Seeds of Fear

JUST A PHONE CALL AWAY John F. D. Taff

Home seemed foreign to Cynthia on a weekday morning, a place she wasn't supposed to be. The small apartment wore the air of a person awakened too soon, groggy and grumpy and put upon.

"Get used to it," she mumbled, shivering in her underwear at the kitchen table. She took another sip from the heavy ceramic mug that said "Don't Ask Me, I Just Work Here," a memento of her recently ex-job.

Cynthia was going on forty. Her long brown hair was worn pulled back, showing off a handsome, if somewhat heavy, face. She wore the best clothes she could afford, but they were old and too tight in some places, too loose in others.

All told, Cynthia was not the type of person one would normally choose for an office romance. She wasn't the self-assured, tight young college graduate, the naive, even younger secretary, or the older, but still sexy, vice president with the failing marriage.

She may not have had the body, the age, or the power to attract lovers, but Cynthia had the voice.

And she had learned long ago that her voice was as sexual as any breast or butt or leg.

It was deep, but not too much so. Raspy, but not grating or harsh on the ear. It was a tingling, vibrating, resonant, breathy voice, reminiscent of Lauren Bacall or Kathleen Turner.

Without a doubt, it turned men on in ways her body alone never could.

It had been what had attracted her boss, what had kept him in her bed for eight months.

It couldn't, however, save her from being fired by him.

That had thrown her for a loop. Cynthia was so accustomed to maintaining the upper hand in her relationships that this single act by her boss left her feeling powerless and bereft, not knowing quite what to do with herself.

So with a couple weeks' severance, a last lunch with the girls, and a parting, bad-dog-eyed good-bye from her ex, she left, with no prospects and fewer ideas of what to do next.

Another punishing draft of hot coffee, and she flipped the newspaper open, scanned the want ads. Down the columns, through administrative assistants, receptionists, secretaries. She circled those that appealed to her; there weren't many.

Her eyes drifted down to "Topless Dancers Wanted," and she snorted, almost gagging on her coffee. She remembered fondly what Ralph in Accounting had told her on her last date.

"Well, Cynthia," he'd laughed, his voice dropping. "With your talent, I think you'd be able to find a great job in the phone sex business. You'd make a fortune. Hell, I'd call and let you talk dirty to me for two dollars a minute!"

"Ralph!" she'd protested, half-gamely, half-flattered.

Suddenly, cold and depressed and in her underwear on a Monday morning, Ralph's idea didn't seem so ridiculous. With the phone company contacts she had gained through being a receptionist with a large company, a little research, and a little money borrowed from her retirement fund, she might be able to swing this.

Then something at the back of her mind whispered to her what she was really thinking of doing.

Talking dirty to men on the phone. And not just dirty, but explicit and definitely X-rated.

Are you really going to be able to do this? the voice asked.

There was only one way to tell.

It amazed Cynthia how quickly it all came together.

She secured a business license, got a tax number, made the necessary arrangements with the phone company. Her liaisons there were more than eager to help her in getting a «900» line installed in her apartment.

While she waited, she visited the newsstand outside her building. There, under the silently amazed eyes of the old newsman, she self-consciously bought a few of the seedier men's magazines.

Back in her apartment, she sat in the little space she'd cleared for her office and flipped through the magazines, intending to go straight for the classified ads. Her curiosity, though, demanded that she scrutinize the first several carefully, until the photos all took on a surreal look, with their tangled limbs and close- ups of genitalia so tightly focused, she was sure even a gynecologist would have trouble identifying what he was seeing.

She was able to cobble together pieces of the ads she liked into a small ad for her new service. Several phone calls and overnight packages later, her little ad was scheduled to run in several of the men's magazines she'd reviewed, as well as a couple of local alternative newspapers.

Before she could sit back and wait for the phone calls, though, she needed practice.

"Hello?"

"Ralph? Hi, this is Cynthia."

"Cynthia?" he said, lowering his voice. "Cynthia Johnson?"

"Yes, Ralph," she purred into the receiver. "And do you know what? I'm sitting here totally nude.»

