Claire
Posted by Barbanne on January 16, 2004 at 21:28:49:
CLAIRE.
"Claire."
Like a siren sound, Claire heard her name called.
She was finishing with her books for the night and stood and stretched. Studying for long hours had left her cramped and stiff. She kicked off her thongs and slid her shorts down and off. Crossing her arms, she took her tee shirt waist band in both hands and lifted it up and off, over her head, in one smooth, swift motion.
"Claire."
The call again. Soft, breathy, husky, demanding. Filled with needing and want.
"Coming." She called back and unhooking her bra, she dropped it to the floor and wriggling, shed her panties, kicking them across the room.
Nude, she crossed to Delia's door.
Delia. Light, coffee coloured skin, masses of thick, black hair, soft brown eyes full of desire, thick painted lips. Her full, round breasts, nipples upstanding, erect with her needs. With one hand she beckoned Claire to her. Her other hand rested lightly on her damp vagina. Claire, such a study in contrasts. Claire's pale, white body, her sweet, young features topped with brown, permed hair. Claire stopped at the door and looked at Delia. Delia sprawled on her low, queen sized bed, her nudity stark against the crumpled bedding, the white sheets. Both women looked at each other with undisguised lust and longing and then in a swift bound Claire crossed the room and joined Delia on the bed.
Delia and Claire sought each other out. Wrapping their arms around each other. Claire's soft lips sought Delia's and their mouths locked in a kiss of such passion, such intensity, that both struggled for breath. Claire's small, pointed breasts crushed against Delia's soft round bosom. Four nipples, hard, straining, erectile tissue, stabbed at each other. Soft skin as flat tummy met flat tummy. Delia's musky perfume mingled with Claire's clean floral scent. Delia's sweaty pheromones mixed with Claire's equally insistent body odours.
Delia's fingers travelled down and over Claire's lean, girlish tummy, past her belly button and on and stroked into her inner thigh and sought for and found her warm, wet slit. Delia's slender artist's fingers were inside Claire and she found her vagina, swollen and hot, her clitoris hard and excited. As she so well knew how to, she caressed and stroked Claire's femininity and was rewarded with a gasping intake of breath and a writhing of Claire's entire length and the low, soft screams of intense arousal and then the rush of wetness. Sticky, hot and filled with feminine odours. Delia bought her fingers to her lips and sucked at Claire's essence.
Claire touched and stroked Delia as she lay, supine and submissive, and used her hands to bring Delia's body awake. All the time murmuring soft, sweet endearments, Claire brought Delia to the pinnacle of arousal and then beyond into the valley of orgasmic delight.
Both women lay entwined in each other as their scents and odours mingled and filled the room with the musky heaviness of sex fulfilled.
In this perfection of contentment, this joining of souls, Claire told Delia her sublime secret, seeking her abiding approval.
Claire sat nude on the spread sheet. Another sheet hung from the wall behind her, providing a neutral backdrop. She posed herself, sleek, feline, feminine. Her hands sought and found her breasts and her fingers lightly caressed her nipples.
Across the room, Delia peered through the viewfinder of her tripod mounted, Bronica, medium format camera.
"Almost. Not quite." She came forward and taking Claire's hands guided them gently into place and with the lightest of touch arranged her spread fingers so that Claire embraced herself like a woman in the ultimate abandonment of masturbatory pleasure.
"Now think sex, sweetheart."
Claire's eyes clouded and a look of utter and lasciviously, lusciously, filthy abandonment came over her face.
The shutter clicked and the lights flashed.
"Lovely." Said Delia.
While Claire assumed another pose, Delia looked at the photos she had processed a day earlier, pinned to her left on the wall of her studio. Claire as Nemesis, goddess of revenge. Nude, Claire brandished a short sword above her head, her eyes fixed on the lens, her foot planted on Roger, playacting her dead victim, his young body naked and covered in blood. What a symbol of feminism Claire was. And she was beautiful. Delia's tummy squirmed with loving lustful need.
Claire was sprawled on her back, her slender arms and legs outstretched, her sex moist and sweet, nestling in the damp hairs at her crotch, her young, smooth vital body glowing in the available light, her hair spread around her virginally beautiful face, a face that held hints of the age old wickedness of woman in her lucent eyes. Delia came forward and made a few slight changes, moving an arm fractionally, guiding fingers, tossing Claire's hair, turning her face to look sideways and then drawing her eyes back to the lens. She went back and looked through the viewfinder.
