Sips of Blood (21 page)

The sudden barking of a dog reminded Sade of
how fond these people were of their pets. A cross between a Saint
Bernard and a German shepherd approached him. One of the dog's eyes
was clouded over, the other seriously drooped. However, the dog's
sense of smell still allowed him to locate trespassers. The dog's
gimpy back leg slowed him down considerably.

"Go home," Sade commanded.

The dog walked up to Sade and sat. His coat
was matted and his teeth weren't all present, but his tail worked
enthusiastically in his greeting of Sade.

"Great
chien de garde."

The dog whimpered and lay down at Sade's
feet.

"Guilt trips won't work with
moi."

When Sade attempted to move on, the dog
followed.

"Chien,
I cannot have you following
me."

The dog again whimpered and lay at Sade's
feet.

Sade heard a sound. A crunching of leaves.
Feminine pheromone came swirling in the air around him, and the
precious smell of blood enfolded his senses completely. He drew
back beneath an old tree and waited. The dog stood and stared at
Sade like a bloodhound directing the hunter toward the kill.

A lissome girl of twenty stepped into
view.

"There you are, Dog. What are you doing out
here?" The girl approached the dog and ruffled his dirty coat of
fur. "Come on back before you get lost. Johnny won't sleep unless
he's cuddled up next to you."

The dog never moved. The girl nudged him with
her knee, and the dog sat down.

"Aw, please come back. I don't want to be
standing out in the woods all night. And neither do you. Remember
how you got that old droopy eye chasing rabbits in the dark?
Thinking you could fit inside the hollowed-out tree like the
rabbit? Bruising that face of yours so badly that we weren't sure
whether it would be kinder to shoot you or patch you."

The dog steadfastly ignored her.

"What's the matter with you?"

The presence of the menstruating woman drove
Sade's hunger to the brink of carelessness. His body stiffened to
leap.

The dog growled.

"Is there some dumb animal in among those
trees?" she asked the dog.

"If I chase it away, will you come home
then?" The girl shook her head and tried to peer into the blackness
of the woods.

Come to me, ma petite fille.

Sade could not make out the color of her
eyes, but her features looked carved. Her braided black hair
reached down to her narrow waist. Her small pert breasts jutted out
against the knitted cotton dress. The sash she used around her
waist appeared bleached and old. Her legs and feet were bare.

"I don't see anything, Dog." Again she
attempted to get the dog to move. This time the dog stood and moved
closer to the trees where Sade hid. The girl followed, passing by
the dog and determinedly heading for the woods.

The sexual energy and menstrual blood turned
Sade into a quivering shadow.

"Is someone there?" she asked.

Sade withdrew further into the shades
surrounding him.

The girl stopped and called a name. A name
that Sade did not catch. She called several other names, and Sade's
mind calculated the leap he would need to make to capture her.

The girl turned toward the dog.

"What do you have me doing? Making a fool of
myself?"

The dog growled in reply.

"What the hell is bothering you?" With an
exasperated sigh she turned back to the woods and walked into the
shadows.

The dog barked once before he fell silent, a
matted twisted jumble of fur and flesh.

Sade sated his sexual hunger. This time he
felt the complete release of thirst quenched and desire punctuated
by orgasm.

"But no one opens his arms to the guilty person....
People blush to be in his presence, are embarrassed to offer him
their tears, as though terrified of contagion; he is banished from
every heart: pride impels us to heap abuse upon him whom we ought
to succor out of a feeling of humanity."

Ernestine

by the

Marquis de Sade

Chapter 39

Marie wrapped the collar around her neck and
tightened the buckle. Each day she would perform this ritual until
he came. He would inevitably, driven either by the suspicion that
she had something to do with his father's condition or simply to
direct his wrath at someone. And she would be here waiting, hungry,
and willing.

Before noon Wil did show, his hair greasy and
disheveled. His dark eyes had no glow. Shadows darkened the puffy
bags under his eyes. His stale breath soured the air around him,
and his body's stench revealed all the fear, pain, and anger that
he had so recently experienced.

