by John Everson
They tried to ignore it, but the precipice grew farther away with every ring.
Finally Christina pushed against his chest with her palms.
“Answer it or they won’t give up.”
He grudgingly agreed and rolled off of her.
“Hello?”
“Jack. You can’t even lie alone for one night? I’m hurt.”
It sounded like Angela’s voice.
“Who the hell is this?” he yelled.
“Forgotten me so soon, Jack? After all those years of marriage? I found Eddie, Jack. He still remembers you. He says he wouldn’t mind handling Christina for you if you’ll come back to me. Will you, Jack?”
He slammed the receiver down.
“Who was it, Jack?” Christina cooed.
“Someone pretending to be Angela,” he snarled. “Pretty mean joke.”
“How many people even know she’s dead?” she asked, stroking the back of his head.
“I don’t know.”
They slept the rest of the night. Or tried to.
The wake was a long and tiresome affair. Chirsten’s Funeral Home filled with an amazing assortment of humanity, from the hairy, odd-smelling space cadets of Angela’s recent acquaintance to the mannikin-sharp models of her older relatives.
Jack smiled diligently at the kind words and kisses of the assemblage, but in his heart, he was feeling relief – the recent memories of the silent hell his home had been were still too fresh in his mind to allow the fireplace-cozy visions of his life before Eddie’s death to push their way forward. He cried, but he did not feel devastated. He felt freed.
He said as much to Christina later that night, as she kissed his eyelids and began sliding lips down his cheek and neck, her tongue leaving snail’s trails of wetness behind.
“I always wished she’d just disappear,” Christina admitted, looking up from her ministrations at his sternum. “But I never wanted it to be like this.”
For a fleeting moment, Jack saw the mixture of joy and regret in his mistress’ face and wondered if this woman was responsible for Angela’s death. Had this sweet-faced fountain of love turned vinegar for an hour and shoved his wife to her death, guaranteeing that at last, Jack could satisfy her needs?
He shrugged the thought away, giving in to the sweet temptation she administered. She probed and massaged and sucked him to full excitement, then rose and impaled herself upon him, allowing him only the sight of her rounded rear bobbing at his waist. And the phone rang.
She froze in mid-squat, while Jack’s heart suddenly beat in double time. He shriveled instantly.
“Why???” Christina screamed, and snatched at the phone. It toppled off the nightstand, the receiver bouncing to rest on the carpet. Christina bent over the edge of the mattress to recover it, only to stop as she heard Angela’s voice.
“Don’t touch it, whore,” Angela’s normally sweet alto growled. Jack’s face was pinched and white. They could both hear the voice as clearly as if she were in the room with them.
“Eddie and I are waiting for you, Jack,” Angela continued, her tone again sweet and complacent. “We miss you. All of that stuff I haven’t done for you these past months – I will now. But first we need to get your little tramp out of your way. It was purity that was needed, Jack. Remember how I said? No sex, no distractions. Pure thoughts of mind and spirit and you can join me. Christina, pick up the phone. Dear.”
Christina’s eyes looked ready to pop from her head. Her hand remained halfway between the bed and the floor.
“I said, Pick up the phone, slut!”
Christina grabbed for the mouthpiece and moved to slam it down on the receiver. But as she stepped on the carpet, the taut phone cord seemed to twitch at her foot, wrenching her off balance. Christina fell to the floor as the tight loops of the phone cord snaked around her neck.
Christina screamed and jumped to her feet, the ringer of the phone box banging on the floor as she stumbled to run from the room. Jack, still stunned at hearing the voice from the grave, was slow to react, not realizing the animation his phone cord suddenly possessed. Christina made it as far as the stairwell before the line went taut and jerked her neck backwards. For a brief second, her frightened eyes met Jack’s as he belatedly barreled out of the bedroom after her, and then she twisted over the railing. He heard the snap as her neck broke, but threw himself down the stairs anyway, hoping against the odds that somehow, Christina could be saved.
She could not be.
