Blood, hot and angry, flooded her cheeks.

"That's just sick. You're sick. You're a f.u.c.king weirdo!"

"Ohhh . . . ummmm ... I love your voice. It tickles my ear."

"Stop it," she pleaded. "Whatever you're doing, stop it."

"I've got my knife again . . ."

"No! I'm hanging up!"

"I'm . . . uhhh . . . making three or four . .. uhhhhahhhh . . . little incisions along my erection. There," he breathed. "Yeah, that's great."

"Oh my G.o.d!" she shrieked. "Stop it!"

"Ohhhh!" he groaned. "Just enough to get a little blood. It's nice and warm, and it's a great lubricant. If it doesn't dry, that is. Gotta . . . uhhhnn . . . keep it fresh."

"Please stop," she whined, twisting and untwisting the phone cord.

"So hard now . . . kind of stings . . . have to make a . . . ahhhhh . . . another cut. Ohhhh. Talk to me."

"No. Stop. Just stop."

"If you don't want to . . . listen, hang up the . . . awwwww . . . phone."

"Don't do this. Please."

"But it feels so good. Stings a little, but. . . ahhh!"

An image of him appeared unbidden in her mind: a vague face grimacing, a nude body writhing upon the white sheets of a bed at the center of a Rorschach test of blood. The straining, swelling thing he held in his closed fist was a deep, dark red, the secret, warm red of the interior of a cherry pie.

Warmth spread out in waves from her pubis, even as her stomach shivered at this image.

Cynthia found, perversely, that her own disgust only seemed to heighten the arousal she was now fighting. It was illicit and forbidden, and she hadn't felt that since having s.e.x long ago with her teenage boyfriend while her parents were away from home.

"Are you still with me?" he moaned, his voice tight and distant.

"Yes."

"Good. So good."

"Yes," and it was the tone of defeat and remorse, edged with the instinctive desperation of s.e.x.

The caller moaned through clenched teeth, redoubled his efforts.

"Do you want me to finish?"

"Umm," she breathed in a.s.sent, plopping onto the chair near the phone, her fingertips brushing lightly down her belly, pulling her robe apart, her panties to one side, sliding through the tangle of hair.

"I'm feeling a little . . . faint. Gotta hurry. Talk to me.

"I want you to finish." And her voice was low and husky, commanding. Cynthia threw her legs over the arms of the chair, struggled out of her panties. Freed, her fingers teased her exposed s.e.x.

"Finish now."

"Yeah. Ahhh . . ."

"Right now. Do it!" she commanded, using her shoulder to clamp the phone to her ear, freeing both hands to dance between her legs.

"Ahh! Yes! Oh G.o.d, yes!" came his reply, his mouth sounding as if it were pressed close to the phone.

Cynthia lapsed into silence as an o.r.g.a.s.m, painful in its intensity and lightning quickness, flashed through her. One of her legs spasmed, lashed out, knocked a lamp off the table near her.

The lightbulb popped as the lamp shattered, and suddenly the afternoon room was engulfed in darkness.

"Did you come?"

"Yes," she panted dryly. It had happened so fast that beads of sweat were only now beginning to form on her forehead. Her aching arms twitched loosely.

"So did I. Are you still wet?"

Cynthia brought her fingers close to her face, rubbed them together.

"Yes."

"So am I," he laughed. "I always have a big mess to clean after I talk with you."

The image of him lying on his bed, the sheets like an ink blotter, came to her again.

In the shadows, her own wet hands were slicked with darkness.

And a smell drifted from her fingers, whose tips had dipped gently inside her.

It was a flat, acrid smell, metallic. The smell of dirty metal and copper pennies.

Blood.

Her stomach, which she had ignored, leapt uncontrollably. It was all she could do to drop the phone and lower her head before she vomited.

As she shook and gasped, the man's tiny voice chirped from the receiver on the floor.

"h.e.l.lo? Are you still there? Are you all right?"

But she could not answer him, could not even pick the phone up, her hands shook so badly.

It was all she could do to stumble into the bathroom, vomit again into the open toilet, fall into the shower.

There, she checked her fingertips to see the blood.

But they were unstained.

Cynthia stayed in the shower until her skin pruned, obliterated the phantom smell with soap and water.

It was dark again when she awoke, the covers curled like a lover around her naked body. She inhaled deeply, hesitantly, expecting the blood odor, but all she smelled were the warm, clean sheets with their stolen scent of the fabric softener.

