Requiem For A Porn Star

The night was still young, and Audrey was thinking of the two desks at the University that were sitting empty due to her and Moon’s absence from their final class of the evening. They’d met in the parking lot beside the Art building, and Moon had had her drive. While navigating the narrow old streets of Paris, she pictured the harsh fluorescent lights in the second-story classroom they should be in, gleaming on the white linoleum floors and wooden desks and blue plastic chairs, and imagined the whisper of textbook pages turning, pens scratching and scrawling notes, and the throaty hum of the Professor’s voice. Usually, they were both such good students. She had that tight grinding feeling in her bowels that let her know she shouldn’t be doing what she was doing, though this was tempered by the feathery pressure of Moon’s hand on her thigh. Moon was a student from America who spoke impeccable French, and had all but declared the City Of Lights her true home after just one semester there. In the process, she had also come to fill a space in Audrey’s life that, before then, she hadn’t even been fully conscious of being empty.
At an intersection, there stood an opera house. The sight of it intersected with her thoughts, and a memory surfaced in her stream of consciousness, though it was a somewhat false memory. Audrey laughed softly, “You see that opera house? I had a dream about it last night.”
“Can you still remember the details?”
“Yeah, quite a few– what was really strange about it was that nobody I knew was in it, and not even I was in it. I was completely separate from the images. It was like sitting alone in a theater, in the front row, watching a movie.
“Anyway, it was the 1800’s in the dream, and a noblewoman from some other country, a Duchess, I think, was visiting Paris. It was nighttime, and she was standing in front of the hotel she was staying at, dressed for a night at the opera and waiting for her carriage to be brought around. There was some dark, blank, anonymous tall building across the street, each floor of it lined with wide windows, and when she looked up at the second or third-story window, she saw a perfect reflection of a couple on one of the balconies of the hotel. The woman had her skirts hitched up, and nothing on underneath, and was on her knees, gripping the bars of the balcony railing, her head thrown back, eyes upturned to the moon while the man knelt behind her and caressed her tits through her tight-laced dress while he fucked her. Then the carriage was there, and the Duchess got in.
“Next thing I remember, she was at the opera house, being shown to her private box, up on the second story. I’ve never seen the inside of that opera house in real life, but in my dream, it was all marble floors, fur rugs and black carpets, brass sculptures, chandeliers dripping with crystals and candle wax, and walls covered with mirrors, and murals of cherubs in starry skies and satyrs in countryside scenes. She was still so turned on from seeing the couple on the balcony, that once all the lights were out and Act One had started, she beckoned the usher into her box, pulled the curtains closed, laid her fur coat out on the floor, and had him fuck her. She was still trying to maintain some pretense of propriety at that point—she only undressed enough for him to be able to get inside her, and told him to hold his hand over her mouth when she came. Afterward, she stood up and smoothed out her dress, had him leave the box, and sat down and opened the curtains again to watch what was taking place on the stage.
“Not much else really happened until Act Two. There was a love scene between the two leads. It started off with a romantic duet, with some flirtatious, somewhat suggestive lyrics, and a kiss. I’m guessing this would have been shocking enough as it was, back in the 1800’s, but it went a lot further than that. Once the actor and actress kissed, they suddenly seemed to forget that they were supposed to be in character. Indeed, they seemed to forget they were onstage! Even though it clearly wasn’t supposed to be part of the show, the orchestra somehow followed their lead. The music grew slower, lower, and more and more lascivious, amid the shocked and confused murmurs of the audience. Soon, the pair was half-undressed and fucking on a black-and-gold velvet chaise lounge onstage.
“The Duchess noticed something in one of the rows furthest away from the stage, and had to peer down into the crowd through her opera glasses to be sure she was really seeing what she thought she was seeing. Sure enough, a couple in the audience had gotten so horny watching the actor and actress, they were following suit. The scandalized buzzing amongst the theatergoers was quickly dying down, and an erotic trance was taking hold of them in its wake. It spread through the entire room while the Duchess watched from her box in disbelief. Not one person in the room was unmoved by it. Other audience members abandoned their boxes and balconies to join the orgy downstairs. The ushers joined in, and even the musicians eventually laid their instruments aside to fall into each other’s arms, or give themselves over to the theatergoers. Everywhere, men were getting sucked off by other men, or women, or both. Couples, threesomes, and foursomes of every imaginable combination formed and re-formed themselves in tangles of flesh in the aisles, on the stage, in the orchestra pit, and on and in between the seats. Women were being fingered, fucked, kissed, and groped, and having their nipples sucked, sometimes all at the same time. The carpet was littered with discarded underthings, and the seats were draped with dresses and coats and trousers. The whole room, the whole building, vibrated and reverberated with moans, the constant hum of one huge, collective, ongoing orgasm rippling and spiraling and winding its way through the crowd like electricity through a circuit.
