“Yeah, but if you’re there, it’ll rip your face off too,” Jake said.
“Worth it to get the last word.”
“But we’d be dead,” said Devon. “What good’s a video if we all end up dead?”
She flashed him a hard-edged, cynical grin. “Where do you think all those found-footage movies come from?”
“Perfect,” Marty said. “From Paranormal Activity bullshit to Blair Witch bullshit.”
“Don’t forget Weird Science bullshit,” Jake said. “Sexy Brit-babe in blue undies, a talking shit-pile, and Iron Man with a bra on his head.”
Devon’s expression proclaimed him utterly, utterly lost. Before anybody could begin to explain, they heard Brendan’s car return, then Brendan himself thumping up the stairs. The apartment door swung open.
“Check this out,” he proclaimed, beaming proudly.
It took the rest of them a few moments to recognize the oblong box he held up as a VHS tape in a cardstock sleeve. Serious old-school, a mere step removed from film-strip projectors and 8-track.
Marty took it and read the drippy-red clawstroke-font title aloud. “Deadly Beauties IV: The Devil’s Daughter.”
“A horror movie?” asked Devon.
“A rare classic of the occult, vintage seventies.”
“Rare classic of the occult?” Beth hoisted an eyebrow.
“Yeah, but does it have nudity?” asked Jake. “Priorities, bro.”
“Boobs and bush everywhere, bro.”
“Bush?” Devon echoed, askance.
Brendan bobbed his head. “That’s what vintage seventies means. These ladies are aaaaalll natural.”
Beth snatched the tape to study the cover: a terrified-looking man bound spread-eagle in a pentagram. Surrounding him were robed figures holding candles, the light of which cast a sexy shadow—hourglass figure, horns, tail, batwings—onto his chest hair and the treasure trail leading down his bare and oily midriff, where strategic scraps of cloth met bare-minimum decency standards over a bulge suggesting not all of him was as terrified as his expression seemed to claim.
“Nice tagline…She’ll Come When You Call. Classy.”
“Sounds like total crap,” Marty said.
“Vintage total crap,” Brendan said. “Vintage seventies total crap.”
She turned the box over, skimming the text. “Varsity swim team on their way to a meet…wrong turn, bus breaks down…have to seek help in a strange, isolated village…beautiful women…sinister cult…insatiable appetites of a she-devil from Hell...”
“Sweet.” Jake high-fived Brendan. “Where’d you get it?”
“My dad. He’s got tons of this shit hidden in the garage. Movies, magazines. Bunches of church stuff, which is weird: naughty nuns, anal angels.”
“He’s religious?” Devon asked skeptically.
“No, that’s the weird part. Or maybe the preggo-porn is the weird part; he’s got a lot of that, too—”
“Dude!” cried Marty. “Sick!”
“Hey, all I know is, I first found his stash when I was ten, and I thought I died and went to titty heaven.”
Chapter Three: Anticipation
Desire.
Desire and purpose.
Desire and hunger.
Hunger and purpose and need.
To crave and to serve.
To give and to take, to take and to give.
It is, it is, it is.
We are.
Many and one, one in many, one and many, many in one.
We are All. We are One.
Who will be? Which will be? Which shall become?
All and one and one and all.
Love and serve. Feed and need.
To urge and coax and taste.
To touch.
Kiss.
Lick.
Suck.
Taste and tease and take.
To engulf.
Draw deep, so deep.
To clasp moist-slick to slide and glide and milk yes milk the salt-milk the life-milk to pulse and squeeze.
So deep, so full, fill and fulfill.
Hunger and desire, hunger and need.
Need!
Need and purpose.
Our purpose.
We. One. All.
We serve. We crave.
Flesh oh flesh salt taste and tang.
The urge. The surge.
The urgency, surging, surging, grip and slip and slide-glide wet-tight to coax to milk, the milk, salt-life-milk and pump and flood, release.
To take.
And take.
And take some more.
More and more.
To feed. To drink. To suck and swallow, to engulf and encompass and absorb.
