“... a lousy date's not worth all this is it?” Tom's conscious returned. Her defenses were weakening at last it seemed! He was flat on his belly on the mat, head forced back uncomfortably, she sitting facing him, her rearward extended arms supporting her, and her strong, shapely thighs once again clamping his neck. A 'face scissors' Tom thought this hold was properly called. Although he tried to keep focused on her face the rest of the world continued to lurch spasmodically while his brain sought to recover from the disorientating and chokingly tight reverse rolling head scissors with arm hammer she'd been subjecting him to for the past several minutes. 'Over we go ... and over again! You like that, huh?' Her laughter had a tinkling, musical note to it. 'And over we go ...'

The audience and for all Tom knew the video guys too must be loving every minute of it.

The head squeeze snapped tighter. “Hey, come on! Don't go falling asleep on me, wannabe lover! I asked you a question!” Her smile, even in these circumstances, was as every bit as alluring as that of her tattooed alter ego's across her chest. The hand on his arm that had been hammer locked still felt dead.

Tom smiled back and somehow managed a vestigial nod.

She released his neck, jumped astride him, and a moment later squatted hard down on the small of his back. Tom felt his arms being pulled back and locked behind her splayed knees, then yelled out in pain as his head was hauled violently up in a back bending camel clutch. “You like that do you? Is that good for you?” Her face was just a little higher than his head, and over the left side. He felt her breath on his cheek. Her voice, like her soft rippling laughter, was almost hypnotic. “Oh, poor baby! You only have to say, you know ...”

Tom was certain she placed a tiny kiss on the edge of his left ear. He could barely breath. “No.”

She flung his face back to the mat, stood up, and reached down to haul him up by means of his hair. Keeping firm hold she delivered yet another hard right-handed face slap, then head mared him right across the mat and into the front row of audience seats opposite.

She was waiting, open hands extended, as he picked himself up again. Tom at once interlocked his fingers with hers. If he'd had any lingering doubts about her before, now he was absolutely certain! There was a force within her, powerful, dark. He could feel it's static arcing from her finger ends and into his flesh. “Hey, look, he's wanting to hold hands with me!” Tom ignored her talk. Their real communication was visual. Their eyes held briefly. Then she kicked a foot into his stomach, dropped down, and sent him flying over the top of herself back to the other side of the mat he'd just come from.

The by now familiar hair pull raised him to his feet again. A slap. All awareness of the onlookers had long since vanished. This was strictly private now. Eyes met. She had kept her hold on his hair. “Okay, friend. I'm giving you your final chance to say.” The pain hadn't even begun to leave Tom's back. “For real this time.”

Even breathing hurt, and Tom was gasping. “I already told you. No ...”

Tom's knees buckled and crashed back to the deck as she straight knee'd him in the balls.

And then up by the hair again. This most certainly wasn't at all like watching the video! The new pain down below was intense, and his legs suddenly felt like jelly. But the fifteen minutes must be all but up. Even she was getting just a little out of breath, he noticed. They eyed one another for another couple of seconds or so as she once again tightened the grip of her left hand in his hair. More slaps coming up then? Time itself seemed to momentarily stretch and flux. Had she sussed him in his suspicions finally?

Tom's world exploded as Alison's clenched right fist powered into his already half numbed larynx.

*

Tom felt movements as consciousness jerkily returned. His throat screamed in agony. Just about everything else ached. His tongue probed a sore lump on his lower lip, and there was a vague taste of blood in his mouth. His balls, brushing the inside of the shorts he wore, felt incredibly tender.

There were voices, disjointed, echoey. The guy Brian's Tom thought: “Jeez, what the hell was she thinkin' pullin' a move like that! If the guy decides to sue ...” Tom's eyes flickered open to see a muscular, fake tanned lady in an orange bikini lifting his feet onto some kind of platform suspended by chains from the wall. The one who had called him 'sugar' a week ago? Someone else was lifting his head end. There felt to be a mattress of some sort underneath him.

The boss man Brian was peering down at him. “An unfortunate accident. We'll have the doc check ya out ... ”

It seemed to have gone silent again. Tom tried to move his head to scan the empty changing room. The door crashed noisily open. Tom heard another voice, the buck-toothed teenager's he thought: “You shouldn't be going in there, Miss Angel. The boss said ...”

“Beat it!”

At last! Tom rubbed his eyes as she walked over to the platform on which he lay. She stood by his head, but turned half away from him. After half a minute or so she slowly looked back over her left shoulder. The one displaying the staff and vine tattoo. The red strands to the front of her jet black hair and the small silver ball-stud in her left upper lip appeared prominent in the flickering neon. A deadening silence appeared to have descended upon the world.

“So you truly are from England then?”

The umber eyes were looking intently down at him. Her bright red lips were very slightly parted, just sufficient to reveal the crowns of her front incisors to his lower viewing angle. Stunning wasn't the word for her. What was then? Angelic? Tom swallowed painfully, and tried to speak. When he at last found his voice it came out as a forced croak.

“Yes. From Oxfordshire. It's very green there.”

Slowly she extended down her left hand to smooth back the hair from his throbbing forehead.

