by Jeff Strand
"I’m fine," Jake insisted.
"Are you sure? Is it something you want to talk about?"
Jake looked at her. Damn, she was hot. But yet she was also chilly, as he could tell through her t-shirt. He’d sure love to rip that off of her and…
No, he couldn’t. The whole quadruple-ball thing.
Then again, she didn’t have to be facing him, now did she?
"It’s my mother’s puppy," Jake said. "She’s very sick."
"Oh, that’s horrible!" said the brunette. "The poor puppy."
"Yeah. My mom lives in Alaska and I’ve never seen the dog, but the thought of a sick puppy just rips a hole in my heart…you know what I mean?"
The brunette nodded.
"What kind of world do we live in where puppies get sick? Poor little guy. I’m just a mess." Jake sniffled. "You must think I’m being silly."
"No, not at all," said the brunette, shaking her head. "I think you’re being lovely."
"I just wish there was something I could do. I sent her a check to take care of the vet bill, but I just don’t trust those Alaska vets, you know? I wish I could take the puppy to Paris with me—they have the best vets in the world there—but I’m not leaving until next weekend."
"I’ve never been to Paris."
"I try to make it there every couple of months, just to clear my head from the pressure at work. It’s not easy being the boss, you know? Poor little puppy."
"Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?"
««—»»
Jake admired the Betty Boop tattoo on the brunette’s back as he knelt on the bed behind her, tightly gripping her waist as he thrust into her. He’d thought that concealing his overpacked scrotum would be a problem, but oddly enough, by simply not asking for oral sex or trying to push her head in that direction, he’d avoided any lingering gazes.
At least his penis was functioning without any problems. In fact, he was giving a darn good performance, as evidenced by the brunette squealing and praising his mighty tool. Although he was getting close to release much sooner than normal…he’d have to think of something to distract himself.
Hey, I’ve got four nuts!
That worked for another few seconds, but then he could feel the imminent eruption again. The brunette hadn’t finished (as far as he knew), but oh well, it wasn’t like he’d be seeing her again.
The orgasm hit him with such force that it knocked him onto his back, sending the condom flying across the bedroom. It splattered against a framed photograph of an old woman.
"Grandma!" cried the brunette.
Jake just lay on the bed, barely able to move. Wow. That was freakin’ incredible.
The brunette scurried off the bed and into her bathroom. She returned a moment later with a wet cloth, which she used to wipe off the photograph. "I’ve never seen anything like that before," she said. "Is that normal?"
"Only if you’re all man," Jake replied, grinning.
««—»»
Jake woke up with the brunette lying next to him, her arm draped over his chest. He’d been too exhausted to make his usual break for the exit, but after a good night’s sleep he felt nice and refreshed. He gently moved her arm out of the way, rolled over, and—
Holy shit!
He rolled onto his back again and grabbed his scrotum. It felt like a bag of marbles!
He screamed.
"What? What’s wrong?" asked the brunette, snapping awake.
"Uh…uh…uh…I wish my mom’s puppy wasn’t sick!"
"Oh, sweetie, I’m sure the puppy will be okay." She gave him a kiss on the cheek and then rolled onto her side.
Okay, don’t panic. You’re going to be fine. There has to be a reasonable explanation for this. Whimpering, Jake very, very, very, very carefully slid out of bed, walked bow-legged into the bathroom, and shut the door.
He looked at himself in the full-length mirror. His scrotum was the size of a grapefruit. He ran his fingers over the surface—there had to be twenty or thirty testicles in there.
He screamed again.
"It’s just a puppy, for God’s sake!" the brunette shouted back.
Jake turned on the faucet and splashed some cold water on his face. What in the world was happening to him? He didn’t work around radiation, and he’d never taken any drugs that counted, so why was his nut sac filling up like a gumball machine?
He had to get out of here. He returned to the bedroom and picked up his white briefs from the floor, but he’d never be able to fit his scrotum into that. He certainly couldn’t wear his jeans. Maybe she’d let him borrow a dress.
"Are you leaving?" asked the brunette, not looking over as he hurriedly pulled on his shirt.
"Yeah, babe. Sorry."
"S’okay."
"Could I borrow one of your…um, garbage bags?"
««—»»
Jake hurried over to his car, feeling like a complete jackass in his garbage bag pants. He jostled his balls getting into the driver’s seat and let out a wince of pain.
He started the engine and sped to the nearest emergency room.
««—»»
Jake lay in the hospital bed, holding an ice pack to his crotch. He’d been mercifully unconscious during the operation (as was the first nurse to examine him) but they’d successfully removed…
…his entire scrotum.
He was a man without balls.
A castrated bull.
A joke.
He closed his eyes and wallowed in silent misery.
