Seeds Of Fear

by Gelb, Jeff

  "You're right," she agreed, pausing to lean over, down, and kiss him. Then she slung the improvised sack over one shoulder, and with Eddie opening doors for her, carried the trash out to the apartment Dumpster. "And you're right that times are changing. We'll still find somebody to produce my story, and you will play a true-life role opposite me—in the script we've written together!"

  He took her hand as the heavy Dumpster lid clanged shut and squeezed it. He realized she might well fulfill the dream he'd placed in her head, and he hoped she would. He truly did. But if not, there was always the videotape with the close-up of old out-of-date Andy Chalminski's agonized expression at the very end. People today wanted a higher concept than a little guy making it with a big girl. "How many units did you say have access to this Dumpster?" he asked, casually glancing around.

  Donna laughed then because her Edward did, and they used his car to drive over to his place for the night. The trash pickup was in the morning.

  JUST A PHONE CALL AWAY

  John F. D. Taff

  Home seemed foreign to Cynthia on a weekday morning, a place she wasn't supposed to be. The small apartment wore the air of a person awakened too soon, groggy and grumpy and put upon.

  "Get used to it," she mumbled, shivering in her underwear at the kitchen table. She took another sip from the heavy ceramic mug that said "Don't Ask Me, I Just Work Here," a memento of her recently ex-job.

  Cynthia was going on forty. Her long brown hair was worn pulled back, showing off a handsome, if somewhat heavy, face. She wore the best clothes she could afford, but they were old and too tight in some places, too loose in others.

  All told, Cynthia was not the type of person one would normally choose for an office romance. She wasn't the self-assured, tight young college graduate, the naive, even younger secretary, or the older, but still sexy, vice president with the failing marriage.

  She may not have had the body, the age, or the power to attract lovers, but Cynthia had the voice.

  And she had learned long ago that her voice was as sexual as any breast or butt or leg.

  It was deep, but not too much so. Raspy, but not grating or harsh on the ear. It was a tingling, vibrating, resonant, breathy voice, reminiscent of Lauren Bacall or Kathleen Turner.

  Without a doubt, it turned men on in ways her body alone never could.

  It had been what had attracted her boss, what had kept him in her bed for eight months.

  It couldn't, however, save her from being fired by him.

  That had thrown her for a loop. Cynthia was so accustomed to maintaining the upper hand in her relationships that this single act by her boss left her feeling powerless and bereft, not knowing quite what to do with herself.

  So with a couple weeks' severance, a last lunch with the girls, and a parting, bad-dog-eyed good-bye from her ex, she left, with no prospects and fewer ideas of what to do next.

  Another punishing draft of hot coffee, and she flipped the newspaper open, scanned the want ads. Down the columns, through administrative assistants, receptionists, secretaries. She circled those that appealed to her; there weren't many.

  Her eyes drifted down to "Topless Dancers Wanted," and she snorted, almost gagging on her coffee. She remembered fondly what Ralph in Accounting had told her on her last date.

  "Well, Cynthia," he'd laughed, his voice dropping. "With your talent, I think you'd be able to find a great job in the phone sex business. You'd make a fortune. Hell, I'd call and let you talk dirty to me for two dollars a minute!"

  "Ralph!" she'd protested, half-gamely, half-flattered.

  Suddenly, cold and depressed and in her underwear on a Monday morning, Ralph's idea didn't seem so ridiculous. With the phone company contacts she had gained through being a receptionist with a large company, a little research, and a little money borrowed from her retirement fund, she might be able to swing this.

  Then something at the back of her mind whispered to her what she was really thinking of doing.

  Talking dirty to men on the phone. And not just dirty, but explicit and definitely X-rated.

  Are you really going to be able to do this? the voice asked.

  There was only one way to tell.

  It amazed Cynthia how quickly it all came together.

  She secured a business license, got a tax number, made the necessary arrangements with the phone company. Her liaisons there were more than eager to help her in getting a "900" line installed in her apartment.

  While she waited, she visited the newsstand outside her building. There, under the silently amazed eyes of the old newsman, she self-consciously bought a few of the seedier men's magazines.

  Back in her apartment, she sat in the little space she'd cleared for her office and flipped through the magazines, intending to go straight for the classified ads. Her curiosity, though, demanded that she scrutinize the first several carefully, until the photos all took on a surreal look, with their tangled limbs and close-ups of genitalia so tightly focused, she was sure even a gynecologist would have trouble identifying what he was seeing.

  She was able to cobble together pieces of the ads she liked into a small ad for her new service. Several phone calls and overnight packages later, her little ad was scheduled to run in several of the men's magazines she'd reviewed, as well as a couple of local alternative newspapers.

