Just above the lodge, I turn to the right and slowly drive the slick road up to a small cabin; as the moon temporarily breaks through storm clouds, we can see that the ground is white with snow.
“This is my cabin,” I say, and in this I tell the truth. It’s a cabin I bought last year with the inheritance from my parents’ estate.
“Oooh, how pretty,” Annie says. She’s moved by the Christmas Eve winter wonderland.
“Do you want to come in and see?” I ask, moving into the gravel driveway and turning off the engine.
“Do you want me to come in?” she asks, coyly.
“I have a surprise for you.”
Annie doesn’t hesitate. She loves surprises.
After we enter through the front door, I flick the switch and the room softly explodes in soft, almost ethereal light. The living room looks like something right out of a magazine: wreaths over the window, a soft brown couch with the stairs behind it, three lamps, a coffee table made of cypress, and two soft leather recliners. Norman Rockwells hang on the wall.
“God, it’s beautiful, Jerry,” she gasps, removing her black leather coat. Underneath, she’s wearing a Green Bay Packers T-shirt.
“You want it?” I say, walking over to the stereo and putting in a Christmas CD.
“Of course,” she purrs.
My heart soars as I walk to Annie and, putting my arm around her shoulders, say, “I want you to see one more thing.”
I guide her through the pantry to the storage room in back. The room is cold, and when I flick on the dim overhead light she sees the padlocked freezer across the room.
“There’s something here I want you to see,” I say, guiding her across the room.
Tense, Annie is frightened, but I keep one arm firmly around her waist as I slip the key in the padlock. As I lift the top of the freezer, I pull her closer and tell her to look in. She shrieks and resists, and I can feel her whole body trembling. Suspecting some diabolical trick, Annie collapses and, with both arms, I pick her up, hold her over the freezer, and force her to look inside.
It takes her a moment to realize that I am not going to shove her inside and close the lid. Her body becomes merely rigid as, stunned, she sees that the long rectangular block of ice contains the body of a nude woman: the blue-green eyes are wide open, the face has a slight blue tinge, her nostrils are flared (odd for a freezing), and her blood-red lips part in eternal bewilderment; the woman has large tanned breasts whose shape has been preserved. Even now, six months after her disappearance, the blonde’s features are quite recognizable.
Numbed, Annie shakes her head as if to clear it of thought and stares at the corpse as I put my arms around her, kiss her on the neck, and whisper, “Merry Christmas, my sweetest angel.”
As “Silent Night” fills the air, Annie breathes deeply, laughs very nervously, relaxes even more, and says, “Jerry, you are one sick son of a bitch, you know that? I think you’ve changed a bit.”
I have to admit, albeit silently, that Annie is right: I’ve changed.
“This is your gift, Annie.” Holding Annie, my cock pressed hard against her small ass, I tell the brief story of my relationship with Joan: how I met her at a supermarket maybe a year after her fight with Annie outside the restaurant, began dating her, actually lived with her in order to gain her trust, and then asked her to join me up here where, lured by the thrill of ropes and bondage, she actually allowed me to strangle her to death.
There is a long pregnant pause, and the player switches to the next CD.
“Did you fuck this bitch on the night you killed her?” Annie finally asks, almost offended by the prospect that I might do such a thing. The tone of the question tells me that, outward appearance notwithstanding, Annie really has not changed; she’s still the delightfully possessive slut that I used to live with. It’s a question she would have asked years ago, and I am ready for it.
“No goddamned way,” I say. “I’m not that crazy. But I figured I had to do something to get you back after you left – I went fucking nuts when you weren’t there – and I figured that this would work.”
For a long time, Annie says nothing, and I know that she is considering asking me to take her back. If she asks, I will oblige. Annie is my angel, and I shall never harm her.
Finally, she turns, puts her arms around my neck and, before I have time to say anything, kisses me on the mouth. I remember then how much I enjoy how Annie tastes.
“It works,” she says, slowly drawing back. A few years back, as I’m sure she recalls, she wanted this blonde bitch dead. “I won’t leave again.”
In my bedroom, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” playing softly in the background, we slowly undress each other, taking precious time on the parts that have become significant. Delicately, I part her legs and slip my tongue inside her. When Annie takes my manhood in her tiny hand, I can feel her touch and then lick the scar. The sensation is euphoric.
“Bite me, Annie,” I request, looking back at her, and she begins giggling. “But not too hard.” This is as close to true love as I have ever been.
As Annie gently takes me in her teeth and gives me an easy tug, I lie back on the bed, listening to the Christmas music; I put a hand between her legs and insert a finger into her asshole. I remember that Annie has a fondness for anal sex.
It doesn’t get any better than this, I tell myself, hard as a rock. Annie and I will surely be inseparable from this night forward.
London Derrière by Dawn O’Hara
Never perform with your back to the audience, Orlando taught his rare music students (he took on such a commitment only when financially desperate). Shaking your booty works if you’ve got Jon Bon Jovi’s ass, he instructed, worthy of leather encasement and admirable even from the back row of an arena. But if you are a mere mortal crooning in a local pub, best to face the fans.
How, then, did Orlando come to find himself bent over a barstool on the stage floor – nothing more than a bar corner cleared of tables – with Isabella’s dick up his forty-one-year-old virgin ass? His back to the audience, indeed.
Orlando now sang a different tune than the melodic ones he’d played for the small audience of late-nighters. His voice lost its smooth patina. His words contained no witty double entendres, looping rhymes, or seductive repetitions. He abandoned his lyrical search for meaning in a complicated world of misunderstood words. His fingers no longer picked at intricate chord progressions on the six-string or the electric keyboard. They clawed at the air. He growled and shouted, his words incomprehensible, pushing back against Isabella’s thrusting thighs. But before he descended into passionate, guttural urges, his words were clear.
Orlando feared the peculiar combination of words he shouted. He was terrified that, once uttered, Isabella would have what she wanted and would leave him. Again. Only this tiem she would desert him for speaking the irretrievable, and not for silence.
Hold something back, Orlando taught. Leave them wanting, so the fans return, or, better yet, purchase the compact disc you’ve peddled for years, stacks of them stashed in your attic. The whole song can’t be a repeating chorus, he instructed. You’ve got to build up to the consummate word at the end of the line. A literary crescendo to a word so perfect that the audience thinks they could have guessed it, but a word so unexpected they never do. They echo it once they’ve heard the song, and then forget the wonder and surprise of it. Like this word he just enunciated as clearly as the Rain in Spain before deteriorating into whimpering gibberish. A word that all-too-often atrophied, stalled, and lost its meaning through overuse. A powerful word that dulled and tired. Coveting words, understanding their potency and deception, he had refused to utter it all these years.