Futile Efforts

by Piccirilli, Tom

  No more than five seconds went by before she broke his grip. The animal in him started crawling out of the hole, the rage stirring. Megan twisted around and bent way over, resting her arms atop the tombstone, showing off her ass. This is some freaky shit, he thought, but not much different than some of the other situations he'd been in. His first screw had been with a black prostitute named Rosy weighing in at 270 that his father had brought home for him when he was thirteen. You got used to strange lays after that.

  "Come on, slap my ass."

  "Sure," he said.

  "Let him watch. Let Daddy watch."

  It irritated him, hearing that. Holder began spanking her with his right hand while running his left underneath her neck, squeezing lightly. He worked his way down to toy with her clit, still swatting her pretty roughly.

  She turned and gave him the slow once over, sort of disappointed. "Harder, really punish it."

  "Okay." He let loose and gave her a few open handed whacks that echoed like gun shots across the cemetery. Her ass grew instantly red. He thought about the Pope in Vatican City suddenly flinching so severely that his big funny hat flipped onto the floor.

  Some people would've thought it a little weird to be doing this but he knew his Dad would've enjoyed the scene, had probably done plenty similar in his life, though maybe not on his old man's grave. It gave Holder an extra incentive and he planted his heels, throwing all his weight into it as he swatted her. When did this turn to abuse and violation? When did it close in on murder? She was grinning now, clenching her teeth and letting out a low moan broken by bitter snorts. The nasty crimson of her ass grew deeper and deeper. Here he was thinking of bubble baths and now this. It made him scowl and he started to feel a little out of it, thinking, Am I supposed to dig this? Where's the payback? I don't want my heinie hurt. He stopped in mid-whap and she quivered while he licked her neck. Better, much better, none of this hostility. You let that out on the rude, ugly pricks of the world, not on the young beautiful girls.

  You could kill your demons with kindness. She bucked and heaved backwards as he pressed his groin up behind her, dry humping her as he strained against his shorts. Rosy had liked it this way, urging him on going, "That's it, honey, that's the stuff. Uh huh." This might actually get good. Megan reached behind and undid his jeans, unzipped and yanked him out in one fluid motion, slipping it in without ever glancing over her shoulder to look at him. She was close already and when he thrust into her she was so wet that drops splashed into his pubic hair.

  Dad's roaring laughter filled Holder's head. Rosy's too. And Matilda's and Jade's and Patricia's and others he remembered but whose names had disappeared. His father had been very generous there for a while. A couple of them had been murdered the next year during the summer of the Icepick, when a killer had worked the streets taking the ladies out. It had been an ugly time. Bartenders had started getting the stink eye, cops coming around to all the pubs and back rooms, rousting anybody who came within a hundred yards of an ice pick. Holder would stand around while the police tried to shake something loose, describing the way the ladies were found. Sixty-four puncture wounds. Ninety-seven. Twenty-five in each eye. Holder threw up a lot that summer.

  He held onto her hips and screwed her from behind even more forcefully, not caring where he was any longer as his nuts tightened and her hair whipped back into his face. She had good control and nabbed him with her muscles, snickering while he moaned. He caught a whiff of some sort of extra-strength shampoo, no fruit or tropical oils, just straight detergent. He wondered what went on up in that hospital to beautiful crazed women like this who danced on top of the dead.

  The stone tipped an inch as she cried, "That's it, that's it, for Daddy, as hard as you can," chanting it, in rhythm with his lunges. He nearly quit then, that Daddy shit was getting on his nerves, but he let the tension go, rising up the back of his neck until it drifted free. He wanted to kiss her but couldn't figure a way to turn her around to face him without losing contact. It worried him, the idea that she might just run off if he didn't keep his hands on her like this, so he kept hold of her.

  A strong scent of sweat wafted in the air and made him a little heady. She thrust backwards, fiery hand prints atop alabaster flesh. You could see Nick everywhere if you wanted to. He snorted into her neck and she whispered, "You can bite me if you want." He did but not very hard, just enough to gather some of her flesh between his teeth as he locked up.