*

As Tom discovered after Alison instructed a far from willing Brian to take him there, she lived on a trailer park no more than a half mile across town. The first couple of days they'd spent getting to know one another whilst Tom recovered a little from their encounter. The discovery that she would kiss as readily as she would slap had been a happy one: “More fun I guess!” Then yesterday things had moved further. The very first time she'd been like a wild cat. As if her metal framed bed was the ring, and expectations had to be lived up to. Tom had stayed with the task however, and by the end of the day felt he'd gone a good way towards winning her confidence.

Which was how it was that this morning they'd made love pleasurably and unhurriedly to the steady hum of traffic on the nearby freeway: “I've gotta hand it to you. You're different to the other men I've slept with,” had been her immediate post coital comment. She'd next proceeded to give him a very competent all over body massage, and the gentle kisses she'd administered to his still horribly bruised throat had been a balm. Afterwards they'd spent some time purchasing groceries at the local Wal-Mart.

And then there had been this afternoon. They'd gone back to bed after potato waffles. Sex, then a nice restful siesta until she had to get ready for her booked performance in the evening had been the intention. Only it hadn't quite worked out that way.

Behind his still closed eyelids Tom smiled to himself. Maybe guardian angels really did intercede on behalf of mortals if properly invoked! Or if not actual guardian angels then maybe synchronicity. How for every action or sequence of actions that take place there's an equal opposite reaction. Such went the synchronicity theory anyhow.

Otherworldly powers were at work, no doubting it, and right now so much depended upon them ...

The greater her fulfillment, the more pleasure he brought her, the more renewed energy he seemed to be deriving from it! Synchronicity in practice. The beating she'd meted out to him coming back full circle ... and how! This was empowering alright, and yet more than a little humbling too. She was trying to wrestle him in the bed, and yet it was his angel which retained control. Retained control, and kept the talk going. His talk this time. And the power flow. Keep the cosmic channel open at all costs! Don't loose it now!

'I would lead thee by thy hand through the enchanted forest, beautiful Angel ...'

A loud beeping noise abruptly snapped Tom out of his pleasurable reverie. She'd set her bedside alarm for five-thirty. Beside him Alison stirred, then rolled across on top of him as she reached out to switch it off. Tom lifted his head from the pillow and kissed her immaculate cheek. She turned her head to look down at him in mild surprise. With secret satisfaction Tom saw that the pupils of her wonderful eyes had still not totally undilated. She smiled tentatively. Confused, bewildered, disbelieving as sleep fell away and recent memory flooded back. Finally she whispered: “I've never known anything like that ...!!!”

Tom smiled in turn. “And just think, 'I am so far out of your league as to be light years away' was practically the first thing you ever said to me!”

The dark eyes flashed. Beneath the rumpled duvet long, slender fingers cupped around his aching manhood. The breathtaking features flushed. Even in his present condition Tom could have eaten her with a spoon. “Mortal, if you as much as look at another woman again, even one single glance yeah, I swear I'll make breakfast oranges of the pair of them!”

Mortal ...? “I can't see myself ever doing that, Alison. So you truly are an angel then?”

“A fallen one, yeah.”

Tom's brain all but momentarily froze at the blandness of the confirmation. Panic fluttered briefly. For all his fantasizing about her, this had suddenly become seriously heavy stuff! He swallowed - still painfully - and sought to marshal his rapidly overloading thoughts. All manner of biblically inspired images crowded into his mind. And a scent of ... what? Fear? Fornication with a demon, for such she must be considered, was a Mortal Sin was it not? But then he'd known that all along, hadn't he? And when had she first realised of his suspicions of her?

Brief salvation in the form of a familiar triple rap came suddenly upon the trailer door. “Ally!”

Alison grimaced. “Shit! Brian.”

She kicked out of the bed, slipped a fluorescent white bathrobe over her nakedness, and went to the door but didn't open it. “Brian, it's only five-thirty. We're not due to start till seven. I'm not even showered yet.”

“Look, c'mon will ya? There's loads ta do. Costume, make-up. The client's paid his bucks!”

“I'll be over in ample time. Else get one of the others to cover!”

“It's your booking. But hey, no one's indispensable! I'm runnin' a business here ya know.”

“I'm the one asset your crappy business has got, Brian. So from a business angle I'd say pissing me off isn't such a smart move!”

A great thing empowerment. Tom realized he'd unthinkingly turned his gaze upwards. The metallic ceiling of the trailer gave no clue. He forced his mind to the positive. An angelic girlfriend, and a cornucopia of forbidden delights as yet barely tasted: And as for her, the chance to travel a better path than hitherto. Maybe not the whole way to Redemption, but certainly a situation winner also. For he would teach her about love. That had been his intention all along. And if there really was a one true God, then He could surely not object to that?

The lurid reds and pitch black imagery of John Martin's immense 'Fallen Angels Descending Into Pandemonium' canvas pushed at the precariously barred doors of Tom's consciousness.

There was an appreciable pause from outside the trailer door, then: “Well, how long d'ya need?”

“Give me twenty minutes. No, on second thoughts Brian, better make it an hour.” Alison turned from the door and looked back to Tom. “I want to be tamed some more first ...”

Copyright Terence Hugh Hazelton, 2006