Seeds of Fear

WHAT YOU SEE Paul Dale Anderson

Who do you want to be tonight? she asks herself. Sandra? Marsha? Cynthia?

Cynthia, yes. Cindy for short. Cindy is sexy, sinful. Full of fun. Tonight she wants to be Cindy.

Hurriedly stripping off her daytime persona to leave behind a scattered trail of discarded business attire and conventional undergarments — nylon half-slip, pantyhose, bra, white cotton panties — littering the plush hallway carpet between master bedroom and bathroom, Cindy softly hums the theme song from Gypsy. She flings the brightly colored plastic shower curtain aside, her playful mood quickly escalating to near mania. She steps into the tub, adjusts the water temperature, yanks the curtain back into place, twists a plastic knob to divert the flow of hot water from spigot to showerhead, and luxuriates in the sheer sensuality of thousands of tiny needles pounding her shoulder blades and stinging her naked flesh like a cat-o'-nine-tails.

Her nipples instantly harden; her inner thighs become slippery and wet; a warm flush flutters her tummy as soapy fingers caress her tendermost spots.

After bringing herself to multiple orgasms with erotic daydreams of the night yet to come, Cindy shaves both legs and carefully trims scraggly strands of curly hair from her pubic thatch with her father's straight razor. She rinses off and towels herself dry.

Gaudy makeup comes next: eye shadow, eyeliner, and lipstick. Then she selects a long, blond fall, one of dozens of expensive falls and wigs that line her makeup table like trophies line the huts of South Seas headhunters. She expertly shapes and blends the soft synthetic human hair into her own closely cropped natural hair with the consummate skill of a professional hairdresser.

Nipple rings? Should she wear nipple rings?

She rummages through her jewelry drawer to find a pair of delicately crafted twenty-four-karat two-inch-diameter gold rings, pokes thin hypoallergenic wires through tiny holes piercing the center of both nipples. Delicious thrills sensitize her body as she tugs both rings to be sure the wires are securely seated.

On impulse, she spreads the lips of her vulva and attaches a third ring — this one a long, slender, razor-thin piece of jeweled metal that clamps tightly to her clitoris like the jaws of a vise.

The image that stares back at Cindy from the full-length mirror on the other side of the room is extremely beautiful, too beautiful to be believed. Didn't Mother always say Cindy was far too skinny and sickly looking for her own good? On closer inspection, she grudgingly admits Mother was right. Without an inch of fat to spare, her image appears delicate, fragile, easily fractured. Like a porcelain doll that will shatter to thousands of sharp shards if touched by human hands. Her skin, too, seems unnaturally pale; there should be telltale tan lines decorating her chest like military campaign ribbons, but there aren't. And her firm breasts, though more than ample for her height and slender frame, are neither as large nor full as the cover girls that pose for Cosmo or Vogue.

She makes a mental note to visit a tanning salon. A few more pounds might add an inch or two to her bustline, hopefully without ruining the rest of her figure. Why should she settle for anything less than perfection? Mother would insist she shouldn't.

And Mother is always right.

At twenty-eight, Cindy thinks she can easily pass for twenty-four — maybe even twenty-two, if the lights are right. She's young enough to be attractive, but experienced enough to know how to exploit a woman's hidden assets. Mother would say it's the best of all possible worlds.

She is the same age her mother was when she was born.

Toying with fabrics in the walk-in closet, she decides a red half-cup bra under a peach-colored silk see-through will be perfect tonight. A matching red garter belt, peach-tinted nylons, a magenta thigh-length leather skirt, and red patent leather pumps complete the outfit nicely.

Should she wear panties? Yes? No?

Wouldn't Mother be mortified at the thought? Not wear underwear? Mother would kill her if she knew.

But Mother isn't here now, and Cindy is a grown-up girl who can make her own decisions.

She decides to leave the panties at home.

"So this is where you live," Alex says. "Nice."

"I inherited this house when my parents died," Cindy tells him. "I've lived here all my life."

"Bet it costs a fortune to maintain a house like this and the grounds," Alex whispers appreciatively, strolling around the huge living room, examining the fine furniture, the glassed-in curio cabinets, original framed oils on all four walls. "How do you do it? Everything looks so neat, so clean, so spotless. So perfect."

"Why, thank you," Cindy beams, pleased he noticed. Most of the pretty boys she met tonight at the club wouldn't have. That's why she picked Alex: He has a certain sensitivity she finds attractive. "A landscaping service takes care of the yard," she explains, "but the house I do all by myself. My mother taught me that cleanliness is next to godliness. I've never forgotten a thing Mother taught me."

