A Terrible Beauty

'That's impossible, I'm afraid.'

'I know she was badly hurt. But I can accept that. My younger brother was killed in a motorcycle accident.'

Katie took his right hand between both of hers. 'Mr. Kelly, what happened to Fiona wasn't like a motorcycle accident. You'd be much better off remembering her the way she was when she last said good-bye to you. Please, trust me on that.'

'Donald?' said his wife, and took hold of his other hand. 'Leave it, Donald. Let her be.'

Mr. Kelly's shoulders began to shake, and he burst into uncontrollable sobbing. There was nothing that Katie could do but stand beside him while he let all of his agony out.

It was well past midnight when the door opened and the man came back in again. It was almost completely dark, and all that Siobhan could see of him was his silhouette against the curtains. She was shuddering with cold, and about an hour ago she had been unable to stop herself from wetting the foam-rubber seat of her chair.

She said nothing as he walked up to her and stood close beside her. He sniffed twice and took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. 'I suppose you're getting hungry,' he said, and sniffed again.

'Please let me go,' she whispered.

'I can't do that. Not yet. I can't have my merrow swimming back to the sea, now can I?'

Without warning, he switched on the standard lamp beside her chair. The light was very bright, 150 watts, and she had to turn her head away. Even so, she was left with a bright green retinal after-image, a ghost of her tormentor which swam in front of her no matter where she looked.

'You've peed yourself,' he remarked, without compassion. 'Well that, my little merrow, is about as close as you'll ever get back to the briny.'

'Please,' she begged him. 'My mam's going to be so worried about me.'

'That's what mothers are for. They're never happy unless they're anxious.'

He reached into the inside pocket of his black coat and produced a pair of wallpapering scissors, with blades almost ten inches long. He snipped them a few times, like the long red-legged scissorman inStruwwelpeter,and gave her a smile which made her shiver even more, because it was so benign.

'I told you what a man has to do to stop his merrow going back to the sea. He has to take her bright red feathery cap, hercohullen druith.And that's exactly what I'm going to do to you.'

He stepped closer, and gripped her hair. She jerked her head wildly from side to side and tried to wrench herself out of the chair, but he pulled her hair viciously hard by the roots and said, 'If you don't keep still, you little bitch, I may change my mind and snip your nipples off instead. It is a matter of total indifference to me.'

Siobhan let out a moan of fear, and stopped struggling.

'That's better,' he said, and he was so close that she could feel him breathing on her forehead. 'There's nothing like a little cooperation, is there? A little cooperation makes the world a very much happier place.'

He took hold of the front of her hair, and cut into it with a crunch. She closed her eyes, and hot tears began to pour down her cheeks. She was so terrified now that she was unable to speak-unable even to sob.

The man cut off more and more of her thick red hair, cropping it as close to the scalp as he could. Siobhan could feel it dropping onto her shoulders and onto her breasts. When he came round to cutting the back, she obediently bent her head forward and he cut it so close that the cold scissor blades were nicking her ears.

When he had finished he gathered up her fallen hair, brushing it off her stomach and her thighs, and he triumphantly lifted it up in front of her. 'There?no more swimming away foryoufor a while, my darling merrow. Now you'll have to stay here with me.'

He took a rubber band out of his pocket and twisted it around her hair to keep it together. 'What acohullen druiththis is?what a souvenir of youth and beauty and the strange love between mermaids and men.'

Without warning, he tugged down the zipper of his pants and took out his penis, which was already half erect. He trailed Siobhan's hair across it, from side to side, and gradually it rose harder and harder. Siobhan tried to turn her head away, but there was something so mesmerizing about what he was doing that she kept having to look back at him.

'Do you know what this feels like? It feels like being caressed by animals. It feels like being stroked by a woman who isn't even human.'

He drew her hair one way, and then the other, and the gaping head of his penis grew a darker and angrier purple. At first he stroked it quite gently, but as he grew increasingly aroused, he began to whip at himself harder and harder. Soon he was lashing at himself in a controlled frenzy, his mouth clenched, his chest heaving, his whole body tense.

Suddenly he cried out, 'Ahh!' and a thick white jet of sperm jumped out. Siobhan felt it loop against the side of her neck, while one drop of it dangled from her earlobe in a glutinous parody of a pearl earring. The man gave himself two or three luxurious squeezes, his eyes closed, and then he pushed his dwindling penis back into his trousers and zipped them up.

'Do you know how much you excite me?' the man breathed, opening his eyes, and giving her that same benign smile. 'We're soclosenow?so very, very close. You're going to change my life, Siobhan. You're going to give me pleasure beyond anything that you can think of.'

Siobhan looked dully away. It wasn't his abuse that had degraded her, it was the cutting of her hair. She felt as if she weren't Siobhan anymore, as if she were nothing but a scarecrow. A tear ran out of her right eye and dripped onto her forearm. That, and the man's semen, were the only warm things that she had felt all day.

38

That evening, Katie made a point of cooking them a proper meal. She sliced potatoes and mushrooms and