The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica

L’Enfer ^{Alice Joanou}

We had a magnificent passion for dark alleys, expensive champagne, and each other. She was very rich and unhappily married. Happily, I was neither.

She was generous or silly enough to pay my way during the length of our affair, and I had the wit to make no objection. Her husband was an old man – yes, it was one of those marriages. She was an ornament, a gesture of diffidence towards his ageing, and a symbol of his wealth: having her on his arm meant virility, especially in the public eye. The old man didn’t seem to mind that she was out nearly every night cavorting in the underworlds of Paris. She adored the cabarets and the most sordid cafés in Montmartre. He was glad to have her as his companion once or twice a month for the opera or some business function. Certainly, she was one of the most exquisite women in Paris.

She wore her sleek hair bobbed and was always dressed in the height of fashion. She never wore corsets or other restraining undergarments, not even knickers. When I asked her why she chose not to wear what other women considered such finery, she replied blithely that she liked the freedom it afforded her body. Her body. Her fine body. It was true that it would have been an insult to nature had she strapped it in or belted it down. Her body mirrored her soul. Her body was wild, animalistic. Her breasts were small and sat high on her slim torso. Her nipples’ areolae were a deep-brown colour, and her torso, her hips, were virtually without curve. She had a dangerous body, and whenever I came near her I could smell that fire and needed to possess her. I could hardly keep my hands from tearing away the sheer silken dresses she wore. I could hardly stop myself from falling on my knees and taking her in my mouth, beginning with her feet. I needed to genuflect before her and taste her sex.

She almost always wore low-cut dresses with subtle slits in the sides of the skirt that rose perilously high on her long, slender legs. She decorated terrifying eyes with make-up, swearing, as she applied the make-up, that it served a protective device. She never went out without kohl smudged heavily around her eyes, the eyes of a corpse, blue-black and empty. Only now and again would they light when I took her in a violent way. Her eyes haunt me still. As if to compensate for such iciness, her full lips she painted with a flaming red tint she called “Madder Crimson”. Her mouth was her vitality, and her smile was eccentric and not really beautiful. But it was human. Her painted red lips matched her luxuriant cinnabar hair. I loved watching her stand in front of the mirror, methodically making up her face. I watched her go through this preening ritual, and never did I grow tired of it.

One evening, I lay on my bed. The sheets were a sea of sweat and semen. We had been making love all day, and she said it was time to go out. To go out and see what kind of hell we could release upon a city like Paris. She wanted to go up to Sacré-Coeur and look out upon the city that loved her best. Paris was a city that looked good on her. It matched her lips and eyes. I was unable to move from the bed, half-mesmerized as she put the make-up around her eyes. Her back was to me, and she was naked, yet I could see her face and breasts in the mirror.

“Come here,” I said to her quietly, almost unwilling to disturb her in her ministrations. But the sight of her body naked and pale and her face dressed for the evening gave me the strangest sensation. She looked nearly like a boy from behind, yet her face was clearly a woman’s.

“You must come here if there is something you want,” she said, her mouth smiling, her eyes dead.

“Please come here.”

She ignored me and continued to put the finishing touches of light-pink rouge on her cheeks. And then she did something she didn’t ordinarily do as she prepared herself for Paris: she took the powder puff and began to make slow circles around the tips of her breasts. Then she dipped the white puff in another powder that was a deeper red and began to rouge her nipples. My cock was already stiff. I had begun to imagine she was a young boy from the back and a gorgeous woman from the front. The idea of taking her from behind overwhelmed me. I had never entered her there. She had not permitted it. Her uncanny eyes were following my hand as it went involuntarily to my sex. She continued to slowly decorate her nipples, never turning.

Edith Piaf sang out defiantly and permanently damaged, her song wafting out in a thin line from the radio in the next room. It was summer and slightly humid. The flowers next to the bed violently perfumed the air. She was looking at me still. At last, I stood and went to her, taking the powder puff from her hand. Rather than put it on the vanity, as she suspected I would do, rather than take her immediately, I surprised her by dipping the make-up puff into the pot of rouge and reaching down to rouge her sex. She smiled and allowed herself a low sound of pleasure, realizing I had only just started.

“You look like a boy from behind. Are you my boy?”

“Yes,” she answered, “I am your boy.”

“I want to fuck you, boy. I am going to take you.”

She made no reply, but raised her eyebrow at me in the mirror. She had a quizzical look on her face that was mixed with pleasure as I continued to lightly tease her pussy with the powder, making her blush between her legs. I set down the puff.

“Of course, from the front, you are the most exquisite woman I have ever seen.” As I said this, I was dipping my fingers into a jar of pomade. My desire for him was unimaginable. My need for her was desperate.

“I am going to fuck you in the ass, my boy, my love. You’d like that, you little queer, wouldn’t you?” He nodded… while she managed a wan, almost frightened, smile.

I rubbed my finger, lubricated with the pomade slowly up and down the crack of his ass. She sang with “La Vie en Rose”. She opened her mouth. Edith Piaf opened her mouth and a flower scent came out. My love opened the lips of her crimson sex. I was to christen her a man. I wasted no time, though the heat in the flat made me feel as though I were moving exceedingly slowly, moving through an erotic heat that was material, that weighed down my caresses, and I noticed how heavy my hands were on his slim hips. I touched her breast, and the tip of my sex entered him slightly. She winced and moved backward in shock; he moved over me with delighted pain.

“Oh, my love. I’ve only just started. Does it hurt…? Don’t speak…” I whispered, suddenly afraid.

If he opened his mouth, I would know it was her. It had been so long since I had made love to a boy. She had distracted me from such need. She inhaled deeply, her eyes expressing nothing, the corners of her lips a mocking sneer. But within her strange smile she was urging me to take her. Without hesitation, I thrust my cock deep into his virgin asshole, violently needing to tear into her body, to enter a place I had not been before. She screamed. I put my hand over his mouth, while I took her nipple between my fingers and pinched. She fell towards the mirror, his cheek rested against the glass, and I reached down between her thighs and found her pussy wet. His body was perfect and delicious, and I took hold of his boyish hips with my free hand while I licked her clitoris with my fingers, expanding the possibilities of our bodies with every thrust of my hips, with every movement of my fingers into her soft, pink psyche. He fell hard against me. She fell hard against me. I could feel her breathing through her sex while I made a man of her. I crashed against her and she continued to look at me with that serene indifference. Once in a while her eyes lifted towards the ceiling. A diamond bead of sweat cut a path through the white powder on her high forehead.

