She held her stare for another few seconds, then smiled back at him, let go of his chin and ran the backs of her fingers across his cheek, leaving a soapy streak behind.
“I wanted to talk to you about Ms. Beasley. You been over to see her lately?”
“Last week. I was just thinking maybe I’d head over there today, see if she needs anything from the store. She doesn’t really eat much, and I’m starting to think she’s only buying food so she can make me eat it.”
His mom chuckled, nodded. “Yeah, I bet you’re right about that. What, are you complaining?”
“Not at all. That old lady can cook. Especially her pork chops. Man.”
“Better than your mother’s pork chops?”
Calvin scratched his head. “Have you ever made pork chops before? I—”
“I’m just messing with you,” she said, and threw her hip into his side. “Anyway, I’m a little worried about her. I usually see her in the mornings, sitting outside of her house, reading the paper. I haven’t been seeing her at all lately.”
“I can go over, make sure she’s all right.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “You’re such a good boy.”
“What am I, your dog now?”
“You keep barking, maybe we’ll take a little visit to the vet.” She raised an eyebrow, made her hand into a scissors shape, and snapped her two fingers together. “Snip snip, Rover.”
“Mom!” Calvin couldn’t help but laugh as he backed away from her toward the front door.
“Don’t you want something to eat first?”
“Nah. Ms. Beasley will make me something. She’ll force me to eat whether I’m hungry or not, so I might as well go with an appetite.”
“I’m proud of you, Calvin. Can’t believe I was blessed with such a sweet boy. It might not seem like much to you or me, but you spending time with Ms. Beasley, it probably means the world to her. Might be the only thing she’s got left to look forward to besides the morning paper.”
Calvin grinned, his hands in his pockets. His fingers brushed up against the broken glass on his phone, and the butterflies in his belly got to flapping their wings.
“All right. Go on ahead. Tell her I said hi, all right?” “Yeah, Mom. I will.”
Calvin trudged through his yard and hopped the short chain-link fence separating their place from Ms. Beasley’s. Before even making it to her door, he noticed the flowers in front of her bushes were drooped over, the petals wilted. The summer had been record-breaking hot, and they were in the middle of a fierce drought. The only other time Calvin saw Ms. Beasley outside of her home, besides reading her paper, was when she watered her flowers and lawn. Always smiling, always humming as she did it.
“Ms. Beasley?” Calvin called out before he knocked.
He noticed the smell first. Creeping out from under the door. Calvin had never smelled anything like that before, and he had to use the collar of his shirt to keep from gagging.
He knocked again. “Ms. Beasley? You in there?”
After getting no response, he pressed his ear up to the door. It sounded like a hurricane of flies inside, buzzing and clicking as they collided with the door from the other side.
What the hell?
Calvin waited another minute or so before trying the doorknob. The door was unlocked, and he pushed it in gently, took a step inside.
The flies and odor hit him in a wave, and when he stumbled away from it, his backward motion slammed the door shut behind him. He leaned against it for a second, shooing the flies out of his face, trying his best to hold his breath.
Though he kept his shirt collar over his nose and mouth, the potent stench flowed through the fabric, up his nostrils and past his lips. Filled his mouth with its savory, sour essence. No matter how many times he swatted at the flies, they just kept settling on his arms and hands and face, scuttling through his hair, so he gave up and crept through the front hall toward the kitchen.
“Ms. Beasley?” His voice was muffled through his shirt, so he lowered his collar. “Ms. Beasley! It’s Calvin! You here?”
No answer. Only the constant insectile hum.
The kitchen was empty and clean as it always was. He had expected to find some spoiled meat left out on the counter or a sink full of festering dishes, but everything looked normal and sparkly. He didn’t bother calling out anymore, knew that if Ms. Beasley was in the house, she would have heard him.
Maybe she’s got family after all, and just never told us about them. Maybe she’s off visiting somewhere.
Maybe an animal crept into the house somehow, up and died while it was in here.
Calvin knew there was one other possibility, but he didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t know if he could handle seeing something like that.
