“Any difficulties?” asked Dr. Arcolio, lifting both penises with professional detachment and examining them carefully. Both began to stiffen a little.
“Timing, that’s all.” Philip De Scenza shrugged, with a sideways smile at his friend. “I still haven’t managed a simultaneous climax. By the time I’ve finished, poor John’s usually getting quite sore.”
“General comfort?” asked Dr. Arcolio tightly.
“Oh, fine ... just so long as I don’t wear my pants too tailored.”
“Okay,” said Dr. Arcolio dully. “You can zip yourself up again now.”
“Over so soon?” Philip De Scenza flirted. “That’s not very good value, Doctor. A hundred dollars for two seconds’ fondle. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
That evening, John Pierce and Philip De Scenza went to Le Bellecour on Muzzey Street for dinner. They held hands all the way through the meal.
Dr. Arcolio picked up a few groceries and then drove home in his metallic-blue Rolls-Royce, listening to La Bohème on the stereo. He glanced in the rear-view mirror from time to time and thought he was looking tired. Traffic was heavy and slow on the turnpike, and he felt thirsty, so he took an apple out of the bag beside him and took a bite.
He thought about Helen; and he thought about John Pierce and Philip De Scenza; and he thought about all of the other men and women whose bodies he had skillfully changed into living incarnations of their own sexual fantasies.
Something that Philip De Scenza had said kept nagging him. You should be ashamed of yourself. Although De Scenza had been joking, Dr. Arcolio suddenly understood that, yes, he should be ashamed of what he had done. In fact, he was ashamed of what he had done. Ashamed that he had used his surgical genius to create such erotic aberrations. Ashamed that he had mutilated so many beautiful bodies.
But as well as being painful, this surge of shame was liberating, too. Because men and women were more than God had made them. Men and women were able to reinvent themselves, and to derive strange new pleasures from pain and humiliation and self-distortion. Who was to say that it was right or that it was wrong? Who could define the perfect human being? If it was wrong to give a woman a second vagina, was it also wrong to repair a baby’s harelip?
He felt chastened, but also uplifted. He finished his apple and tossed the core out onto the highway. Ahead of him he could see nothing but a Walpurgis Night procession of red brake lights.
In her house, alone, Helen wept salt tears of grief and sweet tears of sex, which mingled and dropped on her hands, so that they sparkled like diamond engagement rings.
THE SAD, NOT-SO-SAD, BALLAD OF GOAT-HEAD JEAN, AMBIVALENT DEVIL QUEEN
BY MICHAEL LOUIS CALVILLO
Not one idiot, cattle-minded, dim-fuck of a person believed in her.
Assholes, assholes, assholes.
The world at large was overrun with idiot, cattle-minded, dim-fuck assholes.
Not one of them was cool with it.
Not one even tried to understand.
Well, maybe one.
But, Christ, her slutty, on-again/off-again friend, Karla, didn’t really count. In fact, her enthusiastically positive opinion only made matters worse. Her acceptance and encouragement only served to reinforce everyone else’s negativity. The whore’s take only mucked things up.
But she needed this!
Jean even reasoned that she deserved this!
Before the awful, awful accident she was such a pretty, pretty girl. She had a mighty, mean walk. All sorts of men strained their necks to follow that sexy sashay.
Hubba, hubba! Yeah, baby! Woot-woot! You want some fries with that shake?!
Their horny brains went rock hard.
But now?
Now?
Now, Jean held her hands over her face and welcomed sobs.
Now?!
Now, those stupid, stupid men stared, but instead of leering and tenting their pants, their mouths formed tight, prudish lines and their nervous, suddenly guilt-stricken eyes jumped from her ruined pelvis to her straining forearms, to her clanking crutches, and eventually to another, complete woman with full, swaying hips and fully functional legs.
The grinding car accident did nothing to her face. It was as lovely as it had ever been—high cheekbones and a softly shaped chin. But a pleasant, symmetrical, bright-eyed visage did little for musky, animalistic sex appeal when the rest of her lady parts were twisted into savage ruin.
