Exhibit

by Noir, Stella

  “What’s wrong, Mom?” Denny asked, concerned.

  “Nothing”, she said. “It’s nothing. I’m just tired that’s all.”

  Denny put his spoon down and pushed the bowl away from him. He turned himself sideways and cuddled into his mom.

  “Don’t worry, Mom”, he said. “Everything will be fine, you’ll see.”

  Jess kissed her son on the top of his head.

  “I hope so sweetie”, she said. “I truly hope so.”

  Chapter 9

  Cleveland stood in the mud, baked hard by a hundred years of sun. There was a sign some ways off that indicated the state line in faded letters, and another that indicated the speed limit. All three of them had seen better days. The land was flat and dusty and looked like it was good for nothing but filling in the blanks, so the earth could breath between towns.

  Cleveland dropped his cigarette butt to the ground and squashed it flat under the toe of his boot, kicking the dust up into the air like an army of ghosts, memories of a time long ago when the rains fell and the grasses grew and the devil stayed in his hole. Cleveland remembered that time. He was old enough to have seen it first hand, and young enough back then to never think it would go away. How wrong he was.

  He’d seen a lot in his time and the older he got, the more tired he was of the way the world was changing. He used to know why people did bad things, but now he struggled to comprehend the evil he saw so deeply in the eyes of those men he’d managed to catch and the thousand more that plagued him like ghosts in the night, their eyes coming to him in the same way the eyes of the dead did, as though he was the one who’d done them wrong. Carl Taylor was one of those men, one of those men where evil lurked inside with no reason.

  The land was so flat he could see Jack’s pick-up approaching from over five miles away. It took him twenty minutes to plough across the beaten up road, kicking up the dust behind him like a gray tornado, and all the while Cleveland watched him coming, like Charon carrying a dead man across the River Styx.

  He pulled up in front of Cleveland and Cleveland spat on the ground and pulled another cigarette out of his packet and lit it up and watched Jack and the man trussed up in the back of the car and had little to say to them both.

  Jack opened up the door and pulled Carl out and Carl stumbled a little because both of his hands and his feet were bound together, so he ended up on his knees in the dirt.

  “That him?” Jack said.

  Cleveland spat again. “That’s him”, he said.

  “Fuck you”, Carl said. “Fuck you both.”

  He had marks on his face and blood stains over a torn shirt that Cleveland knew the story of without asking, but the fight was gone out of him. He was like a fighting dog backed into a corner that knew it was about to die. Short of whining a little bit, he was gone.

  Cleveland approached him, got down on his knees and looked him square in the eyes. He didn’t recognize anything in the man he could call human.

  “You caught the devil, Jack”, Cleveland said. “Put him in the boot of the car, I don’t trust him in the back.”

  Jack dragged him across to Cleveland’s car, lifted him up and tumbled him into the boot. Before Carl could get out another word, darkness shut off his senses.

  Jack kicked the dust a while and smoked with Cleveland and they talked about old times and how the storms were coming and how nothing would be the same again.

  “You’re getting old”, Jack said.

  “I’ve got old”, Cleveland responded. “Come back, Jack”, he said. “They want to see you.”

  “Oh, I’m not going anywhere yet”, Jack said. “Not now it’s just got interesting.”

  Cleveland looked at his old buddy looking away and he knew that look because he’d seen it a few times before.

  “Oh, Jack”, he said. “Don’t go breaking her heart now.”

  Jack smiled.

  “Don’t you worry, Cleveland. You might be seeing a lot more of me than you first thought.”

  Jack got into his car and pulled away, and Cleveland watched the gray tornado for a while before he got back into his own car. It was almost dark when he felt like he had enough energy to pull away himself, and well past dinner time when he finally got Carl back to the station and behind bars.

  “You should have just shot him in the desert and left him there for the vultures”, his deputy said to him as he turned the key to the cell, his eyes all the while fixed on Carl, taunting him. “Pushed him over the state line and let that lot deal with the paperwork. Save a lot of time and effort.”

