From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon)
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: Untitled story
Date: 23 Aug 92 08:44:52 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC


This is something I've written as the prologue to a longer story.  Any
comment would be greatly appreciated!  Sorry about the formatting; this was
pulled from a troff document.  No, it hasn't been spell-checked, so I'm sure
there are errors lurking in there somwhere.

_______________


     She was too drunk to keep her legs closed.  It was a  thing  that
later  many  would  say derisively, sarcastically;  in the very begin-
ning, it was merely the truth.

     "Want a Coke?"

     The words would mock her again and again when she began to under-
stand what had happened.  Again:

     "Want a Coke?"

     She did not, but she could not tell him so.   What  to  say,  "_I
love you, I want to kiss you, I want to put my arms around you, I want
more than anything in the whole world your respect and admiration, but
I *don't* want another Coke!_"

     The words ran together all wrong in her head and  made  her  feel
very small and unimportant and undeserving.  She drank deep.

     They spoke for some time of this and that, or perhaps more truth-
fully,  he  spoke,  boldly,  with confidence, and she made brief timid
interjections, terrified of saying the wrong thing.  After a while she
found that the words came easier, and that she was no longer so afraid
of what she might say, and perhaps this should  have  told  her  some-
thing,  but  she did not then know what, and did not in any case think
of it.  Her heart sunk as she saw him rise again - leaving?  She  beat
back rising confusion.  What was she thinking?  He was just going into
the other room.  He'd be back in a moment, and he was.

     "You look thirsty.  I brought you another Coke."

     She felt sick to her stomach at the thought of another Coke,  but
she  took  it  without  a  word and tried to gulp as much as she could
before she could think better of it.  The first thing she noticed  was
the  strange,  almost  bitter taste that she'd wondered at before, but
this time it was stronger.  Her mind did  not  remain  upon  it  long,
assaulted  at  an  ever quickening pace by strange feelings and sensa-
tions that she had never before in her young  life  encountered.   _Oh
no_,  she  thought,  _I  can't  be getting sick!  Not now, please, not
now!_  Her thoughts wandered off again, then snapped back to  what  he
was saying.

     "Are you all right?  You look kinda sick."

     "I..I've gotta go, go to the bathroom, where - can  you  show  me
where it is?"

     _No_, her mind screamed, _he noticed!  What if he thinks  there's
something wrong with me?  What if he doesn't like me? What if-_

     But just then they came to the bathroom, and she had  to  concen-
trate  all  of her attention on finding the light-switch.  As the door
closed behind her she thought she saw a strange, unpleasant expression
on  his  face,  but  then  she found it very hard to sit on the toilet
seat, harder still to clean  herself  up,  stand  up,  and  flush  the
toilet, and she pushed her doubts down deep inside, resolved, fuzzily,
that she would not let her sudden illness endanger her  standing  with
him  any more, and walked as best she could down the hall to fall more
or less where she had been sitting upon the bed.

     She was confused when he did not say anything  to  her,  but  she
soon forgot this when she found that he was kissing her tentatively on
the lips.  She felt a terrible sense of loss when he pulled away  from
her, and tried to tell him not to, but the words lost themselves some-
where betwixt tongue and teeth and lips and would not come save  as  a
low, incomprehensible mumble.  Suddenly she felt his hands at the but-
ton of her shirt, palms across her breasts, and  she  remembered  that
she  should  not  let  him do this, and fumbled with the top button in
vain as he moved to the next, and the next, until all were open.   She
tried  to  stop  him from pulling the shirt free from the waist of her
jeans, but to no avail, her hands refusing obstinately to go where she
willed  them  and  terrible  waves  of  nausea  that  rose  ever  more
insistently from her stomach distracting her from her feeble  efforts.
As he removed her jeans she felt very small and weak and helpless; had
she been able she would have curled herself up in  a  ball  and  cried
like a baby, but she lacked even the strength to turn away.

     Now above the sickness in her stomach and the pounding  sound  of
blood  in  her  ears  there was an awful weight across her abdomen and
chest making it almost impossible to breathe, but soon she was far too
busy  trying  to  keep her legs closed to think about it, only another
blow among many, and just then she knew she had failed when  the  real
blows  came,  terrible blows that she was sure would split her in two,
break her inside, tear her until she bled to death, and dimly she felt
the  warm  wet  flow of blood on her thighs and she was very sure that
she would die.  She did not know if death would be  such  a  very  bad
thing  if  it  would  make all this go away and she shut her eyes very
tight and tried as hard as she could to think of nothing.

     "Get up, what's wrong with you, get your clothes on!"

     The pain was gone and his weight, too, but she  still  felt  very
weak.   Somehow she brought her body up, confused and very frightened,
thinking only that if she could get her clothes on somehow she  would.
_He  knows  there's something wrong with me!_ flashed dimly across her
mind, and she wanted to cry again, but she pushed the feeling down and
struggled  with  her jeans, which would not go, finally fastening them
as he became increasingly upset.

     "You stupid girl, can't you even put on your own clothing?"

     She was having terrible trouble with the buttons  on  her  shirt,
and  angrily he did them for her.  He had just done the third one when
his mother came in, home from work, the sound of her car on the  drive
the  siren of danger to which he had responded.  In the other room she
had found on the table an open, half-empty bottle of whiskey,  and  on
the  floor she saw a pair of panties, and on the bed the girl with her
shirt half-open and she did not see the spot of blood among  the  has-
tily  smoothed  bedsheets and she did not stop to consider the meaning
of the four empty cans of Coca-Cola on the nightstand and  she  became
very angry, but for all the wrong reasons.

     "Get away from my son!", she almost shouted, "Go in the  bathroom
and  get yourself dressed properly and you'll be damn lucky if I still
can't think of anything to say to your mother when I take you home!"

     She whisked her son off into the other room, a door slammed,  and
there  came  the  sound of much anger, vented quickly.  The words that
one could hear were mostly about _that horrible little slut_, and  the
girl knew only that somehow she had done something very wrong.

     _I'm sorry, she sobbed, I'm sorry I was bad!_ But the words  from
the other room still came. Fingers still not working right and wracked
by great heaving sobs that threw her  torso  violently  this  way  and
that,  she managed somehow to do the buttons on her shirt.  She picked
up her panties from the floor and balled them up tight, not looking at
them, and stuffed them in her pocket as she crumpled to the floor in a
small tearstained avalanche of guilt.

     She was twelve years old.

-- 
Thor Lancelot Simon	 tls@panix.COM
  "Oh, you have wounded me!  I have very few prejudices, actually.  The
biggest problem is that I am intolerant of fools.  That is why I have
such a low tolerance level for Libertarians."  -- Jim McMaster
Newsgroups: alt.prose