“Better let her cool down,” Jake said. “If you went after her right now, she’d rip your balls off and bounce them down the street.”
Devon slumped in his seat, mumbling how it wasn’t fair, he didn’t mean to, he didn’t know, he didn’t even do anything anyway…Spencer told him hey cheer up at least it was a girl; here the rest of them had been wondering if he was a fagola or something; which was fine if he was but he could’ve said…Marty just went, “Beth?” again, as if that was going to help.
“Okay, guys, c’mon, listen,” Jake said. “I think we’re agreed on this much: they were dreams, right? We’ve all been having these weird—intense and hot, but, weird—dreams. Right?”
“Speak for yourself—ahhh, fuck, fine, fine, dreams, sure. But I’m tellin’ ya, that fuckin’ hick with his crossbow, he’s a get-laid goldmine for the likes of me. I should get a motorcycle; I’d be chin-deep in va-jay-jay.”
“Dude!”
“And it still doesn’t prove jack shit about demons. Only proves what Beth said, we’re a bunch of pervo jacker horndogs.”
“This whole thing was your idea in the first place,” Marty told him.
“Don’t get me wrong, I still think it’d be fuckin’ awesome, wish it was true we had us a real succubus sluttin’ around. If it’s dreams, though, where’s the evidence?”
“What do you mean, evidence?” asked Devon.
“The fuck you think I mean? Tissues, sheets, the ol’ crusty fucksock.” He tossed his head swagger-like and did the this-guy thumbs. “I dunno for the rest of you, but the way I been feelin’ lately? It’s goin’ somewhere.”
Marty looked at Jake. Jake looked at Marty. Devon looked away, suddenly captivated or deeply concerned with something in the corner.
“That’s…not a bad point, actually,” Jake finally said. “I swear, I have not had any girls over, let alone what’s-her-name, and...”
“And we all know I haven’t,” said Marty, not without bitterness. “So then...”
“Maybe we really should watch the video,” Jake said. “Just to make sure.”
They watched the video.
They made sure.
“Oh, shit,” somebody whispered.
Everything Jake had been trying really hard not to think about, to not remember…everything he’d been repressing and forcing violently from his mind…
It had been easy, so easy, to give in and go along, to let himself accept the illusion believe the seductive lies immerse and ignore…ignore the truth, ignore the reality…
Go with it like a drug, a buzz, a rush…ride the wave…hypnotic and hallucinogenic…the sensation and pleasure and ecstasy…
“What is it?” Devon sounded queasy.
“Not a sexy demon chick,” said Marty.
“But it is what we summoned,” Jake said. “The ritual worked. It really did.”
They watched the video again. And again. Full screen. Pausing it. Frame-by-frame. Until there could be no doubt of what they were seeing, no debunking, however much they might have wanted to.
The way it moved…the way it squished and squelched…its gelatinous, sea-slug, quivering aliveness…the bioluminescent pulsating blue-green glow and the memory of how it had smelled, how it had felt…
“That’s what we been stickin’ our dicks in,” Spencer said.
And if it had been chaos before, what followed was screaming balls-to-the-wall pandemonium.
Chapter Fifteen: Discussion
Beer and weed was probably a bad idea. But, as Spencer said, after that? They fuckin’ needed it!
If not something even stronger.
Hard drugs and brain bleach came to mind.
With those not available, beer and weed would have to do.
Supplemented, in Marty’s case at least, with some snackage. Salt, grease, sugar.
They’d each compared more extensive notes. Humiliating as it was to have to admit the details about his salacious encounters with Llylth and her host of succubus handmaidens—particularly the part how, for most of it, Marty wasn’t himself-as-himself but his Hellslayer avatar; how lame could you get, not only fantasizing about being with someone else but about being someone else—he took some small solace in the fact that each of the others’ stories were just as bad. If not worse.
Devon’s Beth-thing, for instance.
Or Spencer, dreaming up his backwoods orgies.
He took considerably greater solace knowing at least Jake hadn’t really been doing it with Cynthia-Lynne Abbott. She did deserve better than Troy-fucking-Cahill, yeah…but all the same…
“So,” said Spence, releasing a long cloud of smoke. “The fuck do we do?”
