Chapter 1

 

A young woman - a teenager in conservative but expensively stylish clothes - enters a house from a rear garden, into what appears to be a dark kitchen.

"Drew?" she calls out speculatively - a voice edged with a hint of foreboding.

The kitchen is unlit but there is sufficient natural moonlight for her to sidle slowly to the light switch. The fluorescent strip comes on, though it takes a few flickers. She makes her way to the unlit corridor, her head swivelling from side to side. She calls out her friend's name again a few times; switches on the hall light. As she passes the cellar door a creak is discernible, somewhere down below. The young woman mouths the same name one more time, now with a hint of anxiety. A harsh noise explodes out of the complete silence: a sudden burst of screeching violins. The frantic movie soundtrack bursts through a real living room in full Dolby 3-D Surround.

Sprawled on the living room sofa in front of the TV, an attractive blonde. She bawls at the young actress drifting through a poorly lit house on the widescreen. "Nah-ah, you're not, you're not, are you? Of course you fucking are!" She digs her toes into a seat cushion.

The actress - the young woman - opens the cellar door. Flicks on the light switch at the top of the stairs, and starts walking down.

"Naah! Totally clueless. What an idiot!" the blond hollers at the TV, eyes rolling. Her hams shift in her seat. She can't help herself; buttocks tightening she sits up attentively, adrenaline coursing through her body. "Naah! Unbelievable! How can you be so stupid?"

On screen, the young woman continues to tread the creaky boards, a bicycle hung on the wall to her left, head cocked to one side while staccato violins scrape jarringly. The whites of her eyes are luminous and impeccably white, although the light on the stairs is dull and even.

"You there, Drew? If you're dicking me, I'll kill you. I mean it," the young woman insists edgily.

A massive freezer box is at the far end of the cellar. The lid is open; an icy greenish mist lit up by freezer bulbs floats upwards from the white cold box. The young woman heads that way, head ducked a little. Midway a large cobweb strikes her face; she shudders, shrugs it off.

An extreme close-up of the woman's face. Her eyelids stretched wide open, she gapes, shock and horror in her bug-eyed expression. She takes one step back from the freezer box. Quick cut to an overhead view: inside the freezer a body fully clothed and frozen solid. Ice coalesced on his mane, Drew's features are set hard in a rictus of horror.

The young woman screams and wheels around; starts for the stairs. She stops dead, eyelids again pulled wide. A figure at the foot of the staircase seen from the rear; a massive, glinting knife at the end of an outstretched arm, which slowly rises in an arc. The woman cowers, stumbles back a few paces. A scream catches in her throat. She gargles; a tear streaks down her face.

"No, please, please," she begs piteously, garbling, raising her arms diagonally across her torso, the broad darkly clothed figure closing in. The saw blade edge goes across her neck end to end, lining it red; a jet of crimson liquid shoots out.

The blonde pumps the pause button on the VCR remote. Reality it isn't, she thinks, grinning. If this was really happening, the on-screen prom queen would be pleading desperately with her eyes, using all of her face as she screams for the attacker to stop. The blonde gives a half-eaten, limp pizza slice on the coffee table a disgruntled stare, gets up and scoots out of the room.

In the kitchen she finds a girl on her bare knees, waxing the floor. The girl's baggy T-shirt - Marilyn Manson tour merchandise, going by the printed front - is the only item she's got on.

Self-conscious that the blonde is watching her, the girl pulls the hemline of her extra-large T-shirt, so she totally covers up her ass.

"Where's Jason?" Anri asks, tugging aside a thick layer of dangly blonde hair obscuring her right eye.

The girl looks up, eyes half-lidded. Her shoulders slump miserably. "Jason's out," she mumbles, her voice weak and low like a whisper. "Gone to Torture Haven, apparently." Her dopey stare is exactly like a nodding weed head's.

Anri kisses her teeth sourly, turns and walks out without acknowledging the girl with a final glance.

Upstairs in her bedroom, Anri gives her club/fetish gear a brisk speculative sweep. Then, her mind made up, eases out of a tightly packed wardrobe a gun metal grey rubber top, red leather jeans and a biker's leather jacket. It's her punk-look, which might seem incongruous with her long hair: a healthy mane styled like a centre-fold, sun-kissed blonde.

With her jeans and shirt off and on the floor she faces herself in a full-view mirror. Delicately she works talc onto her Lara Croft-size breasts, working slowly down to her wide hips and flat stomach - hard, like she's on a strict regime of squat-thrusts. Her nipples are taut already and stick up in a way that makes them look really not that dissimilar to the type of knobs you get to control volume and treble on an amp speaker stand. Her knobs are large, but obviously not as large. All it takes is a few fingertip strokes and they look like they might poke someone's eye out. And every time she's done it since she's reached the age, such minimal contact is enough to bring out a little moan.

She's standing naked in a bedroom with lube in her hand. With a dirty look tugging on her cushiony lips she watches herself reaching down, hand cupped. Past the Brazilian stripe - blonde, which darkens at the edges - her curled round little finger swipes at the bud of flesh she feels bulging out of her clitoris hood. The shriek that comes as she makes contact is quickly overridden by relentless groans as Anri's fingertip strokes her clit. She closes her eyes and mouth, managing to maintain silence for only a few seconds. It hasn't always been like this, before she met Jason she had to work to get aroused. Then along he came and her life changed. Like day to night.

She appreciates what she sees, a glimpse between her legs, the thumb at work on her clitoris like it's strumming, fingers slowly entering, brushing against her relaxed inner lips. Loosened up so quickly her hand goes in up to the wrist. She keeps her hand moving, back and forth. Her toes brace; gasping, she slows it down. Otherwise she'll touch the sky in seconds, come hitting the carpet like piss, her discharge always such an excessive amount that it's close to being supernatural.

Aside from her plump - but firm - breasts there's no visible sign of fat anywhere, taut but rounded thighs, trim ankles, tight butt. The type of body that's too perfect - only super-confident men think they've got a chance, the sort of confidence that's helped by having the gross annual product of Microsoft in a bank balance. One thing she could say about Jason, he sure has one big ego. But the first time they met, he didn't have to say a word. One look exchanged said it all. They were of the same kind, a match on that part of the gene pool that distinguishes them from the average girl or boy.

Moulded to talc powder-coated, ultra-thin rubber, her boobs hang far out front. Carefully she adjusts the top at the left shoulder, enjoying its touch, barely a breeze against her skin. At the back she tucks and teases her hair, taming it into a ponytail with a dollop of mousse. Then looks at herself in the mirror and winks. Men - and a lot of women - will go weak at the knees. And she knows it. They can't help it, weak as they are in her presence.

On her way out she passes the open door of the living room. Framed by the doorway the frozen TV picture flickers up and down repetitively - horizontal, fractured white lines bordering the bottom of the screen - stuck on the girl sprawling toward the floor, blood trailing in the air from her neck. Crossed bug-eyes, mouth twisted.