@@DESCRIPT="Damn Woman by Vyrus"
                              Damn Woman
                              ----------

I don't know.

It rips at my heart, as if it were a puppet being controlled by a
particularly angry man.

She didn't have to do this.

She could have left me alone, told me to leave, instead of leaving me this
way.

Damn woman.

It began the day I met Myra, about six years ago, in Los Angelos.
She was part of the trend setters, wearing the leather miniskirts
and keeping her hair in such a frenzy it looked like a flock of
little birds were nesting about.

But the thing that really intrigued me was her eyes.

They were a deep, rich purple, the color of a bruise when a body has
been hit rather hard, only brighter. More enlightening. More.. alive.

If only I had known.

I met her in a bar in one of the sleazier parts of LA that fateful day,
June 6th. She had been talking with one of her friends and dropping back
shots as if they were flat, warm Cokes, never taking her eyes off the
woman she was speaking to. She never wavered, always laughed softly when
her girlfriend said something funny, and she managed to stay focused and
attentive.

After she had knocked back sixteen or twenty drinks, the bartender must
have thought she was pretty sloshed, so he let her have them for free.
She grinned a goofy grin, and staggered towards the door.

Of course, I was dumb enough and attracted enough to follow.

The minute she was out of the sights of the neon signs and brightly lit
streets, she straightened her walk, and talked clearly without the slight-
est bit of a slur.

"Fuckin idiot barkeep, even now he thinks I can't hold it," she told her
young female friend sarcastically. "Lousy bastard always takes pity on me,
as if I was a fuckin dog or somethin'." She complained all the way down the
street, and turned off into an alleyway, stopping only momentarily to hitch
up her long boots. The high leather kind, with the zippers.

I followed, wanting to know more about this mysterious woman, who could
drink like a fish, and walk like a rich girl, this woman who was at this
moment strutting down one of the more darker and more unfriendly parts of
LA, California.

Hitching in my breath, I let out a contorted sneeze, looking up guiltily
when the lady turned around. Her crescent eyes narrowed even further, and
she began walking towards me. Not knowing if I should stay or run, I,
foolishly, stayed.

She swung her hips as she walked, the leather miniskirt accenting her hips
in such a way that I began to rise to attention. She must have noticed this,
since as soon as she walked up to me, she did three things.

First, she trailed her finger down my chest, pausing in between the buttons
of my trench. Second, she inquisitivly asked for my name. Licking dry lips,
I was barely able to stammer out "Barry," and third, as soon as she heard
me croak out my name, she grabbed my cock with such feriocity that I winced.

But apparently, she liked what she found, and motioned for me to follow.

Goddamn, I was rather stupid. Only twenty three years old and I was following
some prostitute down the dark and receding corners of one of the worlds
worst cities.

They say youth excuses a great deal.

Yeah, bullshit.

I followed her through a maze of winos and dumpsters, old men with cracked
and bleeding lips begging me for "just a dime, mister, I need a smoke", and
even worse street-corner sluts, asking me if I wanted a good time. "My"
lady told me to pay no mind to these "cheapies", but to wait until we got
to her place.

Still curious, and even more aroused, I followed.

We arrived at a rather distasteful, shabby place, containing nothing but a
table, two chairs, a door leading off into what must have been a bathroom,
and a couch so ratty, it must have been stolen from the local dump.

She walked immediatly into the bathroom, and closed the door behind her.
I heard several screams and a few thumps and thuds, and my mind was racing
so fast, I couldn't tell wether I wanted to run towards the bathroom door,
as if to save her, or towards the front door, and run for my life.

But she emerged, even more beautiful then before, wearing a translucsent
gown, and with a new color eyes. Since her eyes had changed color, I had to
assume the reason beforehand was because she wore contact lenses. Even now,
that's what I believe.

But no, her eye were a deep and horrendous red, as if her pupils were 
dripping vast amounts of blood all over. The part of her eyes that would
normally be white, were a dark, stained yellow, the yellow of a smoker's
teeth and filters. The gown was also blood red, and had splotches on it.
As if it was... clotting.

I shrugged this thought from my feeble, young mind, and advanced towards
her. A thought surfaced from my rampaging mind, and so I followed it.
The thought was telling me to ask her name.

The voice that came from, no, ERRUPTED from her throat was not that of a
two-dollar slut, or six-thousand dollar slut, but one of an insane,
possessed, madwoman.

No shit, Sherlock.

She came at me with fangs of silver and lips of blood. Her eyes were glowing
madly, and her gown had slipped off. Her curves were accented, yet not
accented, and being the hormone-raged young man I was, I found myself
staring at her chest.

But to my horror, her lucious mounds reformed and melded and molded themselves
into different shapes. Wild, inhuman shape. As if.. they were animals.

At that moment I was nearly positive I had gone completely out of my mind.
But a voice whispering at me said, "No, you're completely sane. But in my
eyes, and in my soul, you will be neither sane nor insane, just one more
floating, dying life, waiting to be consumed in a gorging, fountaining
river of evil and death, writhing in agony for all eter--"

I screamed so loud I woke the dead (so to speak), and bolted towards the
door. I ran all the way to a nearby park, and in doing so, I nearly knocked
a cop off his feet.

He jerked me to my feet and grabbed my collar, and was about to snarl out
a warning or a curse, but seeing the intense fear and rage and desperation
in my eyes, he abruptly dropped me, and fell down, dead.

Staring at the dead policeman quickened my heart and sped up my pulse so
fast I thought every blood vessel in my body would burst.

Damned if they didn't.

I felt myself go, spraying madly everywhere. A horrible, wrenching,
BUBBLING sensation filled me. I felt my life running out my viens and
arteries.

Only about ten seconds after my initial "explosion", she came to a stop
beside me.

Her voice was gutteral, but bubbly all in it's own, as if she was trying not
to vomit, or she had drank too much all at once and was trying to keep from
swallowing all at once.

"You know, Barry.. one does not fuck with the matters of Hell and the Devil."

With that, she placed her hand on my forehead and I screamed again, a sound
the whole world must have heard.

I reawaken in this red place. Red and yellow and black.

A place of death and toture.

I can hear millions of tormented souls around me.

I still wait for my time.

Meanwhile, I replay my last moments in my mind over and over.

I don't know.

It rips at my heart, as if it were a puppet....

                                       
                                       -vYrus [SAZ] '95

