Through terrified eyes, she sees a big penis appear from out of the shadows, its bulbous head angling towards Seagull Head’s beak. Seagull Head sees it coming and turns his head and squawks at it.
The Prostitute of Death is holding the sex toy. But it is not a sex toy. It carries a small explosive device in the helmet of its phallic moulds that detonates when it becomes sufficiently wet or subjected to sustained fleshy compressions from the vaginal, anal or oral cavities.
The Prostitute of Death forces it into the beak of Seagull Head and down into his oesophagus. He instinctively reacts, seagull-like, to allow consumption. The explosion is both small and big enough to mangle Seagull Head’s throat area, and this causes his head to detach in a burst of viscera and sparking wires. He totters, falls in a branch-like heap. He becomes still; death overcomes him.
My Disease-Ridden Spit turns her head and sees the Goat Thing convulsing with the broken blade of a stiletto sticking out of the crown of its head, right between the stumpy horns.
She looks up at the butterfly girl, mutters something under her breath about taking “fucking ages to find that cock”, then falls into an unconscious slumber.
When she woke again, she was in a bed in the emergency unit of the Anarcho Chambers, feeling remarkably shit.
When Mertens came to see her, he brought flowers.
“So,” said My Disease-Ridden Spit, “we managed to save your ancestor, I see.”
“He was severely brutalised and rendered blind for life. But, yes, you did.”
“The seagull fucker messed me up pretty bad, huh?”
Mertens nodded. “You had a fourteen percent chance of survival.”
“So how did I?”
“TerrorSlut Butterfly.” Mertens always used their formal names. “She administered a vial of Exo fluid by intravenous injection. You were transported back to the Intel Core. I got you here as quick as I could. It was quick enough.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Three weeks.”
“Holy shit.” She stared upwards. Then: “So where’s the butterfly girl? I suppose I better thank her.”
Mertens looked down at the floor.
“She resumed her mission to eliminate the praying mantis.” He looked up again. “The mission failed.”
My Disease-Ridden Spit stared up at Mertens. She lay very still. After a few moments she said:
“It’s okay. I’ve been coalesced with a cobra. I’m a cold-blooded son of a bitch. Her death means nothing to me.”
She lay her head back on the pillow, staring upwards. Mertens remained silent.
After a while, she said:
“How about you turn this mantis mission over to me when I get better?”
She looked straight at him. Mertens held her gaze.
He looked down at the floor again, breathed long and hard, and said:
“Okay.”
Alistair Rennie is author of the sword and debauchery novel, BleakWarrior, and has published weird fantasy and horror fiction, essays and poetry in The New Weird anthology, Weird Tales magazine, Fabulous Whitby, Electric Velocipede, Mythic Delirium, XB-1, Pevnost, Schlock Magazine, Horror Without Victims, Weird Fiction Review and Shadowed Realms.
He was born and grew up in the North of Scotland, has lived for ten years in Italy, and now lives in Edinburgh in the South of Scotland. He holds a first class Honours Degree in Literature from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD in Literature from the University of Edinburgh. He is a time-served Painter and Decorator and a veteran climber of numerous hills and mountains in the Western Highlands, the Cairngorms and the Italian Dolomites.
He also creates retro-futuristic synthwave concept albums inspired by 1980s horror under the alias O S C U R O Z O N E.
WE BELIEVE IN 5B by Airika Sneve
AIRIKA SNEVE
Hadley would never have thought it possible, especially not in the elegant AdTech, Inc. lobby with the marble fireplace and the antique gold telescope, and yet there it was: each effeminate sneeze that erupted from the executive conference room—“Ah-teu!”—seemed to summon another boner-wielding gent through the lobby doors. If ever there existed a mating call to the wild North American pervert, it seemed to be that sneeze.
“Ah-teu!”
