There Are No Saints (Sinners Duet)

I take my stalking of Mara online.

Like most people, she’s splashed her life all over social media for anyone to see—both on her own accounts, and her friends’.

They’re an artsy bunch, so the photos they share are more eclectic than average. I have to wade through any number of sepia-toned popcorn machines, pictures of people’s feet, and landscape shots to find something useful. Once I do, I find endless portraits of Mara.

Like most struggling artists, they have to use their own acquaintances as models.

Mara is popular for this purpose because—despite not being as sexy as her roommate Erin—she has that stark bone structure that captures well on film.

Her grungy, neglected air, coupled with sharp, elfin features, gives her the look of a female Peter Pan, a wild thing left to fend for itself.

I spend a long time examining her face.

The foggy eyes, tilted upward at the outer corners. The upturned nose, spattered with freckles. The full lips and sharp teeth.

She’s an interesting conundrum. Vulnerable yet fierce. Damaged yet stubborn.

Mara does not make personal posts—no long, rambling dissertations on her inner feelings under a mirror selfie, and no vague captions intended to elicit a flood of comments begging for more details.

She made no mention of her ordeal in the woods.

Her only recent posts are requests for studio space.

This is a constant problem in San Francisco for those at the mercy of fickle landlords. I own my own private studio close to my house, and also a block of studios on Clay Street.

I’m considering offering one to Mara Eldritch. I want to see her work in person. And it would make watching her much more convenient.

I’ve already decided that Mara and I will inevitably cross paths—the art world is too small to avoid it.

I intend to choose the time and location of that meeting. I’ll control all the elements, arranging the players like pieces on a chessboard.

It’s unlike me to fixate on a woman like this. I find most people horrifically boring. I’ve never met anyone as intelligent as me, or as talented. Other people are weak and emotional—slaves to their impulses. Constantly making promises they can’t keep, even to themselves.

Only I seem to have the power to control my own fate.

Whatever I want to happen, happens. I make it so by my own cunning, my own determination.

Everyone else is a victim of chance and circumstance. To arbitrary rules set up by people who died a hundred years ago. To their own pathetic ineptitude.

I do what I want. I get what I want. Always. Every time.

If there’s a god of this world, it’s me.

But even Zeus found mortals interesting from time to time.

I desire to see Mara again, to speak to her. I want to manipulate her and see how she reacts.

And if I want something . . . that means it’s good.

I break into her room later that afternoon.

She’s walking a half-dozen dogs in Golden Gate Park, something that usually takes her several hours with the pick-up and drop-off process.

It’s almost impossible to find a point in the day where none of her roommates are home, so I don’t bother waiting. The house is so crowded, with so many people coming and going, I doubt that any of them will notice a few extra creaks from a room that ought to be empty.

It helps that Mara’s room is on the topmost floor. It’s easy to scale the trellis of the neighboring house, drop down onto her deck, and force open the flimsy lock on the glass door.

The attic room is certainly not to code. The ceiling is so low that I can’t stand upright, even in the center of the peaked space. Mara’s bed is a futon mattress on the floor, her clothes folded in plastic milk crates because she has no closet or dresser.

This is the sort of cramped, chaotic space that usually disgusts me. The dusty air and stacks of battered secondhand books next to the bed—no bookshelf to hold them—reek of poverty.

Curiosity staves off my repulsion. I’m drawn to the hundreds of sketches taped all over the sloped walls.

Most of the drawings are figure studies. She has a good sense of proportion, and she’s skilled at indicating the direction of the light. Perhaps because most of the subjects are her friends, she’s caught a strong sense of personality in their positions, in the expression of their faces. The tall black girl, Joanna, looks awkward but pleased at being drawn. The boy with frizzy curls seems to be holding back a laugh.

With no place to sit, I sink down on Mara’s pathetic mattress. The bed is unmade, her blanket in a crumpled pile.

