As he continued to stare, working up the nerve to toss the shroud aside, he saw that whatever it covered was moving, bubbling up against the sheet in various, random waves. It looked like there might be two people moving. Luigi’s mind went frantic at the thought of the Goldsteins reunited under the cover. He bent forward, lifted the cloth, and began reaching forward to grab whoever was on top. That’s when something, a bee perhaps, stung the palm of his hand. As his other hand dropped the sheet to the side, he saw what had really been moving beneath it.
Luigi ran from the Goldstein house and waited until he was safe inside his own car to scream. He would never forget the sight: so many of them crawling over each other, attacking each other—a violent orgy of bugs.
MY LOVE BURNS WITH A GREEN FLAME
By Thomas Mavroudis
That Ted Howard put a single bullet though the heads of six women is only slightly less significant than the six bullets that passed through his own head, discharged by his own hand.
He remained standing, conscious, practically pain free, after six close range shots to the head; his head, the mossy ichor draining from the wounds, sealing them almost as they burst forth with hot lead. And even as the insatiable lust inside him continued to blossom as dust compressed into a gas giant, into a sun, Ted Howard decided to relieve his pain. It was a sickness wanted, tolerated, needed and so vastly abhorrent. A sickness so unlike the pain suffered by the six women, and the greater suffering on the world, and Ted Howard didn’t want to take that chance.
But bullets to his head—that just wasn’t doing it.
The house in North Park Hill was not your standard Addams Family property; no widow’s porch, no Victorian eaves or gables, no wrought iron fence. On the surface, it was a quaint brick pre-war bungalow on a corner lot blighted only by the dilapidated wood fence, dead grass, and faded remnants of graffiti.
The house was on the corner of the border street that used to separate the bad neighborhood from the worse neighborhood, and like many houses on this former battleground, was beyond the definition of a “fixer-upper.” Almost every house on the block had been boarded up at one time or another. That was over fifteen years before.
All that remained of those days were a few survivors, families of pride and hard work, not tempted by fast cash schemes; families hardened to moral and civic responsibility. Yet, people from the suburbs were making a lot of money from neighborhoods like this, taking away the ghosts for cheap and re-building expensive dreams. People like Ted and Erin Howard.
The house was in better shape than most, and did not need to be entirely gutted. The floor plan of the main level was functional, with larger than normal bedrooms and a second bathroom. It was a perfect first home, and bound to double in value by the time Ted and Erin were ready to move farther south in the neighborhood and have children.
The challenge for the property was the basement. “This is where we’re going to profit on this place,” Ted assured Erin. Although it was finished, the basement was not, in Erin’s mind, useable. The three great rooms were empty, dirt-littered, obviously unused in recent history, except for a few crushed cigarettes and pieces of beer bottles.
“Well, then that’s your canvas, Ted,” Erin proclaimed. “I can’t wait to watch you design on a dime; or a penny—at least that’s our budget for the rest of the year.”
Weeks went by, and bit-by-bit, the house came together, mostly at the paint-stained, cracked, and sometimes bloody hands of Erin. Weekends went by and Ted devoted most of his time to the landscaping, a project Erin wanted to do together. It was late spring, but not so late that Ted couldn’t start sod and new trees in the seemingly rich, semi-clay of the back and front yards. The first planting day, as Ted watered newly-mulched mounds of aspen bundles, the little lady from across the street hobbled down from her porch shaking her head.
“Ain’t never seen no plants grown over there.”
Ted smiled. He met her the day they moved in, but couldn’t remember her name. She professed to be the neighborhood watchdog, and had watched the good and the wicked come and go. Overall, she was happy to see folks fixing up the houses.
“Is that right?” he asked, wiping sweat from his brow, taking a sip from the gardening hose. The old lady scowled at Ted’s drink.
“Yep. That’s right. See them bushes there? Ain’t never seen them bloom yet; been on this corner since 1948.” She pointed to the neighbor’s spindly hedge, more dead than alive, that separated his front yard from the neighbor’s.
