Perignon.  'No
bucket, no ice bucket,' he said, 'Tsk, tsk.' He popped the cork of one and
poured it into two champagne tulips that stood in a row on the rosewood
table.  He did not offer any to the perspiring emissaries from California,
but gestured to the lovely, lounging men in yonder room filled with the
sweet, exotic smell of hashish, a smell I would come to know well.



   'They do not hold with alcohol,' he said, handing me my glass and
clinking his against it.  I felt like I was in a movie.  'That much they
retain of their original religion,' Leopold said, puffing on his
Shakhterskiye, a cigarette with a picture of a Soviet coal miner on the
pack, each stick not a coffin nail but a rat-a-tat-tat of long, pungent
stakes from a vampire killer's tommy gun.



   Leopold sneered at Red Glasses.  'Get nekkid, boy,' he said.  Oh,
Christopher, he was so jolly, so jovial, so perfectly cruel.  Red Glasses
was one of the swine in the sauna, the one selected for Leopold's
affectionate slash.  The trouble and the hum of perfection in my lover's
masque was that Red Glasses was so horrified that he did not realize the
grace that he was in -- that Leopold would spare his life and educate him
about his penis.  So Red Glasses went red in the face.



   'Now look here,' he said, like a debutante about to have her ass raped,
'Mr.  Doors...  Mr.  Doors knows we're here...  and...'



   Leopold poured us some more champagne.  I felt like a nubile heiress at
Wimbledon, Christopher, an heiress whose medulla oblongata was planted in
some Attic temple, a foxy Roman girl studying the size of her favorite
gladiator's cock.



   Do you know what it is all about, Christopher?  Like pornography, it is
about DISTANCE.  Deeper, deeper, deeper.  Harder!  Harder!  Tear my skin
off, peel me like the legendary banana, use my entrails as a cravat, hang
me, gut me, dessicate me, grease me.  I will still be far away, like that,
Christopher, like that still of the starlet.  You are not human, you are an
ottoman, a davenport, a Nazi lampshade, a cool car with a sweet, wet hole.



   I am over here and over there is you.  My skin is like the surface of
the moon.  Did you ever notice how after a bath you can embrace your
beloved and know her biblically, Christopher?  It's the ions.



   This is not a person, it is a character in a story.  That is not cheese,
it is Velveeta.  It must be summer, the electric bills are kind of high. 
Do you know that you are going to die?  Very shortly?



   Your lover emerges from her toilette, magnetic, her genetics splayed
like a ripe fig.



   My name is Ariadne Fish.  When I first came to America, I read the
diatribes by the Unabomber.  What interested me was that this sick little
puppy gleaned information from Joseph Conrad.  He misread Joseph Conrad,
Christopher!



   'It's nice to speak English again,' Leopold said.  There is no Leopold.
I inhaled the smoke from the hash-scented room.  I crossed the continent in
a casket.  Oh, Christopher, English!  _Commiseration._ Are you empathic?



   What are you doing right now?  Is your hand around your instrument,
which has wilted since the action died down?



   _Commiseration._ _Convivio_.  _Misread._ The strength and beauty of
English is in vocabulary.  French has grammar, German, alchemy.  Chinese,
the image, I suppose.  Oh and the whole world is now awash in English.



   What are you doing right now, Christopher?  Are you feeling sorry for
yourself?  I hate it when you wallow in self-pity.  It's like when I am
mired in girlhood, you know.  O Prince Charming, my personal figment of
history, fuck me with your big-ass dick.  This lampshade is not a pretty
Jewess in a concentration camp.  The cloud looked like a hand, and smote
repeatedly.



   What does it mean to misread?  Between the lines the birds perch, and if
their wings finger the transformers in the wrong way, they go the way of
monsters fried in the electric chairs of Dixie.



   This is English.  I am a Ukrainian girl.  You are reading my diary.  The
other day, when you were away, I listened to a passage of your Laurie
Anderson CD.  'So if you think you're living in the modern world, where
everything is clean and swell...  just take a walk on the B-side of
town...'



   Where do you think you are living when creatures such as I prowl by
night?  (Ariadne beats her bony chest like Tarzan.) Yesterday I read an
article in the paper about a school in Kenya where ten-year-olds like me go
when they want to escape their fathers' transactions, though it does them
no good because their clitorises have been removed.



   Do you know what I want you to do right now, Christopher?  I want you to
take your hand away from your limp doggie and go stand in the mirror,
assuming the stance of the Microcosm of Vitruvius: legs spread, arms
straight out, looking like a star.  Oh, Christopher, the wine has gone to
my head.  The only thing that spoils the star is your dick.  It hangs like
a tail.



   One of the things that Leopold taught me was that in the nineteenth
century, many scholiasts had fantastic notions about the spermatozoon. 
Where are you, Christopher?  A nineteenth-century man in a walk-in
wardrobe, pawing some furs, while the men of Scotland clone sheep.



   I read the Unabomber, Christopher, and ruminated like the mooncalf that
I am.  When you are standing with your feet far apart and your soft
cocktail hanging superfluously from the crotch of your starry body, think
about what you think about.  Look at the floor.



   You are a teacher, it gives you a certain cachet, but without the
pretensions of an educator, you are just another functionary, a servant of
Ialdabaoth, a glint, at best, in the whirling gears of the planets, an
eater of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a splatter of jizz.  The fixed stars are
invisible, sulphurous smog glows like the rosy-fingered dawn, the refinery
across the river glimmers like a space station, and all you are looking for
is love.



   God, the Great Geometer, Unabomber, urchin...



   Leopold poured more champagne, Christopher.  He didn't have to say
anything, just rest and stroke my shoulder and wait for the American to
undress.  Red Glasses actually started to cry, but soon his Body by
Soloflex was buck naked in its magazine glory.



   'Hush now, big boy.  You don't mind bringing your boss little girls,
now, do you?  I think you need to fuck some, big boy.  I think you need to
show us how you fuck.' Leopold unlocked the cage and brought out the three
captives.  Red Glasses stammered that Mr.  Doors only wanted virgins.  'Oh,
I don't want you to fuck them, big boy.  I think my wife wants to fuck you.
I think you and these girls are going to bathe my wife, who is tired from
her journey, and then my wife is going to fuck you.  In the ass, big boy.'



   We trooped to the bathroom, casting an eye on the dark, lithe bodies of
the hashish smokers on the pretty pillows, who were making love to one
another and playing with Nadia.  Leopold took Nadia away and brought her
with us.



   He took the cuffs off of the girls, who immediately assumed postures
like seven-year-old versions of Botticelli's Venus, concealing their
treasures and tiny, soft, roseate nipples.  Truly lovely virgins, they
hadn't understood what Leopold had said about their fate and were scared
but not terrified, as shy as they were frightened, though two of them of
course became very disturbed when they saw what was left of Beppo.



   The third one just stared at the vestiges of this Mediterranean man.  It
reminded me of Uncle Remus: 'Brer Fox, he come up, en der lay Brer Rabbit,
periently cole en stiff.  Brer Fox he look at Brer Rabbit, en he sorter
_study_.' I decided that the third one was the most interesting, and while
Leopold was filling the tub and dirty Nadia was touching the horrified Red
Glasses, I put my hand on the little white bottom of the blonde girl who
had not been upset at the sight of Beppo's body.



   It was the first time that I had ever touched a girl that way, like I
had wanted to touch Nadia when Vlad made her put her hand on my thigh, and
it sent a thrill through me, Christopher.  It was like touching a baby, she
was so soft and sort of snotty-smelling, except that I knew that the
bookkeeper's boss was going to ram his cock into her tiny little hole and
strangle her.  I started to stroke her tight, round cheeks, then bent down
and kissed her on the lips...  and she kissed back, and not like an
innocent little girl, running her baby tongue into my mouth!



   She looked confused.  I ran my fingers through the limpid white gold of
her long, wavy hair and put my finger to her lips.  She kissed it, then
took my wrist and sucked it, gazing up at me with a weird, sickeningly
corrupt look on her baby-girl face, her cornflower eyes gleaming with
perversity, apprehension and submission.



   'But...  y-you...  you're a girl!' Her voice was very high and weak and
I wondered what it would be like when she was coming, and her Russian was
very refined, St.  Petersburg, probably.  'You're not a virgin, are you?'
'What's a virgin?' I took her little hand away from her unformed cunny and
slowly slid my finger inside -- and was surprised to find that she still
had her hymen.  She gave a soft, high-pitched moan.



   'Do boys touch you like this?' Her eyes grew wide with mistrust and
fear. 'Unh-unh,' she said, looking down.  'You can tell me,' I whispered,
'I'm a girl, remember?'



   'H-he said never to tell,' she whispered back.  'He only meant not to
tell men, baby...  not to tell grown-ups.  Does your daddy play with you?'
I kissed her again, and touched her rosy nipples.



   'No!' She looked shocked.  'My daddy told me nobody should ever see my
pee-pee.'



   'You have a pretty pee-pee...  you must be very pretty when you play. 
Who plays with you, baby?' 'I'm not a baby!' 'How old are you?' 'Seven and
a half!  How old are you?' 'I'm almost ten,' I said.  'Wow,' she said, in
English, probably because she thought it was cool.



   Leopold turned off the water, gave me his hand, and helped me into the
tub, then lifted the sexy little girl and put her in with me with a splash.
She giggled.  The two other little blondes were standing against the
peeling lilac paint of the wall, uncomfortable and embarrassed, hiding
their crotches alluringly, staring at the experienced one with wonder and
suspicion.  Red Glasses was holding the whining Nadia away from him, his
lower lip twitching like a jackrabbit's, the funny glasses sliding down his
sweaty nose.



   I spread my thighs and pulled the slutty child on top of me, gently
guiding her lips to my nipples.  The bathwater was already filthy from my
butt.  'My name is Ariadne Ivanova Fish,' I said.  She was still nervous
with me.  'Yura Fyodorovna...  Romanova,' she whispered.  Leopold watched
us, the expression on his ebony face darkening like a beautiful storm
cloud.



   He reached into the tub and ran his finger along Yura's crack.  She
gasped, then spread her pale cheeks and squirmed.  'F-fuck my botty,' she
said, like one of those dolls that talks when you pull a string.



   Leopold took his hand away.  He looked shattered.  Red Glasses saw an
opportunity.  'Mr.  Doors won't like that...  sir,' he stuttered.  'Mr. 
Doors, he...  he...' Leopold glowered at him.  'He...  he...  only good
girls, sir.  Maybe, sir, if you...  if you let us go now, I wouldn't tell
him, and...'



   The cloud passed and Leopold grinned again.  'Is that right, big boy?  A
man who snuffs five or six virgins a year won't be able to tell if this
child has been buttfucked?  You're a bright one, big boy.  Real bright.'



   'S-sir...  perhaps...  we could take the two...  and...' Leopold put his
face very close to the red glasses slipping down the pointy nose.



   'Shut up,' he said.  He kissed Nadia on the lips.  'Suck this man's
cock, Nadia.'



   He let go of her wrists and sank back against the wall, closing his eyes
as if thinking about something painful to him, the death of Bill Gates,
perhaps, or people speaking Spanish in Miami, or Sam Walton's abduction by
Basque aliens.  The penis of Red Glasses was actually quite nice, of
average dimensions, and soon as hard as copperwood.  Nadia licked and
sucked the head with her dirty little mouth, beads of perspiration broke
out on the bookkeeper's forehead, and in a very few minutes he pushed her
head away, trying not to get his spunk in her, but splashing her face.



   Leopold applauded.  Red Glasses pushed his glasses back up his shiny
nose and started to cry.  'How...  how can you...  how can you do this?'
Nadia moved towards Leopold, but he lifted her to her feet and whispered to
her that she should be still.  Then my new husband grasped Red Glasses'
half-hard dick.  The assaulted bookkeeper's pouting lips made a sound like
a lost balloon you were trying to tie the navel of.  Leopold idly stroked
the prick, then let go as Red Glasses began to bawl.



   'You don't want my wife to fuck you?' Leopold lifted the weeping man's
chin.



   'N-no...  sorry...  sir...  I...  she is very pretty...  beautiful... 
I...'



   The two ignored little graces were trembling and had their arms around
each other.  Their eyes were dry, though.  Leopold let go of Red Glasses
and spat on the floor.



   'I would fuck you myself, big boy, but I don't fuck shit.  That's what
you are, you know that?' The deflated man nodded.  'I don't think Ariadne
should fuck you either, because you couldn't take it.  I don't think you've
ever been fucked properly, have you?  You shit.  You sit in your office and
accumulate your pension...  do you ave a family, shithead?'



   Red Glasses nodded again.  'Tell me about your family,' Leopold said.  I
caressed Yura's botty and admired my husband.  'I-I...  please, sir...'



   'Do you have a daughter?  Tell me, you bastard, or I'll stick my fist up
your ass.'



   'Uhhh...  daughter...  son...  wife...'



   'How old?' Red Glasses somehow got control of himself, but wouldn't meet
Leopold's eyes.  'M-my wife is twenty-eight, sir...' 'I don't care about
your wife, big boy.' 'My son is...  ten and...  my daughter...  my daughter
is...  eight...'



   Images of Leopold obtaining his daughter must have roared through the
mind of Red Glasses like runaway armored trains across the steppes.



   'What's her name?' 'No.' 'Noh?  Kabuki!  What's her fucking name?' I was
starting to feel sorry for him, but Leopold's calm, measured fury was also
arousing me.  I held Yura close and tried to get her leg against my hole.



   'Blair,' Red Glasses finally said, as softly as an empty nutshell
dropped into bacon grease.  'Is she pretty?' The almost broken man stared
at the gray linoleum floor.  'I bet she's pretty, big boy.  Tell you what,
I won't let my wife fuck you if you bring me Blair.'



   Red Glasses lunged at him like an overgrown sissy.  Leopold just stood
there, letting him throw his punches, until the miserable man collapsed on
the floor, sobbing.



   'I bet Mr.  Doors will like that, eh, big boy?  I'll tell Mr.  Doors to
do Blair, maybe -- I don't really want to touch something with your blood
in it.  I'm sure your boss-man will like her.' Leopold told us to take a
shower with Nadia and left with the two virgins, laughing.  After a while
the heap that was Red Glasses went sniffling after them.



   I opened the drain and Nadia stepped into it and for a while the three
of us stood in the fecal water and looked at each other.  I was already
tall for my age, taller than Nadia, even though she was almost two years
older than me.  She recognized me, and I think she was scared because she
remembered insulting me at Vlad's.  I felt sorry for her, and after a while
I put my hand on her frail hip and pressed my lips to hers.  Nadia returned
my kiss with her tongue and I felt Yura tentatively touch my cunny.  I let
go of Nadia and kissed Yura like a man, forcing my tongue deep into her
mouth, kneading her tight little ass, licking her sweet neck while she
fingered my slit.



   'Yura...  put your fingers in me...  please...  yes!  Oh, yes! 
Aaahhh... oh, God...  oh God yes...  more...  please darling...  please...
more fingers...'



   I put one foot up on the edge of the tub and clutched the rail on the
wall and Yura squatted and soon slipped her entire hand into my desperate
hole.  Nadia kissed me feverishly, dangling one of her damaged fingers at
my behind and trying to masturbate herself.  Yura was diddling her puffy
little slit.  I slid a finger down Nadia's shit-caked crack to her poophole
and reached behind myself, took her hand and tried to work her useless,
loose fingers into my bottom.  Yura kissed my clitty and I came, bleating
like a spring lamb, nearly falling into the empty, soiled tub.  Yura came,
too, sucking on my dirty cunny, and I put my arms around Nadia, sank to my
knees and slurped at her mangled, pissy snatch, then stood and stroked it,
kissing her ravished mouth, licking the bookkeeper's semen from her face.



   'Nadia...  Nadia...  Nadia...  pretty whore, Nadia...' What I wanted was
to lick the scum from her poophole, to put my tongue in it.  All of me
wanted it.  I guided her foot to the rim of the tub and urged Yura to lick
Nadia's twat and began to kiss her and lick her shit-encrusted crack.  She
couldn't hold on to the railing because of her deformed fingers, so her
pathetic little body swayed precariously as I held her skinny thighs and
lapped at her stinking bottom like a cat cleaning its child, then plunged
my tongue into her obscenely dilated anus.  I was coming without touching
myself, maniacally rubbing my face against her slimy ass, desperate to make
her come.  Yura put her fingers in Nadia's baby-hole and played with
herself and all three of us were swept into a pitiful orgasm, the climax of
creatures destroyed, whose only refuge is the love of fluids, a secret
space behind the veil of a warm waterfall.



   IX



   That was not where Leopold lived, that was one of the places where he
did business.  There were several dingy, sparsely furnished apartments
where he met with various emissaries from men who needed little girls. 
Some he treated with respect, some he dealt with like those bookkeepers or
programmers or whatever they were, making them dress in funny costumes and
behaving like a brutal, infallible potentate, a Heliogabalus from Timbuktu.
It was only an act, though.  It sounds strange, Christopher, but he was not
entirely an evil man.  I wonder if anyone is.  I could be wrong, of course
-- I was enthralled with his evil, made sexually insane by it -- but I
think that Leopold Mustapha de Berry was at heart a good man.  Was he?  I
saw him perform acts of astonishing cruelty, and in the two-odd years that
I was with him at least three hundred girls passed through his hands into
the arms of wealthy men who loved them or raped them or killed them or
loved them and killed them or raised them and screwed them and dumped them
when they matured.  But it is hard for me to hate him, Christopher, because
he made me who I am.  You know that I sometimes hate myself, but I almost
never did while I belonged to him.



   At heart, a good man, and so far from his heart.



   After we showered, kissing and diddling and washing and playing, one of
the beautiful men came in to perfume us and dress us and do our hair.  His
name was Akhmed and he was an Ingush from Dagestan.  He put lotion on the
rash I had gotten from peeing on myself in the casket and my cunny drooled
and I started to touch his cock, but Akhmed said we didn't have time but
that he was very sorry because it would be a great honor to serve me as a
damsel.  He called me 'Madame de Berry' and powdered me and clothed me in a
filmy g-string black garter and black silk stockings and helped me into a
very elegant dark blue dress that must have cost a fortune and gave me the
sapphire choke you have seen and put it on.  He complimented me partly in
Russian and partly in execrable French.  Then he said that I was the most
beautiful of Monsieur de Berry's wives.



   'Has he had many wives?' Akhmed said I would meet them soon.  Jealousy
and premature envy swept through my nine-year-old body like bad heroin. 
The dress fit perfectly.  Akhmed said that his eye was expert in the
measurements of those as beautiful as myself, and asked if I had ever worn
high heels.  I said no, and so he gave me low-heeled pumps and slipped them
onto my feet.  He said I should go to Monsieur de Berry while he dressed
the others.



   Most everyone had gone.  The Americans had vanished with the two little
blondes and only two of the handsome men remained...  they were making love
to each other, ardently.  My husband sat at the rosewood table looking at
spreadsheets on a laptop, dressed now in a gray flannel suit, white shirt,
and black silk tie.  He smiled at me as I sat down beside him.  I forgot
about whatever other wives he had and tried to look noble and beautiful
while he worked, eyeing me now and then and sipping coffee with cardamom.



   The two Arabs moaned and ejaculated, washed themselves in the kitchen,
dressed, bowed to Leopold, and left.  He closed his laptop and kissed me,
sweetly.



   'Do you like Yura?' I nodded.  'Do you still play with dolls, darling?'
I nodded again, ashamed.  'I don't want you to do that, Ariadne.  You are
to be a woman.  I will give you Yura.  You can play with Yura.  Would you
like that?' I kissed him.  'What's going to happen to Nadia,' I asked, then
bit my lip.  'Will she be your wife, too?'



   Leopold pulled me into his lap and fucked my mouth with two fingers,
then held them still so I could suck them.  I squirmed in his lap and tried
to make sexy faces and when he slid his middle finger into my throat, I had
an orgasm.  He kissed me again, lingeringly.



   'You have no need to be jealous,' he said, gravely, holding me while I
came down, 'no need, my love.' My heart leapt at the word.  'You will love
your sisters, Ariadne, and they you.' There was no way to disbelieve him
when he spoke like he did, his eyes of moldavite, labradorite, his voice an
oily licorice oozing out of Hades, his long fingers snaking under the hem
of my dress, stroking my trembling thighs, deftly slipping the little patch
of filmy cloth from my hole, his fingertip tickling my urethra, grazing my
clit, slithering into my slimy cunny.  I began to beg him to fuck me, to do
anything to me, to do me, and Leopold slipped yet another finger into my
writhing body, his thumb teasing my clit until my come came like a bright
green fish diving into sweet water without a splash, my head louring, the
sky falling, a surge of convulsive pleasure milking me, emulsion raining
through my lungs, my skin like the flesh of a broken mushroom, a peeled
birch, sap squeezed skyward through my intestines, hagios, hagios, hagios.



   He drew a white silk handkerchief from the pocket of his suit and
cleaned me.  'No,' he said after a heavy silence, 'Nadia is for someone
else, a friend.  To be my wife one must be someone like you, Ariadne,
reckless and alone, designed to come like God and the Devil.' I was still
reeling, the bright green fish motionless in an unlit deep, coral
flowering. So Persephone ate of the pomegranate.



   Akhmed appeared with the doomed Nadia and Yura, who would now be my
doll. Leopold kissed me and lifted me to my feet, stood, and kissed both
girls.  Yura was clad in a black satin minidress, her pale hair coiffed, a
wide black velvet band with an amethyst pendant around her slender neck,
her spindly legs bare, struggling to balance in heels insanely high for a
seven-year-old.  I felt proud of her, as if she was already mine.



   Under the masterly care of Akhmed, Nadia had been transformed, too, her
hair in a long braid, her emaciated body dressed in a short dark skirt and
pink silk tank top.  But nothing could hide that she was constantly abused,
her furtive eyes and broken nose and two missing teeth, the way she winced
when she moved, the set of her body, the mutilated fingers.  Akhmed himself
was dressed in a white suit that made him seem dapper and comical by turns.



   Oh, Christopher, if I did not possess the sapphire choke, if I wasn't in
pain all the time from when my husband pumelled my insides, I would
sometimes doubt that the world in which we moved ever existed.



   Not then, then I was as confident as a brave girl in a bad dream, a
dream full of leaky vessels and strangers, ogres and faerie, potent and
eternal twilight with Leopold as lingam, Leopold the pole supporting the
iridescent gossamer that formed our tent.  Not then, not then, then was a
spectacular limbo where thirst was answered with cool water and heady wine,
then was a place where every seen thing gave suck, where every scene was
essential and evil and beauty were one truth.



   It is not that way anymore, is it, Christopher?  I still try to see, I
have even tried to import goods to this nexus, to make good mean as much to
my cunny as Leopold's cruelty meant to it then.  'When the organs of
perception close, their objects close,' Blake knew, and the world now is
half-lidded, still aroused but drowsy, damnably unclear.



   My Uncle Mavrik always lectured me on my lack of clarity, you know.  He
would play his chess games, replay his Kasparov and Karpov.  'You have no
reason, Ariadne, you must learn to see things clearly.  You are drowning in
your dreams.' And that might be true, now, without Leopold, now with my
dreamy dreams and murky memories swathed in distance, fingering my choke
like a rosary -- but then, Christopher, then, even my dreams were certain
then, even the murk was redolent of immediate need.  I was strident with
dire longing, my legs spread even in a mare's nest, my fundament aching for
flowers, a maypole, him.



   We got into an old black Citroen, the headlights like the jaundiced eyes
of a prowler, the hydraulic suspension finding our weight.  Akhmed drove,
my husband typed on his laptop, and Nadia, Yura and I sat in the back.



   'Are we going to Disneyland?' Nadia did not hate me anymore, she needed
me, her eyes like a sick stray puppy's.  'I'm hungry,' she said.  I should
have been famished, but was not.  I am like that -- if I am in love I can
eat glances, words, breath.  I can subsist on caresses and sperm.



   We drove to a run-down patrician neighborhood near
Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, the big, low-slung car swung into a yawning garage,
and we had arrived at the place that would be our home for some time. 
Leopold moved around a lot, not like a fugitive but like a strategist.  We
traveled and we wandered and we visited and toured, but this house, not far
from the Musee Moreau, was his favorite.



   A skeletal young man in rimless glasses opened the door for us once we
had emerged from the garage and walked to the house, Yura doing quite well
in her high heels, me helping the exhausted and mutilated Nadia.  The man
knew my name already -- Madame de Berry -- and introduced himself as
Armand.



   It was a very narrow house of three stories -- only later did I realize
that almost all of Paris consists of apartment buildings, that we were
fabulously wealthy.  The entrance hall, sparsely furnished, Second Empire,
was also the stairwell, with wide, steep stone stairs leading up.  Leopold
kissed Armand on the mouth.



   Armand was creepy.  A slight build, eczema, a large, heart-shaped wart
at the tip of his long, prominent nose -- his entire face seemed to be
nose, his pale, thin lips and sharp little yellow teeth contorted in the
kind of smile I am always afraid will end in a yowl, deep-set, bloodshot
eyes the color of mold on old coffee, he leapt about like an itinerant
acrobat whose feet were being shot at.  Dressed in what looked like a
twenties' bathing suit, his dirty grayish-blond hair reminding me of a
porcupine with corkscrews for needles, he led us upstairs while Leopold and
Akhmed walked into the next room on the ground floor.



   Steep, steep, staircase, smooth gray stone.  One of Yura's heels missed
a step -- she fell backwards, and would have broken her neck, probably, if
I hadn't caught her.  I snapped at her to be more careful.  She was mine
now.  The first long room we came to was a sort of library, with bookcases
that went all the way to the ceiling, leather chairs, a sideboard with
pipes and cordials and cognac.  The next was full of computer and
audiovisual equipment, keyboards, filing cabinets, boxes of files, packages
of documents.  The third seemed to be a storeroom for everything under the
sun.  The rooms lead one into the other; there was no corridor.



   The house may have been narrow, but it was also very deep -- next came
the Music Room, littered with violins and lutes and drums and woodwinds and
sheet music, decorated with African art and a painting that must have been
Monet, dominated by a grand piano.  Then a room I called the Listening
Room, furnished with velvet couches and a day-bed, one wall a tremendous CD
collection, another a sound system.  Then a series of what were obviously
girls' bedrooms, each quite different, but all of them the result of
unlimited funds and individual taste.  The one I liked best was medieval in
appearance, with an intricately carved wooden bed, paintings of knights and
maidens, gobs of art supplies, books of reproductions.  and sketches,
watercolors and pastels scattered everywhere, in which the knights
deflowered the maidens and worshipped them.  Another bedroom had a walled
off section that seemed to be a darkroom, and the room itself was full of
photographic equipment.  There were five bedrooms in all.



   After that came a very long room that looked like a cross between an
operating room and the interrogation chamber of a well-equipped
contemporary secret service in a rogue country, one that employed some
antiquarians.  In the center was a padded table like in a doctor's office,
modified to include leather restraints, spitoons, basins, bidets, cabinets
of devices and medicines, and some odd, old contraptions, one of which
appeared to be something like an iron maiden, but with a tube curling
around it and leading to a sunken tub of stainless steel.  Another wall
looked like an exhibit in a pharmacy museum.  This and all the subsequent
rooms were windowless.



   Armand opened double doors and ushered us into an oval room with a large
crystal chandelier hanging in the center.  We seemed to be so deep in the
house that the next street could not have been far.



   Four young women sprawled in varying states of undress on the largest
bed I have ever seen, their beauty illumined by the tapers in the
chandelier and torcheres and sconces on the lavender walls, as well as by a
glass globe at the foot of the bed, a globe of the world, intricate,
gleaming like a conglomerate of precious stones lit from within.  The
beauties were reflected in a mirror on the ceiling.  The candles on the
walls were held by marble arms, female arms, and between them were huge oil
paintings of harem scenes and a wide, flat television screen that flickered
with black and white footage of a Chinese man being dismembered, then what
must have been a Voudon ceremony, then a close-up of Leopold's hand
fondling an infant's penis, then a cute five-year-old girl stroking her
tiny strap-on dildo, then a scene from the days of the Khmer Rouge, a
father throwing his baby into the air so that soldiers could catch it on
the glistening point of a bayonet.  There was no sound.  One of the young
women lying in bed got up and turned the television off, then drew a
lavender curtain across the screen.  She gave Armand a knowing look, and he
withdrew the way we had come.  Then the young lady looked at me, smiled,
said 'oh!' and kissed me.



   Four of Leopold's wives were there -- we called one another sisters --
and they all rose gracefully from the bed and bestowed little wet kisses on
my lips.  Akhmed had said that I was the most beautiful of my husband's
wives, but the other Mesdames de Berry made me want to deface myself.



   There were seven wives in all -- two were away, and I shall come to them
later, while the third missing one entered presently from a room I had not
seen yet, deeper in the manse.



   That was Cosima.  Cosima was the eldest, at thirteen.  She was an Ossi,
an East German, from Ruegen, a statuesque blonde of the type that seem
otherworldly, with flawless, luminous skin, perfect in every detail, from
her healthy, pink fingernails to the carefully trimmed, soft platinum hairs
of her pubis.  She already possessed pert breasts with nipples like cock
heads, and Akhmed the Elegant directed her exercise program.  Cosima was
the ardent photographer, her work ranging from the erotic to the
pornographic.



   She shared the shade of her pair of lupine, white-blue eyes with Amanda,
who was from America.  But Amanda was frail with chestnut hair, tiny
breasts that were nonetheless succulent, narrow hips and a small, soft,
uncircumcised penis.  There was nothing boyish about her, though.  Her
delicate fingers were constantly stroking her flaccid, pale genitals, and
even if she was half erect they seemed somehow feminine.  Amanda was born
in Ipswich, Massachusetts, but had been kidnapped when she was nine by a
deviate who had dumped her in an alley in Red Hook, Brooklyn.  Brought up
in an orphanage, her parents having perished in their grief, Amanda was
kidnapped again and ended up in Macao, where my husband found her.  She was
less artistic than the rest of us, or her art was herself, hours and hours
of filing her nails and braiding her hair and bathing in milk and begging
us to give her enemas.  She did, however, know how to use a video camera
and edit footage -- the images that had flashed on the screen were hers.



   Amanda, Cleo and Epiphany were twelve years old.  Cleo was a gypsy from
Karelia, and would often tell of summer outings on the shores of the White
Sea.  She had skin the color of pralines, and her dark, bottomless eyes
flashed as if she could light a torch with them.  Her labia were as dark as
Leopold, as if they had been steeped in India ink, and her wet hole was the
hue of rose hips tea.  She had no breasts, but her nipples were the size
and hue of black walnuts.  Cleo was an occultist, her bedroom a cornucopia
of crystal balls and rare tarots, her evenings spent in the library,
masturbating and poring over 'many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten
lore,' her eerie voice calling out in Enochian in the dead of night.



   The other twelve-year-old was also from America, like Amanda.  Epiphany
came from the sea islands of South Carolina, and was of indeterminate race,
though I am certain that in someplace like Haiti, where she had been kept
as a slave for some time by a Boston yachtsman, where there were once
hundreds of terms for different shades and hybrids of humans, some bokor
might have known what she was.  Her skin was a rich, deep gray, except on
the soles of her feet and the undersides of her hands, where it was like a
newly unwrapped kneadable eraser.  Her labia were also inky, with even a
bluish tinge, and her slimehole was strangely small for her lanky body,
reminding me of a ravaged rosebud.  It was still almost bald, and her
breasts had barely sprouted, the dime-sized nipples erect and raw, crimson.
Epiphany's face and hair were European, the tresses long and silken, coal
black, her nostrils flaring like a mare's when she was aroused, which was
often, her peridot eyes burning like a predator's.  She was an accomplished
worker of voudon, and very close to Cleo.  Epiphany was also the most
musical young woman, composing disturbing sonatas and concertos, even
writing an opera for one of Manga's librettos.



   Manga came from Kaliningrad Oblast, the Russian enclave that was once
East Prussia.  Raised on the Couronian Spit, Manga was descended
spectacularly from the Old Prussians, a Baltic people exterminated by
Germans by the eighteenth century.  Her name meant Whore in the dead
language, and Manga spent much of her time delving into etymological
dictionaries and whatever lost wisdom could be retrieved or reconstituted
in the scanty annals of her hapless people.  Her literary interests made
her very attractive to me, and I was also insanely in love with her
sexually.



   In addition to writing and studying linguistics, Manga was the
watercolorist, the painter, the portraitist, with most of her work made of
dim atavistic memories from the holocaust that engulfed her forefathers. 
The story of how she came to the house was somewhat similar to mine: her
drunken father began to sodomize her when she was five, and sold her to an
elderly tourist from Saarlouis who had come to look at what was left of
Koenigsberg, which was practically nothing, the Russians having long ago
deported the Prussians and wrecked whatever the war had not destroyed.



   Conceived when her parents were visiting her father's army buddy in the
zone that surrounds Chernobyl, now a haven for wolves and home only to
troglodytes who prefer to eat the radioactive vegetables of their ancestral
soil, Manga developed a rare cancer, and the man from Saarlouis traded her
in for another girl, putting her in the hands of Leopold.



   Bald from chemotherapy, she had once had red hair and possessed the skin
that goes with it.  Like me, Manga had an eating disorder, only hers was
far more pronounced.  She was skeletal, addicted to cocaine, stank of puke
and urine and suffered excruciating pains.  Another thing we had in common
was that she was quite tall for her age, eleven.  She had menstruated once.
One of the amazing things about her artistic talent was that her anorexia
had almost ruined her vision, and her watery, lavender eyes were often
almost glued shut.



   She was also beautiful, constantly craving sensual attention, speaking
in poetry, fingering her delicate bone structure and caressing her taut,
white skin.  Her lips and slit were chapped, and we both shared a love for
fisting.  We also shared a secret that we kept from our husband: both of us
needed to be little girls.  Kissing and moaning and fingering each other's
depths, Manga and I became as intimate as Siamese twins.



   It took only minutes for me to realize that jealousy was absurd.  We
were sisters, weird sisters, all of us.  For a time I was worried that I
hadn't the talents that they had, that I was inferior, but under Leopold's
tutelage I came to understand that I was the youngest and would blossom as
they had, a venus flytrap, an oyster mushroom after rain.



