Dead Bait

by Romana Baotic (ed. )

  Elise watched until there was nothing but a bubbling scum of blood and fragments on the surface. Then lying down on the hull, she closed her eyes.

  *

  The moon came up over the Amazon River basin.

  Elise woke, raw and hurting, aware of nothing but the agony that pulsed through her body in punishing waves. Botflies had laid their eggs in her wounds. Clouds of mosquitoes had drank their fill. Gnats and chiggers had feasted on her throat.

  Out in the rainforest, night birds cried out and snakes slid through the wet leafy loam. Spiders spun webs larger than men in the branches and huge Amazonian leeches clung to the thick cable roots just under the water. Moths fluttered over the clotted surface of the channel and crab-eating raccoons chattered in the jungle.

  All was well in the hot, misty night world.

  Elise went to the edge of the hull and peered into the water. What the moonlight showed her should have been shocking, but she was well beyond things like shock or fear. She was bruised, bitten, slit, peppered with dozens upon dozens of swelling insect bites. Botfly larva were already wiggling in her wounds. She knew only agony and misery and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Only nature at its fiercest and a channel filled with unnatural things. This is what the moonlight showed her in the water: the piranhas.

  Hundreds and hundreds of them surrounding the overturned skiff. Just waiting. Row upon row of them breaking the surface, their jutting jaws wide open. Greening things, bloated things, wormy things, glaring evil skulls. They were not alive and had not been in some time so they did not need to swim to force oxygenated water through their gills. The leaking chemicals from the biotech ship that poisoned the school also resurrected them. Once they had been alive, filled with a rapacious vitality. Social creatures that lived to defend the school. Not truly dangerous to man except in the dry season when food was scarce. But now they no longer mated and swam for the glory of the school. Now all they had left was an insatiable appetite.

  And this is what they offered Elise: their appetite. Serrated rows of triangular teeth activated by powerful jaws. The sort of jaws that could bite through fishing nets and steel hooks. It was all they had and they offered it to her now.

  Elise looked down at them surrounding her little island. Like loyal subjects surrounding their queen. And they were loyal. She did not doubt this.

  They waited.

  They knew she would come to them.

  Finally, staring out across those yawning, tooth-studded jaws gleaming in the moonlight, all open in her honor, she said, “Please, I hurt so bad, so terribly bad…let it be fast.”

  Somehow, she knew they would make it so.

  She thought then of Peruvian cattle herders. Jack had told her how they would sacrifice a cow downstream in the dry season to the hungry piranhas so that the rest of the herd could cross safely upstream. Elise knew then that she would be such a sacrifice.

  Sucking in a breath, she slid into the water and submerged amongst them and they accepted her. And true to their promise, as the water gushed red with her blood, it was mercifully quick.

  The skiff drifted on upstream.

  A giant otter splashed in the distance.

  And in the treetops, a pygmy owl screeched.

  SOMETHING FISHY IS GOING ON

  By Mark Zirbel

  Ben had been married to Liora for nearly a month when it occurred to him that he had never seen her vagina.

  He had felt it, of course, plunged into the depths of its silky wetness. But it was always with the lights off, always under the covers. One time, Ben had tried to slip down below and perform oral sex on Liora. But she quickly stopped him.

  “Sorry...is too much that way,” she explained in her stilted English. “Is too intense...afraid I crush your head.”

  Well, Ben certainly didn’t want that to happen. But he did wonder if this was Liora’s real reason, or if she just felt uncomfortable with that type of intimacy. Maybe it was a Russian thing -- some sort of cultural modesty. That would explain the floor-length nightgowns she always wore to bed. Liora definitely wasn’t a Victoria’s Secret kind of gal.

  But so what, Ben told himself. After all, the woman was no prude! In fact, once she crawled into bed for the night and clicked off the bedside lamp, she became insatiable. They would have sex for hours at a time, doing it again and again and again. It was always Ben who would eventually insist that they stop, either because he was too sore or because he just didn’t have another erection left in him. It amazed Ben that Liora’s vaginal muscles never got tired -- they just kept clenching and unclenching, clenching and unclenching. The sensation brought to mind a hungry little mouth, gumming incessantly at his cock. Ben sometimes wondered if that’s how it felt with all women. He had no way of knowing, no other point of reference. Ben had been a virgin when he married Liora.

