Angel, Demons Pt. 06

"You're a murderer," she said, her voice trembling. "You killed my best friend."

The pale woman sighed, turning towards the cage.

"Tell her, honey," she said. "I'll leave you two alone." She walked off, stopping at the door. "Tell her the truth."

And she left.

***

A bridge, burned.

The girl touched the leather collar around her neck, as if to find support.

Her mistress's words had cleared the sweet, protective mist she'd lived in for days now. "Tell the truth," she'd said, and her question brought back an uneasy sense of causes and consequences.

Answering truthfully would bring... finality.

If she told the truth, that is.

But, why wouldn't she? Was there another option left? Not really, was there? So many bridges burned, so many people estranged...

Besides, Mistress wouldn't accept her lying. But even that wasn't the point anymore, was it? The point was, she wouldn't accept it herself, anymore.

Not anymore, no.

At long last playacting had exhausted her - too tiresome, too destructive, and just too plain complicated. Being honest might cost her her best friend - her only friend by now.

But who needs a friend if she only stays when you lie to her?

"Sweetie," she rasped, looking up. "I always lied to you. I am not the girl you think you befriended.

"I never was."

Tears leaked from her eyes. She rubbed them away with the palms of her hands.

"I'm sorry."

They stared at each other for a minute. Then the girl crawled forward. Opening the door of the cage, she stepped out and knelt at her friend's feet, hugging her calves.

"Forgive me."

Her friend stepped back in a jerk to avoid the embrace. It made her trip and land backwards in the chair she'd occupied before.

"Don't. Please don't do this," she whispered. "It is humiliating; it debases you." But the girl held on to the legs, rubbing her cheek on them.

"Yes," she said, looking up. "Debasing, humiliating, I know. It is all of that and more, but you see - that is what I need.

"What I have been needing all along."

Her friend reached down now, cupping her face in both hands.

"That is what you think you need, sweetie," she said. "It is what that awful woman makes you think. It isn't true. I'm sure it can't be true, because I know you.

"I have known you forever, remember?"

Her voice broke as her hands closed tighter around the girl's smeared face. "This is me, remember?" she croaked. "Your best friend, and I love you!"

The girl just stared up out of wide, tear-filled eyes. Her head slowly shook 'no.'

"No, honey," she said. "I love you too. God knows I love you, but you have no idea who I am. I never dared telling you. It would have chased you off. I did chase you off, remember? You were disgusted, just as you are now.

"You see, right now I ache to eat your cunt, to make you come. Not because Mistress wants me to; it's been on my mind as long as I've known you."

The embracing hands flew apart, making the girl fall backwards. Her sprawling, naked body was flushed and smeared with sweat and oil and goo; straggled hair stuck to her skin.

She scrambled to her feet and walked over to the cage. Leaning against it, she panted, her eyes down.

"I'm a slut, sweetie," she then said, husky at first, but her voice gained force. Her eyes flashed in defiance.

"Ever since my brother unzipped the fly of his cut-off jeans to show me his cock, I knew I was one. It happened behind a bush in our yard - and I have been sucking his cock until the day before he died.

"Just like I sucked the cocks of friends he handed me over to. And the cocks of all those guys I blew in school - not just to be accepted, but because I loved it."

The woman who used to be her friend sat straight up, shaken to the core. All these years together and the girl had never told her; never even hinted at it. They'd been close, special.

She should have known, shouldn't she?

She rose from her chair and embraced the girl, uttering desperate sounds of compassion. But her petite friend wrestled herself free.

"No!" she cried out. "Don't pity me. It wasn't like that at all! I loved it! I loved every fucking second of it, you understand?

"Just tasting cock sent me sky-high. Even before I had the slightest idea of what an orgasm was, I already had them all the time, just from plain sucking.

"I was good, you know? I'm the best!"

Her eyes sparkled as she held the woman away from her. Then a cloud passed over them.

"But, god no," she said. "You'd never understand, would you? You'll never accept who I really am! I'm a slut for cocks and sperm and cunts and everything sexual, every day. It is why I came here, where I can wallow in it.

"But you must accept that I already was like this, from the very beginning!"

The woman was speechless. Her eyes wandered around, desperately searching for anything solid.