««—»»
They released him the next day. He decided to go home and wallow in silent misery some more. Though he might’ve been able to keep the four-testicle problem concealed from a sexual partner, the complete lack of a scrotum was going to be a tough one to hide.
Damn, I’m going to have to get a strap-on ball sac…
He wished he’d died on the operating table. They should’ve at least provided him with a cyanide capsule after an operation like this. Or a helpful pamphlet like So You’ve Lost Your Testes and Your Will to Live.
He walked upstairs to his apartment, collapsed into bed, wallowed in silent misery for a while longer, and then proceeded to sleep for the entire afternoon, night, and most of the next morning.
««—»»
He opened one eye. Darkness.
Not because the room was dark. Because something was blocking his vision.
He pushed it away, but it was attached to his forehead.
Attached, soft, and contained two balls.
He sat up. His whole body felt completely freaky. His left eye was uncovered, and as he threw aside the blanket he let out a cry of unrestrained horror.
His entire body was covered with scrotums, hundreds of them, like a demented form of chicken pox. He had scrotums dangling from his arms, his chest, his legs…everywhere but his freakin’ crotch!
He stroked the one that dangled from his chin as he trembled in fear.
He needed to get to the phone and call for help. He very slowly eased his way out of bed, crying out as he accidentally squeezed two of the ball sacs on his leg. The pain brought tears to his eyes, and he had to sit motionless for a few minutes until it subsided.
He gently swung his legs over the side of the bed, thanking every deity known to mankind that he didn’t have testicles on the bottom of his feet.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he padded across the bedroom floor. The scrotums were surprisingly heavy, and most of them itched.
He took a misstep, and for a terrifying moment he thought he was going to fall to the floor, but he regained his balance and continued out of the bedroom, down the hall, and into his kitchen.
He bashed three sets of balls against a chair and vomited onto the floor. He braced himself against the table, eyes closed, and just waited for the unbearable pain to go away.
It took a long time.
When he could finally walk again, he slowly made his way to the telephone. He lifted it out of its cradle and—
/>
—the phone rang, scaring the hell out of him. It fell out of his hand and smashed against the tile, breaking apart.
Damn! Damn! Damn!
Where was his cell phone?
In the car. He’d forgotten it there because he’d been so upset over the operation.
Damn! Damn! Damn!
Okay, he’d just have to get one of the neighbors to call 911 for him. He was obviously in need of medical attention, so they wouldn’t protest.
He walked into the living room, balls perspiring heavily, and then tripped on the remote control that he frequently tripped over but had never quite found the willpower to actually pick up off the floor.
He fell forward.
His life flashed before his eyes six or seven times.
But, miraculously, he threw out his hands and stopped himself from landing face-first on the carpet. Instead, he found himself in the middle of the floor in a push-up position.
Okay, this was awkward.
He supposed that he could gently ease himself onto the carpet, but there were a lot of balls on his chest to crush. He was pretty sure he didn’t have the physical strength to give a mighty push that would spring him back into a standing position.
Yeah, this sucked.
He stayed in that position for a while, trying to figure out what the hell he was going to do, besides cry.
This was not how Jake Triben was going to die. He summoned his strength, and walked on his hands and toes across the living room over to the sofa. He gripped the arm of the sofa and pulled himself to a squatting position, enabling himself to stand up again.
Problem solved.
He walked over to the door, took a deep breath, and then opened it and stepped out into the hallway of his apartment building.
Through his free eye he saw Ms. Duncan stepping out of her apartment. She was a heavyset woman in her late fifties who, judging from her facial expression, had never seen a man completely covered in scrotums before.
She gaped at him.
"It’s a Halloween costume!" Jake insisted. "I’m going as…balls!"
"It’s June!"
"I know, but I’m getting an early start. But I got caught in my costume. Could you call an ambulance?"
Ms. Duncan walked over to him. "Jake, that costume is obscene!"
"I know, I’m sorry."
"What are those made of?" she asked, flicking one of the sacs on his arm with her index finger.
Jake howled in pain. Ms. Duncan flinched as if she’d been struck.
"My God, are those…are those real?" Ms. Duncan asked, seconds before she dropped to the floor in a dead faint.
Ms. Duncan’s six-year-old granddaughter, who really should have been in school, peeked out the doorway and shrieked.
"It’s okay, it’s okay!" Jake insisted, but she slammed the door. Jake turned and hurried down the hallway, quickly but not so quickly that he could take a tumble. The balls were jiggling and jostling against each other, not quite hard enough to hurt.
He reached the top of the stairway, and there she was.
Melissa/Margaret/Maggie/Mildred/whatever the hell her name was.
"Hello, Jake," she said. She didn’t seem surprised at all by his appearance.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
"Are you feeling more sensitive?"
"You did this to me! You cast some sort of spell on me, didn’t you?"
"Kind of," she said, holding up a voodoo doll with dozens of miniature scrotums glued to its surface. "You weren’t very nice, you know."
