The Naughty Collection

by Ruby City Books

  Equally of note was the fact that she had the habit of storing her dildo in the freezer, a reminder of her supernatural lover’s peculiar endowment. She didn’t exactly hide the toy, and whoever opened her freezer tended to be equal parts dumb-struck and embarrassed.

  After laying for a quarter of an hour or so, remembering that distant night with Baker and basking in the afterglow of the graveyard’s errant sexual magic, Shana decided to find the Haserot Angel. She was curious how the bronze had aged since she was an 18-year-old basking in its patch of grass. Little geographic hints in the graveyard conjured the map she had stored in her memory long ago, and she quickly became oriented, finding the angel at the end of a lingering, nostalgic journey through the former playground of her young romance. The angel had in fact not aged a bit, with white corrosion still streaking the green, oxidized bronze in nearly the precise pattern that it had a decade and a half ago.

  Shana took the opportunity to meditate on no particular thought at all while basking in the angel’s tiny dominion. Her mind wandered in the same empty, pleasant way it does while drifting to sleep. The peacefulness was broken by a quick shuffling somewhere behind her. The mass of the shuffler was too great to be anything but a large creature, yet it was too clumsy to be the deer that frequent this particular final retirement community. While glancing around, and ultimately pivoting her body to find the source of the sound, she caught glimpse of Baker’s mausoleum. Even though this was the first time she explicitly thought of the old blood sucker all night, she realized that he had very much so been on her mind since she returned to Cleveland, tiptoeing around in there like a guest who was trying desperately not to impose.

  She started towards his miniature temple, wondering for the first time want it looked like in there. Was it just a stone pedestal for a bed, like in the movies? Did he have some candles, maybe a book our two? Once again, her wandering mind was brought back down to earth by a coarse scurrying, once again behind her. She pressed on towards the mausoleum and heard the scurry grow closer. Her mind reverted to its teenage tunnel vision. “Could it be him? It must.” But somehow she noticed that the sun had started to lighten the gray on the gravestones, meaning Baker wouldn’t last a second outside.

  A quick glance over her shoulder caught a man hobbling toward her, setting one foot forward and dragging the other leg with surprising agility. He was in a hurry to catch up with Shana, and the shape of his mouth suggested the one track mind of a predator with dinner in sight. This mouth had few teeth. Shana stared for a second at his eyes twitching into blinks, bizarre and mesmerizing on account of the fact that they never seemed to close or open in unison. The trance this inspired was broken when she noticed the ice pick clutched in his fingers so stubby that they may as well all have been missing digits.

  She ran. She lost him. She hopped the wrought iron fence and dropped her keys twice trying to find the right one to unlock the driver’s door, not realizing that her sister’s car unlocked automatically once the magnetic key fob is within a certain radius. Somehow, the hobbling man found her, emerging not from some hole in the fence but lumbering down the sidewalk, foot forward, other dragged, foot forward, other dragged.

  Shana tried the door out of panic, and was startled when it flew open. Realizing that this was a significantly nicer car than her own back on Long Island, she looked for the push button ignition and pushed it readily. She thought that pressing the button made the passenger window shatter, but instead it was the gimp’s ice pick. The car was suddenly in drive, the gas pedal as close to the floor as it would dip, and the stumpy fellow growing smaller in the rear view.

  Chapter Five

  When Shana awoke in the guest bed, she was sure she had dreamt it all. The incubus-induced orgasm, first off, was so like the ones she experienced in dreams about Baker. The angel not aging, the warehouses falling into cartoonish disrepair, the man with the icepick... Cleveland was a city of lucid strangeness, but never one of pure unreality.

  It smelled like Suze had percolated some coffee in the kitchen, with the burnt Arabica’s scent bleeding through the walls of the house. Shana followed the aroma, one that ensured an easy transition into the day. She poured the coffee into an olive green mug, dug the almond milk out of the fridge and prepared the drink that would lull her back into this earthly plane.

