DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

a wash of warm blood. The woman, still on her knees before him, lifted her hands to catch the spurting blood, smearing it on her face and in her hair, laughing with drunken, ecstatic glee. He staggered backward and would have fallen had it not been for the armoire behind him. And then she was wielding her pine-cone stick, shoving it deep into his stomach, thrusting upward. New agonies flared within him as the serrated, irregular end of the spear pushed in farther, piercing skin, rending muscle, ripping veins. She pulled the stick out and dropped it, trying to shove a hand into the hole she’d made. Her gown was covered with a Pollock canvas of red, and still she was tearing at him, her mouth open to catch the spray, greedy fingers bathing in the hot liquid.

He kicked out at her with what strength and coordination was left to him, all the time screaming, but she absorbed the blows happily, laughing, her head whipping back and forth in a frenzied motion as she clawed into his abdomen, grabbing viscera, squeezing. He slumped to the floor, his vision clouding, coherence slipping fast.

The last thing he noticed was that she had ripped off her gown and was naked.

6

After Mythology, Dion followed Kevin out of the building to the cafeteria. He felt pretty good. He had been here less than a week, but already he had settled in to the familiar rhythm of school, making the adjustment with unusual ease. The teachers, the classes, seemed not much different than those in Mesa, certainly no harder, and most of the students he met seemed all right, although he hadn’t really spoken in depth to any of them except Kevin.

He was still not sure of Kevin’s status in the school social structure.

His friend clearly did not belong to any of the identifiable cliques, but neither was he a true loner or outcast. He seemed to fall through the categorical cracks. Kevin knew almost everyone, was on good terms with most of the people he knew, yet he chose to spend his lunches with Dion. The two of them were still not completely at ease with each other, were still in fact defining their roles within the friendship, but a friendship it was, and for that Dion was grateful. Kevin talked tough, but between the frequent obscenities there lurked evidence of a mind, a sharp one, and Dion suspected that Kevin had latched onto him because he sensed a soul with similar interests. Indeed, their taste in everything from music to movies to schoolteachers seemed remarkably in sync, and Dion thought that perhaps that was one reason why he and Kevin seemed to get on so well.

He was surprised to find that his interest in Penelope Daneam had not abated. He had half thought that his first day attraction to her was the result of her resemblance to the girl in his dream, but as he heard her talk in class, as he eavesdropped on her conversations with the friend seated next to her, as she grew into a person of her own, distinct from his mental image, he found that his interest had increased. She too seemed intelligent, far more aware of events and ideas than the girls he’d known in Arizona, and that impressed him. What’s more, she appeared to be approachable. She was gorgeous, of course, no doubt about that, but she did not seem as far out of his league as he had initially thought. She was not in the least standoffish or stuck up. There was an easiness to her manner, an unaffectedness obvious even within the confinements of the classroom. She seemed like a real person, not a phony.

She also did not seem like a lesbian.

The problem was that he didn’t know how to go about meeting her. In class, he imagined what he would do if she accidentally dropped her books and he picked them up, their eyes meeting, but he knew that sort of thing happened only in film or fiction and wasn’t a feasible possibility. He could, and did, however, move his seat closer to hers each day, changing and exchanging desks. In this class the teacher did not insist on a seating chart, allowing students to sit wherever they pleased, and this was an opportunity he was determined to take advantage of. He was not sure what he would say to her when he finally reached the adjoining desk, not sure of how he would initiate a conversation, but he would deal with that problem when he came to it.

That would be Friday, according to his calculations.

Luckily, Kevin continued to move forward through the seating ranks with him. It was always easier to bring a third party into an existing conversation than to start a conversation cold with someone you’d never talked to before.

Kevin bought a Coke and a burrito at the cafeteria, and Dion purchased a hot dog and milk. The two of them battled their way against the stream of traffic, and sat on a low wall next to the vending machines, watching the passersby.

Kevin took a bite of his burrito. He shook his head, “Do you realize,” he said, “that every one of those girls has a pussy? Every one of them.”

Dion followed his gaze, saw a well-endowed girl wearing a tight T-shirt and form-fitting jeans.

“Between each of those legs is a hungry hole, ready for dick.” He grinned. “It’s a wonderful world.”

Dion nodded. Yesterday, Kevin had called women’s bodies a “life-support system for the vagina.” Kevin’s macho comments were funny, but Dion wasn’t sure if they were simply public posturing or reflections of his real attitude, and it was something that bothered him, that made him slightly uncomfortable.

The two of them watched the girls pass by. Dion’s eyes were caught by the sight of Penelope, carrying a brown sack lunch, buying a carton of orange juice from one of the machines. Kevin saw who he was staring at and