   They dressed resplendently, Manga the exception -- she wore a sort of
shroud, sometimes a chiton, Jesus sandals, nothing else.  Amanda in a
leathern loincloth, a silk scarf around her small-breasted chest, a ruby
necklace tight around her swan neck, barefoot -- the string of carbuncles
reminded me of the red strings worn after the Terror, when such a thing
symbolized that your relative had died on the guillotine.  Cleo like a toy
soldier, baby blue satin jacket, naked underneath, wide white satin pants.
Epiphany in a diaphanous dress, her raw nipples protruding starkly.  Cosima
wore only lingerie, transparent black lace against her supernaturally
blonde skin, silk stockings.  I still cannot understand how she maintained
her well-formed, long-toed, virginal feet but managed to wear three-inch
heels and pointy shoes.



   As the eldest, Cosima had the privilege of directing us now and then,
though she never abused it.  She asked the others to go downstairs, they
gave me quick kisses and left the way Armand and I had come, and Cosima
stood staring at Nadia, Yura and I.  Suddenly she swept down on Nadia,
dragged her screaming to a bureau plat, lifted the skirt of Nadia's sailor
suit, brandished an awl and stabbed it into the shrieking girl's urethra.
Poor little Nadia passed out almost instantly, and Cosima dragged her
mutilated body into the as yet unseen room, motioning for us to follow. 
Yura was again not scared.



   The next room I came to call the Porno Room.  It was filled with smut,
videos and photographs and drawings, Japanese books and Dutch magazines,
wooden filing cabinets and haphazard piles.  After that was a small space
with a spiral staircase that led only downward -- the third floor,
Leopold's lair, was accessed only by the steep stone stairs we had first
come by -- and beyond that, a secure, padded door which Cosima opened by
voiceprint.



   The final room of the second floor (I am using the Anglo-American
convention; it was the first etage), almost a block away from where we had
ascended, was the size of an adequate barn, and I make the comparison,
Christopher, because one side of it was covered with hay, loose and in
bales.  This loft was dense with children and young girls and teenagers,
mostly female.  There must have been fifty or more, of every size and
description.  Some looked like virgins, others were bleeding between the
legs.  Many were crying, a few were blurred in coital clumps.  They were
herded by a pair of grotesque eunuchs and two twin boys about sixteen years
old, one of whom was raping a four-year-old when we entered.  The other --
they both looked inbred -- seemed to be conducting a class for about ten
young teenaged women sitting in a circle, showing them photographs of
bestial scenes.  In one corner was a heap of cat litter that was being used
as a toilet.  Some of the girls were loose, others in cages of steel mesh,
and one wall was a plywood structure of bunks.  The stench and noise were
unbearable, but the room was soundproofed, as was much of the house.



   I felt revulsion and fear...  but also hideous, overpowering arousal, my
eyes drawn to a lithe Asian girl weeping and defecating in the kitty
litter. Yura was masturbating, staring at two fresh corpses.  The twin who
was teaching the teenagers about animals came and spoke to Cosima in French
with a strong Alsatian accent, almost as though groveling.  She introduced
me, and the ugly young man fell to his knees.



   Cosima stroked Yura's golden hair and looked at me sternly.  'Is this
your toy?' I nodded.  'What do you want to do with her?' 'What do you
mean?' 'I suppose you can...  keep her in your room,' Cosima said, her eyes
softening.  'But maybe it would be better if she stays here until you... 
get to know us.' Yura did not understand French, but the drift of the tone
was not lost on her, and she begged me not to leave her.



   I knew deeply and instantly that I needed to be with my sisters.  I
planted a kiss on Cosima's sweet lips.  'Of course, you are right, sister.
Let her stay here.'



   All of the children had little hospital wristbands with names and
numbers and a code for their 'status' (whether they had been used before
and in what holes).  The twin pulled a tarp from a computer and Cosima gave
him the necessary information, giving me a strange, glassy-eyed look when I
said that Yura was still virgin in her vagina.  Yura let go of my hand. 
She did not cry.  Nadia was still unconscious.  Cosima took my hand and
both of us left the room.



   When we were in the alcove with the spiral staircase, Cosima seized me,
sighing, panting, her perfect fingers flying up my dress, peeling my
panties away from my sticky hole, desperately diddling me.  'Ariadne... 
sister...  please...  oh, please...'



   We tumbled to the floor, sucking each other's clits, grunting and
fingering one another until we came, her tongue stabbing at my poophole,
mine extended into her slimy snatch.  When we calmed down, she kissed my
mouth and fixed my clothes, stroking my hair.



   'I didn't mean to hurt Nadia like that,' she said.  'I'm...  afraid. 
There are only five wives here, Ariadne.  Your arrival means that one of us
will go.  I'm not ready to go.  I don't know if I'll ever be ready.' Her
face was gritted with stoicism.



   'Leopo...  our husband...  chooses?' I caressed her shoulder.  'Yes,'
she sighed.  'He decides which of us...  and I am the eldest here, in this
house.  There are two others, but I don't even know their names.  They live
in the country.  We...  we can't be late for dinner.  We'll tell you some
things at dinner.  And you don't need to say -- our husband -- you may call
him Leopold.  You may do anything you really want to do, and say what you
like.'



   Cosima and I got up, examined ourselves in a gilt-edged mirror, and
descended.  Downstairs, now reading from the back of the house, there was
an opulent bathroom, the tub the size of a small swimming pool, mosaic,
surrounded by plants.  The ceiling was painted with bathhouse scenes.  One
wall there was cut glass, and beyond that was a lush greenhouse that gave
on a small garden the garden ending in a high stone wall.  I later learned
that Leopold owned both buildings that flanked our devilish little
paradise, which was why we were able to disport ourselves as we pleased
below the neighbors' windows.



   Going toward the Rue d'Auseuil, the street where the car lay snugly in
wait in its small garage, the next room contained a fantastic collection of
clothing in all sizes and styles, convenient to the bath.  Next came the
laundry room...  well, it had a washer and dryer, but was primarily devoted
to surveillance equipment and the security system.  Then an armory that
could have equipped a small cell of rabid and technologically keen
terrorists.  Then an immense kitchen, and beyond that a fabulous dining
room, where everyone was gathered around a long and heavily laden table
with sinuous candelabra and an assortment of delicacies, fine wines and two
ice sculptures, one of Dionysos, the other of a nymph.



   Leopold was not there yet, and by everyone I of course do not mean the
prisoners or their captors.  Akhmed, in an expansive mood as almost always,
was pouring wine, telling each of us that she was the loveliest wife, while
Armand served the food.



   The room itself was almost ludicrously ornate, its ceiling and walls
decorated with frescoes of orgia.  Often the table was piled with art and
fruit while food and drink were served on the low velvet couches, which
also functioned as beds if anyone became aroused during a meal, which, of
course, was frequent.  Beyond the dining room, the house was ordinary: an
office, a sitting room, a guest room, a sort of entrance hall.  Leopold
would receive visitors, even officialdom, in the common rooms, and by all
accounts from without we were a bourgeois household, exceedingly wealthy,
to be sure, but not remarkable.



   Manga looked at me invitingly, and I sat down next to her.  Armand
informed us that Leopold would be out late on business, filled my plate
with whatever I asked for from the bowls and tureens and platters arrayed
around the table, bowed, and went off with the bowing Akhmed to who knows
where.



   I ate and delighted in Manga's bony fingers snaking along my inner
thigh. Though I was almost ten years old and used to alcohol, wine and the
shock of my surroundings and recent revelations soon made me swoon.  Manga
stroked my slimehole through my panties and whispered to me that she needed
to go to the bathroom and wanted me with her.



   Achmed or Armand had filled the mosaic basin before disappearing.  Manga
closed the door and wrapped her emaciated arms around me, her bald head
gleaming in the muted light.  She said she was glad to have someone who
spoke Russian with her, and suddenly dissolved into baby talk.  'Got to
go...  potty...  do you need to go potty?  Pee-pee?' She was trembling.



   I unwrapped the shroud from her pale, anorexic body.  She climbed on the
toilet backwards and began to knead her tight belly.  I squatted down and
kissed her skinny ass, and Manga began to beg me to put my fingers in her.
She showed me a pot of the strange grease that Leopold had used on me in
L'viv -- oh, so long ago!  -- on a shelf near the toilet.  I teased her,
running my tongue into her pink, open poophole, kissing her mouth and
playing with her slit.  She was as light as if her bones were of balsa
wood.



   I greased my hand and began to dig her feces from her bottom -- whatever
was wrong with her made it very abnormal; it was dry and powdery like old
dogshit.  She squealed in orgasmic agony as I forced my forearm into her
rectum.



   One day I want to fist you, Christopher, I want you to know what it is.
It hurts more than anything in the world, and then the world opens up. 
Manga writhed in unbearable pain, unable even to scream, as I curled my
greasy fingers around the turn in her intestines.  I slowly thrust in and
out of her bowels, then withdrew my arm and made her eat her bitter, vile
waste, sticking my fingers into her throat.  Shaking, pissing, coming,
sweating, she began to puke, vomit dripping down her bony chest.



   We bathed together, kissing and whispering little-girl things, telling
each other our deepest secrets, and then she led me to her medieval
bedroom, where I sniffed cocaine for the first time.  She showed me her
drawings and paintings, then asked if she could blindfold me.  I said yes,
of course, and Manga tied me up, binding my arms and ankles to the carved
wood of her headboard, my cunny and poophole available to her.  She ate me
out for a long time, until I was nothing but an orgasm, greased my anus,
and began to stretch my sphincter with her emaciated fingers.



   'Fist me...  darling...  sister...  please, darling sister...  please...
ohhhh...  aaaaah...  fuck me!  Yes!  Owwwww!!!' Her hand entered me again
and again, then the fingers of both hands, spreading my bottom open, then
her hand, then her fist, then both her hands.  I felt nauseous from the
pain, but kept begging her to get inside me, deeper, harder, God, and
suddenly I felt her bony toes against my slit, then her big toe penetrating
my asshole, and very slowly her greasy anorexic foot forced its way into my
anus, fucking me.  I strained at the silk ropes that bound me, shuddering,
bolts of terrible pain shooting through my little body.



   'Noooo...  I can't...  please no...  Nooooooooo!' I blacked out when she
tried to force her heel past my sphincter, coming to with Epiphany's pink
tongue in my mouth, her dark gray face against mine, her bright green eyes
boring into me like drill bits encrusted with emeralds, her fingers lightly
stroking my chest, circling my nipples.  I bit down on my lip, drawing
blood, insane with excruciating pain, Manga's entire foot in my vagina, her
skinny leg sliding into me like the trunk of a young birch tree, her other
foot buried in Amanda's behind, Amanda's flaccid girl-penis dangling in
Cleo's mouth, Amanda crouched down and thrusting back at the invading leg,
retching and howling in horrid torment and submissive pleasure as I slid to
some place that was neither consciousness nor coma, dancing like a luna
moth suicided against a streetlamp.  I felt Cosima's wet lips on my
clitoris, I saw scenes that were not there, men in suits of armor ramming
their mailed fists into dying virgins, burning horses crashing into
streams, fog-shrouded witches opening their chests like cupboards, sucking
on their hearts, and then, against myself, without myself, I came, Epiphany
licking the blood from my lips, Cosima's tongue pressed against my clitty,
Manga's foot kicking into my core.



   Cosima kissed my slimehole and Epiphany untied me and the two of them
held me gently and helped the sick girl extract her foot, blood and feces
gushing onto the crisp linen sheets.  Then Cleo and Cosima lifted Amanda's
half-dead, self-absorbed body and worked her up and down on Manga's calf
while Epiphany sucked her half-hard little penis.  The barely conscious
hermaphrodite came, ejaculating into the gray girl's mouth, and Epiphany
dribbled some between my bloody lips.  It tasted like emulsion and fish,
battery acid and fish, grapefruit rind and fish.  It was fishy, more like
cunny milk than boy-spunk, and the droplets on Epiphany's gray chin were
more like dishwater than semen.



   They lifted Amanda's limp, delicate body from Manga's leg, her scrawny
foot making a sickening sound as it came with a shower of bloody poop.  I
licked the scum from Manga's long, thin toes and lapped at the soles of her
soft feet, savoring the spicy flavor of my own feces, salted with blood and
sweetened by the strange grease, running my tongue between her toes.



   They carried Amanda and me to the operating room and draped us over the
table.  Someone diddled my cunny and Manga tongued my mouth as a thick hose
went into my rump and I was filled with something cool and viscous. 
Whatever it was did not sting my injured insides, and I felt soothed even
as I began to get cramps.  Moaning, I was held above a basin and kissed and
masturbated and allowed to empty my bowels and orgasm.  Amanda was revived
with some fragrant, mysterious mixture of herbs and emptied while I played
with her soft little penis -- it was very hard to get her to stiffen, and I
never saw her any more than half erect, though she claimed that she was
able to fuck Leopold's ass -- and soon we were all together in the great
mosaic bath, smoking Three Castles laced with hash oil, sipping Graves and
snacking on fruit and cheese, playing with our cunnies, making love, and
kissing in a clump.



   So I learned some things: policies, procedures, insights, intuitions,
desires, fears.  Leopold was not often there.  He took each wife for seven
days, and made love to her each day, then realeased her to the others. 
There were seven wives, and it was forbidden to speak of the two who were
not resident, just as it was forbidden to talk about what he did to the
wife he was using, or what he had done.  one of us -- or one of the two
invisibles, though that was unlikely -- would be sent away now that I had
come.  Eventually, we would all be replaced, not necessarily in the order
of our age or arrival.



   Otherwise we could pretty much do as we pleased, though we were expected
to create art, and it was likely that we would be chosen for eviction if we
slacked off.  We had not been chosen because we were sexually similar:
Cosima was something of a sadist, Manga, Amanda and myself were basically
masochistic, Epiphany and Cleo were usually neither.



   No one liked Armand, and Cosima suspected that he was around to remind
us of the real world.  He did not harm us, but he could be very cruel to
the prisoners.  Cleo was sure that Leopold was fucking him.



   We could fuck anyone we wanted, and no one could fuck us unless we
wanted them to.  We were even permitted to snuff the captives, even the
expensive virgins.  Cleo sometimes used them in her rituals, and Cosima
raped and killed a lot when she was nervous or horny.  the inbred twins
(who weren't allowed to screw the virgins) were great lays and, like the
eunuchs, whose mouths were very educated, were required to obey our every
whim.  We were also allowed to take the prisoners off the market, and Manga
had a little fuck toy also, another thing we had in common.



   Every so often the routine was broken and we were taken on trips,
separately or in different combinations.  Different agents and buyers came
to shop for little girls or boys, and sometimes we could take them to bed,
too, and the same went for Leopold's friends.



   It was not uncommon for one or more of us to spend time depressed, even
suicidal, and I could expect that.  Cosima once tried to hang herself after
snuffing a five-year-old.  Drugs helped.



   The wives who were divorced and departed were sometimes visitors -- many
of them had become or again become whores, most of them were addicts, and
few were happy.  This is what we had to look forward to: exile from Hell.
Sometimes Leopold would invite the divorced wives to return, but they would
never accept -- they felt guilty and ashamed and psychologically mutilated
by their months or years as perverted concubines and murderous sluts,
though the ones who came to visit did not hate Leopold for it.



   Cosima was getting terribly aroused and began to whisper to me that
talking about how awful and depraved we were was making her 'kid-horny.'
She put my fingers on her cunt and licked my ear.  'Feel me, sister... 
please...  I need it,' she whispered, her voice a heavy snow on the North
Sea, '...feel how wet I am...  sister...  Ariadne...  it's from watching
you...  watching you hurt like that, dirty girl...  touch me...  you
whore...  watching you hurt, you dirty whore...' We were standing at the
shallower end of the massive tub.



   I fingered her beautiful blonde pussy and whispered back to her.  'Did
you like Yura?  Did you like my little fuck doll?  She's a virgin,
sister... her cunny has never had anything in it...' I was drooling.



   Cosima kneaded my buttocks and stuck her tongue in my mouth, then pushed
my lips down to her breast, just above the water line.  'Suck it...  suck
my tit...  suck it, sister...  suck...' I ran my tongue around the huge,
hard, blonde's nipple, and Cosima closed her eyes as Manga came and sucked
her other titty.  'Yesss..  both of you...  are so...  dirty...  I want
to...  fuck your little Yura...  unghhhhh...  suck!  Suck me!  Yes!  I want
to FUCK her...  I want to see your little toy...  bleed...'



   I was abominably aroused, and Manga, Cosima and I got out of the tub and
toweled one another dry, smooching and trembling and talking dirty. 
'Nadia, too,' I whispered.  'I want to see you hurt her, sister.' What I
wanted to see was Nadia snuffed.  I wanted to see little Yura seeing Nadia
snuffed.  I wanted to see Nadia seeing herself in a mirror, getting
snuffed.



   My whole body was suddenly desperate for death, Christopher.  I
envisioned this pale blonde, this exquisite creature with penile nipples
and a gymnast's musculature, my eldest sister, tearing Nadia's limb for
limb, Cosima's white-blue, lupine eyes gleaming with devastating lust,
yowling in orgasm as the mutilated girl lost her life.



   We crept naked up the spiral staircase and Manga spoke into the
microphone that opened the door, reminding Cosima that it needed to be
programmed with my voiceprint.  The twins were just then using Nadia in the
hay, fucking her mouth and anus.  They made as if to stop, fighting their
own need, but Cosima told them to go on, staring at the wriggling
eleven-year-old.



   Manga put her arm around my waist and took me to show off her slave
doll. Again the stench of the barn, the cat litter, the crying, whimpering,
tortured children and young women.  But all I felt now was need,
Christopher, and the reek of the place did nothing but arouse me.  My fear
and revulsion were gone.



   The eunuchs were sleeping in the hay, entwined.  A boy of about thirteen
was raping a boy who could not have been five yet.  Two sixteen-year-old
girls with tattoos all over their bodies were in a sixty-nine.  Most
everyone fled squealing away as we walked through the dense crowd of
stinking captives, staring at me, probably wondering what kind I would turn
out to be, whether I was like Cosima, whether their fellow inmates would
return if I took them for the night.  A few did not try to get away, either
because they were paralyzed by fear or crippled or, in a couple of cases,
crazy enough to want to be taken, either turned on or unsure if whatever
happened beyond the locked door was worse than what befell them here.



   I stared at those who appeared turned on, particularly a beauty who
resembled me, an Ashkenazy with short, blue-black hair and porcelain skin.
'You have good taste,' Manga whispered.  'When they first brought her here,
I thought she was a wife, not steak.' 'Steak?' Manga smiled.  'That's what
we call them.  Steak, pussy meat, kiddie meat.  Epiphany calls the boys hot
dogs.'



   Manga clapped her hands and shouted.  'Freeze!' She turned and kissed me
as the whines and cries subsided into sniffles and every captive froze
except one, a three-year-old.  What must have been its sister grabbed it
and held it still.  They froze like mimes, like the people who earn money
standing motionless as statues.  Manga nodded to the twins and they resumed
raping Nadia.



   'It,' Christopher.  At that time they were nothing to me but objects.  I
did not recognize anyone as human except Leopold, his friends and wives. 
And myself?  I don't know what I was, a she or an it or a that, a monster
or a godling.



   Even the sniffles fell silent.  'These have all been here for some
time,' Manga said.  'They know what's good for them.'



   Later I liked to focus, taking forever with a single girl or boy, at
most a pair, but on that first night I felt like a baby vampire in a candy
store.  The eunuchs got up and came groveling over.



   'Roll call!' It was so quiet that Manga had no need to raise her voice.
Everyone that was not in a cage or dead ran or staggered or limped or
crawled into two lines of ten each and a third partial line, and I noticed
that there were numbers stencilled on the floor.



   The eunuchs were named Mimi and Fifi.  Mimi was effeminate, Fifi rather
butch.  Manga dealt with both of them as if they were subhuman.  There was
a sudden crescendo of groans and a wet gagging sound as the twins
ejaculated into Nadia simultaneously.  A sharp crack of a whip across her
buttocks, a screech, and Nadia crawled to the third line of captives,
coughing sperm, blood and spunk and feces trickling from her anus.



   Fifi fetched a printout and Cosima joined us, her aristocratic face
distorted by desperate lewdness.  The twins brought each of us cute little
miniature cattle prods.



   Suddenly Cosima collapsed on the floor, whimpering.  'I -- I can't...  I
need...  I need it, please, I can't...' She grasped one of the twins'
cocks, the one that had been in Nadia's asshole.  They both had enormous
members, and being sixteen were almost perpetually erect.  Identical twins,
their only distinguishing feature was that Roland had a scar across his
left cheek and a tattoo that said MERDE on his lower belly, while Maurice
was flawless...  flawless in his ugliness.  Both boys -- and they were
boys, not men -- were olive-skinned, which was almost their only redeeming
feature.  Their ears were huge and reminded me of bats' ears (which I later
appreciated, when they ate me out), and their tiny gray eyes also reminded
me of flying rodents.  Their noses were small and flat, with huge nostrils,
their mouths girlish.  They were very skinny but muscular, built like
runners, with powerful lungs, and their toenails reminded me of claws. 
Their heads were shaved and they were otherwise hairless, except for pubic
hair that was lush and a sort of greenish brown.  Their cocks -- oh,
Christopher, their cocks!  They were almost as large as Manga's calves when
erect, and hung halfway down their thighs when at ease, which was very
rare. Their hands, too, were beautiful, strong and gentle.



   Leopold had found them in Marseilles.  They were barely literate and
really very nice boys.  As I said, Christopher, 'nice,' to me, meant 'nice
to me.'



   Cosima sucked Roland's shit-smeared pole, but Manga quietly asked her if
she would mind going elsewhere, whispering that she wanted to be alone with
me when we inspected the stock.  Cosima nodded sadly and tore herself away
from the stony shaft.  She was miserable, I think because she felt murder
coming on.  Flashing a dirty look at the eunuchs, Manga ushered everyone
out and the door locked automatically.



   With the captives so orderly and their overseers gone, I observed other
amenities -- a freight elevator, which led to the garden in back of the
house (Manga explained that there was a second garage in the basement of
the house, which was how the girls were delivered, usually in broad
daylight.  I later learned some of the ways in which Leopold avoided the
authorities; for example, he owned a small petting zoo in a Paris suburb,
and most of our neighbors thought we kept some animals here, an impression
he intensified by delivering a goat or two now and then, which ended up in
Cleo's rituals, or chimps...  but you'll have to wait for the chimps,
Christopher!) -- there was an area floored with stainless steel, which was
a shower space, and two troughs, one containing the gruel and brewer's
yeast and vitamin mixture which most of the captives were fed, the other
water.  There were also several futons covered with white silk, and Manga
pointed out that these were chosen as background for virgin blood.



   Manga showed me the printout.  There were forty-nine captives on my
first night there.  Manga grinned and touched my drooling fuckhole.  'Cleo
would say the number is auspicious,' she whispered.  'Forty-nine is a
number of Venus; Leopold has seven wives and sleeps with each for seven
nights.'



   Three were dead, the two Yura had spotted and masturbated to and a third
we found in the bunks had managed to suffocate herself with a plastic bag.
Manga drew a faint line through her name so that Fifi could update the
records.  The virgins who were considered so alluring that the twins did
not trust themselves to avoid deflowering them were locked in cages --
there were eight of these, and I was pleased to note that Yura had been
caged.  'Mine is, too,' Manga whispered, smiling.  'I've had her for almost
a year, but I still haven't popped her cherry.  Do you want to do inventory
one by one, or in the lines?  It's more fun in the lines, I think, 'cause
the ones around the one you're inspecting get all scared.'



   'Let's save the cages for last,' I whispered, 'and let's do the lines.'
I knew how Cosima felt when she fell to the floor begging to be fucked. 
Manga took my hand and we headed for the assembled merchandise.



   There were thirty-eight items arrayed on the stencilled numbers: nine
boys and twenty-nine females.  The boys ranged in age from four to fifteen,
and three of them had been anally used before, two in our house and one
before he was captured -- the four-year-old, a blond kid from Gothenburg
named Sven.  Of the six with virgin behinds, one had sucked and been
sucked, one had sucked, two had been sucked and two were utterly pure.



   'Leopold specializes in girls,' Manga explained, 'and with so few boys
around, they tend to get used.' The boys were all in the first row.  Manga
caressed my bottom and whispered in my ear.  'You like virgins, don't you?'
I nodded, a trickle of cunny milk running down my left thigh.  I was not
yet ten, Christopher, but I was already wetter than any girl I have ever
met, and I've met lots.



   Manga led me to the perfectly virgin boys: the fifteen-year-old,
Michael, a gorgeous black from Indiana (a good portion of the captives were
always American; children seem to disappear a lot in the United States),
and a twelve-year-old Walloon from Brussels named Herve (the Low Countries
were also fertile territories for Leopold, because he had a large
organization there).  Michael glared at us without fear, making me a little
afraid.



   I figured that few if any of the prisoners could understand Russian, so
I asked Manga if there was ever any trouble.  She said that there had been,
but very rarely: there was an alarm system that was rigged to react to
certain sounds -- though this was imperfect; it went off during sadistic
acts, obviously -- and pointed out little fluorescent green nodules
throughout the room, which would also trip an alarm and bring swift
reaction from either Akhmed or Armand, one of whom was always in the house.
There were no weapons in the room unless we brought them in (with the
exception of the electric prods and some whips and such, but those cannot
really be called weapons).  There were, of course, incidents -- a weapon
fashioned from part of the bunks, a board pried loose with a nail in it,
that kind of thing, and sometimes accidents.  The plastic bag had been such
an accident: the suicide, a very rare type of redhead, was extremely
expensive.  (Manga said this last in French; she may not have been very
much of a sadist physically, unless inspired, but she loved to humiliate
the steak and hot dogs, constantly letting most of them know that they were
objects for sale.)



   I would come to learn which types were truly rare and dear.  Manga said
that there had never been an escape, and never would be.  As Akhmed catered
to our needs and beautified us, Armand was the master of armaments and
technical director.  She believed that the hidden cameras which surveyed
every nook and cranny of the house were monitored by someone else in the
house, someone in the basement, someone we never saw.



   That's when I asked whether we were allowed to go out of the house
unsupervised.  'Of course!' She promised to show me Paris, and we turned
our attention back to the two innocent boys.



   Manga began by caressing Michael's muscular chocolate-colored body while
I went straight for Herve's penis.  I became addicted to abusing virgins
from the very first touch, feeling his slender, uncircumcised pee-pee
harden in my hand, watching him flush and squirm and look at me with
resentment and fear, tears welling up in his blue-gray eyes.  Herve was a
pretty little sissy, with long lashes and a delicate face, dimpled buttocks
and eggshell skin.  He stood with his toes turned slightly inward, and his
feet were very soft, as if he had never walked without shoes.  He was
trying hard not to cry, his hands against his skinny, silken thighs, the
feminine fingers spread.  His stiffy was a little over four inches.



   I kissed his lips.  He didn't return my kiss, keeping his mouth closed.
'Are you a boy or a girl,' I whispered in his ear, 'garcon ou fille?'
'Garcon,' he said, his voice choked with restrained tears.  'Does it feel
good, what I'm doing?' 'I...  I don't know,' he said.  'I'm scared.' I
appreciated his honesty.  'I'm doing it because you're pretty,' I
whispered. 'I don't want to hurt you.  I'm a woman, cheri.  This is what
women are for.' I stroked his hard-on gently.  'Don't you ever touch it?'
He didn't answer.  I stared into his eyes.  'Can you make babies yet?  Does
stuff come out?'



   Herve looked at me like a little faggot getting glared at by a
homophobe. 'Salope,' he said.  'You dirty slut.  Whore.'



   For an instant I felt as if he had socked me in the stomach, then a
nauseous rage gripped me, then a lucid, venomous calm.  I would kill him. I
would make him my father and kill him.  I grinned at him.  'Don't you like
sluts, you queer?g' He was very afraid now, his face like paste.  He made
no answer.



   Manga was faring little better with her athletic, hateful virgin. 
Michael looked as if he wanted to strangle her as she played with his dick,
which would not get hard.  She asked him if he jerked off, and Michael said
that it was sin, through gritted teeth.  Manga squawked and looked at me,
saw that I wanted to avenge what Herve had spat out.



   She took me aside and we walked a little ways away to hunker down.  She
pointed out another effeminate boy two boys down from her young black and
called him over.  He came to us shyly, but did not seem afraid.  He had a
boner.



   'This is Nigel,' Manga said, running a finger teasingly along his
five-inch, circumcised erection.  'Nigel is from England, from...  London?'
The boy nodded.  'Highgate,' he said proudly, staring at me with a kind of
awe.



   'Nigel is thirteen,' Manga whispered.  'And Nigel has been watching you,
Ariadne, watching you touch that nasty boy, wishing he could play with
himself.' She fingered the pre-cum leaking from his stiffy.  He was
rosy-cheeked with flaxen hair, a girlish body with a slightly pink tinge,
and the furtive look of a little pervert who is teased a lot.  He seemed
very aroused, but looked like he wanted to crawl off somewhere and touch
himself.



   The three of us tongue-kissed, our hands on each other's butts.  It
excited me that everyone was watching us, watching me caress this pretty
boy, seeing what a naughty, dirty little girl I was.  Manga stroked Nigel's
taut stomach.  'Nigel wants to put his pee-pee in your mouth, Ariadne.  No
one's ever let him do that.  Have they, Nigel?'



   'N-no,' he said.  He was trembling, not with fear, with desire.  Manga's
bony fingers went lower, stroking his pubic hair but not touching his
penis. He gazed at me longingly.  It was nice to be wanted like this, by
someone who couldn't rape me.



   'Monsieur de Berry put his cock in your mouth, didn't he?' Manga stroked
his hip and lower belly.  'Did you like that, Nigel?'



   'Y-yes,' he stammered.  'Yes...  yes.' It was as though the yesses were
for me.  I stared back into his greenish gray eyes and ran a fingertip
around his nipple.  'Do you like me, Nigel?' 'Yes!' 'I like you, too,' I
whispered.  His penis was throbbing.  'Is that what you want to do?  Put
your pee-pee in my mouth?' He twitched and gasped and suddenly he was
coming, without being touched, thick, fragrant little-boy fuck spurting to
the floor, some landing on Manga's scrawny thigh.



   I kissed him and wrapped my fingers around his shaft.  'Was that for
me?' He nodded.  I slid my tongue into his mouth and felt his flicker.  He
was almost swooning.  'Do you like me?  Do you like me a lot?' 'Yes... 
yes! Very much!'



   'That boy Herve said a terrible thing to me,' I whispered.  'I want you
to rape him, Nigel.  Do you know what rape is?' 'Yes,' he said,
uncertainly. 'I want him to lick your come off the floor while you stick
your pee-pee in his butt.  If you do that, I'll love you.' He stared at me,
a little scared.  'Yes,' he finally said.



   Manga gestured to Herve.  He came forward unsteadily.  There was no
defiance in him now.  He hadn't heard what I said, but he knew that
something terrible was going to happen to him.  I knew that I was ruining
his life -- that he would never be able to have sex without thinking about
what I had done to him.  I looked at his beautiful body, and I didn't want
it anymore.  I didn't want it anymore, and I realized that for the first
time I did not want to be humiliated.  I would do it to others now.  When
my father raped me I did not know what I wanted -- I wanted him to love me,
and I wanted the pain to stop, and I could not imagine that the pain was
coming from him, because I knew that he loved me, and if the pain could not
stop, if he could not stop hurting me, wherever it was coming from, I
wanted him to hurt me, to hurt me so much that it didn't hurt anymore, and
love me, love me, love me...  I was a week shy of my tenth birthday,
Christopher, and suddenly I saw a great, sick tree, bare branches covered
with lichen, slugs, a dead tree, a tree that only because of the vermin in
it, a tree growing downward like the reflection of the tree in a pool of
stagnant, brackish water, and each grotesque branch was a molested
creature, leading to another and a crotch in the branch and two molested
branches, and another fork and a Y and more victims and twigs and little
children until the entire diseased structure became so fine as to be
invisible, starring off into a sort of negative infinity.  It did not occur
to me to lob myself off, that came later, much later.  Nine years, eleven
months and three hundred and fifty-eight days old, I only wanted my sap to
flow downward into the bough, towards the water.  No, the tree was not
dead, it was alive, but I was not in it, I was in its mirror image on the
surface of this fetid water.



   I stared into Herve's eyes.  He averted his.  'Get down on the floor,' I
said.  I think my voice was a puncture wound in the wall of a Frigidaire.
Freon gas.  The pretty boy slowly dropped to his knees.  'Lick that up,
salope,' I said.  'Stinking slut.'



   He started blubbering and I could see that he was struggling with
whether to refuse or not, but my voice was absolute, and he could sense
that there were worse things than sex, or worse sex, if you can call
lapping semen off of a grimy floor when you are a barely pubescent sex.  I
know he knew that if he disobeyed me, he was done for.



   I could feel the hatred from almost all of the other captives, a few of
them barely capable of standing up.  I could feel their hatred coursing
through the sinister tree, most of it finding me, some finding Herve,
Nigel, anyone, anything.  Sobbing, pretty little Herve cleaned the seed
that was meant for my beauty up off the filthy floor.



   I put my arm around Nigel, and he tentatively put his around me.  Then I
called out.  'Does anyone need to pee?' To my surprise, the stunningly
beautiful Jewess with hair like lampblack and porcelain skin let out an
involuntary orgasmic moan.



   Bald little Manga went and extracted her from the line.  What had been
beautiful was now sublime, Christopher -- this creature glowed with
perversity and orgasmic hunger.  And I flew again, Christopher, I was
flying, circling, swooping, diving, a bat out of Hell, watching what I
loved -- the incoherently desirous -- destroy what I hated -- the rest of
the world.  The _rest_ of the world, Christopher, the slumber.







   V I R G I N I T Y (LIVES OF THE GREAT WAIFS)



   X



   She was a magnificent creature.  Her huge dark eyes were like slate
quarries filled with acid rain, her corrupt mouth the color of rose quartz.
She was fifteen, but by then I had already stopped seeing myself as a child
and limiting my sexual pastures.  Sarah Leucht was bulimic, and utterly
obsessed with her cunt, her bodily fluids, her anguish.  She had the kind
of skin that looked like it would bruise if you caressed her, and indeed
she was bruised, with greenish yellow and purple marks around her skinny
ankles and wrists, from when she was tied up.  She loved to be tied up,
tormented.  Everything was a form of masturbation to her.  Her breasts were
globes the size of half grapefruits, very firm and perfectly round.