  Luke wandered in. “Morning, Luke.”

  “Morning, Aunt Shana.” The boy was wholly distracted by his monomaniacal quest to for another bowl of Guava Pops. This required shimmying up the counter to reach the cabinet that was supposed to be off limits to him. Shana was too amused to stop the boy from obtaining his forbidden second serving. He grabbed the box successfully, and even replaced it in its exact position so his mother would never guess it had moved a hair.

  “Bye Aunt Shana.” The boy wallowed out of the room, cradling his spoils.

  As if on a conveyer belt transporting members of the same bloodline, Nate sauntered in. He was looking healthy these days, regardless of the spare tire that middle age so often affixes to men. He shot Shana a familiar smirk and nod. “Coffee still hot?”

  Shana’s response took the form of a petite sip. Nate gave another little nod and poured himself a cup of steaming Joe. “How it’s it to be back in Cleveland hun?”

  “Oh it’s better than being back in Indiana.”

  “Most things are. I remember passing kidney stones being better than going back to Indiana.”

  “Sounds like things are well between you and Suze.”

  Nate took a long sip, too long for how hot his black coffee was. “Well sure.” He took another sip, this time taking a moment to savor the flavor. “Just don’t understand where this new religious bent of hers came from. The exercising too, I guess. But at least I don’t have to get dragged to the gym every time she gets the itch to work out.”

  Shana just kind of shrugged and sipped again. They sat on silence for a spell. Nate broke it. “Hey wanna check something out?” Shana followed his lead.

  It was the car. It was fucked up.

  “Looks bad, huh?” The dreamer had no response. “Police came by and took some shards of glass that had blood on them. Took an icepick too and figured they could use the prints on that with the blood from the glass to find the guy if he was already in their database.”

  “But...”

  Nate let it hang for a minute, politely waiting for the rest of the thought. After long enough he helped her. “But nothing was stolen, is the strange part. No sign that he entered the car either. Cop said sometimes homeless people will break in to take a nap or jerk off. No signs of either.”

  Shock was the only feature on Shana’s face.

  “What? You didn’t know homeless people jerk off?” Nate had a hardy laugh and gave her a light punch on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry hun, insurance covers the whole repair and even the tow truck to get it to the shop. Of course I doubt Suze is going to feel too good driving around in the car that some freak soiled with his blood.”

  “Yeah, freak is right.”

  Chapter Six

  June in Cleveland was an easy time. The wind from Lake Erie provided good reprieve from the balmy late afternoon heat and lighting at night lent a romantic, sporadic glow on the people sipping beer on porches. The warm nights would bring people out of their houses, which was both good and bad. Good if those people were the neighborly types who wanted to chat about the progress of this or that plant in the garden. Bad if they were the meth-smoking, child-beating types who brought their paranoid quarreling out to air for the entirety of an unwitting block to gain a quick, thorough education on. Kids from those families were usually the ones to whack mailboxes with a bat, or nail a squirrel’s tail into the soil on their patchy, yellowed front lawn.

  It was a boy from one such family, Benjamin Henderson, eleven years old, 54 inches and about 80 pounds, who went missing in early May. He and his two brothers were seen running around the block on the first sunny, spring day of the year (April was a month that
flooded a great number of Northern Ohio basements), trying to catch birds with a fishing net. Their sister, Toby, was cutting a circle into the earth with a kitchen knife, as deep as its circumference could be transcribed. When she could cut no deeper, she left it be and went inside. The parents were nowhere to be found that day.

  After Benjamin’s two brothers reported in a panic to a neighbor that their brother had gone missing, there was no answer to a neighbor’s knocks on the Henderson family door. That neighbor was Suze, and she returned to her house to ask the Henderson boys, who she had supplied with some cookies and carrots, if their parents were home. The older one shrugged, divulging that the parents don’t take kindly to knocking since only policemen knock. When Suze tried calling, the youngest warned that “Mom only picks up during emergencies. She don’t like talking on her phone because it’s tapped.” By this point, the police had arrived and indeed they were knocking on the Henderson’s door, trying desperately to gain some insight from the meth heads as to where their boy might be.

