Grimoire Diabolique

by Edward Lee

  Smith didn’t know how much more of this he could take. Aw, it’s only a dream, he dismissed. “You’ll have to eat too, Daddy,” his daughter informed him again. “But not here, not at the Mother’s.” What the hell are you talking about, you little imp! Smith thought in a burst of frustration. But then Marie and Donna were drifting up the ravine’s slope. Giggling, they took Smith away from the tree and lay him down paralyzed into the sludge. “Not too much,” Marie warned as her hands roved her husband’s rather flabby chest. “I told you, he comes real fast.” Smith frowned again. When he glanced past his burgeoning belly, he noted that Donna was fellating him, and via a considerable level of proficiency. The coed stopped a moment, disengaging her mouth long enough to chuckle and remark, “You’re right, Marie, it is like a breakfast link!” This infuriated Smith further. What, a guy’s gotta have a leg of lamb between his legs to keep a woman happy? Christ. “He’s close, you better get on him now,” Donna suggested. The sludge crackled as Marie prepared to mount him. But then it was Smith’s daughter’s face that bulged forward, warped in cherubic youth like a fisheye lens. “No!” the demanding little voice echoed. “Daddy’s not ready yet! Daddy has to visit the Father!”

  ««—»»

  Smith spent the next day at work hungover. At least that’s what it felt like, a bezeled drill bit spinning through the pulp of his brain. He’d stopped drinking years ago; he’d opened too many Parke-Davis cadaver bags full of too many mangled drunk drivers, and he’d histologized too many swollen, sclerotic livers too many times. Yet his head pounded all day. Splinters raged behind his eyes.

  The dream, he kept thinking. The nightmare.

  He saw the heinous black wads everywhere: in the autoclave, in the chromatograph receptacle, on the flat top of the Vision Series blood analyzer and in the morgue table’s stainless steel runoff gutters. He even saw them in the Polar Water bottle, and in his lunch…

  But only for an instant.

  When he blinked, they were gone.

  Backwash, that was all. The nightmare had wrung him out. Get your act together, Smith. He’d bungled two y-sections already today, and had to jink the autopsy reports. Thank God Smith’s clients could tell no tales. He hadn’t been so off the mark in years.

  Eventually he dismissed the dream as frivolity, just a lewd mindstage of fear and guilt. Fear that a drum of chemical waste had been dumped behind his house, and guilt from his voyeurism. He felt much better about the whole thing when he called home that afternoon. “The police were out back earlier,” Marie related, “and then some cars with EPA seals came. They took the drum away in a big truck. It was like a movie, men in gas masks and white rubber suits were poking around. They sprayed some kind of foam all around the ravine and left notices in everybody’s mailbox saying that the area is safe and there’s nothing to worry about.” This news relieved Smith fully. The white drum was gone now, and its black spillage decontaminated. End of story.

  But not end of headache.

  When Smith drove home, he spotted Donna walking away from the bus stop. “Need a lift?” he offered.

  “Sure, thanks,” she replied and slid into Smith’s big Buick. Her blond head cocked, though, and she peered at him. “Are you all right, Mr. Smith? You look, like, oh, I don’t know, like you’re all tensed up or something.”

  “Well, wait, put the car in park,” she oddly suggested.

  “Why?”

  She slid right next to him, smiling. “I’ll rub your temples.”

  Smith blushed. “Uh, well, uh, you know—I’m kind of like, you know…Married.”

  Donna laughed lackadaisically. “Mr. Smith, letting a girl rub your temples isn’t exactly what I’d call being unfaithful.”

  Smith considered this, trying hard not to stare at Donna’s cut-offs and orange halter. Well, uh, yeah, she’s right. What’s the harm in letting her rub my temples…Smith pulled over, put the Buick in park. “Uh, okay,” he said.

  “Turn this way, lean back a little,” the 19-year-old directed. “That’s it, that’s good.”

  Smith leaned back against Donna’s formidable bosom, while her thumbs gently massaged his temples. Her breasts felt like firm, plush cushions against his shoulder blades.