   What made Sarah terribly attractive was her shame.  If anyone looked at
her desirously -- and they did, with her fine, dancer's body and insanely
long, alabaster neck -- she squirmed with need and confusion and wetness
and shame.  She desperately needed to be desired, and just as desperately
needed to push what she lusted after away.  Touch made her sick and slimy
and wanton, it sent her into agony even as she undulated and offered
herself like a shameless hetaira.  Her secretions were acrid and copious,
and what she was most ashamed of was that her anus was easily and
unnaturally aroused.  She hated to be touched there.  She did not even
touch herself there unless...  unless she couldn't not touch it.  She
craved adoration and abuse, and ever since kindergarten, she had made love
to herself, violently, languidly, interminably, until her cunt was raw,
dreaming about things so awful that she could not bear to think about them
when she wasn't masturbating, and even when she diddling her desperate
hole, they made her semi-conscious, they lost her in a foggy twilight of
barbed wire and whips and razor blades and prostitution and every
conceivable abuse -- but she yearned to be touched a certain way, the way
she touched herself, sucking on cucumbers and pretending that they were
homeless people forcing her to give head.



   Sarah saw herself as a sick freak, but at the same time felt deep down
that she was the only thing in the world, and that all of these things that
did not exist wanted her, needed her, insisted on her.  She would tell her
mother that she was ill and lie in bed all day with her cucumbers or kosher
sausage, whimpering and talking to herself and crying and coming, coming,
coming, until she, too, did not exist, until the empty world was a blurry
pattern of genitals and instruments of torture.  Then she would sleep and
have disturbing nightmares about being molested and molesting others,
waking soaked in sweat, in despair, and soon, inevitably, masturbate
herself again.



   Sarah pretended that no one could see that she was addicted to her own
body, that no one noticed how she reeked of perversion and depravity, and
tried to mask it by acting like a refined, scholarly, introspective young
woman.  But part of her, the part that wanted to stop, to go cold turkey,
to keep her fingers away from her hole, to suicide -- that part of her was
deathly afraid that she was naked, transparent, available, and men or women
would look at her and she would squirm with shame and self-hatred and ooze,
liquid, fluid, mucus, revealing her long white legs or bending down so that
they could see down her dress, glimpse her aching breasts, down, down,
down, take me, fuck my virgin cunt, my...  ass, oh God yes, my ass, please,
fuck me in the ass, please, and Sarah would flee frantically if anyone
tried to touch her and end up on the toilet making herself puke so that she
would be beautiful so that all of those nasty, non-existent things would
masturbate her and make her disappear, and then she would gorge on
camembert and brie and blue cheese and cheesecake and steak and swallow
laxatives and run to the bathroom and feel and smell and hear the dirt, the
filth, the pollution inside her squirt into the toilet and shudder and get
cramps and play with her hole, five fathoms below the surface of the world,
staring at the pitch black liquiescent waste floating in the cold water and
touch her clit and finger her lovely breasts and come and come and vanish
into the twilight and emerge from the bathroom dazed, ruined, snuffed,
traipsing through the pubic library and looking down on the terrible
patrons who could see that she was trembling with arousal and distance,
distance between her uterus and her self, her soul and her womb, a distance
to be filled only by her soft, slender, sensuous fingers...  and the whole
cycle would begin again, maddeningly, the uncontrollable urge to make love
to herself, to slip beneath the silken veil of shame and burrow into the
ravenous abyss between her legs, dreaming of death and need.



   When Sarah was fourteen, she went to the Skokie Public Library almost
every evening, a fine, vast, well-endowed institution in a pleasant and
prosperous, primarily Jewish suburb of Chicago, with leather Breuer chairs
and and green marble tables and an atrium containing a reflecting pool with
a modern sculpture.  There, she could polish the veneer of Sarah the
Intellectual Waif, the sophisticated, mature, subtly alluring young woman
who seemed to be drowning in a mirror even as she concentrated on a book
about urban blight or Chinese foot binding.  She was a bud on the verge of
opening, her breasts not yet the halves of a grapefruit, a sliced tangerine
perhaps, her alabaster, masturbatory hands moving nervously from her taut,
cramped stomach to her soft white throat to her lap, her dewy fingers
fiddling with the hem of her dark, elegant, revealing dresses, shuddering
now and then from the abuse she inflicted on her digestion with emetics and
laxatives, fingering the hips that this abuse had produced, shifting her
shapely buttocks in the thick leather of the chair.  Now and then she would
slip off a shoe and touch her statuesque, ivory foot, her mouth watering,
fingering the soft, moist, pallid appendage, clenching and unclenching the
tight, damp, musky sphincter of her perverted, adult rectum, a thin film of
sweat on her high forehead, her shoulder-length, dark brown hair smelling
of roses and old books and also the oil paints she used to paint secret
portraits of her erotic expressions.  She had taken to anointing her shaven
armpits with essential oils, sandalwood and vanilla and patchouli, to hide
her own scent, which was virgin and harlot and dancer and invalid, and
because it was impossible to know her own aroma, Sarah's needy, bulimic
body was enveloped in a cloud of perfume.



   She _was_ a scholar, well-read despite the fact that she spent half the
night fondling her trembling, clammy body and went to the washroom so often
that the clerk at the circulation desk got the key out whenever she saw
Sarah approach, sneering.  Sarah pretended that the clerk must have thought
she had an illness, but once in the toilet stall would go into a panicky
fear that the clerk knew what her illness was, and then Sarah would lose
that thought by fingering her raw, acrid gash, sniffing the putrescent
slime on her sensitive fingertips, dizzy with sin and shame, softly
stroking her erect, misshapen, scarlet clitoris, hallucinating faceless men
who castrated her and impregnated her and sodomized her spastic anus. 
moaning, she would torment her clitty and molest the tiny, sore opening of
her urethra, writhing as her stinking piss streamed into the cool, clear
water of the toilet, spraying her outstretched fingers and putting them to
her corrupt lips.  Clutching her porcelain belly and closing her eyes,
Sarah licked her dirty fingers and felt her maidenhead as the pollution
gushed from her bottom.  Squirming and gasping and squeezing her throat,
she diddled her inflamed penile clitoris until oblivion came, not release
but a dank wind whistling through the door of a tomb, another captivity,
another slimy step into a fecal pit, where naked library clerks with
Sarah's irresistible body danced in a tragic, prurient ballet, where brutal
poets with prehensile phalloi and fascinating, effeminate fascists and
brawny librarians and crippled sailors slid widdershins toward the cold
muddy center of an uninhabited planet, spearing her sexual reflections like
prehistoric fishermen.



   Shivering as this new world solidified around her like verdigris aspic,
Sarah would flush the toilet and wipe herself as if touching a corpse
infected with a picturesque disease, cover her inhuman, repulsively
beautiful nether regions with her stained, diaphanous, malodorous panties,
straighten her skimpy, costly dress and stagger from the stall.  Gazing
into the dark, abysmal eyes that stared back at her from the mirror,
infested with sin, she washed her delicate hands and fix her mask, growing
cool as the water that carried her waste into the sewer system, straining
to hide the famished depravity of her lovely face in an insolent, murky
melancholy.  She would apply more oil to the smooth skin of her underarms,
conceal the indigo circles around her eyes with Clinique, and walk
awkwardly back to the reference room or fiction section, dropping off the
key and thanking the clerk with a frozen smile that resembled a grimace.



   Forced calm, then, a book about Gabriele D'Annunzio or the Holocaust, a
novel about the color yellow, a treatise on the history of Eros, a
collection of decadent poems that revived the unbearable clamor of hormones
blowing through her psyche.  She read much about the feelings that whetted
the windswept marble of her body like sentient hurricanes: every novel she
found to contain a figure pursued through twisted grottoes of articulate
obsession, women who cursed her as a feeble projection of male desire,
Buddhists who asked herto seek the root of the lotus stalk sending its
stark blossom from fecundity through watery awareness to glassy surface,
Christians who damned her to the infernal torment she wanted she wanted she
wanted so desperately that she was already in it but all alone, zealots who
only had intercourse through a hole in the sheet, scientists who denied the
existence of her thirsty demons, fanatics who severed the centers of
pleasure that graced their daughters, psychiatrists who promised to fix her
and were themselves afflicted with terminal illness.



   Many who saw her dismissed her as an adolescent struggling out of
puberty, a creature whose beauty verged on the hideous, a maiden who needed
a smart, responsible stick stuck into her gaudy womb to turn her into a
wife and mother and regular customer at The Gap.  What a pretty, pretty
girl -- I hope that she finds a good husband when she emerges from this
traumatic phase in a girl's life.  Others, looking more closely, recoiled
from her glistening corruption and hoped that the club her suitor inserted
would deflower not only her genitals but also her mind.  For Sarah was full
of flowers, mostly poisonous, sickly blossoms that warned wild animals
away, ghostly Indian pipes that sprout from decomposing carcasses, sweet
domestic vines that continue to crawl along the collapsed walls of
abandoned houses, deadly nightshade, trillium, columbine, skunk cabbage,
succulent plants that cannot be exterminated and never flower, purple
loosestrife, frail endangered species, pale petals that only appear for a
single night in the depths of a rain forest when the invisible sky is
moonless.



   O Christopher, surely Sarah would have been in the cages, a rare,
inimitable beast, were it not for the fact that her beauty had taken a
frightening turn.  Kindled and extinguished by the gaze of many a man and
maiden, Sarah also received a few stares that nearly disarmed her.



   One August night when her fourteen-year-old body emerged from the
treasure house of knowledge, the sneering clerk locking the door behind
her, the very warm weather having allowed her to dress more scantily than
usual, her dark dress, patterned in porphyry with arabesques of cochineal
scarlet, barely concealing her braless, budding breasts and little white
bottom, her erogenous feet clad in leather sandals so that when she crossed
her legs and saw them and her long legs and slender ankles and tight
hematite anklet having to swallow her thick, astringent drool, it began to
rain.



   It was a cold rain, and she was already miserable from the climate
control in the public library.  The temperature fell eerily, and Sarah was
drenched, shivering, when she spotted a bus.  She ran to the corner, her
wet dress clinging to her gooseflesh, her hair dripping, and hailed it. 
The books she had checked out were ruined.  Once she had boarded and
extracted the fare from her little purse and slid and jingled it into the
farebox and endured the penetrating gaze of the driver, she realized that
it was the wrong bus.



   She was the sole passenger.  The 97 SKOKIE took her into the city, to
Howard Street, a place she had never been, a once questionable and violent
neighborhood that was now in transition to a kind of desolate nothingness.
Sarah Leucht was soaked to the bone and scared not out but into her wits.
She felt suddenly keen as an alert fawn in a dense forest.  She found the
courage to address the driver, who was black (she had nothing more against
blacks than she had against anyone else who traversed her misanthropic
little world; it's just that she had never really spoken to one, except to
order things, or Mr.  Anthony, the history teacher in high school), and
said that she must have the wrong bus and would pay again if she had to and
ride back with him.



   'I'm sorry, Miss,' he said, staring into the sheets of rain and the
headlights shimmering on the unknown street, 'This is my last run.' She
felt like an egg in vinegar.  'Is...  is there another bus?' He nodded, and
glanced at her in the mirror, seeing her fear.  'About a hour,' he said. 
'You be alright.'



   By the time they reached the end of the line the temperature had
fluctuated yet again, or so she thought, and it was warmer, but the rain
had intensified and gusts of wind blew off the great lake nearby.  It was
the northern terminus for many city buses, but on this night it was for
some reason practically deserted.  She stood for a while in the shelter,
then remembered that there was also a train, the Skokie Swift, which
connected at the El station above her.  Sarah went into the station and
purchased a smart card from the machine and went through the turnstyle and
climbed the steps to the platform and felt relieved.  She found a payphone
and dialed her parents' number to tell them that she was okay, but they
were still at the Hirschs' dinner party.  She hung up on the machine and
read the timetable and looked at the watch she kept in her purse because
she thought her wrist was too beautiful for it and wore a thin bracelet of
lapis lazuli and silver instead and the last of her fear dissipated.



   But the train did not come.  The storm had knocked out a transformer and
after a long time a distorted, barely comprehensible voice made an
announcement to that effect through a speaker.  Wwwaaerrrexperriensssnnn
delays-delaze-laze shhhh khrrr.  A train from Evanston pulled in and a
small crowd spilled onto the platform.  The rain was horizontal and some
people opened their umbrellas and held them against the east.  A
silver-haired man with gold-plated glasses in a Burberry trench coat (why
is he using public transportation, she thought) stared at her, at her long,
slender neck and sinuous white legs and the outline of her budding breasts,
her cold, erect nipples plainly visible through the the thin material of
her rain-soaked dress.  The man smiled and gazed into her eyes. 
Wwwaaerrrexperriensss sssss train-rain-rain delays-delaze-laze khrrr.



   Sarah tentatively twisted her lips into a faint, nervous smile, the man
came closer, studying her corrupt little mouth, and Sarah turned away. 
This was not the library.  She clutched her ruined books and felt the wet
wind against her bare thighs and realized that the gossamer of her panties
and the gauzy fabric of her skimpy dress were plastered to her perfect
little bottom.  She could feel his elderly eyes caress the curves of her
soft thighs and peek into her tight, moist crack.



   Instinctively, Sarah clenched her buttocks, reached back and tugged at
the hem of her dress, peeling the wet cloth away...  and felt her heart
enter her throat like a cucumber as it dawned on her what that must have
looked like.  She flushed and shifted her pelvis as the horsemen of panic
swept through her like intoxicated marauders.  She fled the platform and
ran down the grimy stairs, pushed through the turnstyle and saw that a 97
SKOKIE bus was pulling out of the station.  She waved her arms and ran
after it, but the light changed and the the bus wheezed and growled and
pulled away.  Tears welled up in her wild eyes.  She turned back and saw
the well-dressed man with gold-rimmed glasses and silver hair emerge from
the terminal.  Her heart was back in her chest, pounding.



   She dropped her ruined books, clutched her purse, and ran.  She ran and
stumbled along Paulina, her panicked mind remembering a bad joke (What
Chicago streets rhyme with vagina -- Paulina, Malvina, and Lunt), her
breath shallow, her drenched sandals flopping, the warm rain it was warm,
warm now, rain and sweat and...  and...



   And pee.  In her panic, she had wet herself.  She slumped against the
dark brown brick of a shabby apartment building, trying to catch her
breath, sobbing, realizing that it wasn't just urine but also arousal,
slime.  She crouched down on the broken sidewalk, the heavy rain soaking
her to the marrow, and puked.



   Only then did she realize that she had money and a credit card that her
father had given her for emergencies.  A car slowly cruised down the block
towards her and Sarah struggled to her feet, forcing herself to breathe
deeply, wiping the rain and sweat from her face with her hand.  She felt
like a bat with a broken wing in a forest full of Tasmanian devils and what
eats bats.  Does nothing eat bats?  The car pulled up to the curb and the
tinted window opened halfway.  The throbbing music flooded the street, then
faded to silence.  'Looking for something, baby?'



   She shook her head no and turned and walked back towards the station. 
She had seen taxis on Howard Street.  The car slowly followed her, the
music throbbing again, though more quietly than it had when the window came
down.  She did not look towards it and walked faster.  'Baby!'



   A police cruiser appeared in the distance, the swirl of light blue
light, sweat, the rain, the dark car putting on gas, away, Sarah, walking.
The squad car alongside her, will the window roll down?  She was suddenly
afraid of the police.  The walk back against the run nowhere, rain, and
just as she reached the station the cops pull over and the radio crackles
and Sarah wants to die, leave me alone, please...  and the man in the
trench coat approaches as the officer emerges from the car.  'There you
are!' The man's arms around her.  Why am I afraid of the police?



   It was the present tense, tense, the man is warm (you are old enough to
be my grandfather) (what are you doing, Sarah?) and wet and the rain and
the cop calls out everything okay?  Is it okay?  Are you supposed to be my
father?



   'It's fine, Officer,' the man with the gold-rimmed glasses who was
staring at her ass and has caught her, trapped her...  why am I not telling
the policeman...  the cop gets back into the squad car and she is left
there with this...  this stranger (never get into a car with a stranger,
never get into a car with a stranger, did he touch you?  How did he touch
you?  Where did he touch you?)... ... ...I'm not _normal_, Sarah thought.
Why am I asking myself if I am normal?  Why am I not running?  Why is he
not scared of the police?



   The man has his hands on her bare upper arms, holding her gently,
staring into her eyes.  There are drops of rain on his glasses.  She has
never been touched before.  Her father, her ballet teacher, friends,
mother, the doctor.  Her cousin Jamie.  They touched her.  But this man who
is touching her is touching her against her will (what are you doing,
Sarah?), touching her because he saw her nipples and her...  ass...  and...
he can see her nipples now, and his hands...  are warm...



   Sarah suddenly realized that she had vomited, that there was puke on her
lips and face and...  don't kiss me oh God don't kiss me...  I...  I... 
leave me alone, I...



   And then he let her go, and she didn't move away, and the man pulled a
handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to her.  She took it, and
wiped her mouth and chin.  Her hands were shaking.  The man smiled... 
warmly.  She expected him to leer at her.



   'Are you really okay?' What kind of question was that?  No, I'm not
okay, I'm alone...  and...  She nodded, and wondered whether to and him
back a handkerchief that had her vomit on it, and decided against it. 
'Thank you,' she said, trying to sound...  mature.



   'My name is Mr.  Carlson,' he said, 'John Carlson.' He extended a warm
hand, a hand that had touched her...  like that, in a way that...  made
her...  dirty.  'Sarah Leucht,' she said, feeling as if her voice came
through a miserable flute at the bottom of a well, and shook hands with
him. It had stopped raining.  She wanted to cover her breasts, to hide the
nipples she knew were obviously hard, from the cold, not from her
arousal... arousal.  She wondered if he knew that she was...  sick, that
her slit was...  wet, and then she remembered that she had peed herself,
too, and she felt like crawling into a...  hole.  Had he waited for her? 
He must have known that she was...  abnormal.



   'I was just going to catch a cab,' he said.  His had a deep, cultured
voice.  Perhaps she was wrong, maybe she had imagined everything, maybe he
had wanted to...  help her, and then he had decided to take a taxi and she
thought that he was following her, and then the thing happened with the --
were they drug dealers?  And she had...  messed herself and the police...



   'I was just going to catch a cab.  Would you like a ride somewhere?' But
if she had imagined it, why did he make the police go away, and hadn't he
touched her, in a way that...  wasn't...  right?



   'I -- I have to go to...  Skokie,' she said.  Suddenly she was _afraid_
that she had imagined it, that he wasn't going to...  going to...



   Sarah began to cry.  Mr.  Carlson put his arms around her again and
stroked her wet hair.  What are you doing, Sarah?  She saw her books out of
the corner of her eye, in a puddle.  He ran his strong fingers through her
hair and gently stroked her back and she started to stop crying and she
felt his hand...  there...  his hand on her left buttock for a moment and
he was whispering in her ear.  'Would you like to visit with me a little...
talk?'



   He was touching her spine and her...  tailbone, and she closed her eyes
and again her butt, more firmly, and suddenly she felt his lips on her
mouth and hers came open automatically and his fingers reached the hem of
her dress and his tongue was in her mouth and his middle finger...  she
gave a weird, muffled moan and pee trickled down her leg and the man's
finger was touching her crack through her panties and she was kissing him
and she felt the bulge of his erection even through the coat, through her
soaked dress and she thought, I should...  scream, I should, what am I, and
she clenched her buttocks and...  came, and then she thought nothing at
all, she was flying, downward, with her broken wing, ever downward, dark,
the urine, down her leg, and he released her mouth and his hand was on her
upper arm again.



   He was looking at her like...  like a sicko, she thought, and suddenly
it was all so ugly, she felt like a...  whore, and he was something awful,
an old man who was paralyzing her like a spider, and Mr.  Carlson raised
his arm as a Yellow Cab stopped at the light and the taxi pulled into the
bus depot, where it wasn't supposed to drive and Sarah wanted to escape
again, like before, only it was worse now, because she wanted to escape
backwards in time and escape also from herself.



   She pulled her arm away from him and he literally shoved her into the
cab and when he started to get in she said 'Help...  me...' and Mr. 
Carlson's face was transformed into the face of a monster as the cabbie
turned around and the old man ran towards the terminus.



   'I call police?' The glistening eyes of the driver, he was Indian or
Pakistani, the slight smell of spices and it was over.  'No,' she said,
sniffling, and pulled the door closed.  'Take me home.'



   XI



   Fate is stranger than fiction.  As it happened, Sarah was met by another
whirling and authoritative blue light when she returned to the ranch house,
her fine, wildly disoriented brain and beautiful body aching for solitude.
Mr.  and Mrs.  Leucht, driving home from the Hirsches, Abe a little tipsy,
had been struck by the very first train to resume service on the line, the
train in which Sarah would have found herself had she not been ogled by Mr.
Carlson.  Their aging Mercedes convertible had been turned into modern art
and their distant, adequate, individual lives ended.



   So Sarah was taken in by her Uncle Harry in White Plains, New York.  For
almost two weeks she was alone only at night or in the bathroom as her
adolescent being was dragged through funeral and public sorrow, government
agency and lawyer's office.  In bed in the dark, she was dragged through
the purlieu of what had been her privately choreographed, perfect,
perverted world.  She literally gasped for the perfumed air of her lost
solitude when she was by herself.



   In bed, at night, Uncle Harry's snoring penetrating the blond maple door
of a room that would soon no longer be hers in a house that was saturated
with her, Sarah tried to return to the descending steps where naked
chimeras danced and seduced her, but the face of her future and the
monstrous centaur that had been Mr.  Carlson impeded her, and the days
being forced through the rituals of bereavement and relocation had
scattered the foci of her desire.  She touched herself as a medic attends
to a wounded enemy soldier.



   She couldn't bear to think about what she had done with the old man. 
Despite the feminists she had read, to her it was entirely her fault -- she
had dressed like a...  whore, she whispered, softly, her voice seething
with self-hatred -- _whore_ -- and her hard clitty had rubbed against her
rain-soaked, urine-stained panties and she had let a deviate run his finger
along her crack and...  come, she had come knowing that she was nothing to
him, Sarah, the lovely, sexy, brilliant scholar, had been brought to orgasm
like a piece of meat.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  His filthy finger had
touched her...  there, and he had wanted to put his...  thing...  in... 
there...



   And Sarah's slender, damp little finger slid to her tight, inexplicably
moist bottom hole without an intervening wad of toilet paper for the first
time since she was a baby.  Sucking her thumb and shuddering with arousal
and revulsion, Sarah wet her pinkie in her...  _fuckhole_ and lifted her
pale, shivering legs and touched the tip of her fingertip to her trembling,
tiny anus...  and...



   'Please!  Oh...  God...' Moaning, she moistened her middle finger and
began to...  'Fuck...  oh, fuck...  yes...  ohhhh...'



   The orgasm caused what was left of the missing Sarah to congeal again,
the abyss gaped and the crippled sailors sodomized and...



   Uncle Harry opened the lockless door, his face transfigured by disgust
and blue-lit authority, his eyes blazing with reprimand, his...  Sarah
froze as she had when Mr.  Carlson had touched her...  like...  that... 
And there was not an iota of desire in the mien of Uncle Harry, nothing...
nothing, nothing, nothing, she whispered voicelessly, slowly pulliing the
sheet over her...  _despicable, whorish body_ (how can he not desire me?)
and in a very few seconds he was twisting her harm and his big, brutal hand
was slapping her in the face and urine stained the bed, her bed, the bed
where Sarah Leucht had found her body, discovered her...



   'Get your clothes on,' Harry growled.  'Get your clothes on right now!'
Sobbing, Sarah crawled naked from the bed and dressed herself in a pair of
silk pajamas and Uncle Harry's voice was far worse than Mr.  Carlson's
fingers, far, far, worse.



   'Do you think I want a...  a whore living in my house?' (_Whore.  Whore.
Whore._) 'Did Abe know about this?' (Did my brother know that his daughter
was a _whore_.) 'You listen to me young lady, if I ever, ever catch you
doing _anything_ like this in _my_ house you are going to fucking reform
school.  Do you understand?'



   Sarah, cunt milk and spit and feces still glistening on her fingers,
nodded, her body a pinata, a hole covered with papier mache.  'Yes,' she
said very quietly as her tears ran dry.  Harry turned and left the room. 
'And from now on, your door stays open.'



   The next day, the plane to JFK, the limo to White Plains, not a word
between them.  And then the revelation: he was going to make her share a
room with his own daughter, her Cousin Jamie.  Not because there weren't
plenty of rooms for her -- he was rich, the house was huge -- but because
he _knew_ that she was a _whore_ and _his_ daughter, Jamie, sixteen, Honor
Student, President of the French Club, second place winner of the Junior
Artists' Competition in her division, second violin in the school symphony,
ugly, mean, goody-goody spoiled brat, was to supervise The Whore.



   A cook came at three to prepare dinner, for Uncle Harry's wife Sadie was
long gone, for some obscure reason taking the son and leaving this Jamie.
Kosher Mexican.  Would you pass the salsa, please.  Yes, dear, how was your
music lesson, Jamie?



   Sarah sat at the bottom of her pit, cleared of crippled sailors and
well-hung acrobats, staring up at her new family.  Uncle Harry glared at
his niece with the kind of hatred he usually reserved for Jehovah's
Witnesses and street musicians.  He looked at Jamie, then at her.  Then he
said it.



   "You wash your hands before coming to the dinner table, young lady.  Who
knows where they've been." Jamie giggled.



   A box cutter carefully cleft the pinata that was Sarah.  Strings of
minuses fell into the abyss like silver rain, piercing the papier mache of
her flesh, subtracting everything from nothing.  'Ew,' Jamie said.



   Sarah looked away, got up, and went to the bathroom, moving like a cross
between a ghost and a girl with a chronic illness, an allergy to herself,
locking the door and weeping in front of the mirror.  Her sobs always
brought tears to her slit, too, and chewing on a dark blue face towel to
silence her tormented moans, Sarah struggled toward the only oblivion she
knew, the dirty hole between her legs, the clitoris like a cat's penis, the
erasers that tipped her suberb white breasts.  Whimpering into the rag,
images of herself as a crucified slut drifting through the tenebrous fog of
her brain, she touched again her...  her most secret place, a phantom said,
and Sarah took a toothbrush, knocking the other toothbrushes from the glass
shelf, dipped it in Vaseline, squatted down and slowly slid the handle of
the light blue brush into her slimy rectum, clutching her throat and
thrusting her pale, sinuous bottom against the cold white tiles of the
floor, crippled sailors clutching their forked phalloi throughout the
Abyss, droplets of bitter khuos drizzling from her kteis and spattering the
floor, her engorged clitty between her thumb and forefinger, waves of
forbidden, degrading pleasure shooting through her intestines, her hips and
lower belly as cold as ice, gargoyles dripping celestial sperm from their
gray stone beaks.



   And Uncle Harry was jiggling the doorknob.  Oh, Christopher!  The very
body of Sarah Leucht is educational material, even at a remove, even
swathed in my tortured, torrid, purple prose.  She had constructed such a
lovely world, she had made herself pregnant with herself, and allowed to
seek others like her, to find her own level like water, she would have
leapt with astonishing grace into a demented ballet, into sex with wolves,
with virginal machetes.



   But a man with no world, a man who inhaled buttery air as green as the
money that passed through his insensate hands, green with undifferentiated
growth and black with analysis (analysis is loss), humid with opinions and
bleak with moralities, a man who is The Man, Christopher, homo erectus,
grim circuitry laced through his android head, hammerhead, had to beat some
sense into Sarah's head, dollars and cents, male fantasies whipped up with
artificial cream, a multiverse of antibacterial Dollys, sheep for the Good
God, an end to torment.



   O Christopher, the most beautiful act in all the world would be the
individual suicide of every pedophile who has ever touched an actual girl,
a butterfly dive into a pit writhing with lives like their own, sprinkling
their own bodies with quicklime.  Then what is the actual?  What am I?



   I am writing this, grave with cunny-milk and derogatory emotions,
certain of actuality.  Are you hard, Christopher?  Were you, before I began
to preach?  I love cockroaches, love-cockroaches, little girls poised on
their exoskeletal backs, their dainty legs wiggling.  Diesel trains
piercing the tropical night, legless stevedores stoking the furnaces of
Arabic wrath, tiny feet with curled toes flying like gulls while virgins
are encunted.



   Is it a trope?  Did my trope give you a boner?  I know you, Christopher.
You are an elevator operator at the sliding doors of Purgatory -- which way
shall you go?  Do you want to push the up arrow or the down arrow?  Is the
kiddie whore in your prostate having a good time?



   Do you know what I am, Christopher?  I am a fabulous whore who is giving
you a fable that makes the slender date palm sprouting from your groin sway
in the nocturnal wind.  Take your letter opener and slit your perineum, O
Christopher.



   Pope Innocent by Velasquez, Pope Innocent by Bacon.  What is this
creature?  Shanks of shit hang in the walk-in meatlocker.  I am an old
queen whose favorite bar is the watering hole of John Wayne Gacy.  I used
to go to the grill next door, it was open all night, they served three eggs
instead of two with the special, double yolk eggs, too, with hot sauce, the
kind where a comic devil carries a cartoon pitchfork with which to spear
other animated folk.  A girl is afloat at the Macy's parade, Donald Duck is
devoid of genitals.



   Have you ever peered into your own anus?  Inserted a can of Raid?



   The image of a girl was recently stabbed by the image of a man.  The
Taleban knows what is best for him -- the TV flies out the window, the
music repeats the Glory of God, little Sarah examines the slimy entrance to
Dis, ringed by mezzanines and intermezzos.



   If you prohibit.  If you prohibit, Christopher.  In the convex miror,
your aqueous humor.  The nice thing is that you can sleep.  It is on
special at K-Mart, a thousand and one sequential nights of somnolence,
stars hanging above the Sahara like genitals.



   If you prohibit, you inhibit.  Das Ding-an-Sich gives birth to invisible
girls, the damozels from your Cowper's Gland crawl toward the setting sun.



   The lock on the bathroom door was the kind that was easily opened, Uncle
Harry pulled out his Swiss army knife, poked the center of the doorknob,
and found his perverted niece naked from the waist down, her perfect
breasts bare above her twisted bra, her blouse open, trying to hide the
slimy toothbrush and urinating in fear and shame, her stained panties
around her bony ankle, the jar of Vaseline open on the floor.



   What saved the secrecy and sanctity of Sarah's intricate sexuality was
that there was no pretense of love or like or even attraction.  Uncle Harry
grabbed her by the hair, pushed her head down, bending her over the sink,
whipped out his evil little prick and stabbed it through her maidenhead.



   She did not even scream.  She turned to stone.  He sawed into her wet
stone cunny, her blood coating his miserable member, filled her with semen,
dropped her to the floor and ordered her out of the house.  She knew from
the moment he entered the room that he was going to make her pregnant, that
his vile seed was going to fertilize her very first egg.



   She took a few of her things, clothes mostly, sobbing now, stuffed them
into a backpack, dressed in tight black jeans and a black tank top, black
sneakers, counted her money -- $156, fingered an ATM card that gave her
access to another thousand or so, looked at the terrified Cousin Jamie, and
left the house.



   It was a tough call, to stay in the suburbs where there were quiet
libraries, empty streets, what seemed to her to be civilization, even if it
was dreary, or go to Manhattan, where she had never been.  She chose the
latter, mostly because she wanted to keep moving, and within a few hours
found herself at Port Authority, the sterilized bus terminal of Rudy
Giuliani's New York, and despite the inexorable progress of sterility,
decency, civic virtue and toilet plungers up the rectal canals of
immigrants, Sarah Leucht was spotted, followed, stared into and confronted
by Emilio Lucius Cain in less than twenty-two minutes.



   If Leopold de Berry was at heart a good man, whatever was good in Emilio
Lucius Cain lay hidden in places that no one would ever find them.  Leopold
was cruel, intellectual, fascinating, brilliant and depraved.  Emilio was
nice, smart, unaware of the twists and turns in his own uninteresting
nature, clever and devoid of depravity.  He did not like young girls.  They
were his income, and now and then he would fuck one, when the
silicone-breasted bimbos he preferred were unavailable or in the course of
his business.  No, a pubescent girl was for Emilio what a chicken is to
Tyson's, and he steeled himself for the unpalatable duty of luring Sarah
far enough into his world, so that when she was deep enough he could trap
her and rent her, possibly sell her, let her lay some golden eggs in his
safe deposit box and eventually let her be nothing but thighs or breasts
and unappetizing pain.



   What was odd about Emilio, the son of an Appalachian miner who died
hideously in front of him, from black lung, and a Sicilian Greek who
received a few slices of golden egg in her Queens bungalow when he visited,
was that he had managed to pursue the skin trade with really very few
connections.  Not a mafioso, he was simply a depressed, cunning man wit no
real desires other than a steady income and the occasional boffing of a
boisterous blonde.  He himself had a daughter -- she was thirteen, he was
forty-three, and his wife was at the bottom of the East River, having
discovered Emilio between two playmates in pink lycra and protested.  But
it had never crossed his mind that what he was doing was destroying young
women -- in fact, he had more than once considered expanding his business
to include the distribution of the deflowered Lucia, who was half his, only
the smart part of him, and half the weighted body of her strangled mother,
beautiful, sorrowful, drowned.



   Lucia had a job -- making friends with the adolescents her father fished
out of Port Authority ('Do you need a place to stay?  I have a daughter
about your age, you can crash in her room until you figure something
out.'), showing them videotapes of fun with penises, introducing them to
one.  They lived on the sixth floor of a walk-up tenement on Broadway near
125th Street, the fringe of Harlem, the edge of Columbia University's
well-patrolled neighborhood.



   His trade was lucrative.  His chickens lived and worked in a spacious
apartment not far away, on Riverside Drive -- a better building, actually,
because a bevy of young women drew less attention by appearing to be
wealthy -- who knows about the mores of the very rich, the girls must be
students of some sort, their father must be jetting about in Europe.  If
Emilio was a Stinking Bastard, life in his dormitory and brothel on
Riverside Drive was what he was not: it was interesting, sapphic,
intelligent, surprising.  And it was sheer accident that it was so; you
would have expected Emilio to reel in flotsam and empty-headed sluts, but
instead he always seemed to end up with the daughters of the upper class,
twisted, to be sure, but far from empty.  It bothered him.  He did not
understand them.  The luxurious light of intellect falls as though animate,
and it made his eyes hurt.  So it was that the thirteen-year-old Lucia
maintained his stables, and Emilio's only job was the actual trawling for
vagrants, something he did not let her do because he was afraid of her
getting picked up as one herself.





   He chose young meat because it was as yet pimpless, or most often was,
and in the hope that one day he would find associates who were stupid like
the girls he liked to fuck.  But, apparently, God was against him, and he
could tell after a few seconds in Sarah's eyes that here was another
strong-willed, perverted, bright, abused, repulsively fascinating
individual who would give him a headache.



