A lot of men looked at Alyssa Lewis. The lithe beauty liked to be looked at, aware that she drew more stares since she'd started gymnastics, graceful and strong. At eleven and a half, with tawny hair she wore long and put into a ponytail when she went for a run in the nearby park, Alyssa had eyes like sweetened absinthe in ice cold water, an obstinate yet sensual mouth, and soft skin the color of Sara Lee cheesecake. Her athletic body was barely in bud, but Alyssa was slowly becoming seductive. The girl had a rudimentary knowledge of sex and was definitely not yet ready for it, self-possessed and virginal... still, Alyssa wasn't altogether innocent, either. She had let her cousin kiss her - even in bed - and her best friend's brother had started making out with her... in a manner of speaking...
Steve was sixteen - he even had a slight beard - and Alyssa couldn't believe he could be interested in her. His sister Chloe was twelve, blue-eyed and blond like him, and Chloe had a crush on Alyssa's cousin Mark, who was fourteen. Chloe and Alyssa were very close - they were the prettiest girls in seventh grade - and Alyssa told her cousin that Chloe was interested in him. Mark and Alyssa had kept their kissing a secret - she was embarrassed about it - but one summer afternoon at Chloe's house, when her mother was away for the weekend - Steve took care of his sister - Chloe poured a finger from each open bottle of Mrs. Peck's liquor into a glass. Steve was in his room, like they were too young for him, and Chloe, Alyssa and Mark got drunk. Mark said he'd let Chloe and Alyssa try some pot if they kissed each other.
The girls giggled and did it. Alyssa wasn't really interested in drugs, but she was excited by the idea of kissing her friend. She'd thought about it before, but she was too shy and scared that Chloe would think she was weird. Alyssa was worried that she might be a lezzy, but doing it in front of her cousin kind of made it okay. It was just a little kiss, but Alyssa got butterflies in her stomach. The twelve-year-old was wearing a pink tank top and tight cut-offs. Chloe already had cupcakes, and she had an indescribable smell, fresh and clean but smutty somehow, too. She was athletic like Alyssa, though not as graceful, and had a slight tan.
"Come on... kiss each other for real," Mark urged in a hoarse voice. Alyssa's heart beat really fast. Mark was sitting Indian-style on the floor, but the girls were in Chloe's bed. Alyssa was wearing a white T-shirt and khaki shorts. She didn't have titties yet, only puffy sepia nipples far apart and high on her runner's chest. They were both barefoot, and being in bed felt so strange. They kissed again, kneeling, and Chloe put her arms around Alyssa. The blonde tasted like the liquor, and Alyssa tentatively slipped her tongue into Chloe's mouth for a second, her hands on her friend's haunches. Chloe pulled Alyssa closer and responded with her tongue. Alyssa closed her eyes and felt her friend's breasts brush against her chest. Chloe's nipples were hard, and Alyssa almost moaned, running her tongue in and out of her friend's mouth like she did for Mark, savoring the wild taste of girlie, booze and maybe peppermint, eucalyptus, Chloe's lips soft and incredibly warm, hot and wet.
Alyssa broke the kiss when Chloe's hands wandered under her shirt, scared. Her body felt like it was burning underwater. Their eyes met like plumes of smoke and Alyssa looked away as Chloe's hardened, ashamed. "Don't you want to kiss us, too?" Chloe's voice was plaintive, frightened. Mark climbed onto the bed and the three of them kissed, sticking out their tongues, his hands on the girls' hips. Alyssa touched her cousin's butt for the first time, kneading his cheeks, trying not to whimper, then put her other hand on Chloe's butt to let her know that she wanted to be touched, she'd only been afraid. Her friend's fingers slipped under Alyssa's shirt again, caressing her back, and Mark put his hand on Alyssa's thigh. Petrified, Alyssa fondled Chloe's ass. She gasped Chloe's fingers crept under the waistband of her shorts. Alyssa stiffened and slid her hand between the twelve-year-old's thighs, rubbing her through the faded denim, her crotch. She heard a zipper and her cousin groaned. Alyssa looked down and saw his penis. Chloe moaned and took it in her hand. Mark shot off immediately, and Alyssa squealed in horror as semen spattered her shorts.
"Break up the orgy!" The three of them jumped. Chloe's brother was grinning in the doorway. "Your mom's on the phone, Alyssa."
"Tell her I'm in the shower," Alyssa said, blushing. "Oh, God..." She felt horrible, like she'd been caught doing something unbelievably evil. Chloe was embarrassed, too, and Mark looked terrified.
"Okay," Steve said. Alyssa hopped out of bed and ran to the bathroom after he'd gone, sniffling. She couldn't believe she'd gone that far... or that Chloe had. Her best friend had actually touched him! His boner! Alyssa washed her shorts in the sink. There was some stuff on her T-shirt, too, but she cleaned that with a wet wash towel. Her slit had never been damp before. She put the wet shorts on and walked back to Chloe's bedroom, reeling. Steve was there, leaning against the wall. "She wants me to drive you home," he said to Alyssa. "Something about your grandma... Mark can stay." Steve grinned again. "If he keeps his hands off my sister... I'm supposed to be watching you, slut."
Chloe started crying, and Mark looked stupid, sitting stiffly in her bed. Alyssa followed Steve downstairs and out to his car, an ancient Camaro. She was mortified.
"You're not gonna tell, are you?"
"Fuck no." He swung into heavy traffic on Magazine. "I guess we should wait till your shorts are dry, huh? Want a shake or something?"
"Thanks," Alyssa said, smiling. Steve went through the drive-thru at a McDonald's, got her a strawberry shake and a Coke for himself, and parked in the lot. "Thanks... thanks a lot!"
"You're kind of little for fooling around," he said, lighting a Marlboro from the box by the shift. "Do you do that a lot?"
Alyssa turned scarlet. "No!"
Suddenly he touched her hair, brushing it behind her ear. She looked at him, stunned. "You're really pretty, Alyssa," he whispered. Then he leaned over and kissed her on the lips. Alyssa squirmed. She liked it... but she'd just been with someone else - Jesus! With a girl! A girl and her first cousin!
"Don't," she whimpered, pushing him away.
"Wanna go out later?"
She almost said 'what do you mean.' He kissed her again, and Alyssa kissed back, a tight knot in her stomach. She still felt queasy from the alcohol, but mostly she felt like dirt. "Don't... please..." He slipped his hand under her shirt. She knew she couldn't stop him; he might tell. Steve fingered her nipples. Alyssa sobbed, but she was wet, too, really wet.
"What time can I pick you up?"
"I don't want to," she sobbed, miserable.
"I really like you," he announced. It didn't matter if she didn't like him. "What time?" He didn't threaten her. She knew.
"I can't leave... the house," she sniffled.
"Tomorrow morning, then. Say you're coming over to see my sister. I'll meet you at the corner at ten."
Her shorts were almost dry. Steve drove her home, and Alyssa had lunch with her grandmother, who always popped up unexpectedly and demanded to see her. Alyssa wasn't really there, already dreading morning. She cried herself to sleep early.
The girl got up at dawn, showered, and went for a run in the park. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. He was nice-looking, anyway, lean, his eyes a darker blue than Chloe's. Her little libido had been replenished by sleep.
Alyssa loved to run. It got her high, and she knew that there were men who went to the park to watch girls, a few who were interested in younger girls, even girls as young as her. Most of them were disgusting, but not all of them, and liking to be seen was a secret, like kissing Mark. She hadn't the slightest intention of letting anyone approach her, and no one did, but she liked to wonder what it would be like when she was older and men would try to ask her out. She wore shiny purple running shorts and a plain tank top of ribbed white cotton, kind of low-cut, and she knew that when she got sweaty her sepia nipples were visible... not very, only a hint, but still. She waved to the man who sat on the bench about fifty feet from where she stretched. He waved back, like always. Middle-aged and handsome, the man always sat there when she went for her morning run. It was the best place. Alyssa felt a thrill, stretching, his eyes on her legs and butt. She'd never gotten wet before, performing for him, but her excitement from the day before suddenly flooded her anew, cunny milk seeping to her vestibule as she felt his stare. Alyssa ran a few miles, avoiding his gaze whenever she passed him, another man by the pond enjoying her. She thought about Steve and started to look forward to seeing him. She wouldn't let him do anything really bad, but she wouldn't mind touching him. Alyssa remembered her cousin's penis, Chloe wrapping her fingers around it. Mark was only fourteen. She wondered if the sixteen-year-old's would be any bigger. She definitely wanted to touch it, she decided, to hold it in her hand.
Alyssa went home and showered for the second time - she loved bathing - and decided to get dressed up, putting on a cream-colored silk panty, a peachy linen skirt and a sleeveless top, apricot silk, brown leather sandals. She made coffee and waffles for her parents and brought them breakfast in bed. Sometimes their bedroom smelled like sex, and she liked it. She especially liked it that day. Her mom was still sexy at thirty-three - they sometimes ran together in the evening - and her dad was great. He had worn his boxers to bed, and Alyssa was almost aroused, thinking about what he didn't know and imagining him making love to her mother.
"You look great," Steve said as she climbed into the blue Camaro. Alyssa smiled nervously. "Listen, my friend Charlie's parents are out of town... I thought we'd go over there. Okay?"
"Okay," Alyssa said in a voice that was almost sexy. She'd imagined him taking her to the park or something, doing things to her, and it made her feel better to be taken out... he was even showing her to his friends. She felt very mature, happy.
Charlie lived out by the lake. Steve opened the door for her, even, and they went into the pleasant split-level. Steve's friend was seventeen, kind of a burnout, wearing a Metallica T-shirt. He was cute, too, with sandy hair and foggy gray eyes. Alyssa held her breath and took Steve's hand, sitting on the floor in Charlie's room and listening to music. She wanted to be Steve's girlfriend, and she was glad that he wasn't embarrassed about her age. He wasn't was he? Not if he took her to see a friend!
Charlie got a bong out and Alyssa tried grass for the first time. It was funny, 'cause that's what they were going to do the day before, and here she was smoking pot. Steve put his arms around her and she leaned against his back, between his thighs, floating away on a cloud of cannabis and bliss. She realized that Charlie was looking up her skirt and crossed her feet to hide her panty, blushing.
"Spread your legs, Alyssa," Steve whispered.
She giggled. "Come on, Steve... not in front of him!" She moved away and sat with her legs together, sideways, almost posing. Steve sidled up to her and kissed her. Alyssa kissed back, and he put his hand between her legs. "Cut it out," she said, giggling. "Steve!" He took her into his arms and lifted her skirt, then yanked down her panty. He was showing Charlie her butt. Alyssa screamed and tried to get away, but Steve twisted her arm. She hissed in pain, struggling to break free.
"Knock it off, Steve," Charlie said. "Hey, man... she doesn't want to!"
"The fuck she doesn't," Steve growled, pinning her to the floor and spitting in her face. Alyssa bawled as the teenager undid his belt. "Spread your legs, you little whore!"
"I said knock it off!" Charlie stood, looming over the smaller boy. "Leave her alone, Steve... I mean it."
"Help me, Charlie..."
Charlie kicked him in the face, hard. Steve fell backwards, blood spurting from his nose, howling. He tried to fight back, but he went down, his pants still open.
