After a week of humiliation and abuse, Todd had finally reached his last assignment for Hell Week. After tonight, he would be a member of his chosen fraternity, guaranteed to be included in all the 'in' activities. All he had to do was find a street hooker, have sex, and return with her panties.

He had come prepared. There was a small assortment of condoms in his wallet, along with a hundred in cash. He figured that should cover a quick blowjob with some left over for the panties if the whore demanded compensation for losing her undies.

The problem was finding a pro. One girl he'd approached in a bar last night had dumped a king sized frozen margarita on his crotch, almost causing hypothermia. There were sure to be plenty of working girls downtown, but that still presented a problem.

He'd grown up nearby. Pastor Benson and the Mission Society frequented the main sin streets, handing out pamphlets, picketing controversial movies, and annoying the winos with offers of food instead of the change they could use to buy some more Mad Dog.

There would be the prim, beehive coiffed ladies who'd drilled him on bible verses he couldn't understand, and the grim faced deacons who'd thumped him on the head when he dozed off during service. If any one of these saw him in such a place without a leaflet explaining the need to repent, the surety of Hell if you didn't, and how to gain Eternal Salvation, they'd be sure to report it to his parents. That would mean the end of his enrollment at the public university, and his entrance into a Bible College.

That was not going to happen if he could help it. So here he was, cruising the fringes of the more popular areas. Pickings were slim, though. This area was the turf of the hookers who couldn't make it in the high traffic areas. They were too old, too fat, too skinny, too far gone with drugs, even misshapen or disfigured.

He'd started to pick up one that had a nice figure, and moved with the spring of youth. She was wearing her long brown hair Veronica Lake style, sweeping over the right side of her face, a nice touch. When she leaned in to negociate, the tresses swung away, and the dash lights had illuminated a face out of a horror show.

The left side was pretty, even beautiful. She wasn't long out of highschool, and there was probably a picture of her somewhere at her senior prom, smiling under a rhinestone tiara as Princess Somebody or Duchess Someone. But the right side...

Todd was forcefully reminded of the Batman villain, Twoface. It was a shiny, twisted mass of raw scars, not old enough to have paled to white. It looked as if, from brow to chin, that part of her face had been slathered with gobs of pink and red wax, then left to harden. The most disturbing thing was the carefully applied mascara, shadow, and fake lashes on the right eye. It had been pulled almost shut by the healing scar tissue, and it looked as if she were giving a hideously knowing wink.

When he suddenly fell silent, she gave a nervous, high pitched laugh and touched the rough surface of her cheek. "Learned not to hold out on my old man the hard way. I didn't think he'd use Liquid Plumber over a measly fifty, but his dealer had been cutting his shit more and more..."

Todd hit the gas, almost knocking her down in his haste to escape that awful image. He heard her purse thump against his trunk as she flailed at his car, and wondered vaguely whether the paint was scratched. Her voice lifted in an outraged, hurt shriek that faded as he pulled away. "It's not catching, motherfucker!"

When Todd slowed down at last, he realized that he'd driven even farther into the industrial area that surrounded the city than he'd intended. He wasn't far from the docks, in an area that seemed to consist of nothing but warehouses, junkyards, and metal shops. Here and there he'd see the glimmer of an arc welder beneath a garage door, and suspected there was more than one chop shop flourishing in this area. Other than that, it was deserted.

About half a block up, he saw someone emerge from the shadowy doorway of a building. They started up the sidewalk, away from him. He could tell by the swing of the hips that it was a woman, and he eased up beside her hopefully. A nearby street lamp was miraculously unbroken, and he got a good look at her.

She looked in her early twenties, old enough so he'd not have to worry about statutory problems, not yet to hag stage. She was around 5'6" or 7". She moved with the thoughtless, fluid grace of a ballerina, but she was more solid than slender, her legs lean and muscular. He could see a lot of those legs.

That was another thing that piqued his interest. The way she was dressed, she had to be a hooker. No one dressed like that if they weren't, and it wasn't Halloween, or Los Angeles.

She was wearing a lime green polyester mini dress shorter than the ones worn by that skinny lawyer babe on tv. It had circular cut out pockets in front, backed by hot pink fabric the same color as the trim and her fishnet stockings. Underneath it she wore a long sleeved knit shirt in narrow black-and-yellow bumblebee stripes. She had on knee high black patent leather boots, which matched the enormous shoulder strap purse she carried over her shoulder. The ensemble was finished off by a heavy gold chain belt. When he thought about it later, he decided that she looked like she'd come straight out of an Austin Powers movie.

He pulled up beside her and tooted his horn. She stopped beneath another street lamp and turned toward him as he slowed to a stop. He liked what he saw even more. Her face was angular, but pretty, the smooth skin ivory pale and perfect. Her hair was cut short, shorter even than most boys' these days. It was a sleek chocolate brown with strands of cream colored blond streaked through it. She was wearing round framed white plastic sunglasses, and her pearlized lipstick was so pale that her mouth was barely discernable in this light. She was frowning.

"How much?" he called.

Dark eyebrows rose over the white plastic rims. "How much what?"

Great, she was going to be coy. "Just some french. How much?"