Take and take, the hunger, the need, the desire, the purpose.
Take and give. Give and give. Share and grow, grow many, grow strong.
Our purpose.
Which will be?
Which becomes?
We are All, All are One.
We crave. We serve.
One becomes.
And here, now, the Call.
Interlude: Vignettes #1
You know how, in a lot of books, you get the obligatory info dump of town history, backstory, and character introduction?
Yeah. This is one of those parts. This is where we’ll take a quick overview of Fairmont and meet some of the people whose lives are about to be fucked over in the upcoming chapters.
A few of them may even deserve it. The dogfucker, for instance, and the eunuch. Others, the more innocent, the good and decent hard-working citizens, might not deserve it so much…but tough shit for them; evil doesn’t play fairsies.
Onward!
***
Nestled in the picturesque wooded hills blah-de-blah natural beauty hiking day trips excursions et cetera et cetera charming inns bed-and-breakfasts cabins vacation rentals so on and so forth winery tours wine tastings art galleries quaint shopping district specialty foods fine eateries yadda-yadda perfect honeymoon locale or dream private getaway quiet scenic adult-oriented lay it on with a trowel.
Fairmont wasn’t always like this.
Once, back in the day—the day being in the 1940s and 1950s—it was your typical example of classic Americana. White picket fences, ladies’ bridge clubs, mens’ bowling leagues, Veteran’s Day parades, Fourth of July picnics, school concerts, speeches at the Shelter Park bandstand, bake sales, Community Civil Readiness drills.
Pleasantville bullshit, as Spencer might say.
Then came the decline, the beginnings of the struggle against slow, clawing attrition. The interstate went in, and what had once been a main highway became the road less traveled by. Stores closed. Families moved away. Soon, all that remained was yet one more downspiraling, dying town.
Until the vineyard craze hit. Until the area around Fairmont was discovered to be a sweet spot for grapes, as well as several varieties of apples, fruits, and berries. Enterprising developers glommed up the land, and before most of the locals knew what was happening, small privately-owned wineries were popping up everywhere.
Then came the revitalization, the renewal. A fancy downtown went in, packed with bistros and upscale shops and pedestrian strolling areas, and a surge of handcrafted this and artisinal that. Streets were given names like Merlot, Reisling, and Chablis—Rose-like-the-flower becomes Rosé-like-the-wine as it nears the nicer neighborhoods.
Today, tourists come and go. Some make annual events of it, particularly for anniversaries. Weddings are also big. There’s a couple of time-share resorts, a gated RV community, a posh conference center for corporate retreats. No casino, of course, because that would be gauche.
It isn’t exactly high on anybody’s list of kid-friendly destinations, though. The businesses like it that way, not having to cater to noisy, grubby, demanding, picky little brats. None of the good restaurants have juvenile crap like chicken nuggets or hot dogs on the menu. A few don’t even allow anybody under the age of thirteen. The nearest McP
layPlace is over in Winston City, the only day care is run by a creepy old lady and her creepier live-at-home nephew, and the toy stores are more aimed at well-to-do grandparents who’ll spend way too much on gifts nobody wants.
But, most of all, the kid thing? That’s important. That’s the author pulling a deft bit of plot-prestidigitation on you, providing a plausible reason why there aren’t a whole lot of children in town.
Because, see, this story’s going to get all nasty with sex stuff, dubious issues of informed consent, nocturnal dream-demons and the like—it’s a succubus book, here, people, what do you expect? And having a lot of younger characters around would just make everything a little too icky and weird. We have some standards, thank you very much!
***
So, about that dogfucker.
He was mentioned earlier, if only in passing. His name is Lewis, but he’s known as Coach. He’s been known as Coach since about the mid-1990s, and still is known as Coach, though he and Fairmont High parted ways some five years ago.
One too many instances of DUI they couldn’t overlook, the school board says.
That dye-job biddy of a new lady principal having it in for him, Coach says.
Like Spencer, Coach is a Bodean, which may need further explanation.
