Walk on the Wild Side

Locked Away



It was a small gold locket, late Victorian, shaped as a heart, usual period embellishments, pendant from a heavy gold chain. The locket came as part of a lot of estate jewelry for which Pandora had just made a successful bid. She was quite pleased with her purchase, although she had had to bid very high. She generally did well on her buying trips.

Pandora Smythe—she had taken back her maiden surname—owned and managed an antique shop in Pine Hill, North Carolina, a sort of sleepy college town now overrun with development, yuppies employed by the numerous white-collar industries, and retirees from up North. Pandora was English by birth and couldn’t complain about newcomers, especially since they enjoyed spending too much money for antique furnishings to grace their new town houses and condos, erected where a year before all had been woodland.

Her shop was, not unsurprisingly, named Pandora’s Box, but it did a very good trade, and Pandora employed three sales assistants, one of whom she would take with her on buying trips. Pandora Smythe had a peaches-and-cream complexion, angular but pert features, was rather tall, jogged daily to preserve her trim figure, was blond and green-eyed and nearing thirty. Her two vices were an addiction to romance novels and sobbing through vintage black-and-white tear-jerkers on rented videocassettes.

She wished she were Bette Davis, but instead she was a sharp businesswoman, and she had made only two mistakes of note: She had married Matthew McKee and stayed with him for most of a loveless year despite his open philandering and drunken abuse of her. She had bought a locket.

It had been a good day at the shop. Doreen and Mavis had managed very well; Derrick had seen to the packing and delivery of the larger auction items—some very good and very large Victorian furnishings and a few excellent farmhouse primitives, which would be stuck in the back of Volvo wagons before the week was out. Pandora carried back the case of jewelry herself, chiding herself for having paid too much, but that bastard Stuart Reading had been keen for the lot as well. Probably would have fetched far more as individual pieces, but the day was long, and most of it was costume, worth more as antique pieces rather than any intrinsic value.

“Ooh! I love those jade earrings!” Mavis was peering over her shoulder as Pandora sorted through her trove across her desk.

“Take them out of your salary, then.” Pandora gave them a quick look. I’ll want fifty dollars for them. About turn of the century. And that’s green jasper, not jade.”

“Then I’ll only give you thirty dollars.”

“Forty. That’s gold.”

“Staff discount. Thirty dollars. And I have cash.”

Done. Pandora passed the earrings to Mavis. She could have had the fifty easily from a shopper, but she liked her staff, liked Mavis, and there was more here to turn a handsome profit than she had thought. Eat your heart out, Stuart Reading.

“Here’s the thirty.” Mavis had dashed for her handbag.

“A sale. Put it in the cash drawer.” Pandora was sorting the cheaper bits from items which might demand a professional jeweler’s appraisal. Of the latter there were a few.

“Here. I quite fancy this.” Pandora lifted the golden locket. An inscription in Latin read Face Quidlibet Voles.

Mavis examined it. “Late Victorian. Gold. Yours for a mere two hundred dollars.”

“I’ve already purchased it, Mavis.” Pandora fussed with the gold chain. “Give us a hand with the clasp.”

Mavis worked the clasp behind her neck. “You going to keep it for yourself?”

“Maybe just wear it for a few days. How does it look?”

“Like you need a poodle skirt to go with it.”

Pandora faced an antique mirror and arranged her hair. “Feels good. Think I’ll wear it for a bit. As you said, should fetch two hundred dollars. Solid gold. Look at the workmanship.”

Mavis peered into Pandora’s cleavage. “I can’t make out what the lettering means. Face something voles? That’s silly. Voles are cute. Got them in my garden. Industrious little rodents. Better than having squirrels chewing up the bird feeders.”

Pandora studied her reflection. “Problem with gold. A well-worn locket. And I haven’t had Latin since a schoolgirl.”

“Let’s open it up and see what’s inside!” Mavis fumbled with the catch. “Should be a lock of hair or some old portraits.” She tried again. “Shit, it won’t open.”

“Stop tugging!” complained Pandora. “I’ll manage once I’m at home.”

Pandora took a long shower, wrapped herself in towels and terry cloth robe, made a small pot of tea, added cream, two sugars, and a bit of lemon to her cup, flicked on the television, curled up on her favorite couch, snuggled under a goose down comforter, and waited for her hair to dry. Her hair was too straight for her liking, so she preferred not to use a blow dryer.

The television was boring. The tea was good. She fiddled with the catch on the gold locket—she hadn’t been able to work the chain clasp before showering. The hot water had done the trick. The locket snapped open.