Her ghostly lips formed a circle. "Oh, I see." Then her mouth relaxed into a smile, but it wasn't a friendly smile, or even a diplomatic business smile. It was tartly amused. "Frat boy's out tomcatting, looking for some pussy?"

"That's right, and I can pay for it."

She took a couple of steps toward the car, boot heels clacking hollowly, echoing even over the thrum of his idling motor. "I cost dear."

"Twenty." This was what the anorexic with the bad skin had offered outside the arcade an hour ago.

She laughed, a sound like his mom's crystal wind chime made, twirling in a lazy breeze. "Boy thinks he'll get filet for hamburger prices. Or are you so inexperienced you don't know the going rate for luxury goods?" She took off her glasses and regarded him with brilliant sapphire blue eyes with a faint, exotic upward tilt. Now the smile was openly derisive.

"Alright, fifty. But you gotta give me your panties to take home."

She laughed again. "What's the matter? Your little sister catch you sniffin' her bicycle seat and tell Mommy?"

Todd could feel his face turning red, the anger and embarrassment building up inside. He didn't handle ridicule well. It had even gotten out of hand once or twice. His younger brother had learned to tread softly after a couple of bloody noses. And there was the time his junior year, when his girlfriend wouldn't stop teasing him about his voice breaking during his talent show solo...They'd broken up, and she told everyone she got the black eye when she tripped backstage in the dark.

"Seventy-five, and you don't have to be such a bitch."

The smile widened, but it was no longer amused. It was like she was baring her teeth. "Wrong species, honey. Why don't you get your little ass back to suburbia before someone eats you, and not in a way you'll like?"

He made a final effort. "One hundred." Surely no hooker on earth would turn down a hundred for a quick blowjob.

"There's all kinds of ways of taking payment. You can't afford what I need."

"Bullshit!" No street tramp was going to turn her nose up at him like this. If she didn't want to give it up, he'd take what he wanted, and save the cash. He slammed the car into park and started to open his door. "Get in the car, slut. I'm gettin' some pussy tonight, whether you..."

He didn't see her move. He played it over and over in his mind for years afterward, but he honestly didn't see her move. It was just zip, like a transporter or something. One second she was just off the curb, the next she was beside his car, reaching in.

A hand far too rough and strong clamped down on his throat, pinning his head back against the seat. Her eyes widened, and the pupils narrowed, elongated into vertical slits. "You want pussy, boy? Oh, I can give you pussy." He cried out as what felt like needles pressed, barely puncturing his skin.

He threw a fist at her, but she casually batted it aside with her free hand. Now her eyes glowed, shifting from blue to red. "Problem is..." her voice had sunk to a husky growl. "I don't like to hunt too close to my own turf. Of course I could always make it look like a mugging." He felt a sharp point drawn lightly over the pulse in his neck. "One little slice here, over the artery. If I go deep enough it would only take three or four minutes for you to bleed out."

He lifted his legs and tried to kick her away. She gave a slight jerk, grunting a little from a blow that should have knocked her into the gutter. Her grip tightened a bit, and he felt warm blood trickle down in several places. "Now that was stupid. What if my nails had slipped, hm?"

"Please." He was crying, crying like he did at that evening service when he finally made his formal profession of faith at eight. The church elders had given such a vivid description of Hell that it had frightened him into a fit, and his hysterical tears were mistaken for a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. He cried now because once again damnation seemed like a very real, possible thing.

"Say you're sorry, shithead."

"I'm sorry oh god I'm so sorry please please please don't hurt me I don't wanna go to hell I'm so sorry..."

“That'll do." She shoved him back. "If you come back down here again, I'll eat your eyes, take off your head, and leave it on your gearshift. That'll make a nice news clipping for Mom and Dad's scrapbook."

She sauntered around the front of the car. In the headlights, he could see that her nails were at least an inch long, funny he hadn't noticed that before. At first he thought the tips were polished a bright red. His stomach lurched when he realized that it wasn't enamel, but his blood. As she crossed the street and continued on her way, he slammed the car into reverse and made a screeching turn, bumping up on the sidewalk and narrowly missing a telephone pole. Then he roared off as fast as he could, laying rubber for several yards.

He never went back to the fraternity. His roommate watched in sleepy puzzlement as Todd crammed his clothing into suitcases and plastic bags. He left his textbooks and told his roommate he could keep the radio, then drove directly to his home. He arrived at two am.

His father started to scold him for his inconsideration, then took a good look at his pale, trembling son. He took him in, sent Todd's mother back to bed, and called the pastor. Todd spent the rest of the night locked in the study with the preacher who'd thundered brimstone and sang salvation to him three times a week since he was a toddler. When he emerged the next morning he was calmer, but still haunted. He agreed to enroll the next semester in the Bible College, then go on to a seminary.

He'd told Pastor Benson a lot. Most of what had happened, in fact. But there was one thing he didn't tell him, one thing he never told anyone. Not his parents, not the therapist he visited for a time, not even the girl he eventually married and had children with. He didn't even tell God, though he was sure He knew about it.

What Todd never spoke of was the fact that, when the woman had walked in front of his headlights, she hadn't thrown any shadow. None at all.