
		 BEFORE THE TIME OF THE BEGATTING

	 (c) Copyright 1993 by Franchot Lewis

			I.

	 Her nose was pretty. Its curve struck him as cute and
     excited him. His tongue was pink and raw - where? He has
     swabbed her body like an old sea swabbie in the ancient
     texts, he has read, swabbed the decks of old sailing ships.
     His saliva laid jelly thick on her, and she wiggled beneath
     him like a fish that has been kept from the sea. He thought,
     Thank God for his escape through the time tunnel.  "Good
     Lord," he mumbled as his tongue covered her eyes. She doesn't
     have to know that he has reached the limits of his comfort
     level. He was as aroused as she. In his time, only imbeciles
     have the look he has and shake the way he shook. He didn't
     want to see in her eyes, the mirror image of his own.
	 Back home, in his own time, he had been a proper citizen,
     a company manager. Now, he thought that he had been a well-
     meaning imbecile, someone brought up to mirror the empire's
     image of the well-meaning man. God, he wanted to quit thinking
     of back home and focus on the naked young woman who lay with
     opened legs under him. He told himself, she doesn't need to
     know that he is a fugitive.  He set, ready to bam down into
     her. He remembered something that he has read in an ancient
     tome on love by the expert Adrian Syn: the lines about
     battering down on a young woman as though she is an
     impressionist's canvas ... humping the back to pack a wallop.

	 As he heard her soft sigh, the sound of a thump rose behind
     him. He turned in the bed.  "Who?  Who's there? Rats!" He pulled
     himself from the young woman. "Honey," she said, her tone
     low and nervous.
	 Then, he heard a raspy voice behind him.  He knew that
     voice well. It did not belong to a friend. He has listened to
     the voice on the tele-viewer as he sat in the un-anonymous
     insecurity of his darken home. The people of his time, from
     the beginning of their early childhood years, were taught to
     listen to and heed this voice. It was the empire's, the calmly
     spoken tenor that sat off alarms.
	 The young woman screamed. She saw from where the voice
     came. Her scream sounded hostile. Arguably, hers was the
     world's most frightful sound. Before he could tell her to
     quiet down, there was a flash of light. She shook and slumped.
     Her head fell back, her eyes dazed, her legs sprawled opened
     wider. He inhaled, along with the odors of her sex, the odor
     of a faint singe of flesh. She lay stunned by a lazer ray. The
     effect looked to be probably temporary.  He wondered if she
     would ever know what has happened to her, or if anyone would
     learn that he had attempted to escape the empire to freedom.
     He glared at the intruder and started to tell it what he
     thought, when it said,  "It's me, Elwood,  Officer 00-74. Here
     to retrieve you."
	 It moved its huge bulk forward: a ten-foot, six hundred
     pound monster. Elwood looked small, and the unconscious girl,
     tiny, as it moved in the cramped motel room toward the bed.
     Elwood didn't have to remind himself that this thing was the
     enforcement instrument of the empire, a feared robot cop.

		     II.

	 Elwood was back in his time and in prison. His cell has
     three pieces of furnisher: two plastic-looking chairs and a
     large bed, and it reminded him of the motel room where he was
     captured by the robot cop. Elwood was naked. In the cell along
     with him was another rebel, a female. She, a young woman, was
     also naked. They sat on the bed and neither would look at the
     other's face.
	 He thought, thank God for small favors, she doesn't
     even try to look at me in the face, so she can't be a mental
     case. He tried to put a friendly smile into his voice.
	 "I'm Jon Elwood."
	 She kept her hand-covered eyes to the ceiling.  "Hi." She
     cleared her throat, and coughed. "We're in tough sh-, huh?"
	 He replied, "Horrible. "
	 "What do they want us to do? Commit suicide?"
	 "Nah," he said. "We're political prisoners, they want
      us to admit that we are crazy."
	 "I'm almost ready to, although it isn't true."
	 "You're just a little scared."
	 "Cold," she said.  "That's - " she coughed.
	 "A - Some heat, please?" he shouted at a small box
     attached high up on the wall above the bed. The box had
     camera and sound openings. He lifted his chin and made an
     angry hoot. The young woman prisoner yelled a few obscenities.
     These were promptly answered by the familiar raspy voice
     ordering her to be silent.
	 "Prisoners in Cell 6420 be advised that only you can
     hear you shouting. A further advisory:  The human organs of
     sound production, the throat, the lungs, et. al, are fragile
     and not are capable of continual -"
	 The woman prisoner shouted over the raspy voice, "Cold!"
	 "Activity," the voice replied.
	 Elwood, hooted, "Heat!"
	 The voice said, "Make your own."
	 "Say?" The woman cursed, "What the sh-!"

