Knight

Peter walked to the double door of the pool house. The pool house was, in fact, a complete house in and of itself, though it lacked a full kitchen. The absence of a kitchen was not an oversight; the main house's kitchen was always ready to provide food service to the pool house, so a kitchen there was redundant. Instead, the pool house had changing rooms, a beautiful mid-century modern living room and bedrooms, all stunningly appointed.

Upon removal of his Bat-glove, the door responded to Peter's direct touch; the door was electronically keyed to the prints of Peter, his wife, and their two children. Employees with reason to enter had key cards. Peter moved silently into the living room, not activating any lights, relying on the ever-present mood lighting. The door silently closed behind him.

Peter heard soft feminine moans. He walked to the bedroom door, which was open, and stared at the scene before him. Again, the lighting was subdued, gently illuminating the best features of the room, the glow showing the movements of the couple joined together on the bed. The bed, with a large mid-century modern headboard, was centered on the far wall. The footboard was pointed toward the entrance to the large room, where Peter stood silently.

Marie Antoinette sighed her pleasure as she moved with the emperor. Her aristocratic clothes were pushed up and away from her naked vagina, her crotch was wide open and her legs were wrapped graspingly around the emperor's back. Peter watched the hireling's buttocks moving up and down as the emperor plunged his oversized penis into Peter's wife.

Peter's unbroken silence hid his anger, hid his pain, hid his shame, hid his rage. Peter struggled to breathe without shuddering; caught in a moment of absolute insanity, his soul torn asunder. This could not be! This was truly happening! This changed everything! This was an end. It was their end.

Peter, like his costume's namesake, watched his family die, but his family died in soft moans and in deep plunging penetration, in the heat of sexual passion, and not from the cold bark of a criminal's gun.

The Halloween party's Dark Knight knew his next actions would have irreversible consequences. Just as what he witnessed destroyed so much of what he believed in, so too, he must decide whether his actions would destroy them, or carelessly destroy himself. Should his actions be that of a ruthless destructive avenger, as a cold and unmoved statue, as a surreptitious instigator of revenge or as something as yet not considered?

Without haste, but moving with purpose, Peter backed from the room, gently closing the huge door to the bedroom almost shut, but not closing it, thereby avoiding the sound of the latch. He walked swiftly out past the living room and through the front door. He tapped his mic. "Jimmy, I need all eyes and sound in the pool house on and recording."

"They're on now, boss," said Jimmy.

"Good," said Peter.

Peter walked back into the pool house, and directly to the main bedroom. He swung the door open, then stated loudly, "All Lights On." The scene was bathed in light.

The couple was captured by the bright light. "Jesus Christ! What the hell?" the emperor expostulated as he pulled himself quickly out of Clair's pussy, breaking the grasp of her legs. The emperor saw Batman glowering at him. Neither the emperor, nor Clair, yet knew who the Dark Knight was. The emperor knew neither Clair nor his employer, Peter. He just knew he liked to get his rocks off, and Marie Antoinette was very obliging.

Clair yelled, "Get out!" at the Batman. In her shock and surprise of their discovery, she had not identified the voice of her husband. "All Lights Off," she yelled, and the room went dark again.

"All Lights On," yelled Peter. "Clair, don't shut them off again," he said vehemently, his rage clear in his voice.

Clair now knew it was Peter and that Peter had seen her fucking the emperor.

Aside from his placard and his crown, the only thing the emperor had worn that night was Clair's vagina. Now his prick was clad solely in her lubrication. His outsized penis still pointed up, and it bobbed about as he made ready to dart from the room. The persistence of his erection was a satyr's promise, youth and vigor made of velvet hardness. He might not have known who he was with, but the emperor knew he wanted no part of the scene that was unfolding and sought a quick exit, Priapus penis and all.

The emperor ran towards the Batman Peter. Whether Peter knew the emperor was trying to escape or not, the emperor's act of running toward him was sufficiently aggressive that Peter understood he could respond to protect himself, and he swung a haymaker at the emperor as the emperor ran at him to get out of the door. The arching punch connected, and the emperor, hit solidly on the temple, instantly fell to the floor, unconscious, where he began to snore, lying on his back with his still throbbing, unconquered erection, twitching with his breathing, to and fro.