No, she’s fine. She has to be.
The living room was as clean as the kitchen, the walls decorated with old photos of Ms. Beasley and who he assumed were old friends. Calvin stopped, studied a photograph of Ms. Beasley when she was younger, maybe in her thirties. He wouldn’t have recognized her, but a few weeks ago, the old woman pointed it out to him, though he only glanced at it then.
“Not bad, huh, Calvin?” she had said, then chuckled deep like she always did.
The photo was faded, almost yellow, but sat in a gold ornate frame. The woman smiling out from behind the glass looked nothing like the old woman Calvin knew. This woman was gorgeous. The kind of woman that Calvin would never have a chance with, the kind that was out of his league, though he was starting to wonder if there was anyone in his league. Perhaps he was doomed to spend his life alone.
She had brown curly hair that hung down over her shoulders. Her smile was wide, teeth perfect, cleavage deep and cream-colored. Calvin had to wonder how a woman who used to look like that could have possibly transformed into the squat, chubby old lady he knew. Ms. Beasley wasn’t hideous or anything, had to be the most adorable old woman he had ever seen, but now that Calvin knew what she looked like in her youth, now that he had a chance to really study the photo, he didn’t know if he’d ever look at her the same way again. As he forced himself down the hall toward the bedrooms, he realized he was beginning to get used to the smell. He could still detect it loud and clear, but it was losing its strength, didn’t make him feel like he was going to puke with every breath he took anymore.
Ms. Beasley had three bedrooms. One was what she called her sewing room, but really it was a place to stuff all her junk. Calvin could barely get that door open, and decided then and there he would help her clear it out one of these days. He poked his head in, but there was nothing to see but boxes and plastic containers of old junk.
The second room was her guest bedroom, though Calvin wasn’t sure a single guest had ever stayed there. He stepped in, but the room was empty, bed made, drapes drawn. Nothing to see.
That left Ms. Beasley’s bedroom.
The smell had grown stronger when he walked from the living room toward the bedrooms, and now that he stood just outside of Ms. Beasley’s room, it was like an open flame of putridity. Flies zoomed in and out of the crack at the bottom of the door, and though he knew it was pointless, Calvin knocked, tried to swallow, but a ball of mucus got lodged in the middle of his throat.
“Ms. Beasley? You all right?”
He wanted to leave. Wanted to go home, get his mom, or better yet call the police. But then he pictured Ms. Beasley in the room, maybe hurt—she fell and can’t get back up again, shit herself maybe. If that was the case, she needed his help as soon as possible. He couldn’t just leave her there, prolong her suffering just because he was scared of what he might find.
He took a deep breath, his mouth filling with the hot, stinging taste that flooded the house like a spicy fog, and then opened the door.
He had been holding his breath, terrified he would find the old woman in bed with her eyes wide open and sightless, but when he discovered the bed empty, he exhaled, leaned against her dresser as he inspected the room.
The bed was vacant, and the sheets and comforter were tossed aside. He had never been in her room before, but he knew she was a very clean, tidy person, figured her for the type to make her bed each and every morning.
The next breath he took nearly choked him as he inhaled a lungful of the thick, humid air in the room. He gagged this time, pulled his collar back up, his eyes watering. The odor was so intense in that room, the air seemed to vibrate with it, stung his senses like pepper spray.
The bathroom was to his left, a triangle of light projecting onto the wall and floor. Clouds of iridescent flies floated about, scuttling and flitting their wings. He knew it was futile, but he swatted at the insects anyway as they swarmed over him, pressing their suctioning mouths to his skin and slurping up the moisture there.
Run! Get the hell out of here!
But he walked forward instead, his curiosity overpowering his fear. He crept toward the bathroom door, using his foot to swing it open. The motion of the door awakened an explosion of flies, but they were too enthralled by their meal to flee. They only burst into the air for a moment before settling back down and continuing their feast.