"I said you were good for your first time! What more do you want?"
"I just want you to be nice. Can you be nice?"
"Nice? After you’ve done this to me?" He waved his arms, flapping around several nut sacs. "You stupid psycho bitch, I should break your neck!"
"You’re not being sensitive to my needs."
"Okay, okay, I’m sorry," Jake insisted. "I’m just in a weird place right now, y’know? If you could help me out, that would really be swell."
"Do you think you deserve it?"
Jake nodded.
"How do I know?"
"Whenever a puppy gets sick, my heart aches for—"
"You’re not being sincere, Jake. Sincerity is important in a relationship. If I can’t trust you, how is our marriage going to work? How can we raise our children?"
"Aw, c’mon, don’t do this to me! Just fix the nut problem, okay? I’ll be the most sensitive fucker on the planet, I swear!"
"Prove it."
"How can I prove it when I’m standing here like a Christmas tree decorated with testicles? Give me a break here!"
"Just answer me one question."
"Ask me anything!"
"What’s my name?"
Jake froze. He could feel several of his testicles tightening up in fear. "Melissa?"
"No."
"Margaret?"
"No."
"Maggie?"
"No. It’s Joan, asshole," she said, tossing the voodoo doll at him.
Jake lunged for it, momentarily forgetting that he was standing in a location where lunging for a flying object was a poor idea. He realized this very quickly as he fell forward.
Time seemed to stand still, which gave him plenty of time to think about how much it was going to hurt when he hit those stairs.
He finally struck them and bellowed with the combined agony of every male who had ever been kicked in the groin since the beginning of time. The pain was beyond devastating. He tumbled down the stairs, crushing testicles beneath him, his vision filled with a blinding white light.
As he struck the corner of one of the steps, the testicles above his right eye burst.
Jake hit the bottom and lay there, bloody sacs covering his body, sick to his stomach, the pain so intense that he couldn’t breathe. He wept silently, praying that his suffocation would be quick.
Moments (years?) later, he could sense Joan standing over him.
"Guh…" he managed to say.
"What’s that?"
"Guh."
"I don’t understand."
"Gun. Need a gun."
"Oh, now, you don’t want to kill yourself, do you?"
"God, yes…"
Joan crouched down next to him. "There’s no need for that. Just say you’re sorry."
"I’m so sorry," Jake said, a second before he vomited.
"Say you’ll bring me flowers."
"I promise."
"And candy."
"Yes."
"And you’ll serenade me underneath my bedroom window, when I move into a place where I have a bedroom window."
"Yes."
"Good. Let’s get those nasty things off the voodoo doll, shall we?"
««—»»
Jake lay with his head between her legs. His tongue felt like it was going to fall off, but she wasn’t ready for him to quit yet, and he knew the penalty for stopping early.
"A little more to the left," Joan said.
"Yeth, ma’am."
The chains were uncomfortable and the collar chafed his neck, but Jake didn’t complain. Tending to her each and every need was a hell of a lot better than living life as a scrotum creature.
He was Mr. Sensitive now, and he was going to please his woman.
The Bad Candy House
I don’t get how the whole "razor blades in apples" thing is supposed to work. I think it’s an urban legend. How could you get a razor blade in there without leaving a big gash in the side of the apple? I mean, yeah, kids are morons, but they’re going to notice an inch-long cut in the side of their apple. I guess you could come in from the bottom, but using that technique I don’t see how you could wedge the blade in far enough that somebody would actually bite into it. And there’s really no set biting pattern for an apple, so unless you lucked into a direct hit the best you could hope for is a little nick on the lips—barely even worth the trouble. Most importantly, kids are going to remember the cheap bastards who handed out apples inste
ad of candy (granted, an apple costs more than a Fun-Size candy bar, but that’s not the way they see it) and they’ll bring the police right to your front door.
It just wouldn’t work.
That’s why I used arsenic, injected with a hypodermic needle into name-brand chocolates. Even if parents checked the candy, they were unlikely to notice the holes, and the little cretins were sure to just pop those things into their greedy mouths whole. Dead kids. A Halloween present to myself.
I wasn’t ignorant; I knew I wouldn’t kill all of them. As soon as the first one croaked, there’d be mass hysteria all over town and parents would be yanking the bags of candy away from their screaming brats. But I figured I’d probably knock off a few of them before people started freaking out, and in a worst case scenario where I only killed one—well, hell, at least I’d be responsible for everybody else’s candy being taken away. Heh heh.
Obviously, the candy would eventually be traced back to me. But that was fine. My Mildred had died two months ago, and I really didn’t have anything to live for. I would’ve blown my brains out the same night the stroke took her, except that it occurred to me that if I didn’t have to worry about any consequences to my actions, I could have one hell of an enjoyable Halloween.