her cunt, splitting her with pleasure and pain. He came into her with a ramming, bucking movement, lay still for a moment, then pulled out.
Susan lay totally inert, totally open, probably even totally ready to give herself to be killed. And the man who had just fucked her walked up until he was standing over her chest and sent a long stream of yellow-green urine right into her mouth. She keened in ecstasy and swallowed it noisily. Then another squatted over her and lowered his asshole onto her mouth. She reached up and pulled him further into her, and I could see her cheeks cave in with the suction. As though toying with a disgusting object, they came in turns and fucked her again, or had her suck them off, or peed on her, until they had come so many times that they were exhausted and she was caked with excretions.
Then, to my shock, the screen lit up, and on it came the figures of two people. I blinked twice, then saw that it was a film of Susan and myself, one that must have been made that afternoon from a secret recess in one of the walls in her room. It must have been shot with a telephoto lens, because every nuance of expression was caught close up, every whisper, every glance. I was dizzy with surprise, not knowing even which categories of understanding described what was now running through my emotions.
I saw a movement in the room and looked to see Susan crawling to the place in front of my chair. She lay on her back and raised her legs. Then she reached down and stroked herself between the thighs. She offered her cunt to me. Simultaneously my handcuffs were released. And the voice on the screen came up to full volume. It was Susan's voice, saying the things she had so lovingly whispered this afternoon: "This is for you, Michael, only for you. I have never let another man have just this before. Only you have this special part. This is just for you. Now, fuck me. Put your cock in me. Let me give you my cunt."
"Let me give you my cunt," the Susan lying before me said, her voice a grating whisper. I looked from the warm, gentle Susan on the screen, to the ragged, filthy dreg of humanity leering up at me from the floor. Visions of betrayal and disgust flamed through me. And all the love I had in my heart rose up to clash head-on with all the hatred that filled my soul, and I shot up from the chair and loosed a cry so terrible, so complete, so final, that it burned every feeling my being had ever been capable of knowing.
I stood for a long moment and felt a cleansing deep pain which I knew had sealed forever the door to the kind of tenderness that I had always thought was a sign of love.
I felt a pang of great loss, and then closed the door on the myth for good. Tenderness was just another facet of personality, no better or worse than any other. My metatheatrical education was continuing on schedule.
I felt a stirring in my cock and saw that it was becoming erect. I looked down at Susan and felt . . . absolutely nothing. Everything for the instant had become pure perception. I opened my fly, walked off the platform, and smiling, plunged my cock deep into Susan's bruised cunt. The lesson had been driven home. Cunts are, first and foremost, for fucking. The rest is dramaturgy.
As she clasped me to her and began moving in that rhythm which I had already come to know so well, I heard the voice of Doctor Tocco, now thin and dry, as from a great distance, saying, "Bravo, Michaell You have come a long way. But we are only now at the foot of the mountain."
SEVEN
AFTER FUCKING, I got up and left rather quickly. I felt drained of all interest in anything, and the only remedy was sleep, as a full, delicious tiredness soaked my body. It was a feeling of deep privacy and contentment, and for the first time in many years I made contact with a part of myself that seemed like home. My mind was empty, and if there is such a state as nirvana, I was in it at that moment, beyond all