Peter walked to the side of the bed, where Clair had moved into a seated position, her back against the headboard. Her dress now covered her sex, and was smoothed down to her ankles. Her blood spurting mechanism had been triggered by her movements, and blood trickled from her ostensibly bleeding, and in close up, now also suppurating wound around her neck.

The Dark Knight stared at Marie Antoinette. His eyes were ablaze with anger and pain. Only now, in their real confrontation did other emotions come into play. Now Peter felt the disappointment, the loss, the betrayal of his trust.

Standing there, staring, the Knight began to speak. "Clair, you've destroyed us. Who are you? Who the fuck are you? I've loved you, so absolutely... just... completely. You were my touchstone. Your love was my home. Our home. I'm lost. You've cast me adrift."

His adrenaline subsiding, Batman Peter sat down onto the floor, unwilling to sit on that sullied bed with his sullied wife. He leaned back, his back resting against a bronze statue of an art deco version of a full-sized winged woman. Peter tapped his mic. "Jimmy, the naked emperor is down in the pool house. Send quiet assistance to deal with any injury. View the tape to see what happened, keep cops out of it. Be here in 20 minutes if I don't call to tell you he is mobile."

Peter turned his Bat-head toward the suppurating Marie Antoinette. "We had everything," Peter said. "What does all of it do for us, since you've betrayed us?"

Clair saw tears brimming in Peter's eyes. She began to lightly weep, seeing the depth of Peter's pain. "I'm so, so sorry, Peter. I wanted extra excitement tonight, and thought it wouldn't matter if I had some quick, zipless, sex with this emperor character. We're still okay. We're still us. We don't need to leave each other. I love you. We love each other. He was just a toy to play with, not something to hurt or to end us. He wasn't important enough to do that, he was nobody, he was nothing."

Peter raised his head high to stare at Clair, his mouth open. "He was nothing? His prick was inside you. It can't be much more personal or intimate than that. It was meaningless? You were moaning as that prick fucked you. I kiss your cunt, I lick your labia, I've stuck my tongue in your asshole, I've licked your anus. That part of you was reserved solely for me, that privacy, that limitation to access, and the love I had for you, all of it made your sex, your pussy, precious to me. They were mine, too, as much as your own. Kissing you there, and fucking you, was private. It was us, just us. Because you loved me. You promised yourself to me."

The Dark Knight shook his head. "If he was nothing, and you said he was nothing, but you were willing to fuck him, that means you would fuck anyone if the notion struck you. Jesus." In her response, Clair had disclosed more than she intended.

"Don't you see? Don't you get it?" He continued, "Your clearly... cavalier adultery has trashed what was us. Our marriage was built upon what we sacrificed to each other. I gave you my fidelity. I meant it. You gave me yours. I thought you meant it. What it meant, both as a reality and as a symbol, was a mutual sacrifice, it meant our love for each other was real. When you fucked someone else, a 'nobody,' you destroyed your pledge to us, to our marriage. That sacrifice to us, you sacrificed to your whim to fuck a stranger. We vowed not to have sex with others. We pledged ourselves sexually, and in all ways, to each other. We sacrificed polyamory for monogamy, to put one another first.

"Our 'us' has been mangled, ripped apart. I don't know how often you have fucked others, but I don't doubt that you have. You rang a bell you can't un-ring.

"I'm rich, you're rich. That part of our lives will go on. All our stuff, it's like a bloated body that's lost its soul, floating dead upon the dirty waters.

"We're both going to be pursued for our money. But we will never know, for certain, that others will love us for ourselves, or just for what we have."

"No, Peter, you're making this choice," Clair said. "You don't need to shut me out. I know I did something wrong, and it has hurt you so badly, I know that, but I didn't mean for it to damage, much less end, our love for each other. Can't you hear me? I know I love you, the side sex was just a diversion, just a stupid, thoughtless, vacation from what we mean to each other."

Peter drew his knees up toward his chest as he sat there, then crossed his arms atop them to rest his forehead on his forearms. He closed his eyes and considered what to do or say next. Clair was babbling about their love for one another, but it sounded like treacly bullshit, so Peter shut it out so he could think.

"Clair, why did you want me in that armor?" Peter asked, without looking up.

Clair was still lightly crying. "Because you're my hero, my knight, you've always been there to save me," she responded.

