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Subject: {ASSM} Monsters in My Bed by Rachael Ross (13 stories on Sex, Politics and  Religion)
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Monsters in My Bed and Other Stories
by rache
Copyrighted 2008 Rachael Ross all rights reserved. Intended for adults
only.
Story Codes: See TOC
Synopsis: Today, 07/27/08 is my 26th birthday and to celebrate it I'm
posting a collection of 13 short stories on a variety of subjects
which will doubtless shed some meager light on the author's distorted
world view. Each story is self-contained in its own chapter. See the
Prologue for the Table of Contents, Story Codes, and individual
Synopsis for each story.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Monsters in My Bed and Other Stories
by Rachael Ross

Prologue


This collection comprises thirteen short stories on a variety of
topics, everything from politics to religion to romance and fantasy.
It's my birthday gift to myself and like other collections I've done,
I'll probably get a few dozen copies printed for friends and family.
It's my fourth such endeavor (or fifth if you include Indian Summer)
and probably the strangest in terms of diversity and themes. That's
what I like though and predictability is the enemy! Fight it wherever
you can and the world will be a better place.

The stories are arranged by chapter and this prologue will have to
serve as the table of contents. Story codes and a brief synopsis are
provided for your convenience. I've tried to keep the coding simple
and accurate, even to the point of 'spoiling' some of the plots. None
of these stories are intended to titillate the reader with graphic
sexual depictions, nor have I attempted to shock or bludgeon anyone
with gratuitous violence. What you will find here are those elements
necessary to the individual narratives and I hope you'll understand
that. I have faith in you.

A final note: The last story here, "Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?"
was originally written as a play in autumn 2002 although some scenes
were slightly changed for obvious reasons, and much descriptive
narration was subsequently added in 2004 when it became the short
story you see here. Some minor editing has been done in 2008 for this
posting. Everything else here was largely written with the idea in
mind of creating this collection over the last six months or so.

Oh...I used some of these to easter egg various sites like ASSD in the
past.

Best always,
Rachael Ross : July 27 1982-2008 ~ Twenty-six years and not a day of
peace...Allah Akbar!

====================================-

Table of Contents


Ch.01 - The Last Married Man On Earth (FF/M, Humor) Life as a door-to-
door salesman isn't easy for a man devoted to his wife. A tongue-in-
cheek look at the sort of porn we all love to complain about. Or at
least I do, when I'm not writing it.

Ch.02 - Optimism (F/F, Romantic) Two young women romantically involved
struggle with coming out to their families during a college holiday
break. Contrary to popular belief this really is my favorite sort of
story and I've written a bazillion of them.

Ch.03 - Anarchy in My Heart (M/F, No Sex, Romantic) The 99% true story
of how my husband talked me into it. Only the names are changed to
protect the guilty. Of course, looking back through the rosy lens of
time can be a little distorting, his version is slightly
different...But don't listen to him!

Ch.04 - Nothing A Plumber (Politics, No Sex) When politics and
plumbing meet, it's business as usual. I have to assume that things
like this happen all the time, which is cynical, I know. I'd apologize
for that but I'm an American!

Ch.05 - I Dream of...John? (M/F, Fantasy, No Sex) When a young woman
decides to wax her brand new car, strange things happen. I wish I had
a car.

Ch.06 - Allah Akbar (M/F, Implied Violence, No Sex) My only comment on
the ongoing 'War Against Terror' such as it's being waged today. This
is a heavy story, but it is in fact a 'story' with a plot and
everything, viewer discretion advised.

Ch.07 - Broken (M/f, Incest, Humor) Can a teenage girl named Venny
convince her Daddy to connect their home to the internet? I called
this 'Doodlin' originally because I actually wrote it on like 3
napkins while I was waiting for lunch at the absolute slooooweeeest
restaurant in the world.

Ch.08 - Monsters in My Bed (m/f, Erotic Horror, Incest, First) A young
girl finds herself terrified in the middle of the night by a thunder
storm and is comforted by her older brother. Being something of a
Gothic piece, this isn't really a graphic 'gotcha!' story, my take on
horror is more subtle than Freddy and Jason, et al.

Ch.09 - Friendship (F/F, No Sex) Childhood friends Jennifer and Susan
reminisce about old times after a long absence. Again, writing two
women who may or may not be romantically involved is my comfort zone,
it's in my well of experience. Men find me confrontational for some
reason and I tend to abuse them as a species.

Ch.10 - New World Order (f/everybody, No Sex, Political Satire, Humor)
When a high school girl named Tiffany unexpectedly becomes President
of the United States, she decides it's high time the country gets off
its butt and starts kicking some! This is just fun. I like being silly
and it takes the edge off.

Ch.11 - Teasing (M/f, Romance, Incest) Bobby gives Carol a ride home
after a party and the two of them engage in a philosophical discussion
on the nature of teasing and non-verbal miscommunication. Now this is
exactly what I mean about confrontational.

Ch.12 - Girl on the Bus (M/f, Public, Interracial, First) A fifteen
year old black girl has her first sexual experience at the hands of a
white? stranger on a crowded bus. A long time fantasy of mine, I think
if I'd had a choice, this is how I'd have wanted to lose my virginity.
It's kind of a romance, actually

Ch.13 - Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? (M/F, Fantasy, Romance,
Religion) Cain and Abel are two brothers in search of a wife. Could an
angel named Lilith be the answer to their prayers? I think a lot of
people think I'm going to hell for stuff like this. If I do, I'll send
a postcard. But the fact is that I do like biblical mythology and
characters and mixing it up, there's a lot to explore there but we're
so often discouraged from it and that's disappointing to me. I like to
challenge my faith, because if it's real then what is there to fear?


Thank you for reading and I hope you will find one or more of these
stories entertaining and enjoyable. Please see my blog for further
information on this and other stories. -rr

====================================-



Chapter 01 - The Last Married Man On Earth


I knocked on the door all ready to sell a brand new Super Sucker 3000
to whoever answered. I didn't expect her to be so beautiful though.
She was wearing some kind of Victoria's Secret negligee thing, and her
body was immaculate beneath it. Big firm perfect breasts with hard
inch long nipples that just begged for some serious sucking. Her tummy
was flat and smooth and her hips nice and round. Her legs were so long
they reached the floor and I could see the thin triangle of her sweet
bush through the gossamer-like material of her thong panties. She had
a face like my first girlfriend's older sister too, the gorgeous one
who wouldn't have given me the time of day if I'd bought her the
watch, but this woman looked like she wanted to get down and suck the
sperm out of my balls with a big, thick, meaty straw and she had the
mouth for it too. Generous and sexy, with pouting lips and a long pink
tongue; this girl looked hungry!

"Ohhhh baby, we need a man like you!" the woman cooed as she caught a
hint of my ten inch tent pole and I couldn't help but notice the
aromatic tang of her arousal wafting on the morning breeze. She
reached for her breasts, massaging them slowly with her small delicate
hands and I swallowed hard. She rubbed her creamy thighs together and
I stared at the wetness between them, like glistening strands of pale
honey dripping from the comb.

"Who is that Pamela?" another woman's voice echoed through the house
and I recognized her as the college coed, the cheerleader one, who was
renting the small studio above my next door neighbor's garage. She was
just eighteen and incredibly beautiful. She had mouth watering tits
and a gorgeous, sublime ass that screamed "Armageddon in your pants!"
everytime she walked past me on her way to school. I thought about her
every night behind closed eyes, usually while I jerked off inside my
wife, which was basically what sex is after twenty four years of happy
marriage, and the secret of our bliss.

"It's a man with a huge cock!" Pamela giggled and I almost spilled
right there on her front steps.

"Oh, thank God! I'm so tired of sixty-nining with other girls all the
time!" the coed responded happily. "Send him my way! I'll get my Kama
Sutra book! Where's the strawberry jelly?"

"Well, are you just gonna stand there?" Pamela wiggled her eyebrows
seductively and pinched her nipples playfully and my dick ached
painfully. "Or are you gonna fuck the living daylights out of me and
my best friend?"

"Uh, sorry," I told her and I really was. "I'm married."

"What?" she stared at me like she couldn't believe what I'd just said.

"Yeah," I held up my hand so she could see my old tarnished wedding
ring. "Twenty-four years this June."

"So? What difference does that make?" She reached for my bulging
manhood and I stepped back, shaking my head sadly.

"No, you don't understand," I said. "I'm really married."

I left her there, standing in the doorway looking dazed and confused
and more than a little unhappy. The college girl, whose name escapes
me at the moment, joined Pamela and peeked at me over the older
woman's shoulder.

"Who was that?" the coed asked.

"The last married man on Earth," I heard Pamela sigh and then she
closed the door.


end

======================-

Chapter 02 - Optimism


I was with Heather. I was always with Heather and maybe some people
wondered about that, but we were careful. We'd dated other people,
guys, but never steady. Once or twice with a guy and it was goodbye,
and we always came back to each other after, telling everything.
Confessing, sort of, but not really because there was never anything
to be guilty of. Nothing to be jealous of. It was just funny, a game
with a purpose.

But now we were 19 and in college and it was time.

When we were 16 we'd told ourselves that the day after my 18th
birthday, which was a month after Heather's, we'd tell our parents. We
promised and reassured each other for two years, but when it was
time...We both chickened out, I think. Neither of us wanted to do it.
Not because we were ashamed or anything, but because it would hurt. Us
and them, but mostly them.

Our homes were normal, typical even. Nothing bad had ever happened to
us. Nothing terribly sad, or disappointing. Life had been so boring,
so predictable, except for each other. Are people born gay, do you
think? Or are they raised that way? Genetics or environment, it was an
old question and interested Heather not at all. She's more practical
than I. And besides, she would say, we're not gay. We're not lesbians
or dykes or anything else. We're just in love.

But now it's time and oh God, I don't want to do it.

My first year in college, every time I came home, my parents would ask
if I'd met any boys. As though I wouldn't, for some reason. But that's
being selfishly literal, isn't it? I do that.

"Lisa?" We were sitting around the dinner table for Thanksgiving. My
mom, a kind woman if there ever was one, old fashioned in her way but
pushing 50 with style, was smiling at me. I'd been daydreaming again.

"Huh?" I looked up and then around a little sheepishly. I caught my
Daddy looking at me, and my older brother Stephen and his pregnant
wife, smiling a little.

"I asked if you'd met a young man at this school of yours," mom sipped
her wine.

"I hope not," my dad opined gruffly, although his eyes were kind. Soft
brown and resigned to the seemingly inevitable, that someday there
would be a young man of note. "As much money as we spend on tuition,
boys should be outlawed," he decided and that was typical, I'm afraid.
I could never tell if he was trying to be funny and it came out
serious, or if he was serious and it just seemed...funny.

"Well?" I was lying on my old bed, in my old bedroom, talking to
Heather on the phone. Exactly the same way we'd done all through high
school and it made me feel good, very comfortable, and I liked it.

"No," I admitted. "You?"

"Nah, I couldn't," she sighed. We'd thought maybe we could do it over
Thanksgiving.

We thought that with the holidays and all it would be easier somehow.
Everyone would be in a good mood, looking forward to Christmas. The
season of love and reconciliation, New Years, the time of new hopes
and dreams...Anything should be possible that time of year, shouldn't
it?

"Do you want to come over?" I whispered softly and Heather giggled.

"Do you want me to?" she replied, teasing me. Her family lived next
door and we'd often teased each other about being 'the girl next door'
quite literally.

"God, I wish," I giggled too. "What are you wearing?"

"Panties," she paused a second before continuing. "Your panties, those
little blue ones with the rip..."

"Right on the crotch?" I almost laughed too loud and I covered my
mouth. "I thought I threw those away."

"I rescued them," Heather was grinning, I could almost see it.
"They're soooo sexy!"

"You're sexy," I said softly. "Come to the back door, okay?"

"You sure?" It wasn't like we were teenagers anymore, but still, 11pm
on Thanksgiving night was a weird time for a visit, even from your
best friend.

"Yeah," I nodded useless into the phone. "I miss you."

"I miss you too. Five minutes."

"Kay," I licked my lips and hung-up the phone. I had five minutes to
get ready, Heather was coming!

I honestly don't know if other girls, straight girls, act this way for
their boyfriends, but I was always desperate to be as beautiful as
Heather deserved. Sometimes I thought she deserved so much more than
me and I wondered how I'd gotten so lucky. I wanted to please her, and
be desirable for her, and be the only one Heather wanted. Ever.

I'm not sure that either of us are beautiful, except to each other, of
course. Heather is tall and thin, with a wonderfully pretty face. An
open face, always smiling so you can see her white perfect teeth. Her
hair is soft and auburn, a little curly on the ends and she wears it
loose to her shoulders. Even the slightest breeze blows it into her
soft brown eyes. Her skin is white and perfect, no moles or
birthmarks, or anything like that. I love her skin, so smooth and warm
and dry. She gets freckles in the summer, just little ones across the
bridge of her cute little nose, but you'd have to be kissing her to
notice them, I think.

I'm shorter by a head, just a couple inches over five feet, and small
all around. I'm half Filipina, and my skin is golden in the winter; in
the summer it turns darker, like caramel. I have round dark eyes and
thick black hair, longer than Heather's, so it falls halfway to my
waist. My breasts are small and my hips narrow and I look more like a
little girl than a college student, but Heather tells me she likes me
like that. Small and cuddly and huggable. Cute is the word I hear a
lot. Heather is pretty and I'm cute, and together, for those few
people who know about us, we're the perfect couple.

I brushed my hair quickly, changed from the old sweatshirt I was
wearing into a short nightshirt, all lace and satin and emerald green,
a color that especially suits me, for some reason. My family was
asleep, or so I hoped, as I snuck downstairs and to the backdoor in
the kitchen. If my mom or daddy should happen to come down and find me
holding open the door, peering into the darkness anxiously for
Heather, I wasn't sure what I'd say...But how could I not do that? We
hadn't seen each other in three days already.

"Hey!" Heather whispered and suddenly she was there, smiling and happy
as I was.

I kissed her quickly on the lips and giggled a little, grabbing her
hand and pulling her inside. I closed the door and we couldn't wait.
Heather had her arms around me, her soft lips finding mine, and we
kissed urgently, as though we were starved. Her tongue slipped into my
mouth and there was just the smallest fear that we might be caught,
but I didn't care. Not right then. I worked my tongue against hers,
moaning softly and squeezing her close.

"Come on," I exhaled and licked my lips.

Heather was giggling and her breasts pressed against my back as we tip-
toed back to my room like a couple of stooges. Heather's hands were
touching me as well, sliding across my hips and around my tummy and up
to my breasts. We were both laughing, we couldn't help it, and trying
to stifle our happiness was so totally useless. It was probably a
miracle we made it to my room and closed the door, pushing the little
button to lock it, without getting caught.

It was just like old times, well not that old really, less than a
year, but it seemed much longer since we'd been alone in my bedroom.
Heather used to sleep at my house, or I at hers, nearly every weekend
for 3 years straight. We knew each other's households as if we were
sisters, and in fact that's how our parents regarded us, I think. We
were both "good girls" never in trouble, always doing well in school,
no drugs, or parties, or shoplifting, or motorcycle gang boyfriends...My
family was of the opinion that Heather was a good influence. Heather's
mom and step-dad thought the same about me. None of them had ever seen
two such close friends and it made them happy, even envious, as my mom
had told me several times.

It sounds like a fairy-tale, doesn't it? Perhaps it is. And like all
good fairy-tales, there has to be a problem...But you already know ours.
I just want to make sure you understand the depth of our relationship,
or maybe I just really like talking about us. But can you blame me? I
mean as soon as the door was closed, Heather had me in her arms again.
Her mouth was on my ear, whispering how much she'd missed me, and all
I could do was hold her and nod and whisper those same words.

My nipples were hard, burning and itching and pressing upward through
the soft material of my nightie.  They pressed against the underside
of Heather's, and I could feel hers as well. She wore a sleepy-tee, an
old comfortable one that she'd had forever and it reached mid-thigh on
her. I turned my head, kissing Heather's cheek and then her lips and
my hands slipped underneath, along the backs of her smooth warm
thighs. She was doing the same to me, her hands running down my back
and to my ass, squeezing and pulling my hips against her.

