CHAPTER ONE

 

Carol Mallatesta worked for the Credential Insurance Company as a claims investigator. Though she rarely left the home office of the Credential Company, she was the one who based on data given her by field investigators, decided whether or not to pay a claim. It was a pretty straightforward job and Carol did it to the best of her ability, which was to say, with a vengeance. Carol was a man-hater. She hated any and all creatures with a cock, from a fruit fly to a whale. As far as Carol was concerned, only the female of the species had any value to her.

Naturally, more than ninety-five percent of the claimants were men. The other five percent, the women, received their money almost immediately. But every man was put under careful scrutiny and if Carol was able to find any reason whatsoever for denying a claim, she did so. As a matter of fact, she often denied a claim was valid and the claimant, unaware he had recourse to the State Insurance Department, usually let the matter drop.

Now in her early twenties, Carol had discovered, against her will, that she was highly sexually oriented. However, hating men as she did, Carol did the only thing she was able to do under the circumstance; she became a lesbian. Where she was a dominant figure at the insurance company, bossing men around, shoving underlings hither and thither, Carol was most definitely the cow-dyke in her relationship with Ann Mason, a sixty-two year old bull dyke with whom she had become friendly a year earlier. At home, Carol was extremely subservient. What made Ann a very powerful bull dyke was the fact that she hadn't discovered her lesbianism until she was in her mid-forties. Ann had fucked around routinely with men, but had always found it unpleasant. Then, immediately after giving birth to her illegitimate son, Albert Kalawrence - giving him his illegitimate father's last name - Ann had enjoyed a most satisfactory relationship with a hospital nurse. The nurse had herself been a cow-dyke, begging Ann to whip her, kick, and humiliate her and Ann had discovered an immense amount of pleasure in doing so. As her son grew to adolescence, Ann began living with other women, and her latest live-in love was Carol Mallatesta. Ann had to admit Carol was the best one of them all, to date.

What Ann enjoyed most was humiliating Carol in front of her growing son, whom she insisted keep his hands off Carol. Not that Albert was going to be a normal human being anyway. He was already much too short for his age and he had a huge inferiority complex, especially when it came to girls, which pleased his mother to no end. The boy was a little jerk and she detested him.

Carol also detested Ann's son, but the fat old bull-dyke's hold on Carol was, at that moment, too strong. Carol was unable to get away. However Carol continued being a bitch-on-wheels at work. Most of her correspondence with claimants was through the mails. However, every now and again they called up on the phone to try and find out why she was denying their claim. Carol always recorded these phone calls. This way, if anyone claimed she was discourteous, she would always be able to play the recording back for her supervisor, a woman, and prove there was never any discourtesy on her part. But Carol had a way with words that aroused the anger in men so that they almost always ended up calling her some kind of unsavoury name on the phone, which was all the excuse she ever needed for hanging up. She almost always knew what to say in her acid-sweet voice.

For instance, that was that conversation with that architect.

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

It had started out as an ordinary day and indeed, as far as Carol was concerned, it ended as an ordinary day. She had denied about eighteen claims that day, receiving a rich sense of satisfaction from the denials.

Her most satisfying denial came at about three in the afternoon. In this instance it had to do with a self-employed architect by the name of Randolph Forrest. According to the folder Carol had on Forrest, he was forty-one years old, had been stricken with pneumonia two months earlier in February, was supposedly forced to lie flat on his back while recovering and claimed that, being unable to work, he wanted some money from the Credential Insurance Company. Granted he had a disability policy with the company, granted he always paid his premiums on time; granted he had never made a claim against the company in the seventeen years he had been paying the premiums. However in spite of letters from the man's physician, it was Carol's opinion that an architect sat at his drawing board all day and didn't have to brave the elements. Therefore, in spite of the pneumonia, there was no reason why Mr. Forrest would not have been able to continue with his normal activities. Ergo she had denied the claim.

When she received the phone call at three in the afternoon she was, as always, acidly sweet to the man on the other end of the phone as she turned on the recorder.

"Miss Mallatesta speaking."

"Miss Mallatesta, this is Randolph Forrest. I'm calling in regard to claim no. DI804 289."

"Just a moment," she told him, pressing a button on her computer screen, seeing the claim light up. However, she made the man wait as if she was going through her files.

After making him wait for more than a minute, she said "Oh yes, Mr. Forrest. According to your records there is no reason why you should claim total disability since even in bed, if necessary, you would have been able to pursue your occupation."

"That's not quite true, Miss Mallatesta," he replied. "As an architect I often have to go to the area where the planned building is to be erected and I have to double check measurements. Besides, pneumonia subjects one to continual coughing fits which would make any kind of architecture impossible."

"I'm afraid that sounds a bit ridiculous, Mr Forrest. No court of law would believe anything like that."

"Well, I'm afraid we may have to test it in a court of law," he replied. "Because I intend suing. You see, Miss Mallatesta ... "

"Mr. Forrest, if you feel you have a good case, then by all means sue. But I'm not the least bit interested in your personal history."

"This has to do with my case . . ."

"As far as we're concerned, your case is closed, Mr. Forrest. I have quite a few other cases to examine, so if you'll excuse me . . ."

"Your manners are somewhat wanting, Miss Mallatesta."

"Then by all means write to the insurance company and complain, Mr. Forrest. Good day!" She gently put the receiver down, not listening to the words he was saying to her as she hung up. That had felt especially good.

"Who was that?" a female co-worker of her asked.

"Another deadbeat," Carol shrugged. 'Wants something for nothing. Hah! Let him go hang."

But it wasn't Randolph Forrest who was slated to hang.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

There was always something dreadful about facing Ann. Carol had to admit she liked what she and Ann eventually did. But she hated doing it all in front of the woman's pimply-faced kid, Albert. Recently, she had gone to an analyst, recommended by Ann, and had spoken at length with the woman. It had been a female analyst, naturally. She would never have had anything to do with a male analyst.

After only three sessions, the woman had suggested that Carol had best stop living with Ann and find a healthy relationship with a male, in spite of the "horrible experience' she had undergone when she had been younger. In spite of what Carol believed, she was really heterosexual.

"I refuse to believe that," Carol replied.

Carol's experience had taken place seven years earlier, in her mid-teens. She had not thought of her parents as being out-of-the ordinary, though she had to admit in the last year, ever since she had developed, her step-father, who had lived with her mother for as long as Carol had been able to remember, had been looking at her in a funny way. One evening, she had come home from school late, and had put her books on the hall table in the small ranch house. Actually it was a living room table, because there was no-real hall. As one entered the house, the living room was on the left, the hall closet was on the right.

After hanging up her coat in the hall closet, she had been about to walk straight ahead into the kitchen when she had heard smacking sounds off to her right, just past the hall closet. The sounds were coming from behind the partially closed door of the master bedroom.

She had no idea what the sounds might be and at first was frightened enough to want to call the police. She was afraid someone had broken in and was hurting her mother and stepfather. She moved closer to the bedroom door, listening, trying to decide what to do. Seeing the door more than a little ajar, she pushed it open and looked in.