When She Was Bad

Irene raised her head-she’d spent the last few minutes studying the carpet-and cocked it to the side, looking up into Pender’s pained eyes. “Yet being the operative word?” she asked him.

“Oh, definitely,” said Pender.

She smiled. “Well that’s going to be a little awkward, isn’t it? Waiting for yet, I mean.”

Pender thought it over. “Tell you what. When the time is right, I’ll show up at your door in a slinky negligee,” he said, just as Irene raised her glass to her lips.

And so what was to have been an evening of romance dissolved into a spit take. But afterward, alone in her room, when her mind insisted on exploring her moment of humiliation the way a tongue explores a broken tooth, up popped the image of Pender knocking on her door in a see-through negligee, carrying a box of candy and a floral bouquet, and she found herself smiling instead of weeping.

Pender too, had a well-developed sense of the ridiculous. Smooth move, Ex-Lax, he told himself, when he was alone in his room again. Turning down that elegant trim at your age-good God, man, you must have lost your mind.

8

“Anything else before I go?” inquired the chunky, bespectacled night nurse. She had already brought Lyssy a glass of water, given him his sleeping pill, helped him take off his leg and change into his pajamas, and tucked the covers around him.

“Yeah, could you move my crutches closer to the bed? In case I have to go to the bathroom?” Lyssy, who’d been trying to postpone the inevitable, began to sense the nurse’s growing impatience. The problem was, he wasn’t just afraid of the dark, he was afraid of anybody knowing he was afraid.

“There you go. Anything else?” She waited by the door, her finger poised at the keypad, ready to punch in the security code.

“I guess not.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

The heavy door slid open, then closed again behind the nurse, locking automatically. The ceiling panels dimmed gradually; soon the only illumination in the room was a faint trapezoid the color of moonlight, cast onto the carpet by the recessed night-light in the bathroom.

What a roller coaster of a day, thought Lyssy, slipping one hand under his pajama bottoms and closing it around his penis, which was already satisfactorily heavy with anticipation.

To make it hard, he thought about the girl he’d met this afternoon, then plugged her image into his standard masturbatory template, which always involved a rescue. Tonight he would save Lily from a fire-another night it might be Miss Stockings whom he saved from a flood, or the pretty black nutritionist who had to be rescued from one of Lyssy’s neighbors on the locked ward. And after the fire (because for Lyssy the idea of even taking the initiative in a sexual encounter, much less resorting to coercion or violence, was a brake-screeching turnoff), Lily became the grateful aggressor. I know what you want, she whispered as she began to undress herself at the foot of the bed, I know what you need….

Another feature common to Lyssy’s sexual fantasies was that the actual sex tended to be indistinct, breast- oriented, and R-rated-he rarely got as far as the nitty-gritty before reaching orgasm.

Tonight, though, strange things started happening. Lyssy had stroked himself into a sort of trance state, picturing the girl turning her back to him while she slipped off her bomber jacket. But when she turned around to face him again, she was no longer Lily-instead, she had turned into Dr. Al’s wife.

Nothing too unusual there. Though she was in her midforties and starting to spread a little in the waist and rear, Cheryl Corder was still nice and bosomy up front, and had a sort of Martha Stewart ice-queen thing going: frosted hair, knowing eyes that crinkled at the corners, and a wry, crooked smile.

Nor was there anything unusual about the way the fantasy played out at first. Stripped down to her panties, Mrs. Corder sashayed around the bed until she was standing directly in front of Lyssy, then cupped her breasts in both hands for him to nuzzle, kiss, tongue, and suckle.

Most nights, that would have been enough to bring the furiously masturbating Lyssy to orgasm. If not, he’d picture her climbing onto his lap and lowering herself onto him-that would generally do the trick. But tonight, instead of waiting passively, he grabbed the woman roughly by the hair and threw her facedown onto the bed-not his own narrow twin, but a big double bed with satin sheets.

Frightened now, whimpering, No, please, she tried to crawl away. Unable to stop himself-it was as if someone else had hijacked his fantasy-Lyssy threw himself on top of her, jerked her panties down roughly. His cock was huge, red-knobbed, and throbbing, a real two-hander. You like it rough, don’t you, he said as he spread her cheeks and thrust himself into her hard. She screamed; the more she screamed, the better he liked it. Humping, driving, crushing her down, feeling the dark tightness enveloping him as one scarred hand gripped her hair for control while the other snaked under her to play with her fat, white, heavy-hanging breasts.

Gone was any semblance of control over his own fantasy-Lyssy wasn’t even surprised, when he turned his head, to see Dr. Al and young Alison tied to chairs at the foot of the bed, both naked, bound and gagged, forced to watch. Don’t worry, your turn’s coming, he hissed to Alison in a voice that was no more his own than was the fantasy. And you’ll get yours too, he confided to Dr. Al.

And as he began to come, a succession of disconnected images flashed before Lyssy’s eyes-a knife being drawn across a throat, blood spattering a wall, a lolling head, a slumping body….

Lyssy opened his eyes, found himself back in his own bed, frightened and ashamed, his hands sticky with semen. With a moan of horror he threw back the covers and hopped into the bathroom, where he scrubbed his hands with soap and hot water, roughly, obsessively, until the scar tissue stretched across the palms was red and raw.

And though in the forefront of his mind he was repeating the same phrase over and over, like a mantra, as he scrubbed-it’s not my fault, it wasn’t me; it’s not my fault, it wasn’t me-in the back of his mind Lyssy was pretty sure he could hear dry laughter emanating from the dark place where he was never to go.

CHAPTER THREE 1

Lily awoke to the sound of an over-hearty female voice bidding her good morning through a speaker in the wall near the head of the bed. For a few seconds that seemed to last an eternity, she felt lost and frightened, totally disoriented. Then it all came flooding back: the airplane, her grandparents, and-oh God-the Institute!

A moment later the room’s only door slid open, then closed behind a massively built young woman in white duck trousers and a tight-sleeved white polo shirt with the RCI logo over the left breast. Her light brown hair was cut in a mullet: shaved sidewalls, buzzed on top, hanging straight down to her powerful shoulders in back. PATRICIA BENOIT, PSYCH. TECH., read the plastic name badge pinned to her shirt.

“Hi, I’m Patty. Dr. Corder wants me to stick with you this morning, kinda show you the ropes, get you orientated, how’s that sound?”

“I have to pee.”

“You might want to try out the shower, too.” Patty wrinkled her nose. “Getting a little gamy, if you catch my drift. I’ll be at the nurses’ station-buzz me when you’re ready.” At the doorway, Patty angled her body to block Lily’s view of the keypad before punching in the code.

Although she was wearing a modest cotton-flannel nightgown from the suitcase full of clothes and personal