  He slumped and laid his cheek on the spot between her shoulder blades, panting. When his eyes focused he checked her skin for teeth marks. He found a couple of spots that looked like small puncture scars and his back teeth ground together.

  Is that what happened to the Icepick killer? Did he crack wide open in his real life and they tossed him in the Falls for a nervous breakdown? Did he stalk around pressing the pick to the backs of little girls, hard enough to bring up a drop of blood or two but not so deep that he'd draw attention to himself again?

  Couldn't you get through an hour of life without having to wonder about some crazy bastard lining up new victims? There were other evils to worry about, but sometimes it just didn't feel like it.

  "I needed that," she told him.

  "Me too," he huffed.

  With a rough touch Megan pushed him off. She waited as he pulled his pants back up. She patted his groin like a new pet and then drew her own bottoms on. It worried him some, that pat.

  "Let's go," she said, smiling with a real understanding. This girl knew more about Holder than she should have and it scared him.

  "Where?"

  "Home, of course," she said, and he understood exactly what she meant.

  "Oh, Christ."

  But he could almost feel his father urging him on in this game, telling him to play it out.

  He headed for his car but she walked the other way, down the hill, so he followed. They traipsed into the woods like Hansel and Gretel and came to the fifteen-foot chain-link fence separating the cemetery from the hospital. He kept glancing at the buildings as they jutted and spiked the sky. She knew the way easily enough and the matted carpet of sticks and craggy rock didn't appear to bother her as she walked on. He'd driven by Fall Gardens a thousand times before, staring up at the indistinct faces peering down from their screened windows and seeing so many other versions of himself. The people he'd barely avoided becoming.

  They broke from the underbrush at a spot where the fence had been carefully cut through, at the beginning of the long manicured lawns. It had once been poorly restored and then the wire clipped again. Cutbacks, everything was cutbacks, the state didn't want to pay to replace the entire chain-linking.

  She led him on without a care, nobody else around, until they got to the main admissions building. It looked like a converted Victorian, quaint and homespun as a Rockwell painting. He didn't know what to expect but it wasn't the openness and freedom he found. Goddamn, it was a lot nicer than his own apartment complex. You could get jealous of damn near anything. He thought there'd be nurses, security guards or lemon-faced doctors around, somebody in charge handing out medication or pushing the group therapy folks around like in Cuckoo's Nest.

  But there were just a few other patients playing ping-pong, reading in lounge chairs in the brightly-lit corners. It looked like a resort and he felt another twinge of resentment.

  Megan ushered him to an office with the words FREDERICK HENDERSON ADMINISTRATOR on a beveled glass door. She didn't knock, walked right in, and tugged him by the sleeve to follow. There was a nurse seated at the secretary's station but Megan walked past and entered the inner office.

  Frederick Henderson was a fat guy, gray hair at the temples, big thick jowls hanging. He probably pushed 350 and his clothes were way too tight, like he refused to believe he was that overweight and decided it wouldn't be true so long as he never went up in waist size. Rosy had done the same thing but at least she'd worn skirts with elastic. Holder had read that tight clothing could cause all sorts of troubles, from poor
circulation to internal organ damage. Freddy didn't have to worry about it anymore. He was dead and had been for hours. Holder touched the man and found the corpse already in rigor. Near as he could figure it was heart attack.

  Freddy's cologne wasn't holding up well in light of his recent turn of events. The room was filled with the same smell Holder had come upon four months ago when discovering his father behind a local bodega, half-buried in the trash, smiling with his eyes open.

  You could do your best to keep yourself on the narrow but once you fell off, you never quite stopped falling, you never got to the bottom. Holder sighed deeply. He didn't turn around because he was sure he'd catch the ghost of his old man standing around back there, doubled-over and red-faced, hand over his mouth to hold back the snickering.

