Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 17:32:43 -0800
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: The Peeper: Uncut

			    "The Peeper: Uncut"

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman


(This is an unauthorized print sequel to the 1972 movie "What the Peeper
Saw" aka "Diabolica Malicia" starring Mark Lester and Britt Ekland,
screenplay by Trevor Preston, and novelized by Jack Gratus, produced by
Leander Filmes.  This story is based on the screen play and novelization,
reiterates parts of the original film to set the story in context; it also
has much extrapolation of and fleshing out of a few scenes not followed
through in the movie or the novelization, and some passages in detail that
were only referred to in the film or the novelization. However most of the
study of these two characters is based on my own interpretations, much of
which varies from the original sources--the vast majority of this short
story is original with me, and never took place in film or novel, and the
writing of all of it is my own. It has not been copied or plagiarized in
any way. In short, since I'm not Stephen King and have to live with my
conscience, I've done my damnedest not to rip off anyone else's material in
this attempt to imagine what a sequel to the movie might be like. And of
course the story is for: Mark Lester.)



It was a villa, with wisteria vines, a sharply manicured emerald
lawn, a large in ground swimming pool of warm sun heated
blue in the back yard, a friendly sky of white that looked like a
white out in winter with wisps of summery clouds in it, all of
which belonged to this villa, to its marble fonts and its rock
terrace, its perfectly blended rainbow colored flower beds, a
garage in which was a BMW kept pristine and shined and
magnetic to the eyes of blue that watched it now, from the
drive way, where he had been idly tossing a basketball into a
regulation hoop at the regulation height at the top of the front
apex of the garage.

The boy was fourteen and his hair was golden made more so
by the hot bright yellow sun, as he dribbled the ball as he lazed
into his perfection of slim sexy body, naked chest with tiny
rose nipples, clad only in brown chocolate shorts, with no
shoes, so he could feel the world of summer round him more
clearly on the soles of his feet, and through them to his entire
body. He was not a pipe cleaner designed boy, nor was he
bulky, nor was he frail, he looked healthy, like a girl sometimes
with his long hair and his androgynous figure, as the sunlight
shone on him and he shone on it as he padded with the ball to
the hoop and tossed it in, bouncing it all the way, sinking it
straight center through the hoop.

His name was Marcus. He was intensely intelligent, and he was
fatherless and he was alone except for his stepmother, Elise,
who was not so young anymore but still young enough, still
with a heady figure and with eyes of emerald, and skin the
color of pearl and coral, even though she sunbathed in the hot
Spanish sun every afternoon after she had finished bossing the
maids around.  Elise who had been considered paranoid, who
had been in a mental home, who had thought Marcus had set
about seducing her, and leading her on, not because he found
her attractive, though he did, but because within him resided a
monster, and that monster liked to kill, and if there was
sexuality in it, all the better. Of course no one believed her.
Except Marcus.

And when she got out of the mental home, she and Marcus had
formed a pact of sorts, and Dad was soon out of the way and
his insurance soothed the grieving family, as his fat royalty
checks kept coming in, for a dead writer, one who died
mysteriously, perhaps was killed, though no one could ever
prove it, suddenly becomes a most famous writer indeed.
Now it was Marcus and Elise in the villa in Spain. And now
the woman felt she knew her prey and she knew how to be
preying on him, because he loved it so.

They had sex together often that first summer, and the sun
beamed down in the morning, and in the night the moon lit
their way, their bedroom, formerly her dead husband's and
hers, formerly, her dead husband's and his previous wife's,
also killed by Marcus, and Elise luxuriated in the soft large
bed, with the sound of sweet summer ticking away outside like
a forgiving soothing clock that understood human kind better
than even Marcus and he understood it enormously well. Like
a mongoose knows what a snake will do.