  Before she could sit back and wait for the phone calls, though, she needed practice.

  "Hello?"

  "Ralph? Hi, this is Cynthia."

  "Cynthia?" he said, lowering his voice. "Cynthia Johnson?"

  "Yes, Ralph," she purred into the receiver. "And do you know what? I'm sitting here totally nude . . ."

  Here she paused, hitched in a deep breath as her stomach fluttered.

  ". . . and I'm really wet."

  There was a stunned silence on the other end. Cynthia heard the tinny sound of a television somewhere on Ralph's end. She almost laughed then, imagining him standing in his living room listening to her. Here she sat in a T-shirt and jeans with no makeup.

  Not nude and decidedly not wet.

  "My wife is here, for chrissakes!" he whispered.

  "Ralph," she moaned so low that her own phone vibrated in her ear. "Oh, Ralph. I've been thinking about you, imagining you. Touching myself. I've been very naughty."

  "Dear Lord," came a hoarse voice.

  "I took your advice to start a phone sex business. You're my first customer. But don't worry," she said with a throaty giggle. "This one's on the house."

  "Can I call you back?" he whined.

  "No, Ralph. We've got to finish . . . right here, right now."

  He did.

  After that, Ralph became her first paying customer, too.

  The phone rang at 3 A.M.

  Cynthia didn't bother to turn the lights on as she picked her way to the chair by the phone. In the three months she'd operated the service, she'd walked the path many times in the dark, often more asleep than not.

  The men who called at this hour were more lonely than horny, a bit more sincere, sweeter, and a little more desperate for simple human contact. Cynthia found that she could talk to these men about things other than sex—their jobs, hobbies, problems. Sometimes these callers even became so engrossed in their conversations that they never made it to the sex part.

  Cynthia plopped into the chair near the phone, answered it without clearing her throat, knowing that these men wanted to rouse her from bed, wanted to hear her raspy, sleep-filled voice. It lent an air of intimacy to what they did, as if they had merely rolled over and awakened a lover curled in bed next to them.

  "Hello, honey. This better be good."

  "Hello," came the man's voice, rough and hoarse and whisper-quick.

  Cynthia knew from experience that he would say nothing more, only respond to questions or ask short, wheezing queries. In this situation, very few men wanted to take the lead.

  She preferred it that way.

  "Does your mommy know you're waking me up? '
Cause if she doesn't, you go tell her it's two ninety-nine per minute."

  "My mommy's not here," he growled.

  "Good thing. Mine's not here either."

  "What are you wearing?"

  "Nothing, honey." Actually, she was wearing a pair of panties, but otherwise this was accurate.

  "I always sleep naked," she continued. "You never know when the opportunity may . . . arise. What are you wearing?"

  "I'm not wearing anything either."

  "And I bet you've got quite a handful."

  "You could say that," he laughed, and it raised goose bumps on her arms, for it was a disturbing laugh, confidential and low, like a rusty engine slowly turning over. She heard a sound, distant, maybe the squeaking of bedsprings, the rustle of covers.

  "Tell me about yourself."

  "Down to details. My kind of man. I'm five eight, a hundred twenty pounds, brown hair and eyes. Thirty-eight, twenty-six, thirty-four. Like to fuck. How about you?"

  "What do you like?" he breathed, ignoring her question. "I mean specifically."

  "I like it all."

  "You haven't been doing this long, have you?" he dismissed, changing his tone as if he were an actor stepping outside character. "That's the easy answer. What do you really like to do—more than anything else?"

  Cynthia rolled her eyes. Obviously the guy was looking to talk with someone who liked the same things he did. But what?

  "I like to be spanked," she finally said, and that was a safe answer. Kinky enough to satisfy wilder men, not so perverse as to disgust the milder ones.

  "You do?" he whispered after a moment, lapsing back into his previous hushed tone.

  "Yeah," she said, relaxing again. "Do you?"

  "Yeah, sure," he responded, a bit distractedly. "Sure."

  There was a moment of silence.

  "You like pain?" he asked from its depths.

  "That depends on who, what, and how much," she said, fumbling for her cigarettes and sensing that control was coming back to her.

  "I like pain."

  "Great," she said, inhaling. "You like to be spanked? Whipped? Bitten?"

  "Cut," said the voice, quivering in anticipation. "I like to be cut,"

  Here, Cynthia hesitated.

  "Cut?" she asked, crushing her cigarette out. "How?"

  A deep, rattling sigh from the other end.

  "A sharp knife. A razor. A piece of glass. It doesn't matter."

  If that litany was not unsettling enough, he did something then that almost made her drop the phone in horror.

  He moaned, soft as a caress.

