Quiver

“Fun.”

“What kind of fun?”

“You’ll see.” He starts swishing it through the air with this strange grin on his face. I’m starting to think that maybe I should confront him about his behavior. I mean, how weird is weird? Then I remember that it’s a pink day.

“You’re not going to hurt me with that, are you?”

“I’ll be gentle, I promise.”

Kneeling in front of the TV, he kisses me on the lips and leads me into the bedroom. He makes me lie on the bed front forward while he pushes up my skirt. He ties my ankles to the headboard and stuffs pillows under my thighs to push my ass higher. Then he binds my hands together and suspends the rope from the light fixture in the ceiling.

My torso is now lifted up from the bed, my legs spreadeagled. He slowly unfastens the small pearl buttons of my blouse, revealing my cleavage. He works over me in silence; it is like I’m with a stranger, his hands alien on my skin.

He runs the end of the riding crop down the inside of my thighs, flicking up the back of my skirt, and slowly rolls my panties down as far as they will go. The plaited end of the riding crop trails across my buttocks. I clench involuntarily, imagining the welts across my unmarked skin. My heart has begun to beat high up in my throat, but I can feel myself grow moist. I don’t want him to see my wetness. I don’t want to let him into my pleasure. In a mirror, I can see that I am beautiful like this, my torso pulled upward, my breasts pushed up between my raised arms, like a picture of a saint from a catechism book I had as a kid.

I don’t recognize the way he is moving around the bed, his step so controlled, as if he knows exactly what he’s doing—so different from his usual clumsiness.

I close my eyes. I can feel the blind head of his penis as he trails it up the back of my legs, starting at the sole of my left foot, nudging for a moment against the hollow of my toes, then up, up the back of my calf, barely brushing the skin, and up the inside of my thigh. He stops just before the flesh dips into the Mount of Venus. My clitoris is pushed against my panties, which are pulled tight into my damp crotch.

I can feel the gush of air as he brings the riding crop down sharply across my buttocks. I gasp, the pain a map of vibration across my skin. Then a numbness floods in as he strikes, again and again and again. I lose count. The blood rushing to the surface brings with it an incredible heat.

He stops and I lie there, throbbing. Something cold and wet is poured over my skin. Slowly it slips across my back leaving a sensation of soothing whiteness in its path. He rubs the cold olive oil down between my cheeks, spreads my lips and runs his oily fingers over them.

He then sits over me, kneeling between my thighs, and fucks me violently, his fingers tugging at my clitoris as he slides in and out, the cold oil trickling all the way into my womb, cooling my insides as it oozes between the skin of his cock and my cunt.

I stare into the mirror, but Adrian’s reflection is cut off at the neck. I watch the movement of his buttocks as he slides in and out. A shadow is thrown by candlelight across the back wall, and I stare as he throws back his face, his profile etched clearly against the stippled white wallpaper. But the shadow is wrong—this isn’t Adrian’s nose, this isn’t Adrian’s chin. And something inside of me crystallizes in shock.

Sitting alone the next day I started to panic. I couldn’t tell whether I was imagining or seeing things. I decided to cook and clean the house—it’s my way of dealing with anxiety. The girls at work always know when I’m nervous because I’ll spend twice as long making sure that every last hair is pulled out of the client’s legs. After gathering up all the sheets and putting them into the washing machine I started to prepare a casserole. Anything to make things normal between us again. In the middle of chopping up the beef I realized that I’d run out of paprika.

Mrs. Harris let me into that dark front room of hers, with the fifties furniture and old rugs. There was an older woman sitting with her back to me, staring absentmindedly out at the overgrown garden visible through the French doors. I couldn’t help noticing the way she was crumbling a biscuit into her tea. Neurotic.

“Jodie, this is Maude Billinger, she’s from number six. Jodie’s from number nine. Mrs. M!” Maude was obviously deaf, but she swung around at the mention of number nine.

“I know that house.”

“Jodie was asking about Mr. Mantilli. Remember him, dear?”

“What?”

“Alberto Mantilli!”

“There’s no need to yell, I’m not a half-wit! Of course I remember Alberto, his wife Leonie used to make dresses for the girls. Lovely woman. Beautiful too.”

I leaned forward, not wanting to betray too much curiosity in my voice. “What happened?”

“What do you mean, love?”

“Why did she disappear?” Maude and Mrs. Harris exchanged glances. Maude gestured vaguely toward the garden.

“What harm can the truth do? They’re all off with the angels now.” Maude looked carefully at me as she spoke. She had a narrow face, with a web of heavy wrinkles around clear green eyes. She must have been beautiful once herself.

“She didn’t disappear, love. She died, just after Alberto got back.” Mrs. Harris, now keen, moved forward dramatically.

“He was in the war, you know, fighting for the other side. Oh, it was a terrible scandal around here.”

“The other side?”

“The fascists, love.”