TWO

“EARLIER YOU SAID something about prey,” Detective Mayer said. He leaned back in his chair and I could see that in his mind, he was putting in what he now would consider to be fruitful investigative time. He had no idea yet where this would lead him, but he had come to believe it would lead to an arrest.

“Yes. Once an Androgyne reaches a mature state, she is driven to feed on the inferiors in her male form.”

“Feed? What are you, vampires?”

“Of sorts. We don’t drain people of their blood, however. We drain them of their very essence, their life force. It keeps us young and alive.”

“Do you live forever and ever like vampires? Are you … the undead?” He couldn’t resist a smile.

“No. Once we experience change of life, menopause, we cease being Androgyne. Part of what makes us so dangerous, I suppose, is what I told you before—on the surface, there is nothing to distinguish us from you. We don’t come at you with long, sharp teeth and faces as pale as death. We don’t change into bats or wolves. Heaven forbid we couldn’t see our images in mirrors. Our egos wouldn’t survive. I can’t think of anything I’d rather look at than myself.”

Detective Mayer laughed. He shook his head and grew serious again.

“So you feed on normal people, steal their life force. How did this start?”

“According to our theology, this situation did not begin until God became disgusted with people. Their sexual lust made them prime prey and it was ordained that we would forever be their predators. They do not know, but we exist now as part of their eternal punishment for original sin. At least, this is what every young Androgyne is told and it’s what we all believe.”

“How convenient for you. Somewhat justifies killing, doesn’t it?” he asked. I shrugged. “What if you should have an affair with a so-called normal male? Isn’t that dangerous?” he asked.

“Not if it’s only an affair,” I said, but I had to look away. Without realizing it, he had struck the heart of my story. Only I wasn’t ready to give him everything just yet. He wouldn’t understand; he wouldn’t appreciate why I was here, confessing.

“If it’s only an affair?”

“Yes. You see, it is peculiar to our kind that Androgyne can only become impregnated as a result of lovemaking with another Androgyne. There is absolutely no danger for us in having sexual relations with the inferiors. Supposedly, we cannot fall in love with them. It is something that should be repulsive to us in the same way it would be repulsive for the tiger to fall in love with the lamb or want to protect the lamb against other tigers.”

He nodded, but stared at me for a moment.

“I think you have a different story to tell me. Am I right?”

“Yes.” I was impressed. He was a perceptive man. I reached for the small diary I had taken out of my pocketbook.

“What’s that?”

“I told you, I got Richard to write a diary.”

“It’s in his handwriting?” he asked, unable to contain his excitement over a solid piece of evidence.

“Yes. I’ll read from it and explain it.”

“Okay.” He got up from the desk and went to a file cabinet. “You mind if I start to tape a little of this? There’s a lot to remember, and I think you would rather I did this than invite a secretary in to take notes.”

“Yes, by all means, use a tape recorder.”

“Thanks.” He produced a small recorder and set it up in front of me on his desk. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said. I looked down at the first page. My fingers trembled so I squeezed the diary harder. Richard had never intended to share his thoughts with anyone but me. In some ways, this was even more of a betrayal than coming here and confessing. I felt him cringe inside me and even thought I heard a hollow “no!” reverberating down the caverns of my soul. But I ignored it and pushed on when I recalled Michael’s broken body.

I sat back, subtly taking on Richard’s demeanor, sitting as he would sit: straight, arrogant, head up, neck taut. Detective Mayer widened his eyes with interest. My heart began to pound in anticipation.

“Even from the start, I sensed that there was something about Clea that would make her different,” I began. “She didn’t have the same attitude most Androgyne had about the inferiors, but oh how I came to despise them, to despise them for their vulnerability. Sex overwhelmed them. They had little of our balance and control. Few, if any, could ignore the bait, even if something told them it was part of an entrapment. Young girls ruined their lives by becoming pregnant as teenagers. Grown men violated oaths and hurt the women they loved.

“They tried desperately to sublimate their insatiable appetites. They put their sexual urges into art and literature, into clothing and films, even into architecture. But all of it only postponed what was often inevitable. The wisdom of age was no antidote either. I have seen elderly men teased, tormented, titillated to the point where they would act like little boys for the favor of a kiss, a touch, a full embrace. Rich men spent lavishly on women to keep them at hand, and women, supposedly wiser, made fools of themselves chasing after younger men.”