His asshole was announcing her pleasure as it fit around my cock like a diabolical mouth, sucking me into a dark place of moral indistinction. I wanted to tear him apart, I wanted to drink the blood that was coming from between her legs. I wanted to consume her. I wanted to consume him. I could feel the white heat bloom from the back of my neck and cut a blazing trail down my chest. I thrust my fingers inside her terrifying depth. My cock was buried to the end of its capacity. She cried out and I came, pulling her hips over me, covering me. I looked in the mirror and saw her face instead of mine. Her eyes open, her mouth open. Edith Piaf sang.

“You make quite a lovely boy,” I told her as we walked up the steep steps of Sacré-Coeur later that evening.

“May God forgive you,” she said, laughing. “I hope we burn in hell together. I should hate to be there alone. Of course my husband will be there too, you know.”

We walked up the stairs of Sacré-Coeur and surveyed the city that was nothing more than our fashionable accessory. We were perfectly happy that night, knowing that we shared one another’s insatiable taste for the bizarre. That night we inaugurated, acknowledged, our mutual hungers.

I suppose I was a concession her husband could make in order to keep her by his side. It was the dead of morning, and we were stumbling down the street, intoxicated from an evening at Les Bals Nègres. Josephine Baker had been dancing that night, and the magnificent sight of her body, her immaculate breasts and legs, ah, Josephine Baker’s legs… Watching her had fueled fantastic images of pleasure as she had moved wildly, mimicking, at times satirizing, the drama of the bed. It was all there, all of her to be seen, moving as though created to be desired.

As we tripped down a dimly lit street, we drank the remaining champagne of our last bottle. In the warm mist of the early summer dawn, an extraordinarily thin man stepped out from a dark doorway. His presence was abrupt and he stood in front of us, unmoving, his head cocked slightly to one side. She began to giggle at his appearance; I believe she laughed mostly out of fear. I could only make out his face when we got very close, an extremely bizarre visage that made me draw back for a moment. His prominent cheekbones created sunken hollows in his face, the effect heightened by the dreary gaslights of the alley. He wore all black, including a silk dress hat and opera cape, which she thought wildly funny, so dramatic a costume on a hot summer morning. His teeth and eyes shone in a peculiar way in the strange half-light.

She gasped when she got closer and looked into his unnerving face, and then, being drunk, she laughed and asked the man if he wouldn’t like some champagne, holding up the bottle. He held out his hand, but only to beckon her closer. His ominous figure alarmed me, but, being young and stupid, I rushed forward. My mistress held my arm and quieted me. She moved cautiously, leaning her ear to his mouth to hear what he had to say. I couldn’t help desiring her just then. Watching her neck tilt in that weird light, slightly terrorized, slightly mesmerized by the danger he presented. I wanted to possess her. I loved her so drunkenly that my thirst for her body could never really be quenched. I stared at her neck, at the lines of her collarbone, as she listened to what the stranger had to say.

He leaned in, his lips hovering dangerously near the nape of her neck. I almost yelled out. He began to whisper in her ear, and, as he spoke, I could see her become slowly breathless. Her back began to arch the way it did when I stroked her breasts. Her mouth fell open, and her lids half-closed over her eyes. It seemed as though the man were making love to her, but of course I could see that his hands were not touching her at all. I moved closer, moved by the tableau the man and my mistress formed in the grey morning light that was trying to get into that alley. And then I suddenly heard her beginning to making low moaning noises, her breasts falling out of the low-cut dress. And then quite suddenly she drew back, tossing her head back defiantly, and she began to laugh. It was inexplicable, whatever was occurring between her and this stranger, and there was a part of me that found a hollow solace in the fact that she had moved away from him. I also found that I was aroused in a way that was extraordinary. My feelings of desire were tinted with a bleakness, a sense of real danger that exceeded the games that she and I had indulged in at my flat.

She was moving towards me, beckoning me to come closer. I hesitated, still overwhelmed by a finishing sadness, a vague anxiety mingled with a potent desire to have her. Finally, I moved. The stranger leered in the background.

“He’s asked us to come with him. He wants to show us a very exclusive cabaret. It sounds absolutely perverted. We really must go!” She paused and then whispered breathlessly, “He says it’s called ‘L’Enfer’. Isn’t that superb! Come.” And she took my hand.

I meant to ask her who the man was, and how did she know we were not stepping into some sort of terrible trap, but when I saw her slip the man a number of francs it was clear she had decided against reason. Of course I could not leave her alone and so began to follow their dark shadows down the narrow alley.

Remembering the silhouette of her breast, and her tongue flicking over her full lips as he had whispered in her ear, I wanted to take her, I wanted to push her against one of the doorways, lift her sheer dress, and take her. I still had the pounding rhythm of Les Bals Nègres in my ears. I wanted to fuck her to the cadence of Josephine Baker’s feet. I wanted to rape her, gently, and then more and more forcefully. I could feel the familiar ache of desire, the pain she caused in my groin, but my mistress was already falling into the darkness of the alley, following her compelling stranger.

“What did he say to you, my love? What did he whisper in your ear?” I asked as I moved up behind her, holding her tightly around the waist. There was, perhaps, some ill-concealed jealousy creeping into my voice.

She said nothing but answered me with a devious smile that came when she was aroused, an expression that was made more corrupt by the lusterlessness, the obsolescence in her eyes.

After winding down a series of unfamiliar and narrow streets, we stopped in front of a nondescript door. Our “guide”, as I had come to think of him, knocked lightly, paused, and then rapped in loud and quick succession. I felt something extraordinary on the other side, but part of me hoped there was nothing, that our guide was nothing more than a petty crook who had taken her money. Part of my body was ready for the confusion of an unforeseen adventure, and another portion of my being wanted nothing more than to drag her away, get home to the creamy eiderdown, the cotton of our sheets.

The door slowly creaked open. Humid air coloured with various scents of smoke came out. I thought I smelled the pungent, sticky smell of opium. We were greeted by a man who who had the colouring of a Gypsy, but no trace of an accent. His French was impeccable. For some reason this unnerved me. He had green-yellow eyes and luxuriant black hair in curls to his shoulders. He was well dressed. The door closed behind us, and I turned, startled. Our guide had left us.

