From that day on, the notoriety of La Tarantula was spread over the breadth of Spain. All knew of her talents as a gypsy dancer. Wherever a dancer was required it was she who was called in to supply that part of the entertainment. At the Fairs, at benefits, at special performances where the services of Gypsy Nina de los Peines, the Girl with the High Combs, who was the best singer in all Spain, were required, La Tarantula was called in.
And as her fame grew, La Tarantula became all the more reserved, insofar as men were concerned. Somehow or other, she seemed to sense that the gypsy in her, the wild carefree blood in her made her the superior of the bu'ne, the ordinary gentiles of Spain. And the more she spurned them, the greater grew their desire for her. When she would dance for them, their eyes would follow her every movement, her every nuance of rhythm, and if she smiled at them, they would boast of the fact to their cronies for weeks afterwards.
But she soon discovered that, though the blood in her was gypsy blood, nevertheless, it was human blood. The memory of that wild tumultuous night with the guitarist, Don Juan, remained with her for some time.
But she turned all thoughts of fucking away and concentrated on her dancing. From cafetin to cafetin she danced her way up the pathway of success. And in each place, she attracted another string of admirers who sought her favours. Like the swath of a comet they lay behind her as she shot her way upwards to the zenith. But to none of them did she give her cool body. It seemed as though the glorious fuckfest she had experienced that last night with Don Juan had served to tide her over a drought of men.
But this could not go on for any length of time. Hers was hot, southern blood, Spanish blood, Spanish gypsy blood that burned in her veins.
That was why, one night, after she had spent a severe evening at the Cafe Soledad in Seville on Calle de la Serpiente, the Street of the Serpents, she did as she did.
Lying back on her chaise lounge, her limbs shaking from fatigue, she ruminated on the life she was leading. She looked out of the window that looked down onto the street. Streams of men were winding their way through the street. Men, men, men of all statures and forms and shapes. Men, men, all different yet all the same because all had that with which she had enjoyed herself so immensely.
Suddenly, she called out to her personal maid, "Cazuela! Cazuela!"
That person came jogging in. She was an evil looking thing. Only one eye gleamed out of her face. The other was only a dead black socket.
You could not tell from looking at her that, at one time, like her mistress, she had been the leading Spanish gypsy in Spain that her roughened toad like skin had once been as velvet-smooth as La Tarantula's, that her shapeless limbs and arms had once been as straight and fine as her mistress's.
Years ago, when she had danced, a lover had beat her up and, in doing so, had kicked her eye out with the heel of his boot. She became unwanted from that day on, as a dancer. But she never slept with another man. Them she hated worse than she hated anything else in the world. She became as complete a man-hater as there was, carrying her hatred to the point of lesbianism. She had learned early in life of the pleasures of woman love and had practiced it incessantly. La Tarantula had picked her up one night, during the early part of her career. And, from her, she learned of the subtle arts of the dancer. For Cazuela taught her everything that she, herself, had known about the art of dancing. Everything she taught her except one thing. About the love of woman for woman, she said nothing. She only bided her time until she could feel that her mistress would be most receptive to its practice. Meanwhile she acted as the personal maid of La Tarantula and taught her all the intricacies of the baile flamenco and the Sevilliana and the baile Malaga, the soleadina and the fandango and the paso doble until La Tarantula became even more adept at them than had been her teacher. Then it was that she had started on the meteoric rise which landed her finally as the star attraction at Cafe de las Flores, the most beautiful cafe on the Street of Serpents in Seville, co-starred with the greatest romantic tenor of Spain, none other than Senor Don Jose Caloro'a himself, from Lima, Peru.
And that was where we found her at the start of this chapter, in her dressing room upstairs from the cafe, resting from her labours after an extremely difficult hour of dancing the paso doble for the customers who had clapped again and again for encores. Next door, in the other dressing-room, she heard Senor Don Jose going through his vocal exercises. Then all was quiet. Then it was that she summoned her maid Cazuela.
"Yes, mistress?" she enquired on entering. She saw that the dancer was lying outstretched in the attitude of complete exhaustion.