  Freddy's ring of keys lay beside him. Holder scooped them up and shoved them in his back pocket, hoping the doors weren't being locked behind him, one after the other, as he'd walked down the halls. Who would he have to fight to get back out again? Which of the patients would bet their broken cigarettes on him?

  The nurse entered, wearing a stethoscope, her uniform unbuttoned too far, opened down to the waist. Loops of long black curls coiled across her shoulders. She had huge, looming brown eyes and a mouth a little too large for her elfin face. But odd enough to be appealing.

  She had the kind of smile you wanted to mash out of existence with your lips. It was that indecent. He wanted to cry out for Rosy and have her come save him--Oh Rosy! You could trust Rosy, but this…you just couldn't be certain what kind of perdition this was going to lead you into. The nurse shrugged and the uniform started to slip from her shoulders. A small growl worked around the room and Holder hoped to Christ it wasn't him doing it.

  The stethoscope lay between two small up-thrust breasts topped with pink aureole she'd actually rouged with lipstick. Holder hadn't seen that for a while and the sight hit him in the right place.

  "Let me guess," he said, "you're the doctor in charge now."

  "Of course."

  "Uh huh. You folks have quite the run of the place, huh?"

  "It's no different than anywhere."

  He thought about that and decided it was true. Even behind bars and in cages you got away with murder. If you got out and wandered around, who would know so long as you came back again?

  "On your knees," she said.

  "Boy, do you got the wrong person." He grabbed for the administrator's phone but saw it had been yanked from the plug hard enough to tear loose the wiring. Holder sighed again. He tried the one at the nurse's station and it was the same. He turned to ask Megan where another might be. Before he could swing completely around he felt an incredible black pain in the back of his head and went down.

  A sheen of burning yellow blazed across his eyes, flickering white lights dappling the edges of his vision. He heard something shatter and hoped it wasn't his skull. He tried to stand and his knees gave out but he didn't hit the floor this time.

  Their hands were on him, tugging and tossing him onto his back across the nurse's desk. They got his pants down and Megan let loose with that giggle again. It was really starting to piss him off.

  Holder struggled to hike himself up but the nurse had some meat and power behind her and kept shoving at his shoulders, pinning him down. He swung a fist, or tried to, but his hands were bound together with something. Freddy's necktie. Ain't this some shit.

  Shards of glass covered the desk. Must've been a paperweight. Who the hell actually had enough free papers around that he needed a big globe of glass to hold them down? He was suddenly filled with an intense dislike for Freddy.

  He wanted to fight but it was too late, they'd yanked his pants off and gotten him up and were already toying with him. Megan licked and let him hook along her top teeth. It was a pleasant feeling until the nurse wrapped her hand around Holder and stroked way too hard, like pulling a fire alarm. Oh Rosy, help me! He'd already climaxed a half hour earlier and was still sensitive. It hurt like a bastard at first. He clenched his teeth and groaned, and Megan took over and slowed the pace, much more gentle.

  Holder let out a moan of relief. He almost said thank you. She kneeled on the floor while the nurse crouched over him, laying across his waist, using her tongue to probe. Now this was therapy. No wonder no one ever got any better. She started moving her mouth in circles, too quickly, everything too rough. Freddy never had a chance, the poor fat bastard.

  Megan moved around savagely, teasing, the kind of shit that made men burn down whorehouses. He couldn't stand it any longer and shoved. They both used their tongues covering every inch of him, working up his thighs now, across his belly.

  The nurse finally mounted him, easing herself open with one hand while guiding him in with the other. He noticed a few spots on her chest that could've also been puncture scars. Was he imagining things again? Did the Icepick wander the halls just sticking the pick at everybody he came across? Did all the patients wear his hideous work in their flesh?

  Black hatred filled him and a part of him wanted to give in to the fury, release it, go hog wild, but he didn't have his old man's delight. One man's pleasure could leave blood on the walls. He twisted his hands in a way that tightened Freddy's tie around his wrists. Some of the insane knew nothing of insanity, and the rest of us do.