His lips were berry colored and his cheeks were soft and
alabaster, she loved to take his clothes off as he had always
loved for her to disrobe in front of him. They would lie
together in bed at night and he would in the warmth of the
evening, put his still childish hand to her pussy and feel the
tangle of pubic hair, and she would touch his penis and rub her
fingers through his golden pubic hair, as their legs met and
intertwined, and his mouth nipped and then bit and then
suckled at her breasts. Because he was a mannered boy,
because he was British and formal in his way, she had once
thought him a freak, but now she saw him as a boy of many
interests, most of them sexual, some violence in him still,
untapped for some time, waiting for the right thing to trigger it
off. But now, tonight, with the smell of bougevanilla and the
damp air and the soft lowing of a bird near by in one of the
olive trees, she let him do with her what he wished.

His voice was still breaking, though he should have been
through that phase by now, and it embarrassed him when it
did, but she would put her mouth to his lips and before kissing
him and putting her tongue inside his creamy wet dreamy
swoony mouth, she would tell him it only made her love him
all the more, as he pretended at being an adult who was
pretending at being a child, only he did not know he was
pretending either persona. Elise did and that was, she felt
where she got the upper hand, and kept it hidden until it was
time to use it.

She loved lying with him and his playing with her, and she
loved when his fingers danced their spider crawl down her
chest and to her navel, as in the dim bedside lamp, he inspected
her and was so serious about it, as though he were a general
inspecting his troops before they went marching off to war, for
that was what Marcus seemed to see everything as, a war, a
campaign, a territory to be conquered, victims to be
vanquished, even Elise, especially Elise.

"What do you think of my cock, Elise?" he asked in that
sophisticated way, his voice still a bit high, always seeming to
make her almost laugh when he said words like cock and pussy
in his little boy voice that heated her up inside and made her
want to hold him so hard but was also funny. She was sighing
and telling him what he wanted to hear, as she lay her cheek
against his thin sturdy chest, for one always told Marcus what
he wanted to hear.

"The first time you saw my cock," he continued, his left hand
in her honey colored hair that was beginning to have a streak
or two of gray in it, no matter how careful she was to color it
and disguise it with her hair styles, unashamed he was at saying
cock, not hesitating, not thinking it a big deal though of course
he was pretending here as well, or was he?; impossible to
know for he was such a fine actor, and caught her off guard
often though she tried to act for him as well, and succeeded
once or twice, for he was getting used to her, and thinking one
day of marrying her, for he talked with her about that more and
more and she pretended to want to as well, at the same time
she truly found herself wanting to. The monster. The murderer.
The enticement of him.

"The first time," he continued, "was when I was in the bath
and my dad called from Italy and wanted to talk to me, and
you brought me the phone, and sat on the side of the tub, while
I was there with my ducks and tub toys, and I was bare, and
you would not look at me, as I touched your leg and your
thigh, and your breasts, and then I took one of your hands, I
don't remember which one, and put it on my cock as I started
to kneel up in the tub."

Of course she remembered, the embarrassment, her husband on
the phone, this 12 year old boy naked behind her and her hand
put to his hard penis, and remembered how ashamed and angry
it made her, but at the same time, as she got off the phone as
best she could considering the circumstances, how she wanted
to turn round, and wring the little bastard's neck, but also how
he brought something out in her, in her who had always
considered herself world traveled and sensible and
knowledgeable, how she was brought back to her childhood by
this naked boy whose body she desperately wanted to see.

As he pushed her hand, the one with her wedding ring finger,
yes, now she remembered, and did not doubt that was not an
accident he chose that hand to put on himself, and she
remembered she felt so wet in her pussy, she felt that old thrill
of childhood tossing about and playing doctor and hiding out
from adults and let me see yours and I'll let you see mine. And
she kidded herself that Marcus later then, when she tried to
find out just how much of a murderer he was, had corralled her
into taking off her clothes in front of him for every question of
hers he answered, hardly listening to his answers. It was she
who had been desperate to do so. Thinking of any excuse to
use.

