(Warning: This part gets a little rough. Viewer discretion advised.)

I sat before the mirror in Freddie's bathroom, the medicine cabinet pulled open. There I had found a motley collection of makeup products, various stage cosmetics that found their way home with him such as foundation (which I couldn't use, Freddie's skin was much more olive than mine), eyeliner, even blush. There were other things in the cabinet, like aspirin and a bottle of sleeping pills that I pondered abusing, but decided against it.

Still other, more relevant items lined the shelves, but I just pushed them to the back. I knew what was going down tonight, I didn't need a half-used tube of lubricant staring me in the face to remind me.

The clock had struck eight outside, and dinner was in the oven. I knew it was highly unlikely Freddie would bother coming home for dinner, but I had started a little something anyway. A futile effort, but an effort nonetheless. It had been raining since about three in the afternoon, the temperature at a constant seventy-five. The very definition of an English summer. Though not a hot night, it was certainly a wet one. I shivered, my skin feeling as clammy as it had all day.

"That's right, pleased to meet you- I still won't tell you my name," Vanity heaved through my phone's speaker. I had been forcing myself to listen to "Nasty Girl" by Vanity 6 on repeat for the past couple of hours in order to get in the mood. So far, there hadn't been much progress.

I had been wrestling passionately with my emotions, forcing myself not to break down and cry, even though that was the only thing I wanted to do. I was petrified, I was miserable, I was hurt. No, not just hurt, I was bleeding; my heart was dying the death of a thousand cuts. That's how it felt.

I'm going to disappoint him, I kept saying to myself. I won't be able to please him. I don't know how. He'll be disappointed and then I will be nothing to him. Just like that. Because as much as I care for him as a friend, as fond as I am of him in ways besides the physical, I am just a body to him. Oh, why couldn't we have just stayed friends?

Did I really have the right to be so shocked? Was it my heart's privilege to be in such agony? I had known this of Freddie all along. All of this aligned perfectly with his noncommittal attitude from at least late 1977 onward till the mid-1980s, a.k.a. the Prenter Period. Yet now it stung me horribly as I was reminded he truly saw me as just another link in the chain. Freddie's Chain of Fools. It hurt to think such things about him- but I had no choice. They were true.

Maybe I should just run, I mused.

"Yeah," I scoffed aloud. "Run where? Catch the British equivalent of a Greyhound and get off where? And do what?"

I tried to be clinical. To up and run was not a thoughtful thing to do. Besides, Freddie wouldn't immediately abandon me. He still needed me to cook tomorrow. And anyway, I had to offer something in return for his goodness. Freddie had been so good to me, regardless of the motive behind it.

I don't have much to give, I said to myself. Just my virginity. Hopefully that would be enough.

I nodded, swallowed, then bent over the toilet and threw up.

It was all well and fine to tell myself these things. But it didn't keep the tears from sticking in my throat, or my stomach from violently churning. This was not how I had wanted it to happen. It would be so cold, so dispassionate, no matter how hot he might get, or how hard he might thrust. How could it be called making love, when there wasn't any love in his heart for me?

Oh, God. Don't just stand there, do something.

And He did. It took me months to realize that's what happened, but He did.

But right then, with Vanity moaning the explicit lyrics (explicit for the eighties, anyway; leave it to Prince to push the envelope), I could only see as far as this evening. I wiped my mouth and brushed my teeth, then finally set to work on my face.

It took ten whole minutes and two more repetitions of the song, but I did finish putting myself together. I put my red lipstick down, then looked into the mirror. I didn't recognize the face I saw in it. There was black eyeliner edging my lids, making my bug eyes pop even more, and the lashes were heavily fringed with mascara. I hadn't put on a lot of rouge, just enough to take the sallowness out of my complexion. As for my hair, I had already taken care of that; it was straightened and sleek, the loose, glossy tresses falling down my back. I never took this much care with my makeup, and I never wore this much in general. But tonight, I had to make exceptions.

I knew what my parents would say if they saw me like this. They'd say I looked like my mother's cousin, probably the most wayward member of her upstanding Roman Catholic family. I had never been around her much, but according to everyone, she and I looked a great deal alike except she was blond, and still trying to rock the 1980's Sheena Easton look in 2017. And that concerned my parents, who feared my actions might resemble hers just as our faces resembled each others'. So I had been raised to consider any comparison to Cousin Roxie to be the greatest criticism imaginable. I don't know what she did, but it must have been something truly damning.

