I am the modern day Don Jaun. But I don’t feel like this was a terriblygreat seduction. I get the feeling I was the one seduced.

"Do you love me?" I ask. Miss Parker leans back against the vanity,arms crossed over her towel covered chest. The walls have gone flying upagain.

"Do you love me?" I ask again. All this time, and I still don’t know.I need to hear the words. She flicks wet hair off her face, and regardsme through the fading steam.

"Of course." Parker says, reluctantly. Her eyes are cold. I need toknow, a driving need that is making me mad.

"How do you love me?" I shift on my perch, atop the edge of the bath.She knows what I am asking.

"I love you like cigarettes." She tells me. I nod.

"Like a bad habit." I stare at my feet. That is what I am to her.

"I can’t break it." I can feel my throat fill with tears. I don’t wantthis to happen, not like this.

"But..but you did. You did break it." I mutter. Silently I beg. SilentlyI plead. Don’t be saying what I think you’re saying. But she is.

"And I will."

She leaves, gathers up her clothes and leaves me here in the steam filledroom. She has made her position clear. She loves me, she may even needme...but she doesn’t want me. I am a bad habit, one she intends to break.

She can probably hear my sobs, but I don’t care anymore.

****

So sleep tonight

In idle dreams

The pain will drown

Your silent screams

And you want it all

And you want it all.

****

When I emerge, she beckons for me, remorse on her face. She is lyingon the bed, still wearing only a towel. Wet hair makes damp patterns onthe pillow. I fall into her arms gratefully, brushing the towel aside,my naked body against hers. I lay my head on her breast and my hand onher stomach, she strokes my hair.

"You’re beautiful Jarod." She tells me quietly, and I nod silently.This is her apology. Sorry because I can’t love you enough Jarod. Sorrybecause my love for Tommy was healthy and my love for you is poison. Sorrybecause I can’t take you with me Jarod. She heaves a sigh.

I tickle my fingers across the space under her belly button, softlyrounded. Under the skin I can feel hard muscle. A distant fantasy surfaces,one I treasured all those years ago. Little soft babies with my dark hairand her blue eyes. A little girl with auburn hair and dimples. I can imagineit. Miss Parker would make a wonderful mother.

I’ve always had this picture of her, cradling a little baby in her arms.But it can’t be mine. One day she’ll have a little flock of her own andI won’t be a part of that. I’d help her of course. Fight for her freedomto the death, just so she could have a private nest of young ones. Andsome other man will be by her side, fathering those children. All I willhave with her is fantasy children. Dream babies. Little dark eyed, darkhaired angels made of smoke and wishes.

"Jarod." Miss Parker’s voice gives me a start, and I realise I’ve beenstaring intensely at her abdomen.

"Jarod, I know what you’re thinking. I’m on the Pill. There’s nothingto worry about." She murmurs. I smile slightly.

"I wasn’t worried." My answer is met with a moment of silence.

"You mean you’d *want* to bring a child into this world? Where it wouldbe hunted and tested and broken?" she hisses. She’s taken it completelythe wrong way. I roll over so I’m facing her, my head still resting onher body.

'I mean that you’ll never have to worry about a child of mine beingconceived." I tell her blandly. Ah, she understands now, the blood drainingfrom her face.

"What are you saying?" she whispers.

"I’m saying I’m Sterile." Sterile with a capital S. Parker sits up,cradling my head in her hands. She looks upset. I feel upset. I don’t wantto cry.

"You can’t have children? Why- I mean, how do you..." I haven’t seen herthis flustered in a while. I smile weakly, but she’s not buying.

"Mumps. When I was nineteen. Raines gave it to me when Sydney was away."Tears are leaking from my eyes, no matter how hard I try to stop them.Little ghost children, blowing away in the wind.

"Why? Why did he do that?" she’s crying like me, for me, for the childrenwe can’t have together. Neither of us have said it, but we simply bothassumed that one day it would happen.

"They did it...because they could. Because Raines wanted to test a newstrain of the virus. Because they knew it would make me Sterile. Becausethey knew it would hurt me, to know I couldn’t have children." My voicebreaks on the last word, and Parker pulls me up, into her arms, and wesob together, for the loss of things that could have been. She holds melike I’ll disappear, and we fall onto the bed in each others arms, spillinggrief in torrents. She kisses me and I kiss her back, but it’s not a sexthing, and I hold her as she soothes from pain to sleep. I hold her, inmy own pain, and follow her, in sleep.

I'll give you something more

And you fade away

One last kiss before

You fade away

*****

I have not slept long, half an hour perhaps. I was woken by the natureof my dreams, a little boy (Daddy!) holding a little golden retriever puppy(isn’t he beautiful Daddy?) then, as I watched, disintegrating slowly (Daddyhelp me!) and blowing away in the wind (Daddy!?) leaving me alone withmy grief. Cold sweats in the filtered afternoon sunshine.