I'd missed her so much, you have no idea. I was getting feverish,
standing there, feeling the rounded contours of Heather's ass, barely
contained by my too small panties, the ones she'd salvaged. They were
blue and cotton and the front panel had been ripped so that when I'd
worn them the fatty little swell above my slit was exposed. I reached
between us, feeling between her legs. On Heather that small tear was
lower, naturally and I sucked her tongue between my lips as I found
her exposed clitoris, small and fleshy and already hard. I thumbed it
eagerly, knowing how she liked that stimulation and she rewarded me
with a sharp gasp.

It took us 10 minutes like that before we could find my bed. Making
love to Heather is like going to an all you can eat ice cream parlor.
I just want everything, all at once, and trying to pick any one part
of her is impossible. When I pulled off her tee shirt and saw the
beauty of her large firm breasts, I had to have them. In my hands, in
my mouth, but at the same time I hungered to taste her sex, her ass,
to lick the soft hollows of her thighs, and the little sensitive
places behind her knees. And to kiss her; always my mouth was drawn to
hers.

We made love for hours, slowly and carefully at times, bringing each
other to sweet orgasms that dripped with sublime pleasure; and at
other times we were almost reckless, grinding our bodies together so
that the bed shook and bounced and threatened to wake the
neighborhood, or so it seemed. And then we'd collapse, hugging and
kissing and giggling softly. Our arms and legs entwined so that we
could barely tell where one of us ended and the other began.

Knocking.

"Lisa! Breakfast! Get up sleepyhead!" it was my dad's voice and I
could hear his heavy footsteps going down the hall. The house smelled
of eggs and bacon and coffee and I woke up hungry.

Next to me Heather was waking up too, opening her eyes and smiling at
me. Her leg was over mine and her arm resting gently on my stomach.
She kissed me, a small one on the cheek and I smiled too.

"What are we going to say?" she whispered.

"Say I called you," I grinned and wiggled my eyebrows. That at least
wouldn't be a lie. "I couldn't sleep so you came over."

"And we played twister!" Heather laughed and rubbed my left breast
lightly.

I looked at her, biting my lip and I knew I was going to spend the
rest of my life with her. My nipples were hardening, but I didn't want
sex. "Let's tell them."

"Now?" Heather stopped moving and turned a little more, propping
herself up on her elbow.

"Yeah. Together," I was scared and my heart was beating a little
faster as I spoke. "I love you, Heather. I don't want to hide it any
more."

"I don't wanna hide either, but...Are you sure?" her eyes were opened
wide and I knew she was as nervous as I was.

"Yeah," I kissed her once more and got out of bed, finding some clean
panties for both of us. I put my nightdress back on and tossed Heather
her tee-shirt.

"Shouldn't we get dressed, Lisa?" she was sitting on the edge of the
bed, holding her shirt. "I mean, uh, clothes? You know?"

I shrugged, it wasn't like we hadn't had breakfast at her house or
mine wearing what we'd slept in the night before.  Clothes probably
weren't gonna matter to my parents a whole lot anyway. They'd be
looking in our eyes.


end

======================-

Chapter 03 - Anarchy in My Heart


I'm an anarchist personally...A real one too. I don't have any dreams
of utopia or even friendly campfire songs after all the governments
collapse. I think it'll be pretty crazy, real hectic, so I'm stocking
up on stuff now.

I'm Amerasian, female, which means I was always welcome down in Oregon
with the anarchists there. Just angry young men with spray paint
though really, and I was pretty torn about leaving those guys. I liked
living in the woods a lot. I shared a cabin with these three guys for
awhile.

It was strange at first, I mean the bedroom didn't even have a door on
it. So when we were doing it, well, the other two guys would break out
the nachos and crack a beer. So that's probably why I'm not so nervous
around here. Compared to being watched during sex by guys who've done
me, ah...This is easy.

Still, my boyfriend tracked me down one day. I'd mailed my dad, always
a bad idea, but I did it, and I'd left the address for this little
filling station where I could get mail, and I asked him to mail me my
celphone and my Skechers. The pink ones, with blue laces, and so he
told Paul, my boyfriend. And there he was one day, holding half of the
letter, he'd just torn off the address part and found that town.

"Where's my celphone?" I asked, because I saw the shoes.

"My place," he smiled at me. I hated when he smiled because it always
made me smile back.

I just rolled my eyes then, you know. I was with a guy too, that was
sort of bad. His name was Jam, and that just shows exactly what we
were like down there. Jam, with his long blonde hair, and blue tinted
glasses. I haven't thought of him in ages.

"I'm not going back with you," I made a face.

"Your dad's worried," Paul shrugged, because he liked to play the
indifferent role. I'd get emotional and he'd watch, toss out the odd
fact, or observation. It didn't solve anything, it just made me mad,
really.

"I'll call him," I sighed dramatically. "Oh wait...I don't have my
phone."

Even Paul had to smile at that and he rubbed his head. God, he
was...Mmmm, 30 then, ten years older than me and looking so nice. I
missed him, you know? We'd been together since I was 16, on and off,
in and out, and we always got back together.

But not this time. I wrinkled my nose at him. Standing there with Jam,
who had no clue. I think he actually thought Paul was my dad for a
minute, until we started talking. Then once he figured out this was
the boyfriend I liked to b itch about when I was stoned, well...Jam
was a lover, not a fighter. He went into the store for a Coke.

"I got your shoes," Paul nodded, leaning against his car.

"Thanks." I almost walked over, you know, gee whiz. I wanted to touch
him, but I didn't want to either. It was like I loved him so much that
I just hated him! lol

He was cheating on me. Not just once, by accident, but all the time.
Every 4 or 5 months there was another girl. And I was so sick of it.
That was all it was, I didn't even care about that, but I was sick of
the surprise. Of expecting him to change and he never would. I hated
that about him...And myself. I felt stupid.

"I got you something else too," he licked his top lip with the tip of
his tongue, the way he does sometimes.

"What?" I asked, even though I didn't want to. It was a Pavlovian
response I think and it came out before I could stop it.

"This," he was holding something. "Come here," Paul jerked his head,
smiling a little and so I smiled, and then frowned when I realized it.

"I'm not going back with you," I told him again, walking over slowly.

The gravel...I remember that gravel crunching, you know? I can't
remember if it was sunny or cloudy. I don't remember if it was cold.
Maybe it was windy, I don't...I just remember the crunch under my
feet, little rocks grinding together.

Weird the way that works. And then he had a box, and you know what it
was, what it is. He opened it for me because I wasn't moving, I was
just looking. It was blue felt and he opened it and inside was a ring.
A real one. A gold one with a diamond, and I blinked at it and looked
at him, and I didn't know what to say. I had no clue at all.

"Will you marry me, Rachael?" he didn't kneel or anything, but he
meant it. Maybe it was the first thing he'd ever said, without really
saying it, that he meant. He loved me.

"Well..." I looked it at it on my finger and I wish I could remember
how it got there, but it was there and I was looking at it. And I
wanted to cry or something. You're supposed to cry, right? So I was
thinking, I should cry.

But I didn't. I just kissed him, like I'd wanted to since the first
second I saw him standing there. I kissed him and looked down. We were
both looking down and I didn't know what to say or do or anything.

"Hmph..." I nodded slowly. "It's not my celphone."


end

======================-

Chapter 04 - Nothing a Plumber


"How bad is it?" The President regarded his scotch, turning the
crystal tumbler slowly in his fingers.

The only light in the room came from the fireplace in his Camp David
study, casting the room and the President in uncertain hues of red and
yellow.

"Pretty bad," the White House Chief of Staff admitted. "Wallace has
been busy. I haven't seen all the information, but just looking at the
names..."

He was standing near the bar and fixing himself another drink. The
navy steward who would normally be doing that for the two men had been
given the evening off.

"When will it break?" the President closed his eyes, wishing this
business away; that it had never happened at all. But in that case,
the man knew, he wouldn't be the President. He'd be just another two
bit pol in a town full of them.

"My guy in Atlanta says they're waiting on Wallace to confirm her
sources. They don't know what she's got, only that it's big," the man
answered. "Thursday night, that's what they're looking for. They want
to go prime time and scoop the networks."

"Yeah," the President drained his glass, "that's what I'd do. Three
days, huh? Okay. What's the spin?"

"We get you into Bethesda, routine check-up, nothing to worry about,"
the Chief of Staff said. "Brian's going to drop cancer, back door it
through his girlfriend at NBC."

"Heh," the President smiled. "I thought he was banging her out of
love."

"What's love got to do with it?" the staffer chuckled.

"Cancer's a big bullet," the President rubbed his jaw pensively. "I'd
like to save that one."

"If you want to make this go away and come out of it smelling like a
rose..." his Chief of Staff held up a hand, "...it kills a lot of birds,
Mr. President."

The most powerful man in the world smiled at his friend's mixed
metaphor, but it was true nonetheless. Even the possibility of a
serious illness gave the President a lot of clout with public opinion.
A lot of sympathy and concern in the polls. It made him appear to be
in public, when in fact he was even more isolated than usual. The
press would have to back off a bit, being fed through press
conferences by doctors, releases by the Press Secretary, and the odd
leak from 'reliable sources inside the White House' ...And the business
with Wallace...

"Yeah," the President stood up slowly, tugging his bathrobe into place
and leaving his glass on the coffee table. "That's what the country
needs, right? Okay. Set it up."

"Yes sir," the man picked up a telephone.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Mercury Plumbing Associates! Good morning, this is Joan, how can I
help you?"

"Hi Joan, this is Shep Richards, over at the American Literature
Congress? We have a little problem with the pipes, I'm afraid, and..."

"Oh, Mr. Richards," Joan smiled into her headset, tapping her keyboard
quickly. "Would this be at 1804 K Street in Georgetown?"

"Exactly," the man replied. "You've done some plumbing work for us
before."

"I understand. I have your account right in front of me, sir," Joan
agreed. "Is this an emergency?"

"Aren't they always?" Richards chuckled ruefully. "We'd really like to
get this taken care of as soon as possible."

"I understand, Mr. Richards," Joan said. "I'll have a man over in...oh...
Between ten and eleven this morning, is that good for you?"

"Perfect."

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Hey there..."

"May I help you sir?" an older woman smiled, taking off her reading
glasses so that they hung around her neck on a silver chain.

"I'm Dick Spanner, uh..." The man in blue coveralls lifted his clipboard
and glanced at it. He carried a red toolbox in his left hand. "...from
Mercury Plumbing. I have a job order here..."

Mrs. Cleary, the receptionist, put her glasses back on and leaned
forward to look at the work request.

"Oh, here. Guess you'll want this too." The plumber let Mrs. Cleary
take the clipboard so he could show her his MPA employee badge.

"I see," she smiled. "We've been expecting you, Mr. Spanner is it? The
lavatory is up the stairs behind you, and to the left. You can't miss
it."

"Yeah, I've been here before," Spanner smiled gently, taking his
clipboard back.

After the man was gone Mrs. Cleary lifted her telephone.

"Mr. Richards? The plumber has arrived," she said. "Yes, he's up there
right now."

Five minutes later a young man with curly hair and a large, hook-
shaped nose entered the upstairs lavatory. He looked like many of the
young research assistants and congressional staffers who came in and
out of the building, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase as he
pushed into the small restroom. He either hadn't noticed the hand
printed 'OUT OF ORDER' sign taped to the door, or perhaps he'd merely
ignored it.

"Oh..." the man paused near the sink as he saw Spanner working on the
toilet, his tool box open with various and sundry items strewn about
the tiled floor.

"Sorry, buddy," the plumber said without looking. "Gonna be about
fifteen minutes."

"Hmph, I see," the man said. "I just wanted to wash my hands anyway."

"Help yourself," Spanner said and then gave a little grunt as he
tightened, or loosened, or otherwise tried to fix the toilet.

"Have good one, pal," the man said after washing his hands and drying
them with paper towels.

"Thanks," the plumber said, looking up only after the door had closed
shut again with a sharp snick.

The man had forgotten his briefcase and it was sitting on the floor
under the sink. Spanner wiped his hands clean and opened the briefcase
quickly, grunting at the large manila envelope inside it. This he
took, and then closed the empty briefcase and put it back under the
sink as it had been a moment before. The envelope, Spanner folded in
half so it would fit into the false bottom of his toolbox.

"That was quick," Mrs. Cleary said as the plumber came down the
stairs.

"It was no problem at all," Spanner shrugged and he had his clipboard
handy. "If you could sign here and...here, please."

"Well, thank you so much," Mrs. Cleary smiled and as the workman left
she was picking up her phone once again, to inform Mr. Richards that
the plumber was finished.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Wednesday evening the top news story was the President's health as he
spent a second full day undergoing tests at Bethesda Naval Hospital. A
reliable source in the White House told NBC News that doctors were
looking at what was possibly a benign tumor in the President's colon.
Avery Sheldon, the White House Press Secretary, quickly denied that
the President was anything but "...healthy, happy, and anxious to get
back to work."

At the bottom of the front page of the Washington Post, it was
reported that Rebecca Wallace had been found dead in her Manhattan
apartment following an apparent break-in and robbery late Tuesday
night, or early Wednesday morning, according to police. Wallace was an
investigative journalist who'd made a name for herself uncovering
corruption in America's national political scene and was reputedly
working to confirm recent allegations of financial misconduct and
election fraud in a number of 1996 campaigns, including the
President's successful gubernatorial bid in his home state of Ohio.
Spokesmen for the President have repeatedly denied such allegations
and a recent examination of election records by an independent counsel
found no evidence of impropriety. Ms. Wallace was 34 years old and
survived by a daughter from a previous marriage.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Thursday night, as the President left Bethesda Hospital with a clean
bill of health, a reporter asked him how his colon was feeling. The
President smiled and reportedly said, "Just great! The doctors did a
wonderful job and my plumbing couldn't be better!"

The country breathed a collective sigh of relief and smiled at his
typical exuberance.


End

===========================-

Chapter 05 - I Dream of...John?


John slammed the car door.

"Wha...Who are you?" Debbie froze, holding a little green tub of
Turtlewax in her left hand and a bit of her ex-boyfriend's t-shirt in
the other. At least he was still good for something. Sorta. But Deb
hadn't seen him in a long time either, so maybe...

"Well?" John looked at the woman expectantly, which only confused
Debbie even more than she probably deserved.

"Who are you? And and and...What were you doing in my car?" Deb
swallowed nervously and looked around.

At least there were a lot of people there, outside her apartment that
sunny summer day. They were washing their cars too, some of them.
Others were trimming bushes or playing with their kids. Some of the
older men were just watching pretty girls like Debbie and somehow it
was something of a comfort just then. That would have seemed very odd
any other time, but odd is a relative term.

"I'm John and you rubbed," the man said with an air of impatience,
dramatic impatience it seemed to Debbie and she was an aspiring
actress, so she would know.

"I'm...I'm gonna call the police," Debbie told him without thinking too
much about it.

"Maybe you should call the fire department too," John nodded
thoughtfully, giving the young woman a deliberate look up and down.

"What? Why?"

"Cause you're so hot, baby," John worked his tongue slowly along his
lower lip, "you must be on fire!"

"Huh?" Deb frowned and felt herself redden. "That's the dumbest line
I've ever heard. Get out of here!"

"I can't," John said. "You rubbed."

"I did not!" Debbie protested and she was very confused, as anyone
would be I suppose.

"Yeah, you did," John nodded towards the rag in her hand. "You rub
nice too, believe me."

"I'm..." Deb looked down at her hands, "...waxing my car, that's all."

"Don't have to tell me!" John grinned, grabbing his crotch and giving
himself an upward jerk so that he actually went tip-toe for just a
second with the effort of making his point.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," Debbie frowned.

"That was too easy!" John laughed lightly, "One down, two to go."

"What?"

"I should get back in and make you rub me for the rest maybe," John
said mostly to himself.

"Stay out of my car!"

"Yeah, that's what we'll do," the man was smiling happily. "Nothing in
the rules against more rubbing is there?"