  “Yeah well”, Cleveland said, “For good or bad, that’s not the way things work.”

  Shadow

  Copyright © 2016 by Stella Noir & Aria Frost

  Chapter 1

  Under his command, she gripped the edges of the leather topped writing desk, until her fingertips went white. Around her neck was a leather belt, the other end of which was wrapped around the fingers of a nicotine stained hand, belonging to detective Devizes Marsh. This girl’s name, which happened to be Elisa, he had already forgotten. She was twenty one, perhaps twenty two at best, gifted with a long slender back that led up to a perfectly petite neck, remnants of her distant Russian heritage, and down to a well rounded ass, which Marsh was busy spanking with a paddle of wood that looked like a chopping board for cheese. Already, a red patch had begun to form on her beautiful, peach-like skin, mottling it to the color of a late summer sunset.

  Elisa had her panties half way down her legs, her high heels still on, and her skirt pulled up to lay across her back. She was naked from the waist up, and the cool touch of the leather inlay was making her nipples turn to stone. Marsh himself was as hard as a rock, despite the half bottle of not nearly expensive enough whiskey he’d consumed throughout the night. His cock gripped the air like the pregnant metal blade of a Mexican cuchillero, pre-cum dripping off the end like blood from a recent strike. He lifted the paddle again, splintered it against her soft pert behind, and then tightened the leather strap until he could hear her choke.

  “You like that?”, he said in a thick, gravelly Scottish accent, never lost in all of his time in small towns of America, before he pulled the strap tighter even more. “I know you do.”

  Marsh threw the spanking paddle down.

  “Open those legs up”, he barked at her, before he kicked them wide himself, as though the girl he had leaned over his desk was a suspect he’d just apprehended burgling his house. Marsh closed in on her. He spat on his hand and rubbed saliva around his cock, but it wasn’t needed. Elisa was just as turned on as he was. She hadn’t gone home with Marsh expecting this, but neither was she disappointed that it had happened.

  Rough, dangerous sex was a turn on for her, and the something risky that she had detected in Marsh was an instinct that led her to points like this in the past.

  “You better fuck me hard”, Elisa croaked out from a constricted throat.

  “What was that?” Marsh spat at her, before snapping back on the belt, and twisting Elisa’s head to the side. “Speak when you’re fucking spoken to you fucking margarine cunted whore.”

  He guided his cock to her hole and was inside her before Elisa could take another breath. The belt was so tight around her neck, it was making her cheeks go as red as her ass. She could barely let out a groan. Marsh pushed deep inside her and pulled all the way out again, delighted by the thick sheen of glistening goo now covering his cock.

  “How many cocks you had up here?” he said, and spanked her ass with his hand. “Your pussy’s all rubbery and loose like a plastic bag.”

  He spat again and rubbed the saliva into the tender folds of skin that formed her tight little asshole. This time Elisa’s groan made it out of her mouth and through the air to his ears. She turned her head to the side, as Marsh began to finger her tight little hole. It hurt as he pushed, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasurable. She relaxed and let him slide inside her.

  “Like two fucking tunnels”, Marsh said as h
e debased her. He could feel his own cock through the thin wall of skin that separated her two holes, and when he touched it he felt like a king.

  He pulled his finger out of her asshole and made her suck it. Elisa did so as though it was her first ever lollipop. Marsh was dirty, but he wasn’t going to surprise her. She wouldn’t have come if she wasn’t happy to indulge herself in the darker forms of sexual liberation. In fact, nothing much had surprised her yet. She’d certainly endured better and worse. She liked the belt around her neck, but his dirty pillow talk could have been improved.

  Marsh pulled his cock out of her tender little cunt – nothing like a plastic bag as he had described it – bent over and began to lick her asshole.

  When he was satisfied he’d loosened her enough, he maneuvered her into the correct position, and guided his cock towards her.