She figured a set of new breasts had to help. Mid-thirties. Unmarried. Shit was getting desperate.
Her original rack wasn’t so terrible. She wasn’t flat or anything like that. B cups. Decent. Not too bad. But a nice boost couldn’t hurt, could it?
Jean hoped a new set of fun-bags would do the trick, distracting from the ebb and flow of her swinging crutches and her ever-flattening ass (no daily exercise equated no muscle and no butt). At the very least, she hoped they’d help her find a man worth a damn.
They did … and they didn’t.
Men stared a little harder, but, as their eyes made the rounds, they invariably got stuck on the hollow aluminum and twisted bone. The only person who seemed to be thoroughly impressed by her pert, well-sculpted 38Cs was the same slutty friend who encouraged her to get them in the first place. Her family remained ambivalent (not that Jean was comfortable talking boobs with her mom or dad or brothers). Her coworkers half-smiled and looked at the ceiling when talking to her.
Jean was in the deepest throes of regret—five grand was a lot of loot—when Dan hit on her during Tuesday Night Karaoke.
Turns out, the wide-grinning suitor was a genuine Satanist, but, hey, he was tall, and, hey, he seemed to be into her, and, hey, beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Besides, Jean really liked his pointy face and the way it looked like he was always on the verge of laughing. That she hobbled around didn’t seem to shake him. He just smiled that near-exploding smile and treated her the way a lady needed to be treated.
After they made love for the fifth time, she even acquiesced and got a wicked goat-head tattoo on her right thigh.
All was well.
Now, when it came to this whole Satan thing, Jean kept quiet and feigned respect. She liked Dan too much to let silly religious belief get in the way of their burgeoning relationship.
He was into the devil.
So what?
Big deal?
She believed in Santa Claus until she was seventeen years old (for real, seriously).
Jean figured it was something they could definitely work around.
Dan was only twenty-five to her thirty-five, and impulsive, and super-eager to please. This devil-worshipping business was probably just a phase. Men were wishy-washy like that. Within two months’ time, she got him to quit playing those idiotic video games. A little longer, and she’d get him to see that religion was nothing but babble invented before science to explain unexplainable phenomena.
When Jean felt comfortable enough in their relationship to demand Dan stop his ritualistic devil activity, her (official!) boyfriend put up a little fight. He claimed he needed his faith. It went deeper than social mores. It was a personal thing. If she wasn’t down with the devil, then she wasn’t down with him.
Jean argued that if he must worship something, why not pick God? Why go against the grain? Why not choose light over dark or whatever?
Dan shook his head and looked at her like a man millions of miles away.
Jean let it go (again) and even got a cute pitchfork tattooed on her left thigh.
Clanking crutches and rocky, weedy forests did not mix, but it was important to Dan, so Jean trudged on. He helped her when the going got too rough, and she appreciated his muscled arms and well-defined chest. Manly acumen aside, after an hour of thrashing through the foliage, Jean was ready to pack it in and head back.
“I’m all scratched up!” She hugged her crutches close to her ribs and rubbed at the tree scrapes striping her arms. It was far too hot out for long sleeves, but the summ
er dress she was wearing was not suited for serious hiking.
She wished Dan would stop being so damn cryptic!
When he picked her up, he failed to mention they’d be roughing it. He cooed sweet nothings (as usual), smiled brightly (as usual), and promised a surprise to surmount all surprises (which was sort of unusual—he was romantic, but not really prone to orchestrating surprises).
“You’re fine, love.” Dan dropped a bundle of blankets and picnic goods, and then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.
Jean lost her balance and fell into his embrace. Her crutches dug deep into her sides and rammed up into her armpits. The force sent little tremors of pain up and down her arms and into her chest, but Dan’s lips pressed against hers before she had the chance to whimper or complain.
