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                          Stiletto

     I pulled up behind the red Chevy pick-up and parked the
off-green one I had stolen earlier that evening.  I'd've
preferred to leave the engine running, but that tends to
attract attention, fast.  I grabbed the ratchet from beside
me on the seat and got casually out of the cab.
     I moved in between the two trucks and squatted down,
and set to work taking the license plate off of the red
truck.  It didn't take me very long.  Ratchet-ratchet-
ratchet and the screws popped off.
     I took the plate around to the back of the green chevy,
ratcheted off its plate and then put the red truck's plate
on the green truck.  I went back to the front, put the green
truck's plate on the red truck.  All the time I could hardly
breath and my heart was racing.  It wasn't thumping loud,
but I could feel it vibrating quickly in my chest.
     I was putting the second screw in the plate when I
heard the car.  The rumble of an engine and the sound of
tires on pavement.  I froze.  I strained my ears to see if
it was getting closer and slowly I realized there was
nothing to hear.  My mind had been toying with me.  Back
then, I still knew myself so poorly that I could fool
myself.  A child, a child.
     I finished up the screw and stood up.  I looked around.
There was no one around, no one to be seen.  It was a muggy
Tennessee night, and right now I seemed to be the only one
enduring it.  Even this little bit of work and excitement
had made me sweat.  I wiped my forehead and got back in the
green Ford.  The engine ground lazily for a minute, then
caught and started.  I backed up a bit and then was off down
the road.
     The truck was now "unstolen" for about two days.  It
could be months before the owner of the red truck noticed
the change and bothered to tell the police, but even back
then I knew to always work on a worse-case scenario.  Two
days for it to be noticed, reported, connected with the
original theft, and the information given to patrolmen.
Minimum.
     As I drove I slid the ratchet bag into my large gym-bag
that carried most everything I could ever need, and
definitely all I needed for this evening.  I pulled the .38
out of the bag.  It felt good in my hand.  It was heavy.
Logically, everyone knows a gun must be heavy, being so much
steel, but until you hold on in your hand and *feel* its
weight, you don't realize it.  You don't know the sense of
*power* that that weight sends shooting up your arm.  The
gun was cold.  I put the side of the barrel to my lips so
that I could feel the smoothness and the cool of it.  It
felt good.  At that time I still thought that a gun was the
ultimate weapon, that it was the strength I needed.  It was
a time before I learned that the mind, the human mind, the
thing which created the gun, was the ultimate weapon.  It
was even longer before I learned to turn their own minds
against them.
     But right then I had a gun and that was all that I
needed to practice my Art, in its then-crude form.

     I sat on a bench outside a closed boot store and sipped
at a beer.  I had a six pack beside me, and had emptied four
of the bottles onto the parking lot of the store I'd bought
them at earlier.  I was drinking the fifth, my first.
     And there she was.  As always.  It was well past 11pm,
and she had once again failed to find anyone to go home
with.  She was too picky.  I'd been in the bar before and
watched.  They talked to her, they bought her beers, they
smiled, she smiled, and then she suddenly had to get home--
get home alone.
     I watched her walk to her truck.  She wore tight blue
jeans which displayed her thick thighs and her wide hips.
Her hair was bleached to blonde and permed into a large pile
which hung down passed her shoulders.  She was attractive
now, but in the morning with no make-up she'd be frightful.
I casually wondered how many men she'd scared that way.  Was
that why she'd given up on going home with them?  Did they
cruelly tell her the truth?  Did they innocently tell
obvious lies?  Did she suspect the truth, did she know the
truth, did she blame herself, did she blame them?  All these
questions floated through my head as I took my six pack and
climbed into "my" Ford.  Back then I was dumb enough to
almost care about such things.  Though, in truth, those
kinds of questions would help me later, when I'd progressed
in my Art.  Right then they just cluttered up my mind and
clogged the workings of the thirty-eight.