I paused to take a breath. When I read about Richard’s abhorrence of normal people, I couldn’t help but fill my voice with his sardonic and acrid tone.

“He does sound bitter. Yet you wouldn’t know it from meeting him. A more charming man, you can’t find,” Detective Mayer said, half in jest.

“Richard uses his charm as a weapon. He’ll kill you with it if he has to,” I said and I meant it. I returned to the diary.

“And so the inferiors were always perfect prey for us. To take pity on them was pointless; but to care for any one of them on a level we would care for one of our own was not only unexplainable, it was sinful. I had hope that Clea would understand it was mainly because of that, that I took the action I took. I never sought her forgiveness, only her understanding. There was nothing for her to forgive me for; rather, something for which she should have been grateful.”

I paused again, my throat closing.

“What is he talking about there?”

“You will see,” I said, forcing back the tears. “Be patient, please.”

“All right. Go on.”

I took a deep breath and continued. “But this all came later, after both of us matured into what even our brothers and sisters called beautiful and handsome Androgyne, prime representatives of our race. Janice said we had androgynous charisma. It seemed only natural for the others to gather around us, to look to us for our insights and wisdom and direction.

“I sensed this the first time I went out for a hunt, that very first day. Alison as Nicholas had sought out Clea immediately. He needed someone to talk to; he needed support and reassurance, like an infant who had just mastered walking needed continual reinforcement and compliment. He lacked my special inner strength.

“I didn’t, as I had promised, call Alison to have her or Nicholas meet me. Instead, I walked to the tennis courts on Highland Street, not far from our apartment. Two young women, easily in their early twenties, were completing their game. I heard the peal of their laughter and, even before I reached the park, I immediately discovered a new power, the power to envision, to anticipate with a remarkable visual accuracy, based entirely on a sound or a scent, for it was part of the Androgyne’s nature that when she metamorphosed, she intensified all her senses.

“This is what made our lovemaking so special for us and so all-consuming for the inferiors. To fuel our heightened being, we had to absorb their sexual energy, to exhaust them, even to the point of death, to start their hearts pounding so fiercely, they moaned out of a strange hybrid of pleasure and pain. It was an entirely new experience for them.

“I told Nicholas that when we made love with an inferior, it was for them as if they were making love for the very first time, for the very first time experiencing the sexual excitement. It was just that new and thrilling for them, so that even though they were dangerously surrendering so much of their strength, their very life force, they did not hesitate. It reinforced my belief that they were victims of their own sexual pleasure.

“This super-sensitivity we possess is something the inferiors feel. It’s part of what excites them about us, tempts them toward the flood. All this I learned that very first day.”

“Excuse me,” Detective Mayer interrupted, “but does he indicate dates there by any chance?”

“No, but we were only fourteen at the time and since I am thirty-five now, you can assume it was twenty-one years ago.”

“Twenty-one years ago,” he repeated and made a note of it on his yellow pad. “Okay, what does he say he did?”

“Do you want to hear it in his words or do you want me to paraphrase?” I asked, unable to hide my annoyance. I didn’t think he appreciated the literary value of Richard’s diary, how well Richard captured details and images and how important that was toward an understanding of what and who we were.

“No, no, his words. You’re doing fine. Read on.” He clasped his hands together and sat up straight like a little boy in grade school promising to behave. I turned back to Richard’s diary.

“Why I chose one female over the other was not immediately clear, but later I understood that one had more sexual energy, a greater appetite and hunger. Some of them, even I had to admit, come remarkably close to our own capacity for erotic fulfillment.”

“Big of him to say so,” Detective Mayer interjected.

“I turned into the park,” I continued in a louder voice, “already focusing in on the light-haired girl. She had a smaller bosom, lean, well-shaped legs and a narrow waist. I thought she was far more graceful than her ostensibly more voluptuous partner. She seemed inexhaustible, growing stronger and more energetic as their game wore on, whereas her girlfriend huffed and puffed and pounded the court with heavier steps. Her movements were abrupt, jerky. She lacked the fluidity of motion that the one I heard called Cynthia possessed.”

“Cynthia?” Detective Mayer confirmed. He wrote that in his yellow pad, too.

“Cynthia reacted to me far more quickly. As soon as there was a pause in their game, she spun around as if she could actually feel my gaze upon her. Later, that was exactly what she would say. I thought she put it rather nicely. ‘You touched me with your eyes,’ she said. Perhaps I had; perhaps, even we are unaware of what form our senses take when we are on a hunt.