Her mouth turned up like sensual question marks as she observed the Gypsy man’s beautifully sculptured ass while he led us down a narrow corridor papered in dark-red velvet and lit with gaudy gilt candelabra. There seemed to be heat emanating from the walls and a muffled sound, not quite far away, vibrating them as if they were breathing and sweating like giant sheets of sex-blushed flesh. It was grotesque and nauseating. I felt the familiar tug of my cock, and was surprised at my arousal in this strange atmosphere. She was moving forward as if in another element beyond her. I watched carefully as she walked down the narrow hallway in front of me, her hand involuntarily caressing the red walls.

Quite suddenly we found ourselves in front of another door, and the vague music I thought I had recognized could be heard more clearly on the other side. The Gypsy swung open the door with ceremony and with a sweep of his arm motioned us inside. After she had handed over more money, of course.

What we beheld behind that door made us both gasp.

A gale of hot opium air and jazz exploded on our faces. There were beautiful young girls and young men. There were old men, bald and dying in the arms of prepubescent nymphs. Old whores danced with wealthy young students. But something else had made us gasp.

There were young boys and girls hanging hairless and well muscled, suspended from leather harnesses connected to the ceiling. There were four or five of them, and all the hanging men were naked, utterly exposed. Some hung from their arms and ankles, others from the centres of their torsos. I don’t know how many of them were suspended thus in the centre of what seemed to be a large underground theatre. Their bodies nearly receded into the vast subterranean darkness, a sea of swaying, glowing flesh in the pale-red light of this very queer theatre of sex. The force of the music was lost in the face of these beauties hung low enough to touch in any way in which the patrons of this select cabaret could wish.

Imagine. Human beings, fresh young human beings, suspended in apparatus resembling something dangerously close to an item from the Inquisition. There were black girls with smooth, dark flesh, their nipples nearly purple in the orange light. I could see the ripples and dark hair of a Gypsy boy, or perhaps he was an Italian, the smooth flesh of his ass and hairless chest evoking that day, not long ago, when I had taken my mistress from behind. I was frightened by so much available flesh. There was an Asian girl with long, silky black hair that swept the floor, and near her a European girl with pink skin contrasting viciously with the black straps of her harnesses.

She clutched my arm, her mouth moved to make tiny O’s. I did not know whether this unreal spectacle was seizing her with desire or disgust. Her eyes were without expression.

I could see men, clearly well bred, standing two at a time, taking a girl from front and back. A Japanese girl floating like an angel from the underworld, legs opened, sex exposed, was held aloft in murky opium clouds. Her cunt was being treated to a kiss by what appeared to be a woman of means, judging by the clothes she wore. I could see that her nipples were erect against the silk of her evening gown and I have to admit that the erection that had plagued me in the alley had not subsided; my balls were suffering with passion and need. The cold desire I felt disturbed me, for I wanted to possess not only my mistress but all those bodies suspended before me like so much provocative fruit.

Before I could lend words to my actions, I took my mistress roughly by her hair and began to bite her neck. The need to have her delicate flesh between my teeth was an absolute necessity. If I didn’t take action, if I didn’t claim her body in some way, however small, I would be lost. It is not something that I can, even now, rationally explain. I was satisfied only when I could taste the metallic copper and iron of her body across my tongue. It was only then that I could release my mouth from the nape of her neck. In this place, in this strange place far beyond even the darkest secrets of Paris, I had to mark her in some way. I had to know, she had to know, that in this flesh jungle where anything might happen she was still my mistress. I could hear her on my lips. The ruby colour of her pain and the rumbles of her acute desire played symphonically on my fingertips and tongue. She turned to me, to my lips, where there was a droplet of her blood. She gingerly put her finger to it and her eyebrows slanted as if to say she was shocked at my bestial need to be so possessive. But then her mouth softened and she raised her bloodied finger to her lips and drank of her own body. Then, while keeping her finger in her mouth, she parted her lips slightly, suggesting something with her teeth and tongue.

I had to tear her dress away from her breasts, I had to free them from the constraining fabric of the bodice. Never taking my hand from her breasts, I lifted the skirt of her dress and reached roughly between her silky legs for her sex. Then I grabbed hold of her slender hips and she pressed her body against me, moving slowly to the music. She was moving more and more forcefully against me now, her sex a warm invitation, her body tugging me in. I opened my trousers and did not hesitate to climb inside her secrets. I drove deeper and deeper until I felt her contracting in low, sing-song sounds of pleasure.

She was holding my wrists, her long fingernails digging deeply into my flesh, drawing blood, and the pain lit hidden fires of violence within me. I started fucking her with thoughts of killing her with my cock. I wanted to fuck her to death. Quite literally. She was screaming, and I imagined that I had been successful. I opened my eyes and saw traces of blood on my hands and then I fell forward, pushing into her last breath.

After we had recovered from our tryst in the corner, we began to move through the peculiar space. I held my mistress’s wrist for some time, but everywhere I turned I was confronted with so many bodies. As my mistress had paid the required fee, I had nothing to distract me. Except my mistress. But as soon as I thought I might have some trouble tasting the fruits of hell, she silently demanded I release my grasp on her wrist. Then she disappeared into the darkness, drawn by some single-minded purpose.

I walked through the labyrinth of bodies until I found the Japanese woman, whose hair was so long that it dragged on the ground. Her skin was soft and white and her legs were spread wide to reveal her pussy shaved of any hair. Her naked sex was a queer sight and it aroused me immediately. She would have looked a child were it not for the decoration of her cunt. The lips of her sex were ornamented with two rings pierced through and, crowning that, her clitoris had been pierced and there was embedded a pearl. I had never seen such a beauty, and my body went before my mind and my hands found her before I could know the word for desire. I wanted to taste her jewellery. I had to kiss her pearl. There were no others near her and I was glad. I wanted to devour her alone. I wanted to take her with my tongue and my fingers and my cock, slowly and with singularity. I wanted to have the luxury of hurting her or pleasing her. Whichever demon, lust or violence, I wanted to act without intervention.