"I am tired! so tired!" La Tarantula complained.
"Does my mistress desire a massage?" the woman asked, continuing further with, "such as I was taught many years ago by my old dancing teacher Don Ortega?"
"Anything! anything!" La Tarantula cried. "Anything to take away the terror of the pain in my poor tired muscles! oh! why must I dance? why must I continuously dance for men, filthy men!" And saying this she turned her face to the pillow and buried it in her arms and wept.
She lay in this fashion for a few minutes, taking pleasure in knowing that she was suffering, as women are apt to do. Then she felt a pair of cool hands settle on her thighs. And the hands began to knead the flesh and muscles to and fro, working the tiredness out of them, flexing the rawness out of them that made them feel as though they had been weighted with lead. All over her body she felt the expert fingers of Cazuela roam, until she felt the tiredness slip away, fall away like a heavy velvet cloak from her shoulders. It seemed as though she were floating on gossamer clouds now, as though her body had left her entirely and that she was all mind, and that her mind was hovering up above her body like a disembodied spirit and pitying the hulk of a body that lay on the chaise lounge. Lightness, softness, cushiony nothingness was all about her.
Suddenly she felt a throb shoot into her.
She opened her eyes wide. There, between her legs, she saw Cazuela, her face pushed in between the joint of the legs as closely as she could get it. But, what was more, she was working her tongue into her mistress's cunt, like forked lightning, touching the button of the clitoris so that it jerked up in sudden surprise. The jerk of the clitoris caused La Tarantula to open her eyes. For the moment, she thought of ordering the woman away from her. Disgust was the first reaction to what she saw. But, pleasure was the immediate reaction to what she felt.
Pleasure, the like of which she had never before experienced. Pleasure such as she had felt when she had been fucked by Don Juan, and that she had sedulously kept herself from these last long years. Pleasure, pleasure filling her with an inordinate amount of desire.
In and out she felt the smooth tongue of Cazuela dart, touching, it seemed, the very vital spot in her system, drawing the blood from her throbbing heart to her throbbing clitoris so that it stood up now like a living thing.
Before she could realize it, La Tarantula felt the ominous approach of the orgasm. Just as she had felt it coming on before, with the man, so she felt it rapidly drawing nearer, but with a woman.
"What should I do?" she wailed, "I am coming!"
"Hold it as long as you can!" the maid managed to gasp out between licks as she sank her tongue deeper into La Tarantula's cunny. "Help me by tickling my button!" and, in order to aid her, she drew herself up closer to her mistress and lifted her dress high above her hips. La Tarantula got the idea immediately. And, as she sucked in her guts and withheld the load that was piling up within her, she reached over and inserted her index finger into the throbbing but enlarged cunt of her maid. The first thought that came to her was a comparative one.
She thought of how large Cazuela's cunt was as compared to her own diminutive one. But this thought remained for only a moment. She had no time to think. Feelings, emotions, crowded her consciousness until they threatened to overflow in one vast, heaving surge of passionate floodtide.
Thus the pair of them worked together, each trying to titillate the other into a blessed orgy of spending their essences for each other.
Closer and closer La Tarantula felt her own orgasm approaching as her maid's tongue darted faster and faster in the overheated box that was her cunt. And under her own fingers she felt the little soldier of Cazuela's clitoris stiffen to attention. Soon she was panting as though she were winded, as she panted after an unusually exhausting fandango. And she began to throw her loins around as though the prick of a man were ramming itself into her. She heard the same laboured breathing of her maid. And she felt the severe thrusts of the woman's buttocks, jerking nervously in a Saint Vitus's dance of passion.
Faster and faster each tickled the other. Closer and closer came their orgasms. Louder and louder grew the sound of their panting.