“She met my gaze. I saw a slight trembling in her lips just before she smiled. Wherever the doorway to the erotic impulse is in the inferiors, it was opened. She embraced herself just as would a young woman who had been surprised naked. Her girlfriend called to her, but she was deaf to anything but the music between us. I saw that; I felt the power. Despite my young age, I was already the recipient of centuries of androgynous experience. I understood instinctively that when we metamorphose, we instantly inherit all that wisdom; and that knowledge and experience shows. Inferiors don’t think of us as younger, even if we are years younger. All they see is the sophistication and it blinds them to anything else.

“It is as if our sexual history is our disguise, brought out and draped over us to cover the deadly, truer motive beneath. ‘Like the Venus flytrap,’ Janice once said, ‘we lure them to us and then snap down over them, drowning them in a sea of pleasure.’”

“Damn,” Detective Mayer said. His shoulders shook with the chill that crept up his spine.

“It’s probably ironic that we are so curious about their weakness and our power over them, but we’re constantly asking ourselves what it is about them that makes it happen. Mary, William’s female self, once told me she had discovered that pleasure, just like pain, had its saturation point.”

“How old is this William?” Detective Mayer asked, his eyebrows raised. “Where can I find him?”

“William passed on ten years ago.”

“Passed on?”

“Mary could no longer metamorphose. Now she resides in a nursing home. Her mind has crumbled, but when she was in her prime, she was very wise, a prophet of sorts.”

“I’ll bet.” Detective Mayer smirked and crossed Mary and William off. “Okay,” he said, looking up.

I read on.

“‘Think of this,’ Mary said. ‘You like vanilla ice cream, let’s say, so you eat a pint and you’re full, satiated. What if another pint and another pint is forced into you. Suddenly something you loved becomes poison. Inferiors don’t know when to pull back. They go beyond the saturation point … it’s why they are overweight or hypertensive … why their bodies are abused so. I have never hunted one that wanted to stop making love, even though I knew she was at a point where she threatened her very own existence. It is their greed, their lust, that actually gives us the power to feed.

“‘Actually,’ Mary concluded, reminding me of our religious beliefs, ‘we serve God. We make His poetic justice possible. It’s why he put us here, so never feel guilty about what you do.’

“I didn’t feel guilty, although I will admit now that I did suffer some remorse the first time when I took Cynthia that day. But maybe I was simply overwhelmed by my own powers. I suffered less and less of it with every succeeding hunt. Clea’s problem is that she never entirely purged herself of remorse over the things we do, and I have come to see that as a weakness, a fatal weakness for an Androgyne.”

“Wait a minute,” Detective Mayer interrupted. “I don’t understand something. Your so-called male self can disagree with your female self?”

“Of course, we’re two different people. Don’t people disagree with each other?”

“But it’s the same brain at work, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no. A part of our brain is reserved for him and a part is reserved for me. Men and women don’t think alike about many things. And you can’t blame it entirely on hormones,” I emphasized.

“Furthest thing from my mind,” he said. “Get back to Richard’s description of his meeting this Cynthia,” he said, his voice full of hope.

“Cynthia turned back to her partner, but her concentration was ruined. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t stop looking at me, and it reflected in her game. Soon her partner became discouraged as well. She said she was tired and suggested they bring their exercise to an end. Cynthia was very anxious to do so anyway.

“I was sitting on the bench placed there mainly for those waiting to use the court next. She wiped her face with a towel and came out to greet me. Her friend, still on the court, looked up with surprise.

“‘You play so well,’ I said. ‘It was a pleasure just sitting here watching you.’

“‘Thank you.’

“From what well I drew the words, I do not know. When I asked Dimitri about it during one of our father-son type talks, he said it was part of the androgynous instinct. ‘The right words come to us just as the right actions come to a spider. Words are the web we spin. Of course, it isn’t just the meaning of the words; it’s in the way we speak them, the nuances in our voice and tone, the way our expressions complement the sounds. It’s why we seem ageless, I suppose,’ he said, sipping his bourbon sour and smiling with that arrogance I had inherited. ‘A fourteen-year-old androgynous male would appear as sophisticated as a thirty-five-year-old cosmopolitan inferior.’”

Detective Mayer whistled through his teeth.

“Talk about your precocious teenagers,” he quipped.

I didn’t look up from the diary.