"But that bastard brother raped you," she cried out. "How could you know who or what you were? You knew nothing!"

She tried to hug her petite friend again, but she avoided her.

"Maybe," the girl said, playing with the dangling emerald. "Maybe I didn't understand. But you see, knowing that my brother and all these boys craved my mouth made me feel like someone, a real person - the person I was never allowed to be at home.

"They were the only escape from hell for me."

The silence that followed was filled with the girl's panting.

"I'm sorry, but all you know about me has been heavily censored," she went on. "I knew instinctively what would happen if I told anyone - even my sweet sister.

"They couldn't know; they shouldn't. Not out of shame, but because it would end my supply of cocks, my one and only escape route from an awful life.

"So, it became my heavily guarded secret. I buried it so deep that I started believing the horny cocksucker wasn't even me anymore; it must be someone else.

"And then I met my husband."

While talking, the girl had walked off to one of the tall bay windows. She picked up a soft pillow, pressing it against her body.

"I fell in love with him," she went on. "You know, you were there. It was a feeling I'd never had before. He seemed all I needed and the little chamber of secrets inside me closed. I even thought I'd thrown away the key..." She chuckled mournfully.

"And then he betrayed me..."

Tears filled her eyes from a pain she'd thought she'd buried years ago.

"He cheated on me and left me. And the old house crashed down on me with every demon and ghost my love had held at bay.

"I had to escape, to get away. Inside me this one, long-forgotten door creaked open, displaying all its sweet, suppressed candy - like a fairytale treasure. But I checked myself on its sill.

"It was the moment I swore off every cock and turned to women."

The woman blushed, remembering her friend's attempt at her and the consequent awkwardness when she'd fled. Should she not have? She could have saved her, the awful woman said. Would things have turned differently? Was she in any way responsible for this... this?

The girl's voice shook her out of her musing.

"And then I discovered this place, or rather a place like this where I found out that delicious, dark, forbidden sin wasn't restricted to cocks.

"I let out the slut I'd always been, knowing that I found yet another save and secret place to live out who I really was..."

The woman stood like a statue through all of this.

She was speechless, hearing how someone she thought she knew intimately proved to be a total stranger. She raised her hands again as if to ward off what she heard.

"I scare you, don't I?" the girl asked. Her voice had a forlorn quality. "I know this may end with me losing you. I'd hate that, but I'm tired of living a lie. I'm also tired of running away from my mistress. I've learned to call her that and mean it; it comes natural now.

"I think I fell in love with her. I get sick when I'm away from her, so please don't make me choose.

"I'll choose her. I already did."

There was another deafening silence. Then the woman, her longtime friend, cleared her throat.

"Who is this woman, sweetie? How did you meet her? What happened?" she asked.

The girl laid down the pillow and sat in the window's bay - an elegant figurine against the darkening window. She patted the place beside her.

"Please sit with me," she begged. The woman hesitated. Then she walked over, sitting farther away than the girl intended.

"I met her at a bar one day, almost two years ago. It's the bar down here, a bar for lesbians I frequented," she began.

Then she told about their meeting and the strange attraction she'd felt - obsession to be more precise. She recounted the months of running away and returning, the incessant struggle between fear and need, and her final surrender.

Halfway her story, the room's door creaked open and a huge dog entered, ambling over to them. He licked the girl's hand before lying down at her feet with a thud and a groan.

It made her friend move away a bit more.

"So, you fuck for her," she asked, her face showing disgust. "You're a whore."

It made the girl sigh.

"As I told you," she went on in a soft voice, looking away. "I'm a slut. I am her slut and it satisfies me to do as she wants. Yes, right now she makes me fuck for money.

"See that table over there?"

She pointed at a small table covered with checks and green dollar bills.

"Men, women, groups of men and women pay me for sex - each day. It is what I do because I love it. I love to please. I love to obey my woman.

"For me it's paradise."

Her gaze turned into staring; a smile curled her lips.

"Her control sets me free," she went on. "I'd never dare on my own what I dare for her. There is no responsibility, no guilt... no shame. I never felt as liberated as I do now.

"My head is clear, my body relaxed. There is no stress. I live to please her and hope that she'll accept me one day soon as her slave."

