I stepped out of the room, dropping one plastic blanket roll before the doorway, and headed for the master bedroom. There was a long trail of blood going from one side of the room to the other. The wife must have tried to crawl away from her man after the first blow. Bloody handprints peppered the walls and chunks of torn skin lay about the stained carpet like discarded gift-wrap on Christmas morning. Where the trail of blood ended, the carpet was drenched crimson, the corner rich with gore graffiti where husband had slaughtered wife. If I hadn’t been so desensitized, I might have asked why, but who was there to ask?
I dropped the rest of the tarps and went back down the hallway. The policemen had gone, leaving Sage alone. She’d put on her gas mask and helmet and stood there looking like an extra in a zombie contagion movie.
“Ready?” she asked, hands on cocked hips.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just gave her the thumbs up.
I led her to the master bedroom first, wanting to ease her into things before taking her to a room where children had been butchered. Once inside, Sage stopped in mid-stride and looked all around, taking in the imbrued nightmare.
That’s it, I thought. She’s gonna quit.
But she didn’t.
“My god,” she said. “It’s so beautiful.”
CHAPTER TWO
I blinked. “What?”
Sage looked at me but didn’t hold my gaze, too transfixed by the human waste.
“Did you just say it was beautiful?”
“Well . . . ” She paused. “I mean, to the right person, this is sort of, like . . . ”
She trailed off again, staring at the mess. Crouching down near the corner where the bulk of the gore was, Sage ran one finger through a puddle of blood.
A freak. I’m dealing with a freak. Ryker sure knows how to pick them.
I shifted where I stood. Should I tell the boss about this? I wondered. I mean, you’ve got to be a cracked little egg to think a crime scene like this was beautiful. But at least Sage wasn’t recoiling from it. She hadn’t barfed inside her suit and resigned on the spot. And I couldn’t go on working alone. I was burning out. Freak or not, I needed this woman.
And besides, she was still mighty easy on the eyes.
“Okay,” I said, choosing to ignore her odd behavior, “we need to get started.”
I laid out the tools and industrial solvents, and then opened several toxic waste bags. I handed Sage a scooper.
“Get the big stuff first. Bag it up and tie it off before starting on cleaning the walls.”
Sage took the scooper without saying a word and went at the viscera. For the next two hours we worked at a steady pace and she took to the job rather well. She didn’t complain and didn’t ask stupid questions. She also didn’t say anything creepy after her initial “beautiful” comment.
Sure enough, I had to tear up the carpet and dispose of a good deal of it. This took some time and effort, and Sage helped me pull and tear the material from the floor. Then she worked on scrubbing the blood that had seeped through to the boards below. Gore is like cockroaches. It sinks into the deep bowels of a home and hides in places most people never think to look. It was our job to sniff out every drop and bleach it into oblivion.
When at last the master bedroom was satisfactory, we moved on to the kids’ room.
“I’ll warn you now. This is—was—a room two little boys lived in.”
Sage shrugged. “Okay.”
She said it with a high, chipper tone—carefree, delighted, weird.
“It’s just that some people really struggle with crime scenes involving child murder. Even if you can handle a butchered adult, the remains of a dead kid can be overwhelming. It can mess with your head.”
Sage didn’t say anything. Instead she gave me the same thumbs up I’d given her earlier.
“Okay then.”
I held out my hand in a ladies first gesture, welcoming her into the abyss. There was no turning back now. Sage stepped forward, opened wide the door, and I followed her inside, flicking on the switch, the bright overhead lamp canceling out the gray daylight. Sage froze in place, her helmet turning from side to side as she took it all in.
“Wow,” she said.
She sounded like a kid seeing Star Wars for the first time. There was no shock or disgust, no horror, only childlike wonder.
Maybe I should tell Ryker about this after all.
But then Sage did something that changed my mind. She planted both hands on her hips and slowly slid them down her thighs. Despite the baggy suit, the motion was erotic and it stirred my testosterone. I heard her sigh behind her mask. It was a breathy, pleasurable moan that made me lick my lips.Then I remembered where we were standing and nausea made my arousal shrink away. I felt suddenly dirty, like an old man whipping his dick out on a merry-go-round. Here I was at the scene of a double child murder and I was getting a semi-boner. Sometimes I made it easy to hate myself, and even easier to see why Rachel had filed for divorce. This was a new low, even for a sad sack like me.
Sage turned around and removed her helmet.
“Do you need to take a break?” I asked.
She held the helmet in one hand and lifted her gas mask with another. Her smile was warm, eyes bright as tinsel.
“Mike, are you single?”
My mouth fell open. “What?”
“Single. Are you single or do you have a wife, or girlfriend . . . or boyfriend?”
“Why exactly are you asking me this?”
“Just asking. Are you?”
I chuckled. This girl really was one for the old journal. “Yeah, I’m single.” I smirked and made a joke of it. “Why, are you asking me out?”
Her smile faded. Had I been inappropriate? Christ, you never knew anymore. The arch of her eyebrows dismissed my fears. There was no anger in the look she was giving me, only a hint of seduction, of mischief.
“Take off your mask,” she said.