She had seen him get so hard when she disrobed, he had been
in short pajamas then, only the bottoms, his nipples rose red
and hard, and she could see the not unimpressive bulk in his
crotch that swelled, and she had wanted to take him there, and
when she knew for a fact he knew a great deal about sexuality,
and enjoyed drawing boys and boys having sex and boys and
girls and himself and his mother and himself and her, well, it
was all so deliciously decadent and ancient like the Spanish
hills that lay out preventing the land from having a table board
effect all round them.

So after Dad had left the premises, even though Marcus had
loved him, even though they had been close, a bit too close for
Elise's taste, back when she was a prude and did not know it,
of course, she and Marcus reenacted all the start ups they had
had but had not finished. She took off her clothes, and felt her
body hot in the mid day heat, as she bathed Marcus in the tub
and he touched her all over.

She took off her clothes for him and he examined her very old
and wise and doctor like, "Where's the clit, Elise, I can't seem
to find the clit, there was a girl I knew back when I was at
school, and she had this large clit I liked to rub." So Elise, a
woman who was ten years older than Marcus and infinitely
more naive and far younger in most ways, lay on the bed and
helped him find her clit and stimulate it. His doe like eyelashes,
his soft as summer breath, his angelic face that could have been
a girl's for all its prettiness, and his mind that was like the vault
at Ft. Knox that housed so many squeamy wondrous
frightening erotic things that she wanted to know at the same
time she never wanted to know them, as he leaned now on his
elbow, beside her, rubbing his penis on her creamy thigh, and
they talked about the bath tub time when she had first seen his
cock.

As she turned to him as he knelt in the tub, as she pulled her
hand--however unwillingly away from him--as her eyes
brushed over his penis, but stayed on it long enough to see it
was pink and slim and sweet and hairless, the balls were nice
small eggs, it was circumcised, and the head of it looked so
delicious as he pushed his groin out to her and smiled that
patented Marcus smile at her. Oh how she had wanted to take
him that afternoon.

She had not wanted to turn and walk away. She had not
wanted to be angry. She had wanted to be his first woman, if
she would have been at all. She was afraid of him, even to this
point, especially now, for they had been together for two
years, more than two years, and the heat was oppressive and
Marcus slept with his arm around an old childhood toy, a
bunny rabbit with only one eye, and Elise slept with one eye
open, herself, because she thought that the boy did as well,
which made sleep an elusive thing, which enervated her and
made her cross with him and with the help from time to time,
and he would get this angry look in his eyes, so she would
apologize whenever he did that, and she would feel herself
back in his good graces for a time at least. Which pleased her
and angered her both at once.

She tried to treat him as the greatest lover she had ever known,
and to some extent he was, considering her somewhat lack in
the area, till she met two boys, and then later on Marcus'
father, Paul, but he would always ask her how his father made
love to her, what turned her on the most about him, for
Marcus could see them fucking from his hot eye at the
peephole in the attic above them, while he masturbated to
them, but he wanted to inside stuff, the stuff of emotions which
he had a limited knowledge of, and which were all but blunted
to the point of uselessness in himself.

He knew about sex as fun and mysterious and something you
did when your dick got hard whether the girl or in this case the
woman wanted to or not, so she would try to tell him why she
loved his father, and what sex had meant to them, but she
never got far with that before she started feeling limitlessly sad
that it was over, so Marcus would always have a glass of
whiskey, or two glasses, ready for her and he would tell her to
drink it straight down like a good girl and let Dr. Marcus
please her. And it was an act. She knew that. And he knew it.
And she drank and lay back and let him have at her.

But when does an act become a reality? Does one change the
other?  And that miserable bitch psychologist Paul had sent her
to, the lofty lady with the regal bearing who had talked to
Marcus and found him a charming little boy who loved all the
things little boys did, who was an angel who had no interest in
harming anyone, he could charm canaries off the branches, that
boy, and how she had led Elise to think she was on her side,
and then the doctor, this criminal idiot who was so all wise and
had been so fooled by the little monster, had asked her, "Why
did you take your clothes off in front of a little boy?" and knew
that Marcus had fooled this genius as well and that Elise's
goose was quite formerly cooked.

