The Real Truth

Annie Stepford-Jones appeared and disappeared unnoticed. Her presence in the world was very small. Her skin was so pale it seemed even sunshine failed to notice her. She spoke always as if she was trying out the words, practicing what to say rather than really saying anything. If other women noticed her at all they commented on the dreary colors she wore and the shapeless clothes that looked deliberately old-fashioned. People who were sympathetic to her (she didn't have friends exactly) described her as "shy". She was married to Charlie, a hollow man; he was large and loud.

Everything about Charlie annoyed me. Sitting on his deck drinking his beer listening to his boastful stories annoyed me. My best mate, Donald, was an old school friend of Charlie's and Donald was loyal in his friendships. It was during one of Charlie's endless stories that my attention turned away from his endlessly moving mouth framed in a neatly trimmed beard and looked for the first time at his wife.

Now, like most guys I amuse myself in queues at airports and grocery stores by deciding who around me is worth fucking and deciding which of the candidates I would most like to screw. It passes the time and makes the looking more fun. Annie's blankness would have made her invisible at the airport, but here on the deck on this hot afternoon she was the only candidate.

There were two moles on the side of her neck that looked like bite marks from a child vampire. Her head was leaning to one side in a pose of listening to her husband and so the muscles of her neck made her vampire bites more prominent. Her hair was gathered up into a severe bun that seemed to stretch the skin on her scalp. She wore no make-up. There was the suggestion of freckles on her cheeks. She was sitting on the edge of the white plastic chair as if ready to jump up at her husband's command. She leaned forward so that her shoulders squeezed her torso and this gave the impression of her trying to squeeze her body into the world. She was neither short nor tall. Her knees poking hesitatingly out from beneath the blue dress that wrapped her up like a hastily offered Christmas gift were bony white with a splash of tiny red scars. These were the traces of childhood accidents; perhaps a fall from a bike, maybe a push from a schoolyard bully. Her legs rested on feet elevated by her toes so she seemed ready to start a sprint race. She wore brown leather sandals which made her feet the most exposed and naked part of her except her neck and face.

I returned to her face to inspect her mouth (does she give Charlie head?) and found her eyes staring at me. At first I was taken aback, momentarily ashamed. But I held her gaze investigating her eyes. They were green with flecks of what seemed like white or silver. Her eye lashes protruded like corn stalks. It was clear to me that her eyebrows would have met above her nose if she had allowed nature to have its way. This was the first sign a vanity. She plucked her eyebrows. Her forehead was unwrinkled. I wondered whether this was because she didn't have worries or whether her worries wrinkled some other part of her body. Her lips were thin as if they had been added late and just pressed into place with little care and attention. I recalled that she was a vegetarian. It seemed to me that this opening to the world was one she regretted having.

Her eyes were still on me when I turned my attention to her hands. Perhaps she was angry I couldn't tell. Hands are important. They touch and grasp and press. It was obvious Annie used her hands to feel her way through the world like someone locked into a dark room groping for the exit. Her nails though were trim and neat. Another touch of vanity. I returned to the marks of the vampire, imagining my lips pressed against her neck.

Suddenly the picture shifted and blurred. Annie rose and turned and walked towards into the house. She was gone. Charlie had stopped talking. When I couldn't recall.

Once Charlie began another of his stories I reduced his audience by one and left the table. From the hallway I could see her sitting at the kitchen table twirling a straw that she had sunk into a soda can. She looked shipwrecked, cast away and alone. I felt no sympathy for her. After a few minutes she looked as if she had known all along that I had been watching. What I had thought was anger earlier had obviously been nothing but a trick of the light. Her eyes were permanently set in an expression of subservience. Like a domestic pet afraid of the anger its owner she cowered in her body waiting for the inevitable blows.

I would have turned away erasing her from my mind like the sight of dead donkey on the side of the road. But her eyebrows and manicured finger nails held me. Her vanities betrayed a whisper of humanity tucked somewhere inside her white sunless flesh. And then there was the mark of the child vampire that suggested that pleasure could be extracted from her body like tin from a mine.

She rose from her chair and tried to walk past me. I reached out and imprisoned her arm in my fist. Her flesh yield to my grasp. She said nothing, not even looking at me. I sniffed, drawing in her air. Her hair smelled like cheap shampoo. I could smell nothing else except her unimportance, her utter insignificance. She had the scent of a life that had failed, that never should have been started.

Her mouth tasted like the sweet soda that had recently filled it. I drove my tongue as far as I could towards her throat searching for the taste of her vanity. Her lack of resistance to my violation of her mouth appalled me. I tightened my grip on her arm and twisted her skin until I released a small yelp of pain from her mouth. I searched her mouth again this time looking for her pain, wanting to taste the sound of her yelp.

Outside I heard Charlie's booming, empty voice recount an old story. I pushed Annie towards the bathroom never letting go of her arm, never releasing her from the pain of my grasp. Once inside I slotted the latch home and locked her in. Her arm was bright red and would soon be bruised. Her flesh had taken on some color at last.

Her primary vanity was her existence. She wanted to be in the world but she didn't think of herself as worthy of it. She stood naked in front of me, relieved of her disguises, just flesh and hair. I put my mouth over her vampire marks trying to feel their heat. I sucked hard on the skin before carefully biting into her. My teeth marks surrounded the moles closing them in and intensifying their shape and significance. I licked the tears of pain that were slowly draining out of her eyes. They tasted of like her truth escaping into the open.

Her bare ass was striped red and white from the garden chair she had sat on. I looked from this to her face reflected in the mirror above the sink as I drove my desire into her childlike pussy. Like an airbed I pumped her, anticipating the creation of something useful, worldly, actual, from my heaving efforts. Her eyes were wide now, growing in the rippling pond of tears that overspilled and dribbled like spit down her face. I could smell the sweat in her armpits as she struggled like a worm speared against the thorn of a rose tree.

The memory of ancient desire now bubbled beneath her flesh, displaying itself in the ruddy, mottled hue that now made her skin more opaque than translucent. Like a murderer I thrust deeper into her. My cock was an ax snatched up in a terrifying anger and wielded with the force of a mad Viking. The whole room was suddenly filled with her sound. Her speechlessness was broken by an animal's cry. Her pleasure horrified her, filled her with the most tortuous pain. My ax struck open the grain of humanity hidden in her cunt and it burst with the screaming sound of truth. The scream went on and on, returning again and again. Still I searched deeper until life, animal and human, edged cautiously into her eyes.

There was only a growl in her throat when I stopped, my cock resting in her slopping cavity. She looked at me through the mirror. Little Annie looking out through human eyes embedded in a richly red face that glowed with existence. She was at that instant beautiful; she was worthy of love, my love. An instant later I saw the truth in her eyes tremble with each loud bang on the bathroom door as Charlie pounded and pounded against it. Soon she was like a frightened child again, struggling into her clothes. I unlocked the door before she could finish, pushed past the frantic, empty Charlie and left her to her wifely fate.