The girl worked in the office as assistant to the head librarian, and had proven reliable enough over the years to be entrusted with a set of keys, should her superior be unable to get there before opening time. He courted her for just over a month, gaining her friendship at first by confessing to a love of the same ridiculously trite afternoon drama he heard her chatting gleefully about to one of the library’s elderly patrons. The thing they discussed most was her favourite character, and he dedicated himself to finding out as much as he could about her non-existent heroine. He consulted fan magazines, websites, even forced himself to sit through half hour after half hour of the miserable piece of tripe millions of women found so inexplicably riveting, until he knew the character inside and out. He learned these fictitious attributes by rote, and then incorporated them into compliments that his sweet little conquest soaked up like a dry, neglected sponge.
‘You know, you look just like Giselle in that dress.’
‘I love your hairdo! You look like Giselle did on her wedding day!’
‘That’s the same lipstick Giselle wears. Looks beautiful on you.’
‘You look as sexy as Giselle did when she stole Drake from Marley.’
Charming her was easy, as was convincing her to meet him at the library one Wednesday night after closing time. She had been calling him her boyfriend ever since he started calling her Giselle, and it was then that he told her what people did after they became boyfriend and girlfriend. Once they were inside the office, he became teacher and lover, easing her into the act step by step. He had gone to a lot of trouble to make her feel special, and he was not about to waste all that effort by rushing. He felt genuine affection for no one – wasn’t capable of it – but he was sure he felt a twinge of something close to it when he gave her her first taste of womanhood. He sat on her boss’s desk and pulled her up onto his lap. She was still wearing underpants, as was he – getting naked right away would only scare her. He held up her arms and took her breasts into his mouth, teasing and tickling them with his tongue. She resisted at first, taken aback by the sudden sensation in an area no one, evidently not even herself, had explored before. Then she started to laugh. It wasn’t an ordinary laugh; it was a giggle the likes of which he had never heard before, even in his remarkably crisp childhood memories. It was the sound of uncertainty and exhilaration, singing in unison.
The chorus rang in his ears now, even as his new client went down on him. He dug his toenails into the bed cover, willing himself back from the brink before she catapulted him over it. Things had gone entirely too far. He grabbed her by the hair and flipped her over onto her back. For a moment, it looked as though she might fight him, but either better judgement or garden variety lust won out, and she caressed the back of his head as he took control and returned the favour. She moved beneath him, gently graduating from soft, barely audible breaths to moaning. Hers would be a relatively loud death, judging by his experience with the simple girl and others like her, and it was rather a shame. The quiet deaths were the most interesting of all, because they required him to examine the women’s faces more closely, and faces didn’t lie. Women who merely whimpered or sniffled while they suffered might seem brave or stoic to an untrained observer, but their faces betrayed them every time. He peered up from between her legs. Her eyes were fixed on the wall behind him, and the tip of her tongue poked into the corner of her mouth. It was a classic concentration face, and he had seen it on many women – mostly en route to either the little death or the big one. The last time he saw that face was on a woman hurtling toward the latter.
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