“You agree it’s a succubus?” Jake asked.
“I agree it’s some-fuckin’-weirdass-critter, though you oughta sue the shit outta whoever wrote those spells. Talk about false-fuckin’-advertising.”
“Well, we have to find it, don’t we?” Devon said. “Find it and…banish it.”
Jake popped another beer. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Well I mean, you can’t be thinking to…uh…keep it around.”
“The ritual worked. We summoned it. That’s pretty damn amazing, don’t you think?”
“And we did say we wanted our own demon love-slave,” added Spencer.
“A hot sexy naked devil-chick,” Marty said. “Not a…jello-glob slug monster.”
“Hey, you got hot sexy naked devil-chicks. Dunno what the fuck you’re gripin’ about.”
“Look,” said Jake, “they’re supposed to be shape-shifters, right? Psychic. They read your mind and take on whatever form you most desire—”
“Call fuckin’ shenanigans on that,” Spence muttered.
“Dude, bright side…you could’ve got Beth, like Dev did.”
Devon went bright red. “I didn’t—”
“—do anything,” they all finished for him.
“Shouldn’t trash-talk Beth, anyway,” Jake said. “She’s our friend.”
“Is it better I imagine she’s shoving her boobs at me?”
“Hey!” squeaked Devon.
“How were they?” Spencer asked, then caught Jake’s glare as Devon went from bright red to purple. “What? Pardon the fuck outta me for bein’ curious.”
“Can we focus, here, huh, guys? Spence is right, we do need to figure out what we’re going to do about this. Whether we banish her or not—”
“Her?” echoed Marty.
“You prefer ‘it’?”
“Good point.”
“So, whether we banish her or not, we did summon her. That makes it our responsibility—”
“If we summoned her and she’s our demon love-slave and all,” Spencer said, “then where the fuck’s she at? Shouldn’t she be here? Or do we gotta be asleep, or what?”
“Yeah, how does it work? What are the rules?” Marty grimaced a little. “How do we decide, you know, whose turn it is?”
“What?” cried Devon. “You can’t really be thinking about keeping her!”
“Wouldn’t be sayin’ that if you’d gone through with it instead of pussied out,” said Spencer. “Okay, so we stuck our dicks in a blob-monster, but holy-fuckin’-shit...”
“Was it really that good?”
Marty nodded emphatically despite himself, and saw Jake doing the same. As horrible as it was, as horrible as he knew it was, as sick and wrong and gross and awful…that warm oozing jellyfish flesh touching him…sliming wetly over his skin…sure, in his mind it had been Llylth, her full lips hot mouth supple tongue deep throat…
Jeez, he didn’t know how it was possible, drained and achy as he felt, but there he went with the start of another awkward boner. How was he ever going to make it back to work at this rate? Not like he could jump into the employee bathroom at the Shop-N-Go every ten minutes!
“Whether we keep her or what,” Jake said, “we can worry about that later. First, we need to figure out how to control her—”
“Uh…you guys…I just t
hought of something.” Devon either missed the look Jake gave him for interrupting, or didn’t care. “You know how all this time we’ve been figuring Brendan was avoiding us, upset because nobody fell for his prank?”
Spencer scoffed like he was about to say something sarcastic, then choked on it. Marty froze with a handful of chips halfway raised. Jake’s scowl did a sort of slow-motion dissolve into a gape of dawning comprehension.
They turned, as one, toward the screen. The video had ended on a blurred and askew image of grass, shadows, looming figures and haggard faces—the Shelter Park bums who’d come over to see what the commotion was, when the five of them made their crazy stampede exodus from Vault 420.
The five of them, because Brendan hadn’t been with the group.
And they hadn’t heard from him, he hadn’t shown up or texted or anything, since.
Good riddance, hadn’t that pretty much been the consensus? Guy’s a douche, that stunt wasn’t funny, fuck him the fuckin’ fuckstick. Good-goddamn-riddance.
Except…
“Fuck,” said Spencer, summing it succinctly.