"No wonder I haven't seen you out on the dance floor before," Alex says, only half-jokingly. "You spend all your time cleaning."

"Not all my time," laughs Cindy. "I'm the chief executive officer and chairperson of the board of two international corporations my father founded. Most of my time, I'm sorry to say, is taken up by business. But I really don't want to spend all night talking about business or cleaning house. And neither do you." Cindy crooks a finger in Alex's direction. "C'mere, you gorgeous hunk, you. The bedroom's this way."

As Cindy climbs the carpeted stairs to an upstairs bedroom with Alex following closely behind like a lovesick puppy tied to a leash, she allows the short leather skirt to inch slowly up the backs of her thighs.

By now there should be absolutely no doubt in Alex's mind that Cindy isn't wearing panties.

Alex can't believe his luck. Not only is this prime-looking bitch horny as hell, she's also richer than Rockefeller.

A college junior, Alex was Friday-night bar-hopping with two half-drunk classmates — "looking at girls, not for girls," they lied to themselves as they put away beer after beer in bar after bar — when they discovered sexy Cindy gyrating on the crowded dance floor of an upscale nightclub out on the beltway.

Instantly smitten by the really seductive way this older woman's tight ass wriggled beneath her incredibly short leather skirt, the way her half-hidden breasts jostled the front of the see-through blouse, the way her piercing eyes scanned and measured each of them in turn — promising heaven on earth to anybody man enough to fuel the fire in those eyes — the boys picked a place at the bar where they could ogle the woman's every move without being obvious.

"She's not wearing panties!" Ernie relayed over the music, becoming so excited, he slipped off his barstool and nearly sprawled face-forward on the floor. "I swear she flashed me a live beaver!"

"Shut up and sit down," Alex shushed, embarrassed by his friend's drunken display. Alex was acting as the designated driver tonight, carefully nursing his own drinks to keep a clear head and stay within state-enforced legal blood-alcohol limits. "No need to blow your cool, Ernie. She's probably wearing flesh-colored bikini panties or a thong." Alex squinted his eyes, scrutinizing the hem of that short leather skirt bobbing oh-so-dangerously close to crotch level, a man might imagine almost anything. "You can't see well enough in this light to tell the difference," he concluded.

"I think I'm in lust," Ernie groaned, downing his nineteenth beer of the night, and immediately chasing that one down with a shot of Jim Beam. He signaled the bartender for another round.

"You're always in lust," Alex said disgustedly. But then, he mused, his eyes zeroing in on interesting shadows dancing around the woman's crotch, so am I.

When the dance ended, the woman excused herself to her dance partner — a muscle-bound thirty-something wearing a half-unbuttoned shirt that showed off his gold chains and steroid-induced pecs — and headed for the ladies' room.

"Show's over," Ted sadly lamented, killing his watered-down scotch and setting the empty glass on the bar. "You guys ready to move on to the next watering hole?"

"Not me, man," protested Ernie, beginning to look a little green around the gills. "The whole room's spinning around like the tilt-a-whirl at Kiddieland. I think I'm gonna puke."

"Warned you not to mix bourbon and beer on an empty stomach, didn't I?" Ted said knowingly. "Maybe if you eat something solid, you'll feel —»

At the first mention of food, Ernie lurched from his perch on the barstool and rushed straight to the john, a protective hand over his mouth.

"Guess he's done for the night," said Ted, shaking his head. "You wanna split before he comes back? Let the asshole catch a cab?"

"Here," said Alex, flipping Ted the car keys. "You go. I'll stick around and make certain Ernie gets home okay."

"You sure? The night's still young. We could always hit a few strip joints…"

"I'm sure," Alex said.

After Ted left, Alex asked the bartender to phone for a cab. Then he headed for the men's room to check on Ernie.

And bumped into the blonde.

Up close, he could see she was older than she looked on the dance floor. Suddenly he felt like an immature teenager with a crush on his eighth-grade English teacher. He couldn't move. He didn't know what to say.

"Do I have to crawl over you to get by?" she asked because Alex's solid bulk blocked the only way back to the dance floor from the rest rooms.

"You can crawl all over me anytime you want," he offered, surprised by the brazenness of the words coming from his own mouth. He couldn't believe he actually said that. He licked his lips, then literally bit his tongue.

Her eyes roamed his body from head to toe. "If I were to crawl all over you," she asked seriously, her voice indicating newfound interest, "what would you do?"

"I'd lick your pussy until you begged me to fuck your brains out," he said, still biting his tongue. It sounded to him like he said, "I dick yewsy ilew egg ilew uck ur ainsout."