Now though it seemed worth it, now as Marcus and she 69ed,
as Marcus sucked her cunt and she gloried down on his hard
penis that now had some golden pubis hair on it, when she
took him in her eager mouth, she felt as though she could taste
England in there, the heaths and the bitter cold and the winter
sleet by Holmes' and Watson's sitting room window, and the
steely knives of Jack the Ripper ready to get to work on an
evening's debacle with this Pretty Polly or that, and she felt the
loneliness of the little boy, Marcus, and she felt how he must
be so frightened of everyone and everything, for he was so
intelligent, and so aware of so much from such an early age.
She listened and felt his tongue slurping in her vagina. His
hands were squeezing her hips together and she rushed her
mouth up and down him until it seemed all was blurring
together, and she knew Marcus would keep her around until
she no longer amused him, until he was tired of her sexuality,
tired of her drunkenness, for she had to admit she was tipsy
more often than not, and she did not need a child to feed her a
drink, for she could do that quite nicely thank you all on her
own. Marcus never drank, that she knew of. His mind had to
be sharp, wait for the moment, wait for the right approach and
then--attack. In whatever diabolical way he thought of.

She had confidence in his finding a way. Sometimes he loved
for her to paddle him while he lay naked and long legged on
her lap on the bed, with the flat of her palm, and making his
cheeks burn, as she massaged his penis and he called her
mommy and he told her all the sexy things Daddy did with
Mommy and that sometimes Marcus did with Mommy and
sometimes with Daddy, for after all, why do you think Daddy
always touches me when we talk, why his eyes bore into me
instead of into you when we are all three together? Oh Elise
there are things here that would curl your hair if you only but
knew, the ghosts still do these things in the night time, Marcus
would say, growing dark and still and foreboding, no longer a
martinet puppet dancing to the string pulls of his active
frightening puerile brain that she had begun to think he had
little control over, thus exempting him from everything like
murdering his first dog and then murdering last month the
dog's replacement, and she tried to accept it, forget it, the
corpse in the pool, she tried to forget it because she was
justifying Marcus.

Like Paul did. Like everyone did but Marcus' former
headmaster who had finally expelled him, which was when this
whole thing had started.

He lapped at her. He drank of her as though she was filled with
life giving nectar. She slapped his naked butt and he pushed
away from her and said he needed to suck a cock, and she
pushed from him herself, for she had never thought he might
want a boy, though why this should not occur to her--the
drawings he had made at school of boys fucking each other, all
of that--somehow it was till a shock. It seemed distasteful to
her, and then she laughed at her holier than thou morality,
while she was sucking this boy off, had let him fuck her, had
felt the joy of him humping her, with his golden curls in his
sweaty face, and his long hair had brushed her face as he
pushed in and out of her, and all of him lying taller and taller
on her, straining into her, but his making it with a boy? But,
then, again, if she could watch.....

Because their villa was far away from other homes and the
town that serviced them, because Marcus did not go to school,
because Marcus was not one to talk to mere children, for his
mind always got in the way, because there was only one
chance of finding a boy who might be willing, because the
summer was at its hottest, because the air conditioning in the
villa was never very good and everyone was out of sorts, even
if Marcus did sleep like the dead, or pretend to, and had
sufficient energy to cope with the massive heat wave that was
so oppressive sometimes their very skins burned hot from
inside, as though summer had put a red hot coal to the bottom
side of their flesh, and swimming in the pool which was also
hot, and sunbathing in the yard would not yield any pleasure
other than the need to burn to a crisp and hating it all the
time--

--but Elise not finding herself able to stay out of the sun in the
afternoon, which made no sense but there it was, to go to the
enemy and meet him and let him strip your clothes off and your
identity and your flesh and your integrity whatever remained of
it, whatever there had been in the first place, Elise decided
since money was no object, they would jet themselves to
London and find themselves a rent boy.