  Elisa widened herself as much as possible, held her breath and let him force his way inside her. Marsh tightened the leather belt so Elisa’s head was pulled off the desk and her chin was snapped towards the ceiling. It was uncomfortable but she liked it. Sex was all about pleasure and pain to her – one led perfectly into the other, and too little of either one was liable to leave her wanting.

  Marsh pushed his rock hard cock as far inside her as he could, pulled out and pushed back in even deeper. Elisa felt his balls sticky on her pussy, and his cock deep up inside her ass. He was rough with her, and fucked her like he wanted to leave his mark.

  She’d be sore in the morning, but sex like this satisfied her. She felt an urge to touch herself, to rub the goo that was slipping out of her pussy hole around her clit, but when she moved her hands towards her cunt, Marsh batted them away and chastised her. She was to do only what he wanted her to do. He would use her like a fuck doll and cast her away, broken and useless at the end of the night.

  Elisa’s asshole had softened under Marsh’s harsh, disciplined approach. His cock, more than average size, was also thick enough at the base to make her feel every inch of him as he pushed it inside her. Each time he did so, his eyes widened as though they were mimicking the movements of her anus, the pleasurable sight of seeing her skin stretched around his cock, like the glint of precious metal to a magpie.

  Marsh was grunting. He could feel the end nearing. A sheen of sweat pearled at the nape of his neck, and slowly began to roll down his back.

  “Fuck”, he spat through gritted teeth.

  He’d let the belt go loose so he could hold onto her hips and really fuck her hard. Elisa was feeling it too. Every time his balls smashed against her pussy she felt a vibration of pleasure explode out across her skin.

  Marsh spanked her. His skin grew taut across his shoulders, down into his sinewy arms and out across his back. He was primed. Elisa could sense the moment approaching, like the darkness of a cloud ready to block out the sun. Marsh didn’t give a fuck about her, but in some ways she liked that. She didn’t mind getting treated like shit every now and again.

  She felt his balls tighten against her pussy, and her head snap back again under the command of the leather belt, before Marsh twisted his own chin up to the sky and howled out a calling to some distant spirit or another, as his breath stopped for just one moment, and he pushed so hard into Elisa’s asshole, that the writing desk slid four inches along the ground under his weight, leaving a mark in the wooden floorboard.

  He came hard, shooting several squirts of salty Scottish muck up into Elisa’s body, while she continued to peak, desperately wanting to orgasm herself.

  “Fuck”, Marsh said again. “Fucking margarine cunt. Fuck”, he cursed, like a boy with tourettes. “Make yourself come.”

  “What?” Elisa complained, unsure if she had heard him right. Her voice caught a little in her throat and it didn’t sound like her own.

  “You heard me. Make yourself cum. I want to see you play with that cunt of yours.”

  Marsh was still inside her asshole. She slipped her right hand down to her pussy and began to play with her clit. She was wet and horny and as soon as she touched herself she knew how close she was. Marsh goaded her on. She reached underneath herself and pulled on his balls, pressing them close to her pussy hole. She wanted to delay her orgasm for as long as possible, but Marsh wasn’t having it. He’d done playing. He wanted to see her stripped bare and vulnerable. He’d shown her his war face, now he wanted to see hers.

  She rubbed her clitoris in the way she knew would make herself come, and felt the familiar sensations begin that would eventually push her towards a climax. Marsh encouraged her, spanking her ass-cheek and holding it open so he could see her better, calling to her like a football supporter might do a quaterback, about to throw a touchdown pass.

  Elisa began to moan, and her breath shortened and rose with her pulse. Marsh could tell she was peaking. He loved this moment. He loved watching girls pleasure themselves, but more so, he loved making them do it himself. Making them lose all inhibitions and show their true selves to him.

  It was at that moment, the very moment that Elisa pushed herself past the point of no return, that Marsh played his trump card. As Elisa came hard, one finger either side of her clit, two fingers from her other hand inside her pussy, Marsh finally surprised her. Disgusted her even. He began to piss.