“The Duchess couldn’t resist anymore—she was a voyeur, she loved to watch, but the sight of so many people, hundreds of them, letting go of their inhibitions so completely, was so alluring to her, that she had to become part of the scene she was witnessing. She rushed downstairs, and let herself be taken and embraced and undressed, and fucked for hours—or, what I can only assume was hours– by men and women alike, long and deep into the night.
“Once everyone had finally exhausted each other and satiated themselves, they all simply got dressed and walked out of the opera house as if nothing at all extraordinary had taken place. The Duchess made her way out through the shifting shadows and golden-orange, flickering light of the gas lamps, and got back into the waiting carriage, laughing to herself. And that’s all I remember.”
They were coming to a stop at another red light then. “Take your panties off,” Moon said, her accelerated breathing noticeable. “You don’t know how much you just turned me on with your little story.”
Audrey was sure she knew exactly how turned on Moon was, because it was most likely as horny as she was herself. But she replied with actions rather than words, quickly putting the car in park and taking her foot off the brake pedal just long enough to be able to twist and wiggle and tug and arch in just such a way as to be able to get her moist silk panties off.
“Leave them on the floor,” Moon told her in the same gentle yet matter-of-fact tone.
She let Audrey put the car back in drive, and continue on through the intersection, before sliding Audrey’s skirt up to mid-thigh, and leaning over and reaching between her legs. Though Audrey moaned a little in aroused apprehension, she made no attempt to stop Moon from inspecting her slit via touch, checking her to see just how wet she was, inserting one finger and withdrawing it, and pinching her sex-lips and her clitoris to get a feel for how engorged they were. Then came the tormented relief of her hand sliding away, to rest on Audrey’s knee. The car glided along the side streets, and the air inside it was heavy with hot silence and scented with pheromones.

The nightclub’s ground floor looked like an evil cathedral. There were red blown-glass chandeliers, “curtains” made of steel chains, walls decorated with concrete “bones” forming shapes like pentagrams and chalices and inverted crosses, stained-glass windows, wooden St. Andrew’s crosses with leather cuffs attached to them, giant spider webs made of iron chains, and religious paintings hanging right alongside erotic artwork in the halls and stairways. The second floor was essentially one vast dance floor, with death metal and techno blasting from the speakers, strobe lights and green laser beams sweeping across the crowd. The DJ was a stout, raven-haired woman in a vinyl nurse costume. One wall was lined with TVs showing softcore latex/rubber fetish porn, and the opposite wall was lined with “prison cells” lit with red light bulbs.
It was to the third floor which Moon led Audrey on her leash. This room was charmingly incongruous with the rest of the club. It was designed to look like an American jazz lounge from the 1920’s, albeit with a strongly fetishistic twist. It had red velvet chairs shaped like giant high heeled shoes, beaded curtains and Tiffany lamps, poker tables alongside leather-upholstered spanking benches and brass cages, strippers doing high kicks in elaborate cabaret costumes, a bartender in a flapper costume, and a projection screen above the bar upon which flickered, in black and white, one of Bettie Page’s notorious lesbian bondage films. The air was blue with cigarette smoke, and as Audrey walked through the carcinogenic cloud, she was almost sure she caught a whiff of weed as well.
Moon signaled the bartender over at a moment when she wasn’t busy, and ordered a Cherry Orgasm for Audrey and a Black Panties for herself. The two lovers sipped their drinks slowly, watching the dancers in their corsets and top hats and stockings do stripteases. Tassels swayed coquettishly from the glittery red hearts covering the dancers’ nipples while they writhed against the bars of cages, or played with feather boas, hula hoops, or parasols, simulated fellatio with strap-ons, or simply strutted their scantily-clad forms while kissing and feeling up on each other. Audrey could only hope she wouldn’t drip on the leopard-print carpet, or, for that matter, stain her best pair of seamed silk stockings. Her panties were still on the floor of the car. Moon had Audrey stand in front of her, so she could idly stroke her thighs, or surprise her with an occasional squeeze or swat or pat on the ass.