"I knew it had to be you the instant I found
him."

"Wil, it sounds more like a crazed dog than
any human. From what you're telling me, it sounds like your father
was mauled. Perhaps some beast. A wild cat. A wolf."

"They don't exist around here."

"The gory details you've told me certainly
indicate to me that it had to be something from the wild that did
this to your father."

Wil let his body drop onto the settee.

"He can never get better. He's permanently
a... vegetable."

"Do they know how much he understands?"

"He's still unconscious, but hell, his brain
was dripping out of his head onto the ground when I found him." Wil
steadied his elbows on his knees and rested his face in his
hands.

Marie fingered her collar.

"I didn't come home to hurt him," Wil
sobbed.

"Yes, you did."

Wil looked up at Marie, tears sliding down
his cheeks, eyes a lackless dark ebony.

"You always tried to hurt your father, Wil.
You wanted retribution for having been abandoned as a baby. Oh, he
took care of the child in mundane ways, but he deserted his son as
soon as his wife died. You were never part of their family. Not for
your father. His family consisted of two people, and you killed one
of them."

Marie watched Wil's chest pump from the
heaving roiling his insides. Suddenly Wil sprang to his feet and
ran for the bathroom.

At least he still remembers his
manners,
she thought.

She didn't really like this aspect of Wil.
The sniveling. The self-pity. She would have preferred a raging
bull.

When he returned to the room, he carried one
of her best hand towels, the one with the stitched poppies
bordering each end. He had soaked one corner of the towel with
water, and he kept rubbing it across his face.

"Want a drink, Wil?"

He shook his head and sat on the settee.

Marie fingered the collar. He didn't seem to
notice.

"I could give you a little arsenic in a bit
of champagne."

"I can't go back."

"To your father's house?" A smile rounded the
corners of her lips.

"Back to the city."

"Do you want to?"

"I can't go back."

"Be cryptic. I don't have time to give you
therapy, Wil."

"I owe a lot of money."

"The pimping business is that bad?"

"I don't do that shit anymore."

"Drugs? Gambling?"

"I borrowed money for a business I was
starting."

"What kind?"

"An escort service."

"And you say your not pimping anymore."

"It was going to be legit. There's a lot of
people who need to show up at functions with a companion. Some are
closet gays who need to rent a date just for the evening. Business
people who don't have the energy for a real relationship, but don't
want the boss to know."

"How much did you borrow?"

"Two hundred thousand."

"What fool lent you that kind of money?"

"A guy who would like to step over my dead
body."

"Ex-lover?"

He nodded.

Marie unbuckled the collar and removed it
from her neck. She studied the collar, trying to decide whether it
would fit Wil.

"You want your father dead."

"No! Damn it! I thought I could stay with Dad
for a while until..."

"Until he dropped dead."

Wil flung the towel across the room.

"You need a shower, Wil. You stink. There's
an open shower in the basement. Use it."

"I'm not good enough for the upstairs
bathroom?"

Marie sat next to him. She measured the
collar around his neck.

"You need something to relieve the tension. I
can help you."

Wil undid the buttons on his denim shirt.

"I can make you forget for a time."

"I don't want to forget. I want to be made to
pay for what happened to my father. And you, bitch, know how to do
it."

Marie chuckled. If she had only known
sooner.

"Take the collar with you and put it on after
you shower. Wait for me downstairs." She dropped the collar into
his lap. "Now!"

A flash sparked his eyes, and by the time it
disappeared Wil had taken the collar in his hand. They both stood.
Marie slipped the denim off his shoulders and down his arms. His
muscles sagged a bit, the confidence and power gone from his body.
She unbuckled his belt and undid the trousers. He was erect beneath
his trousers; a horizontal bar with a metal ball at each end
pierced his cockhead.

When she finished undressing him, she held
his clothing at arms length.