  She wasn’t sure what was happening at first, nor was she even able to separate the sensations, due to the strength of the orgasm she was experiencing, but after a moment, when she felt his cock leave her, and heard a tumble of piss come raining out of her asshole afterwards, she knew what he had done. For a moment, while Marsh gathered up his drink and sat down on the sofa to watch her, she did nothing. She was too shocked by what had happened to speak. It was Marsh who spoke first.

  “Clear that mess up when you’re done”, he said spitefully. “It’s fucking disgusting.”

  The piss puddle was still on the floor when Elisa left. At the door she turned to him.

  “You’re really charming, you know that?”

  “So people keep telling me”, Marsh said. His cock had gone all rubbery, and he looked like a twat standing there without his pants on.

  “You want to do that again?” Elisa asked.

  “No. No I fucking don’t”, Marsh spat back at her quickly. Her neck had a red mark around it she’d have to hide from work. Noone had ever pissed in her ass before. That was a first.

  “See you around then”, Elisa said and began to walk away. She heard the door shut behind her, and then open again ten seconds later.

  “Don’t come back here”, Marsh said, and shut the door again.

  He sat on the couch with his drink and looked at the piss puddle on the floor, the marks on the floorboards where the desk had been shifted, and finally down at his softened cock.

  “Happy fucking birthday, Detective”, he said, and raised his glass to the air, before sinking it down in one go.

  Chapter 2

  The lump of meat on the dulled metal table, that looked like a piece of whale fat, used to be an eighteen year old girl. She had been dragged out of the river that morning, after a fisherman alerted the authorities. The skin was bloated and puckered, and there were several stab wounds evident on her upper torso, bind marks around her wrists, her ankles and her neck. Her face had been badly beaten, and lay there amidst her head, disfigured and difficult to look at.

  “What a fucking mess”, Marsh said.

  By Theo Farr’s assessment, she had been under the water for almost a month.

  “You don’t look so well, Inspector’, he said. “Is our recent find turning your stomach?”

  Theo had a sick sense of humor, even for a mortician.

  “Detective”, Marsh corrected him, “and I still look better than this poor girl.”

  A large man, identified by an on screen message as Deput Chief of Police Mark Monroe, was delivering a statement to the press.

  “It is with sadness and deep regret that I am here to inform you that Mary Jacobson was found this morning in Talcourt lake.”

 
; “Was she murdered?” came a voice from the crowd.

  “Is she another one?” someone else said.

  “That’s four now isn’t it? Do your fucking jobs and find this killer.”

  Mark Monroe hushed the crowd. When they’d finished baiting him he continued. “I cannot release anymore details at the moment. Thank you.” And with that, he left to a barrage of photo flashes and boos from the gathered crowd.

  Marsh clicked off the TV.

  Chapter 3

  Marsh seemed uncomfortable with the formal setting. His wife sat opposite, a child either side of him. This was a portrait of a happy family, that if you glanced at once wouldn’t have noticed a thing – looked at again, you’d see the cracks as deep as ravines across both his face and hers. They were separated, and had been for some time now. Marsh lived alone, had been left to live alone when Daisy moved out, with the children, when his job, his drinking, and his infidelities got too much. She did this mostly for the children, but also because she still loved him and wanted to believe that she could fix the unfixable. Marsh looked like he’d been drinking, but either too much or not quite enough. Either way, he looked uncomfortable. Marsh and Daisy had two children together – Elias a seven year old boy, and Clare, his older sister, a curious ten year old girl, who had the beautiful large brown eyes of her mother.

  It was Clare that broke a silence that had persisted for an uncomfortable amount of time, punctuated on the odd occasion by glares that Marsh and Daisy gave each other. An unspoken language that confused everyone else around them.

  “They found that girl, I saw it in the news”, Clare said.

  “Aye”, Marsh responded. ‘Poor lass.’