	 The woman prisoner lay on the bed on her side. Elwood
     sat in one of the chairs. He managed to get a few nods of
     sleep at a time. Until the female prisoner broke into a long
     coughing spell, he thought that he could learn how to make
     this sleeping arrangement work. It took several minutes for
     her to clear her throat free of the cough, and Elwood thought,
     he wouldn't get any sleep again.
	 "Did the judge tell you that you would not see the fresh
     air anymore?" the female asked.
	 "Did your judge tell you?"
	 "Yes," she said quietly.  "I may never get my freedom back,"
     she continued.  Elwood turned away. He tried to hide his fear
     that his loss of freedom was permanent. He thought, if no one
     could see his pain, he might succeed.  "You can't think in
     those terms," he said.  "Not even if it's so."
	 "We might as well face it."
	 "It is not a fated fact, not by the laws of time, so
     don't go accepting it," he said, loudly, addressing himself
     to the wall box as well as to her. "Don't let the bastards
     break you; freedom will come to you." He turned away from the
     box, annoyed at himself for sounding as though he had become
     angry with her.
	 "Elwood?"
	 Her? The raspy voice?
	 She spoke, "Elwood -"
	 It called, "Elwood -"
	 "What do you want?" she yelled at the box.
	 "Another rebellion won't work," it said.
	 "Sh-" she hissed.
	 The raspy voice spoke, "Elwood, don't fall to another
     deception that won't work."
	 Elwood answered, "I don't mean to sound ungrateful for
     your company, but do you know what leave me the hell alone
     means?"
	 "There are no secrets in these cells," it said. "Your
     words and thoughts are as naked as you are. You can conceal
     nothing from me and you shouldn't try to hide anything
     between yourselves. You are naked."
	 "Go away," the woman yelled at the box.
	 "Never," the voice replied.
	 "Be silent?" Elwood asked. "Please?"
	 "Um," it replied.

	 Elwood examined the small mole at the tip of the
     female's right breast. He felt very uncomfortable. He could
     examine her breast but he couldn't manage to face her eyes
     and she could not face his.  They kept avoiding all contact
     with the face. He kept busy, examining her breasts. His
     hobby was historical and literary research. He has read many
     thick and long tomes on various topics that dealt with the
     relationship of men and women. He has searched the literature
     as part of his study to learn how to behave in the life he had
     planned for himself in the past. Much of the literature
     dealt with the female breasts. "Blouses and bras, taking
     off, stripped off, ripped off ... Gorgeous,  and generously
     endowed breasts tumbling out ... Full, heavy,  delightful,
     dangling breasts." He thought so much of breasts that he was
     becoming as aroused as he had been during his brief time in
     the past. Heat ran up his skin as his eyes caressed her firm
     breasts.
	 He has been silent nearly ten long minutes. She looked to
     find out why. She quickly turned away. She saw his face
     staring at her breasts. He was too busy examining her breasts
     that he didn't see her take a glimpse of his face.
	 "Elwood," she sounded distant, "What are you thinking?"
	 "Nothing," he said. His voice sounded strained and sent
     a chill through her. She coughed again. He felt her nervous
     tremble, sensed that she knew what was in his thoughts.
     "Thinking of escaping," he said, but he felt that she knew
     this was a spur-of-the-moment lie.
	 "The jailer told me ..." She let her voice trail off.
	 "What?" He wondered, why he had sort of lied to her about
     looking at her breasts? He and she were in close quarters and
     naked. He was a man who has always liked the women he worked
     with, and they seemed to like him. He has never been naked
     with them, as decent people of the empire are not naked with
     each other. Law and customs decreed for reasons of physical
     and mental health that people must be always clothed unless
     they are alone in their personal baths. The only people who
     got publicly naked were outcasts and out laws, or were crazy,
     or were being punished. Suddenly, he wanted to stop thinking
     along these lines. If there was anyway, at this stage, that
     he could have gotten all thoughts of the naked woman out of
     his mind he would have.
	 "You were thinking of my nakedness?" she asked him.
	 "Well?"
	 "Sh-"
	 "I can't not see you."
	 "Sh-, thank you." She coughed again.
	 He took a deep breath, said, "Remember that you can't not
     see me." She grunted.  He said, "Really, I think I can offer
     you something." The muscles in nearly every part of his body
     tensed.
	 "What?"
	 "You understand ... " He stared at his feet for a long
     second, trying to find how to begin.  "We are going to be
     here for a while. It is not our fault for being here, but
     theirs who put us here. In some way we can make better use
     of our time while here."
	 "How?"
	 "I can fight what's happened to us, in some way."
	 "How?"
	 "An escape."
	 "There's no escape," she groaned.
	 "A mental escape. I offer you, a mental way out of here
     - sort of."
	 "Sh-, what in the hell are you saying?"
	 "Well ..."
	 "You're talking taboo stuff, aren't you? Giving in to
     them? What was all that sh- about resisting? Bull water?"
	 He reached out for her hand, still not looking at her
      face. "This," he said, "is escape." He placed her hand
      between his legs onto his sex organ.
	"No." She yanked her hand away. "No."
	"Yes."  He reached for her hand again.
	"No. I won't, " she pulled away from him. "You frighten
     me."