Still, whatever unforgivable sin my cousin had committed, it couldn't have been any worse than this.

There was a look in my eyes I had seen before in other people, but never on my own face. It was more than unhappiness- it was hopelessness. Tonight I was a hopeless, unhappy prostitute. I hope I at least make him happy. Oh, how low I've sunk in a week and a half. What I'd give for my old backbone.

This was not the attitude I could have if I was to let Freddie enjoyably seduce me. I got up and walked downstairs to the fridge, where he kept the chilled vodka. I needed a little something to relax my extremely raw nerves.

In other words, I intended to get very drunk.

I'm such a lightweight. After one double shot, I was tipsy; after two, I was laughing at the way someone kept leaning the room on me, and I couldn't walk in a straight line. But I felt much less apprehensive. And that was good enough.

I was pulling the food out of the oven and trying to control my hiccups when the front door knob rattled, and clicked open. Home so soon, Freddie? It was only nine-thirty!

Too early, honey pie, I slurred to myself. We're not ready. Come back in half an hour and there will be candles and sexy music and I'll be in that nightgown you like so much.

The door shut. Freddie didn't say anything, and I heard no footsteps coming further into the flat. That gave me time to adjust my actions, in case I was doing something that might possibly be a turn-off for him. Oscar bounded into the kitchen and stared at me. If he was trying to tell me something, the message was lost in transit- and anyway, I'd find out what he meant soon enough.

Freddie likely was still angry with me from last night, but that was a chance I'd have to take. My eyelids drooped aloofly. Despite the fact I couldn't stand up straight without holding onto the counter, or that my stomach still felt like a bubbling witch's cauldron, I would be as offhand, and as emotionally untouchable, as he. No tears. If one cried, it gave the other control.

I had to get out of my jeans. Since he seemed to still be in the front room by the door, I made to sneak back up the stairs and slip into, as they used to say in the old films, "something a bit more comfortable." I crept as delicately as I could, bouncing unsteadily on the balls of my bare feet.

But then a very cold, very dead, voice stopped me in my tracks.

"Sit down."

Instinctively I turned, my heart sinking. Freddie was standing there, both hands behind his back. The lights weren't on overhead, so the shadows hid his face. He swayed gently back and forth, like I did.

"I'll be right back," I muttered. I took one step towards the stairs.

"Sit down now." His voice rose a bit.

Which I ignored. "One second," I whispered, darting a few feet.

CRAASHHH!

I whirled, the blood pounding in my head. One of the large vases that had lined the shelves now lay in shards upon the floor. Freddie's hand was clenched into a tight, deadly fist.

He offered one final warning. "I'm not asking you again, Julia."

JULIA?

He knows my name?! But how-?

And then his other hand moved into view, and I saw what he held in it- and I realized tonight would end very differently from what I had expected. My hardback journal, with all its analysis and opinion, good, bad, and ugly, rested in his left hand.

Oh, no.

He didn't just know my name. Freddie knew everything.

He's going to kill me. I'm dead. He hates me and I'm dead. I'm dead where I stand. So dead. DEAD.

But now, I was docile. Like a lamb being led to the slaughter, I came back into the parlor and seated myself on the sofa against the wall.

"I made dinner," I whispered pointlessly.

Freddie didn't answer. He lifted his free hand and switched on the lights. Now I could see his face. His features were stony, his eyes shards of black ice that chilled my blood. Slowly he stalked my way, moving like a panther ready to pounce at any second- but there was an unsteadiness about him, and I realized he, too, was drunk. He opened the journal up to a random page, held it out in front of him.

"You know, I had forgotten, just how much you can learn from a book." His voice was quietly menacing. "There's so much to be taken in from a single word, one sentence. The words don't lie, they just stare you in the eyes and say themselves."

I opened my mouth. "Fre-"

"I did not give you permission to speak." His voice was double-edged, the blade of his tongue sliding dangerously across my throat. I shivered and fell silent.