“It was the way I appeared to Cynthia, but how she appeared to me was something new and exciting, too. I did not see each and every one of her beautiful physical characteristics separately. The softness in her light brown hair was the same softness in her almond eyes, a softness I anticipated in her breasts. The quiver in her voice was the quiver I felt later on in her flesh and in the dark, cool area of her inner thighs. The moment we touched, I felt the pulse of her heartbeat everywhere along her body, wherever I placed my lips, be it on her gently curved neck, on her smooth shoulders, or on the small of her stomach.

“I have read the thousand and one analyses of sexual pleasure written by various inferiors. They talk of erogenous zones, places on the body that are more susceptible to a loving caress. Perhaps for the inferiors, such a thing is true. But what distinguishes us from them is the way our entire bodies become erogenous. Our fingers, the palms of our hands, even an arm grazing against the body of an inferior become as electric and as erotic as the so-called erogenous zones on an inferior. I am sure they sense this. It’s why merely holding hands with us begins to make them hot with passion.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the detective unbutton his collar.

“‘Cynthia,’ her friend called, but she no longer heard her.

“‘Do you live near here?’ I asked her. I was sitting back on the bench, my arms spread over the top, my legs apart. I knew how confident I appeared, how relaxed I was. Her gaze traveled all over me. I saw the way her eyes moved quickly, like someone who had been starving for the sight of someone like me.

“‘Just down the hill a block or two.’ She nodded toward it as if directing me where to go.

“‘Cynthia!’ Her friend sounded more desperate.

“‘She’s not your roommate, by any chance, is she?’ I asked.

“‘No.’ She laughed. ‘Just a friend. My roommate is at work.’ She turned back impatiently. ‘What do you want, Debbie?’

“Her friend studied me from the distance, trying to determine if I were someone she knew too.

“‘You’re still going to the Blue Moon for a beer, aren’t you?’ she asked, the doubt already in her voice.

“‘No. I want to shower.’

“‘But you said…’

“‘Do you live nearby?’ Cynthia asked me, ignoring her completely now.

“‘I live everywhere,’ I said. She laughed, a nervous, thin laugh. Something instinctive was warning her, but she was turning deaf ears. I sensed it and it filled me with even more confidence. ‘But I’d like to see where you live,’ I added. I stood up.

“‘What’s your name?’

“‘Richard. Obviously, you’re Cynthia,’ I said. She laughed again. Her friend was coming toward us. She anticipated it and turned on her.

“‘Talk to you later, Debbie,’ she said.

“We walked out of the park quickly. Debbie stood gazing at us, her face filled with surprise and confusion. Neither of us looked back. As we walked to her apartment, I wove words just as Dimitri said we did. For Cynthia, the world around her, all other reality, became blurred and faded. She was mesmerized, but as much by her own lust as by my powers. In fact, William once said, ‘We have no powers, not in the supernatural sense. What we have is an ability to turn them on to themselves, to unleash the pure animal strain within them, something they have tried to keep chained and controlled since the day of creation. It’s ultimately why they began wearing clothes, why they created that ridiculous fiction about the devil and hell and eternal fire, why they formed government and made laws, why they have police forces and judges.’ He laughed talking about it. ‘Why they censor their own books and movies and plays, rushing about frantically to keep from speaking words and showing pictures that will … will do what? Do they ever really consider? They know they have a tendency toward lust.’

“William looked out at the blue sky above the ocean in his illimitable way, pronouncing his words like some biblical prophet. ‘We feed on their desire to be fed upon,’ he concluded.

“My first feeding was as much as I dreamt it would be. Never once did Cynthia pause to consider that she had brought a boy, much younger than herself, into her apartment to make love. It wasn’t the way I appeared in her eyes. Dimitri explained that older women, women past their menopause, women with much diminished sexual appetites, would see me as what I appeared to be … a good-looking thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy. Of course men, men who weren’t gay, would see me as that as well.

“But it was far too late for Cynthia. I learned little about her. She tossed out small facts about herself as if she were tossing off her clothing. She worked in a bank as an assistant teller. She had come to Los Angeles like so many others, dreaming of being discovered for the movies, but she had quickly realized that wasn’t to be her destiny and she found work, one thing or another … receptionist, typist, clerk, and now this bank job.”

Detective Mayer continued scribbling.