   The young were also far more profitable, and that heartened him.  At the
moment, Riverside Drive was inhabited by three girls -- there had been four
until yesterday, when Ursula, propelled by some unseen and incomprehensible
melancholy, had managed to vault from the middle floors of the Chrysler
Building, killing herself and one George Caitlin, who was on his way to
Grand Central Station when the disturbed poultry landed on his piebald head
-- a curious fluke of fate, as Mr.  Caitlin was planning to once again
insert his penis into the snug anus of his five-year-old grandson upon
returning to the Hamptons.



   That left Andrea, another Andrea who went by Andy, Alexandra who went by
Alex, and Connie.  As soon as Sarah saw Andrea, Andy, Alex and Connie, she
knew that she would get pimped, that these were whores, that she was
destined to become a whore.  The horror of whoredom, however, was no longer
the frightening realm it had been two weeks ago; there was not much
difference to her anymore whether the marble sinews of Sarah Leucht went on
sale in the lobbies of grand hotels or wandered around in the electrifying
bustle of a metropolis where she knew no one and nothing until somebody ate
her.



   Lucia smiled at her, a smile tinged with her father's craft and her
mother's bottomless melancholy, Emilio hung around for a bit to make
certain that his new fowl would not try to make a break for it, kissed his
daughter, patted his new division's head, and departed.



   It was almost time to start work, and the girls were in uniform. 
Connie, who had never had an orgasm and was as cold as an abandoned village
on the banks of the Ob in midwinter, was clad in a silver dress that did
strange things to the hue of her dishwatery skin.  Her gray eyes were the
color of a motionless nimbo-cumulus cloud, her hair dyed black.  She was
sixteen, and her the puffy nipples that capped her conical breasts were
obvious through the shimmering fabric.  Her feet were large, and Connie's
three-inch heels drew Sarah's attention to the long toes and bright red
nails.  I am far more beautiful than she, Sarah thought.



   Alex, like her name, was something of an androgyne.  Her dark brown hair
was cut very short, as were her fingernails.  She wore leather shorts that
were so tight that Sarah found it amusing to imagine a customer unable to
remove them, a white cotton tank top, and a blue silk jacket the color of
rivers in postcards.  She was very tall, mature, and elegant for her age,
which was thirteen.  She had no breasts, and her long legs were without
curves until they reached her splendid little bottom.  Her feet _are_
beautiful, Sarah thought, and I want to feel...  to think about feeling...
those fingers...



   Andy, despite her name, was a delicate creature with auburn hair, pretty
little upturned breasts that were very visible through her almost
transparent top, childish legs and no ass.  Her baby-doll face frozen in a
seductive smile, her skin was powdered and very white, and Sarah imagined
the tiny toes of her small feet, toying with her sandals, curling as men
used her bald, prepubescent cunny.  Her skirt was scarily short and she sat
with her legs apart, her slit obvious through see-through panties.  Andy
had just turned twelve.



   Andrea was the most expensive of the assembled objects.  Eleven years
old, reeking of marijuana and sour cream potato chips, her face a flurry of
euphoria and sadness and pain, her blue eyes as hard and lewd as a seasoned
prostitute's, her blond hair in pigtails, she was dressed only in a skimpy
negligee.  Her tiny breasts were swollen with milk, and the baby her father
had made in her was due any day.  She smoked her Virginia Slims and stroked
her obscenely swollen belly with her frail little hands and stared at the
new arrival.



   Lucia was barefoot, her boyish butt in denim cut-offs that were so torn
that they left nothing to the imagination, a bright red scarf tied around
her perky titties, the nipples hard.  Lucia's hair was as black as Connie's
dyed tresses, and Lucia's reached her little-boy buttocks.  She had a
washboard stomach and an unusually large navel, almost the size of a siver
dollar, oddly low, as if it had to do with what she had between her
athletic but pasty legs, which Sarah secretly longed to see.  She gestured
Sarah in a mauve love seat and slinked in beside her.  Her employees
disported themselves on a futon spread with a paisley sheet.  Andy had put
on a Tom Waits CD, and Alex went to turn it low so that they could talk. 
Andrea got up with effort, barely able to move on her spindly legs, the
inbred baby kicking inside her, made Sarah a fuzzy navel without asking,
sipped some, and handed it to her.



   Sarah...  _liked_ them.  She had never met people like this before, and
stared at their corrupt little faces imagining what they did to one another
when the last john dropped his last dollar of the night.  She felt her
uncle's come mix with the familiar seepage of cunny-milk.  Lucia had
fingers like a boy, though softer-looking, and they rested on Sarah's
thigh. Sarah wished she wasn't wearing jeans.  They introduced themselves,
and though the feminine and childish Andy had a trace of jealousy in her
green eyes, Sarah could not remember ever having been accepted as she was
by these...  whores.  She said the word to herself in her head, attaching
it to her name, as Uncle Harry had.  Sarah the Whore.  The Whore Sarah. 
She was getting drunk with the first alcohol she had ever had except a sip
of Manischewitz or two, and imagined a classy cream-colored business card
that said 'Sarah Leucht, Whore' in raised italics, and giggled.



   They talked about the weather and where she was from for a while, about
New York, and Lucia's fingers stroked her thigh through the tight black
denim and Andrea was stroking Andy's pregnant belly and Alex was touching
Connie in a way that was...  dirty, and suddenly Lucia was fiddling with
the button of Sarah's jeans and Sarah held her breath and Lucia breathed in
her ear and said, 'Do you want to get more comfortable?'



   And she did, she did, she had wished that Lucia was touching her bare
flesh, hadn't she, but she started to cry.  Sarah Leucht, Dirty Whore.  And
Lucia, instead of backing off, unbuttoned her jeans and ever so slowly
unzipped them.



   'I don't have a cock, baby,' she whispered, 'I won't hurt you...  I want
to see you, okay?' Sarah nodded, biting her lip and trying to stop sobbing,
staring at Connie's cold, composed face as Alex's androgynous fingers crept
between Connie's thighs.  Lucia took off Sarah's sneakers and peeled her
jeans off, and Sarah's heart pounded as her panties, stained with blood and
urine semen, were revealed.



   Sarah stopped crying and stared at the floor.  Suddenly she felt Lucia's
luscious wet lips on her mouth, and Sarah automatically extended her
tongue. Lucia's strong fingers gently touched her through the shamefully
stained panties.  Alex stopped playing with Connie and came over to the
loveseat, and Lucia removed her tank top.  'Take your panties off, honey,'
Alex whispered, and, tremblingly, but without hesitation, Sarah got naked
before five...  _whores_, crouched in a mauve love seat in only a pair of
thin, cream-colored socks.  She closed her eyes as lucia fondled her
breasts and whispered to her, then felt the last clothing removed...  then
Alex's tongue on her toes.  She wanted to die of shame...  she wanted to
come, the stink of her violated hole stronger than the patchouli and
sandalwood in her sweating armpits.



   'Spread your legs, sweetie,' Lucia whispered as her fingers snaked along
Sarah's shivering belly.  'Yeah...  pretty...  very pretty...  such a dirty
girl, Sarah...  kinky little girl...  show us your pussy...  yeah...' Alex
parted her legs and Lucia stroked her slit and clitty, kissing her,
whispering in her ear.  'Is this your daddy's come, baby?  Hmmm?  I bet you
fucked your daddy, you dirty little slut.  You've got daddy-come in your
pretty little fuckhole, didn't you?' Suddenly Alex's long tongue was in her
filthy cunny and Sarah was coming, almost against her will, Lucia pinching
her nipples, Alex snorting and lapping and stabbing her tongue into the
hole.



   'Come, yeah...  yeah...  good girl...  yeah...' Alex's tongue went away
and Lucia lightly slapped Sarah's defiled place, again, then diddled her
erect, obscene clitty.  'Boy-clit...  you slut...  yeah...  come, baby...
come for me...' Her voice broke off and Sarah opened her eyes and saw that
Lucia's cut-offs were around her thighs and her fingers buried in her... 
beautiful, beautiful hole, the color of cranberry juice, the sparse black
hairs like legs torn from flies, the cunt dripping with the juice of fresh
oysters and avocado oil, her dark eyes suffused with the abject need of a
vampire beggar.  'please,' Lucia whined, and guided Sarah's fingers to the
frighteningly beautiful, distended entrance to her perverted womb.  Sarah
came when she touched it, and Alex lifted her legs and suddenly the tip of
Alex's tongue touched Sarah's poophole, still glistening with Vaseline.



   'No!  No!!!  Nooooo!!!' Sarah jerked away just as Lucia came, protecting
the secret sanctum of her aroused, spastic anus, the place that was only
for crippled sailors in the twilight, the last private part of her body. 
Alex stroked Sarah's buttocks, Lucia balanced on the edge of the love seat,
and, without warning, directed a stream of yellow urine at Sarah's face. 
Sarah cried out and struggled to get away, only to be stunned by Alex, who
dove between Lucia's trembling legs and...  drank it, as if it was a rare
nectar, ecstatically, swallowing, gulping, moaning, and lying back to
remove her tight leather shorts as the trickle ended.



   'Please...  Sarah...  please,' Alex begged, lifting her white cotton
tank top and exposing her titless chest with hard, large, maroon nipples.
'Please...  Sarah...' Sarah looked over to the futon, shy of her nakedness,
and saw that Andy was sucking Andrea's milky little titties while Connie
fingered the pregnant eleven-year-old's butthole.  Lucia stripped and leapt
onto the futon, tearing off Andy's sheer panties and licking her
kiddie-cunt.



   That left Alex alone and desperate.  'Sarah...  oh, please...  I beg
you...' Whimpering with confusion and need and fear and degradation and
shame, oh, more shame than she had ever felt, Sarah helped Alex out of her
shorts and removed her tank top and the thirteen-year-old pulled her on top
of her and kneaded Sarah's buttocks and they kissed and Sarah felt Alex's
soft, long fingers fluttering at her sweaty crack and suddenly a fingertip
against her secret place again and it was too late, Sarah moaned and spread
her legs and the finger was moist and cool and suddenly inside her _there_,
at the very root of her being, and Sarah came and came and came as the
finger wormed its way into the tight passage and almost passed out.



   'Sarah...  lick me...  please...' But Sarah did not need to be told
anything and sucked Alex's nipples and ran her tongue into her navel and
crouched down on the floor and suddenly was lapping and slurping at Alex's
shaven pubis, tonguing her fishy, honeyed, drooling hole and stabbing her
tongue inside and pressing it to her clitty and Alex came and a strangely
bittersweet liquor splurted from her cunny and Alex raised her legs and
pushed Sarah gently...  down...



   'My butt...  please...' and Sarah _did_ she licked the musky hole and...
loved it, and Alex held her lovely cheeks apart exposing the wet pink
opening and Sarah slid her tongue inside and then a finger and sucked
Alex's clit and moved the finger in and out and in and out and Alex came
and came and came and grabbed Sarah's wrist and held the finger inside her
and shook and...



   Was suddenly peeing, her clear, acrid stream like a fountain in the
Abyss that Sarah had dreamt of and Sarah drank, she sipped the urine,
swallowing, thirsty, thirsty for...  'Sarah...  I have to...  Sarah...' and
Sarah withdrew her finger and clamped her mouth to Alex's anus as a thick
dark flow of wet shit spewed from her poophole and Sarah choked and drank
and gagged and cried and frantically rubbed herself and Sarah was in love.



   Alex pulled the slightly older, inexperienced girl on top of her and
their tongues met and Alex's finger slid again into Sarah's bunghole and
Sarah knew that she wanted her...  waste, her shit and Sarah gasped and
crawled and squatted over the beautifully androgynous girl's mouth and
sprayed pee and screamed in delight as she was lapped at, as a tongue found
her, there, _there_.  'Yes...  ohhhh...  yes...  my...  asshole!  Yes!' She
kneaded her tight tummy and gurgled and closed her eyes and farted feces
into Alex's pretty mouth, grunting, and was on the very verge of blackout
when a beep-beep-beep made her jump.



   Lucia extracted herself from the tangle of awesomely beautiful bodies on
the futon and answered the phone.  Sarah veered, looked around her, and
sank again into abject shame as reality caught her again in its grizzly
arms, falling like the blade of a guillotine into an unidentifiable hunk of
kiddie-meat.



   Alex embraced her and stroked her hair.  Stinking fecal matter coated
their mouths and chins and throats and dissimilar chests.  Sarah began to
cry.  'It's okay, baby,' Alex whispered, 'I'll take care of you, I
promise.'



   But Sarah was already away.  The Abyss was uninhabited, abandoned, cold
and dark.  She ceased to weep and stared at Connie, who was without a trace
of arousal as always, her eyes glistening as though she had ingested a
drug. For Connie, unable to experience the pleasure of others, fed off of
the agonizing orgasms of her friends, just as Lucia, raped by one of the
customers a year ago, when she had first begun to run the place, had
hardened against the invasions of men and was thrown again and again into
sapphic orgia, not out of love but because it was the only way for her to
remember herself, remember the pain she inflicted on herself while Emilio
Lucius Cain boffed his bimbos and killed her mother and destroyed every
sensual thing in her sight except the slaves.



   Lucia hung up the phone and returned from the persona she used when
speaking seductively to the men that used them, and all of the girls went
into a flurry of activity except Andrea, who could not, and lay stroking
her swollen belly.



   They cleaned and washed and dressed and preened to some Moroccan dance
mix and in a bare twenty minutes the room was as it had been when Sarah had
been brought to it.  Sarah Leucht, Whore, in Times italics, eight point.



   'Who was it?' 'Gordon.' Andrea began to sob.  'I can't...  Lucia...  I
can't...' Lucia stroked Andrea's belly, again sheathed in the negligee of
the expectant mother.



   Gordon Walsh was one of the regulars, and had become very regular indeed
over the past several weeks, devoted to fucking an eleven-year-old pregnant
child in the ass.  A balding, fiftyish man with a large family in Yonkers,
he was very rough -- as far as they went, really, and once Lucia had
threatened him with a can of mace when he had put out his cigarette on
little Andrea's inner thigh.



   Emilio was not _entirely_ without connections, of course.  Many of the
customers were found through people he knew at various adult bookstores in
the city and what had been the Combat Zone in Boston, guiding the customers
they illicitly supplied with kiddie porn to Emilio if it looked like they
had enough money.  For money it was -- after all, the business was fraught
with peril, and Emilio suffered nightmares about being raped at Rikers or
Sing-Sing -- seven hundred and fifty per hour per girl, an additional two
hundred fifty for an additional girl, an extra hundred for anal or not
using a condom, and other rates for shows between the whores or golden
showers.  He did not allow cameras because he was afraid that the pictures
would fall into the wrong -- or right, depending on how you looked at it --
hands, and mild sadomasochism was two grand an hour.  There had been few
new customers lately -- most of the bookstores had been shut down in both
Boston and New York -- but the regulars were loyal and frequent.



   Lucia saw the attraction between Alex and Sarah and suggested that they
go to one of the bedrooms 'and talk.' Sarah was back in the dark dress with
faint vermilion lines that she had worn on the night Mr.  Carlson made her
come and her parents died, while Alex was in her shorts and white tank top.
Sarah sat nervously on the bed, wondering how you talked to someone whose
feces you have just devoured.  The room was very simple, with a big bed
covered with red silk sheets, a ceiling mirror, potted palms, a TV and VCR,
and a shelf of tapes and porn.



   Alex stared into her eyes until Sarah looked away, then kissed her,
deeply.  Sarah trembled, then lay back and let Alex take off her dress and
remove her fresh panties.  Alex stripped and they both stared at their
reflection on the ceiling.  'You're so pretty,' Alex whispered, stroking
her foot.  'I've never met anyone as wet as me.' In a few minutes they were
kissing passionately, and Alex guided Sarah's fingers to Sarah's cunny and
Sarah's toes to Sarah's mouth and they both lay masturbating, moaning,
staring into the mirror, licking their toes.  'Sarah...  can I show you
something?' 'Mmmm...  mhhh-hmhhh...' Alex turned around and lay so that
their cunnies touched, they seemed to grab each other, and they began to
suck each other's feet, rubbing their wet holes together, gasping, slurping
at the alabaster toes, and came simultaneously like swooping swallows in a
rain-dark sky, sighing, descending, then kissed and held one another as
Sarah clung to the rim of the Abyss, the sailors groaning below with
outstretched arms.

   l 'Is it true -- what Lucia thought -- did your daddy rape you?' 'Noooo!
I...  my uncle...' And suddenly Sarah's story poured into the delicate
empathic ears of Alex, bittersweet, the washroom at the library, the bed,
the daybed, Mr.  Carlson and the Trouble with Harry.  It took an hour for
it all to come out, and when it was over, they were friends.



   Beyond the prewar walls of the bedroom, Andrea's muffled screams,
commotion, mayhem.  'What about you, Alex?  How did you...  get here?' 'How
did I become a whore, you mean?' 'Uh-huh.' 'Say it, Sarah?  'How did you
become a dirty whore?''



   'Dirty _whore_, _whore_, _whore_...' And they made love again, in a
sixty-nine, lapping at each others' filthy genitals, until Lucia entered
the room, distraught, and the odor of mace in the air.



   'Alex...  c'mon...  it's Andrea...  she...' She was in labor, was
Andrea, blood dripping from her violated ass.  Gordon had cleared out,
running water into his nasty eyes.  The other girls stared at the scene
from catatonia, their clothes ripped, beautiful Connie with scratches
across her cold face.  Labor, sweat, blood, grunts, unbearable pain like an
electric storm in the sodden air.



   What child is this?  O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee
lie.  Gordon had begun to rape them, his last hundred dollars clenched in
his sweaty fist, and Lucia, intendant, had brandished the can of mace, and
on.  The whores attended the rotten mother, the child, half-dead, plopped
out about dawn, the mother quite lifeless after the last scream.  It was
food for Sarah's thought, and after, Lucia calling her daddy to hunt down
the tenuous connection he did have to that part of the underworld and find
a man and place to dispose of the bodies -- Connie drowned the baby -- they
removed themselves to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner.



   Sarah started work the next day, her first customer one Jerry McClelland
from Braintree, Mass., a little boy, really, sixty-two years old,
two-point-five children, two-car garage, wife a PTA mother, job at a bank.
Six-inch penis, abominably tight ass, Freude schoener Goetterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium, penis the second visitor in Sarah's hole (fifty-dollar
tip).  Don't touch me there.  For Sarah had become yet more protective of
her back door -- it was a place where only Alex was permitted to go. 
Whatever love had been between them in the sharing of feces now grew into a
real love, to the exclusion of all the others.



   So Sarah lived, and really she was lucky: the customers came in a
moderate trickle, each whore servicing two three four a week, now and then
a rich dude who wanted a show, who wanted his diverted bindu to splash
across several childish faces at once.  How lucky she was it is hard to
tell.  Had Harry been a human being?  Had the teachings of Boehme infected
the Counterreformation?  Had a woman in Braunau not been impregnated, had
Adolf not crossed the river to Germany, had Lemberg not been Lwow, then the
possession of a sick Georgian named Djugashvili?  What if I hadn't flushed
the toilet just now?



   The chaotic aetiology aside, Sarah lived, and found in Alex what she had
never had, a friend -- more, a lover.  Sarah was older by a year, and Alex
far more experienced.  Sarah got a library card and spent her days between
the lions on Fifth Avenue, Alex went to MoMA.  Sarah used laxatives more
often than not, while Alex usually stuck her slender middle finger into her
throat (a difficult task, the invocation of vomit, since cocks had been
back there since she was ten.)



   But they met in Bryant Park and kissed and lived for each other and
compared notes on Jerry McClelland's shaft and admired one another's toes
with their tongues and sneaked each into the other's hearts.  Alex had a
secret place, too: her urethra, and Sarah spent hours licking it and
sliding narrow tubes into Alex's bladder, both girls then sloshing the
urine from mouth to mouth and masturbating each other.  They gave each
other enemas and douches and sniffed each other's shoes and even puked into
each other's mouths.



   Sarah learned to seek pleasure in being used, and Alex helped her,
arranging her on the bed before she had a customer.  'Is pretty baby lying
here with her legs spread?  That's a good girl.  Someone's gonna come stick
a cock in pretty baby.  Pretty baby's a little whore.'



   Pretty Baby was three months pregnant with Uncle Harry's child.  Alex
held her hand after the abortion and bought her ice cream.



   In December, shortly after Sarah turned fourteen (she was a Scorpio, of
course), Alex found out that she had AIDS.  She cried and Sarah licked her
face and then Sarah took a razor blade, slit Alex's arm and sipped the
tainted blood.  Sisters.



   They discovered a new obsession together: virgins.  Twice they lured an
unsuspecting girl to a cheap hotel room on St.  Mark's and coaxed her into
sex and death.  the second time was also the last -- they met Leopold, who
was in New York to sell a six-year-old Algerian girl.



   They had just finished deflowering a fifteen-year-old named Sammy, a
punked out creature they had met on the Bowery, and were leaving the hotel,
when Leopold climbed from a cab, intending to go to Dojo for dinner (he was
mostly vegetarian, for humanitarian reasons).



   Perhaps Leopold had learned from his Gypsy consort, or had a crystal
ball at the tip of his medulla oblongata, but in any case he saw right away
that Alex and Sarah were sick.  They, in turn, realized that Leopold was a
predator, and were just sick enough to be drawn to him, having just left a
naked Sammy bleeding on the sheets and crying, the scent and fear of the
virgin still saturating them.  They both flashed vulnerable fuck-me looks
at the elegant, obviously wealthy man and were dining together a few
minutes later.  Despite being coached by Lucia not to reveal details of the
operation, they both knew that Leopold was a pervert, not a police officer,
and soon he knew almost everything there was to know about the arrangements
on Riverside Drive.  They both almost made the cut as Mesdames de Berry
except that the more he stared into their eyes, the more certain he was,
and finally, his agile fingers sliding up Alex's quivering thigh, he asked
point blank if they had AIDS.  Alex froze and stared at the miso soup;
Sarah said yes and touched his hand.  'You can use a condom,' she
whispered, 'it'll be worth it.' Sarah was desperate for what _she_ sensed:
the bittersweet odor of relentless sin.  It was as if she could smell the
barn, she told me.  The vision of being kept like an animal flooded her
head like the vinegary water of a douche.



   Leopold took his nearly empty pint glass with him to the washroom and
returned, having filled it with urine.  Both young women drank the warm
yellow liquid and squirmed, on the verge of orgasm.  'Yes,' Leopold said.
'I bet you are worth it.'



   They finished their dinner and took a taxi to Brighton Beach, where one
of Leopold's American contacts lived, a Russian from Odessa who had spent
almost ten years in Amsterdam before moving to New York.  Pasha handled the
really young girls for Leopold, as little as three or four, some even
infants, though he himself preferred the five to eight range and kept
choice morsels for several years.



   They met Pasha's droogs in what appeared to be the second-floor
apartment of an ordinary tenement, where the girls were blindfolded and led
through what seemed like a long maze and must have included interconnected
buildings.  By the time one of his attendants removed the blindfolds -- and
their clothes -- Alex's slit was drooling and Sarah had to struggle not to
play with herself.



   It was a large room with a huge bed and a raised throne that Pasha had
designed himself, an ornate, ostentatious thing decorated with carved
cherubs and gilded phalloi.  The whole room was rich in blue velvet, with
columns of lapis lazuli and even a fountain with the marble figures of a
prepubescent maiden urinating while a satyr urinated into her mouth.



   Pasha, about fifty years old, well-tanned, and dressed only in heavy
gold chains that were draped around his thick neck, writhed on the blue
velvet cushion of the throne while two girls who looked about five years
old licked his anus and penis.  The bed, covered with a blue velvet
bedspread, was strewn with pornographic photographs of children being
abused or posing with one another.  Two exquisite naked girls who looked
about five or six, one a redhead, the other a freckled brunette, were
molesting a dazed, slobbering blonde who couldn't have been more than three
years old.



   Sarah stared at the redhead.  Her eyes were as hard and cold as
emeralds, and her face gleamed with perversion and corruption to such an
extent that if it hadn't been for her frail, immature body and unformed
cunny, which was raw, she would have seemed far older.  Her inner thighs,
arms and hard white chest were scarred and lacerated, her nipples nothing
but scar tissue.  Her every move seemed calculated to arouse, which indeed
it was: Stefania had been Pasha's favorite since just after her second
birthday, when her parents, both desperate alcoholics in Gdansk, had sold
her to Leopold's emissary there and she had been shipped directly to Pasha.
She wasn't even toilet trained, and had spent three years doing nothing but
eating (food and feces), drinking (milk, juice, piss and semen), soiling
her diapers and other children's mouths, and sleeping, usually with Pasha.



   Sarah gasped as Tracy, the freckled brunette, who looked very sad and
had welts and cuts on her upper thighs and lower belly, straddled the tiny
blonde and held her as Stefania inserted a spit-slick finger into the
captive child's anus.  Alex watched with rapt attention as the two
five-year-olds, who were twins from Calcutta, brought him to orgasm. 
Groaning, Pasha ejaculated onto their faces.



   Stefania wiggled her skinny, bruised little butt, staring at Sarah over
her shoulder, and Leopold led Sarah over to the bed.  Stefania made a
mewling noise, left the little blonde for Tracy, and offered Sarah her
open, scarred, glistening poophole.  Moaning, Sarah crawled into bed,
kissed the five-year-old's bottom and began to lick her distended genitals
and anus.



   Alex crept to the throne and licked Pasha's come from the Indian twins'
faces.  Pasha stood and urinated on them, and Alex took the stream into her
mouth, swallowing.  Pasha clapped his hands and the thugs who had
blindfolded them emerged from the shadows.  Pasha flipped a control built
into one of the throne's armrests, there was a quiet whirring sound, and
leather cuffs, dangling from thick wires, descended from the ceiling.  One
of the goons cuffed Alex, another gently took hold of Sarah just as she
masturbated herself to orgasm and brought Stefania off, and within ten
minutes Sarah, Alex, Stefania and Tracy were suspended from the high, dimly
lit ceiling, their holes at the height of the men's shafts.  The Indian
twins carted off the crying, anally violated blonde.



   'They're sick -- AIDS,' Leopold said in Russian; Sarah and Alex
recognized the abbreviation of there dread disease, even pronounced in the
Slavic manner: Ides.  Beware the Ides of Sarah.  Leopold and Pasha drank
champagne and ate caviar, a luxury Leopold allowed himself -- they were
eggs, after all, not living creatures?



   It hurt to hang there, yet Sarah was aroused to the point of insanity,
able to see the suspended five-year-olds not far from her.  Tracy was
sobbing and wriggling with dread, Stefania was staring at Sarah with her
cruel and lascivious smaragdine eyes, licking her lips, swaying.



   Suddenly Sarah felt a hand in a greased rubber glove on her cunny. 
Leopold fingered her fuckhole, then her ass.  'No,' she begged.  'Please!
Not there!' to her surprise, Leopold touched her anus once or twice more,
then left it alone.  'Are you virgin there?' 'Yes,' she whispered. 
'Just... fingers...  please don't.' Leopold walked around to her other end
and cradled her head.  He touched her lips and she sucked his fingers. 
'Okay, Sarah,' he finally said.



   Pasha stroked Tracy's hair, then gagged her and ordered her to spread
her legs, extending her cuffed limbs.  Then he whipped her.  She shook and
strained at the cuffs, and Sarah could see her eyes rooling, as Pasha
mutilated her crotch.



   Others, others Sarah couldn't see, entered the room.  She heard thuds
and murmurs, heard Alex scream, and then the assault began.  No one used
her anally, but they raped her cunt and mouth until she was barely
conscious, their cocks safe in thick condoms, ten or twelve men, sometimes
two at once.  Sarah could see the wires that held Stefania's tiny body
adjusted, and at one point the five-year-old redhead was uncuffed and
flipped over, as man after man fucked her in every orifice.  Still her
green eyes gleamed.  Semen ran down her face and Pasha urinated into her
mouth.



   When it was finally over and the girls were released, Sarah was
disoriented, her vision blurred.  Her vagina hurt, her throat was sore and
her nipples were raw.  Stefania kissed her and was taken away, then Alex
and Sarah were led to a small, windowless room with a dirty mattress and
locked in.  Alex was bleeding from her butthole, badly, and Sarah licked
and sucked her there.  Alex played with Sarah's ass, they both came, held
one another and fell asleep exhausted in each other's arms.



   Sarah dreamt about Stefania, incarnadine, hissing and moaning, drenched
with sperm.  Stefania was kissing her, and Sarah woke to find that Stefania
was indeed standing over her in the flesh, stark naked, holding a straight
razor with a tortoise-shell handle.  Alex was still asleep.



   Sarah wasn't afraid, because she had already seen the horror in a dream.
The little redhead was in a trance, diddling her mangled cunny.  Her tiny
fingers played furiously in the distended hole, and her hands were covered
with blood and semen.  At first Sarah thought that her fuckhole was
bleeding, but then she saw that Stefania's quivering thighs were cut deeply
in several places.  Writhing, the five-year-old leaned towards Sarah's
face. Sarah thought she was going to kiss her, but Stefania gurgled and
spewed blood.  It dribbled down her chin with the consistency of vodka from
the freezer, but it was hot, scarlet, salty and redolent of iron.  Sarah
watched it flow down the child's bony chest.



   Snarling like a rabid animal, Stefania slapped herself between the legs,
rhythmically, and drew the razor across her left breast.  Sarah came in the
way that she wet herself and touched the mesmerized creature's hole. 
Stefania's body was cold.  Only the blood oozing from her mouth and wounds
was warm.  Sarah pulled her onto the matress, straddled her, and took the
razor from her clenched fingers.  It was the Abyss now.  Sarah could hear
the mournful, plaintive voices of the crippled sailors.  Flying fish leapt
from their mouths.



   Touching Stefania was like fondling a body with no one in it.  Sarah
spanked her slit, slapped her mouth.  Nothing.  Masturbating herself, Sarah
began to slash Stefania's flat little chest with the razor.  Still the dark
green eyes stared at her, unseeing.  It was as if she did not feel pain.



   'Sarah...  you'll kill her!' Alex's eyes were wide with fright. 
Hissing, Sarah grabbed Alex by the hair and slit her throat in a fluid
motion.  Alex's body jerked several times and fell still.



   The door flew open and Leopold loomed in the opening, nude.  Sarah still
held Alex's scalp, slashing her lover's throat with the razor.  Stefania
was calm, smearing the blood on her lacerated chest and weakly diddling her
hole.



   Leopold disarmed Sarah and threw her on top of Stefania.  Grunting, he
raped Alex's dead body, seized Sarah, pinned her to the floor on her
stomach, and stabbed his cock into her still virgin behind.  She flopped
against the floor, squealing, until Leopold grabbed her hips and rammed his
rod in to the root.  Shrieking and writhing, Sarah tried to escape, but
Leopold took her by the wrists and forced her to fuck him back.  She did...
and suddenly she was coming, as though flames licked at her innards. 
Gasping and tensing her body, she let the orgasm wash through her swiftly,
like water in a spillway, then bucked against him furiously as he slammed
into her bowels.



   'Ohhhhrrhgh...  yesss...  deep yes...  yes yes yes...  unghhh..l
unghhh...  aaaarghhh...  haehhhh...  unghhh...'



   Howling, Leopold flipped her onto her back and shoved his filthy dick
into her womb.  Wave after climactic wave, then a tense, wet stillness as
she realized that he was going to impregnate her, that she would never be
allowed to menstruate, that she was nothing but a dirty hole for cocks and
doomed babies.  She played with her stiff nipples and stuck out her tongue
as Leopold screwed her like a pile driver.  There was no pleasure in what
he was doing to her, only in knowing that she was so irresistible that he
was willing to risk death to do this, to knock up her beautiful, perverted
body, to make a baby in a whore who had just murdered her only friend so
that she could come harder, to seed a slut whose only real love, past the
books and poses and glances in the mirror, was orgasm.



   Sarah rocked her hips and wrapped her skinny legs around him, Leopold
thrust impossibly deep, both of them screamed, and his jism flooded her in
five thick, scalding spurts.  Death, despair, and a new, desperate,
rudimentary life in the dark of Sarah's womb closed the windowless room
like a throat.



   XI



   An ice sculpture made entirely of tears, Christopher, fruit trees that
grow only in sunless grottoes.  Press the fruit, drink, piss into the ice,
open a passage, slime it with blood and feces, penetrate.  Anthracite,
wine.



   Leopold never slept with Sarah again, but he brought her to Paris with a
dearth of plans that was rare for him -- she could not be his wife -- it
was enough to have Manga cancerous and sick -- but neither was she likely
to be sold.  She was still in love with herself, and her anus, secret no
more, had been obsessed over long enough for it to remain sacred.  She
adjusted well to her prison; it was, after all, only a different form of
captivity.



   That is the story that took Sarah to me, Christopher.  I felt lucid,
stroking Herve's soft brown hair as the twelve-year-old sissy licked
Nigel's sweet come off the filthy floor.  I squatted next to him, running
my slender fingers -- they were already long, even when I was only nine
--through his supple, girlish hair as he shuddered and wept and lapped up
the virgin scum.  I felt lucid, utterly, unutterably lucid, as if my mind
was an opening bud, an unfurled rose, as if the limpid slime in my twat was
the genaeology of an averse morality, as if the part of me -- the all of me
-- between my legs was -- atavistic --



   The story within the story, the play of love, ludi d'amore, the fluid
gesture, a shadow play, Balinese music suddenly, gamelan, and Cosima
entered, a ravenous leer on her face.  She carried a pistol and a camera, a
Leica.  She was otherwise nude, and her luminous skin and statuesque body
sent an even deeper hush through the captives than their terror of Manga
had.  Several of the prisoners, the ones who had been tortured by Cosima,
began to shudder.  Nadia wet herself and collapsed yelping as her urine
stung the part of her urethra Cosima had wounded with the awl.  She uttered
high-pitched cries and jerked like a pretty white beetle on its back, her
dirty eleven-year-old body writhing in familiar agony.



   Manga brought Sarah to me.  Sarah was already seething with sick
ecstasy. I could _feel_ Sarah's history, Christopher -- I did not know the
names or the details of her defeats and desires, yet -- O Christopher, I
_knew_ her!  -- Her nature and her deformed, sensual secret life were
_visible_ to me, her torment and destructive need glistened like a dewdrop
at the tip of a grassblade, a droplet of pulque on the curled lips of an
assassin.  Underneath her menace was a profound abyss, Christopher, her
Abyss, and it was as obvious to me as if she were clad in a raiment made of
scenes from her dreams.  Her hole was the entrance to a nineteenth-century
profundity, to a sex that can never be rescued, to the ruby slit of
Prosperine.