  Smith’s eyes closed on their own. He struggled to make petty conversation. “So, uh, Donna, tell me. How’s college?”

  “Great,” she replied. Rubbing. Rubbing. “How’s bird watching?”

  Smith gulped. “Uh, uh, great. I saw a black-throated blue, uh, warbler yesterday.”

  “Mmmmm,” she said. Did she chuckle too? Rubbing, still rubbing, she went on, “That’s wild about that drum of chemicals they found, isn’t it?”

  Rubbing. Rubbing.

  “Uh, yeah,” Smith fairly moaned. “Wild.”

  Her deft thumbs continued to knead Smith’s aching temples. Christ, I’m getting hard, he noted of the swelling at his groin. He felt lazed back into the sweetest dream…

  Her blond hair smelled lovely, like herbs and soap. Then her lips came very close to Smith’s ear and she whispered: “Does that feel good, Mr. Smith?”

  “Yes,” Smith moaned.

  “Hmmmm?”

  “Yeeeeees.

  Her lips moved closer, the hot breath caressing his ear. “Has Mr. Smith been a good boy? Hmmm?”

  “Hmmm? You can tell Donna, can’t you? Has Mr. Smith been a good boy?”

  “Uh, uh, uh…”

  Her thumbs were like mainlines of opium to his brain. Her breath seemed to lick his neck.

  “Be a good boy now and tell Donna that you’re ready, okay, baby? Are you ready? Have you been a good boy?”

  By now Smith could not offer a verbal reply. He moaned some more, and he may have whined. But—

  Donna reclined the power seat. As Smith descended, he saw that the coed had removed her orange halter, and his recognition of this fact dripped like slow molasses in his head. Holy Jesus to fargin’ Pete, what a rack of milk wagons…

  And indeed they were: large, perfectly symmetrical orbs of flesh, with pert pink nipples.

  “Let’s get you primed, Mr. Smith,” she suggested, giggling. “Let’s get this pump good and primed.” And with that statement, her hands began to caress his crotch. “Yeah, we’re gonna get Mr. Smith all boned up, because Mr. Smith’s been a good boy, hasn’t he?”

  Smith raised no objection whatsoever when, a moment later, she pulled his pants and boxers to his knees. Her fingers caged his testicles, and her mouth went south…

  Smith wanted to shout: No! Don’t do that! I’m a married man, and I love my wife, and I WILL NOT be unfaithful to her. So you just stop that right now! In reality, though, he uttered no such thing, electing instead to just lie back and let her proceed. And indeed she did proceed, with hair-raising expertise. “Mmmmm,” she kept moaning in her throat. “Mmmmmmmm.” The hot, frictive sensation made him feel electrified: her mouth was a 220-volt wall socket, and Smith’s penis was the plug. Her firm-as-grapefruits breasts prodded his thigh as she maintained the slow, excruciating ministration. At one point, Smith gazed down over his paunch, and she gazed up, desisting long enough to remark of his 4-inch erection, “Oh Mr. Smith, it’s just so-so—so…big!”

  Smith made a stiff face, recalling the nightmare. No, it’s not. It’s a breakfast link, remember? And he could’ve sworn that, when she’d made this comment, there’d been an undue hilarity in her eyes. Look at me, he thought, self-disgusted. I’m a successful 39-year-old man, with a great career, a great wife, a great kid—a great life. And what am I doing? I’m getting a blowjob from a blonde teenage sexpot in the front seat of a Buick Regal. Yet despite this acknowledgement, he was helpless to do anything about it. He was risking everything, wasn’t he? If he got caught, he would lose everything he cherished, everything he’d worked so hard for. But Donna was a seductress, a sex-siren. Smith felt that he’d be unable to pull away from this even with a gun to his head. All he could do was simply submit to this harrowing, absolutely mind-wringing oral mastery
of hers…

  And just before Smith would ejaculate—

  She stopped.

  Smith, infuriated, gasped at the ludicrous question, pointing to his indisputably erect member. “For God’s sake, doesn’t it look like I’m ready?” his voice grated.

  She papped his nose with a finger. “That’s not what I mean, Mr. Smith.” Her lips played at his ear. “What I mean is…are you ready?”