Inside, nothing. Pandora was somewhat disappointed.

Feeling the fatigue from her buying trip, she set aside her teacup and fell into sudden sleep.

She was wearing a schoolgirl’s gym slip. Two of the sisters were holding her arms, as she was bent over a desk. A third sister flipped up Pandora’s skirt and yanked down her chaste white cotton knickers. Sister brandished a wooden ruler. The other girls in the classroom stared in frightened anticipation.

“You were seen touching yourself,” said sister.

“I’m an adult businesswoman! Who the hell are you?”

“You’ve only made it all the worse.”

The ruler smacked her bottom. Pandora yelped in pain. Again and again the ruler came down. Pandora began to cry. Her classmates began to titter. The ruler continued to whack her reddening buttocks. Pandora screamed and tried to escape the tight grip of the other two sisters. The beating continued.

She felt a rush of orgasm.

Pandora gasped and sat up, almost overturning her teacup. Dizzily she finished it, noticed the locket had closed. Must have done it while asleep. No more strong tea at bedtime. She removed the towel from her head and brushed out her hair. Strange dream. She had never attended a Catholic school. Her parents were C of E, she was secular humanist, in currently politically correct jargon.

Her buttocks hurt. In the mirror she saw welts.

By morning there was nothing to remark upon. Pandora shrugged it off to lying on a rumpled bathrobe and an agitated imagination. She let her staff run the shop, while she sifted through the classifieds and notices of upcoming sales. Doreen got an easy seven hundred dollars for the heart-of-pine table, poorly restored and purchased at a tenth of that. Pandora began to feel better, but still made an early day of it. She thought of Doreen and Mavis as Bambi and Thumper from that James Bond film. Derrick was perhaps James Bond. They could mind the store.

She put on a pink baby-doll nightgown—she had a weakness for fifties nostalgia—curled up in her bed and began reading Love’s Blazing Desire by David Drake, her favorite romance author. She fidgeted with her locket.

It opened.

Pandora was wearing a white cone bra and a white panty girdle attached by garters to beige stockings. Her party dress was somewhere in the back seat of a ’56 Chevy, and she was on her knees on the cemetery grass.

Biff and Jerry were in a hurry, as the cops patrolled this strip looking for teenagers getting their thrills. They d just dropped their jeans and Y-fronts. Standing beside the car, they were letting Pandora give them double head.

She couldn’t take them both all the way into her mouth at once. She gave each cock a quick deep throat, alternating by sucking in both heads, tonguing them rapidly, while she jerked them off separately, fingering her cunt from outside of the tight chastity belt of her panty girdle. She’d told the boys that she was on the rag, because neither had thought to buy rubbers.

Biff was yelling, “Gawd! Gawd! Gawd!”

Jerry said, “Shut up, douche bag! You’ll get the cops on our ass!” Pandora said nothing, making only slurping and sucking sounds. She couldn’t completely close her lips over both cocks, and saliva was drooling down her chin and onto her bra.

Jerry grunted, and Biff repeated, “Gawd!” Their come gushed into Pandora’s mouth faster than she could swallow, spraying over her face. She gobbled down the sticky, salty tide, sucking in both cocks as they grew limp, all the while rubbing her fingers against her cunt outside the elastic barrier of her panty girdle. Her orgasm came just as she accepted both flaccid cocks all the way into her throat.

Pandora choked and sat up in bed, still cradling the romance novel. She had never even ridden in a ’56 Chevy, had no real idea as to what one looked like. Saliva covered her cheeks and chin. She wiped it with a tissue. It smelled like semen. It tasted like semen. It was semen.

The locket had closed.

Pandora was useless at the shop the next day. She went home at lunch, complaining about a touch of flu. Her workers expressed sympathy; she hadn’t looked well. Mavis reminded her of a country auction this coming Saturday, which Pandora and Derrick meant to attend, and said that Stuart Reading had phoned before she got in. Pandora said that Stuart Reading could get stuffed, and then she went seeking a warm shower. Perhaps she was coming down with flu.

The shower was just what she needed: hot, steaming, relaxing taut muscles. Toweling off, her fingers brushed her locket. It clicked open.

Pandora was in a steamy men’s locker room, and she was wearing only a jockstrap. White, elastic, no bulge over her crotch. Not so for the others in the locker room: male hunks, dripping sweat, jockstraps bulging.

Pandora yipped as one of them flipped her on the ass with his rolled towel. “So, if you want to play football with the big boys, then you have to bend over.”