"What? Hey! Get your hands off my car...Don't open that! Hey! What are
you..." Debbie was making quite a fuss and some of the people around her
were noticing, but Debbie only had eyes for John.

She watched as the man gave her a broad smile and a lascivious wink,
opening the driver's door of her brand new car and getting inside as
if he owned it. He pulled the door shut behind him with a thudding
snick and then...He was gone!

Debbie looked through the windshield, obviously, and she'd seen him
for a moment. John was sitting there, putting his hands on the
steering wheel and then the girl had blinked and just like that, John
was gone. She frowned at that and hastened to open the door, dropping
her head and ready to be very angry with that strange man. He wasn't
there though, not in the front or back, not even in the glove
compartment. And Debbie looked. John was just gone and that made
Debbie very frightened.

She'd imagined it, of course. A daydream or something and the woman
looked at her Turtlewax, now fallen onto the asphalt, and wondered if
there were fumes which could cause hallucinations. She hoped so
because the only other explanation was that she was losing her mind
and of the two choices, Debbie liked the first one better. For the
obvious reasons.

The whole experience was almost enough to keep Debbie from finishing
the wax job she'd so recently started. That was silly though and the
car did need it. Besides, that guy had been kinda cute and sorta
funny, in a strange way. If a girl was going to have imaginary
boyfriends, Debbie thought, she could do a lot worse than that guy.
And anyway, he probably wouldn't be back since she knew it was just a
dream. Debbie never got the dreams she wanted, at least not on
purpose, and maybe that's true of everyone, she wasn't sure. So poor
Debbie really didn't know what to think, except that not waxing her
car because a guy had told her she rubbed good was silly. Maybe.

Debbie picked up her turtlewax and found her rag, shaking a little
dirt off it, and then dipped her fingers into the tub. Hmmm, the girl
giggled to herself, if John thought she was rubbing him good before...

Three minutes later, John got out of the car, slamming the door behind
him with a big happy smile.



end

====================================-

Chapter 06 - Allah Akbar


I was dreaming of the sea again. I didn't remember very much, although
I'd had that same dream many times. Strange isn't it, the way some
dreams are like that? But I remembered the water and kneeling on the
shore. Washing my face. Pouring the sea into my eyes so that the salt
was stinging. I wept in my dreams and that was a secret pleasure and I
didn't want to leave it. Five minutes more, facing the rising sun with
my shadow long behind me. Two minutes or just one...A single moment
less than I could bear.

"Wake up, bitch!" Cold water on my face was the only bath I would
know, and a voice that was deep and rough and unkind, as it must be in
a place like that.

I'd learned not to cry a long time ago. Not asking why took a little
longer, but all of my questions went away eventually. That's what it
is to be a slave. I was numb now, except in my dreams, and numbness is
a thing you can't understand until you feel it. Until it consumes you.
Becomes you.

"You go on television today." There was the clattering of a metal tray
being shoved under the bars, kicked towards me so that the cold hard
rice was caught and tumbled off to flake on the floor.

I scrambled for it, catching the rice in my broken fingers like a
living thing and pushing it between my lips. He watched me. Not
smiling, not frowning, just watching. There was fruit on the tray,
four sections of whitish-orange jackfruit. I picked them up carefully,
one at a time, sitting with my knees against my breasts, my chin in
the valley between them. Television. I was going on television again,
that was why they gave me fruit. I ate it slowly, rocking back and
forth and staring at the wall.

My first time had been very hard. I hadn't wanted to read the words
and I'd refused. So they'd beaten me from the waist down with
truncheons of rubber hose filled with sand. I hadn't been able to walk
or even stand, but I'd been able to read what they told me to as I sat
on a chair. My face had not been marked then, not once, nor had my
arms or shoulders. Any part of me that would be seen by my friends and
family was clean and soft and unbruised. It shamed me.

The second time I'd been more ready and I protested silently, staring
into the camera as if my eyes would tell the truth. My voice was a
flat monotone without emotion, unlike the month previous when I'd
struggled with tears. They weren't pleased by this. They said it
looked like I'd been drugged, and fear and pain were better than that.
People would expect fear and pain, understand and appreciate it, but
not drugs. That would be boring. I read it again, this time with wires
attached to my sex and a car battery on a table nearby. It was like
striking a match, the way he did it, sliding the red wire along the
battery post for just a second. He did it again to ensure I understood
what they desired. The breathless quiver in my voice; the nervous
twitch and flutter of my eyelids when he would frown and narrow his
gaze; the jerk of my body at even his smallest gesture; as much as my
words, that was what they wanted from me.

Now, my third time. None of the others had ever done three, but they
were all men and only a few had been on television even once. I was
different. A third time and for all my numbness there was something
there, some small hope stalking me like a disease. I wasn't completely
gone, not yet and that frightened me all the more. I suddenly felt the
urge to throw-up, my stomach knotting around the sickly sweet fruit
I'd just eaten.

"Let me hear you, please." This voice was not so deep, not so rough,
and his accent less gutteral. His civility was offensive and made me
small.

My body heaved and it took a great act of will to swallow the bile
back down. Every punishment I'd ever received had come from that
voice. Every torture commanded softly by him in my language for my
ears, so that I would know what was coming. It was Pavlovian, the
simplest training imaginable. I yearned to please that voice and even
more, I desperately wished to never hear it again.

He wanted me to read the words on the wall. They'd been there when I'd
first arrived, neatly formed letters that ran the width of my cell.
Words written in black on white, and every smudge or stain or crack in
the mortar seemed to give them imperfect life.

"My na..." I coughed and started again in my native tongue. "My name
is..." He listened patiently while I read to him, the same words that
I would say for the cameras later. I tried to sound sincere,
convincing and clear. I hadn't been coerced or drugged at all, my
voice said, my eyes, my hands, the tilt of my spine, the posture of my
shoulders. I meant what I was saying, if it would only please this
man.

A few days later I awoke to find him looking at me and I knew it was
time. I might have said something, asked him if he was going to kill
me now, but I don't remember. I just remember his eyes and how they
were neither cruel nor angry. They were just brown like any man might
have.

"I pray...I..." I stumbled for the words, trying to put them in order.
"...I want to pray."

"Do you want a priest?" He might have been amused, but his tone was
not mocking.

I shook my head, looking down at myself all crumpled up as if I'd been
thrown away. "Just tell me, please..." My face was dry and cracked and
I licked carefully at my lips, ignoring the strange sensation of
ragged gums beneath my tongue. I'd lost all of my teeth in the hours
after my last television appearance. My nose had been broken as well
and the world had tasted of blood and snot ever since.

"Yes?" He leaned forward, tilting his head slightly as if to better
hear me.

My left eye was swollen shut and refused to see, but with the right I
stared at the barrel of his pistol tapping patiently against his
thigh. The man was perhaps smiling because he knew what I was going to
ask. He'd been waiting for this. Waiting for me.

"What...way...is East?" I asked, knowing he would tell me and why.

I'd prayed many times in my windowless cell. Every day, whenever I'd
thought of it. Sometimes I'd forget and then remember as if my faith
had been sleeping, and then I'd weep silently with shame. No tears
would come, not even for Him, but they were the great sea of sorrow my
dreams had become. And I'd faced all four walls when I could, and the
corners in their turn; but too often the ceiling, or the floor while I
was beaten and raped and slowly murdered for my faith.

"Allah Akbar." God is Great and my shadow is long behind me.


end

==============================-

Chapter 07 - Broken


"But...Why can't we get it?" I whined, and not for the first time.
"Everybody on the whole planet has internet now!"

I was 15 years old. A teenage girl living in a broken home, in a
broken trailer, in a town called Broken, Tennessee. My whole life was
broken and Daddy wasn't helping at all.

"We can't afford it," Daddy said, giving me his cheesy smile.

"It's cheap, Daddy. Gomer Taylor just started an internet place. He
said he'd hook us up for nothing at all!" I wasn't gonna let it go
this time.

"You stay away from that Gomer!" Daddy tried to change the subject.
"Them Taylors don't give nothin' away for free. He just wants to see
what you got in your panties!"

"As if I had panties!" I miffed. "And besides, I can pay for it with
my babysittin' money anyway." I made out pretty good watching Mrs.
Hodkins' little boys every afternoon after school.

"All they got on that internet is porn," Daddy shook his head.

"All we got round here is porn!" I replied. "It ain't like I ain't
gonna see something I ain't seen before, Daddy!"

"Don't you get smart with me, girly!" Daddy was being irrational now.

"I ain't being smart, I'm just saying I seen your porn all the time,
so what's the difference?" I was good at arguing stuff with my Daddy.

"The difference is that it ain't porn, Venny," Daddy said, a little
self-righteously. "It's educational, that's all. Not like that other
stuff!"

He always called me Venny, but my real name is Veronica. I know, I
don't much like my name either.

"But they got internet at schools all over the world, Daddy!"

"But not at yours!" Daddy grinned at me.

"Not yet," I admitted. "But soon as we get some 'lectricity the
Principal figures he just might get some internet too."

"Just like he figured on teaching a little of that uppity Charles
Derwin Sex Education?" Daddy narrowed his eyes a little.

"I think it's Darwin, Daddy..."

"Be Derwin in this house, girly."

"And it weren't just sex education, it really is about the birds and
bees too," I'd tried to explain this before, but it was no good.

"You get all the birds 'n bees you need at Sunday School, Ven. You
don't need some Principal givin' it to ya over your desk. A little
reading and writing..."

"Daddy..."

"...and a whole busketload load of home economics. That's what a growin'
girl needs in this town!"

"I get all that!" I rolled my eyes. "And Sunday School is for kids,
Daddy. I'm nearly a full grown woman. I know how to beget and begat
and that Ministers begotten me since I was seven, remember?"

"So?" Daddy gave a little shrug. "You ain't nearly full growed yet!"

"So, it's good to get some new ideas is all. That internet's full of
ideas, Daddy. Heck, you might even like it!" I said quickly, cause he
was starting to look a little mad. "If'n you just tried it."

"Broken don't need ideas and neither do we, girl. Ideas is what got
this country in that big mess in Japan..."

"Iraq, Daddy."

"...and ideas is what killed that Nathan McCoy, remember him?"

"I remember, Daddy," I squirmed a little cause he did have a point.
Nathan had been the first and only person from Broken to ride in an
airplane. It had crashed. "But ideas put a man on the moon, Daddy,
and..."

"Man on the moon! Heh!" my Daddy guffawed derisively. "If they got a
man on the moon how come there ain't a Wal-Mart up there yet?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. "Maybe they're waiting for a town first."

"Shoot," Daddy shook his head. "Everbody knows they build the Wal-Mart
first and THEN the town gets built around it."

"Yeah," I licked my lips. "Okay, so maybe they didn't never go to the
moon, but still...That internet, Daddy...Please?"

"I'll have to think about it some," Daddy surprised me and I hugged
him tight. "An that ain't much more than halfa maybe, understand?
Don't get your...ughhhh...."

He was really feeling it now. All that talkin' had kept his brain
busy, but even that wasn't enough to distract his big cock from what
my little 15 year old pussy was doin' to it. I confess I'd been
feelin' it myself, wrigglin' and squirmin' and when I'd pulled him
tight I could feel the tip of his penis right up way in there near my
womb and that was always pretty darn good.

"Mmmm...Daddyyyyyy..." I just moaned and then he was moanin' too, trying
to tell me not to get my hopes up while his creamy seed finally
spilled into my belly. But I knew one of these days my Daddy would say
yes, it was inevitable cause he loved me too much to say no forever.


end

======================================-

Chapter 08 - Monsters in My Bed


It was a dark and stormy night and everytime the thunder crashed it
shook the whole house. The electricity was out and now my small candle
was just a pale stain on the nightstand. The only light came from
outside, from the staccato flash of lightning and shadows seemed to
jump out of the walls at me. I covered myself up with my blanket, but
that was worse. I would rather see the monsters than not see them, I
thought. But maybe I didn't.

"Are you okay?" a quick whisper brushed my ear and the bed creaked.

"Ahhh!" I screamed, but it was only a soft cry and very short.

"Sorry," my brother was touching me. "Move over."

"I'm scared," I whispered, making room for him under my blanket.

"I know," he was getting on his side to face me and I was doing the
same thing. "You always get scared when it thunders."

"Yeah," I swallowed hard and all of a sudden there was a huge crack,
sharp like the sky being ripped open and I did scream then.

"Shhh...Come on," he took me in his arms and pulled me close.

"I don't like it, Robby!" I said and I was crying, even though I
wasn't a little girl anymore.

"I know you don't," he said softly and his arm had gotten under my
head and the other one was sorta under my arm, so that he was wrapping
me up tightly.

"Make it stop!" I begged him and I jerked with another awful roar that
seemed to come from everywhere all at once.

"Shhh...You make more noise than the lightning does," he teased me, but
I didn't even smile.

His face flickered suddenly and I prepared myself, but it wasn't any
good. My old brass bed rattled and one of the pictures on my bedroom
wall fell down with a bang and the shrill snap of breaking glass. My
mom's picture was busted somewhere in the dark and I moaned with
terror because she was dead and maybe she wouldn't like having her
picture broken like that.

"Kiss me," Robbie said and I was trembling and pressing my wet face
against his neck, sobbing with my hands clenched between my small
breasts like I was praying.

"Erin, come on," he said a little louder, stronger like he could give
it to me. "Kiss me, that'll make it go away."

"Mmnnpph!" I shook my head and I could feel his hand sliding down my
back, scritching the soft silk of my nightgown with his fingernails,
but then there was more thunder and all I could hear was that.

"Yeah, it will," he promised me. "Like this..."

He sorta lifted the arm that was beneath me, pulling back from me too,
so that he could turn his face down and kiss my forehead. I shivered
and Robbie kissed my nose. I lifted my eyes and it was dark, no
lightning and maybe that was why I let him kiss my mouth. He did it
quickly, just a little one and as soon as we were done with it there
was a sharp flash and the thunder was right on top of it, pressing me
down so I couldn't breathe.

I kissed him then; Robbie didn't kiss me. I pressed my mouth against
his and the lightning stopped, the thunder was going away, echoing
through the night outside. My heart was pumping hard and my face
flushed and wet with tears, but Robbie didn't care. His hand kept
going and now it was under the hem of my nightie, his hand on my small
round butt, holding me there and pulling me against him.

I felt the strange sensation of his tongue tickling my lips and I
realized his mouth was open and just when I thought I'd stop and ask
him why, another peal of thunder snapped through the night like a whip
and I opened my mouth to scream, but all I found was my brother's
tongue filling me. My terror was silenced somehow, or at least muffled
as I clutched myself to him in that moment. My left arm was over his
body now, my claw-like fingers digging into his back. My leg too was
over his, so that my legs were spread and I was trying to wrap myself
into a ball around the only person who could protect me.

"Yeah, Erin...Whew! See?" I could hear my brother's smile in the dark
and his hand on my butt was massaging me, rubbing slowly up and down,
his fingers pressing the cotton of my panties between my cheeks.

"There's still lightning," I protested and as if to prove my point we
were suddenly blinded by another stroke just outside my window.

"Yeah, I know," Robbie whispered, kissing my face as I jerked with
fright, drawing the older boy even tighter against me, if it were
possible. "Just hold onto me, I'm here. It's better, right?"

"Yeah, maybe. I don't know," I said weakly, keeping my eyes shut and
searching for his mouth with mine. All I could see were bright
twinkling stars white and blue against all that black.

He had been right though, it was better when he held me. I was still
scared, but when Robbie kissed me it was like he was taking some of it
too. I could give it to him, like part of my screaming and a few of my
tears maybe as they ran from my face onto his. Maybe it wasn't like
that at all, but it seemed like it and I kissed him quickly when
another violent shriek filled my ears.

And he was moving, but I didn't hardly realize it. I was moving too,
shaking and shivering and trying to crawl up and around and through my
brother like kitten in a flood. I was drowning in the terror, mindless
and without reason, but filling me with such distress that nothing was
certain. Doubt clouded every thought and feeling. I couldn't trust my
senses and the monsters were still there, lurking in the dark until
the lightning brought them close and gave them violent voice.

