EXTRACT FOR
Den of Beatrix
(Giselle Renarde)

Beatrix.  

Perdy hadn't realized she didn't know the girl's name.  Now she stared at the tag on the young woman's smock.  When Beatrix scanned the items she'd absently picked up??"white soap, dish detergent, granola bars, disposable razors??"Perdy felt like she was living in a dream.  

Leaning forward, she said, 'And I'd like something else as well.'  

She'd written all this down.  She'd made herself a script and rehearsed it with Tom because she knew she'd freeze if the words weren't implanted in her mind.  

'Lotto tickets?' Beatrix asked, pulling the blue tray out from under the Plexiglas counter.

Perdy almost said yes, but her lips remembered what her mind didn't.  'I've heard the way you talk to the others.  I know what you are.'  

Under heavy makeup, the girl's eyes shifted up from the lotto tickets.  It all seemed to happen in slow motion.  Perdy couldn't get over the amount of mascara she wore, or the thick black streak of liquid liner.  The darkness of her makeup, her hair, and her clothing suited her and aroused Perdy.  

The girl cocked her head like she wasn't sure of Perdy.  'Oh?' she asked.  Her voice resonated lustrously low.  'And what, pray tell, am I?'