Ms. Beasley lay in her bathtub, nude, a puddle of congealed blood under her head that reminded Calvin of cranberry sauce. Both of her legs were propped up on the sides of the tub, the one closest to Calvin hanging off, the toes a few inches above the floor. The nails were yellow and thick, reminded Calvin of stale bread crust. The toes were thickly knuckled, bent and curled up, liver spots over the tops of the feet like leopard print.
The loose skin and fat of her upper thighs was squashed and pressed inward by the porcelain, more brownish spots dotted along the bulbous flesh. The texture and color reminded Calvin of raw chicken skin, and he had an urge to reach down and touch it for some reason.
Above her thighs was a disheveled mop of pubic hair, long and dark gray like a pile of ashes, sticking this way and that as if zapped by static. The way her legs were spread, Calvin caught a glimpse of dark pink, but just a peek. The drapes of wrinkled skin overlapping one another like slices of pastrami and the horde of scurrying flies gorging themselves covered most of it.
But when he saw that flash of pink, a tingle started at the base of his scrotum and rode all the way to the tip of his penis. He glared down at his groin as if a gremlin were crawling out of his urethra, disgusted with his own body for behaving this way. When another tingle slithered through him, he reached down, squeezed himself, then quickly pulled his hand away and shook his head.
What the fuck’s wrong with me?
Above Ms. Beasley’s baggy, slack vagina and the bush of pubic hair like a wizard’s beard was a mound of fat that bulged like she had a bicycle helmet surgically implanted there. His mother had something similar, though not nearly as big as this. She called it her pooch. Ms. Beasley’s pooch had a trail of coarse hair running right up the middle of it, leading all the way up to her belly button which resembled a fat man’s whistling mouth, her gelatinous stomach hanging down on either side of it like jowls. The flies frenzied over her belly the most, and appeared to have chewed their way through in various spots around her midsection. The flesh was opened up to reveal the jellied meat and fat beneath like a baby’s mouth full of applesauce.
The fat on her body hung off her frame in layers, the top layer being her massive, sagging breasts that flowed off her chest and puddled up at her armpits. The nipples were a light pink color, the tips long and thick like cocktail weenies. The areola were feathered at the edges, fading off into the rest of the wrinkled, loose flesh. The skin over her sternum was dark with rot, splitting and breaking open as if the weight of her breasts pulling in opposite directions had eventually torn her open.
Calvin couldn’t make himself look away from the breasts. They were grotesque mounds of festering blubber, wrinkled up, deflated beach balls. Yet they were the first pair of breasts he had ever seen in the flesh. He had never been so close to real, actual tits before, and regardless of what or whom they were attached to, he couldn’t help but stare.
Another tingle. This time he welcomed it, checked over his shoulder once just to make sure nobody snuck in behind him, then grabbed a hold of his crotch like he was palming a baseball.
He tried to imagine Ms. Beasley as her younger self, the gorgeous woman from the photo hanging in the living room. But when his eyes scooted up from her breasts to her face, it was impossible to sustain the fantasy.
Ms. Beasley’s eyes were both open, the flies scuttling over them, nudging each other over to get a taste of the jelly within the sockets. Her nose had been eaten down some, the tip now a red and black nub, the nostrils almost completely consumed. A pair of dentures hung from her lips sideways, looked like a pink hook caught at the corner of her mouth. Her tongue was a black, swollen lump of meat that looked too big for her mouth, and what space remained was filled with maggots, their pale, segmented bodies fat with decay.
What hair she had left on her head was the same color and thickness as the hair between her legs and looked like cobwebs stretched across her spotted, pale scalp.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Beasley,” Calvin said. He wanted to be sad for her. He wanted to miss her, mourn her. But the tingle in his groin had become an erection he could no longer ignore, and he pulled the periwinkle towel off the rack beside the tub and tossed it over the old woman’s face.
He held his breath as he reached his hand toward her, not just because of the smell, but to try and calm his thumping heart. His hand shook, palm damp. He sat on the edge of the tub, shoving her leg out of the way to make room. The tips of his fingers touched the breast first, dimpling the soft flesh.