"I'll let you up and you walk out of here?" Charlie was actually smiling.
"Yeah," Charlie said, trying not to cry. "Come on, Alyssa," he said, getting to his feet. "Let's go."
"No!" Alyssa had wiped his saliva from her face. It glistened on her chin and arm.
"Stay here then, slut," he said. "Catch you later, Charlie... you can bet on it."
"Fuck off," Charlie said, still smiling. Steve left.
Charlie brought Alyssa a damp towel and sat next to her on the floor. Alyssa crawled into his arms, crying, and Charlie held her. "He... he'll tell," she sobbed. "He'll tell his parents..."
"No he won't," Charlie whispered, comforting her. "They hate his fucking guts. You okay?" Their eyes met, her absinthe irises watered down and surrounded by thin pink threads, his a chocolate fog, and Charlie kissed her eyelids, then her mouth. Alyssa's stomach went into knots like they had the day before. She'd been with three boys in two days, and she knew it was wrong, like waving to the man who watched her in the park... but it felt good, getting kissed, and he had saved her... "Steve said you were kissing his sister." Alyssa blushed, dying of shame. "That's really cool," Charlie murmured, caressing her thigh. "Did you like it?" Alyssa nodded, biting her lip. "I can just see you two... you're both like totally gorgeous." Alyssa pulled his face towards hers and ran her tongue into his mouth. Charlie felt her chest through her apricot top, softly circling her left nipple with his fingertip. She was worried about being flat, but he seemed to like her. Alyssa swallowed and took his hand, guiding it under the silk, wide-eyed. "You're so soft," he whispered, teasing her nipple. "Do you want to get on the bed?"
She nodded shyly, then stared at the floor. "Charlie... you don't think I'm a slut, do you?"
"No... I think you're really cool... I'm glad you're here."
"I am, too," she whispered, letting him help her to her feet. She held her breath and bared her chest, dropping the silk to the floor and pulling her shoulders back. There wasn't anything there, only the sepia nipples, not even hard, but Alyssa felt like a woman for the first time ever, as if she were a teenager like him. She was nervous, but not frightened, and slowly undid her skirt, trembling.
"You sure you wanna do this?"
Why was he asking her that? She felt humiliated, standing in front of him in her damp panty. Then she saw the bulge in his jeans. She felt like a slut. Weak-kneed, Alyssa took off her underwear and climbed onto the bed, unable to look at him. She whimpered when he embraced her. He'd gotten naked, and he smelled bad, kissing her neck and nipples. Charlie licked his way to her slit. She'd never masturbated, never come, and she came in his mouth, squealing, scared. Alyssa pushed his head away, oversensitive and shuddering, and suddenly she felt his penis pushing into her tiny hole.
"Naaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuugh!" She'd never meant to let him have her. He held her down and took her virginity, forcing his thick cock into the slippery but small and impossibly tight tube. Alyssa howled in agony as the boy deflowered her, bleating as his semen gushed into her bleeding vagina. He tried to kiss her, wilting, and she clawed at his face. Charlie hissed and grabbed her wrists, then climbed off of her. Whatever womanhood she'd imagined a few minutes before was gone. She bawled like a baby, and Charlie handed her the damp towel she'd used to wipe off Steve's spit. Crying, she cleaned her wounded cunny, semen seeping from the bloody opening.
"I'm sorry..."
"Take me home," she sobbed, gathering her clothes.
"Alyssa..." Charlie grabbed her and threw her back into the bed. She thought he would rape her again, but he only kissed her. The eleven-year-old fought him, but she wanted to be held, too, and soon she ceased to struggle, letting him suck on her nipples and lick her between the legs. He tongued her clitty, and Alyssa spread her thighs wider apart, rocking her hips and moaning softly, then holding his head. Her head thrown back, she felt a needy pleasure seep into her pain, his drool and her slime dripping to her crack as he sucked her clit. She almost wanted him to fuck her when he ran his tongue to her anus. Alyssa's rudimentary knowledge didn't run to anal sex, and she gasped at the strange feeling. Before she could say anything, though, Charlie was licking her cunny hole again, pushing his tongue inside. Had the flick of his tongue lower down been an accident? It was so dirty! Spittle and kiddie-slime trickled to the tight sphincter, and Alyssa almost automatically lifted her legs, lifting her tail a little, the tiny opening of her virgin rectum twitching and actually sucking a drop of the boy's drool into its puckered pinkness. Again his tongue flicked against her poophole. She mewled, embarrassed. Did he really like her... her butt? She always wiped herself very carefully - she supposed it was clean - but still! It was so weird! She was too ashamed to say anything... and it felt... it didn't feel good, not really, not like it would get her off, like when he licked her slit - what if it did? - it felt... humiliating... Alyssa whimpered, and suddenly he was sucking on it, dribbling saliva into the puckered bung and noisily sucking it out. It was so nasty! Alyssa tensed, gurgling, and brought her hands to her buttocks, curling her toes. She wanted to clench her cheeks, but she wanted him in her botty, too, warm spit squirting through the little muscle as her fingers snaked towards her crack and he started to stab at it, Alyssa cupping her taut buttocks and grunting, burning with shame at a need she had never known, squirming like an epileptic salamander, desperate, panting. His tongue flickered rhythmically at the reddening hole as she rocked her pelvis, licking like a little flame. She started to sob, as if he were lapping at a hidden wound, and the boy's wet tongue entered her rectum at last, her tiny rosette turning to butter, the soft rough organ worming deeper into the hole, deep inside, so deep she thought she would die. Alyssa arched her back and gave a guttural scream as spasms of unspeakable ecstasy swept through her entrails, something as horrible as it was wondrous, awful, her spine a desiccated tree trunk struck by lightning, digging her fingers into her flesh as her sphincter fluttered around his long, thick tongue. The orgasm felt like a railroad spike had speared her brains.
The boy was on top of her, clutching her, her body spastic and slick with sweat. He kissed her mouth, and Alyssa tasted her anal musk, clinging to him as he slid his cock into her cunny hole. She wrapped her legs around him as the teenager fucked her aching twat, needing him, shivering until it started to hurt, his huge dick stretching the delicate membrane a second time. Alyssa submitted to it, screwing like a hollow doll. The child's uterus was not yet in use, but the empty little sac needed semen like Alyssa needed love. She clawed at the blanket, bleating as the boy thrust in and out of her, bald and slippery. Their eyes locked, Alyssa's a drugged baby's, pleading, his dick loosening the sore tube. Charlie slid from her snatch and gently turned her over. She didn't know what he was doing, but she wanted him to like her. She'd overheard older boys talking about girls being good in bed. She wondered if she was good enough to be his girlfriend.
Charlie coaxed her into a crouch and slipped his cock into her cunny. She didn't like not being able to see him. It made her feel like a dog. There could have been anyone behind her, and she felt like maybe he didn't care whether it was her he was fucking, either. She whimpered, limp, his prick pushing painfully against her cervix as he stuffed it back in. He wet his thumb and teased her asshole. Alyssa soughed and stiffened, sea salt sifted into the hidden wound, aware then of how obscene she must look, her little butt wiggling while he slowly slid his penis into her pussy. She knew she got stared at from behind, and she figured she had nice buns, but she'd never thought that men who admired her ass were interested in her anus... it was so disgusting! She hugged the pillow, feeling his dick slide deeper. Her poophole smoldered like snot soaked in lighter fluid and lit, and Alyssa let out a feeble moan as a strange smell reached her nostrils. It was sort of like a toilet stink only mucous, and she thought she'd had an accident until she realized that the boy's thumb had wormed into her botty. She gasped, then groaned, as if she was going poop, and she wanted to, she wanted to shit his finger only backwards, bucking, desperate to get the finger deeper, her bowels turning to water as his dick banged against her cervix and he diddled her slimy anus with his thumb. She fucked him back, and Charlie slammed her, pounding her cervix like a rubber hammer. Suddenly she felt his semen gush against it, then squirt into the tiny collar. Alyssa came, howling, and the boy spurted into her again and again, groaning.
She cried as he rimmed her anus again, stroking her slit. It was as if he was watching her go potty - he knew she was abnormal - it was like he was licking her dirty brain - she couldn't be his girlfriend - she couldn't be anybody's girlfriend - she felt like she was being flushed down the toilet. Charlie stopped and she was alone, lost. Where was he? Alyssa wept, and he appeared again, erect, holding something. She stared at him through her tears, and Charlie put her in a crouch again.
"Wha - what are you doing?"
Whatever it was, it was cold and unpleasant. Alyssa sobbed as he stuck his finger in her rectum. She wanted to crawl away but couldn't, crying. He was putting goop in her. She realized suddenly what he was going to do, and just as it hit her she felt a searing pain at her sphincter. She tried to scream but nothing came out, and then the blaze tore through her bowels. It lasted only an instant, then lessened to a scorching heat, a wildfire in a typhoon, his big cock raging in her intestine, slowly, her little body dripping with sweat, then dreamy, drifting through a sickroom like the soul of a dying girl. He pumped his penis in and out of her shithole, holding her hips as if shoving her head underwater, raping her to the marrow. Alyssa quivered like custard, retching, and he reamed her hard, his balls slapping against her gash. She gripped the pillow like it was a teddy bear, white-knuckled. Her filth seemed to boil and then it came, her spine crashing through bracken, her brains bursting like water balloons against her luminous skull, her slender limbs jackknifed, his cock exploding deep inside her as Alyssa shrieked in orgasm.
Numb with unfathomable pain, Alyssa twitched spasmodically while Charlie stretched out beside her, exhausted. She let him kiss her, the room suffused with the evil smell of her bowels. Demons rode in on the odor, her daddy and uncle; she could never look them in the eye again. Charlie pushed her down, and Alyssa saw what had done this to her, half hard, coated with Vaseline and scum.
"Suck me, Alyssa," he whispered. He couldn't mean it! He couldn't make her! "Come on... suck my cock..." Sobbing, she took it in her trembling hand. "Come on, baby... I did you..." She stroked it, nauseous, then tentatively put it in her mouth. Charlie grabbed her leg and moved her closer, then stuck his middle finger in her ass. Alyssa let out a muffled whimper, weakened by his finger, letting him fuck her mouth. "Open wide... that's it..." He held her head down and masturbated her rectum, thrusting up into her mouth. She gagged, but her little mouth was watering, genital, aroused. He took her by the hair and pushed a second finger into Alyssa's butt. "Swallow... that's it... fuck, you're tight..." Charlie squeezed into her throat, then let her up for air. "Swallow... swallow!" He pulled his fingers from her asshole and slapped her bottom. The cock went into her throat again, deeper, longer. He lifted her by the hair again, heard her breathe, and slapped her little ass. She swallowed. Charlie groaned and dribbled the girl's head, raping her throat. Suffocating, Alyssa jerked as he shoved it all the way into her throat and ejaculated, his pubic hair brushing her lips. He moaned and lifted her off, satisfied.
Choking, Alyssa staggered out of bed. She needed to find the bathroom. The child ran down the hall and found it, climbed on the toilet backwards and went poop, wailing. She tinkled and flushed the toilet, his semen scalding her throat, then flipped the drain closed and ran water into the baby blue tub. Alyssa climbed in and cried. Time seemed to stop in sorrow, a dam holding back everything that had happened to her since kissing Chloe... Charlie appeared and took a piss, Alyssa pulling the shower curtain closed. Somehow she left the bath and dried her tortured body, gathered her clothes, dressed, and left the teenager's house, her hair damp, walking funny, walking all the way home.
