A Bestiary of Unnatural Women (12 page)

“Hey, that’s terrific. You always liked
school.”

“Yeah.” She paused, then said, “There’s
something that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while.
Something that I should have said years ago.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” She took a deep breath. “You remember
when we broke up.”

“Sure. That’s not something that I’m likely
to forget any time soon. It was… Well, it was a surprise. Let’s put
it that way.”

“I know. But there was a reason for it. I
wasn’t exactly honest with you. I’d met another man and went out
with him on a date.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I should have told you about it at the
time, but I didn’t.”

“I see.” There was a pause at the other end,
and then he said, “I know that we weren’t like engaged or anything.
Not really committed. But I thought that we were at least a little
bit exclusive. I wasn’t going out with other women.” He sounded
hurt when he said that.

“We were exclusive. I guess we would have
called it ‘going steady’ if we had been a little younger. I felt
like I was cheating on you. It was just that once, but I shouldn’t
have done it. I’ve felt bad about it for a long time. I won’t try
to make any excuses. It was my mistake. Purely my mistake. I’m
sorry.”

“Oh. Well, you should know that I’m married
now. I have a wife and a baby on the way.”

“That’s great,” Cindy replied. “Really great.
Congratulations.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s been nice talking to
you.”

“Wait. Before you go, there’s one other thing
that you should know.”

There was a long pause, then Brent said,
“You’re not going to tell me that I got you pregnant, are you?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. As near as I
know, your wife is having your first child.”

“Okay. That’s good to know.”

“No. There’s something else. The guy I went
out with that one time?”

“You mean the one that you cheated on me
with?”

“Yeah. Him.”

“Did you marry him?”

“No. I never saw him again. He wasn’t much of
a man. You were the better man by far. I knew that from the
beginning.”

“Okay.” He left the word hanging, waiting to
hear what else she had to say.

“Well, he was quite a player. I found out
later that he gave me syphilis.” She rushed the last words in her
haste to get her confession out.

“What?”

“Syphilis. He gave me syphilis.”

“Oh.” He paused. “I don’t know what to say
about that. I’m not happy to hear that you cheated on me, but I
don’t think you deserved that. Are you all right?”

“Oh, yeah. I got it treated right away. I’m
fine.”

“So why are you telling me all this now?”

“I… I should have told you at the time. I’m
calling to apologize. I’m so sorry.”

There was a long pause while Brent digested
the information, then he said, “Wait. I get it. You think you might
have given it to me. Is that it? You kept sleeping with me after
this jerk gave you syphilis and you could have passed it on to me
but you never bothered telling me? Is that it?”

“I’m so sorry. I was a coward. It was a
shameful thing to do. I’m so, so sorry.” She began to cry.

He heard her sobs. “Are you crying about
it?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Well, don’t cry. I’m all right. After you
dumped me, I started going out with another woman. You probably
don’t remember Lucy Cho. I broke up with her when she told me that
she had syphilis. I always thought that she was the one who gave it
to me. She had a reputation for being an easy lay. But now that
you’re telling me that I probably already had it, and it was
probably me who gave it to her, not the other way around.”

“I’m sorry,” Cindy sobbed. She was beginning
to sound like a broken record.

“You should be apologizing to her. She was
the one who had the guts to tell me that I had it. It just about
killed her to have to tell me and then, when I dumped her for it,
she stayed in her room and cried for like a week. I know because
her roommate called me up and gave me blazes for being so
insensitive.”

“God, I’m sorry.” Cindy could think of
nothing else to say. “I didn’t mean to wreck your life.”

“It’s okay. I wouldn’t have been happy with
her, anyway. She was too wild for me. You wouldn’t believe some of
the things we did. It was fun in a really scary way, but if I’d
stayed with her, I never would have met Eve. She’s a wonderful
woman. I’ve never been happier.”

“I’m glad.”

“Me too. You know, you and me? We were never
going to make it. We would have been miserable if we’d tried to
stay together. It would have been worse even than if I’d tried to
stay with Lucy.”

