Crying he would desperately try to straighten up, but he never could. For his neck would merely slip up her thighs and hit her body above. And strangely at that moment her perfume was twice as strong.
"Give him a tanning," his father would shout, grinning at the performance. "Show me I'm wrong in thinking that you spoil him too much."
Then — except for one occasion — it would always end the same. He'd be sent to his room to "smarten up," and as the hours ticked away, utterly confused by the chaos of his feelings, he'd sit on the floor and have a talk with Freddie.
Freddie was his rabbit.
The one occasion that was different was what he remembered now. Again his father had come home, and again he'd had the spanking. Once more he was in his room talking softly to Freddie. Then the rabbit's ears jerked up at the sound of his mother's scream.
On that day he had run to the door, his heart in his throat, flagrantly transgressing his parent's sternest warning. "And don't you dare leave your room until you get permission." The warning didn't matter. His mother was being hurt.
He was five years old.
Even now the man could vividly recall what the boy saw in that room. For his mother's hands were tied to the headboard of the bed. She was dressed in underwear, her body shining with sweat. Her pants were torn and she was moaning as his father moved up and down between her thrashing legs. Then his mother screamed again — and the boy rushed in to save her.
He began to hit his father, who wrenched around in surprise. "What are you doing here?" the man shouted, his face livid with rage.
"Get out!" his mother cried, her reaction shocking him.
Then his father leaped off the bed and grabbed him by the arm. His "thing" was pointing at the boy as he shoved him out the door.
"I hate you. Daddy," the boy said, surprising himself when he heard the words come out of his mouth. And that was his mistake.
For a moment his father said nothing as his eyes narrowed to slits. Then he dragged his son to the kitchen where he removed a butcher knife from the drawer. Together, the boy struggling, they both approached his room.
Poor Freddie, the man thought, recalling that look in his rabbit's eyes. He knew before it happened.
That night the boy spent locked up in his room. For hours he cried, shaking and sobbing as he desperately tried to put the animal back together. For his father had cut off Freddie's head, forcing the boy to watch. Then after a while he gave up. He spent the remaining dark hours gently stroking both of the pieces on the floor. In the morning his mother came once more to take him in her arms. "I'll replace him," she said.
The man looked at his watch. It was now 12:49. Time to go. He found the Men's Room, where he waited till he was alone. Then he removed the mask from his jacket and adjusted it over his face.
Two minutes later, he opened the exit door.
For an entire year this man had waited for the excitement of tonight. Now his anticipation was almost at an end.
Tonight — at least for a while — he knew he would forget.
Suzannah walked over to a cabinet near the rack. She opened two leaded glass panels and removed a tray from inside. The tray contained ten eight-inch needles, each one shining silver-gold in the firelight. Then she placed the needles in a medical sterilizer that was housed in the lower cupboard. Her words, silken, vicious, washed through Crystal's drugged mind. The girl didn't know what they meant, but she knew they sprang from a hatred deeper than any she could imagine.
Suzannah walked over to the wall of whips and took two of them down. She carried them back to the girl.
"This, sweetheart, is a Scottish tawse, about seventy years old. You'll note that it is a tailed strap with a fire-hardened tip. The tip bites like an adder at the end of a cut.
"This other one is an English birch — the closest you'll find to poetry in all these flogging instruments."
Suzannah handed the tawse to Crystal and stepped back several paces.
"Have you ever been to the circus?" she slyly asked the girl.
"Yes."
"Well then you know how they train lions?"
"Uh, huh."
"Well, love, you can train a man the same way."
With a pirouette, the woman spun around in a circle and lashed out with the birch. She hit the tawse in Crystal's hand and sent it spinning like a pinwheel to clatter on the floor.
Then in one fluid motion Suzannah danced before the rack, slowly, methodically, rhythmically beating the wood with the whip. Crystal stared aghast, for with each relentless stroke the woman's lips grew thinner and drew back from her teeth. Her nostrils flared. Her breath came in gasps. And dust exploded in the anxious air.
Then suddenly in midstroke, Suzannah stopped.
"Men are such donkeys," she said with a hiss. "They think themselves superior to their own psychology."
Crystal backed away.
"They are no more than animals, just programed machines — and sex is the clockwork which winds up their psyches."
Suzannah hung the whips back on the wall. Slyly she smiled. "In my house, Crystal, in this room — and as long as he's got the money — give me a naughty little boy and tailored punishment is what he gets. Behind the mask of Mardi Gras, Jekyll really can turn the guilt of Hyde loose."
"And just where do I fit in?" Crystal asked dryly.
"You're my assistant."
"Assistant! What do you need me for?"
"To answer that, sweetheart, I must tell you about our guest."
It was his mother who had first told him about the Axe-Man of New Orleans. That was shortly before she died.
He had later found out that the Axe-Man had killed six people and injured several others during a brief reign of terror at the end of the First World War. Each victim was selected at random, access gained to each dwelling house by chiseling through the back door. Once inside, the killer had chopped his victims up with a long-handled axe. The axe, as a calling-card, was invariably left at the scene.
The Axe-Man was never caught.
His mother had told him none of this. The job of the Axe-Man, she had said, was to hunt for those young boys who did not love their mother. He would hack them up and then devour the pieces. His mother had told him this when they were both in bed.
The man now came out through the main door of the Municipal Auditorium, away from the Mardi Gras Ball. For a minute he stood in St. Peter Street, scowling at all the drunken fools staggering all around. Then a black girl dressed in sequins stumbled and bumped against him. She smiled and mumbled " 'scuse me' and quickly passed on.
"Slut!" the man spat after her.
He watched the woman walk away in the direction of St. Louis Cemetery, his mind recalling painfully the black girl who had been in the street the night his mother died. That girl was not from the neighborhood; he had never seen her before. Just a passerby. Hurrying down the sidewalk. With tears in his eyes and a choked voice he had begged her to run for the doctor. He had pointed up the street toward the doctor's office. Then taking the steps three at a time, he had scrambled back upstairs.
His mother was bleeding profusely. Her skin was as pale as tissue paper and her tongue was flicking wildly between her pearl-white teeth. Oh God, what teeth she had — the straight-est he'd ever seen. And now he remembered those happy days, sitting in his mother's lap, listening to the words of love humming from her mouth.
The man turned left on Bourbon Street, glancing at his watch.
Why does it still bother me when I did nothing wrong? Why? the man thought.
For if only that girl had done as he'd asked, his mother would still be alive. And then he'd still have her love. Eight years old was far too young for a boy to lose his mother.