check his mail and feed the cat, and Pandora had wanted to make a phone call. Glass of chablis? Maybe.
Blackout. Whatever. Flu. Overwork. Losing it.
Pandora felt the urge and plopped very carefully onto the porcelain throne, for her ass was very painful. After some straining, she felt much better. Then she noticed the candle stub floating in the bowl. She flushed and fled her bathroom as she was still screaming.
“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Sanctimonious Baptist bitch!” Pandora tugged at the gold chain of the locket as she stumbled naked into her bedroom.
“Bitch! You locked all your sexual fantasies away in your heart! Bitch! Bitch! You just waited! You fucking bitch!”
Pandora was in no state to work the clasp. After several tries she managed to snap the chain, chafing her neck in the process. She threw chain and locket onto the floor. The locket snapped open. She started to smash it with her bare foot, but it was only a locket with a lock of hair and a portrait of a young woman of another century.
Pandora sat down on her bed. She covered her face in her cradled hands. “Wasn’t you. It’s me. I’m losing it. Can’t hold back my fantasies any longer. Don’t even want to. I won’t be like you.” Pandora washed away the thin string of blood from her neck. Looking into her mirror, she admired the red tattoo of a heart upon her left breast. She had blocked it out of her mind, but now she remembered getting a little tight, walking past the tattoo parlor, feeling daring, feeling the needle drilling into her skin. She wondered what else was missing from her blackouts and where the fantasies began. The last beating her husband had given her put her in the hospital for three days. Dr Walden had told her it was a severe concussion.
It was growing late, but the singles bars were open and sure to be hot. Pandora carefully dressed herself in black hose and garter belt, black panties and platform bra, and a clinging black tube dress and black stiletto heels. The low cleavage and push-up bra showed her heart-shaped tattoo to good advantage. She hadn’t felt at all embarrassed when she purchased all of this, she now remembered: She’d felt brazen and had smiled at the clerk in a way that had made the girl nervous.
This was the first time Pandora had worn the ensemble. At least she thought it was.
She carefully put on her makeup, brushed her hair, as she wondered what to do next. There was a small stain like an old scab on the hem of her dress, but she cleaned that away without much trouble. Maybe she should wear the red outfit instead.
Dr Walden had said to call at any time. After the singles bar, perhaps. She could ask Dr Walden for her opinion. Tonight or another night.
She opened a drawer and popped the switchblade into her black sequined handbag. Frowning, she removed it, pressed the release button: mechanism well oiled and functioning, blade sharp and clean. Satisfied, she returned the switchblade to her handbag. She remembered buying it as a part of a carton of bric-a-brac at an estate auction. Like with the locket. She remembered cleaning off the blood last time she put it into the drawer. Or was that just another fantasy?
The knife was real.
Derrick might be fun. Later.
And Mavis. Delicious.
No more the victim.
I’ve Come to Talk with You Again
They were all in the Swan. The music box was moaning something about “everybody hurts sometime” or was it “everybody hurts something.” Jon Holsten couldn’t decide. He wondered, why the country-western sound in London? Maybe it was “everybody hurts somebody.” Where were The Beatles when you needed them? One Beatle short, to begin with. Well, yeah, two Beatles. And Pete Best. Whatever.
“Wish they’d turn that bloody thing down.” Holsten scowled at the offending speakers. Coins and sound effects clattered from the fruit machine, along with bonks and flippers from the Fish Tales pinball machine. The pub was fusty with mildew from the pissing rain of the past week and the penetrating stench of stale tobacco smoke. Holsten hated the ersatz stuffed trout atop the pinball machine.
Mannering was opening a packet of crisps, offering them around. Foster declined: he had to watch his salt. Carter crunched a handful, then wandered across to the long wooden bar to examine the two chalk-on-slate menus: Quality Fayre was promised. He ordered prime pork sausages with chips and baked beans, not remembering to