“She giggled nervously after everything she said. I understood that her words were her last ditch effort to protect herself. It became an incessant babble, the mind’s way of protecting the body perhaps. But even as she spoke, her breathing quickened, her face and neck reddened, her lips became moist and her eyes small. She fingered the buttons on her tennis blouse, unbuttoning one and then buttoning it. I sat looking at her, my eyes burning through the endless gibberish like two small blue tips of candlelight burning through cellophane.

“She offered some disguise, some pretense intended to hold off her own lust and my obvious intentions. She was just going to shower and freshen up and then we would talk some more. But my words were now in my fingers. I began with that button on her blouse and peeled her clothes away from her like one unwrapping a gift, slowly at first, and then, because of the anticipation, going faster and faster.

“Although my lips on hers brought neither of us any pain, it was like pressing your lips up against cold glass. We seemed stuck together. Everywhere my naked body touched hers, it was the same. At every contact point, I was drawing out her energy. I could feel her heart thumping through her soft breast.

“When our lips finally parted, she gasped, her eyes beginning to reflect the confusion. It was pleasure and yet … something had already begun within her brain, a tiny siren, a barely audible alarm, yet she didn’t want to pull back. She made no effort to retreat, and when I brought myself gracefully between her legs and lifted her into position, she threw her head back and moaned with pleasure, forcing, I know, all other impulses down, shutting the door on any warnings.

“There are some wonderful writers, artists, musicians, creative people among the inferiors who have come dangerously close to perceiving our existence by looking into themselves. One once wrote that only at the point of death was it possible to truly feel the ecstasy of life. Faced with losing it, it throbbed and pulsated with a clarity never before experienced.

“Surely that was what Cynthia felt the moment I entered her and my thrusts began to draw the life force from her like some pump lifting the oil from its subterranean stream. I saw the pleasure building in her face, her eyes brightening like orbs of crystal that had captured the sun. She seized my hips to drive me even harder than I was driving myself. I saw that every orgasm she experienced was built on the preceding one. She was climbing toward heights even beyond her own imagination. Every pore in her body opened. She looked up at me and pleaded for me to do more. She was nearly at the top and needed just to be nudged a little bit farther.

“The energy that traveled from her body to mine made me feel more alive than I had ever felt. She had no need to plead for any extra effort on my part. I wanted more and more and more of her. I had her taste on my lips without touching her. My fingers tingled with the touch of her breasts even though they were clutching her shoulders. I understood I was drawing the essence of her into myself and it filled me with the ecstasy the Androgyne must reach before they experience orgasm.

“It came and almost immediately afterward, I saw her begin to dim. First the light faded from her eyes, and what were once crystal looked more like gray-black coal. Her rosy lips paled into the lifeless hue of day-old dead worms and the crimson that had been in her cheeks and neck sunk into her now whitened flesh, dying out like an echo.

“Her grip on my hips loosened until her hands fell off my body and her arms dropped beside her. Because her mouth was still opened, I heard the death rattle in her throat. Suddenly her body quivered and was still.

“I dismounted, dressed, and left her lying there looking like a once beautiful lily pressed and dried between the pages of a book. My body was still electric, every part of me tingling, the taste of her still very strong on my lips, the scent of her still pungent in my nostrils. I knew I was carrying her off with me, that I had absorbed her like some sponge, and the process of digesting and assimilating her into me had just begun.”

“Christ,” Detective Mayer said grimacing, “what a disgusting description. But I don’t understand, did he strangle her to death, suffocate her? What?”

“You don’t understand,” I repeated. “I told you, we draw out the very essence of life, the energy, that which makes your heart beat. We do just what Richard is describing: absorb you.”

He shook his head.

“We need it. It’s what keeps us young and alive. That’s why I said we feed upon you.”

Detective Mayer stared at me, still not fully understanding.

“Listen,” I said and read on.

“Never did the world look as bright, did colors seem as vivid, did the breeze feel as warm, did the sky look as blue as it did when I stepped out of her apartment house. I filled my lungs with the air and walked away feeling more powerful and alive than ever before.

“Now I was eager to talk to one of my own, and for the first time, regretted that I couldn’t draw Clea out of me and keep myself intact at the same time. I wanted to confide in her, to be a brother to her and have her be a sister to me. But she was asleep, somewhere deep within my androgynous being, waiting for her time.

“However, in that moment I understood something, something that was very exciting to me. There would be a moment when we would pass one another during the metamorphosis. She would be emerging and I would be submerging, but we would cross and in those seconds of transition, perhaps we would confront one another and look at one another and understand who we really were.

