=My House of Incest=

Daddy spent a lot of time in the basement. No one knew what he did down there. "He's practicing his bowling," my mother said and left it at that. We knew enough to question her no further. Night after night, sitting in the family room, we heard the sawing, the hammering, and the clanging of pipes coming from under our feet. We heard the sound of women's laughter down below. We turned the volume on the television higher to hear our cartoons better. We did our best to ignore the racket. One day, daddy didn't come up for dinner when my mother called. "Go get your father," she tells me. "Tell him dinner's ready." Why me, I think, it doesn't seem fair but I go down the stairs to find him all the same. Someone had to. Every story needs a sacrifice. I mean, a hero.

I guess it has been a long, long time since I've been in the basement because it seems a lot larger to me than I remember it. What I recall is a damp, poorly-lit, concrete room with a furnace, a dartboard, and a disordered workbench. Now the one room leads to another, which opens onto another, etc. There is an entire labyrinth of rooms beneath our house. Each is rough-hewn, unplastered, hastily hacked from the raw earth, as if my father, not finding what he was looking for in one room, his car-keys, for instance, impatiently abandoned it for another. And now I feel like I am following in his footsteps. Because I find no answers in the room I'm in, I imagine another and another. I am continuing my father's work.

 I walk for what seems a very long time, calling out, "Dad? Daddy? Poppa?" but there is no answer. After a time, I grow tired and frustrated. I don't want to admit it but I am also frightened. I decide I'd better turn back and tell mom I can't find him before I get hopelessly lost. But when I turn around I realize it is already too late. I have no idea where I am or how to find my way back. Every room looks exactly the same and there seems to be thousands of them. This is the real house, it suddenly occurs to me, the house beneath the house we all thought we were living in. Now that I know the secret I have to tell someone. 

I find a broom standing against a wall in one of the rooms and thump it's handle hard against the ceiling. I stop and wait and thump again. There is no answer from above. Instead I hear one of my siblings turn up the volume on the television, just as we'd always done. Mother, you sent me down here to do a man's job, but I wasn't a man. I wasn't even a boy. Nor were you a mother or even a woman. It was a case of mistaken identities all around. We were both virgins and this labyrinth was intended to be our tomb. The truth is slowly dawning on me. I am fated to live alone with my father's secret. What was he thinking, this man who was not my father any more than I was his child? What was the purpose of this labyrinth? Did he hide his sin down here, his monster, the thing that was never to see the light of day? Had he ever bowled a perfect 300 game? I will be down here forever trying to answer these questions. I will live in fear of finding the monster who will devour me when at last I stumble upon the final room in this maze. But every room is the final room and I am the monster in every one.

=Mother-of-Someone=

 What kind of anti-social dysfunctional asshole goes to a wedding with a book under her arm?

That's what the-mother-of-someone really wants to know.

She's taken a seat next to me outside of a secret bathroom for use only by the wedding party.

Dammit, just my luck.

I stumbled upon it by accident, looking for the most out-of-the-way place to which I could retreat from the menagerie in the main hall, all those nightmarishly looming faces, booming voices, and bared teeth.

Somewhere on the periphery, where the volume of the thought-pulverizing band is reduced to something approaching ignorable, something that could arguably be the bruising soundtrack of someone else’s life.

"What are you reading that's so interesting?" she asks, smiling, forcing herself to look semi-amused at my literary dedication.

Me, the backward, bookish, boorish wallflower at the ball.

The cutting of the cake, the tossing of the bouquet, the moving exchange of individually composed vows, the cocktail hour, the people you haven't seen in ten years, won't see again in another ten, and wish you wouldn't have to see ever again if you live to be two hundred.

That’s not enough for you?

That’s what she really wants to ask and who can blame her?

Instead, here you are, by the secret pissoir, reading?

And not your iPhone, but a freaking book?

What, pray tell?

"Dennis Cooper."

I flash her a look at the cover, singularly unpleasant, illustrated with a grotesquely phallic pickle.

"I don’t think I ever heard of him," the mother-of-someone says.  She's unconsciously picking imaginary cooties off her lap that she fears she's caught from such close proximity to yours truly."Is he any good?"

"He's a disquieting genius," I say, quoting the blurb from Vanity Fair that's featured across the pickle. “He’s Bret Easton Ellis before there was a Bret Easton Ellis,” I add my own imaginary blurb.

"So you like it?"