  Or so he told himself.

  But sometimes late at night, as he lay in bed beside a sleeping Liora, a voice inside Ben’s head told him a different story.

  A virgin? Who are you trying to kid? the voice would ask. Aren’t you forgetting about sophomore year in high school? Aren’t you forgetting about Nelson Lake?

  “No, no, no, no, no!” Ben would shout (silently, of course, so as not to awaken Liora). “Nothing happened on Nelson Lake! So just shut up about it. Shut up!”

  And then he would curl up with his lovely Liora and try in vain to get a few hours of sleep.

  “So, tell me more about Volochayevka,” Ben said to Liora one night, holding her in his arms after a particularly vigorous session of lovemaking.

  “Is fishing village,” Liora replied. “The stink of fish is everywhere. The men reek of it. Is impossible to wash away that fish stink.”

  “Not a big fan of fish, I take it?”

  Liora shook her head. “Horrible creatures. Worst are carp, so ugly and fat. Hundreds swim in shallow waters of Volochayevka. I never hear such noisy fishes! Each night, they stick dirty snouts out of water and squeal like swine.” Liora began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Ben asked.

  “I see you not like fish, too,” Liora said, pointing to the goosebumps on Ben’s arms.

  He hadn’t even been aware of them.

  “Poor baby,” Liora said as she rubbed down the raised flesh. “I give you something else to think about.” She pulled Ben on top of her.

  It took a few minutes to coax another erection out of Ben, but soon he was diving into Liora’s vagina once again, feeling that wet, gulping suction on his cock.

  That hungry little mouth.

  Ten minutes into their lovemaking, Ben realized that his goosebumps hadn’t gone away.

  Walking to work the next day, Ben passed a construction site and overheard a conversation between two workers:

  “Going out with Brenda again?”

  “Yep...third date. Tonight’s the night –- I’m finally gonna get me some fish mouth.”

  Ben stopped in his tracks and spun around. “What did you just say?”

  “Buzz off, asshole,” one of the workers said. Big guy –- if he wasn’t sidelining someplace as a bouncer, he was passing up good money.

  “Please,” Ben pleaded, “tell me what you said!”

  “I said I’m gonna get me some pussy tonight. Got a problem with that? You some kinda Jesus freak or something?”

  “You...you didn’t say fish mouth?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Never mind...sorry,” Ben said, doing an about-face and hurrying on his way.

  Ben was having trouble concentrating on the notes for his 11:30 appointment. It was his first meeting with a potential client, so he wanted to be sharp. But he just couldn’t focus. His head was filled with visions of bloated carp, sloshing mindlessly in the muddy waters of Nelson Lake, dragging long strings of shit from the underside of their filthy bodies.

  Ben looked at the framed picture on his desk –- Liora, dressed in her wedding gown. His beautiful bride, his wedded wife
. And yet he had never seen her vagina. Not one single time. Was she ashamed of how she looked down there? Was she hiding something?

  That hungry little mouth...

  There was a knock at Ben’s office door. Ben glanced at his notes to remind himself of his 11:30’s name –- Andrew J. Magnus III. “Come in,” Ben said.

  Given his client’s proper-sounding name, Ben had been expecting a distinguished, older gentleman. But Andrew couldn’t have been much older than twenty, wearing tennis shoes, jeans, and a t-shirt.

  “Let me guess,” Ben said, standing up and extending his hand. “Newlywed?”

  “That’s right!” Andrew laughed as he shook Ben’s hand. “How’d you know that?”

  “Most guys your age aren’t thinking about life insurance, unless they’ve just gotten married.”

  “I guess that makes sense. And I bet you’re a newlywed, too.”

  Now it was Ben’s turn to laugh. “Okay, how did you know?”

  “Most guys don’t keep a bridal picture on their desk, unless they’ve just gotten married.”

