Devouring Moon

Warm night in the Solipaz hills was less solid than Ransome Farrell expected. Stars spackled the velvet above far as eyes saw. From north relentless perimeter lights demarcated the maquiladoras and silhouetted the Mexican city's downtown.

Distant brightness aside, Farrell had been correct about area illumination. Those few working streetlamps half-heartedly chased darkness in crapshoot patterns.

Random TV glow, weak houselights squeezed through hovel wall cracks or past puckered curtains, while opened and shut doors briefly spilled rectangular floods onto the dust. Almost 50, Farrell could still distinguish shapes from night.

Dark clothing helped obscure him. A black baseball cap, its insignia removed, covered his head. Lest its luminous face possibly reveal him, Farrell's timepiece bunched in his pants pocket. Besides a gun he also toted a walkie-talkie and flashlight. The weapon steeled the small of his back, while clips affixed communication against his belt. He carried a flashlight with truncheon heft and length. Farrell had silenced his walkie-talkie. Its lowest volume setting notwithstanding, any inadvertent squawk might surpass the clarity of the muezzin's call atop a minaret. No need to alert the devout. Or faithless.

If the killer or killers adhered to his, hers, its, or their pattern, tonight would be the strike date. First night of a new moon. A western progression from which a "U" developed then repeated. Celestial certainty determined death. All those numbing calculus courses and there he was playing shaman.

Of all three variables in play he remained stationary. The second ascended in something of a straight line. The third, the wildcard, well, that could intersect anywhere between two fixed points.

Farrell knelt against one of the barrio's few stockade-fence houses. An alley between plots offered a vantage perpendicular to the street. His arrival muted the cicadas' night songs. He didn't bother about roaming dogs sniffing him out. During his earlier daytime reconnoiter he saw no trace of strays. Obviously coyotes (the four-legged yipping kind, not the two-legged smugglers) had cleansed the immediate vicinity of canine competitors. Feral cats too.

At the pocked street's lowest point the road's last working streetlamp. The killing zone sloped upward into a nebulous boundary some 200 yards distant. Although inhabited by the humilde, los narcos ruled past that part of the bluffs. Even the coyotes knew better than trespass.

A young woman volunteered as the "attraction." Or rather, if matters went awry, sacrifice.

Maria was her name. One more Mary in a remorseless country full of suspect virgins. When not working second shift, the 22-year-old serviced Grady the plant manager.

Short, bird-thin, strong features intensified her broad brown face; necessary long jet-black hair included, Maria fit target profiles. For tonight, Farrell and a local tanner had sculpted body modifications which anticipating the assailant's focus should've prevented Maria's fatal victimization.

Merely as a courtesy, Farrell sounded out Grady about the prospective trap. His calculations satisfied the executive. Farrell's numbers added up and lineal thinking mollified Grady. Seeking to improve margins, the plant manager volunteered hiring several gunmen who'd salt the prospective kill zone.

Farrell refused his offer. The fewer people involved, the less likely their prey might get spooked. Also it would just be Farrell's luck that Grady's rented guns should cross the local narcos. Mexico already suffered enough free-fire zones.

Moreover, Farrell already had assistance. Dependable assistance. As a lark he briefly considered dragooning Inez as his accomplice. She wouldn't be in much risk but the job would be crucial. Farrell wondered how she might've reacted had he invited her to be his "moll."

Inez projected "adventuress." A modern-day version at least. All she lacked were pith helmet and jodhpurs. Designer pith helmet and jodhpurs.

Convincing Maria to perform as bait was easy. Willingly as she agreed, payment could've derailed the scheme. Maria wanted more than money. She also demanded a green card. That was far beyond Grady's pay grade. However with company chairman Roderick Quinn off the administration's shit list, Maria's request became doable. One or two phone calls to New York and Farrell added the promise of that document to her pot of gold. Therefore not only did she have greater incentive to live, but collect as well.

The unknown attacker tasked Farrell. Using Maria as chum ought have drawn a sooner than later response. During day both sides of the pitted road provided blinds from which to lunge. Now in the quiet darkness the whole street facilitated death.

Such a lifeless night would've been better suited fucking Inez. The thought of her started a boner.

After their first night together Inez let him sleep deep into day. Upon waking her hotel room's toasty atmosphere, the hot sheets especially, reminded Farrell of his tumbleweed Arizona boyhood.