The understanding between them was unspoken and mutual—they had to pace themselves. The *real* party was still a few hours off.
Angel Love, the most infamous, prolific, brazen fetish porn star in all of Europe, had recently died in a plane crash. The funeral had been cloaked in her family’s shame, the press and the public kept well away, the burial perfunctory, the grave marker modest and located in a tiny graveyard in the countryside outside Paris. This had led to an admittedly bizarre kind of outrage among her fans, Moon and Audrey included. It had seemed there was nothing to be done about it, however… until Audrey, who’d been in on the rave circuit for some time, had caught wind of a handful of Parisians’ plan to mourn Angel Love properly. They had the means to carry it out, the word had spread fast, and Moon had been thrilled when Audrey had told her about it: this group of anonymous, grieving fans was holding a rave in Angel Love’s honor tonight, only it was to be more than a rave, it was to be a requiem. It was to take place inside what remained of a building that had once been an asylum, and which was practically next door to the cemetery in which the porno-goddess had been interred. The structure would be transformed for one night into a church of sensuality, where all those in the know would partake in a debauched funerary rite. There was little doubt that many of the bereaved would also be going out to her grave to pay their respects in a manner that would have pleased her.
As though simply to add to the overall aura of decadence, the ruins weren’t the ruins of just any asylum, but of the Asylum de Berceti, which had housed the Marquis de Sade and his demons during the 1700’s.
*Though the Marquis was a Libertine, not a Decadent,* Audrey reminded herself. Since meeting Moon, she had been careful to educate herself in these matters.
They eventually wandered back down into the main room on the first floor, where two Goths were performing a kinkified version of a “magic act,” involving balloon “dildos,” sword-swallowing, silk scarves, piercing-needles, fish hooks, power-drills, shards of broken glass, and a bed of roses and nails.
After their performance, three women took their places on the stage. They all wore ballet slippers and gauzy white skirts. Two of them were in sheer pink body stockings, through which their hardened nipples peeked, while the torso of the third one was covered completely in dark purple balloons. While some vaguely familiar English rock song played in the background, the two in the body stockings danced slowly around the third woman, popping the balloons one by one with long steel needles, until her bare torso was revealed. Well, almost bare—the woman’s nipples were covered with white rhinestones that had been glued on in a starburst pattern. It was the most creative way of doing a striptease Audrey had ever seen. The two dancers undressed the woman the rest of the way, and Audrey saw that her shaven Venus mound was also decorated with elegantly-arranged white rhinestones. The woman got tied to a chair, and one of the dancers got her off—she used a long, sleek purple vibrator, circling the woman’s clit with its curved, tapered tip, and the spectators actually applauded her when she came. Audrey wondered what that felt like for her.
Moon took her back up to the second story, and into one of the “prison cells,” where she had Audrey hike her skirt high up around her waist and bend over a wooden bench. She tied the other end of Audrey’s leash to one of the iron bars in front of her, tethering her, and proceeded to administer a brief, but not at all lenient, old-fashioned open-hand spanking. She kept her head bowed and never moved her feet. Moon paused every now and then, leaning in close to kiss and nip her earlobe, and tell her how many people were watching them. At one point, she told her eight people were there, just watching intently. Camera flashes went off intermittently, and Moon told her that, yes, there were people taking pictures of them. This didn’t bother Audrey—in fact, it was exciting, and flattering. The slowly driving beat of the music vibrated its way through the soles of her boots and up her trembling, silk-encased legs. She could hear a woman in one of the other cells, screaming—whether in agony or orgasm, she couldn’t tell.
Afterward, they noticed that someone had set a booth up next to the bar, and was selling things like spreader-bars, coils of rubber cord, canes, branding hoops, and the like. Curious, Moon led her over to get a closer look. She picked up an unusual-looking and particularly flexible cane, which the man running the booth told her was rubber coated in acrylic. He mentioned that it was extremely difficult to break.
Moon replied, “I bet I would have fun trying, though!”
Audrey giggled, and the man joked, “Now, that’s a nervous laugh if I ever heard one!”
He encouraged Moon to try it out. She bent Audrey forward, having her grip her knees, and gave the cane a few swift swings. She tested a strap on her in the same manner, but didn’t much care for it—Moon had a definite preference for slender, precise instruments. Audrey was sure it was no coincidence that those were the very tools of discipline which produced the fiercest sting!
