Across the room, I could see Lynn scowling at me, annoyed I had ignored her primly conservative costume advice and turned up in my own creation. I just smiled good-naturedly and gave her a little wave, mentally altering her entire pirate wench outfit to be at least six inches shorter and possibly two sizes tighter. Bless her. She didn’t really think I was going to miss an opportunity like this, did she?
The sheer beauty of costume parties is that they make it utterly acceptable, if not mandatory, to dress like a complete slut, and though sluttery is usually what I pride my girls on, not myself, I felt it rude not to get in the spirit of things. After much deliberation, I had decided on Catwoman, since I already owned the outfit, and I knew it was just what I needed to make Cute Little Neighbor aware of what I intended for her. As a nod to the flimsy excuse for head-to-toe perversion my character allowed, I even had a matching black cat-eye mask, but the beauty of the outfit was in the suit. Every curve of my body was coated in a thick sheen of polished black latex, clinging to me like a second skin, each limb a smooth length of blackness; my feet were encased in tightly laced six-inch-high boots. My ivory-white breasts were crushed into an unbearable cleavage, revealed by the temptingly lowered zipper bisecting my entire torso, undone just enough to display what I wanted, but also to hint at what was beneath. She would certainly want what was beneath, I knew that much.
I was pondering how long to leave it before going to fetch her, and how forward to be when I did, when I heard a small, timid voice at my side.
“Hello.”
I turned, blinking in surprise to see her standing there already. So the prey thinks she can be the predator, hmm? Her eyes were round and expressive, a deep brown framed by long lashes, and there was a sprinkling of freckles across her rounded nose. Her neat brown bob was topped with a pair of cat ears looking suspiciously like bachelorette party accessories, and the rest of the outfit was a plain black leotard, shiny black tights and a homemade cat tail made from a wire hanger wrapped in furry fabric. Around her neck was a pastel-pink kitty collar, trimmed with diamanté, with a little metal tag in the shape of a heart. I do like an attention to detail. The paws were what got me though: safety-pinned with ribbon to each of her leotard sleeves hung two furry black mitts, stitched with pretty, pink satin paw prints, looking alluringly as if they would render the hands quite useless if put on properly. Oh, my poor, helpless, pretty little kitty…
“Hello,” I replied, half smiling in amusement at how perfectly innocent she looked like that, half at how depraved I knew she would become. “What’s your name?”
She looked a little awkward, as if taken off balance by my simplest of questions, or perhaps more by the tone of an adult talking to a small but adorable child, instead of one adult talking to another.
“Susie.”
“Well, Susie, it’s very nice to meet you. You’ve just moved in downstairs, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, a couple of weeks ago. It seems lovely here; everyone’s really friendly and everything, not like where I used to live; my neighbors were just a nightmare, and Lynn’s ever so sweet to invite me to her party, and…”
“Yes, she is,” I cut in smoothly, almost able to taste the nervousness of her babbling. “I would quite like you to go and get me a drink, Susie. Vodka and soda, with fresh lime. Half-full with ice. Will you go and do that for me?”
Her eyes widened as if she was not quite sure if I really had just interrupted her and told her what to do. Well, asked her, really. Telling would come later.
“Oh… um, of course. Certainly. I’ll be right back.”
“Good girl,” I said with a smile, watching her cheeks flush as she scurried away, her little coat-hanger tail swaying from side to side. Oh, she was just too, too perfect. I had tried in the past to take the small-talk route, exchange pleasantries, discuss preferences. It usually worked out all right in the end, but it was just so terribly, tediously dull. It was much more fun to start off by knocking them sideways and see what happened, and besides, I’d never been wrong yet. I always know when a nice girl wants to be bad for me.
A few moments later, she returned, my drink in one hand and hers in the other, an expectant smile on her face.
“Thank you,” I said as I took it, making sure to look straight into her big brown eyes in a way I knew would make her squirm. She looked so beautiful like that. “I do like your costume, Susie. Did you make it yourself?”
“Yes.” She looked a little embarrassed at having made her own costume, not realizing that was the very thing that made me want her even more, that innocence that just couldn’t be bought.
“It’s very nice. Why haven’t you got your paws on though?” I inquired, knowing full well why not.
“Well, they’re just a bit tricky to do things with you see. Everyone was getting a bit fed up with me getting black fluff in the Doritos, so I just took them off!” She grinned shyly, tugging at the fuzzy paws. “They were more for effect than for wearing, really.”
“Well, a real kitten wouldn’t have the choice to take her paws off, would she?” I remarked, admiring the way this made her shift her weight from one foot to the other. “She wouldn’t be drinking from a glass, but from a little saucer on the floor, and curling up at her mistress’s feet like a good little kitty, having her ears stroked and her neck tickled. That is, if you were good. I think perhaps you should put them on, don’t you?”
She stared at me, as if trying to decide if I was being serious or not. I could see all of the thoughts running through her head, wondering if I meant what she thought she’d heard. I just waited.
“Well…” she began slowly, “will you hold my drink for me?”
Oh, that first victory always tasted the sweetest.
“Of course.” I took the glass from her, watching her awkwardly slip her hands inside the pink satin lining of the paws. She had certainly done a good job, to bother lining them at all. It made me wonder how much she enjoyed the thought of putting her hands inside there, feeling herself just that little bit immobilized, not being able to grip and hold and reach.
“Can I have my drink back now, please?”
It almost made me want to laugh, her trusting naïveté.
“I thought we established kitties don’t drink from glasses, but from saucers?”
“Did we?”
“Yes.”
She looked at me, a sudden panic flashing across her features as she realized what I meant, at the same time wondering if that really was what I meant. “Don’t worry though,” I soothed her, “I’ll fetch a saucer for you, seeing as you can’t do it yourself. Wait there… and don’t move.”
I made sure the last words held just the right amount of force to let her know that I expected her to do as I said, and left her there frantically imagining all of the horrors a saucer could bring. I kept glancing back at her while I went to the kitchen, and sure enough, she didn’t move an inch. Such a good girl. I surveyed the contents of her glass, which didn’t look like anything I wanted my kitten to drink, so discarded it. I felt a real kitty should probably drink milk, but seeing as mine was a special one, she deserved something a little more special. A rummage round the back of Lynn’s fridge yielded some rather interesting-looking white chocolate liqueur—most likely just as bad as the junk I had poured away, but at least of a somewhat higher quality. Delicately balancing my saucer, I returned to my pet, who was obediently standing just where I had left her.
“Have you been a good kitty while I’ve been gone?” I inquired, smiling at how the very words made her fidget.