(Author's note: this story deals with some very gritty and harsh subject matter. This is not for those looking for a straightforward sex story. There are many themes that some people might find objectionable, but to reveal them might give away parts of the story prematurely. If you continue reading, please keep this warning in mind.)
(This is the fifth of an eight-part series.)
Part Five
"Holly, honey, you look damn good, girl."
She stepped back from the mirror, holding the mascara brush in one hand, admiring her work. Her face had that perfect, even ebony tone she was always striving for. Her lips were the ultimate shade of dusky red. Her hair was silky and shimmering, a glossy shade of jet with well-placed blonde highlights.
Holly grinned at herself. "Ain't no boy in the world wouldn't wanna fuck you, girl," she told herself. She set down the mascara brush, adjusted her breasts within the snug-fitting Victoria's Secret bra. Not that she truly needed them, as her breasts were the result of implants rather than genetics. Fine-boned hands slid down dark and toned skin toward a crotch covered with silky red panties. She pressed a couple of fingers against her groin, then shifted. And shifted again. She grimaced.
"Damn it," Holly grumbled, pulling the panties aside. A flaccid penis and smooth, hairless balls dangled down a moment before she tucked them back under. After rearranging her panties, she smiled once more upon her reflection. "That's better."
The smart phone on the edge of the vanity trilled and glowed. She touched it with the pad of a long-nailed finger, and smiled at what she read in the text message.
"Calm down, boy, you're gonna get me soon enough," Holly commented. She licked her lips. "For two hundred dollars, you're gonna get everything you want." She laughed suddenly. "Two hundred dollah, I make ya hollah!"
* * * *
Holly waited several seconds after knocking on the hotel room door. She smoothed her hands down along the mini-dress, working out whatever wrinkles may have accrued simply from walking. Then the door opened. She smiled professionally.
"Hi, honey."
Talon let his eyes wander over the figure before him. He had to admit, "she" was certainly passable. Had he passed Holly on the street, he would have thought her a woman born.
He licked his lips. "Damn," he breathed. "You look better than your pics on Craigslist." He pushed open the door and stepped aside.
"Why thank you, honey," Holly responded as she sashayed past the young man and into the room. She went as far as the end of the queen-sized bed, looking about as she always did for signs of the vice squad. She turned back, giving Talon a direct look. "You said you're just in town on business?"
Talon closed the door and locked it. He gave a nod as he turned to the dark-skinned transsexual. "Couple times a month, my company sends me here. I'm a tech rep."
Holly cocked her head. "And you like T-girls," she said with a coquettish smile.
Talon made himself blush and scratched the back of his head. "People I work with, they're pretty tame. Conservative, I mean. Their idea of 'freaky' is road head."
Holly licked her lips. "Mmm. I love giving road head," she declared. "But then, I love sucking cock no matter where I am. I did it once in a movie theater, and probably a dozen other people saw me doing it. Really turned me on."
Talon grinned. "I bet," he said. "Wow. In a theater. That's pretty hot."
Holly chuckled, sitting upon the edge of the bed. She effected a haughty look, like that of a sexual master before a naive young student. "Anything, everything, anywhere," she said. She pursed her lips, letting her gaze travel up and down Talon's lean frame. "You're goddamn sexy."
Talon blushed again. "I don't hear that much," he said sheepishly, approaching the way a gazelle might approach a tigress. "Wow. You're really hot."
Holly shifted into business mode. "Well, first things first, honey," she said. "We agreed on a certain something."
Talon nodded. "Right," he said, digging into his pocket. He came up with a neatly-folded stack of twenty-dollar bills, which he held out for her. She took them with a sly smile, counted, then tucked the wad of cash into her handbag which she then set on the floor.
"So, Bobby," she said, using the name she had been given during their previous emails. "What you wanna do with me?"
Talon smiled slowly, a sudden darkness crossing his face. His eyes flickered past the black transsexual, as Thorne appeared from behind the hotel room's drapes along the far wall, a cloth in hand as he approached the "woman" stealthily.
"Nothing you're going to enjoy," he intoned, just as Thorne pounced, wrapping a strong left arm about Holly's shoulders and smothering the cloth around her mouth and nose.
* * * *
June sat up in bed, staring at the banal infomercial on the TV. The faint fragrance of sex lingered in the air, but it had been hours since she and Sophie had made love. On any other occasion, relaxed sleep followed any bout of lovemaking between them, and June would not awaken until the alarm on her phone went off at half past six in the morning. But on this night, she was troubled by dark thoughts and images.
The stirring of her partner did not register as June numbly switched the channels, looking for something –
anything
– to occupy her mind. But even with hundreds of options, nothing could banish the twisted images that plagued her mind.
"June?"