He found himself again at the naked feet of a woman he loved, as she slowly spun like a silent, ghastly pinata. Poke her hard enough and her entrails will rain to the foyer, a voice in his head taunted.
Jack screamed in impotent rage. Not pausing to dress properly, he pulled on a pair of pants, slid bare feet into his shoes and went to his car. He no longer functioned rationally, his sole thought was to put an end to what Angela was doing to him. And there was only one way he could think of to do that: kill her. That she was already dead didn’t register.
Chirsten’s was cloaked in darkness as Jack used a crowbar from the trunk to force the lock on a window. He tried to muffle the sound of the window as it protested the upward force he exerted, but it still let go a loud “eeeeerrrrraahh” as it crept up in its frame. Holding fast to the iron rod, Jack flipped his feet over the window jam and pressed close to the wall once inside. He was in one of the many waiting areas strewn throughout the funeral parlor for the bereavers. After waiting long minutes listening for the telltale sound of investigative steps, he disconnected his body from the wall, and crept forward. Angela’s body should still be in the waking room in anticipation of tomorrow’s funeral, Jack thought, as he tiptoed past a number of closed doors. At last he came to the sign reading ANGELA TRENTON – white letters against a field of black. Even in the murky twilight of the hall he could make out her name. It angered him further just to see it, and he abruptly grabbed the doorknob to open the door. It didn’t budge.
His anger only grew at the realization that, while she was apparently capable of striking out at him from behind the doors of this locked room, he couldn’t get within 10 feet of her. He wrenched and twisted the handle, trying to force the lock, but to no avail. At last, knowing that only a scrap of steel separated him from his troublesome dead wife, he wedged the crowbar in the crack of the door and pushed. It gave a little, and he tried again, harder. Something began to splinter, but he ignored the noise. Giving it a third shot, he threw all of his weight into it, and with a sharp crack, the hollow wood around the lock gave.
Angela lay displayed in an icy glare of moonlight which stole in through a crack in the venetian blinds. Jack marched up the center aisle of the room. His eyes glinted with mad purpose as he came to a halt before her casket. She looked good in the purple turtleneck dress he’d given her last Christmas, he noted absently, though he’d seen her in it all day. Her eyes were shut primly, her mouth a vacant closed line of blush. Raising the crowbar, he smashed those innocent features, releasing a puff of makeup and a stream of liquid onto the satin pillows of the casket.
“How could you?” was his only articulate cry as he raised the dripping bar again and again before resorting to more personal attacks.
The flashlight caught him in macabre silhouette, hands squeezing and shaking the flopping neck of a corpse.
Officer Starley spent the rest of the night in Jack’s house, picking the place apart. It was with a grim but victorious smile that he faced the disheveled prisoner the following morning.
“Quite a little death circus you’ve been running, eh?” Starley snarled, pacing the length of the table at which Jack sat cuffed. “Killing the wife wasn’t enough, huh – got a thing for phones Jack? A little sex, a little strangulation? And we found another interesting piece of evidence up there at the sex n’ death cottage, Jack. Maybe we’ll be reopening investigation on the sudden demise of your brother-in-law.”
Jack’s eyes at last flashed with a vestige of intelligence at the mention
of Eddie.
“Didn’t think we’d find out about that little perversion did you?”
Jack frowned in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
Starley pivoted fast, slapped his hands down on the table. “We found Eddie Perfit’s hand under the mattress of your bed, creep! Did you use it in place of your own on Christina and Angela when you couldn’t get it up? Or did you just like knowing ol’ bro Eddie was close at hand?”
Jack’s eyes bugged. He began to stutter. “Angela… must have dug up… she wanted to be with him…”
“Save it for the jury,” Starley cut in and then stalked from the room.
