by Lee, Edward
Past that, a circle of women surrounded a man bound to a chair, head tilted back with a funnel jammed in his mouth. The women vomited into the funnel with the kind of tandem precision rarely glimpsed outside of an aerial show. The recipient bucked in his chair. The lone watcher worked his inches.
The hallway light ceased, relegating it to the displays themselves. He saw no voyeurs as grislier scenes played out. He’d breached a membrane in the fabric of reality, because now he saw impossibilities; humiliations of the flesh that could never be. He passed the semblance of an orgy. To the left a goat-headed man thrust between the spread legs of a woman as she deep-throated the ridiculous girth offered by an elk-headed man on the right. She did this with the bone of her spinal cord visible where her throat was hollowed out, head slumped so it rested against her own back, face upside down, mouth agape. Each time the elk-man pumped, the tip of his penis poked through the ruin of her excavated throat like a Whack-a-Mole.
Her cheek bulged as she tilted her head to follow Rob’s progress, blinking rapidly as if he were the anomaly. Horribly, unmistakably alive but no worse for the wear.
He suspected the goat and elk heads weren’t masks.
Would Anna be a mutilated shell of her former self, unrecognizable as the one who seduced him so profoundly? He had to believe otherwise to keep going, the thought like a deleted psalm: Yea, surely I shall not find my obsession in a state of anatomical renovation with an abundance of cocks.
He found her at the next exhibit and could have wept to see her as merely a bystander. He wanted to run up and embrace her, though managed to remember despite his Odd-yssey he was still a stranger. Instead he savored her look of unbridled passion at the scene before her, possessed by it so completely she didn’t notice his arrival. She wore a white top with an olive skirt, the shortest one he’d seen her wear, as form-fitting as a second skin he would die (had died?) to see her shed.
Rob followed her eyes to her secret fantasy in Painfreak. All thought ceased as efficiently as if he’d been unplugged, but gradually he made sense of it; the what of it, if nothing else. He thought he saw naked men of varying sizes vanish into the floor, but as they crawled, he understood their hands and feet were missing minus a man still with one hand. Arms otherwise ended above the wrist, legs below the knees. None professionally done; they bled freely from tattered stumps. Their faces were blood-spattered in a fine mist. Above them dangled a human cylinder, formed essentially by female torsos with shortened arms and legs, their stumps of comparably amateurish quality. They looked turkey-like in the fashion in which they’d been strung upside down, straps around their waists to keep them a foot off the ground—the only foot available to any of them.
One of the crawlers clambered up the body of a blonde woman, awkwardly wrapping its upper limbs around her and planting the point of his shin into the underside of her breast, leaving bloody prints and smears behind. Blood trails ran in tributaries from the jagged stumps at her thighs. He scaled her until he attained the summit. Perched on her thighs with his abbreviated arms around the overhead strap and an eager face, he worked the point of his shin between her legs. It sank inside her almost to the knee. As if walking on stilts, he extended his other leg over to the body of a larger raven-haired woman, full ass prominently displayed. His other shin sank nimbly in the opening between her legs as well and he boosted himself up and out of the blonde, pulling the bloody appendage up like a boot stuck in the mud. His other stump slid deeper inside the second woman as he pushed to swing his free shin and bounce to the next in line, straining. The resultant hemorrhage didn’t seem to bother her. She moaned and sighed in the thrall of pleasure while he landed the other shin within the next crevice. Another man climbed awkwardly atop that initial blonde with the seeming object to circumnavigate in his shin-steps, a “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” of stump-fucking.
In the far rear corner, partially obscured by this amputated configuration, Rob saw a stack of severed limbs. Arms and legs cast off like clothes on a race to skinny dip. Someone volunteered to dismember them. He recalled the crawler who still possessed a hand.
When he pried himself from the morbid display of carnality, he found Anna’s passion surpassed the limitations of mere facial expression. She had one hand inside her shirt plying a breast, the other behind her skirt. She slumped against the wall, eyes wide open, transfixed by the interplay of amputated limb with waiting orifice. Even with nothing truly exposed, Rob looked upon her with desperate longing, enraptured by her ecstasy.
It clicked for him in that moment, his joke on the elevator (nearly lost a limb) forgotten as soon as he made it, while his whole world became her essence. And her brief lust, the merest hint of the one she succumbed to now. One that had been willing to enter the recesses of Painfreak for this moment, maybe conjured for her alone. Had it been someone else it might have been something totally different. Perhaps it also had something from him.
Rob entered the aperture, stepping over crawling forms who paid him no mind, stickiness beneath his shoes as he walked through blood, searching. It was back there, obscured by the seeping extremity pile, as he knew it would be. He yanked the hatchet from the mound of limbs and carried it back.
He found Anna where he left her, building to her apex, face flushed, beautiful, transcendent. For that, he would sacrifice. He hardly knew her beyond the identity he created for her, ideal in every way, but tonight demonstrated he barely knew himself. He would shape himself to her liking, an endeavor far more meaningful than any he had chosen to leave behind.
I must.