Suddenly, La Tarantula heard her maid moan as though she had lost the most precious of things. And over her hand she felt the gushing warmth of a sticky liquid spurting out in hot viscid jets. The moment she felt the wetness she felt the maid's body exert itself mightily in one grand upheaval. La Tarantula could hold herself no longer. She felt the overflowing in the region of her loins, in the small of her back. Her breath came faster. Her hips vibrated madly. Her tongue clove to the top of her parched mouth. Not knowing what she was doing, she seized hold of Cazuela's cunt and squeezed it so that the poor maid shrieked out in pain. With her other free hand, she dug her fingers into the chaiselounge so that the lone fingernails ripped jagged tears in the cloth.
Then she came!
Pouring, spurting out of her abnormally heated cunny came the pearly fluid full into the face of the maid who was still working on the pokerstiffened clitoris. For a while both of them continued to work their bodies jerkily as the intense feeling that swarmed over them remained.
But when it started its decline, each fell away from the other, La Tarantula on her back to the chaiselounge, Cazuela to the floor, each gasping from their exhaustion. Completely tired, they remained in those positions, their eyes closed, their arms outspread, a lush feeling of tired warmth creeping over their limbs.
They were suddenly startled by the sound of clapped palms. La Tarantula opened her eyes wildly to see that the clapping was coming from the doorway. And, in the doorway, she saw the immense portly figure of Don Jose Caloro'a, the South American tenor who was costarring with her that week. She became speechless. Shame crept over her. Her cheeks reddened like an over-bloomed rose.
"Pretty! pretty! very pretty!" the tenor said, still clapping his palms together daintily, in derision.
"What do you want here?" La Tarantula demanded.
"I heard the sound of your ardent lovemaking in my rooms," the tenor continued with a shrug. "The walls are so thin. I thought it my duty to see what I could do in the way of helping you ladies!"
La Tarantula looked from the tenor to her maid who was reclining on the floor, hatred shooting from her eyes, hatred for the man who had interrupted her orgy of lesbianism.
"Don't be afraid, my dear!" the tenor continued, advancing slowly to the pair near the window. And as he advanced, he threw his widebrimmed sombrero aside and started to take off the velvet pea jacket that he was wearing.
Still neither La Tarantula nor her maid spoke. Instead they watched the man disrobe, as they were completely hypnotized by his actions.
They saw him undo the sash around his great belly and then slip off his shoes and draw his bellbottomed trousers off. La Tarantula gasped when she saw his enormous prick shoot out from its confining quarters.
But the maid sneered and her lips curled in disdain.
When the tenor had disrobed himself completely, he towered over the two shrinking women like an enormous man-mountain, his girth quivering like jelly, his cock sticking out from its bed of dark brown hair like a jousting pole in the arm of a medieval knight.
"Really, ladies!" he said, advancing still closer to them, "you are wasting the charms of two beautiful women when you attempt to draw pleasure from yourself by yourselves. Woman was made for man's pleasure. And, likewise man was made for the woman's pleasure.
Neither can derive pleasure from themselves. You are women. I am a man. Quite a man," he continued, stroking his swollen piece as emphasis.
But La Tarantula scarcely heard a word he was saying. Her eyes were for nothing but the projecting prick as big as life, swollen beyond the size of any other penis.
"You like it, eh?" the tenor asked.
La Tarantula nodded her head. The maid Cazuela began to lose some of her disrespect for the man. After all, this was no ordinary man, she reasoned. Any man with a cock like that stood apart from the world in general and man in particular. And she too could look at nothing but that great big bravo toro, that could have done service even for a stud bull.
"Hah!" the tenor laughed, "you are wondering at the size of my tool, eh?
Well, where I come from, from Lima in Peru in South America, we have what is known as the llama. The cowboys on the vast prairies with no woman to soothe their desires, they fall in love with the female llamas whose little cunny is as delicious a quim as any woman's that I have yet experienced. Once, twice, three times we can fuck those llama in half an hour. And the more we fucked them, the more they liked it. It is no wonder that my thing here grew to such a great size!" He caught himself suddenly. "But why do I speak, why do I waste my precious time in useless gabble? I have come here to act! I call my thing Caesar, because Caesar is so great, Caesar is so marvellous. And so, like Anthony, I come to bury Caesar!"