They forced Pandora to kneel onto a weight bench. Seconds later a soapy cock was pressing into her ass. Pandora cried out as the head popped into her, and its length was stuffed in brutally to the balls. The man began to thrust into her ass violently, urged on by cheers from the others. Pandora gasped but endured the pain, after a few minutes she felt his cock strain and pulse, spurting come into her rectum.

The second entry was not as painful, and the man came quickly after a few rapid thrusts. The third cock was thick and long; the man f*cked her ass slowly while the others yelled for him to hurry up. The fourth man seemed to come forever. The fifth was in and out of her ass in a minute. The sixth took his time and paused to drink a beer. By die seventh her ass was sore and bleeding, but he reached into the pouch of her jockstrap and massaged her p-ssy. The eighth followed suit, playing with her *. By the ninth Pandora finally had her orgasm.

She was lying across her bed. The locket was closed. Her ass was in agony. She stumbled onto the toilet seat in extreme urgency.

There was a little blood and a great spewing of mucus from her ass as she sat down on the seat. Later she cleaned herself, then tugged off her jockstrap. She did not own a jockstrap. To the best of her knowledge.

Pandora made an emergency call to her therapist, scheduling an appointment for the next day. Dr Rosalind Walden had been very supportive during the dark months of her broken marriage. Pandora felt she could help her understand this series of nightmares—if nightmares they were.

Dr Walden was a trim brunette, with rather short hair (a salon cut), close to Pandora’s height, and looked more a successful career woman than a psychiatrist. Today she was wearing a loose business suit ensemble of dark linen and black hose. Pandora felt comfortable with her and gratefully sank onto her couch.

Later, Dr Walden said, “So you think these dreams are associated with this antique locket. Why not then just get rid of it?

“I think I may enjoy these fantasies,” Pandora confessed.

“You are recovering from a dysfunctional marriage, during which your former husband physically and sexually abused you. I think there may be a part of you that enjoys being the victim. We need to explore these repressed needs. But now, let’s have a look at this locket.”

Dr Walden bent over her, fumbling with the catch. Pandora liked the brush of her hands against her bosom. “I can’t work it.”

“Let me.” Pandora clicked open the locket.

Rosalind was already leaning over her. She bent her head closer and kissed Pandora softly on the lips. In a moment their tongues were wriggling together.

Breathless, Rosalind broke off their kiss and turned to pull off her panties. Pandora was surprised to see that she wore a black garter belt. She tossed the lacy black panties onto the floor by the couch, then quickly sat astride Pandora’s face. She raised her skirt, looking into Pandora’s eyes. “You want my p-ssy. You know you want my p-ssy. Tell me that you want my p-ssy.

Rosalind had shaved her crotch for a thong bikini line. It smelled of musk and faint perfume. Her p-ssy lips were already engorged and spreading.

“I want your p-ssy.”

“Say it louder! You won’t be able to beg in another second!

Pandora shouted. “Yes! Please! I want to eat your p-ssy!”

Rosalind lowered herself onto Pandoras face, silencing her with a gag of flesh. Pulling her skirt to her breasts, she watched Pandora’s face as she rocked back and forth against her tongue. She squeezed her breasts as she rode Pandora’s face, shoving her * against her nose.

Almost smothered, Pandora worked her tongue twirling around Rosalind’s * and into her vagina. Her p-ssy was salty but sweet with juices. It excited her. She could feel her own p-ssy growing wet. She felt Rosalind come onto her mouth, almost choking her. After a brief spasm of ecstasy, Rosalind began to ride her face all the harder. Pandora’s cunt grew hotter and wetter. She tried to masturbate herself, but Rosalind’s legs restricted her arms, and she could not reach inside her skirt.

The second time Rosalind came was violent enough to trigger Pandora’s own orgasm.

Pandora sat up from the couch. The locket was closed.

Dr Walden was making a few notes. “Repressed sexual fantasies are common to all of us, and it’s not unusual for patients to experience them involving their therapist.

“Oh, would you like some coffee? You fell asleep for a moment there.”

“I’m all right.”

“Well, are you sure you can drive? I’ve written out a prescription here for something that will help you sleep at night. Most likely job worries and travel stress have created sleep deprivation, causing these repressed fantasies to emerge in REM sleep. Try these for a week. If they help, I’ll renew the prescription. If not, we may need to consider an antidepressant. In any event, don’t hesitate to call me at any time.”

“Thank you.” Pandora recovered her handbag from the floor beside the couch. There was a pair of lacy black panties lying beside her bag. She quickly slipped them into her bag as Dr Walden wrote out her prescription.