   We kissed, at first coldly, then flowed together like two beads of
quicksilver.  She stank of the squalor in that room, and under that was a
strong, weird odor, a strange perfume of bestial, unnatural needs.  Each of
her eyes was a well carved in black onyx, a narrow, slimy shaft that led to
brackish water hundreds of feet below the surface of the world.



   I knew immediately that I would never part from her, Christopher, that I
could not, that Ariadne Fish was entwined with Sarah Leucht until
apocalypse.



   Cosima took a few flash photographs of our kiss, then gently interceded
in our bliss, adding her tongue to our amorous embrace.  'You must be
careful,' Cosima whispered.  'Manga is reckless.  If you are going to
humilate them like this, you need a gun.  Some of them have not seen what
we do to disobedient meat.'



   Nigel had a stiffy again, and stood staring at the squirming little
faggot lapping up his jizz.  Herve's movements were effeminate and clumsy
-- the twelve-year-old virgin looked like a pretty little girl trying to
hide her nakedness, an inscape of gentle, loving sexuality suddenly .  I
was still shy of my tenth birthday, and I felt like the hybrid of a
molested little boy and a shameless hooker, cursed and pleasured by
clairvoyance.  I could even see through Sarah's anorexia to the tiny fetus
that dwelt within her.



   I helped Herve to his feet and fondled his semi-soft little pee-pee. 
His face was wet with tears and smeared with dirt and semen.  I caressed
Nigel's tight little bottom and slowly moved the two boys into an embrace,
softly fingering Herve's perineum and gently touching Nigel's anus and
pushing them together.  Nigel's face was a mixture of awe and desire, while
Herve's dignity dissolved and he trembled like a waif, the defiance in his
eyes giving way to the shivering, vulnerable beauty of a haughty, enslaved
maiden attacked by an incubus.



   'Kiss, for God's sake,' Sarah whispered.  'Kiss him, Nigel.' I stroked
their tender little butts and watched them kiss, my nine-year-old body
shivering with lust.  Manga and Nadia watched, too, touching each other's
cunnies.  Sarah was masturbating.



   Cosima fetched some of Leopold's aromatic grease and ordered Herve to
one of the futons, still in full view of all of the captives.  Sarah,
Nigel, and I followed them, Manga helping little Nadia.



   Cosima, her statuesque body shimmering with sweet-smelling sweat, posed
the little sissy on the stained futon and handed Nigel the jar of grease.



   'Kiss him, Nigel,' Sarah whispered, diddling herself frantically.  'Kiss
his poophole.' I put my arms around Sarah, rubbing my bald pubis against
her skinny butt.  Cosima and Nadia began to make violent love not far away.



   Manga and I lay down on either side of the twelve-year-old virgin,
stroking his flaxen hair, as Nigel, panting with arousal, slurped at
Herve's anus.  Herve's little pee-pee was hard, and the miserable boy was
struggling not to be aroused by Nigel's tongue.  He was posed like a female
kiddie-whore, his girlish ass in the air, and shuddered when I reached
under his effeminate, crouched body and fingered his stiffy.  Manga began
to kiss him, and I took his four-inch, uncircumcised penis into my mouth. I
sucked him gently and steadily, and when Nigel finished slobbering over his
bunghole and Sarah urged him to lubricate it, Herve came in my mouth as
soon as Nigel's greasy finger touched the rectal opening.  It was
delightful, youthful boy-juice, thick and fragrant.



   Sarah squirmed next to me, playing with herself, and Manga was in a
trance, moaning and caressing her bony chest.  I kissed Herve, letting him
taste his sperm, then whispered wetly into his ear and ran a fingertip
around one of his hard little nipples.  'You're a pretty little girl,' I
whispered.  'Pretty little girls need to get fucked.  Girls like you lie on
their backs with their legs spread waiting to be fucked.'



   I turned him onto his back and flicked my tongue against his nipples. 
'Hold your ankles, Herve.  Be a good little girl.' Making pitiful whining
noises, the sissy grasped his ankles and offered his bottom to the other
boy.



   Sarah squatted over Herve's mouth and forced him to lick her anus,
unable to preserve its privacy in the furor of her desire.  Sarah and I
tongue-kissed and played with each other's cunnies, Manga masturbated and
stroked Herve's inner thighs, and Nigel placed the head of his hard-on
against the greased poophole, then stabbed it in.  Sarah pushed her butt
against Herve's shrieking mouth, Manga grabbed the victim's ankles, and
Nigel thrust into the virgin behind.  The pretty faggot twisted like a
girl, and Nigel fucked him hard.  I held Herve's head firmly and Sarah peed
on his face as Nigel pulled out and spurted into Manga's waiting mouth. 
Everyone came except Herve, who sobbed and choked and writhed in shame and
humiliation and pain.



   Nigel, Sarah and I kissed as Manga lead the deflowered little boy to
Michael, the athletic, handsome black boy who had rejected her.  Manga
ordered the bawling Herve to suck Michael's cock.



   There was a sudden turbulence in the many-eyed slave barn, then a burst
of adrenalin, and Michael punched Manga in the chest so hard that she flew
back fifteen feet, her head hitting a bale of hay.



   The black boy sprinted for Cosima's gun, cast aside as Cosima molested
Nadia -- Leopold entered, glorious in a long saffron shirt and loincloth --
Leopold leapt like a leopard, tackled Michael and held him in a headlock.
It was like trying to watch a hockey puck, and ended as swiftly as it had
begun.



   Leopold released Michael, and the rebellious captive lay gasping and
sobbing, boy again.  Cosima, looking frightened, retrieved her pistol.



   'It is time,' Leopold said in a low voice, taking the weapon from the
statuesque, cowering young woman.  'Time for you to go, Cosima.'



   'Go?' Her eyes were wide with terror.



   'I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you,' Leopold said with
solemnity, all that is required in some Islamic societies as formal notice
that the ties of marriage have been severed.  Cosima was about to plead
with him, but his eyes dissuaded her.  'Armand will help you prepare for
your departure.  He is waiting outside.' Leopold gave her a little kiss and
helped her to the door.  His voiceprint, a hushed tone, opened it, and the
banished wife made her exit.



   Leopold came over to me and kissed me.  'Enjoy your servants,' he said
to me.  'I will send for you after Cosima has left.' He bowed to us and
took his leave, handing Manga the pistol and nodding.



   Manga, looking frail with the heavy weapon, walked over to the defeated
Michael, held it in both hands, put it in his mouth, and fired.  Even with
the silencer, it was loud.  She fired again and his head burst like a
pomegranate.  Several of the captives fainted.



   With Manga and Sarah at my side, I inspected the remainder of the
uncaged prisoners.  Subtracting Sarah, and missing Nadia, who was making
out with Nigel, there were twenty-seven female captives on the stencilled
numbers that night, arranged in the order of their virginity.



   We decided to save the non-virgins for another time, ordered them and
the boys into the bunks, and were left with eleven maidens of varying
purity; some had been forced to give blow jobs, or had been masturbated. 
Some were weeping, covering their cunnies, one had fainted, two were like
zombies, three glowed with hatred and revulsion which they tried to
conceal. About half were prepubescent, the rest more or less adolescent.



   'Do you want to take those two to the garden?' Manga pointed to two
nymphets who appeared to have just reached puberty.  They were both
brunettes.  One, Nadezhda, had been purchased from her parents in Omsk. 
She was built like a swimmer, her hair was in two thick braids, and her
expression mixed innocent sexuality with traces of irrepresible
sluttishness.  Her eyes were wicked and she held her blossoming body like a
tease, her hips thrust forward, her hand draped over her recently haired
pubis more in enticement than modesty, sucking her thumb.  Nadezhda was
twelve years old.



   The other young woman Manga wanted had been kidnapped outside a high
school in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee.  She had chestnut bangs and
eyes the deep blue of suburban toilet water, tiny breasts with nipples the
color of dried blood, and stood very awkwardly, hiding her privates as if
she was about to die of shame, her feet turned inward.  She was very small
and reminded me of a bird.  Her name was Vivian and she had just turned
fourteen.



   "Can we...  can we take Yura, maybe, with them?" I was wet.



   Manga giggled and Sarah took my hand.  'My fuck toy, too, then,' Manga
said, skipping over to the cages and releasing Yura...  and a pale, feeble
child with closely cropped dark hair, big blue eyes and weak legs that
glistened with urine.  It was obvious that Manga was starving her, but the
six-year-old was still graceful, and the creature was abused so frequently,
with not a mark left on her soft white skin, that her despair and
degradation had fused with her prematurely kindled eroticism.  Her navel
was the size of a silver dollar.



   'This is Karina,' Manga said.  The damaged child displayed herself,
turning twice, touching her still virgin cunnus.



   Yura, too, was cramped and had soiled herself from being kept in her
cage.  The seven-year-old blonde was still beautiful, though, and still
apparently devoted to me.  Her condition contrasted with her ethereal
loveliness, like Karina's.



   Manga paged Akhmed from the computer.  He appeared momentarily, still in
his white suit.  She gave him the gun, the eunuchs and twins appeared to
take orders (to prepare the garden and supervise the captives again), and
Manga sent the virgins to their bunks, except for Vivian and Nadezhda.



   Vivian was crying and shifting her weight from foot to foot, trembling.
I stared at her feet -- her big toes protruded almost an inch beyond the
others.  Sarah and I kissed and caressed her.  She cringed when touched, as
if we were lepers.  'Show us your fuckhole, virgin whore,' Sarah whispered.




   'Please...  please don't...' 'Don't what?' 'Don't...  hurt me... 
please...' 'Be nice, then.' I made her move her feet apart and Sarah
grasped her wrists, uncovering her mysteries.  I gently ran my finger down
her crack and touched her anus.  She clenched her buttocks.  She had hair
only towards the top of her slit.  I squatted down and flicked my tongue
against her bitter little poophole.  She whimpered.  I ran the tip of my
tongue along her fragrant slit, kissed her clitty, and stood staring into
her tear-filled, deep blue eyes.  'Kiss me,' I whispered.  She did, with
revulsion.  I circled her hard little nipples with my thumbs, then fondled
her tiny titties.  'Kiss me good, Vivian, or every boy in this room will
fuck you up the ass.' It was delicious.  She kissed like a porn starlet,
and I could taste her shame and fear and degradation.



   The eunuchs and twins returned to say that the garden had been prepared
for Mesdames de Berry, and we descended: Sarah, entranced; Manga, leading
our little fuck toys Yura and Karina; Vivian, weeping; Nadezhda, looking
wickedly aroused.



   From the distorted voices in the grand bedroom , it sounded as if Cleo
was leading a ritual with the others.  Roland, the scarred twin, came down
with us to guard the garden.



   The garden was opulent.  Huge futons covered with white silk had been
arranged between torches and potted palms.  Stands with ornate silver
buckets contained salted ice and champagne, and two borzoi reclined on a
blue satin cushion.  A red cloth bore various implements -- transparent and
black dildos (les godes en francais), tongue-piercing devices such as the
one Leopold used when he first fisted me, ointments and oiled and the
sweet-smelling grease, clamps and strap-ons, whips and scourges, collars
and douchebags, gags and catheters, handcuffs and plastic-loated wires and
chains.  There were steel eyes buried in the stone around the futons, and
Sarah, who had been abused here before, suggested that we start by
deflowering Vivian.



   We forced Vivian to lie down, cuffed her, and bound and tied and held
her so that her shoulders were against the smooth dark stone that paved the
garden and her little rump was in the air.  Manga fingered her slit. 
'Listen carefully, Vivian,' she said in a hard, cold tone.  'You're going
to stop crying now and give my new sister a nice show.  If you're very
good, you'll be allowed to live.  If you scream too much, or don't make
these nice dogs come, or don't look pretty, you will be hurt so badly that
you'll wish you were dead, and we'll kill you in a few days.  Is that
clear?'



   Vivian had an accident.  The urine sprayed from her peehole and splashed
on her quivering white body.  Manga stroked her pissy slit.  'That's very
pretty, Vivian.  Very.'



   For the next hour, Vivian lurched from delirium to unconsciousness and
back as we tortured her.  We had to use the tongue-contraption after the
first gorgeous dog used her cunny.  Sarah and I fucked our pussies on her
long big toes, Roland sodomized her, and after half an hour Vivian was no
more, replaced by a twitching, ravaged, senseless creature devoid of any
emotion except visceral misery and a desperate, futile desire for the
reaper.



   Oh, Christopher.  I did this again and again to virgin after virgin
while I was Leopold's.



   All of us were aroused by Vivian's devastation except perhaps Karina,
who somehow remained a tender girl-child while able to offer her charms and
rectum to anyone who asked.  Manga's pleasure came more from her happiness
at being able to please me with this performance than it did from her
sadistic acts.  Yura was fascinated and anally aroused.  Nadezhda was
afraid that we would do this to her, but also visibly turned on.  Sarah was
the one who _needed_ this, who craved Vivian's suffering at the core of her
being, and I needed to see Sarah like this, transformed into a bestial,
leaky ghoul, drooling from her mouth and gash, squirming with sadistic
desire.



   It was evident from Vivian's empty eyes that there would be no more
screaming, so Manga removed the tongue-trap.  Sarah kissed Vivian's bloody
mouth and sucked her tongue while Manga helped me put on a seven-inch dildo
and greased it.  I mounted Vivian and made her put me in her cunny, which
was soaked with canine semen.  Sarah forced Vivian to move as if she wanted
it, making her move like a little whore and say 'fuck me' over and over
again.  After a while I lay down and we had Vivian ride my black rubber
cock until she couldn't anymore.  Sarah put her on her back again and
taught her to keep her legs spread while her slit was being hit.



   Manga played with Yura and Karina as if they were dolls while I turned
my attentions to Nadezhda, taking her to a futon on the other side of a
medium-sized banana tree.  The twelve-year-old swimmer was scared, but I
kissed her and unbraided her sorrel hair.  The sentence from _La Peste_
about the sorrel mare kept running through my head, starting and fitful. 
Nadezhda's breasts were the size of my little fists, with aureoles the pink
of pickled eggs in Louisiana and hard, maroon nipples.  Here eyes were the
brown of Serbian herbal liqueur mixed with light, and her fingers and labia
were very long.  She had a tiny mouth, hardly wider than her pretty,
delicate nose, and her chin and lower lip had a pronounced cleft.  Her
toenails were small and smooth, her toes spaced widely, and her skin was
the color of bechamel sauce.  She breathed hard when she kissed, and I slid
my slimy little fuckhole against her muscular thigh.  We spoke Russian, and
her voice was low and husky.



   'Don't...  don't hurt me like you did...  her,' she said, almost
matter-of-factly.  'Please don't.  I'm...  I'm not like her.'



   'What do you mean?' She took my hand and placed it on the soft hairs of
her mons.  I touched her slit.  Her cunny was drooling onto her anus. 
'I'm...  like this,' she whispered.  'I want you to touch me.  I'm not like
her.'



   I fingered her little clitty and felt her hymen.  Nadezhda moaned and
gently slid her very long, slender middle finger into my sopping wet hole.
She did it so beautifully that I came on her hand, exhaling and flushing.



   'Ariadne,' she whispered.  'Ariadne, fuck me.' It was an utter contrast
with Vivian's resistance.  Nadezhda was in ecstasy, and lay down, her
swimmer's legs apart.  I sucked her nipples and kissed my way to her
dripping hole.  She tasted like carob and a deep sea fish.  Her poophole
was too tight to penetrate with my tongue, and her cunny lips reminded me
of a largemouth bass.  'Ariadne...  please...  your finger...  take me...
please...  open me...  open me up...' I slipped two fingers slowly into her
virgin passage, stretched her hymen, then stabbed.  She screamed, then
moaned.  'Ohhhhh...  yessss...  oh, yes...  fuck me...  fuck your... 
girl...  you girl...  you...  pervert...  yesss...  fuck it...  fuck it
you...  lesbian...  uhhh...  unhhhh...  unnnnhhhh...'



   She diddled her clitty and rocked her wide hips as I teased her butt and
fucked the bloody hole with two fingers, hard, and Nadezhda came, gasping
and closing her legs.  She started to cry, softly.  'What's wrong?' I
kissed her eyelids.



   'I...  I want to be your...  girlfriend,' she sobbed.  'I want you to...
to...  love me.'



   'That was love,' I whispered.



   'Noooo!  You love...  Sarah...  and...  and...  _men_.'



   I sat up and looked at Sarah, who was still abusing Vivian, still in a
voluptuous trance as she reamed the barely conscious girl's bottom with a
thick dildo.  Manga had passed out, a spilled champagne glass next to her
serene face.  Yura and Karina were licking each other's assholes.



   I got Nadezhda and myself some cold champagne and stared at the banana
tree.  'You don't know what love is,' I said.  'You were a virgin.  All of
this is love.'



   'It is not,' Nadezhda said, making a sour face at the bubbly.  'It's not
love to rape and hurt and...  it 's not.'



   '_That's_ not.  But that's for _you._ That's why you won't know what
love is.  You're a slave.  You're going to get sold.  You're not good
enough for love.'



   Nadezhda was no longer crying.  'You won't either,' she said bitterly.
'You're a _whore_.'



   I caressed one of her small breasts.  'Yes, I am.  I'm a whore.  I love
being a whore.  I'd rather have Sarah and Leopold make love to me than...
than love like a dog, like you do.  Everyone can fuck me.  Everybody wants
to fuck me.'



   'It's not love.  It's just...  fucking.'



   'Why do you want me then?'



   'Because...  because I want to really know you.  I want you to know me.'



   'If you knew how to fuck, you'd know me when you fucked me.  You don't
know anything.  All you know...  is like what a dog knows.  Pet me and feed
me and walk me.  Loyalty isn't love, either.' I was thinking while I talked
to her.  The two dolls were coming.  Manga woke blearily, her anorexic body
trembling like that of a waif crossing a high bridge in a strong wind.



   'When you get old, nobody will want you.'



   'They want me _now_, Nadezhda.  Look at you.  You're a little lesbian
who has stupid complexes about it.  I scare you, don't I?  I scare you
because I don't care about getting old.  I care about cock, and cunt. 
About dreams and art and nightmares and beauty.  I'm going to be a god when
I die, Nadezhda.  You're going to be a dead dog.'



   'It's...  it's not right, what you're doing.'



   'I know it's not _right_, slave.  You and your dog owner ought to kill
me.  Kill me and Sarah and all of us.  It's not right.  It's evil.  It's
evil and it...  it tastes good.  It tastes like my cunt hole.  And that's
all I really care about, Nadezhda.  And I'd rather care about it than about
my masters, like you.  You don't have a single beautiful idea in your head.
All you have is your identity.  I don't.  I get rid of my identity.  I take
it off like clothes.

   Christopher, when I knew more about people -- when I knew more about
people and my hunger to know people, despite the fact that they mostly
bored me, that I wanted to know people like Sarah, people with secret
worlds, with _grace_, with dark things...  when I knew more I compared my
sinful nature to that of a drunk, a drunk like you, Christopher.  You are
sad and tired and hardly even live anymore, except that I gave you a chance
-- like a god, Christopher, I came in and opened your life again, made you
_feel_, reified your dreams.  And you're on this slippery slope with me,
Christopher, the wine so much more than your lecture notes, the wine in the
lecture notes, the art object in the girl, the girl in the dream, the dream
all over the day.



   I know now that it is wrong to wreck virgins, Christopher.  I knew it
then, too, but I was a child.  But I also know that I'm like a drunk who
quits drinking -- not a mean drunk, not a stupid wino.  Say, you start with
that wine, and because of it your life lies under a cluster of dark grapes,
you are a failure.  The pulque-sign, the numberless teats in the mothering
sky.  But have you ever met the man who quits drinking?  The recovering
alcoholic -- always an alcoholic, drunk on sobriety instead of wine now,
ruling his life or letting God rule his life, unable to crawl into the
caverns he knew before, Christopher, stripped of his potion.  And maybe
they were not caverns, only latrines, maybe there was nothing of Eros in
destroying Vivian -- only pain, pain refracted, magnified, sent on out
through the veins of the sick, slippery tree.



   And Dionysos, Christopher?  I saw a magnificent sarcophagus in Moscow,
decorated with Dionysian orgia -- their faces, Christopher!  Euphoria! 
Wine and blood and sperm and cunt-milk in their faces, in their stone eyes.



   What I regret, Christopher, what I lament -- is that I did not meet
Sarah in Skokie, or you here, or Manga in the forest of Belovezh, as a
little girl.  That I did not become what I am in my imagination instead of
in the flesh.



   But then how do I know what I would have and what-if and what-not?  I am
my precisely my history, and no one at all.











   P U B E R T Y (LIVES OF THE GREAT WAIFS)



   XII





   We took Vivian and Nadezhda back to the barn -- I told the twins to cage
Nadezhda, because I wanted to see her suffer, later, and keep her fresh
until then -- and Manga said it was time to feed the dolls.  Whatever that
meant made Karina weep and shiver and whimper that she wasn't hungry.



   What it meant was that we spread an oilcloth on the floor of the bedroom
and watched videos of little girls being raped and snuffed until Roland
brought nyam-nyam: a bowl of ice cubes, a bowl of feces, and a bowl of
urine.  Sobbing, Karina ate ice cubes until she doubled over with cramps.
Manga made her drink piss and fed her feces until the starving girl
vomited, writhing in pain as she puked the ice.  Shuddering, Karina ate her
vomit, struggling against nausea as the video showed a girl encunted by a
pony.



   Sarah and I filled Yura's rectum with ice and shoved it deeper with a
greased dildo the size of her forearm.  The seven-year-old blonde shrieked
in agony, and Sarah started to come, hard, ejaculating, gasping, shaking
like subterranean asparagus in gelee.  She wouldn't touch her anus, but
parted her ivory buttocks, staring at me wide-eyed and letting me see her
moist, musky, spastic asshole.  I kissed her very close to that secret
entrance, savoring the scent of her sick shit, and finally flicking my
tongue against her bunghole.  It was bitter.  She jerked away and came
again, howling, seductively covering her perverted behind with an alabaster
hand.



   I wanted to see her kill.  Manga saw the insanity in my blue-violet eyes
and whispered to me, gently caressing my bottom.  'Do you want to let Sarah
finsh Yura, Ariadne?  Baby?' I nodded, dazed.



   We went to the torture chamber or surgery, Sarah still trembling with
orgasmic sorrow, Manga drunk, the champagne coursing through her
underweight body, dragging the two broken dolls with us.



   The metal maiden had a narrow metal bicycle seat with two adjustable,
penile metal protrusions.  We lifted the screaming little blonde onto the
seat and took her virginity with the longer horn, the other penetrating her
abused anus.  Her hymeneal blood dripped into a sort of system of gutters
and flowed into the sunken steel tub.  It was a fine, almost silent
machine. We strapped Yura's ankles and wrists to the gleaming metal of the
female monster and the counterweighted seat carried Yura into the embrace
of death, a long metal finger entering her shrieking mouth, a metal arm
clasping her, two thick spindles emerging from the girl-machine's metal
nipples and piercing Yura's heaving chest, a blade from the statue's
genitals slicing upward and cutting open the suddenly silent
seven-year-old's stomach.  Her blood drained into the stainless steel bath.



   We played in the shallow blood as the machine continued to bleed Yura's
corpse.  Manga and Karina made out while Sarah drank the virgin's blood
from my cupped hands, wriggling and finally letting me touch her bottom.



   Sarah seemed to be in another world, shuddering and sucking my fingers
as I gently slipped a fingertip into her slimy butt.  'Yeeeessssss,' she
moaned, smearing blood on her perfectly round white breasts and draping her
upper body over the edge of the tub, onto the gray granite tiles of the
floor.  I knelt behind her, my knees in Yura's blood, and began to lick
Sarah's bunghole, tenderly, teasing her abnormally large, erect clitoris
with my thumb.  I kissed and sucked and lapped at her quivering bottom
hole, then fucked it with my tongue, taking her clit between my fingers. 
She held her cheeks apart and grunted, letting me explore her most precious
part, her clitty throbbing like the head of a dying snake, jerking
spasmodically and wailing as a stream of strange fuck spurted from her cunt
and her masturbatory body wiggled obscenely, giving itself like suicidal
prey.  I slurped her acrid, metallic discharge and stroked her clitty with
a soft, gentle, milking motion as Sarah groaned and stabbed her middle
finger into her insanely aroused butt.  I flicked my tongue against her
urethra and suddenly she urinated like crazy, gushing violently, as if piss
poured from a bottle were drained into our bath for a couple of minutes.  I
came as the gorgeous creature shivered and relieved herself.  It smelled
like illness.  I sipped some and tongued her tiny peehole, then lightly
slapped her snatch a little, running my fingers into her fuckhole, hurting
her nasty clit, then moaning myself and forcing my hand into her distended
vagina.  Sarah whimpered and let me fist her, hissing as I punched her
cervix, her repulsively beautiful body twitching in a new agony.  I
squeezed her abnormal clitoris and shoved my arm into her again and again
until she was barely conscious.  I brutalized her cunt and carefully
invaded her bowels with the fingers of my other hand, deforming her
sphincter and ramming my fist into her noxious rectum.  She jerked
uncontrollably as I ravaged both her holes, gasping, then passed out.  I,
too, was on the edge, coming when I extracted my fingers and touched
myself, sucking my fingers clean, lost in a blur of horror and desire.



   That was when my husband came for me.  It was dawn, the kind of dawn
that finds you only in Paris, Eos seeping into the sky like a fugitive from
Hyperborea, a coldly sexual light at the tall windows meant for flinging
open, the promise of unfathomable beauty sweeping across the dark facade of
the Gare du Nord, slight white gold on the face of a young girl in an
ancient bath, the tumuli of her tiny, aroused breasts, the stone queens in
the Jardin de Luxembourg still alive, milk dripping from their unsmiling
lips.



   Leopold looked at the ravished, blood-smeared body of Sarah, at the
unconscious Karina, at an almost mousy, bald, intellectual Manga, at the
drained, torn cadaver that had been Yura, clasped by the pretty, murderous
machine, and then at me.



   For the firsttime in an eternity I was not aroused, Christopher.  There
was little left of me.  It was as if my sex had passed into Sarah Leucht,
as if genitals were suddenly transferable, like wet tickets to an evening
of Webern passed from hand to hand in an alley off the Wahnsinngasse by a
quartet of exhausted lovers, erat hora, o and in illness besunk...



   Leopold looked at Sarah, and I saw that he was in love with her.  That
he loved her and did not love us, his wives, or loved her differently,
loved her in such a way that he had to keep her away or be drugged by her
beauty and dragged silently into death.  Odd to see a strong man so.



   He stared at me with what appeared to be utter hatred.  I knew he would
hurt me because he did not love me all of a sudden; he loved Sarah, and
couldn't have her because she belonged to death.  The way Leopold looked at
me scared me to the marrow, and being scared by my husband...  turned me
on.



   Leopold took me by the wrist, spat in my face, and led me upstairs.  I
wet myself and could hardly walk.  He dragged me.



   The upstairs apartments were austere, in contrast to our quarters and
the rear of the ground floor, with the exception of a long room which
resembled an ecclesiastical nightmare in an opium den.  This room was a
maze from Piranesi mixed with the deathly splendor of something Baudelaire
might have seen before the cold moralities of age caught up with him. 
There were Bokhara rugs, purpureate, violet, lapis lazuli, and so many
objects of beauty and beautiful hideousness that my head oscillated between
pulchritude and utter terror as my husband kicked me through the heaps of
expensive objects, crystal and fine glass shattering as I screamed and
crawled and flew through the dust, one more beautiful object among them. 
The room seemed much longer than the lower parts of the house, some
terrible trick of architecture.  Leopold shed his rich clothes as he forced
me into the long and then suddenly empty space.

   The nave was bare except for dust.  There was a great rose window that
reminded me of the one described in H.P.  Lovecraft's and August Derleth's
novella, _The Lurker at the Threshold_, a weird, hypnotic glass that seemed
to promise views of things not truly there.  Beneath this window was a
massive altar that appeared to be carved out of a single block of obsidian,
black towards the filthy floor and transparent in its upper reaches.



   This amazingly sculpted thing consisted of two figures that appeared to
be about to intertwine, to copulate: a tall, slender maenad and a fierce
satyr with a priapic member.  They barely touched one another, the
transparent maenad's long fingers seeming to barely graze the thick thighs
of the shiny black monster, her exaggeratedly long tongue hovering near the
dark creature's proffered anus, his own insanely long, phallic tongue
extended parallel to her flat stomach as she arched over him.  The
creature's face was twisted in an expression of unfathomable agony, as if
she had aroused him for thousands of years of karezza, and only now would
he ejaculate, throwing forth rot and fiery disease.  The altar was
nauseatingly obscene.



   Leopold lifted me roughly, shoved some grease into my cunny and impaled
it on the monster's obsidian shaft, tearing me.  Then he took me by the
hair and twisted my head so that the phallic tongue slammed into my mouth,
knocking out a tooth, and slid down my throat.  I gripped the transparent
maenad's slender arms and began to buck automatically under my husband's
cruel gaze.  There was no pleasure anywhere.  I expected only to die a
horrible death.



   He stabbed me with a hypodermic, and I had my first taste of the sublime
void that is heroin.  It was not pure; my husband was a master of potions,
and most of what he administered contained not only narcotics but also the
extracts of exotic herbs and not a little magick - with the help of Cleo
and Epiphany, Leopold experimented with odd mixtures and incantations of
mysterious provenance.



   I was somewhere between life and death, consciousness and
unconsciousness, and I stayed there, suffering and coming, for a very long
time, at least several days, perhaps an entire week, while my husband
tortured me.  He hit me, whipped me, broke my arm, jammed probes and prods
into my holes, gave me enemas of various acids, and turned me into nothing.




   When I did black out, Leopold took me to bed - a hard, antique wooden
thing from Africa, fed me more drugs, revived me, and made me suck him.  I
had to suck him for hours while he slept.  If I stopped, he woke and
impaled my cunny on the altar again.  I kept thinking I was gone...  then,
how can I think if I'm gone...  and I would be back there, trapped, no
longer in love at all, not knowing what love is, feeling the whole world as
a rayed ball of unbearable, incomprehensible pain as he grinned and hurt
me. After a while I helped him hurt me.  He would hold a cattle prod and I
would take it in my mouth as if I wanted it.  At some point, memory fails
me.



   After our marriage was thus consummated, he kicked me down the stairs.
For weeks, Manga nursed me back to a semblance of health.  Her own
illnesses were destroying her - she could barely walk, and took vast
amounts of drugs to kill the pain.



   I took them with her.  I did coke in the morning, heroin in the
afternoon, hash and opium in the evening, drinking all the while.  Some of
the drugs I used didn't go together, but I was little and could take it. 
Junk is very bad for teenagers, I think, but does wonders for little girls.



   We played girly a lot, locking ourselves in the bathroom and using baby
talk, then fisting each other, drinking each other's pee, comforting each
other.



   Two things saved me from being lost beyond the point of no return.  One
was love for Sarah, the other was materialism, and the two went together.



   We were free when we were not being used, and the full use of this
freedom became my credo.  I was one kind of nothing when my husband beat
the fuck out of me, and another kind of nothing when I was in awe of Sarah
(awe, awe, awe, simpering, animal, futile - Sarah quickly learned that she
was my personal god, and it made her hate me almost as much as she hated
herself) - and I learned to be _someone_ with _no one_ at all, when in the
mirror, preening, when being dressed and catered to by Akhmed, when
drifting through the streets, usually back streets, the kind that made my
pussy want to get lost.  Oh, Christopher, I found my pussy wedged between
Leopold's cruelty and Sarah's destructive beauty.  I named my fuckhole
Apollonia.



   My pussy starts as a clear note.  A clear, high note, a drop of water
falling from the depths of the sky, rising through a silver flute, dripping
into Sarah's mouth.  I get lost, Christopher, when I talk about this.  The
streets.  Most little girls are not as pretty as I.  Somewhere in the
Marais, where short, burly Frenchmen guard what is left of the Jews, lazily
shouldering their submachine guns, the Jews that weren't carted off and
killed by the Nazis and their French collaborators.  I learned to be a Jew.
A rare interval, an otherworldly note.  The Rue des Francs Bourgeois, the
Rue Pavee, off into bleak little neighborhoods where no one is wanted but
you can get to know the tenders of horseshoe bars, un kir, s'il vous plait,
I took to drinking kirs when in bars, please sweeten my rotgut, my thin
white flinty wine with cassis, with the fleeting juice of bitter currants
mixed with sugar, o sugar.  Paris is above all a city of wandering.  Have I
ever been there?  Have I ever been anywhere?  What does it mean to live
somewhere?  Stay?  Visit?  Work?  What is work?  (You are a whore, Ariadne,
whores don't work, whores vampirize the milk-sops who exploit the workers,
whores are half meat and half butcher, whores are meat that eats itself, a
whore's mind is like that yellowed chart at the market explaining whence
comes every chunk of flesh you send into your private spiritualism - that
is why the neighborhoods where whores hang are named after cuts of beef, o
Tenderloin...  looky here I am an object, is it good for a body to be an
object?  Hi Mister Doctor, please do not treat my gangrene as an object.  I
am an imprisoned person.) Oh, Christopher.  The bad parts of town in Paris
were several.  There was of course Pigalle, Place Blanche, a place of
inimitable whiteness, thronged with Brazilian transvestites.  But the best
part of Paris was the Rue St.-Denis - a street lined with hookers, shoulder
to shoulder, not a one of them whom you would want to fuck even if they
paid you.  (If they ran another street parallel, one with quail or nutria
equipped with female genitalia, these would be equally alluring.) Work? 
And what is work nowadays?  My great-uncle Yoshka wandered through the Pale
of Settlement selling things, suitcoats and remedies, thingamajiggies, and
that was work.  His son dealt in vegetables, and someone drew these from
the earth, and another, and sweat from the brow as if the body is proof of
work, dying, and somewhere all of these genes trickle into a tidepool named
upward mobility or an open society and voila.  I don't know Paris because I
never worked there.  My friend Blank has traveled the world and when he
arrives in Blanco he always asks, hey don't take me to the touristed spots,
take me to show me how you really live.