So she suggested it, and Marcus as he continued to jack
himself off into the flowery smelling night that seemed to work
its way under the eyeballs and the fingernails and toenails and
inside the hearts themselves, readily agreed, and came more
than usual, said that would be a wizard idea.

Elise had not been with him when he first squirted and had
always regretted that. So they decided to find a rent boy who
might be on the edge of just squirting and she could be there
for the initiation. And the boy could see what she and Marcus
did. And she could see what the two boys did.

And in London, the heat was worse, the traffic was a scream of
sound, the buildings were tall so vastly unimaginably tall she
had been out of any city so long therefore they seemed that to
her, and everybody was busy rushing and walking at a run, and
undergrounding, and nattering on cells phones, and driving and
sitting impatiently on the double deckers, and at night it was
worse.

The neon signs made it seem even hotter. The bright
nightmarish lights, the car and truck and bus lights, the heat
even more oppressive somehow without the sun, the intense
desire of the masses to have fun and the bull headed way of
going about it, all aggressive, all angry seeming, always a fight
breaking out somewhere, under this marquee, out the door of
that pub, and if Marcus had not lead her to Picadilly Circus and
literally held her hand as he went to a dark side street with a
porno shop in it and all the other buildings decayed like it, but
it was the only one not boarded up, she would have lost her
way entirely and spent the rest of her life stumbling blindly.

As Marcus forced her with his imperative commands, for she
must keep that number one in her mind, he was her boss, she
was his slave, his warm damp child's hand holding her wary
hot frightened adult woman hand and she clung to his boy hand
in a death grip.

With practice he knew which part of the garishly lit porno shop
to go, with its bright hot burning lights on porno mag and
book covers, all round the walls, as were the video boxes, that
spread white black pink brown flesh everywhere as though the
walls themselves were made of it, as though in the
predominantly pink light of the place they had somehow or
other entered a vagina, and the music was loud and brassy with
punk rock pounding at her ears that echoed back the assault,
with all the men and women looking at the tape boxes, the men
and women alone together, the worst kind of alone there is,
and at the covers of the sealed magazines and books, every
sort of sexual images there could be on them.

Marcus took her unerringly through the main room, to a
darkness behind a curtain, the smell of the place was filled with
sexual aromas that hit her in the stomach, hard, and made her
want to belt out of the place, but Marcus pulled her along as
though she was a drowning swimmer and he was her only life
boy to the rescue, as she stumbled in darkness totally black,
fearing a knife in her stomach and across her neck, fearing that
Marcus had brought her for himself and maybe some of his
friends to kill her so he could get onto the next higher more
advanced level of his life, now that he had used her up.

And then there was a slightly lighter darkness and she could
see Marcus again, holding a door open, and then they were
both outside in an alley that had wooded fences on either end.
And in this alley, out in the heat that felt better than the
superannuated heat of the shop which had left her dripping
wet, away from all those men and women who looked like
loneliness in its deepest face, not glancing at anyone, but the
things in their hands, the sex toys, the video boxes, the sad
equipment one a lonely room,  that might this time oh please
pull me out of me, and away from the smell of desperation and
deprivation, she held to Marcus as though she was going to
lose him forever this night, forever right this second.

All of this made her feel less frightened of him. Was that how
everyone felt?, later she wondered, what makes you less
frightened is the thing you pretend falling in love with? and try
to be happy with for the rest of your life. Then there were the
sounds of mice.

But the mice were boys. Young boys. Street boys. Night boys.

The mice were in the midst of the moon and the little street
lamp on the corner that made the darkness more visible and the
things in it as well, and she felt Marcus letting go of her hand,
she trying to call him back, feeling as though she was about to
float off the planet, but there was such a burgeoning of fear in
her throat she could not call for him, and she wished they were
back on those clammy sweaty hot sheets at the villa.