Derrick Sloane was at her door at six in the morning. Pandora pulled on her robe and let him in.

Derrick looked embarrassed. “You’d said to come around at six, and I hadn’t heard different. So. Here I am. Right on time. Are you feeling all right? Flu can be nasty. If you want to sit this one out, I can go wake up Mavis and let Doreen keep shop while we’re at the auction.”

“No. It’s just that my shrink gave me some sleeping pills. I’ll just get dressed. Would you please make the coffee?”

“Didn’t even know you saw a shrink.”

Derrick was familiar with her kitchen and had a cup waiting for her when Pandora finished dressing.

“Thanks. This will help. I can’t miss this auction.

Derrick made better coffee than Pandora could. He was taller than she was, in his twenties, well versed in antiques, and very well built. Ideal for lifting and loading heavy pieces at auctions and moving them about the shop. He was darkly handsome, and Pandora rather fancied him, but suspected he was gay. At least, he’d never made a move on her or the others at her shop, and Mavis was to die for.

It was a bright spring morning, and Pandora felt much better with the coffee. She had pulled on some faded blue jeans and scuffed Reeboks, a T-shirt advocating saving whales, and a denim jacket. Derrick had buttered toast for her, and she munched this as she carried her plastic mug to the van.

Derrick had on black Dockers, a Graceland T-shirt, and a light jacket of black leather. That would get hot once the sun was high. Pandora glanced at her watch. They were running a bit late, but should be there in fine time for the viewing.

Derrick moved the van along swiftly. Pandora admired his shoulders. Yes, they reached the pre-auction viewing with good time to spare. It was an 1880s farmhouse whose heirs wished to liquidate along with all properties, and Pandora knew for a fact that the house was a treasure trove.

Of course Stuart Reading was there, mingling with the other dealers and the mundanes. He sidled up to Pandora. He was a balding, sixty-something with a paunch and reek of pipe tobacco.

“Sorted out that lot of jewelry from the Beales’ estate yet? I see you’re wearing her locket.”

“Whose?”

“Tilda Beale. You outbid me for the lot, inasmuch as I was only interested in a few of the pieces. I can offer you a very good price on the few I’m interested in. The jasper earrings?”

“Jade. Already sold.”

“Chrysolite, actually. Do you still have the necklace of carnelian and bloodstone? The matching earrings? Come, give me a good price and I won’t bid against you on that pokeberry-dyed spindle bed you have your eye on. And I do have a buyer in mind for them, so you can get the bed without my overbidding, and we’ll both profit.”

Reading peered at the locket, pulling it away from Pandora’s bosom much to her distaste. “Face Quidlibet Voles. Do what thou wilt. Aleister Crowley. Where on earth did she acquire this? Wore it always. Probably family motto. Consider selling it?”

“The necklace and earrings are for sale, of course. Not the locket. What do you know of Tilda Beale?”

“You should do your homework, my dear, if you’re to stay afloat in this business. She was a maidenly spinster who never had an impure thought. A matriarch of our church.” Reading was a Southern Baptist. “Passed on at age one hundred three. Wonderful woman. Won’t be any more like her.”

“No impure thoughts?”

“If she ever had nay, which I doubt very much, she kept them locked away in her heart. Hey, they’re about to start. Will we cut a deal?”

They did, and Derrick and Pandora carried off the heirloom spindle bed in triumph.

After unloading the bed and the rest of Pandora’s purchases, Derrick suggested that they stop off at his place for some champagne, which he’d been saving since his team lost the Super Bowl. Pandora was in high spirits after a successful auction and from selling the necklace and earrings to Stuart Reading at an exorbitant price—his buyer must be daft.

Super, she said. Was Derrick making a move? Perhaps she had been wrong about him.

Derrick actually had several bottles of champagne in his fridge. They went through the first one rather quickly with some Brie cheese and Ritz crackers—Derrick apologizing all the while. He said he’d run out of peanut butter and Velveeta. They both exploded into laughter. Derrick opened a second bottle.

“This locket,” said Pandora, after a glass too many. “What do you make of it?”

“Still wearing that? Woman’s picture and a lock of hair. Saw it at the auction with the rest of the lot last week.”

“But it’s empty.”

“Mistake somewhere. Doesn’t matter. Let’s have a look.” Derrick fumbled with the clasp.

“Let me,” said Pandora, and the locket opened.

