Hottest Blood

by Jeff Gelb

  I think I will always remember Valentine the way he was at that moment. It is the picture of him that I will carry with me to the grave: Valentine, framed by the window, cast like a statue in shadow and light. His hawklike, scarred face, his leonine hair, his angular shoulders bent with a burden of melancholy. This memory remains clear, like a snapshot of a long-lost perfect day. And, in my mind, he will never fade nor grow old.

  “Let’s go,” said Valentine, picking up his bag.

  The light inside the house had taken on a curious red cast. The air had congealed into a bloody miasma that caught in the back of the throat and reeked of sweat and sex.

  “Will we be strong enough to fight it?” I asked. Already my penis was knocking against the door of my trousers, stiffening into a club. I found myself watching Valentine’s buttocks shift under his jeans.

  “This is only a residual effect,” he said. “The real power is in the room itself. It’s anchored itself to the house in order to function more efficiently as a gateway for The Mysteries. We must prevent that from happening.”

  As we climbed the stairs, the sound of the room became louder. It was moaning. A deep bass note vibrated through the walls and floor.

  “I’m afraid, Valentine,” I admitted. “I can feel itself insinuating its way into me. What if I can’t control myself?”

  “Then try to enjoy it,” he said grimly.

  We stood outside the door. Valentine reached into his bag and transferred a number of items to his pockets. Finally, he selected a brace of Band-Aids from a silverplated tin.

  “I’ll be looking beyond the real,” he said. “You must be my eyes if I need a description of events on this plane.” Thus saying, he fixed the strips of sticking plaster over his eyelids.

  I wiped my brow and picked up Valentine’s bag.

  “Ready?” he said, and, before I could reply, the door was open and we were swept into the Bacchanal.

  The first thing I saw was the young policeman. His body was no longer his own and had become a mere engine of unfocused lust. The Mysteries had worked their enchantments upon his flesh and transformed it to suit their own ghastly purpose. His body seethed, like a bag of skin filled with serpents. Mouth and nose were fused into a single glistening slit with staring eyes on either side. His eyebrows had grown together into a thick pubic mass at the crown of this rudimentary vagina. His tongue thrashed from his transformed face, flicking thick liquid onto the bodies of his fellow revelers. Heavy extrusions surged out of the young policeman’s torso, searching for receptive orifices before subsiding back into his rippling musculature. His penis was extended, fractal-branching into a cat-o’-nine tails that flailed and penetrated men and girls and the very walls of the room with indiscriminate abandon.

  Giselle was pounding her fist repeatedly into a gaping, flaming hole at the base of the policeman’s spine. When I caught a closer glimpse of the girl’s hand, I realized that it too had suffered a monstrous transformation, becoming a bling, glistening phallus. The other men and Imogen were not so radically altered, but I could not help but be aware of the way in which their skin seemed to slide and flow.

  This, then, was the scene that greeted me when I entered the room. I will not lie; I wanted to retch, but at the same time I was stimulated to the threshold of my self-control. Here was pure flesh, pure desire, set free from all restraint and given uninhibited expression. All the impulses that drive the human animal were here distilled and unleashed.

  The room itself was no less active than its occupants. Every object strained at the limits of its construction. Chairs, tables, toys, furnishings: All these things ached with a newly revealed eroticism, each attempting to form of its substance some representation of cunt or cock. The walls, floor, and ceiling were alive. Suffused with a rosy glow, they extended stalagmite didoes upon which the occupants of the room pleasured themselves. Vibrating gashed blinked open in the walls, eager to be filled.

  My mind and body reeled, and I could no longer tell whether I was in Hell or in Heaven.

  I glanced at Valentine, blinding surveying the room, and tried to describe what I was seeing. I knew that he saw something quite different. His “sealed vision” permitted him to penetrate to the normally veiled essential nature of things. He saw the naked room.

