Firefly. Part 28

'But it wasn't in me,' she argued. 'Just the juice went in. I got the real thing in me now.'

The girl paused. The interviewer, still trying to mask a certain discomfort with the proceedings, prompted her. "And that was all?"

"No, I wouldn't let it be all," Nymph said. "It wasn't in me when it went. I wasn't a real woman."

"But can you be a real woman, at your age?"

"Yes! Yes! I had to, so Daddy would like me better, and George couldn't get me."

"And what happened next?" the interviewer inquired with simulated mild curiosity.

"I held it in me, and it was real soft and slippery and it didn't hurt at all, it felt real good. 'This can't be all,' I said. 'I want more!'

'You can try it, I guess,' he said. 'Put your finger down where it's slippery and rub, right in front of it.'

Nymph still sitting astride the interviewer, put her hand down at her crotch, demonstrating. She touched herself, through her panties, and rubbed slowly. 'Here?'

'Yes. You'll know the place when you find it. It will feel good.'

Nymph experimented, reenacting the experience. Then she smiled angelically. There! There! It feels good!'

'Keep doing that, and maybe you'll feel what a real woman feels.'

The interviewer attempted to move the narration along. "So then you didn't have to stay with him anymore?"

"No, no! I kept him in me! He-it-his thing was getting big again, and hard, and I knew if it got out it couldn't get in again, so I stayed real close and didn't let it out, and I kept rubbing, and it felt real good." The child was accelerating the pace, rubbing her panties faster and harder. "I kept stroking it the right way, and his thing kept getting bigger, but it was so slippery because of the stuff that came out of it before, it didn't hurt, and the bigger it got, the better it felt, and I knew if I could keep it in me I'd be a real woman this time!"

The interviewer gave up. "And what did Mad say?"

'You really are getting there, Nymph! I think you're going to come.'

'Yes, yes! I'm coming, I'm coming! I want to come! I want to make warm stuff come out of me!'

'No, a woman doesn't do that. She just has a very good feeling when the man does. He gives it, she takes it.'

'I'll take it! I'll take it!'

Now the child's action was feverish. She bounced around as she rubbed her front, and it was evident that she was getting a real reaction in the course of the reenactment. Then, impatient with the panties, she put her hand down inside and into her cleft, and stroked directly.

"But wasn't Mad's thing too big to stay when it got all the way hard?" the interviewer asked desperately.

"Yes, I couldn't keep it all in me, only the end of it," Nymph confessed, still rubbing vigorously. "It felt awful big and awful tight and awful good. I tried to hold it in, but it just got longer and I couldn't. So I just sat on it as much as I could, as tight as I could." She rose a little on her knees, so that her weight was no longer directly on the interviewer. "Oh, I wish you had a c.o.c.k!" she exclaimed.

The interviewer seemed to give herself up for lost. "Pretend that I do," she suggested. "What happened next?"

"I got real hot, and it was so good, it just-aahh!" the child went into an evident climax, her little thighs flexing, her torso shaking.

'You did it!' he said. 'And you've got me into it too. I feel you coming, I'm coming again too! Hang on!' And his thing swelled up like before, and he pushed some, in and out and she hung on, but it was sliding so, she thought it'd come out. 'Lie down on me!" he said. 'Don't let me hurt you! I'll try to keep it slow!'

The child lay down on the woman, her legs spread wide, trailing down across the woman's hips and outside her thighs. Her body moved in an unmistakable rhythm. "And he shoved, and maybe it hurt some, but it was so good too, and I kept it in, and the stuff came out of it again, and into me."

'Now I'm a real woman!' she exclaimed, flush with her victory.

'Now you are a real woman,' he agreed.

The girl put her little arms around the interviewer and hugged her. "It was so good! I just lay there while his thing got small again, and this time it was all right, because I was a real woman, I had done it, I had all his warm water in me, I knew what it was. It wasn't pee, it was sorta white and slippery, and it could make a baby inside my tummy, and I was a real woman for real now!"

Then she lifted her head to look at the interviewer's face. "Wasn't I?"

"Yes, dear, you were," the interviewer said with a straight face, though her lips were thin.

