Seeds of Fear

Did it heighten his sexual response?

Her gaze drifted back to the cutting board, to the compact knife that rested there on the damp, red cutting board.

Her fingers curled around it, tickled the back of her other hand with its tip.

Behind her, the tomatoes melted into the mass of the omelette.

Her robe slipped open, and she pressed the flat of the cold blade against her breast, the sharp edge just circling her nipple. It became hard immediately.

She flicked the blade's tip to her other breast, traced the nipple.

Goose bumps rushed in a wave up her abdomen, across her collarbone, down her arms.

The knife's blade became warm, moved.

There was a momentary sensation of heat, which swept across her like a scouring, dry wind.

Then a sudden coldness that engorged her nipples so much, she thought they might explode.

She cried out.

Simultaneously, and quite unexpectedly, she orgasmed, her legs buckling beneath her.

Her free hand caught the counter as she fell to her knees, bent her head, and gasped for breath.

Beneath her, bright red pennies dripped unnoticed to the ground from her nipple, pooled loosely on the floor.

The omelette burned in the pan.

Cynthia was in control.

She'd cleaned the kitchen, scouring the charred egg and cheese from the pan. She'd mopped the floor, trying not to distinguish between the pulpy tomato drippings and the other spots that were thicker, more red.

The bandage she had applied after she had collected herself chafed the sore, raw nipple it covered. She had already changed it twice, and blood still oozed from the wound, soaked through the bandage, her T-shirt.

When she had first gone into the bathroom, she was surprised at first to see blood, dripping from her nipple like red milk, running in a rivulet down the curve of her breast, beading on her stomach like water on a finely waxed car.

With hesitant, probing fingers she discovered that the sharp little paring knife had nearly sliced off her entire nipple. It now hung from her breast by a small flap of skin. When she touched it, it moved away like an opening door, exposing bright, red tissue beneath.

She quickly closed it.

Amazingly, it had taken nearly an hour for it to begin to hurt, first in a tentative, stinging way, then in great, gasping throbs of pain that made both breasts ache in rhythm with her pulse.

Once the kitchen was clean, she poured herself a glass of soda, gathered her robe around her, and sat down in her chair near the phone.

She did not cry, and her stomach ached only in a vaguely threatening way.

Rather, she felt she understood the caller better, as if they had bonded in some secret, bloody way. For the first time, she felt she could handle him better when he called next.

Cynthia felt in control again.

And, she had to admit, for some strange reason, what she had done, and done almost unknowingly, had felt. good.

Or at the very least, it hadn't been merely painful.

The phone on the table next to her rang shrilly, and she set the glass down, answered it.

'Hello? Hi, Steve,' she purred to one of her regular customers. 'Is your wifey asleep? Great. Yes. Uh-huh. I bet you are hard, Stevie.

'I've got something with me tonight that's hard, too.'

Steve stayed on the phone, angry at first, then scared, then weeping.

When she was through, he asked if he could call her again.

The phone rang, as it did more and more often these days.

So many calls, so many callers.

Many times, they didn't like what Cynthia wanted to offer them.

With most, though, it only took a phone call or two to turn them on, just as it had been with her.

Then they were easy to control.

But it was getting harder with each caller.

It took more and more of her to keep that control.

Cynthia grunted as she fought to pull herself up from her sticky, crusted bedsheets. She spent most of her time here these days, the phone now moved to her nightstand, where it was within easy reach.

Cynthia was naked, as she was all of the time now. She found that clothing of any kind, even a loose robe, chafed the many wounds on her body, some still oozing fluids, some scabbed over, some already covered with thick, ropy scars.

There were far too many to worry about Band-Aids.

It was difficult to walk now. She was weak so often, and it was hard to maintain her balance without any toes. The neighbors had started to complain, too, first to her, then to the building manager, about the screams, the strange smells coming from her apartment.

'Cynthia?' asked the voice on the receiver, and it trembled through her.

Her ex-boss. Her ex-lover.

'Hello,' she croaked, her voice hard and hoarse. It had suffered the most over the last six months or so, through all of the shouting, the shrieking, the crying. The toll of that stress was as apparent in her voice as it would have been in the lank, lusterless hair or wrinkled, saggy body of a burned-out topless dancer.

For a moment, she felt like she had when he had fired her; when the man who cut himself had called her for the first time.

Powerless. Out of control.

Pushing that aside, her hand fumbled for something on the nightstand, just out of reach.

It sparkled in the low light of the room as she brought it around, settled back in bed.

It was awkward to hold the knife these days. All the fingers on her left hand were gone, and on her right hand only a single finger and thumb remained. This, she found, was the minimum number of digits necessary to hold the knife.

'Ralph told me to call you.'

'He did? What else did he say?'

'He said I'd never forget it.'

'Ohh, you'll never forget it. I'll make sure of that. You'll never forget.'

'What are you doing?'

'I'm stroking the tip of the knife over my skin. ahhh. goose bumps are covering me everywhere,' she whispered.

Clumsily she moved the knife, trembling a little when the tip of the blade skipped over a scar, slid through a raw, wet patch. She sought out something she had given to no caller as of yet; some part of her body that was whole and unscarred to offer him.

To control him.

'Ahh,' he groaned, a noise that sounded as if it were ripped involuntarily from somewhere deep inside him.

'Ummm. It feels nice. Doesn't it?'

'Yes,' he answered shakily.

He hesitated briefly when he heard something in the background, underneath her heavy breathing; the corrugated sound of metal cutting into something soft.

The knife moved against her, into her.

'Yes.'

Warmth spread within her, upon her.

Her voice cracked with pleasure.

'Good. So good.'

She screamed, her hips bucking up from the bed uncontrollably, shuddering with the powerful waves that