"Fantastic."
She fired the shutter and the flashes hit Claire's body.
Delia looked out from behind the camera.
"Oh my God, you're beautiful."
Claire smiled. An enigmatic smile.
Delia came forward as Claire's eyes followed her every move. She knelt and took Claire in her arms as she would a baby. Lifted her up and pressed her body against Claire's nakedness. Their mouths met and their lips parted and they kissed. A long, sensuous, cloying kiss that left them both breathless.
"Oh Claire, I love you so much it hurts me and it kills me."
"Delia. My dear, dear Delia. Its you and I, only you and I."
"Oh Claire if only it were true."
"Delia..............." Claire's little fingers toyed with Delia's blouse, undoing buttons until it was free and Delia shed it. Claire removed Delia's bra and unhooked her skirt. Delia watched the teenager as she expertly removed Delia's skirt and rolled her panties down and off. Together naked on the sheet they consumated their love for each other until they lay panting together, side by side, four breasts heaving in unison as they sucked air into lungs exhausted by passion.
"Oh Claire."
"Delia." Claire's fingers wound themselves in Delia's hair.
Delia looked at Claire. How she loved this teenaged uni student. Perhaps it could have been different. Other ways, another time. Her heart was heavy and great sadness crept through her like a slow and deadly infusion.
Claire ran up the stairs to the lecture hall.
Today's lecture, the Founders' Memorial Lecture to be given by John Allenby was one no student of the Arts would miss. A man famous for many years, for most of his life, for the strength and clarity of his literary works, he was one man everyone would want to hear. There would be a crowd and Claire wanted to be sure she got a good seat.
Suddenly Tom was in front of her, his hands clutching her shoulders.
"Claire, Claire, where have you been? We have to talk."
"Go away Tom."
"But Claire, I have to see you."
"It's over Tom. Now let me past. I don't want to be late."
"But Claire.............."
"Tom!" She pulled free and continued on up.
She turned into the corridor that serviced the hall and the nausea hit her. Oh damn, she thought and stopped for a moment. Students were filing into the hall and Claire joined them. Another spasm hit her and she doubled over. The nausea wouldn't pass and she knew she was going to be sick. Worried students surrounded her.
"You OK?"
"You look dreadful Miss."
"Excuse me." She said and ran for the toilets.
Inside she found a cubicle and rushing inside, she lifted the lid, bent before it, and vomitted explosively. Again and again until she was empty. God she felt awful. Could it be?
She emerged pale and shaky. Two other girls were looking at her worriedly.
"Are you alright?"
She nodded and crossing to the basins, washed her face and hands and threw water over her face a couple of extra times.
She returned to the hall and found it almost full. Annoyance caused her to feel squirmy again and she fought it down and took a seat at the back.
The uni Chancellor and John Allenby entered to vigorous applause. Introductions followed and then Allenby began talking. Silence throughout the hall. Claire was overcome with another wave of nausea but fought against it and settled down to listen. The girl next to her looked at her strangely but she ignored it and concentrated on the speaker. His voice droned in her ears, into her head.
John Allenby wound up his lecture and was warmly applauded. The Chancellor rose and thanked him and further applause swept through the hall. The guests departed and the hall started to empty, students filing from their seats.
Tom stopped at the head of the stairs and looked around for Claire. She wouldn't leave him. Not after the way it had been. If only he could see her, talk to her. He spotted her alone in her seat. She had slumped down. Hah, he thought, after all she had said about Allenby, she had fallen asleep in his lecture. He pushed against the tide of students and made his way to Claire's row. He walked through to where she sat, slumped down, her shoulders bowed and her frizzy brown hair enveloping her face.
Claire. Claire. It wasn't that boring surely?"
He shook her shoulder and she rolled to one side. Her eyes were closed and her mouth gaped open, her lips were a deep blue in an otherwise chalky white face.
"Help! Help here." he called.
A master and two students rushed over to where he was bent over Claire's still form. Together they lifted her and carried her down to the front. A few stragglers watched in semi-interest as they bore Claire, limp and floppy, to the front of the tiered room. The master was using a mobile phone and by the time they were at the bottom and had laid Claire on her back, two nurses, a man and a woman, had come running in from the infirmary. The woman bent over Claire and checked for airway obstructions. Then she commenced mouth to mouth, while the male nurse pumped Claire's chest.
The nurse looked up. "Get an ambulance.'