   And how do we really live, Christopher?  What if I have a recurring
dream?  Bubba makes his red beans with andouille, say, and lives quite
well, fine blonde to fuck in the ear canal, chopped liver, rock and rye,
death thoughts, sleep, protect your interests, fuzzy around the hour of
crimes, ooooh, wake and catch the train and investigate the nature of
professionalism, a white county outside Atlanta say, nice daughter nice son
other vaginal excrement, dreams about the end of time, goo-goo ga-ga family
barbecue company picnic, responsibility o frail thing, just what Sarah
needs, to get her act together, this is _life_?



   So, how do we really live?  I am _alive_ Christopher, you know it, under
your sporadic doubt, your own pathetic self-hatred.



   Are people ever the same?  The path of the fractional second, the scum
and glory and life and nada rushing through the open gate.  I have a
narrative.  Here, have a narrative.  Mmmmm.



   I could have become ugly.  Am I ugly, Christopher?  Is it ugly when your
pretty little baby has poop in her mouth?



   Perhaps you are ugly, Christopher.  I used to wander up the Rue
St.-Denis staring at the hideous hookers and pass through the little
keyhole at the end, the arch that says LUDOVICUS MAGNUS, go as far even as
the Peripherique, the end of Paris - was that the old Farmers' Wall?  --
and Paris was a new world to me, my love for Sarah keeping me in my cunt,
Leopold showing me that I was meat with eyes, Manga sharing her paintings
of knights and raped girls, who is Ariadne?

   It was so _rich_ to me, Paris.  At that time, in the Ukraine, everything
was the same.  A few types of sausage at standardized prices, Mosfilm and
Lenfilm, Good Morning Comrade Accountant did you see the film last night
and drink what was available at the gastronomiya, give birth to a child,
stuff your face at Social Feeding Establishment Number Seven?



   And suddenly, by being enslaved, I was in the City of Light, the child
of dubious parents, the product of my father's rape and my mother's pimp's
abuse, of vodka and Ukrainian nationalism, of a photo shoot in a Polish
mansion, of innocence and destruction, with a wallet suddenly bottomless
and a valet named Akhmed and...  Sarah.



   What did Sarah think.  What did Sarah ever think.  I later spent exactly
three weeks as a normal person, Christopher.  As a normal person, I looked
upon my old self as a loathsome caterpillar.  It did me no good.  Once one
thing, always that thing, if we are going to live in a world where
identities are ironclad, where personae are assumed at all.



   Someone somewhere once told me that Hope was the worst thing to crawl
from Pandora's Box, up there in foulness with disease and doubt, but
stringing us along forever.



   I learned that I was inaccessible.  For my tenth birthday, I got Sarah.
It was a pernicious present from my husband - Leopold wanted Sarah, so he
gave her to me.  She would from then on - until the events I am going to
describe came to pass - occupy a mid-ground, a...  No-Man's-Land, a
minefield studded with heather and hematite, a purlieu no one would know
except Ariadne Fish.  My husband did not fuck her, I let her head into Hell
and get her asshole reamed by every sentient being who happened to pass
by...  but no one knew Sarah Leucht except myself, and I very nearly became
her in the process of knowing her...  and I NEVER want to do that again
with a woman, ever.  With men, it is easy.  Men are easy.  I love you,
Christopher.  I loved Leopold...  maybe I still love Leopold.  But you
haven't the intricacy Sarah possessed, and at the age of ten I thought
intricacy equaled love.  I thought profundity was sorrow, and I did not yet
realize...



   Inaccessible - I was ten years old, Christopher, and no one wanted
intimacy with such an intricacy as I.  I was ten but carried myself like a
fourteen-year-old when I wasn't in pain from the incessant torture.  I had
a mind like a steel trap when I wasn't dazed from taking dogs and boys and
men up my holes.  Cleo told me that I had the eyes of a barely legal
virgin. I walked like a model unless I saw something with a cock - then I
half-cringed, as if I was rubbing my bony chest up against a hard-on, and
sometimes drooled.  Drugs, art, books, food - everything was only a
temporary substitute for orgasm.



   Sarah was in love only with herself and Leopold.  She was in love with
my husband, but not in a puppy-dog way - she loved him because he loved
those parts of her that strained towards oblivion.  It was in oblivion, in
the kind of orgasm where utter beauty becomes unutterable, insane yearning
for apocalypse.



   I wrote stories with Manga and got to know my sisters, I became
interested in outre art, while Sarah became more and more obsessed with her
own sexuality to the exclusion of everything else.  The doomed, dirty baby
in her belly made her look freakish, and we dressed her in sickeningly sexy
clothes, parading her through the Bois de Boulogne and the Tuileries,
exhibiting her filthy desires.  It was a game.  Short skirts, high heels,
halters.  Sometimes we had her carry a dildo, at other times we bought her
a big lollipop.



   We went shopping every day.  I decorated my room, changing the decor
every month or so.  I bought myself a round bed and made Sarah sleep with
me.  She was always awake before I was, masturbating.  I would take her to
the bathroom and be her toilet, lick her clean and pose her in the mirror
telling her how beautiful she was.  Then I would write about her while she
played with her slimehole.



   I got bored with the baby-slut act and started to dress her as a refined
young lady.  She looked like a knocked-up rich girl.  I devised various
ways of arousing her all day long, not letting her come until the very end,
when I was drugged out and almost comatose.  Then I would masturbate while
Akhmed or the twins or the dogs screwed her.



   During my first year as Leopold's wife, I visited the barn almost every
night, lining up the captives and choosing two or three virgins to
terrorize and deflower.  The damage I did to Leopold's merchandise must
have been in the millions, but my husband never mentioned it.  I cut boys'
pricks off, whipped girls with barbed wire, dismembered children, and
otherwise brought myself to a gasping, frothing, epileptic frenzy again and
again.  I tied up Sarah so that she couldn't touch herself and watched her
pussy drool while I destroyed the prisoners.  My greatest accomplishment
was forcing two twelve-year-old twins from Norway to eat each other.  One
of them was still alive when her limbs had been gnawed to the bone.



   Cleo more than anyone taught me how to shift, how to go from a
blood-smeared, ravenous, murderous animal to a demure, sophisticated,
elegant creature and back again, my pretty fingers making strange signs in
the stench-filled air of the barn, drawing odd forms in the candlelit
restaurants we sometimes dined in.  The dark girl took me under her wing
and I became her apprentice, often participating in her rituals, and as
Sarah's pregnancy entered its seventh month, we prepared for the birth.



   I know that you think I have a talent for the occult, Christopher, but
really I do not.  I learned how to focus, how to decipher people's secrets,
the basic operations of sexual magick and even some Enochian.



   The peril of voudon is that unlike most Western magick, it allows for
total possession.  What it teaches you is that your self does not exist. 
The little girl lying in bed stuffing her mouth with feces and ripping
apart her dolls is not the same Ariadne who shares red wine with you in the
evening.  The Ariadne who sleeping dreams of Naxos is not the same woman
you fuck in the throat, and Ariadne at orgasm is none of the above.  I
tortured and killed the most beautiful and virginal captives, then dressed
in cobalt blue silk and charmed the company assembled for dinner.  I fucked
goats in Cleo's rituals, then slept and dreamt about taking my father up
the ass.  There are few constants in Ariadne, and Cleo taught me not to
identify with any of them, so that my identity - identities - became fluid
and uncertain.



   Cleo taught me to invoke the Loa and I spent a lot of time with deities
running me, like a toy airplane, dependent on a wild child clutching a
remote control.  I crashed often, lying next to Manga's drugged and dying
form, sucking her toes and shooting us up, contemplating suicide.  But
within a few hours I would sparkle again, help the half-dead Manga to the
dinner table and chat about Pushkin and Lermontov, Chinese alchemy and
Jung.



   I developed a strong interest in the works of the English sorcerer
Austin Osman Spare, who wrote _The Book of Pleasure_ at a very young age.
In it, he describes the creation of an "alphabet of desire," signs and
formulae that allow one to access the subconscious, the only place where
desire actually functions.  "Conscious desire is unattractive," Spare
wrote. But deeper, darker desire, forgotten by the conscious mind, _is_
attractive.  Studying Spare and practicing what he called the "Death
Posture," I soon learned how to make my needs manifest.  I was surrounded
by astral forms, incubi, creatures of the night.



   That is what attracts you to me, Christopher.  You hurt yourself by
fighting yourself, and all of the things you repress become violent demons,
tearing you up from within.  You would not love me if I wasn't a murderess,
yet you keep telling yourself that you will reform me, fix me, heal me,
straighten me out.  For what, Christopher?  So that you can be bored?  What
is bliss, to you?  Ennui?  Total control over everything, so that you are
unchanged and unchanging, so that you can rot?



   My demons are mere servitors.  I call and dismiss them at will.



   Sarah gave birth to Leopold's baby in the middle of the night in
midwinter.  My husband had made an exception to the closed status of the
upper floor, and Sarah was fitted onto the altar, screaming, the satyr's
penis imbedded in her sacred anus, until she was silenced by the monstrous
obsidian tongue, Cleo jerking her head forward so that it went down her
throat.  I whipped her, Leopold stood impassively, Epiphany looked on. 
Amanda lay on the floor diddling her girly-dick and Manga lay next to her,
dying.



   When Sarah's contractions increased in frequency, the massive obsidian
prick deep in her rectum, blood dripping down the black tongue, Epiphany
took up a weird melody on the violin and Cleo began a strange chant.  I
masturbated myself and Manga, Leopold buttfucked Amanda, and the child
emerged from Sarah's womb.



   I came as the baby came, using Manga's limp arm as a dildo, and
Jean-Baptiste Leucht de Berry entered the world among moans and
ejaculations.  I pulled the unconscious mother from the altar and Cleo
revived her by holding a luminous green powder under her bleeding nostrils.
Epiphany put down her fiddle and tended to the baby.



   My orgasm would not end.  I dragged the traumatized, hemorrhaging mother
down the spiral staircase, coming, rubbing my hard little clitty, gasping
for air.  I felt as if I was drowning in lubricant.  I drank the scum
spilling from Sarah's gaping hole, ate the placenta, and threw my lover
into the bath.  Everything was electric blue when I suddenly realized what
I wanted - the baby.  I draped Sarah over the edge of the tub and hurried
back to Leopold's apartments.



   Cleo held the newborn, whispering some disturbing incantation and
occasionally making sounds like those of a sperm whale.



   Manga was dead.  Leopold was defiling the corpse while Epiphany ate its
eyes.  Amanda was crawling around fingering her asshole.



   I wanted the baby.  I wanted to shove the baby down its mother's throat.
I tried to tear it away from Cleo, but Leopold finished fucking the
cadaver, grabbed me, and beat my head against the altar until I blacked
out.



   XIII





   Jean-Baptiste was not to be mine.  He grew quickly, and no one was
allowed to touch him.  He was to be Leopold's heir, and a year later he was
taken away, probably to one of the country houses we were never allowed to
see.



   I nursed Sarah back to health, hardly ever leaving her side.  It didn't
make her love me, though, and because of that I slowly I started to hate
her.  I didn't hurt her - out of respect for the memory of love maybe.  I
drank and did drugs and took out my frustrations on the captives,
especially the really little girls.



   I don't have much of a sense of time about this phase - I would wake
early, bathe Sarah and beg her to shit in my mouth or piss on me, drink
some absinthe and smoke some hash, seek privacy to play girly with Karina,
shoot up, cry, get fucked, cry, snort coke, make Karina puke and torture a
new girl or two.  Then I would go to sleep, crying.



   I looked forward a lot to weeks when I was Leopold's functioning wife.
These were a little longer then because Manga hadn't been replaced yet.  I
fell in love with him again, with how much he hated me.  Sarah's dislike
made me hate her because it was indifferent, but my husband seemed to
detest me passionately - it was as if he blamed me for Sarah's
unavailability, an unavailability I didn't understand.  He hadn't been
infected by her, and he could easily have had her.  Maybe he could really
only love what he couldn't have, what he held at arm's length.  It was
absolutely clear to me that I was repulsive to him, and the more I doped
myself up and got smashed, the more repugnant I became, I guess.  He stuck
thin, long pins into my trembling body, hung me in all sorts of contorted
postures, made me lick his asshole all night, gave me painful enemas and
hurt me and hurt me and hurt me so that most of the time I was with him I
was passed out or delirious, begging him to hurt me, hurt me, hurt me,
while he cursed me and spat in my face and slapped me and held a cattle
prod for me to suck on.  My tongue was covered with blisters and when he
was done with me I was usually bedridden for a week.



   Once, instead of inviting me upstairs, Leopold took me to the country in
a minivan.  Akhmed drove, and I don't know where it was that I was taken
because I was a wreck by the time we got there, a voodoo doll for him, pins
stuck through my tummy and thighs and cunt and cheeks and nipples.  He
stuck cattle prods in all my holes then, and I blacked out.  When he
revived me with one of his powders, I was in a stable.



   I recognized Stefania right away, remembering Sarah's story about Pasha
and the razor and how she had killed her beloved Alex, inspired by this
strange suicidal little redhead.  I recognized Stefania, and I felt myself
again, through the pain and hate and drugs and booze I was shrouded in.



   She was almost seven years old then, and nothing about her was human. 
Almost as skinny as Manga had been, her alabaster flesh criss-crossed with
scars and blotted with burns, Stefania lay writhing on a bed of straw,
fixing me with a venomous stare, her smaragdine eyes unutterably insane
with starvation and perversion, her lips curled in a grimace of sick lust
and self-hatred, her delicate nostrils flared, fingering her rubbery,
distended, formless fuckhole.  She smiled at me.  My heart leapt with
desire and loathing.  It was a ghoulish smile, and Stefania twisted on the
straw, obviously inviting me to use her, exhibiting her torn anus and
moaning, barking like a trained seal, rubbing her flat, bleeding chest
against the bundled straw, her tiny buttocks covered with bruises and cuts.



   I stood awestruck by the terrible beauty of her unimaginable violence.
Suddenly my husband knocked me down.  I screamed, and Leopold dragged me by
the hair to the tiny, monstrous redhead.  Stefania turned onto her back and
grabbed for Leopold's crotch.  My husband caught her wrist and twisted her
arm.  The six-year-old gave the shriek of a brain-damaged little goddess,
her emerald eyes fierce with masochistic lust and lunacy, shoving her dirty
fingers into her ravaged kiddie-cunt.



   Leopold threw both of us into some loose straw and sauntered off.  I
crawled on top of the gurgling freak and shoved my tongue into her mouth.
The child smelled like a grown whore in a torture chamber, returning my
kiss and desperately sucking my tongue, spreading her legs and clawing at
her gaping fuckhole, whimpering, her eyes unblinking, hard, indescribably
evil.  I bit her left nipple.  She trembled and hissed with pain and what
was indubitably mindless, corrupt pleasure, ramming her fingers in and out
of her hole rhythmically until I grabbed her hand and slapped her across
the cunny.  Stefania screamed like an adult and moved her legs further
apart.  I hit her again and again, then shoved my fist into the bone-dry,
distended hole.  Her pale, black and blue, lacerated body shuddered like a
diseased leaf as I raped her brutalized vagina with my hand.  After a while
it started to bleed and my fist went easily in and out of her.  She never
took her eyes off me.  I rubbed my pussy against one of her little white
feet and punched deeper into her ruined body.  She started to grunt like a
little boy being raped by an animal, but her soft, delicate toes played
with my snatch like agile fingers.  I was lost in a lucid fog, as I hadn't
been since I first touched Sarah.  Stefania erased Sarah.  I began to move
my hand in and out of my little deity with less force, then gently.  Her
face changed.  A kind of wicked tenderness glowed subtly in her wild eyes.
I fingered her tiny cervix and slowly, ever so slowly, without the
slightest pain, felt first her toes and then her foot enter my slippery
cunny.  An angelic smile played at her corrupt mouth.  Rigid, trembling, I
took her deeper and stroked her deformed cervix with two fingertips.  Then
I slid my middle finger into her wrecked womb.  Stefania gasped, her foot
slipping in and out of me like a water snake, her mouth and eyes wide as I
moved my finger in and out of the loose, tiny, damaged collar of her
six-year-old womb.  Moaning steadily, I worked another finger into the
slick little entrance, then another, very gently, caressing the traumatized
membrane.  With my other hand, I lightly grasped her heel and tried to get
her to go deeper.  We made no sound now, lost in silent rapture.  I placed
my thumb against my palm and carefully inserted my entire hand into the
dark, sterile depths of the ice-cold child.  Her face was a distorted mask
of sinister ecstasy.  Releasing her heel, I ran my hand along the cold wet
skin of her little white belly, teasing her pretty, protuberant navel with
the tip of my middle finger and stroking the bulge my hand made as I forced
it deeper into the recess.  Her foot moved slowly in my soaked hole, her
smaragdine eyes suddenly rolled into her head so that only the whites
showed, and an inhuman, wild wail welled up from her trembling throat. 
Shaking uncontrollably, glistening with sweat, Stefania clutched my elbow
and pulled more than half of my forearm into her as the fingers of my free
hand closed around her throat and her little foot kicked into me.  Her womb
felt like a tiny steambath.  Her tongue lolled as I strangled her.  I made
a fist and rammed it into the desperate little girl, orgasm catching both
of us like a mad, luminous bird.  I went limp, letting go of her throat,
listening to her choke and rasp as her perverted cunt tightened around my
forearm and I spread my fingers inside her, raking them along her inner
walls, wishing she could twist her foot and ram her leg into where my hand
was in her in me, screaming, screaming, slapping her bony chest, her eyes
again upon me desirous as my forearm thrust in and out of the abused tube.
Her eyes bored into me like the searchlight of a submarine in a cool green
sea, and I felt and saw her squirm and heard her hiss as she moved
backwards like a wounded snake.  I froze as her icy fingers caressed my
tiny titties and toyed with my labia.  Firmly, Stefania forced my weakened
body onto all fours, stroked my buttocks, spread them, licked my crack and
slipped her wet tongue stiffly into my rectum.  I came again, almost
passing out.  I felt her tease my asshole with her toes, then, slimy from
my gash.  I bit down on some dirty straw and instinctively reached back and
held my tight cheeks apart.  I wanted her to hurt me.  I wanted her to hurt
me as she had been hurt, I wanted her.  Her little toes deftly pushed and
pulled at my aroused sphincter and suddenly were inside me, painlessly.  I
relaxed a little, letting her sodomize me, craving her.  I tried to twist
around to see her, imagining her gracefully balanced on one skinny leg,
staring at my open body.  I pushed back against her invading foot and
gurgled as the heel went in, then started panting, suddenly feeling the
pain, horrible pain.  Stefania's ankle slid past my sphincter and slowly
her leg pushed into my shithole, I don't know how deep, deep.  She rocked
back and forth.  I could hear her fingers flutter at her own soggy cunny. I
wanted her so much and at the same time the pain was excruciating,
unbearable.  What are we going to do when you get older, I thought
absurdly, as if she was mine, would always be.  I wanted to puke it hurt so
much, I could feel her toes against my intestine, but my body began to fuck
her back automatically, and suddenly the pain was the same thing as the
pleasure and flames ran up my spine - I wanted to die, I wanted to kill
her, she was howling like an injured monkey, I was bleeding, her leg thrust
deep, I shrieked and then came like a depth charge, feeling her green eyes
boring into my back, came, came, came, collapsed, there and at the same
time lifeless, as insane as her smaragdine eyes, gone and yet suddenly
present as I had not been since Leopold threw me down the stairs.



   She withdrew her blood-smeared foot and pressed her crazy little body
against mine.  Bolts of pain shot through me.  We kissed, hard, and fell
asleep in each other's arms.



   We woke in what must have been the middle of the night.  I licked her
wounds and whispered girly things.  We went wee-wee in each other's mouths
and made little dolls out of straw and string.  She put hers in her fucky.
Bad little girly fucky.  Nasty little girly poopy finger.  Bad little girly
spank.  I found a stick and beat her botty until bad little girly bled,
then stuck it in her poopy.  I made her cry and I made her come good.  I
put my cunny on the stick sticking out of her botty and got bad real good.
The stick stuck out of my cunny like a stiffy and the girly did nasty stuff
to the boner with her slut mouth.  I put a straw in her pee-pee.  I made
her eat moo-moo poop and kissed her like a dirty whore.  I sucked her baby
titties and she touched my cunny.  I rubbed my cunny on her cunny and she
had to go poop.  She let me be her potty.  She went wee-wee again too.  I
told her I loved her and she said she loved me, too.



   My husband found us like that, entwined, entranced, licking each other's
cunnies.  He dragged us both outside.  There was a snowy pasture full of
incongruous sleeping cows and two trucks with lights.  A frozen pond,
cameras, horses, several big men and a few vans.  Some outbuildings and a
stone farmhouse.  It was dawn.



   The temperature must have been around zero and we were naked.  One of
the men was Pasha.  Stefania became tense, nervous.  They opened the doors
of one of the vans and pulled out some girls, a few of them with clothes
on, and herded us into an immense shed.  a

   Gray-eyed Sophie was sixteen and looked like she ate men for breakfast.
She was naked under her mink coat and had long legs and long hair dyed dark
red.  She wore high heels and her full breasts were very firm.  Her pussy
was shaven.  Eva was fourteen, in a long, sleeveless, silver dress.  She
had black hair and pointy breasts with long nipples.  Her cold blue eyes
were mean.  Monique was thirteen, and not yet fully developed.  Naked under
fox fur.  Naturally red hair.  Green eyes, but not nearly as beautiful as
Stefania's.  These three young women were in charge when the men weren't
around.



   The five other girls, Stefania and I were nude.  Ulrike and Ilse were
identical twins from Chemnitz, the former Karl-Marx-Stadt.  Nine years old,
blonde and blue-eyed, they were both dazed and gloomy.  Kidnapped a week
before, both had been anally raped several times a day since then.  Their
cunnies were still virgin, though, and their rapists had used lubricant. 
They looked like fresh merchandise.  Amber was a twelve-year-old runaway
from Vermont.  Abused by her stepfather since she was seven, the scrawny,
chestnut-haired girl had sad brown eyes and a mouth frozen in a forced
smile.  Lydia was ten years old and had been kidnapped in Liverpool.  Her
hair was the color of wheat, her eyes gray.  Rosy-cheeked, she covered her
flat chest and virgin hole in the way I liked a lot, as if even anyone
seeing them would kill her.  No one had touched her yet.  Veronique was
five and crying.  Taken from a kindergarten in Quimper, the skinny little
brunette with hazel eyes was trying to hold her pee in.



   Our three overseers inspected us.  Eva spat in my face, then turned her
attention to Lydia, who wet herself.  'Show me your twat, slut,' Eva barked
in English with a slight French accent.  The terrified virgin moved her
feet apart a little, head hung down, and slowly removed her trembling hand
from her hairless slit.  Eva giggled and ran a long-nailed finger along the
scared girl's gash.  'Sweet,' she said quietly.  'Real sweet.'



   Monique drifted over to me, wearing only a friendly little smile. 
'You're one of Monsieur de Berry's wives?" She spoke in French with a
Belgian accent.  'Oui,' I answered.  Stefania and I were holding hands. 
Monique looked at my beloved little witchy masochist and smiled warmly
again.



   The men, under the direction of Pasha, set up lights and cameras and
reflectors and brought in mattresses and sheets and boxes of equipment. 
Monique asked if Stefania and I wanted to come to the house and have some
breakfast while things were set up.  She put on her fox fur and led us out
and quickly through the snow to the stone farmhouse.



   My husband was on a bearskin rug in the parlor, fucking a frail, sobbing
ten-year-old boy up the ass.  I put my arm around Stefania's waist and
Monique took us to the large, well-appointed kitchen.  There was a TV
showing a video of a little girl screaming, the sound turned off, while two
men in masks held her down and a Great Dane screwed her bald cunny.  I was
starting to get very aroused.  Monique gave us caf, au lait and croissants
and rolls with black currant jam, and tentatively touched my foot with hers
under the table.



   I looked into her eyes.  Maybe they were as beautiful as Stefania's, at
least at that moment.  Her lips were parted and she wet them with her
tongue.  She was a lovely young woman, built like a sylph.  She got up and
came around the table and gave me a deep kiss.  I felt Stefania's hand on
my thigh and spread my legs.  Monique kissed Stefania on the lips and then
the three of us kissed.



   Like lightning the three of us were on the floor, eating each other out
and sucking each other's fingers, kissing, relishing one another.  Monique
was very gentle and Stefania needed to be hurt badly, whispering into my
ear how she wanted me to do her, fist her, punish her.  But Monique wanted
me and pushed her fragrant, pretty gash to my lips while frigging mine.  We
didn't notice that Stefania had slipped away until we heard her savage
hisses - shoving a bottle into her rectum, she had found a knife and was
slashing at her flat chest, drooling.  Monique was frightened.  I was
hideously turned on, watching the six-year-old draw her own blood, her
emerald eyes glued to the television set, where the girl raped by the dog
was being sandwiched half-unconscious by two masked men.  Slobbering and
bleeding, Stefania humped the heavy, dark glass bottle, clawing frantically
at her cunny as the masked men on TV strangled their little victim. 
Monique slapped me, wrested the knife from Stefania's hand and drove us out
of the house, screaming that we were sick, vile, unbearable beasts.



   Back in the huge shed, Sophie was whipping Amber, the abused runaway. 
The scrawny girl was gagged and the horsewhip raised spectacular welts on
her pale back.  Monique remains a mystery to me - unfazed by the barbarity
and brutality of her cohorts and the men, she seemed nonetheless incapable
of understanding Stefania's insane masochism and my orgasmic reaction to
it. She didn't look at me again.



   We began shooting the video at sunrise.  Leopold directed.  By eleven
o'clock everything was a blur to me.



   The men - there were nine plus Leopold and Pasha, who acted as producer
- put on masks and raped Amber.  Her smile endured the first four or five
assaults as they reamed her anus and mouth and cunt, then vanished as she
realized that she would not survive, that they intended to destroy her. 
Eva and Sophie whipped her between rapes as she writhed on the cold dirt
floor.  Ten-year-old Lydia fainted.  The twins grimly awaited their turn.
Stefania and I played with each other's cunnies while Monique kissed and
cuddled the five-year-old.  Two men held Amber as the others burned her
with cigarettes and the twelve-year-old uttered piercing screams.  Then
they made her fuck herself with a banana and smile and say how much she
liked what they were doing to her.  'Do...  it...  more...  please,' she
wept.  Finally one of them stuffed a beer bottle in her hole and broke it,
then slit her throat.



   The twins were next, but they weren't snuffed.  Lying them on white silk
sheets, the men deflowered them and came on them and pissed in their
mouths.



   Lydia's turn.  Having witnessed the horror, the ten-year-old English
girl was a mere zombie now.  She lay down languidly on the mattresses and
did what she was told, not bothering to cover her puffy, prepubescent slit.
One of the masked men took stills of her while Leopold ordered her to
display her wan, almost rigid body.  Two men led in two horses.  They were
Lipizzaners.  My husband asked me and Stefania to help.  Monique slapped
the dazed virgin a few times and pretty soon little Lydia was licking the
member of one of the horses, tears streaming down her rosy cheeks.  We
posed her and complimented her while Monique sucked off the horse's huge
dick.  Lydia was like a garbage bag full of grass clippings.  Stefania tore
her hymen with her fingers and all of us worked Lydia's little body onto
the horse's penis.  I spat on her bleeding hole and the three of us forced
the horse dick into the unconscious girl.  It would only go in a little
ways.  I got some powder from Leopold and revived her.  Lydia was more dead
than alive.  Stefania was on the verge of another fit.  Monique fingered
and sucked the Lipizzaner until the beautiful white horse flooded our faces
with semen.



   All hell broke loose.  Three men raped five-year-old Veronique, someone
gave Stefania a razor blade, the twin girls were made to lick the other
horse, Eva took it in her ass...  and then Sophie made me lie on my back
while she whipped me.  The rest a blur, then.  I think she whipped me all
day...  until I _liked_ it.  Man after man fucked my throat and fuckhole
and rectum, I swallowed horse come, my husband fisted me.  I saw other
things going on around me - Lydia in a sandwich, Stefania cutting
herself...



   XIV



   When I came to, it was again night, Stefania beside me, staring into me
with her cold, emerald eyes, the fingers of her left hand buried in her
sick cunny, picking at her dirty, bleeding bottom, using the only methods
she knew to make her mind disappear.  All of a sudden I felt old.  I felt
like I was _her_, then, like time was fucked up, like I was the little girl
who stuck things in her holes, but at the same time I felt like I wanted to
live, while Stefania wanted to fuck or die or fuck and die.



   The girls who had survived the ordeal were piled against the other wall
of the back of the van, bleeding and sobbing or asleep, except Monique, who
was absent-mindedly frigging herself, drugged out.



   The van pulled off the _autoroute_ at a _Self_, one of the dreary,
plasticky cafeterias that are all the same, and Pasha, who was driving, and
one of the men who had been masked, who was smoking a cigarette strongly
laced with hash, got out.  There was a sort of cage, like for dogs, between
the front part of the van and ours.  I wasn't even thinking when I tried
the lever of the back doors.  I hadn't the least hope that they were
unlocked.  They opened, fully, on the fluorescent lights of the gas bay. 
As soon as they did, Monique lunged, but she was in the throes of a
soporific orgasm.  I threw a weak punch, but she tumbled out onto the
tarmac.  I have no idea how I had the presence of mind to do what I did,
adrenalin and desperate desire, but I found some ill-fitting clothes and
dressed Stefania and myself and grabbed her squealing, uncomprehending body
by the wrist and forced her out of the van and ran, ran with her, past some
chain stores and into a tenebrous market town.  Dogs barked and howled and
we were still barefoot.



   A stream ran through the town, and police sirens wailed low in the
distance, in the direction we had come.  What must have been a restaurant
stood near the stream, with a big sign that said TRUITE AUX AMANDES.  Its
verandah hung over the gurgling brook, and I dragged Stefania under it.



   She was still looking at me.  I felt not liberated but horrifically
lonely - I had never been alone, never learned to be alone, and my little
masochistic lover was a burden only, not company.  The sound of the brook
calmed me, though, reminding me of my grandmother's dacha in the Carpaths.
Afraid, I wanted to be a baby girl, and reached for Stefania's cunny.  She
touched my crotch, and in a few minutes we were naked, our hands in each
other's holes, kissing, shifting, licking, fisting each other, hard, her
shoving both of her little hands up me, making me come.  By the time dawn
came we were exhausted, and then I heard children's voices.  At first they
meant nothing to me, being only the sounds of meat ready for rape and
death, but then I realized that they were _laughing_, and I realized that I
hadn't heard laughter since my mother's pimp started using me, and I made
Stefania get dressed.  The full moon was setting over an old church denuded
during the Revolution.  A crimson sun rose simultaneously in the east, and
a small crowd of girls and boys were silhouetted downstream, waiting for
the bus.  It came just as Stefania and I approached, without shoes, in
tatters, and the kids fell silent.  The moon set, then, in clouds like
curdled milk, and the sun lost its rubeate tinge, and we piled into the
bus, ignoring what the driver barked at us, the children staring at us
fearfully, and headed down a hilly road into a small town, disgorged in
front of an odd school.  It looked like an old palace.  The kids, craning
their necks and whispering, stared at us, and, gripping Stefania's elbow, I
led her away, away, into an obviously impoverished little industrial city
black and silver with soot and neglect.



   Oh, Christopher!  I was free for the first time in my life - and utterly
terrified.  Men were headed for the factories, and I think my freedom, or
illusory freedom, endured the space of half an hour before I wanted one.  A
man, I mean.  Stefania was visibly horny, her dirty, diminutive body
trapped in a dress far too tight for her, her sickeningly focused,
smaragdine eyes staring point blank at every passing drudge.



   And then I saw Zero.  He was a strange bird, and if I loved Leopold,
Zero was my secret captor, the man who owned me, really, the man who is the
reason I can't _really_ love you, Christopher.  But what is real love, what
makes love real.  I was almost eleven years old, then.  I am almost eleven
years old, now.  What Zero did to me, how Zero made me _see_, is beyond me.
He made me see beyond me.



   He was unassuming for the first half of the split second, crossing the
dingy street with his lunch pail.  Whiskers the color of nicotine, missing
a lens from his tinted glasses like Baron Samedhi, furrows in his high brow
hung with ringlets of hair the color of smoke.



   'Bonjour, mesdemoiselles, ca va?" The sun just then flared over the
roofs of the ancient buildings opposite, and Zero smiled.  It was the kind
of smile you see over a tar pit when the latest species is extinct. 
Stefania moaned.  His eyes, the hue of rock crystal infused with absinthe
and tossed around in the Sahara for a few hundred years, landed on mine. 
My cunny oozed.  "Vous avez besoin des bon-bons?" There wasn't the
slightest kindliness in his voice, as if asking whether we needed candy
referred exclusively to cock and cunt, and yet there was also not a trace
of condescension - so that I once again felt very old, as if I was a
traveling exhibit from kiddie-whoredom.  The juices from my hole ran down
my leg and I felt my bottom get slimy.



   He motioned us to follow him down a street the color of rotten
chocolate, and in a little while we were in a tiny apartment crammed with
books and empty bottles, drinking eau-de-vie and sucking his thick, stubby
cock.  He kept spitting in my face while I stuck out my tongue, he kept
calling me _pute_ and nothing, and then he tore off my dress and fucked me
up the ass, slapping my face and chest until I came.  He screwed Stefania,
too, ejaculated in my mouth, and shoved his hand into my snatch.  His hand
was huge, but remarkably tender at first.  Then he fisted me, and I thought
I would die.  He made Leopold seem gentle.  Hitting me in the face, he
pumped my fuckhole relentlessly, sneering, ripping me open, thrusting his
dick down Stefania's throat.  When I had nearly passed out, or passed out,
Zero shoved his bloody fingers down my throat and came in Stefania's mouth.
I was suffocating, suffocating, and then gone.



   I woke to another series of rapes - Zero's only friends, Pierre and
Jean, fucked me up the ass and hit me and shoved their filthy dicks down my
throat until I lost consciousness again.



   I have no idea how long we were there.  Day after day and night after
night were like that.  Zero was never nice to us, never had a kind word to
say.  He hurt us and used us and beat us and gave us to his friends when he
went to work.  He called us ugly names and made us cook for him and told us
what to do.  Stefania loved it, and after a while I did, too.



   While at Leopold's I was a queen except when he tortured me, at Zero's I
was nothing when he tortured me and nothing when he didn't torture me.  At
first I tried to make him love me, but after a while anything he did to me
_was_ love, as long as he paid attention to me.  I waited for him with my
legs spread, and Zero belted my cunny and used my throat.  I tried to suck
him, and Zero put it in my ass.  I made him a nice dinner, and Zero went
out to eat and gave me to Pierre or Jean, who raped me and pissed in my
mouth.