My brother would keep them away, I thought. The same way daddy had
told me mom's picture would keep me safe. She was watching over me,
but not anymore. She was broken on the floor and daddy was a thousand
miles away and my brother was all I had. He was protecting me and the
thunder didn't seem so loud when we kissed and the lightning wasn't so
bright and the monsters weren't happy that my brother was in my bed.

"Robbie?" I felt him between my legs but I didn't know why. I didn't
understand and I hadn't noticed what we were doing.

"Wait," he whispered. "Like this."

"What are you doing?" I asked him, and I wasn't moving anymore. I was
still and quiet and the night was waiting with me.

"I'm gonna make it better," he promised.

"Robbie!" I swallowed hard because I did almost know what he was doing
all of a sudden, but I didn't want to. "No! Stop it! You can't!"

I was pushing at him with my hands, arching my back and trying to kick
my leg against his. I was open, my legs spread with his body between
mine and my panties were old and stretched, worn thin and comfortable.
That's why I liked them, but now they were pulled away mostly, my
brother had used his fingers to pull the crotch aside while I worried
about lightning and thunder and monsters in the walls. His thing was
hard, his boy part, but not a boy's at all, not anymore. I felt the
thing hard and thick and hot against my skin. It was crouched and
coiled and already nipping at my private place and it wasn't ever
going to let me go.

Robbie roared with the thunder and a lurid flash of lightning lit his
face all twisted suddenly and wrong. His gaping mouth threatened to
swallow me whole and underneath, inside me someplace else and new, all
my fears had finally taken form.

My scream was lost in it, lost to him as the monster covered me with
his lips and teeth and tongue. He drank my terror and spilled my blood
forever. We were changed and I stiffened against the pain, as
brilliant and brief as anything the storm had offered, and then it was
rolling away with the thunder of my innocence dying in that black and
endless night.



end

==============================-

Chapter 09 - Friendship


The sun was going down, the way it had so many times before and we
were watching it one last time.

"I always liked it out here," Susan said, splashing the water with her
bare feet. "Remember when we were sixteen? We came up here with those
two guys..."

"Jeff and Craig, yeah."

I lit a cigarette, leaning against one of the big wooden poles that
held the dock up. It was jutting ten feet out of the water, all
graying and half eaten away in places. Just beneath the surface of the
lake I could see algae growing like green hair, undulating slowly with
the current.

"Yeah," she nodded. "Which one did I fuck?"

"I dunno," I shrugged. "Jeff fucked me, I know that."

"Must have been Craig then," Susan kicked a little harder and a fish
jumped some twenty feet away.

"I never liked him," I said. "He always reminded me of that guy in
seventh grade, the one who used to pull my hair. Remember him?"

"Oh God!" Susan laughed. "What was his name?"

"He'd say 'Ding-Dong...Avon Calling' and laugh," I sighed. "I hated
that."

"Yeah, you were gonna change your name," Susan said. "Soon as you
turned eighteen."

"I did," I laughed a little unhappily.

"Don't blame me for marrying the guy," Susan turned her head to look
at me. "That was your fault."

"Yeah, but you introduced us," I pointed my cigarette at her.

"Didn't mean I wanted you to have his babies," she giggled, tossing
her blonde hair into the wind.

"Thank God I didn't," I said and we thought about that for awhile.
"You ever have kids?"

"Me?" Susan asked. "Almost. Someplace down in Mexico. Texalazhata or
something like that."

"Heh," I grinned at her.

"Six months premature, as they say," Susan made a little face. "It
sucked."

"Yeah," I nodded. "Boy or a girl?"

"I don't know," she waved a hand. "Wasn't like it mattered."

"It woulda mattered to me, I think." I flicked my cigarette away. "I'd
have to know what I was killing."

"Well, that's the difference between me and you then," Susan said a
little sadly.

"Maybe," I was feeling sad too and we just watched the water for a
minute or two.

It was warm and springtime and the sky was blue with streaks of white
like God had dragged his fingers high over the earth. Long ghostly
shadows stretching from one horizon to the other and the sun was going
down behind them. Going down on all of us.

"Hey, I never told you..." Susan said abruptly and I hadn't really taken
my eyes off of her.

"What?"

"I sorta fucked your brother," she said.

"When?"

"At your wedding," Susan sucked her lips. "I wasn't gonna tell you. He
made me promise, but since..."

"You fucked him on my wedding day?" I stared at her and Susan just
shrugged.

"I didn't mean to," she said. "It just kinda happened, you know?"

I took a deep breath, holding it for a second and letting it go
slowly.

"You're pissed, aren't you?" Susan frowned. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well," I swallowed hard. "That was a long time ago."

"I knew you loved him, but I figured you were marrying that other guy,
so..." Susan was feeling the need to explain the way guilty people do.

"He never told me," I said with a little snort. "That fucker."

"He loved you too," Susan said quickly. "We didn't plan it, I swear.
He was a little drunk and well, you were marrying someone else, you
know?"

"Yeah, but he shoulda known I wasn't gonna...Ah fuck it," I caught
myself. "It doesn't matter."

"I'm sorry," Susan repeated.

"Yeah, I know," I said. "Thanks."

"For what?" Susan asked.

"For telling me," I said. "Most people wouldn't, or at least..."

"They wouldn't feel bad about it?" Susan smiled and I nodded.

"Yeah," I said. "I wouldn't feel bad if I was you."

"Well," Susan shrugged. "Maybe that's the difference between us."

"Yeah," I had to smile at that. "That one too, huh?"

"Didn't know we were so different," Susan said.

"We didn't used to be," I said and we were both thinking about that.

"Ten years is a long time," Susan said. "Maybe we just never noticed."

"Maybe."

Susan looked around and the place was empty. It had been so busy when
we were kids, full of people all summer long. Noisy with laughter and
loud voices and people enjoying life. Now it was quiet, the only
sounds coming from the wind in the trees and the creaking of the dock,
and the gentle lap of water around Susan's legs and the wormy wood
beneath us.

"The sun's going down," she said without looking at me.

"It always does."

"So?" Susan nodded to herself and then looked at me. "Are we gonna do
this thing, or not?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "But you know I have to ask...Where is it?"

"I don't know," Susan shrugged apologetically. "I spent it. Lost it.
You know."

"Don't make me do this."

"I don't have it," Susan was looking at me, her blue eyes staring into
mine, but they lied. I'd known her my whole life.

"Who are you protecting?" I asked her and she was pushing hard, going
to the limit for someone.

"Nobody," she whispered and we just stared at each other, with that
nine millimeter pressed against my tummy, tap-tap-tapping like a
heartbeat cause it helped me think.

"I'll find out, Susan," I warned her. "Make it easy. All they want is
their money back."

"And me, right?" she gave me a wry smile. "You frown when you lie,
Jen."

"Maybe I'm frowning because I love you."

"Same thing," Susan shrugged.

"I don't think so."

"Then let the money go," she was turning around, lifting her feet out
of the water so she could face me.

"Susan..." tap-tap-tapping and I shook my head.

She stood up slowly, smiling at my frown and spread her arms.

"Tell them I spent it," she said. "It's not a real lie."

"Spent it down in Mexico?" I asked and Susan's smile was going away.
"You're just like me, Susan. You'd have to know what it was."

"No," she shook her head.

"The real difference between us..."

"Jen..."

"...You couldn't kill it. You kept the baby didn't you?" I asked,
knowing all of it suddenly. "That makes it, what? Nine? Ten years old
now?"

"Jennifer, please..."

"Nine," I decided, doing the math in my head and it all made sense.

"...Don't."

"Boy or a girl, Susan?" I was pointing the gun at her stomach, flat
and empty now, but it hadn't always been and we both knew it.

"Boy," she whispered and I looked at her for a long while.

"I guess you really did spend it all, huh?" I decided finally and the
fear fell out of her lungs with a deep sigh.

"Thank you," Susan looked away to where the sun was going down and we
watched it together one last time.


end

=============================-

Chapter 10 - New World Order


"Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception." - George
Orwell

"Nationalism pays for my shoes." - Empress Tiffany


=========


"Madam President?"

I looked up to see Henry, my White House Chief of Staff frowning and
looking at his watch. Pointedly. He'd have stared at his wrist for an
hour, just to be sure I saw him doing it when I finally looked.

"Everyone is waiting," he said.

"Fuck 'em," I shrugged and went back to playing the Sims on my
computer.

"It's your State of the Union Address, Ma'am. We have to go," Henry
was always telling me what I had to do. "Everyone's waiting. The
nation is waiting."

"Really?" I'd sort of forgotten about the nation part. I looked at
Brian, all six foot four of him. Delicious hard chiseled statuesque
Greek God underwear model-turned-Secret Service agent Brian...and he
smiled and nodded.

"I have your speech right here and..." blah blah blah Henry was a good
guy, but man did he talk too much. I'd inherited him, sorta.

----

I hadn't asked for the job. Being President of these United States.
After the Third Civil War the office had become largely hereditary and
when my Uncle Stewart had suddenly died of frostbite during the
misguided Yukon Campaign of '67 I'd been plucked out of 10th grade and
thrust into politics. It wasn't much of a change, except the food was
a little better here.

The best part was I got to bring my friends along. Like Trevor, my
boyfriend, I'd made him the Secretary of Transportation cause he had a
really cool car. I'd lost my virginity in that car. And Becky, who was
my best friend and captain of the junior varsity pep squad, I'd made
her my National Security Advisor, because she was blonde and evil. She
was always plotting something.

I was neither blonde nor evil, just apathetic with my long black hair
and deep brown eyes. I'd been a 16 year old hottie a few months
before, now I was just the sexiest President ever. Except for that old
Kennedy guy, but I wasn't gonna get my head blown off just so
everybody would love me forever and ever. I sort of needed my head and
so that was why I was just a tiny little bit paranoid maybe. That and
the fact that I'd been diagnosed with Axis II Depression and
borderline Multiple Personality Disorder. But nobody needed to know
about that, really. It was an Official Secret, much like my Uncle's
chronic syphilis problem had been and still was. Classified for the
next 100 years at least, locked up with whoever killed Kennedy. That
was cool.

----

"My fellow Americans..." I was starting my speech in front of the
Senate, Congress, the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs, a gazillion
reporters, and every media outlet available to mortal man. It would
have made me nervous except for one little fact...I knew something they
didn't.

"...and so, by Executive Decree I have decided to change the office of
President of the United States to that of Immortal Empress of the
Americas and Most Glorious Protector of Earth."

I looked up and smiled for the cameras. The Senate was very quiet and
the usually rambunctious Congress was staring at me with their
innumerable mouths collectively open.

"In order to facilitate a peaceful and timely transition from a
'Democratic' government..." (I made little quotes with my fingers over
my head) "...it is most obviously necessary for the safety and security
of the American people to rehabilitate those individuals and
organizations most responsible for our recent failures as a nation."

I gave a little nod and a regiment of my personal Secret Service
bodyguard 'SS Tiffany' stormed the chambers and began arresting
politicians.

----

"Well Peter, it's very interesting that Pres...excuse me, I mean Empress
Tiffany," the political analyst for CNN smiled apologetically into the
camera. He did it on purpose though, obviously.

"Put him on the list too, Brian," I was eating Doritos and playing
with my boyfriend's cock while we watched television.

"It's very interesting that she didn't exactly say what form of
government we were transitioning to," the analyst continued, as if
that were penetrating and insightful.

"And how about her plans to redistribute the wealth, do you really
believe the rest of the country will accept that sort of..." the talking
head searched for a word, or maybe he just didn't want to say it.

"Bribe?" the analyst smiled.

"Definitely on the list," I accidentally squeezed Trevor's dick a
little too hard and squirmed beside me. "Oh, be still."

"Well Bill, that's your word, not mine," the anchorman looked a little
pale, as well he might since all the newsies had gotten the new laws
concerning sedition, mutiny, and treacherous misrepresentation of
national policy through the exploitation of mass media.

"It is what it is," the analyst shrugged and I glanced at Brian and he
reached for a phone.

"Well, I must confess that hearing her report the facts, that 5% of
our nation's population control 80% of its real wealth was a little
staggering. When you consider our unemployment figures, the ever
increasing costs of social programs like welfare, Medicare, and social
security, don't you think a redistribution is warranted?" The CNN guy
was making it clear that he had listened to my speech very carefully.

"I like that guy," I was stroking Trevor's penis like it was a little
puppy.

"Certainly some people will think so, but this isn't a solution to the
problem by any means, in fact..." he was cut off suddenly as two large
men dressed in SS black appeared, "...Hey, what the..."

There were probably a few more Secret Service guys in the control room
because the cameras didn't move, even when the analyst was executed
with a 9mm bullet to the back of his head. Someone off camera handed a
paper to the shaken anchorman, who was positively white with fear and
stained with blood. Still, he managed to do his job. He was a genuine
professional.

"Uh, this just in..." he licked his lips. "CNN regrets the recent
comments made by political analyst William Forsythe and in no way
condones or agrees with the views expressed. His malicious and
subversive lies were obviously intended to damage the American people
and our great nation, and sources inside the Justice Department assure
us that a full and complete investigation into Mr. Forsythe's
activities is now underway. Once again, CNN and its affiliates wish to
apologize to our viewers and to our Glorious Leader, Empress Tiffany."

"Did you write that, Brian?" I looked over my shoulder at the man.

"No Ma'am, that would have been Emily Fullbright I believe," he said.
"She's the watch commander down in Atlanta."

"Fullbright, huh?" I smiled "Not bad. Is she a party member?"

"Of course," Brian nodded seriously. "She took her oath last month."

"I don't remember her," I frowned at that, but then again I'd had over
a thousand SS agents swear their lives and deaths to my personal
security over the past few weeks. "Good job."

"Thank you, Ma'am," Brian didn't smile, of course, but I knew he was
satisfied.

----

The fact was that the redistribution of wealth was just a fancy
bribe.

Americans, being Americans, would never tolerate anything but the
great democracy of our forefathers...without proper incentive. It's
pretty amazing what people will surrender in the name of greed. I'd
commissioned a study at Princeton, the Institute for Advanced Studies,
specifically, to find the very best and most promising method of
staging a coup in the United States. So far those huge brains weren't
letting me down.

"I know we can't just give all the money away," I stuck out my tongue
at the man.

"It has to be reinvested, used to stimulate key industries..."

"What?" I stared at him. He was secretary of the treasury. Bob
something or other, and supposedly pretty bright, but I had my doubts.
"Are you stoned, Bob?"

"Excuse me?" he looked over his glasses at me.

"I have to give the money back, stupid," I shook my head. "What do you
think? All those rich people are going to sit still while I give their
money to welfare mothers in Peoria?"

"Give it...Back?" He was hopeless. First he said I couldn't take it,
then after I did take it he was trying to tell me I could keep it.

"It's a loan, Bob!" I giggled.

"I see..." the old guy rubbed his bald head.

"Like it or not you just can't take away a few trillion dollars or so
from the people who make the world work. They get a little pissed," I
stared at him. "Didn't you go to college or something?"

"Yes, but..."

"I need the armed forces too. They have more guns than I do, but they
just want the same thing the capitalist want, a return on their
investment."

"The army, cool," Trevor was walking into the Oval Office with a big
pizza in his hands. "Extra pepperoni."

"Awesome!" I kissed him on the cheek. "You're such a good boyfriend."

"You're a way cool girlfriend, Tiff!" he kissed me on the lips and we
made out for like five minutes until Bob cleared his throat.

"Look," I wiped the spit off my mouth off with my hand, "they spent
gazillions on nuclear weapons, right? And hardly ever get to use them!
We need a really good war to get the country going..."

"A war?" Becky looked up from the television.

"...And not some bullshit little war on terror, or a little fund-raiser
like Iraq. We need something massive, Bob. Something that will put
World War Three to shame..."

"Let's declare war on Italy," Trevor said, biting into a slice of
pizza. "Mph ummp agg emph!"

"What?" I stared at him.

"We..." he swallowed. "We could take them. The Italians."

"Why?" Becky turned back around, switching the channel from VH1 to MTV
Blast. "What's in Italy?"

"The point is I need something I can sell to the American people.
Something we can win." I looked at Trevor, "And not just Italy."

