Fallen Angel

"Besides," I said honestly, "I think it's hot that you can't get enough dick."

She laughed again, prancing back toward me. "Oh, I get enough Dick. He's so fucking boring. When I showed him this cool lip plumper lipstick that you got me, he just got this blank look on his face like, 'Why do you need that shit?' And, jesus, if I come home smelling even a little bit like smoke, he goes fucking ballistic. If he had any idea that my Monday, Wednesday and Friday aerobics classes were really mattress mambo sessions with you and whatever stunt cock I can come up with, they'd have to put him in a little rubber room somewhere."

Stopping beside the bed, she took a long hit from the cig as she stared down at me, raw adoration in her eyes. I was stunned, really. I hadn't tampered with her feelings for me in our little tune up sessions. In fact, I suddenly realized, there hadn't even been any in over two months. "You, however, accept me for who I am – the campus cunt. In fact, the sluttier I get, the more we both seem to like it."

Her eyes moistened and she batted tears away with lashes as long as blackened palm fronds. Glancing away with sudden self-consciousness, she stubbed out her smoke in the ashtray beside the bed. She bent over and left a little lipstick on the head of my prick, then a tad more on my mouth. "Well, if I'm going, I better move."

I almost asked her to stay. Instead, I said, "Go have some fun, lover. I'll see when you come back to clean up." What was this strange feeling in my gut? Guilt?

*

"If you do that Angel," I whispered, holding her as she cried, "it's over between you and Richard. He wants a trophy wife, somebody he can take to the Country Club and show off."

"Not some sleazy cunt with tramp stamps on her belly and ass?" she wailed. "Is that what you mean, Gino?"

"Is that what he called you?"

"Oh," she said angrily, pulling away and lighting a smoke, "that was just the start. After that he got really mean."

"Did he hit you?"

Something in the tone of my voice caused her to sit and and give me a long, hard look. "No. He wouldn't dare. I'd beat the fucker to a pulp with his favorite baseball bat – and he knows it." She snuggled into my shoulder and exhaled her smoke. "So. You don't think I should do it?"

I petted her hair, kissed the top of her head. "I didn't say that. I just wanted to be sure you know that'd be the final straw. Smoking and platinum blonde hair and makeup are all just temporary, babe. So's the belly ring and three piercings -"

"Five. Got two more in each ear this afternoon. See?"

She leaned forward and lifted the hair away from her graceful neck so I could look.

I nibbled the proferred earlobe. "Mmmm. I like."

"Oh, stop," she giggled, pushing away and tapping the cigarette in the ashtray. "Your point is that tattoos are permanent, like, for the rest of my life, and Dickless couldn't deal with that." She sucked smoke, frowning, then looking at me. "Would you like it? And don't feed me any bullshit about liking whatever I want to do, okay? That's the kind of shit that got us in trouble before."

It was just an offhand observation, casually delivered, but it hit me with the impact of a profound insight. She was right. I'd always been so eager to please her that I'd never really voiced an opinion, unless it was carefully couched in plausible deniability. I'd come off like a spineless, wishy-washy wimp. I'd blamed her for all of our troubles. Then, I'd retaliated massively and set about to ruin, not just her relationship with Richard, but, probably, her entire life. Man, if you called what she'd done to me betrayal, what the fuck could you call what I'd done to her?

My tinkertoy house of dreams, when confronted by that tornadic truth, blew away like so much kindling.

Suddenly, I was having trouble breathing. I tried to make my mouth work. She looked at me with growing concern and twisted toward me.

"Gino? Baby, are you alright?""

I shook my head, gritted my teeth, and forced words through a throat which desperately didn't want me to speak. "No. I'm not alright. I'm a totally sick fuck."

Her joke was feeble. "That's what I love about you."

"No, Angela. We've got to talk." I think we both realized about the same time that I hadn't called her by her given name in nearly six months.

"This doesn't sound good," she said, her eyes huge, her voice afraid.

"Oh, it's even worse than that." And I laid out the whole, ugly, manipulative, evil story.

*

She handled it better than I thought she might. Her first punch was to the solar plexus, not the balls. I think her second one was to the side of my head after I'd doubled over, but I really don't remember. All I recall is waking up on the living room floor at around three in the morning, feeling like I'd been kicked in the guts by a mule, then had my head stomped by an elephant.