Miss Parker sleeps beside me, her face gentle in oblivion. The air ofsuppressed violence that usually surrounds her is gone. That’s somethingI’ve learnt over the years. True violence isn’t in the action, its in thethought. The former cannot exist without the latter. Miss Parker practicallyglows with harmful intent, but rarely acts on it. Yet she is widely fearedand has the reputation of a serial killer. Man eater. Ice Queen. Beautiful.

I pull Parker close, cradle her in my arms. She’s out cold, like a ragdoll, and I drag her body close to mine, yet her limbs stay behind. I rearrangethem, tucking our legs together and her arms on my chest. Beautiful andnaked, her cheeks slightly pink from the tears she’s shed. For me.

I figure she must need this sleep badly, to collapse so entirely. Iknow she doesn’t sleep very well anymore, since that first night. She’salways waiting for my touch. Two times, I have been back. Two times I havecrept into her house and found her awake and wanting. I have slipped intoher arms with barely a murmur of protest on her behalf, crept into herbed and, for a brief time, back into her life.

And I always leave again. In the morning, usually just after the sunhas risen, I creep away while she casts resentful eyes on me. She hatesthat I come for her. She hates that I leave. But most of all she hatesthat she waits for me. My Miss Parker, forever independent, waiting ona fool like me. One day she’ll lock her bedroom door. Wouldn’t stop meif I didn’t want it to, but the symbolism would be there. Or perhaps onemorning I’ll go to leave, she’ll kiss me on the cheek and whisper to me.Don’t come back Jarod. That thought frightens me like all hell.

She’s adorable, here with me like this, and I’ll hold onto this momentforever. When I’m old and lonely I’ll look back on this and smile, smilesadly, at the way things were. And she’ll be somewhere, living in a happyde facto relationship (she’d never get married), wildly successful whenthe Centre has fallen, and I’ll see her one day and she’ll scratch herhead and swore she knew me from somewhere. I’ll disappear, like I alwayshave. My own prophecy is becoming like a memory to me, a memory that hasyet to occur.

Parker mutters in her sleep, wiggles away from me.

"Hot." She complains, and pushes at my chest until there is space betweenus. They don’t show that in the movies. There are no L shaped sheets here.The blankets cover me to the hips and her to the waist. Real life is neverso perfect.

Real life also shows the pain of love. Happy endings are a myth. Youcan have happy starts, or happy middles, but I’ve given up on happy endings.I know this is silly, but I regret that I’ve never had those long kisseswith Miss Parker. The kisses where you kiss just for the sake of kissing,where its not going to lead to sex. Like teenagers do in the back rowsof cinemas. I’ve never experienced that. Maybe I should. Before she leavesme.

"Mmmmm" Miss Parker moans as I pull her close again. I rest my handon her waist and brush my lips across hers, nibbling on her lower lip.She opens her eyes sleepily as I press butterfly kisses to the edge ofher mouth.

"Again?" she whispers, surprised. Energizer bunny, she calls me. I shakemy head.

"No. I just wanted to kiss you...for the sake of kissing you." She smiles.I smile. I feel like crying. I kiss her instead. Hold her close and kissher, enjoy kissing her. I love this woman. God how it hurts.
 

Lies you once adored
Will fade away

Lies you can't ignore

You soon will pay

As you fade away

****

Our goodbye is short but painful, like I’ve come to expect. She dresses,tugging on rumpled, designer clothes. I wind the sheet around my waist,follow her through my tasteful, expensive and depressing town house.

"My plane leaves in an hour." She explains, tucking the gun into herwaistline, and I nod. Her lips are bruised red, I touch them gently. Shetouches my neck.

"A hickey." She tells me. I capture her hand with my own, holding itto the mark she has left on me.

"I have to go Jarod." She mutters, tugs impatiently on her hand. Thetables are well and truly turned. I release her. I won’t cry. By God Iwon’t cry for her again. I am lying to myself now.

"Goodbye Jarod." Parker says, leans over and kisses my cheek. Then walksaway, a different woman than the one I first kissed two months ago. Twolifetimes ago.

The door closes, and I’ve broken my promise. I’m sobbing like a baby.Great, heaving sobs. Don Jaun indeed. Already I regret my little escapadewith Jess. I regret teasing Miss Parker for two months. I regret takingher for granted. I regret that she is growing and moving and changing withoutme. I regret that I can’t go with her. I regret. I regret like nobody canimagine, and invariably its all my fault. I’m no Don Jaun. Who knew I’dfall on delusions of grandeur to salve my wounded pride.

She’s leaving me behind. And I love her too much to hold her back.
 
 

As you fade away...
 
 

Fini.
Mandy.
 

Feedback please to : kitty_amazon@yahoo.com
 
 

Hunter/Hunted