She felt like a rodent on a treadmill, trudging along the bayou and then through Mid-City, past the Blue Plate mayonnaise factory and through Broadmoor, finally reaching the house. By the time she got there she had composed herself. Her composure was superficial, like thin ice, but it was enough to get her past her parents and upstairs to her room. There she broke down, crying herself to sleep. When her mom came in, Alyssa said she felt sick, and no one disturbed her until the following morning, when she woke with her mouth still redolent of feces and sperm.
Alyssa actually wanted to go to school. She was a stubborn kid, and she sensed that there was no use in tunneling through the mattress towards deceptive depths of self-pity. She showered in the morning, wincing when she washed her ass and cunny, but didn't go for a run. Alyssa was now afraid of men. She wasn't sure how much of this fresh fear was about getting raped - hurt - and how much was the sense that they could see into the remains of her mind. She was afraid that they would know that she... she'd let a boy fuck her up the butt, that she was not a normal girl. Alyssa could recall remarks now - 'stick it in your ass,' 'shove it...' - what had been innocuous curses had now become the stuff of nightmare, words meant for her, for a sick little slut who liked it - maybe she didn't like it - but then why had he done that to her? He must have seen that she didn't like it in her pussy. She remembered holding her cheeks apart when he tongued her. Alyssa shuddered, showering, soaping her crack. Her botty hurt. She fingered the sore bunghole, wondering what it looked like. Whimpering, she slid a soapy finger into her anus. Before she knew it she was masturbating her rectum, kneeling in the tub, the shower running. Her bowels empty, it wasn't enough. She climbed dripping from the bath and spotted the toilet plunger. She put the wooden handle in her mouth first, then sodomized herself, on her knees, her ass in the air, slowly pumping the plunger in and out of her colon, sticking it in deep, deeper, her face against the cold green tiles of the floor. Alyssa came, crying, and extracted it, nine inches of the handle coated with scum. Shaking, she cleaned it and climbed back into the shower, washed her anus again, stepped from tub, put some Vaseline on the raw opening, dried herself and caught her gaze in the looking glass, looking gone, then hurriedly dressed - cotton panties and a linen dress the color of green olives, skimpy sandals - dazed, brushing her teeth and gargling, then slipping out the door.
School was within walking distance, a private academy, mostly white despite the overwhelmingly African-American makeup of New Orleans proper. Alyssa was aware of the rapidity of her strange recovery - and of its failure. She was a bright girl. What she had done in the bathroom surprised her almost more than what she'd let the teenager do to her. That she'd done under duress, only partly willing... or had she... had she wanted it? That was the worst part! She hadn't resisted. She couldn't even remember for certain whether she'd ever been innocent, doing her stretching exercises in front of the man in the park, aware he was staring at her butt... walking, she felt the Vaseline around her aching rectum. Did everyone do that? Did her dad do that to her mom? She'd loved being at the boy's mercy. She'd even loved sucking him off when he it was dirty... _loved_ it, even if it had made her feel like shit. It felt _good_ to feel like shit, like it sometimes felt good to get sick, to stay home and be taken care of... she thought about her daddy, about how sad he looked when she was ill, lying in bed in nightgowns she wore only when she was sick, cotton only slightly darker than her creamy skin in summer, flannel the color of her eyes in winter... what would her daddy think of her? She wished she was sick, sitting in his lap...
Chloe Peck was standing in front of the side entrance with Lori Gardner and Cindy Firmin, who - with Alyssa - were the prettiest seventh graders. Alyssa automatically got sexier, her stride turning seductive, looking around to see who was watching.
"Look, it's Alyssa," Cindy sneered. "Let's go in... I don't wanna catch anything..."
Chloe and Lori laughed and left Alyssa standing there, tears welling up in her milky green eyes. She was stunned, then staggered and called out after her lost friend. "Your brother rape anybody lately?"
The blonde whirled around. "Nobody can rape you, Alyssa. You can't rape a whore!"
Alyssa felt blood rush to her face. She watched them go in, then steadied herself against the wall. Everyone was looking at her. She took a deep breath and went into the building behind Tanya Ivanyuk, a fabulously beautiful classmate who wasn't in their crowd because she was a misfit and anyway Ukrainian. Alyssa wasn't in Chloe's crowd either, not anymore. She felt like someone had shoved a shovel into chest.
The apparent obstinacy of Alyssa's mouth reflected an actual quality, though. She wasn't only bright and physically strong for her age, she was a trooper, too, and by lunch-time Alyssa was determined to weather the storm, thinking it would pass. She got a bagel and cream cheese and carried the tray to the table where she usually sat. Lori Gardner saw her coming and moved over. They wouldn't let her sit down, so Alyssa ended up with the outcasts. A trooper, and actually curious under her slightly torn veneer of self-possession, Alyssa decided that it didn't matter. She didn't know most of the kids at the corner table, and sat down next to a fat slob who looked like he should have been in high school, not seventh grade.
They were friendly, at least. The fat boy's name was Bobby. There were three eighth grade boys who had gotten into trouble for doing drugs a few weeks back, a seventh grader who hung out with them, a dumpy girl, and Tanya Ivanyuk, who sat across from Alyssa, out of place. The twelve-year-old was small for her age and very thin, with white blond hair and a fantastic complexion, like butter only rosy around her big gray eyes, scholarly hands and ripe little breasts defined by an ugly dark blue dress she had outgrown. Her sandals were plastic, her skinny legs in cheap pantyhose, and Alyssa would have worn a bra if she'd had titties like Tanya, a tennis ball cut in two. The Ukrainian girl was nervous, and her poverty stuck out like a sore thumb. Probably she'd gotten a scholarship somehow.
"How come you don't come to gymnastics?" Alyssa used a superior but friendly tone.
Tanya looked like she wanted to pretend that Alyssa was talking to someone else. "I don't know," she said, looking at her half-eaten plate of spaghetti.
"You're from Ukraine, aren't you?"
"Yes." The girl spoke perfect English, but had a strong accent.
"What's it like?"
"I don't know."
Alyssa gave up and looked at one of the eighth grade delinquents. He was fourteen, with shoulder-length sorrel hair and a sallow complexion, bloodshot amber eyes.
"I'm Alyssa," Alyssa said.
"Bill," the boy answered. "How come you're not with them?" He gestured at Lori, Cindy, Chloe and the other girls with whom Alyssa usually sat. Cindy Firmin stuck out her tongue, then stuck her finger in her mouth. The others giggled.
"I don't want to be," Alyssa said, trying not to turn red.
Finally the bell rang and lunch was over. The afternoon passed quickly, and Alyssa walked home alone. She'd reached Magazine when the Camaro made an illegal left and she saw Steve Peck at the wheel. There were two other boys in the car, sixteen or seventeen. Steve got out. She thought about running, but didn't. She'd have to face them sometime.
"Hey, Alyssa," he said, leaning against the car and taking a drag off his cigarette. "Want a ride?"
"No, thanks."
"Come on... I'm sorry about yesterday." He didn't look sorry. "Come on... I've got some pot."
She nodded and got in. Steve burned rubber and headed for the lake. Alyssa sat in the back with a boy whose eyebrows met above his nose. They were in City Park when the teenager put his hand on her thigh. Alyssa squirmed, but she didn't make a sound. She was petrified, staring at Steve's hard eyes in the rear view mirror. He parked the car and lit a joint. The boy with the heavy eyebrows pried her legs apart and rubbed her through her panty. Alyssa whimpered. Steve passed the joint to the other kid in the front seat and turned around, his eyes burning into hers.
"Charlie said you give good head. Let's see, Alyssa."
The boy with the eyebrows unzipped his pants. "Just a blow job," the boy said. He had a low, throaty voice. Alyssa was paralyzed. "Want me to say 'please'?" She saw his cock - it was huge and dark, with a purple bulb - and let him pull her towards it, nauseous.
"Shit, she likes it," the kid next to Steve said.
"Suck him, Alyssa," Steve hissed. "Open wide!"
Alyssa hated it, but she hated herself more. The boy didn't force it into her mouth, and his hand felt nice, resting on her head. His dick felt even nicer, warm and hard, salty. She wrapped her fingers around it and sucked until he started to fuck her mouth a little, then let her head go limp, cunt-mouth, drooling. She felt like she was going to get an orgasm in her mouth, like she was being stripped naked in a dream, not her body but something else, something deeper. Alyssa gagged, then swallowed. His semen gushed into her windpipe and throat, hot and thick, and then she was against the seat, sobbing. Steve's cock was smaller, but he held her by the hair like Charlie had, pumping it in and out of her throat, fast. He shot off, then made her lick the come from his jeans. The third boy was big and uncircumcised. He jacked off more than he fucked her face, then spurted in her eyes and nose and mouth, semen dripping down the front of her dress. Alyssa was as cold as a corpse, not really crying, tears mixing with the sperm, panting. She'd peed herself, her thighs and linen dress soaked with urine. She curled up against the door, shivering, and Steve drove to Uptown, whistling.
"T-take me to Mark's," she sobbed as she saw Audubon Park. Alyssa knew that her cousin would be home alone. She could take a shower there and wash her dress.
"Still horny," the boy with the eyebrows said. They reached her cousin's house and let her out. She'd been scared that they might want to go in with her, but they must have had other plans. Alyssa was a trooper. She was in shock, but she could still think almost clearly, or at least she could see where she was in some way, as if she were in a pitch dark fun-house with rapists leaping out at her, sure of an exit ahead. She needed to wash before going home.
Alyssa went around to the back of the house and knocked on the kitchen door. Her dress was drenched from the waist down, and her face still glistened with semen. There was no answer. She banged harder, and finally Mark peeked at her through the curtain. He opened the door and let her in. She saw Chloe disappear around the foot of the staircase. At last Alyssa burst into choking sobs and threw herself at her cousin. He pushed her away.
"Hey... what are you doing here? Fuck, Alyssa... what..."
She ran upstairs to the bathroom, catching sight of Chloe out of the corner of her eye, locked herself in, stripped, and turned on the shower. Alyssa felt insane, the fun-house serious, suffocating, her soiled things on the floor. She opened her mouth under the shower-head and ran a finger down her crack, leaning back and diddling her poophole. Alyssa's little ass-cunny was damp with musk. She threw her head back, tepid water splashing against her throat, and masturbated her anus. Her orgasm was slimy and sudden, one hand at her throat, shooting off in her dirty butt and mouth, her bald snatch dripping. Quivering, Alyssa squeezed her neck and fucked her twat with her fingers, then squatted in the tub and stuck a shampoo bottle in her mouth, rubbing her clit. She had the eight arms of Shiva, throttling herself, frigging, kneading her nipples and squirting lukewarm water up her ass. If she didn't, she would run out naked, writhing on the floor in front of Chloe and her cousin. Alyssa fell to her knees and tried to stick a bar of soap into her butt, gasping. She dropped it and used her hand, working it into her rectum like a grown-up whore, grunting. She forced her other hand into her mouth and came like a banshee, in agony, falling on her side and shuddering like a streamer tied to a fan. Then it was over, and Alyssa sank like lead, too deep in despair to cry, stunned, as if a demon had dropped her in flight.