"Its been called." Said the master.
Tom watched as the two nurses continued to work frantically on Claire. She was very still, deathly white and her lips were even bluer than before. She seemed to have been lying there forever when the ambulance crew arrived carrying a portable fibrillator between them. The were both young women, clad in the unisex green uniforms of the emergency services. They knelt beside Claire while the two nurses stepped aside. Tom heard someone say "Nothing." and "No signs." One of the ambulance crew had a pair of scissors and quickly cut up the front of Claire's ribbed top. She pushed the two severed sides away, revealing Claire's black, lacy bra. A snip and she cut through the strap joining the two cups together and thrust the bra aside. Claire's small breasts, freed from their reatraints, splayed outwards. The woman rubbed Claire's chest and breasts with clear gel. She wiped her hands and took the paddles offered to her by her companion.
"Charging." The other girl said. And then "Ready."
"Stand clear." said the first girl and placing the paddles on either side of Claire's greasy chest, fired the charge. Claire's body bucked and jerked away from the floor.
"Again." Said the girl.
Again the machine whined to full charge and again the powerful electric current fired through Claire's chest and again her body jerked and bucked clear of the floor before flopping back to lie still.
Twice more the girls tried to shock Claire back to life, increasing the charge each time. Finally one turned to the other and shook her head.
"Turn it off." She looked up at the others. "Nothing more we can do. She's dead I'm afraid."
"But, but how?" Tom said. Others nodded.
"Don't know. She'll have to be autopsied."
Suddenly all urgency was gone. Claire lay still and white and dead in a circle of onlookers. One of the uni nurses covered her nipples with the ragged remnants of her top. The two ambulance officers went out to get a stretcher. They returned to where Claire's corpse lay, still surrounded by the circle of onlookers. People were speaking softly together. The ambulance girls wrestled Claire into a body bag, zipped her and placed her on the stretcher. They wheeled it outside and loaded it into the back of the ambulance. In contrast to their frantic arrival they left in near silence.
Simon pulled on his gloves and turned to the low, wheeled, trestle with the black body bag lying on it. The kid from the uni. Went in to a lecture healthy as far as was known and came out an hour and a half later, feet first, dead as meat. He called Frank over. Doctor Weinstein would be doing the autopsy. He'd be here soon and they'd want the body ready by then. Simon unzipped the bag and he and Frank got the girl's body out and lifted it on to the stainless steel table. Frank prepared the camera and Simon arranged the girl on her back and located her head over the neck block. He tilted her head back and spread her hair out. She was sure a pretty one. He and Frank would get a good price for photos of this one.
The doc came in tying his green gown behind him.
"OK boys what have we here."
"Uni student. Claire Randall, died during a lecture by John Allenby. No obvious cause."
"Allenby eh! he's not that boring. Hah Hah."
Claire lay on the table dressed as she had been at the lecture hall. Her cut top had fallen open again. Simon pulled the two sides closed. "Frank." Said the doc, "Photos please." Frank moved in with his camera, its twin flashes lighting up all of Claire's secrets. Doctor Weinstein had started studying Claire's corpse. "Frank, look at this bruise on her neck. One side only. Get a shot of this." He dictated into an overhead mike as he worked over the body. He turned to Simon. "Alright Simon. get her clothes off." Simon unstrapped the young girl shoes and removed them one at a time putting them aside into a box labelled Claire Randall. He unhooked the short denim skirt, unzipped it and worked it down and off. Folding it, he placed it in the box. He lifted Claire's shoulders and worked her out of the cut and ruined top and the equally wrecked bra. Placing her back down, into place, on her back, head draped over the neck block, he arranged her arms at her sides. He folded her damaged clothing and put it with the others. Claire was now clad only in a brief pair of black panties and ear rings and two wrist bangles. Simon removed the ear rings and worked the bangles off of her limp wrists and placed them in a plastic bag and then into the box. He put a thumb in either side of her panties and pulled them down and over and off of her feet. No-one was looking and he sniffed them appreciatively before putting them in the box as well.
Claire was nude.
Frank moved in for photographs of every part of her naked corpse. He would print up extras of her full body shots and facials and they would turn a neat profit from that publisher of net photos. A pretty girl like Claire was more desirable dead than alive to those guys.