	 She sat up in one chair, on guard. He now lay on the
     bed. He played with his self, stroked and wagged his organ at
     her. She kept her eyes away from his face, and still, he
     kept his from hers. He looked at his erection and pointed
     it toward the chair in the direction of her legs.
	 "I think you should - "
	 She was saying something, but now, her words were a slow
      drone. His eyes were on her cute legs - they - their form was
      a blur. He was thinking of a train: a train in the 1990's,
      the Washington, D.C. subway, the Red-line at the morning
      rush hour, on its way to the Farragut North Station. It's
      packed, people are piled in, tight in the aisles, one,
      stuffed against the other like sardines. Adrian Syn wrote:
      "Young woman ... When she got on ... Could see those lavender
      panties through her summer dress and ... could smell her
      perfume. Now, I'm so close, I can taste the mint in her
      mouth. Her backside is pressed to my hip bone. Her perfumes
      have entered my skin. As the train moves her trim buttocks
      shake ..."
	 Elwood went into this scene. The young woman's butt was
     vibrating to his hip.

	 "Shit!" The young woman in the cell with him yelled.
     And, his dream of what Adrian Syn wrote was the blur, and
     the woman in the cell legs were together, tense and standing.
	 "You are disrespecting me!" she shouted. "You are a
     creep or crazy!"
	 Elwood mumbled. He didn't feel up to arguing. He
     closed his eyes. He would have put both of his hands in his
     ears but one of his hands was occupied.

	 Adrian Syn again. Adrian Syn wrote: "This young woman was
     determined with a capital 'D'. Let her detect a man, detached
     or otherwise that she desired and nothing would be left undone
     until she had, had him. Destiny, she said it was. If the man
     be described as hero or despot, despicable or saint, no matter.
     And no matter if he be experienced, a full dinner for her
     devouring appetite,  or a young dessert, she would have him.
     She was like a sex demon with her love. She once despoiled a
     middle age priest, taking his chastity, desecrating the altar
     of a Catholic church after Sunday Mass to do so, destroying
     the man's virtue. She said, his deprave destruction was his
     salvation ..."

	 Elwood again in Syn's world. He was naked atop Miss.
     Determination's silky sheets and she was atop him.

	 "You're mad, mad, MAD ..." Elwood heard. "Mad, Mad ..."

	 "Bad, bad, " he mumbled, holding his shrunken manhood
     in his sweating, and other ways, wet hands. "Bad boy,
     spitting like that," he addressed himself.

	 She, the naked woman in the cell, was angrily hitting
     and kicking him, and he, momentarily, felt too weak to
     respond. "I want out of here! I don't want to be locked in
     with a crazy man!" She screamed and hit him for several
     minutes before he recovered strength enough to fight her
     off. When he did, he growled. He grabbed her, shook her
     and threw her against the wall.
	 She lay on the floor. The back of her head bleeding,
     where her head hit the wall. Her butt bruising, where her
     backside hit the floor. She whimpering, the breath has
     been knocked out of her. She could not speak for several
     minutes. When her breath returned, she sobbed at the box
     above the bed asking for help.
	 The raspy voice from the box replied, "Never interrupt
     a man who's making love to himself."

    {END}

     (c) Copyright 1993 by Franchot Lewis. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