Jake, meanwhile, grabbed his phone. There was no immediate reply, which, okay, well, it was the middle of the night, but all the same…
“If he’s, um, missing, wouldn’t someone have said?” asked Devon. “I know he doesn’t have a job, but, what about his parents? He lives at home, right?”
“Sort of,” Marty said. “Apartment over the garage, supposed to be for a housekeeper, but they gave it to him as a graduation present. Rent-free until he’s twenty-five, the lucky bastard.”
“So, they might not even know if he’s gone?”
“Might not even notice. The way he talks, it sounds like his mom and dad are all work-work-work.”
“He wasn’t there when I went back down for the candlesticks and stuff,” Jake said.
“But neither was Cumslut,” said Spence. Seeing their reactions, he shrugged. “What? Why not fuckin’ name her?”
“Cumslut?” Marty shook his head. “Dude.”
“Not classy enough for ya?” He leaned back, puffed, and pondered. “How about Jizzabel?”
“Dude.”
“Fellatrix,” Jake suggested, grinning.
Devon put his hands over his eyes. “This is insane. Shouldn’t we be—”
“Yeah.” Jake stopped grinning, put on a sober expression, and struck a purposeful pose. “Yeah, we need to take care of this. It’s our responsibility. Brendan may be a douche, but he is our friend, and since he wasn’t pulling a prank on us, we owe it to him to find out what the hell happened. Save his butt, if it needs saving. Are you with me?”
As those big inspirational/motivational leader-speeches went, Marty had heard better in video game cut scenes. He got up anyway, brushing chip-crumbs from his chin and shirt, and crammed his last few snack-cakes and a can of generic soda into his jacket pockets.
Spencer and Devon followed similar suit, though, like Jake’s speech, it was one of the weakest equipping montages Marty could recall. Tying shoes and grabbing phones was hardly buckling on armor, gear, and weapons.
Then again, they weren’t going into battle, for crying out loud. No gangstas, no zombies, no mutated dire-rats or war-wolves. A few skeevy hobos at the park was about the worst of it.
“I see that fuckwad Tater again, he better keep his fuckin’ crazy-ass yap shut,” Spencer said. “Sayin’ that shit about my ma...”
True shit, Marty knew, but you had to commend the Bodeans for familial loyalty. Marty’s own parents had moved to one of those 55+ high desert condo communities; they made dutiful noises about visiting, but there was always a bridge tournament or casino field trip weekend or last minute doctor’s appointment. They sent him the occasional card, usually with a check for fifty bucks and a note about how proud they were of him being so independent.
Subtle.
Still, an improvement on Jake’s mother, who’d ‘taken a break’ to pursue her singing career when he was nine and never got around to coming back. His dad was a decent enough dude, for an absent-minded inventor type who forgot little things like, oh, say, eating or paying the electric bill. Fortunately for them both, there’d been Jake’s grandparents in the picture.
Equipping montage over, they headed out, making the habitual effort to be quiet on the walkway and stairs. Though if the neighbor who’d complained about the noisy sex parties hadn’t heard the earlier shouting, they were probably in the clear.
Not that ‘probably in the clear’ stopped Marty and Jake from sneaking surreptitious peeks at the windows. Dark, not a sound, not a sign of activity.
Same could be said for the street, and indeed most of Fairmont, this late. Over in the fancy wine-snob part of town, some of the bars would still be open, and the hotel lounges, and ballrooms-slash-banquet-halls where any wedding receptions were going on.
Cynthia-Lynne Abbott would be over there somewhere. Marty hadn’t been able to bring himself to message her, but now that he knew she wasn’t seeing Jake…though what if she’d gone back to Troy again? She’d said she wouldn’t, she’d said their break-up was for keeps this time, but she’d said that before. A lot. Almost as often as she’d said how hard it was to meet decent guys who weren’t total assholes.
“Retards in a horror movie, Take 2,” Spencer said as they neared the ominous black silence of Shelter Park. “Action.”
“Ha, ha,” said Devon.
There weren’t even any bumfires burning in the homeless camp behind the low half-ring of bleachers. Tents and shacks sagged in the gloom, looking more derelict than ever. Derelict and depressing.