Bodeans are your basic human barn cats: some friendly, some feral, none fully tamed.
Coach is—or was—one of the more semi-respectable members of the sprawling and probably-too-inbred clan. Under his guidance, the boys’ basketball and girls’ track teams in particular had several championship years. He saved up enough on a regular salary to buy himself a tidy rambler by the school instead of continuing to enjoy the more traditional shack-and-shantytown lifestyle of most of his kin.
He’s still popular with the older teens and immature adults in town, because he’ll buy them beer if they put up the cash. Beer, mind you. None of that whiny-winy shit for Coach Lewis Bodean. None of those microbrewsnob bottles, either. Real, proper, mass-produced American beer in real, proper, mass-produced aluminum cans. Many underage drinkers have earned their first head-pounding hangovers at Coach’s place.
The downside to the arrangement, if it counts as a downside, is that hanging out at Coach’s means listening to Coach dispense his sage advice and wise wisdom unto the brows and bosoms of the next generation. He may no longer be a member of the faculty, but as he sees it, he’s still a teacher at heart.
In other words, they sit around and drink and listen to him lecture-gripe about women.
Coach has never been married. He has no kids of his own and damn well doesn’t want them. He’s seen more than enough train wrecks already, within his own extended tangle of relations, or passing through the hallowed halls of Fairmont High. Hell, you couldn’t even turn on the television these days without witnessing nine miles of conniving bitchery.
And yet, hasn’t it always been that way?
What a man has to go through to get laid…a million gauntlets to run and hoops to jump…and if she likes it too much, she’ll turn clingy, start wanting commitments, go psycho if he tries to break things off…but if she regrets it later, she’ll cry rape; even if he’s found not guilty, forget it, there’s a life as good as over. If she’d been boozed up, she’s free-and-clear not accountable…but if he’d been, guess who’s entirely to blame?
No one believes a man’s story. It’s always, always, his full-and-sole fault. Women had, in their scheming over thousands and thousands of years, seen to that, all right.
Likewise, the rubbers; for each who wouldn’t go near a boner unless it was sealed in six layers of shrink-wrap—and never mind showering in a raincoat, diminishing a man’s pleasure; never mind his opinion on the matter—there’d be another who might pin-jab it first or fish the used out of the trash, and bam, marriage-trap or a lifetime of child support.
Wasn’t worth it, wasn’t none of it worth it. Not in Coach Lewis Bodean’s opinion.
Hence, the dogfucking.
Hence, his Roxie, his good ol’ girl.
She’s a big bloodhound-mix mutt, a clumsy-looking collection of long gangly legs, droopy jowls, floppy ears, and lolling slobbery tongue. Breath like the bottom of a dumpster in high summertime and paint-peeling farts.
A bitch, yes. A literal bitch to be sure. And she does have her wiles—the soulful eyes routine when he’s having his dinner, by way of example. But the one bitch, the one female of any species, he can trust.
His Roxie, he knows, would never trick or betray him. All he had to do was keep her in kibble, give her a roof over her head and a yard to shit in. She’d never cry rape. She’d never make him wear a rubber, she was fixed anyway, and it sure wasn’t as if he’d knock her up.
This, of course, is Coach’s reasoning. As such reasoning goes, it isn’t entirely un-sound.
We could look in on him late some night, after the beers had been drunk and the kids gone off to do whatever they did when they weren’t receiving his sermons.
We could look in on him as he pats his mattress to beckon his good girl up onto the bed, as he slathers up his cock with Vaseline from the jumbo-size jar he keeps in the nightstand drawer, as he maneuvers her hind paws astraddle his hips and eases her haunches down so his grease-slicked cockhead pushes into the hot and fuming mess of her dogcunt.
We could watch as he fucks her in short, hard, fast thrusts…as she whines a little, confused like she always is, and stringers of drool splat on Coach’s belly and chest…as his fists clench at coarse coat and loose skin…as he grunts and strains and spurts into her…as he collapses, spent, and tells her to go on and get down…as his limp cock slip-plops out of her like a stillborn puppy trailing a placenta of Vaseline and cum.