The trial went quickly – Jack refused to speak on his own behalf and the evidence seemed overwhelming. He was sentenced to life, and many reporters noted the vacant stare in his eyes as they led him from the courtroom after a 20-minute verdict delivery. They put him in solitary, and assigned him a shrink. But he had retreated fully. They stuck him with needles and prodded him with batons, but he didn’t speak. The shrink gently cajoled him with soft words and easy questions, but to no avail. During his second week in solitary, he was led to his daily appointment with the shrink. The guard patted his ass with the baton and whispered a crude proposition in Jack’s ear, but he didn’t break stride. Failing to get the rise he’d intended from the prisoner, the guard pushed him into a chair, shrugged at the doctor, and left.
At that moment, the phone ran. The prison psychiatrist noted with interest that Jack’s normally blank expression had been quickly replaced by one of alarm at the sound of the phone. The shrink answered the ring, and a smile wrinkled the corner of his lips. He offered Jack the earpiece over the desk.
“It’s for you,” the shrink said, closely gauging his patient’s response. Jack shakily held the receiver to his ear.
“Hi honey, it’s me, Angela,” a familiar, raspy voice cooed. “I thought this would be a good place for you to get pure so we can bring you over to us. Eddie and I are waiting for you, Jack. Eddie says now he can understand why you were doing Christina. He says she’s pretty good. I think so too. Say hi, honey.”
The voice changed to a younger, more sultry tone. “Jack, it’s me, Christina. We’re waiting for you, baby. We’ll get you out of there soon, huh? Stay near a phone.”
Jack dropped the receiver and cupped his palms over his ears, letting loose a single, tortured, shriek.
“Nooooooooo!”
I’ve always been fascinated with obsessions, maybe in part because my own nature is often to focus on a project, worry or desire to the exclusion of all else. The obsessive mind, depending on its direction, can as easily produce an Einstein as a Dahmer. Intellectual obsession can lead to brilliance or insanity. Erotic obsession can lead to ecstasy, but in the unending pursuit of pleasure, sooner or later, the limitations of the flesh must come into play. How do you thrust beyond this cage of bones?
Cage of Bones
t was beautiful. A painstaking work of genius. And after weeks of preparation, hours upon hours of slow polishing, careful craftsmanship, it was finished. A full body restraint table. Made out of steel. Wood. Leather
And bones.
“Art for the whole family,” Dan snickered.
“Think it’ll hold?” Melissa asked, arching a hairless eyebrow at him. She had shaved, plucked, and depilated every lustrous shaft of black hair on her body last month as her birthday present to him. Their conjugal love fluids had subsequently made contact with most of the surfaces in the house during the following days.
“Think? I know it will. Look.”
He turned the giant skeletal wheel next to the cage. It twisted a chain wound beneath the black wooden frame and the cage began to elevate from horizontal table to upright. It reached its peak position and stopped with a shudder, bones rattling against bones with the clinking sound of muted wind chimes. Dan reached for an arm restraint. Two humerus bones jutted in stark relief from the black wood. A third rested between the two held firmly in place at its joint ends by steel pins. The ends of the pins were kept from slipping out by a short length of silver chain and clip hooks. Dan grabbed the middle restraining bone and yanked. The table jostled slightly on its axis, but the bone did not break, the pins did not slip, the bolts holding the humerus bases to the wood did not give way.
“No baby, when you clamp me in this thing, I’m yours.”
Melissa glided slowly across the room to stand in front of the cage. Her eyes came alight with erotic designs. She reached out a thin white arm to touch the ribs of the cage. It was like the skeleton of some mythic beast: two skulls propped beyond the lip of the wood for the living head to rest upon. Another three-bone restraint jutted just below these to clamp the captive’s head to the table beneath the jaw. On the outer right and left ends of the wooden base were two sets of bone arm clamps: one for the elbow and one for the wrist. Down the center of the wood ran a series of ribs. These were attached to the table on one side with steel pins that worked like hinges. The other ends were fastened to hooks on the table with leather belts to allow adjustment for the restrainee’s girth. There were two three-bone restraints for each leg, and a skull at the foot of each. The skull could be moved up and down a small groove in the wood, to assure that the restrainee's feet rested on them. Melissa rubbed her palm on the brain pan of one of the foot skulls. Her other hand snuck under her loose white cotton t-shirt. Dan could see the nipple she was not already massaging begging for attention through the thin material.
