Chapter 7

Karen's dreams that night were a horror of black pits, screaming people, animals torturing her and wild running but so deep was her sleep that they couldn't awaken her. She slept on until mid-morning, awakening to find herself alone. It took some minutes for the awfulness of the night before to come back to her. With them came the deep depression, the shame, the determination to seek the purgation of death.

She was alone. Hadn't Bruce gotten into the bed last night? He wasn't there now. She listened intently; could not detect a sound of any kind.

Could she escape? She might find some sort of clothing to put on. If not, she might be able to drape a bedsheet over herself sari-style well enough to get her to a police station where she could seek help.

What could she tell them? They'd ask her why she was there and what she wanted to do and she'd have no explanation-obviously she couldn't tell them or anyone what depraved things had been done to her, and what she witnessed in this house. They were too utterly foul to tell anyone. Her throat would constrict and she wouldn't be able to get the words out and they'd think she was insane.

Even while she pondered, her chance, if she ever had one, disappeared. She heard steps coming to the door, a lock click back, and Bruce entered the room. He was wearing one of DeWilde's robes which wrapped almost twice around him. He smiled at her.

"So you finally woke up. I've been up for hours. We're alone, Roger left for the office as usual this morning. I told him I'd take care of you while he was in town."

She sank back to stare up at the ceiling.

"I'm taking a few days off so we can have fun together. Just called in and said I had the flu-not to expect me before Thursday or Friday," he chattered on. "Ready for breakfast?"

Stoically she arose to sit on the edge of the bed. He looked at her admiringly for a second; God, she did have a beautiful young body. He tossed a flowered Oriental robe at her.

"Put this on, honey. It's a little chilly this morning."

For some reason she felt almost grateful toward him as she slid into it. How nice to have one's nakedness covered again. She found her comb in her pocketbook; stood in front of the mirror as she groomed her hair. The reflection of her face almost staggered her because of the surprising fact that it looked just as it always did, except for the discoloration on one side of it which was already disappearing.

Karen tried to analyze what she had expected to see. Hollow eyes, the face of a slut? Marks of dissipation and debauchery? Horns and pointed ears, maybe?

It was nothing short of amazing that there was no change visible in her. Still puzzling over it, she followed Bruce to the kitchen.

The coffee was already made. He poured her a cup as he turned on a burner beneath a skillet.

"Hotcakes and ham for breakfast," he announced. "Roger keeps a well stocked refrigerator and all of us bachelors can cook at least a little bit."

A second surprise came to Karen. She discovered she was hungry. As he poured the batter into the skillet, she asked:

"You're not married?"

"No, I was for seven years, but about two years ago it came to a sudden end."

"That's too bad."

"Not really. She was a lousy cook, a lousy housekeeper, and a lousy lay. And, if a woman can't cook, keep house or fuck, what in the living hell is she good for?"

"I suppose so," was all Karen could think of to say.

"It finally came to an end when she had a baby. I always wanted a child and was delighted when she told me she had one in the oven. The only trouble is, when it was born it was as black as the ace of spades. Well, chocolate colored, anyway. Then she confessed she'd been balling our Negro gardener for years. She said she had been sure the kid would be mine because he'd been off on vacation during the month she'd gotten pregnant and I was the only one who had fucked her after her period."

Karen didn't understand. "Then how could the child be black?"

Bruce grinned. "Because she was one of those women who have a period for a month or two after they get pregnant. It's not too uncommon. The baby was born eight months after her last period."

"What did you do-throw her out?"

Bruce looked grim. "Hell, I didn't have to because I never let her come back to the house from the hospital. I found her a decent little apartment, paid the rent for six months, gave her two thousand dollars in cash and told her never to come near me again. My lawyer got me an uncontested divorce and I was free."

"You were generous," Karen commented.

"Oh, I had to give her some kind of a start. She'd never worked so she had to have some time for an adjustment. Besides, she did put in seven years with me-me and a dozen other guys."

Karen ate some pancake before speaking again. "Is it lonesome to be alone, after that long a marriage?"