This time, the weak nasal fit brought a tiny Mexican man with a huge purple hickey on his neck and a sleeveless t-shirt with “KISS THIS” spelled out in enormous block letters. His name tag declared him “RAYMUNDO.” Like the ten men who had traversed the lobby before him, an unmitigated stiffy tented the crotch of his shorts, seeming to lead the way like a lodestar homing pigeon with an ETA four inches prior to its human attachment.
“5B?” he said in a thick Mexican accent. His eyes found her chest and stayed there.
Hadley pulled her blazer closed. “Conference room straight ahead to your left.”
He nodded. “Ladies,” he said, slowly pumping his hips. “Ladies like meeeeee.”
The words were out of Hadley’s mouth before she could bite them back. “Well. Chivalry is dead, thank you for murdering it; conference room to your left.” She glared.
Raymundo paused and then winked. Flabbergasted, Hadley watched him vanish around the corner where the CEO, Chief Operations Officer, and Vice President awaited. Hadley had welcomed and directed the procession before Raymundo: two construction workers, a cable guy, a man in a red pizza delivery costume with no pizza, two men in expensive-looking suits, and the rest in smart business casual attire. As different as they all appeared, each shared one trait: an unrepentant boner that could perforate the oculars of anyone within rutting range.
Why erections? Why a pizza-less pizza man? A construction worker? Why... Raymundo?
It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke: a construction worker, a pizza man, a cable guy, and some businessmen get together in a boardroom...
From the conference room: “Ah-teu!”
It was the daintiest man-sneeze she had ever heard, and someone in senior management was responsible for it. She knew this because the sneeze had come before the procession.
Hadley waited. The lobby doors remained closed.
No pervs this time.
She was beginning to convince herself it had all been a bizarre coincidence when another man walked in, this one tall, trim, and in finely tailored business attire. Her gaze found his crotch: he, too, was hellaciously aroused.
So much for mere coincidence.
“Welcome to AdTech, Incorporated,” said Hadley in a flat voice. The man approached the front desk with the kind of toothy, polished grin made for Crest toothpaste commercials—or nightmares.
“Why hello there, Miss. Matthew Train for the 5B meeting.”
“Conference room to your immediate left.” Hadley avoided his eyes.
She waited for him to leave. Instead, he stood there at the reception desk, beaming at her with that Tony Robbins rictus. The only sound was the squeak of Hadley’s ergonomic chair as she squirmed.
“Is there something I can help you with?” she asked, blushing. She could almost feel him pressing his erection into the polished white wood of the front desk.
“I suppose I would be remiss if I neglected to introduce myself. I’m the President of the 5B Committee, and I can’t tell you how much it pleases me to be here. Thank you for having us.”
She squirmed. “I can’t say I’m familiar with your work.”
Matthew cracked a smile that was suspiciously close to a leer.
“5B helps businesses reach their full potential through innovative though highly unconventional means. That’s not the whole enchilada, of course, but it’s the main slice. Last year alone, we helped a small tech startup triple their annual sales with our leadership seminar, which your company will get a taste of today.” He licked his lips. “Mmmm-mmmm.”
Hadley tapped French-manicured nails on her mouse. “Oh. Have a fantastic meeting.”
“Bet on it.” He tossed her a practiced corporate wink and strolled his ere
ction into the conference room.
She hadn’t felt this kind of unease since she’d walked in on Joe from accounts receivable taking a shit in the unisex bathroom. Not even then.
Hadley pulled up the company’s digital calendar on her computer monitor. The morning’s event was titled “The 5B Committee: A Seminar in Unconventional Leadership.” Matthew Train was listed as the host. The meeting was scheduled to run from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.
Great, Hadley thought. Another overpaid consultant coming in to fuck up our workflow.
With a helluva lotta hardons involved.
Hadley leaned back in her chair, aghast. Had someone slipped some LSD into her coffee? What was with all these bonerous pervs marching into corporate? Were they holding the National Erection Convention at AdTech today, or what? None of this made any sense. Hadley could of course understand the businessmen’s arrival (minus the boners), but a pizza deliveryman with no pizza? Construction workers? A cable guy?
Why?