  The word dropped like a stone in his head.

  Ready.

  Are you ready?

  Smith’s memory ticked. The nightmare. Jeannie—

  What had Jeannie said in the nightmare?

  Yes—

  Donna’s preeminent breasts vised his face. Her fingers weaved through his hair. “Oh, Mr. Smith,” she whispered. “Please tell me that you’ve been a good boy. Please…tell me that you’re ready.”

  ««—»»

  Ready? Yeah, I was ready, all right, you teasing, fickle bitch, Smith thought, driving the Buick home. How much more ready could he have been? Cock-tease! Evil cunning slut! She’d brought him to the brink, then left him hanging like clothes on a line. She primed my pump, that’s for sure—

  Then she’d left. Smith, incredulous, had stared after her as she’d opened the car door, gotten out, and walked away, leaving him with his pants at his knees and his unslaked erection bobbing in his lap. Women are such evil bitches, he glumly thought. Cock-teasing, evil fickle little harlots…

  His headache raged when he arrived home. Jeannie lay before the TV in the family room, her little ankles crossed in the air. She raptly watched Star Trek reruns. “They stole Spock’s brain, Daddy!” she fretted upon his entrance. Tough luck for Spock, Smith thought. He remembered the episode. “Don’t worry, honey. I think Bones will save the day,” he consoled. How about taking my brain—along with this fucking headache! “I hope they catch the slobs who dumped that crap,” Smith griped to his wife, who tended to dinner at the Jenn-Air range. “I mean, Christ, couldn’t they have dumped it in Jersey like everyone else?” “I’m sure they’ll catch them, dear,” Marie assured. “So why don’t you just relax?” When Smith sat down at the table, Marie came around to rub his temples.

  “No bird-watching tonight, dear?”

  “Naw,” Smith said, swallowing his guilt like a lump of phlegm.

  “How’s that headache?”

  “It’s—” Then Smith paused. He hadn’t told her of his headache, had he? “How did you know I had a headache?”

  “Honey—” Rubbing. Rubbing. “You told me this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon?” Smith questioned.

  “This afternoon when you called me. Remember? You called me to ask if anyone had come about the drum, and I told you the police were here, and the EPA men—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Smith said. “I remember. Sorry, this headache’s killing me. I’m just out of it today.”

  Out of it was putting it lightly. And Marie’s affection, her sheer care for him, made Smith feel even worse now. Fifteen minutes ago I was letting a blond coed suck my dick, and she didn’t even do it long enough for me to come…What was wrong with him? The gifts of his life couldn’t be more plain. His loving wife, his lovely little girl, his home. All right, so Marie would never make the cover of Swimwear Illustrated. Her breasts, not nearly as large as Donna’s, had a bit of droop to them now, and she was getting a trifle wide in the caboose department. But— She’d stuck with him through thick and thin. She’d given him a beautiful daughter and a beautiful life. She was real, and her love was real. How could anything else matter? The girl next door was just something pretty, a bird in a sense, a black-throated blue warbler no more real to Smith than the August centerfold of Penthouse.

  At once his guilt fell down on him, like a mineshaft cave-in.

  “Marie?” he peeped.

  “Yes, dear?” Rubbing. Rubbing. “What is it?”

  Smith was suddenly close to tears. “I-I-I…”

  “Honey? What is it?”

  “I love you too,” Marie said.

  “No, no, I mean…” But what did he mean? “I mean, like, I really love you.”

  Marie’s voice seemed to grow hot. Her fingers meandered at his temples. “Why don’t you show me?” she whispered.

  “I want your cock in my pussy, darling. I want you to stick your cock all the way up my pussy and come in me.”

  The words alone nearly made Smith come, the words in addition to Donna’s previous attentions. Yeah, she primed my pump, all right. But to hell with her. I have a loving wife. I have a real woman…

  “Stick your cock in me right up to the balls and come, you big beautiful fucking love-machine. Squirt all that wonderful jizz right up into my little honey hole.”