The doctor was going over every square centimetre of Claire's nude body, dictating as he went. The only unusual feature was the bruise. Frank took more shots of the bruise. It looked like she'd been grabbed by the neck, or would have if there had been a matching bruise on the other side. The doc talked about the bruise a lot. Simon heard him say "Vagal nerve." and "Vagal infarction". He hadn't heard that one before.
Doctor Weinstein took up the scalpel from the tray of instruments he had placed adjacent to Claire's body. Placing it just below Claire's right collar bone he cut deep and drew it across in a straight line that crossed over her chest at a forty five degree angle, severing the top third of her breast on its way to her sternum. Her young, firmly elastic flesh sprang apart with negligible bleeding, opening up muscle and tissue like a spitted carcass. The doctor removed the scalpel and placing it under her left collar bone, repeated the cut, meeting at the sternum. He then turned his hand and continued down, slicing through her abdomen, making a letter Y incision that stopped at her pubis, just splitting her mons veneris. He spread her flesh and cut through her ribcage using vicious looking cutters. Working inside, he removed her liver, lungs and heart. Each was weighed, noted as normal, sectioned for path testing and returned. He opened her stomach and removed and bottled the contents, sufficient for toxicology tests to be carried out. He removed her uterus.
"Ah Simon, look at this."
Doctor Weinstein placed the hard little lump of organ on a tray and sliced it open.
"There, she was pregnant. He probed the messy tissue. "About eight weeks I'd say." Simon thought "Take your word for it doc." as what he was looking at bore no relation to a fetus as he understood it.
"Interesting." said the doctor.
He continued on until finally he was satisfied he had finished probing the secrets that Claire's dead body could reveal to him of the matter of her death. As he talked to the pathologist about testing he would require, Simon restored Claire's remaining parts to her body and started sewing up the intrusive slash that had rendered her mysteries open to the doctor. His sewing showed no prize winning needle work but eventually she looked vaguely human again although somewhat of a zip up doll.
The doctor came over again and, taking Claire by the chin, rolled her head to one side so that the bruise on her neck was displayed. Using an ultraviolet lamp he studied it closely. "What do you make of this Simon?"
"What doc?"
"These ragged edges."
"Looks like teeth marks doc."
"Exactly. Its not a bruise, well, not literally. Its a love bite. Quite a passionate one too."
"Fun before you die doc?"
"I hope for her sake it was fun. It's the last she'll ever have."
"But not the last she'll ever give." Thought Simon as he remembered the time Frank had lavished on photographing Claire's corpse.
Doctor Weinstein sat with Detective Sergeant Fallon and watched as he skimmed through the report on the autopsy.
"So doc, tell me what it all means."
"Well, she had a bruise on her neck, one side only. That threw me for a while and I wondered if she'd been killed by vagal infarction. A sharp blow or pressure to the vagus nerve in that part of the neck can cause the heart to stop immediately. Instant heart failure."
"But?"
"But that would limit your possible killers to specialist forces personnel and a few doctors. That seemed unlikely so I thought again. What I had taken for a bruise turned out to be a love bite of unusual severity. Or so I now believe. Anyway it wasn't the cause of death."
"No?"
"No. Toxicology results proved she died of ingesting a plant poison. Foxglove, maybe Henbane, they're working on that now. But, and this is the interesting part, she didn't swallow it."
"Well then how.............?"
"Introduced via the vagina. It's been done before."
"So what does this mean?"
"That's why you're the detective. Either you've a case of a really weird suicide, some wobbly sex game gone wrong or, and this is my favourite, murder. Probably by her lover or someone equally intimate with," he looked at the file, "Claire Randall's body."
Delia sat looking at her plants.
"Oh Claire" she thought. "Why?"
"Why did you get pregnant?"
"To whom?"
"A man. A bloody, bloody man."
"Curse all fucking men. Mother fuckers."
"Oh Claire."
Delia went into the kitchen. The cut remnants of the root were lying on the chopping board, cut and ruined, cut as her Claire had been cut open and wrecked. The infusion had cooled enough. She poured it from the saucepan into a glass. "Claire, Claire" she thought. "when I masturbated you to heaven itself, I masturbated you to death. Claire was it good for you?"
She heard the sirens. They were in a hurry.
"Too late guys." she thought.
She stripped off her clothes and sat on her bed. Our bed Claire.
She drank greedily and put the glass to one side.
It was quick. No doubt about that.
Delia's eyeballs rolled back into her head disappearing altogether. Instantly lifeless, her naked body fell backwards to lie sprawled on the bed.
Someone was pounding on her front door.