The Convulsion Factory Read Free

he was pleasant enough without seeming possessive. A few of the guys in these places, in spite of their laissez-faire posturing, they nailed you once and it was as though they’d staked a claim. So she let Daniel talk, but already her thoughts were drifting ahead. Tomorrow night, or the night after … future nights at other clubs, wondering where she’d be, what she’d be doing, who she’d be doing it with.
    Maybe at the Purgatorium, with the rings through her hardened nipples and chained to a leather belt while some hooded dominatrix violated her with a strap-on.
    Or maybe with the Jezebel Society, where gangbangs were a specialty, and where, on knees and elbows, she could be triply penetrated while massaging a cock in each hand.
    Or elsewhere, with company even more exotic, but always sure to wring more from the experience than her partners. It was a kind of challenge, something bone-deep and primal.
    And she wondered if, wherever she’d be, after she was sated and lay breathing heavily, she’d once more start dreaming of the next time before the sticky fluids of that night had even dried.
    Could you even completely look forward to that next time when you could so easily forecast your pose by its end? Even in private clubs like the Inner Circle, the Purgatorium, the rest, sex could get as routine and predictable as some fat suburban couple’s half-hearted hump scheduled for the second Tuesday of each month. It was only a matter of degree.
    And she wondered if considering these things, in a room with three other nude people whose potent sexuality had just soaked the walls, meant that she was bored.
    Figuring that, in the asking, she already had her answer.

    *

    A few days later Ellen came back from lunch, took one look behind the counter, and wondered if one of Jude’s facial nips and tucks had begun to unravel. The woman’s forehead appeared ready to burst veins.
    “He’s … upstairs,” she said through clenched teeth.
    Ellen frowned. “Who? Who is?”
    “That … that creature .” Jude seemed to need the counter to remain vertical. “From the alley.”
    “Ohhh,” she said, and frowned again, more thoughtfully. “Was everything in place when he came in?”
    Jude’s eyes widened, horrified at the very notion she’d have glanced down to check. “You see, you see — it’s types like his that make me think Affirmative Action is a terrible imposition on the rest of us. No telling what he’s doing up there.”
    Ellen started for the stairs. “Maybe he needs help reaching a book. We don’t have elevators for the shelves, did you ever think of that?”
    “You’re going up?” Jude clutched the counter, all bony white knuckles and maroon nails. “What if he has his willy out again?”
    Over her shoulder, Ellen smiled with reassurance. “Then I’ll suggest he find a more appropriate bookmark.”
    This befuddled poor Jude. Upstairs, Ellen began to check the aisles, the shelves older and taller and dustier up here, home to the store’s used and vintage and rare books. She’d always accorded a greater respect to the browsers who spent their time here.
    She found him in fiction, as sturdy and vital in his chair as if it were an outgrowth of him. He sat engrossed in a book, not so deeply that he didn’t notice her approach. His face lit with a self-effacing smile, and she tried not to recall how it had looked the other day, self-pleasured and unashamed. And so powerfully attuned to his body. Not one in a thousand could get past his lack of discretion, and she supposed that finding this a simple matter made her the odd one as well.
    “Can I help you?” she asked.
    He pointed at the second shelf from the top. “Even chimps use tools to get what they can’t reach, but…” He spread his empty hands. “Eleventh from the left, if you wouldn’t mind.”
    She stretched, pulled it down, looked over the cover before handing it to him. “De Sade, Justine . Not too much call for that.”
    His grin was