 I should just say “yes” and leave it at that but instead I hear myself saying:

"Well all the gay sex doesn't do much for me. Personally I’m far from a prude when it comes to sex-stuff in general, but to tell you the truth, I can’t help but wonder is this representative of what gay men really do? It’s all so…so obsessively, monomaniacally anal. I mean, it isn’t the penetration and violation of that orifice for unnatural purposes that I find off-putting, lord only knows. It’s the unending descriptions of the licking, the sniffing, the tastes, the odors…asses are described like faces, with emotions and expressions, as if they were an entire cast of secondary characters in their own right. Correction, make that the main characters for which the people to which they are attached are little more than an Uber service ferrying them to various sodomistic rendezvous. That aside, though, I like the general idea of what he's trying to do. You know, the transgression and all."

Did I really say all of that or was I just thinking it?

How much did I say?

How much did I have to drink?

Was that vintage-age Xanax more powerful than I thought?

Have I become deranged?

"Is being gay really all that taboo nowadays?" she asks lightly, now plucking at her corsage.  “I thought it was fairly mainstream by now.”

She's not fooling me.

The mother-of-someone is as republican and straight as the day is long, even if she votes democrat.

Or says she does.

"No, but I’d venture that all the casual killing still is.  Half the people in this book get off on killing and the other half get off on being killed. I might be exaggerating the percentages a bit, but not by much. Necro-fetish. Yeah, I think that's probably still taboo."

"I see," she says, still smiling.  “That is disturbing, isn't it?”

“The really disturbing thing was that I didn’t find it that disturbing at all.”

Her eyes dart off to the sides.

Is no one coming on whose behalf she can excuse herself from my dark gravitational pull?

No.

You can almost hear her thinking, What the hell are they doing in that VIP toilet anyway?

She turns back, reluctantly, to me.

Social courtesy can be hell; it's like I'm punishing her with this fact, taking my revenge on a world of propriety and hypocritical politesse that I've always despised.

"Do you think real people actually have such a fetish?"

She asks the question as if she doesn’t really expect—or want—an answer.

This is where I should say that I have no idea.

This is where I should shut up.

Instead, I’m like the Ancient Mariner in the Coleridge poem of the same name.

I stoppeth my one of three.

I say, "Well, I don't fantasize about killing anyone. That wouldn't turn me on at all. But I can easily get turned on imagining being killed. But not by a gay guy. It would have to be a straight guy. Or guys. And it would have to be relatively painless for it to be sexy. But that's the problem. Even in fiction. It's just not realistic to stay sexually aroused while you're being beaten or stabbed or butchered. The characters who volunteer for death face that fact in the book and you'd face that in real life, too. The killers promise to make it as painless as possible but either they're lying to get the victim to go along with the fantasy or at some point they lose control and just start doing whatever they want, which is always pretty gruesome. You really can't blame them either, I suppose. I mean, they're taking all the risk by killing you. If they get caught, they're going to jail, even if you were a willing victim. Even if you sign papers, a contract, let's say. It’s not legally binding. You can’t legally give someone the right to kill you. Your life isn’t your own, when you come right down to it, sad as that is to say. So who can ultimately blame them? If they're going to put their own futures on the line by killing you is it really reasonable to suppose that they're going to let you dictate to them how they're going to do it? Don't you think they're going to go for their own peak experience and goddamn you? Are they really going to allow themselves to be topped from below? They'd have to really love you to allow that kind of extravagance and let's face it. What are the odds that someone who agrees to murder you really loves you? But that’s where the idea of sainthood comes in because the willing victims in the stories are sort of like saints, suffering for the ecstasy of others, and for their own ecstasy, or, at least, a kind of apotheosis through erotic agony. Think of that famous statue of St. Teresa of Avila, for instance. The one by Bernini.

Again, I wonder if I really said all this out loud. It seems hard to believe I did, even at my most inebriated.

The mother-of-someone sits there, jaw slightly unhinged.

I swear whatever corsage that is pinned to the front of her dress has shown considerable wiltage since she first parked herself beside me and no amount of fingering will revive it.

It looks like it suffered through one of those time-lapse photography things when summer turns to autumn in about three seconds flat.

"I should be getting downstairs," she says. "I think they're…well, I think they're doing something I should be in attendance for."

She looks vaguely worried.

“I thought I heard some kind of announcement.”

"Okay," I say brightly.

Later, I spot the mother-of-someone on the parquet floor in front of the melting ice sculpture—once a swan now a dwarf twisted with some kind of horrible degenerative bone condition—slow-dancing with her husband.

She presses her lips to his ear and whispers something to him and he cranes his head up over the crowd to get a better look at me.

He's never had much use for me up to now.

In fact, this may be the first time he's ever really noticed me.

Later still, as the die-hards hunker down for the long bitter end ahead and the band gets increasingly peevish  and aggressive in the face of  their inability to drive them home with the most terse and hostile renditions of “I Need a Hero” and "It's Raining Men," my boyfriend and I say our good-byes.

The mother-of-someone looks past me with an air-kiss that safely flies high above my cheek.