"What do you want?" Bob chuckled like he didn't believe me. "The whole...
No...You can't..."

"Keep going," I nodded, rolling my hand.

"You want the whole world?" Old Bob stared at me.

"Arma-fucking-geddon!" Becky giggled as she jumped up and down on the
couch. This was half her idea anyway; she was way good at that stuff.

"Why not? We're a service economy, Bob. We've had a hundred plus years
of atrophied national pride," I told him. "The nation is hungry."

"We're the nice guys who finish last!" Becky shouted out, getting into
the spirit of it, like I knew she would.

"We're the modern Jews," Vanity said and we all looked at her, but she
ignored us. "Without the stigma of being the assholes that killed
Christ."

"Oh," I nodded. "That's good."

"What the hell does that mean?" Trevor laughed.

"I'm Jewish," Bob looked at the girl and she didn't even bother with a
shrug. She was busy.

"How's my speech coming, anyway?" I called over my shoulder to Vanity.
I was hungry too and that pizza smelled good.

Vanity Wilson was only 13, but boy could she write. Like Mozart wrote
his first concerto when he was 4 or something? This girl had written a
Pulitzer Prize winning essay on social discourse and the human
imperative to communicate when she was six. If she wasn't working for
me I'd have burned her at the stake.

Thankfully she was so psychotic that she imagined Hell when she
masturbated and had spent the previous 3 years screaming her lungs out
in a padded room at Johns Hopkins. All Vanity needed was a proper
outlet to express her inner demons, so she was my speech writer.

"Which one?" she asked, without looking up. She never looked up,
except when Satan talked to her. The rest of us couldn't see him of
course, but I for one believed her.

"The Will to Power speech," I rolled my eyes.

"Oh, pretty good," Vanity said airily. "I sacrificed a cat last
night."

"Okay...Good," I nodded slowly. "George!"

"Yo!" George was my public relations guy and press secretary.

He also had the attention span of a five year old with attention
deficit disorder. That was extremely handy during those sticky press
conferences I'd held after suspending the Bill of Rights. Reporters
largely gave up on asking questions once George had the podium. But I
had him on Ritalin now, so he was okay mostly.

"Put that down..." he was playing with a snow-globe. "...What's the deal
with the party?" I asked him.

"Ahhh...I'm getting the Hollywood guys to come out in a few days, look
it over. You still want to do it at the mall right?"

"Yeah, torches and bonfires," I nodded. "Right out there in the
Washington Mall, with the grand spire of the Washington Monument
behind us."

"Beer?"

"Shut-up, Trevor," I stifled a giggle. "Big flags and tanks. Make sure
the army is in on this. I want a million men, all in black. Oath
takings and book burnings and sacrifices. I want virgins, ummmm...Get
the graduating class...No, the freshman class from Radcliff. We'll
sacrifice them all to...to..." I paused, "...We need deities!"

Everyone looked at me.

"Staff meeting, right now. Get the cabinet up," I decided. "I want a
dozen Gods on our side! Chop chop people! We have a destiny to build!"

It was time, finally, for America to embark on a path of global
conquest. The time was right; the technology available, all we lacked
was the moral certainty and national willpower. But I was here now,
and so I had plenty of that stuff. All the country had to do was hang
on tight.

A new New World Order was coming.


That's enough, right?

=============================-

Chapter 11 - Teasing


"Are you gonna throw me a fuck?" Carol asked Bobby.

"Say what?" the college freshman looked at the high school girl.

"The way those guys back there talked," Carol explained, pulling her
auburn hair back with one hand and digging in her purse for a rubber
band with the other.

"Oh, yeah," Bobby said. "They were getting pretty drunk."

"They were getting pretty disgusting," she said. "I didn't even want
to go anyway."

"So why did you?" Bobby asked, watching the girl fix her long
ponytail.

"You know why," Carol turned her blue eyes on Bobby, but they were
black in the glow of the car's headlights.

"Me too," he said. "It was kinda boring, huh?"

"Heh!" Carol slumped down in her seat, putting her heels on the dash
and wiggling her bare toes. "You didn't look very bored when
whatshername was climbing all over you."

"Who? Veronica? Yeah right, she climbs all over everybody," Bobby
laughed and he was stealing looks at Carol's legs beneath the denim
shorts she wore.

"Yeah, that's not the point though," the girl laughed too. "God! What
a total slut!"

"She's just lonely or something," Bobby said.

"Lonely? How can she be lonely? Everytime I see her she's with
somebody."

"Don't mean she's not lonely," Bobby shrugged and he wanted to touch
Carol's left thigh cause it was right there. "I heard she was abused
or something, you know, when she was a kid."

"Abused? What? Like by her dad or something?" Carol pressed the soles
of her feet together, spreading her knees so that her legs made an
oval shape. "That's so gross."

"That's just what I heard," Bobby tightened his grip on the steering
wheel. "Maybe she wasn't."

"Maybe she's just a nympho," Carol giggled, tugging her shirt down
because the wind was trying to lift it up all the time.

"You want me to put the top up?" Bobby asked, taking the excuse to get
a long look at the girl.

"No," she shook her head, "convertibles are so cool. I'm okay."

"Okay."

They were quiet for a minute or two, but neither of them were very
uncomfortable with that. Bobby kept driving while Carol pulled at
loose strands of cotton around the ragged edges of her cut-offs. The
way she spread her legs pulled the crotch tight against her pelvis and
Bobby imagined he could see a little of her panties every now and
then, just flashes of white, but it was dark so maybe he just imagined
it.

"Anyway, you didn't answer my question," Carol said.

"What question?" Bobby asked her.

"You know!" she put a little pout in her voice, "You're such a tease!"

"Me?" Bobby rolled his own blue eyes, but Carol didn't notice. "I saw
what you were doing."

"What do you mean, what I was doing?"

"Teasing," Bobby said. "You wanna know why guys say the things they
do? It's cause they think you want it."

"What?" Carol shifted, sitting back up and she pulled her feet to the
edge of the seat, hugging her knees to her breasts.

"The way you act, you know? Like flirting and..." Bobby shrugged, "...
teasing. You're just asking for it."

"I'm not asking for anything!" Carol protested. "I'm just trying to
have a good time."

"Uh-huh."

"Just cause I smile or whatever, it doesn't mean I'm asking a guy to
fuck me," Carol said.

"You do a lot more than just smile," Bobby said. "Admit it. The way
you laugh, like that little giggle you got. The way you make faces..."

"I make faces?" Carol stared at him, her eyes going wide and the
corners of her mouth turning down.

"See?" Bobby nodded, looking at the girl. "Just like that."

"This isn't my come fuck me face," Carol said. "This is my I don't
believe you just said that face."

"Well, maybe not that face," Bobby admitted, "but you got other ones.
Probably you don't even know your doing it."

"I know exactly what I'm doing," Carol snorted. "Whatever faces I
make, they're mine. That's the point."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean they don't mean anything and if some guy thinks it does,
well..." Carol shrugged, "...that's his problem, not mine."

"Until he starts asking if you wanna go count stars, right?" Bobby
asked and Carol giggled.

"See? That's what I'm talking about" he shook his head.

"What?" Carol asked.

"That giggle. You know what that sounded like?"

"It sounded like a giggle," Carol said. "You were cute. What you
said."

"It sounded to me like you wouldn't mind going someplace and counting
stars with me," Bobby said. "It sounded like you wanted more."

"More?"

"Yeah, more...I dunno, more talking, more attention or something," Bobby
said. "Like if I tried to kiss you it would be okay."

"You want to kiss me?" she giggled again.

"And now you're really teasing," Bobby said with a sigh.

"So?" Carol licked her lips and sighed too.

"Oh, you admit it now?" he asked.

"Maybe I'm just teasing," Carol said and this time she bit her bottom
lip, just a little and only because she knew Bobby would see it.

"You want me to throw you a fuck?" Bobby asked rhetorically.

"No! See? You just ruined it," Carol said. "Now I just wanna go home
again."

"We're almost there anyway," he said.

"Yeah," Carol untied her shirt, because it was unbuttoned and just
knotted across her tummy. "I don't wanna go home."

"I know."

"How many stars are there, do you think?" she wondered after half a
minute.

"I don't know," Bobby shrugged, glancing at the girl as she buttoned
her shirt.

"Do you want to find out?" Carol looked at him.

"I gotta get you home, it's already late," Bobby said. "We'll get in
trouble."

"I'll get in trouble," she said.

"Yeah," he swallowed hard.

"Maybe I like trouble," Carol said. "You could say we got a flat
tire."

"Ran out of gas too," Bobby said.

"Yeah," Carol smiled. "There's a lot of stars tonight."

"Uh-huh."

"And we gotta count them all, right?" Carol was making a face and she
knew it.

"We gotta stop going to these parties," Bobby sighed and he was
already turning off the highway, but not towards home.

"Why?" Carol laughed lightly and she was reaching for Bobby's thigh.
"That's the best part."

"Cause mom's getting suspicious," he said.

"No she's not," Carol was closer now and Bobby put his arm around
her.

"We gotta be serious this time," Bobby said.

"Serious?" Carol looked up and Bobby looked down.

"We only got up to eight last time," he said. "I know there's more
stars than that."

"I dunno," Carol smiled, "eight is a lot of stars."

"You're such a tease," Bobby laughed.

"I'm not teasing," Carol said with a soft giggle. "I just want you to
throw me a fuck."


end

=========================-

Chapter 12 - Girl on the Bus


I was fifteen and riding the bus. There were a lot of people on it,
businessmen mostly and predominantly white of course. I was the only
black person there, but I wasn't nervous or anything. I'd grown up in
Minneapolis and sometimes it was like that. That's why we're the
minority, right?

Mostly I just held onto the chrome bar above my head and tried to look
out the window, or maybe read someone's newspaper while they held it
up. I had a long ride from downtown out to the suburbs and traffic
didn't help. We were stopped quite often for no good reason at all. It
was just another boring bus ride.

And then I felt someone touching me. It wasn't so strange, being
crowded like it was, but this was more than incidental contact. It was
a hand, a finger, just that and nothing more. Someone was stroking my
bare thigh beneath the plaid pleats of my school uniform. It tickled
at first and I shooed the contact absently, not realizing what it was.
The hand moved away and then returned a few seconds later. That light
touch up and down, just along the back of my leg.

I was going to turn my head and say something, because I was a little
na�ve then, a bit innocent really. I thought it was just...A mistake,
you know? I didn't know what to think, but I didn't turn my head. I
shifted slightly, gripping the chrome tightly, turning my body and
shuffling my feet. I didn't look though and I didn't say anything and
whoever it was, he took that for agreement, I suppose.

The hand became bolder, but only slowly. He was teasing me and I was
very sure it was a he, but don't ask why. There were other women on
the bus obviously. This was a man though and I felt two and three of
his fingers, soft and not callous, his hand now caressing me. It was
unmistakable and undeniable and I swallowed hard. I licked my lips and
tossed my head, so that my loose black hair would fall in my face. I
have thick hair, coarse and straight, not kinky, and I was using it
like a veil. I was doing it deliberately to hide myself. Or maybe to
hide him from me.

I liked that hand. I was fifteen and I'd never been kissed. I'd never
had a boyfriend and no man had ever touched me. Until now. But I'd
dreamt of it and so this was something like a dream come true for me.
I felt safe too, that's the thing. I was on a bus, surrounded by white
people. The man touching the back of my thigh could do that much, but
what else? Nothing, I thought. He could feel my skin, how soft and
smooth and warm I was, but nothing more than that. I would remember
how it felt and close my eyes later and relive it in my bed with the
lights out. Alone. I was making my plans already and hiding behind my
hair.

The bus lurched to a stop and the man behind me lurched with it. We
rebounded, the way people do on busses and he used that excuse to
press his palm against me. He was holding the back of my leg, giving
me a small squeeze somewhere between my knee and panties. I hitched a
breath and blinked, but I said nothing. I held that breath while the
hand moved. The bus was stopped, but the hand moved and it seemed so
quiet then, like everyone around me was holding their breath as well.

The bus started moving with a deep growl and I let my breath go as the
soft noises of travel began. The hand moved higher, sliding upward
slowly. I closed my eyes and stiffened because he was under my skirt
then, in the shadows with me. I reached back and perhaps he thought I
meant to stop him, but in truth I had no idea what I was doing. I was
just reaching blindly and then his hand was gone. I'd frightened him
away and I felt disappointment. How clear that emotion was. I was
unhappy and alone and I missed that strangers hand on my skin.

My heart was beating fast, as it had been, and I stopped my tentative
reach and let my arm hang at my side. I may have turned a little more,
as if presenting the stranger with my back completely, an invitation
to take advantage of my deliberate ignorance. I kept my head down and
I waited, but there was nothing. I waited another half minute, a
minute longer while the bus rocked and swayed and there was still no
touch. I moved then, knowing the man must still be there. No one had
gotten on or off, we were all steadfast in our places. He was there, I
was certain of it, and so I moved my left hand back slowly, finding
the hem of my skirt and I reached under it myself.

I scratched the back of my thigh lightly with my nails, exactly where
he'd last squeezed me. A little scratch and nothing more and I
returned my hand to my side as the bus stopped once again. A few
seconds later, with a dull rumble the bus moved and the man along with
it. His hand found my leg and I shivered with relief. It was
unmistakable, the tremor running along my spine and shaking my
shoulders. His hand was back and I nodded slightly, knowing he would
see that sign. I was a tall, thin black girl, giving myself to a
stranger and my every part of me ached with unexpected pleasure. I'd
never felt like this before.

He was brave then, knowing that I wanted his attentions now. His hand
went higher and found the crease in my flesh, the soft wrinkle between
my ass and my thigh, just beneath the leg band of my panty. He traced
it with a finger, back and forth, sliding his fingertip along the
shallow furrow my stance created. I was breathing harder, through my
nose as I compressed my lips tightly. That wonderful hand was so
gentle, so loving it seemed to me. I'd never known anything like it in
my life and when his caress moved to graze the cotton of my panties,
to follow the full curvature of my butt, I shivered again.

It was unreasonable, to feel so good about something like that. A
stranger touching my ass on a bus and yet there it was. He was doing
more than touching me, he was loving me, or so I imagined. He was
enjoying me and sharing something with me. He was anonymous and
existed only as a pressure on my skin, a shadow in my feverish mind.
He was perfect that way and I didn't protest when his hand cupped my
left cheek and began to massage it lightly. He was bold as I arched my
back, thrusting my ass back only so much as I thought I could get away
with. Nobody else knew what we were doing and that was amazing to me.
It made it even better, doing this in the middle of a crowded,
claustrophobic place. I was trapped.

Both hands. I had to bite my bottom lip to keep from crying out with
surprise and pleasure. He was directly behind me, I realized, standing
with my back to his chest and I could feel the weight of him, the
warmth of the man through our clothes. He was taller than me because I
could feel his breath in my hair. It made me tingle and my breasts
ached, my smallish tits almost hurting beneath my bra as they tried to
grow. My nipples itching and trapped in the soft cups which contained
them. And his hands were between us, under my skirt and holding my
pert black butt. I could hear and feel his breathing, I thought, and I
wanted to feel more. I was hot all over by then, my body breaking out
in sweat and I felt sticky beneath my white blouse.

It was unfair, feeling like that. I was on my tip toes and biting my
bottom lip so hard I could feel it swelling beneath my teeth. He was
gripping my ass tightly, but not hard, not painfully, it only felt
good. Those strong fingers kneading my flesh, working my panties loose
and down. I cleared my throat, fearing I would gasp or moan or make
some other noise to give our game away. I cleared my throat as my
panties came down in his hands. Over the roundness off my butt,
clinging briefly to my moist pussy, but then sliding down my thighs
and he just...Let them go. They fell without so much as a whisper to
puddle around my ankles and black school shoes.

