Chapter 14

2063 a.d.

Secret desires and Unhealthy Urges

"God, just look at that!" Tanya exclaimed, gazing at the Tri-d in horrified fascination. Her darling little daughter was lying in the middle of the street, gunned down by that psycho who had been chasing her for the last ten terrifying minutes. She lay, naked and gasping though shot-pierced lungs as the recorder panned up and down her convulsing and obviously dying body, showing the very real bullet holes and the blood pumping out through her wounds.

"Yeah, she's really made a name for herself in the last three years," Frank mused. "Being a Snuff Girl must really pay well."

It did. It paid very well. Snuff Girls were stunt girls who would do stunts that the regular talent wouldn't touch – usually because of a healthy respect for their own lives.

Tri-d had replaced flatscreen technology years ago. But now that a typical viewer could watch a scene from any angle they chose, fake special effects really sucked, especially back when Tri-d was first introduced. Realistic flatscreen effects were easy to produce because the producer controlled the viewpoint of the viewer. The stunt people required for special (read: violent) effects recorded in three dimensions either became very capable or they died – or, more commonly, quit after being seriously injured.

Only two* other women were considered top line Snuff Girls besides Katie Kelly. One was currently in the hospital with a broken neck caused by leaping from a traveling boxcar – a stellar performance done without any breaks in the recording and showed each and every tumble, tear and laceration of her rather rough landing. The other was currently recovering from grenade shrapnel incurred completely 'accidentally' while recording a war scene. The 'accidental' scene wasn't edited out and actually increased Tri-d sales of the product considerably.

*(Actually, there were always hundreds of eager, athletic girls trying to become famous as Snuff Girls, but most of them didn't live long enough to become well known.)

"Well, she's doing better now that Frankie's paired up with her," Tanya replied. "At least, he can help keep her healing abilities a secret – not like that ass-hole husband she had..."

"It isn't polite to speak unkindly of the dead," Frank admonished her quietly.

"He was an ass-hole!" Tanya insisted. "He had her doing snuff porn! If that exploding dildo hadn't gone off while he was holding it, SHE would be dead instead of him! Damned ass-hole trying to shove something like that up between my baby's legs! He was going to kill her!

"Why does she do it, Frank?" Tanya implored, almost crying. "Why does she torture me like this?"

Frank reached over and pulled his wife gently into his arms. He leaned back, letting her rest her head on his shoulder.

"It's the same reason that you like playing with fire, Honey," Frank said earnestly. "It's her heritage. It's in her blood."

"Béla's blood!" Tanya said quietly, but with venom in her voice. "The price we pay..."

"You don't seem to think so badly of those urges when I'm depilating you," Frank replied, almost whispering in her ear.

"It's not the same!" Tanya exclaimed, sitting up, now. "I thought she went through that phase when she was fifteen!"

"She never let go of that," Frank explained earnestly, "and it wasn't a phase. It's part of who she is. In order to keep peace between the two of you, I added that bedroom section onto the house, just for her – so she could have the privacy she needed."

"You hid that from me?" Tanya asked, upset with Frank now.

He shook his head. "No, Darling, you don't understand. She had to grow into her own person. You let Alicia grow with the freedom she needed to explore her sexuality, but you were smothering Katie. All I did was give her the space she needed to grow..."

"I wasn't smothering her!" Tanya insisted, standing up, now. "I was ... protecting her! And you stopped that! And now – look at her! She hires herself out to be killed for a living! What kind of a life is that?

"For God's sake, Frank! What did you let her grow into?" She was crying openly now, but shoved Frank away when he tried to console her.

Fleeing the room, Tanya hid behind the first door she could put between herself and her husband. Leaning against the locked door, she cried to herself for a moment, then dried her tears. She hated to cry and had always thought it was incredibly unfair to use tears to win an argument with a man, but this time she couldn't help it. She wasn't trying to win anything. She just wanted to understand.

Frank leaned his head against the other side of the door. He knew she was leaning on the opposite side. He could always feel when she was that close to him.

"Sweetheart," he whispered, knowing she would hear him. "Just open your eyes and look around the room, Honey."

Tanya had taken sanctuary in her own private playroom. This was where her toys were that Frank had purchased for her over the years. Against one wall was a waterwheel where she had spent many torturous hours of pleasure while Frank hosed her down or spun her upside down so her head was underwater while he dropped lit matches or dribbled hot wax between her legs. A wide massage table in the middle of the room still had the six-inch wide magnifying glass to shine concentrated sunlight from the mirrored skylight onto her sensitive flesh. She loved it when Frank would literally 'cook' her clitoris with it. Sometimes, he would make her crazy by drawing decorative little scorched circles around her nipples before they made love.

He heard her take a deep breath, as though she was trying to recover some semblance of self-control.

"She's her mother's daughter," Frank whispered. "She wants, the same way you do ... She's the next generation, so she took it a step further, that's all."

After a quiet moment, he felt the door handle move beneath his hand and stepped away. Tanya's tear-streaked face was visible through the slight opening. She gazed into Frank's eyes for another minute, then opened the door wider, silently inviting him in.

Turning away and not looking back to see if he was following, Tanya walked to the massage table in the center of the room, then turned around and leaned against it, half sitting on it. Frank was right behind her and put his hands on her shoulders when she turned around. She let him hug her head against his chest.