Here she paused, hitched in a deep breath as her stomach fluttered.

". and I'm really wet."

There was a stunned silence on the other end. Cynthia heard the tinny sound of a television somewhere on Ralph's end. She almost laughed then, imagining him standing in his living room listening to her. Here she sat in a T-shirt and jeans with no makeup.

Not nude and decidedly not wet.

"My wife is here, for chrissakes!" he whispered.

"Ralph," she moaned so low that her own phone vibrated in her ear. "Oh, Ralph. I've been thinking about you, imagining you. Touching myself. I've been very naughty."

"Dear Lord," came a hoarse voice.

"I took your advice to start a phone sex business. You're my first customer. But don't worry," she said with a throaty giggle. "This one's on the house."

"Can I call you back?" he whined.

"No, Ralph. We've got to finish. right here, right now."

He did.

After that, Ralph became her first paying customer, too.

The phone rang at 3 A.M.

Cynthia didn't bother to turn the lights on as she picked her way to the chair by the phone. In the three months she'd operated the service, she'd walked the path many times in the dark, often more asleep than not.

The men who called at this hour were more lonely than horny, a bit more sincere, sweeter, and a little more desperate for simple human contact. Cynthia found that she could talk to these men about things other than sex — their jobs, hobbies, problems. Sometimes these callers even became so engrossed in their conversations that they never made it to the sex part.

Cynthia plopped into the chair near the phone, answered it without clearing her throat, knowing that these men wanted to rouse her from bed, wanted to hear her raspy, sleep-filled voice. It lent an air of intimacy to what they did, as if they had merely rolled over and awakened a lover curled in bed next to them.

"Hello, honey. This better be good."

"Hello," came the man's voice, rough and hoarse and whisper-quick.

Cynthia knew from experience that he would say nothing more, only respond to questions or ask short, wheezing queries. In this situation, very few men wanted to take the lead.

She preferred it that way.

"Does your mommy know you're waking me up? 'Cause if she doesn't, you go tell her it's two ninety-nine per minute."

"My mommy's not here," he growled.

"Good thing. Mine's not here either."

"What are you wearing?"

"Nothing, honey." Actually, she was wearing a pair of panties, but otherwise this was accurate.

"I always sleep naked," she continued. "You never know when the opportunity may. arise. What are you wearing?"

"I'm not wearing anything either."

"And I bet you've got quite a handful."

"You could say that," he laughed, and it raised goose bumps on her arms, for it was a disturbing laugh, confidential and low, like a rusty engine slowly turning over. She heard a sound, distant, maybe the squeaking of bedsprings, the rustle of covers.

"Tell me about yourself."

"Down to details. My kind of man. I'm five eight, a hundred twenty pounds, brown hair and eyes. Thirty-eight, twenty-six, thirty-four. Like to fuck. How about you?"

"What do you like?" he breathed, ignoring her question. "I mean specifically."

"I like it all."

"You haven't been doing this long, have you?" he dismissed, changing his tone as if he were an actor stepping outside character. "That's the easy answer. What do you really like to do — more than anything else?"

Cynthia rolled her eyes. Obviously the guy was looking to talk with someone who liked the same things he did. But what?

"I like to be spanked," she finally said, and that was a safe answer. Kinky enough to satisfy wilder men, not so perverse as to disgust the milder ones.

"You do?" he whispered after a moment, lapsing back into his previous hushed tone.

"Yeah," she said, relaxing again. "Do you?"

"Yeah, sure," he responded, a bit distractedly. "Sure."

There was a moment of silence.

"You like pain?" he asked from its depths.

"That depends on who, what, and how much," she said, fumbling for her cigarettes and sensing that control was coming back to her.

"I like pain."

"Great," she said, inhaling. "You like to be spanked? Whipped? Bitten?"

"Cut," said the voice, quivering in anticipation. "I like to be cut,"

Here, Cynthia hesitated.

"Cut?" she asked, crushing her cigarette out. "How?"

A deep, rattling sigh from the other end.

"A sharp knife. A razor. A piece of glass. It doesn't matter."