I shrugged,removed the helmet, and slid the mask up so it rested on the top of my head. Sweat ran from my temples to my jaw, dots of it across my upper lip like a dewy mustache. Sage was dry and closer to me now, close enough that I could smell her subtitle perfume, a mist of essential oils. I cleared my throat, feeling oddly intimidated.
“Okay,” I said. “Mask’s off.”
A nerve-wracking silence hovered between us while she took off her gloves.
“Ummm . . . ” I started, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I saw the way you looked at me when we met.”
Shit. I gulped audibly.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I like being admired by men. You like my body, don’t you, Mike?”
I couldn’t believe this. Sage was a perfect ten and was probably twenty years my junior. She couldn’t really be hitting on me, could she? And in here of all places? This had to be some kind of joke. Maybe Ryker was messing with me. Hired Sage for a little prank. But I couldn’t see any reason why he would want to punk me, and he was too cheap to spend money on something so frivolous. Maybe Sage was teasing me for her own amusement. Not the best way to start a new job.
“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”
She gave me a hurt look. “Absolutely not. I asked a simple question. Do you or don’t you find me attractive?”
“Lady, that’s not a simple question, it’s a stupid one. Of course, I find you attractive. Any man with hair on his chest would feel the same way. You’re a knockout.”
Sage stepped closer. Our boots were touching.
Knocking boots.
I tried to shake the thought but couldn’t. A nervous smile curled my face.
“Do you want to have sex with me?” she asked.
My smile faded. I’m sure all the blood left my face, probably en route to my penis. In my lifetime, I’d had some good-looking women who were kind enough to go to bed with me. Rachel was modestly attractive. Not television hot, but a nice-looking woman. My high school sweetheart Ally was rather cut
e. But I was no lothario; not even a dollar store Cassanova. I’d bagged a few one-night stands who’d looked a whole lot better before the honest light of day, a few flings I choose not to brag about. Still, in all, I’d made out okay. But I had never come close to being with a woman of Sage’s caliber even when I was her age. I’d always considered girls like her unobtainable, a look-but-don’t-touch art piece, like they were in a museum and encased behind bulletproof glass. She was the kind of girl that would only ever stare at me longingly from the cover of a magazine. I had always considered myself lucky to get a mere passing smile or polite conversation from babes like her, so all of this was a little hard to believe.
“Sage, what are you getting at?”
She smiled like Satan. “You know exactly what I’m getting at.”
I laughed. “Well, I think so, but in this day and age I’d be more comfortable if you spelled it out for me.”
Her eyebrows arched—a young Julie Newmar, Christina Applegate in her prime. Sweat gathered in my pubic hair as she came in even closer.
“Okay, I’ll spell it out,” she said. “F-U-C-K space M-E.”
She reached out and put her hand on my crotch, cupping the good parts. I shivered like a newborn calf, eyes bulging, my mouth hanging open like a dumb shit. My loins began to spin and she squeezed my growing hardness.
I stammered. “We, um . . . we need to finish here, and um . . . ”
Sage leaned in and nibbled my neck, making the small hairs on my body rise.
“After work,” I said, “we can go back to my place and—”
Sage stepped away. Her hand still held my boner, but she stopped caressing it. “No. Not later. Not at your place or mine.” She looked around the room, leading me to do the same. “Right here, Mike. Fuck me right here.”
Despite the heat of my suit, I went instantly cold. We were standing in the blood of children and this wacko wanted to get it on? It was repulsive, and yet I didn’t push her hand away when she started stroking me again through the suit. It’d been so long since a woman touched me there.
“Sage, listen, I don’t think—”
She put a finger to my lips and shushed me, then replaced the finger with her lips.
CHAPTER THREE
This can’t be happening.
But it was. I was inside this beautiful young girl, thrusting away, our HAZMAT suits around our ankles as I fucked her against a wall speckled with blood—children’s blood. Even as I banged her, I knew the very moment after I came I would be filled with a galaxy of shame and self-loathing (and perhaps a fear of Sage), but in this moment of sexual ecstasy I was a man without scruples, convictions, or conscience. I was a pig. I was a ghoul. And I was so hungry for the girl I was feasting on.
I clutched Sage’s hips and she pushed back against my pelvis, taking me deeper. She was warm and wet and tight and perfect, with skin as soft as it was pale. I ran my hands under her shirt and bra, squeezing the perky breasts and trembling at their natural bounce. My erection was like granite, far harder than what I’d been able to achieve with Rachel in those last few months we’d still been having sex (many months before the marriage ended). Sage was crying out and whipping her hair like a succubus. She was all fireworks, full rodeo, and when I plunged deeper in my orgasm she rubbed her body against the wall, slathering herself in the tacky blood and stuck bits of viscera, groaning. Either she was coming too or she deserved an Academy Award for faking it.
We breathed our way down from the height of our deed, and just as I’d predicted the oh sweet mother of Christ, what have I done feeling hit me like a punch to the nuts. The guilt of my crime against humanity nestled in me before I could even slide out of my accomplice. Her hand was still between our legs, fingernails gently scratching my scrotum. I pulled out and started getting dressed, suddenly ashamed of my nearly nude body. I felt filthy, flu-like and weak at the knees.