"And I went up on him and kissed him," Nymph continued suiting action to word, kissing the interviewer ardently on the mouth. "Because that's part of it, because I saw grown-ups doing it. I had his water in me, and I loved him just like a real woman."

"And that was all," the interviewer said, as if uncertain whether to believe it.

"Yes. That time." Nymph scrambled off her.

The interviewer got up, somewhat disheveled. She looked less confident than the child did. "There was another time?"

"Oh, sure!" Nymph said eagerly. "Lots of times! Every time I could, I sneaked back to his house, and if n.o.body else was there, we did it. It was a secret, see; he didn't tell anybody, and I didn't tell anybody. It was just us. It was real fun! We were Lovers!"

"What did you do with him, those other times?"

"Oh, everything!" Nymph said, delighted. "I licked his thing, and he licked my thing, and he made me come with his tongue, and I sucked on his thing and made him come, and we kissed and hugged and everything, and he said I was the best little woman he ever had!"

"He made you do these things?"

"No! I made him! I wanted to do everything a real woman did, and he said he wasn't really supposed to do it with anyone young like me, but I kept kissing him and grabbing his thing, and then he did it. I made him do everything!"

"How many times did you visit him?"

The child pondered. "Gee, I didn't count. Should I have counted?"

"No, dear, I was just curious. So you did it several times."

"Every day I could! Some days I couldn't get away from George. See, I didn't want him to see where I went, because then I couldn't hide from him, so I'd just run around and not go there, so he couldn't see. But I went lots of times-more than I can count." She ticked off her fingers, to ten, and again, not knowing the numbers. "Mad and I are in love."

"What?" For a moment the interviewer lost her composure, as if there had been one straw too many.

"In love," Nymph repeated. "Real women love. Make love, I mean. I didn't care about Daddy anymore, I didn't want him to do it with me, just Mad. Isn't that love?"

"It may be, dear." The woman took a deep breath. "How did it end?"

Now Nymph scowled. "George! George did it! He followed me when I wasn't looking, and he saw Mad, and he told Mommy, and now Mad's in jail, and it's all George's fault and I hate him, and can I go to him now?"

"You want to see Mad?"

"Yes! Can I see him now? I told you everything, so you know it's okay."

"What do you want to do with him, if you see him?"

"I want to get his thing in me again, and hug him and kiss him and everything and make it spout in me, and be his best woman! Just like before. Can I, huh, please? I really, really want to."

"I don't think that's possible."

Nymph stared at her. "I can't see him? But I told you everything! It's all right now!"

"I'm afraid it isn't. You see, Mad wasn't supposed to do those things with you. He will be put on trial."

"But you said if I told you, it would be all right! He would be out of trouble!"

"Nymph, you misunderstood. I said we had to talk about him, and that what you said might help him."

"Yes! Yes! I helped him! I told everything!"

The interviewer's face was grim. "I had thought you might say something else. Something that would help him. Unfortunately-"

Nymph's eyes widened in shock. "You mean our secret-it won't help him?"

'I'm afraid it won't, dear."

"You mean if I'd lied, it would have helped him?"

"I didn't say that, Nymph." The interviewer's eyes were moist, and her lower lip was trembling.

"I didn't help him, I hurt him!" Nymph exclaimed, catching on. "Oh, Mad! I'm sorry!" Her great innocent eyes overflowed as she started to cry. "Oh, Mad, I love you! I'm sorry!"

"So am I, dear," the interviewer murmured, wiping her eyes. "I wish I had never done this."

The courtroom was quiet as the videotape ended. The Jury sat stunned. Several jaws hung slack. One jury woman was openly weeping. No one had antic.i.p.ated a story like this.

The Judge refocused his eyes and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. "Is-is the Defense ready to proceed?"

"We are, Your Honor. We believe that this poignant tape establishes that though the Defendant may be technically guilty of the charge against him, he is not morally guilty. He did not seek the girl, he did not force his attention on her. He demurred at every stage, by her own testimony. It was entirely voluntary on her part. In fact, they were lovers, in the truest sense, age no barrier. The law may say he is guilty, but the law is sometimes an a.s.s."

