#9 — Nemesis.

Stephen Bedford awoke from his slumber and unzipped the door to his tent. The fresh air breezed in from the surrounding woodland and the russet, early autumn, aroma gratified his senses. With the twist of a knob the camping stove ignited and minutes later he settled down to a mug of coffee and the ham and cheese roll, he purchased the previous evening. He had been living like this, the life of a hermit, for three months now.

It had to be this way. He knew himself all too well. Not one single night, in the last fourteen years of his prison sentence, passed without him thinking about it. At lights out the image of the young woman’s face filtered, into his drowsy reverie, and followed him into his dreams. Her expression of sexual rapture and, as he reached his performative zenith, his hands moving up from her shoulders to her throat. Moments away from carnal denouement, the face changed from pleasure to horror. The beating hands on his face and chest. Hands gripping his wrists as her chest bucks, desperate to inflate. As the pupils of her eyes grew, to the point he could fall into them, he exploded inside her.

After breakfast he walked the eight kilometres to the village. At the shop he bought a newspaper, a tin of beans, a small loaf of bread, butter and a packet of ten cigarettes. On his way back, to the woodland trail, he noticed two young women standing at a bus stop. His stomach turned over and he quickened his pace, head down, looking at where his next couple of steps would take place.

Davina Newport turned to her friend, Haile Durham and asked her, “Have you seen that guy before?”.

“No.” Haile lied.

Oh she had seen him alright. Three weeks previously she had been cycling through the woods and spotted a tent in a small clearing in the trees. Intrigued, she laid her bike on the ground and tiptoed into the undergrowth to get a closer look. Crouching down behind a wild shrub, peering through the leaves she saw a naked man. She saw a naked Stephen Bedford. He picked up a large bucket of water and poured it over himself, so as to wash. As his hands reached down to his groin and rinsed his genitals, with the loose water, Haile’s stomach tightened and a tingle went through her crotch. “If you have an itch, scratch it” she thought to herself, and her hand disappeared under her skirt as she admired his physique. Oh yes, she had seen him alright.

After his shopping expedition, Stephen returned to his tent, made another cup of coffee and relaxed into his day. He wasn’t always sure what to do with himself, now he no longer had to fit in to the prison routine, so he came up with routines of his own. Now it was time for coffee, the newspaper and a cigarette. He opened the paper and, upon sight of the scantily clad glamour model, his diaphragm churned. He took a pair of scissors, cut out the offending picture, tore it into tiny pieces and cast them to the breeze. He turned the paper over and started from the back. He always preferred the sports news anyway.

Haile stepped out of the shower, dried herself off, and began her preparation. Hair, blow dried. Make up, bare minimum applied, with her complexion it was a no brainer. A few dabs of perfume to her neck, wrists and the little landing strip of hair on the area of her pubic bone, just in case. Short, very short, denim dress, which buttoned up at the front, for the full length. No underwear, to save time. No bra, unnecessary. “Bye Mum, I won’t be late!”.

Mopping up the last smear of tomato sauce, with a piece of bread, Stephen cast his plate to one side, leaned back into his camping chair, and listened to the onset of dusk. He lit his sixth, and final cigarette of the day, and drew deeply from it. He briefly thought about the two girls at the bus stop, shivered and pushed the image away. “Stay strong” he thought to himself. The idea of re-offending was never far from his imagination. He stood up, turned to extinguish his lamp and there, in front of him stood Haile Durham.

Nemesis, in the shape of a beautiful young woman.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Haile.”

“What do you want?”

“I saw you today, in the village. I wondered who you were”

Stephen was wrestling with his eyes. They wanted to look at the supple thighs, the delicately pretty face, the breasts fighting over each other to escape the tight denim. He wanted them to stop doing that. They wouldn’t stop. His eyes betrayed him, they told Haile all she needed to know.

“I’ve been watching you for weeks”, Haile informed him, “I’ve seen how you live, how you eat, how you wash yourself, everything.”

Stephen’s mind was about to blow up. How could he stop this? How would this end? Then, all of a sudden, he knew exactly what was going to happen.

“So you’ve been watching me wash?”

“Yes”

“And what of it? Did you like what you saw?”

“Oh yes”, Haile replied as her hand moved to the top most done up button of her dress and undid it, “I loved what I saw.

Stephen’s mouth dried up. He licked his lips.

Haile undid the next button, and the next until her dress was fully open and Stephen’s eyes feasted on her. “To hell with it”, he thought, “She’s none the wiser and by the time she realises, it will be too late”.

He moved forward, slid his hands around her waist and pulled her towards him. She moaned, as he kissed her neck and pinched her nipples. She pulled his shorts down and gripped his fully tumescent cock. In no time he was upon her, rhythmically working towards her end, in more ways than one. He was determined to finish her before his, rhetorically, final act.

He looked deeply into her eyes. He noticed her expression of sexual rapture and, as he reached his performative zenith, his hands moving up from her shoulders to her throat. Moments away from carnal denouement, the face changed from pleasure to ecstasy. The beating hands on his face and chest.

As he looked at her face, expecting to see her eyes bulge, a drop of blood fell on her cheek. Then another. Then another. Then a trickle. Then a pour. It was then he saw the scissors in her hand as she beat his face and chest.

He couldn’t help feeling jealous. He realised now that they were soulmates. She knew what he knew. That satisfaction of the last climatic moment being a persons last ever moment. He exploded into her and her body shuddered to orgasm at the same moment his eyes darkened. He drifted out of consciousness and drew his terminal breath

This was the best so far. Haile dragged herself from underneath Stephen’s limp corpse. She found his large bucket of water, poured it over herself and washed away the blood from her nakedness. She took a cigarette from his packet, lit it and drew deeply from it as she allowed the gentle evening’s breeze to dry her skin.