If that litany was not unsettling enough, he did something then that almost made her drop the phone in horror.

He moaned, soft as a caress.

"What are you doing?" She swallowed, hoping to change the subject.

"Stroking myself."

"Are you hard?"

"Yes. And so is it."

"Is what?"

"My knife."

"Knife? What are you doing with a knife?" she asked, covering herself with a blanket, sliding her feet up underneath her.

"Cutting myself," he said, and his voice was rapturous. "Little lines across my chest, my abdomen. Around my nipples. Ohhh!"

And she felt the shudder in his voice.

"Keep talking to me. I like your voice," he said.

"Are you going to keep doing that?" she asked, her stomach folding in on itself.

"Oh, yessss! OHHHH!"

"Doesn't it hurt?" she moaned, biting a finger.

"No! Yes!"

"Stop!" she screamed, leaping up, the blanket falling forgotten around her feet. "Please stop!"

"Jesus! OH! OH MY GOD!" he yelled, his wavering screams descending into a series of broken sobs.

Cynthia stood shaking, her hand cupped over her mouth.

Neither said anything for a minute.

But neither hung up.

"Are you OK?" Cynthia asked, her hand still not far from her mouth.

"I cut off my nipple."

"Oh my God," she whispered, her eyes fluttering back in her head.

"I've got to go now. I've got quite a mess here. But you were wonderful. I'll call again."

With another moan and a creaking of bedsprings, the receiver clunked into place.

The rest of the night, Cynthia sat upright in bed wrapped in her quilt and stared at the phone. It rang several times, stopping at around 4:30 A.M., but she did not answer it.

She'd heard many things over the phone in the last three months; things that were exciting and intriguing, rude and disgusting, uncomfortable and unpleasant. But this had gone far past those other calls, too far.

Into territory within herself that she found unfamiliar and frightening.

Cynthia replayed the conversation over and over in her head. Each time, the feelings surged back, as strong and vivid as they had been during the experience. Strangely, even though they never talked about sex, the call left her with an overwhelming feeling of being used.

Being out of control.

She hadn't experienced that yet. Up to now, she had always been in control on the phone.

This man, though, played her as deftly as she played other callers.

There was something else that disturbed her even more, something that clung to the borders of her conscious mind, hid in the shadows.

Cynthia caught only a glimpse of it, but that was enough.

Excitement.

She'd been excited by the conversation, by the man hurting himself.

Enjoying himself.

Unable to think of another explanation, unwilling to accept this one, Cynthia sobbed herself to sleep just as the morning sun poked through the slats of her bedroom blinds. And the phone rang.

Two days later, Cynthia felt good enough to begin taking calls again.

Passing the jangling phone late in the afternoon, a soda in one hand, cigarettes in the other, she picked it up on impulse.

"Hello?"

"I didn't frighten you, did I?"

Cynthia stiffened, fumbled a cigarette out.

"You're still there. I can hear you. smoking," he said just as she exhaled.

"I'm sorry if I upset you," he went on after a minute. "I tried to call back for two days."

Cynthia exhaled another cloud of thin smoke, took a drink of soda, sat down. She was going to make sure she was in control before she answered, even though her heart was vibrating inside her chest, her mouth bone-dry.

"I really enjoyed our conversation. It was the best I've —»

"Did you really do it?"

"Good, you are there," he said, amiably.

"You really cut… it off?" Cynthia couldn't bear to say the word.

"It only hurt after, and then for just a little while."

"I can't believe you did that to yourself," she said, her own nipples beginning to ache with imagined, sympathetic pain. She crossed an arm over her breasts, crushed them to her as if to reassure herself that they were intact.

"Why not?"

"Is that a serious question?"

"Sure."

"You're not going to do it again… are you?"

"Who says I'm not doing it right now?"

That stopped her. Of course he was doing it now. That's why he'd called again.

"You are, aren't you?" She puffed, keeping the cigarette perched close to her lips.

"You don't even know if I really did it or not. It excited you, though, didn't it? Even if it scared you, repulsed you?"

Blood, hot and angry, flooded her cheeks.