     Again the lazy grind before starting, and then I began
following her.  Just until we were outside of town.  Of
course I knew where she lived, so I didn't need to keep her
in sight.  I followed her a bit farther out of town, and
then speeded up and passed her, continuing to pull ahead of
her until I was quite out of sight.  I drove on ahead most
of the way, then backed up a tree-hidden driveway and killed
my headlights.  I waited, fingering the gun, flipping the
safety back and forth.
     Once she drove past, I pulled out onto the road behind
her.  By the time I caught up to her she had pulled off into
her driveway and was out of her truck, walking up to open
the gate.  I pulled in behind her.  She was in the light of
her own headlights when she stopped and turned around to see
who it was.  All she could see was my headlights.  She put
up a hand to block the glare and said, "Hello?"  Then she
started tensely walking back to her truck.
     I cut my lights and got out of the cab and began to
walk towards her, my hand hanging at my side, holding the
gun.  She came around the front of her truck, realized she
had no idea who I was, and sprinted for the cab.  I just
kept walking.  She grabbed the pump shotgun from the rack in
the back of the cab and pointed it at me.
     "Stop right there, Mister," she said, clicking off the
safety.  I stopped and just looked at her standing there
with her back to the truck door and the gun leveled at me.
I smiled.
     "There're no shells," I said.
     "You want to find out?" she asked in her best bitch-
voice.  I could see her hands trembling.  The barrel of the
shotgun vibrated from it.
     "I know."  I started forward again, bringing up my hand
and pointing the gun at her.  "I broke into your truck this
morning and took them all out.  And the extras in the glove
box," I explained.
     Click.
     She pumped the shotgun and stuck it out at me again.
     Click.
     Again.
     Click.
     Again.
     Click.
     I grabbed the end of the barrel and jerked it away.  I
motioned her away from the truck.  She walked stiffly down a
few paces and stood near her back bumper.  She was visibly
shaking, and shot a glance down the road.
     As I reached in to put the shot-gun back in place, I
said, "Don't even think about it.  I'm leaving this God-
foresaken state tomorrow, so I have no problems with killing
you.  But I also have no reason to.  Don't give me one."  I
pulled out a rag from my pocket and wiped the shotgun where
I had held it.  I used the rag to turn off her headlights,
stop the truck and pull the keys from the ignition.  I
locked the door and closed it.  "Are you going to be stupid,
or smart?"  I asked.  "Or should I say, 'Are you going to be
alive or dead?'"
     She just looked at me.  "Here," I said, and tossed her
keys to her.  She clumsily caught them.  "Stick those in
your pocket."  I started towards her.
     "My purse," she said, then paused.  "All my money's in
my purse in the truck."
     I stopped.  "Don't lie to yourself," I said, "It'll
give you a complex."  I motioned with the gun towards her
keys.  "In your pocket."  This time she stuffed them into
her jeans pocket.  "Now turn around."  She did and I pulled
out the police handcuffs from my back pocket and cuffed her
hands behind her back.
     I pushed her towards my truck.  She stumbled a bit,
then walked slowly over to it.  I opened the drivers door,
and pushed the gun into her back.  "Get in," I said, "and
slide over."
     She did and I climbed in after her keeping the gun
pointed at her while I did.  That's the problem with guns.
They're directional.  You don't have to point a mind, it's
always on target, and in ways it's easier to hold onto.  But
most importantly, it's too damned easy for a gun to suddenly
be pointed the other way-- not so with a mind.  But I had a
gun then, and I used it.
     I backed out onto the rural highway and drove up the
road a bit.  I didn't pay her much attention, but drove with
one hand while the other kept the gun stuck into her side.
I drove a half-mile or so up the road to the next driveway.
It was still her fathers farm, but this driveway led into
the woods where he occasionally went to hunt or cut down
some firewood.  This wasn't inside the fences, though, so
there wasn't any gate.  I drove up the furrowed dirt track
into the woods, cut the lights and the engine.