Wished she was telling him what it was like to hold him and
feel him and have him lie on his stomach, as she demonstrated
as she spoke, how it felt to touch his shoulders, this beautiful
child, and to trace her finger tips and her tongue down his
spine, how it felt to get to the cleft in his butt, and to feel those
soft girlish hips of his, and to reach between his legs and feel
his warmth, his boy heat so different from girl heat, and to feel
the bottom of his balls, and hear him sigh in spite of himself
and to reach under him and feel his penis and pull it downward
as he lifted himself up and to masturbate him that way, and
how he would tell her what it was like to see her masturbate,
as they knelt together on the bed, and not let him touch her or
himself during the doing of it, just sit close so their breath
commingles, and watch him long and lose some of that iciness,
watch him lose control, his fingers his hands wanting to touch
himself, her, coming forward to do so, but she with stern face
making him withdraw, and he momentarily under her spell, did
so.

The mice boys skittered. The mice boys dwelled in shadows
and were the shadows of a velvet curtain and Elise moved
backward till her back was against the stucco side of the
building, and she felt weak in her knees, as she watched
Marcus being toppled over by the naked tumescent mice boys.
As she watched them gambol round him and strip him starkers,
as she watched their little cheese nibbling mouths on him and
his nipples and his cock and his butt and he rejoicing in them,
rejoicing and being given and with his own hands and mouth
giving pleasure, which he had never gotten from Elise, for with
her he had always been so proper, even when he made her
degrade herself to a point she did not even wish to think about,
not ever again in her life.

She heard a curious golden rhythm, as she watched them
undress Marcus completely and use him all the ways sexually
that she had used him and he had used her, but with the
woman it had been a chess match, a marching of toy soldiers in
the heat of battle, something that he had enjoyed yes, but
something that could be enjoyed only to a certain point.

 The sweat dripped off her face and sogged her dress and
blouse and she suddenly realized what that curious golden
rhythm was she was hearing--the most natural, the most
normal thing in the world to hear from a boy, the thing she had
never heard, not even when he had been with Paul in her
presence--she heard him now, in this back alley, as he pulled
the hungry poles of some of the boys and allowed himself to be
turned over on the dirty concrete and entered through his back
door--she quite simply and quite profoundly heard him put the
pieces of some of the puzzle finally together--she heard him
laugh.

Uncategorically. Heedlessly. Without thinking it through first.
His legs kneeling him and a boy going into the heart of the sun,
and another boy kissing Marcus while another boy sucked
Marcus' hard cock, the sight of which made her so wet, and he
laughed with joy and sheer happiness that simply unnerved her,
and how in hell had she never noticed he never laughed with
her or perhaps even ever laughed with Paul. How much under
his spell had she been. She was work. She was practice. He
was sizing up the lay of the land before he went out into the
world older and with much more experience, perhaps, had she
not come along?

But Marcus, she unawares thought, two can play that game.
She found herself smiling. Had she ever smiled or laughed with
Marcus? Had he ever made her really happy? Sexy yes. Hot
yes. But she found she too had been practicing.

Marcus threw the boy in him off of him, and tossed his head
away from the pole of a little boy, and spat out the gob of cum,
"come on, mate, you know how I hate the taste of that stuff."
And then he laughed and they were all back at their boy mice
games and Marcus was one of them, was a boy mouse himself.
Who were the boy mice? Did they live here? Was there a stable
of them? Were they orphans? Had they no one to look after
them? Or was Elise as the psychiatrists at the mental home had
told her, going insane, and she too stupid not to go ahead and
admit it and play their game their way so she could get out of
the hell place sooner than she did when she finally wised up
and went along with the pompous louts?

And Marcus saying the word "mate"--this wasn't something
she had heard from him either. This was street talk, no proper
about it, he was using now. How odd to hear it from him. And
he was no good with children, except when he bullied them
and forced them, like the boy's former head master had told
her, but there he was, one of the mouse boys, her Marcus, who
was not her Marcus, who was not anyone's, not even his own,
because here he was in this filthy alley and going at it with who
knew who the hell these kids were and what kind of diseases
they were giving him right at this minute.