Despite the churning ceiling fan only desert summer air flamed through thrown open windows. Funny thing was until he matriculated in college in what he certainly considered a big city, Farrell never would've realized such conditions as discomforting. The campus' ubiquitous climate control not only cooled, it also spoiled him.

Before he fully gathered his surroundings, Farrell mused about innocence just being perfumed ignorance.

He'd been laying on his side. Farrell rolled onto his back and took stock. Facing him Inez sat at the writing desk. Legs crossed, she wore a shirt, unbuttoned, more as a sop to modesty, likely the one from yesterday, and nothing else. She hadn't brushed her bedhead into order yet. Lack of excessive vanity bolstered his esteem of her. A morning glory smile sold him completely.

Farrell asked the time. The late morning hour she gave was one more sign that when it didn't nip at his increasingly slowing heels, age occasionally taunted him from ahead. The prior day hadn't been so strenuous nor had he drank all that much. Had he?

He stretched his arms. Warm between those walls limited his joints popping and cracking. Doing the same in his own cooled hotel room might've scared lumberjacks.

"Did I talk in my sleep?" Farrell asked.

"No," Inez said. "And you don't snore either."

"We should both be thankful for those little mercies."

Farrell rolled upright and sat on the bed edge eying her. Spread on the desk behind Inez a clear pitcher containing orange juice, two glasses, an open laptop and her digital camera. Unbidden she filled a glass and passed him the beverage. While sips of the lukewarm juice further revived him, Inez unwound a curious string.

"I took advantage of you," she said.

"Did you?" he answered. "It was quite an enjoyable offense."

Inez pondered momentarily. His true meaning became clear.

"Ah, not like that," she said. "While you slept ... Has anyone ever told you how you look asleep?"

"It's been a while since I've been close enough to a woman long enough to have her ask. Are we that close already? After one night!? My, you work fast."

Flustered, smarting from his tease, Inez clarified herself. "You may regard this as unthinkable, but while you slept I photographed you."

"Oh," Farrell said, "that's worse than unthinkable. It's unconscionable!"

Facetiousness escaped Inez. She became quite honest and forthcoming. Almost to the painful point where Farrell felt intercession necessary. Indeed Inez was a West Coast girl. She said his face had a lot of character.

"You mean it's lined," Farrell said.

Still seeing him through the aperture, Inez continued. "Your body reminds me of driftwood. Long, hard, smoothed by waves."

Feeling far more impish than impressed, Farrell said, "So, I'm human flotsam? Is this bed the beach? Where's the seaweed?"

Inez smirked. "Hey, mister, you're really not helping the creativity process here. Come. Let me show you."

She faced her laptop and booted up. Farrell's ass off the mattress, he clambered from its towel-empty side; the one their repeated screwing hadn't stained. He kneeled just behind her left shoulder.

Inez' twist toward the desk let her unbuttoned shirt gape apart. Both benefited from her excellent posture. Plumb straight between the top of her birds nest into her coccyx. Though not gravity defying, Inez' large tits jutted pert and alert, their pink devilishly small nipples squinting outwards. Below her overhang a tight midriff. Tamed pubic curls sprouted between her lap. She'd hooked her feet around the chair's rear legs.

Naked proximity and the damp clappers clinging between his own legs had Farrell tugging himself into comfort. No way she'd have known how good it felt to have free-dangling balls. Inez certainly pretended ignoring Farrell's steadily rearing meat. About the latter her simper and squirming bottom tipped him.

After Inez keyed in "my pictures" thumbnails filled the screen. He asked what she scrolled through.

"Recent shots," Inez said. "On the set. Up in the hills."

She randomly stopped and commented. Sometimes she even enlarged a thumbnail. Set pictures were candid, the accompanying commentary incisive. Pictures of young Mexican mothers, however, carried every indication of having been posed and lighted for highest emphatic effect. She emphasized contrast.

The movie shots typified insouciance. Her barrio frames were to elicit then magnify need. An affluent empathizer could expend his or her sympathies upon worthy downtrodden subjects at a safely removed distance.

Inez' portraits couldn't have made any clearer that these women were impoverished and had few recourses for escape. Smudged continually needy infants and toddlers thickened their prison walls. Such were the images which compelled soft touches to dig deep and contribute out of First World guilt.

Inez spared few techniques towards elevating her subjects' dignity. That was quite a feat in itself. Off the pedestal, in the everyday, Farrell would've regarded them casually. If at all.