Freddie moved closer. "As I was saying, it's really enlightening, what can jump out at you from a page." He held up the journal. "Take this book, for instance."

He paused, let me stew in the suspense. I felt my sanity slip further and further away as the silence continued. I shut my eyes.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you, Julia."

My eyes opened up again. WHY DOESN'T HE JUST KILL ME AND GET IT OVER WITH? STOP DRAGGING IT OUT! JUST DO IT!

"Take this thing," he went on. "Why, I never expected to learn so much about myself. Just take any line in here, and there's just so much. Like here, this one part, where is it- ah!" He flipped through the pages and found whatever the part was. And he read it to me.

"Complete logic free zone, says things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever and somehow gets away with it. Yes, very nice, good to know I'm so incoherent. Oh, what else, what else?" He flipped to another page discussing the towel fiasco. "There it is. It's odd, considering what she -Mary, that is- put up with him doing all his life, that she should be so moved by this. So what exactly does that mean? What is the torture I burden poor Mary with? And how would you know about the rest of my life anyway, when you didn't even know who I was in the first place?"

I didn't answer.

"You've known who I was all this time, haven't you?"

I bit my lip and lowered my chin.

He took hold of my face and jerked me back up. "Haven't you?"

"Yes," I squeaked, my voice trembling. "Yes, I have."

Freddie blinked. "So you lied to me."

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I-"

"My dear, it's a little late for 'I'm sorry' at this stage, don't you think?"

"But I am! I didn't like having to lie, I didn't have a choice, please, I'm sorry."

But Freddie was not in a forgiving mood. He closed the journal and threw it on the coffee table. "Pray tell, my dear, where do the lies end and the truths start?"

This coming from a man who pretended for a living- a man who basically lived a lie until the lie caught up with him. I felt myself bristle, and my voice hardened, "Hey, hey, that is not a fair question-"

"Seems to me the only honesty I've seen out of you works its way into the pages of this diary thing. And you are, indeed, shall we say, brutally honest, whether it comes to the - what was it you called Paul? Let me see, I can't rem- oh, yes, the Pudding-Faced Antichrist, wasn't that it? Tart. Quite tart. And what did you mean, he'll be my doom? Or is that you just making your marvelous little assumptions again?"

He was tearing me apart inside, and he'd only just begun. I rose to my feet, my hands clasped almost pleadingly. "Freddie, please, that was the first week, I had so much to lea-"

Freddie seized my elbows and whispered, "Did I say you could stand up?"

My throat tightening, I shook my head.

"Then F---ING SIT DOWN, BITCH!" he yelled in my face.

My knees turned into gelatin, and I fell back against the sofa. Freddie was being such a beast, it made me sick to my stomach. Vodka overload was no excuse for this. He was just being mean to be mean. Was this vicious creature his true self- the monster left over when all other facades and manipulative characters were brushed aside?

Don't cry. Whatever you do, don't cry.

His voice leveled once more. "But you were certainly your most honest about me. And in some ways, yes, you hit the nail on the head. Moral centers do bore me, as do you. Every time you open your mouth I want to scream, you're so dull. How I managed to put up with your ridiculous American-ness for this long, I'll never know."

I began to visibly shudder. His voice was so cool, like steel.

"But my favorite line, in this whole f---ing thing, has to be the last. Short and sweet, to the point. Ties everything together so nicely." he cleared his throat and recited the last ten words I had scrawled in the notebook. "What a waste of time, what a waste of life. So perfect. I think I'll have them put that on my headstone."

I went even whiter. The words flew, my voice shaking, "Freddie, I wasn't talking about you, I swear to God, I wrote that in the wrong place, I meant myself, I was talking about myself! Please! I-"

"Oh, speaking of yourself," Freddie continued, willfully deaf to my apologies, "as much as I leaned about me, I think I learned much more about you than you might have wanted anyone to learn. As much as you despise my soul, you can't seem to get enough of my body."

"Oh, shut up," I snapped. "I don't-"

"You just can't help yourself, can you? First impulse, always always, is to lie. But there's the proof in black and white. You want me. You want me like mad. Some of those entries, God, the page is practically dripping wet-"

"SHUT UP!" I screamed.