"Bet you've had these on for several days.
This what you were wearing when you found your father?"

"Yeah." His voice sounded defeated and
tired.

"I'll burn them." She started for the doorway
then stopped. "You're dismissed."

Wil looked down at the collar he still held
in his hands.

"After the shower you can put it on. I don't
want the leather getting ruined."

He moved past her. As he walked, she took in
the colors covering his legs. The Grim Reaper flexed on the back of
his right leg, wielding his scythe over his head and just under the
curve of Wil's right buttock. Tombstones covered the back of the
other leg. Skeletal limbs were scattered among the tombstones.

She didn't have to show him the way to the
basement. He homed in on the dungeon, or perhaps she had said
something previously about where the dungeon was located. She
couldn't remember, and it didn't matter.

"Remorse is no index of criminality; it merely
denotes an easily subjugated spirit; let some absurd command be
given you, which forbids you to leave this room, and you'll not
depart without guilty feelings however certain it is your departure
will cause no one any harm."

Justine

Marquis de Sade

Chapter 40

Wil touched his father's hand. Milky white,
he thought. The ragged nails had been trimmed by a nurse. The
misshapen knuckles no longer gave his father pain. The age spots
appeared to be more prominent against the flaccid flesh. Wil slid
his own palm under his father's. Slowly Wil's fingers closed around
his father's hand, but as when he was a child, there was no
response. He felt the weight of the hand and tried to lift it, but
it seemed to be made of a heavy material that looked like flesh,
only looked like flesh.

"Dad, I'm going to be taking you home soon.
The doctor said he could do no more for you. Hell, I don't know
what I can even do. Nothing, I guess, but bathe and feed you. And
maybe pray, if I can remember any prayers. What should I be praying
for, Dad? Your recovery? Or for you to die a peaceful death?"

He waited for tears to shine his eyes, but
nothing blurred the vision of his father lying against white
sheets, tubes keeping the old man alive. The hospital bed seemed
too narrow for his father's bulk. Too confining. Too unreal.

"Hey, when I get you home I'll slip an old
T-shirt and boxers on you. Get rid of this piece of cloth that
passes as a nightgown. Besides, you're too macho for a
gown."

The nurse's call button dangled uselessly
from the headboard.

"The nurses don't know how lucky they are
that you can't use that button. You'd really be living it up
bullying around the staff."

Wil smiled, but didn't feel any emotion. He
used his thumb to rub the back of his father's hand, attempting to
bring back life.

He knelt down beside his father's bed and
kissed the old man's hand. The smell of antiseptics overpowered
Wil's breath. His stomach roiled, and his own hands began to
shake.

"Don't know if I'll be able to duplicate all
this clean stuff. Home might smell more like... a sewer. I think I
finally fixed that toilet. I've been flushing and the water hasn't
spilled over. Still think you could use a new septic tank, except
that you're so damned cheap you'd rather live with the stink rather
than part with a cent."

An empty bed lay stripped down next to his
father's bed. A boy had been bunking there, or at least he had
looked like a boy. Yet Wil and the boy had been the same age. Born
two months apart, they had been able to communicate and share
jokes. The kid had kept talking about going home, had kept
apologizing for Keith's condition, even though he had had nothing
to do with the
accident.
The kid had never been farther than
fifty miles outside his town until he had the stroke. They had
rushed him to the nearest hospital, one hundred and five and a half
miles from home. He had to learn to walk all over again. Had to
work on the slight slur that had marred his speech. His intent to
overcome the remnants of his stroke had camouflaged the boy's fear.
However, when the boy had died, fear and surprise distorted the
expression on his face. Briefly Wil had caught a glance of the
chiseled dead face. A second stroke had taken away the boy's second
chance.

Wil wanted to start all over. His father
wouldn't let him. Marie wouldn't let him. He couldn't allow himself
to forgive his own indiscretions. His own warped and depraved
pleasures eased the pain. Made him forget. Made him purge himself
of the guilt.