Several members of the Jury nodded their agreement.

Then he turned to the Jury. "If there is guilt here, then surely it is that of the father, who set her up by incestuously toying with her. And of her brother, who practiced sodomy on her with a candle. Remember, it was to escape that abuse that she first fled and found the Defendant. The Defendant never hurt her. He did only what she asked. He gave her what no other man did. He loved her. We may take issue with the manner of the expression of that love, but we cannot deny its reality. She came to him of her own accord, again and again, because what he offered her was so much better than what she received at home. Her family should be on trial!"

In the dark, Geode was quiet. "Are you asleep?" she asked softly.

"No."

"Did you like the story?"

"No."

"Do you want me to go?"

"No." His hand squeezed hers.

"Then do as you will with me."

"What did the jury decide?"

She nodded in the darkness, then resumed her storytelling tone. "But in the end the Jury, reluctantly, had to go with the Law. They found Mad guilty. They urged leniency. But the Judge was constrained by a mandatory schedule of penalties. Mad was sentenced to a long term in prison."

"What happened to Nymph?"

"Nymph was returned to her family. She showed little emotion, and seldom spoke unnecessarily. The years pa.s.sed. The first chance she had to get away from the family, she did so, by seducing and marrying the first eligible man she encountered. She maintained contact only with her brother, to whom she sent hostile cards every Christmas. He was afraid of her, and never responded. She became a nondescript housewife and was never heard from again."

"What happened to Mad?"

"Conventional criminals don't like child molesters. He was killed in prison. Nymph blamed herself for that; she had betrayed their Secret, and so had killed him."

Geode lay silent. After a time she asked again: "Do you want me to go?"

For answer, he pulled her down beside him. He found her face and kissed her. "I think I can do it now," he said.

"Oh, Geode!" she exclaimed. Then she succ.u.mbed to a sudden storm of weeping.

Tightly embraced, they slept.

* 33 - GEODE WOKE, FINDING none in his arms. She was sleeping. The bed under his shoulder remained wet with her tears.

She had told him a remarkable story. There had never been any doubt in his mind that it was her own. none was a creature of stories and of alternate ident.i.ties, and he loved them all. none, whose husband had lost interest in her and taken another lover. Teensa, who had been raped but came to love her attacker. Eve, the girl with b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Nymph, with a love affair at age five. She was all of them, to some degree, but mostly she was none and Nymph.

But who was she now, with him? None of her stories had involved impotence. He had told her he thought he could do it now, to have s.e.x with her, and he had thought so, but they hadn't tried it right away. She had thought he wouldn't like her once he knew her story, but she could tell him a thousand such stories and it wouldn't matter. Rather, it did matter: it helped him to know her and to trust her. He wanted to know all about her, because only then could he truly love her.

He thought about his impotence. He had always had it. He had gotten erections when by himself, but in the presence of another person, male or female, never. It had been known in his family from the outset that s.e.x was evil. Later there had been cla.s.ses in school that said it wasn't, necessarily, but they had no force; he knew.

He had never had any social life. It wasn't that he was especially shy of girls, just that there wasn't much point, since he knew he couldn't do what it came to in the end. Mostly girls had evinced no interest in him, and he had ignored them. But in his reading and viewing he had come to understand that there was a world he was missing. Now he knew what it was and how it was supposed to be done, but he couldn't doit.

Once a girl had befriended him, perhaps because he was nonthreatening. In due course she had suggested s.e.x, and he had explained that he couldn't get it hard. "I don't believe it!" she said. So they had gone to his bedroom when his folks were away, and locked the door, and undressed. He had never before seen a live girl naked. She was beautiful, with flaring hips and full b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He wished he could do it with her, but his p.e.n.i.s remained limp.

"I'll take care of that!" she said confidently. She had fondled it, then put her mouth to it and sucked. He had liked the feeling, and his p.e.n.i.s had enlarged a bit, but it didn't come close to an erection.

Finally she had given up. "I guess you really can't," she said frustrated.

"I want to," he said. "But I can't."

"There must be something wrong with you. Maybe a clogged nerve or something, so it won't get hard no matter what. It must be awful!"

"It's awful," he agreed.