Jack Daniels Stories

by J. A. Konrath

  “Obviously.”

  I walked over, grabbing a robe for myself. It was made out of felt, and had a large hood. A monk's robe. Or rather, a store-bought Halloween monk's costume.

  Old caretaker guy put his on, and as he was tugging it over his head I gave him a Crazy Hamster Elbow to the chin. He went down, hopefully in need of some facial reconstructive surgery. I scooped up his flashlight, located my keys, and limped down the tunnel.

  I followed the path a few dozen yards into the darkness, ducking overhead beams when they appeared overhead, keeping an eye peeled for rats, and giant spiders, and that guy I was supposed to be following, I think his name was Fred or George or something common and only one syllable. Maybe Tom. Yeah, Tom.

  No, it was Fred.

  The air down here was cool and heavy and smelled like asparagus piss, but for the most part it was clean. That meant ventilation, either in the form of an exit, or an air osmosis recirculator, and I'm pretty sure that osmosis thing didn't exist because I just made it up.

  The tunnel ended at a large metal door, the kind with a slot at eye-level that opened up so some moron could ask you for a password. Which is exactly what happened. The slot opened, and a pair of eyes stared out at me, and whoever belonged to those eyes asked for a password.

  “Tom sent me,” I said.

  “That's not the password.”

  “Tom didn't say there was a password.”

  “Tom who?”

  “Tom,” I improvised, “from Accounting.”

  “How is Tom?”

  “Good. Just got over a cold, still kind of congested.”

  “It's great you know Tom, but I'm not supposed to let you in without a password.”

  I was tempted to give him a Three Stooges eye poke through the slot.

  “Look,” I reasoned, “why else would I be down here?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe you got lost.”

  “I'm wearing the robe.” I did a little sashay to emphasize the fact.

  “Maybe you're a cop.”

  “I'm not a cop.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “Because I don't have a badge. You want to frisk me to check?”

  “No. You smell like pee-pee.”

  I set my jaw. “Doesn't anyone ever forget the password?”

  The eyes shrugged. “Sure. Happens all the time.”

  “So what happens then?”

  “I ask them for the back-up password.”

  I drew my Magnum, jammed it in the slot.

  “Is the back-up password open the fucking door or I'll blow your head off?”

  “Yep that's the password.”

  He opened the door. I considered smacking password boy in the head, and it seemed like a good idea, so I gave him a little love tap with the butt of my pistol. When he fell over, I gave him another little love tap in the stomach, with my foot. This made my ass hurt even more, so I kicked him again, which hurt even more, so I kicked him again for causing me pain, and again, and again until the pain got so bad I had to stop, but I didn't, I kicked him once more.

  Then I wandered through a short hallway and into a large open area, roughly the size of a woman's basketball court, which is the same size as a men's basketball court, but a woman's court has bouncing boobs. I noticed little details like that. Unfortunately, this room didn't have bouncing boobs. It had a dozen-plus boneheads in robes, all carrying flashlights, standing around and chanting something monkish.

  I wormed my way into the group and considered the camera in my pocket. Mrs. Drawbridge had hired me to take pictures of her husband acting nutty. This qualified, but it was too dark to make out any details, and a flash might cause attention. Plus, these jamokes all had their hoods on, making positive ID pretty impossible.

  I scanned the room, seeing if I could find Tom. I spotted him through my clever detective technique of looking around, and noticed his bag from the hardware store, still clenched in his hand. Maybe I could get up close, shove the camera in his face, get a quick snapshot, then run away.

  “Attention, everyone!”

  The chanting stopped. One of the wannabe monks had his hands up over his head, his knuckles brushing the dirt ceiling. Everyone stared at him.

  “Let us form the sacred pentagon, and pray to Anubis, god of the dead, to bless the ceremony this evening. All hail, Anubis!”

  “All hail, Anubis!” the monks chanted in reply.

  Then we all arranged ourselves in a five-sided square around something in the center of the room. As I probably should have guessed—but didn't because I was too busy rubbing my painful throbbing ass—in the center of the room was a coffin.