"Good God no. An unmarried man today, especially one with a little money to spend and a nice house and car, can get all the female companionship he wants. Barbara and Gwen are only the two current members of my stable. They just go nicely together, like ham and cheese, and I enjoy banging both of them-often, at the same time."

They finished eating and Karen did the dishes without being told. As she was putting them away the chimes of the front door sounded. Bruce rose.

"That'll be Ted. He's a kid friend of mine, only fourteen, who crews on my boat and helps me generally. I phoned him this morning and asked him to get some clothes together for me and bring them over here."

He left, and Karen heard the front door open and close. Voices; Bruce was saying: "Thanks, Ted, I appreciate your bringing this stuff over here. Did Barbara and Gwen get home safely last night?"

The voice which replied was young. It was just now deepening in timbre. It had the quality typical of the not-yet-man, no-longer-boy voice. It was saying.

"I guess-they both let me in this morning to get the clothes you wanted, and neither of them looked any the worse for wear."

"Did they seem pissed off because I stayed here last night?"

"Not that I could tell. They were both very nice to me, as usual-nice, but-ah-distant."

That was Bruce laughing. "I'll bet you made another pass at them and they cooled you. They have to be distant with you or you'd bang both of them, and their pussies are under exclusive contract to me. At least, for the present."

A pause, then Ted replying: "You sure are a lucky guy, Bruce. Every time I'm in a room with them I get a hard on."

They had moved across the room now, into Karen's line of vision from the kitchen. Bruce had his back to her. Ted was facing him. He looked even younger than his fourteen years, Karen thought. He was short for one of today's youth, and slightly built; probably an inch or two over five feet and at least three inches less tall than she herself was. He had a nice face, not yet scarred by teen-age acne; straight black hair worn only collar-length. He was wearing a sport shirt and Levis with sneakers on his feet.

Karen was disappointed. A half-formed plan to rush into the room screaming when Brace's clothing messenger arrived died. This slight youth could be no help. Brace could beat up both of them at the same time, with one hand for each.

Brace was speaking again. "Ted, I just thought of something. Didn't you have a birthday last month which I forgot all about?"

"Aw, that's all right. I didn't expect you to get me anything."

"Well, I'm going to give you a belated birthday present, and it's going to be the nicest one you've ever had, or ever will receive. Here-here's ten bucks. Go pay that taxi driver off and tell him we'll phone for a cab when we want one."

Silence. The sound of the front door opening and closing, a pause, then the opening and closing again. Ted was back.

Bruce spoke. "Karen, come into the living room, will you?"

Her now-familiar fear tightened her throat again. Nevertheless, she obeyed, walking into the living room with steady stride.

"Karen, may I present Ted, a good buddy of mine and a reliable crewman. Ted, this is Karen."

The intensity with which the lad stared at her made Karen unthinkingly clutch the flimsy robe around her more tightly. One hand went to her chest to pull the lapels further closed; the other went down to make sure the skirt below the belt was fully overlapped. By doing this she merely made the thin garment more tightly fitting, more revealing of the curves of her body.

"This is the birthday present I got for you, Ted. Take her and enjoy."

A flush started at the base of the boy's throat and spread quickly up over his face. His voice was husky as he replied:

"You mean it? I mean, really?"

"I wouldn't joke about a thing like that with a buddy like you. I've been promising you for a long time that I'd get you your very first piece of ass, but I haven't been able to do it until now. I'm not ready to share Barbara and Gwen yet, except at an occasional party on a swappie-swappie basis, and I haven't been dating anyone else."

Ted gasped out, "Gosh."

"So there she is. Take her-she's yours. For today only, of course, but up until five o'clock you can do anything you want to with her, as many times as you can."

Did Bruce mean that he was going to let this child perform a sex act with her? For some reason this seemed more disgusting than any depravity she had yet seen in this house. She didn't think a boy this young was capable of sex. Somehow, she had felt sure that males had to be much older before the sexual instinct emerged.