"That's just sick. You're sick. You're a fucking weirdo!"

"Ohhh. ummmm… I love your voice. It tickles my ear."

"Stop it," she pleaded. "Whatever you're doing, stop it."

"I've got my knife again.»

"No! I'm hanging up!"

"I'm. uhhh. making three or four.. uhhhhahhhh. little incisions along my erection. There," he breathed. "Yeah, that's great."

"Oh my God!" she shrieked. "Stop it!"

"Ohhhh!" he groaned. "Just enough to get a little blood. It's nice and warm, and it's a great lubricant. If it doesn't dry, that is. Gotta. uhhhnn. keep it fresh."

"Please stop," she whined, twisting and untwisting the phone cord.

"So hard now. kind of stings. have to make a. ahhhhh. another cut. Ohhhh. Talk to me."

"No. Stop. Just stop."

"If you don't want to. listen, hang up the. awwwww. phone."

"Don't do this. Please."

"But it feels so good. Stings a little, but. ahhh!"

An image of him appeared unbidden in her mind: a vague face grimacing, a nude body writhing upon the white sheets of a bed at the center of a Rorschach test of blood. The straining, swelling thing he held in his closed fist was a deep, dark red, the secret, warm red of the interior of a cherry pie.

Warmth spread out in waves from her pubis, even as her stomach shivered at this image.

Cynthia found, perversely, that her own disgust only seemed to heighten the arousal she was now fighting. It was illicit and forbidden, and she hadn't felt that since having sex long ago with her teenage boyfriend while her parents were away from home.

"Are you still with me?" he moaned, his voice tight and distant.

"Yes."

"Good. So good."

"Yes," and it was the tone of defeat and remorse, edged with the instinctive desperation of sex.

The caller moaned through clenched teeth, redoubled his efforts.

"Do you want me to finish?"

"Umm," she breathed in assent, plopping onto the chair near the phone, her fingertips brushing lightly down her belly, pulling her robe apart, her panties to one side, sliding through the tangle of hair.

"I'm feeling a little. faint. Gotta hurry. Talk to me.

"I want you to finish." And her voice was low and husky, commanding. Cynthia threw her legs over the arms of the chair, struggled out of her panties. Freed, her fingers teased her exposed sex.

"Finish now."

"Yeah. Ahhh.»

"Right now. Do it!" she commanded, using her shoulder to clamp the phone to her ear, freeing both hands to dance between her legs.

"Ahh! Yes! Oh God, yes!" came his reply, his mouth sounding as if it were pressed close to the phone.

Cynthia lapsed into silence as an orgasm, painful in its intensity and lightning quickness, flashed through her. One of her legs spasmed, lashed out, knocked a lamp off the table near her.

The lightbulb popped as the lamp shattered, and suddenly the afternoon room was engulfed in darkness.

"Did you come?"

"Yes," she panted dryly. It had happened so fast that beads of sweat were only now beginning to form on her forehead. Her aching arms twitched loosely.

"So did I. Are you still wet?"

Cynthia brought her fingers close to her face, rubbed them together.

"Yes."

"So am I," he laughed. "I always have a big mess to clean after I talk with you."

The image of him lying on his bed, the sheets like an ink blotter, came to her again.

In the shadows, her own wet hands were slicked with darkness.

And a smell drifted from her fingers, whose tips had dipped gently inside her.

It was a flat, acrid smell, metallic. The smell of dirty metal and copper pennies.

Blood.

Her stomach, which she had ignored, leapt uncontrollably. It was all she could do to drop the phone and lower her head before she vomited.

As she shook and gasped, the man's tiny voice chirped from the receiver on the floor.

"Hello? Are you still there? Are you all right?"

But she could not answer him, could not even pick the phone up, her hands shook so badly.

It was all she could do to stumble into the bathroom, vomit again into the open toilet, fall into the shower.

There, she checked her fingertips to see the blood.

But they were unstained.

Cynthia stayed in the shower until her skin pruned, obliterated the phantom smell with soap and water.