“Bet they’re downtown, spare-changing,” Jake said when Marty mentioned it, only half paying attention because of something over on the far side of the playground. “Hey…guys…that’s not Brendan’s car, is it? Under those trees?”
It was, parked where he’d left it the night of the ritual. Judging by the layer of leaves on its roof and hood, and the ticket tucked under a windshield wiper, it had been there ever since.
“Was it there when you came back?” Devon asked.
“I didn’t notice. But…shit…shit, this isn’t good.”
“He must still be down there,” Marty said. “What if he’s hurt, or—”
“Don’t fuckin’ say it.”
“C’mon.” Jake strode toward the restrooms.
Marty hesitated. “I dunno, dude.”
“We ran. We abandoned him.”
“We thought he was yankin’ our cranks!”
“Now we know better.”
Dev took a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah.”
“Fuck,” Spence said. “Fine, let’s go, let’s do this shit.”
Interlude: Vignettes #5
Unsurprisingly, the guys are about to go and get themselves into a bunch more trouble. Not like we couldn’t see it coming; not like we didn’t see it coming back in the prologue at the very start of the book.
It’s about to get worse for them, but, let’s throw in some more nasty gratuitous dogfucking and creepy-rapey first!
***
It’s late, but the lateness of the hour doesn’t make much difference to Lewis Bodean. Weekend, and not like he has a job to go to anyway. He managed to save up a tidy sum during his stint at Fairmont High, knows better than to lend money to his shiftless kin, and the only bitch he’s got to support—besides his taxes going to welfare cases squeezing out one brat after another—is his good ol’ Roxie.
He’s settled comfortably in front of the TV, watching one of those movies with a title like Spring Break Bikini Bimbo Beach Slaughter Bloodbath. Even skimpier on plot than it is on costuming, and that suits Coach just fine. Sun, sand, surf, tits, ass, and a couple hundred gallons of corn syrup and food coloring.
Quality entertainment.
Coach cracks a fresh beer and pauses to lift it in a silent another-man-down tribute to a buddy of his who’d just announced his engagement earlier that day.
“Poor dumbf
uck bastard.”
True to form, the gal in question was closing in on the big 3-0, and wanted to lock herself down a meal ticket before time ran out. She’d had her fun, hopping in and out of beds, and would be happy enough now to dole out a semi-regular sex-ration to keep set for the rest of her life.
Hell, if she wasn’t already knocked up, Coach was sure she’d see to it soon, just to further seal the deal.
During the next round of commercials, not needing to see more ads for barely-there rubbers, flavored vodka (Jesus wept!), or boner pills, Coach goes to zap some leftover chili and cornbread his sister had sent over. While it rotates in the microwave, he glances across to the Vilstreets’ kitchen window, where the light’s on.
And sure enough, talk about men being played for suckers and strung along, there’s Hank Vilstreet at the sink, doing the dishes again. While Carla’s no doubt upstairs in bed, nursing one of her ‘migraines.’
How long, he wonders, until Hank has finally had enough?
You simply couldn’t talk sense to the man. Lord knows Coach has tried.
Why, only yesterday, Carla had gone for one of her shopping trips and oh whoopsie-daisy when she got home she locked her keys in the car for what had to be the fourth time that month. Had to have the locksmith out to jimmy her inner workings with his big long tool…and open the car for her too.
Some deluxe service, all right. And to think, Hank will be getting the bill for that emergency call.
He takes his food back to his chair, right as the movie comes back with the Bikini Bimbos getting ready for the big wet t-shirt contest while the psycho with the dive-knives and speargun creeps closer to the couple skinny-dipping in the turquoise-clear lagoon.
Roxie abandons her gangly-legged sprawl in the other recliner and drapes her big head over his chair’s arm, doing the soulful eyes routine.
“Even you have your wiles, don’t you, girl?” He scratches behind her floppy ears and gives her half the cornbread. “No chili for you, though. My own are bad enough, and if you get going, it’ll gas us out of house and home.”
Her tail thumps his leg as she sloppily hoovers up the crumbs. Then she’s back, pushing her muzzle under his hand. Into his lap. Whining a little, nudging with her nose at his crotch.
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