But they did mean it-both of them. Ted wasn't holding back, or acting embarrassed, like she would have expected a young boy to do. He was moving toward her, with a pleased flush on his face.

"Karen will be great for a first-timer like you, Ted, because she's only had a little bit more experience than yourself. You'll have fun starting out together."

The boy was in front of her now, his hands reaching out for her. As she stood still, unresisting, he untied the belt at her waist, pulled the robe apart and slipped it down over her shoulders. It dropped to the floor. Ted was eating her up with his eyes. The intensity of his gaze had an almost tactile impact on her skin.

"God, but she's beautiful," he gasped, awed by her lovely young nakedness. "I never thought I'd be so lucky, to have such a beautiful girl for my first. I don't know how to thank you, Bruce."

As he chattered his joy, his hands fumbled with his clothing. He got his shirt off quickly enough, but the zipper on his trousers jammed and he had to fight it to get it down. He kicked off his white jockey shorts along with his shoes; peeled off his socks to stand before her naked. Without a second's pause he took her by the hand, pulled her down to the living room floor beside him and promptly mounted her body.

Bruce was laughing uproariously. "Hold it, hold it kid," he chortled, as he reached down to take the young boy's arm and partially pull him off of her. "Don't rush it, Nobody's going to take her away from you. Do it right and make this first one something you'll remember all of your life."

He helped Ted to his feet; assisted Karen to hers. "Come on, let's go into the bedroom and make this a thing."

Leading the way, he marched down the center hall to the bedroom they had occupied last night Ted followed behind him, holding Karen's hand as if afraid she'd escape.

As they walked, Karen looked at the nude boy beside her. The muscles of his chest and shoulders were just beginning to form with approaching manhood; the pot-belly of childhood had already disappeared. He was some five inches shorter than she; the top of his head was about even with Karen's eyes. His body was still hairless except for a sparse patch of black fluff which curled around the base of his penis.

She saw that his penis was erect, almost painfully so. It was so stiff that it stood straight up almost touching his belly; so hard that it didn't even swing from side to side as he walked. It was small, little boy's sized; in keeping with the rest of his stature, she reflected, but not over three or four inches long and perhaps three-fourths of an inch in diameter. He had been circumcised and the lack of this missing flesh made his little cock head seem to stick out even more naked and alone.

It was hard to believe that his modest little cock could be the same kind of fearful tool DeWilde had used on her, or be blood brother to the other cocks she had seen in this house, and which had been inserted in her and others. Yet, she reflected, this little man was just as eager to put his little prick up her cunt and squirt his stuff into her as the owners of the medium sized and huge tools had been. Actually far more eager.

They were in the bedroom now and Ted gallantly led her to the bed. He pushed her down on it, then sat beside her to gaze down at her, reveling at the sight but uncertain where to begin. Finally he reached out both hands to grasp her breasts, kneading them awkwardly but joyously.

"Jesus, but she's got pretty boobs," he almost crooned.

Bruce removed his robe, dropped it on a chair and sat on the foot of the bed. "Go down on my young friend, Karen, and get him all nice and slick for his first entrance," Bruce directed.

Karen turned onto her left side facing Ted, who went down at full length beside her, hands still grasping her breasts. His face was pressed against the lower portion of her belly, his forehead pillowed against the curly soft hair which sprouted from between her legs. Ted lifted his right arm to place it around her waist and pull her body even closer to him.

Karen opened her mouth and sucked in the turgid little tool. She was amazed at how hard it was; by far the hardest she had ever mouthed. She put her teeth against it experimentally; gave it a little bite. It was like biting down on a raw corn cob, she reflected, or like a stick. As she did so Ted moaned; la moan of pleasure more than agony.

She felt the tickling of hairs against her nose and chin, which made her realize she had all of this cock, right down to its base, within her mouth. There was no room on the shaft for her fingers. She felt the cock head in the back of her mouth, the top of it pressing against the base of her tongue, the bottom of the cock head against the rearmost portion of the roof of her mouth. That would mean the hole in the end of it was pointing down her throat, just in front of her palate. It was not quite long enough to make her gag. She swallowed so that she would know what to expect; found that the base of her tongue moved easily up toward the roof of her mouth and compressed the cock head between.