She says how good it was to see me while making eye contact with the next person in line.

Her husband gives me a hug.

I feel his knobby little fingers playing around on my butt as if they were exploring combinations of buttons on a game console, looking for shortcuts.

Forget it, you fat little sanctimonious toad, I'm thinking, I'd never let you kill me, not in a million years.

Then on the ride home, and again later in bed, I'm picturing random scenarios and there I am splayed on the buffet table and split down the middle, oozing warm stuffing, garnished with fruit, and the mother-of-someone's husband has his fist shoved halfway up my ass. 

I'm shocked to find him standing there.

He smiles and winks.

Then he flexes his hand, knowing full well what it will do to me. 

I guess it really is possible to learn something new about ourselves and each other, something that changes everything.

 Life really is full of surprises.

=ultimate hose=

"So, for future reference, that’s what a real man’s cock looks like, honey. Now you can understand—ahem—first-hand why I preferred Luis over you, can’t you? Of course you can. Any woman would. By the way, sweetie, you can stop pumping his cock now. You’ve gotten it plenty hard enough already. I’ll take over from here. You skip off and do the laundry or something useful. We’ll be down later.”

Yes, darling, that silly frilly little apron most definitely does have a purpose.

=Thought for the Day=

Be careful: this could happen to you!
I was once probably someone like you. Someone with a secret feminine self. I compulsively surfed through the internet looking for sissy and transgender sites, looking at pictures, reading stories, fantasizing about what it would be like to be a girl. It seemed so unrealistic, something so beyond the realm of possibility that I  took for granted it was all just grist for the masturbation mill. I started going to online chatrooms and hooked up with others who shared my fantasies and that made things a little more real—but not so real as to threaten what I then considered my real "real" life. There were some brief flirtations with meeting up with this or that online partner and I almost went through with it on several occasions, but then I'd always back out at the last moment. Yikes! What the hell was I thinking, I asked myself. How could I even consider meeting someone in real life? I never got a really good answer. I still clung to my "reality" as a man but in the background another part of me was always pulling in the opposite direction, intent on making me lose my grip.  Of course, I should have realized then that I was losing control of my "fantasy" life, that it was growing larger and more powerful, that it was subsuming, draining the life and color, the very reality out of what I'd considered up to then my real life.

It was inevitable that my marriage should suffer. I was, after all, imagining myself to be a woman even while making love to my wife. I never initiated what little sex we had and even then I would imagine that my wife was the man, or she was fucking me with a strap-on, or there was a man in the room with us, fucking us both. Neither of us were happy. I was spending increasing amounts of time in front of my computer screen, living my second life. She thought she had married a man and I was turning into something she hadn't planned on marrying: a woman. She didn't fully understand this at first, but when her dissatisfaction and suspicion reached critical mass she was driven to break into my computer and see what was going on;  she got an eyeful.

Divorce followed. Then a few more years where I dated women while fantasizing about becoming one. Still it didn't quite dawn on me. Still, I thought the idea of becoming a woman so preposterous, so impossible that by necessity it had to remain nothing more than a sex-fantasy.

Until, finally, after yet another catastrophic break-up and a half-assed failed suicide attempt, I said to myself why not? Why not give it a try? Buy a wig, put on a nightie and heels, take a selfie, post an ad on Craiglist. Offer guys a no-strings-attached blow job. See what happens. If you're thinking of killing yourself anyway, what difference does it make what you do, what the consequences are? Death is the big eraser. Oblivion is your trap door, your escape hatch. You'll be long gone before the news hits the stands.

Well, I don't mean to write an entire autobiography here. I did something of the sort in my short collection of pieces "A Girl the Hard Way." My point is that if you've got a strong enough imagination a fantasy can start to concretize, take form in reality. It's like magic—actually, I'm convinced that this is what real magic is. So be careful. Your fantasies, especially your sex fantasies, culminating as sex fantasies so often do with the powerful energy release of an orgasm, can make things happen in the real world. In my case, they made me a girl. Not overnight, mind you. But over time, a kind of delayed spell, a slow-motion hocus-pocus that is, perhaps, less dramatic but no less magical than if  I'd just said "abracadabra I'm a girl."

So be careful what you spank your monkey to. Because you could end up like I did this weekend attending an out-of-town wedding wearing a little black cocktail dress and heels. Once, such a scenario was just a fantasy. Now, it's just another day in the life of a sissywife!

=betrayed=

As any good Jungian might have told him, Suzi was betrayed by his own shadow.

=My Dark Knight=

There's a man in my doorway. He's outlined in the cold blue glow from a streetlight. A black, man-shaped shadow, silent. At first it seems like he must be part of a dream. I shut my eyes. I open them again.