Moon took her time, examining the various implements, discussing their virtues and flaws with the obviously knowledgeable vendor.
“No matter what, she has a firm flogging coming to her tonight,” she told him, darting a glance over at Audrey, her eyes full of playfully sinister meaning.
“Oh, I can tell she’s going to get it,” he said, and the double entendre wasn’t lost on either Moon or Audrey.
They usually kept to themselves whenever they visited the fetish clubs, but on the occasions when Moon did talk to someone, she almost always found some way to slip something into the conversation about how well-behaved or how masochistic Audrey was. It was almost like she was bragging about a conquest, but not in a way that cheapened her at all. The way Moon talked about her at such times was, in its own way, a form of praise, and it often caused her to blush in her arousal and giddy humiliation.
She was pretty sure she spotted it the same moment Moon did: a cane that was *actually coated in shards of seashells.*
There was no way the man could’ve missed the way their eyes lit up then. He told Moon that, while it looked quite brutal whether it was in use or simply sitting on a shelf, it was safe because it actually only cut one-eighth of an inch into the skin.
His exact words were, “Yeah, it’s a bloodbath, but it heals quickly.”
Neither of them had ever seen anything like it before. To Audrey, it was impressive, intriguing, scary, arousing… and to Moon, it was irresistible.
It was paid for and bagged, and he told them to “Have fun!”
Back up in the lounge on the third floor, Moon ordered snacks for herself and Audrey. She also got a bottle of water for both of them, which Audrey wasn’t allowed to pick up—she had to ask Moon to lift it to her lips when she felt thirsty. Audrey wasn’t actually hungry, but she didn’t tell her this, she simply ate what Moon ordered for her. It was going to be a long night, after all. Moon knew what she was doing. It was all about timing, pacing. Audrey already had so much to write about in the diary Moon had been making her keep, and their adventure wasn’t even half over yet.
Audrey was walked down the stairs one more time. The show on the club’s main stage was especially elaborate that night. It was obviously meant to be an eroticized version of a circus act. They arrived just in time to see a female performer in a frilly, cute clown costume and blue-and-gold makeup getting wrapped up and suspended in what appeared to be hemp rope.
Audrey’s favorite segment was the one in which the three dancers from earlier returned to the stage. This time, they had silver-and-white Venetian masks on, and were dressed up as wind-up dolls. One of them popped up out of a black wooden box, like a jack-in-the-box, and the other two bound her up in thick satin ribbons, looping and winding them all over her body.
There was also a pony-play act, with all kinds of harnesses and hoods, flashy costumes with lots of feathers and bells, and bit gags. Of course, plenty of whip-snapping was involved. There was even a “human tiger,” wearing a Speedo, body paint, and little else, his skin covered in glitter.
The show concluded with a second appearance of the “clown” from earlier, only without her blue-and-gold makeup and in a different costume. This time, she got stainless steel hooks stuck through the skin on her arms and legs, by a dominatrix who climbed up onto a chair above her, and “danced” her like a marionette while blood, *real* blood, trickled out of the fresh wounds and the spectators screamed their excitement.
Once the show was over, Moon made Audrey strip until she had nothing on but her boots, stockings, and collar. She had Audrey clean off a St. Andrew’s cross with a sanitary wipe before strapping Audrey to it, and unclipped her cat-o-nine-tails from her belt.
Underneath a single dim blue beam of light, she stood with her arms stretched well above her head, gripping the chains attached to the cross, crying out as Moon took the cat to her skin, and the pain didn’t end until Audrey’s tears were flowing copiously.
There would be some pretty little purple bruises to see on her thighs later… but for right then, Moon unbuckled the cuffs and brought her arms down gently, and let her dress while she cleaned the cross.
Audrey knelt before her and kissed her whip in thanks. Moon took her over to a long, broad, soft leather bench tucked away in a shadowed corner. Audrey curled up to her and laid her head in her lap, and almost fell asleep. Maybe she did sleep. She wasn’t entirely certain.
They stayed there until the DJ killed the music, and they and the other two dozen stragglers were jarred, at least temporarily, out of their trance by a bouncer bellowing into a microphone, “Go home! Get the fuck out! Fuckin’ leave, people, we’re fuckin’ closing! Go home!…” It would have taken a hell of a lot more than someone shouting and cussing into a mic to ruin their mood—Moon and Audrey laughed it off, gathered their things, and stepped back out into the night.