She was a beautiful young woman whose eyes betrayed a liking for opium. Her full lips were parted and she was humming a strange song in a very low voice. I put my hands to her small breasts and took her nipples between my fingers. I pinched them hard and watched her face. She smiled and continued to hum. She parted her eyes wider to look at me, and, as much as her restraints would allow, she rippled her body in response to my attentions. I leaned forward and slowly tasted of her skin. It was salty with sweat, and there was a lingering scent of lavender powder. I let my tongue play lightly over the flat of her belly. I turned my head, resting my cheek on her stomach, and found the sight of her breasts stretched tightly from bondage very pleasing. I fell into her. I moved my mouth slowly over the full, clean lips of her labia. When the tip of my tongue touched one of her rings, I tugged it and she thrust her body lightly against my mouth. I let my tongue enter her flesh, I could hear her pleasure, I could feel it on my mouth. Her body twitched, making her sway gently from the leather straps which held her wrists, ankles, and torso. As I teased the outside of her cunt with my tongue, I found her imposed submission utterly exciting and I slid my tongue inside her once again. I drank there and returned to her outer shell. I wanted to kiss her pearl. As my lips found the cool stone pierced through her clit, I could hear the buzzing of her body. I sucked the pearl and she began to writhe. I stopped. Her moans reverberated through my mouth as I undid my trousers, readying myself to take her.

As I stood, I noticed that two women had found the Japanese woman appealing and had attached themselves to the lovely girl’s nipples, touching one another as they sucked her. The sight only irritated my cock more. I stood between her legs and, taking her hips in my hands, I forced her body over my cock, letting my member slide in slowly so I could completely enjoy the strange new feeling of the golden hoops and cool sea pearl against the heat and sensitivity of my skin as it moved in deeper towards her fiery core. She cried out when I finally fell forward with all my weight, not caring for her comfort or discomfort. I made love to her with more and more force, suddenly feeling the overwhelming need to ravage the girl’s tighter orifice. When I removed my sex and started to push into her from behind, I found she was generously lubricated from the residue of my own kisses. And as much as I wanted to shamelessly brutalize her, I was pleased to find that she was wet with desire and she moved her hips in a slow, swaying motion.

I responded to her mute invitation by shoving my cock into her anus without hesitation. With one finger I began to roll the pearl in her clit. And then, as if a dream, my mistress appeared from some darker place. Her beautiful face was covered in sweat, and I could see her lips were swollen. She smiled a smile that had a hint of malice and without saying a word, without touching me at all, she leaned over the Japanese girl’s exposed sex, putting her perfect mouth on the girl’s cunt, where I kept my finger so my mistress’s tongue licked both my hand and the girl’s pussy.

A fierce bewildering pleasure was welling up from within me and the force of it nearly frightened me. I imagined it was coming from some bilious and evil place, for, as I watched my lover kissing the girl’s sex, as I continued to take the woman from behind, I wanted to put my hands to my mistress’s neck. I wanted to put my fingers into the flesh of her back, or her cheek, and with all my strength to tear into her, to be inside her in a different, an immediate manner. The simplicity with which I could achieve this horrible feat fed my lust and rage and I continued to push my body more forcefully against the girl. I began to know that there was nothing but trust stopping me from tearing the flesh away from my mistress’s body. I realized that nothing could stop me if I wanted to kill her. I considered with cold precision how simple and fragile is flesh.

As though my lover sensed the maniacal rage in my pleasure, she stood and put her lips to mine. I shot my semen into the Japanese woman, as though relieving myself of the hideously dark thoughts that had only moments before nearly overwhelmed me to commit murder. My mistress gently pulled me from the girl. I was walking in a sleeping state, and the sound of my mistress’s haunting and persistent humming chilled me.

My mistress led me to a dark corner of large, soft cushions to recline upon. Someone appeared and gave us champagne. I did not bother to pour the wine into a glass because suddenly I was taken with a thirst so great I thought I might damn near die if I didn’t drink immediately. I felt out of control and at the same time in great command of my body, my life. In fact, I felt more in control at that moment than I ever had, the hollowed-out darkness in my heart seemed to be the very reason for my sense of grace. A vague tingling told me this was perhaps not the first time I had ever felt this way. I stole a sideways glance at my mistress for I did not want to encourage conversation. I wanted to be isolated in this queer and violent loneliness, this satiation. We rested in darkness for a while, then wearily we stole into the early morning light to make our way home.

She went home to her greying husband that morning, while I went to the flat she paid for with his money. It was a nice bohemian hideaway in the troisième arrondissement, the top floor with a large skylight that filled the place with sun when it made its rare appearances in Paris.

I fell onto the generous quilts of the iron bed. The furnishings of this lovely little nest were also compliments of my mistress’s husband. And my clothing, and my food. I felt a moment of great bitterness and envy towards my mistress’s husband. I was infuriated that I could not provide the things for my lover that I knew she needed. I felt irrationally murderous towards him, towards her, my situation, a situation I had been content with until now. It seemed that the visit to that infernal place had started my mind on a dangerous tread that I could not stop at will. At last I found myself sleepy from all the rage threatening to exhaust me, overwhelm me.

I fell into fantastic and violent visions. I dreamed I had bound my mistress to a thick post in the centre of the theatre of L’Enfer. The air around us swirled in orange narcotic clouds, and her beautiful boyish figure, the fine skin of her legs, shone as though she were drenched in exotic oils. Or perhaps it was a terror sweat. In my satanic dreams, I did things to her that I cannot even write. I attacked her helpless body with such a violent grace and ease that when it was over I scarcely thought about the strength it took to tear her limb from limb, and in fact was more concerned about the mess on my clothing… ah, but I must cease. Even the thought of that gruesome, dream, and, worse, the intensity of pleasure as I dreamed it – it is too, too strange.

The sun was warming my aroused flesh, now turning clammy in an unfamiliar orgasmic sweat. I lay there thinking about my mistress, and the nightclub called L’Enfer.

Two days later I received a note and a package from my beloved. The note read:

Just reading her note, seeing her handwriting, sent an electric thrill through my body. And then my mind turned instantly, without hesitation, to my unspeakable dream. I stood for a moment reading the sky in front of my eyes that held the terrible, bloody images of my mistress’s demise. At last, and with a great deal of will, I shook my head and body and tore open the elegant wrapping on the box. Inside was a beautiful, black-silk tuxedo, complete with an opera cape with red lining. It was sinister, and I feared suddenly that my mistress sensed my more detestable motivations.