But not Sage.
She turned around to face me, smiling with closed eyes. Her shirt was caught halfway up her body and the cups of her bra were down, exposing lovely, squished breasts. Large patches of blood ran from her forehead to her knees. Her small patch of pubic hair glistened crimson. She was like something out of the late-night horror movies my buddies and I used to watch when I was a teenager—the sexy vampire with bloody tits, the female werewolf in mid-transformation. Part of me questioned what I possibly could have seen in a mental case like her, but one look at that body reminded me.
I felt like I should say something, but all words turned to dust in my mouth. My sweat was cold now, and for the first time since I’d started this job the gore in the room made me feel queasy. I could feel the weight of what had happened here, could feel the darkness of it deep in my heart. And here I was having fucked in it like a goddamned monster. At best it was an insult to the pain and terror those kids had gone through. At worst, it was an opened door to a side of me I’d never known and didn’t want to be introduced to, an unearthed sliver of personality that was pitch-black and fetid.
“Beautiful,” Sage said, opening her eyes. They burned into me, perhaps searching my soul for that pitch-black sliver. “It’s all so beautiful.”
She pulled up her pants and held the suit up so she could step closer to me. Placing her hands on each side of my face, she pulled me in for a kiss but I resisted. She made a sour expression.
“What?” she asked. “Don’t try to tell me you didn’t like it, because your body told a different story. The evidence just ran down my leg.”
I winced at her language, always uncomfortable when a woman spoke in such a tawdry, vulgar manner.
“We shouldn’t have done this,” I said. “Not here.”
“It had to be here.”
“Why?” I moved back and looked away. The very sight of her was a reminder of my shame. She was the bait I’d taken down the steps to hell. “Why did it have to be here? Why couldn’t we screw in a cheap motel room? Why here where two innocent little boys were slaughtered less than twenty-four hours ago?”
She touched my chin, guiding my head up so she could see my eyes. I looked at her at last and saw pity and compassion beneath the smear of blood on her pretty face.
“I thought I could hold back,” she said. “I thought I could just take it all in and go home and masturbate to the memories of all I’d seen and touched while on the job. I’m not usually so loose. I don’t normally have sex with guys I’ve just met, but I just can’t help myself around blood and guts. It turns me on like nothing else. Without it, no man could ever make me come the way you just did.”
A tremor went through me, making the muscles in my neck stand out. I had the urge to look behind me, as if someone were creeping up, but the source of my fear was right in front of me. My initial label of freak was not enough for this woman. Sage belonged in a rubber room. The poor thing was sick and I had indulged her, taking advantage of whatever illness made her a blood-fetishistic nympho.
I struggled to find the right words. “What we did here . . . we can never talk about. Not even with each other. This was wrong.”
She tilted her head. “What’s so wrong about it?”
“Everything, Sage!” I slapped my forehead. “I mean, Jesus, do I really have to explain to you how perverse this was? It’s vile, it’s—”
“What we did was totally consensual and behind closed doors. We’re even cleaning up afterwards, bleaching the whole place.”
“Yeah, but those kids—”
“Those kids were dead long before we got here, Mike. And it’s not like their bodies are in the room. How does what we did hurt them or anyone else?”
A short, anxious laugh escaped me, almost involuntary. “It may not have hurt anyone, but that doesn’t make it okay.”
“Sure it does.”
“It’s fucking perverted. Like, super perverted!”
She smirked. “So-fucking-what? Everyone’s perverted. Everyone has kinks. Some people like being tied up. Others like having beads shoved up their butts. Some pe
ople dress up like babies and get spanked. I happen to get turned on by blood. The more of it there is, the hotter I get.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve never been around this much of it. Not even close. It was like sensory overload. I couldn’t help myself. No offense, but you’re not exactly my type, you know? It was being here in this room that made you irresistible.” She started to get dressed. “Besides, I didn’t force you to have sex with me.”
“Look, I know that. And I was more than a little surprised you’d be into me. I know I’m not exactly Brad Pitt or whoever women are into these days. But for Christ’s sake, Sage, why blood and gore? Why does that turn you on?”
She was dressed but kept her mask and helmet off.
“I’m ready for that break now,” she said.
***
On the balcony, Sage puffed on her slim cigarette. The smell of tobacco and mint wafted toward me even though I was upwind of her. The morning sun had done little to warm up the day and the air was damp, hinting at freezing rain or even snow. I noticed just how bare the trees were now. The foliage of October was gone, leaving only dead, grey branches and pre-winter ruin.
“Why does blood turn me on? You wouldn’t believe how many shrinks I’ve asked that same question. I may seem comfortable with my fetish, but believe me, for a long time I was even more shocked by it than you are right now.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
Sage ignored my snarky comment.
“I wasn’t always this way, you know,” she continued. “I didn’t want to get it on in piles of guts the moment I hit puberty. I had regular boyfriends, regular desires. But even though I enjoyed sex I could never climax. For years I thought the female orgasm was a myth.”
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