“Shakespeare, one of the greatest inferior authors, wrote, ‘The eye sees not itself, but by reflection.’ But inferior that he was, how was he to know that our eyes can be turned inward and even if only for a split second, we would see who we truly are.”

I sat back to catch my breath, for whenever I read those words, they flashed Richard’s face before me and made me relive the moment he was describing.

“Are you all right?” Detective Mayer asked.

“In a moment.”

“Let me get you something else to drink … coffee?”

“Yes, please. Just black.”

I sat back and closed my eyes. The moment I did so, I heard Richard calling. I tried to ignore him, but his voice echoed through every organ and traveled through my blood until he reached the chambers of my heart.

“You can’t do this. You need me. Call me, seek me, do it now,” he pleaded. But I drove him back and pressed my palms against my ears.

“Hey, hey, are you all right?” Detective Mayer said, returning.

I gasped and nodded. He handed me the coffee.

“Take it easy, relax. We’ve got time.”

“Not as much as you think,” I said between sips of coffee. “Richard will keep trying to return, to prevent me from confessing.”

“Let him return. I’ll handle him,” the detective said with an inferior’s stupid arrogance. I shook my head. They will never be able to overcome us, I thought. Richard was right about that.

“You want to go on, or…”

“No, I’ll continue,” I said firmly. I was determined to crash through the wall of skepticism and stupidity. I drank some more coffee and then turned back to Richard’s diary. Detective Mayer sat down again, his pen poised above the yellow pad, his face masked with sympathy, but his eyes betraying his eagerness to achieve something concrete and make his precious arrest.

“Janice had metamorphosed into Dimitri before I returned. Wisdom and experience told her I would need to share my experience with the male viewpoint, a father figure.”

“Excuse me,” the detective said. “You’re saying his mother, your mother, turned into a man, just like you say you turn into Richard, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Now clear something up for me here, if you please. Is this Dimitri your father? Richard’s father?”

“My actual father was an Androgyne I had never met, nor ever would. For one thing, Janice was not positive as to who he was.”

“How many guys did she sleep with the same week?” Mayer asked.

“It’s not that,” I replied. “An androgynous female does not become pregnant in the same way an inferior female does. Because of our ability to metamorphose, the male sperm could remain dormant in the female Androgyne for some time and then suddenly fertilize an egg and start the development of a fetus. A female Androgyne could make love with a dozen different androgynous men in the interim.”

“Sounds like roulette. Also sounds like you guys don’t care whether you know who the father of your child is or not. Am I right?” the detective asked.

“Since we don’t live together as man and wife and since the male has no obligations, it doesn’t matter.

“Of course, once an androgynous female becomes pregnant, she can no longer metamorphose until months after giving birth. The gestation period is the same and the birth is the same as it is for the inferior females. Any physician can deliver the child, and in no way will the androgynous infant appear androgynous to the nurses or doctors. Earlier in this century and before, it would prove to be difficult for an androgynous female to give birth as a single, unmarried woman; but with the radical changes in morality that have taken place in the inferior society, it no longer proves to be a problem. Before this, androgynous men, even perhaps the very one who impregnated the female, would pretend to be the husband and father.

“But to answer your question more fully, let me say every androgynous male is a father and every androgynous female is a mother, so I had no difficulty considering Dimitri as my father, nor did Richard.”

The detective nodded, his eyes glistening. He was confused, but intrigued. I knew that he was still humoring me, but his skepticism was beginning to melt. Until it did, his doubt like a block of ice imprisoned his realization of how significant this all was.

“Richard continues,” I said and read. “Dimitri smiled knowingly when I entered the house. He was in the living room reading the evening paper and waiting for me.

“‘There is no need for you to tell me,’ he began. ‘It went well. I can see it in your eyes.’

“‘Yes, it went very well,’ I said, unable to contain my excitement any longer. He laughed as I rushed into the room. I didn’t sit down. I paced back and forth, describing how I had heard her laugh, envisioned her body, and pursued. He sat back, listening attentively, experiencing it all vicariously, reliving his own first hunt through mine. ‘There was never any hesitation on my part,’ I said. ‘I knew just what to do, what to say. I felt … felt as if I had rehearsed the part, the dialogue and action for hundreds of years, even thousands…’

“‘You have,’ he said, growing serious. ‘Through your ancestors, and as I can see, you have proven to be a descendant in whom they could be proud.’