"Think you're man enough to fuck my brains out?" she asked.

He reached for her hand and, without thinking of the consequences, moved her fingers straight to his fly. "Think you're woman enough to find out?"

Her eyes locked his in a battle of wills as two of her painted fingers touched the tab of his zipper, tugging it down. Down past the dangerous snake uncoiling in his jeans. Down, down, all the way down. As far down as his zipper would go. A curious smile curled the corners of her eyes as the same two fingers slowly — oh, ever so slowly! — crept inside his open fly, around the elastic edge of his Jockey shorts, made intimate contact with his bare flesh. Made him jump. Made hot sparks shoot through his nervous system like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

"You'll do," she acknowledged, withdrawing her hand. "Let's go before I change my mind."

"Go? Go where?" Alex asked in a daze, awkwardly fumbling to zip up his pants before anyone else saw he was wide open.

"Why, my place, of course," the girl said, making him feel stupid for asking such a dumb question. "I'm going to give you a chance to fuck my brains out."

Cindy takes her time undressing.

She has already undressed Alex. He sits, completely naked, on the edge of the bed, watching her every move, a throbbing erection between his hairy legs.

Cindy loves the look of rapt attention fixing his face. He seems so young, so innocent, so expectant. So hopeful. So perfect.

He is the exact same age she was when her parents died.

She peels off her see-through blouse, drops it to the floor by her feet. Her full breasts, spilling over the tops of the half-cups, ache to be touched. She reaches up and touches her flesh herself, squeezes her own firm flesh as if she were kneading bread dough on a kitchen countertop. Alex is forced to watch all this from the edge of the bed. She has forbidden him to touch her until she gives explicit orders. The prolonged wait is meant to torture her as much as him.

She removes the confining material from around the bottoms of her breasts, drops the red half-bra to the floor next to the see-through blouse. She watches Alex's eyes widen in surprise and fascination as she slips her fingers through the golden rings dangling from her pierced nipples and yanks. An unsuppressible groan escapes her lips as exquisite thrills rip through traumatized nerve endings in both nipples, adding fuel to an already fierce fire blazing between her legs.

Bunching the short leather skirt up around her waist, Cindy slowly opens her thighs and allows a solitary fingertip to explore her moist crease from one end to the other. She licks her lips and imagines her finger has now become a tongue.

Despite strict orders not to move a muscle or she'll stop the show, she sees Alex can barely control himself. His hand goes to his lap and grips his erection like a vise. She can tell he is right on the edge.

She walks quickly to the bed, her fingers opening herself wide.

"Fuck my brains out," she orders, lowering herself atop his hard-on.

Alex awakens to bright morning sunlight spearing his eyes, temporarily blinding him. He also has to pee something fierce. Without realizing that he's not at home in his own room, he tries to roll out of bed and instantly discovers he can move no more than an inch or two in either direction. Then he remembers: Both hands and both ankles are firmly cuffed with police-style steel handcuffs; the handcuffs chained to iron eyelets anchored to ceiling beams above the bed.

He dimly recalls allowing Cindy, at some low point during their nightlong lovefest, to shackle and chain him like a criminal. Though it did seem a bit kinky at the time, he didn't voice an objection because beautiful Cindy had him so turned on, he would have agreed to almost anything.

Then she proceeded to test his sexual stamina until he fell asleep with the cuffs still fastened to his hands and feet.

Now, as he looks around for Cindy to free him, Cindy is nowhere to be seen.

Alex struggles with his bonds for what seems like hours, rattling the chains, rubbing his wrists raw, but neither set of cuffs wants to budge. He begins to panic. He shouts for help until he's hoarse. No help comes. His bladder lets go and he wets the bed.

Finally, when he's given up hope anyone will hear him, the door opens and an older woman — old enough, by the looks of her, to be his own mother or grandmother — enters the bedroom carrying a bundle of clean sheets. She walks to the windows and closes the blinds.

At first, as his eyes try to adjust to the changing light, Alex is absolutely certain this woman bears no resemblance to Cindy. This woman's hair is short and gray. Cindy's hair is long and blond. This woman appears old, tired, worn-out. Cindy is young and vibrant. Supersexy. Cindy, he's sure, would never dress in a frumpy pale green housedress that obscures her figure from neck to knees. Nor would she house her feet in brown, well-worn penny loafers a size too big. Nor wear ornate eyeglasses and no makeup.

"Where's Cindy?" Alex demands, thinking he's addressing a maid or cleaning woman. "Did she send you in here with the key to unlock these damn things?"

"Cindy. went. away," the woman replies, each word deliberately drawn out as if she has to think twice about what a word means before voicing its sound. "My. name's. Marsha. I'm Cindy's. mother. And. no. she didn't give me any key."