The woman started to shake her head in denial - first slowly, then faster. She pushed herself off the window seat, carefully avoiding the dog.

"You're sick," she said. "You need help."

The girl looked at her. A great sadness came to her face.

"Is that all?" she asked. "Is that what you have to tell me? That I'm sick?"

The room's temperature seemed to have fallen.

She shivered, lowering her hand to touch the dog's head, tickling it behind its ear. She stood and grabbed the beast's collar. It looked similar to hers. Together they walked back to the cage.

Its door closed with a soft sigh, just as the room's door opened wider to let the woman in, the one her friend called Mistress. She had changed into a dark red kimono robe.

The brunette at once spoke.

"I'll tell people what you did to her, you know?" she said, walking up to the pale woman. "You won't get away with this."

The woman in the kimono smiled sadly, looking from her to the cage. Her eyes found the girl's eyes for a fracture of a moment before turning back.

"I will not get away with exactly what, honey?" she asked. "There is nothing illegal going on, is there? Whomever you want to 'tell' might be rather pissed off when my girl informs them she is with me out of her free will.

"Police don't like to be harassed by zealous moralists, you know. It costs them time, people and money - and in most cases, it leads to nothing.

"They hate that; they might even charge you with wasting their time."

As she talked, she carefully guided the woman to the exit, showing her the way to the elevator.

"You'll hear from me!" was the last she heard, before returning to the large room, where the girl attacked her, wrapping her body around her and sobbing into her shoulder.

"Sssh," she said, patting the riot of black hair. "All is well. I'm here, honey. All is well. I am so proud.

"You made it."

The sweet monkey in her arms climbed even higher up her body - soaking the precious silk.

***

A girl, anonymous.

She'd cried on the woman's shoulder, her hot tears sinking into the robe's fabric.

She knew it was like life-blood seeping away with a finality she couldn't fathom. She desperately embraced the woman, her mistress now, squeezing the air from her lungs.

The woman patiently let her cry; maybe she already knew they'd be the last tears she'd ever spend on her fading, miserable past. She hugged her, crooning endearments as she rocked the clinging body.

Then, when the sobbing came to an end, the woman had wiped the tears from the girl's ruined eyes. She'd kissed each one softly - licking away the salty remains.

"Now stop this, silly slut," she'd whispered. "Enough crying for a lifetime. Be proud; you'll pass the gate of no return; there'll be no more awful past, no more dreadful future, just the now."

She'd eased the body down till the girl stood on wobbly legs. Then she carefully walked her to the marble bathroom, where showerheads unleashed a scalding cloudburst.

The water was hot.

It relaxed the girl's stressed-out muscles, flushing away the sweat, the tears, the sticking sperm and the reeking remains of urine she'd spilt in her desperate abandon.

The woman had joined her under the shower, still wearing her waterlogged robe. Her hands spread foamy soap over the girl's slick limbs and rosy skin. She kissed and hugged her under the downpour.

They moved like ghosts in perfumed clouds.

"Now listen, honey," the woman had said after they retired to the huge bed, cuddling naked under its freshly laundered sheets. "Listen well, for it concerns your life - and mine."

The girl's eyes dwelt in a hazy distance.

Ever since she'd stopped crying she had moved like a sleepwalker. She smiled at times, or frowned her dark eyebrows, but her mind seemed far away - thinking far away thoughts, if thoughts at all.

"Do you understand what I'm saying, darling?" the woman went on, kissing her face; then waiting for the faintest of nods.

"By reaching your point of no return - as I said, there is no way back. Breaking with your last real friend was your first step to giving up the girl you were.

"Do you understand?"

There had been a long pause, then another nod; the girl's eyes never blinked. Her world was in a haze.

"Today you lose your name," the woman said, taking in a sharp breath after she said the words. "I and other people will call you slut or darling, whore or honey, cunt or sweetheart from now on - or whatever pleases us, but never your name again."

There was another nod; then one single blink of the fat, long eyelashes. The woman's hands closed tighter around her upper arms.

"Soon you'll be free from everything that ever burdened the girl you were," the woman went on. "Freed from every tie to who she was. You'll allow me to sell her house, her computer and furniture, her car and all her clothes - everything that ever linked her to you.