Mexico accelerated time's effects. Especially on women, after marriage, childbirth. How many young, sweet, sharp seductresses had he watched break, seemingly overnight?

Without fail brown formerly slim, girlish bundles of sex became and remained hectoring two-legged baby-making barrels. Looking at them, their misbegotten, misbehaving squadrons of straggling children, Farrell troubled understanding how one-time lovely, light-stepping senoritas meekly abandoned allure and deserved attention for heavy-stepping stoutness.

Prior to decline they were lusted after and justifiably hounded. Now tits flattening across torsos, pleasing curves vanished beneath cylindrical measurements, firm bodies forever cushiony, what stoked their husbands? Memories? Obligation?

Farrell might've mentioned some or all his observations to Inez. However, after doing so she'd slander him as sexist. She'd find his objectification mortifying. Then worrisome because of her own body's future.

His terrors remained unspoken. Harmony better than candor. Nor did he laugh at Inez' artistic myopia. Neither did he volunteer any hard-edged lessons about life below the border. Although having slept together, they were nowhere close enough to share honesty. Yet. Yet? Her scrolling reached him, her morning's work.

Farrell wished he were vain. The missing attribute would then lend him a self-critical eye. Rather, he was too objective to appreciate himself. What aspect hadn't Inez captured of him?

His image wallowed in rumpled linen. Such purity drew out the Argentine and Mexican sun upon his face, neck and arms. Her foreshortening lens transformed his lean muscle masses into monumental flesh. Morning sun's progress and his instinctive evasion of its rays gave Inez facial angles both peaceful and sinister.

Unlike the female sex' mystery, the male member discouraged pleasant similes. Labia and flower petals were plainly exchangeable, if not outright complementary. Plenty of O'Keeffe's confirmed that.

The penis, though, fixed metaphorically, well, what paeans did it inspire? Beginning in Paradise the penis, its associations, despite protestations of compulsion, was disreputable. Inez had photographed his with incipient menace.

Its calm repose fooled no one. Those misery scars streaking his hose indicated prior violence. Doubtlessly something it'd provoked. Probably something of the initially unspeakable excruciating variety. The kind which once they really thought about it might jar mindful viewers.

Joking, Farrell asked, "These aren't going on the internet, are they?"

Inez turned. Her voice carried severe prognosis tones.

"I'd hoped to speak to you about possible exhibition. In a gallery, not on some smutty web site. You see it's still in discussion, a preliminary phase actually. Um, a compilation of recent works ..."

"Some of my ...?" he said.

Hurriedly Inez said, "Not just yours. Work from the past year."

The irony struck Farrell as complete. Months ago he shifted heaven and earth to maintain a low profile. Since then life rendered caution unnecessary. Her suggestion of public display -- in this case extreme public display! -- intrigued him. It also frightened him. The exposure, the judgments, could either be rewarding or offer ridicule. Confident as he was of himself, Farrell's was not the physique of some cut and buffed 20-something. Fit as he kept, his five decades lived-in body would be cropped, enlarged for minute evaluation.

Indecisive, Farrell stalled. "Um, I notice you don't have any shots of my balls. Kind of incomplete without them, huh?"

Inez shook her uncombed tumble of hair. "I hate playing down any part of the body but scrotums and what they hold rarely get good responses."

He asked why not.

"Damned if I know," Inez said. "Damned if anybody knows. Maybe they remind too many people of figs. Or maybe they're just ugly."

"Figs ...?" Farrell said.

"Figs," she repeated helpfully. "Or ugly."

"I prefer 'ugly' to 'figs,'" Farrell said. "Even 'big figs.'"

Inez shrugged. "Who wouldn't?"

Farrell chose risk. He allowed Inez use of his image. She squealed in delight and awkwardly hugged him. He nearly lost his balance. Finished smothering, Inez babbled something about "signing releases." He gently interrupted.

"We don't need any. You have my okay. We shake on it and that's that."

She looked at his hand as if it were an alien appendage. Her hand tentatively folded into Farrell's.

Aware of her trepidation, feeling hesitancy through her grip, he added, "But, uh, if you need something ironclad legal, I'll sign your papers when time comes. There will be no misunderstanding between us. It's just other people we have to look out for."

Relief eased across Inez' face. She peered into his crotch. Although flagging somewhat Farrell's cock retained sufficient anger. Inez unhitched her feet off the chair legs and swiveled 90°. He straightened before her.