  Ben picked up the framed photo. “Oh, right. This is my lovely Liora.”

  “Liora...is that Russian?”

  “Yes it is. Believe it or not, I met Liora through a Russian mail-order bride company.”

  “Really! What was that experience like?”

  “It was great. Everyone I dealt with was very friendly, very professional. The whole process went very smoothly.”

  “I’m kind of surprised. I’ve always had my doubts about those companies. They seem kind of...I don’t know...kind of fishy.”

  A chill shot up Ben’s spine. “What do you mean by that?”

  Andrew’s face flooded with crimson. “I’m sorry...I didn’t mean any offense.”

  “Tell me what you meant by that comment,” Ben demanded.

  “Nothing! I mean, I’ve heard some news stories about those kinds of companies...stories about them running scams on their customers. But I’m sure that’s not true in your case! I’m sure the company you dealt with is very reputable. It’s just that some of them are a little shifty.”

  “You didn’t say shifty before –- you said fishy!” Ben slammed Liora’s photo onto his desk, shattering the picture frame’s protective glass. “Why did you say fishy, goddammit?”

  Andrew looked like he was about to cry. “I don’t know...it’s just a word. Fishy, shifty, suspicious, whatever.”

  “No, you specifically said fishy. You even gave it a little extra emphasis. What are you trying to imply? That there’s something abnormal about my wife’s vagina?!”

  Andrew hightailed it out of Ben’s office without saying another word. Moments later, the telephone rang.

  “Hello!” Ben shouted into the receiver.

  “Ask Liora about the Butcher of Volochayevka.”

  That voice. So familiar, yet impossible to place.

  “Who the hell is this?” Ben asked.

  “Ask Liora about the Butcher of Volochayevka. Ask her what he did to his victims.”

  The line went dead.

  Ben stood at his desk for a long while, gripping the telephone receiver in one fist, and grinding his other fist into the shards of broken glass from Liora’s photograph.

  When Ben got home from work that evening, Liora immediately noticed his bloodied hand. Ben told her he had tripped and fallen onto some broken glass in the alleyway behind his insurance office. She believed him. Liora’s eyes were moist with love and concern as she cleaned Ben’s wound, disinfected it, and bandaged it. There was no way Ben could stare into those dark, beautiful eyes and interrogate Liora. So he waited until bedtime, waited until Liora’s eyes blended seamlessly into the darkness of the bedroom, before asking, “Liora...? Have you ever heard of the Butcher of Volochayevka?”

  There was a loud rustle of sheets from Liora’s side of the bed. “What? Why you ask such horrible thing?”

  “So you have heard of him?”

  “Of course. That monster terrorize Volochayevka for a year. Twelve women dead before he is finally caught.”

  “What did he do to his victims?”

  “Please, I not want to talk about—-”

  “Dammit, Liora –- tell me what he did to his victims!”

  “He cut them...down there.”

  With his eyes adjusting to the darkness, Ben could see that Liora was timidly pointing to her crotch.

  “He cut everything away,” Liora continued. “He leave nothing but a bloody hole. And in that hole, each time he stick a fish head.”

  “A fish head?”

  “Yes. He was local fisherman. That fish stink drove him crazy, I think. They say he was...”

  Liora was still talking, but Ben had tuned her out. In his mind he pictured a Russian morgue: twelve cadaver tables, each table occupied by a dark-haired beauty, each woman with a fish head where her vagina should be. The women were all dead, but the fish heads were very much alive, their gaping mouths coughing out soggy words: “Fuck us, Ben. Fuck us!”

  Ben bolted toward the bathroom, making it there just in time before his dinner splashed into the toilet bowl.

  “Ben...? Ben, are you okay?” Liora called from the bedroom.

  Ben staggered to the doorway. “Give me a minute!” he shouted down the hall, then closed the bathroom door and locked it. A pair of Liora’s panties hung from a hook on the back of the door. In all likelihood, these were the panties that Liora had worn that day. Which meant that as little as twenty minutes ago, they had been rubbing right up against her private parts. What was so damn private about them? That’s what Ben wanted to know!