  Benjamin did not return. A body of about 54 inches and 65 pounds was found in one of the Metroparks near a more industrial zone. Its stomach was blown open, as is typical of corpses after more than 10 days. Gas accumulates in the abdomen, and liquid flows from the body cavity out of that rupture.

  What chilled Suze and Nate the most was the fact that the Hendersons were barely affected. They buried the boy in a cheap plastic coffin, and once he was in the ground, life down the block seemed to go on as usual. Toby continued carving shapes into the family’s destitute property, the boys continued running around wreaking havoc. The only discernible change was that the Henderson parents became more paranoid, and that their early morning meth sessions would culminate with wailing, wallpaper shivering wailing every few days. Horror metathesizes in a manner so subtle yet profound in those who deny it.

  “How would you protect Luke from something like that?” Shana was doing her best to keep up with Suze, who was admittedly one hell of a power walker.

  Suze’s arms swung like motorized pendulums with one-pound dumbbells in each of her hands. “Well, you can live in fear or you can feel secure with the knowledge that you do the best you can to keep you and your family safe. You’ve gotta expect the unexpected and account for what you can expect. Can’t live your life wondering about what may be.”

  “Shit Suze. You get that from the Bible? Sounds a little Eastern to me.”

  “Eastern? Hindu and Buddhism, those are cults of Lucifer! Don’t you dare.” The dumbbells were swinging with more determination, and Shana speculated that Suze’s veins were not bulging from the intense workout alone.

  They walked until they reached the corner that the abandoned Chad’s Chug Pub sits on. They took a breather.

  “Been thinking about Tom.” Shana’s sheepish tone betrayed precisely what she had been thinking. Suze remained silent while stretching her quads, letting her sister take whatever moments she needed to think.

  “He hasn’t called or texted once since I’ve been here.” Shana let herself be distracted by the old fashioned neon signs affixed to the shuttered tavern’s windows. “Called him once and it sounded like there were people over. Said he’d call back and...”

  Suze continued her silence, listening.

  “I don’t think this is me being needy, right?”

  Suze hugged her sister, an especially warm hug given the physical activity. “You know why you feel, and you’ll know what’s right when you figure it out.” When she pulled away, Shana wiped a tear with her sleeve. They continued their walk, and by chance, destiny, our other, they passed there hallowed graveyard.

  Shana stared into it the entire time, and when Suze shouted, “Shana!” after realizing she had not been listening to her tale of consumer injustice at the frozen yogurt store, Shana returned a vacant look with eyes wide open. Not a blink even tickled her lids.

  “You’re not thinking of that vampire are you?”

  Shana resumed her gaze at the graveyard.

  “He is undead! Leave your teenage infatuations with anti-Christiandom to the past! That creature just wanted to drink your blood and drag you into his purgatorial eternity.” Suze started mumbling prayers and performing the stations of the cross with a dumbbell. The second they stepped a block away from the cemetery, Shana’s trance was broken. All of her energy was sapped, and she dragged behind a fury-fueled Suze the entire way home.

  Dinner was fairly quiet, aside from chatter between Luke and Nate over whether red cars were cooler than green cars. Luke choose green and Nate could not disagree more. “You’ll see when you’re older, kiddo, the girls love red cars.”

  “But green is the color of slime!”

  Suze glared at Shana from time to time.

  That night, Shana awoke in some patch of grass between “Franklin Hale, 1833—1900” and “Mamie Hale, 1841—1900.”

