couldn’t understand why the girl’s body was composed of dots like a newspaper photograph enlarged beyond reason. Of course, it was the frosting on her bathroom window.
Having her in his flat without her knowing excited him, but not enough. Perhaps he needed her to be home so that he could watch her failure to realize he had her. He opened a packet of hamburgers and cooked himself whatever meal it was. The effort annoyed him, and so did the eating: chew, chew, chew. He switched on the television, and the little picture danced for him, oracular heads spoke. He kept glancing at the undeveloped frame of her window.
By the time she arrived home the fog was spiked with drizzle. As soon as she had switched on the light, she began to remove her clothes, but before shed taken off more than her coat she drew the curtains. Had she seen him? Was she taking pleasure in his frustration at having to imagine her undressing? But he already had her almost naked. He spread the photographs across the table, and then he lurched toward his bed to find the article about sex magic.
By themselves the photographs were only pieces of card, but what had the article said? Toby Hale had put in all the ideas he could find about images during an afternoon spent in the library. The Catholic church sometimes made an image of a demon and burned it to bring off an exorcism… Someone in Illinois killed a man by letting rain fall on his photograph… Here it was, the stuff Toby had found in a book about magic by someone with a degree from a university Sid had never heard of. The best spells are the ones you write yourself. Find the words that are truest to your secret soul. Focus your imagination, build up to the discharge of psychic energy. Chant the words that best express your desires. Toby was talking about doing that with your partner, but it had given Sid a better idea. He hurried to the window, his undecided penis hindering him a little, and shut the curtains tight.
As he returned to the table he felt uneasy: excited, furtive, ridiculous—he wasn’t sure which was uppermost. If only this could work! You never know until you try, he thought, which was the motto on the contents page of
He sounded absurd. The whole situation was absurd. How could he expect it to work if he could barely hear himself? “By the time I’ve finished with you,” he said loudly, “you won’t be able to sit down for a week.”
Too loud! Nobody could hear him, he told himself. Except that he could, and he sounded like a fool. As he glared at the photograph, he was sure that she was smiling. She had beaten him. He wouldn’t put it past her to have let him take the photographs because they had absolutely no effect on her. All at once he was furious. “You’ve had it now,” he shouted.
His eyes were burning. The photograph flickered, and appeared to stir. He thought her face turned up to him. If it did, it must be out of fear. His penis pulled eagerly at his fly. “All right, miss,” he shouted hoarsely. “Those knickers are coming down.”
She seemed to jerk, and he could imagine her bending reluctantly beneath the pressure of a hand on the back of her neck. Her black knickers stretched over her bottom. Then the photograph blurred as tears tried to dampen his eyes, but he could see her more clearly than ever. By God, the tears ought to be hers. “Now then,” he shouted, “you’re going to get what you’ve been asking for.”
He seized her bare arm. She tried to pulled away, shaking her head mutely, her eyes bright with apprehension. In a moment he’d trapped her legs between his thighs and pushed her across his knee, locking his left arm around her waist. Her long blonde hair trailed to the floor, concealing her face. He took hold of the waistband of her knickers and drew them slowly down, gradually revealing her round creamy buttocks. When she began to wriggle, he trapped her more firmly with his arm and legs. “Let’s see what this feels like,” he said, and slapped her hard.
He heard it. For a moment he was sure he had. He stared about his empty flat with his hot eyes. He almost went to peer between the curtains at her window, but gazed at the photograph instead. “Oh, no, miss, you won’t get away from me,” he whispered, and saw her move uneasily as he closed his eyes.
He began systematically to slap her: one on the left buttock, one on the right. After a dozen of these her bottom was turning pink and he was growing hot—his face, his penis, the palm of his hand. He could feel her warm thighs squirming between his. “You like that, do you? Let’s see how much you like.”
Two laps on the left, two on the right. A dozen pairs of those, then five on the same spot, five on the other. As her bottom grew red she tried to cover it with her hands, but he pinned her wrists together with his left hand and forcing them up to the dimple above her bottom, went to work in earnest: ten on the left buttock, ten on its twin… She was sobbing beneath her hair, her bottom was wriggling helplessly. His room had gone. There was nothing but Sid and his victim until he came violently and unexpectedly, squealing.
He didn’t see her the next day. She was gone when he wakened from a satisfied slumber, and she had drawn the curtains before he realized she was home again. She was making it easier for him to see her the way he wanted. Anticipating that during the days which followed made him feel secretly powerful, and so did Toby Hale’s suggestion when Sid rang him to confirm the
“I might have,” Sid told him.
He didn’t fully realize how involving it would be until he began to write. He was dominating her not only by writing about her but also by delivering her up to the readers of the magazine. He made her into a new pupil at a boarding school for girls in their late teens.
At the end of the story he met her on the bus.
He was returning from town with a bagful of film. She caught the bus just as he was lowering himself onto one of the front seats downstairs. As she boarded the bus, she saw him and immediately looked away. Even though there were empty seats she stayed on her feet, holding onto the pole by the stairs.
Sid gazed at the curve of her bottom, defining itself and then growing blurred as her long coat swung with the movements of the bus plowing through the fog. Why wouldn’t she sit down? He leaned forward impulsively, emboldened by the nights he’d spent in secret with her, and touched her arm. “Would you like to sit down, love?”
She looked down at him, and he recoiled. Her eyes were bright with loathing, and yet she looked trapped. She shook her head once, keeping her lips pressed so tight they grew pale, then she turned her back on him. He’d make her turn her back tonight, he thought, by God he would. He had to sit on his hands for the rest of the journey, but he walked behind her all the way from the bus stop to her house.
“You’re not tying me up with that,” the woman said. “Cut my wrists off, that would. Pajama cord or nothing, and none of your cheap stuff neither.”
“Sid, would you mind seeing if you can come up with some cord?” Toby Hale said, taking out his reptilian wallet. “I’ll stay and discuss the scene.”
There was sweat in his eyebrows. The woman was making him sweat because she was their only female model for the story, since Toby’s wife wouldn’t touch anything kinky. Sid kicked the fog as he hurried to the shops. Just let the fat bitch give him any lip.
Her husband bound her wrists and ankles to the legs of the bed. He untied her and turned her over and tied her again. He untied her and tied her wrists and ankles together behind her back, and poked his crotch at her face. Sid snapped her and snapped her, wondering how far Toby had asked them to go, and then he had to reload. “Get a bastard move on,” the woman told him. “This is bloody uncomfortable, did you but know.”
Sid couldn’t restrain himself. “If you don’t like the work, we can always get someone else.”
“Can you now?” The woman’s face rocked toward him on the bow of herself, and then she toppled sideways on the bed, her breasts flopping on her chest, a few pubic strands springing free of her purple knickers like the legs