“Folly!” I shouted out loud, to disrupt my own mind from its obsessive wanderings. I shook the cloak free of the box and held it up to the light. It was so black it seemed to absorb the sun, and, when I turned it, the red silk was a great slick of beautiful, pure, fresh blood.

The early edition of the morning paper reported that an unidentified young woman who appeared to be Japanese had been found dead, her head floating in a small valise down the Seine. The police had not yet found the remaining portion of her body. She had lipstick kisses on her white cheeks and a small white pearl in her mouth.

All during the day I was seized with erotic frenzy. Vague pictures appeared and disappeared in my heated imagination. Suspended, naked bodies swayed under my fingers, the memory of L’Enfer a palpable reality. I wandered across the Pont Neuf and stared at the murky, mysterious water of the Seine. I found myself laughing quite uncontrollably as I thought I saw her shoe rolling and bobbing on the filthy surface. As I laughed, emptying my horrible sound into the wind, I envisioned the girl, her head upon the glorious body of my mistress, and the visage of my mistress sewn to the missing body of the dead girl.

I saw her red lips slightly parted, perhaps grimacing in pain or smiling with languorous pleasure. I remembered seeing her mouth open, the pearl tumbling about… though I can’t be sure. I cannot remember if she was screaming, but I recall her terror combining rather elegantly with her ancient Asian complexion. I don’t know whether I thought I saw that pearl in her mouth, or if I wished it there. And then I realized I was confusing my lover with the Japanese girl and, then again, I wondered if I hadn’t confused the Japanese woman’s lips for those of my mistress.

When it was time to dress, I was covered with a light sweat of desire and irritated by a persistent guilt. And, worse still, an erection that would not fade. I contemplated abating my need with my own hand, then thought better of it, waiting to see what mysteries the night had to offer me.

She came for me that evening, a vision of carnal appetites. Every detail of her body, her dress, her perfumed hair, exuded a need to be ravished. I tempered my own need, savouring the romantic pain of wanting her, wanting to take her immediately and forget the enticing nightmares awaiting us at L’Enfer. I held myself back, mostly because around the edges of her mouth I could discern a strangeness that worried me. I could tell she wanted desperately to say something about the article in the newspaper, but I put my finger to her mouth. There was a terrible silence inside me that suggested to her that she should not pursue the subject of the dead girl. I told her, while my hand still rested on her mouth, that I had read it too. And yes. It was dreadful. But I felt the corners of my mouth turn upward in an uncontrollable moment of pleasure. My queer expression was met with a questioning look from my mistress.

There was a new tension between us as we made our way to the alley, where we were to meet the tall stranger. I have to admit that I quite liked this new thrill. She was a little afraid of me and this pleased me greatly. I thought it fair for all the humiliations I had suffered. The embarrassment of being so frightfully over-educated and so dreadfully poor. She had given me money and she had debased me with her generosity. So if she feared me that night as we walked silently towards our destiny, it enhanced my contentment.

Oh, how I could hear the bells of Sacré-Coeur ringing for the souls of the dead, how vital, how omnipotent and wild I felt as those bells ran through my body. When we arrived at the narrow, foul-smelling alley our guide was not there. I was in despair, yet my heart still raced. We stood in grim, tense silence as the final tolling of the bells tore through the darkness. And then suddenly on the breeze a subtle caress of my mistress’s perfume.

I stood perfectly still without turning to look at her. She moved close to me, breathing heated kisses on the back of my neck. Her hands wrapped around my waist and immediately she began to unclasp the buttons of my trousers. She squeezed my balls and erect sex firmly, and the sight of her long, elegant white fingers tipped with blood-red enamel stirred me beyond measure.

“I need you,” she whispered into my hair.

I turned to kiss her. She looked supernaturally beautiful. The translucent powder on her face made her eyes and lips glow like fire in the dark. She wore a simple silk shift the colour of champagne and over that a luxurious fur coat. Between the sheer pleats of fabric, I could see her nipples and the full shape of her perfect breasts. She wore an extra-long strand of pearls around her long, white neck, fatalistic tears all the way to her sex, which I could see framed with the dark triangle of hair covering, no, framing, her perfection. I wanted to possess her, give her pleasure suddenly as a form of absolution for all the horror and violence to which I had given rein.

The night was cold and I swung the enormous cape around both of our bodies. I bowed my head without hesitation and I began to taste her breasts through the paper-thin material of her shift. Her nipples responded immediately to my touch. I raised my head and kissed her delicious lips, thrusting my tongue deep into her mouth. I avoided looking at her eyes for fear that some expression of doubt or fear might still linger there. Besides, taking her lips between mine, her tongue in my own mouth was far more telling, for my mistress’s eyes rarely betrayed her state of mind. It was her mouth that told all without speaking, her lips that would betray her. Her tongue greeted my kisses and I was compelled to bite her tongue hard. I took that organ between my teeth and crushed it. How tender, how delicate the tongue really is, how easily I could have bitten it clean off. Her knees bent slightly under the pain I was affording her. Her moan was a sound beyond pleasure. I stopped just after the luxury of drinking a few droplets of her thick, warm blood. She tried to pull away but my hands reassured her of impending pleasures. I slipped my fingers under her dress between her thighs to find her secret anatomy alive and betraying her passion for mingling pleasure with a little bit of terror. Her sex was hot and inviting. I imagined her juices to be warm blood and I was hungry to taste of her. I kneeled.

The flesh of her labia seemed to coil round my lips. I had never felt the terror with another woman as the terror I now felt of tasting her thus. I was overwhelmed with a primordial fear that had no words. All my anticipation of the evening’s events, all my desire for my mistress paled in the light of this new terror. But as quickly as it came upon me, it left, and I let the lips of her sex consume me. I drew my tongue along the outer rim of her soft, hot flesh and let her juices fall on my lips, on my ready tongue. Her body wrapped around me like a bloody mantle. I felt her hair on my lips, I was suffocated in the involuntary thrusts of her body in paroxysms of pleasure. I was filled with a hunger. I wanted to mangle her with my tongue. I stabbed it inside her as though it were my cock. As my tongue went inside her I felt as though I were tasting a great and powerful light, a wonderful and horrible sensation, cannibalistic, wondrous. I had to stop before something dreadful happened.

