The bed had a female smell of heat to it as she went to sleep. Her dreams were fragmented recalls of the evening that had just passed; she saw Sonya and Carla, heard their voices, moaned in her sleep as she felt again the touch of their hands and bodies. Over it all, as a threatening chaperonage, she saw the girl in the poster. Her swirling hair wind-whipped and somehow deadly, flying madly in bright green ropes, reaching out to capture her like a deadly Venus fly trap.
… The hair whipped out to catch her, like a tentacle. There was so much of it… The wind was blowing through the forest and sending the green strands closer and closer.
"No! No! Don't!"
She had awakened with a start to a dark room and a howling electric storm. Water splashed on the sill and the soaked curtains fluttered wildly. Brenda got up from the mattress and closed the window, her chest rising and falling with breathless fear.
The light from the street lamp was almost white. Slowly, she turned her head and looked at the poster.
It was there again! That dark cloud behind the girl's head, like a black mist rising behind her and penetrating her creamy skin. What was it? A great dark circle behind the evil-looking face. She turned on the table lamp, blinking against the sudden illumination. A nail file lay on the coffee table; she took it and stood on the sofa and pried loose the two thumbtacks in the top of the poster.
When she saw the blood stain she screamed. The sound tore through the empty room and ended in a mindless babbling as she shrank away from the brownish smear.
Blood on the moon… someone walking over your grave…
She jumped down from the sofa and backed away, bumping into a chair and hitting her shin cruelly on its base. It was blood, there was no doubt about that, but how did it get there? Someone has been murdered here… someone has died. But who?
"Ginny," she whispered. "Ginny, that's you. Part of you. Your blood."
She stood naked, her hands roving over her own body to touch its warmth. A dead body wasn't warm; she had to reassure herself that she was still alive. She cupped her breasts and rubbed her thumbs over the nipples, watching them rise up and darken as the blood from her body flowed into the erectile tissue.
Her own hands were cold, clammy and cold. The coldness of death was already starting in her hands, and then it would spread and take possession of the rest of her body, slowly but surely she would turn to cold marble… stiff, hard to the touch, repulsive.
Where was Ginny's body, who had killed her? No one had heard from her, no one would tell her where she was… They all knew! They knew she was dead, and they knew who had killed her. Perhaps they had all killed her, a conspiracy. And now they were coming for her.
She sank down on the floor and buddled against the opposite wall, hugging her knees against her chest. The splotch of blood was an oval shape, the size of a woman's head. Where it had splashed there were long strands of it going out in all different directions until it resembled a clumsy multi-pointed star or… or a woman with long, tangled and steaming hair!
She cried out hoarsely, then ran to the sofa and tacked the poster back into place. The face stared back at her with its unfathomable smile and its evil eyes. She would never escape that smile or those eyes now. The poster had to stay up to cover the blood. That hair… what was it you always heard about corpses? That their hair and fingernails continue to grow long after death… The girl had been dead a long time. Ginny had been dead a long time! Else why would the hair be so long and wild?
She went back to bed, not daring to turn out the light now. She lay on her back for a moment, then realized with horror what that meant and rolled over, burying her head in the pillow and trembling each time the lightning struck. She did not sleep; in the morning she got up automatically at her usual time. Her bones felt like bars of lead in her body as she went through the instinctive motions of washing and dressing for work.
That afternoon, Leo called her.
"I want to bring some friends by this evening," he said. It was not a question but a command. His tone was flat and metallic and dreadful.
"Yes… that's fine," she answered blankly. She could not fight back any more; the evil face on the wall would not let her go. If she tried to escape it there was only blood waiting for her behind its slanting green eyes.
I'm going to be a whore, she thought. It's going to be a real party, and I'm going to be fucked by all of them.
She left work early and went to a tiny store on the West Side whose window was full of sleazy lace lingerie. She stood for a long time staring at the display. Black garter belts – a necessary whore's item but she already had one. Black stockings with arrows that pointed up the leg… yes, a pair of those. She saw a bra made of flimsy scraps of red lace with holes cut out for the nipples. Definitely! The pants were perfect – they had no crotch-piece. She bought the lingerie from a grinning old man who wore a gravy-stained tie. When he showed her the pants he put his hand through the crotch hole and waggled a finger at her.
"Nice, huh? You don't even need to take 'em off. The fellas love 'em. Lotsa fellas come here and shop for their girls, you know what I mean?"
She went home and took a bubble bath. As she lay back in the tub she looked at the new things laid out on a bench, ready to be put on. She dried herself and rubbed cologne in the puff of golden hair at the base of her belly, then dabbed some on her inner thighs.
When she was dressed in the new lingerie she slipped on a black linen sleeveless muumuu and had a drink. Her hands shook as she raised the glass to her lips. Slut… slut… slut… slut! Drinking by herself before the customers showed up. Perfume on her pussy. She moved her shoulders inside the loose dress and savored the rough brushing of the linen material over her bare, protruding nipples. The cut-out holes in the bra were tight, pinching her teats in two lacy little vises that excited her. It was like a mouth biting her there… two mouths. She would have that tonight, she would have a lot more. They would all work over her at once.
She looked down at her shoes. Already her feet hurt but what of it? Surely sore feet were part and parcel of a whore's life – a streetwalking whore anyway. Cops and streetwalkers… they shouldn't be enemies. People who suffer from sore feet have a bond between them, they understand each other.
The knock came at the door and she went to open it. Leo stood there with four men. A chorus of appreciation went up from them as they saw her, but she was only looking at one of them.
It was Nick Eubanks, his square face wiped clean for once of his cocky grin. He did not recover from his surprise until Leo had put a drink in his hand. Then his eyes glittered with revenge.