The sound of her love's voice garnered her instant attention. She glanced to the sublime redhead beside her as the woman reached out, still half asleep, to caress June's nude body. She caught Sophie's hand and clutched it tightly.
"Sorry, babe. I didn't want to wake you."
Sophie made the effort to sit up. Her auburn hair was a tangled mess about her face, but she still looked uncompromisingly gorgeous. "No, it's okay," she murmured, leaning against June's bony shoulder. "What'cha watching?"
"Nothing," June replied, flicking to another channel. The images of kittens playing filled the screen, accompanied by a voice-over of a man describing their actions in anthropomorphic terms.
"You okay?"
June ground her teeth. She let the hand holding the remote fall to her lap. "Just having trouble relaxing, that's all," she said, then raised her other hand to pet Sophie's soft hair. "Go back to sleep."
But the redhead shifted, sitting up more fully, her eyes becoming more lucid. She looked upon her lover with concern. "Something's really bothering you," she observed. "You've never had insomnia before."
June grimaced. "It's nothing."
"No, it's not," Sophie insisted.
"Look, you don't wanna hear about it," June said, then expelled a short, harsh laugh under her breath. "I don't even wanna hear about it."
Sophie ran her hands across June's body, casually brushing fingers across small breasts. She kissed June's shoulder, then her neck, then the lobe of her ear. "You can always talk to me about anything," she whispered. "Even if you think it might scare me. Believe it or not, I'm tougher than you think."
June managed a smile. She tilted her head to give a quick kiss, but then returned to flipping through the channels. But she wasn't looking at anything. Nothing registered.
"When I was six," June suddenly began. "I had three best friends. Purple Bear, Green Monkey, and Puppy."
Sophie smiled with affection. "Stuffed animals, right?"
June nodded. "I was an only kid," she said. "Anyway, I remember one day when I couldn't find Puppy. I looked all over, but couldn't find him. Went crying to my mom. I was convinced that some monster had taken Puppy. No matter what she said, I just
knew
that a monster had taken Puppy and I'd never see him again."
Sophie laughed softly, letting out a soft sigh as she hugged her lover. "But you did, right? Found him in the back of your closet or something?"
June sighed through her nostrils. "No. See, I had been sick for a couple days. Threw up all over my blankets. Turns out that my dad, in his infinite alcoholic wisdom, yanked off all my sheets, with Puppy inside them, and threw the whole mess in the trash. But my mom didn't tell me that; I found out about it later. Instead, she told me that I just lost Puppy, that a monster couldn't have taken him, because there was no such thing as real monsters."
Sophie remained quiet, petting June's back.
June stared, face drawn, at the television, registering nothing upon the screen. "But she was wrong. There are real monsters in the world. Maybe they didn't take my Puppy, but they're real. Holy fuck are they real."
Sophie looked upon her lover's face with worry. "This is about that case you're working on, isn't it?" she asked softly.
June let out a quivering breath. She looked down at her hands as she rubbed them together. "I've heard people talk about good and evil, but always figured they were just using those terms to define something they couldn't understand. I mean, a guy kills his wife because she's fucking someone else. I can understand that. Some crack whore lets herself get kicked out of her apartment because she spends all her money getting her fix. I can understand that. It's sick, and disgusting, and makes me feel bad for being the same kind of basic human being they are, but I can understand it. It's explainable to me."
She fumed a moment, glaring at the images on the screen across from the bed. "But I found out today that I can't understand everything," she said in a hoarse, shuddering voice.
Sophie made a
tsk
sound and touched June's chin. "Baby, sweetie--"
But June flinched and bucked away. "You don't understand," she said bitingly. "And I really hope you never do. These . . . guys, these men we're after . . . they took a dog they'd had as a pet for years. Years! And they just . . . chopped him up. It makes me sick to think about it. Like, 'here, boy! Come on, let's play!'
Thwack
!"
June squeezed her eyes shut, fighting down the sudden rush of bile in the back of her throat.
Sophie did not know what to say. She could only hug her lover and try to give her comfort.
"People talk about what's good and what's evil," June intoned darkly. "But they really don't know. And I really wish I didn't know it now. These guys aren't drug addicts, or passion killers, or sick-ass serial killers with a fucking chemical imbalance, or anything else I could explain away. They're . . . evil. Inhuman. And I don't know what to do to stop them."
Sophie shifted around until she faced June. Her bright green eyes bore into her lover's. "Well, if you're going to believe in evil, then you have to believe in good, too," she said. "And trust me, of everyone I've ever met in my life, you're definitely the most
good
person I've ever known."
June smiled slowly, feeling the weight of tears in her eyes. She looked upon Sophie with love, affection, and graciousness. "That means so much more to me than you could ever know," she whispered in a ragged voice. "I just wish I knew what to do."