Alyssa lay under the shower until the water turned cold, then climbed out of the tub and washed her clothes, mechanically, brushing her teeth with her cousin's toothbrush, staring wild-eyed at her reflection. She put the wet panty on, the soaked and wrinkled dress. She had to leave before her aunt got home. Alyssa slipped on her sandals and opened the door.
She found her cousin and Chloe downstairs, drinking Coke in the kitchen. Chloe looked like she'd been crying. Alyssa sat down at the table, her dress dripping. She felt weak.
"You both get out of here before my mom comes home," Mark said. He seemed like he wasn't related. Chloe and Alyssa got up and walked around the house together.
"I don't care," Alyssa said. She didn't. She didn't care about anything anymore. She felt like a tiny insect crawling around between her brains and body, as if what stood there in Third Street were a ghost.
"Wanna walk home with me?" Chloe was lovely. Her long blond hair fell across her narrow shoulders like liquid wheat, her cornflower eyes even more beautiful than usual because she was sad.
"Okay," Alyssa said.
It was getting dark. Alyssa felt a lot smaller than Chloe, younger, weaker, something she'd never felt before. They reached Camp Street and suddenly Chloe kissed her, roughly, like a boy. Alyssa melted into her arms like a molested infant. They were in front of a fence with a lush garden looming behind it, deep in shadow.
"Did my brother fuck you?" Chloe's fingernails dug into Alyssa's butt.
"No," Alyssa whimpered.
"I want you to kiss my cunt." Alyssa sank to her knees as if she'd turned to water. Chloe lifted her dress and slid her panties aside. She already had hair and a strong, savage smell. "Kiss me... you like it..." Alyssa kissed the girl's slit, sucking the slippery hole. The lights of a car panned the trees across the street, and Chloe drew her to her feet, cruelly, clutching her wrists. "Did you give him a blow job?" Alyssa nodded, sobbing. "You liked it, didn't you?" Alyssa nodded again. The car passed them and Chloe kissed her mouth, sticking her tongue in it. Then she pushed Alyssa against the fence. "You like my brother, don't you?" Alyssa sobbed. "I wish I could fuck you," Chloe hissed. "I wish I could stick my cock in you." The girl lifted her dress again and took off her panty, then turned around and rubbed against a palm tree, sobbing. "Kiss me, Alyssa... kiss my asshole... please..." Alyssa squatted behind the blonde and licked her crack, then lapped at Chloe's little anus. "Yeah... suck it... suck it, slut... suck..." Another car turned into Camp Street, but they ignored it. Apparently the driver didn't see them. Alyssa felt like she'd been kidnapped by a dream figure, nuzzling Chloe's crack, trying to get her tongue into the tiny hole. The blonde hugged the tree, then masturbated, her pretty fingers making lapping sounds as Alyssa sucked her asshole. Chloe got herself off, gasping, nearly knocking Alyssa down, then fixed her dress and ran away, crying.
Alyssa fumbled for her soul, leaning against the wall of the fun-house. She was in big trouble, late, in the dark. The eleven-year-old started to walk towards her house, her dress almost dry. Was Chloe friends with her again? The twelve-year-old's wantonness had almost erased the three boys and the thing Alyssa had done in the shower. Her rear really hurt, though. She crept through the dusky streets and paused before her home, wondering what her parents would say. Then she climbed the steps and rang. The ping of the smitten bell had barely ended when her mother opened the door. Mrs. Lewis stood aside, and Alyssa went in. It wasn't that bad, staying out late, was it? She'd never really done anything wrong before, and what she'd actually done - had sex... was it having sex? - felt far from what her mom and dad could know all of a sudden, down there with the dreamy squid and her teddy bear's crotch, with the strange feeling she'd had once when her mom's friend Mrs. Prescott left her with her baby for a few minutes - Alyssa had wanted to throttle it, idly wondering what Mrs. Prescott would do when she found the two-year-old strangled - down there with her little white lies and the things she saw sometimes before she fell asleep, not quite grasped, woodland animals without fur scampering through the somber forest of her father's sorrel pubic hair the one time she'd seen it, walking in on him by accident...
"Where have you been, young lady?" He had never called her 'young lady' before. He was sitting on the sofa sipping a beer. "Do you know we almost called the cops?" (He usually said 'police.') "Sit down." Alyssa sat down in the crimson recliner, acutely conscious of the fact that her mouth smelled like Chloe's anus. "I'm waiting!"
"Cousin Mark's," Chloe said, looking at the pile carpeting, puce. Saturated colors. She felt dizzy.
"We called over there," her mother said from behind. "He said you left with Chloe."
"Couldn't you have called us?" Her father didn't seem like he would punish her though. She'd never been punished, not really.
"I'm sorry." She was... in a way, as if she was pretending to be a little girl again. The terrible things that had happened in the fun-house made her feel like a grown-up now, like she had juicy secrets and stuff.
"Warm your dinner, Alyssa... it's on the stove. And don't ever do that again, or you'll be grounded. Hear?"
She ran to his lap before she remembered what she smelled like. He hugged her, and Alyssa ran to the kitchen and heated up the broccoli and peas and chopped chicken breast. She realized then that she'd forgotten her backpack with her homework in it in Steve's car. Oh, well. Alyssa was actually almost happy. Her butt hurt, but she was glad to melt into her familiar surroundings, as if it had all been a bad dream... a bad dream with juicy parts, she thought, succulent little secrets, butter in the broccoli and peas, pretty little hiding-places, slugs under bright green leaves, overturned stones shaped like her kidneys. She finished eating and did the dishes, helping out, making her parents happy, her daddy smoking his pipe in the front room, her mom watching some video. Alyssa'd have to call Steve, she mused, remembering the way he stood by his cool Camaro... she dried the dishes and went upstairs, saying goodnight, kicked off her sandals and dialed Chloe's number.
"Hi, Mrs. Peck... may I speak to Chloe, please?" She couldn't ask for Steve; they'd think it was weird. Alyssa lay back on her bed, holding the Princess phone, languid.
-- Alyssa? (Chloe sounded like she'd been crying.)
"Hi... I left my backpack in your brother's car... can you bring it to school tomorrow?"
-- Yeah... no... Alyssa, I don't want to talk to you in front of Cindy and them anymore.
"Well, just bring my backpack then." Alyssa wasn't surprised.
-- No! I'll... I'll leave it in the bushes in front of my house. And don't come here anymore.
"I have to if I'm gonna get my backpack, duh... what's the matter, Chloe, don't want me to see you playing stinkfinger or something?" Alyssa wished she could stab her.
-- You wish, Alyssa... you...
"Me what? 'I wish I could stick my cock in you!'"
-- Shut up... if you tell... I... I'll tell my brother stuff, Alyssa...
"What stuff? I'm not a sicko like you!"
-- He'll beat you up if I ask him to!
"I bet you ask him to beat _you_ up."
-- The backpack'll be in the bushes.
Chloe's voice was tiny. She hung up, and Alyssa put the phone down. She read some Doctor Doolittle, then went to brush her teeth and changed into her pajamas, pink silk.
Alyssa was between dreams when her bedroom door opened in the dark. She was a light sleeper and rolled onto her back, thirsty, wondering who it was, not scared - it could only be one of her parents. The door closed quietly and she heard her father tiptoe towards her bed, then sit down beside her.
"Are you awake?"
"Yeah."
He got under the covers with her and pulled her close. He'd never done that before. He'd never kissed her lips, either. It happened so swiftly. He was kissing her like he wasn't her daddy, and Alyssa felt sick, then unbelievably slimy. "You stink like a whore," he whispered, pulling off her pajama bottoms. She sobbed softly as he spread her legs and slid into her cunny. Alyssa moaned, then whimpered as he fingered her anus, fucking into her hard. Everyone was going to do this to her now, weren't they? It was okay with his finger in her ass, calming her somehow, his penis pushing into her little slot. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest, not pushing him away, forgetting it was her father, rocking her hips. He fucked her harder, then flooded her with come. She hugged him, his cock still inside her. "You smelled like an asshole when you came home," he whispered. "Who did you fuck?"
"Steve," she sobbed, lying. He unbuttoned her top and felt her flat chest. She couldn't stop sobbing.
"Who else?" How did he know? Alyssa felt like a little girl again, a dirty little girl, ruined. "I said - who else?"
"I don't know," Alyssa whimpered. "D-daddy..."
He pinched her nipples, stiffening in her soiled cunt, and suddenly, deftly, slid into her ass. Alyssa grimaced in perverted ecstasy and pain, her mouth and eyes wide open, and her daddy raped her like that until she was coming in agony, kicking and thrashing like a broken marionette. He put it in her mouth and came, then clamped his hand over her blubbering lips and runny nose. She jerked as he smacked her between the legs so hard that she thought he would break her pubic bone. Alyssa puked when he hit her again, her head flying into her snaky midriff like a deformed fetus, and then he was gone.
She couldn't get up in the morning, and her mother's eyes were like dry ice. "You're sick," Mrs. Lewis said at a distance. "I'll call school." Did she know? Alyssa's brain felt like an abortion. She knew that the world wasn't supposed to be like this, but she couldn't touch bottom anymore, treading water, dog paddling past the backpack in Chloe Peck's azaleas, into the Camaro, around the flooded park, her father's semen in her mouth and her cunt hole sticky with it, lost. She stuck her fingers in her twat and sucked them, and in the afternoon she fucked herself with a hairbrush, clutching her pillow and stuffing the handle into her ass. Alyssa felt as if her body had been taken from her.
Her father raped her every night. She was numb, letting him flip her over like an undercooked pancake, struggling for breath as he used her pussy and mouth and whining when he put it in her pooper. He didn't say anything anymore, but she knew she was garbage. His hatred was like acid, and she wanted to kill herself but didn't know how. A week after he'd first had sex with her, he stopped, and finally her mother made her go back to school.
It was horrible. Her backpack was gone, and she'd lost all her homework. She didn't know where she was. The teachers seemed to assume she'd been doing drugs. She sat with the outcasts at lunch, and a week after her return she let Bill, the burnout with shoulder-length hair, take her to the boys' room and put it in her mouth. She didn't like him, but blowing him and his friends made her feel needed, at least while she was doing it. Sometimes they fucked her after school, in a run-down cemetery on the edge of a little ghetto, taking turns. The boys were nice to her and gave her dope, and Alyssa would go home with semen oozing out of her gash, high as a kite.
One time some black kids chased the burnouts away and caught her. They were really sweet - they'd never had a white girl before - and Alyssa got really turned on, tripping. She'd been too embarrassed to beg the white boys for what she wanted, but it was different with strangers. Alyssa hadn't had anything in her ass since her daddy had stopped raping her, and the kids from school never sodomized her, maybe because she was better than them. One of the black boys had her get on top while the others jerked off, and Alyssa shyly ran a finger into her crack, looking invitingly at the darkest one, licking her lips. He was maybe fifteen, she thought, wiry, with big warm eyes.