"No," Peter replied. "You wanted me immobilized. You wanted me trapped in that tin can so you could fuck someone else."

"No, no, no, Peter, that isn't true! I wanted everyone to see you through my eyes," Clair said. "As a knight in shining armor!"

"You spent a million dollars to put me in a cage. You wanted to wrap me up with our money, to the point I couldn't move freely. You cared so much about me that you, of all people, didn't see that George was the one in that garbage pail, suffering. Your knight in shining armor was so important to you, you left him trapped, sitting on a divan, sweating, to go chase a big cock." Peter then raised his Batman masked head to look at her. "We aren't going to recover from this, Clair." Peter lowered his head again.

"You said you didn't know the emperor. His cock was bareback. You fucked him raw, without knowing anything about him. Fuck. I'll get checked for STDs." Peter tapped his mic. "Jimmy, get Dr. James on the line, tell him I need a full panel of blood work to test for STDs, later tonight, let's say 2:00 AM"

"On it," Jimmy said.

Still not raising his head, Peter said, "I believed in you, Clair. I believed in us. That's over now. I'll mourn what we've lost. It was more than just our trust, more than just our love, though losing them breaks my heart. I lost the last part of me that wasn't defined by money and power. I still saw us as just us, not as uber rich, just as Peter and Clair, who loved each other, and got stupid rich. I thought that our 'us' transcended everything and was more real to us than our wealth. We were what was special, not the money and the power."

While his forehead was still resting on his forearms, Peter shook his head, as though saying no, and said, "But you know, even though you set me up with that armor, I also avoided self-sacrifice. Instead of sacrificing myself to your desire that I wear that horrific armor, I chose to leave that sacrifice to George."

"Doesn't that mean we're both at fault, both imperfect?" Clair asked.

"You're kidding, right?" Peter responded archly. "There is no equivalence in me dodging wearing that garbage can you insisted I wear, to you trying to entrap me in it to go chasing big cock. Nothing is equivalent there at all."

Peter's security detail arrived; two men and Jimmy entered the room. The large security men grabbed the emperor; one grabbed him under his shoulders, hooking his arms under the unconscious man's armpits and across the emperor's chest, the other grabbed the emperor beneath his knees. As they exited the pool house, there was muted laughter, caused by the sight of the emperor's erection, that continued its rigid salute as the emperor was hauled away, swaying languidly from side to side, cheerfully proclaiming its unassailable virility.

Jimmy stood by, awaiting any further orders. He looked at Peter and at Clair, then said, "You okay, boss?"

"Yeah, Jimmy. Get back on the monitor. We'll talk later."

The Dark Knight stood, alone. His shoulders squared. He looked down at Marie Antoinette, still on the bed. "Enjoy what's left of the party. I won't come looking for you again. Never again." He turned and strode from the room, leaving Clair.

Stepping into the grand ballroom, the Dark Knight listened to the buzz and laughter of the crowd. George was still sitting in his tin can, surrounded by a host of sycophants.

The lights had been dimmed, on schedule. The time had arrived for the orchestra to play "Clair de Lune," the sweetly special, evocative music he had chosen that reflected in sound, the essence of his wife, the one who had been the love of his life. Clair had been his moonlight. As the beautiful, halting, music began to play, the inspiration for Debussy's masterpiece was projected onto the walls; the poem by Paul Verlaine. The multitude of projectors each sent forth the image of the complete poem, as though written on parchment by quill pens, the poem played in parchment shards across the ballroom's structures, on the horror vignettes, and on the guests:

Moonlight

Your soul is a chosen landscape

On which charming masks and Bergamasques cast enchantment as they go,

Playing the lute and dancing and almost

Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

Singing all the while, in the minor mode,

Of victorious love and the opportune life,

They do not seem to believe in their happiness

And their song mingles with the moonlight,

With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,

Which makes the birds dream in the trees

And the plumes of the fountains weep in ecstasy,

The tall, slender plumes of the fountains among the marble statues.

Peter, the Dark Knight, saw the blue-eyed girl with the bat wings standing nearby as "Clair de Lune" played. Her wings were unfurled, marking her space among the other guests. He walked over to her, and reached for her hand. She allowed it to be taken, and looked into the eyes of the Batman. "I'm Peter" he said. "Peter, the owner of PDI, Potamus Digital Industries."

He watched his money catch fire in her eyes.