“I’m glad that you found someone better than
me,” Cindy sniffed, a touch of sarcasm breaking through her
tears.

“Me, too,” Brent replied in all
sincerity.

“I hope you have a good life.”

“You, too, Cindy. You too. If you ever need
insurance, let me know. Otherwise, I don’t need to hear from you
again.” There was a click as he hung up the phone.

Trevor looked at Cindy. “Well, that was quite
a call. Talk about heavy life experiences. How do you feel?”

“Better,” she admitted. “It’s a load off my
mind knowing that everything turned out well for him. I don’t have
to wake up in the middle of the night any more worrying that I’d
killed my first real boyfriend by giving him the syph.”

“Good.”

“Also, in a way, it’s only fair that I gave
him a chance to shit on me a little. It feels like the books are
balanced.”

“Do you think that he’d want you to ride your
horse for fifteen minutes, just so that you could feel some of the
pain that he felt when you dumped him?”

She did not say a word, just began crying
quietly and peeling her clothes off with trembling hands.

After her fifteen minutes had passed, Trevor
told her that he would only release her if she agreed to give him a
first-rate blowjob.

She didn’t hesitate even for a second. Big,
sloppy blowjobs were becoming routine. She was learning to be a
first-rate cocksucker.

That night in bed, as she snuggled in his
arms relaxing into sleep, she said, “You’re going to have to think
of something a lot more distasteful for me to do. Just sucking you
off is becoming too easy for me.”

Trevor fell asleep thinking of distasteful
sex and coming up blank. Most of the things that he thought would
disgust her would disgust him as well. He wasn’t about to put
himself through anything unpleasant just to make her as unhappy as
she wanted to be.

Cindy had been riding her horse for a few
minutes and was moaning in pain. “What do you want from me?” she
asked. “Just tell me and I’ll do it. Riding this thing doesn’t get
easier, you know. It gets worse every time.”

Sadly, he had not thought of anything to
demand from her that was worse than a blowjob. He had only mounted
her on the horse because it had been a week since the last torture
session and he knew that he was supposed to keep her constantly
fearful of the horse.

Now that she was up there, suffering again,
he had to come up with some rationale for doing this to her. “Just
be patient, you’ll find out soon enough.”

She whimpered loudly and said, “Please tell
me what you want. Really. I’ll do it. Anything you want.”

He felt a twinge of pity for her. He had to
come up with something soon so that she could agree and stop the
torture. Suddenly, a brilliant idea flashed into his brain. “I’ll
tell you what. Sue and Saul are throwing a Halloween party next
Saturday night. It’s a costume party so you’re going to dress up
special for it.”

“How special?” she gasped through her
pain.

“You’re going to dress up like a hooker. I
mean you’ll be the world’s most obvious streetwalker. False
eyelashes and bright blue eye shadow and eyeliner that’d make
Cleopatra blush and lipstick the color of ripe cherries. Hair
bleached blonde and giant cheap earrings. And super high stiletto
heels and fishnet stockings and a miniskirt so short people can see
the ends of the garter belt straps and a tube top two sizes too
small that shows your belly all the way up to your ribcage and no
bra. And, after everyone’s arrived, you take me into the bathroom,
or find a quiet corner in the back yard or find some other place in
the house. And that’s where you get down on your knees and give me
the perfect whore’s blowjob.”

“I can’t do something like that in public,”
she screamed. “Everyone’s going to know me at the party.”

“Yup. And you’re going to look and act like a
hooker because if one person, just one person, asks you what your
costume is supposed to be, then you’ll have failed and you’re going
to be stuck right back up on your high horse for the rest of the
night.”

She dangled quietly across the wedge for a
minute, thinking about what it would be like to dress like a whore
in front of all her friends and colleagues. For years she had
deliberately worn shapeless, sexless clothes to the university to
prove to everyone that she was nobody’s sex object. “I can’t do
it,” she insisted. “I just can’t do it. Ask me for something
else.”