   All I cared about was him touching me.  The more he hurt me, the more I
loved him.  He kicked me between the legs and I kept them spread.  The more
I wanted him to hurt me, the less he would.



   Zero loved Stefania, but as a sort of jester, not as a girl.  The more
she hurt herself, the harder he laughed.  Stefania and I slept together,
but were usually in too much pain to do anything.



   It was late spring when he started whoring us.  He had made friends with
the night porter in a sleazy hotel near the train station, and two or three
times a week we went and did it.  By that point, I loved it.  I love you I
love you I love you, I said, while Stefania cut herself or screwed a
bottle, always in a frenzy.  I loved being outside, loved being looked at.
Now and then Zero took us through the train station, and I knew that
everyone could see what I as - nothing, a pathetic, starving, ten-year-old
whore.



   Once Zero started making money off of us, he stopped torturing us, to
keep us in good condition.  It made me feel valuable.  I turned beautiful
again.  It felt good to take off my clothes - Zero only let us wear clothes
on the way to the hotel, trashy, short, tight dresses - and turn on some
salesman or consultant.  Stefania and I would put on a little girly lesbian
act, and then they would fuck us, fuck us hard, fuck us without the least
pretense of fucking _us_ -- we were just a couple of sick child
prostitutes, bodies like in a magazine.  I love you I love you I love you.
Stick it in my ass.  Oh, yes.  Harder.



   Sometimes they were rough, and sometimes Stefania had a fit.  I loved
watching her then - she turned seven in March - the baby taught to pose and
move like a woman, trying to tear her pale body apart, her wild eyes wide.



   The end came in autumn.  A vitamin salesman from Toulouse was fucking my
mouth when Stefania ran through the balcony window, cutting herself,
appearing naked above the dismal street.  My john hit me and a cry went up
outside, it was still dusk and everyone saw her, a scarred seven-year-old
bleeding and clawing at her genitals.  I grabbed our clothes and Stefania
and ran down the stairs, but people had rushed into the lobby.  It was a
strange melee, and in the end I lost her and our dresses and ran naked
towards the station just as the train to Strasbourg was leaving - fate kept
me free; if anyone saw me once I ran down the platform, it didn't matter. I
leapt into the first class and into the washroom, alone, alone again,
gasping for breath, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, nude, scared,
desperate.



   After a while, I peeped out when people tried the door, hoping someone
would want me.  I knew that men wanted my body, my cunny, my dirty bottom.
The first couple were women.  I peeked through the crack, excused myself
and shut the door.  Then a young man in a shirt and tie.  I opened the door
and gave him a sexy look.  He ran away.  I was really scared - we were
almost in Strasbourg.  Another woman.  A silver-haired man in an Icelandic
sweater - he gasped and cursed and crossed himself.  I started to cry when
the door handle jiggled again.  I opened the door a little.  It was a
middle-aged man in a gray suit.  He stared at me.  I smiled and tugged at
his sleeve.  He followed me nervously into the washroom.  I sat down on the
stainless steel toilet and spread my legs and asked him to please put it in
my mouth.  I stuck out my tongue and touched my slit.  The man was about
forty or forty-five, with straight brown hair and rimless glasses.  He was
frightened, but obviously aroused, his cock tenting against his flannel
trousers.  'S'il vous plait,' I said, 'fuck my mouth, please, please...'
The man touched my face.  I kissed his fingers, then sucked them.  He
called me a little whore in German, _kleine Hure_.  'Bitte,' I said, having
learned German from Manga.  'Bitte sehr...  ich will dich blasen.  Piss
mich an.  Bitte.' I unbuttoned his trousers, my hands shaking.  He stuck
his fingers in my mouth while I fumbled with his underwear.  He had the
biggest cock I had ever seen, almost the size of my forearm, uncircumcised.
'Schoen...  ja...  fick mich...' I sucked and drooled and stroked his dick
until he slapped me, flipped me over, and rammed it into my wet fuckhole. I
had completely forgotten that I needed clothes, that I needed someone to
help me, as the man shoved his huge shaft again and again into my skinny
little body.  I fingered my poophole and started to come, moaning, as he
thrust in and out of my cunny and finally came, yanking his tool from the
hole and ejaculating across my back.  I pleaded with him to piss in my
mouth and he did, holding me by the hair, his hot urine splashing against
my face, streaming into my eyes, running down my chest as I diddled my sore
snatch.  Then he threw me against the wall and...  left.



   My panic was immediate, total.  I wet myself, I couldn't breathe.  I
envisioned the police, some terrible reform school, suicide...  the door
opened and another man came in, shocked, can I help you, mon dieu, mon
dieu. Even in the state I was in, I could tell by the way he touched me
that he wanted to do more than help me.  He was maybe fifty, with a paunch
and graying hair, deep-set, furtive eyes.  I let him fondle me, then
tentatively touched his bulging crotch.  'What are you doing,' he said,
speaking French with a thick Alsatian accent, 'what are you...  non, non...
petite fille...  pauvre fille...' He had a narrow, long penis, and held the
back of my head as he fucked my mouth, grunting, forcing it down my throat
like I like.  I touched his balls and he came just as the announcement that
we were approaching Strasbourg came.  The man looked awful afterwards, like
he wanted to kill himself.  'Aidez-moi,' I begged.  'S'il vous plait... 
j'ai besoin des vetements...' The man slowly came back to this world from
his shame and told me to lock myself in.



   The train was already slowing when he knocked and handed me - girl's
clothes.  They were a little loose on my half-starved body, but better than
what I'd hoped for.  There were even shoes.



   The man was crying.  He gave me five hundred francs and blubbered
something about his daughter, then left.  I dressed, happily, a little
disappointed by how conservative the wide-wale blue cords and black sweater
looked on me, testing the shoes, which fit perfectly, and we had arrived.



   I was insanely horny, thinking about what I'd done.  The more I do, the
more I want, and I felt _independent_ now.  I felt like I could get men to
use me.  Stinking of semen and urine, I hung around the main hall of the
train station trying to look sexy in the boring clothes.  The man who gave
them to me passed with his family, looking away.  His wife was fat, and his
daughter about my age, empty.



   It was very late and there were few men, and after a while I spotted a
gendarme and went out.  I started to feel hollow, lonely again, thinking of
Stefania, of Sarah, of Zero and Leopold.  I wandered aimlessly through the
city, trying to catch the eyes of likely johns, aching with need and
afraid. Finally I stood in front of a brightly lit caf,, then found the
courage to go in and order a hot chocolate at the zinc.  The waiter was
nice, and I ordered a citron presse on the terrace.  But the men I stared
at looked away, and when there were no more customers I left, walking very
far into what must have been suburbs, finding a school and falling asleep
at the edge of the playground.



   I woke shivering, chilled to the marrow, at dawn, and threaded my way
through the empty streets, back to the train station, utterly miserable.  I
bought some hot tea and a brioche, but couldn't get warm...  and then I
realized that someone was staring at me.  He was young, thirty at most, and
poor, in a thin, threadbare coat, drinking a caf, au lait.  His hair was a
blond mess, and his thin hands were shaking.  In his gray-blue eyes I
immediately recognized heroin.  I smiled.



   Andre asked if he could join me and sat down.  I didn't know anything
about talking to men and after a couple of minutes I touched his hand and
asked him if he wanted to fuck me.  When he said no I started to cry.  He
put his arm around me and asked if I wanted a place to stay.



   Andre's apartment was in a shabby section of town, and small, and he
shared it with his girlfriend Mirabelle, who was asleep when we got there,
on a mattress on the floor.  I felt confused and my cunny was wet.  He took
me into the kitchen and put water on to boil and I lifted my sweater to
show him my chest.  He said to be cool and I started crying again, telling
him he could do anything he wanted, that I would do anything, that I loved
him.  He pulled my sweater back down and held me, but I grabbed for his
crotch and begged him to do me.  I love you I love you I love you.  Andre
clamped his hand over my mouth and told me that I would wake Mirabelle,
that if I acted like this I would have to leave.  He let me sit in his lap.
And then I felt his hard-on against my crack.  He blushed and gently made
me go sit in a chair.  We drank tea, and after a while we shot up.  The way
he held my arm made me melt.



   Mirabelle woke up around noon.  Mirabelle hated me right away, I think,
but mildly.  She didn't really have major emotions.  She worked in a record
store, used dope, and listened to music.  Now and then she fucked Andre. 
Otherwise nada.  She was pretty, though - fair-haired, gaunt, with eyes
like slate.



   Andre was a writer.  Not a very good one - he was too drugged out, too
afraid of himself to really know himself and so to know anyone.  What he
was good at was other people's work - listening to him talk was like
falling into a book about the sea, drifting past reefs and shoals and
islands made up of literature, a word he hated.  Poetry and prose were, to
him, adventures, revelations, doors to other worlds.



   When Mirabelle left to go to the record store, he got nervous and I knew
it was because he wanted me.  I took my clothes off slowly.  'Please don't
do that,' he said, too quietly, his voice shaking.  'Don't you like me?'
'Ariadne...  I want to be your friend...' I could see his cock swelling in
his jeans.  I turned so he could see my butt and got down on my hands and
knees on the mattress.  'You have to go,' he said.



   'Please,' I whispered.  'Please...  show me how you want to be my
friend.' I touched my little slit.  'Show me with your cock.  Please.' I
wiggled my bottom and slid my middle finger into my cunny.  'It's so wet...
for you...  please...  fuck it...'



   Andre came near and touched the small of my back.  I moaned and spread
my cheeks, showing him my bruised, slimy, dilated bunghole.  Breathing
hard, he started to finger my snatch.  'So...  wet...  feel it...  yes...
so...  good...' His tender reluctance made me wild.  I rocked back and
forth as he diddled my gash and very gently slid his middle finger inside.
'Oh...  yes...  more fingers...  use more fingers...  fuck your little
whore!  Fuck me!  Oh, God, fuck me!'



   I heard him unzip his jeans and then he was running the bulb of his cock
along my swollen, wounded, wet slit.  I pushed back and he slid inside me,
throbbing, to the hilt.  'Baby,' he whispered, 'baby, baby, baby.' His dick
was thick but very long.  He fucked me for a long time from behind, then
flipped me over and kissed me as I lifted my legs and guided him into my
bottom hole.  Groaning, Andre played with my nipples and slowly thrust his
penis deep into my ass, kissing my feet and staring into my eyes.  He was
in love with me.  He was in love with me and it made me come.  'Oh...  I
want it...  in my mouth...  come in my mouth...  please...' He pulled out
and held me under my skinny arms and I licked my poop off his cock and
sucked him and Andre came, flooding my tight little mouth with sweet, salty
semen.



   Andre pushed me off the mattress and told me to get out, throwing me my
clothes.  I started to cry and he hit me and spat in my face until I came
again, without even touching my hole.  'Get the fuck out of here,' he
shouted, and threw me into the stairwell, tossing my clothes after me.



   Sobbing, I lay against the cold steps and masturbated.  After a while I
got dressed and staggered out into the streets again.  It was late
afternoon and there were dead leaves blowing around everywhere in a gray
drizzle.  I went into a restaurant and had a choucroute, but could only eat
a third of it.  I went to the washroom and frigged my cunny some more, then
walked to the station.  Along the way, I stopped at a department store and
bought myself a jacket, a miniskirt, a halter top and masking creme for my
bruises.  I changed and diddled myself in the washroom at the train station
and wandered around the main hall sucking my thumb and bending over,
pretending to tie my shoelaces, rubbing up against men and licking my lips.
One man cursed me in German, and another yelled for the police.  I ran
away, crying.



   I was stumbling along a boulevard lined with linden when I saw Cosima.
She hadn't changed at all.  She was fourteen now, but had the same
flawless, luminous skin, platinum blonde hair, and lupine eyes.  Her
elegant clothes - a white fur and short, dark blue silk dress, must have
cost as much as a used luxury car.  She saw me before I called out to her,
her pale lips twisting into a mixture of cool friendliness and sick desire.
I almost fainted with relief.



   We took a taxi to her apartment, a huge, opulent place in the
fashionable part of town.  She filled two champagne flutes with Piper and
sat down on a blue velvet couch, pulling me close and stroking my hair,
then stuck her long, pink tongue in my mouth.  Cosima flipped me over,
lifted my skirt, yanked down my panties, spanked me and slapped my cunny,
hard.  Then she tore my clothes off and had me hold my cheeks apart while
she sodomized me with the bottle, champagne gurgling into my ass.  She
drank some, then made me eat her out.  She tasted ambrosial, rich, distant.
She throttled me when she came, slapped my cunt some more, and was hitting
my bony chest when the doorbell rang.  Cosima dragged me into the wardrobe,
spat in my face, and told me to be quiet.



   Whoever the visitor was screwed her for over an hour.  I could hear her
screams and moans while I crouched shivering and softly sobbing and
masturbating between her expensive clothes.



   He left and she pulled me out of the closet.  I stared at her beautiful
naked body, her perfect breasts with the huge nipples like dickheads, semen
dripping down her flat tummy.  We bathed together in a large tub of
honey-colored marble and then she whipped me until I passed out.



   When I woke up in the autumnal light of a dismal morning, she was
kissing me and crying.  I kissed her back and we made love.  Then she had
to go and left me alone.



   I walked around the apartment, made coffee, drank it black, and played
with myself.  Cosima returned around noon with shopping bags full of
clothes for me and two men in leather jackets, Russians.  They teased me
and raped me real good and pissed in my mouth.



   After they left, Cosima cleaned me up and dressed me in a black velvet
dress and took me out to eat.  I had almost forgotten how to be elegant.  I
didn't eat very much - I was so skinny then that you could see every bone
in my body.  She took me back to her place and went out to prostitute
herself.



   I was myself again by the time I turned eleven in December.  The
Russians got me my own apartment, a studio in Cosima's building, and I
lived alone for the first time.  It took a while before I had a steady
clientele, mostly Eurocrats from Brussels, but by February I had clients
every night.  Most of them wanted to hurt me, because I wanted to be hurt,
but it wasn't the same as being hurt by the same man all the time.  Cosima
asked me why I didn't try to go back to Leopold, but I was afraid he would
just snuff me.



   My favorite regular customer was a man named Jens, a Swedish lawyer who
lived in Amsterdam.  He was fifty-five, and devoted to me.  He came every
other week, on Friday evenings, and tortured me until Sunday afternoon.  He
took pictures of me tied up in painful, impossible positions, hanging from
the ceiling with whips sticking out of my holes and thin wires stretching
my titless nipples.



   In February I ovulated for the first time and Jens made me pregnant.  I
knew it immediately, intuitively.  He had stuffed my mouth with his feces,
tied my ankles and wrists to the cast-iron headboard, and stuck a salami in
my rectum when he came in my cunny and made a baby in me.



   When my belly started to swell, Jens started coming every Friday and my
other clientele increased.  I had severe morning sickness, but I started to
feel needed, as if Jens was my husband.  He would let himself in and I
would be waiting for him with my legs spread.  'How's my little girl?' He
would feel my belly, spit in my face, fuck my throat and then my cunny,
saying he wished he could make more babies in me until my tummy popped. 
'How many guys fucked little mommy-baby-whore this week, huh?' 'Twelve!' 'I
bet she liked that, huh?' 'Uh-huh!' Then he would call me names and beat me
and fist my ass.



   In late spring, Jens paid the Russians forty thousand dollars for me and
took me to Amsterdam.  He lived in a tall, narrow house in the Jordaan,
alone except for a fifteen-year-old maid named Erika.  She was a waifish
strawberry blonde with greenish gray eyes and a pretty smile that
disappeared whenever he used her.  We shared a room, but she wouldn't sleep
with me - she hated it that I liked what Jens did and she pretended to hate
what Jens did.  She had been abused by her father and uncle from the age of
ten, and was consumed by shame and guilt.  What Jens did to me physically,
he did to Erika psychologically, making her fuck him and say over and over
again how she was a dirty slut who had seduced her father and his brother.



   Doctor Harmon was a friend of Jens' from the short time he had lived in
London.  The doctor examined me and gave instructions on what was to be
done with me.  They didn't care about me, they cared about the baby.  I
liked to go walking on the Leidseplein, and near the Central Station,
showing off my pregnant little body, but Doctor Harmon had me locked in the
insulated attic after I had been knocked up for five months.  He made me
eat, and when I wouldn't, they force-fed me.



   I went into labor exactly two months before my twelfth birthday, and
Apollonia (I named her after the nickname I had given my cunt so long
before) was born a month premature.  She was very underweight but survived.




   Doctor Harmon gave me an injection, fisted my bloody womb and fucked me
in the ass.



   I even had a some milk in my tiny little titties - not enough to feed
the baby, but enough to suck.  Erika felt sorry for me and crawled into bed
with me.  I got her to suck my nipples and fell asleep.



   The baby was a few months old before Jens started to molest it.  For the
first time in my life I was stabbed again and again by the jagged glass of
jealousy as I watched him oil the little creature's holes and stick his
thick pinkie in there and come in its face.



   When Apollonia was six months old, I walked in on Jens rubbing the
bulbous head of his huge dick against my baby's lips.  I felt a sudden
surge of adrenalin, almost like an orgasm.  At the same time, I seemed to
myself cold and curiously calm.  I grabbed the bottle of genever he was
drinking from and smashed it across the back of my keeper's head.  He
turned around, staring at me with his watery blue eyes, and fell.  I took a
cigar from his pocket, lit it, and took my baby in my arms.  I must have
burned it for half an hour before it died.  Frantically frigging my cunny,
I tore at its soft flesh with my teeth, and was lost in an insane orgasm
when Erika walked in.  She stood frozen, staring at the scene.  I walked up
to her, smiling, blood dripping from my chin, and kissed her.  She tried to
get away, but I was quick and strong.  I grabbed her by her strawberry
blonde hair and smashed her head against a full-length mirror, then slit
her throat with one of the shards.  Then I cut Jens' throat.



   I did not feel fear.  Perhaps horror, but in the middle of it was an
idea, a new idea, a pure idea that took me a few minutes to recognize.  I
wanted to go _home_, to L'viv, to walk in the park on the hill...  and to
find my father.  There was no reason for it.  I did not want revenge.  I
only wanted to find my father.



   I ransacked the house and found a stash of money - a lot of money, the
equivalent of maybe twenty thousand dollars in guilders, Swiss francs and
dollars.



   My mind was suddenly _different_.  I felt...  I felt like I often feel
now, Christopher, in the evenings, when I am...  a woman, a bright, a
brilliant woman.  I packed a suitcase with clothes, called a taxi, bought a
first class ticket to Paris, and was happily staring out the window at the
toy-like countryside and canals of Holland within an hour.



   Paris because I couldn't get back to the Ukraine without a passport, and
had long not had one.  It was as though someone _else_ was thinking inside
me - half-formed thoughts rose through me like golden eggs of diaphanous
substance and I read them.  The thought I translated from the bottom of my
being, between Brussels and Paris, was that I was going to see my husband
again.  I was going to find Leopold and he would help me get back home. 
How was it home?  What was home about it?  A father who had raped me, who
had started this whole strange process that had cost me my youth?  I
giggled.  I was twelve years old, and talking about my youth as if it was
past.  The businessman opposite me glared at me as I laughed and laughed,
laughed for the first time in over four years.



   I arrived in Paris in the gloaming, the Gare du Nord bustling with
travelers and tourists.  Train stations always turn me on, and I felt the
fiendish clarity in my head seep slowly down into my cunny as a middle-aged
man gawked at me and swallowed.  I smiled at him invitingly and wheeled my
suitcase to one of the cafes that face the platforms.  He followed me, but
sat down a couple of tables away and pretended to read the newspaper. 
Looking away so that he wouldn't be scared to stare at me, I crossed my
legs and gave him a glimpse of my panties, then bent down so he could see
down my silk top.  Gazing into his eyes, I licked my lips.  He turned
nervously away.  Taking the initiative, I got up and went over to his
table, asking him if he would help carry my suitcase to the hotel across
the busy street.



   He came as soon as I put my lips around his cock, pushed me away and ran
out of the hotel room.  Insanely frustrated, I fingered myself to orgasm
and raced panting back to the Gare du Nord.  I slumped against a wall near
the entrance, sniffing my fingers, burning and drowning simultaneously.  It
was almost an hour before another man looked at me, a sixtyish man in a
beret.  I turned around and bent down to tie my shoe, my skirt riding high,
my panties soaked.  He stood very near me, pretending to read the
timetable, near enough to smell me.  I asked him the time, and when he
showed me his watch I touched his hand, running a trembling, sweaty finger
that stank of cunt along his palm.  He grabbed my chin roughly, called me a
dirty whore and asked how much it cost.  I told him that depended on what
he wanted, on whether he wanted to stick his hand in my filthy hole or use
my bottom.  'If you piss in my toilet-mouth,' I whispered, 'it's free.'



   The porter looked at me with disgust as I led the man to my hotel room.
Once there, I stripped.  Cunny-milk was dripping down my left leg.  I
crawled around on the bed and displayed my holes.  The man threw me on the
floor, removed his belt, and whipped me.  I put my shoulders back and
offered him my titties.  He belted my nipples, trembling with lust, then
dragged me to the bed and stabbed his prick into my cunny.  I came when he
used my ass, slapping my tight buttocks.  He jacked off, calling me names,
came all over my face, hit me in the mouth and departed.



   I lay there for maybe an hour, masturbating, then reluctantly washed my
face and headed downstairs, intending to go back to the station.  I wanted
to be fucked to death, to be extinguished like a fog in strong sunlight.



   The porter, an old man in a stained uniform that was too big for him,
grabbed me by the elbow.  'This is not a bordello,' he said.  Moaning, I
lifted my top.  My tiny breasts were marked by the whipping.  The porter
snarled and slapped me hard across my right tit.  Swaying, I groped his
crotch, drooling.  The old man dragged me into the office and ordered me to
undress.  Whimpering with need, I stripped and crouched on my hands and
knees.  The porter spat at me and opened a desk drawer.  I was trembling
uncontrollably, almost in orgasm, when he started to hit me with the ruler,
at first across my tight buttocks, then on my hole.  'Salope,' he kept
repeating.  'Salope.' The ruler cracked against my salivating, tortured
hole as I tried hard to keep my legs spread.  Then I felt his thin semen
splatter across my arched back.  He kicked me in the cunny and I blacked
out.



   I woke in a hospital near Pere Lachaise, bruised and terrified and
drugged.  My clothes were hanging nearby, however - strangely, I thought,
since I had at first thought that I had been put away.  I struggled into
them, throwing up, and staggered into the corridor.  A nurse screamed and I
ran, somehow pushing her aside, dazed, making the exit and running out into
traffic.  Brakes squealed, horns honked.  I reached the other side and felt
for my wallet.  Amazingly, it was there.  Shouting with madness and joy, I
hailed a cab and told him to take me near the Rue d'Auseuil - we were never
allowed to take taxis directly to the Maison de Berry.  I climbed the hill
and came to the familiar door and knocked and...  a strange face appeared
in the open orifice of the terrible house I so longed for.  'I am looking
for the de Berrys,' I stammered.  No forwarding address, no idea, not the
slightest idea where they went.  None at all.



   All the wind went out of me.  I wafted down the hill into the caf, Manga
and I sometimes visited before she died and demanded a Ricard.  'You're not
old enough,' the proprietor said, not remembering me.  'This is,' I
answered, flinging a five-hundred franc note onto the zinc.



   I drank anisette after anisette and brooded.  The cafe owner also had no
idea where the strange inhabitants of the imposing house had gone.  Drunk,
I caught a taxi back to the Hotel Apollo and entered the lobby.  It was
already late, and my tormentor was already on duty.  He gasped when he saw
me, coughed, said nothing, and handed me my key.  My suitcase was still
under the bed, with its trove of cash and clothes.  I slept.  I slept and
slept and slept.



   I spent maybe two months in Paris, unable to find anyone I knew, as if
they had never been there, as if it had all been a delectable nightmare.  I
even searched the newspapers at the library in the Centre Pompidou, looking
for clues.  Nothing.



   Every week or so the madness took me.  I prowled the train stations and
found men to fuck and hurt me.  Shivering with lust and self-abuse, I got
myself raped in bathrooms and alleys and parks.  Once, when I couldn't find
a man, I was walking in circles in the Bois de Boulogne and spotted a very
pretty girl about my age, maybe a little younger, sitting on a bench near
the artificial grotto, reading.  She had long, beautiful light brown hair
with a few thin braids, woven bracelets and an angular, awkward body that
was barely concealed by her white summer dress.  I sat down next to her and
conspiratorially offered her a cigarette.



   I was beautiful, too, terribly beautiful.  Somehow the tortures I sought
never harmed me, and I seemed to grow more desirable the more I sought
them, the more depraved I became.  The girl giggled virginally, nodded, and
both of us disappeared into the trees.



   I asked her what she was reading.  It was _L'Amour Fou_ by Breton, the
manual of mad love.  We smoked and talked about literature.  Then I
casually put my arm around her.  'Have you ever been in love?' She blushed
and shook her head.  'You're very pretty,' I whispered, stroking her hair.
I didn't want to scare her - there were too many people in the park, and I
needed to get her to come to my hotel or invite me to her house.  'You're
pretty, too,' she murmured suddenly.  She was shaking, staring at the
ground.  I took a deep breath and slowly put my hand up her dress, touching
her hip, running my fingers across her tight, trembling tummy, and snaking
them into her cotton panties.  'No...  please...' But she didn't try to
take my hand away.  She had very little hair there, and her labia were
tiny. I whispered into her ear.  'Do pretty girls make you wet?' 'Let me...
go...' She was scared.  I kissed her mouth, lightly running my middle
finger along her damp slit.  She resisted me, then kissed back clumsily.  I
took my hand from her crotch and licked my fingers, staring into her
frightened eyes.  'Do you want to kiss me more?' I looked at her with
something like disdain.  She shivered, and her eyes were wet with tears. 
'I...  I have to go home.' Sighing, I lifted my skirt and pulled my panties
down around my thighs.  My bruises had healed.  My slit was lightly downed
with silken black hairs, my labia parted.  The scent was strong against the
blossoms of the Bois.  My little victim stared at my pubis, transfixed,
confused.  I took her hand and guided it to my cunny.  She gasped, pulled
it away, still staring.  'Do you like it,' I whispered, 'do you think it's
pretty?' I fixed my skirt and panties.  'Yes,' she said, quietly,
swallowing.  I kissed her mouth again, then her ear.  'I want to go where
we can kiss each other's,' I said, licking her lobe.



   I wanted to take her where I could hurt her more than she could ever be
hurt in her own worst nightmares, where I could make her regret she had
ever been conceived, then wipe her off the map.  She was mine, now, mine. I
lead her through the Bois towards the Arc, found a taxi, and brought her to
the Hotel Apollo.  The daytime porter, callow, sneered.



   Ophelie sat stiffly on the bed as I opened a bottle of wine - the night
porter and I had become friends, or at least useful accomplices, and he
procured wine and cigarettes for me.  I poured two glasses of Chateauneuf
du Pape and offered the eleven-year-old virgin another cigarette.  Ophelie
accepted it with trembling hands, sipped some wine, and stared at the dirty
floor.  Breathing deeply, she suddenly looked up at me and spoke in a
different tone - a mature, resolute, even lovely voice.



   'What are you going to do to me?' I said nothing, swallowed my wine and
poured another glass.  'Are you going to kill me?'



   'If you scream, you little slut, I'll cut your fingers off and feed them
to you.' But I felt hollow all of a sudden, uncertain, lost.  The clarity
in my cunny became murk and my head ached like a lake being dragged for
bodies.



   'I won't scream,' she said.  Then, with a touching awkwardness, Ophelie
removed her dress and sandals and panties and knelt on the bed in front of
me.



   Her white summer dress had concealed most of her beauty after all.  She
looked as if Botticelli had carved her from a long, thin bar of Ivory Soap.
Her miniscule breasts already ended in the nipples of a nubile girl, but
they were very pale, like rose quartz.  Her body was not that of a
pubescent, despite her age and face and delicacy - she looked like a young
woman, the kind of woman men are almost afraid of, as if she were only half
human, the rest of her appallingly divine, dangerous, uncanny.  Ophelie
wasn't trembling anymore.  And then she smiled, a cryptic, unfathomable
smile.





















   F I D E L I T Y (LIVES OF THE GREAT WAIFS)



   XV

   Christopher Fuseli, drunk out of his mind, finished what was left of the
Diesel Grain Alcohol and the salty cooking wine, pushed the diary across
the dirty table and lit a vile cigarette.  He stumbled barefoot out onto
the porch, desperate for more drink.  It was the middle of the night in the
middle of summer.  Tomorrow he would turn forty-three.  He had read
Ariadne's diary maybe a hundred times now, sometimes believing it,
sometimes doubting parts of it, sometimes dismissing everything written in
it as the ravings of an overly imaginative, brilliant, fucked-up girl.  He
had made little notations in the margins - places where the dates and
birthdays and the story itself did not ring true or contradicted what had
been written elsewhere in the thick notebook.  Now and then he got in his
rusty Karmann Ghia and drove to Blackridge Road, to the intersection where
he had picked her up ("that fateful night" "my most immemorial year"),
sipping Mickey's Big Mouths with the top down and considering driving over
to 801 and knocking on her Uncle Mavrik's door, or just honking the horn so
that the terrible ("monstrous" "diabolical") man would appear and he,
Christopher, could convince himself that there was really such a man and
maybe an Ariadne and...

   Christopher Fuseli, pissed to the gills, tossed the butt of his last
cheap cigarette into the tall wet grass as dawn filtered through the hoary
trees of the abandoned orchard.  He couldn't write anymore - he drank
himself to sleep each night, which often took until morning, and slept
fitfully into the afternoon, staring remorsefully at the piles of clothes
his young lover (lover?) had left on the floor and at the summer sunlight
pouring through filthy drapes, striking the empty bottles that stood and
lay on every available surface, light green and clear and dark green and
amber.  Then he would sweep clean a little space on the table, glare at the
diary, and write a few lines in his own notebook, the project of writing
about Cici forgotten long ago in favor of writing about Ariadne...  but
what could he write?  He regretted not having gone off with her.  He should
have taken her somewhere, fixed the fucking car or bought a new one and
gone on a long road trip...  and...  and...  The broken man flung his
exhausted, thirsty body onto the dirty mattress in what had been his
lover's (lover's) room and wept until sleep finally came, not bringing
relief but dragging him back to Naxos, to dark and illogical dreams about
abused chimeras and cloned minotaurs, Ariadne's eyes appearing like
longed-for curious stars to guide his leaky boat or bed under Mavrik's
hideous gaze past rocks swarming with crippled sirens and...  and...

   The rest of the diary was a chore to read.  It was partly in French,
mostly in Ukrainian, the handwriting crabbed, then too sinuous to decipher.
Here and there, parts were written in very strange characters, perhaps
Georgian, Armenian...  Whole pages were covered with what appeared to be
code.  To his horror, Christopher suffered dreams in which Ariadne would
translate these sections for him in an icy, distant, utterly loveless voice
while her Uncle Mavrik, lolling in angry clouds and sucking on the claws of
dark blue crabs or eating grapes looked on, a pistol loose in his thick,
blood-stained fingers.  Half-awake between terrible dreams, Christopher
turned the pages of the young woman's diary in his mind, the story
committed to memory.  "By heart," he muttered to himself, taking off his
sweat-soaked shirt and touching his stiff, lonely cock.  "By heart." He
closed his eyes and continued to read.



   Ophelie's beauty took my breath away.  Suddenly I didn't want to snuff
her - I wanted to know her, to be friends with her.  O Christopher! 
Suddenly I remembered how I used to _think_, read, write, _create_ -- I was
twelve years old, and for two years I had done none of those things,
nothing intellectual...  I was bent on destroying myself - no, on being
destroyed, on getting fucked, on getting hurt, erased...  and there was
nothing to erase anymore except my beauty...



   I kissed the eleven-year-old goddess lightly on the lips and ran my
fingers down the center of her thin, creamy, pubescent body, gently
touching her sparsely haired cunnus, withdrew my hand, stood, and stripped.
Ophelie stared at me, her mouth dry with inconceivably adult lust - like
mine.



   I turned around slowly and caressed my tight little buttocks, listening
to her breathing.  I looked at her over my shoulder and smiled.  "Do you
want to touch me," I whispered, turning around again and fingering my hard,
violet nipples.



   Ophelie was trembling again, nervous, shy.  I went to the edge of the
bed and tenderly pulled her to me, offering her a tiny breast, stroking her
hair as she licked, then gently sucked my erect nipple.  "Suck...  oui...
suck..." I took her wrist and guided her hand to my hole, then climbed onto
the bed.  She masturbated me awkwardly, as if afraid to hurt me.  I kissed
her, and she kissed back feverishly, as if she had been waiting for this
all her life.  "Lie back," I whispered.  She obeyed me with utter trust.  I
licked her barely budding titties and soft, pink nipples, kissed my way
down her tight, white stomach, tongued her navel, spread her skinny legs
and plunged my tongue into her fresh-tasting, wet cunny.  She moaned
violently and came almost instantly, grabbing my head, then pushing it
away. Her pale face was flushed.  I lay beside her and gave her a deep kiss
on the mouth, then urged her to eat me out.  She did so eagerly, clumsily,
slobbering, and my orgasm came very slowly, dreamily - strangely for me,
who had come only when hurt for years now, hurt or invaded.  I pulled my
virginal lover to me and stared into her gold-gray, slightly frightened,
orgasmic eyes, gently fingering her cunny, poking lightly at her hymen. 
Then I took a sip of wine and dribbled it into her mouth.



   "Where do you live?" Ophelie slowly returned to earth, my question at
first snaking through her confused, easily enraptured mind.



   "St.  Germain-des-Pres," she answered, her girlish voice still suffused
with the same bizarrely cool adult tone she had used when she thought I
meant to kill her...  when I meant to kill her.



   "You're rich?" She nodded.  I was as confused as she was - I didn't know
what to do now, how to end this, how to do something other than hurt her or
get her to hurt me...  and I didn't want pain all of a sudden, I wanted
this tenderness to go further.



   "You live here?" I nodded.  "All alone?" I nodded again.  We lay staring
at each other for a while.  "You're...  different," she whispered, sipping
some wine.  "You're like...  like a grown-up."



   "You're mature, too, Ophelie," I said, sitting up.



   "Not like you.  You...  you've kissed boys, haven't you?" Her eyes were
bright with fascination.  I laughed, kissed her, and swallowed some wine.



