The Worm Turns: Chapter 1 The Seduction By Richard Gross Constructive comments welcomed: rgross@juno.com Hatred as overwhelming as her muscle. And, He's back. It's the worm's turn. Update: 10/01/1998 to gross Copyright 1991 by Richard Gross "J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage." "I alone hold the key to this savage parade." ----- Rimbaud The shock was mutual. Neither one would have guessed this could happen. Coincidences like this are too cruel. They don't occur except by some black cosmic joke. But there it was, and the realization jolted him like the crack of a giant bull whip. It took a moment for it to register on her mind. She had done nothing more unusual than open her front door dressed in her floppy warm ups when the bell rang. Her mind in the ether, as usual, soaring through the implications of a thousand details of a dozen projects, triumphs, defeats. She had been sprawled out in the other timelessness of her bedroom, where she was thinking through her latest plans out loud to her tape recorder. Her body answered the door; her mind two paces behind, above, below, wherever. Another instant and she recognized him. The shock on his face was a picture of her own. It had been years. And, they still loathed each other. He had always wanted to fuck her -- for him sex was only fucking, he could imagine it no other way -- but he was scared shitless of her. She had always wanted to humiliate him, him and the whole bunch of them, humiliate them past all reckoning, past all endurance, past the point where they could ever walk tall or look anyone -- much less her -- in the eye again. But, she feared the consequences. So, there he and she stood, mouths agape with a mixture of unmitigated hatred and horror; wanting to run, not willing to back an inch; frozen to their ambivalence: the bitch and the bastard. The ball was in his court, he knew, so he ran with it. "Jesus Fucking Christ, you're not...you're...you're... I'm supposed to see someone here about a fucking job! You're not the guy running the ad for a roady for that... uh that Vegas job?" She was the guy and he knew it now without a word from her. "No way I'm working for you... No way!" he said as if the very idea would devour him. "So, no one sucked your dick to my door," she hissed. "Why don't you just move it out of here?" Why not? he thought. Why aren't my damn feet walkin' me out a here right now? He knew why. The years hadn't changed her much. He recognized that same old stuff about her. How he had several inches on her even when he slouched, but he always felt small next to her. How he always felt he was looking up at her even as he looked down at her. And, how he never could look at her straight in the face. Afraid she'd know. How could she not? Look at her. He had never seen such raw physical or sexual power in any woman. Not twice her size. Even with her sweats masking her body, she exuded the stuff dreams are made of, dreams and nightmares. He knew what was underneath the clothes. It was those legs that always sent hot juices churning into his gut. There was a voluptuous fullness and sweep to her thighs that hinted of a power he rather not think about. Her calves too, he knew, had balled up from years of exhibition gymnastic dancing. That's where he'd met her. Working the set ups: running the wires, spacing the hurdles, prepping the kerosene torches, setting the hoop fires. Yeah, setting those damned fires; they'd burned hot in him too. So, he had watched those calves work from behind her, always behind her in the shadows...in the darkness, as she did her routine. Their imagined hardness had fascinated him...had first gotten him thinking. The thinking, the burning had come to own him in time. But, he'd never had the balls to confront her with it. Oh, he'd spit the obscene foulness of his heart out at her along with the others, but only with the others in the crew. They had all watched her those first few days of practice. They had seen her stuff through the baggy, uncomplimentary practice sweats. They'd all wanted a piece of her; some of the cockier bastards had said so to her face when they managed to get her alone. But, most of them, especially he, had blurted out their challenges, their veiled beggings in the safe company of the other stage donkeys. "Yeah," he would say, "Yeah," as the more verbally ballsy of them informed her through lying teeth that they would take her when they would...if she were lucky. And they would do her and she would love it and she'd never have it better because it didn't get any better because they would grind her and grind her and she'd scream and hate it and love it and in the end she'd want it and do it all anything they'd ask because she was only a goddamn fuckin' cunt on legs with a look in her eyes...with a look in her eyes...with a look that had frozen them where they stood and would have shamed them had they the sense to know it. So, she still had the power to freeze him with that look, and here he stood now, immobile at her door looking for a job, still waiting for some inspiration better than "Yeah, yeah" and the motivation to move himself from the spot. But, fear and pride denied him as they had denied the whole crew that first day on the road. He could still remember that first performance, that night her brief costume finally revealed the reality of all their worst fears and desires. That was the night they'd seen those legs...and the rest. Jesus, the rest. Bad enough a girl could have legs to make you want to run your hands over them and over them, to hug them to you like you hadn't hugged anything since you were a child, legs you wouldn't dare touch for anything, not anything... But, she had arms, frightening arms, beautiful arms, god she had arms that made the guys on the crew take furtive glances at their own. The abdominals didn't help either, or the cobra's hood spread of her back, for that matter. The boys with the balls were struck dumb finally when she stood momentarily at rest, gauging her last stunt. It was an unconsciously classic pose. Weight on one leg, the other forward, feeling out the risks; upper body twisting 'round slightly, the definition, the lithe hardness of her stomach implied, barely hinted at by the fit of her top; shoulders back, wide, their power surging downward through those arms. Atop it all was what gave meaning to her strength, what raised her short frame to heights that no one there could look down on. It was that face and what poured through it. More than just pride, more than just sexual or pretty beauty. It was a face which projected everything from sweet innocence and sarcastic humor to a killer flash of a smile, and that