This is wrong. What am I doing?
She was my friend!
Though the thoughts erupted into his mind, his hand seemed to have a mind of its own. When he seized the breast, squeezed it, the head of his erection got to pulsating, and he reached down to unzip himself, let it breathe some. He kneaded the breast, softly, lovingly, tweaked the elongated nipple.
It felt nothing like he imagined it would, softer and squishier. His free hand reached for the other breast, and just as he grabbed hold, his eyes darted once again to her face. Even though the towel concealed it, he could still see the shape of it, could still tell that her mouth was wide open. Dark stains had already begun to seep through the cloth, and the maggots and flies captured beneath wiggled and buzzed.
Calvin sighed and pulled his hands away. “I’ll be right back.”
He ran down the hall back toward the living room. Lifted the framed photo off the wall. As he dashed back toward the bedroom, he studied the young Ms. Beasley again, let her beauty sink in deep. He still couldn’t believe how perfect she once was, now reduced to the pale, stinking pile of meat and fat in the bathtub.
Calvin planted a kiss over the young woman’s mouth, leaving waxy lip residue on the glass. He quickly wiped that away, only managing to smear it, and placed the frame over Ms. Beasley’s towel-draped face.
“Much better.”
His erection was so hard, so full of blood, it was starting to hurt. The base of his testicles began to throb with ache, so he removed his pants and boxer shorts to give them room.
He stared down at his cock, the head purple and throbbing as if a heart had been stuffed into it. As he stroked it, his eyes coasted toward Ms. Beasley’s colossal breasts, and he wanted desperately to feel them again, squeeze them. Part of him wanted to slide one of the nipples into his mouth, nibble on it, swirl his tongue over it.
But that would be disgusting.
As excited as he was, he still couldn’t help but notice the abundance of flies and maggots, whose feeding frenzy seemed to have grown more violent since Calvin had arrived. Not to mention the smell.
“Just a couple more things, and we can get started,” he said to the photograph. “Sound good, Ms. Beasley?”
“Hurry. I need you, Calvin. I always have.”
Calvin turned on the water, pulled the showerhead down and sprayed the bug
s away. They buzzed and swarmed angrily, colliding with his head and face to show their displeasure. He opened up the small window over the toilet, did his best to shoo the flies out through there.
The maggots fell off in wriggling clumps, a good amount of them swirling down the drain, but as they continued to collect there, they clogged it. The water started to rise, so Calvin cut off the shower, figured that was good enough. Maggots wiggled and danced in the water like mosquito larvae, but as long as they weren’t on Ms. Beasley, he figured he could ignore them.
He snapped his finger, sprinted back into the bedroom and toward the dresser. A vast collection of perfumes sat on top, each with its own flamboyant color and name that Calvin couldn’t pronounce. He used both arms to grab as many bottles as he could, then crept back to the bathroom, being careful not to drop any.
One at a time, he emptied the bottles over Ms. Beasley’s body, making sure he covered every spot. A few maggots had started to work their way back up her torso and head, but the perfume washed those off. The sloppy gashes along her belly filled with the pungent liquid before it slowly soaked into the tattered flesh and meat.
When the last bottle was empty, he tossed it aside, sat on the edge of the tub, and smiled down at Ms. Beasley. Her photograph smiled back at him, and he knew it was in his head, knew he was just seeing things, but he could have sworn she winked at him. Invited him into the tub with her.
“Are you sure?”
“Hurry.”
Calvin’s erection had softened some, but when he pulled his t-shirt over his head, climbed into the bath, it hardened back up. His feet splashed in the water, perfume, and maggot soup, and he carefully lowered himself to his knees right between her legs, inches away from the matted down, soaking mound of pubic hair.
He had to remind himself to breathe as he stretched himself forward, braced himself on the wall as he hovered over her. And then centimeter by centimeter, he lowered himself on top of her, wrapped his arms around her wet, spongy body, laid his head on her chest so that he could look up into the photograph, make eye contact with the young Ms. Beasley.
DOA III Page 4