Just before leaving town, Moon stopped at an all-night drugstore. She unclipped Audrey from her leash and sent her in to get some peroxide, tape, and bandages. She was in for it tonight, indeed…
Sometimes, when Moon was taking her out somewhere and wanted to surprise her, she would have her lean the passenger seat back and blindfold her, and occasionally tie her wrists as well. Of course she knew generally what the plan was for tonight, and she knew where the asylum ruins were, but she was still thrilled when she got back into the car and Moon told her to lean her seat back, and produced a black scarf with silver stars on it, which she tied comfortably over her eyes.
“Lift your hips up for a moment.”
Once Moon had arranged Audrey’s skirt up around her hips, she turned the key in the ignition. Audrey settled back down into the reclined seat, savoring the feel of it against her bare buttocks, which she was still unaccustomed to. She kept her knees apart, as she was always required to when in Moon’s presence—this was to subtly signify that her flesh belonged to Moon, and she was to be sexually available to her at all times, even when at only a moment’s notice.
“You can sleep, if you like.”
“Thank you, but I’m wide awake now.”
Moon had used the word “can” instead of “may,” so it had been an offer, not an order. She heard Moon slip a disc into the CD player.
“Tonight is May 10, 1998,” Moon declared, just as the first notes of “The Slave,” by Serge Lamain, began floating about in the car’s cozily cool interior, “and we are going to remember it for the rest of our lives.”
She reached over and gave Audrey’s exposed sex a warm, possessive squeeze, and then kept her hand there, unmoving, loosely cupping what was rightfully hers.
Audrey kept her hips still, silently reveling in the sensations of being intimately claimed. The motion of the car gave her a mild sense of weightlessness. She listened carefully to the melancholic, erotic lyrics of the song that was playing, almost meditating upon the words. Even though Moon was inarguably fierce with a disciplinary implement in her hand, she was really very tender towards Audrey the rest of the time. In a short time, she had dispelled from Audrey’s mind the myth of the cold, heartless dominatrix which so much of American pornography seemed to perpetuate.
It was a long drive, and she passed the time with fantasies. Though she loved and wanted only Moon in real life, she liked fantasizing about orgies, especially orgies in unlikely places. She pictured an erotic art exhibit, and a group of tourists being shown through it by a museum guide. The work was so beautiful and explicit that the entire tour group, slowly, two and three at a time, gave in to the urges inspired in them by the images surrounding them, until they were sprawled naked on furniture carved with images of penises and vulvas, or penetrating themselves or each other with ivory dildos, or even fucking the erect phalluses of bronze and marble statues. The guide, a mousy librarian type, was the last to succumb, but her lecturing on the histories and meanings of the various pieces finally gave way to moans of bliss when two women from the tour group unbuttoned her blouse, unclasped her surprisingly sexy, see-through bra, and each started sucking on one of her large, cherry red nipples…

When they arrived, Moon clipped her leash back on, and waited until they were inside the building to remove the blindfold.
Naturally, the event had its share of Goths attending. The full gamut of fetish wear was represented in the half-crumbled structure’s labyrinthine halls and rooms, as well, from the standard sexy black leather numbers, PVC harnesses, lingerie, latex dresses, biker garb, and naughty schoolgirls, nurses, and maids, to geishas, warriors, rubber-clad superheroes in billowing capes, Renaissance Ladies, Victorian gentlemen, pony-boys, belly dancers, and just plain whimsical getups utilizing accessories like fairy wings, striped stockings, gas masks, and pink rubber wigs. But, to Audrey’s surprise, there were also many rave-goers dressed much like she and Moon were: neo-bohemian girls wearing flowing skirts, velvet berets, stockings of silk or fishnet, boots of leather or suede, colorful beads and rhinestone or spike studded belts, scarves around their necks or waists, mascara and black or peach or plum lipstick, and peasant blouses decorated with embroidery or sequins.
The pair wandered from room to room for awhile, and the sight of the leash caused several people who saw them to smile.
A band was setting up in the building’s largest room, and the singer was testing the microphones by yelling into each of them, “Sex, sex, sex, fuck, fuck, yeah, fuck!”
Off to the side, two topless goth vixens—one of them with the word *SLUT* written across her breasts in strawberry colored lipstick– were dry humping while a guy took pictures, at one point pausing to discreetly reach down and adjust his hard-on through his jeans.
