"I want something to play with."

She tongued her lips gently as she spoke, leaning forward in her chair and cocking her head to the side, so that her hair fell in ringlets over and down her shoulder. She smiled at me, and swayed her hips in time with the music.

"Oh?" I hesitate to ask. I hesitate to even think of what this woman will do to me. My dreams and my nightmares are so closely enter-twined, that I am easily led down the path of perpetual sin and extreme pain.

"I want someone that will whisper my name in the dark," she replied rather quietly. "In the dark when I'm alone with just you, where only you can touch me, see me cry, hear me breath…. Where only you can taste my salty flesh and brush my silken hair. In the dark of this club, maybe? In an alleyway, or on the street. In the parks or the just a parked car, maybe your apartment or maybe mine. It doesn't matter where it takes place. I only know one thing, and that is that I want your body on top of mine, so that it squeezes the air from my lungs with each thrust."

"And?"

She seemed to stop and stare off into the distance at the dancers. No ma'am - this is just a simple whore, not her fantasy man - not that man of whom she spends many nights playing with herself over, the fragrant memories burned into the insides of her eyelids.

A look of extreme disgust slashes across her face - her pretty mouth becomes twisted and grotesque, truly a grin of the macabre. She stops moving, she stops breathing, stops blinking. Her tongue was frozen on her bottom lip, her hand paralyzed on her hip.

Then they convulsed, those hands of hers, slicing at her fishnet stockings, tearing at her skin - drawing blood from within. I reach over quickly and take her hand in my own; I kiss her fingers one by one, and can taste her coppery blood on my tongue. She trembles as my tongue touches her hand and sighs when I slowly lap up her crimson blood.

Truly an addict this woman. One of the newer drugs probably - Lasher was popular among the elder Goths these days. Anne Rice. The name now sparked no memory among newbie Goths anymore. No secret passion did they hold in their hearts? No dreams of ancient Lestat or Lasher or Louis sweeping them off their feet, and making mad love to them in the ancient New Orleans cemeteries. Such beauty lost.

She giggled, and traced my jaw line with her blooded hand. I would do anything for this woman. I would fulfil any fantasy she might have. I am, after all I am human and I need to be loved - just as everybody else does. I smile, and she goes on as if nothing has changed.

"In hard long strokes I want you inside of me." She smiles and places both hands immaculately in her lap. Her back straightens and her face becomes gentle and calm again. Perfect.

"Whispering my name and the names of the girls, the women, the boys, the men. Everyone that you've laid with… Oh, I want so many things... I want your tongue in my mouth, so hard in my mouth that I can taste the Gin you had with dinner. And I want it on my body. I want to feel its roughness against my naked body. Have it running against my neck, sucking on my breasts while those big hands of yours, and those many calluses scrape and tear my tender virgin flesh. I want you to rip me in half, rip me open and stare at your own cock inside of me as I quiver in ecstasy under your body. I want your seed spilled so that it leaks out of my ass, out of my mouth I want it to dribble and pool around my head, and around my thighs as you suck at such a tender, swollen, blooming flower."

I have to smile; this woman has such an imagination. If only she hadn't burned her mind to the edge of nonexistence with all of the drugs and the sex and the violence. If only she had worshipped her own body, instead of paying others to worship it for her.

"Let us go then," I whisper.

"Yes," she replies.

I take her hand and guide her out the club doors, up the steps, and into the chilly New Orleans air. She leans against me and places her head on my shoulder as we briskly walk down the old streets of the French Quarter. Idly fingering my torn white cotton shirt, closing her eyes, leaning against me, she hums an old song now forgotten.

We walk huddled together toward the park. We walk past the homeless, the restless. More whores, more sadness. It makes me want to cry and claw at the 'pretty' faces around us. And the park looms ahead, its gates open wide to the outside world.

We step over broken syringes and rusted Pepsi cans as we enter this dark forbidden grove. The park is under siege by the ravages of the wild as bushes grow huge and wild. As vines creep over the tall walls, and the grass is knee high. I lead her behind a tree and push up against its rough bark, she yelps slightly in pain as it scratches her back before throwing back her head and staring up into the trees gigantic branches. I lift her shirt and idly finger her small breasts while I cover her mouth with my own. I massage her tongue with my tongue, and explore the soft velvety deep of her mouth. She tastes like rot and decay, but I continue this onward struggle.

I imagine her insides as I slide my hand down into her pants and finger her "blooming flower," I imagine her lungs blackened with the cities smoke, her kidney black, her heart black, her throat black, her liver black. Decaying in silence within this tender flesh.

She moans and convulses against my weight. "Inside me, come inside of me," she begs.

I am only her servant and comply by ripping at her shirt and locking my lips onto her nipples. I pull down her pants hard and push her even harder against the tree. I unbuckle my belt and let my pants fall in silence to lay among the piss and the dirt. She locks her legs against my waist as I enter her. She whimpers silently, thrusting her hips forward as I press her back against the tree. I cover her mouth with my own as her tongue ravages the insides of her mouth, biting on my lips, her screams muffled by my flesh.

It goes on like this, her thrusting forward, me pushing back. So natural, these movements we make, so animalistic, so primal. I feel her growing tense as she sucks in her stomach and bangs her head against the tree. I calm down and slowly move inside of her as she shudders against my chest. This is my signal; I push inside of her, slamming her back against the tree once more, I paint her insides white.

I lay against her for what seems like hours before our shakings stop. She still clings to me, shivering in the night air.

"After all I am human and I need to be loved," she whispers into my ear. "Just as everybody else does."

She goes limp and falls from my arms. She slides down the tree, a trail of blackened grease in her wake. Her precious fragile skin was torn by the rough bark of the tree, splitting her wider open every time I pushed her back. Every time her struggled to pull forward I had pushed her back against the tree. And now here she is, split open on the ground.

Cogs and wheels and black as night grease. No organs did her body hold. I gather my pants and shirt and move away from her body, staring at the wheels and cogs that poke up from her tender flesh, and the black as night grease erupting from within her body. It bubbles and burps and then goes silent. I can only hear the wind rustling in the trees and the crickets chirp in the grass.

I have no need to hide her body. The police are as corrupt as the bushes that push the boundaries of the park. The weeds will hide her body, and the stench of death is too familiar to be noticed anymore. No one will miss her. No one ever loved her, no one ever will. I take the money from her purse and kiss her goodbye.

Such beauty lost.