"I didn't know it would be like this," Tanya murmured. "I ... I don't know what ... what I expected, I guess."

"You're not responsible for what she does with her gift," Frank told her. "Frankie's with her, so he can protect her if she needs protecting."

"I guess," Tanya admitted. "We should be glad he was interested enough in the difference between our family and everyone else's to want to know more about it. That ambition got him through medical school. Being a doctor, he should understand more about us than we do."

"Frank will protect her," Frank Senior promised. "And I'm certain that if Katie gets into trouble, our son will be able to get her out of it, or at least call for help."

"I suppose," Tanya admitted, trying to get over her upset. "She's with him like I'm with you, huh?"

She looked up at her husband, suddenly concerned about a new thought.

"You don't suppose they're having sex, do you?"

"What?" Frank asked, surprised. "You mean with each other?"

He laughed, then suddenly looked serious again. He gazed down into his wife's pale blue eyes.

"There's something else you don't know about your daughter," Frank said quietly.

"What, she's gay?" Tanya asked jokingly.

Frank didn't laugh. Tanya sat up straighter and stared at him. Frank still didn't react.

"No!" Tanya exclaimed. "I don't believe it! She's had boyfriends all her life!"

"Yeah," Frank admitted. "She's had boy friends all her life. But somewhere along the way, she discovered she prefers girls. So I wouldn't worry about Frankie and Katie making nook-nook with each other."

"But why did she marry that 'Zeus' guy?" Tanya asked, needing to understand.

"Probably for the same reason that Béla chose Jake," Frank replied, a sour look on his face. "He provided what she thought she needed."

"How do you know so much about her?" Tanya asked, sounding belligerent.

"She called me," Frank said simply, "about a year ago."

"Where the hell was I?" Tanya wanted to know. "On Mars?"

"Well," Frank said, wondering how to tell her how close he'd come to nearly losing her. "You were tied to the waterwheel, unconscious. Katie called because your body monitor set off every alarm in the house when your heart stopped."

"My heart stopped?" Tanya asked, her eyes wide open, like her mouth at that moment.

"I'm sorry, Hon," Frank said quietly and sincerely. "I kept you underwater for just a few seconds longer than I should have – but you were ... well, I was inside you and you were really convulsing ... and, I just couldn't help myself. I couldn't stop. I nearly killed you..."

Tanya stared at him, remembering the incident. She didn't remember that she nearly died. What she did remember was that it was the most incredible orgasm she'd ever had in her entire life. It was so powerful that she'd passed out completely. Then, for hours afterward, she'd felt incredibly languid – weak as a kitten, in fact – almost completely unable to move at all. Frank had lovingly carried her to bed because she was so weak that she couldn't walk.

"My heart stopped?" Tanya murmured, almost to herself. "How about that..."

"I rolled you back out and hung you upside down so the water would drain out of your lungs and did CPR on you for a minute, then you started breathing again. A few minutes later, Katie called, scared to death by the alarm."

"The house alarm went off?" Tanya asked, still confused. It was difficult to assimilate this much new and unbelievable information in less than a minute.

"Yeah," Frank admitted. "Good thing, too. I was completely crazed with sex and you would have drowned."

"I didn't know I was drowning," Tanya admitted. "It felt so good I never wanted it to end..."

Then she got mad again. "You almost killed me, you fuck-head? You don't have my permission to do that!"

"Sweetheart, it was a year ago!" Frank admonished her. "I didn't kill you! Everything is fine! I even got my own body monitor so I can keep track of your vital signs. It can't happen again!"

She remembered! Frank had suddenly changed his mind about getting a body monitor implanted in his neck. Now she knew why! Tanya turned away, trying to get away from him, again. Frank grabbed her arm.

"Please, sweetheart, let's not fight," he implored her. "I'm only trying to explain to you how alike you and Katie are. You both push the envelope. On the video, didn't you see the look on Katie's face when that psycho shot her?"

Tanya was silent. She'd seen it, and she knew that look well. She'd gotten wet between her legs while watching her own daughter get shot down in cold blood. She almost felt the orgasm that those bullets must have caused as they tore through Katie's slender, fragile-looking, immortal body.

Frank was holding her tightly against him, almost like he could see in his mind the mad turmoil and the horrible denial that Tanya was torturing herself with. They were both quiet for several minutes before Tanya spoke again.

"We aren't really human any more, are we?" Tanya asked, her voice sounding a little tired and ragged. It was more of a statement than a question. "Human values don't apply to us."

"I suppose they don't," Frank agreed, hugging her gently. He was glad that she seemed to be putting her earlier upset behind her. "I do things to you that would appall most people. But that's because what we do for fun would injure most people – maybe even kill them.

"It took me a few years," he continued, "but I've accepted the fact that you ... that we're ... immortal for all practical purposes. You like being whipped, burned and nearly drowned. We can indulge ourselves because it won't kill you or maim you or give you permanent scars that might need to be explained.

"Katie likes being shot and stabbed," he concluded. "She knows that violent penetration won't kill her and she'll be good as new in a day or so. On some level, I imagine, it satisfies her needs. So, in that respect, I guess you're right – at least partly. We're still human, in spirit, anyway, but some human values don't apply anymore."