The hint of danger in the atmosphere merged flawlessly with the traces of sexy sadness this extraordinary occasion had given rise to. Whenever Audrey went to a rave, she felt like she wasn’t on the earthly plane anymore. Each time, she realized all over again just how heavenly Hell could be.
Once they’d familiarized themselves with the layout of the structure and gotten a good feel for the mood pervading it, Moon and Audrey stood watching the band for about 20 minutes or so. It seemed there wasn’t a single stage prop that the singer didn’t end up rubbing between her legs at some point during her set, whether it was a cane, a dildo, or even a toy gun, and she didn’t seem to be capable of saying or singing the word “pussy” without grabbing at her crotch.
Some partygoers were standing staring up through the holes in the roof at the stars, tranced out on Ecstasy and music. Others were dancing. Neither Moon nor Audrey was much for dancing. Neither were countless other attendees, who had clearly found their way there with more carnal intentions on their minds.
The two lovers would be following suit soon enough, but pain was to come before pleasure, and this time, this was as much a matter of pragmatism as libertinage. Having sex while high was one thing, but her precocious dominatrix didn’t have to tell her that one of the very first rules of the unspoken-but-universally-accepted code of honor and common sense among kink practitioners was to never engage in discipline while high. Moon got out the cane, wiped it down, dried it, and let Audrey off her leash for the moment. She had let her think about it long enough, and now it was time, and she was to demonstrate her obedience in front of all these people by standing free to take her discipline.
*Though I am never really free, no matter what I’m doing or where I am,* Audrey reminded herself.
Even after several practice swings, Moon was tentative, learning the new cane as she went along, learning its weight and arc and impact, its quirks and temperament.
It was almost immediately apparent that this most unique of implements didn’t offer much in the way of a buildup; subtlety with it was impossible, so the experience Moon provided through it was, more than anything else, a constant thrum of pain punctuated with the occasional high C. Some strokes of the cane were, in fact, taps, poking her with the broken pieces of seashell without penetrating the flesh. Others were harder, landing across her buttocks and her already-sore thighs and even her back. Normal canes weren’t suited for flogging the back– she knew this, and knew Moon knew it—but the sole function of this particular cane was to puncture her skin, and it took so little force to do so, that there was no risk of hurting her kidneys or spine. Audrey could tell when Moon had gained confidence, because she was figuring out just the right way to rake the needling shards across her skin, no doubt etching a crisscrossing spider web of scarlet welts and cuts and scratches into her back: she would administer a relatively light strike, but then drag the rod back towards herself before lifting it away to strike again.
Audrey’s palms went clammy and her fingers clutched at the air, but she kept her hands in front of her, where Moon had placed them. The cuts might be technically superficial, but then again, a razorblade could create a superficial cut, too. It was precisely this kind of pain (Audrey would later realize), the insidiously steady kind, which wore down the will most efficiently.
Onstage, the singer had put on a rubber suit with long, accordion-like tubes hanging off it, a dildo attached to the end of each one. The singer was walking around, slipping those dildos into the mouths of band members and audience members alike.
All around them, the party was a garden of curious delights, which melted in the welling-up behind Audrey’s eyes, where the pain signals were lighting up every synapse in her skull, and then her vision was clear again and her cheeks were adorned with saline crystals. Moon drove her still further into the savage high of the endorphin rush, until her final scream could be heard over the thunder of the music.
She must kneel, of course, to kiss the cane, which was freshly christened with her own blood.
“The blood is standing out on your skin like pinprick rubies,” Moon purred into her ear.
The disinfectant hurt almost as much as the seashell bits had, but she took perverse pleasure in its healing sting, and relaxed into the feeling of being taken care of. That Moon had opened her skin up and watched the blood appear and not only loved her despite her tears, but *for* them, and was now cleansing and bandaging the very wounds she herself had inflicted, while kissing her and calling her “dear one, little one…” somehow didn’t strike Audrey as self-contradictory at all.

They were lying on the blanket Moon had brought, in one of their cuddly lulls in between bouts of pussy-licking, when Moon said she was going to go get some X for both of them.
“While I’m gone,” she asked Audrey, “could you just move the blanket into that little alcove over there? This place has gotten so filled up, I think we might be starting to get in people’s way where we are. I’ll be back in ten minutes, tops.”