He's still there. It's no dream.

This can't be happening. 

My heart is beating out of control, skittering down a panic path.

He puts a finger to his mouth. If I could have screamed, I would have already. Now I know I better not.

He steps into the room, points a long dark object at me. Am I going to die? Is this it?

Suddenly I'm illuminated. In the spotlight of his flashlight. I'm sitting up now. What does he see? I'm wearing a small black nightie, a pair of red panties. My hair is tied in a high ponytail.  No one is supposed to see me like this.

He steps to the side of the bed, yanks the sheet off me. He plays the flashlight over my body, like an interrogating, all-seeing eye. It travels slowly over my smooth body, from my head all the way down to my freshly painted toes, and then slowly back up again, lingering at my frilly panties, and continuing on to my terrified face. What did he see when the light paused in the vicinity of my genitals? Did it show?

"Please," I dare a whisper. "Whatever you want. Just take it. I won't say a word. I promise. I won't call the police or anything. Just don't hurt me."

"Shut up," he says, but not cruelly. Quietly. Totally in control. There is something strangely comforting about his calm. As comforting as it is terrifying. Like the voice of fate. It's the voice that says you can give up now, stop fighting, there is nothing you can do to change anything. It is what it is. Let it go.

"I plan on taking what I want," he says. "I don't need your permission. Or your assurances. I'm sure you won't tell anyone. Let alone the police."

What does he mean he's sure I won't tell anyone? I want to beg him not to hurt me again. I'm not ready to let it go, if letting it go means dying tonight. But he's already told me not to say anything. I start asking myself wild, desperate questions. Can I jump out of bed and get past him? If I could only make it to the front door, into the hallway, and start screaming for help. Someone else in the building is sure to hear me.

Then again…what would they think if they saw me dressed like I am? For crissakes, I have bigger things to worry about than that now!

It's all nonsense. I'm not making a break for it. I'm too paralyzed by terror. I'm not a fighter, never was. I would never make it, anyway. He'd be sure to catch me. God knows what he might do to me then. Better to just do what he says. Be obedient. That's more my style. Hope that he won't hurt me. Hope for the best.

I try not to look at his face. I don't want him to think I'm storing up details to describe him later. But he's right. I won't call the police. How does he know?

"What do you want?" I ask, not sure I really want to know.

"Turn over," he says in that same calm, deliberate authoritative tone.

"I should tell you something…"

"Turn over."

I do as he says. I notice that he's wearing gloves. 

"Put your hands behind your back."

I cross my wrists and he binds them together with what I take is a plastic zip-tie. He tightens it so tightly I whimper in spite of myself. Then he pulls my elbows together and binds them, too. He seems to have come prepared. My face is buried in the pillows. 

"Get your ass up."

"Please. Let me just say one thing. I should tell you…"

"I don't want to but I'll gag you if I have to."

"I just should tell you…"

He presses my face deep into the pillow until I can't breathe. When he figures I've got the message, he eases up. He's yanking my panties down now. Is it possible he won't notice? I'm not big to begin with and I'm so terrified I feel like whatever's there has pulled back inside my body. Maybe in the darkness he won't see what's between my legs. Just so long as he doesn't try to fuck me where there isn't any road to hoe.

"I already know what you're going to tell me."

"You do?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Okay."

He's gotten up on the bed, positioning himself behind me. I feel his cock, hard, hot, pressing insistently up against my sissypuss. I do my best to meet his thrusts, to open myself up. He's wearing a condom; at least it feels as if he's wearing a condom. I can feel what seems like lube to me and I doubt he's brought lube along to rape me. It's all greasy back there. Still, it's not easy going. 

"Relax," he says. "I don't want to hurt you. Don't make me hurt you."

I don't want you to hurt me either, I think. But how am I supposed to relax? If only I could know for sure that he isn't going to kill me. Or beat me. Maybe with a little reassurance on that score, I could do better. I want to say this to him, but I'm afraid to say another word. He's half inside me now, thrusting and grunting and forcing himself in the rest of the way. He doesn't need my help. So I let myself leave my body. What's going to happen is going to happen. There's nothing I can do about it. I guess I knew this all along. But at this point I accept my fate, whatever it's to be. I wonder how he knew what to expect when he pulled down my panties? I'd like to ask him. 

He's shoved all the way inside me now. Fucking me. Of it's own accord, my body moves in unison with his thrusts. Meanwhile, my consciousness, the part of me I think of as me, has detached itself. I'm floating around up in the corner of the room, looking down on my body being fucked on the bed by this masked stranger. What a compliant little whore my body is. Who is that masked man, I wonder. Maybe I'll never know. 

He may, after all, kill me. There's a fairly good chance of that, I consider, with an objectivity that scares me, momentarily, into not being quite so objective. 