  The head monk shouted, “Who shall be the first to partake in the carnal pleasures of beyond the grave?”

  I looked around, wondering what idiot would be stupid enough to bone a corpse, then found myself shoved into the center of the circle.

  “My friend will go!”

  I spun around, aiming the flashlight. It was old caretaker guy, a big grin creasing his face.

  “This first has been chosen!” head monk bellowed. Two other monks—big ones—grabbed my arms and escorted me to the coffin.

  “Guys, I'm new here. I'd sort of prefer to wait until next time before violating any dead people.”

  I tried to pull away, but these monks had supernatural strength. The weight of the situation began to weigh on me. Sex with a cadaver wasn't on the list of things I wanted to do before I died, unless the cadaver was Angelina Jolie.

  Then I stopped struggling, because I realized this had to be some kind of joke. Like a hazing prank, and when the coffin opened a stripper would pop out and blow me. That made a lot more sense than a society of necrophiliacs meeting secretly under one of Chicago's largest cemeteries. Right?

  I smiled, hoping the stripper had big tits, not even protesting when I was depantsed by one of the hulky monk guys. They also took my gun. I figured that was okay—I only needed one type of gun to handle a hot stripper. You know what I mean.

  My penis. I'm talking about my penis.

  “Okay.” I clapped my hands together. “Let's do this.”

  Another monk opened the coffin, and I stared in grinning expectation at a naked dead man.

  “That's a guy,” I said.

  Head monk came in close and whispered. “Couldn't find girl this time. It doesn't matter. Death is death. It's all a turn-on. You're here to get laid, right?”

  I eyed the body. A chubby bald white guy, late fifties. The Y cut across his chest indicated he was autopsied. Death was probably a heart attack, based on the size of his gut.

  “I'm actually not really feeling it right now,” I said.

  “We can flip him over, if that helps.”

  “I don't think it will help.”

  “How fresh is it?” someone in the crowd yelled.

  “Planted eight days ago,” head monk answered.

  The crowd cheered.

  “I got sloppy seconds!”

  “I got thirds!”

  “I want to go last, when he's so full he's leaking out of his nose!”

  I tried to step away, but the inhumanly muscular monks held me firm.

  “I'm really not horny right now,” I insisted. “In fact, I may never be horny again.”

  “My friend is shy!” That damn old caretaker guy again. “He doesn't like to pitch! He prefers catching!”

  “No problem. Fetch the bicycle pump!”

  Someone brought over a bike pump, complete with needle tip. The head monk fussed around with the poor dead guy's junk, then pushed the needle into the pee hole at the shriveled tip. I had an anti-erection, my dick actually retreating into my body as I watched.

  He began to pump. And, incredibly, the corpse's johnson responded by filling out in length and width, until it stuck up like a tent pole. The monk kept pumping, and then the scrotum inflated. First apple-sized. Then grapefruit. Then soccer ball. I winced, waiting for the POP, but he quit before it got to medicine ball propo
rtions. Which is a good thing, because balls that big would be bad medicine indeed.

  “This is wrong on so many levels,” I said.

  Someone stuck a tube of KY into my hand, the head monk said, “Have fun,” and then I was tossed onto the corpse, the coffin lid slamming closed above me with devastating finality.

  Chapter 8

  I lied. There isn't any sodomy in this chapter. Instead, there was a good minute of mindless screaming panic, followed by a minute of mindless yelling terror, and another two minutes of unmanly begging.

  “We're not opening up until you finish,” head monk spoke through the coffin lid.

  “I'm finished.” I hoped I sounded sincere. “It was fantastic. Best dead sex I ever had.”

  He wasn't buying. “The only way you're getting out of there is by embracing your necrophilia. That's why you came, isn't it? That's why we're all here. To make our fantasies come true. To taste the forbidden.”

  “I tasted it. It's like rotten meat, and disappointingly unresponsive.”

  “We can stay here all night if we have to.”

  I collected my thoughts, the sum total of which were Get me the fuck out of here. Then I calmed down a little. Then I started screaming again. Then calm. Then more screaming. Then even more screaming.

  Finally, I took a deep breath, and really started screaming.