I blinked rapidly, wondering how I would get them back up. It was a
funny thought and one I didn't understand. My white panties were off
and on the floor of that bus and how would I bend over to pull them
back up? The hands though, they drove all reason from my mind. My
doubts fled and a sudden fear took possession of me. Fingers were on
my skin. My bare skin. Hands were touching my ass without anything
between us. I couldn't breathe and my heart was a hammer in my chest.
Goosebumps appeared on my arms and I was shaking my head, but the man
insisted now. The time for refusal was over and his hand was moving
down, along the deep crevasse between my cheeks and lower still.

He meant to touch me there, in that place and I shuddered, shifting my
weight from one foot to the other and somehow spreading my legs for
it. Had I planned that? I couldn't know. I didn't want to examine
myself or my intentions, but I'd done it. I was standing with my feet
apart, my panties stretched now between my ankles and those fingers
were rubbing my soft vulva from behind. I was wet. I shut my eyes
again, feeling tears welling beneath the lids. I was wet between my
legs and my sex was a deep ache of desire. I'd spread my legs for him,
of that I had little doubt. My virginity was on display to the man's
fingers and he explored me slowly, carefully and without mercy.

My thin lips were spread around his finger as it moved lengthwise
along my slit. The pad of his digit found my immature clitoris and I
let out a soft sob, helpless to do otherwise, but even that didn't
stop the man now. We were possessed and invulnerable, immune in a
world all our own. Everyone else on the bus ignored us. The others
slept, or read their magazines, or looked out the windows. They
couldn't see us. We were invisible and my I was bending my knees,
seeking more pressure, more of that awful pleasure. I had a fever and
his fingers rubbed over my clit which was stiff and throbbing and I
felt him playing with the thin wisps of my pubic hair. There was no
part of me he couldn't explore and I thought I would die from it.

I coughed and straightened up and made as if looking around. I was
blinking as if the light hurt my eyes, but really it was the sudden
fear and excitement of being caught. What if someone caught my face,
caught my brown eyes with theirs and knew what I was doing? What he
was doing to me? But no one did. The bus was stopped and people were
getting off, only one or two near the front and the rest of us moved
not at all. There were noises, the whoosh and squeal and bang of doors
opening and closing. The outside coming in briefly, a motorcycle
passing and a radio someplace. A dozen seconds of confusion to draw
our attention and then the doors closed and I felt him pressing inside
me.

His penis was free and the man was under my skirt with it. His cock
angled up and unmistakable. I'd never even seen a real one. Never
touched one before in my life, but now it was there between my legs
and he was lifting himself to stab upward and into me. His hands were
low on my hips, on my thighs really, urging me silently to keep my
legs spread for him. The stranger had taken advantage of my
distraction. Nobody had noticed and no one asked the man why he would
be standing so close behind the little black schoolgirl. Nobody cared,
it seemed and I glanced about nervously, but I was careful still not
to turn my head too far. I was terribly frightened suddenly and a
portion of my mind wanted this to stop. Touching was fun and
dangerous, but harmless too maybe, but this...His cock, his white penis
was there between my legs!

And this was my dream taking form.

A man taking me. He had no face or form except what I could feel. The
pressure on my hips, the warmth rising from his loins, the slippery
smooth head of his penis as it pressed against the folds of my
innocent sex. Would you think less of me if I told you this was what I
wanted? That having it now was the best, scariest thing in the world?
All those people, all those white people, surrounding me. They were
silent witnesses to my humiliation, my degradation at the hands of a
stranger who was going to use me for his pleasure. I had no words for
it then, no clear definition like I do now. I had only the instinctual
desire that haunted me every night when I lay alone in my bed. It
wasn't fair and I surrendered so easily. He knew I would, I thought,
and maybe he'd dreamed of me too.

My fantasy was upon me and I didn't run away from it. I braced myself,
so much as a fifteen year old girl can in the middle of the bus.
Emotionally as much as physically, although I had no experience to
draw upon. No clue or expectation. I couldn't breathe and my heart was
a hammer. I made fists of my hands and held my gaze down, determined
to give no outward sign of whatever I felt. Pain or pleasure, I would
swallow them both and keep my new experience inside me somehow. I
wanted this, even more than I feared it. I was shaking terribly and my
knees threatened to buckle completely.

He took me with a hard thrust at an opportune moment, when the bus
jerked to a sudden standstill and we were pushed forward by our
momentum. He held my hips in an iron grip and let his body surge into
mine. I screamed inside my head. Inside my heart I wailed. His cock
tore through my hymen easily and buried itself in the angry tightness
of my sex. The walls of my vagina were forced apart painfully and the
experience lanced into my belly so that I very nearly doubled over. My
grip on the rail overhead weakened, but I didn't let go. I remained
upright, with my ass pressed back against his trousers and my spine
bowed sharply inward.

He was in me now, completely it seemed, and we didn't move for a long
minute. We stood there like that, the man holding my hips while I
fought to regain my senses. The pain fell quickly to a dull throbbing
sensation, an aching cramp deep between my legs and I felt wetness
spilling down my thighs. It was hot and then it cooled and in my fever
I imagined it was blood. He'd taken my virginity certainly and so it
must be blood and I blinked at the tears running down my cheeks. Was I
bleeding from my eyes as well? I resisted the urge to wipe my face and
find out. The idea terrified me and I merely stood there until the man
began to move.

He was slow, with such small movements that I might have imagined
them, letting the motion of the bus do the work for him. Letting the
throat of my innocent pussy suckle at his prick with soft contractions
that I couldn't control. I was made for this, I realized, and the
feeling was undeniable with the slightest movement inside my sex
telegraphed immediately throughout my body. I trembled as I felt that
cock inside me withdraw a fraction of an inch and then press inward
again. I moved as well, working myself against him. My vaginal walls
clasped him so tightly that I was afraid he was pulling me inside out.
It was a strange feeling, like nothing else, but it didn't hurt. After
that initial pain, there was nothing terrible - only a deep and
satisfying pleasure. It was a relief to understand that this felt so
good. I welcomed every part of our sex and I was able to breathe
slowly, letting the hot air escape my lungs and that made it even
better.

He made the faintest sounds, so soft were his grunts and he tried to
hold them inside, I'm sure, but I was tight for him. My pussy was hot,
burning through me and he must have felt it. I had to move and I did.
Some part of me was energized now, the woman part that had been
waiting for this. I was making love, for that's how it felt to me. I
was having real sex and I moved against him, so much as I dared,
pushing my butt against him and feeling his cock stretching me all the
way inside. He reached the deepest part of me finally, when I was sure
he was completely inside. I knew it because I felt the utterly wicked
sensation of his swollen cockhead touching the bottom of my pussy. It
was a pleasant jolt, an electric kiss that sent shivers up my spine
and my tummy quivered uncontrollable.

Something was happening to me and I'd thought I knew what an orgasm
was. I'd touched myself before, but this was different. This was real
and someone else was bringing me off. A man that I didn't know and
hadn't seen, a touch inside me that I'd never experienced before. He
was pushing me over the edge and I whimpered softly, biting my lip and
shutting my eyes tightly as ll the best feelings in the world rushed
through me. I couldn't stand up and my fingers were slipping off the
rail above me. I was going to fall, but he held me up, impaled on his
cock while I came around him.

I was crying and I didn't know why. I was shaking and rocking my ass
against him so hard that the man had to squeeze me hard with his
fingers and shush me softly with his lips to remind me where we were.
How I found the strength or the will to control myself I don't know. I
wanted to ride him harder, as hard and deep as I could because
everytime I moved against him, everytime the man's cock moved in and
out of my pussy it was wonderful and insane and beyond anything I'd
imagined possible.

He was cumming, without a word or any sign of it except the slightly
more rapid thrusts, one, two three of them as deep and hard as he
could and then I felt it. The odd spasm of his cock against the grip
of my hungry cunt. The sudden flood of something hot and soothing and
indistinct. A warmth spreading through me that seemed to be everywhere
and nowhere all at once. It was just inside me and he was holding me
to him, breathing hard in my ear while I gasped weakly wit the
knowledge that a man, a white man was cumming inside my young black
womb.

The bus was stopping and people jostled to get off and we had to take
an awkward step, the man buried and still hard inside me. His cock
still leaking sperm to mix with my own juices. It was spilling out of
me, leaking around his swollen shaft to run down my thighs and I could
smell it. I could smell our lovemaking and taste it on the air and I
wondered how any of those people couldn't know what we'd done. I was
smiling and then giggling, I swear. I felt high and euphoric and all
the fear that I should have felt, all the anxiety and doubt that would
haunt me later, was just a rumor for me then.

He pulled out of me slowly and I sighed at that, the curious and
unwelcome sensation of being empty but for the remains of our sex. I
was soaked inside and my pussy was sore, but in a good way. I liked
that feeling and losing my virginity hadn't been an awful experience,
it had been delicious and rewarding and I was crazy for thinking that
way, I know. But what else could I do? He pulled out of me and I felt
his movement, the awkward necessity of replacing his stained cock in
his trousers and zipping himself up.

And he didn't say a word, not even to say thank you or tell me he
loved me and I had thoughts of saying those things to him. Of turning
my head and seeing him and telling him he'd been my first, as if he
wouldn't know. I imagined doing that and of course I couldn't. The
moment was passing and I was coming back to my senses and my panties
were around my ankles. I was soaked with cum, his and mine, and it was
inside me. I started to feel the guilt, I suppose, the fear and
uncertainty that every girl feels her first time maybe. I don't know.

I waited until I couldn't stand it and when the bus jerked and groaned
to a stop again, I bent my knees quickly and picked up my panties with
clumsy, trembling fingers. I pulled them up as I stood again and I
didn't say a word or look at anyone or do anything, even as I realized
the man who'd taken my virginity, broken my cherry, was getting off
the bus. I didn't look at him, deliberately, and it pleased me greatly
knowing it could be anyone anywhere after that. He would always be a
secret who knew the truth and that made me tingle all over.


end

=================================-

Chapter 13 - Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?


There was a temple in the basement...

It was simple enough, just an altar made of wood, solid and sturdy,
made by Adam the very day he had purchased the house. It was covered
with a coarse linen sheet, woven by Eve, and dyed to a striking golden
color. There was a chalice of red clay, also made by Eve, along with a
platter and two candlestick holders. The candles had been made by
Cain, who had learned the method from his father using fat from a cow.
One of the bones from that same beast had also been used to fashion
the sacrificial knife, which Abel had honed to fine edge and he'd
carved intricate angels around the handle.

The rough walls had been decorated with sprigs and leaves and flowers,
some fresh and some dried and flaking to the dirt floor. The only
lights were from the candles, the only sounds were the chanting of
Cain and Abel while their father anointed a small calf in preparation
for offering to the Lord.

They were only four, the two parents and the two sons, alone in the
wilderness in which they found themselves. They worshipped the One
True God who had created them, surrounded by unbelievers and heathens,
the unclean. It was a difficult existence and all the more so since
Adam and his wife Eve could still remember the Garden where they'd
first lived, before Eve's sin had caused the Lord to cast them out of
Eden. Now they found themselves in this...place.

"I hate Seattle." Abel was washing dishes while his brother dried
them, putting each one carefully away. Abel was 19 and had just
started college, but he found it a chore because it took time away
from his devotions to the Lord.

"It's not so bad; you just need to get out more, bro." Cain was 22 and
had graduated from the University the year before with a bachelors
degree in sociology and now worked as a bouncer at a strip club near
the airport.

"Father told me I should start looking for a wife," Abel frowned.
"They're all heathens though! These women, they worship idols and
paint their faces to look like angels."

Cain laughed. "Yeah, they do all of that," he grinned at his younger
brother, "and then some."

"They're unclean," Abel looked up at Cain's face, "I don't see
anything funny about it."

"You pray too much," Cain shook his head.

"And you don't pray enough," Abel pulled the drain and rinsed his
hands. "God's unhappy with you."

"I was talking to God just the other day, he didn't seem pissed," Cain
grabbed the last plate, drying it slowly. "Why, did he say something
to you?"

"Well, not exactly," Abel allowed. "But I can tell."

"Pffft..." Cain exhaled. "Yeah right."

+++

Upstairs Adam was fingering the leather corded whip in his hands.

"Bend over wife, it is time now." He was naked and his hardness ached
at the thought of performing this service to the Lord.

"Yes husband," Eve whispered. She was very old, but her lithe form
moved gracefully onto the bed. She looked only a few years older than
she had when God had created her, despite the many hardships and
bearing two strong boys for her husband. She was blonde and tall, her
skin unblemished but for the scars across her back and thighs.

The Lord had decreed that she would never know Adam again as a wife
should, but only as a harlot, an unclean sinner. Her husband whipped
her nightly while she prayed and then he would sodomize her roughly,
taking his pleasure from her anus like a beast. She thanked her God
that at least He had not denied her the pleasure that accompanied such
debasement. She had blamed the serpent at first, but now after a
thousand centuries of painful humiliation, Eve knew that it had been
she alone who had sinned mightily before the Lord. She deserved her
punishments and eagerly accepted them.

The heavy slap of the leather whip, damp with perspiration and blood,
echoed through the house and was soon joined by the high pitched wail
of Eve's supplications and the low grunts of Adam's efforts.

Cain laughed and clapped his brother on the back, "Mother is singing
again...Oh glory to God, the Lord and the Light..."

Cain's singing was poor at best and Abel sighed, wondering why his
brother felt the need to add his voice to that of their mother's. He
sensed that Cain was mocking the ritual and it deeply saddened the
handsome young man.

+++

"Good morning Abel, where is your brother?" Eve was serving breakfast,
their usual simple fare of fruits and fresh cream, with toasted
homemade bread.

"I'm here mother," Cain walked into the small kitchen and Adam joined
them for their morning prayer, thanking the Lord for the new day and
the food on the table.

Adam was a florist, working at a local nursery. His passion was
orchids and people were amazed at his skill with raising the difficult
plants. He'd tried to explain once that he'd once lived in the Garden
of Eden, which had been full of orchids, and it had pleased the Lord
to give Adam a certain empathy with them. But most people didn't seem
to understand.

Eve had opened her own restaurant, called 'The Garden of Eden' and it
had become quite the little success, largely due to the popularity of
thematic entertainment in general. All of her waiters and waitresses
walked around in skimpy uniforms resembling fig leaves, and the
atmosphere was very lush and tropical. Ribs were the house specialty
and the apple pie was simply the best in all of Seattle. Eve would
have been quite proud of it, but she'd been to the real Garden and it
was nothing like what could be recreated in Seattle. Besides, she
would remind herself, pride was a grievous sin. It was enough to be on
the cover of last month's Pacific Cuisine.

+++

"Hello Abel," hers was a soft voice, different from any other, and it
made the young man look up from his notes.

Abel expected to see another one of the whores who attended the
university, women who dressed obscenely, painted their lips and eyes,
and promised their bodies with every gesture. But this woman was
different, he could sense it, she was one of the humans, those made in
God's own image.

"Hello," Abel replied and he looked at her carefully from where he sat
in the shade of a large tree. She was tall, with a pale complexion and
long black hair. Her face was beautiful and touched with sadness he
thought, in her brown eyes and upon her full pouting lips. She wore no
cosmetics, no jewelry, and her dress was simple and covered her from
her delicate neck to her ankles. Even the sleeves were long, reaching
to her wrists.

"May I sit with you?" she did not smile, as the man might have
expected, instead she merely stared at him.

"Yes, you may," and he watched her fold her legs gracefully, until she
sat demure and silent beside him. "Are you an angel?" Abel asked,
using the true meaning of the word, which is a Messenger of God.

"I have come to tell you, Abel, the Lord is pleased by your devotion.
He would have you make a sacrifice to him, upon the noon sun after the
next full moon."

"And what will I offer my Lord?" Abel asked.

"He has not told me, Abel. It is to be your offering alone, and so I
cannot advise you," she did smile then, barely, and it caused a
strange confusion in the young man's heart. "I will leave you now."

"No," Abel said suddenly, without really meaning to. "I...I would have
you stay, please, for a moment," he looked in the woman's eyes until
he had to turn away.

"I will stay for a moment, if you wish it."

"Will you tell me your name also?"

"I am called Lilith."

Abel frowned briefly, wondering perhaps if he hadn't heard such a name
before. "Lilith," he repeated, enjoying the way it felt upon his lips.