Hadley stared glassily into her monitor, too shaken to focus on the spreadsheet awaiting her formulation wizardry.
She Google-chatted Anthony Skalarzza, her buddy in accounts payable.
Hadley thought for a moment. While Skalarzza was indeed her break room buddy, she didn’t know him well enough to open with a line about erections. She had only been with the company for a few months, after all. This matter warranted caution.
Finally, she typed: “What’s the deal with this 5B meeting? Know anything about it?”
She waited an excruciating two minutes before Anthony replied: “Not really. Big secret project of the operations guys, that’s all I know. It’s the new phase of their ‘productivity iteration.’”
She tapped her fingernails on the keyboard, debating what to say and how graphic she should be in saying it.
Finally, she replied with a simple “OK.”
This was not a conversation for written documentation.
Hadley Googled “5B,” but Google wasn’t very helpful. The only results pointed to a website labeled “under construction,” as well as a few generic business directory listings describing the company as “Independent Business Consulting.”
She heard cheers coming from the conference room. A muffled voice—it sounded like Matthew Train’s—shouted, “We don’t want a single slice! We want the WHOLE ENCHILADA!”
“YEAH!” the voices chorused back.
“Repeat after me! We believe in 5B!”
“We believe in 5B! YEAH!”
Hadley scratched her head. They were starting to sound like a Southern Baptist church revival in there.
For the next half hour, Hadley sat at her desk, hazily answering phones, listening to muffled cheers, and staring blankly through the spreadsheet on her screen. It wasn’t long before another thump erupted, followed by chants of, “This is leadership! THIS is leadership!”
She clicked out of the spreadsheet and stood up.
Fuck Excel. She needed answers.
Hadley crept around the corner toward the conference room. She figured if someone surprised her by popping out, she could always say she was on her way to the stockroom to get a Coke.
The door was slightly ajar. Her heartbeat tripled.
Carefully, she tiptoed over and peered inside.
What she saw nearly caused her to faint.
In the very same conference room she had dusted and organized a hundred times or more, the upper-management businessmen she normally knew as respectable professionals stood with their pants pooled around their ankles, each drilling a woman with an elaborate ballroom hairdo while expensive gala dresses littered the room in silken piles. Pearls jounced on naked breasts; vigorous corporate thrusts frayed apart careful curls; high heels scattered about the neat cut pile carpeting. One guy had forgone the bare beauties and plugged into a hard-bodied hunk. Lee Marchand, COO, reclined in a high-backed office chair jerking off with a serene, almost regal smile on his face.
The guy was even pretentious when he choked the chicken.
Hadley gasped. There was AdTech’s CEO Stokely Yams, Fortune 500 businessman and LinkedIn networking guru, plowing a woman from behind while shouting, “We believe in 5B!”
Matthew Train lay naked on the floor with one finger in his asshole while a naked woman buffed his broomstick, panting, “I’ll give ya the WHOLE enchilada, YEAH! The whole enchilada!”
Another group of men jacked off in the conference table chairs laughing, cheering, and clapping as if they were live at the Super Bowl while a male stripper plowed a naked woman on top of the table. The stripper wore a handmade lanyard around his neck with the word “LEADER” scrawled in black Sharpie.
“He’s all berries and no twig!” shouted Ed Jasper, AdTech’s senior marketing manager. “I’m a bigger leader than he is!”
“I AM A LEADER!”
“Yeah, give ’er the business!”
“Let’s FUCK him!”
Without warning, a hand snaked through the cracked door and yanked Hadley inside by the collar.
The party clapped and catcalled as a naked goon dragged her in. The cable guy looked her up and down and exclaimed, “Girl, I’d suck a faht outta yo ass!”
“Look at the turd cutter on that one!” whistled one of the construction workers.
Two goons held fast to Hadley’s arms while she struggled. Lascivious eyes probed every inch of her body. Leery winks went off like flashbulbs.
“An unexpected guest,” said Matt Train, pulling out of his prostitute with that frozen grin. His face was red and wild.