  “My God!” I heard him say. “The taint runs deep…”

  He raised his bandaged hand toward the tall, narrow windows on the far side of the room. I forced myself to look beyond the carnal chaos to those open windows. The scene there bore no relation to the cityscape one would have expected to see from that perspective. Instead of chimneys and treetops and clouds, I found a nocturnal sky, filled with strange liquid stars. Silhouetted against these dream constellations, I discerned vast structures. The windows of these threatening buildings were lit with a whole new spectrum of unearthly colors. The buildings spat vast streamers of aurorae into the sky, and I heard sounds I cannot explain. For just a moment, it seemed, I was granted a vision of a world beyond known philosophies. A world where amniotic seas raged through living cities.

  “What is that place?” I said. “What are those buildings?”

  “Those are not buildings,” Valentine said, and he began to unwrap the stained bandages that covered his left hand.

  It pains me to confess that, at that moment, I lost all control. Something pushed me back and I fell. The room roared and fluxed around me, and I raised my head to see Imogen Bedlow’s lips fasten around my erection. I slid in and out of her mouth and could feel strange cold spaced at the back of her throat. As she gorged herself on me, her own father took her from behind and, almost as quickly, Barnes was upon me. Worse was to follow as I helped him to divest me of my clothing. With writhing, lactating nipples, he fell upon me and drove himself into me. I abandoned myself to the delirious, monotonous rhythm of the bewitched room.

  Giselle and the young policeman seemed to be fusing together somewhere in the center of the room, creating a new and fabulous organism. I saw a shrieking, deformed thing rearing up toward the ceiling and collapsing like a wave. It was beautiful and gorgeous, a living Henry Moore sculpture carved from bleeding flesh. It strained for heights of gratification I could scarcely imagine, and I watched it pass into the palpitating substance of the room itself. Then I collapsed, hovering on the brink of orgasm for what seemed like endless hours.

  Suddenly Imogen was torn away from me. I looked up through a red fog to see Valentine pushing her back against the wall. She tongued the air, pleading with him to abuse her. Calmly, Valentine removed a key from his pocket and placed it in the girl’s mouth. Her eyes closed in bliss and she began to suck on the rusty key. Valentine ignored the hands that scrabbled at the zip of his trousers and turned the key in Imogen’s mouth. I swear that I heard the clacking sound of an ancient lock. Imogen’s eyes snapped open, like switch-blades. She began to scream.

  For a moment, the spell was broken. Barnes and Bedlow pulled away from one another in disgust and horror.

  “Get them out of here!” Valentine shouted. I tugged at my trousers and tried to restore some dignity to my appearance.

  “Forget your trousers!” he cried. “Just get them out!”

  Ignoring my nakedness, I managed to push the others out of the room and onto the landing.

  I paused at the threshold and turned. Valentine lifted his uncovered left hand. It was withered horribly, like the hand of some mummified king. This, I knew, was another legacy of his most dreadful confrontation with The Mysteries. Angela had died and Valentine had lost the use of his hand. It had, however, become for him a potent object of power. He placed birthday-cake candles on the tops of each finger and lit them. Then he lifted his Hand of Glory in preparation for the final battle.

  “Valentine, for God’s sake!” I whispered. “You can’t fight them alone.”

  “I’m not alone,” he said. “Get out now, while you still can. The only way to stop them is to the use the room’s own power. It’ll destroy you if you stay.”


  The air was filling with strange viscous streamers. Pearly-white, like semen floating free of gravity, this substance filled the air around us. Thin tendrils glistened and sang.

  “They’re coming!” he said.

  “I can’t leave you to fight them alone…” I tried to say again.

  “Out!” he yelled, and the door blew shut in my face.

  “May God help you, Valentine,” I whispered.

  There was a moment of calm in which I heard Imogen Bedlow weeping softly, and then a surge of power shook the walls and I was thrown down the stairs.

  I recovered my senses to see Barnes and Bedlow kissing passionately on the landing. Imogen crawled between their writhing bodies, licking and sucking at whatever she could find. Eventually she sandwiched herself in such a way that both men could fuck her simultaneously. I struggled with the urge to joint them.

  There was a great ululating sound from the Rutting Room and I ran back up the stairs. I could not leave Valentine to his fate. With shaking hands, I opened the door for the last time.

  Of Giselle Barnes and the young policeman, no evidence remained, except for a shuddering cube of stressed flesh.