     I climbed out, then said, "Come on," and waved the gun
at her.  She just sat there.  "Now!" I said, trying to
growl.  The tough-guy act never was my finest.
     She looked up from the floorboard where she had been
staring ever since she'd slid into the cab, and asked,
"You're not going to kill me?"
     "I hadn't planned on it," I said, "Unless you give me a
reason to.  And pissing me off qualifies as a reason."
Though I hadn't learned the usefulness of the mind as a
weapon, I did know one thing, even then: they *want* to
believe you.  You can lie all you want to-- they'll believe
you.  You can even be caught in your lies, and they'll
believe you.  You can lie, repent and tell the truth, and
then lie that the truth was a lie, and they'll always
believe the lie.  Only repeated obvious, disprovable lies
will convince them.  And I rarely knew them that long.
     She wanted to believe me.  And so she slid across the
seat and hopped unhappily out of the cab.  I waved her down
to the end of the truck, and then leaned in the cab and
pulled out my bag.  I tossed it into the bed of the truck
(Great name, eh?), and then walked around and lowered the
tailgate.  "In," I said, again attempting to growl, and
again sounding like someone with a respiratory infection.  I
knew I was a crude Artist, but I was working, I was
practicing, I was *learning*.
     She sat on the tailgate, which creaked a protest, and
then she kicked her legs up, rolled onto her knees and
crawled up into the bed.  I close the tailgate and climbed
over it.
     "Just lay on your front," I said, and she did.  Not a
sound, not a false move.  She knew that all she had to do
was endure and she would live.  I slipped the gun into the
small of my back, and then knelt down and straddled her
waist.  I dug into my bag and came up with surgical
scissors.
     "These clothes have to go," I said, starting to cut a
slit up one of her sleeves.  I did the other sleeve, and
then jerked the bottom of the shirt out of her jeans and
slit it up the back, which was a bitch to do around her
cuffed arms-- but I managed.  Physical restraints are never
as graceful as psychological ones.  I cut the shoulder
straps on her bra, and then unhooked it.
     I rolled her over and grabbed the front of her shirt
and bra in one fist and jerked.  They came off, and she
sucked in a gasp of air.
     She was attractive.  She worked on daddy's farm, and
had the strong, broad shoulders and muscles to prove it.
She had a little fat on her, thanks to old fashioned, deep-
fried southern cooking.  And she obviously came from old-
fashion southern stock and had the large watery breast to
prove it.  They were pale white with large pink nipples, had
never seen the light of day, and now lay there rolled to the
outside of her body.
     "Nice," I said, and ran my hand lightly around the
fullness of one of them.  And at the time I had meant it.  I
was still caught up in the realities, in the physicals of
things.  A stage, merely a stage.  It would be ended soon
enough.
     I leaned down and put my mouth to the nipple and
sucked.  It was nice.  It was soft and warm and close.  I
pulled the nipple into my mouth with suction and played my
tongue over it, relishing how it felt.  I stroked the sides
of the breast with my hand and gloried in its softness and
smoothness.
     I sat up and looked at her face.  I don't know what I
expected.  Maybe I was so sophomoric to believe she might be
enjoying it.  Her face however, showed the screwed up
concentration of endurance.  Of letting the universe wash
over her and then hopefully going away.
     Bitch.
     I moved down to her legs.  I pulled off her boots, and
tossed them over the side of the truck after the remnants of
her shirt and bra.  Her socks followed her boots.  Her pants
I slit up the side of each leg.  As I got to her thighs each
time, the fabric almost ripped itself, as the flesh locked
inside it strained to get out.  Her thighs were bigger than
I had thought.  I cut her cloth belt on both sides and with
the jeans still hanging on her, I cut the sides of her white
cotton panties.  Then I grabbed all three in a fist at her
front and slowly peeled them off.
