The politician looked at his Rolex, but that moment of inattention earned him a brief kick to his chin. He apologized again. ‘Kiss my feet,’ she said, speaking seductively, brushing her feet up against the politician’s face.

He did as she said. It was a strange feeling for him to be treated like this, to be instructed. He kissed up from her legs, up, up, until reaching her moist inner thighs, sweat-slicked, perspiration the only reminder that she was as mortal as he was. As beholden to urges as he was.

He waited for her to instruct him to pleasure her, but she never did.

Without this permission, he seemed to be unable to kiss further, tentatively rubbing where he couldn’t kiss with a thumb. He could smell her, now. She wore dark grey nylon panties similarly laced and frilled as her bra. She still remained stoic and silent.

‘I want to—’ he attempted, before she shot him down with a glare. He kept that gaze for a while, before she prodded him with a foot down against his groin. She probably wanted him to continue, but not progress further. This teasing was just like her.

This went on for another ten minutes. Up and down, up, slightly, then down, slightly, tracing this invisible iron curtain. He knew she liked it, because he could smell her getting heavier with lust, a stronger, more potent, physical scent. At one point, licking her thigh, he even tasted something different, other than the taste of moist flesh and salty sweat. Earthier, more real. Surely it would not be long, the politician thought.

Eventually she relented, two fingers moving the panties aside. He stretched forward, an instinctive motion. He somehow could sense his late father chiding him, though this time not because he was some deviant adulterer, but instead because he was now this servile, obsequious pathetic creature made to follow specific instructions from this whore.

But ayah, he thought, she is not just any woman! She could control anybody if she wanted to. His father shot back an angry, otherworldly retort: Be a man and take what you want, when you want it. When you grovel, you bring disgrace to your so-called achievements, you bring disgrace to your role as a leader of men, head of your family.

He lapped her up when she unthinkingly allowed him, with no other desire than to give her pleasure. He was not actually there; he was arguing with ghosts. If he were there, he would have heard Dahlia’s moans, first starting short and small, and then growing in volume.

His face was full of it, all in it. He faced his father and asked aloud, antagonized, ‘What do you want from me?’

‘More,’ he heard a confident, salacious response, but it came from Dahlia, not his father. This brought him back to where he was. No ghosts were here.

He pulled back, wiping his face. He simply could not go on. Dahlia didn’t look like her usual self anymore, suddenly. She no longer looked flawless and professional. Her hair was slightly untidy, and she was blushing, and she bit her lip and looked… different. She was partially undressed, and so was he. He looked around and no ghosts were here.

He reeled back in horror. ‘Go, just… go.’

‘What?’

‘Please, go,’ he pleaded. He took his wallet out of his pants pocket and pulled out crisp notes. Fifty ringgit. A hundred. Another hundred. Two, three, five, eight hundred. He flicked them her way.

This broke her icy coolness. She was confused, but so was he. ‘You haven’t even…’ she stuttered.

‘I don’t want to.’

A long moment passed, tense between them. She collected the notes from the bed, repositioned her panties. She took her bra and didn’t even ask him for help putting it back on. He just stared at her. She put her shoes back on and walked over to the door. She gave him one last look, and this time he saw some strange vein of pity in there. Pity for who, for him?

When she left, he exhaled. He stared to the ceiling as he lay down in bed. Her scent was strong, and her lasting presence was damp on the covers.

As he stared up, he tried to conjure those ghosts, begging for their approval, that now she was out of the way, they could talk. But no ghosts were here.

No ghosts were here.

FEMME FATALE

O Thiam Chin, Singapore

Revenge was topmost on Pearlyn’s mind as she entered the master bedroom.

She had done a quick headcount of the number of people in today’s sex group. Eight men, five women. Thirteen, a good number—and ironical too, she thought, chuckling to herself.

As the men and women single-filed into the bedroom, small talk and suppressed whispers continued to be exchanged. One of the men, the owner of this five-room flat in Jurong, had switched on the CD player and a soft, ethereal tune began to play. The bedroom smelled of cheap aromatherapy oils, and several stubs of candles were lighted around the room, throwing waving, elongated human shadows on the walls. The thick, velvety curtains had been drawn shut. Pearlyn hated the pervasive aromatherapeutic smell that plagued the room, but she chose to grin and bear the odours silently.

The men were the first to take off their clothes, dropping their pants and removing their light-coloured polo-tees or long-sleeved shirts in a haste, impatient to start the session. The women, on the other hand, fumbled with their tight skirts and bra-straps. A few eager men even assisted some of the women with their undressing.

Pearlyn took her time as she undressed, wanting to seize the opportunity to focus the lusty eyes of the men in the bedroom on her. She knew her body well enough to use it to its advantages—her smooth, slender legs, her 36D-sized breasts, and her shaved pussy. It was the latter asset, that shaved pussy, that turned the men on; she knew men were attracted by it, its bareness conveying a sense of vulnerability and virginity that drew men to it. Pearlyn had concluded this with a cold, hard clarity from the numerous group-sex sessions she had attended in the past few months.

The ruttish men wasted no time as they moved in on the women in the group they wanted. A young muscle-clad man approached Pearlyn and began to fondle her breasts gently. Pearlyn moaned in response and arched her body forward, pushing it towards him. “You are number one,” she muttered inwardly.

The young man took her hands and guided her to a sheep-skin rug beside the large bed and lay her on it. Spreading her legs, Pearlyn pressed the man’s head to her chest; the man began to nibble at her hardened nipples. Pearlyn let out a louder groan this time, drawing other available men, unknowing victims, to her web.

She closed her eyes and receded into her secret thoughts, like an elusive sea creature slipping into a deeper, darker depth. The young man jerked her body upwards as he lay on his back, and in this sitting position, Pearlyn guided his hard cock into her, edging it in roughly, causing the man to take a harder bite on her left breast. Another man approached from behind and pushed himself into her ass. Number two, she counted.

Her time would soon be up, Pearlyn knew, but before she went, she would take as many of them with her as possible, like an ancient Egyptian pharoah who brought his whole household, family and slaves, with him when he passed into the next world.

Pearlyn had received the news nine months ago, when she went for an anonymous AIDS test at Kelantan Lane, a month after a particularly hot-and-heavy session when the guy who had doggie-fucked her broke his condom.

Completely devastated by the results, she took a free-fall into an emotional chasm. She wrestled through the whole gamut of experiences, from denial and anger to what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. But one thing that she had refused to come to terms with was acceptance. She refused to back down in the face of death. She had never been a victim, and she refused, even now with this disease, to become a victim.