Audrey pulled herself to her unsteady feet, and dragged the blanket over to where Moon had pointed. She felt along the ground with the toe of her boot in the shadowed recess, nudging aside twigs, rocks, bottles, cans, and… something else. Once she had the blanket spread out, she got out her lighter, and investigated further.
The object turned out to be a small, rotting wooden box, the hinges of which had rusted clear off. Inside it lay a stack of stiff, weathered paper that must have been anywhere between 600 and 700 pages thick, tied together with a brittle piece of string. The very top page read, in bold calligraphy, “Poems,” and, below that word, the name “Donatien Alphonse François de Sade.”
*But how can that be?* Audrey wondered, once she’d recovered from her initial moment of shock. The Marquis had been a novelist, an essayist, and even a playwright, but not a poet. Yet, she was holding a handwritten manuscript, the front page of which asserted that he had, indeed, been a poet as well. Was it authentic? Well, who would go to the trouble to forge such a lengthy document, especially if they were only going to hide it in an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere?
It was easy enough to slip the wide loop of string off of the thick sheaf of paper. Taking care to keep the pages in order, she thumbed through them, and picked a poem to read, entitled, “Pearls.” It described a woman being whipped with a long cat-o-nine-tails that had strands of large pearls instead of leather lashes, and her punishment not ceasing until all of the pearls had shattered or snapped off of their strings when they struck her, bruising and often breaking her skin.
It was only half a page long, but by the time Audrey had finished it, she had stained the blanket with a fresh gush of passion, and she had no doubt that it and all the other poems in the stack had flowed from the Marquis’s pen. The words were so aphrodisiacal, she was too overwhelmed right then to read another page. She snapped the lighter shut and put it away, slid the string securely back into place around the manuscript, and put it into her shoulder bag to show to Moon later.
Just then, Moon returned with two tabs of Ecstasy. After what she’d just read, Audrey didn’t need the pill’s sensuous, hallucinogenic charge, but, it wasn’t about *needing* it. Doing X was about desiring, experiencing, enjoying, and desiring more, reveling in the very condition of *being* insatiable. She inserted a tab of it into Moon’s asshole, and Moon did the same for her—it stung, but the near-instantaneous high was always worth it.
With a moan, she held out her arms. She drowned and died and went to heaven between Moon’s legs, and then Moon was all over her. Audrey was on her back, and Moon and all of the stars in the sky were pouring themselves straight into her.

They had not forgotten why they were there. The party was just starting to wind down when Moon turned to her and said, “We should go out to see Angel, pay our respects.”
With a nod, she gathered up their clothes and other belongings, and followed at the end of her lead. On their way out the door, Moon procured another tab of X.
Angel’s gravestone wasn’t at all difficult to locate in the humble little fenced-in graveyard. It was surrounded by crude drawings in the dirt, discarded panties that were still wet, dripping, penis-shaped candles, and envelopes full of fan letters and dirty poetry. The stone itself was covered with a scattering of flower petals—many, though not all, of which had been crushed and bruised beneath the countless copulating mourners who’d visited her resting place during the night.
Moon laid Audrey out on the long, raised stone slab, and she felt for a split second like a sacrificial virgin being stretched out on an altar as part of some clandestine, blasphemous ritual. But she was certainly no virgin—she spread her legs widely and easily so Moon could insert the tab of Ecstasy deep into her gaping slit. Moon’s tongue found Audrey’s clit hard and ready.
Neon buzzed through Audrey’s veins, and a silver halo encircled the moon. The worms inhabiting Angel Love’s coffin, corrupting the structure of her corpse (as if that body could have been corrupted any further), were whispering to Audrey from six feet below. She could hear it in her bones. She saw the pungent scent of the flower petals wafting up around her in iridescent, translucent plumes as she writhed. Moon’s heart palpitated inside Audrey’s skull. Audrey’s bones were hollow and flutelike, like those of a bird’s, and her bandaged back was made of glass, glass that was spider-webbed with cracks. Moon lapped at her spasming slit, swallowing her sex-essence and getting high again herself off of what little bit of the melted Ecstasy tab hadn’t been absorbed through the walls of Audrey’s pussy.
Moon scooped up handful after handful of petals, sprinkling them across Audrey’s torso until she was draped in them. She caught Audrey’s wrists and pinned them to her sides, and went down on her again. To Audrey’s even further delight, as her tits heaved and she arched her back, she discovered that, without her trying or meaning for them to, one or two petals would slide off of her every now and then, simply from the natural movements of her body as she neared her next orgasm… and each time this happened, each time a petal slipped away, it felt, for all the world, like a shivery silken kiss. She was kissed all over, with a rainbow of lipsticks, and each kiss translated itself to an orgasmic contraction.