I hurt, but the physical pain wasn't the worst. Not by a long shot. Long after I could have gotten up, I just lay there in the dark quietly sobbing. She didn't deserve a tenth of what I'd done to her. Hell, no one did. Then, on second thought, maybe I deserved something along those lines. Have someone hypnotize me and turn me into a simpering little pussyboy fag fucktoy.

I guess I cried myself back to sleep there on the dirty carpet. The sun pouring over the horizon like molten gold and searing my eyes is the next thing I recall.

That day and the next and the one after that were pretty ghastly. I had a headache that wouldn't go away – a minor concussion, though a skull fracture was more aligned with what I deserved. It wasn't crippling. My depression was. I thought about suicide, but figured I didn't deserve that yet.

For the rest of the week, I worried about what kind of horrors Angela was going through. To have been forced into acting like a wanton slut was her worst nightmare made real. To have become, against her will, what she most despised – now that was torture. Evil incarnate. I didn't go to class or my part time job. I mostly just stayed on the couch and dreamed dark dreams. I half prayed she'd come back with a gun and finish the job.

It was late Monday afternoon. I woke from another nightmare with a start, then flopped back down with a moan and stared blindly at the ceiling. Had my bladder not been radically insistent, I'd have just rolled over and dozed off again. Wakefulness was a terrible thing. As it was, I wasn't quite to the piss-your-pants phase of depression, so I struggled into a sitting position.

"God, you stink," she said, her lighter flaring too brightly in the dim room.

"Angela!" I croaked.

"No, you fuckhead," she said. "I'm Angel, remember?"

"I told you," I managed to say, unable to look at her, "a good therapist - "

"- can reverse everything. Yeah. I remember what you said."

I studied my feet. "I didn't say, 'everything.' Nobody can undo the things I made you do and say and think."

I heard the whisper of hose as she stood up. "Yeah, well, I've got a problem with that. What you did to me – or thought you did – was fucked. It was rape. Or would have been if I hadn't spread my legs and begged for more."

"You didn't. I -"

"- Oh, can the shit Gino. We both know you can't force people to do things under hypnosis. Granted, it's possible to manipulate them into some weird shit – which you did. But none of this, baby, is stuff I wouldn't have gotten around to sooner or later on my own. I know that now. I'm still righteously pissed and have no regrets whatsoever about busting your chops for it."

She was pacing and smoking. I could hear the first and smell the latter. I closed my eyes. "You're wrong. You were -"

" - A train wreck waiting to happen. You diagnosed me right – a slut. Look what I did to you, baby – the man I said I loved. I was fucking around behind your back for three months. I mocked and humiliated you. I lied and cheated and broke your heart. I'd have kept doing that over and over my whole life – and probably only gotten worse with time. I was sick and would've gotten sicker."

"Right. And I healed you, huh. Some fucking healing!"

"More like acceleration than healing, I think. You just helped me to paint my heart on my body. Made me honest about the fucked up shit I was pulling. Made sure I didn't fool anybody else with my innocent, pure little act. WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get."

"Angela -"

"Shut up, Gino. I'm not finished. I spent a lot of time thinking this week, and made some changes. The first thing I did was go to a bar for a drink and some cock. That cleared my head a little, but I think I scared the poor bastard I picked up. Can you believe he'd never had a girl asked to be ass-fucked?"

"Angela, before I re-arranged your head, you'd never been ass-fucked."

She laughed smoke. "Give up the self-pity, Gino. I've been double-fucking my ass and cunt with toys since I was in the eighth grade. Now I just use the real thing." She licked her lips as if tasting the memory. "Anyway, by the time I got home, Richard was asleep. I sat in the living room all night trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Where I really wanted to go with my life. I've known for a long time that teaching special-ed wasn't want I really wanted to do. That's shit from my mom and dad – along with every other fucking thing about how I used to be."

Her heavily made up eyes burned into me. "I realized that you, dirt-bag that you are, set me free. I wasn't bound by all those old rules I made up and couldn't ever live by. I realized how totally fucking miserable I used to be. How much I disgusted myself. I also realized something else. I'm a hell of a lot tougher than I thought I was." She shook her platinum mane in amazement. "How could you stand being around somebody as insecure as I was?"

I shrugged, had to look away from here again as she met my eyes. "Wasn't so bad. It's not like you were needy all the time. There's a lot more to you than that."