One of Hadley’s naked captors clamped a sweaty hand over her mouth, stifling a scream. She wrenched away from their wagging hard-ons.
“Welcome to 5B: Big Boners Bring Big Business,” said Matthew, panting. “You are witnessing the most innovative leadership strategy of the twenty-first century.”
Hadley thrashed and screamed under the naked goon’s hand, spitting salty sweat back into his clammy palms.
“5B has shown via clinical research that sexually satisfied employees produce up to nine times more annual revenue than their carnally parched counterparts. Here today are the top workplace perverts in over nine major industries, as determined by sexual harassment lawsuits, self-reports, and supervisor writeups,” continued Matthew. “Phase One of AdTech’s business development deal is now in session: Sexual Satisfaction. Care to join?”
The goon unclamped his hand from Hadley’s mouth long enough for her to yell, “FUCK YOU!”
Cries of “BOO!” resounded all around. Ed Jasper banged on the red plastic “Bullshit” button in the middle of the conference room table. Raymundo armpit-farted.
The hand snapped back onto her mouth.
The male stripper gave no sign of even acknowledging Hadley’s presence. He was in his own dirty world as he threw his partner off him and twisted into a ridiculous human pretzel in an attempt to fellate himself.
“Shame,” said Matthew between breaths. His forehead glistened. He made no effort to smooth his rumpled coif.
Hadley knew then that the man was absolutely batshit insane. “99% of male AdTech employees are in favor of the 5B initiative.
99% can’t be wrong, Hadley!” Matthew cocked his head. “Look at that pioneer right there.” He gazed wistfully, almost proudly, at the male stripper, who was now licking his own shaft. “THAT has leadership written all over it. How many men can do that, Hadley? You should be taking notes.”
The stripper’s nose was parked firmly in his rectum. His tongue snaked closer to his power bar. He had gulped a full inch of his manhood into his mouth when, from his anus, burst a sharp foghorn report.
The stripper’s eyes popped open. He gasped. Instinctively, his hands clapped onto the overly-tanned butt-loaves sandwiching the offending nucleus.
He penis flopped limply out of his mouth.
Total silence descended in the boardroom. Hadley’s panicked gaze darted about the shocked, disgusted expressions on the participants’ faces.
The stripper had killed the mood with a single fart.
A titter of revulsion passed among the businessmen. “Well!” scoffed one.
“How could he do such a thing?” gasped another.
“Disgusting!”
“FAUX PAS!”
“HE’S no leader!”
“Well,” said Matthew. He frowned deeply. “Flatulence happens, folks. Very sorry.” Turning to the mortified stripper, he said, “That will be all, Sir. Your inspirational services are no longer needed.”
Hadley couldn’t believe it. These men were having an orgy in a corporate conference room, yet a fart was too much for them to handle. She redoubled her efforts to free herself, but she was no match for two turnt-up goons. “I’m very displeased with my investment,” whispered Stokely as the stripper yanked his silver tearaway pants on. The room rustled with grumbling, dressing men. Skinny hinders parted down the middle as men bent to the floor in search of ties.
Matthew nodded to Stokely. “Men!” he said in a stentorian boom, turning to address all sides. “This seminar isn’t over yet!”
The crowd paused with furrowed brows.
“It is well-known in history that conquering armies in medieval times would often eat the flesh of their conquests in celebration of their victories.” He turned to the stripper. “It is in the spirit of victory today that we shall celebrate leadership in spite of this—” He gestured disgustedly, “Snafu.”
“I’m out,” said the stripper, and bolted toward the door. Jasper from the credit department restrained him while another guy stuffed a pair of tighty whities in his mouth, then heaved him onto the table. Hadley too made a break for it but Matthew’s cronies grabbed her and held her tight.
Matthew shot a laser-cold smile at the struggling stripper on the table. “Let’s get a little less sexual, boys, and a little more visceral. How about we EAT this imposter! What do you say?”
DOA III Page 29