The Red Bracelet by Jolie du Pré

Carolyn bought it at the Dollar Mart, a string of red plastic beads. She had fancied gold or silver before. Before they found her naked.
    She had worn only the red bracelet, in the rain, a stray cat at two in the morning. They thought she was homeless. She gave them my name.
    I knew.
    I knew when she talked about the dead children and that we must never forget the blood that had been shed and that lesbians could be good parents, but she would never bring a child into this world. Never.
    I knew when she looked at me. I’d be reading a book and I’d glance up and she would be staring at me and smiling and I’d smile back, but she wouldn't look away. She just kept staring.
    I knew when she held me. Like she did that night.
    I tried to move, but she pinned me to the bed. And then she brought her mouth to my ear, hot breath against my skin. "Let me."
    I let her. Her hand at my cunt, fingers deep inside. In the shroud of her long dark hair, I put my face against her breasts, and when she bit my neck, I cried. As the blood trickled down she licked it off.
    "I love you" were the last words I heard before I drifted to sleep. The screeching halt of the train shook me awake.
    She was gone. I threw on my jeans and my t-shirt and ran down the hill to the stricken faces and the ambulance and the police cars and the train, which had stopped in the middle of the street, traffic backed up for miles.
    The sunlight shone on the red bracelet, on the part of her arm that wasn't crushed.
    “Hey, somebody grab her!” I heard when I crawled underneath and pulled it off her wrist. And then I ran, through the crowd and past the cars and up the street and back to our apartment. Curled up in a ball, I shut out the pounding on the door, the ringing of the phone, the smell of the dead.
    Four months later I'm sitting in the park.
    “Can I have it?” The little girl asks me. Her brown eyes billow as she reaches, a crab at prey. I jerk my wrist, slither off the bench and fly. Safe, I land on another bench farther away. The leaves on the trees sway gently in the wind and I am calm.
    Carolyn, in a sheer dress, creeps along the grass. I touch the bracelet, unafraid.

About the author:
Jolie du Pré's erotica can be found on the Internet and in print. "She" appears in Hot & Bothered 4, edited by Karen X. Tulchinsky and "Lacy" appears in Down and Dirty, Volume 2, edited by Alison Tyler.