by John Everson
Her left hand was maimed.
The thumb and pinky fingers were whole, their long, red-capped nails raked his flesh as any woman’s. But the middle three fingers lacked nails – in fact, they seemed to lack flesh as well. It looked as if she’d dipped her hand into a radiation soup. That would explain the hard coldness he had felt the past three nights as she first cupped and cajoled his loins. With cold bony fingers…
But her skill made up for any deformities. Again and again she brought him to orgasm, he groaned and begged her to suck him dry once more. And every time she did. Again the night ended with his losing consciousness in the throes of release. Again he awoke to find her gone, and spent the remaining hours tossing in his bed. And the next two nights were the same.
On Friday, Bob put him on report and turned the web project over to another department. Tony went back to Dr. Regsic.
She tried to keep the alarm from reaching her voice, while noting that his blood pressure had dipped dangerously low and he’d somehow lost another 10 pounds since Tuesday. But when he removed his clothes, her breath hissed with disgust. The purple bruising covering his torso looked like a gridmap. And it all led to a penis the size of a cucumber. Not an overly healthy looking one at that. She handed him the name of “a good doctor” at the hospital scribbled on her business card.
“Go there. Now,” was all she said. It was three in the afternoon, but he went.
Not to the hospital, though, to the hotel.
As he pulled into the parking lot – for the first time in daylight – he saw how truly decrepit the place was. Weeds sprouted everywhere through cracks in the asphalt. A “For Sale” sign was tacked on below the big Redroom Hotel placard above the main office door – which was boarded shut.
Apparently the Gentech Laboratories, whose fence butted up to the back of the hotel property, weren’t bringing in enough business to support a hotel. Or maybe after the outcry a few years ago about GTL’s genetic testing program, they had steered business away. The hotel windows that weren’t covered in graffiti-ed plywood were broken, ragged glass massaged gently by shredding curtains in the low breeze.
Yes, this hotel had been closed for awhile, he supposed. So how had there been lights on in some rooms the other nights? And how long had She been there? This was probably a prostitution pit even when it was open for legitimate business, he guessed, wondering if his goddess had plied her strange trade here even then. Were there others like her in the other rooms? Could the cold blue lights he had seen night after night have been the flares of others undergoing the same consuming pleasures as himself, not the glow of cathode ray tubes? He found that he no longer cared, and strode unerringly towards 112. Closed or not, he knew of one room that had a vacancy.
The room was a lot creepier in the daylight than hidden in the moist shadows of night.
The paint, a dull, putrid green, was peeling away from the walls, especially in the corners where water damage had left brown stains on the cinder block the paint was separating from. The carpet was once charcoal gray, but now was pockmarked with circles of brown and black stains. Portions of it were frayed and pulled up. Spiderwebs crisscrossed the corners, and something scuttled under the unsheeted bed when he stepped towards it. The mattress looked too dirty to sit on, let alone sleep on. Now he knew another reason she said to come after 9. It would be hard to get off knowing that you were likely taking rats, spiders, or any number of vermin along for the ride.
“Hello. Anybody home?” he called into the silence that seemed to hang around him like a breath taken and held.
Something rustled nearby.
“I know I’m early, but I couldn’t wait.”
She came out of the bathroom, her skeleton legs joining neat as knickers with golden-skinned thighs and a blonde tuft of pubic hair. Her belly button was exquisite, a hollow darkness on a flat-planed bed of sensual muscle that promised both pleasure and mystery. Her breasts were as tan and supple as her belly, full, alert and capped by the lightest shade of pink areolae.
He saw now that both her hands were incomplete, but each by only two fingers – which was puzzling because he knew he’d seen three skeletal tips on one last night. But white-boned calves, feet, and fingers were not a turnoff to him now. And she could have hidden these odd deformities if she’d wanted to, he thought.
Her face was the real problem. A lipless mouth showed the white teeth within glittering savagely against a gash of wet crimson. He could see her cheekbone jutting through pink flesh on one side, while the other half of her face seemed nearly complete, and as coppery brown as the rest of her fleshed body. Her eyes were piercing sapphires, but on the visible cheekbone side the eye was lidless, and the white line of her skull seemed to poke through above it. The lightly kinked, wind-blown blonde hair that turned him on so much ringed her face and draped across her shoulders. She held her arms out in offering.
“Is this what you want?” she asked. Her voice was gentle as a girl’s, yet somehow throaty, wanton. But despite the velvet of her tone, without the cushion of lips, her words revealed themselves like daggers plied from carving meat.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “But, what are you?”
She smiled with her eyes. Her ivory teeth ground cruelly.
“I’m your dream lover. Come to me, Tony. They designed me to be filled up by men. And it’s really been too long.”
He started towards her. She moved past him to the bed and laid down. He could see dots of scarlet and curdled cream on the bones that were her legs, and on her feet, tiny red lines that looked like unsheathed capillaries. She wiggled her toes and they clinked together invitingly. She spread her legs and he saw the heaven he’d thirsted for all week long. She was his dream lover. She was the girl from the porno vid. He could see it in the eyes now, in the perfect breasts, in the pinkness that glistened so invitingly. His crotch throbbed painfully while his head ached with fear and longing.