With a huge roaring laugh, he eased himself directly over the body of La Tarantula as she lay back on the chaiselounge wondering what was going to be the outcome of this strange affair with this strange man.
"Spread your legs!" the tenor commanded imperiously. But he could not see to insert his stiffened prick into her cunt, although she spread her legs as wide as she could. It was his hanging belly. Like all tenors, he ate well and had built up a large-sized physique so that he would have great lungs for a powerful voice. And so his belly, hanging over his prick, prevented him from directing it into its proper channel.
Once, twice, he shot the thing into the cleft of her legs but each time he was unable to hit the mark.
Suddenly he turned to where Cazuela was lying on the floor staring wide-eyed at the proceedings. "Help me in with the thing, woman!"
Slowly, she arose to a kneeling position and took hold of the rampaging prick. Beneath its skin she felt a pregnancy of power that seemed to be striving mightily to burst the bonds that were holding it.
Life coursed through its entire length with the vivacity of a dozen men.
The steady throb of blood pumping through it made it seem like a living thing, an entity in itself, as though it were apart from the rest of the body. Tenderly she wrapped her ten fingers around its heft. All hatred for the male sex was driven out of her.
With her right hand she spread apart the lips of La Tarantula's vagina as wide as she could possibly force them. Then, directing the pulsating phenomenon, she guided it slowly, surely between the parted ruby lips of the quivering quim of La Tarantula, stroking its entire length as the whole of it slid into the awaiting aperture with a succulent sound of suction.
Immediately there arose from La Tarantula a moan such as of a woman going through the travail of childbirth. In her she felt the parting of her body as though a giant crowbar were prying her in two. But it was such sweet pain. What was Chato Doble? What was Don Juan? This was a man! Her breath almost left her when she felt the size of the thing pushing its way insistently into her, spreading her apart, touching the very quick of her existence.
"Oh! oh! oh!" was all she could say as she tried to keep herself from working her hips so as to lessen the pain of entry. But, fortunately, the inner part of her cunt was well-lubricated with the juice of her spurting brought on by Cazuela's titillating of her clitoris. Otherwise, the tenor's cock would have ripped her insides to pieces, into raw gaping wounds. But, as it was now, oiled by the pearly fluids, the same cock was sinking deeply into her like a machine piston, being moved up and back. But each time it was moved forward it was shoved in a little deeper. And each time it was shoved in a little deeper, the girl would cry out, not knowing that she was crying out, knowing only that in her was the greatest thing in the world.
Before she was aware of what was happening, she felt the curious boiling within her. She was coming. Before she had an opportunity to prepare for it, she was going to spurt her fluid. It was the size of his thing that was the reason for it. And so she threw her arms around his enormous belly and clutched the flesh and panted like a wounded hart. And, without a warning, she felt herself let go of herself. But, at the same time, she felt a splashing of fluid within her such as she had never before experienced. There must have been a whole pint in his bulking balls for she felt it streaming in hot gushes all over her cunt and, in a short while, she felt the excess fluid trickling down her leg.
Instead of withdrawing his penis, the tenor allowed it to remain where it had been. "It takes so long for it to come back to its normal shape, you may as well get as much pleasure out of it as you can," he explained to her. Tired completely, La Tarantula allowed her head to loll over to the side. She saw Cazuela frantically fingering her own clitoris, pitifully trying to bring herself to another climax. And just as La Tarantula turned her way, she managed to bring herself up to the desired climax. Her body went through a series of contortions. She locked her legs together as tightly as she could get them. Her face wrinkled itself in a spasm of passion. Then she came. And her whole body stiffened up into a huge knot.
There they lay, the three of them, La Tarantula exhausted from the severe fucking she had received, the tenor puffing from mere physical exertion of manipulating his prick, and the maid, Cazuela, outstretched on the floor, the fluid issuing from her stretched cunt and onto the floor.
For a while, none spoke a word. The only sounds to be heard were the stertorous breathing of the three of them puffing like winded runners.