Inez cupped his nuts in her unsure hands. In consoling tones she addressed Farrell's testicles.

"Sorry, boys, but you do nothing for me." That said, Inez bent forward slightly, gazed at him from waist level, slid palms along Farrell's meat and coaxed bone from flesh. Stiffened, veins extended, scars prominent on skin, his dick in her grasp resembled a primitive weapon. Before sucking him, she rolled his rod against her cheeks and jaw.

She mouthed him a little at a time. Each ingress got inquisitive tongue swabs. Her surveys were thorough. Towards the end they became sloppy and loud.

Inez perched close-legged allowing him to inch closer while she swallowed farther. Her own hands rested on the mass above his gluts. Sometimes her fingertips pinched his skin.

Before the pull that mashed his turtle into her throat, Farrell gently steadied himself upon her shoulders. His palms quickly moistened the loose fabric covering them.

Her draws on his cock were deliberate. So much so Farrell's hot and heavy balls dripped sweat down Inez' chin. The insides of his thighs began trembling during the thoughtful synchronization of her tongue, teeth and timing. He liked she brought him along agonizingly.

Mouth open, eyes closed, head tilting back, the sound of his own breathing reached Farrell's ears. Her efforts matted drool on his pubic carpet. Trying to remain flatfooted he nonetheless arched towards Inez.

She'd revved him enough. Time to drive. Inez strengthened her pulls, picked up the pace. Her bobbing quickened and she suctioned more insistently.

Farrell squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his teeth and concentrated. Inez' sucking cock was first-time splendid. He rewarded himself when one when long second mounted another. But so immersed in the present he lost count. Prolong it as he tried, Farrell succumbed to inevitability. His reserve burst.

Farrell's seed leapt into Inez' gratifying mouth. He groaned thankfully. Through his flood she maintained her fervor. Only when his spume weakened and his rigidity faltered did Inez slow her task. By the time her palms quit resting on Farrell's lower back his cock had regained pliancy. His hamstrings barked too.

He stumbled backwards and opened his eyes. Sweat rolled off his forehead and stung sight. His fingers wiped away the wages of their exertion. Farrell looked down at Inez. She cleansed her mouth with sips of orange juice. Rather than spit she swallowed.

Farrell couldn't remember the last woman who'd blown him minus latex who hadn't spit. It'd been so long he figured either some high school homecoming queen or service time cooz angling for another really big tip last gulped his goo. Inez must've seen amazement in his face because she transformed tidying up into coquetry.

Lashes of her copper eyes finished batting, corner of lips daubed, their mixture of jizz, perspiration and saliva back-handed off her chin, Inez insisted he returned the favor:

"Now kiss me!"

Joking as she was, hers remained the kind of request which had he been drinking would've spat through his nostrils. Even then crouched in night, dividing the unknown, Farrell grinned and shook his head at her precocity.

He liked Inez was serious but didn't take herself with utmost seriousness. If she kept that up, she might could keep him interested. Scuffing feet along the street returned him to the present.

If Farrell strained, weak distant maquiladora lights vaguely outlined Maria's head and shoulders. It must've been her. According to the plan, Grady dispatched her 30 minutes ahead of second shift change. Maria's head start meant less likelihood of another homeward bound worker possibly falling victim.

Maria's guardian himself had snuck into position an hour before her departure.

During preparations Farrell asked whether other hourly workers commonly used flashlights. Where the question never would've occurred to Grady, Farrell's esteem grew in Maria's eyes. He'd proven himself more than just another gringo.

No. The local poor didn't carry flashlights. While such devices would've brightened journeys home, the money for batteries could've been better spent. Therefore, familiarity and sharp vision sufficed.

Though this wasn't Maria's barrio she resided in similar circumstances. To lessen the strangeness or maximize the uncertainty of her new surroundings and heightened conditions, Grady fed her a greenie. Should matters pan out, the amphetamine ought have overridden any fearful immobility. Farrell wanted her hair-triggered wired.

She clutched a whistle. The moment attack occurred reflexes should've prompted reaction, her alarm and his response. Unless of course this one night the killing method changed.

Leavening the night's special situation, a boyhood friend of Farrell's collected Maria at the factory gate then deposited her below where Farrell waited. Company collectivos usually gathered and disbursed workers, but one dropping off a single passenger instead of disgorging many might've struck wrong notes all over the place.