I abandoned her on the edge of a catastrophic orgasm. She was moaning, crazed, tearing at my clothing. I stood and watched her with a dispassionate stare. I loved the way she was pleading and begging. I was pleased by the fact that she was a helpless victim of her own needs.

I reached down to my trousers, willing to take her there in the alley, but she pulled my hand away. She kneeled in the dank passageway and, pulling the fabric of my trousers away with her teeth, she released my raging cock unto her kisses. She took my member into her mouth, letting it slide sensuously into her open throat. Her lips sucked lightly at first round the tip of my sex, and, as she raised and lowered her head in a steady rhythm, she pulled with her lips more powerfully. She ran her tongue like a feather over the tip of my cock, and with her hands she teased the rim of my anus, gently squeezing my aching sac. I felt more and more helpless as my desire grew. She was a great cat sucking with feline prowess on my throbbing sex. I felt like a child and this made me angry though I felt that could not stop the locomotion of my veins, pressed her head down on me hard and without relent until my seed fell into her throat. It was an awful moment: fleeting images of the Japanese woman, pictures of bleeding and screams more like memories than fantasy.

“Come along, my darling,” she said in a voice husky with pleasure, “we don’t want to miss the show.”

The sound of her voice took me out of my misery for a moment. I helped her to her feet and brushed her hair from her face, an awkward attempt at apology. She smiled at me as if to say she too was sorry.

We linked arms and made our way more deeply into darkness as we moved unguided towards L’Enfer. The last chimes of Sacré-Coeur sounded off the damp sides of the crumbling buildings of Montmartre. We stopped in front of the same nondescript door. My mistress boldly stood forward and knocked three times, waited, and then five more times. The tiny wooden-hinged window inset swung open and the grey eye of the Gypsy could be seen clearly. He closed the small window and opened the door just wide enough for us to slip inside.

Tonight the Gypsy doorman wore a black leather mask over his entire head. It was a sort I had never seen at any masquerade and resembled a medieval executioner’s mask. His beautiful black hair and handsome face were hidden and all that appeared were his eyes. There were holes in the leather for his nostrils and an aperture for his mouth, but this was sewn shut, a feature both violent and alluring. His chest was exposed, assuring both my mistress and me that it was indeed the same man who had greeted us two nights before. His body was unmistakably magnificent, even more enticing with the sinister black mask. Without hesitation, my mistress reached into her small beaded purse and withdrew a bundle of francs. I noted that her hand trembled slightly and I thought that unusual. She was ordinarily so calm. The doorman had enough manners not to count it, but he seemed to know by the sheer weight of it that it was not enough and he bowed discreetly and urged my mistress to give him more. She did, and she trembled more at this. We both seemed to know that more money meant something more rare, and probably more terrifying. The doorman seemed satisfied and bowed again at the waist then turned to lead us down the narrow red corridor, towards the theatre of L’Enfer.

We were prepared to witness something at least as bizarre and exciting as we had seen on our previous visit yet, in retrospect, I don’t believe either of us was prepared for the excesses we were to witness on the eve of All Saints.

The dark space appeared to have changed so radically that for a moment I thought we had entered another place altogether. We faced a circular stage surrounded with heavy velvet curtains in the centre of the large underground room. The place was filled with the smell of opium and tobacco, and the queer scent of marijuana clung in languid clouds in the humid air. Groups of people sat at elegant little tables clustered towards the stage. In front of the stage was a pit just large enough for a small band, which was playing blue jazz that made the room hotter and my heart bitter. The darkness to the left and right of the tables held voices and the shimmer of expensive beaded dresses. The dark offered up a jeweled hand here and there and now and again I caught a glimpse of rouged lips and cigarette holders. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark I realized that it was from erotically disembodied hands and mouths that the smoke came, and after a time I could see the languorous forms of opium smokers stretched out on tapestried pillows, the long stems of the pipes in their hands. It seemed that their bodies were dilating en masse, and all the smokers caressed one another in lingering, slow motions.

At last my mistress said, “I am going to try some opium. I really must – have you ever, darling?”

I just shook my head. I was not afraid of the drug, but afraid of myself. I wanted to stay lucid, yet I knew it was impossible in the hallucination that was this nightclub. But I knew that if she wanted to try something, she would. I thought perhaps if she tasted the opium she would lose the anxiety and fear she was feeling towards me and, in a moment of compassion, I wanted her to be less afraid. But I knew her fear eroticized my violent motivations and suddenly I didn’t want her to smoke the drug. But it was too late. Not wanting to cause a disturbance, I let her go. She moved hypnotically towards the dark figures on the pillows. I thought to follow but turned away, thinking that I would return for her before the show started.

I walked towards the tables, each lit with magnificent candelabra. In the dim light I could make out women’s elegant fingers decked in jewels, and I could smell the fashionable scents of Chanel in the air. People talked secretively with one another, their heads tipped towards each other’s lips to listen or to steal a kiss. I felt suddenly alone and excluded and was about to turn and find my mistress. Just then I felt a hand at my elbow attempting to lead me somewhere.

I looked to my right and found a woman standing by my side. She was absolutely beautiful. She wore her sleek hair long, as young girls do before they ritualize their entrance into womanhood by, regrettably, cutting their locks. Behind her ear she wore a rose. She had the colouring of a Gypsy, her eyes black and her skin a lustrous olive. She wore nothing to cover her breasts, and around her hips a silken shawl with a fringe. She pulled me to an empty table further away from the opium than I wanted to be, for I did not want to lose my mistress in this strange crowd, especially not tonight. But I was captivated by the dark woman’s breasts, the tiny rings of gold pierced through her perfect nipples. The piercings looked beautifully strange and violently erotic, so much so that I followed the wordless motions of the woman without looking back towards my mistress. I wanted to touch this woman’s breasts. I wanted to taste the metal on my lips as I had done with the Japanese girl days before. I wanted to – my thoughts were giving way to more violence and it was getting increasingly difficult to stop the powerful surges that came over me.

As though the dark beauty had read my mind, she brought my eager hand to her breast, and I reached out to take the tiny ring between my forefinger and thumb. I pulled a little, and the corners of her sensuous lips turned up in a wincing smile. I pulled at the ring a little harder and she half-closed her eyes, her long lashes brushing her cheek. I imagined that the little moaning sound that she made came from the contact of my lashes on her skin. I let my eyes wander down the front of her figure, her long, flat belly, her secret parts barely hidden by the silken shawl. I ran my hand along the flat of her stomach as I reached around her neck to pull her generous lips towards my own, because it seemed she was offering herself to me.