Her stomach rumbled, loud enough to hear, and she realized that she'd had nothing to eat since getting sick yesterday.

The mere thought of eating brought a rush of saliva.

Swinging her feet off the bed, she stood, wobbly and stiff.

She grabbed the robe hanging from the bedpost, thrust her arms into it, pulled it closed and knotted the tie.

The kitchen was flooded with the moon's translucent silver light until she snapped on the harsh fluorescents, whose light seemed to ooze from the fixture, creep across the countertops and the white tile.

An omelette, she thought, that really sounds good right now.

Soon she was beating eggs, pouring them into a hot skillet.

The refrigerator held any number of ingredients that would be good in her omelette, but she selected grated cheddar cheese, mushrooms, and a tomato. Her movements were as spare and unconscious as any cook working in a familiar kitchen.

Until she opened a drawer to get a knife to cut the tomato.

They gleamed from where they lay within the drawer, long and tapered like a mouthful of razor teeth.

Cynthia reached tentatively for one, as if the drawer might close around her hand like a hungry mouth.

s.n.a.t.c.hing the knife out, she slammed the drawer shut with her hip.

She'd selected a paring knife. It was slim and tapered, curving to a point like a miniature scimitar, its gentle, upward angle not unlike that of a ...

Shaking her head, she frowned, thrust the knife into the tomato, cored it, divided it.

In her haste, though, the knife slid across her finger, whisper-soft.

She didn't even realize she had cut herself until she had dropped the cubed tomato into the bubbling center of the omelette and washed her hands.

Under the water, blood welled from the cut, hair-thin but deep. When Cynthia, grimacing even though it did not hurt, pulled its edges apart, it opened to reveal a moist, red interior.

It made her finger feel warm, her body a little faint.

Was this what her caller felt each time he did this to himself? she wondered.

Did it heighten his s.e.xual response?

Her gaze drifted back to the cutting board, to the compact knife that rested there on the damp, red cutting board.

Her fingers curled around it, tickled the back of her other hand with its tip.

Behind her, the tomatoes melted into the ma.s.s of the omelette.

Her robe slipped open, and she pressed the flat of the cold blade against her breast, the sharp edge just circling her nipple. It became hard immediately.

She flicked the blade's tip to her other breast, traced the nipple.

Goose b.u.mps rushed in a wave up her abdomen, across her collarbone, down her arms.

The knife's blade became warm, moved.

There was a momentary sensation of heat, which swept across her like a scouring, dry wind.

Then a sudden coldness that engorged her nipples so much, she thought they might explode.

She cried out.

Simultaneously, and quite unexpectedly, she or-gasmed, her legs buckling beneath her.

Her free hand caught the counter as she fell to her knees, bent her head, and gasped for breath.

Beneath her, bright red pennies dripped unnoticed to the ground from her nipple, pooled loosely on the floor.

The omelette burned in the pan.

Cynthia was in control.

She'd cleaned the kitchen, scouring the charred egg and cheese from the pan. She'd mopped the floor, trying not to distinguish between the pulpy tomato drippings and the other spots that were thicker, more red.

The bandage she had applied after she had collected herself chafed the sore, raw nipple it covered. She had already changed it twice, and blood still oozed from the wound, soaked through the bandage, her T-shirt.

When she had first gone into the bathroom, she was surprised at first to see blood, dripping from her nipple like red milk, running in a rivulet down the curve of her breast, beading on her stomach like water on a finely waxed car.

With hesitant, probing fingers she discovered that the sharp little paring knife had nearly sliced off her entire nipple. It now hung from her breast by a small flap of skin. When she touched it, it moved away like an opening door, exposing bright, red tissue beneath.

She quickly closed it.

Amazingly, it had taken nearly an hour for it to begin to hurt, first in a tentative, stinging way, then in great, gasping throbs of pain that made both b.r.e.a.s.t.s ache in rhythm with her pulse.

Once the kitchen was clean, she poured herself a gla.s.s of soda, gathered her robe around her, and sat down in her chair near the phone.

She did not cry, and her stomach ached only in a vaguely threatening way.

Rather, she felt she understood the caller better, as if they had bonded in some secret, b.l.o.o.d.y way. For the first time, she felt she could handle him better when he called next.

Cynthia felt in control again.

And, she had to admit, for some strange reason, what she had done, and done almost unknowingly, had felt. . . good.

Or at the very least, it hadn't been merely painful.