I'm almost frightened back into my body.

No…wait a moment, I tell myself. Stay here. Watch. You're safer where you are.

So I watch the man in black thrusting in and out of my small, vulnerable, half-naked body. He's got one black-gloved hand placed almost casually on my naked left shoulder. Watching, hovering safely out of harm's way from the corner of the room, it all looks kind of sexy, like watching it on the computer. I feel myself getting turned on. What, pray tell, is getting turned on, though, if the physical part of me is down there getting fucked. Is this a kind of dream, then? If so, it proves that sex really is at least half in one's mind.

He's breathing harder and I can tell he's reached the point of no-return. Me, too, in my own way. He grips my shoulder tighter now, thrusts deeper, grunts, and with a muffled series of obscenities, unloads deep into my ass. He continues pumping into my compliant, boneless body, driving my face repeatedly into the banked pillows, until he slows and, at last, stops, spent and relaxed—at least for the time being. 

At some point I've returned to the body on the bed. It must have been the orgasm, I decide, that drew me back, in spite of the danger. Well, I'm stuck in the flesh now, it seems, at least for the time being. I'll have to pay the price, whatever it might be. 

I feel him withdraw his penis, not quite detumescent, but going in that direction, still thick enough to make me gasp as it pulls out of me, leaving me suddenly unstoppered.

What now, I wonder? Maybe he'll just leave, his work done. Maybe he'll just forget about me, if I lay here quiet enough, unmoving.

He's up off the bed, tucking himself back into his pants, I figure. 

I feel quite ruined. My panties yanked down around my thighs, my nightie rucked up over my hips, and my poor sissypuss ravaged, sore and still gaping open in the shape of his massive cock, oozing his fluids.

"Come on," he says. 

He yanks me off the bed by my bound arms and waits for me to gain my footing. Then he marches me out stumbling to the kitchen. 

What now, I wonder?

"Make some coffee." 

It seems an odd request, all considered. 

"My hands," I say, lifting them behind my back as best I can.

He has a knife, of course. He opens it with a practiced flick of his wrist. So nonchalant. The blade looks like the lower jaw of a small alligator. I don't want to see any more of it than I already have. I turn away, just in case, but feel him hold the plastic carefully away from my wrists, then from my elbows, sawing them free.

"Thank you."

The first thing I do is reach down to pull my panties up. I feel like I might be bleeding back there, but when I surreptitiously touch myself, my fingers come away only with what look like lubricant and cum. That's a relief. 

I wash my hands in the sink. They're trembling in spite of the hot water.

I set the filter, scoop out the grounds, fill the carafe. I turn on the coffee maker. 

"Would you like something to eat?" 

He's lit a cigarette. He's still wearing the ski mask. It's adding to the surreal quality of this whole encounter. He's staring at me like he's evaluating me for something.

"Make me a sandwich."

"I don't have any meat. I'm sorry. I'm a vegetarian."

"What have you got then?"

"I've got…" I pull open the refrigerator door. "Some fake chicken. Some meatless meatballs. Some spaghetti….actually it's yam spaghetti but it tastes pretty good. I've got some barley.  Cheese…I can make you grilled cheese. Or a cheese omelette. If you like. Umm…"

"Jesus Christ. The coffee will be enough."

"I can bake you something."

"Forget it."

"I'm sorry."

"I see how you keep your figure. You don't have any real food."

"Thanks," I say, then blush, embarrassed that I took what he said as a compliment rather than a commentary on the deficiencies of my cupboard. 

Meanwhile, the coffee machine hisses and sputters. 

"I'm going to make myself tea if you don't mind."

"Knock yourself out," he says, looking for somewhere to put out his cigarette and deciding to just crush it out in the sink. 

"Coffee this late will just keep me awake all night."

He looks at me as if I were deranged. 

"I mean…well, I guess I won't be getting much sleep tonight as it is. What time is it anyway?" 

He doesn't answer. I get the feeling he's not in the habit of answering stupid questions. The clock on the microwave is, however. It informs me of the time: 3.48.

"I'll probably call in sick to work tomorrow," I say, hopefully. I fill the teapot with water from the sink tap. I have to practically rub elbows with him to do so. It makes me feel lightheaded. He doesn't say anything ominous, like about me never having to worry about work again.

He simply nods noncommittally. "You got a garbage can somewhere?"

He's still holding the crushed stub of cigarette. "Oh, yes. Sorry. Here, let me take that." 

By now there's enough coffee in the carafe to pour him a cup. I set the teapot on the burner.

"Milk? Sugar? Actually, it's Truvia, but it tastes even better and no calories. I don't have real sugar."

"Naturally. Just make it black, okay?"