     Her thighs were big, and her hips wide, and they had
seen about as much sunlight as her breast.  But they were
attractive.  Her legs looked strong under that layer of
cushioning deep-fried fat.  I took my hand and slid it up
the outside of her thigh, again pausing to enjoy the reality
of her, the warmth, the softness, the smoothness.  My hand
went to her waist, then slid across to the middle of her
front and down.  Her pubic hair was dark, and had never been
shaved, not even the bikini edges.  She was soft and even
warmer there.
     I resisted the urge to probe and discover her vagina
with my fingers; instead I moved up the bed and sat on the
tool box that was bolted behind the cab.
     "Come on," I said, "Now's when you get to prove that
you want to live.  Up on your knees; face me."
     Her clenched eyes dropped open, and for the first time
a bit of anger floated across her face.  But fear drowned
it.  She rolled onto her knees, and straightened up, facing
me.
     I looked into her eyes, and suddenly had to look away.
A child, a child.
     I unfastened and unzipped my pants, and pulled out my
penis.  It was quite hard by now, and the tip was slightly
moist.  I pointed it at her, looked back into her eyes and
waited.
     Her eyes shifted from mine almost instantly.  She
hobbled forward, and leaned down slightly so that her face
was right before my penis.
     Impatience talked, "Come on."
     Her mouth split open and she slowly brought it down
around my penis, then as it tapped the roof of her mouth in
the back, she closed her lips around it, and her tongue
pushed up against its bottom.  She pulled her head back and
I almost shivered from the sensation of her tongue massaging
my penis, and from her lips sliding along its length,
nursing my semen from me.  She began to suck slightly, like
a calf on an udder, caressing my own milk from me.  Back and
forth her head slid, the warm wetness of her mouth
enveloping my penis, bringing it and me to life.  I could
feel the roof of her mouth with my tip; I could feel the
ridges and the slope of it.  At times it would slip to one
side or the other and I could feel the smoothness of the
insides of her teeth.  And she kept suckling me until
finally my body relented and gave her my precious milk,
squirting it into her mouth, firing it down her throat, and
she swallowed, gagging.
     I must admit, I leaned back and sighed.
     When I looked back to her, she was on her haunches,
staring at me with hate.  There hadn't been hate before,
only fear and confusion, but now there was.  It was as if my
seed had taken root in her stomach, and, watered with bile,
had blossomed into hate in her heart.  But sometimes I get
too caught up in my own writing.
     She hated me, I saw it, I knew it, she knew it.  I
pulled the gun back out and showed her again why she did
this, why she was doing this.  I flashed my power before
her, and helped her fear win back control.
     "Good," I said, grinning, "Now I won't come too fast.
On your back."  I put the gun down on the tool box and
pulled my pants down over my hips-- but not too far.  She
laid down with her legs close together and pointed at me.
     "Spread your legs," I said.  And she lifted them
slightly, and spread them open for me.  "Wider," I said,
"higher."  She did.  "More!" I said, staring down into the
spread V of her legs at her waiting lips.  I knew that I was
seeing something more, I knew that something was about to
come to me.
     And then I learned.

     She lay there, naked and bare to the world.  No
protection, no armor.  And her legs were lifted high and
wide in an invitation to me.  Her white thighs made
themselves a soft, smooth passageway to find her, to enter
her, to put myself *inside* her and to use her to make me
orgasm.
     In that moment I learned that it wasn't about the
impulses that the nerve ending in my penis shot off to my
brain that tweaked some primeval pleasure center.  It was
about the symbols that my mind saw, the messages my
subconscious read scrawled on her body, her submission, that
said she was mine, her life was mine, her body was only
there to be a receptacle for the products of my pleasure,
her mind existed only to drive her body so that my body
could be made happier, so that I could feel pleasure.  Her
legs trembled as they jutted into the air, making a guide to
her use, and proclaiming that *I* and my Art were the whole
purpose for her existence.  She had no reason, no point
other than to be my tool.  I knew then what my Art was, I
knew then what my instruments were, I knew then what it was
that would set my intellectual pleasure centers alive.