By the end of their kiss, Derrick was pulling off her T-shirt. She pulled off his. She was wearing a bra, he wasn’t. He removed that as well as her jeans, she followed suit, and after minimal fumbling, their clothing was all in a pile and so were they.

“Do you mind if I tie you?” Derrick asked.

“What? ” Pandora was dazzled by the champagne.

“Just a little gentle bondage. A real turn-on. It helps me drive you to new heights of passion.”

Bad line from one of her romance novels, but Pandora was ready for anything now. Derrick’s cock was starting to straighten, and she realized she had been wrong in considering him gay. There must be ten inches there, if she helped him along.

“Sure. If it pleases you.”

Derrick opened a drawer full of many ropes and things. Pandora obediently stood with her hands crossed behind her back as he tied them.

“Let’s see how close these elbows can come together.”

“That hurts!” Pandora whimpered, as another rope pulled her arms together brutally. Another rope passed around her back and breasts, pinching them cruelly.

“You’ll get used to it,” said Derrick. He had passed a length of rope in several turns about her waist, tightly cinching a few turns through her cunt and ass. “Your p-ssy is already getting wet, so you know you enjoy this. Now, walk into the bedroom and lie down on the bed.”

Derrick tied her ankles together and then her knees. He rolled her onto her stomach and tied a short length of rope between her ankles and wrists, drawing them together in a tight hog-tie.

Pandora was clutching her ankles and in some pain. Her back was bowed, her breasts raised from the bed. This wasn’t gentle bondage, but she had gone too far now.

“But how can you screw me like this?”

Down the throat, babe. Open wide, bitch, if you ever want to be untied.” He stood beside the bed and grabbed her hair.

Derrick’s huge erection was suddenly bouncing against the back of her throat as Pandora tried to engulf it. She thought of the movie she’d seen about Mr Goodbar or something. She was completely helpless. Maybe this was all in fun.

Derrick was excited and came very quickly, filling her throat with his long blasts of come. He grabbed her head and slammed her face again and again against his crotch, yelling obscenities at her all the while.

When she had sucked out the last drops of come, he withdrew from her mouth. Pandora was in real pain from the brutal hog-tie. “I think this game has gone on long enough. Please untie me.”

“I think you talk too much.” Derrick was rummaging through their clothes. He folded her panties into a neat wad, soiled crotch leading as he pushed them into her mouth and tied them there tightly with her bra.

“Just to keep the come inside while I plan the rest of our evening.”

Pandora rocked back and forth on the bed, helpless, only able to make muffled grunts.

Derrick rolled her onto her side. He wound another long length of rope around her back and encircling her breasts. He tied the ropes in a tight tourniquet around each breast. Pandora’s breasts quickly swelled from the stricture. Derrick seemed pleased by the effect of her bulging, reddening breasts. Then he clamped clothes pins onto her nipples.

Pandora made muffled sounds through her gag.

Derrick watched her writhe about while he smoked a cigarette. Rising, he rubbed the cigarette out on her ass. Her screams were lost in the panty-bra gag. Derrick lit another cigarette.

“Like that, bitch? Here’s another game we’ll try.”

Derrick brought a candle from his dinner table, lighted it, and began to drip hot wax onto Pandora’s tortured breasts. She made frantic sounds through her gag.

Her pain turned Derrick on, and his cock hardened quickly. He stroked it over her breasts and face as the wax dripped onto her red and swollen breasts. “I think I’ll come up your nose and see if you can breathe come.”

Pandora’s eyes pleaded. The gag was already choking her.

“Maybe later. Let’s see how you like this.” Derrick ejaculated onto her agonized breasts, following the spurts of come with hot candle wax, sealing it to her flesh. “Which is hotter, bitch?”

Derrick rolled her back onto her belly, then violently jabbed the burning candle stub into her ass, wedging it between the ropes that bound her crotch.

“If you lie still and don’t make a fuss about the hot wax running over your ass and slit, maybe I’ll blow it out before it burns all the way down.”

He pushed his cigarette against her other ass cheek, lit another, and sat back to watch. He took a large knife from the drawer and tried its edge.

Pandora was in agony, but she wriggled her body against the rope that ran through her cunt, rubbing her *oris as hot wax dripped into the crack of her ass. The flame scorched her wrists as the candle burned down. Soon it would be scorching her ass cheeks. She writhed harder, rubbing her * against the rope. The flame had reached her ass.

It look forever to reach orgasm, but she did.

The locket was shut.

Pandora staggered from Derrick’s sofa.