  He wanted to ask his father, Did you ever make it with two deranged inmates at the same time with a murdered porker laying twelve feet away in another room, with a killer possibly loose in the halls, stabbing folks in the night?…he had to wager against it. A trace of pride filled him. It was a fair bet but still not a guarantee. Dad definitely had stories left to tell at the end that never got said.

  Nick was nearby. The nurse kept their movements slow, rocking lightly as he pushed harder. She was wonderfully tight and gasped aloud as he found the rhythm and started enjoying how her chest bounced each time he moved. He tried to focus on the marks but sweat stung his eyes. Megan had herself poised over them, just observing now, elbows on the desk, her chin in her hands. He'd seen a porno like this once, some boring piece of French crap. A sudden bout of insecurity gave him a few doubts, but he slogged on, and soon the nurse began trembling. She kept her gaze locked on Holder as she swayed above his body.

  No wonder Freddy's clogged arteries had given out. He'd eaten baby back ribs for lunch and his tie smelled of grease and barbecue sauce. The nurse dropped, clung to him and drew her nails across his chest in the same spot until thin lines of blood oozed free. She let out a harsh "ngg" noise that actually made him feel pretty good, despite the strange lay. She kept her eyes on him and so did Megan, both of them staring, deranged. Almost enough to put him off his game, but not quite.

  The nurse shuddered so hard that her knees cracked. Did the Icepick make her feel that good when he was stabbing her, cutting her up? Megan leaned over him and said, "Do it again for us, let me see you do it again." Under normal circumstances it was the right kind of talk that would've set him on fire, but now it just brought him back to where he really was, staring down at his bound hands and seeing dead pigs in his mind.

  Holder almost lost it for a second but the nurse wouldn't let him fade out. She slapped herself down hard on his groin and kept up with those "ngg" sounds, her face darkening as she flushed.

  He stiffened and bucked, trying to ride the wave--that tickle doing good things to him in the right place. When she was satisfied that she'd finished him off completely, the nurse slowly moved away.

  "You are two very fucked up chicks, you know that?" he asked.

  "Yeah," she said, "we do. But we don't mind. Do you?"

  There was no point in trying to figure any of it out. He held his wrists out and Megan carefully unknotted the necktie.

  Holder wandered around the place until he finally found a phone and called the police. He left then and made his way back across the lawns and the woods to his father's grave.

  It was evening but the bright moon squatted three-quarters full.

 
Dad down there smirking, pleased with his boy.

  The old man would've told him to have fun, and Holder looked forward to visiting again in a few nights. He still had Freddy's keys. He'd make copies and leave the originals somewhere on the property, near the front doors. Cutbacks, everything was cutbacks, and the state wouldn't want to pay to change all the locks. He'd find the Icepick killer if he was hiding in the hospital. Holder would walk the halls and hunt his prey, whether it was actually there or not. Sometimes you couldn't go wrong, and sometimes you could.

  You must. You had to be ready for just about anything.

  He needed to have one last drink with his old man. Holder uncapped the whiskey, took a long pull, and poured the rest into the dirt. It vanished immediately and he took the empty bottle with him as he staggered into the darkness, grinning so wide that his teeth lit the way.

  Introduction to "Two in the Eyes"

  By Brian Keene

  Tom Piccirilli's words are like bullets. Sometimes he fires a warning shot. Other times, he unloads a full magazine. I've often thought that his muse must be a Kimber 1911, with a box of CorBon ammo on the side.

  Imagine him, sitting there at the computer. Loading the gun, round by round. Sliding the magazine into place with a satisfying click. Thumbing off the safety. And then, with a squeeze of the trigger, he begins to type.

  At point blank range.

  He's gunning for you. These words have your name on them.

  BAM. There's one in your brain.

  BAM. One in your heart.

  BAM BAM. Two in the eyes...

  –Brian Keene, author of THE RISING and TERMINAL

  Two in the Eyes

  Hurricane Thomas sat about forty miles off the coast, crouched out there with immense patience and resolve, waiting like a well trained pet ready to play but unwilling to move until given the right word.