I flip through several of her books. Naked Lunch, The Virgin Suicides, Life After Life, Troubled Blood, Black Swan Green, Lolita, Cold Spring Harbor, Winter’s Bone, The Cement Garden . . .

Butterflied next to the bed is Dracula. I pick it up, seeing that she’s drawn all over the pages, marking passages and writing notes.

She’s underlined:

Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer—both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams . . .”

I smile to myself.

Poor little Mara is not impervious to nightmares, whatever she may pretend during the daylight hours.

I pick up the next novel on the stack, Prometheus Illbound, and let it fall open to a dog-eared page. Here she’s marked:

I do not love men: I love what devours them.

That actually makes me laugh. I haven’t laughed in some time.

I set the books down.

I can smell Mara’s perfume on her sheets, stronger than when I followed her.

I lay down in her bed, my head on her pillow. I turn my face so my nose is pressed against her crumpled sheets and I inhale.

Her scent is layered and complex. Warm notes of vanilla, caramel. A botanical scent—mandarin, or maybe black currant. Then something exotic, spiced—perhaps a jasmine soap. Under that, the light scent of her sweat, which arouses me far more than any of the others. My cock swells until it’s no longer comfortable within my trousers.

I enjoy the trespass of laying in her bed. Knowing that she may catch a hint of my cologne lingering there tonight. It may confuse or frighten her. Or arouse her, if my chemical composition calls to her as hers does to me.

The idea of her heart beating fast, of her startling awake, searching her room for evidence that someone else was here, amuses me.

Deliberately, I rearrange the order of the books next to the bed.

Then I look through her clothes.

She wears cheap nylon underwear, thin and transparent, in shades of black, gray, and taupe.

Most of her clothes are dirty, stuffed in a drawstring bag to be hauled down to the laundromat.

A single pair of black briefs lies abandoned next to the bed. I assume this is the underwear she shucked off this morning.

Lifting it to my face, I inhale the scent of her warm morning pussy.

It’s similar to the smell of her sheets, but musky.

My cock is raging now. I unzip my pants, allowing it to spring free. I stroke it gently while I breathe in the scent of Mara’s cunt. I even put out my tongue and taste the cotton strip that nestled between her pussy lips.

I picture her laying on the ground, tightly bound, arms behind her back and breasts thrust forward. Her knees were pulled back, her bare pussy exposed. I could have shoved my cock in her. That’s what Alastor expected me to do.

If I had smelled this scent, I would have done it.

I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s addicting. The longer I spend in this room with her sheets, her half-empty perfume bottle, her dirty laundry, the more it fills my lungs, surging through my blood.

I want it. Fresh from the source.

I’m jerking my cock harder, taking deep breaths.

I imagine her tied down, this time on her back with her legs pulled apart. I imagine burying my face in her cunt, thrusting my tongue all the way inside her while she thrashes against the ropes.

My balls are boiling, my cock throbbing with every heartbeat.

I wrap the panties around the head of my cock and I thrust into them, right against the crotch. My cock erupts, pouring cum into Mara’s underwear.

I use her panties to catch every last drop, squeezing them around the head.

That skimpy black fabric feels better around my cock than any actual pussy I’ve ever fucked. Maybe it’s the novelty, or maybe it’s the way her scent still clings to my fingers, lingering in my lungs.

It’s not enough. The orgasm was rapid, powerful as a rifle shot. I’m not satisfied.

I want to watch Mara in this space. I want to see how she walks around her room, how she undresses, how she behaves when she thinks she’s alone.

I look out her window.

The adjoining row houses offer no line of sight into Mara’s room. But the house behind hers—the tall Georgian with the black shutters—offers a perfect view from its own attic space.

Mara has no curtains on her windows. She’s so high up, she feels as safe as a crow in its nest.

Crows forget about hawks.

I drop the panties back on the floor where I found them.

Then I leave the way I came, already planning to call my estate agent.