Moon mounted her, and the fragrant, cool petals still resting on Audrey’s skin—and there were plenty—were deliciously crushed in the grind and thrust of their lovemaking.

At dawn, the place cleared out quickly. Audrey guessed that, within half an hour or so, the average observer wouldn’t even be able to tell exactly what had happened there during the nighttime hours.
As they walked past Angel Love’s thoroughly-desecrated grave one more time, Moon waved and said, “Bye, Angel. We’ll miss you.”

Sometime during the drive back into the city, with the radio turned down low, Moon told her, “You’re coming along so well, I’m certain your initial training is going to be complete by the time we graduate, if not before then. And I’ve decided how I want to mark you as mine, when that time arrives: I want to brand you.”
This was better than anything she had dared hope for. “You’re going to *do* that?” she gasped.
“Well, not I personally, of course—I don’t know how!” Moon laughed. “But I’ve heard about how certain tattoo studios have people who can do it. I’ll do some asking around about a good one, and take you there when you’re fully ready. I won’t even tell you then, I’ll simply put you in the car and take you there. I’ll know when the time is right.”
Audrey nodded. “Do you have an idea of what you want branded on me?”
“Now, *that,* I’m going to have to give a great deal of thought to. Rest assured, I’m not taking this decision lightly. I’m not going to forget for one moment that this is a mark you’re going to be bearing for me, permanently.”
“And from there on out, I can call you ‘Mistress,'” she sighed happily.
Moon smiled, and corrected her, “No—from there on out, you *must* call me ‘Mistress.'”

They had a late breakfast—more like an early lunch, really—at an outdoor cafe.
“God, I am going to *crash* when we get back to the dormitory,” Moon was groaning.
“You and me both,” she agreed, starting to feel the full effect of the previous night’s exertions now that the food was settling in her stomach and she wasn’t just running on adrenalin anymore. “In each other’s arms, I hope?”
“Naturally!”
They stood up, and Audrey noticed an X-rated bookstore up at the very end of the block. This reminded her suddenly of the bundle of poems she had stowed in her shoulder bag.
“Oh, Moon, I’ve *got* to show you something when we get back to the car!”
“Can it wait until we get back to the dorm? I’m sorry, but I’m really feeling the need to get out of this sunlight and away from the noise.”
“Of course, that’s fine.”

“Oh, my God. Ohhh, my mother-fucking *God*,” Moon was saying as they lay stretched out, nude and freshly showered, together on her bed. She was staring at the manuscript in her hands. “Do you think it’s *real*?”
“I read one of the poems. Nobody but the Marquis could have written it.”
“Do you think we should hand it over to a museum or something?”
“What for? After all the censorship his published work has suffered, why even take the chance that one more book of his might be suppressed?”
“Ah, good point. More than likely, it would end up collecting more dust than it already has, and in some hidden museum vault, no less.”
Audrey laughed, “You haven’t even read any of it yet! Aren’t you curious?”
“Extremely!” She handed Audrey the manuscript. “Here, read one to me.”
Audrey selected a random page, and began to read one of the poignant, pornographic poems aloud. It was called “Chantal And Bernadette,” and it described a village woman’s seduction of a novice nun, which culminated in their consummating their lust in a thicket of roses, tearing off each other’s clothes and rolling and fucking and bleeding together.
Moon requested another, entitled “Scarlet Chamber,” about a man being branded, pierced, made to drink menstrual blood, and put into a cage lined with iron spikes—his three Mistresses stuck hot pokers through the bars at him from all sides, and he had to either endure being singed, or throw himself against the spiked bars to avoid the glowing-hot tips.
Moon wanted to hear more, and Audrey read her one called “Snakes And Swans,” which was a lasciviously lilting, seven-page orgy of verses describing all manner of carnal juxtapositions of man, beast, and woman, including one about a servant who was forced by her Master to suck a horse’s prick while he watched…
Audrey had the vague sense that if she kept reading long enough, it would bring both her and Moon to spontaneous orgasms without their even touching one another.
But that was an experiment for another day.
The sheaf of yellowed paper was laid aside for the time being…
Pacing, it was all about pacing…
All thoughts of sleep vanished, and remained far from both their minds until night fell.