It was dark again when she awoke, the covers curled like a lover around her naked body. She inhaled deeply, hesitantly, expecting the blood odor, but all she smelled were the warm, clean sheets with their stolen scent of the fabric softener.

Her stomach rumbled, loud enough to hear, and she realized that she'd had nothing to eat since getting sick yesterday.

The mere thought of eating brought a rush of saliva.

Swinging her feet off the bed, she stood, wobbly and stiff.

She grabbed the robe hanging from the bedpost, thrust her arms into it, pulled it closed and knotted the tie.

The kitchen was flooded with the moon's translucent silver light until she snapped on the harsh fluorescents, whose light seemed to ooze from the fixture, creep across the countertops and the white tile.

An omelette, she thought, that really sounds good right now.

Soon she was beating eggs, pouring them into a hot skillet.

The refrigerator held any number of ingredients that would be good in her omelette, but she selected grated cheddar cheese, mushrooms, and a tomato. Her movements were as spare and unconscious as any cook working in a familiar kitchen.

Until she opened a drawer to get a knife to cut the tomato.

They gleamed from where they lay within the drawer, long and tapered like a mouthful of razor teeth.

Cynthia reached tentatively for one, as if the drawer might close around her hand like a hungry mouth.

Snatching the knife out, she slammed the drawer shut with her hip.

She'd selected a paring knife. It was slim and tapered, curving to a point like a miniature scimitar, its gentle, upward angle not unlike that of a…

Shaking her head, she frowned, thrust the knife into the tomato, cored it, divided it.

In her haste, though, the knife slid across her finger, whisper-soft.

She didn't even realize she had cut herself until she had dropped the cubed tomato into the bubbling center of the omelette and washed her hands.

Under the water, blood welled from the cut, hair- thin but deep. When Cynthia, grimacing even though it did not hurt, pulled its edges apart, it opened to reveal a moist, red interior.

It made her finger feel warm, her body a little faint.

Was this what her caller felt each time he did this to himself? she wondered.

Did it heighten his sexual response?

Her gaze drifted back to the cutting board, to the compact knife that rested there on the damp, red cutting board.

Her fingers curled around it, tickled the back of her other hand with its tip.

Behind her, the tomatoes melted into the mass of the omelette.

Her robe slipped open, and she pressed the flat of the cold blade against her breast, the sharp edge just circling her nipple. It became hard immediately.

She flicked the blade's tip to her other breast, traced the nipple.

Goose bumps rushed in a wave up her abdomen, across her collarbone, down her arms.

The knife's blade became warm, moved.

There was a momentary sensation of heat, which swept across her like a scouring, dry wind.

Then a sudden coldness that engorged her nipples so much, she thought they might explode.

She cried out.

Simultaneously, and quite unexpectedly, she orgasmed, her legs buckling beneath her.

Her free hand caught the counter as she fell to her knees, bent her head, and gasped for breath.

Beneath her, bright red pennies dripped unnoticed to the ground from her nipple, pooled loosely on the floor.

The omelette burned in the pan.

Cynthia was in control.

She'd cleaned the kitchen, scouring the charred egg and cheese from the pan. She'd mopped the floor, trying not to distinguish between the pulpy tomato drippings and the other spots that were thicker, more red.

The bandage she had applied after she had collected herself chafed the sore, raw nipple it covered. She had already changed it twice, and blood still oozed from the wound, soaked through the bandage, her T-shirt.

When she had first gone into the bathroom, she was surprised at first to see blood, dripping from her nipple like red milk, running in a rivulet down the curve of her breast, beading on her stomach like water on a finely waxed car.

With hesitant, probing fingers she discovered that the sharp little paring knife had nearly sliced off her entire nipple. It now hung from her breast by a small flap of skin. When she touched it, it moved away like an opening door, exposing bright, red tissue beneath.

She quickly closed it.

Amazingly, it had taken nearly an hour for it to begin to hurt, first in a tentative, stinging way, then in great, gasping throbs of pain that made both breasts ache in rhythm with her pulse.

Once the kitchen was clean, she poured herself a glass of soda, gathered her robe around her, and sat down in her chair near the phone.