  Smith was dizzied. He lay atop her and obliged. At once her hand slithered around and massaged his buttocks. “Come, baby, come,” she breathed. “Come in my pussy, darling…”

  Aw, shit! Smith was going to come, all right. Quite expeditiously. He tried to stave it off, think about baseball, Mantle’s 500th homer, which Smith had seen with his dad, Marris breaking Ruth’s record, and Catfish Hunter’s first 20-win season. Boy, could the Catfish throw a spitter!

  But it didn’t work. How could it? This was love, not childhood baseball memories.

  After a strenuous, sweat-popping five seconds, Smith ejaculated, exhaling like a busted raft. Marie moaned with each pulse, wrapping her legs about his back.

  “Oh, honey,” Smith nearly wept into the crook of her neck. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

  And what a cruel ripoff this was. Smith generally lasted at least half a minute. Punishment, he thought; his guilt continued to assail him. Yes, the universe was punishing him for being with Donna, decimating his already less-than-impressive endurance.

  “I’m so sorry, Marie…”

  Her warm hand played over his scalp. “That’s all right, dear. I…I know.”

  Smith’s heart skipped a beat. She knows? he thought in sheer terror. She knows about Donna?

  But then he simmered down. No, no, she didn’t know about that. How could she? She merely meant that she understood Smith’s problem with premature ejaculation. She was so understanding, so considerate. What a woman, Smith realized, as drenched in shame as he was sweat. But—

  There was something he could do for her, wasn’t there?

  Smith slithered down…

  “Oooo, sweetheart,” Marie cooed lewdly. “You know exactly what I want, you dirty little sex-muffin.”

  Yeah, Smith thought. Here was this wonderful, warm, passionate woman who’d offered herself solely for Smith’s pleasure. Now he would return the gesture.

  Her white thighs opened before his face like a newspaper. Her fingers raked his hair, while her own hair—her private hair—tickled around Smith’s mouth. Suddenly he felt bent on something, frantic in the taste of her. Compelled. Driven.

  “That’s it, sweetheart, that so good,” she breathed. “You do it so good, you big love-tongue, you…”

  The synchronicity of Smith’s tongue against her pleasure quickened in increments; he chased her squirming hips across the bed. Smith kissed, licked, lapped—

  “So good, sweetheart—”

  Kissed, licked, lapped.

  “So good, so good, such a—”

  Kissed, licked, lapped.

  “—good good boy.”

  Smith’s eyes bulged. A good boy?

  Hadn’t Donna said the exact same thing…

  But before he could even reckon such a coincidence, Marie seemed to gasp, and her body seemed to…tremor.

  Smith’s mouth remained locked at her sex when the septic stench rose. Marie gasped again, then her hips twitched, then—

  Several hard, steady dolphin spurts of the stinking black sludge shot into his mouth. He wedged away in shock, paused to bend over and vomit, and when he raised his head again, a final pulse of sludge jettisoned right in his face.

  Over the rise of her breasts, Marie’s eyes fixed on
him.

  “You didn’t, did you?” she gargled.

  Smith stared, frozen in disgust.

  Marie craned her neck further, her face wavering. “You weren’t ready, were you?” she gushed. It sounded like an accusation. “Goddamn you, you were supposed to be ready…”

  Then her eyes rolled up white, and her head fell back.

  “She’s dead,” he whispered.

  It was too much, too fast. All rationale escaped him; his psyche felt stuffed, like a Szechuan squid stuffed to bursting. Marie seemed to be on the verge of bursting too. Movement churned beneath her pale, dead belly. Revulsion, shock, etc. cut Smith’s spiritual tether, leaving only his objective remains: Smith the Coroner, Smith the Man Who Autopsies Dead People For a Living. It was impulse now, in this moment of intractable impossibility. He went for his old med school bag in the closet, and his old CMS knife set.

  Thoughts swarmed but he didn’t really hear them. The sharp bivalving blade flashed. “Aw, God,” he muttered, cutting. “Aw, no.” The incision stretched as he drew the gleaming blade from hip to hip, exuding a goulash of black lumps. She was a doll stuffed with beans. Out they poured as Smith watched, slow black lava sliding over the sides of the bed.