Heather Brown

Juicy piece

CHAPTER ONE

The reflection of Madame Fellatio of Honey Pot magazine (Do-you-need-advice-on-your-sex-life? Are-you-horny? Got-something-kinky-you-want-to-share? Write-to-Madame-Fellatio-and-she-will-help-you) stared at me from the electric coffee pot as I sat at my desk. The shiny metal cylinder beamed Madame Fellatio's perplexed facial expression. I looked at it for almost five minutes before I noticed how severely the anxiety showed on her face.

The lines creasing her face concerned me. A young woman only 25 years old shouldn't carry such an obvious burden in the expression on her face. The problems of her job were glaringly obvious in the troubled mask she wore. The frustration was building day by day, and her normally pretty face was marred by the lines more and more frequently.

Looking at her reflection in the coffee pot, I wondered how long it would take for the lines to become permanent, indelible souvenirs of the frustration of the job, the awesome responsibility of being Madame Fellatio.

Increasingly, when my brain came to a deadening halt and I couldn't coax a word out of my typewriter, I sat and stared at Madame Fellatio's troubled face. I would become so mesmerized with the daily evidence of the frustration of her occupation that her identity seemed to be totally her own, as if she were not a creation of Melville Shark, the money-grubbing publisher and editor of Honey Pot magazine, but a kind of patron saint for all the people in the world who were hung up on sex, her existence fueled by the sex problems of others, a freaky legion who depended on her to ease their guilt and shame.

"Hey, Madame Fellatio," I could hear Shark's crass voice slithering the way it did over my shoulder, the voice I imagined a snake would have if one could talk. "Time to get cracking. We've got a deadline to meet."

I looked at her face for a reaction to Shark's command, but it remained frozen in the shiny metal of the coffee pot, failing to respond to his call for action. I wondered how long she could ignore Shark, who was notorious for his losses of temper and sharp tongue whenever things didn't go his way.

Although my back was to Shark, I knew his face was turning red and the spit was bubbling around the corners of the thin slit of his mouth as he got ready to cut loose with a sarcastic stream of abuse. My eyes remained trained on the reflection of Madame Fellatio, fascinated by what her reaction to Shark would ultimately be. I wondered how long she could take it – the letters, the job, the deadlines, Shark screaming at her.

"You dumb cunt!" he exploded from somewhere behind me. "I can put you back in the unemployment line where I found you!"

Her face showed nothing as he raged. It was only when her reflection was joined by his purple face in the cylindrical mirror of the coffee pot that she showed any reaction. She looked as though she had just smelled something bad.

I could have gone on watching the drama unfolding on the silver screen of the coffee pot indefinitely, I suppose, reacting to it as though I were sitting out in the audience, unseen by either of the players. However, Shark did not permit that to happen, and brought me to my senses by screaming my name.