the only human thing on the earth that was close to his own age.
He’d paid her a thousand dollars cash, five times what she’d asked.
She looked wholesome somehow, cherubic—another contradiction of self and effect. She wore no stockings, her young legs looked smooth and sleek in the lamplight. Nor did she wear any panties, he noted, when she wriggled out of the tight leather miniskirt. The malefactor watched from across the room. Fake, pretty blonde hair, long and straight. Chocolate-brown eyes. A trimmed and nearly black pubic patch. Each of these images assembled into a complete contemplation. The freshness of her being. The surge of her youth. Her blouse slid off her shoulders to reveal smallish, pert breasts and pointed nipples.
“What’s your name, by the way?” she asked.
My name is oblivion, he thought. My name is forever. What would her reaction be if he actually said that? I don’t really even have a name. What worth are names? He smiled at her again.
“I know.” She laughed. “It’s John Smith, right? I get lots of John Smiths.”
“My name is Lethe,” the malefactor said.
“Well then why don’t you come over here and join the party, Mr. Lethe? You’ve got me for the whole night.”
No, I’ve got you forever. “Just…” he began. His eyes grew wide on her, the vision blooming. It was an erotic vision, a fleshy and sensual one: the young girl sitting naked at the edge of the big hotel bed, coyly smiling. All she had on were black high heels.
“I know,” she postulated. She leaned back, splaying her pose. “Lotta guys like to watch a little first. They like to look.”
“Yes,” the malefactor said.
She lay back on the bed and parted her legs. She closed her eyes and sighed, and began to caress herself. The malefactor felt enraptured; this was beautiful, watching the beautiful young girl delight in the pleasures of her own body. Her hands roved her breasts, distending the nipples. In moments she was touching her sex, fervidly plying it with her fingers. She writhed on the sheets. Her heels kicked out of the black shoes. And in just moments more, she’d climaxed.
Yes, the malefactor thought.
She seemed exhausted, astonished. After lying back to catch her breath for a minute, she leaned up. “God,” she whispered. “I don’t know what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I…” She faltered, squinting at herself. “I never come that fast. Usually I don’t come at all, when…” Her finish dissolved.
“When you’re with a…client,” the malefactor finished for her. “You don’t generally find pleasure in the province of your profession.”
She looked at him. Sweat dried on her chest. “Something like that,” she said, at once seeming sad.
“But why shouldn’t you? Why shouldn’t you find pleasure in yourself? Why shouldn’t you rejoice in yourself?”
Now her smile was a crux. Of course, she didn’t understand him. She would, though, in a little while.
She didn’t scream at all—they never did. She wrapped her legs around him as he thrust. With each thrust he could feel the frantic contractions of her sex, her repeated climaxes. “I love you,” she breathed each time she came.
The protracted incisors sunk into the beautiful white flesh of her throat. Sleight of mouth, he thought. She continued to climax as his teeth dug out the sternomastoid and scalenus muscle groups, exposing the jugular and the common carotid. They pulsed side by side amid the shorn muscle. The malefactor bit into them both.
She writhed beneath him, still convulsing her own silent, hot ecstasy. Lovely, he thought. It was lovely, to consume her so ardently. He swallowed all that she was in essence, not just simply her blood but her beauty and her vitality, her youth, her whole life.
The malefactor sucked her dry.
I am forever. I am oblivion.
He felt warm deep in his guts as he dressed. She didn’t look beautiful anymore, she looked vitiated, wizened. But that