"I will go now; I have other duties to perform." The beautiful woman
rose. "Perhaps..." she started to say, and then pursed her lips, looking
away.

"Yes?" Abel couldn't bear the silence with that one word hanging
between them.

"Perhaps you will remember me, tonight."

"In my prayers? Yes! Of course!" Abel found his heart lifting almost
painfully at the thought.

"And after, sweet Abel?" she turned around, without waiting for a
response the man couldn't find.

+++

The Bodyshop was typical of the strip clubs in Seattle. The girls were
all heathens and whores; the men who came to witness their lustful
depravity were Sodomites all. They were unbeliever's and born without
souls, but Cain enjoyed their revelries all the same. He'd even
coupled with several of the harlots, knowing that they were merely
animals and subservient. He'd consumed their alcohol and tobacco,
partaken in excesses of the flesh, and poisoned his sensibilities with
sin.

"Hello Cain," her voice cut beneath the music like a razor and ripped
open the man's heart. Cain had been speaking with a blonde dancer
named Cherry when his head turned in unconscious response.

"Hey, what do you think you're..." Cherry had begun speaking, seeing
only a beautiful young woman, some Goth bitch, moving in on her man.
Cain was handsome, like Abel, as they were created in God's image and
perfect. All the women wanted him, but tonight he was Cherry's. He'd
promised!

The woman put a finger to her lips. "Shhhh..." and Cherry's voice died,
though her lips moved and her eyes went wide.

Cain glanced at Cherry and then stared hard at the woman standing near
him, with her pale skin and black hair, penetrating brown eyes and the
hint of a smile upon her lips. She was one of them, he knew, a person
created by God and given dominion over the earth and everything upon
it.

"Who...?" he started to ask, but she cut him off.

"The Lord our God is unhappy, Cain. He has sent me to tell you this."

"I am at the Lord's mercy," Cain replied, feeling his heart swelling
as he looked at the angel. "Tell me how I may please him."

"The Lord requires an offering, a sacrifice upon an altar of your
construction at noon of the first day of the full moon."

"And what shall I sacrifice to our Lord?" Cain licked his lips.

"I do not know. Your offering is your sign and yours alone, I cannot
advise you in such things." She looked at him intently for a long
moment, seeming oblivious to their surroundings, and then the woman
turned to leave.

"Wait! Please, what is your name?" Cain reached out as if to grab her
arm, but instead his fingertips brushed only the cool linen of her
simple dress.

"I am called Lilith," she turned back to the young man, smiling with a
tempting mixture of modesty and amusement. "Why do you stay in this
place?"

"I'm just a shepherd."

Lilith smiled at that and started to turn away, but Cain's voice
stopped her.

The dancer, Cherry was tugging at Cain's arm, her lips moving
uselessly as she still tried to speak. He shrugged her off, unable to
look away from Lilith.

"I've never seen a real...woman...before. I..." Cain suddenly felt deep
shame for being in that place. "I would like to speak with you."

"Would you pray with me, Cain?" Lilith smiled sadly.

Cain swallowed nervously. "If you would like, yes, of course," he
nodded.

"Then we shall see," the angel closed her eyes and one corner of her
mouth lifted. "Good night dear Cain," Lilith turned and left Cain
watching her until she'd disappeared out the doors.

=-=-=

That evening Abel did indeed remember Lilith in his prayers. He
remembered her smile and the way the wind had moved her hair, so that
just a strand of it had caught in her eyes. He remembered her voice
and her movements, and in the remembering Abel felt his manhood
stirring.

It was not unwelcome and the young man felt no shame in it. God
himself had commanded that they should be fruitful and multiply. But
he did nothing else. To stain his hand with the seed of life was a
wasteful sin; it led to lust and jealousy, envy and greed. He'd
indulge none of that for his heart was pure.

Even so, during the night as he slept Lilith crept into his dreams and
Abel found himself once more upon that soft green lawn. Her scent
wafted on the breeze and it stirred him. When she moved closer, he did
not resist, but opened himself to her smile. He took her, as a man
might take his wife, possessing her body as only a man who is dreaming
can.

When Abel awoke he was embarrassed to find he had stained his bed
sheets. He was damp and sticky and he saw this as a weakness. He'd
been tempted to speak of the angel with his parents, to express his
thoughts that perhaps he'd found a wife. A believer and not a harlot,
someone who could provide children to worship the Lord.

But now he felt ashamed of his interest in her. Of his lack of
patience and faith. He washed himself and remade his bed, lest his
mother discover what had happened and be equally shamed. He could not
speak of Lilith now, he knew. Not until he had cleansed that part of
him that had betrayed his devotion to God.

=-=-=

Cain had not slept in his bed. He'd found himself in Cherry's
apartment, listening to the whore whine about losing her voice for
almost 3 full hours. He finally shut her up with a well aimed thrust
of his aching manhood between her lips. But always that night, no
matter how he used the bestial woman beneath him, Cain imagined it was
Lilith he was with.

She was not an animal like Cherry, he knew. Lilith was human. And so
she would be his wife, his devoted mate as God had intended for all of
his creations. Even the lowest dogs could find a mate. Around him
these people, who were so much less that that really, had spouses and
children. Why not he himself?

"Lilith," he sighed, pressing his erection between the plump excited
folds of Cherry's sex.

"Huh?" she looked up at her lover, trying to understand what he was
saying.

But Cain merely ignored her. She was only slightly better than
masturbation, the man thought, and only because it made less of a mess
for him to clean up when he was done.

=-=-=

"Hey, can we swing by the river?" Abel was riding along with Cain in
his brother's big truck; they were on their way to Snoqualmie to get
some wood.

"What?" Cain was barely paying attention, he was thinking of Lilith.

"I need to stop by the river. I need some clay."

"Why don't you just go to Henderson's?" That was an arts and crafts
place close to the University.

"Because, I need to get it myself," Abel paused, not really wanting to
explain why.

"What for?" Cain asked suspiciously because he knew his brother pretty
well and Abel was hiding something.

"I need to make an offering to God," he looked at Cain. "Can you keep
a secret?"

"Sure, hell yeah," Cain said, only because it would annoy his brother.

"Don't swear," Abel shook his head. "I met someone. A girl, a real
girl."

"What?" Cain almost went into the ditch. "What, uh...What's her name?"

"Lilith," Abel smiled as he said it.

"Tall girl? Thin, pretty face, big tits?" Cain glanced at his brother.

"Yeah, well, something like that," Abel allowed slowly, though he
didn't care for the phrasing. "She's an angel. She told me I had to
make an offering unto the Lord."

"Oh," Cain frowned.

"You know her?" Abel stared at his brother. He knew Cain pretty well
also.

"Well...uh, she comes into the club, you know," Cain grinned.

"What?"

"Yeah, she's a big tipper," Cain loved pissing his brother off. "Got a
lap dance from Cherry the other day. Shut that bitch right up! I gotta
tell ya, bro..." He looked at Abel and put on a pained expression of
sympathy, "You're angel...She's a carpet cleaner."

"A...what?" Abel stared at Cain in disbelief.

"A rug muncher, you know...A lesbian," Cain shrugged. "That was a sin,
last time I checked."

"So is lying!" Abel glared at Cain angrily.

"Who's lying here?" Cain gave Abel a dirty look.

Abel just stared.

"Okay, okay...sheesh...She came in and said God wants more stuff, like He
ain't got enough dead sheep already."

"And?"

"And what? I said sure...what does he want, but she didn't know... 'It's
your sign...' she says, and so I says, look Lily, it's a five dollar
cover, pay up or get out..."

"You did not!" Abel shook his head.

"Nah..." Cain laughed and actually got Abel to smile, just a little. "I
wanted to bone her too bad to say that, bro!"

"Well, you can't do...that," Abel said definitively.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna marry that woman," Abel folded his arms across his
chest and smiled. "I love her."

"Well, I love her too. So maybe you should buy a dog, Abel."

"Maybe you should watch the road!" Abel grabbed the steering wheel and
yanked it hard over so that they narrowly missed two people on
bicycles.

"Aww...who cares. They're not even human."

"Yeah, but God doesn't like roadkill, didn't you get the memo?"

"Yeah, I got it. He's thinking about adding Thou Shalt Not Kill to the
six commandments, but that doesn't apply to animals, does it?"

"I don't know, but..."

Cain snapped his fingers, interrupting Abel's thought, "I got it!"

"You got what?"

"This Lilith business. God sends this foxy hot to trot angel right?
Saying we each gotta make an offering, right? But He don't tell us
what and he don't tell us why, right?"

"Right, right," Abel was nodding. "So?"

"So...it's a test! It's a contest!"

"What?" Abel frowned. "What kind of contest is that?"

"It's a 'Best Offering Gets The Girl' contest!" Cain grinned. "Don't
ya get it? God's giving us a woman, a real believer to be fruitful and
do the math with!"

"Ohhhh...I don't know about that," Abel shook his head. "She didn't look
like that sort of girl."

"What sort?" Cain laughed. "Shit! She's probably been looking for a
husband as long as we've been looking for wives, man!"

"You think?"

"Hell, she probably won a contest of her own, just so she could be the
prize in this one! It all makes sense!"

"Yeah, mmm...maybe. God does have a sense of humor about stuff like
that."

"Hey, uh...Abel...So what are you offering?"

"Oh..." Abel turned his head, looking out the window. "A little of this,
a little of that, you know."

They were quiet for minute before Abel turned to look at his brother.

"What are you offering?"

Cain shrugged, "I don't know yet." He gave his brother a sideways
glance. Whatever it was going to be, Cain thought, it's gonna be
better than yours bro!

=-=-=-=

"Good morning, Abel," Lilith was standing a few feet away, once more
on the soft green grass of the college campus. Behind her the morning
sun was still low in the eastern sky, and Abel could see the effect it
had, turning her simple linen shift into something soft and gauzy,
outlining her naked form beneath. He swallowed nervously as he could
just make out the swell of her sex between her slightly spread thighs
and he looked away.

"Hello Lilith," he spoke softly.

It had been nearly a fortnight since their first meeting. Abel had
dreamt of her every night. Sometimes with passionate visions that
aroused his senses to such a state that he'd awoken sweating and
breathless and unable to sleep again. Other times it had been soft and
subtle, a caress upon his sleeping form and he would rise in the
morning expecting to find the woman beside him.

"Do you think of me? After your prayers, Abel?" she sat down unbidden
and folded her long legs beneath her slender form.

The young man glanced up, sharply, wondering if she mocked him.

"Or, have you forgotten me so soon?" Lilith lowered her own face as if
that were something she'd expected. Her tone was not humorous,
sarcastic, or knowing. It was lonely.

"No," Abel's heart softened immediately. "No, I have not forgotten.
Every night for me is a torment." He paused, tilting his head, "I have
done more than think of you, Lilith. I have dreamt of you in...many
ways. Unclean ways. Forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive, dear Abel," she was looking down, her
delicate fingers weaving dandelions into a braid. "I too
have...dreamt."

"You have?" Abel sat up straighter; it had not occurred to him that
she would feel anything. It had been too much for hope, to believe
such a thing.

Lilith sighed, her proud breasts rising so that her nipples were
prominent with their hardness. She looked around the University
grounds at the people sitting, walking, talking, reading, doing all
manner of things. Going about their lives and innocent of the real
world around them.

"I wish I were one of them, Abel."

"Who?" Abel looked at the beautiful woman, leaning closer and scenting
the oils in her hair.

"That one..." she pointed to a woman, perhaps 20 years old. Black
haired and slender, moving gracefully across the lawns. She carried
her books and smiled, seeming to laugh, although she was alone. "She
is in love," Lilith smiled. "She is thinking of him and there is
nothing else. She cannot see us."

"But...She is empty," Abel stared at the unknown girl. To his eyes she
was a shadow, there was no aura of divine presence. "She has no soul."

"But she has love, Abel. There is a light there, of a different
sort..." Lilith blushed, seeming to catch herself suddenly. "You are
right."

"Don't worry, Lilith," Abel reached out and took her hand. "I will
pray with you."

She nodded, unable to speak. Lilith was crying.

=-=-=

"And this is the temple where you pray?" Lilith's voice was tinged
with humor and she smiled, standing in the doorway and toying with a
dandelion chain woven in her hair.

Cain looked up from his knees, turning his face to look over his
shoulder.

In front of him on an old leather chair sat Wendy, her long tan legs
spread wide, hooked over the arms of the chair. She'd been smoking a
cigarette and she blew an angry cloud of smoke into the air.

"Hey! What'd you stop for?" the dancer made a face. "Go down, baby,
come on!" Wendy pulled Cain's mouth back to her sex, but he shrugged
her off.

"What?" Cain said.

Wendy followed his gaze and finally saw Lilith, dressed in her thin
linen dress, devoid of any makeup or jewelry except the flowers in her
hair. "Fucking elf! Get out of here!"

"I asked if this was your temple," Lilith moved into the room,
rebuking the stripper on the chair with a little twitch of her lips.

"It's a dressing room and uh, Wendy...uh, well...She had a boo-boo
that needed kissing," Cain stood up slowly, wiping around his mouth
and chin with his hand. "I didn't think you were coming back."

"Who the fuck is she?" Wendy kicked her foot at Cain, trying to get
his attention.

"Shut up," Cain pushed the girl's foot away.

"We have not prayed yet," Lilith shrugged. "I thought perhaps..." her
voice trailed away.

"Cain!" the girl whined and Lilith looked at her. "What the fuck are
you looking at? Get her out of here, Cain!" Wendy flicked her
cigarette at Lilith, so it struck the hem of her dress.

"Give her to me," Lilith said.

"Give her?" Cain shrugged. "Take her. She isn't mine."

"I thought you were a shepherd," Lilith laughed and it sounded like
glass breaking. "I will leave you now."

"Good!" Wendy laughed and rolled her eyes.

"No! Please," Cain frowned. "I have disappointed you. I'm sorry."

Lilith shook her head. "You haven't disappointed me. This..." she
looked at Wendy who gave her the finger, "...is what I expected."

Cain watched as Lilith turned and left. Wendy giggled and tugged at
Cain's belt, trying to pull him closer. "Weird bitch. Come here lover,
I still got 5 minutes before I'm up."

"Shut-up," Cain cuffed the side of her head hard, knocking the girl
out of the chair and onto the floor.

"Bastard!" Wendy stared up at him, a little blood trickling from her
nose.

A moment later Cain had his engorged penis inside the girl, driving
into her sex with obscene frenzy. "Lilith....ohhh fuck...Lilith..." he
moaned.

=-=-=

"What are you doing there, Cain?" a slippery voice wondered.

Cain turned around slowly, sweating under the armload of wood he was
carrying. "What do you want?"

"Just wanted to say hello, see how my favorite boy was doing," the
snake slithered around a tree, over roots and rocks and then rose to
slowly take the form of a man. Tall and dark, unblemished and smiling.
"Long time no see."

"Yeah," Cain turned back around and made his way to the clearing where
he would make his sacrifice to the Lord.

"Ohhh..." the man rubbed his hands together. "Looks like a fire's
coming."

"I'm going to make an offering," Cain dropped the wood and stood there
with his back to the man, wiping his forehead.

"I know," the voice chuckled. "I heard."

"What did you hear?" Cain turned around and looked at the man.

"I heard a faint heart never won a fair maiden," the man bent down,
picking up a stick and began tracing lines in the dirt.

"What's that mean?"

The man laughed and looked at Cain. "What are you putting on your fire
there?" he looked over at a calf grazing peacefully 20 yards away. "A
cow?" he yawned. "Ho-hum, Cain! Ho-hum sayeth the Lord!" and he
laughed again.

"Go away," Cain frowned. "You don't know anything. God hates you.
Everybody hates you."

"Not true!" the man held up his stick. "But...Be that as it may,
everybody loves Abel." He peered at Cain with yellow eyes, "God loves
Abel too."

Cain didn't say anything, he just sat on the stones he'd stacked for
his altar.

"I've seen the girl, Cain," the man was moving around Cain in a
circle, like a wolf waiting to strike. "What's her name?" he snapped
his fingers. "Lilith. Yeah, Virgin Lilith. I'd pop that little cherry
myself! Ughh!" he grinned, jerking his hips forward. "Little girl like
that? She's begging for it, man. Don't tell me you ain't seen it,
Cain. How she comes around, sniffing at your cock like a bitch in
heat..."