Rob knelt outside the exhibit and drove the hatchet through his wrist with the strength of conviction. His hand came away clean, soon anointed with blood. The pain was empowering. He crawled to Anna, a crimson snail trail in his wake, prepared to leave still more of himself behind. Now she saw him, blessed him with that look of infinite desire as he proffered his spurting stump. The smoothness of her pale thighs intoxicated him as her skirt lifted and she allowed him into the sanctum of the divine Red.
| — | — |
Bondage and Godhood
————
Jordan Krall
Ayman spent the last of his money at the arcade and had no money for dinner. That was the fifth time this week. The arcade machines had control over him especially the one in the center of the room, the one called PAINFREAK. It had held him in virtual bondage for the last six months.
One time he had spent his entire week’s pay on that game over one weekend. He was deeply ashamed of it and had cut down ever since but he still addicted to the arcade machine. His father had forbidden it but after the old man’s death, Ayman had all the time he wanted to retreat to the arcade district, the biggest in the nation. He was fortunate to have been born and raised in a city that housed one of the cosmonaut’s citadels. Ayman had never visited a citadel as it was reserved for the cosmonauts and their families. He was nowhere near that social class but was able to benefit from their lust for continuous urban development. That also meant the “relocation” of the undesirables who were in the way. Like Ayman.
He made his way through the markets, past the neon signs advertising trips to the moon, alcoholic food, and training manuals. But Ayman wanted a firearm.
The desire came to him in the night like a djinn made of steel and gunpowder, ordering him to give in to servitude. He had awoken with an erection.
Now he thought of the game as the center of his life, the source of his pride and identity. Two weeks prior he had gotten further than anyone in the entire arcade: he reached level 70 of PAINFREAK.
An Asian man’s face had appeared on the screen. It spoke in digital noise. “Congratulations, my brother.”
An explosive device appeared on the screen. Ayman had put his face close to the glass and smelled smoke. Now he needed to beat level 71. Now he really needed a firearm.
He also wanted a bomb.
And a car.
Ayman did not have a driver’s license but he thought he
would be able to drive one good enough to send it straight into the government offices. He’d beat the level for sure. He’d be one step closer to the final boss in PAINFREAK.
When he turned the last corner, Ayman walked face first into a cosmonaut suit that was hanging from a wire. He was frightened but a surge of desire went through him as he perused the spacesuit. But why was it there suspended in midair like a prize waiting for him to claim it.
Was this blessing the next step to finality?
Ayman took the suit off the wire and slowly put it on, savoring the sensations. Someone of his social status could never become a cosmonaut. But now there he was, dressed like one of the enemy.
He put the helmet on and stared through the visor at the city, at the citadel.
Sparks in front of his eyes appeared and the Asian man’s face appeared. “Congratulations, brother.”
Ayman stayed silent.
The man spoke again. “Kneel and pray.”
Though frightened, Ayman obeyed. When he opened his eyes, a firearm was laying two inches from his head. He grabbed it and stood up.
Ayman knew all the entrances of the citadel. He had memorized it over the course of the last six months. It would not be so difficult to get in. The cosmonauts have become lax in their security. They were so sure of their superiority. Little did they know.
It took eight bullets to kill the three guards. A very successful move.
Ayman entered the building and realized that no one inside had seen the murders. Were they that arrogant? Did they not think it could happen?
He put the firearm away and blended in with the others walking in and out of rooms. Ayman saw an elevator and took it up to the top of the citadel. There was a stiff and emotionless cosmonaut in the elevator with him. He did not acknowledge Ayman. When they reached the top of the citadel, the cosmonaut walked out first, practically knocking Ayman down.
The top of the citadel was less awe-inspiring than Ayman had expected. It looked exactly like every other cosmonaut building, every other room, every other wall. He walked into the room and down a hallway where he saw a door that was different than the others. It looked like wet wood covered with strands of seaweed or hair.
As Ayman approached the door, he became more and more aroused. Lust and love, bondage and godhood, pleasure and pain.
Pain.
Painfreak.
Ayman opened the door. He could not describe the sight for he knew that to be blasphemy. Inside the room was not a room. It was paradise, the epicenter of holy sensuality, and in that paradise were the spoils of the game: 72 virgins.
They were more wondrous than he had heard but knew that describing it in words would be sacrilege as well as pointless. Humans could not comprehend, in word or thought, the majestic nature of this, the final conquest of PAINFREAK.
He thought of his father. He would be ashamed of Ayman.
Within the garden, a petite man appeared, that same Asian man from the game. He approached Ayman and said, “Your father would be proud… Who did you think got you entry?”
Ayman was confused but slightly elated as if a large emotional weight had been lifted.
The man said, “Now…you have been pushing the buttons for the last six months…but you have one more button to push. Just. One. More.” He pointed to a button on the front of Ayman’s spacesuit.
Ayman looked at it. It was so shiny. It begged for pressure. It wanted to be pushed. That was its ultimate pleasure. And it would be Ayman’s, too.
He pushed the button and as he perished, he heard the Asian man’s voice speak.