"Admit it, darling, I want to hear you say it. Say you want me. It's so much easier if you just admit it."

"GO TO HELL!"

"First you answer me, bitch. Do you want me?"

I turned away, the tears more imminent than ever. Suddenly he yanked me to my feet, forced me to look into his cold, cold eyes. And he hissed, "Answer me."

And against my will, the words puffed softly from my lips. "Yes... Yes, I want you, you bastard."

Freddie let go of me, and shrugged aloofly. "Well, of course you do, dear. What else is new?"

That did it. Despite the fact that I had been planning all day to give myself up to him, there was no way I was going to follow through now. That would be far too easy a victory for him. My face froze, like his. I walked away from Freddie, forcing my back to straighten and my shoulders to square. My backpack was sitting on the floor near the front door; I headed for it.

"Where are you going?" he called indolently, but I didn't answer. I was perfectly silent, hoisting the bag up onto my shoulder. My old flats were in my room, I'd have to traipse up the stairs to get them. I didn't know where I would go from here, but I didn't mind exactly where as long as it was nowhere near "here."

When I reappeared to walk down the stairs, the corners of his mouth twitched. "Leaving so soon?"

Again, I said nothing. After a few seconds, he walked toward the bottle of vodka I had left on the coffee table, and spoke again with a chuckle under his words. "You'll be back."

I bit my lip, and swore to myself I would never set foot in his flat ever again. My hand was on the knob.

He took a swig straight from the bottle. "Where's your Passport, Julia?"

My skin prickled. Oh, Good God.

On instinct I swung my bag back off my shoulder and peered into the three main flaps. My forged United States Passport wasn't there.

Out of my peripheral I saw Freddie march toward the stairs. I dropped everything and sped to the second floor. He too broke into a run. I broke all records getting up those stairs, literally jumping three steps at a time, nearly tripping over my own feet but catching myself just before I toppled. I burst into the green room, saw the Passport there on the nightstand. I put out my hand, my fingers barely grazing the leather bound document when another larger hand slid in just a hair faster and slammed down over it.

"Sorry, dear," he murmured, clenching the Passport in his fist. "I'm afraid it's just not that easy."

My fists clenched, on the inside screaming and raging against the futility of all this. "I hate you."

Freddie almost reacted to that; I saw his eyes widen the tiniest bit, but then he froze over again. "You do not. You can't feel hate. You can't feel at all. You just think. And assume. And analyze. Your heart pumps cold blood, there's no love or hate to warm it."

"Please, just let me have the Passport, and you'll never see me again-"

"I don't think you understand. You belong to me, Julia. I own you. All this time, ever since the first night, you've been in my debt. There's nothing I can't make you do for me. No, more than that. There's nothing I can't have anyone do for me. And you're no different. There's nothing special about you. You're just like anyone else, except you're colder- and more beautiful. Such a waste."

His words continued to vivisect my heart into even smaller pieces. I managed, "Fine! Fine! I'll pay you, I still have a little money I won in Vegas, you can have it all-"

"Darling, do I look like I want your pocket change?"

I heard myself ask this question, and immediately wanted to jump off a ledge, because I already knew the answer. "Then what do you want?"

"I crave the very thing you crave," he whispered. His finger traced the curve of my face. "A nice, long, serious f---."

I took a step back, shaking my head. "There's no w-"

"It's what you want too, don't try and say otherwise," he hissed. "I'll please you, you might please me, and you will be free to go. Is that so awful?"

"Oh, God, I hate you," I said again. "You're a monster and I hate you!"

Again, that made a chink in his armor. But he kept talking. "Darling, we're wasting the night, if we're going to f---, let's begin. All you need is a lesson, and the right teacher. Step One: Arouse."

Before I could pull away, Freddie seized both my hands. "You want to see me aroused," he hissed, "so arouse me."

Freddie put my hands on him then. He let out a muffled groan, and my insides entangled themselves. I tried to jerk my hands away but he was too strong. He backed himself up against the bedroom wall, drawing me over with him. And then, he started to move my hands up and down.

"Spread your palms out a litt- ohhh, yes," he sighed. "Like that..."