  Being hysterical is pretty exhausting, so I took a time-out and tried to rationalize what to do next, other than scream.

  Unfortunately, clearing my head made me even more aware of my current situation, and how disgustingly horrible it was. I was trapped in a coffin, lying on top of a naked dead guy with nuts the size of a basketball. A curly-haired basketball with a bratwurst glued onto the top. It pressed against my pelvis in a way that could only be described as awful.

  My upper half wasn't any happier, with my face inches away from a dead man's. He didn't really smell like rotting meat. Not exactly. It was more like meat that was about to go bad, but dunked in formaldehyde first. His flesh was waxy, sort of stiff, and cold in a way that only dead people get. I moved my hands up across his nude, hairy chest, fighting the urge to vomit, and then pressed my elbows into his gut to force some distance between us.

  It was a mistake. His autopsy meant his ribs had been cut away, and no ribs meant no internal support. My elbows ripped through the stitches and my arms disappeared into his still-moist body cavity.

  I felt things. Horrible things. Squishy things. To prevent the organs from leaking, the clever embalmer had placed them in plastic bags, like some sort of lunch snacks from hell. I thanked the darkness that it was dark and I couldn't see anything, because I had no light. But I screamed anyway.

  When the screaming finally stopped, I screamed a little more, and then realized the only way I was going to get out of here is to do what women have been probably doing with me ever since I'd been sexually active.

  I'd have to fake it.

  Unfortunately, the only way to fake a sexual movement is to perform a sexual movement. So I locked my knees on either side of his hips, his giant scrotum tucked beneath my legs like a fleshy bicycle seat, and began the humping motion. I also began to cry.

  The coffin went with the rhythm, back and forth and back and forth, and it was a high end model which meant springs in the cushion which meant this felt even more like the real thing. Even though I couldn't see I squeezed my eyes shut and invented gods in my imagination so I could pray to them to make this end. I tried to think back on happy times, but too many of my happy times involved sex and that didn't help me block out the unhappy fact that I was fake dry-humping a corpse. I tried thinking about happy times when I was a kid, and unwillingly focused on the time I was six years old and my mother bought me a Hoppity Horse for my birthday, and how I used to love bouncing up and down the neighborhood and, oh goddamn it...

  I threw up in my mouth. Energy drink and pizza mixed with stomach acid. I swallowed it because adding puke to this situation was possibly the only thing that could make it worse.

  Scratch that last thought. My pelvic gyrations had loosened up some trapped air in the nether regions of the cadaver, prompting extreme flatulence. He ripped one so loud it sounded like a trumpet. But is sure as hell didn't smell like one. You think you know stink? Dead guy farts are number one on the stinkmeter. It was so bad, I'm sure if I could see I would have seen green gas.

  “Do it! Give it to him!”

  I wasn't sure who the head monk was cheering on, me or the dead guy. But I knew in order to properly fake it, I had to add some vocals to the rhythm.

  “Oh, daddy!” I moaned, trying not to breathe. “Oh, yes, daddy!”

  Someone slapped on the top of the coffin, urging me on. There was more corpse farting, more crying, more humping, and finally I couldn't handle this anymore without a complete nervous breakdown and I cried out “Oh, god!” and then went still.

  Eventually, miraculously, the coffin lid opened. I made it. I was alive. Amazingly, wonderfully alive. Now I needed to find my gun and eat a bullet.

  The strongarm monks pulled me out of the coffin, my arms slupping from the dead man's chest cavity, glistening with guck.

  “Congrats!” head monk said, giving me an attaboy slap on the back. “You really rocked his dead world!”

  I wiped my hands on his fake robe.

  The rest of the perverts queued up for their shot at playing Megaball, and I managed to stumble into my pants. I even got my gun back. I cocked the hammer and stared deep into the blessed release promised by the inside of the barrel, and then remembered I only had one bullet left, and if anyone should die, it was old caretaker guy.

  I looked around for the bike pump, flitting with the idea of filling his nads up with air before sending him to hell. Or maybe I would just pump him up and let him live. Live out the remainder of his pathetic life with unusually large testicles. The humiliation he'd suffer. The stares. The laughter. Plus, it would be impossible to find pants.