"Do you hear?"

The girl sighed as she nodded yet again.

"Everything she owned will either be sold, given away or destroyed. All her souvenirs, pictures and letters will go - passports and ID's, driving licenses and birth certificates.

"Do you understand why, honey?"

The girl didn't know how to react, or why.

There was an urge to the woman's question - an urging for her to understand, but what - why? The woman had talked about a 'she' and a 'her,' a third person already remote. She'd talked about things that needed to be destroyed - pictures, memories of 'she' and 'her.'

What was there to understand?

"No memories, darling. No pictures, none," she said, searching for the girl's eyes and holding them intensely. "No memories will tie you down to the girl who is no longer, you understand...? No memories of that girl or her friends or her family, none.

"They were hers, not yours. She's gone, you know - she is no more - as are her demons, her fears and nightmares.

"You're here now, the one I love. It's you, not her, and you are free, because today you decided not to be her anymore."

The woman's mouth had floated through the surrounding haze, reaching hers and closing over it with an open-lipped kiss, followed by a plunging tongue. Soon the girl kissed back and felt expert fingers fondling every inch of her freshly washed body, making it arch and squirm.

She sighed, at last knowing what to do - letting go, getting free. The soft mouth slid down over her skin, finding her soaked cunt and swollen clit - teeth biting down on it.

It made her dissolve into orgasm, sweeping the last cloud away.

The woman, her mistress, rose over her spent body.

"Do you understand, slut?" she asked, panting from her exertion.

The girl just lie there, eyes open, breathing hard. There were no tears.

"I... understand," she then whispered, a smile spreading on her face, touching her eyes. Her arms rose and she pulled herself up to bring her mouth close to her mistress's.

They kissed forever.

***

A girl, obliterated.

When she entered the house, it was dark and hollow.

It breathed its stale breath on her when she stepped through the front door. Funny how you hardly notice a house's body odor while living in it, but now she did - it was an old and musky smell.

She walked inside, only clad in a long white t-shirt and flip-flop sandals. Their sounds resonated in the huge, empty space.

There were no ghosts, no demons now - no sarcastic chuckles or demoralizing whispers - not even the mute creaking of tired wood. Had the house finally become to her what it was to others - an ancient pile of stones, planks and wooden beams, wrapped around dank smelling emptiness?

She shook her head, closing her eyes.

The darkness made her ears grow invisible tendrils, reaching out to the most secret niches of the place where she'd been born and had grown up - and where she'd lost every soul she'd been related to.

Her ears begged for response, but there was only silence - ear-shattering silence.

She shivered when the woman's hand touched her shoulder.

"Was it ever worth hanging on to, honey?" she asked. Her voice echoed with a hollowness she'd never heard before in this house. "Let's get rid of it all."

She nodded and they walked from the hall to the kitchen, going on to her former office and her bedroom before reaching the den. Every room had been stripped, every piece of furniture was gone - each knick-knack and souvenir had been taken away.

She expected memories, but nothing came.

She saw the old wallpaper her brother had glued to the walls, ages ago. She saw the corner where the piano once stood, but even the years-long torment of practicing didn't leave an echo. She noticed the pale rectangle where once her mother's mirror hung, but never saw a glimpse of her, twisting and turning vainly to her reflection as she so often did.

God, she'd been beautiful.

At last they reached what had been the living room.

It was totally empty, but for a stack of paper, folders and framed pictures at the middle of the floor, where the movers had emptied desks and cupboards before taking them away.

"Help me carry it outside, girl," the woman said, taking an arm full of ledgers and walking into the yard, where a tall oil drum already smoked from a fire in its soot-lined belly.

She dumped the ledgers into it without even checking their content.

The girl stood in the door opening when the woman turned around. Her hands only held one item: a small, framed picture. She stared at it, totally absorbed, her lower lip trembling.

The woman came over to her, took her hand and turned the picture so she could see what was inside the frame. It was a photograph. It must be of the girl's long dead sister. How much like herself she'd looked, the woman thought - and yet she didn't. She had the same black mane of hair, same brown eyes, straight nose and olive skin. But she seemed touched by death already - she was beautiful, but in a waxen, fragile way.