Yes, we could do that, we could look in on him and watch.
But it’d be sick, gratuitous, and wrong.
Chapter Four: Location
A few days and several barrages of text messages back and forth later, Jake figured they were as ready as they were ever going to be.
He also figured, probably rightly, that if they waited too long or thought about it sober too much, it’d never happen. Someone would get cold feet and back out. Or Beth’s sarcasm would turn to scorn and shame them to their senses. Or any of a number of possibilities.
Not that he really expected it to work…but what a kick in the head it’d be if it did! How cool would it be if they actually pulled it off?
Even if they didn’t, it’d still be pretty damn awesome just to try. Better than another night of the same old sitting around playing video games. Something new. Something different. Exciting. An adventure.
When he told them where he wanted to make the attempt, he got some push-back and reluctance. But he wore them down, won them over. It wasn’t as if they had many other options, and it was better to not get anybody else involved, anyway.
If it did work…
Which it won’t, he could almost hear Beth saying in his head.
But if it did…
And hey, wasn’t there a chance that it might?
More of a chance even than the rest of his friends knew, because he hadn’t yet told them his personal special secret. He didn’t want to say anything ahead of time, didn’t want to have them give him a bunch of shit if nothing actually did happen—which, okay, it probably wouldn’t—but on that off-chance, that slim and crazy off-chance…
So, after another round of texts to make sure they all knew the plan and would be there at the agreed-upon time, Jake gathered the printouts and his share of the ritual’s supplies, and headed down the street to Shelter Park to start setting things up.
The name didn’t, contrary to popular belief, come from the fact that a handful of homeless used it for an occasional campground. Jake’s grandfather, a local history buff, had told him how that was where, once upon a time, everybody in town was supposed to go when the bombs flew. In a calm, cooperative, orderly fashion. There to wait out the nuclear firestorms, trust in their government, and be ready to emerge to reclaim a
nd rebuild this most greatest of nations.
Or something like that. As if. Maybe once, maybe back then in the golden oldie days, but this was today’s world. At the first sign of civilization collapse, it’d be road warriors, rape-gangs, and cannibalism in no time.
Most of the Fairmont wine-snob elite didn’t even know about the old Community Civil Readiness program, let alone about the warren of bunkers, dormitories, tunnels, and storerooms honeycombing beneath the little half-ignored park.
Hell, most of the ordinary locals didn’t know, either. Or didn’t care anymore. Grade school kids heard about it as where high schoolers would to go to smoke and drink and make out; high schoolers forgot about it as soon as they found other places to go to smoke and drink and make out; junior high kids dared each other to venture down there as tests of bravery or rites of passage.
And there were the homeless. Not many, but a few. Drunks and crackheads and low-key crazies. As long as they didn’t stray over to try panhandling in the tourist part of town so much that the rich people complained, the cops only made half-hearted efforts to move them along.
Two or three had their claims staked between the rear curve of the low amphitheater bleachers and the hedge—sleeping bags, shopping carts, an ancient army-green pup tent—but the bandstand steps and stage were deserted. So was the graffiti-covered cinderblock building that had once housed restrooms and a utility shed.
The shed’s heavy double doors looked like they would screech and squeal rusty murder on their hinges, and slam shut with a huge echoing clatterbang that’d rip through the quiet darkness like a fart at a funeral. A stout bolt and looped length of padlocked chain secured their handles. As a finishing touch, some smartass had scrawled DONT DEAD OPEN INSIDE across them in black paint.
Jake just went around to the wedged-ajar door to the men’s room, and into a chilly cave of chipped tiles, stained plaster, and windblown dry leaves. Though the fixtures had long since been removed, leaving capped pipes jutting from the floor where the stalls used to be, the facilities were still far from disused. His nose wrinkled at the ammoniac tang of pee both ancient and not-so, but it was a reflex and he barely noticed.
Spermjackers From Hell Page 3