As she did this Ted gave another moan of sheer ecstasy; blurted out with his lips pressed against the beginning of her pussy hair: "Ooooooh, God, that's good."

His little cock began to leak furiously, oozing more fluid than she had ever yet experienced in her brief sex life. It was running over the base of her tongue as copiously as Bruce had come last night when she had given him that final blow job.. She swallowed regularly. Each time she did so the back of her tongue compressed Ted's cock head and made it leak more furiously. She tightened her lips against the base of his shaft to see what would happen and found this added to the involuntary flow.

This was about as deeply as Bruce's prick had filled her mouth last night during that final blow, she compared; as deep, but much smaller around. Even when he had been completely soft, the girth of his cock had distended her lips. This little prick merely nestled in her mouth and she could even purse her lips around it. She did, just to prove the comparison, and Ted's hips began to quiver.

"That's enough, Karen-you'll suck him off before he knows what's happening."

Karen released the organ and made a quarter-turn onto her back. Like a flash Ted was on top of her, grabbing for her body almost desperately, his hips swinging in wild lunges in the air. Karen spread her legs, doubling her knees and opening her thighs. Ted crouched over her on his hands, thrusting at her opening with his hips and missing.

As she looked down at his penis between the curves of her breasts, she could see her own pussy hair curling upward. Between Ted's legs and hers she could see Bruce's face. He was saying soothingly: "Take it easy, little stud. You've got to learn to pace yourself."

She saw Bruce's hand come into view; saw it grasp Ted's cock firmly from behind and direct it toward her hole. The man's big hand completely enveloped Ted's little cock. With one fingertip he got it started right and she felt the cock head enter her hole.

"There you go, youngster, give it a shove."

Ted was fully into her long before the sentence was completed. She felt the cock head go into the entrance to her main chamber, then stop; felt his testicles bang up against her rectum. Was that it? Apparently. She felt warm meat inside her and that was about all. She could feel her clitoris compressed against Ted's groin, felt scratchiness as their cunt and cock hairs mingled and that was about all.

Ted was grinding his loins against her now, thrusting into her with everything he had to offer, and it didn't hurt a bit. He was groaning, too; matching groan for thrust and thrust for groan. The sounds began to form themselves into words.

"Oh, God, how good. What a fuck. Fucking is great. Oh, God, nothing in the world ever felt like fucking."

His babbling ceased; became groans again as the pace of his hips redoubled.

"Jesus, I can't hold off any longer-oooh, Jesus, I'm going to-ooooh, God, I'm COOOOOOMING," he fairly screamed as he blasted into orgasm.

Karen could feel a little expansion of his cock head as the come began, and then an absolute stream of hot liquid began to flow into her body. If his cock was little, his come was monumental, she reflected, as she felt the solid impact of his first shot almost like something striking her on the inside. The smallness of his penis left plenty of room inside her for his come and he seemed determined to fill the space.

She resumed her habit of counting. Another pulsation of the cock head and bang! shot number two. Expansion; another shot. She could feel the hot liquid being forced into the back of her chamber by the subsequent shot, and then another, and then another. He was pumping her full.

Now he seemed to be finished, his ecstasy trailing away in little jerks that had no flow of stuff behind them. He lay on her, exhausted, and his body was so light she saw no reason to ask him to get off.

Eventually he did so himself. He slipped off alongside her on his back, a leg crossed over one knee and his hands clasped behind his head.

"How absolutely great, Bruce. That's the greatest thing in the world. I feel so wonderful now."

"Sure beats jacking off, doesn't it?" Bruce grinned.

Ted looked through the triangle formed by his crossed legs. "I wish I could have lasted longer, but I haven't jacked off for almost two weeks and I was so loaded up I couldn't hold back."

"You'll be better next time," Bruce assured him.