  Regrettably, the bike pump was nowhere to be found. Neither was old caretaker guy. And I'd apparently won the loser trifecta, because Bill, the man I'd been hired to follow, was also MIA.

  Some pinhead hopped into the coffin with Frankengroin, and I picked up the flashlight and made my way to the exit before the groaning began. I needed some fresh air. I also needed a hatchet and some steel wool, so I could access and scour the last half an hour from my brain.

  Conveniently, the exit was a large door marked EXIT, which opened up to some concrete steps. I took them up, and they ended in a maintenance closet, which opened up into the mausoleum. It was an easier—and faster—entrance than the nightmare slide, but lacked the dramatic effect.

  I pulled out my gun, did a quick search for old caretaker guy, scared the hell out of some grieving old man, mourning his dead wife or some similar maudlin bullshit, and then made my way through the cemetery, across the street, and into the first place that sold liquor.

  Three shots and two beers later, I called the police.

  Chapter 9

  The cop I called was a somewhat tasty little morsel named Lieutenant Jackie “Jack” Daniels. So-so face, great legs, nice rack, especially for an older broad. I knew her back in the day, when we were partners in blue, and she continued to have a crush on me almost two decades later.

  “I don't owe you shit, McGlade. And if you bother me again I'm going to send some uniforms over to trash your apartment and beat you with phone books for so long you'll have area codes embedded in your skin.”

  “Pay attention, Jackie. I'm offering you a prime bust here. As we speak, there's a group of perverts running a train on a dead guy with gonads the size of a Thanksgiving turkey.”

  “Let me guess. Is it a Butterball?”

  “They have to be stopped. Would you want some loonies digging you up and poking your cooter after you've been laid to eternal rest?”

  “Sex with a corpse, disgusting as it is, isn't a crime, Harry. Didn't you read Bloody Mary by JA Konrath? There w
as a character in there, did the same thing.”

  “I listened to part of the audiobook. The author thinks he's funny, but he's not.”

  “It's a he? I thought a woman wrote those books.”

  I tried to make my voice sound soothing, a tough trick because I had screamed myself raw.

  “Jackie, partner, be a good cop and send a team over to the cemetery. You'll get brownie points from the Captain, a little TV spotlight, and the satisfaction knowing that you got a bunch of lunatic perverts off the street.”

  “What do I charge them with, McGlade? Public indecency? You want me to waste manpower on a minor misdemeanor?”

  “Aggravated sexual assault. Trust me. It was aggravating.”

  “Who's going to press charges? The cadaver? You want to bring a corpse to trial? The cross examination would be riveting, I bet.”

  I clenched my fist. “Dammit, Jackie! I was violated in ways you can't even begin to understand. I'll never be the same. My sex life might very well be ruined, and I won't be able to ever watch basketball on TV again. And I love basketball. If you don't arrest these assholes I'm going to go on a killing spree and when they bring me in I'll tell them you could have stopped it just by doing your job.”

  She sighed big, but I knew I'd won. “Cut the melodrama, McGlade. I'll send a few uniforms over to check it out.”

  “If you arrest a creepy old caretaker guy, call me. I'm going to impale him on his mop and make him clean all the floors in Union Station.”

  “I got extra tickets to the Bulls game tomorrow. Want them?”

  “You can really be a mean bitch sometimes, Jackie.”

  I hung up, ordered another tequila, drank it, ordered another, drank it, then called a taxi to take me back to my condo to really start drinking.

  Chapter 10

  My plan had been to drink so much I didn't dream. And when I peeled my eyes open, I thought it worked. I couldn't remember a single nocturnal image, let alone any nightmares.

  Then I realized I was lying naked on the kitchen floor, straddling a head of lettuce.

  “Oh hell no.”

  Like any freaked-out person, I needed answers. So I searched Google, using the terms “post dramatic stress disorder sex with corpses and giant testicles” which linked me to a bunch of unhelpful porn sites. I dutifully surfed them anyway, but there were no answers there.