He's having his coffee. I'm waiting for the tea to come to a boil. He's not going to kill me, I'm telling myself. Men who break into your apartment, tie you up, and rape you in the middle of the night don't stand around the kitchen having a coffee and a chat with you before stabbing you to death. Do they? How would I know? I don't suppose there are any set rules governing this sort of thing. I watch the teapot. My favorite cat mug from the American Folk Art Museum waits patiently on the counter with its teabag and its spoonful of Truvia just like it has on a thousand other mornings. Will this be the last time?

"A watched pot never boils," I shrug apologetically. I don't plan to say anything but it just sort of comes spilling out. "You're not going to…you know…hurt me or anything, are you? I mean, there's really no need to. I mean, unless that's what you're into. Then I guess it's not even a matter of needing to do it. It wouldn't matter that I'll never tell anyone or report it to the police. My reassurances on that score are meaningless." I frown, as if this were just occurring to me, which it is more or less. "I probably shouldn't be giving you any ideas, huh? As if I needed to. As if you aren't already way ahead of me in thinking this through. Maybe I don't want to even know what you're thinking. You know what? I don't think I even want tea anymore. I don't know what I was thinking."

"Shut up will you?"

I nod. I feel my knees buckling. I grab hold of the counter.

"Dammit, don't start crying now. What the hell are you crying about?"

That's how I realize I'm crying. Because he's told me not to. I've started to cry without even knowing it.

"I don't know."

"That makes a helluva lot of sense."

"Well, I do know. I just haven't wanted to say it."

"Maybe it's better if you do."

Up to now, I've been trying to avoid saying the obvious. Almost as if I don't say the words, they won't occur to him. It's stupid, of course. Nothing but superstition. A kind of magical thinking. Still, I hesitate. Then I decide to just blurt it out. 

"I don't want you to kill me, okay?"

He laughs. Not a maniacal, scary-movie laugh, though. It's a normal, human laugh. Friendly, even.

"If I were going to hurt you, don't you think I'd have done that by now?"

"I don't know. It occurred to me earlier that you wouldn't be hanging around having coffee and asking for a sandwich…but how do I know? I've never been in this kind of situation before. This is a first for me. Maybe it happens all the time. A guy asks you to make him a snack and then he kills you."

"Maybe. To tell you the truth, I wouldn't know either. This is the first time I've ever done anything like this myself."

"You're kidding. Really?"

"Really. That surprises you?"

"Frankly, yes."

"Why?"

"Well you were very…you know…just very good at it, I guess you could say. Very convincing."

He laughs again, the same friendly, normal laugh as before. "Thanks. I think."

"So what do we do now?"

"Beats me. Any suggestions?"

"Could you take off your ski mask?  This would all be a lot less scary if you did. And I cross my heart and hope to die I'm not going to call the police or anything."

"I don't think I'm comfortable with that. Sorry."

"Okay. I just thought we could be, you know, like friends. Or something."

"Are you sure you don't want that cup of tea?"

I eye the teapot. "No, I don't think so. Not right now."

He helped himself to another cup of coffee. "Let's go sit inside for a minute okay? We can talk more comfortably there."

I followed him into the living room. I was feeling a lot better now. It occurred to me that this was part of his plan. To act friend, get me comfortable, and then strangle me to death. I tried not to let myself think about that, though. I forced all such thoughts out of my mind. 

He sat in a wing chair and I sat across from him on the couch, my legs tucked up under me. Looking at him now, I couldn't help but wonder. Did I know who he was, had I seen him before somewhere, maybe even without knowing it? Was he some guy in the building who'd caught a glimpse of the girly things in the laundry room and knowing I had no girl living with me, none that ever even visited, put two and two together? Was it someone who'd been spying on me? Someone in an apartment across the street who'd caught a glimpse of me through a carelessly uncurtained window? Maybe even a work colleague, someone from the IT department who'd eavesdropped on my computer communications? More likely, it could be someone I'd chatted with online, maybe even sexted or role-played with. I thought I'd been very careful about shielding my online identity but there were times in the heat of the moment when I'd let my defenses down. Who knew what clues to my real identity I might have let slip? And no one's computer security was 100% unbreachable nowadays. How many identity thefts and hacker scams, how many whistle-blowers and Edward Snowdens did we need to point that out to us?

The simple fact was that I hadn't a clue to the identity of my mystery man. He could have come from anywhere and once he left, disappeared back into anywhere. I hadn't even been able to garner any clues from the way he talked or moved. He didn't remind me of anyone I knew. He hadn't removed his black gloves. I couldn't  see enough of his eyes or mouth from around the cutouts in his mask to even tell if he were black or white, Asian or Hispanic. His voice betrayed nothing of his ethnic or racial identity. He was a total mystery.