"You gonna fuck her now?"

Bruce shook his head. "No, I'm going to wait for an hour or two until you get pumped up again, and then I thought we might try something special. She drained me pretty good last night," he explained, "and I have to save my shots. I'm a lot older than you are, you know. A kid your age can flow like a fountain."

"Could she just suck on me again? That would feel so great, even if it is soft."

"She's all yours, Ted. She'll do anything you say."

For the first time Ted spoke directly to her. Shyly he said: "Please?"

It didn't really matter any more one way or the other. Karen swiveled around until she was at right-angles to the lad's body, wiped his cock as dry as she could with the bed sheet, placed her head on his belly and pulled his limp penis into her mouth. Ted sighed with joy as he felt the warmth and pulled his legs up, bent-kneed, like a young frog on its back.

Karen mouthed the limp tool which was now only a few inches long. She squished it back and forth from side to side in her mouth, kneading on it with her tongue. She was on her left side so her right hand was free. She reached in between his legs, cradling his ball sack in it, and was surprised to find it was big and heavy; amazingly large. It felt fully as big as Bruce's. She hadn't noticed this when studying Ted on the way to the bedroom, or when she had gone down on him the first time.

She opened her eyes to look at the thing she was holding. Two massive globes bulged the surface of the sack; her hand could hardly contain this scrotum and its contents. Bruce was observing the phenomena too.

"For such a little guy, you sure have a big pair of nuts," he commented. "If your prick ever grows up to fit your balls, you'll be another DeWilde."

Karen massaged the big testes gently. She knew this was a very sensitive part of a man. She also knew that so long as she was doing this nothing else would be happening to her, so she continued to do what she thought Ted would enjoy. Alternately she nursed hard on the limp cock, drawing deeply on it with the pressure of her tongue, then relaxed to flip it from side to side within her mouth. Occasionally she bit down with her teeth, just a little, to increase his sensations.

Time went by. Karen didn't know how long. She was content to keep at her task so long as Ted enjoyed it. At least no one was hurting her now. Bruce sat silently, watching them, in his own way enjoying the enraptured expression on Ted's upturned countenance. He smoked an occasional cigarette; once, crossed to a sideboard, mixed himself a highball and drank it. Later, she heard him go into the bathroom, followed by the sound of him urinating.

A funny thing began happening. The cock in her mouth seemed to be growing. Her tongue was meeting with more resistance when she pushed it sideways. Its head no longer rested against the front of her tongue but had moved backward considerably, almost to the base of it where it had been originally. She gave it a little bite with her teeth and was surprised to meet a great deal more solidity.

Bruce returned to the room and resumed his seat on the bed, a small jar of something in his hand. Ted's breathing increased. She could feel her head lifting and falling more where it lay on his belly. He spoke, in an enraptured voice: "It's getting hard again, Bruce."

Even as he spoke, the leaking began. Karen felt the first drop ooze out but without the flow which had marked the previous time she had gone down on him. She swallowed, flexing her tongue, then moved her head back and forth on his cock, squeezing her lips tightly around it, and found that this stimulation completed the job. The head of his cock was now as deeply down in her as it had been before.

"Ready to go again?" Bruce asked. Ted nodded assent.

"God, it's great to be young. I used to be that way myself," he added a little wistfully.

He extended the jar to Ted. "Here, smear some of this on your thingie. I want you to try something you'll never forget."

"What's that?"

"All in good time. Go ahead. Grease it."

Karen released her grip on Ted's penis. It was standing up straight again, its proud little head high. The skin on its shaft was quite the whitest she had even seen on any part of a human body. In stark contrast, the head was a delicate pink, even rosier than it had been before because of her prolonged nursing on it. Ted lubricated it thoroughly.

Bruce moved up to lay beside her. "Get up on top of me, Karen, and put my thing in that nice little hole of yours."

