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I slept through most of the day. When I got up again, it was already dark outside. I had managed to sleep away the entire day. I got up and had a shower and then got dressed. I moped around the house for a while and then decided to go out for a bite to eat. I hardly felt hungry at all, but I didn't have any plans for the evening and I didn't want to sit at home by myself. So I went out to the car. It was still raining outside. A miserable night.

I drove to the local diner and had ham and eggs. A mid-evening breakfast. The eggs were overdone and the toast was burnt, and the coffee was sour. I was beginning to wish I had never gotten up. I hardly touched the food and paid and left.

I got into my car and started to drive. It was around 9:00 and I was just cruising aimlessly, thinking about all the women I had been fucking in the last few days. I was also thinking about Patti. I really loved Patti, I wondered what she would think about all my fucking around. I knew I would tell her. There was no doubt about that.

I cruised around thinking about all the cunts I had been looking at and poking my prick into recently and although my memory of all that pussy was so vivid that I could even smell the cunt, I didn't get a single erection. I was kind of burned out on fucking I guess. Feeling sort of weak and aimless.

I was driving without thinking about my driving. I've done that a lot when I do long-distance driving. Sort of put the brain on "automatic" and it drives the car without you consciously thinking about it. I had been doing this for a couple of hours, going all over town, when I looked up and saw, on the right side of the road, a sign that read, "Koczechne Estate." Without even thinking about it I turned the car into the drive. The complete ease with which I headed the car up that road unnerved me a little. I hadn't intended on coming here at all, and here I was. I glanced at my watch. It was midnight. Exactly when I should have arrived if I had started at the designated 11:30.

The driveway was lined with ragged shrubbery that looked like it hadn't been cared for in years. There was a wrought iron gate at the end of the drive that was wide open – I supposed for me. Beyond the gate lay an old mansion of rough-hewn stone that was dark except for a single light in the front room. I parked my car beneath a huge oak tree in the front and walked to the front door. There was a large, brass knocker on the door and I rapped it a few times and waited.

The door opened slowly. A woman in black stood at the door and said, "Come in, Allen."

She had short brown hair, neatly cut, and deep brown eyes. I walked past her and she closed the door behind us and followed me into the room. It was a large room lit by a single small lamp and so it was still rather dark. The floor was a dirty parquet and the furniture was late-50's modern. Mies Van der Rone shit, if you know what I mean. The furniture looked like it was rarely used and gathered dust.

"Sit down," she said congenially and I did.

I noticed that she wore no shoes and that her feet were wet and dirty, as if she had been out walking in the mud. Her dress and hair, though, were dry. I supposed she had gone out walking with an umbrella. It was odd to see her mud-caked feet as they contrasted with her formal dress. It was a black evening gown that went down almost to her feet. It was cut low at the front so that I could see that she had nice tits. I felt really awkward. She noticed it and said, "There is no reason for you to be nervous. We are perfectly alone."

"Oh, I'm not nervous," I said and coughed.

"A drink?" she asked.

"Please," I said.

She poured out one drink and handed it to me, no taking one for herself. "I hope you like brandy," she said.

"Love it," I answered.

"They always do, it seems. Were I to offer you water, would you love that too?"

"What?" I asked.

"Drink up and never mind. It doesn't matter."

I shook it off and drank. The brandy was strong and it warmed me up a bit. I had begun to feel a little chilled. I hadn't noticed when I first came in, but it was exceedingly cold in the house. I thought that the floor must be freezing, especially to her with her wet, bare feet.

"Are you cold still?" she asked when I had finished the brandy.

"Better," I said.

"It is a cold house. I like it, though. I like the cold. It has a certain attraction for me. The cold and the damp, like the earth itself."

When she spoke, she looked straight through me as if I didn't exist. Her eyes looked very still and her color was extremely pale. Yet there was something about her… the bright red of her lips, maybe, or the way she gestured with her long, pointed fingers.

"You've answered a lot of these ads?" I asked.

"Yes," she answered. "I find the men who take them are interesting souls, in a way."

She had a way of talking, of choosing her words that sent the chills running right up my spine. And she never seemed to blink. I had nothing to say to her, and she didn't seem interested in speaking, so we sat in silence for a long time. The sound of the rain could be heard as it struck the windows and the roof. Occasionally the wind would rustle the trees and it sounded as if there were someone stirring about outside.

"Are you curious about me?" she asked.

"Yeah, I guess I am," I admitted.

"I am a lonely woman who has a need for men. I have the means and the time to afford attaining them in the way that I do. I never leave this house and no man has ever returned to this place. I was in love once but I was scorned and I have never forgiven him. As far as he is concerned, I am dead."

I could feel the chills running up and down my spine as she spoke. I wished I had never come and I wanted some way of escaping. I didn't have the least bit of sexual desire towards her. She drove me batty. I was freezing.

"You're cold," she said. "Come, we can build a fire."

She went to the fireplace and I followed her. There were some half-burned logs in it that looked like they had been there years. There were some newspapers beside the fireplace and we began to crumple them up for kindling. I noticed that they were all the same newspaper, an old copy with a date in the 60's. The headline was about an accident of some kind. As the paper burned, I read the disappearing headline, "Governor and… plunge car into ocean." The name of the other party had already burned away.

The fire crackled and sputtered. The wood was wet and wouldn't start. We burned all the newspaper but couldn't get the fire started. I was just about shivering with the cold. I wanted to go home.

"I suppose it won't start," she said. "It never does. We shall have to find another way of keeping warm. Come with me."

I wanted to tell her that I was leaving, but I couldn't for some reason bring myself to contradict her. The way she looked right through me…

I followed her down a dark hallway to another room. She turned on the light and it was a small, green lamp that barely lit the room. It bathed the great, canopied bed in a green palor. It looked like a scene from an underwater movie. Everything seemed to be floating in the green light. Outside, the wind had picked up and was hurling raindrops against the windows.

She walked past me and sat down on the bed. Without speaking a word, she began to undress. The gown came off in one motion and she was completely naked underneath except for a diamond-studded collar she wore around her neck. She lay down on the bed, her body glowing in the green light. She was ravishing, but for some reason I wasn't stimulated. She had large, high tits with nipples pointing straight up, and her cunt was covered with curly black fur. I knew that the sight of a body as curvy and sleek as hers would have ordinarily driven me wild, but I was overcome with the feel of the place, the green, misty light, the weird way of talking she had, the extreme cold. She didn't seem to be cold at all.