La Tarantula's eyes were closed. As she felt the gradual decline of the cock within her, she felt a curious feeling of reluctance go through her, reluctance to let go of that marvellous instrument that had afforded her so much pleasure in such a little time. But she felt it grow smaller and smaller in her. In time it stopped completely. But she continued to rest back, her eyes closed, a delicious sense of well-being enveloping her as the afterfuck settled over her limbs and gave her a feeling of complete satisfaction.
Again La Tarantula cocked her ears for familiar sounds. In the distance, faintly, she could hear the concerted twang of the string orchestra in the cafe, below. Outside, on the street, she heard the cry of an itinerant lottery ticket seller calling, "the winning number! remember it! buy now or weep tomorrow!" Gradually, his cry lessened until the street was quiet once again. The rhythmic breathing of her maid came up to her. She had probably fallen asleep after her double spurting of dew. But how about the tenor? Why was he not breathing as heavily as he had done before? Without opening her eyes, she strained her ears to catch a sound of his breathing. But no sound came.
For a while, she made nothing of it. But a small doubt insisted on remaining in her mind. Again she tensed herself and listened for the sound of his breathing. But still no sound came. She was afraid to open her eyes. Instead, she raised her hand hesitantly to the hulk of a man who was still kneeling in front of her spread-eagled legs. Hesitantly, her fingers touched the immense belly jutting out over her own flat stomach. It was quiet. The life that had just been seething in it had died down. Instead of the usual rise and fall there was only a calm stillness.
She tried to laugh her fears away. She tried to will herself to open her eyes so that she could confirm her doubts as to her fears. But something within her refused to allow her to open her eyes. Instead, she lay back, her heart filled with a dread fear, her throat stopped up with an unreleased sob. Then, with all her might, she finally managed to force her eyelids apart. They widened with terror when she gazed at the face of the tenor hovering directly over her. Instead of the jovial countenance that had been there before, there was a horrid purple mask. Tiny red veins seemed to have appeared all over his bloated face. His eyes seemed to have popped out of their sockets. Tiny flakes of slobber drivelled out of the corners of his mouth. But worst of all were the great white eyeballs protruding from their holes like a frog's pop-eyes.
La Tarantula shrieked in horror.
Then she realized-that her doubts had been correct. On top of her, astride of her in the attitude of fuck was the hulking body of a dead man. Already, she felt what had been warm flesh only a short while ago, rapidly turning cold. Like one gone suddenly berserk, mad, she tried to wriggle herself free from the dead weight of the threehundred-pound corpse that was imprisoning her. But with her weakened strength considerably lessened by the two orgasms she had just undergone, she was unable to get herself away from under the gruesome cadaver. Her shrieks awakened Cazuela. She, too, shrieked when she saw the purplish, bloated face of the tenor. Then, when she came to her senses, when she finally realized the predicament her mistress was in, she leaped up, seized hold of La Tarantula's arms, and dragged her slowly from under the triangle of the man's spread knees.
Immediately, when this was done, the body toppled over to one side, its horrible face upward, its body already stiffened in the throes of rigor mortis.
Later on, at the inquest, the coroner called it heart failure. They did not hold La Tarantula, despite the deaths that had occurred in her presence previously. There had been no doubt as to the cause of the death of the tenor. His heart, already overburdened by the enormous weight that he carried around with him, simply buckled under when he went through the terrific exertions of that last fuck with La Tarantula.
The coroner called it heart failure.
But the old men, sunning themselves in the square, they nodded their heads knowingly and cackled when the news of the inquest was brought around. They cackled because they knew that the Tarantula had struck again. They knew that the death's head had shown its ugly face and had brought down another victim.
And when the news of the death of Cazuela, La Tarantula's maid, was delivered, they nodded their heads again. The reports stated that she had mistaken a bottle of poison for a bottle of aguardiente. She had been found lying in the anteroom of La Tarantula's dressing room. Her face was screwed up into a mass of wrinkles. Bitterness, the bitterness of the wormwood and the gall of the poison was etched in those lines.
Her stomach was distended from the virulence of the poison. A stale odour of almonds hung in the air.
The coroner called it accidental poisoning.
But the old greybeards whispered: "The Tarantula has struck again."