Derrick was carrying a tray of tea things. “Hope you like herbal teas. This one is one of my favorites. Do you take honey? This will help you wake up. You’ve been out for an hour. You really shouldn’t mix auctions with flu.”

Derrick was wearing an apron. He set the tea tray down on the table beside the sofa and began to pour. “Oh. And this is my friend, Denny. He came home while you were in slumberland.”

Denny was a handsome, muscular blonde of just past twenty, perhaps. He waved and said the usual pleasantries as he accepted a cup of herbal tea. Then he said, “Derrick told me you’ve been at it since six this morning. No wonder the nap.”

“Glass of chablis helped,” said Derrick, sipping his tea. “And Pandora shouldn’t have insisted upon helping with the lifting—women’s lib or not.”

“We’ll see you safely home once you’ve finished. You really do need to take a few days off from the shop. We guys can run it. We worry about you. Flu can be much worse than just a bad cold.” Derrick drove Pandora home. Pandora thanked him and Denny, locked her door, undressed, broke away the wax that still clung to her breasts, took a pill, then passed out on her bed.

It was Sunday, so she slept through. By dusk she was stumbling about the house in her robe, stirring a mixture of black coffee, sugar, and brandy to wash down the aspirin. She followed that with a straight brandy, then collapsed onto her favorite couch.

Probably flu. Her joints ached. As if she’d been tied in severe restraint. Flu. Lifting. Overwork. Fresh as a daisy come Monday morning. Maybe take the day off, as Derrick had suggested. Probably made a fool of herself passing out like that. More vitamins, more jogging, no champagne. Chablis?

There had been no champagne. Derrick had only stopped at his place to check his mail and feed the cat, and Pandora had wanted to make a phone call. Glass of chablis? Maybe.

Blackout. Whatever. Flu. Overwork. Losing it.

Pandora felt the urge and plopped very carefully onto the porcelain throne, for her ass was very painful. After some straining, she felt much better. Then she noticed the candle stub floating in the bowl. She flushed and fled her bathroom as she was still screaming.

“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Sanctimonious Baptist bitch!” Pandora tugged at the gold chain of the locket as she stumbled naked into her bedroom.

“Bitch! You locked all your sexual fantasies away in your heart! Bitch! Bitch! You just waited! You f*cking bitch!”

Pandora was in no state to work the clasp. After several tries she managed to snap the chain, chafing her neck in the process. She threw chain and locket onto the floor. The locket snapped open. She started to smash it with her bare foot, but it was only a locket with a lock of hair and a portrait of a young woman of another century.

Pandora sat down on her bed. She covered her face in her cradled hands. “Wasn’t you. It’s me. I’m losing it. Can’t hold back my fantasies any longer. Don’t even want to. I won’t be like you.” Pandora washed away the thin string of blood from her neck. Looking into her mirror, she admired the red tattoo of a heart upon her left breast. She had blocked it out of her mind, but now she remembered getting a little tight, walking past the tattoo parlor, feeling daring, feeling the needle drilling into her skin. She wondered what else was missing from her blackouts and where the fantasies began. The last beating her husband had given her put her in the hospital for three days. Dr Walden had told her it was a severe concussion.

It was growing late, but the singles bars were open and sure to be hot. Pandora carefully dressed herself in black hose and garter belt, black panties and platform bra, and a clinging black tube dress and black stiletto heels. The low cleavage and push-up bra showed her heart-shaped tattoo to good advantage. She hadn’t felt at all embarrassed when she purchased all of this, she now remembered: She’d felt brazen and had smiled at the clerk in a way that had made the girl nervous.

This was the first time Pandora had worn the ensemble. At least she thought it was.

She carefully put on her makeup, brushed her hair, as she wondered what to do next. There was a small stain like an old scab on the hem of her dress, but she cleaned that away without much trouble. Maybe she should wear the red outfit instead.

Dr Walden had said to call at any time. After the singles bar, perhaps. She could ask Dr Walden for her opinion. Tonight or another night.

She opened a drawer and popped the switchblade into her black sequined handbag. Frowning, she removed it, pressed the release button: mechanism well oiled and functioning, blade sharp and clean. Satisfied, she returned the switchblade to her handbag. She remembered buying it as a part of a carton of bric-a-brac at an estate auction. Like with the locket. She remembered cleaning off the blood last time she put it into the drawer. Or was that just another fantasy?

The knife was real.

Derrick might be fun. Later.

And Mavis. Delicious.

No more the victim.