“You can do it. Either you decide that you
can do it or you can keep riding that cock horse until you get to
Banbury Cross. If you don’t agree to go to Sue and Saul’s party
looking and acting like an absolute whore, then you ride that horse
until four o’clock.”

“Four o’clock,” she wailed. “That’s three
hours away. I can’t stay her that long.”

“It’s three hours and seven minutes, to be
exact,” he replied, checking his watch. “And you don’t have to stay
up there for that long. You can get down as soon as you promise to
play the hooker at Sal’s Halloween party.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Then you can stay up there for another three
hours and seven minutes.”

“That’s too long.”

“You’re right. It is too long. Much too long.
You could suffer permanent injury. You know that you can’t keep
riding the horse that long, so you may as well save yourself a lot
of pain and agree to my terms right now. You have nothing to gain
by waiting.”

“Let me know when it’s four o’clock,” she
said flatly.

She lasted for almost an hour. Her suffering
must have been intense. Trevor was amazed by her unwillingness to
play a hooker at a costume party. He would have thought that it was
no big deal – that she would have agreed to his terms right away.
Clearly this was something that she desperately did not want to
do.

But eventually the unrelenting pain made her
more desperate to get off the horse than to avoid public
humiliation.

“I’ll do it,” she shrieked in the end. “I’ll
do it. I promise. Just let me down. Please. Let me down now.
Please.”

He let her down.

That night she made love to him with
exceptional enthusiasm.

He didn’t see how she could do it; her crotch
had to be sore from the afternoon’s activities. There was no
understanding women. Or at least for him, no understanding
Cindy.

On Saturday night, Cindy let Trevor have the
bedroom and she changed in the spare room, the one that she used as
an office.

He had spent a long time pondering possible
costumes. What would be the appropriate escort for a hooker? His
first thought was pimp, decked out in purple jacket, gold chains,
white patent leather shoes, and a fedora, but that was wrong. She
was to service him, not work for him servicing other men. Then he
thought he would dress as the classic medieval torturer, garbed in
a black hood and wearing a whip on his belt, but that was wrong,
too. He was only her torturer at home, not in public. Finally, he
realized his true métier. He was her devil. His job was to bring a
little corner of hell into her world, to make her suffer for her
past sins and to force her to sin some more. That was the role that
she had imposed upon him and, tonight, he would look the part. He
was the devil, complete with red horns and a long tail, who had
driven her to prostitute herself for his amusement and who would be
happy to slake his lust in her.

His costume was understated; a business suit
with a long red pointed tail poking through a hole in the seat and
hair neatly parted in the middle with small red horns poking
through his coiffure. A neat black goatee, mustache, and eyebrows
that rose high at the outer tips gave him a nicely sinister
look.

When she finally emerged from her own room,
her costume was as over-the-top as she had promised: pink fake
leather micro-skirt too short to cover the tops of her black
fishnet stockings; tight pink blouse tied at the waist that left no
doubt she was wearing a black lace bra; and black stiletto heels so
high that the balls of her feet barely touched the floor. He
recalled that he had specified a tube top, but he liked the blouse
better. She had left it completely unbuttoned and was held closed
only by being tied at the bottom of her rib cage, not only leaving
her entire midriff bare, but also exposing the center of her black
bra almost to the edge of her nipples. And the material was
sufficiently transparent that he could see the lace pattern of the
bra underneath.

Her hair was bleached blonde and had been
teased into a loose haystack that was piled high above her garishly
made-up face. Her lips were ruby red and her eye shadow sapphire
blue. Thick eyeliner made her eyes look as big as saucers and a
generous application of rouge made her look like she was suffering
from a high fever.

She was chewing gum with open-mouthed
enthusiasm that drew his eye right to her mouth where he could see
the tip of her tongue darting around behind her open lips. He could
not help but imagine those lips wrapped around his cock while her
tongue tickled it fiercely. He was sorely tempted to forget the
party and stay home, letting her suck him right here for the rest
of the night.