  Valentine hung suspended and naked in the center of the room, thrashing at the heart of a twitching web, a great spidery crucifixion. Filaments and protrusions extended from every corner of the room to penetrate his mouth and rectum. His pelvis bucked and his penis slammed like a piston in and out of a soaking orifice that the room had manufactured for itself.

  “Valentine!” I shouted, but he did not respond. His body spasmed automatically. The far wall no longer existed, and in its place there was a vista of staggering abnormality, through which these monstrous “buildings” came lurching. Faces were scorched into walls. Leering, childish drawings appeared and were erased by unseen hands. The word “SUBMISSION” was scrawled with some diarrheal substance that faded into bilious smoke. Saliva ran from the walls. I felt that I was simply an observer in the midst of a battle I could not comprehend.

  I looked up to see Valentine extend his Hand of Glory. The tiny candles flared, and shredded paper began to rain down from the ceiling. The room’s breathing grew more rapid and the walls flushed red. The same color spread across Valentine’s skin like a rash. His own breathing was synchronized with that of the room. Together they ascended toward some unendurable climax. The Mysteries reached into the room, spreading a scabbed, diseased shadow across the windowsill.

  There was one ineffable moment when everything paused at once, and then Valentine threw back his head and screamed.

  It is to my eternal shame that I fled from the room and did not say to help my friend. Instead, I joined Barnes, Bedlow, and Imogen for a final mesmeric orgy. Her bruised lips locked about men and I was lost.

  When I awoke from my wet dream, it was to find Valentine standing over me. The fingertips of his left hand were charred to matchsticks.

  “I’m sorry…” I began.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “They’re gone, for now, and there was nothing you could have done to help. That door has been sealed forever.”

  “Thank God,” I muttered. The unconscious bodied of my recent lovers lay tangled on the floor. “What have I done?”

  Valentine shook his head. “More lived destroyed by those monsters.”

  “But what about you?” I said.

  He simply turned and walked back toward the door that opened onto the Horney Chamber. At the threshold, he paused and looked down.

  “When Angela died, I thought I had died to love,” he said. “I was cored, hollowed-out. Not it seems I’ve found the thing that was lost to me.”

  “The room?” I said, barely articulating the words.

  He nodded. “I was enflamed,” he said quietly. “I transformed the room into an instrument of purest love. The carnal and the spiritual united. The Mysteries had managed to pervert the room’s true intentions. I restored them.”

  I knew then what he was about to say.

  “The Horney Chamber, powered by love, opens out into innumerable worlds. It can be folded through dreams, into unimaginable universes,” he said. “Rainbow skied and blue raging storms of tear-stained love notes. It’s all out there, old pal.”

  He smiled at me. “That’s where I’m going.”

  He reached out and laid his ruined hand on my shoulder.

  “Goodbye,” he said.

  He opened the door. From within, I heard the sound of a great sighing. The room was filled with light; spring mornings and new rain, scented black chiffons, red lamps swinging in the sweat of the night. All the colors of desire, all love and longing expressed in one eloquent rush of charmed air.

  “Goodbye, Aubrey,” I said.

  And Aubrey Valentine stepped into the room where Love lived and closed the door, and I never saw him again.

  Black Cars

  J. L. Comeau

  You comfortable back there, Mr. Winslow? Great. How was your flight? A little turbulence, yeah? Just let me stow your bags in the trunk and I’ll be right back.

  Wow, could out there tonight. Dulles is always windy. So where’re we headed? Oh, yeah. That’s your girlfriend’s house, right? Good-looker, mmm-mmm, great skin. Oh no, I’d never say anything about her in front of your wife, Mr. Winslow. No way, no way. Did you tell anyone about your little sidetrip here to D.C.? No? Smart man.

  Whoa, here comes the rain. Better turn on the wipers.

  You look sorta cold, Mr. Winslow. Just between you and me, I keep a little flash of cognac in the glove box for my best customers. Want a little snort? Sure, let me fix you up. Warm the old bones.

  That’s better, huh? More? Here.

  Hey, how did you like calling my car direct on this cellular phone? Convenient, huh? Thanks, I like this new car, too. Yeah, it’s a real switch from driving that old taxicab of mine. They call this a Black Car. Luxury sedan. They’re real popular up on Capital Hill now.