I’ve Come to Talk with You Again



They were all in the Swan. The music box was moaning something about “everybody hurts sometime” or was it “everybody hurts something.” Jon Holsten couldn’t decide. He wondered, why the country-western sound in London? Maybe it was “everybody hurts somebody.” Where were The Beatles when you needed them? One Beatle short, to begin with. Well, yeah, two Beatles. And Pete Best. Whatever.

“Wish they’d turn that bloody thing down.” Holsten scowled at the offending speakers. Coins and sound effects clattered from the fruit machine, along with bonks and flippers from the Fish Tales pinball machine. The pub was fusty with mildew from the pissing rain of the past week and the penetrating stench of stale tobacco smoke. Holsten hated the ersatz stuffed trout atop the pinball machine.

Mannering was opening a packet of crisps, offering them around. Foster declined: he had to watch his salt. Carter crunched a handful, then wandered across to the long wooden bar to examine the two chalk-on-slate menus: Quality Fayre was promised. He ordered prime pork sausages with chips and baked beans, not remembering to watch his weight. Stein limped down the treacherous stairs to the Gents. Insulin time. Crosley helped himself to the crisps and worried that his round was coming up. He’d have to duck it. Ten quid left from his dole check, and a week till the next.

There were six of them tonight, where once eight or ten might have foregathered. Over twenty years, it had become an annual tradition: Jon Holsten over from the States for his holiday in London, the usual crowd around for pints and jolly times. Cancer of the kidneys had taken McFerran last year; he who always must have steak and kidney pie. Hiles had decamped to the Kentish coast, where he hoped the sea air would improve his chest. Marlin was somewhere in France, but no one knew where, nor whether he had kicked his drug dependence.

So it went.

“To absent friends,” said Holsten, raising his pint. The toast was well received, but added to the gloom of the weather with its memories of those who should have been there.

Jon Holsten was an American writer of modest means but respectable reputation. He got by with a little help from his friends, as it were. Holsten was generally considered to be the finest of the later generation of writers in the Lovecraftian school—a genre mainly out of fashion in these days of chainsaws and flesh-eating zombies, but revered by sufficient devotees to provide for Holsten’s annual excursion to London.

Holsten tipped back his pint glass. Over its rim he saw the yellow-robed figure enter the doorway. He continued drinking without hesitation, swallowing perhaps faster now. The pallid mask regarded him as impassively as ever. An American couple entered the pub, walking past. They were arguing in loud New York accents about whether to eat here. For an instant the blue-haired woman shivered as she brushed through the tattered cloak.

Holsten had fine blond hair, brushed straight back. His eyes were blue and troubled. He stood just under six feet, was compactly muscled beneath his blue three-piece suit. Holsten was past the age of sixty.

“Bloody shame about McFerran,” said Mannering, finishing the crisps. Carter returned from the bar with his plate. Crosley looked on hungrily. Foster looked at his empty glass. Stein returned from the Gents.

Stein: “What were you saying?”

Mannering: “About McFerran.”

“Bloody shame.” Stein sat down.

“My round,” said Holsten. “Give us a hand, will you, Ted?

The figure in tattered yellow watched Holsten as he arose.

Holsten had already paid for his round.

Ted Crosley was a failed writer of horror fiction: some forty stories in twenty years, mostly for nonpaying markets. He was forty and balding and worried about his hacking cough.

Dave Mannering and Steve Carter ran a bookshop and lived above it. Confirmed bachelors adrift from Victorian times. Mannering was thin, dark, well-dressed, scholarly. Carter was red-haired, Irish, rather large, fond of wearing rugby shirts. They were both about forty.

Charles Stein was a book collector and lived in Crouch End. He was showing much grey and was very concerned about his diabetes.

He was about forty.

Mike Foster was a tall, rangy book collector from Liverpool. He was wearing a leather jacket and denim jeans. He was concerned about his blood pressure after a near-fatal heart attack last year. He was fading and about forty.

The figure in the pallid mask was seated at their table when Holsten and Crosley returned from the bar with full pints. No need for a seventh pint. Holsten sat down, trying to avoid the eyes that shone from behind the pallid mask. He wasn’t quick enough.

The lake was black. The towers were somehow behind the moon. The moons. Beneath the black water. Something rising. A shape. Tentacled. Terror now. The figure in tattered yellow pulling him forward. The pallid mask. Lifted.

“Are you all right?” Mannering was shaking him.

“Sorry?” They were all looking at Holsten. “Jet lag, I suppose.”

“You’ve been over here for a fortnight,” Stein pointed out.