As Elise watched and put her hand under her skirt to her
crotch.

As the loud punk rock from the porn store against whose wall
she rested, her knees though stronger and not as weak now,
made  booming thudding counterpoint sounds to the boys
getting it on with each other, and then a hand reached out from
the mass the knitted spider darting darkness of them and
brought her down, crashing to her knees, making the left one
bleed, and Marcus reached out of his tumult of boy pyramids
and kissed her hard on the mouth, like he honest to god meant
it and was not just continuing to test her out, and before long
she was kissing him hard back, and someone of the boys or
more than one, helped her take off her clothes, did not tear
them off as they did Marcus," respected her somehow, and
soon she wore only her panties and the boys were over her and
Marcus and watching the boy and his stepmother fucking, the
mouse hands and their eyes and their mouths witnessing and
observing and never forgetting.

As the boys fucked each other for her enjoyment, as they
sucked Marcus each in turn and then let her suck him when he
was ready to explode and she greedily took all his cum into her
mouth, as he looked down at her, so superior, so like a Greek
godlet that he knew he would have her under his spell forever
and a day as boys sucked each over on top of her and two little
boys put their tiny dicks in her mouth at once and kissed and
hugged each other while she was sucking them off.

And the night got darker and the mice claws clicked more and
more on the cement and time etched each of them into her
mind and when everyone of them and Marcus and she were
drunk and dizzy and detached and seeming to float above
themselves into a hot night sky that was gathering clouds to
belt down rain on them, sleep came, and the morning nudged
to the end of darkness before she and Marcus, all alone now,
awoke. Both still naked, he looked over at her, she was a foot
or so away from him, and his eyes were most unkind, and he
looked at her angrily, that kind of anger pretty boys have that
is so filled with discontent and foreboding and fury that, even
though the face still seems gentle, there is a gut wrenching
horror to it when it is directed to you that you can never shake
no matter how long you live. She pushed her hair back from
her head and began ashamedly to get dressed. She turned from
Marcus as she dressed, and when she turned to him, she saw
he had clothed himself as best he could in his torn garments.

"Do you see, Elise?" Marcus asked. "Do you see how old and
dried up and used up you are? They were FUN. You are
NOTHING. I just let you go on like a mechanical canary all
the time, thinking you were teaching me things about sex,
thinking I gave a shit about your prattle, your inability with
words, no chance of you and I ever playing word games like
Paul and I did, all for my amusement. But I killed him, and you
helped, you might remember, because he had begun to bore
me. He could never give me head like mum did. And that
always bothered him. Did you know that, Elise? I was laughing
at them too, all the time? I laugh at you when you're not
around."

The words hit the woman like cannon balls blasted at her. She
knew what he was going to say. She had just hoped he would
keep up the act a little bit longer. She had hoped this would
bring them closer together. She had entered his world, then,
hadn't she?

She had not wanted to be with the mice boys, at first, for they
smelled of the streets, and the dirt and the smoke and the
loneliness and the desperation and the sheer numbing fatigue
that was in their bones from an early age and would only weigh
them down more and more the older they got. When they were
older boys. And then men. And then getting to be older men.
And no one would want them. No one would give them the
time of day. No one would give a fig what they once looked
like. They would not be able to get anyone in the kip except by
forcing or by money. But Marcus, didn't Marcus now, right
now, having been with this roll around in the alley by the porno
shop, this place he was obviously more than a little familiar
with, didn't Marcus smell now like they did?

She considered. The look of him. The youth of him. The young
feel of him. That was simply all he had going for him. A
monster at 20 or 25 or 30, it was jail for him then for sure.
Looks later on, who would give a damn? A moment of time
had kept him safe. It would keep him safe little longer. It
wasn't his brain or anything else at all. She suddenly saw him
as such a terrible nothing. An incidental.