They kissed long and hard, the kiss of a fully maturing love, until Dan moved away and helped Jean steady her stance.
“Just a little further, I promise. I’ve got the perfect spot.” That ever-laugh pushed at the back of his lips, vibrating his nose and quivering his eyeballs. Jean couldn’t help but to nod and smile in accordance. Dan nodded back, swooped up their picnic supplies, and then resumed marching, clearing dry brush and dead tree branches so Jean had an easier time of it.
After another fifteen minutes of exasperating, sticky hiking, they arrived in a small clearing near a postcard-perfect stream that sparkled like a river of diamonds wherever the sun cut through and glittered upon its rolling surface.
At the far end of the clearing, a chunky formation of shiny black rock jutted from the soil. The strange stones arched and hung at odd angles. If you squinted just right, just so, they seemed to resemble the ruins of some ancient, sacred palace left to decay among the indifference of wild, wily wilderness growth.
Jean’s eyes lit up when she saw the picturesque stream. This was more like it.
Dan dropped their supplies and held out his arms. “Well? Whadda you think? Not too shabby, huh?”
The hike was way grueling, but all things considered—the gorgeous stream, the flat, even ground of the clearing, the ample shade of overhanging tree branches, the cooling air bereft of muggy heat—it was well worth it. This was indeed an oasis. Its distance from civilization made Jean feel like the two of them were the only mortals on the planet, like the savagery of the piercing, poking, prodding forest had given up and bowed low, gifting them with their own private Eden, rewarding their struggles with the promise of luxuriant relaxation.
It was a good feeling and Jean was glad she had stuck it out. At that moment, she never wanted to leave.
But then she stared at the outcropping of those strange onyx stones and a cold shiver ran the length of her spine. She shook it off, propped her crutches under her chin, and hugged herself tightly.
Dan sensed her unease and moved in for another consoling squeeze. He moved the crutches aside, setting them on the ground, and then wrapped his arms round her. The warmth of his body banished the nervous chills. Jean hugged herself even harder, compacting her shoulders, an embrace within an embrace, and leaned closer into her man’s warmth.
They kissed. Deeply. And though Jean wasn’t the type to get freaky out in the open—she was generally much more modest than that—Dan ramped up the passion, spread out a fluffy den of blankets, and the two fell into each other.
The lovemaking was exquisite. Something about the small clearing and the cradling woods heightened the experience. Jean’s body came alive. Her heart expanded. The devilish tattoos on her thighs seemed to glow a demonic red. The love she felt for her new boyfriend overwhelmed her. The notion that this might be the ONE momentarily tripped up her emotions. In that instant, electricity sizzling her from the inside out, she’d never been happier.
After they were done, Jean dressed and then wandered over to the stream. Dan laid out their picnic lunch, and then went about fashioning a large pentagram out of rocks and sticks at the opposite end of the clearing.
Jean gave him a look and he gave her one back.
“Come on?” Dan raised his arms and gestured at the beauty around him.
Jean nodded and waved her hands as if to say, hurry up with it then.
She wanted to put her foot down. This stupid Satan thing was a persistent bugger. She’d have her way in the end. If she learned anything before screaming metal stripped her of her womanly powers, it was that the fairer sex always got its way. Sometimes it took a little time, but in the end ...
Alas, a lot of Dan’s mumbo-jumbo rhetoric was dependent upon the natural world. A clearing like this? It was Satanic gold. If this wasn’t the most perfect spot to build a pentagram and worship whatever it was he worshipped, Jean didn’t think he’d ever find one. If there was ever a time to go lax and let her man do his thing, it was now. Dan got it that she understood. He nodded appreciatively and started arranging rocks.
Jean turned her back on his religious preparation and wandered. She dug her crutches deep into the wild grass at the stream’s edge and leaned over the crystal clear water.