He put it in her mouth. She whined, sucking him and sticking her finger in her ass, and then somebody finally took the hint. Alyssa had never been dry holed. It hurt, but her rectum was aroused and slimy. Their movements were awkward, three boys in her drugged out body. Alyssa had been a gymnast, though, and they soon found a rhythm, the kid under her holding the sick little slut while everyone took turns in her butt, then stuffed their wilting cocks in her mouth until she made them hard again. They kept at it until her sphincter wouldn't close. Alyssa farted out what must have been a cup of come, crying not because she was hurt - she was - but because she'd been gutted by orgasm. Giddy, she dragged herself home.
At bottom, Alyssa was lonely. Steve and his friends sometimes picked her up and screwed her, but they didn't want to be with her. She took acid a lot, and stole her parents' booze - her father whipped her once - and she hung out with Bill and his buddies, but she didn't have anybody to talk to. The burnouts were stupid, and Alyssa wasn't, not in an intellectual sense, anyway. She missed Chloe, but Steve told Alyssa to stay away from his sister.
Alyssa didn't notice the chemistry between her and Tanya Ivanyuk until November. Alyssa was high all the time, and misinterpreted Tanya's glances, used to the disgust she now inspired in everyone around her except losers. Tanya wasn't a loser, and Alyssa figured the girl hated her. They still sat at the same lunch table, but almost never spoke. Tripping on a sugar cube, Alyssa had just found out she was failing two classes when her gaze wandered to Tanya's cupcakes like they sometimes did, not intentionally, really, just resting there. Slowly, Tanya undid the top button of her dress. Alyssa looked up. The girl's gray eyes were scared but seductive, and after the bell rang Alyssa asked her if she wanted to go for a walk after school.
"I cannot," Tanya said with her Ukrainian accent. Alyssa's heart sank back to its by then usual place. "Saturday," Tanya whispered. "If you want... I go to gymnastics now, and I could... well, I could skip it and meet you by the fieldhouse."
"Okay!" Alyssa didn't go to gymnastics anymore. She didn't run, either. When Saturday came, Alyssa put on the linen dress she had worn when her troubles began, the one that was the color of green olives, and a white silk thong. It was still warm in New Orleans. She slipped on her skimpy sandals and set out for the school.
My bad luck dress, she thought to herself. Oh, but it wasn't, not really! The pleasures she felt sometimes were so strange, and she took enough drugs to make it seem that she would... what? Survive? She didn't want to survive. Alyssa dreamt of a door, of one of those weird corners of New Orleans where it seemed like the world would come to an end or already had, a secret passage... Kid stuff, she mused. But was it so bad, being a kid? She still sometimes wanted her father to hold her. He wouldn't. He looked at her like he'd sired a changeling.
Alyssa was still beautiful. She was too young to worry about what her escapades were doing to her beauty; she had a ten years of beauty ahead of her at least, and anyway her beauty was such that it seemed to grow like a spectral fungus, or flourish after breakage, like a lilac bush. She hardly exercised anymore, but the drugs had made her lose her appetite. Her tawny hair was down to her slender waist, and her breasts had budded, quinces, the nipples quite dark, pink umber. She even had some pubic hair; her mons was still bald, but long strands of aureate hair grew in the gap between her thighs, darker than her mane, somehow bestial, her outer labia sore, chapped, the slimy vestibule pink except for her inflamed hole. Alyssa's creamy buttocks were incredibly firm, her crack tight, her anus constantly aroused, sort of sepia with a raw, mucous hole. Her crotch had a gamy odor. The girl's eyes, a milky green, were like a mysterious sewer, erogenous and wild. Her little mouth had lost its obstinacy but retained a disturbing sensuality. Alyssa still turned heads.
She couldn't find Tanya at first, and assumed she wasn't coming. Then she heard a low whistle from across the street.
Tanya Ivanyuk, carrying a cheap gym bag, was wearing her ugly blue dress and thick pantyhose, the cheap plastic sandals. They went to the courtyard of the P.J.'s on Magazine. It was empty, surprisingly, perhaps because it was getting cool after all, and drank ice lemon grass tea, sharing some carrot cake. Alyssa had to pay, which upset her. Her dad hardly ever gave her money anymore. He knew where it was going.
"Alyssa..." Tanya looked like she'd been crying, though the rosy hue of the darker skin around her big gray eyes made her look like that naturally, the rest of her face truly the color of butter but dry. The gray was like a cold sea, and her lips were a sort of salmon. "Alyssa..." She was nervous. "I had to ask you... I don't know, maybe you can help me?" The stormy seas lapped pleadingly at Alyssa's sewers. "You... you know a lot, don't you?"
"What do you mean?" Alyssa was mystified.
"I mean..." She blushed. "I mean, you... you will not be offended? You know... men," Tanya whispered the last word.
"What's wrong?"
"I want to go away," she whispered. "I live with my uncle, he... I don't like him. He doesn't do anything... bad, but I don't like him. I can't even go anywhere except to this gymnastics." She looked almost womanly for an instant. "I'm twelve years old! I want... I want to have pretty clothes like you have, and I want... I would even have a man, if he would take me away!"
"Oh," Alyssa said. She'd taken a sugar cube with her tea. "Are you a virgin?" Tanya blushed again, then nodded. "I like you," Alyssa whispered. "Want to run away together?"
"Yes!" The Ukrainian girl glowed. "When?"
"You can't get any money, can you?"
"No... he never gives me any.," she said sadly.
"Don't you know where he keeps it?"
"You mean..." Her eyes widened. "You mean you want me to steal it?"
Alyssa felt cool. "Tanya... if we're going to run away, we'll probably end up in the gutter. That's what my uncle always said about girls who... what are you thinking, anyway?"
"I don't know," Tanya whispered, teary-eyed. "I thought maybe you knew a man who, how you say, keep me..."
"Good luck," Alyssa said. "Anyway how do you know you want to be 'kept,' if you're a virgin?"
"I dream of it," she whispered in her thick accent. "Don't... don't you?"
"I guess so." Alyssa wasn't at all sure. She had dreamt of belonging to someone, but she'd stopped. "We better go... if you want to get back. Does he pick you up afterwards?"
"Yes." Tanya grimaced. "You... you won't help me, then?"
"Why'd you ask me?"
Tanya turned red again and averted her eyes. "I like you," she whispered, almost inaudibly. Alyssa hadn't been in love yet, but she instantly recognized the furtive bloom in the older girl's face. It was more than 'like' - the older but far less experienced child was infatuated with Alyssa, and for the first time Alyssa felt romantic desire directed at her.
"I like you, too," she whispered back. She wasn't sure that she did like Tanya, not really, but she loved the feeling just then, the sense that the twelve-year-old didn't see a gutter but something like a distant Renaissance landscape in Alyssa, or at least a Piranesi etching, Tanya incarcerated there like a captive swallow. Their eyes met, and the Ukrainian girl's lower lip trembled a little, her face the color of White Zinfandel, her pupils dilated, like India ink, the gray seas straitened, vernal. She bit her salmon lip and looked away again. Alyssa took her hand, softly caressing her moist palm. Alyssa understood part of how Chloe had felt, but Alyssa wasn't really embarrassed about liking girls, not anymore. She wanted to take Tanya to the toilet and eat her out, devour her. "Do you really want to run away with me?"
"Yes," Tanya said in a hot whisper.
"I want to, too... where do you want to go?"
"I don't know..." Tanya gazed at her again. "I know where my uncle keeps the money."
"Your hand feels so nice." Alyssa couldn't think about anywhere except the shadowy gap between Tanya's thighs. Tanya crossed her legs, the long fingers of her left hand tensely intertwined with Alyssa's. "Have you ever kissed a boy?"
Tanya nodded, ashamed but glad to talk about boys, not the tension between them. "My cousin... in New York." She stared at the ground. "When I was nine."
"How old was he?"
"Nineteen... I... I was in love with him."
"Where did he kiss you?" Red Zinfandel. "I kiss my cousin, too," Alyssa said reassuringly.
"My body," she admitted, frightened. "My uncle, he... he found us."
"Were you naked with him?" Tanya nodded. "Did you... suck him?" She nodded stiffly. "Did he make you come?"
"Yes... my uncle... he hit me, and Yevgeny he went away." She withdrew her hand. "I have to go."
They left the courtyard and walked back to the school. Alyssa wanted to kiss her but didn't dare. Tanya was too nervous. Alyssa felt like a boy.
They met furtively, exchanging glances at lunch and sometimes finding a few minutes together before school, when they weren't being picked on. Alyssa knew where her father kept his money, too, but there wasn't very much. Tanya's uncle was an illegal immigrant and kept the earnings he didn't send to Kiiv under the mattress, though. They made fantastic plans but settled on DC because Tanya had loved the museums there. She counted her uncle's savings - about two thousand dollars - and two weeks after conspiring they left from Tanya's gymnastics practice, a few things and the loot concealed in her gym bag, Alyssa carrying her backpack with four hundred-odd dollars stolen from her father.
The ticket agent hardly look up at them, and by late afternoon they were on a Greyhound to Washington, dressed exactly as they had been when they decided upon the adventure, the olive bad luck dress and ugly blue thing. They held hands a little, and somewhere in Georgia, in the dark, Tanya lay her head on Alyssa's shoulder. Alyssa stroked her white blond hair and saw the twelve-year-old's eager but frightened eyes in the rhythmical flashes of the lights outside. Their lips met lightly, Tanya's softer, much sweeter, then kissed, Tanya's tongue tentatively slipping into Alyssa's mouth, the eleven-year-old suppressing a sigh and pumping hers into her lover's like a penis. Tanya responded like a weakling taught to suck, as though she'd been molested as a child, limp and submissive, opening wide. Her cousin must have abused her. Alyssa replaced her tongue with her fingers and undid the top three buttons of Tanya's dress. The girl sucked Alyssa's hand as Alyssa fondled her small, firm breasts and fingered her underarms, savoring the obviously virginal scent of Tanya's sweat, then bending down to take a titty into her mouth, sucking. Tanya squirmed, the childish smell of her perspiration slowly suffused with the fragrance from between her legs, the whiff of a wild animal, ferrous and unclean, unlike her. Alyssa lifted Tanya's dress and hooked her thumbs under the waistband of her pantyhose. Everyone around them was sleeping as the bus whooshed along the four-lane highway through a forest, a deep wood, the dark trees draped with kudzu.
"Don't," Tanya whispered, but didn't resist. "I'm... dirty..." She was having her period. The cotton underwear under her pantyhose were stuffed with toilet paper, and the rusty, obscene fumes of her menses flooded the back of the bus, her blood and sexual effluvia mingling with the chemical stench from the washroom. Trembling, Alyssa took of Tanya's sandals and underclothes, sniffing the girl's feet. The twelve-year-old was in a trance, quivering. Alyssa lifted Tanya's feet to the edge of the seat and slid to the floor, sucking the girl's toes and caressing her haunches. Alyssa felt exactly like she did when confronted by a cock, as if the skin of a minaret had been slit to reveal a maiden. The virgin's foot was sour, salty. Both girls moaning softly, Alyssa masturbated, licking Tanya's skinny thighs, then put her slimy fingers in the twelve-year-old's mouth and kissed her slit. Filth oozed from the hole. Tanya's clitty was a tiny pebble, the sparse hairs surrounding her snatch matted with blood. Alyssa pulled her forward and lapped at it, sucking the scum from her gash and sticking her tongue into the tight opening. Tanya jerked spasmodically, clutching Alyssa's wrist and biting her fingers, then stiffened as Alyssa licked her anus, her body frightened by the unfamiliar feeling, the bitter little bunghole tightening as Alyssa probed it with the tip of her tongue. Alyssa could feel the girl's embarrassment and moistened her pinkie, gently teasing the tiny hole and sticking her other hand into Tanya's mouth. The girl went rigid with a muffled whine, and Alyssa slid her finger into Tanya's rectum. Pressing her tongue against the virgin's clit, Alyssa wiggled her pinkie in Tanya's anus. The blonde convulsed in orgasm, her thighs squeezing Alyssa's head, then pushing her away with clammy hands, gasping for breath.