“Cum in me, Tony. Let me suck you down to make me whole.”
His pants were so loose now they slid to the floor with no unbuckling. He realized briefly that however he’d written off his previous indiscretions with this woman, this was, unalterably, adultery. He knew somewhere in his head that Loni would be back Tuesday, and he should put himself back together by then. And he knew he wouldn’t.
Couldn’t.
And he didn’t care.
He straddled her unfinished body and bypassed foreplay. She was visibly ready, and her hands now raked at his back as they had all week on his chest. He felt as though he were being diced and licked at the same time. Her tongue snaked out of her lipless mouth and teased and moistened his eyes, nose and neck.
She bit him hard on the shoulder and then caressed his lips with her tongue. Her eyes sucked him into another world, her vagina was a utopian tunnel. He was making love like he never had before, bucking and pumping like a male hound on a bitch. Then she rolled atop him, the bones of her toes scratching at his calves, sounding like nails on hollow wood as they met the bones beneath his muscle. Yet he didn’t howl; he could feel nothing but her force fed ecstasy. And she drove him on, harder and harder, the trails in his flesh burned and froze in alternate coursings. He could see them glow with power released. And when at last he answered her plea and came, he knew with fatalistic certainty that it would never stop.
She laughed as he came and came and the skin on her cheek grew thick and tan and her lips went from baby pink flesh to full pouting sex teases.
…And he came and felt her legs pressed upon his own growing, the red and white seeds of flesh drawing the essence of him to her, nursing, nourishing their growth.
…And he came and as her shinbones ceased clicking together he heard his own begin to clatter. He felt light, empty, but trapped in some sick, twisted compulsion as his hips smacked against hers of their own accord.
…And he came and she laughed and pressed her arms upon his chest. Her fingers were perfect and whole and she said in that husky girl voice, �
�take me again, stud,” and laughed when he did and she bent to kiss him and his tongue was caught in a vacuum; his cheeks sagged, receded. She lifted his arm in passion and he saw the white bones protruding from the unraveled skin of his fingers.
…And still he came and the night came and the morning too before she pushed his trembling bones away from her flesh.
She stood then, and stretched, a lithe cat of a woman. Running her fingers across supple, muscular skin, she drank in herself inch by inch in a shard of mirror across the room. Her body was whole, tan, California style – no lines. Her lips were shiny pink, an erotic complement to the nipples of her perfectly brown breasts. She flipped a strand of sand-blonde hair away from her face, ice-blue eyes flashing with abating lust, sweat drying on her forehead, lips pursed in humorous consideration. Gazing back at the bed, she saw the eyeballs in Tony’s meatless cranium staring back at her, still with a longing, and, she felt, appreciation of her new form. She’d best finish the job.
She sighed and bent over him, tongue lasciviously ready. When she rose the skull was sightless, the bones no longer vibrated on the floor. A long transparent tube of skin trailed between his femurs. She pulled it off with a rip and swallowed it. “Every last drop,” she murmured and licked her lips.
She pulled on his jeans, cinching the belt to its furthest hole. It left her thighs baggy and ill-defined, but it would do for now. She fastened one button of the short-sleeved blue cotton shirt, and tied the rest across her belly, leaving her midriff and much of her chest exposed.
She pulled at the uncomfortable weight on her behind and came up with his wallet. Thumbing through $20s and $10s, her white canines flashed hungrily.
Good.
She didn’t relish hanging around this dump any longer. As she went to flip the wallet closed, a snapshot of a woman caught her eye. She was raven-haired, dark-eyed, with high cheekbones and an intense look of vibrance in her mouth. The woman was hot. Just looking at the photo made her mouth dry, and even after its recent use, her groin ached with desire. Probably his wife, she speculated, checking his license to find an address. She knew where this house was, she realized, as Tony’s cannibalized cells merged and shared their knowledge with her own. It had taken her too long to find a host after the Gentech engineer had abandoned her here to wither away. She laughed, thinking of his reward if she could track him down. Sex goddesses were hard to find – or make! And she intended to feed regularly to keep her full goddess form from now on.
Maybe he could be one of her snacks.
Kicking the sated bones under the moldering bed, she wondered, in the meantime, if Tony’s wife liked blondes. Opening the door to step with anticipation into daylight, she resolved to find out.
What is justice and who does it serve? While it may yield a brief feeling of satisfaction for the wronged, it can’t undo deeds already performed. It can’t bring the dead back to life. Its taste is often fleeting and sours quickly. Yet, who hasn’t wished for justice to be done?
When Barrettes Brought Justice to a Burning Heart
e staggered from the smoky heat of the bar into the chill autumn wind. The street outside was empty, the cloud-scummed sky a leeching black. Bill Frond’s stomach sloshed as he weaved to the corner, but all the liquor his wallet could afford hadn’t assuaged the burning in his chest. In fact, through the haze of inebriation, he actually felt more wounded now than before he had stomped into Ale’s Head Tavern several hours ago. The fire in his heart had contracted to a pinpoint of heat, leaving behind a blackened void. He feared when the little acid flame that still burned was extinguished, he would stop dead in his tracks, a flesh appliance whose batteries had spurted their last current.