“Well, maybe they just need some TLC? Maybe they just need some water?” It was the only detail next door that seemed unkempt.
“Hmpf. Maybe. But I ain’t never seen nothing green, ever, over there. That’s a fact. And I wouldn’t be drinking that water neither.” She scowled again.
“Well, what’s your secret? Looks like you’ve got a pretty green thumb over there.” Ted was eager to please the watchdog.
“My husband was responsible for that.” She smiled. “He’s dead now. Been dead for about fourteen years, but he keeps my garden real nice, bless his soul.”
“Well,” Ted said, “thanks for the advice. We’ll see if we can get some greenery to pop up around this place.”
“Good luck, honey. Don’t drink that water.”
Summer began, and the landscaping failed to even try. Ted was disappointed, but more than happy to finally retreat to the cool of the basement and the projects he had been talking about from the day they moved in. The basement was cool, but musty, more so than typical old basements. Ted couldn’t focus, his mind distracted in a dank, mossy haze. He would sit on the upturned, brand new tool bucket, his back against cold concrete, methodically sipping cans of beer, and consider his failure with the dead dry sod and withered aspen sticks. It was like lying in bed, resisting the inevitability of going to an office, a desk, and a job one hated.
On a hot afternoon at the peak of summer, Erin called down, “How goes the masterpiece?” She promised not to set a foot below until Ted had at least swept and vacuumed. She never heard him perform either.
“Oh, you know,” Ted answered, “I’m still mapping. I know you don’t believe me, but there are so many possibilities down here.”
“Okay, my sweet Morlock. But come up soon. We barely have two hours to get ready for Eve’s.”
“All right,” Ted called up. “You better start getting ready. You shower first, there’s got to be a leak down here, I think. I want to check it out.”
Ted heard the water begin rushing through the pipes and stood under the area that, in the finished basement, would be the third bathroom. He poked the flecks of brown plaster around the edge of a moist crack in the basement ceiling. Searching for the greater leak, he peeled away a tiny bit of plaster and a large chunk of the ceiling fell through with a gush of soapy, warm water.
Ted spat the taste and grit of bitter almond and wood rot from his mouth. “Erin! Turn the shower off! Turn the shower off!”
“What?”
“Turn the fucking shower off, Erin!”
“Sorry,” he heard her mumble through the floor when the water was off.
Ted came upstairs, still wiping his mouth with anger. “Well, shit. I guess we won’t be using this bath for a while.” Erin wrapped a towel around her hair and Ted, snapping another towel from the rack, stomped off to the other bathroom.
Ted and Erin left the party early, Ted complaining of severe allergies. “It feels like there’s a squirrel’s tail up my nose,” Ted explained as they said their goodbyes. All night, eyes watery, face swollen, Ted blew his nose, trying to dislodge whatever was irritating his sinuses.
“Honey, are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” Ted said. “This is terrible.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Well, I don’t know,” he barked, then backed off. “I think maybe . . . maybe, there was a mold or something in the floor.” He rubbed his forehead furiously, pressed circles under his eyes.
“Maybe.”
He closed his eyes tight. “This is just awful. I feel like shit.”
Erin stroked his chest. “Well, don’t go back down there. Okay?”
“Are you crazy? I’ve got to fix that shit. We can’t just have a hole in the bathroom floor with water pouring all over the place.”
“I know that, I’m not stupid.” It was her rightful turn at bitterness. “Just get better first. Please?”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just this damn squirrel in my nose.” They both laughed and kissed each other goodnight.
Ted Howard was thirteen all over again. He and Erin did not suffer any marital problems. In fact, they had been frequently intimate for not having been newlyweds for some years. So Ted was surprised to wake from a dead sleep at the very moment of climax, Erin snoring soundly on her side beside him, and remember nothing of how or why. With certainty, his shorts were sticky and wet.