And she had known enough gay people in Lisbon and Madrid,
had heard their hurts and sadnesses, to know that in the gay
world, most especially, if that was the way he was going, and it
looked like it, you had better hope and pray that you never see
25 or that you look far younger than you are, you better take
good care of yourself, your health, your stamina, your face,
you better work out and keep checking your face every
goddam morning in the mirror and pray the wrinkles take a
long time getting there, and the hairline doesn't start receding--

--you had better learn the current songs, the current fads, wear
the right clothes, don't get your times mixed up, don't refer to
a book or movie or TV programme before their time and give
it away, you'll be a fugitive the rest of your years, constantly
running from yourself; you better make it while you're young,
cause when you're not, when it all starts advancing on you,
you'll chance to be as alone as I am, Marcus, Elise surprised
herself in saying these things to him. Things that hurt Marcus,
that made his eyes squint up, that made his hands ball into fists,
that made him boiling mad, and all that anger was inside him
waiting to explode. And not in a nice neat mathematically
orderly fashion.

Not in well thought out revenge that is best served cold.
Sometimes the geniuses don't think of the thing most obvious.
Sometimes there is that blind spot you don't mention to the
other person, especially if they are lording themselves over
you, that you don't mention because they must know for
themselves, and you don't want to hurt their feelings, even if
they hurt yours all the time like it's their right or something,
and now Marcus turned away from her, his hair mussed and
ratty looking almost gray colored in the dim gray reddish
morning light. She saw him old there. She saw him unwanted
and unneeded and broken and too bent. The sadism never
counted for anything. It was an obstacle. And in time, that
would be all there was to him. Anyone could have inhabited his
beautiful body. Anyone and it wouldn't have mattered if
Marcus had never been born.

"Why don't you go fuck yourself, little mechanical canary?"
He said, voice breaking, this time maybe on purpose, wanting a
bit of sympathy?, his profile at her, not looking at her,
embarrassed that he had not had this brought home to him
before simply by knowing the facts of living and of aging?, "I
wound you up for my amusement. Now I see you winding
down. Go away."

"Well, Marcus, I will then, I will go away, if you will tell me
where the mice boys are."

He looked at her then as though he had lost something. As
though he couldn't believe she meant it. As though it was time
to go back to Spain and keep on as before. But Marcus who
had caused loss now experienced loss. And that something lost
was himself. That something would never be anything but
himself, who no longer existed, and a boy rooted in concrete,
then torn from it, where does he go from here? Himself is no
more. And that was all he lived for. Himself. The narcissistic
bastard. All he needed and knew, the art of making himself
beautiful and wanted and more than the sun just by his simply
being alive. And that last pretend game was exploding in front
of him.

Angrily, he pointed to a basement door to the right of her,
which she knelt down to and opened. He started walking to
one of the fences, preparing to climb over it. He said nothing.

"Marcus," she said, to which he did not respond, but started to
scale the fence, as she realized her knee was burning from
being pulled down on it last night, she said it somewhat like a
robot, somewhat by rote, as though she had been saying it a
long time but she knew she hadn't, she felt weary when she
thought of Marcus, sorry that he wasted both their time, "The
mice boys are lots younger than you. That's what they've got
over you. That one tiny little thing. That and their avaricious
appetites, while you were just a fake, a fraud, a convenience.
You had nothing to do with you at all. Try to make trouble for
me, Marcus, and I will come after you and I will kill you.
Leave the money to me. Go away. Get the hell out of my life.
Stay away from the villa. Go be a rent boy for the few years
you have remaining. I've learned some tricks from you, and
I've extrapolated some from you you would really not like to
ever know about."

Marcus hesitated at the top of the fence a moment, then
finished scaling it and was gone.

Elise heard mice claws on the concrete basement floor, heard
the chittering of them, knew they were waiting for her, and
knew she was waiting for them as well, but not for much
longer. She pulled the basement door open all the way and
went down into the darkness.