Then I saw the oddest, most incongruous thing of all hanging on the wall above the bed: a large framed photograph of a man with thick black and silver hair, narrow glistening eyes that seemed to bore into my head, and a craggy face as cold as steel. Pastor Hudson Potter, I was certain.
As I began to undress, Jayne dropped her robe and quickly turned off the light. But in that instant I saw the scars and calluses on her body. All over her body.
She lit a candle and took some of the accoutrements from the walclass="underline" a short whip, manacles, clamps, spherical weights on thin chains… and the barbed rod. She attached the clamps to flaps of skin between her legs, then the weights to the clamps, groaning through clenched teeth. The tender flesh of her pussy hung impossibly low, like the flabby sinking skin of a very old woman. Climbing onto the bed, she put the manacles on her wrists and ankles and had me attach them to the chains hanging from the ceiling. At her request, I turned a crank on the wall, and she slowly rose a few feet above the bed, weights dangling from her rubbery labia. I was trembling as I flipped the latch that locked the crank.
"Now," she whispered, "whip me. Punish me."
I started slowly, like the first time, whipping her legs and sides as I knelt on the bed.
"No, no! My cunt! Whip my filthy, sinful, evil cunt!"
"Juh-Jayne, I can't —»
"Do it!"
I did.
She writhed and laughed and cried obscene apologies, her head hanging back so she could look at her father's icy face. The weights bobbed and she began to bleed as the teeth of the clamps bit into her flesh.
That was when I began to laugh and whip her harder. My cock stood at attention, and I began to stroke it with my free hand, breathing faster.
"Now, Paul, now! Put it in me!"
I stopped, confused. "What —»
"The rod!" she growled. "Drive it in! All the way in! Fuck me with it! Punish me!"
I hesitantly lifted the pointed rod from the bed; the barbs curved like small evil grins. Something happened to me then. A clean bright light inside me went out and a ragged hot flame spat up in its place. I think I smiled as I eased the rod into Jayne —
"Fuck me with it Daddy Daddy I'm sorry —»
— a bit deeper —
" — Daddy sorry I told sorry I made you hard sorry Daddy punish meee!"
— until the first barb was touching her vagina. I think it was the blood that stopped me. One of the weights plopped onto the bed taking a piece of flesh with it and I caught some blood on my face. I realized what I was about to do and gasped, pulled out the rod, dropped it, and ran to the bathroom to vomit. It wasn't because I was horrified or disgusted by what I was doing, but because I wanted — wanted so badly — to do it.
Jayne screamed obscenities at me as I lowered her to the bed, unhooked the manacles, and dressed. As I left her for the last time, I heard her crying, "I'm sorry, Daddy, so sorry… I need to be punished… punished…"
Gary Sigman committed suicide two years later. Had Jayne done that long before, things would have been very different for us all — especially for the boy who finally did what she wanted. But suicide is a sin.
Despite my parents' disapproval, I drifted away from the church; instead of attending an Adventist college, I went to UCLA. There I met Roz, a beautiful business major. One night while we were making love, I began to pound the mattress with my fist, lost in passion. When I finally heard her screams, I realized it wasn't the mattress I was pounding. I expected her to press charges, but she didn't. I paid her dental bill and never saw her again.
I tried prostitutes for a while, but they weren't safe. One night I left a motel room in Hollywood and met the girl's pimp in the parking lot. When he saw the blood on my hands and shirt, he beat me senseless. He hurried in to check on his girl, and I limped to my car and left, certain he would kill me if I didn't.
I remained parked before the boy's house for two hours, watching the reporters surrounding the front yard.
I considered visiting my parents, but they would want me to stay a while and I couldn't. I had to get back to my pet, Clarissa. Sometimes, if left alone, she stops eating, just out of spite. Sometimes I have to force her.
I found her on Sunset Boulevard. In the right light she even looks a bit like Jayne. She's about seventeen or so and says she has no family. I keep her in a box in the spare bedroom.
I guess I forgot what I was waiting for; I started the car, drove away from the house, and left Manning.
RED LIGHT
David J. Schow
Tabloid headlines always make me laugh. You know: I Aborted Bigfoot's Quints, or See Elvis' Rotting Nude Corpse, or Exclusive on Jack the Ripper's Grandson! Earlier today, while passing one of those Market Street newsvendors, I saw similar hyperbolic screamers, and I laughed. I did not want to laugh; it came out as a sick coughing sound.
TASHA VODE STILL MISSING
Terrorist Kidnapping of International Cover Girl
Not Ruled Out
What the hell did they know about her? Not what I knew. They were like vampires; they sucked. Ethically. Morally.
But what did that make me?
At the top of the dungheap was the good old National Perspirer, loudly thumping the tub. A four-color cover claimed all the hot, steaming poop on Tasha's disappearance, enumerating each of her three juicy, potential fates. One: She had pulled a Marilyn Monroe. Two: She had had a Dorothy Stratten pulled on her by some gonzo fruitbag lover. Three: She was tucked away in the Frances Farmer suite at some remote, tastefully isolated lunatic asylum.
Or maybe she was forking over richly to manufacture all this furious controversy in order to boost her asking price into the troposphere — in a word, hoax time.
It was pathetic. It made my gut throb with hurt and loss, and downtown San Francisco defused behind a hot saltwash of welling tears. I blamed the emissions of the Cal Trans buses lumbering up and down the street, knowing full well I couldn't cop such a rationalization, because the buses ran off electricity, like the mostly defunct streetcars. Once, I'd nearly been decapitated by a rooftop conductor pole when it broke free of the overhead webwork of wires and came swinging past, boom-low, alongside the moving bus, sparking viciously and banging off a potted sidewalk tree a foot above my head, zizzing and snapping. Welcome to the Bay Area.
I had no real excuse for tears now, and wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand. My left hand; my good hand. I was still getting used to the weight of the new cast on my other one.
One of the street denizens for which Union Square is infamous had stopped to stare at me. I stared back, head to toe, from the clouds of gnats around his matted hair to the solid-carbon crustiness of his bare, black feet. He caught me crying with his mad prophet eyes, and the grin that snaked his face lewdly open suggested that yes, I should howl with grief, I should pull out a Mauser and start plugging pedestrians. I put my legs in gear instead. I left him behind with the news kiosk, the scungy, sensationalist headlines, and all those horrifyingly flawless pictures of her. The bum and I ceased to exist for each other the moment we parted.