Karen straddled Bruce as she had seen Gwen do with Edgar the night before. She grasped his prick, which felt like a monster in comparison with the organ Ted had used to possess her and taking its knob between thumb and forefinger, placed it into her opening. Now that her body was erect, the large quantity of semen with which Ted had injected her began to dribble out. A little of it dripped down to land on Brace's pubic hair before she got her hole plugged up with the end of his organ.

"I don't really like playing with a wet deck," Bruce commented, "but I guess since it's such a close friend it'll be all right."

The entrance of Bruce's cock was eased by it, however, and Karen felt no great pain-at least, not anguish-as she lowered herself onto his stiff tool. The sensations were familiar by now; almost routine. First the cock head siding into her, then the stretching of the lips of her vagina around the shaft, then the slow progress of the cock head which felt like a knob going on up into her. This was the pear-shaped cock head, she remembered. It felt different inside her mouth but was just like any other when it was in her cunt.

She felt the curve of her buttocks come up solidly against Bruce's thighs and knew it was all the way home. A sudden twinge very far up inside her told her that he was getting even more cock into her in this position than he had the evening before when he had dog-fucked her. It must be that her own weight was pushing down on him, adding to its penetration.

To ease herself she leaned forward. Bruce took her arms and pulled her down so that she lay full length on top of him. He wrapped his arms around her, ran his hand down her body and grasped one of her buttocks in each. He massaged them, kneading them with his strong fingers, then alternately pulled them apart and pressed them together again. This hurt her rectum slightly but not enough to make her complain.

Then he spoke. "Now, Ted, get up on top of her and poke your stiff little thing into that pretty rosebud you see staring up at you."

She felt the slight weight of the boy's body on her back, felt warm, slippery flesh poking between her buttocks. Bruce pulled the cheeks of her buttocks wide apart with his fingers and she felt a steady pressure from behind prodding at the opening of her rectum.

My God! He was going to invade her from behind! She wildly tried to struggle; found she could hardly move because of the way her legs were spread-eagled, clamped between Bruce's on the inside and Ted's on the outside. Her arms were locked to her sides by Bruce's being over them. She couldn't even move her hips because the cheeks of her buttocks were clenched in Bruce's powerful fingers, while Ted had both of his strong young hands firmly cupped around her waist.

Wild, terrified thoughts raced through her. Words formed mentally in her newly-acquired vocabulary. God, he's pushing it into my asshole. God, there goes the head of it; he's slipped it in and he's tearing my bunghole apart. He's pushing now. He's ramming it into me.

Wild pain began, even more painful than before because it was entirely new. She felt Ted's cock going further in. It felt as big as DeWilde's; like the boy was pushing a watermelon up inside of her. She struggled as much as she could, which was little; succeeded only in increasing both the pain in her asshole and the pain in her cunt. Exhausted as much by pain as by her useless struggles, she stopped her efforts. Bruce sensed this but retained his tight grasp on her buttocks.

"There, honey, you'll find you're making it a lot easier on yourself." He moved his cock upward and downward, easing it in and out of her gently. He spoke again.

"Got all of it in, Ted?"

An ecstatic grunt from the boy signified yes.

Bruce chuckled beneath her. "I knew you had, kid. I can feel your cock laying against mine with only a thin wall of her flesh between."

Both of them ground away on top of and beneath her. To Karen it felt like she was utterly full of cock. Her vagina was stretched, distended around the shaft of the cock beneath her; her rectum was dilated by the tool of the boy on top of her. She felt both of these hard things merging inside her. She found it was of no use to struggle; it only made the pain worse.

She endured, trying to ease the agony by moving her hips to various positions. It didn't help. If she turned her hips downward to open herself to the up-thrusts of Bruce it made Ted's cock in her ass a torture. If she turned her buttocks upward toward the boy, Bruce's cock tore her cunt.

The man and boy had their hands on each other's shoulders now, timing their movements so that their thrusts into her were simultaneous; feeling each other's bodies and seemingly ignoring the fact that she lay between them. She had the feeling that she was only there to enshroud their cocks and receive their semen.