   "Do you know what a whore is?" She looked a little scared, but still
fascinated, nodding.  I touched her cunny again.  "Do you like that," I
whispered, "do you like to be touched there?"

   "Oui," she rasped, "oui!" I pulled her legs up, wet my fingers in her
virgin hole and carefully fingered her tiny, puckered anus, kissing her
toes and gently slipping my little finger into her bottom.  She gasped. 
Frigging her sweet cunny, I fucked her tight poophole with my pinkie until
her beautiful white body jerked in another orgasm.

   "Did you like that, too?" She stared at me, fear again enveloping her,
but nodded.  "Tell me you liked it," I insisted.

   "I...  liked it," she said softly.

   "Tell me you like it when whores stick their fingers in your asshole." I
wanted to hurt her again.  I wanted to wreck her innocence, her vulnerable,
trusting body.  "Tell me, you slut."

   "Please...  don't..." Ophelie started to sob.  "Please...  I like
_you_...  I...  I _love_ you..."

   Shaking with rage and lust, I straddled her face and pressed my anus to
her mouth.  "Lick it...  lick it, you filthy...  slut...  oui...  ahhh..."
Her wet tongue plunged into my open bottom hole.  "Lick me...  lick my
asshole...  oui..." I rubbed her cunny and pushed my butt against her
frantic tongue, then slapped her between the legs, feeling her young body
jerk as she brought her legs together and tried to push me away.  I spun
around and pinned her to the mattress.  Ophelie screamed, loud.  I covered
her mouth with my hand and tried to think, quickly, as quick as I used to
think...  I _couldn't_.  I could think only about destroying her, about
getting fucked, snuffing this little virgin and going to the train station
and...  and...

   There was a heavy knock on the door, insistent, nasty, the night
porter's knock.  Ophelie was calm again.  I took my hand from her mouth. 
The porter knocked again.  "Ouvrez la porte!  Ouvrez, tout de suite!"

   Ophelie got dressed, trembling, sobbing softly.  The porter's key turned
in the lock and the door opened.  The wiry old man in the stained, baggy,
burgundy uniform was crimson with fury.  I lay down on my back in the bed
and spread my legs.  Ophelie tried to run, but the man caught her and threw
her, too, into the bed.  I grabbed and held her as the porter tore her
dress off.  I stuffed my panties into her mouth and throttled her as he
removed his belt, then whipped her.  It had been so long since I'd had a
girl that I was coming.  I held her arms as he whipped her, her skinny body
jerking violently with each stroke.  When she passed out, he took her
virginity, then raped me for the first time, then jacked off on her ruined
body.  He slapped me a few times, spat, and left.

   She came to sooner than I expected, groaning like a wounded animal,
holding her bloody fuckhole, whimpering and sobbing dryly.  I gave her some
wine and looked into her eyes.

   "Pourquoi...  why...  why...  I..."

   "Shut up," I said.  My fit had passed quickly this time, and I felt
something odd, something like regret.  "Shut up and let's figure out how to
get you home.  Unless you want me to get rid of you."

   Amazingly, Ophelie fell silent, and something of her strange maturity
returned to her quivering, raped body.  "I...  I can't go home now," she
said in her cool, adult voice.  "I...  don't want to.  I want to...  to be
with you."

   Rage, remorse and weird confusion made me dizzy.  "You can't be with
me," I said weakly.  "I...  I don't have...  a man.  And you have
_parents_."

   "Was that your papa?"

   "No.  I live alone.  I...  my papa is...  en Europe Orientale.  I live
in this room and bring men here.  I'm a whore.  I...  I came here... 
looking for my husband.  I had a husband.  We..."

   Ophelie stared at me as if I was crazy.  Which I suppose I was.  Then
she grabbed my wrist, pulled me to her, and kissed me.  Not sexually.  Like
a sister.  Then sexually.  I pulled away.  "Please," she whispered.  "If I
go home now...  my papa...  he'll...  please don't make me go home.  Let's
run away together.  I...  I have an aunt...  who...  an aunt who'll take
care of...  of me...  and you, too.  She...  please..."

   "No one will take care of me except men who want to fuck me." I said it
before I thought about it, and the realization was something...  new, new
and - and self-pitying.  I had never pitied myself before.  I felt
nauseous. "Go away," I said.  "Go home."

   I gave her a dress that was tight on me but too big for her and shoved
her out the door.  She looked back on me through her tears and disappeared
down the stairs.  I finished the wine, smoked, and tried to think of what
to do.  I felt tired, I felt a million years old.  I felt horribly alone. I
masturbated myself to sleep and dreamt about Leopold and Sarah and Jens and
my baby and Cosima and Manga...

   The knock was very light at first, then with a desperate, forced
insistence.  The door was unlocked.  The lever turned.  Ophelie came in.

   She was dressed in a dark green silk dress with a light green hem and
looked a lot older than she had before, with a pretty emerald choke and
two-inch heels, black silk stockings.  She carried a big leather bag and
there was a wistful, queer smile on her mature face.

   "Ciao," she said, matter-of-factly.  "Can I come in?"

   "You already are in," I said, lighting a cigarette.

   "I snuck into the house and got my things.  I'm not going back there. 
I'm going to my aunt's...  and...  and I still want you to come with."

   I took a deep drag off the Gitane.  Ophelie was staring at my body.  I
spread my legs.  She put down her bag, crawled into bed, and licked me. 
Ravenously, she lapped at my cunny as I clutched her sweet-smelling head.
It went on forever and I came and suddenly I was happy again, scary-happy.

   Her aunt lived on the Cote d'Azur, Ophelie told me.  When I asked her
why she thought her aunt would take us in, she clammed up until I
threatened to send her away again.  "Ma tante...  she's...  she's a whore."

   "Whores don't take people in."

   "She will.  She's...  she's not really my aunt.  My...  my father..."

   "Tell me or leave."

   "I think she was my father's...  mistress.  I don't know, I was only
nine when she used to visit.  When my mother went away.  One time... 
she... she said strange things to me." Ophelie was trembling.  "She...  she
said that she wanted...  to...  to do things to me.  To...  do things
like...  like you wanted to do.  She said she wanted to watch me...  die."

   I started to get very aroused again.  "And that makes you think she
wants to take _me_ in?  What if she only likes nine-year-olds?"

   "I..." Ophelie flashed me a desperate, glassy look, as if she only
half-believed what I was saying and wanted me to add the other half. 
Ophelie is really in love with me, I thought.  _Love._ "I _know things_,"
the eleven-year-old said gravely.  "I know you...  know things, too, and
you've...  you've done them and stuff...  but I...  I knew you wanted to...
rape me.  As soon as I saw you.  I knew you wanted to and I knew you
wouldn't.  And I know my aunt will...  will want to see you.  Us.  I just
know it.  Please."

   I pulled Ophelie close and kissed her lingeringly.  I packed my things,
put on a dark blue silk dress and my sapphire choke, hid my money in
several places between us, and the two of us went downstairs past the
sullen leer of the night porter and out into the street, catching a cab to
the Gare St.-Lazare and speeding southward soon after the sun rose.



   XVI



   Ophelie's "aunt's" villa was at Cap d'Antibes, surrounded by high walls
and a mass of bougainvillea.  A taxi brought us to the iron gate and the
driver pushed the buzzer.  The voice that came through the speaker went
through me like a warm wire through pale butter, recognizable even through
the static.



   "Sarah!" I gasped into the microphone.  "Sarah!" There was a pause and
the gate swung slowly open.  The taxi drove up a long drive lined with
every conceivable flower and drew up in front of the mansion.  My heart was
pounding.  Ophelie stared at me with her divinatory expression.  A blond
youth, maybe sixteen years old, with vacant blue eyes, took our bags, I
paid the driver, and Ophelie and I followed the servant through the open
doors of the stately villa.



   Sarah Leucht stood at the end of a long, nearly empty entrance hall,
barefoot, her dancer's body clad in a diaphanous gown, her perfectly round
breasts still firm, her bulimia uncured, her eyes as dark as ever.  She was
seventeen now, and regal.



   "Well, well," she said, approaching softly, sinuously, fixing first me,
then Ophelie in her perverse, murderous gaze.  "Well, well."



   The servant stood nervously near our bags.  I curtsied, and Sarah smiled
faintly.  Ophelie took my hand.  "Aunt Sarah..."



   "How's your father?" Sarah kissed Ophelie lightly on the lips, then me.
"How's your father, Ophelie?"



   "He's...  fine."



   "It's too bright in here," Sarah said in her slightly venomous soprano.
"You'll be wanting some dinner...  take their bags to the west wing,
Richard." Relieved, the young servant danced off through a pair of open
glass doors.  Sarah led us up the curving staircase, down a corridor hung
with obscene paintings, and into a room where the windows were covered with
heavy black drapes.  She lit a candle.  We couldn't see anything, but the
stunningly beautiful creature moved like a wildcat through the darkness,
and I could _feel_ her loveliness.  After some minutes she lit several
candles, and slowly the scene came into view.



   The candelabrum was on a sideboard laden with fruit and meat and wines.
There were several delicate marble sculptures arrayed around the room, of
satyrs and nymphs.  Between them were three large, ornate beds and several
chaises longues, a few little stone tables with hookahs and extinguished
candles and bottles and huge white roses.



   Two of the beds were occupied.  In one, a girl maybe five years old lay
in the arms of a boy who might have been twelve or thirteen.  In the other,
quietly fucking herself in the ass with a massive Lucite dildo, was Karina,
Manga's old doll, now eight years old, still tiny and starved, her closely
cropped dark hair unchanged, her blue eyes glistening in the candlelight.
On one chaise longue, a young boy perhaps ten years old lay trembling,
rubbing his cock against the velvet.  In another, a thirteen-year-old girl
lay bound and gagged, blood trickling from her gaping vagina.  On the
floor, a dazed twelve-year-old boy was jerking off, sucking on a dildo as
if for dear life.  Standing in the corner was a frighteningly skinny
adolescent boy, idly playing with his flaccid penis.



   Ophelie started to cry as she took in the dimly lit chamber.  I saw a
knife on one of the tables, took it, and cut my little lover's dress open.
Ophelie wet herself.  I removed my dress and shoes and kissed Sarah for the
first time in two years.  She gently but firmly pushed me away. 
"Laisses-moi...  I'm not yours anymore," she hissed.  "No one is yours
anymore." Then she led us to the sideboard, shed her gown, poured us some
wine and watched us eat.



   My cunthole was drooling.  I watched Ophelie force herself eat, shaking
with fear.  Sarah embraced her and felt her recently deflowered cunny. 
"Did you miss your aunt?" Ophelie nodded, terrified.  Sarah took an empty
bottle and slowly pushed the neck into the frightened's eleven-year-old's
sore vagina.  She moved it in and out of Ophelie a few times, then led the
victim to an empty chaise longue.  Coaxing her to her hands and knees,
Sarah kissed Ophelie's cunny and poophole, then began to lick her in
earnest.



   I went over to Karina.  The skinny little doll immediately spread her
legs.  "Remember me?" Karina nodded.  I stabbed my fingers into her cunt.
She made no sound.



   "Frederic," Sarah called shrilly, "viens!" The starved adolescent boy
emerged from his corner, still playing with his soft prick, and went to his
mistress.  The twelve-year-old boy who was masturbating on the floor
crawled over and sucked Frederic to erection.  Sarah positioned Ophelie for
Frederic and guided the skinny adolescent's cock into my eleven-year-old
lover.  Ophelie grunted.  I finger-fucked the moaning Karina's cunny and
diddled myself, watching Ophelie squirm as Sarah directed the proceedings.
After a while, the twelve-year-old licked Frederic's balls as Sarah
repositioned Ophelie and then worked Frederic's dick into Ophelie's virgin
rectum.  Ophelie was too scared to resist.



   I went into my old trance, wandering around the room abusing everyone -
except Sarah, of course.  At some point, taking swigs from different wine
bottles, forcing a dildo into the five-year-old's ass, shoving a bottle up
the half-conscious Ophelie's openings, I passed out, falling heavily into
dreamless, unbroken sleep on the sticky floor, my fingers snug in my
slimehole.



   I woke uncertain whether I was really there, under a soft white down
comforter in a room that was almost entirely white, either dusk or dawn
silvery beyond the open windows through which cool, fragrant air wafted in.
I saw the room first, then him.



   Leopold stood motionless and silent at the foot of the bed, staring at
me.  His expression was unfathomable.  He was stark naked.



   At first I felt a numbing fear, followed almost instantly by arousal.  I
let him tear the comforter away and inspect me.  Watching him get hard
_melted_ me, and the first blow to my face made me come.  Delirious, limp,
I felt my husband possess me again, his long, thin fingers forced into my
holes -- _his_ holes, his cock using my throat like a ragged sleeve, his
fist punching into my womb.  He slapped my mouth again and again and I
stuck out my tongue for the clamp.  He attached it, flipped me over, forced
my legs under me and rammed his fist deep into my rectum, deeper, deeper,
my sphincter gripping his forearm, again, again, the awful, unbearable pain
like lightning, the pain I had missed so much, harder, again, again harder,
harder again, blood filling my mouth, again, his fingernails scraping the
bloody walls of my intestines, harder, deeper, rhythmically, fist, fist,
fist, tearing me, ripping me, pulling open my cunthole and both his hands
in me, punching hard into my numb, senseless, empty body as I choked on my
puke, harder harder rhythmically, again again again, cunt ass cunt ass
ass-cunt, ass-cunt until the lightning ended thunderously and there was
nothing.



   I came to in a muddy ditch, naked and cold, shuddering as the pain shot
up from my genitals and anus.  Ophelie, incoherent, crouched at the side of
the narrow dirt road, also naked, crying hysterically, clutching her
bleeding crotch.  I tried to get up but it hurt too much.



   "Where are we?" The only answer was a fresh burst of tears.  Clenching
my teeth, I crawled out of the ditch.  Our bags were there.  I got mine
open and dressed, almost vomiting from how I hurt, managed to get Ophelie's
open and find her some clothes.  I cleaned her a little with a shirt and
helped her into a cotton dress.  "Where are we?  Hey?  Where are we?"



   "I...  don't...  know," she blubbered.  "They...  they drove us...  I
told...  I told them my father...  knew where we were that you that were
that you...  had to...  get home..."



   Then I saw the third bag, a little leather pouch.  I opened it -
passports!  Passports, notarized documents allowing minors to travel, my
money, more money, travelers' checks...  I kissed Ophelie.  Even the
searing pain receded.  I was in a fairy tale again.  "But - what happened?"



   "I...  don't..."



   "Listen, you little cunt.  Get it together or I'll leave you here." She
choked on her sobs, staring at me pathetically.  I felt sorry for her, took
her in my arms and kissed her again.  "Come on, Ophelie," I whispered,
reaching under her dress, "please pull yourself together...  please, pretty
baby." I stroked her still bleeding snatch through her panties.  "Is that
good, honey?" She started to kiss me back, and to my amazement I found that
I, too, was getting horny, under the pain, under my fear of being alone
again - being with her - with any girl?  -- was the same as being alone...
I slid my fingers under her panties.  "Is that good, pretty girl?  Do you
want me to kiss you there?"



   We went into a long, delicious sixty-nine, our dresses up around our
hips, coming simultaneously, and wiped our mouths on the hems of our
clothes.  I felt oddly _good_ then, as if anything, especially sex, was
better than _not being_, than what Leopold could have done.  I was still
intact.  I was still somewhere.  Not only was I somewhere, I was _on
track_; finding Ophelie led me to Sarah led me back to Leopold - I had
gotten my passport, I was going _home_ -- it hadn't been like I'd hoped,
but it all fell into place -- _place_, ye olde space-time continuum, the
temple of memory and desire.  I had _evoked_ these events...  Or had
someone evoked them through me?  Had I invoked some desperate demon that
took me through these tortures and pleasure domes?  I thought about Cleo,
about her rituals.  Writing this, Christopher, I start to see how you need
a story to understand what the results of rituals are - the thing you first
take as the answer to an evocation or as the sign of success, the weird
shadowy realm of a remembered incense as a man appears and rapes you and
resembles a man you wanted - this is not the stuff that is _deepest_ -- the
actual depths, the thing you wanted that hid under your wish - that is
something that only becomes visible _later_, when you make a story out of
your life.



   Feeling philosophical and benevolent, I brought Ophelie off again,
getting my whole hand into her loosened anus.  We changed our clothes and
staggered onto the narrow gravel road.



   A sign told me where we were - my body sank and my heart leapt.  Leopold
was a sort of Klingsor.  We were in the Ukraine.  He had brought me close
to home.  Why?  To teach me what?  Why did he want to teach me anything at
all, the sorcerous, indifferent, mysterious man?  We reached the nearest
village in less than an hour, a cluster of dilapidated houses, a dreary
caf, that had no coffee and a _gastronomiya_ selling scrawny chickens the
color of bruises, rotten mustard, vodka and foul-smelling filterless
cigarettes.



   It was early, and morose workers with severe hangovers were only
beginning to stagger to a day on the collective farm.  They stared at us,
of course.  We must have looked utterly surreal, two fabulously beautiful
pubescent girls covered with bruises, dressed in silks from Paris,
wandering around a muddy, depressed village, barefoot and wild-eyed. 
Surreal enough to be avoided - some of the babushkas crossed themselves,
children ran away in fear, men glared, spat, and turned away.



   I bought a bottle of vodka with one American dollar and Ophelie and I
waited for the bus.  The little bus wheezed and rattled into town and a few
hours later we were in L'viv.



   Ophelie had begun to impress me - she reminded me of how I had loved
Sarah.  My impoverished native land, where she couldn't understand a word,
must have been a shock to her.  But she lived in my shadow, in being able
to be near me.  It was all she cared about.



   I knew of a cheap hotel, one that merchants from the Caucasus used to
stay in, and with a combination of bribery and charm acquired two dingy
rooms.  "Why don't you want to share...  a room with me?" Ophelie was
devastated.



   "Because I need to get fucked," I answered brusquely.  She lay in bed,
her legs slightly spread, pouting.  The virginal rich girl was long gone.
Here was a dirty eleven-year-old mess with used holes, desperate to be
taken care of, totally dependent on me.  "How about you, Ophelie?"



   Tears swelled in her eyes.  She nodded.  "I want to do what you do." She
looked down.  "Can't we do it together?"



   We washed at the sink, which gave cold water only, her staring longingly
at my body, me thinking only about cock, and put on miniskirts and halters.
I wore high heels, but Ophelie didn't have any.  I needed to stop thinking
about getting raped so that I could look for my father.



   We went to a weird beer place where the main street petered out.  It was
a low-class hangout for old drunks, mostly.  We drank a lot of beer - no
one would even think about not serving minors there, even as they snarled -
and pretty soon was taking swigs off a vodka bottle offered by an
ex-convict, the year of his release tattooed at his knuckles, whose fingers
were between my legs within five minutes.  Ophelie was squirming like a
virgin again, getting molested by two retired plumbers who were
falling-down drunk.  I suggested we go to the washroom.  Ophelie started to
cry.



   The washroom was in the so-called Asiatic style - a couple of filthy
holes and a pissy floor.  The ex-con's huge cock was thickly veined and
with a pronounced curve.  The two plumbers were too drunk to get it up.  I
licked and sucked my man's dick and he shoved it down my throat as the
plumbers, ashamed now of their condition, took it out on my little friend,
pissing down her throat and thrusting their fingers into her cunt.  We
stayed in the washroom until late evening, servicing everybody who came in,
Ophelie puking urine and flopping like a fish in prussic acid as she was
raped repeatedly in her raw cunny and bloody butt.  I took two sets of
three men in me, held as though weightless in the stink, until the
bartender came, used my mouth-hole, threw us out and closed up.



   We drifted back to the hotel, Ophelie looking like a lobotomized wraith.
I washed her, spanked her, cleaned myself up, put on an elegant black silk
dress and went to look for my father.



   It was strange to be back in my native city.  I had expected it to mean
something, but it did not.  I didn't have a home anymore - my memories of
the place were more important, more dense, more meaningful than L'viv
itself.  I found a few old neighbors of ours, acquaintances, father's
friends - all of them stared at me like I was the Mother of Abominations,
and located papa before midnight.



   By then I was horny again.  Papa was a wreck.  A Christian wreck to
boot. He had converted to some imported sect during a mass prayer meeting
organized by some American missionaries.  He opened the door of his
Stalin-era apartment, a dark gray building that radiated enormous weight,
an impossible metaphysical heaviness that emanated also from the hideous
furniture and icons that lined the walls.  It seemed to take him some
minutes to recognize me, a few more to realize what it meant, his sin of
four years back germinated and come to term, crawling out of the past like
a ravenous demon.  Wordlessly, he let me in.



   He hardly spoke, but with my experiences and talent for figuring things
out, I sized up his destiny quite quickly - he drank himself into a stupor
every few days, then spent a couple of days praying and drowning in guilt
and hypnotic confusion.  The night I found him was the very beginning of
his drinking binge, and papa had just opened his first half-liter of vodka.




   Papa drank, but had never done again what he did to me, and what he did
to me scared him - not exactly what he did to me, but what might happen if
it was found out; Papa had remarried, and his four-year-old daughter,
Inessa, was not only his pride and joy but also the black grain at the core
of his fear.  When he was drunk, he avoided her religiously, afraid he
would molest her, too.  I saw this in his eyes as if his heart was
newsprint.  He looked away whenever he spoke of her.



   The two of us drank, and after a while I joined him on the couch.  He
froze.  I kissed him on the lips.  They parted, my tongue snaked inside,
and my hand went tremblingly to his crotch.  I felt his hand on my bottom,
the hand that had taught me what I am, the fingers that had explored my
eight-year-old rectum...



   The door to the other room swung open and his new wife appeared in the
opening, gasped and stood paralyzed as my father pushed me away, breathing
hard.  "She...  my daughter," he stammered.  "Mariya, she...  she's my
daughter Ariadne."



   The apparition in the door was swathed in suspicion, then relaxed a
little, convincing herself that she hadn't seen what she saw.  How my
drunken, seedy, washed-up father had acquired this creature for a wife was
unimaginable to me.  She was twenty-two, I later learned, but looked a lot
younger.  She was dressed in a white tank top that ended just above her
cotton panties.  Her huge, pale blue eyes were shone with submissive
melancholy, and her high cheekbones gave her face an aristocratic
appearance.  What made her exotic was her body - her hands and feet were
disproportionately large, the fingers and toes very long, as were her arms
and legs.  She had the widest hips I have ever seen, but her upper body was
frail and bony, and her breasts, though small, were far apart and
unnaturally protuberant.  She was as pale as I, with long, straight, light
brown hair.  When she recovered from her shock, she struggled to hide her
beauty, tugging down on the tank top and covering her breasts with her arm
like a frightened virgin.  Blushing, flustered, she ran off to get decent
and returned in a robe and slippers, a gold crucifix around her neck.



   My father got more vodka - it comes in non-resealable, pop-top bottles
there.  Mariya didn't drink, staring at me as if I was a gargoyle as I got
desperately drunk to avoid having to do something about my lust, which was
ferocious - I saw scenes of papa fucking his pretty, fearful nun-wife on
the floor while I hurt her, of whipping the four-year-old I hadn't seen
yet, of my father fisting me...



   It was obvious that Mariya had been sexually abused as a child.  Scaring
her turned me on.  I got her to sit next to me and nonchalantly touched her
a lot, even resting my fingers on her inner thigh.  She was on the verge of
tears.  Papa had a hard-on, but when I asked for another bottle of vodka,
he told me he would call a taxi and Mariya stood up.  I talked him into
accompanying me downstairs.



   "You...  you'll ruin my marriage!" He stood glaring at me in the dirty
stairwell.



   "Is she good in bed?"



   He grabbed me, slammed me against the banister, lifted my dress, tore
off my g-string and shoved his cock up my asshole to the hilt.  I clutched
the railing and bucked against my father's penis, hard, trying to stifle my
moans so that his wife wouldn't hear, panting.  The taxi honked below.



   "Papa...  papanya...  fuck my cunt...  pizda...  fuck my cunt and make
me pregnant...  papa...  please...  fuck your toilet whore...  please!" I
came as soon as he stabbed his dick into my womb.  His sweat dripped onto
my back and soaked through my dress.  "Come...  come in me...  papa... 
make a baby in me...  come, papa...  come!"



   Clutching my hips and groaning, my father slammed in and out of my
slimehole and finally came, flooding me with his seed.  He set me down
gently.  He looked like a corpse.  Mariya must have heard.  The taxi blew
its horn again.  I kissed papa on the cheek, thanked him, and ran out to
the battered Volga.



   The taxi driver didn't like little girls and in ten minutes I was back
in the seedy hotel with Ophelie.  She sat listlessly on the bed, clutching
her bruised crotch.  Sleep came more sweetly than it had in many years,
thick with happy dreams as my father's sperm found my egg.



   XVII



   My father shot himself with his old service revolver on the castle hill
that very night, but his body wasn't found for several days.  In the
interim, I played mind games with Mariya.  It was a delight to dominate a
woman ten years older, and I enlisted Ophelie's help.  We both moved in,
which Mariya had to accept, since I was after all her stepdaughter.  I lied
to her and said that Ophelie was my half-sister.



   Inessa, my real half-sister, four years old, was a lovely girl, but I
bided my time before abusing her.  I was fascinated by Mariya's reactions
to me and her own sexuality.  Ophelie and I openly showed our affection for
each other, and didn't even bother closing the door when we ate each other
out.  Mariya wept and prayed.



   Her nervous breakdown came when the _militsiya_ informed her of my
father's suicide.  She tried to kill herself and was taken away, while
Inessa, Ophelie and I were taken in by my old grandmother in the country.



   It was at the funeral that I first met Uncle Mavrik.  He flew in from
New York for the occasion, which was a huge party, really, flowing with
vodka and crawling with many distant relatives I did not know.  The men
held a conference the next morning, curing their hangovers with beer, to
decide what would become of us.  Meanwhile, I got my hands on the
four-year-old.  She hardly cried at all as I stuck my finger in her tiny
cunny, and she liked licking me.



   Inessa's little hand was in my butt when Uncle Mavrik walked in for
another pack of cigarettes.  At first I thought he would fuck me.  He stood
stock still, staring, looming over the ratty couch I had chosen as the
nearest surface on which to educate my baby sister.  Inessa withdrew her
hand from my shithole and whimpered.  I reached for my uncle's crotch, but
he grabbed me under my arms and lifted me into the air, gazing at me with
stern, cold eyes.



   "My brother...  your father did this to you?" I tried to caress him with
my feet.  "Get dressed, girl.  Get dressed immediately.  You, too, Inessa."
He put me down.  I made one more attempt to seduce him, trying to kiss him.
He held my shoulder firmly and pushed me away.  "You heard what I said. 
Get dressed.  We're leaving."



   There wasn't even time to kiss Ophelie good-bye.  He had me pack my
things, bid farewell to our relatives and had his hired car take us to the
L'viv station.  We took a train to Kiiv and were on a flight to New York
before I could even start thinking about what was happening.



   What was happening?  It took me some time before I figured Uncle Mavrik
out.  By the time I did, I was trapped.  The man was smart, the man was
kind, the man was wealthy, the man was generous.  I hated him with all my
soul.



   He soon realized that I was pregnant, and determined that I should have
the baby.  The first year then, until little Andrea was born and I ate her,
I didn't have to go to school.  I didn't have to do anything except receive
my uncle's lectures, clean the house, cook, and play chess.  The trouble
was that Uncle Mavrik _did_ have authority over me - as I had dominated
twenty-two-year-old Mariya, my Uncle Mavrik controlled me through his,
heh-heh, moral force.  He never hit me, never hurt me, hardly ever even
disciplined me.  What he did was try to turn me into an ordinary girl. 
That first year, I disobeyed him, but all he would do was pay bribes to
cover up my bouts of madness, my seductions, even, once, a murder.  Then he
would forgive me and tell me to make a new start.



   When Andrea was born, he was proud and expected me to be proud.  I put
my baby in the microwave.  He moved us up to the Valley and enrolled me in
Clairmont.



   I ran away a few times - to Manhattan.  The first time, I was thirteen.
I arrived at Port Authority and immediately felt the terrifying emptiness
of being alone, without a man to tell me what to do.  Even if my uncle
never touched me, he controlled me, and without that I felt utterly lost,
like a cast-off snakeskin.  I hung around the bus terminal sucking my thumb
and waiting to be picked up.  I followed men around for about an hour,
asking for cigarettes and lights and change and even specifically for sex,
but didn't have any luck.  When one of my father's employees found me, I
was almost glad.



   After that, he had me guarded.  One of his men picked me up from school,
another took me there.  All I had was masturbation, until he heard me. 
After that, he tied me up at night and watched me every minute.  After
that, after that, after that.  Anything I did resulted in another
straitjacket, and a few months before I seduced you, I ran away again,
getting a ride from another senior after school, ending up at Port
Authority again.  This time I walked over to Grand Central Station, and
this time I was in luck.



   John Stanton was forty-five, rushing to catch the train Montauk, when he
spotted me and stopped dead in his tracks, pretending to look at his watch
as if he'd forgotten something, sneaking furtive glances at me.  I gave him
a seductive smile and he left the stream of business people.



   "Are you...  lost?" He was sort of nondescript, with short brown hair
turning peppery already, gray suit.



   "Yeah," I said, trying to look vulnerable.  I _was_ vulnerable - I
hadn't been screwed in six months, and would have done anything at that
point.  At any point.  My whole being was nothing but my body, and all my
body wanted was to be used, used hard, abused...  my fuckhole was a swamp,
and I had to swallow my drool.  My knees were weak.  "Help me...  please?"



   Mr.  Stanton asked me to follow him, and we went out and caught a cab.
He sat far away from me, pretending I don't know what, and gave an address
on the Upper East Side.



   It was a small one-bedroom he kept for when he worked late or bought
prostitutes.  My head was swimming.  I struggled to stay cool, to act like
a demure little girl, because I could tell that was what he wanted.



   "Would you like a glass of wine, little lady?"



   I giggled.  "Sure, if you think it's okay." I pretended to admire the
apartment - it was actually overdone, the walls covered with ultrasuede and
smoky mirrors, leather furniture, glass tables, Lalique, old movie posters.
He sat down next to me and offered me a Dunhill.  The wine and smoke went
to my head, since my uncle kept me from both.



   Mr.  Stanton put his arm around me.  "Run away from home?"



   "Uh-huh," I said.  I was trembling with need.



   "Don't be scared," he whispered confidently.  "You're a pretty young
lady."



   I threw a shaking leg over his and my dress rode up my thighs. 
"Please," I whispered.  "Please...  I want you...  please..."



   He recoiled.  "Listen...  hey!  What...  what the fuck's wrong with you?
How old are you?"



   "Touch it...  please...  please..." I put my hand on my soaked panties,
rubbing myself.  "Put your dick in me..."



   "You're fucked up, kid," he said, opening his fly.  "Fucked up little
whore."



   Writhing like a maggot on crack, I got his cock out of his underwear and
deep throated it.  Mr.  Stanton came almost immediately.  I swallowed.  He
pulled me up by my hair, gave me a hundred-dollar bill and pushed me out
the door.



   I felt as though a nest made of leaden wings had unfurled inside me.  I
was insane.  I hailed a cab near the Guggenheim and tried to pick up the
Haitian driver, who pulled over near the bottom of Central Park and ordered
me out.  I ran through the park like a wet wind, threw myself in the grass
and clawed at my desperate slimehole, panting, sticking my dirty fingers in
my mouth and gurgling.  I could still taste the businessman's semen.  I
closed my eyes and shoved four fingers into my ravenous snatch...  and felt
a big hand on my chest, on my little tits, through my dress.  The man stank
as if he hadn't washed since birth.  He was tall, gaunt, and black, eyes
burning with madness and lust, dressed in a filthy running suit.  He pushed
his long, dirty cock to my lips.  I sucked and drooled and stroked his
balls until he pushed me down and stuffed his prick into my cunt.  I had
never been so starved.  I started to come like tracer fire as he fucked me
in deep, rapid strokes.  It went on forever and I didn't stop coming.  Then
he grabbed my ankles and lifted my legs.  I guided him into my little white
behind.  That, too, was interminable, until I started to come, grunting
like a skinny albino pig.  Then he pulled out and straddled me, jacking
off. I stroked his balls and fingered his ass, sticking out my tongue.  He
shot off all over my face.  I scooped his come into my mouth with my
fingers.  He stood up, fixed his pants, and spat.  Then he went back to his
shopping cart and rattled slowly away.



   I masturbated, crying, and finally sat up.  I was dirty and my purse was
gone.  My dress was ruined.  I staggered back to Grand Central.  The police
there made me nervous, so I wandered around.  Times Square belongs to
Disney now.  More police.  I went south, and after a while ended up in the
East Village.  I sat around on St.  Mark's Place until it grew light and
walked over to Penn Station.  I was exhausted.  I looked for a man...  and
instead found Aleksei, one of my father's employees.



   Uncle Mavrik barely spoke to me after that.  I was sad and, briefly,
hated myself.  I had started reading again, drawing, writing, but every
night would end up writhing in the bed, handcuffed, my ankles tied to the
posts, thinking about getting raped, about my father, about how stupid I'd
been to run away from Leopold.  In the mornings, Aleksei took me to school.



   Then I noticed you.  Only one other teacher had looked at me - Mr. 
Cunningham - but he was the kind who would just look.  You looked at me
like you wanted to devour me.  You looked at me and I felt like I belonged
to you, like you could be my uncle and papa and husband and rapist all
rolled into one.  I _knew_ it, Christopher.



   But I tested you.  I wrote you that first note.  Afterwards, I ran away
again, because I thought you would never have anything to do with me again.
This time I didn't get very far, though - I was waiting for the bus to New
York when a forty-year-old man started staring at me.  I asked him for a
cigarette.  He touched my face and asked if I wanted to go home with him.



   Bruce lived in the trailer park off Ridgedale.  He shoved me down on the
bed, lifted my dress, pulled my panties aside, and screwed me.



   "Yeah, fuck!  Look at that!  Yeah!  Nice cunt!  Fuck!"



   I thought about you, Christopher.  I thought about what you would say,
what you would make me do.  He came all over my dress, threw me a twenty,
and threw me out.



   So now I'm here...  and...



   +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ========================

   This story is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental. ===============================
Wish to read more texts of this writer? To load archive, pass to a file
0SilvioStoker.htm in the same catalogue. Or on my homepage Sergdriver
http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/Sergdriver/www/index.htm
   =================================