  That hungry little mouth...

  Ben grabbed the underwear, buried his face in the crotch, and inhaled deeply. They smelled fishy. But that’s normal, isn’t it? Ben asked himself. Don’t most women have sort of a fishy odor down there? He tried to recall that rhyme he had once heard about cunnilingus:

  Smells like tuna,

  Tastes like chicken,

  So hold your nose,

  And keep on lickin’.

  Ben took another whiff of the panties, and this time he almost retched. This was no tuna smell! This was the smell of dead carp floating in muddy water, baking in the summer sun, being pecked at by seagulls as they stood atop their scaly, fly-ridden meal.

  It was the smell of Nelson Lake.

  Nelson Lake was actually more of a big pond than a lake -– hidden from sight by a tangle of thickets, just beyond the trailer park where Ben’s friend Ed Obluck lived. Or “Evil Eddie,” as the kids at Woodside High called him. Ever since moving to town at the beginning of the school year, Ed had been at the center of a growing mythology. According to the rumors, Ed had beaten the crap out of his stepfather, who was now in a coma. He was fucking his eleven-year-old sister. He owned a video of a woman getting raped in a men’s room by a bunch of drunken rednecks. He was maybe even the person who had shot the video.

  Ben figured that these stories were, at best, half-truths, and in all likelihood, outright lies. Still, they managed to rile people up and get Ed noticed. Best of all, the bullies didn’t mess with Ed, because they perceived him as someone who would retaliate by burning down their house and gutting their dog. That’s the kind of status that Ben wanted: to be well known and left alone. Maybe if he spent enough time with Ed, he’d become known throughout the school as “Big Bad Ben” (which would be a definite improvement over Dorkwad, Shitfuck, Retard, and the other assortment of names that the popular kids currently called him).

  And so it was that on a hot afternoon in late May, Ben found himself sitting with Ed on a makeshift raft in the middle of Nelson Lake. They had passed the after-school hours discussing the lyrics to Rush songs, debating whether An American Werewolf in London or The Howling was the better werewolf movie and, most of all, talking about girls.

  “Who would you rather rape,” Ed asked as he dropped his fishing line into the water, “Cindy Johnson or Ann Cody?”

  Those kinds of comments s
ometimes worried Ben -- made him wonder if Ed might be as screwed up as people said he was. “Why word it like that?” Ben asked. “Why not say, ‘Who would you rather fuck?’”

  “Because neither one of them bitches would fuck someone like me. So I’d have to rape ’em!”

  “Come on, Cindy and Ann aren’t so bad. Sure, they’re pretty stuck up, but it’s not like they’re mean or anything. They’re actually pretty nice –- especially Ann. She sits next to me in Chemistry. Sometimes we talk and joke around before class. I’m actually starting to like—-”

  “Got a bite!” Ed interrupted, the tip of his pole bending sharply toward the water. “Let’s see what it is.”

  What the fuck do you think it is? Ben wanted to say. Nelson Lake was basically a big, muddy carp hatchery. Drop a worm anywhere in the lake and a carp would be chomping at it within a minute. In the shallow water, you could reach in and grab one at will. On the shore, you had to watch your step to avoid tripping over the dead ones.

  “Hey, it’s a carp!” Ed said as pulled the snorting fish to the surface.

  “Now there’s a surprise,” Ben replied. He watched Ed lug his catch onto the raft –- looked like a four-pounder. Its color was grimy and nondescript, probably because of all the time it spent burrowing in the muck at the bottom of the lake. Despite the summer weather, Ben felt a chill come over him –- these dirty bottom feeders really gave him the creeps.

  Ed pried open the carp’s slimy mouth to check on his hook. “Aw man, she swallowed it good,” he said. “This one’s gonna croak for sure.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “Are you kidding me? This is the perfect catch. Just enough life in her for sucking, but not enough for biting.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Ed unzipped his jeans and pulled out his penis -- his full erection pointed up toward the blazing sun. “Let’s just say that all the talk about raping those two little bitches has got me good and horny!”