Alyssa slithered into her arms, bucking like a boy. She needed to get fucked - she needed Tanya to fuck her. Alyssa wanted the virgin to ravage her. Alyssa wished that Tanya would turn into a bunch of black boys and ravish her. "Washroom," Alyssa hissed. "Let's go to the washroom!"
Alyssa staggered towards the toilet, and Tanya came back there after fixing her dress, barefoot and afraid but following because she had to. The eleven-year-old took off her panty and lifted her dress, staring at the older girl, wild-eyed. "Do me," she begged. "Tanya... please... frig me!" Tanya tentatively touched her slit. Alyssa turned around and leaned over the toilet, trembling. She could feel Tanya's shyness and fear. "Pleeeease! You don't have to lick me..." Alyssa clawed at her cunny, whimpering. "I want you... inside me... fuck me... fuck me with your hand... oh, God, stick it in... yeah... oh, God... stick it... in..." Alyssa howled as the girl got her hand into the hole. Tanya tried to take it out, scared of hurting her. "Noooooo! Fuck me... fuck me... hard... fuck me... fuck me with your fist... harder... fuck me..." Finally Tanya made a fist and stuffed it deeper, stretching Alyssa's snatch and punching into her like a cock. Alyssa almost passed out, clutching the toilet seat and crying until Tanya opened her hand and fingered her cervix. The twelve-year-old actually masturbated it, forcing her middle finger into the tender collar, sending shudders through Alyssa from head to toe. At last the pain became unbearable and Alyssa came like a bird in a hurricane, collapsing against the toilet as Tanya took her hand from the hurt hole.
Alyssa struggled into a squat and stared up at her lover. Tanya was sucking her glistening fingers, wanton. Suddenly someone banged on the door. They froze, terrified. Alyssa suggested that she leave first, saying that her friend was sick. Tanya nodded, on the verge of tears, a child again.
"Wait," Alyssa said to the man in the aisle. "My friend's... carsick." It was a fortyish creep with greasy hair and ridiculous sideburns, chewing on a toothpick. He sneered at Alyssa, who didn't realize that her chin was coated with menstrual filth. She went back to their seats and waited. After ten minutes she turned and saw that the man wasn't there anymore. Tanya didn't come back for half an hour. When she did, she was barely able to walk. The man had raped her in every hole.
The Ukrainian girl cried the rest of the way to Washington. Alyssa tried to comfort her, but couldn't. Tanya Ivanyuk wanted to go home.
The trip was a disaster. Their plans collapsed inwardly as Tanya lost heart, and they had nowhere to go. They ended up getting hassled a lot - Alyssa couldn't get picked up, taking care of Tanya, and anyway she couldn't really pick up grown-ups; she would have had sex with whoever wanted to, but seducing an adult was something she couldn't do - men reminded her of her father, of how much he hated her - and the girls ended up sleeping outside in the cold, by the canal in Georgetown. They hoped to meet other kids, but they were too young, too innocent despite their corruption. They weren't whores. After three days they took the bus back to New Orleans.
Alyssa had no intention of returning to her parents, and Tanya couldn't go back to her uncle. They just figured that it would be better to return to the someplace familiar, and Alyssa had conceived the idea of finding Charlie and asking him for help. He was seventeen; maybe he knew someone they could stay with. Alyssa had regressed to girlhood after her cervical orgasm, seeing Tanya transformed by her rape. It was different from her own suffering and rekindled it. Maybe they would just drift until the money ran out.
The bus was fairly empty, and they each had two seats to themselves. Lots of people got on in Birmingham, Alabama, though, and before Alyssa could go sit next to her friend - they weren't lovers anymore - a fat black woman sat down next to Tanya and Alyssa had to move over to let someone take the seat next to hers.
Alyssa hadn't been with an adult man other than her father. She felt the one beside her before she looked at him, felt him looking at her, at her legs. She was still wearing the olive dress. It was badly wrinkled, and she stank. Her legs were utterly hairless, like her arms. Her hair was dirty and her feet were dusty, and she had dirt under her toenails. Alyssa was self-aware. The man was weak-chested and scrawny, with a Roman nose and round, rimless glasses, a very slight beard and big, bony hands. He was the color of dust but oily, with thin lips. He was a freak, not a man, wearing a denim jacket and jeans. There was something unholy about him. It fascinated her. His eyes through the thick lenses were the hue of raw cocoa, almond-shaped and intense.
"Headed for New Orleans?" His voice was syrupy but not Southern, low and sweet.
"Yeah... you?"
"Uh-huh. Name's Jake."
"Hi, Jake. Alyssa."
"I can switch places with your friend if you want." He must have been very observant.
"That's okay." Alyssa looked out the window. His steady gaze seemed to graze her thighs, bare from about their middle, slightly above it, where the curve already became suggestive of her concealed nether regions. Suggestive?! Her whole body was suggestive! We call the crotch the lower body, the anus the _fundament_, as if there were nothing below... indeed, Alyssa's slender legs seemed to be part of her genitals, aroused. Moslems have the right idea, she mused, covering them. She put a tense hand in her lap, the other nervously fondling the armrest between them. Alyssa was tired of taking care of Tanya. She needed to be taken care of. She wished she could be a little girl again, bare-legged in her flannel nightgown, absent, her daddy... but she couldn't think about her daddy without remembering how he'd fucked her, without a word, without even telling her that she was pretty or good... wasn't she any good? Alyssa thought about the burnouts. They said she was pretty, but it was only because she was around, the only girl they could do it to. They didn't respect themselves. It was hard for Alyssa to get her lips around the word 'respect.' She closed her eyes and thought about running around Audubon park... back then, before her daddy hated her, when everyone at school admired her... they did, didn't they? She remembered standing around with Lori and Cindy and Chloe, so pretty... but that was before Alyssa knew what it meant to be pretty... to be sexy... was she sexy? In some sense the black kids in the cemetery had respected her more than the burn-outs did... they'd been excited by her, not just eager to get off... it had hurt so much! It hurt... her botty hurt, her dirty cunny stuffed with the boy's dick while the other kids used her butt like that...
Half dreaming, Alyssa folded her arms across her chest and drew her legs up into the seat, her head against the man's shoulder, sleepily remembering how her body had started to feel when the boys kept fucking her, numb but still needing it, her mouth getting them hard again... one of her sandals fell off and she kicked off the other, barefoot, curled up against the stranger, secure. Her dress had ridden up to the softest part of her thighs, her little poophole open under her panty, moist. Almost asleep, Alyssa didn't notice the drift of her hand, the small of her back against the back of the seat, sleepily stroking her slit through the soiled cotton, sucking her thumb.
Jake Dubois glanced at the passengers across the aisle, another corpulent black woman, dozing, and he daughter, maybe seven or eight, as skinny as her mother was obese, staring wide-eyed at Alyssa, as if in awe, her face the color of milk chocolate, with high cheekbones, her nappy hair tied back with pink bows. Alyssa didn't quite masturbate, moaning softly. At the outskirts of Jackson the Greyhound slowed and wheezed around an exit ramp, Alyssa opening her eyes in a trance. She didn't blush, fixing her dress, and sat up almost reluctantly, looking out the window again. The bus pulled into a dreary depot.
The black woman across from them woke and dragged her daughter from the bus. Jake wondered whether the seven-year-old would remember Alyssa. How many girls have weird scenes like that at the root of their sexual selves... or would that be the root - no, not really: everything in infancy must be there at the base, innocent caresses and strange stares turning erotic at puberty, those early, gentle invasions reinterpreted, or not reinterpreted at all, not quite remembered but there, fermented...
Tanya Ivanyuk moved up into the empty seats across the aisle. Alyssa couldn't look at the man, but she didn't want to be with Tanya just then. A few people boarded the bus, but Tanya was left alone, somber.
"Your friend's upset," Jake whispered to Alyssa. There was a long pause. "Lots of terrible things can happen to a little girl," the syrupy voice went on. "But I guess some girls just keep right on looking for trouble." Alyssa kept her face averted, tense. "You're runaways, aren't you?" Alyssa nodded, nervous. There was something soothing about the man's voice, though. She was very conscious of what he had seen, and by that time sights like that ended in sex, didn't they? But this was different. He was an adult, for one thing. And he was talking to her. "Ever been to New Orleans before?"
"We're from there," Alyssa answered, her voice catching in her throat.
"That's an interesting direction to run in! You're going home, then?"
She looked at him, her green eyes cloudy with suspicion, what was wanton in them uncertain. "No... we... we went to Washington... it... it didn't work out."
"What did you expect to happen?"
"I don't know." She looked at the net on the back of the seat in front of her, empty.
"Nothing happened, though, huh."
"It did," Alyssa said quietly. "On the way... she... got raped."
"So what are you going to do now?"
"I don't know."
"You've been raped before, haven't you?" Alyssa nodded, tears welling up in her milky eyes. "Have you ever made love?"
Tanya interrupted. The Ukrainian girl couldn't hear their low conversation, but couldn't be alone. "Alyssa... do you have any water left?"
Alyssa leaned forward. "We're talking, Tanya," she said in a high-pitched voice. The twelve-year-old sulked, but fell quiet.
"Have you ever made love?"
"I don't know... I don't think so," Alyssa whispered, staring at her knobby knees. She felt compelled to be honest, like she once had with her father. This was an adult... but angelic somehow, okay not angelic but otherworldly, anyway, the way he asked her things, without condemning her... it was sort of like being in school, only in a school where nobody wore clothes. Alyssa had an acid flashback. They were silent for a long time. Then Tanya interrupted again.
"I'm really thirsty, Alyssa!"
"Leave me alone!" Alyssa caught herself screeching... it didn't become her. She felt like her body was everywhere, the rough cloth of the seat in front of her, the exhaust, the memory of the black boys in the cemetery, between her legs... she wished the man would gather up her scattered parts. He could, couldn't he? She wished he could hear what was going on inside her. Maybe he could? Alyssa was almost twelve years old, and for the first time ever she felt... romantic, not like when Tanya had confessed to her - Tanya was a baby - but like a woman. The man was treating her like a woman, wasn't he? 'I guess some girls just keep right on looking for trouble...' Did he mean her? It was the way he asked her whether she'd ever made love that... moved her. Didn't that mean that he thought she could? And then she was sad, because Alyssa herself wasn't sure that love was possible. It certainly hadn't been with Tanya.
"How old are you?" The man's voice was really deep and curiously kind, almost paternal but not quite.