“Now?” he asked, as a glazed look stole over her face and her bottom lip hung heavy, pouty.
“Get me my fur,” she breathed, never taking her hands from skull or breast. Her fingers had slipped inside the eye sockets while her thumb slid repeatedly across the top of the yellow-mottled cranium. Dan left the basement almost running.
When he returned, Melissa was naked. Her clothes lay forgotten in the middle of the green-tiled floor. She was rubbing her crotch against one of the skulls and talking softly.
“…always wanted to get between my legs, didn’t you? Ahh, Mr. Bernie, yes. You always wanted my snatch in your teeth, didn’t you?”
She turned then, and held out her arms to him.
He set his pile of furs on the floor beside her, and began fastening them. Squirrels which he’d killed for her with a slingshot in the back yard laced across her arms. The raccoon they’d seen in the forest preserve while picnicking he stretched over her tiny belly, laced it up across her back. The bullet holes in its head hardly showed at all. The rabbit skins fastened around her thighs, one of them covering the body of the blue and green snake tattoo that wound up and around her left thigh. The snake’s neck and head crossed her pelvic skin, its eyes stared centimeters from the bare cleft between her legs. Its thin pink tongue disappeared into her own private salmon folds.
Dan considered joining his own tongue with the snake’s, but knew he’d never be able to stop. He wanted to do this right for her. Picking up the last of his carcass coverings, he fastened wreaths of sparrow feathers around her calves. Then he stood, staring into her shiny black eyes as he hastily unbuttoned his shirt and pants, letting them fall to the floor. The ritual inflamed them both.
“Are you animal enough for me, now?” he asked.
Her bald white head peered down at her body. Only her breasts and vulva remained fully exposed from the covering of furs.
“No. Still I feel exposed. Offer me more,” she said in a familiar response.
Dan walked across the room to an aquarium on the floor and removed the lid. When he returned, a small gray mouse clawed the air beneath his hand. She accepted the tail from him, and smiled in anticipation. Her breathing grew louder as Dan held his palms to either side of his body as though in benediction. Then he brought them around with a slap, crushing the struggling rodent. He unclenched his hands then, streaked with the gore of the exploded mouse. Tenderly savage, he streaked her cheeks, her scalp, her breasts with blood. Then he took the dead creature from her hand and again
walked across the room. This time when he returned, the mouse had a silver ring through its hind end. He clipped it to the matching ring on Melissa’s left nipple. The weight of the mouse pulled the breast lower. Melissa licked her lower lip and groaned.
At last, it was time. Dan backed against their newest toy, feeling the cold uneven surfaces of bones against his back, his buttocks. He stepped up on the foot skulls, and placed his arms in position. Melissa, blood shining brightly on her baby smooth ceramic skin, moved to lock his arms into place.
She undid one chain, then the other, letting both of the pinning bones dangle from the goalpost bones they fastened across. With the silky touch of a gentle lover she lifted and set his arm in place. Then she pushed the middle bones into place, clicked the pins through the holes drilled in the middle of them, and locked the chains. She repeated the process with his other arm and his legs. Dan could feel his muscles stretching as she pushed each restraint to its tightest position. She locked down an altered pubis over his cock, which grew stiff as the dead bones. It felt as though his balls were being crushed as she levered it down on him, but his cock stood tall and proud through the hole in the bone. At last, she levered the clavicle across his neck and battened his head down. As she completed chaining the last pin, Dan blew at her bloodied head to get her attention. She looked up and smiled.
“Happy birthday, babe,” he said.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I think it’s going to be.”
She stepped back to observe her handiwork. Dan was deliciously naked, almost as hairless as she was herself. He’d refused to shave his head, but had gone along with the rest of the Nair treatment. His legs gleamed a mahogany brown beneath the white of the bones which bound them to the table. He liked the sun, she liked the moon. He was tan and muscular, she was wan, elfin. They really were night and day to each other, she thought. But when they came together…