Glittering fish—silver, and red, and orange, and blue—swam with the mild current. Overhead, birds of every variety chirped and rustled about the treetops. If there was a way to never go back to the peopled, concrete mess of everyday living, Jean would happily take it. This purity, this open wonder—there’d been nothing like it in her life.
Maybe before the accident, maybe when she used to be innately happy, maybe there were joys to equal the growing sense of rightness that now filled her, but at the moment she couldn’t remember any of them.
Pushing upright, she swung around to watch Dan and whatever nonsense he was up to. While mucking their way through the woods, he chatted a bit about wide, open forces and pure pathways.
Shirtless, his muscles and golden skin looked awesome in the intermittent shafts of sunlight that punched through the thick canopy above. Jean felt her heart do a little somersault. She took a step and supported it with the proper crutch. The mass of black rocks glinted in the corner of her eye. Jean turned to her left and approached the odd formation.
The rocks projected this way and that and took about ten feet in diameter of clearing space. The formation continued into the lush wood for an indeterminate distance.
“What is this?” Jean called over her shoulder to her busy-beaver boyfriend.
Dan lugged a heavy gray stone near the apex of his nearly complete pentagram. He frowned, shrugged, and then went back to it, grunting while aligning the stone.
Jean turned her attention back to the rocks. She’d seen chunks of onyx and obsidian in displays at a number of museums. The massive black rock didn’t look all that different from some of the more exotic minerals, but here, it looked completely out of place in this landscape of browns and greens and grays.
Struggling for the right amount of balance, Jean leaned on her crutches and reached a hand out to touch one of the smooth, black rocks.
Thought instantly swirled into a funneling mishmash of emotion. Jean felt like crying, screaming, laughing, raging, loving, embracing, fucking, killing, dying.
Her mouth went bone dry.
Her feet levitated a full inch off the ground.
She grasped her crutches with her armpits.
A little anal leakage seeped from a wildly clenching sphincter and absorbed into her silky panties.
No matter what Dan thought about natural energies and religious hot spots, Satan and God weren’t real to her. Jean didn’t think they’d ever be real to her. She liked myths and legends fine, they were fun and interesting. But she understood them for what they were—stories to fill in esoteric blanks. Nothing extraordinary had ever happened to her to make her believe otherwise.
But now ... with the strange black rock warming her palm ... and charging her brain ... everything ... changed.
She let her crutches drop to the ground and cradled the protruding rock in both hands. The warmth surging into her systems doubled. She floated another inch higher.
The consta
nt pain that coursed the boney masses and muscle tissue of her right and left hip flickered in and out like a windswept candle.
The rock in her palms shifted. Its solid, glassy surface rolled like a rippling river and its sides went amorphous, gelling, leaking droplets of sludge-like ooze. The entire rock softened, then melted into a viscous pool. It thinned and began seeping into Jean’s skin.
Everything inside hummed.
Suddenly, she believed in whatever it took. God, Satan, Jehovah, Baphomet. Whatever. Her soul unraveled and held its proverbial arms wide in loving acceptance.
That the pain was dissipating—that her pelvis, legs, knees floated in gauzy contentment—pried devotion from nonchalance and instilled a piety only possible in those that have actually seen The Light (or, perhaps in this situation, The Dark).
Jean reached under her dress and smoothed the black-gunk palms of her hands over her bare hips, massaging the dark tar-to-liquid-to-permeating mist deep, deep, deep, into the screaming hollows and crevices of her internal meat.
The creeping black wasn’t partial to any one part of her body. It seemed not to care that it made Jean feel whole. Soothing aches and pains was not its mission. Filling in the cracks and strengthening weakened cells were all byproducts that happened to have a positive effect upon its host. It supposed, or it would suppose if it could suppose, that this was all well and good.
A healthy host was ultimately an effective host.
But then, in the end, whether its latest incubator was howling in bloody pain or standing tall, shining with vibrancy—so long as it provided the right configuration of heat, bacteria, pus, and salt—the Dark could do its thing.
Zippered Flesh: Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad! Page 17