"No," Cain shook his head. "What would you know anyway, snake?"

"What? You think your mama was just eating fucking apples?" the man
laughed and rubbed his crotch suggestively. "I know about taming
bitches. Believe me Cain...I know!" He paused, then moved closer,
squatting down besides Cain so he could stare into the young man's
face. "And that little Lilith is feeling the need, Cain," he put his
hand on the younger man's shoulder.

"Get away!" Cain shrugged it off.

"Okay. Okay!" the man sniffed. "But when it's all over, you remember
me. Huh? You remember boy, when you hear Abel's sigh," he chuckled,
even as his form faded into the twilight. "That bitch is gonna scream,
Cain. But not for you...Not for you."

"Shutup!" Cain yelled, looking around at the emptiness.

=-=-=

Cain thought about it long and hard. Abel was favored. And not just by
God or their parents, but by Lilith too. Cain was sure of it. He'd
listened to Abel speaking of her. How she'd looked, what she'd
said...The way she moved and looked at him. Abel had asked Cain if
he'd seen Lilith again, but he couldn't speak of it. Cain couldn't
admit to his brother that she'd looked upon him with contempt, with
none of the intimacy of which Abel spoke.

"What's the matter?" Abel was cleaning the table after their supper,
while Cain started washing the dishes. His hands were angry and his
arms jerked as he scrubbed at them.

"Nothing," Cain frowned and seemed determine to say nothing. Abel
glanced at his brother's back and shrugged, only to hear Cain's voice
a moment later. "I....I want her, Abel."

"Who?" Abel asked, knowing already the answer.

"Lilith," Cain rinsed a cup and dropped it into the plastic dish rack,
uncaring if it broke or not. "I...She can save me." He turned
suddenly, fixing Abel with his tortured eyes, "I've been wrong. About
so many things, what I've done...I want to start again, Abel."

"Everybody feels like that..." Abel started, unsure of his brother's
meaning.

"No!" Cain snorted and shook his head. "I mean, I spend my time with
animals. I'm...becoming an animal, Abel. I can't feel it, my soul..."
Cain held up his soapy hands, "When she comes to me, I can feel it
again. There's hope there, a chance for me...Do you see?"

"Yes," Abel nodded. He understood exactly what Cain meant. Lilith had
awoken something inside his own heart as well, but not his soul. "I
understand, but it is not your soul, Cain. That is for the Lord and if
it sleeps, it's only because you have wandered so far..."

"I have not wandered!" Cain shouted. "He has abandoned me!"

"Cain..." Abel stared at his brother and opened his arms as if to
embrace him. "What has happened to you?"

=-=-=-=-=-=

"Abel?" Lilith found him on the shore of Lake Washington, sitting on
the cool grass. "It is almost time."

"Lilith." He didn't turn around to see her; he only bent his head
down, to look at the grass between his legs. He smiled and closed his
eyes. "Why do you come here?"

"Why?" her voice was questioning. "I am...Anxious," Lilith admitted,
as much to herself perhaps, as to him.

She sat down on the grass close to the young man, smoothing her dress
and taking a soft, deep breath of the clean air. On the lake, a
sailboat all white and blue drifted slowly past, and there was no one
to be seen on it. Some distance around them were other people, the
lesser ones, walking and sitting and running. Their voices carried on
the wind and it seemed a lonely sound.

"Do you like it here?" she asked Abel.

"It is a place," Abel licked his lips, still refusing to look at the
woman, though he wanted to with all of his heart.

"There is a place here as well," Lilith looked at Abel, her head
tilted down and her eyes lifted towards him. He turned slowly to see
her. "Would you not dwell here?" she held her palms to her breast.

"What do you mean?" Abel stared at her.

"I fear for you, Abel," she lifted her chin, her eyes intent on his.
"I want to leave, now, to go away from this place forever."

"But...my home? My parents, we...I mean, I want to marry you!" Abel
reached out, but his hand fell short of hers, still clutched above her
heart. "What do you fear?"

"Please, Abel, I love you as well. I do not wish this to be,
this...Contest, the competition to possess me. It is wrong, it is not
God's will, Abel. I was tricked."

"Tricked?" Abel frowned.

"I have been looking for a husband, Abel, dear sweet Abel. I did not
know I would love you, I thought...." she swallowed hard. "I did not
know you, I only knew the need. I thirsted for it, for a touch, for a
kiss...For children, Abel. He promised me children and I want it so
badly. We can leave! We can..."

"I don't understand, Lilith," Abel rubbed his brow slowly.

"You..." Lilith felt a tear beginning in her eye, rolling slowly down
her right cheek. "You don't have to, it is wrong. It is..."

"Ahhh...Love," a man's voice settled over Lilith's words, turning them
to ashes.

Abel turned his head slowly, "Begone, you are unwelcome to my sight."

"Say no more," he smiled. "I was just walking by and thought I'd say
hello." His eyes were golden, bright and fluid as if made of molten
metal. "The lovely Lilith, a genuine pleasure to meet you at last."

Lilith jerked at the sound of her name. "I was just...Leaving," she
bowed her head slightly, glancing at Abel. "I will see you...after. I
hope."

"Hope springs eternal," the man shook his head. "Go on, woman. Prepare
yourself for the morning, count your dowry thrice and set a penny upon
the moon," he laughed as Lilith got hastily to her feet.

"No, don't go..." Abel reached up, too slowly so that his fingertips
could barely graze the hem of Lilith's skirts.

"I must," she wiped at her cheek and gave Abel a last lingering look
before she fled.

"What do you mean here, Beast?" Abel turned fully to the man, staring
at him.

"Nothing, nothing at all," he held out his hands, which were smooth,
without any of the creased lines a human demonstrates from birth. "I
am an observer, Abel, nothing more. This is between you and your
brother now," he smiled and the sun went cold. "She's going to him."

"My brother?" Abel stared at him.

"Ah, I say too much!" he chuckled. "Love...It will undo us all, I
fear. Even Him," he looked up and shrugged apologetically. "Perhaps."

=-=-=-=-=-=

"Cain!" Lilith walked quickly into the cool neon glow of the club,
looking left and right until she spied the man standing at the end of
the bar. He was drinking something, holding the glass in front of him
and looking down into it, as if there were something interesting
hiding in it's murky depths.

"Cain..." she paused, taking a breath.

"Lilith?" Cain glanced around him, jerking his arm away. "Have you
come to mock me once more before I lose you forever?"

"No, no...Please," Lilith brushed her hair back. "I...I want to leave.
I want you to leave, now...With me."

"Leave with you?" Cain almost smiled. "And go...?" he gave a little
shrug of his shoulders.

"Away," she sighed. "Anywhere, please. Just...Now! We have to leave
now."

"What about the offering?" Cain took a drink from his glass. "What
about my brother?"

"Abel?" Lilith breathed the word and even that betrayed some small
emotion in her eyes, or perhaps the way her hand moved ever so
slightly.

Cain felt the liquor burning and he knew she loved his brother. "Yes,"
he said quietly. "Abel."

"I...I don't care about him. We'll leave, Cain. I will be your wife
and we'll...Go. Please!"

"And will you love me as well?" Cain looked at her. Lilith didn't seem
so strong now, so self-assured and confident. She was frightened and
small and offering herself completely, but only herself...not
everything.

"I..." Lilith looked down, her fingers fretting at the fabric bunched
slightly at the hips of her dress. "I will learn, Cain. I will love
you."

Cain took another drink and a deep breath after, setting his glass
down carefully. "Why?" he looked at her. "You've seen me here..." he
gestured around them. "You've seen what I've become. My offering will
never please God," he laughed at himself. It was cruel laugh, full of
self-loathing. "God will choose Abel, just as you've already done,
Lilith."

"No," Lilith shook her head. "I choose you, Cain. Right now, right
here....I have chosen." She reached out to touch his hand with her
fingers, "Don't you love me?"

"Yes," Cain allowed himself a smile then...

"Cain!" Abel fairly ran across the bar, pushing heedlessly at a
customer on one side, and then a waitress on the other, so that she
fell heavily to the floor. "Lilith?" he stopped short as he caught
sight of the woman standing so close to his brother.

Lilith sighed, closing her eyes tightly. "I am here," she said softly.

"But what are you doing here?" Abel walked closer.

"That's none of your business, little brother," Cain looked at Abel.

"Stop! Please..." Lilith looked into Cain's eyes and then slowly
turned to face Abel. "I was just leaving. I...My task is through," her
voice was soft as a shadow and it fell between the two brothers like a
sword.

"Come with me then," Abel held out his hand. "We'll leave this place.
I swear."

"No!" Cain grabbed Lilith by the arm, jerking to him. "She's already
decided to be my wife."

Abel stared at Cain and then at Lilith. "What?" he shook his head as
if to clear it. "Let her go!" he took three quick steps and put an arm
around Lilith, pulling the girl to him as he pushed the palm of his
right hand to Cain's chest, shoving his brother back.

"No..." Lilith whispered, but the two men didn't hear her.

Can rebounded quickly, his left hand shooting out to grab Abel's shirt
by the collar, jerking the smaller man up slightly on his toes, while
Cain's other arm cocked back, his fingers curling into a fist. "Don't
piss me off, Abel," Cain warned his brother in a low voice.

Abel jerked back, but was unable to break Cain's grip on his shirt. He
pushed Lilith back out of the way, behind him, and grabbed at Cain's
wrist. "Will you strike me, brother?" Abel stared into Cain's face.

"Please..." Lilith moved closer, attempting to wedge herself between
the two men, but someone else pulled her back.

"Shhh..." his voice was in her ear. "It's not up to you," the serpent
told her and Lilith protested, pushing and clawing at the man, but he
was far to strong, far too powerful for that.

Outside in the cool night air, he tossed Lilith away from him. She
recovered her balance and stood, half bent over in the moonlight,
panting and weeping softly. "You lied to me!" she accused the man.
"You lied!"

"No," he spread his arms. "I told you that you would have a husband."
He gave a slight curl of his lips, "And so you shall."

"I know what's going to happen! I've seen it!" she took a step, but
knew he wouldn't let her pass. "I've got to stop it, please...I can
stop it!"

"No. You can't," the man shook his head. "No one can stop it. You've
done very well, Lilith. You have no one to blame but yourself."

"No..." she shook her head. "Please, I beg you...For the love of God,
don't do this."

"The love of God?" he laughed at her. "You forget yourself, girl. Now
go home, prepare your things. You know what you must do. You're as
bound to it as I am."

=-=-=-=-=

Cain stared down at his brother. He had put up a good fight and both
of the young men had been bloodied. Cain sat on a large rock, staring
at Abel, his fingers along his nose. He would lose her, Cain thought,
lose Lilith. She had offered herself and Cain did not understand why.
She loved Abel, as everyone did, it was obvious. So why had she come
to him, begging to be taken away. Was that a part of God's plan?
Another test of some sort or just more games? There were plans and
plots, and circles within circles that he'd fought to understand, but
never could. His father, Adam, had spoken of these things and Abel,
beautiful attentive Abel had listened.

But it was Cain now, brutish and distracted, uncertain of what he
should do. He remembered Lilith's face, her hair, the swell of her
breasts and the fullness of her form. How perfect among all His
creations, a woman. He wanted her and if he were to require love? He
might have had her. Cain kicked at the ground. He would have had her
now, but for love. What was that anyway, something so ill-defined,
that the lacking of it caused him to hesitate? Cain had never known
love and as he stared at Abel's unconscious form, Cain knew finally
that subtle difference between them.

Cain stacked wood slowly, gazing over his shoulder at the fatted calf
grazing lazily on the mountain grasses. It was almost noon, almost
time. He licked his lips, feeling the ancient dagger at his belt, the
vials and small pouch in his pockets. Cain felt his heart beating. Why
had Abel come? He'd never been to that club before, never once in his
life and yet last night, just as Lilith had offered herself, Abel had
come inside, to spoil it. To ruin everything. God wanted it.

"God?" Cain sat down again, holding his head in his hands.
"Please...Lord?" But there was no answer. The sun was high now, the
sky washed of its blue by it.

Cain lit the fire slowly, using flint and a bit of dried moss. He blew
gently, fanning the flames to life. The wood caught, the smaller twigs
first and then the larger pieces, crackling upon the large square
hearth he'd constructed, just beneath the stone altar.

"Cain?" Abel opened his eyes slowly, licking his lips. He was dry,
thirsty, and his head ached, along with the rest of his body it
seemed. He tried to move his hands, but found them bound with hemp
behind his back. He was naked, sitting on the rough stone and the wind
shifted slightly so that warm acrid smoke filled his eyes momentarily,
causing them to water and he shut himself off to it until he sensed
it's passing.

"Lord, I offer this unto thee," Cain spoke softly. He poured some
small amount of oil over Abel's brow and poured ashes over his
brother's chest, speaking more words, softly, so softly even he
couldn't be sure they were being said aloud.

"Cain?" Abel repeated and then the young man sighed weakly as he felt
the knife penetrating his breast, the tip slipping easily through
flesh and the hardness of his bones, angling between them to find
Abel's heart. He looked up, his mouth hanging open as he stared into
Cain's face, dark and shadowed with the sun high above him.

Cain held the knife in his brother's body, feeling his eyes growing
wet and finally running with tears. They fell heavily onto Abel's
body, mixing with his blood and running to the stone beneath him. The
stain grew large, spilling over the uneven edges, some of it landing
in the dust at Cain's feet, and some of it rushing into the fire with
a soft sizzling sound as it turned to steam.

Cain said more prayers, praising his Lord and begging his God to find
the sacrifice a worthy one. Only later did Cain finally put Abel's
body to the flame, letting his brother's flesh be consumed so that
only bones remained, gleaming white and black and shimmering behind
the veils of heat.

"I am here," Lilith spoke, disturbing Cain from his reverie. He'd been
sitting silently, staring at the fire, staring at his brother.

Cain looked at her. "I have killed my brother," he held his red hands
out.

"I know, husband," Lilith would not look up. "I tried to stop it. We
are all dead now."

"Do you hate me?" Cain sniffed slightly, looking away from her as
well. "Is that why you joke?"

"No," Lilith struggled to right herself. "You are my husband."

"We are not married," Cain observed.

"There is none who will marry us, husband. For what you...What we have
done here. We are married by nature, married by deed. Take me now,"
Lilith had unbuttoned her dress as she spoke and she now let the
material fall away from her snow white skin unceremoniously. She
stood, clothed only in the afternoon sun, radiant with it as it
reflected from her flesh.

Cain looked at her then, his eyes still wet and he saw the perfection
of her form. The upturned swell of her breasts, topped with eager dark
nipples. The inward curve of her taut belly, the plump rise of her
Venus mound covered with a dark tangle of pubic hair. He felt the ache
in his loins, a desire which no coupling with lesser women could
slake, and he wanted her. He stepped off the rock, undressing as he
moved, so that when he took Lilith in his arms, Cain's erection jutted
out before him, pressing itself to her body.

"What have I done?" Cain whispered.

The wind blew softly and the sun was warm, the day was like any other.
There was no answer.

"Kiss me," he commanded her softly, but Lilith was unyielding.

She'd done as much as she could and her face was a mask, made of stone
for all the emotion it showed him. Cain grunted, pushing her to the
ground and spreading Lilith's legs. He guided his cockhead between her
nether lips and pushed hard inside, feeling her dry and unresponsive.
The temporary blockage of her hymen and the subsequent scream gave
Cain a moment's pause...Cain thrust himself violently then,
remembering the dark one's prophecy and hating him for it. He covered
Lilith's rosy mouth with his and found nothing there but emptiness,
and even his desperation would not silence her.

"Ahhhh..." Lilith's body arched as the sharp lance of Cain's
penetration breached her will finally. She cried out, over and over,
and cold tears ran down her cheeks, "Oh! Abel...Abel..."



end

=========================-
end of MIMB Complete 27 July 2008
rache696@yahoo.com
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/rache/www/index.htm

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