"You can't be Cindy's mother," Alex objects. "Cindy told me both her parents were dead."

"But I am her. mother. and I'm certainly. not dead," the woman insists, her voice beginning to sound more and more like Cindy's. "What's the. matter? Don't I look like Cindy's. mother?"

Despite her aged appearance and weird speech patterns, Alex now thinks he can recognize a certain familiarity in this woman's demeanor. Merely a family resemblance? Or is it possible he may be talking to Cindy in disguise?

"No," he decides. "You look more like Cindy in a cheap, gray wig than you look like Cindy's mother." He rattles his chains. "C'mon, Cindy, stop playing games. Get me out of these things."

"Oh, no. I couldn't… do that," says the woman, "even if I. wanted to. Cindy has the only key."

"Can the crap, Cindy," Alex shouts, angry at feeling toyed with. "Unlock these damn cuffs right now! I want to take a shower and go home."

"I can tell by your. lack of clothes, young man," the woman says sternly, glancing disapprovingly at Alex's nakedness, then quickly averting her eyes, "that you and my daughter have been very, very. wicked. I'll just have to. punish her for that. when she returns. I can't have Cindy bringing strange. men into my house and doing heaven knows what. with them without. punishing her. Can I? I always punish Cindy when she's been wicked."

"You're. " Crazy, Alex starts to say, then quickly bites his tongue before the word can slip out. What if she really is crazy? Do crazy people turn violent, he wonders, when you tell them you think they're crazy? Alex is afraid to find out.

"What would be a suitable punishment for. my daughter. this time?" the woman asks herself aloud, momentarily ignoring Alex. "Should I beat her again? Lock her in a dark closet and feed her nothing but. prunes? Or should I make her lick the bathroom spotless. with her tongue? I've tried all those things, you know, and. none of them works. What can I do to make. Cindy obey me? What? What?"

Alex says nothing.

"Maybe I should punish you, "the woman suggests, returning her full attention to Alex. "Cindy seems to like you. Maybe if I were to punish you, it might hurt her worse than if I inflicted the same punishment on her directly. What do you think?"

"This isn't funny anymore, Cindy," Alex says, traces of fear edging into his voice. "Please. Just unlock these cuffs and let me go home. Play your mind games on someone else."

"I assure you, young man, this is no game," the woman says, laying the clean sheets at the foot of the bed and stepping to the doorway. "When I get back, I'll show you just how real all this can be."

"Oh, no," Sandra says when she opens the door to her bedroom and discovers a naked man chained to her bed. "Not again."

"Cindy?" the man asks hopefully. "Thank goodness, you're back, Cindy! Get me out of these cuffs before I go crazy!"

"I'm Sandy, not Cindy," Sandra quickly corrects the man, switching on overhead lights, casting out encroaching early evening shadows so the naked man can clearly see her raven-colored hair and baby blue eyes. "Cindy was my younger sister. Who the hell are you, mister? And what, pray tell, are you doing chained to my bed without any clothes on?"

"Alex," the man answers, hope draining from his voice when he sees that Sandy isn't Cindy. "I'm sorry. I thought you were Cindy. You look a lot like Cindy, except for the hair and clothes. And I thought this was Cindy's bed."

"It was Cindy's bed. Before Cindy died in it."

"Cindy died? In this bed?"

"Four years ago. I was away at college at the time, but when I came home for spring break, I found my father chained to the bed, Cindy tied up next to him, and my mother on the floor at the foot of the bed. All dead. According to the autopsy, Cindy and my father both died of starvation and dehydration after weeks without food or water. My mother died from a self-inflicted overdose of sleeping pills."

"Jesus," Alex says.

"I don't cry for them anymore," Sandy says. "I don't have time to cry, what with running my father's businesses and maintaining the house."

"I don't suppose you do," Alex says sympathetically. "And I really don't want to impose on your precious time at all, but do you suppose you might take just a little time to look for the key to these cuffs? I'd really appreciate it."

"I don't know where to start looking," Sandra says, wondering how this man got chained to her bed in the first place. Especially since the police took all the chains and cuffs away when they took her father's decomposing body away. Where did these new chains and handcuffs come from?

"Please," begs the man with tears glistening his eyes. "Look for the keys. Please."

"Oh, all right," agrees Sandra. After all, it certainly wouldn't do if Mother were to come home unexpectedly and find a naked man chained to Sandra's bed.

It wouldn't do at all.

Can all three women be the same person? Alex wonders as he watches Sandra's shapely backside sashay from the room.