But another fire was lighting in his guts; it surged past the dying ember in his heart to race through his throat. Bill froze a moment, staring sickly at the dark alleyway just ahead. As his binge lit to purge, he dashed for the privacy of the narrow street.
Ten minutes later, exhausted, slumped on the ground near a pool of bitter vomit, Bill pulled a tissue from his jacket, wiped the tears from his eyes and blew the acid from his nose.
“Feel better?” a voice grated from the darkness. Bill’s heart leapt at the unexpected sound. He squinted at the uneven bricks and shadows around him. The dim outline of a man began to take shape from the depths of the darkened street.
“Not really,” Bill answered, wondering if, after all this, he was now going to be mugged. Or killed. Preferably the latter, a voice within him begged.
“Tell me,” the voice asked, its owner settling just far enough away that Bill couldn’t make out his face. A white flash as the man spoke, a glint from eyes turning down. That was all. A hint of a face.
“Tell you what?” Bill snapped. “That I feel sick inside? That I just wasted 30 bucks trying to drink away reality? Please leave me alone; I’m not in the mood for company.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not anybody’s idea of company.” The hint of a face blurred, shifted, moved closer. Bill caught the sour odor of alley trash and felt his belly kick in complaint.
“Tell me why you’re here, while you still can,” the voice demanded. The roughness of its tone sent a chill through Bill’s neck. If this guy was going to beat him up – or worse – what difference did it make why he was here?
“You want to know? I’ll tell you,” Bill began, slipping easily into the words recounting events he had already relived a hundred times this night.
“Seven months ago, Lissa, my daughter, was walking home from school. We live just a few blocks away from Sanders High, and she always walked home. In the rain, in the snow, in the summertime. She liked to walk. And she always came straight home. But on that particular afternoon, she didn’t come home on time. Cheryl – that’s my wife – worried a little, but figured Lissa had stopped off to talk with someone. When it got to be dinnertime, Cheryl started calling the parents of Lissa’s friends. No one had seen her. After I came home from work, and she still wasn’t home, we checked the hospitals. Then we called the police.”
The shadowed figured nodded slowly, as if hearing a familiar story.
“They found her the next day in the woods behind the school. She was naked, her body smeared with blood. Her own. Her eyes were open. I think that hurt me the most. She was aware of every touch, every violation, I know she was. Her skull was crushed – she’d been hit on the head with a rock. Then raped. But she felt every minute of it. Her eyes were screaming.
“They caught the boys who did it – a couple 17-year-olds who thought they could just knock her out with a rock, rape her and leave before she woke up.” Bill’s face wrinkled in silent agony, then he coughed out a sob and shook his head clear.
“But they hit her too hard,” he finally continued, tears now wetting his cheeks. “And somehow, she didn’t fall unconscious. I wanted them to die like my daughter died. I watched them smirking to each other in the courtroom during the trial, and I pictured myself smashing their heads together until their brains pulped through my fingers.”
He paused, unclenched his hands and laughed sadly.
“The violence I planned for them! I wanted to castrate them, bash in their brains, stab holes in their hearts. Every night during the week of the trial, I cried myself to sleep. And when it was all over – the boys walked away free. Their lawyers managed to get every scrap of evidence the police had found thrown out of court on technicalities. They walked away free while my daughter rotted in the ground.”
A flash of white, as the stranger’s face nodded once again, inched closer.
“The day after the trial was over, I stepped out on my front porch to get the paper. And found these.”
Bill pulled two triangular shapes from his coat pocket. They glittered in the faint light filtering into the alleyway from the street. “Lissa’s barrettes. I know the boys left them for me to find. A joke. It was all a joke to them. And I hated myself, because instead of going after them, instead of giving them what they gave my daughter, I tucked these
in my pocket, went back in the house, and cried some more.”
The pale face again shifted closer, its outline now distinct, long in the heavy shadow of the alley. “Revenge is an expensive enterprise,” it whispered, near enough that Bill could see the stranger’s lips move. They seemed crooked, off-kilter. The alley stench had grown stronger, its character led by the nauseous aroma of rotting meat, but filled out with the bitter taste of old milk and neglect. Bill began to breathe through his mouth.
“Well, I wish I had paid the price now,” Bill retorted. The fire in his chest had flared briefly with the retelling of his child’s murder, but now flickered lower than before. He was beaten. It was over. He couldn’t avenge his daughter and the remaining foundation of his life, which he’d spent years building upon, had, just today, been swept away in an instant.
“You’re not here tonight because of your daughter,” the voice breathed. Bill heard a pain in that tone that sounded not unlike his own. “Tell me,” the stranger demanded softly.
Bill looked up in surprise at the stranger’s appraisal, then nodded. It seemed right. He wanted to tell someone everything. And so he did.
“My wife looked into my eyes this morning. I thought she looked sad, and I asked her what was wrong. She just kept staring at me, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Then she kissed me. I knew something was bad. Real bad. She’d been so quiet since Lissa died. Actually, she’d been quiet before that, but I hadn’t noticed – until I thought about it tonight.