They quickened their movements. She heard Bruce speak. "Soon, Ted, soon. Let's try to go off together." The pace became even faster, and then they were both hunching up against her, trying to cram even more cock into her as both of them began their ejaculations.

Karen lay still and felt it flow into her. Bruce's come in the front of her body scalded her as it always did. She felt its heat surge up into her, felt the pumping of successive shots, felt his come hit the back of her tightly-packed hole and then start leaking out again, between the walls of her gash and his shaft. Bruce's cock plugged her so tightly it had no place to go except back out.

Ted's come in her ass was stretching her rectum with every pulse, and each pulse brought stabbing pain to its distended muscles. He was shooting her but it wasn't flowing back out, she noted; she must have plenty of room there to receive it from him.

The two hardnesses were replaced by limpness. She lay still, sandwiched between the pair of exhausted males. Eventually Ted slipped off, to lie beside her in a doze. Bruce too seemed to be sleeping. Quietly she removed herself from his body; sat crouched between them for a few minutes to make sure both were really sleeping; satisfied that they were, Karen stealthily removed herself from the bed. Her bare feet were silent on the thick rug as she returned to the living room.

She found the robe the young boy had stripped from her, put it on and tied the sash tightly around her waist. She sat down quietly in a chair, winced as her weight came down upon her invaded rectum; settled back quietly with her hands clasped in her lap.

Quite calmly Karen decided that the time had come when she must die. Longer shadows outside the windows indicated it was afternoon. In a few more hours Roger would be home and there would be more torture in store for her. Probably he would want to do it to her again and death was much preferable to feeling that horrible thing of his go into her. She knew she could never stand it.

Who knows what goes on in the mind of someone who has determined upon self destruction? The act of suicide is so complete a reversal of the most basic human instinct, self-preservation, that to even contemplate it seriously one must have first experienced a complete breakdown of all other mental processes.

In her hours of degradation in this house, Karen had suffered just that: an utter disintegration of all of her life values. She had been raised with standards of purity, decency and morality. She loved those standards. Now she had experienced illicit sex, deviated sex and perverted sex. Every part of her body had been defiled. Therefore, she was no longer fit to live among decent human beings.

How could she kill herself? In her trance-like state, the problem of how loomed with much more importance than should she. For some reason the name of Dorothy popped into her mind. When Karen had been about twelve she had known a girl named Dorothy who was older; maybe sixteen or so. Dorothy had gone away to school and when she came home at Christmas time had tried to kill herself by slashing her wrists. It was whispered that Dorothy had done it because she was pregnant. Her parents had found her in time to stop the bleeding and save her life.

Karen remembered that some of the kids had stated that it hadn't been a bit painful for Dorothy; just a couple quick slashes and that was all. They said she had held her wrists under the hot water faucet and hadn't felt a thing.

Moving softly, slowly, Karen got up and went into the kitchen. Quietly she opened and closed drawers until she found the one where the knives were kept. She felt their edges; decided they are all too dull to give the sharp, deep slash she knew she must have to avoid pain.

Aimlessly she opened another drawer; found in it some odds and ends of small hand tools; a small screwdriver, a pair of pliers and similar things. Among them was a window glass scraper. Alongside it was a package of new razor blades which fitted into the scraper to provide its cutting edge.

Karen knew that here was her answer. Carefully she slid two of the blades out, peeled their paper covers back to glance at each one's shiny new edge and knew that in them lay her deliverance.

Quick. Do it now, before Bruce or Ted woke up; before Roger returned. How long would it take? Five minutes, she guessed; maybe ten.

She started to unwrap one of the blades but paused. Suddenly she felt alone. She remembered something the instructor in one of her psychology classes had said; we are born into this world alone and we die alone, and everything we do in between is an attempt to avoid being alone. Now she was facing the ultimate loneliness, the aloneness of death, and she wished she could say good-bye to someone before she did it.