She tilted her head towards mine willingly and I tasted to my fill of her lips and neck. She bit my lips with a single-mindedness that matched my mood, and her fingernails dug into the nape of my neck. As we kissed, she unhooked the cape from my neck. Once she had removed the cloak, she surprised me by putting it about her own shoulders, which made her look magnificently sinister, her bare breasts surrounded by the black fabric of the opera cape, the contours of her body trickling with red silk. The small orchestra had started to play music that filled my head with the rhythm of sex, the music of fucking. My blood was responding to the beat of the music, and my sex was responding to the cloaked image of the tall woman, who was leaning towards me over the small candlelit table.

I knew I was about to commit an infidelity. And I wished that my mistress were closer to watch. I was going to ravish this woman, and I knew my pleasure would be that much greater if my mistress were forced to watch as I took and gave pleasure to an equally beautiful creature as she.

The dark woman and I sat together without uttering a single word. Her black hair was falling over one shoulder, nearly covering her breasts. I reached out and touched those tempting breasts again, brushing the hair away so that I could admire them throughout the seduction. I wondered if the piercing had given her great pain, and if she had enjoyed the sensation. I began to wonder if she had willingly put those strange rings through her breasts, or if someone had forced her. This last thought enflamed my desire and gave way to more brutal thoughts. I found her right nipple with my lips and began to tease her by pulling the golden ring with my teeth. She arched her graceful back to meet my mouth. She was beautiful in the candlelight, and I was aroused beyond compare, the public nature of our caresses making me all the more excited. I reached down and unwrapped the shawl which covered her lower body. She tipped her pelvis up to meet my hungering stare.

I nearly fell back in my chair, gasping when I saw what rested between my dark beauty’s legs. Tucked in the dark thicket of her pubic hair was a fully formed male member. Since I never suspected for a moment that this mesmerizing beauty was endowed with such equipment, you can imagine my surprise. When I finally looked up to her face, I was met with the shine of perfect white teeth in the glow of the candles.

At first I thought his smile was mocking and the humiliation I felt turned my thoughts immediately vile. But then I saw the softness of her breasts, the inviting tilt of her body and I wanted to possess her. Unsure as to what to do next, yet still aroused by her beauty, I found it difficult to fall into her caresses again for I had yet to have relations with another man and I had been taught to find the act repugnant. And that made me want him more, because he was forbidden. I kept thinking of my lover, who had disappeared into an opium cloud, and wishing she could see this anomaly of nature, this beauty with perfectly formed breasts and as perfect a member as I had ever seen. I could feel the Gypsy pulling me towards her. She began to kiss me passionately with his full lips, her dark nipples long and perfect to the touch. I couldn’t resist taking them into my hands. He slowly began to open the front of my dress shirt with her long, feminine fingers, the puzzling, maddening smile never leaving his face. I felt as though he were challenging me to make love to him, to take her in my arms and possess her. Her smile was pressing me to accept what I wanted, what I desired. I was utterly perplexed, repulsed and simultaneously wishing nothing more than to possess this man/woman. She was wrapping her arms around me and, as he did, I could feel her cock against my leg. She began kissing my chest and unbuttoning my pants, his hand having found the profound evidence of my passion within the folds of my trousers. The intoxicating sensation was not entirely unfamiliar, and as she took hold of my sex I saw the fleeting image of the day I insisted on making a man of my mistress.

Before I could protest, he fell gracefully to her knees, her mouth over my cock. Her tongue flicked over the head and then he took the whole length into her mouth. I could feel her hair brushing my bare chest as his head fell lightly against my stomach, her cheek moving up and down against the tender flesh of my lower abdomen. I lifted my hips to thrust the full length of my member down her throat and he took it hungrily into her willing mouth. I started to press her head hard over my throbbing sex as I felt an orgasm filling every nerve of my body. I looked down to see my own hands pushing her hard, then harder over me, and I could feel the low masculine sound of his pleasure as he tasted me. She was touching her own cock and turned her body so that I might see what I was engaged with. Suddenly my mistress appeared from the dark, her eyelids drooping sensuously, obviously under the spell of the magical pipe.

The corners of my mistress’s mouth turned up in a drugged smile as she saw the woman from behind, her dark-haired head moving languorously up and down against my belly. I opened my mouth to explain, then thought better of it. The pleasurable sensations running through my body were also making it impossible for me to utter intelligible words. My mistress moved towards me. In the hazy light she looked fantastically gorgeous. She came up beside me and began to kiss me passionately on the mouth as the Gypsy he/she continued to suck my cock. I pulled my mistress’s face away from mine and said to her in a commanding voice, “Get under him. Let him have you.”

“Who, my darling, who?” she answered, intoxicated and compliant.

“Her,” I said, and pushed my lover towards the dark woman, who stroked her male member slowly as he licked my own member. She gasped and tried to move away.

“No,” she said quietly, “no… I—”

I put my lips over her mouth and kissed her. Then I took her lower lip between my teeth and I bit until I drew blood as I pressed her languid body downward. I had to see this sight, two beautiful women together, one of them penetrating the other. I wanted to watch my mistress take her inside herself, I wanted to watch their breasts touch.

“Do it,” I moaned and then let myself fall over into the blinding sensuality that had been threatening to overcome me. I pushed her down to the floor and she seemed to spill to the ground in her soft skin, her opium flesh, and her champagne-coloured dress.

The Gypsy moved magically when he saw my mistress presented to him, there at my feet. Through the dazed comfort of the aftereffects of my pleasure, I watched my mistress struggle hopelessly for a moment under his feminine touch. He stroked her breasts with his, she fell upon my mistress, her dark hair spilling like wine, her narrow hips coming down hard upon my mistress, lifting her dress as he licked her nipples, the movement of his narrow hips flowering, slightly more feminine finally than masculine as she pushed her cock inside my mistress. And when my mistress lifted her body to greet the sensation, I let my head fall back. I closed my eyes and let the violent nausea overtake my senses. The sickness I was feeling was only a symptom of what I was coming to know as my true being. I was sick and delighted with the monster I was discovering within, the hideous malformed personality that had lain dormant, waiting for the opportunity to arise and overtake the superficial in my soul. The bestial. That is what I truly am. It took an evening at L’Enfer to allow for the inevitable release.