The following night when it happened again, Ted remembered the dream. He walked in a mansion with walls covered in lush oils of Victorian nudes. He was naked except for a black fur-lined coat. He attributed the dream to the anti-histamines that were no help except for knocking him into sleep. After the fourth erotic dream, he told Erin. She smiled, “That’s a turn on. We’re going to have to do something about that when you feel better.”
Ted, expressing that he was indeed feeling better, had sex with his wife and he dreamed nothing. The sex was more intense in every way. He woke the next morning feeling rejuvenated beyond any rest he had experienced in his life, as though he had been reborn, fresh and new.
It went on like this. After increasingly extreme sessions awake with his wife, he slept deeply, undisturbed. But on the sexless nights, he dreamt. The dreams grew in length and detail every night. Other people were introduced, male and female and in-between, beautiful strangers dressed in leather and lace or gossamer rags, orgies in shopping malls and plaza fountains, sex on floating pillows, in submerged tunnels of luminous wine, Ted at the center, the master of it all, reaping and sowing.
It was the hot final day of August when Ted woke in the middle of a sexless night, first relieved and relaxed, then sickened with horror. He had dreamt of rape. Who it was, he didn’t know, he couldn’t see her face covered by a feathered mask. The memory of the dream was delightfully awful.
“Well, stud,” his wife said, smiling, pouring a morning cup of coffee, “what kind of wild ride were you on last night? You woke me up.”
Ted drank a slow draw from his glass of juice. “You don’t want to know.”
“Sick, babe. You’re right, I don’t want to know.” She kissed his ear.
The dream troubled him all day.
At a late dinner that night, they argued over what to do with the basement. Erin insisted they forget about it; maybe hire someone to renovate later when they were in a better financial position. Ted disputed that they were losing money, would lose even more if they did anything stupid, but they hadn’t even repaired the faulty plumbing. Dinner ended with Erin slamming—smashing some of—the plates in the sink. Ted fell asleep at the table, an empty bottle of wine by his hand. He woke to Erin pinching the skin on the back of his arms, a sweet, hot sting. “What the fuck are you trying to do? What’s the matter with you?” He hung over her side of the bed, naked.
“What?” Ted rolled onto the floor, crawled into the corner by the bathroom.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked again. “Do you think you can just make up for being an asshole by trying to sleep with me? I was sleeping! Pissed, but sleeping. Then you come in, like a fucking bear . . .”
Exactly. Ted was dreaming he was a bear, walking like a man through the crumbled marble steps of a Greek amphitheater to a set of lily ponds below. In one of the ponds was a nude woman, bathing. Small white feathers covered her skin. She screamed when Ted, his fat and fur, crashed into the pond. She hissed like a swan.
Ted sat in the corner, shamed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Ted. Just don’t mess with me like that. You started pulling my hair. Hard.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. But he wanted to ask if they could still have sex.
Ted wanted sex every night. The lascivious thoughts eroded his days. Without sex, real cognizant sex, he had the rape dreams. He never told Erin about them, and when she began to ask if he was having nightmares now, he said yes. He raped someone, something, every night, and every day he woke tired and ashamed of his gross pleasure. His mood grew worse every day, and so every night, he and Erin would not have sex. When they did, he was still like the bear, his passion increased exponentially. And Erin grew colder, her desire for his passion lessening, until she was only doing it so Ted would not mistake her for some dream whore. She was almost becoming frightened.
Ted pushed too far again the night Erin made him sleep on the couch. She locked the bedroom door when she heard his body collapse on the furniture.