  "What are you doing?" She swallowed, hoping to change the subject.

  "Stroking myself."

  "Are you hard?"

  "Yes. And so is it."

  "Is what?"

  "My knife."

  "Knife? What are you doing with a knife?" she asked, covering herself with a blanket, sliding her feet up underneath her.

  "Cutting myself," he said, and his voice was rapturous. "Little lines across my chest, my abdomen. Around my nipples . . . Ohhh!"

  And she felt the shudder in his voice.

  "Keep talking to me. I like your voice," he said.

  "Are you going to keep doing that?" she asked, her stomach folding in on itself.

  "Oh, yessss! OHHHH!"

  "Doesn't it hurt?" she moaned, biting a finger.

  "No! Yes!"

  "Stop!" she screamed, leaping up, the blanket falling forgotten around her feet. "Please stop!"

  "Jesus! OH! OH MY GOD!" he yelled, his wavering screams descending into a series of broken sobs.

  Cynthia stood shaking, her hand cupped over her mouth.

  Neither said anything for a minute.

  But neither hung up.

  "Are you OK?" Cynthia asked, her hand still not far from her mouth.

  "I cut off my nipple."

  "Oh my God," she whispered, her eyes fluttering back in her head.

  "I've got to go now. I've got quite a mess here. But you were wonderful. I'll call again."

  With another moan and a creaking of bedsprings, the receiver clunked into place.

  The rest of the night, Cynthia sat upright in bed wrapped in her quilt and stared at the phone. It rang several times, stopping at around 4:30 A.M., but she did not answer it.

  She'd heard many things over the phone in the last three months; things that were exciting and intriguing, rude and disgusting, uncomfortable and unpleasant. But this had gone far past those other calls, too far.

  Into territory within herself that she found unfamiliar and frightening.

  Cynthia replayed the conversation over and over in her head. Each time, the feelings surged back, as strong and vivid as they had been during the experience. Strangely, even though they never talked about sex, the call left her with an overwhelming feeling of being used.

  Being out of control.

  She hadn't experienced that yet. Up to now, she had always been in control on the phone.

  This man, though, played her as deftly as she played other callers.

  There was something else that disturbed her even more, something that clung to the borders of her conscious mind, hid in the shadows.

  Cynthia caught only a glimpse of it, but that was enough.

  Excitement.

  She'd been excited by the conversation, by the man hurting himself.

  Enjoying himself.

  Unable to think of another explanation, unwilling to accept this one, Cynthia sobbed herself to sleep just as the morning sun poked through the slats of her bedroom blinds. And the phone rang.

  Two days later, Cynthia felt good enough to begin taking calls again.

  Passing the jangling phone late in the afternoon, a soda in one hand, cigarettes in the other, she picked it up on impulse.

  "Hello?"

  "I didn't frighten you, did I?"

  Cynthia stiffened, fumbled a cigarette out.

  "You're still there. I can hear you . . . smoking," he said just as she exhaled.

  "I'm sorry if I upset you," he went on after a minute. "I tried to call back for two days."

  Cynthia exhaled another cloud of thin smoke, took a drink of soda, sat down. She was going to make sure she was in control before she answered, even though her heart was vibrating inside her chest, her mouth bone-dry.

  "I really enjoyed our conversation. It was the best I've—"

  "Did you really do it?"

  "Good, you are there," he said, amiably.

  "You really cut... it off?" Cynthia couldn't bear to say the word.

  "It only hurt after, and then for just a little while."

  "I can't believe you did that to yourself," she said, her own nipples beginning to ache with imagined, sympathetic pain. She crossed an arm over her breasts, crushed them to her as if to reassure herself that they were intact.

  "Why not?"

  "Is that a serious question?"

  "Sure."

  "You're not going to do it again ... are you?"

  "Who says I'm not doing it right now?"

  That stopped her. Of course he was doing it now. That's why he'd called again.

  "You are, aren't you?" She puffed, keeping the cigarette perched close to her lips.

  "You don't even know if I really did it or not. It excited you, though, didn't it? Even if it scared you, repulsed you?"

  Blood, hot and angry, flooded her cheeks.

  "That's just sick. You're sick. You're a fucking weirdo!"

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

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

  "I've got my knife again . . ."

  "No! I'm hanging up!"

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

  "Oh my God!" she shrieked. "Stop it!"

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

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

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

  "No. Stop. Just stop."

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

  "Don't do this. Please."

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

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

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

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

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

  "Yes."

  "Good. So good."

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

  The caller moaned through clenched teeth, redoubled his efforts.

  "Do you want me to finish?"

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

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

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

  "Finish now."

  "Yeah. Ahhh . . ."

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

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

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