I heard my mistress crying out. It was a strange sound of grudging pleasure mingled with humiliation and rage. It was a sound that satisfied me. I felt more alert. I leaned towards the ground to find my mistress’s lips and chin covered with what was presumably my sperm. The freakish man/woman heaved into her one last time, releasing a masculine groan of sexual release. Then the creature’s cry turned to a roar of frustration, a keening sound of anger. She lifted herself away from my mistress and disappeared into the dark. My lover fell to one side, rolling slightly back and forth, her body not quite recovered from the trauma of such a pleasure. I realized that the dark-haired creature most probably took no real pleasure in possessing my mistress, but had done it for my pleasure. For when the thing had looked up towards me as he arched her back, we met eyes, and the calculated cruelty she found there was most telling, I am sure. She had therefore run. He was a wise woman, that poor forgotten creature. He was a very lucky girl. If she had stayed, I am afraid of what I would have done to him…

At last my lover opened her eyes and I found that the opium had not worn off in the least, yet a new expression was clinging to the sides of her mouth. It was a confused turn of her lips and I realized that the effects of the opium and the dark-haired creature that had possessed my lover were a trifle horrifying. I laughed as she half-stood and fell into my arms. Many eyes were looking upon us with great appreciation. I turned to find that the mysterious Gypsy had vanished into the opium darkness, leaving my lover to our private kisses. I pretended to give her comfort. But inwardly I laughed, and my hysterics, had they had a colour, would have been scarlet and shameless. I stroked my lover’s hair. My affection for her had turned to hate, to resentment. I kissed her neck and put my arms around the fragility of her body. Again I was consumed with thoughts of the simplicity of murder.

My mistress was overcome with the seductive languor that opium induces, and she rested in my arms as I ordered a bottle of champagne. She fell in and out of her opium stupor, made worse by the champagne that I plied her with. She lay her cheek against the tabletop and I noticed how lovely she looked, her lips swollen from my kisses, her eyes mellowed and half-aware of the nightmare she had stepped into unknowingly. The nightmare she had in fact paid for.

After some time, the little orchestra began to play a low soulful tune. The guests at the tables readied themselves to watch the show. Slowly all light, aside from the candles on the tables, was doused. The lamps at the foot of the stage were lit, and at long last the curtain that surrounded the little stage in the centre of the club began to part.

The tableau was fantastic.

In the centre of the stage was an extraordinarily large chair. The back of it rose up at least six feet. Seated on it was a woman whose face was hidden by a black leather mask similar to the one the doorman had been wearing. In this instance, the only part of her face that was exposed was her mouth, a hole showing her lips painted bright red. Her hands were held with leather thongs threaded over her head and pinioned to an iron eyebolt in the centre of the back of the chair. Her legs were also bound, her sex shaved and widely exposed, her ankles tied to the front legs of this throne of sorts. The stage-lights caught a golden flash from between her legs and I realized that this woman wore rings of gold pierced through her labia, just as the Japanese girl had. A thorny shiver of recognition, of memory, rasped through my body. I studied the little chain that ran through the rings on the outer lips of her sex and then encircled her waist.

There was nothing more on the stage. Except a sleek black panther. The magnificent beast lounged alongside the girl’s chair, its black fur gleaming in the theatrical lighting. It was an extraordinary animal. It lay with its mouth open, panting. It was chained to the massive arms of the chair, and, though the chain kept the animal at a safe distance from the audience, the beast was not going to be kept from the girl. The tension in the air matched my mood. It was a murderous perfume and every nerve of my body waited. I wanted to watch that creature tear into the flesh of that young girl. I wanted to put my hands round my lover’s throat. I wanted to hear screams of shock mingled with my own delighted cries.

“Let’s go home, darling,” my mistress managed to whisper. She sat staring at the potentially gruesome tableau, unable to move. She was waiting for me to motivate the action of fleeing this scene. She was going to have to wait a long time. Or so I thought.

The panther stood up lazily, but her movements became more agitated, more predatory, as she heard and felt the sound of human fear. For some of the guests this bestial passion play was a bit too realistic.

“I only came here to realize fantasy!” I heard one woman exclaim indignantly as she and her escort stood to leave.

Good, I thought. It is good and right that all those unable to endure the instinctive realities of our bloodthirst, all those who would deny a chance to witness the feral, the barbaric savagery that sat within every heart, should well leave. L’Enfer was no place for merciful.

“Please, I’m begging you. Take me from this place,” she said. For the first time I saw in her eyes real terror. I was so disappointed in her. Her eyes, her wonderfully sharkish eyes, were the feature of her I most adored, most admired. And now in the face of this she wanted to run. She had shown her humanity and I couldn’t forgive her.

The panther tried to lunge into the tables and chairs. She tried to swipe at the conductor in the small pit. But her chain kept her from making fatal contact. I ignored my mistress.

Finally, as though the panther had had the dignity not to attempt the obvious first, she at last turned towards the prey meant for her. The girl bound in the chair had already started screaming. But when the panther got closer, she stopped and began pleading. The girl beseeched the audience she could only hear. She begged certain people by first names, perhaps her abductors, her masters, her lovers… I watched as the panther circled in slowly. I could not pull my starving eyes from the scene.

“I must… I must… go… I must…” My mistress stood and stumbled to the floor.

I started to laugh when, through spraying blood, the poor girl on the stage began to actually pray to God.

I yanked my mistress to her feet. She fell against me. We started to move through the thick, sanguine air of L’Enfer. There were very few guests remaining seated. I thought the whole tableau brilliant and knew that I would certainly be back for more. The next morning, as I drank my chocolate in the sunny little flat, the newspaper was delivered. On the first page was a story concerning the murder of a beautiful young society woman found floating in the Seine. Her body had been torn to shreds and the police could only believe it was the work of a beast, a maniac, yet the tears on her body resembled claw marks. Her husband, an elderly gentleman, offered what I thought to be a minor reward to anyone giving reliable clues or information to the police.

I wake sometimes, plagued by a recurring nightmare. I have finally persuaded my new mistress, a wealthy girl rebelling against her family, to accompany me to L’Enfer. I know that only a visit to that place will sate my appetite.

I have become so hungry.

She is to be here any moment, at the flat she has recently rented for me.