She did not cry, and her stomach ached only in a vaguely threatening way.

Rather, she felt she understood the caller better, as if they had bonded in some secret, bloody way. For the first time, she felt she could handle him better when he called next.

Cynthia felt in control again.

And, she had to admit, for some strange reason, what she had done, and done almost unknowingly, had felt. good.

Or at the very least, it hadn't been merely painful.

The phone on the table next to her rang shrilly, and she set the glass down, answered it.

"Hello? Hi, Steve," she purred to one of her regular customers. "Is your wifey asleep? Great. Yes. Uh-huh. I bet you are hard, Stevie.

"I've got something with me tonight that's hard, too."

Steve stayed on the phone, angry at first, then scared, then weeping.

When she was through, he asked if he could call her again.

The phone rang, as it did more and more often these days.

So many calls, so many callers.

Many times, they didn't like what Cynthia wanted to offer them.

With most, though, it only took a phone call or two to turn them on, just as it had been with her.

Then they were easy to control.

But it was getting harder with each caller.

It took more and more of her to keep that control.

Cynthia grunted as she fought to pull herself up from her sticky, crusted bedsheets. She spent most of her time here these days, the phone now moved to her nightstand, where it was within easy reach.

Cynthia was naked, as she was all of the time now. She found that clothing of any kind, even a loose robe, chafed the many wounds on her body, some still oozing fluids, some scabbed over, some already covered with thick, ropy scars.

There were far too many to worry about Band-Aids.

It was difficult to walk now. She was weak so often, and it was hard to maintain her balance without any toes. The neighbors had started to complain, too, first to her, then to the building manager, about the screams, the strange smells coming from her apartment.

"Cynthia?" asked the voice on the receiver, and it trembled through her.

Her ex-boss. Her ex-lover.

"Hello," she croaked, her voice hard and hoarse. It had suffered the most over the last six months or so, through all of the shouting, the shrieking, the crying. The toll of that stress was as apparent in her voice as it would have been in the lank, lusterless hair or wrinkled, saggy body of a burned-out topless dancer.

For a moment, she felt like she had when he had fired her; when the man who cut himself had called her for the first time.

Powerless. Out of control.

Pushing that aside, her hand fumbled for something on the nightstand, just out of reach.

It sparkled in the low light of the room as she brought it around, settled back in bed.

It was awkward to hold the knife these days. All the fingers on her left hand were gone, and on her right hand only a single finger and thumb remained. This, she found, was the minimum number of digits necessary to hold the knife.

"Ralph told me to call you."

"He did? What else did he say?"

"He said I'd never forget it."

"Ohh, you'll never forget it. I'll make sure of that. You'll never forget."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm stroking the tip of the knife over my skin. ahhh. goose bumps are covering me everywhere," she whispered.

Clumsily she moved the knife, trembling a little when the tip of the blade skipped over a scar, slid through a raw, wet patch. She sought out something she had given to no caller as of yet; some part of her body that was whole and unscarred to offer him.

To control him.

"Ahh," he groaned, a noise that sounded as if it were ripped involuntarily from somewhere deep inside him.

"Ummm. It feels nice. Doesn't it?"

"Yes," he answered shakily.

He hesitated briefly when he heard something in the background, underneath her heavy breathing; the corrugated sound of metal cutting into something soft.

The knife moved against her, into her.

"Yes."

Warmth spread within her, upon her.

Her voice cracked with pleasure.

"Good. So good."

She screamed, her hips bucking up from the bed uncontrollably, shuddering with the powerful waves that crashed through her, the warm liquid that spattered over her.

Through everything, she heard him, on the other end, gasp through the spasms of his own orgasm, his breath grating in her ear.

She smiled fiercely as her vision lurched, dimmed.

It came out with little difficulty, and she held it glistening and dripping in the blackness of the room. She was surprised by its smallness — no bigger than her fist — and the fact that it still shuddered timidly in her hand.

"Never forget," she muttered thickly as the receiver dropped to the bed, the still-beating heart squeezed slickly from the ruin of her hand.

Cynthia was in control.