“I nodded, happy for the compliment, but he sensed something in my face.

“‘Yet something troubles you about it?’

“There was that moment of remorse. I described my feeling when I looked back at her, a corpse, her bed already serving her as a coffin, the bed sheet her shroud. She looked as if she would decay right before my eyes. Perhaps that was why I rushed away.

“‘Their deterioration is very rapid after our feeding,’ Dimitri explained. ‘In time you will be able to tolerate it. Some of us even enjoy seeing it,’ he added and I sensed that he had become one who did.

“‘Enjoy?’

“‘There is an added sense of power when one realizes that he has done this … he has caused this whole process to begin. But for now, you are like a young boy who has shot his first deer … thrilled with the kill, but still trembling from the realization that it was you, and solely you, who has made the kill. It will pass quickly,’ he assured me. ‘And now,’ he said, standing, ‘I know you are very hungry, right?’

“‘Starving.’

“He laughed.

“‘Janice has prepared something for us. We’ll have dinner and you’ll describe the rest of it to me … how you felt making love, how she was … all of it, every vivid detail.’

“‘Yes, I want to do that,’ I said. ‘I have this need to talk and talk about it.’

“‘I understand.’ He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me to him. After Janice had metamorphosed into Dimitri, he had showered and put on the new Giorgio cologne he purchased on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills the day before yesterday. I rather liked the scent and thought I would use it myself whenever Clea became Richard. ‘I’m proud of you,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘It will be a wonderful life. You will see.’ His eyes watered with happiness.

“‘There is so much I feel I have yet to learn, so much I have to know,’ I told him.

“‘Yes, yes. And you will, and quickly too. Unlike the inferiors, you do not have to duplicate a foolish experience in order to appreciate why it is foolish. You do not have to learn it all for yourself; you benefit from your ancestors and that is a large part of what makes you so superior to the inferiors.’

“‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s something I already understand.’

“‘Good. Come, let’s eat.’

“‘But tell me, Dimitri,’ I said, ‘will all that I know become something Clea will know too?’

“‘Some of it, yes,’ he said. ‘But I can’t tell you to what extent. It differs for each Androgyne.’ His eyes became small, his gaze penetrating. He searched my face as if he were examining it for any visible signs of Clea’s soon to come emergence. Satisfied that she was still submerged beneath my identity, he smiled. ‘But don’t let any of that worry you. I assure you, Clea is as capable as you are and she will be someone in whom we will all be as proud.’

“I nodded and followed him into the kitchen, but something told me it wouldn’t be exactly as he predicted. Perhaps it was Clea, deep inside me, already challenging some of my feelings and thoughts, for we were different; perhaps more different than the counterparts of any Androgyne. I couldn’t help being afraid for her.

“And, when I say I was afraid for her, you must understand … of course … I was afraid for myself.”

I looked up from the diary, the tears burning my eyes. For a long moment, the detective stared. Then he sat back.

“This parent, mother, father, whatever, encouraged Richard to kill, congratulated him on it?”

“Of course. From Janice’s point of view, it meant she had a normal child.”

I looked away.

“But you didn’t like it,” the detective said, seizing upon my hesitation, “did you?”

“No.”

“Well, wouldn’t your people consider you a freak, a failure then?” he asked with that impish grin, a grin I was beginning to despise.

“Yes. Once my weakness became clear, they tried to help me. We care for each other a great deal.”

“Did they help you?”

“Yes and no. You will understand when I tell you the rest of my story,” I said.

He stared at me a moment.

“Would you agree to my having the police psychiatrist sit in?” he finally asked.

“You haven’t believed anything I’ve told you, have you?”

“I believe your brother is a psychotic killer, yes. And maybe the realization has affected you too.”

I sat back. I could hear Richard’s arrogant, “I told you so.” Perhaps the only way I could get this man to believe me was to metamorphose, but once I did that, Richard would be in control and he would never permit me to return.

I closed the diary and put it back into my pocketbook. Then I stood up.

“What are you doing?” the detective asked.

“I don’t want to waste any more of my time,” I said.

“Now wait a minute,” he called. I didn’t pause. I opened the door and left him and walked quickly out of the police station, fleeing from Richard’s confident laughter, which trailed behind me like cans tied to a terrified dog’s tail.

I knew it was just a matter of time before he would encroach upon my thoughts and creep into my consciousness until I was thinking more and more as he.

Then, instead of my burying him inside me forever, he would bury me inside him.