I could feel the difference already. My eyes were squeezed shut, my teeth clamped down on my bottom lip. And the sickest part was, I didn't know how to feel. I should have been repulsed, I should have screamed and with the aid of an adrenaline rush come up swinging and gouged out his eyes and maybe even knocked out one of those extra teeth- but I wasn't repulsed. Even worse, the longer he stood there making me stroke him, the more I... liked it.

Freddie moaned in a voice that appealed to me more than it should have, "My dear... you do learn so... so very quickly..."

I opened my eyes and looked down. He wasn't holding my hands there any more, and the most triumphant look was in his eyes. No doubt now that he was aroused. At once I drew away, breathing hard.

"Oh, dear, now you've done it," he whispered rather heavily. "And a good job of it too. Very nice, I didn't even tell you to knead your ha-"

I covered my ears and screamed, tried to dart out of the bedroom, but again, he was too fast. He yanked me back toward him before I went any distance at all.

"Not yet," he hissed. "You got me like this, you have to fix it now."

I watched in horror as his smooth, deft hands undid the button of his now quite strained-looking jeans. There it was. And I wanted to be sick. But you would never have known it from the way I breathed, "Oh, my God..."

"See, you really are no different," he whispered. "On your knees, please."

My face turned green. "I will do no such thing!" I shouted with one last flare of willpower, and it might have been more effective had I not ended the sentence with the absolute worst thing possible.

I licked my lips. I didn't mean to. I swear. But I did.

And Freddie saw it. "What are you waiting for?" he growled. "You're only torturing yourself, you know. Go to it."

I looked up into his eyes, and said flatly, "No."

"Get on your knees right now or I will find someone who will!" he snarled. Some of the chill had left his voice, replaced with a touch of unbridled insanity.

"Aw gee, that will be my loss, then, bye bye," I whispered, then turned on my heel.

And Freddie lost it.

He grabbed me by my hair and pulled my head back so fast had he been any more emphatic he could have snapped my neck. I fell to the floor, then Freddie pulled me back up in such a way that now I was kneeling and he held my head right next to it. I shut my eyes and covered my mouth.

"Do it!" he ordered.

And all I could shout was "No! NO! NOOOO!"

"Jesus!" Freddie snarled, letting go of me roughly and buttoning his jeans again. I sat there huddled and shivering, hands still over my mouth as I stared up at him in horror.

"Why do you look so f---ing surprised?" he slurred caustically. "I'm a monster! That's what you think I am! Don't you? You think I'm a monster? You won't accept anything less than that, and I dare not disappoint you. It's a monster you want, then a monster I'll be. Are you happy now? Did that support your f---ing hypothesis?!"

"Freddie, please," I gasped through my hand. Tears were streaming down my face, making tracks of black eyeliner across my cheeks. I didn't want to cry, but I couldn't contain it anymore. "Please... I'm sorry... for everything I ever said, or did, or wrote, or dared to think within my own f---ing head, just please don't..."

"Julia, stop - stop crying," Freddie's voice halted, and seemed to catch. A new shiver vibrated under his words as he demanded again, "F--- it, stop crying."

I didn't reply, instead just knelt there and drowned in my own sobs.

"I'm not doing anything anymore, so stop crying!" His voice thickened, and his hands, no longer clenched in fists, began to shake. "Stop it, damn you!"

And then something happened inside of me. I don't know what, for a moment maybe I too just snapped, and the cool, refreshing caress of sheer madness washed over my shell-shocked mind. I opened my eyes, looked up into the dark ones glaring above me.

I felt my knees lift me back onto my feet. With a loud, unhinged roar, I rose up at him and hit him with everything I had. Twice. Once for each sharp cheekbone. I slapped him so hard I sprained the ring finger on my left hand, and he was thrust off balance. Down he went, landing in a rather compromising position, but I didn't have it in me to laugh. I just wanted out- and away from him.

"YOU MONSTER!" I screamed one last time, then ran down the stairs, grabbing my backpack and flying out the front door, ignoring the last thing I heard Freddie raggedly shout before the door closed.

"Julia, wai-"

Click-clack.

And then all I could hear was the drum of a heavy downpour tapping against the sidewalks and on top of my head, the splash of my already waterlogged flats slapping furiously through the puddles- and the crash of what was left of my heart shattering into a million million fragments.