  In the distance, through the space in the wrought iron fence, she could make out what looked like Suze’s sedan. Something about it was not right though, and in her hypnopompic daze she could not pinpoint exactly what was off. Like little Luke in search of his Guava Pops, Shana found her body moving towards Baker’s mausoleum. Even if she had heard that stranger’s shuffling behind her, that repeated stomp of one foot and drag of the other, it would have filled her with no dread. Perhaps her internal compass aligned to the globe’s magnetic poles, as her orientation to the cemetery’s geography was nearly instant.

  Keen navigation made for a short trek, and she stood within feet of Baker’s stone abode. This was the first time that hesitation braced her, and her abdomen started to churn steadily. With studied steps she moved towards the mausoleum, peering around with slow rotations of her neck. There was nothing in the graveyard that night but many corpses and her own live body.

  A slab of stone sealed the mausoleum shut. The sight of it made Shana feel puny. A size 6 girl pushing against a slab of rich like that, it seemed impossible she’d make a dent. But driven by some deep determination welling up from a mysterious place within herself, she gave it a push. Nothing. Immediately she tried again, this time with more resolve, and got it to budge.

  Adjusting her body in various positions, using everything from her hands to her shoulder to her back to push, she made it budge more and more. The mechanical howl in the distance fell deaf on her ears. The short scrapes that the slab made against its frame were the sole sound that Shana cared about. When that revving grumble grew closer, ever closer, she thought it some creation of her own mind, the great energy that flowed out of her and into this door made sonic.

  As the slab popped open, light enveloped her and Shana froze. A figure practically fell out of the pickup truck which currently had its nose pointed directly at the mausoleum, and Shana, for lack of better impulse, ran inside. She tried to push the slab shut, but it required that same energy and time as when she opened it. The figure slipped through with ease, agility. Panic blinded the prey to her pursuant’s face and form. She found herself grabbed, pinned to the wall.

  And then nothing. The cold, bony hands left her shoulders, but she felt the imprint of long, thin fingers. She saw battered work boots, jeans smeared with black grease. She saw flannel weathered by years of wear, under it the outline of a barrel chest and gently bulging arms. The neck was sinewy, the jaw stubbly as if not shaved in ten days. His eyes peered into hers and Shana felt bony, freezing fingers touch her cheek, guiding with the lightest suggestion his head towards hers.

  Baker kissed the outside of her lips. Shana froze, breathing in short spurts. She looked up at him, his ageless face, trying to comprehend his timeless being, his soft kiss. He did it again, and this time Shana opened her mouth a bit. They touched the most part of their lips together, and licked them away slowly.

  Baker guided her to the slab, on top of which he slept, and laid her down. Some incantation was muttered under his breath, and he began to undo his flannel shirt. Pale skin was pulled taught against his quietly defined musculature. Shana
was entranced by the way his biceps moved up and down over the bend inside his elbow as he wrangled the opened shirt off his body. She pulled him down onto his stone podium, and their maws merged into one wet form inside of which tongues lanced like puppies playing in the grass.

  The cold fingers against the lower side of her breasts, and quickly get nipple, made Shana gasp, then exhale all that her lungs contained. She could feel the corpse-stiff phallus against the inside of her leg and was taken by a craving that left her dumb.

  “I want you to reach up and slip my panties off me.” The long, chilly fingers found the waist of the cotton drawers, the types that Shana would slip into four comfortable sleep. He slowly pulled down the front, making sure to stimulate that sacred spot at the top of her vagina’s crest before he grabbed the panties from each hip and dragged them down as she raised her hips to assist. When she rested her butt against the sleeping pedestal, it was engulfed by that same sense-robbing chill. In this moment, Shana felt fully taken.

  Baker started to position his cold, dead cock and she said, “No.” She rolled over on a hip facing away from him and started to touch herself. Once her hand was sufficiently wet, she reached behind her and stroked the vampire, moistening the pipe that he would lay. Preparing, he crawled up on the pedestal next to her and positioned her thighs in his benefit. His cock, slick with her juices, rubbed against her buttock and he slid in as slowly as a train pulling out of a station. The sensation reduced her, it felt, to a blob of matter.