She cocked her head sideways. "You really loved me, didn't you?"

All I could do was nod.

She straightened, then leaned forward. "Do you now? Still? Since I've turned into a total slut?"

I hesitated, then nodded again.

Her eyes narrowed, turned to steel. "Say it."

I swallowed. "Yes. I love you."

She studied me like a bug, then leaned back in her chair and deliberately re-crossed her legs, flashing miles of thigh. "Back to my story. By the time Dickless woke up, I'd made up my mind about a few things. Instead of answering questions about where'd I'd been, I sucked his cock until he forgot I hadn't answered him. After he left for class, I started phoning around looking for a place of my own. By noon, I'd moved my shit in with two girls just off campus. Then I started looking for a job." She paused to light another cigarette.

"You're dropping out of school?" I blurted in alarm.

She shook her head and exhaled. "Part time job." Her sliver eyelids drooped seductively. "I work three nights a week at Club Vogue. I'm a stripper, Gino."

"Oh, God."

She slowly uncrossed her legs just enough to show me she wasn't wearing panties. "I fucking love it, baby. Strutting my shit on stage, dancing nasty for dozens of guys. Having them throw money at me. Lap dancing till they come in their slacks." She slouched down, letting her tiny skirt rise. "I even turned a trick – let some guy fuck me for five hundred." She sucked hard on the cigarette, eyes closed. "I'm finally a whore," she moaned.

I couldn't take any more. "Stop, Angela," I sobbed. "Please stop."

She looked puzzled. "Stop telling you about it, or stop doing it?"

"Stop doing it!" I screamed, jumping to my feet. She shrank away from me. "I can't live with this! You're not Angela. I murdered her." My rage died, leaving only pain. I scrubbed my hands across my stubbly face, forced my voice back toward the normal range. "Okay. I deserve it. I deserve whatever punishment you've decided on." I hazarded a glance at her face.

She was crying. "Oh, Gino. I'm so sorry. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be like it was before. Before you told me. I was going to come back here and tease you and make you crazy hot for me and we'd fuck like we did only I'd never leave and . . ." Her voice was lost in sobs.

I was stunned. I just stared at her, mouth agape, for way too long. "Angela, I -"

She jerked away from my voice. "What a dumb cunt I am. Never mind. I'll get out of your life." She was on her feet, moving toward the door.

She almost made it. When my paralysis ended, I launched myself like a missile and blocked her path. "Stop. Wait."

"For what?"

"You said . . . you said you'd never leave."

"Oh, that. Never mind. Just a dumbing fucking -"

"- I don't want you to ever leave. I want to be with you the rest of my life."

I never saw it coming. She slammed into me like a freight train, pinning me against the door. Her mouth ravaged me. I swear by the gods that I felt her nipples denting my chest as she growled down my throat. She ripped her lips from mine. She was panting, but her eyes were narrowed. "Why? Why do you want me to stay?"

"Because I -"

"Be careful here, asshole," she growled. "A lot depends on your answer – and I'll know if you're lying. Is it because I'm the best fuck you'll ever have? Or is it because you feel guilty?"

I stared right into those amazing eyes, now haloed by ruined makeup. "Both. But, more importantly, I just saw that Angela's not dead. The woman I loved and was ready to ask to marry me is alive and well, and I want her back. In my bed and in my life. Forever."

"Marry?" she squeaked in a voice I hadn't heard since before this whole hell started. "Me?" she added.

I dropped to one knee. "Angela Ann Montenegro, will you -"

I was interrupted my her grabbing my ears and face-fucking me with a decadently wet, hairless cunt as she screamed "Yes! Yes! Yes!" at the top of her lungs.

Well, it turned out that her nipples had been denting my chest. They now bore heavy-gauge rings. And her tongue bore a stud that she used to amazing effect.

Now, though, her nipples wear her engagement and wedding rings. Her customers at Club Vogue seem to really like them, and the diamond tongue, belly, and clit rings, too. She still turns the occasional trick, just for the sheer wickedness of it, and now and then just fucks someone for fun. Usually, though, it's just me, her poor suffering hubby who has to keep the insatiable slut satisfied. She'll probably retire this May, as soon as we both get our our PhD dissertations published.

And, yes, we do still play with hypnosis sometimes. A girl's got to keep her weight down, you know.