"I'll be twelve on New Year's Eve." Alyssa almost lied, but couldn't. There was something firm about the man, like he would punish her. Again her body got confused, part of her still in bed with her daddy, miserable but needing it, too, in her botty, his big hands holding her hips... Alyssa crossed her legs, her anus aroused, trying to act like a grown-up. "How about you?"
"Thirty-two." The man touched her, the back of her neck. Alyssa almost gasped. He rubbed her softly, her shoulders and neck. "Relax, girl," he whispered. She did. She felt like a rag doll soaked in baby oil. The man massaged her for what seemed like forever, then kissed her lightly on the lips. She looked shy. Alyssa Lewis fell in love, falling like a suicide. The ground had opened to her hungry young body. Her tiny heart spread to her immature uterus and smeared her like a delicate pâté. Warm brains mixed with the mucus in her pink intestines. Jake ran his fingers through her tawny hair, and Alyssa looked into his eyes, her smitten face reflected in his glasses. He ran his thumb across her lips, and Alyssa sucked it like a milk bottle, then made a sexy face and wrapped her fingers around his hand, sucking, her rectum slick with slime. She ran her tongue around his thumb, wicked, then groped for his crotch. He gently pushed her away after she felt the bulge there, withdrawing his hand. "Easy, baby," he whispered. Alyssa was still falling, her heart in her feet. She struggled for breath and slithered higher in the upright seat, her panty soaked with drool. "Do you have a place to stay?" She shook her head no, almost too desperate to masturbate to keep... seducing him, she was seducing him, her body so eager to surrender, so utterly receptive, passive and weak, as tender as caged veal. Alyssa slid her left leg towards him, drawing her calf across her right knee, lissome, and ran her fingers along the inner thigh, showing him the milky skin, hairless, offering herself, her jaw slack, swallowing. Nothing mattered but getting him to take her home.
She straightened up as the bus polled into Ponchatoula. They were almost there. Wasn't he going to invite her? "How 'bout your friend," Jake whispered. "How old is she?"
Alyssa wished that Tanya would disappear. "She's twelve."
"She was a virgin until you ran away with her?" How did he know?
"Yeah... she... she wanted to. To run away." Alyssa felt the need to defend herself.
"You can both stay at my place. But if you do, you can't go out. I've got nosy neighbors."
"Thanks!" Alyssa knew he was asking them to stay because he wanted her, or them... it wasn't bad at all, though, was it? She'd thought it would hurt to sell her body. It did a little, but it hurt good, like getting it up the butt. She wanted that more than anything. Her cunny was excited, but she knew somehow that it didn't matter, that she needed it in her asshole to get off. She couldn't have babies yet.
The bus pulled into the terminal at last. Alyssa whispered to Tanya that the man had offered them a place to stay. The blonde was scared, but held her friend's hand, chastened by Alyssa's anger in the Greyhound. Jake put them in a taxi - he could have been their father - and the driver honked his way through the Vieux Carré after heading down Canal.
New Orleans holds many secrets unlikely to be seen by visitors or residents. Not a few cities possess some mystery - even in young America, a country not much given to a sense of place - but the soul of New Orleans runs deeper, deeper indeed than its celebrated mystique and somehow contrary to it. It is difficult to enter fully, as if the city's surface were a sodden trapdoor that wouldn't be opened unless by a suspension of disbelief, not until certain horrible words were howled in their proper hour, in key, coming off only in ecstasy, as if by accident, by heart. Still, the spell comes upon you through serendipity, in the way that only a subtle lover will ever find love - or find a simulacrum of such love as already beats within him. Study prepares the tenebrous ground, but the circumstance itself is epiphany. Not book learning or dry analysis but dream and vision bring lover and glamour to the gate.
On the surface, the Big Easy can be exceedingly annoying - some residents refer to it as the Little Hard - with as much of the Third World in its fabled cocktail of history and culture as there is of the so-called Old World. The European aspects are overemphasized. If Thomas Jefferson hadn't gone against his conscience to make the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans would probably resemble Port-au-Prince, whence much of its architecture derives. Life below sea level is lugubrious, its hot monotony relieved by a dismal winter and terrific carnival, dissipated in drink and an endless resort to lesser amusements between the larger, more boisterous ones. In an effort to boost civic pride, the city put out bumper stickers that said NEW ORLEANS - PROUD TO CALL IT HOME. A popular parody appeared soon after: NEW ORLEANS - PROUD TO CALL IT HELL.
"Our politicians do their best to keep the corporations out," a lawyer who worked for the city once remarked to me, and it is probably the fact of its corruption, of its being a backwater, that keeps America away. Oh, there are plenty of Pizza Huts and Blockbusters, hotel chains and extinct idiosyncrasies, and the people of New Orleans do like to pretend that they live in America, but New Orleans is _different_. You have to go to Metairie to get to America, or at least to the Riverwalk (though you may recall that a ship crashed into the shopping mall before Christmas not many years ago - where else does that happen?). So the fabled city festers despite its desperate joie de vivre (an actual condition, often ending in dipsomania). It festers, and a secret city is fed at the well, rather as its surface feeds upon tourists, something its bottom dwellers often do as well.
When I say that tourists seldom see the secrets, I don't mean to suggest that this mystery I've been hinting at is unavailable to the visitor. Not that the tourists _do_ often wander off the beaten path, except perhaps to take a tour of one of the numbered cemeteries (supposedly dangerous enough even for a group; the National Park Service canceled theirs). During Mardi Gras, when the city is set upon by a million drunken louts from Outside, the more interesting places, like the Faubourg Marigny - and even Jackson Square, surprisingly - are mostly left to the locals. But the thing about the arcane territory to which I refer is that its guardians, fleshly and otherwise, aren't the sort of spirits to fear a crowd. New Orleans would be a dumb place for them to haunt if they did. Indeed, that part of the Quarter thronged with visitors is among the most haunted parts of the city. The night life does come to an end except in a few watering holes, and even Pat O's is often empty after the hour of crimes, rats scurrying through the fantastic courtyard with its fountains and flames while I sip a final Hurricane before descending. The hidden dimension is definitely downward.
Alyssa Lewis had grown up up in New Orleans as if she were a girl upon earth, as isolated from Terra Incognita and the corrupt cops and demons and demimondaines who wander its borders as most of us are. I'm not saying that shelter can't be found. It usually is. There's the old money, still suffering from the loss of its privileges at spectacular parties, and the new money, playing yuppie in the Warehouse District or scattered through the less perilous streets of the Faubourg, yuppifying Uptown or gentrifying Mid-City - can't be immune to everything - there are a few poor whites, mostly fleeing or already fled, and there are blacks, who live for the most part in yet another world. New Orleans remains racist, less so but still. There is no longer a streetcar to Desire but there is a bus, and I wouldn't advise walking around Desire at night, whether you are black or white. Ditto the district within a stone's throw of the Superdome, where a huge billboard that said THOU SHALT NOT KILL, put up above Clay's Package Liquors (open all night seven days a week, the bottles behind bulletproof glass) by some zealots, was taken down a while back. The 'NOT' was underlined, but the message was nonetheless not heeded. I wouldn't advise a midnight ramble in those areas or countless smaller pockets of poverty and despair (even there relieved by an enigmatic joie de vivre - drugs, guns, and Mardi Gras) but I may only be disingenuously dispensing the customary advice, keeping you from the mysteries. New Orleans is violent but civilized. You may take a nocturnal stroll through notorious Tremé, or hopping the walls to visit graveyards sometimes throbbing with the sinister rhythms of the Petro Loa - not always the innocuous or simply spooky Voudon or Voodoo shown to tourists and dabblers but the hard stuff, dark enough chill the blood of that anal soul unable to cast off its identity - or you may find a curious and criminal solitude in the Bywater at dawn... you may, and you might be rewarded by stumbling into some opening, one of the many doorways to the underworld. You could disregard the guidebooks and go out to the Moonwalk in the dead of night. You might meet a young runaway who is only partly human, the rest of her possessed, what the Tibetans call a hungry ghost. You needn't 'believe in the supernatural;' in fact, belief is as much of a hindrance to ingress as disbelief. Romanticism helps, as it does the lover. You can't find romance unless you are ready for it, a readiness different from waiting. Neither passivity nor overt eagerness will take you to Terra Incognita, and the duration of your transit there may be only a matter of hours. You'll find yourself on the curb in front of the Clover Grill as the sky begins to sweat with light, the direction of sunrise in the convoluted city mysterious, too - the traditional directions in New Orleans are 'towards the river' and 'towards the lake,' locals scratching their heads if you ask about the east - hung over and unsure if you've been anywhere, really, like that drunken peasant who got invited to a banquet by the Evil One, only to find that the Devil's delectable sausages had turned into turds when the spell wore off. Doubt kills, and you will never get there again.
But I'm running at the mouth and claviature. This secret city was as unknown to Alyssa as pink spiders are to a teetotaler. She grew up in the ordinary light and was too young to know about the other place. A fluff bunny - one of those flaky crystal-gazing 'spiritual' frauds - once told me that she couldn't consider living in New Orleans because she didn't want her daughter growing up around that 'darkness,' and I do suppose that if you want to up your chances of raising your kid to join the living dead, go to school get a job get married, drug free and 'safe' from everything including thinking, New Orleans is not the place to do it. To be sure, most children turn out okay even in the Big Easy, but woe to the adolescent with a death wish! They're too easily led astray, often ending up as permanent residents of Terra Incognita, and such a necrophile malady or attraction in an modern American adolescent is about as rare as a cultured pearl.
But Alyssa was not that kind of girl. She had suffered a normal childhood and seemed to be destined for exactly the sort of security we hope for until we finally croak, foisting it upon our children. Maybe she would have had it better, maybe a good school and a job requiring imagination, which she had in excess, maybe a husband who wouldn't enslave her in a typical relationship (each spouse gnawing at the other until they turn into each other's crutches), maybe drug free except for coffee and a glass of bad Chablis at some gallery opening, maybe finding those elusive lines of thought that allow one to think without becoming disagreeable to the rest of humanity. But a few seminal events disturbed young Alyssa and seeded her like an oyster, the pearl formed in her unformed animus, and the lovely little girl never turned out like a television parent might have hoped.
They got out of the cab near Barracks and Jake shepherded them into a hidden courtyard, up some ancient stairs and along a sagging balcony. Allysa was ready for Terra Incognita. Tanya was trembling.
The apartment was small and dingy. It was crammed with so much stuff that it was hard to get an impression of any one thing, antiques, but not the antiques sold in that neighborhood, scruffier, books and wilted flowers in weird vases, lots of candles and oil lamps, pillows, bottles. Alyssa wondered whether she should take off her clothes.
"Don't act like a whore... not yet, anyway - you're no good at it," Jake said, divining her thought. "Why don't you two go wash up. You look like you could use it." Alyssa blushed from head to toe. It hurt her that he'd said that, especially in front of Tanya. The part of Alyssa that wanted to be a whore swelled like a malignant tumor, wounded. The bathroom was huge, with a very high ceiling and a dirty claw-foot tub. Tanya washed it while Alyssa looked around and stripped. Scary magazines were scattered on the floor, pictures of women handcuffed and gagged, whipped. Tanya undressed, too, too frightened to notice the smut, and they bathed, not talking, a low lamp with flame-shaped bulbs giving them and the room a rusty light.