I waited for him to speak. He seemed to be searching for the right words. What, I wondered, could he possibly say under the circumstances?

"Listen," he said at last. "I understand this was very upsetting to you and I'm sorry for that. If I could tell you who I was—my circumstances and whatnot—you'd understand. But that isn't possible. At least not now. Probably, to tell you the truth, it will never be possible. I've been watching you from a distance for some time now. That's how I knew about you, why I wasn't surprised, why no explanations were necessary. Like me, you're existing in the shadows, on the fringes of your real life. Maybe one of these days you'll come out in the open. I can see that potential for you. It's possible then that I might be able to unmask myself and meet you in the light of day. But that's getting way ahead of ourselves, of where we are here and now, tonight."

I wasn't sure what to make of what he'd said. If he'd meant to clarify things with this little speech, it hardly helped. I was even more mystified than I was before. He seemed to imply that maybe I did know who he was, after all. I could foresee that from now on I'd be looking at every man I met with a careful eye. I'd be searching for a clue. A mannerism. A tone of voice. Anything that might bear a resemblance to my mystery man. And, still, I'd never be 100% sure.

"Will I see you again?"

"Do you want to?"

What a question! This man had broken into my apartment, terrified me half out of my wits, tied me up and raped me against my will. Then demanded a cup of coffee. Now he wanted to know if I wanted to see him again!

There was bizarre and then there was Bizarre. I was astonished at the depth of absurdity to which my life had evidently sunk in just one evening! 

Did I want to see him again?

Yes! Dammit, yes. And that may have been the most bizarre and absurd thing of all. I did want to see him again.

He smiled. It wasn't easy to detect a smile from under a black ski mask, but I could tell he was smiling. I'd already become sensitive to what minimal expressions the mask permitted him to reveal of himself.

"Good," he said. "I'd like to see you again, too."

"Would you like my phone number or my email address or….something?"

"I know where to find you."

I blushed. "A blonde moment. I'm sorry. What a dope I am. I guess you do. What about a key? Would you like one?"

"I didn't have any trouble getting in."

"No, you didn't. How did you, by the way?"

"My secret."

"Well, will you call first next time? So I can be sure I'm ready for you? I mean, I would hate to be unprepared. I might not be, you know, dressed and stuff. I'd like to have something on hand, too, in order to make you a decent sandwich."

"Always be ready."

I could see that there was no way I was going to move this unorthodox arrangement into anything like an orthodox relationship. I would risk driving him away if I continued to try. And I didn't want to drive him away, this strange masked man, my intruder, my rapist, who seemed to know everything important there was to know about me. In some ways, maybe more than I even knew myself. He would come and go as he pleased, if he pleased, and I would keep myself ready for him. On call always, for whenever he wanted to take me. Those were to be the non-negotiable terms of our "relationship."

"Is that acceptable to you?"

"Yes," I said. 

"Good. Now come here." He put the coffee mug on the lamp stand beside him. "I want you to do a little something for me before I go." He reached down and unzipped himself.

His cock, growing ever harder as I watched him extricate it from the front of his pants, was thick and ruddy, rising out of a nest of neatly trimmed black hair. It was the first clue I had as to his identity. Not much of one, admittedly.

I knelt down between his spread knees and took his heavy testicles in my cupped hands, caressing them gently, holding them up to my lips, and then kissing them with what I can best call an attitude of reverence. When I felt them tighten in my palms, I slowly began licking his balls. He sighed and slid down a little further in the chair to give me better access. "That's good baby. That's the way to do it."

When I sensed his readiness, I lifted my head and put his cock in my mouth. He still tasted faintly of the rubber he'd worn to fuck me earlier. But the petroleum-based taste wore away quickly. Soon enough, he tasted like man, then like flesh, and finally like my own tongue. It was a phenomenon I'd experienced before, of course. It had surprised me the very first time I'd sucked a man's cock. Now, although it didn't surprise me quite so much, the realization that we all tasted the same under our differences, still had the power to please me. Who knew that sucking cock could have a genuine spiritual dimension? 

There was nothing particularly spiritual about what my masked intruder was saying now, his hand firmly at the back of my head, the better to shove his cock as deeply as possible down my throat. 

"Take it you sissy cumslut, take it you fucking pansy. Swallow that cock. You want it, don't you, faggot? Pussy. Fake girl."

I didn't take offense. It was just sextalk, cum-talk. And it was true, what he was saying, wasn't it? I was the things he was calling me. So what? I'd heard worse in role-play sex online. I called myself worse in fantasies while masturbating. The humiliation turned me on. Why stand on ceremony? Why deny it? I could feel my little clittie throbbing as his cock fucked my face. I could feel the damp patch in the crotch of my panties.