Doug Morgan. She'd like to hear his voice again. It would give her something to think of when she made the slashes and waited for it to happen. She could just ask him how he was and maybe say how much she had enjoyed knowing him and somehow she wouldn't be all alone when she did it. She wouldn't talk to him long because she might not have much time but she wanted to chance it. If she kept her voice low Ted and Bruce wouldn't be awakened; it was a long way from the kitchen to the bedroom they were in and a kitchen phone extension was on the wall right in front of her.

Her mind flashed back to Doug's number, taped to the base of her phone in her apartment; the number she read every night when she pretended she was phoning him and saying. "Good night, Doug." She picked up the receiver and dialed the digits carefully, to make sure she didn't waste time by getting a wrong number. She heard the ringing signal begin and waited. It rang once, twice, three four times-kept ringing.

She glanced at the kitchen clock. Five twenty-five. He ought to be home from work by now. Oh, God, if he had to work late tonight! She'd have to do it without saying good-bye to him; without hearing his voice just once more time. She'd be all alone when she did it, if she didn't have one last conversation with him to remember.

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen times it rang. No use. He wasn't home and she could wait no longer to do what she had to do. She started to hang up. When the phone was halfway to its cradle she heard a click and a voice crackled out of the earpiece.

"Hello? Hello? Still there?"

It was Doug. Gratefully she put it to her ear again and breathed a soft:

"Hello, Doug?"

He was puffing heavily as he replied. "Karen, is that you? Are you all right?"

"Yes, Doug. I'm all right."

"I had to run all the way up the steps when I heard my phone ringing and I'm winded. Where have you been? I called you a dozen times over the weekend. When you weren't at work today I got worried about you."

Careful-he must never know what had happened to her. He must be left to think of her forever as a nice girl. Her ravishment must be kept a secret.

"I'm fine. I just decided to go out of town for a few days and didn't get back to work."

A puzzled pause. "Karen, that's not like you. Where did you go? Where are you now?"

She had to offer some explanation or hang up, and she didn't want to do that just yet.

"Oh, I'm at the home of someone I know."

"Honey, you're in trouble of some kind. You don't have any friends here you could visit. Where are you and what are you doing?" His voice was demanding.

She couldn't tell him but she did want him to continue talking so that she could soak in the sound of his voice. Dreamily she replied:

"It will be all right, Doug-quite soon everything will be all right again." She waited for him to resume speaking.

"Karen, you're not yourself. You're tripped out on something. Has somebody been feeding you booze, or drugs, maybe?"

Oh God, he mustn't think that. "No, Doug, no, nothing like that at all."

"Then what is it?" he insisted. "Why won't you tell me where you are?"

A long pause. She had to say something. Her throat tightened but she choked out: "I-can't. I just can't."

"Well, what you mean is that you won't. In that case, I'm going to hang up now." His voice was cold, suppressed, angry. Silence. Karen could say nothing.

A sudden sound of indrawn breath crackled in her ear. "Say-it was DeWilde who reported you wouldn't be in today. How did he know that? Has that bastard got you out at his place?"

She mustn't let him know he had guessed the shameful truth. "No, Doug, no. Everything's all right. It will all be over soon."

Dead silence. Then, quizzically: "Well, if that's what you want out of life, I guess it's not up to me to interfere. Good-bye, Karen." The phone clicked dead in her ear. She held it tightly to her head until the dial tone began. She hung it in its cradle before returning to the sink. She turned on the hot and cold water, mixing them until they ran warm. Satisfied with the temperature, she calmly picked up one of the razor blades and held it as she stared down at the blue veins on the inside of her left wrist. One quick slash, she reflected, then change the blade to her other hand and slash her right wrist too. Afterwards hold both wrists under the warm water to encourage the flow of blood. Right now is the time she must do it-now is the time.

A stunning blow from a powerful fist hit her squarely in the center of her back, between her shoulder blades. The tremendous impact of the punch drove all breath from her lungs; caused her to sink to the floor where she lay, convulsively trying to get some breath back into her body. Pain spread from her spine to her every extremity. As air returned to her lungs it was even more painful than the blow itself. Her vision swung with shock, but she looked up from the floor and squarely in the eyes of a very angry Roger DeWilde.