  Beg your pardon? Naw, I only drive nights. Sleep days. I’ve got cat’s eyes, you know? Night eyes. Sun kills me. Burns my brain. And there’s business out here after dark, let me tell you. A lot of monkey business, too, if you know what I mean. Things can get pretty weird sometimes, but I don’t really give a shit what people do as long as they pay me what they owe. I’m a driver, not a cop, right? Yeah, gotta make that living first and foremost. But it can get weird. Believe me, I could tell you some stories.

  You really want to hear one? Well, let’s see…There’s so many—Oh. I’ve got one for you. We drivers swap tales, you know, mostly bull storied about hot babes in the backseat inviting us to join them or wild lied about huge fared and tips that never happened. Stuff like that. We all do it. Anyway, one story I kept hearing again and again was about a couple living in a luxury suite at the Willard, that classy hotel around the corner from the White House. I’d been hearing about this wealthy couple for years, about how they’d hire out a Black Car for an entire night. Hey, that’s a driver’s dream. Thirty bucks an hour for a whole night can turn into one hefty chunk of green. Then, on top of that, this particular couple were said to tip a hundred percent, so you can understand why all of us drivers were eager to book those two, right?

  Well, at first I thought the stories were a bunch of brag and crap like the rest, you know, because none of the guys who’d ever transported this couple were still driving. But I’m an ambitious kinda guy and I keep my ear to the rail, so to speak. So a few months ago, one of the other drivers told me that he’d heard the couple lived in Suite 302. That’s all I needed to know. I hustled by backside over to the Willard Hotel that same night, trotted myself up to 302, and shoved my business card under the door. On the back of the card I’d written: Call me for the best ride of your life.

  Two days later Mr. Murdock called me.

  He booked me for the entire night, eight to five. It was a Saturday and I had a lot of business already booked, sure, but hell, I’d have cancelled my subscription to the resurrection for a chance at that kind of dough, ha. S
o I farmed out all my previous bookings to the other drivers and didn’t say a thing to anyone about the Murdocks. I like to play my business sly, you know? Keep my best customers to myself. Black Cars are competitive as hell; we’d steal each other’s clients in a heartbeat. It’s expected. Business is like that, right?

  So, to get back to the story, I buzzed home for a shower and got all decked out in my best suit. Gray Italian double-breasted job. Sharp. I thought I looked like a million bucks when I pulled up in front of the Willard at eight. But then I saw the Murdocks and realized I might as well have word a leisure suit from K-Mart. Brother, they were something to see.

  They kind of flowed down the front steps of the hotel like melting butter. Smooth. Clothes you wouldn’t believe. Mr. Murdock and his wife looked as different from each other as an eagle and a cat, but somehow they seemed perfect together. Complemented each other, right? He was as dark and tall as she was fair and tiny. Like a storybook king and princess, you know? Perfect. Could have been in their thirties or sixties, no telling.

  I was kinda nervous when the doorman ushered them into the car. I’m from working-class background, grew up in the Virginia suburbs. I was afraid my manners might offend them. Well, the Murdocks put me right at east, talking to me the way you would talk to someone across a dinner table. Friendly. Told me they wanted a tour of the city. I thought that was pretty strange, since they were residents, and said so. They laughed and Mr. Murdock said, We want to see your interpretation of the District. We want you to show us things we’ve never seen before.

  I figured he wasn’t talking about the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial. So I took a chance. I headed northwest across the city toward what they call the Crater District.

  You familiar with the Crater? No? hey, let me tell you, it’s unique. Half blast zone, half upper-middle-class residential district. It’s where the two parts of Washington, D.C. come together. Sandwiched in between burned-out buildings and deserted lots are big renovated homed that the owners bought for a song. Yuppied, right. Thought they were smart because those great big houses are located two blocks from the business district and two blocks from the subway. They were sure the whole area would get cleaned up and renovated when urban renewal rolled in, but they were wrong. Now they’re stuck out there in their fancy houses butted up to the worse kinda urban blight. Rats big as ponied, know what I mean? The residents did manage to get rid of most of the prostitutes who hung out there when they moved in, but nature abhors a vacuum, right? A whole new variety of prostitutes moved in. Transvestite hookers. Guys all decked out like chicks.