“Tired from it all,” said Holsten. He took a deep swallow from his pint, smiled reassuringly. “Getting too old for this, I imagine.”

“You’re in better health than most of us,” said Foster. The tattered cloak was trailing over his shoulders. His next heart attack would not be near-fatal. The figure in the pallid mask brushed past, moving on.

Mannering sipped his pint. The next one would have to be a half: he’d been warned about his liver. “You will be sixty-four on November the eighteenth.” Mannering had a memory for dates and had recently written a long essay on Jon Holsten for a horror magazine. “How do you manage to stay so fit?”

“I have this portrait in my attic.” Holsten had used the joke too many times before, but it always drew a laugh. And he was not going on sixty-four, despite the dates given in his books.

“No. Seriously.” Stein would be drinking a Pils next round, worrying about alcohol and insulin.

The tentacles were not really tentacles—only something with which to grasp and feed. To reach out. To gather in those who had foolishly been drawn into its reach. Had deliberately chosen to pass into its reach. The promises. The vows. The laughter from behind the pallid mask. Was the price worth the gain? Too late.

“Jon? You sure you’re feeling all right?” Stein was oblivious to the pallid mask peering over his shoulder.

“Exercise and vitamins,” said Holsten. He gave Stein perhaps another two years.

“It must work for you, then,” Mannering persisted. “You hardly look any older than when we first met you here in London some ages ago. The rest of us are rapidly crumbling apart.”

“Try jogging and only the occasional pint,” Holsten improvised.

“I’d rather just jog,” said Carter, getting up for another round. He passed by the tattered yellow cloak. Carter would never jog.

“Bought a rather good copy of The Outsiders,” said Foster, to change the subject. “Somewhat foxed, and in the reprint dust jacket, but at a good price.” It had been Crosley’s copy sold cheaply to another dealer.

Holsten remembered the afternoon. Too many years ago. New York. Downstairs book shop. Noise of the subway Cheap shelf. The King in Yellow, stuffed with pages from some older book. A bargain. Not cheap, as it turned out. He had never believed in any of this.

The figure in the pallid mask was studying Crosley, knowing he would soon throw himself in front of a tube train. Drained and discarded.

“Well,” said Holsten. “I’d best be getting back after this one.”

“This early in the day?” said Mannering, who was beginning to feel his pints. “Must be showing your age.”

“Not if I can help it.” Holsten sank his pint. “It’s just that I said I’d meet someone in the hotel residents’ bar at half three. He wants to do one of those interviews, or I’d ask you along. Boring, of course. But...”

“Then come round after,” Mannering invited. “We’ll all be here.” But not for very much longer, thought Holsten; but he said: “See you shortly, then.”

Crosley was again coughing badly, a stained handkerchief to his mouth.

Jon Holsten fled.

The kid was named Dave Harvis, he was from Battersea, and he’d been waiting in the hotel lobby of the Bloomsbury Park for an hour in order not to be late. He wore a blue anorak and was clutching a blue nylon bag with a cassette recorder and some books to be signed, and he was just past twenty-one. Holsten picked him out as he entered the lobby, but the kid stared cluelessly.

“Hello. I’m Jon Holsten.” He extended his hand, as on so many such meetings.

“Dave Harvis.” He jumped from his seat. “It’s a privilege to meet you, sir. Actually, I was expecting a much older... that is...”

“I get by with a little help from my friends.” Holsten gave him a firm American handshake. “Delighted to meet you.”

The tentacled mouths stroked and fed, promising whatever you wanted to hear. The figure in its tattered yellow cloak lifted its pallid mask. What is said is said. What is done is done. No turning back. Some promises can’t be broken.

“Are you all right, sir?” Harvis had heard that Holsten must be up in his years.

“Jet lag, that’s all,” said Holsten. “Let’s go into the bar, and you can buy me a pint for the interview. It’s quiet there, I think.”

Holsten sat down, troubled.

Harvis carried over two lagers. He worked on his cassette recorder. The residents’ bar was deserted but for the barman.

‘If you don’t mind, sir.” Harvis took a gulp of his lager. “I’ve invited a few mates round this evening to meet up at the Swan. They’re great fans of your work. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“My pleasure,” said Holsten.

The figure in tattered yellow now entered the residents’ bar. he pallid mask regarded Harvis and Holsten as Harvis fumbled with a microcassette tape.

Holsten felt a rush of strength.

He mumbled into his pint: “I didn’t mean for this to happen this way, but I can’t stop it.”

Harvis was still fumbling with the tape and didn’t hear.

Neither did any gods who cared.