“Congratulations, brother.”
| — | — |
They Deal in Pain, But Pleasure is Better
————
Chesya Burke
The bed squeaked, rickety springs older than Ceely had seen in age moaning, seeming to cry under their weight. She bounced with the rhythm of his large, bloated body on her hers. Except there was no recognizable cadence, just sloppy, disjoined beats, met with equally repulsive grunts. He was sweating, the droplets landing on her lips, cheeks and eyelids. He always sweated, always grunted, always released inside her. Never asked one way or another what she wanted.
If he had asked, she would have been scared to tell him that she didn’t like the feel of it, the smell of it, the way that it made her feel. She would have admitted that she didn’t like the way his seed flowed into and then out of her, both seeming to want to infect and flee from her simultaneously. She would have been ashamed to admit that she was always sore afterward, had to keep a cloth down there to ease the infection that almost always occurred. Would have said that he squeezed her nipples too hard, and that he never waited for her to heal properly before he was ramming it into her again. But she never said anything at all. If she had said any of those things, she knew, it would have pleased him in unnatural ways. He so often found pleasure in her pain.
He finished, and didn’t slide off of her until the last drop of his toxic seed had drained into her. He was still panting when he sent her for the cloth to clean him off. It grew hard again as she washed, as she knew it would. This time was even longer and hurt her more. As he knew it would.
The only good thing was that he was old, like the bed, and his mistress, Sarah, was coming into town. And while Ceely would have to cook and clean for the woman, Sarah willingly took him into her bed, into her arms, into herself. The two women were not exactly friends, but they had an understanding this way.
Sarah understood her pain; she understood Sarah was a whore.
««—»»
Sarah had been there three weeks. She’d leave and stay gone for hours, not letting on where she went. Ceely’s husband was scared to ask, so he just yelled and screamed at the one thing he could control, Ceely. Other than that, Sarah ate a lot, slept a lot and liked to take Ceely’s husband into her bed at lot. The man liked for her to watch sometimes. The way that he touched the other woman was not so very different from the way that he touched his wife, but there was loads of difference in Sarah’s reaction and, if she had to admit it, Ceely’s as well. Making her watch was an insult meant to shame her. The man wanted to embarrass Ceely and she appeared appropriately contrite and upset, but Ceely never really felt the way he wanted. She was happy to simply know that she would not have to do it herself, at least in that moment, and though Ceely would never admit it even to herself, she found some kind of pleasure in watching Sarah’s pleasure. It was strange for Ceely, feeling tingling in peculiar places, while watching this woman moan and carry on. But she did. If there was any genuine embarrassment seen on Ceely’s face while watching the pair, it was from the revelation that she could possibly enjoy these encounters like a common street whore.
But there she was now, in these back alley streets, searching for the address on the small scrap of paper hidden discreetly in the palm of her hand. She found the door, and didn’t bother to knock before she entered. There was no point, someone like this would not need nor expect courtesy.
“Oh,” the woman said upon walking into room. “I didn’t hear a knock.”
“Oh, my apologies,” she should have knocked and was slightly embarrassed for not having done so now. She needed the woman’s help after all, no need to offend her over simple civility. “Are you Ms. Walker?”
“Yes. What do you need?”
“I…have a problem that I need to get rid myself of, because…um… it’s a bigger problem than I can handle on my own, you see,” it was the first time Ceely had uttered this truth out loud so she paused for a moment and looked at the woman who returned her gaze without blinking. “You know my meaning? Should I explain further?” Ceely had never spoken of this “problem,” not because of fear, but because she never wanted anyone to know. Ever.
“Are you sure?” the woman still did not look away. Her stare was uncomfortable and too familiar. Ceely did not know this woman, and would never have made her acquaintance if she had not sought out her services in that desperate moment
. “Are you sure,” the woman repeated.
“Yes.”
She followed the woman into the back room, undressed from the bottom down and lay on the table while the woman examined her. It was cold. She was exposed to the world, or at least to the woman between her legs now at the end of the table.
“Have you tried to do this on your own?” the woman asked her, concern on her face. Some distress in her voice.
“No.”
“There’s so much trauma…are you sure?”
“Yes.” Ceely did not want to talk to this woman too much. She did not want the woman to know anything about her or who she was. She did not like the way she looked at her right now. The woman wasn’t every old, but she acted and her eyes told of years she probably would not see for many moons, perhaps several dozen or more. Ceely did not know if it was judgment or pity on the woman’s face, but either way, Ceely did not like it. This woman had no right to judge her. She performed cheap, back alley abortions for drunken school girls and broken prostitutes who let any man dump inside them for the right price. She was a criminal and yet she pitied Ceely? For shame.
She wanted to yell such at the woman, but she clinched her knees together instead, keeping her mouth shut, but her private places exposed. This man’s seed needed to be removed from within her before it grew into something worse than its father, and it was none of this woman’s business why, though it was probably more than evident to her at this point. None of that mattered to Ceely, she just wanted it done and over with. No matter the pain, no matter the cost to her purse or her soul.
The woman put her hands on Ceely’s knees and gently pried them apart, “You’re going to have to open these as far as you can. That’s right, just lay them wide open and rest them to your side. Okay…good. Now this is going to hurt a lot…I’m sorry.”