Stepfordian contentment washes over her as she gazes out the picture window, her favorite jelly jar glass lathered with a healthy dose of antibacterial dish soap. The gentle foliage of her backyard wafts to and fro in the wind. She inhales the perfection of her life.

An unnatural motion parts her forsythia bush.

Impossibly, a man steps out into the expanse of grass. The jelly jar slips from her hand and shatters in the sink. His filthy skin, the bulging tattered dungarees. And the axe, the swinging axe. She clutches the Formica counter–something real. Fear and unmistakable arousal blind her to everything but him.

She swallows hard against it.

His arms flail and whip, the axe arcing wildly in the space around him. He stops all motion and locks his eyes onto hers. She is transfixed, unable to move. He punches both arms into the air and bellows out. The scream is primal and terrifying. She startles at the shock of it.

He falls silent, his chest heaving. The hot sun sheens on his body, slick with sweat. She should run. She should scream. The phone, car keys, 911–something.

She does nothing.

Running straight towards the house, he takes the axe in both hands and winds it up behind his head. At once the axe is in flight, cart-wheeling through the air. The plate glass patio door explodes into the kitchen and the axe scatters across the linoleum.

She is paralyzed.

He steps through the ragged hole. The aftermath is silent save the sound of his tortured breath. His animal smell fills her nostrils and fuels the desire beneath her fear.

She is alive.

He lunges towards her. But when the impact comes, it is only to push her aside. He plunges his face into the sink and opens his mouth to the running water. He gulps and gulps and gulps. She starts to speak, but has no words. Her throat is dry.

He stands and drags the back of his hand across his mouth, which smears away dirt and reveals lips lush and full. He rubs at himself, tugging at his filthy pants. In an instant he is naked before her, magnificently aroused.

“Fill me,” she whispers.

Her pants bunched idiotically around one ankle, she is on her back beneath him, inexorably open. Shards of glass dig into her flesh. She cries out in climax and pain, tears squeezing from her eyes.

He bucks and howls, then withdraws and rolls her over with a rough push. Her blood drips from a dozen wounds of varying depth. He sucks and licks each one with the same orgiastic intensity of the coupling. He works his teeth, chewing at the sliced edges of skin.

She is face down in the blood and glass with his seed is both planted and dripping. She blinks through blurred vision at fur-covered haunches. He turns and gallops across the flawless green lawn.

His scream waxes in the distance. She exhales once, twice, three times before finally succumbing to sleep.

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