Free Bull Running For Girlsl by Allyson Bird

again, and that her grandmother was right. The sharp, blue eyes of May Thomas held Alice in a solid chain of contact from which Alice could not break away, and then the camera drifted from her grandmother, to the other passengers who looked as though they actually did belong on the trolley. Alice was shocked. She held back the tears and shivered, telling herself she would have to resist whatever Maitland had in mind for her. She then convinced herself that her imagination had got the better of her, and that she had not seen or heard her grandmother.
    The telly was in the far corner of the room. Alice got off the couch and stumbled over to it. She turned it off and swayed slightly, the nausea welling up from the pit of her stomach until she could taste the bitterness in her mouth. The room began to spin around her and she felt guilty about the secretive encounters with Walter Maitland, that she needed to end. Her husband, Geoff, was away on business, and Alice believed she had seen her guilt mirrored in his eyes before he left. He didn’t suspect…did he? It was not just the guilt that was haunting her but fear as well.
     
    Alice prepared to go out and her thoughts fell upon last Tuesday, when she had gone to Maitland’s house to tell him she was ending the affair. He had been calm. But he frightened her when he pulled out a kitchen drawer, and started rattling the knives. He held one up and the cold sunshine streaming through the window struck the blade and dazzled her. Maitland slowly placed the knife back in the drawer and shut it with a loud bang. Alice jumped and panicked. She could feel the sweat on her palms and see the wry smile on his face. Was he going to try and make her stay?
    Today was the day she had agreed to meet him one last time and Alice hurried to his car, when it drew up around the corner. She slipped on the icy pavement and felt herself about to fall. Recovering her footing she made for the car and opened the door—hesitated for an instant—trying to remember a warning that could not now be recalled, and got in. Once inside she turned to face his dark, hooded eyes that both attracted and repulsed her at the same time.
    “Where this time? Not the house?” she asked with more than a hint of nervousness.
    “Not the house,” he replied.
    “Then where?”
    “You’ll see.” He smiled and patted her knee. She shuddered. There were very few words between them. The usual day-to-day stuff was of no interest to them at all. Maitland was a mysterious man thirty years her senior, and Alice had been attracted to an otherness about him. She was interested in the occult. Maitland was charismatic and reminded her of the sinister Alistair Crowley. She had been willing to risk her marriage—everything—to experience something of the dark side of magic.
     
    February. Cold. But, Maitland took her to a broken down hut in the middle of Nairn’s Wood. Through rotten bracken to a small place that smelt of musk and strange, odorous plants, the names of which she would never know. He had been to the hut before her. The floor was covered with thick, animal furs—enough to cover them too, and keep the cold out. He lit three black candles and indicated that she should remove her clothes. He placed a fur pelt around her waist, which he tied securely with scraps of skin, still attached to the fur. The fur felt good, sensual, and seemed familiar. Maitland picked up a dark-green bowl and bade her drink the mixture that smelt a little like mulled wine but had an underlying taste that was unknown to her.
    “I can’t, I can’t do this anymore,” she pleaded.
    Before entering her, he smeared his penis with a strange, animal-smelling cream that heightened her orgasm and no doubt his. During copulation her head filled with vile faces of creatures hideously deformed, and yet she found the attraction of their evil irresistible—it lingered like a fugue. When they coupled she felt the evil flow into her and it fed deep