Is it possible?

Racking his brain for answers, he recalls something he learned during an intro psych class the spring semester of his sophomore year. "The victims of multiple personality disorder," his instructor had informed the class, "are almost always women, very often young and pretty women, usually in their mid-to-late twenties by the time symptoms manifest themselves for clinical observation.

"MPD is one of several mental disorders believed to be caused by severe emotional trauma during the identity realization phase of late childhood development or early adolescence. When a fragile undifferentiated preadolescent ego suffers an intolerable condition — such as repeated physical, sexual, or mental abuse — over an extended period of time with no end in sight and no possibility of escape in the real world, the human psyche's unconscious defense mechanisms take over and the damaged ego sometimes splits into separate personalities in a desperate attempt to fool itself. 'This isn't really happening to me,' the mind tells itself, 'it's happening to someone else.'"

So which personality is the someone else in Cindy's case? Sandra? Marsha? Cindy?

Which woman is real, Alex wonders, and which two women are figments of a warped imagination?

Sandra is obviously just Cindy with medium-length black hair, dressed casually in loose-fitting blue jeans and a patterned blouse, looking like your average graduate student or maybe someone's third-grade teacher. Marsha, too, is Cindy, shrouded in a shapeless shift that hides her figure, wearing ornate eyeglasses to disguise her face and a short gray wig to make her look twice as old as she really is. But Cindy herself is, he realizes too late to escape being trapped by the handcuffs, too fantastic to be real. Her long blond hair, fabulous body, and voracious appetite for kinky sex make her every man's wet dream come true.

While her Marsha personality is every man's worst nightmare!

And Sandra, who appears as nice and normal as the typical girl next door, is probably as crazy as an ax murderer.

Alex smells his fear. Tears run down his cheeks as he realizes the precarious predicament that thinking with his balls instead of his head has placed him in.

Next time — please, God, let there be a next time! — he promises he'll know better.

What are you thinking now, my beautiful blue-eyed boy? Have you figured it out yet?

Do you know what's going to happen next?

Cindy swivels around in her executive office chair, punches a button on an electronic control panel in front of her, and is able to view Alex's terrified face simultaneously in six live television monitors mounted on the wall. The hidden cameras — one concealed in the ceiling, one on the floor, and one in each of the bedroom walls — can zoom in on any part of Alex's anatomy she wishes to focus on at the flip of a switch.

A dozen other video monitors on another wall replay highlights from last night's hours-long fuckfest, more than enough footage, Cindy is certain, for three or four feature-length films. When she has time, she'll edit the tapes for content, develop a cohesive story line for each feature presentation, dub in additional dialogue as needed, then add scripted footage of herself in the roles of Marsha, Sandra, and Cindy to round out production values. After tightening each feature to ninety minutes, reproducible masters, digitally enhanced, will be distributed via modem and international phone lines to business associates in London and Bangkok. There her associates will inexpensively mass-produce videotapes for the booming billion-dollar porn markets of South America, Eastern Europe, and the Pacific Rim, where snuff films — real snuff films, not phony reenactments — are currently very much in demand.

Cindy expects to gross half a million dollars or more per feature, a mil and a half to two mil for the bundle. Not bad for a single night's work. Especially since her costar won't be alive to see a penny of the proceeds.

"The key to operating a successful business," her father taught her, "is to keep overhead low. Occupy a market niche that can command a high price for goods and services, and slice costs to the bone."

Her father had been her first costar, and she'd certainly sliced him to the bone.

Her mother had costarred in Cindy's second film.

Of course, Cindy isn't her real name. Nor does her real name appear in the phony credits of any of her feature films.

Cindy sees the growing fear on Alex's face in the monitor and knows it's time to end the charade. After all, it wouldn't do to have him die from sheer terror and ruin the bang-up ending she has planned, now would it?

Cindy picks up a twelve-foot braided rawhide bull- whip from her desk, coils it over her arm. The bullwhip is always a crowd pleaser. She'll start the next scene with the bullwhip biting into Alex's back side.

She slips on a pristine pair of white pumps with six-inch-high stiletto heels. The heels have been honed to fine points much sharper than nails. She'll end the scene by walking over Alex's groin, stomach, neck, and face with stiletto heels.

On her way from the office back to the bedroom, Cindy stops by a mirror, checks her makeup, and adjusts Marsha's wig so several strands of her own hair are visible at the edges.

The incongruity of the relatively young and well- proportioned naked female body in high heels she sees reflected in the mirror and the gray-haired granny wig slanted cockeyed on her forehead nearly makes her laugh.

But laughing is for later.

First she has to attend to business.