     I sat there for a moment as this all swept over me.
And then I moved off the tool box and onto my knees over
her.  I lowered my hips to hers, guiding my penis into her
vagina with my hand.  I felt her lips sliding over the tip
and allowing the rest of the shaft in.  I pushed farther and
farther into her, my penis feeling harder and longer than it
had ever before.  It felt like every sword every swung to
cut off a man's head.  It felt like every stiletto that ever
found purchase between someone's ribs and slid into their
soft flesh and pierced their struggling heart and killed it.
     I pushed in until my hip were against the insides of
her thighs.  I lowered myself down till I could feel her
breast pushing up against me, and I could look into her
face.  I was over her, the reality only showing the Truth,
the philosophical truth of our positions in the Universe.
     Art is meant to show truth, and I was showing my Truth,
the truth that was her relationship to me, and I began to
pound into her.  My hips up and down, harder and harder.
Every cry that escaped her lips were the music to my
performance, the tears that leaked from the edges of her
clenched eyes as I watched were liquid diamonds, pure and
beautiful.  Harder-- harder-- faster-- faster.  In.  In.
In.  In.  She waited and grunted and took it, her only
reason, her only purpose in existence: to be there when I
came to catch my sperm like a mortal catching the dropped
gift of a God from on high.
     I kept driving into her, the Truth as I saw it then
flashing through my mind and finding expression in my
actions.  Until finally I came, spouting joy and truth and
beauty.
     I relaxed slowly afterwards, lowering myself down onto
her, feeling her breath gasp in and out beneath my weight.
     I separated from her and stood up, pulling up and
fastening and zipping my pants.  I looked down at her,
laying there, her legs slightly apart, her breast spread
too, her face still clenched but smoothing even as I watch.
I'm sure she thought it was over.  She'd succeeded.  She'd
survived to spend another day not realizing her reason for
living.
     She'd had the Truth squirted into her and probably
still she would deny it.  But it didn't matter.  I let the
tailgate down, then grabbed her by her shoulders and dragged
her out of the bed.
     At first she hung limply, but then she found her legs
and stood herself up-- a little weakly.  "Over here," I said
and lead her by her arm off of the road.  "On your knees," I
said, and gave her a shove down.  She dropped heavily into
the ground clutter, but stayed upright.  I went back to the
truck and got the gun, and the gas can from the tool-box.
     "I'm going to clean off my finger-prints," I said, and
started dumping the gas on her back and down her front.  She
jerked when it first hit her, and her head, which had been
hanging, snapped up and she looked me in the eyes.
     She'd receded far, very far to get away from me.  Her
eyes were nearly blank.  She was deep down in them, but I
saw them in there.  I saw the hate, the fear, the sadness,
the pain, and... the *innocence*.
     There was the beauty in her.  There was beauty itself.
Innocence in the face of Truth.  What can anything, even the
ultimate truth, do versus innocence?
     I knew then that the next working of my Art should
feature innocence.
     I pushed her head back down, put the gun to the base of
her skull and blew her existence all over daddy's woods.
The gunshot set off the gasoline and I had to jerk my hand
back to keep from getting burned.  Her body fell forward
into the ground with a thud, and the wind whipped the smoke
from the burning gasoline and flesh into my face.  I ran
back to the cab of the truck and leaned against it,
vomiting.  My society-ingrained knee-jerk reactions winning
the best of me.  I was still a novice... then.
     I finished retching, tossed the empty gas can into the
truck bed, tossed her clothes into the bubbling fire, and
climbed into the truck, the gun safely back in my bag which
was back under the seat.
     I backed out of the woods, and started down the highway
towards the interstate.  Innocence.  That glint of innocence
had intrigued me, and I knew that I had to study it more.
But how?  Where?  With whom?
     And then it occurred to me: What personifies innocence?
     Youth.