Jake came in and Tanya covered her breasts. He bore a tray with a bottle of wine, grapes, and glasses. "Don't be scared," he said softly. Tanya cowered, sobbing. The man plucked a seedless green grape from the cluster and held it out to her. "C'mere," he whispered. Still covering her little titties with one arm, she tried to take the grape. He held it out of reach. "With your mouth, honey," he said. She leaned towards it, but he held it higher. Whimpering, Tanya got to her feet, covering her cunt and chest. "Stay," he ordered, putting the grape in her mouth. "Turn around." Tanya turned, trying to hide her crack, awkwardly. It made her look even sexier, but she didn't know what to do. "You're a shy one, aren't you," Jake said. "Bend over, honey. I want to look at your ass." Puling, the skinny blonde obeyed, kneeling. Alyssa had never had a chance to look at Tanya except in the light. The girl was beautiful, her cheeks like a sliced softball, the bottom of her crack bruised from the rape, her labia almost lavender. "You're not shy, are you, Alyssa? Stand up." Alyssa stood, coy and dripping. "You two like each other, don't you?" Alyssa nodded, pulling back her shoulders to make her tiny bumps on her chest stand out, keeping her arms at her sides as though trained. Her nipples were hard from fear, but she wanted to be hurt. She'd never felt so helpless, as if she were suffocating, and it made her slimy. This was very different from being with a boy. "Get out of the tub." He didn't offer his hand. Alyssa stepped out, standing unsteadily, wet, a few feet from the man. "You, too," he said.
Tanya turned, covering her breasts again. "I... I want to go home," she whined suddenly.
"Who's stopping you?" Jake smiled.
"Alyssa?" Tanya's voice was tiny.
"Go on," Alyssa said. "Go home."
"Come with me?" She tried to touch her, but Alyssa backed away. "Please?!"
"Get lost, kid," Jake hissed. "Either get out now... or stay and do what I say."
Tanya hesitated, then took her clothes and left the bathroom. Jake waited until he heard the apartment door open and close, then ran his fingers along Alyssa's ribs, simultaneously coaxing her to the wall. Her friend's departure, though desired, was terrifying to Alyssa. Staying meant she wanted him... didn't it? Did wanting him mean doing what he said? Anything? 'No means no' did not apply here.
Jake fingered her upper body, fondling her puffy nipples - they couldn't really be called breasts yet, still quinces, feeling them stiffen - then stroked her taut stomach softly, touching her shallow navel. Alyssa looked at him pleadingly and moved her feet apart, shivering. She felt paralyzed. His touch was gentle, but that made it worse somehow. She wished he would hold her, but knew he wouldn't. She felt like a mounted butterfly.
"Poor baby," he whispered, running a fingertip along her slit, then rubbing her clitty. Alyssa whimpered as he diddled her. It was dirty and embarrassing, and she felt like a captive, a captured animal. When she started to moan, he stopped and pinched her nipples between his fingernails. Alyssa squealed and sobbed, and the man put her on the floor, on her hands and knees. "You're a back door girl, aren't you," he whispered. Alyssa wept, and then he was in her pussy, wetting his penis before forcing it all the way into her rectum, hard. She howled, then grabbed the edge of the bathtub and bucked frantically against his cock, oblivious to the pain in her colon, her little gymnast's body fucking him back, epileptic, her feet splayed and sliding on the floor until he took her hips and reamed her, slamming her butt until she came in a thunderclap and turned to suck him when he slid from the hole, looking up at him as she licked off the scum, then sucking his cock deep into her small wet mouth. He didn't force it down her throat, and Alyssa sucked like a whore, stroking his balls and mewling, squeezing the base of his shaft, pausing to pose with the tip on her tongue, her lips stained with feces. At last he groaned and made her gag, holding her shoulders annd hitting the back of her throat, then flooding her mouth, choking her. She writhed on the floor, retching, and suddenly he was pissing on her. Alyssa looked like an overturned beetle, flopping against the white tiles, crying and covering her face as he sprayed her pale skin, then slithering away on her belly.
The eleven-year-old stopped at the door, crouched low with her legs under her, her toes pointed outward, puling. Jake took her hand and lubricated it, then guided her fingers to her bottom. Bawling, Alyssa fisted herself, stuffing her little hand into her sore anus. She went pee when he whipped her, and then he was fucking her, her cunny hole, holding her as she held her hand in her rectum, on her side, playing with her nipples and caressing her. It hurt so much! She whined and clawed at her clit, feeling his cock against the back of the hand in her botty, jerking in pain, then orgasm. It washed over her benumbed body like an oily sea, and just then Jake came in her cunt.
Then he took her into his arms. Alyssa clung to him, and soon they were in the claw-foot tub together, her clinging to him and consciousness, Jake sipping wine. He kissed some into her mouth, and the child revived. He was still wearing his glasses.
"I was just teasing you... about being a bad whore," Jake said softly, putting a grape in her mouth. "You're fantastic, Alyssa... and you can stay as long as you want."
While she was with him, Alyssa couldn't imagine being away from him. When he was away - often he was gone for most of the day - she missed him, but he was gone for a very long time she began to think, to fear, to feel something other than the hold he had over her. She was starving in so many ways, not allowed out, not locked in, getting hurt every night, hurt and held, his... but she was starved for something indefinite, hungry for the infinite. She loved to be hurt, but he _bored_ her. They shared nothing other than sex and wine, sometimes drugs. He was her daddy in a way, and she wasn't sure what else she wanted - a husband? How would a husband differ from a daddy? She brooded about these things before he came home and tortured her. He took care not to damage her, why she didn't know, since she was never allowed out.
After a few months - and she was deep in puberty, too, the tiny breasts he hurt growing again, Ping-Pong balls by then, and her first period couldn't be far off - Alyssa's brooding had narrowed down to that, to not being allowed out. She'd turned twelve without ceremony, her mind the mixture of a precocious masochism, an infantile need and the remnants of what she had been, of whatever it was in her that had sought love, first in Tanya Ivanyuk and then in this man, of what had sought it and would recognize it when it came.
She couldn't know, though, almost as if she'd had no experience of love. Maybe she hadn't? To Jake, _this_ was love, torturing her, then letting her crawl into his arms... she loved it, but it wasn't love. Was it? She wondered what would have happened if Tanya hadn't left. Would she have liked watching him hurt Tanya? Alyssa didn't know anything anymore except that she couldn't come until he made her feel bad, not just physically but making her fall apart, too, then humiliating her into orgasm and hugging her.
When he was gone, she watched TV and played with herself. He made her clean house and cook, and he gave her presents, pretty dolls and stuffed animals, sexy underwear, dildoes and drugs. She hated posing with the dolls, but if she didn't, he hated her. She needed him inside her.
Sometime in the spring, Jake started bringing other men over. Wearing a ball gag and playing with her pussy - he made her shave it - she would wait for the strangers, then wait for them to finish using her. Then Jake would punish her, calling her a whore like her daddy had... but he would hold her afterwards, and sometimes he would even tell her he loved her, licking her wounds and rocking her like a baby. The worst part was waiting for them, raw, on her knees in bed, the big red ball in her mouth, holding a doll and diddling her slit. She got more drugs then, though, and if she threw tantrums Jake would fuck her butt or stick things in it until she was good. She started playing with the dolls on her own, and he bought her a crib. Alyssa stopped thinking about going. She was scared of what was outside the apartment, then of what was outside the crib. She lost all sense of the passage of time, lying there waiting for the men to come hurt her or Jake to hurt her and fuck her and hug her, going in her diapers and playing with her dolls and dildoes, watching tapes of other girls who were as unreal to her as she herself was. She had dreams, or rather nightmares, that seemed more real than her days, and she couldn't tell anymore if the men who used her were making fun of her or loved her. She wanted to be loved, but that, too, hurt.
It was about a year after she lost her virginity to Charlie, though Alyssa had no idea when that was, autumn again, when Jake Dubois didn't come home. He'd been arrested, selling speed to a lady cop. Jake had no ID on him and kept his mouth shut, and Alyssa lay alone and lonely in her crib, crying and watching a movie about a pair of ten-year-old twins losing their cherries, hungry. Finally she got the crib open and crawled to the kitchen, but there was no food there - Jake always got Chinese or muffalettas or rice and beans on his way home.
Alyssa Lewis was still lovely. Skin and bones - semi-transparent skin like Glue Stik and delicate bones - she still hadn't menstruated, far underweight, almost thirteen, her eyes wild, her orifices sore. It wasn't food so much as drugs that drove her into the street. She started to feel her old self again, and with it came unimaginable, unbearable pain. It took two days, but Alyssa bathed and put on sexy purple underwear and the very same linen dress, the color of green olives, her bad luck dress. There weren't any other clothes; he'd only bought her underwear because she'd never been allowed out. It was tight on her, but her sandals still fit. Her tawny hair was cut short, her body still hairless, shaved between the legs and under her emaciated arms. Walking was almost unfamiliar. Alyssa found a spare key and opened the door, nervous, tense, and descended.
It was a Saturday night, and the Quarter teemed with tourists. She staggered through the steamy streets, unsure of where to go. She only needed drugs, and maybe would have gone back to Jake's after finding them, if she'd found them. The waif wandered up Bourbon Street like a frail skiff pitched about in a sea of light and sleaze, not even capable of making sexy faces for the mostly drunken men who glanced at her, as if she'd never been outside before, her mouth open, hungry and desperate for a fix, her tender Ping-Pong balls protuberant against the cotton of her tight dress, to young to sink into the industrial sin that swirled all around her, hallucinatory, an acid scene if she hadn't felt so awful, a bad trip, then, her only desire drugs and embraces... and then, near to where the mechanical mannequin's leg swings in and out of a window invitingly, Alyssa saw a familiar face. She couldn't place it at first, the gloomy but beautiful visage of a tall and slender adolescent with white blond hair.
"Tanya!" Alyssa called out Tanya's name and stumbled towards her through the crowd as the Ukrainian girl turned into Conti, alone. "Taaaaaaaaannnyaaaaaaa!"
Tanya Ivanyuk recognized her former lover instantly. She was nearly fourteen, in the ninth grade at the same exclusive school, still living with her uncle. He beat her, and she stayed away most nights, returning to him as if she wanted to be beaten, which she did. She'd never become a whore, but she was definitely a slut, still somehow managing to drag herself to classes between abortions and bouts of love, mostly with married men she picked up in the Quarter.
"Alyssa!" They hugged, and Alyssa melted like white chocolate. "You look awful," Tanya pronounced. "Get something to eat?"
They went to what had been a slave market. There were no locals there, only tourists, but the food was good, crawfish etouffé. Alyssa picked at it but felt a surge of strange energy anyway, forgetting even about a fix for a few minutes while Tanya told her about her boyfriends and about how Chloe Peck had gotten pregnant. It was as if the months Alyssa had spent in the crib hadn't happened, or they had happened but outside time, and after dinner Alyssa took Tanya back to Jake's place. It was like she had her own apartment. She did, didn't she?
They made love. The place was like a tent pitched against the starry night. Maybe time began again and maybe it didn't. If it did she shot up, and men would find her. They always did.