On the couch, naked and cold, Ted Howard dreamt. It was unlike any of the sex dreams he had had before. He was floating in darkness that felt like water. Electrical warmth surrounded him, pleasurably irritating his skin. He tried to touch himself and discovered he could not. Where were his arms? The concept of arms disintegrated. He wanted to laugh, but the sound he heard himself make was a squeal, a distant, feeble vibration behind a curtain of time. Was that really him? The concept of self exploded. A rush of colors bled from the darkness and what used to be Ted began to experience falling, a fall from the edge of space into the wilderness. The Ted-thing crashed, and fire, black and emerald, erupted from its crater. From this vantage, Ted-thing could see all angles: a sow with one hundred teats; featherless birds with song like a frozen rose; fish with gaping, hungry mouths that walked plains of sand; furry, muddy hominids clustered in furious orgy; black liquid stone that ebbed and flowed in the air; teeth-like beetles feasting on the remains of a blind serpent; wet electricity, an entire planet, pink and wet, pulsing—a squid, a jellyfish or. . . .
The sensation was like a flower blossoming, but the flower was the universe, and the universe was made of ice that became steam with the snap of a Cyclopean eye closing. Ted woke with a chiseled smile on his face, his hands and manhood bloody.
After the night he slept on the couch, Erin told him, “I think you need to see a doctor.”
“Why?” Ted caressed her earlobe.
“Ted. Come on, there’s something wrong with you.” Erin pulled his hand away.
Ted smiled and tried to kiss his wife.
She backed away, said, “Ted, there’s blood on the couch. What happened?”
His smile grew broader. “I’m all right.” Erin imagined he was somehow drunk.
“Ted. Were you hurting yourself or . . .”
“Is that what it’s called? I thought only church folks believed that kind of shit. Hurting myself, huh?” He stroked himself in his pants.
“Stop it, Ted. I’m serious! You’re having these wet dreams every night . . .”
“Only when we don’t . . .”
“Ted! Please listen to me. What is happening? I thought you were going to rape me last night.”
Ted’s smile folded. “Erin, I’m sorry.” He grabbed her hands, lovingly pulled her to him and held her shoulders. “I know I’ve been a little aggressive lately.”
“Ted, aggressive is kinky. You haven’t been aggressive.”
Ted nodded his head, a moment of cold clarity. “You’re right. There is something wrong with me.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.” He kissed Erin’s forehead.
Ted Howard was no longer like men; his thoughts were truly consumed by sex only. He couldn’t concentrate at work, began making the types of errors people make under extreme stress. His office encouraged him to take the rest of the day off.
“Yeah,” Ted said, itching beneath his suit, already peeling it from his body as he stood up from his desk. “Good idea
.”
Ted’s legs felt blurry as he walked passed row and row of ready-made office space, passed women he had seen almost every day. Most of the women he never noticed before, would never notice, and now, as he passed them, all he could do was think of how their sweat smelled, what their voices sounded like grunting and screaming, how their muscles looked flexed and contorted. Were they looking at him, wondering what he smelled like? Did they know? Did they want him? He managed to get to his car without incident.
Along and below the side of the highway, where Ted drove to and from work every day, were three gentlemen’s clubs. Ted had been to Ruby’s Gold just once before, not even for his own bachelor’s party, but someone else’s. The club was expensive and Ted was not looking for expense. Further along was Glass Kittens, really just a porn theatre and shop with a live pay-per-view parlor, the vintage peep show type with a blind that goes up and down. Ted did not want women under glass, although he had dreamt of it in the past weeks. At the end, where the service road bent off towards the rail yard, was a place simply called Fun. It was the club pregnant high school girls danced at, the club where high school boy’s hearts were broken—a place where men became boys again. The club was all nude, eighteen and up, served no alcohol. Ted walked in the cool shadow of the highway, through buckled faux leather doors and into red light and heat.
Ted got home around four in the morning, prepared to detail his long-extended work day. There was a note from Erin taped to the television:
What the fuck Ted? You are such an asshole. Thanks. I don’t even want to tell you where I am, but I will because I don’t feel good and I think you should know. Please call me at Eve’s. E.
Ted went to bed and slept for twelve deep, dreamless hours.
Erin didn’t call all day and Ted didn’t care. When he woke in the late afternoon, he checked the bank account to see how much cash he spent the night before. He couldn’t remember.
Year's Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology Page 25