*** A Halloween Entertainment, by averti ***

She unhooked her skirt and dropped it to the floor. She sat on the edge
of the table and looked at me. She wore no panties. She had removed her
pubic hair, for the first time I could remember. The smooth, almost
shiny new expanse of bare skin looked slightly startled, like some cave
dweller suddenly brought into the light.

***

She reached behind her and took out a small knife. The indirect
lamplight gleamed on the curved blade and darkly figured wooden handle.
``Do you know this knife?'' she asked, turning it in her fingers.

``Yes. I _made_ that knife.''

``Indeed you did.''

``How did you come by it? The owner was a witch--''

She smiled coldly. ``A witch who was murdered. But not with this knife.''

I returned her fixed gaze. ``I know that.''

``I KNOW you know it. You were there, the next day, right? You walked
in her dried blood, you picked through her stuff...''

All this was true, but beside the point. ``Where did YOU get the knife?''

``Bought it off a fence who bought it off the Sausalito cop who kiped
it from the crime scene...''

***

She trailed the point of the knife idly down one thigh and back up the
other.  The knife left a very very thin scratch quite clear on her
smooth tan skin.

I felt like I was in the wrong story. ``What do you want?'' I was
compelled to ask.

``I want things to be like they were. I want you to look at me. watch
me, the way you used to. I want you to crawl over here on your knees
and jerk off onto my toes. I want you to be glued to the wall, drilling
into me with your eyes, as I turn myself inside out for you. I want you
to sit in the corner and cry while I masturbate for you--AT you--until
my pussy is one raw glowing mess!''

***

I wished I still smoked. I needed a cigarette to fiddle with, so my
hands and their obvious shaking wouldn't give me away. I had loved, if
that's the right approximate word, this woman for a generation. I knew
she was totally self-centered and totally ruthless and absolutely no
more to be trusted than the senior lioness in a circus act.

I stood against the wall, near the door, like a dummy, watching her,
trying very hard not to stare, staring very hard. She manipulated the
litle knife in the air with one skillful hand while beginning to feel
and tease between her legs with the other. I wondered if it really were
possible to dislocate one's eyes just from avid staring...I hated
myself for knowing every inch and millimeter of that pussy. I could
paint a picture of it, sculpt a replica of it, if I could knit I could
knit a pussy afghan of it. I knew it when it was young, when it was
dry, when it was wet, when it was swollen with lust, pried apart by the
hands of other women, stuffed full of dildos, vibrators, vegetables...
everything except how it felt to fuck.

`There's some kind of definitive orgasm inside me'' she said
wildly.``If I can't tease it out I'll DRAG it out.''

She took the small knife and made a neat four-inch incision in the
perfect skin of her lower belly, just above the start of the white,
hairless pubic area. Dark, rich-looking blood welled and then began to
trickle down toward the meeting of her thighs.

``That's why I shaved'' she said. ``Much easier to see. Much neater.''

``All the best surgeons do it that way'' I murmured, dreamily watching
the blood ooze downward.

She took a fresh grasp on the knife and made another incision parallel
to and below the first, and then yet another. They were not dangerously
deep, I could tell; no possibility of suddenly seeing escaping lower
intestines. I leaned against the wall, next to the door, and just kept
watching. Her facial expression hadn't changed one iota since she began
cutting. Still the same beautiful mask, full mouth, dark eyes, a
general expression of knowing something that nobody else knows.

She dabbled her free hand in her crotch, which by now was throughly
soaked in blood, then raised the hand to her face and licked delicately
at it like a cat. ``Mmmm...I like getting REALLY in touch with myself''
she smiled.  Rather ghastly with her own blood on her lips. ``A woman
should be free to choose the time and place to bleed...''

I was pretty sure that those superficial slashes would begin to clot
over before long. I watched as she slid backwards into the center of
the table, leaving a dark brownish-red smear as she went. She opened
her legs and showed me her naked, gleaming vulva. Looked quite
striking, actually, but, to me, less erotic than exploitative.

She held the little knife delicately and made several minor cuts along
the edges of her labia majora, saying ``Blood goes to blood'' and then
groaning, not in pain but in lust. The knife clattered as she threw it
carelessly onto the floor. Then she began to use both hands between her
legs, shifting and moaning and drawing hissing breaths as I had seen
her do a thousand times before, as though the blood were just some new
kinky love lube you could buy in an overpriced plastic squeeze bottle.

I watched for a minute more. Out of context, this would have been
transfixing.  Cheap as it felt, for me, it was more like watching a
former friend get very drunk and wrap her car around a median pole. I
lowered my eyes, and then turned toward the door.

``Wait!! Where--'' she hissed, in a strangled voice that I knew so
well. Again.  not pain, but lust for self. Lust for control. Even over
mere me, the one-time easiest to control of them all.

``Thanks for the show, babe. But I haven't paid for the E-ticket, and
it looks like the big ride is almost under way.''

``YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME NOW!!'' masturbating faster, like somebody trying
to get their stalled car on the railroad tracks started by sheer will
power.

``I won't. I left you eleven months ago. You weren't paying attention.
Anyway,'' I opened the door, ``You're the one with the imagination.
Just imagine I'm still here--sitting in the corner, watching and
drooling--the imaginary me always cooperated better, anyway...''

I closed the door and made for the elevator. I had never felt so good
about leaving a room containing a naked, bloody, sex-crazed woman. I
was pretty sure she'd be all over herself with towels and antiseptic
and bandages in a minute.

As the elevator doors closed I heard this long, eerie howl, the
capstone to an hour of blood and horror. Other people must have heard
it too; but I was the only one who knew that it was not a werewolf or a
vampire and any such common wretch. Only I knew that it was the
enraged, frustrated cry of a first-rate witch having a second-rate
orgasm.

****


Well, happy Halloween, little friends...and if you should find yourself
gazing lustfully at the knife...well, one can always make more blood,
they say...

averti