He put his two gloved hands around my throat and instinctively I knew that meant he was about to come. He squeezed firmly, steadily, and I could feel the pressure building slightly behind my eyes, hear the buzzing inside my ears. I wasn't scared, though. I wondered how long he would continue to tighten his grip. Would I pass out before he came? Then what? It came out of the blue—my own orgasm—a bursting flood of warmth that bathed my crotch like a golden corona, emblazoning my panties. At the same time, his cock began disgorging it's contents down my constricted throat. I went limp all over. I think I might have briefly lost consciousness. Was this where he killed me, after all? If so, it wasn't so bad. I didn't mind. I could accept it. Really, it wasn't such a bad way to go. 

He held me up like a half-strangled chicken until he emptied. Then he let me go. I choked and spluttered, lying there on the floor at his feet, utterly conquered. My face was a mess. Wet and hot and covered with saliva and cum. I didn't want to lift it. I didn't want him to see. But he commanded me to do so.

"Look up."

I did so, adoringly.

"Don't ever forget this moment."

"I won't."  Like how could I, even if I wanted to, right?

"What did you say? I didn't hear you."

"I said I won't."

"Look at me."

I hadn't realized I'd looked away until he leaned forward and grabbed me under the chin. He was so quick I never saw his hand coming. He lifted my face to his. The eyes behind the mask were dark and glittering. His voice was rough with a kind of raw passion I'd never had anyone direct toward me. 

"I mean it." He sounded sexy and pissed off and dangerous.  But this time I wasn't just scared, like I'd been before. This time I was also inexplicably, ragingly, turned on. I was  more turned on than I'd ever been in my entire life.

"I'm not fucking around with you," he growled. "From this moment on, I own you. Do you understand?"

I nodded vigorously, as best I could. "I do. I understand. You own me. From this moment on."

He was still holding me tight enough around the throat that the words came out, well, sort of strangled and high-pitched. Like I'd taken an inhalation of helium.

"Okay," he said, and relaxed his fingers. "Just so we understand each other." He pushed himself up from the chair and stood over me. "Don't get up. I'll show myself out." 

And that was it. He left without another word.

For a long time I stayed there on the floor, collapsed, like a pretty paper parasol turned inside out in a violent storm. When I finally got up, I was unsteady on my feet. I weaved my way into the kitchen and turned on the electric burner under the tea kettle. I would finally have that tea. My hands, I couldn't help but notice, were trembling, even worse than before. I took a Xanax with my tea. 

Then I took another.

Since that night, I've been waiting, just as he told me. I want to be ready when he comes. Meanwhile, as if in preparation for his return, I find myself pushing the boundaries further and further every day. As if by becoming more a girl, I'll magically bring him back quicker. Whereas I used to dress androgynously in public, now I've moved decidedly into the feminine realm in my wardrobe and general appearance. My hair, which had been on the long side, I now wear in a high ponytail or clipped back, always with bangs. More often than not, in public, people take me for a woman. At work, where they know better—actually, where they don't know better—I can sense that they're talking about me when I'm out of earshot. I see the way they look at me when they think I'm not aware. There are rumors going around, one of my colleagues, has warned me. "You better be careful. Official policy or not, they have ways of getting rid of people who…well…don't fit the company image." When I asked him for specifics, he said he didn't feel comfortable saying anything more. He's avoided me ever since. So has everyone else. 

That's okay, I'm probably better off looking for a more suitable job anyway. I'm thinking of signing up for an adult education beauty school class.

On the weekends, I let myself go full-on girl. I dress for the market in mini skirts and cute tops, throw a short-waisted sweater on if it's chilly, or a pink hoodie. I wear sandals and short flirty dresses in bright prints. I feel more comfortable in my skin. I like this new, feminine me. I've begun seeing a therapist who specializes in gender issues. With her recommendation, I have an upcoming appointment with a physician who will evaluate me and, if all goes well, as expected, I will shortly begin hormone replacement therapy.  

In the evenings, I prepare myself like a bride, fixing myself a scented bubble-bath, making sure my nails are carefully polished, my hair done just right. Then I put on a sexy nightie, spritz on perfume, slide bangles on my wrists and ankles. I tie a pink bow on my sissy clittie, tuck myself chastely inside a pair of naughty panties. Finally, I lie down in bed. I read for a while, one of the hot erotic sissy stories I keep bookmarked on my computer, a story that I know will bring me to the brink, but I never let myself cum. Instead, when midnight strikes, I turn off the computer and the lamp on the bed stand and I slip down beneath the covers, every inch of me electric with sexual tension. I watch the doorway, always a little lighter than the surrounding wall, even in the pitch-dark. I wait to see the silhouette of my dark knight. 

I know that one day he will return just as he promised.