look of contempt that stopped you dead. It said, "I could eat you alive." And, she could. She could do them, and they all knew it then. It was that look that stopped him now, years later. That look and the body that went with it. It gave off the same old power, oozed that same thick sexuality. He didn't understand it now any better than he did then. But, he did know why he couldn't leave. He still wanted her, had to have her as badly as he was scared of getting her. And, he was scared of that like nothing he knew. It was fight or flight, and it was his pride which broke the stalemate. No bitch was going to make him turn tail. He stayed. "Really," she said again, "why don't you just move your dick out of here? We both know you're not going to work for me. You can't need a job that badly?" "Maybe I do," came the sullen reply. She hadn't expected that. She covered. "You can't think I'd hire you to ream my cunt clean." She liked the idea suddenly. All the old rage flooded over her. Six years of healing and trying to forget. Now, she opens her front door and thirty seconds undoes the work of all those years. They'd stopped trying for her shortly after the show went on the road. She couldn't figure it, but something had shut them down. They sabotaged her instead. It was a coward's way, childish. They'd given up, but they would make her pay. Hurdles distanced wrong, essential lights missing to show up her landing area for those crazy flips, torches that wouldn't light one night and damn near exploded the next when she complained. They would take their revenge and were outraged when she didn't submit to it. Fuck or be fucked, bitch, was the mentality. Fuck her they did. And now, five broken ankles, both broken arms, and six years later, she had to admit that she really liked the idea of him reaming her cunt clean. She almost smiled. He had to explain. "Haven't had a job worth a damn in a year or so. Things are rough. You know how it goes. Sometimes you get a fat cow to milk for a while, you know, like the one we was on together. That was really great...well we made some money, didn't we?...anyway I thought it was really great. Then sometimes you get a bunch of real duds..." He was prattling on and she was back in the ether again, remembering. She had hated them all. But he, this one, had inspired feelings of viciousness she had never known before. She didn't like that in herself. It wasn't worthy of her, she felt. She'd let this jerk get to her that way. "The last mother I worked for paid us minimum wage...that's not legal if the union finds out. And, you know what he has us doing?" Why had he gotten to her? He wasn't nearly as obnoxious as some of the other grunts. They'd been the ones who really assaulted her. She'd never forget the filth that poured out of their mouths. It was like an oral rape, and she always felt like scraping her skin down to the next epidermal layer after an encounter. Showering never quite did it. And, they had hurt her feelings, hurt her badly, though she never let them know it. Her pride was all she had, maybe, and she would tough it out and stare them down as best she could. "He has us workin' weekends for shit if we want to keep his regular job. An' he's got us -- get this -- building an addition to his friggin' house, a dressing room for his uppety little daughter. A sixteen year old piece of ass, an' she's gotta have a dressing room..." So, why him? He'd just stood around and agreed with the others: "Right on man, me too." Maybe that was it. Maybe at least the loud mouths had had the juice to say what they wanted. She'd give them that much. But this piece of shit. He never had the brains or the guts to face her alone. He wanted it, but only if someone else nailed it down for him. "I'd a liked to stick this little shit of a kid good and hand her back to her daddy with a smile on her face." So, she loathed him, and she used to dream about getting him alone sometime. Getting him where no one could hear and putting her legs around his neck so she could watch him and he would have to look at her and squeezing so slowly while she just watched and watched and... "But I knew if I touched his little darlin' I'd be out more than just pay, so I was scared and just kept workin'." But she knew if she ever touched him, word would get out, and the bitch would become the dike, and they'd replace her with some fuckin' dog show one day. So, she'd held it in and kept working. "But shit, man, I still think about goin' back there an' holdin' her down an' gettin' me a piece of that pussy to last me a good long while. Man, I could go for that. You know." "What?" "You know." "Yes, yeah, I know." And, she did know. There was a worm deep inside her and it was starting to turn around in there and she was getting warm with a mixture of hate and excitement and it was growing inside her, quietly and insistently. For a moment it scared her, but then she understood it and gave herself over to it. The worm turned again and she knew what she wanted. But, it was dangerous, really dangerous. The excitement flooded her vulva. "Yeah, I bet you do," he leered. She looked down a long tunnel to what she desired: dark, dangerous, exciting. It could destroy her if she didn't do it right. "So, maybe it's been a while for you too, huh?" he warmed to the idea. She had to have it the way she wanted it, but all nice and legal too. She had to have it both ways. But how? "Maybe you and me can work out a deal?" he tempted. The worm turned once more and she had it. Some part of her mind she didn't know about had it all, and in a flash she knew it had been there all the time, so very simple. Every step down that long tunnel lay exposed before her now and she knew what she had to do. She would love it. And so would he...in the end. "Maybe we should," she said. "Maybe I've got a job you'll like after all." And, she shot him that killer smile of hers, that ultimate smile, that smile that always set a twinge of something he could not name working in his scrotum, there just behind his testicles. "Let's go inside." She held the door open to him. He swallowed hard, forcing a smile back at her, astonished at his luck. Am I ever gonna get her this time, he swaggered to himself. Trying to keep the blood from flooding to his face as he followed the obsidian black opulence of her long hair bouncing a tantalizing micro inch above her butt. She knew she would need iron control to bring this off. A steely calm settled over the worm, putting it to sleep. She cut herself off from the tingling inside her...for now. She looked back at him objectively. He was flushed, what cool he had in headlong retreat. She knew it. He was all hers.