Seeds of Fear

These crystals are pretty potent, making my eyes water, and I have to glance away and take a deep breath.

It's all set up now. I sit down on the toilet, spread my legs, and reach for the filled bag.

Nothing like douching with Drano. A little dab'll do you.

THE WATCHER Rex Miller and Jeff Gelb

For many years George Winters had fantasized about the same basic scene: two women, one of them his wife, making love, with himself as coach, director, onlooker, and commentator. 'Pull the hair away from her face,' he would say, having seen his share of hard core.

His wife, Karen, was a statuesque natural redhead, heavily freckled over her upper torso, with a long, slim neck, a chest that other women envied, and a little hint of tummy. Karen had kept most of her figure. At forty-one she still looked like a woman in her early thirties, and was just beginning to fight the battle of the middle-aged bulge. Her long legs were as fine as they'd been when George had first seen her, in the lobby of First Financial, where he was the junior lending officer in the mortgage department. That had been nearly twenty years before, and the sizzle had long since died between them. They still had sex, but it had become infrequent and routine. He thought that intercourse with Karen had become like masturbation with legs and a vagina. He could admire her aesthetically, still, but for the last few years he did not eye his wife with lust in his heart. unless he thought of her with another woman. Then — BOING! That was all it took. His fantasies, the way he looked at it, were saving their marriage.

When the spark had sputtered, George began spending more time reading the out-of-town newspapers he collected, much to Karen's chagrin. She claimed to be allergic to newsprint and paper pulp, but these days it seemed she was allergic to almost everything. He felt maybe she was really just allergic to him.

To ease the frustration of a marriage that seemed directionless, and over which he appeared to have lost complete control. George started writing. He plowed the darkest depths of his mind to come up with a pseudonymous self-help revenge book called How to F — Somebody Over. No one was more surprised than George when the book was actually picked up by a small company called Landfill Press, which sold it both in-store and by direct mail. One of the big chains picked it up. It became a publishing freak, a word-of- mouth success, even reaching the New York Times best-seller list. George made a ton of money.

When the sequel, How to F — Somebody Up, went into its second hardcover printing literally before the Landfill sales department finished the initial solicitation, he quit his mortgage-lending gig and started writing full-time. He'd been tremendously successful, and could indulge himself. That meant outcall ladies. Scenes.

One of these scenes had brought him Gayle, a lovely, smiling, bimboesque girl of twenty-two who was obviously selling her body as much for the taboo kick as for the dough. She was slim, small-boobed, with a great face, super ass, and a hot way about her that instantly turned him on. He made her model sexy lingerie for him while he beat off, and then she sucked him while he thought about how crazy it would get him to watch her go down on Karen.

That night he popped the question — for maybe the fiftieth time — to his bride of nineteen and a half years.

'I've found somebody for us. I know you'll go nuts when you see her,' he told his wife, describing Gayle, the beaming bimbo, in minute detail while leaving out the precise details of their money-for-sex encounter. Karen's response floored him.

'She sounds quite fuckable, actually,' she said in her soft, cultured tones. For the first time she agreed to participate in a three-way. A two-way, technically, as his thing was watching from the sidelines, as it were.

George asked why she was willing this time; what had finally made the difference? She said she was tired of fighting him, and besides, she said she'd been doing some fantasizing herself lately, and his constant harping about another woman had started her thinking along those lines.

'Most of all,' she'd said, 'I'm afraid of getting too old to try something new.'

The big scene was arranged. Gayle lived some twenty miles away, so there would be an extra hundred to cover the «travel» both ways, which would, with her basic fee, buy her for the entire night. Camcorder loaded, wife primed and waiting nervously in the next room, he sat — vodka collins in hand — ready for company.

The doorbell went through him like a direct current of electricity. He couldn't recall being so up for a scene, both literally and figuratively, and he opened the door on Gayle's big, sexy smile. She had one of those MTM mouths with about a thousand white Chiclet teeth in it, full lips that were so youthfully pretty she didn't bother with lipstick, and a tongue she couldn't keep out of sight. She was always smiling, or holding her mouth open as she listened, or licking those thick lips, or pouting, or laughing or chewing on a finger — something. Very busy, that ripe mouth of hers. He couldn't wait to see her with Karen.

Drinks. Introductions. He was about to explode in his blue bikini briefs, which is all he wore under the black and red silk kimono. The women took to each other immediately. It was all he could do not to touch himself, he was already so hot with the anticipation of the event. They put their partially finished libations down and headed for the master bedroom.

George triggered the camera, surreptitiously, and took a seat near the bed, preparing to begin instructions and suggestions, but they were miles ahead of him. Karen pulled Gayle on top of her and they jumped into the sack like two schoolgirls, kissing with a kind of heat he found totally alien to Karen. This wasn't Karen at all — this was some sex-mad twat fiend who'd been released from dormancy. His wife ran every change imaginable on the more than willing Gayle, and it was unlike any scene to which he had ever been a voyeur. It was so exciting, he forgot to jack off!

They kissed as if they were writing a book on the art. Karen would open her mouth and sort of begin eating Gayle's lips, and then Gayle would imitate the same type of kiss, then Karen would try a face-sucking corner gobble, and Gayle would duplicate that, and then they each began innovating, working their way up and down and over and around. Karen was on those little breasts with a mad devouring passion that was amazing to behold, and then down on the shaved patch of snatch in the heart of Gayle's unsuntanned love triangle, going at it lickety-split. Then it was Gayle on Karen, then each of them after the other's asshole, just fucking incredible. The videocassette ran out. He went to the bathroom. He got tired of watching.

After Gayle's first visit, everything between Karen and George improved. Sex, naturally, warmed up; they lived off the event for weeks, but their attitude toward one another changed. Karen no longer treated him like a necessary evil in her life, she seemed to suddenly care about him again. There were other changes as well. She became a better housekeeper almost overnight. Now she was cooking the meals he liked again, and her constant criticizing had abated. In turn, he treated her with more respect, not being so critical of her every decision, allowing her more freedom. She loved to take hours and hours shopping, and now he let her shop till she dropped, and never threw it up to her when she came home. He even made sure she had plenty of extra money in her checking account, something he'd never bothered to do in the past.

George was so pleased with the way things had changed for them, he was stunned when he suggested a possible menage a trois with Gayle, whom they hadn't seen in some weeks, and she nearly jumped down his throat.

'Just leave Gayle the fuck out of our fucking lives, all right?' she'd shouted.

'Sorry,' he said, meekly.

Karen became instantly contrite, and that night she made his favorite meal and served it to him as if it were going to be the last food she'd ever cook for him. The next morning he found out why. The phone rang. He happened to pick it up just a beat after Karen did.

'Hm-um,' he heard his wife whisper into the phone, 'can't right now.'

'Ten OK?' Gayle's voice, he was certain.

'Yeah, gotta go.'

'Love you,' Gayle said.