She forced her arms straight to look him in the eyes. He wore a mask, they all did, but she could tell it was him by the blood on his fingers and dripping from his chin. Jealousy tried to sink its claws in.
She shook. She managed to get an inch or two closer to him before being dragged back by her loose arse skin. It was dry enough to tear. Not even the infections kept it moist. They emitted an odour which made X choke on bad days.
The air pressed against her insides. She couldn’t keep them as insides any longer. The last thread of dignity leaked out of her with the liquid.
Laughter travelled around the circle. X would be the one to clean the mess in the morning, once the Dragon paid a visit with her fix.
Footsteps echoed off the floor. X fell on top of her steamy mess. It would find the tightest folds of skin and fester in there overnight to make her gag in the morning.
“She’s had enough now.”
Salvation came. Skin on the back of her knee was pulled back. A needle connected with her vein. Warm relief swept outwards, enveloping even the furthest skin folds. There was always a knight to rescue the damsel in distress.
Bright stage lights shone into her eyes. The audience wouldn’t be able to smell the puke or last night’s bellyful of semen, but they’d be able to see the stains if a stagehand didn’t hose her down. X still smelt ripe, even to her own heroin-dulled nose.
The fat lady was on and ready to belt out the final note. X’s Dragons came disguised as people in evening wear to the night’s performance. A better performance meant better drugs.
The tint of vomit surrounded her, and with it a hint of withdrawal. She needed that needle in her vein all the time. But she hit the high note without exiting stage left to puke.
She was bundled away back to her dressing room. A lesser Dragon held a needle in his hand, ready to inject her. She was new and fresh to this game.
Trackmarks decorated her arms right next to the old scars from the razor blade. The veins still welcomed the drug—there was no need to search her groin or beneath her toenails. It hit her system. It wasn’t as strong as what was dished out at night, the shit that made her forget.
“That’s a good girl.”
X aimed to please, there was still some Xanthe hiding in her after all. Her smile spread with the heroin coursing through her system.
“There’s been a change of plan for this evening.”
The voice was distant, not attached to anything at all. X slumped in her chain. If only her neighbour could see her now. Some part of Xanthe locked away inside took control of a nerve centre and crossed her legs.
“The party is going to be held on the stage.”
A string inside her snapped. Warm wetness rushed from between her legs.
“Wardrobe isn’t going to like that.”
The door slamming sounded like it was one million miles away. X was alone.
Voices haunted her and shadows danced across the wall with the flickering light. It was hard to say if she was truly haunted, or whether it was the poor quality of the drug that made her think she was. It came down to the same thing.
Her thoughts were lost in a swirling dance of green, with demons dropping in and out to say hi or simply hiss. There was shouting from outside her dressing room. It was real. X had the headache to prove it.
“There’s a body in the lake.”
Movement outside her dressing room found the centre of her head and shook it around a bit. Her stomach tied itself in knots. Until she learned how to source and cook her own fix, she was at the mercy of the Dragons.
“Party’s still on.”
A man barged into her dressing room. She didn’t know who he was until she saw the tips of his fingers. Under the harsh lights, it looked like they were stained with the crimson glow of countless visits with Aunt Flo.
“Take your clothes off.”
He stared her down.
“What did you do? Piss in these?”
She cringed against his loud voice and harsh words. Xanthe made an appearance when there wasn’t the correct amount of H running through her system. He made a reach for her sleeve.
“Take it off.”
He sounded like the whining man-child he was. They all were, the company—even the patrons.
“You’re fucking disgusting.”
The air of poshness and snobbery in his tone made the hairs on Xanthe’s body stand up. There was too much skin hanging from X for this to register in the outside world.
X pushed herself out of the chair. There was no way to know how long she’d been out for. There was no way to mark the passing of time even without drugs, except when she was on stage.
The VIP pulled off her costume. The things were designed to be ripped off with speed and ease. Bandages held her loose flaps of skin in tight bounds to return a bit of her lost bulk.
“Take those things off.”
He never gave her the chance before his bloodstained fingers started to pry at them. His nails drew droplets of blood to the inner skin folds. He noticed and went in for a taste.
“Not as good as your period.”
X could’ve done without the assessment. He was a patron of the theatre; she had to keep her mouth shut. She’d never had a voice to begin with. Promises and assurances meant nothing when the words didn’t carry over into reality.
He tore away the rest of her bandages leaving her with scratches and her stage undergarments. The wardrobe department needed to work on their laundering skills. The white had turned grey thanks to stretched elastic and a good case of crabs. They itched worse than what the neighbour had given her just when her pubes were starting to come in. Patrons still came to see them after hours. They seemed immune, like they could control who the crabs bit.
X knew better than to cross her arms over her breasts as he stripped off her bra. It was larger than her actual cup size due to the excess skin. Her nipples were nothing more than brown dots, only meeting the air on occasion.
“Take off your own underwear, fucking pig.”
She bent down, digging it out of skin flaps. The smell of urine hung over them. It burnt her eyes like cat piss. Her underpants were damp, leaving her to conclude that she’d wet herself a few hours ago. Had it been more recently, there would have been a puddle beneath her and the clothes would have been saturated.
Xanthe raised her head. She wanted to throw the pissy underwear at the VIP. If he liked menstrual blood, then he should like golden showers and underwear damp with infected piss. X sent her back to her box and nailed it shut.
“Lift up your flaps like a skirt and turn around.”
Her face went red. On the humiliation scale, this was up there with freezing her used tampons for his inspection.
“All the way.”
He made a twirling gesture with his fingers. All X saw was the red. She wanted to feel special, but the stains indicated she wasn’t his only one. He was the sort to keep different women, with different cycles locked in a dungeon so he had a continuous supply to meet his vampirical needs.
The theatre manager assured she was kept waxed and fresh down there, but everything passed in a blur of hazy green and vomit. She couldn’t remember the tampons, only see them in her personal freezer, wrapped up in clear plastic just for him.
Her VIP reached with his bloodstained fingers. He had to move back her loose skin, because even down there had been fat, before he could shove a finger inside and lick. Her skin would suffocate him if he attempted to suck out her vaginal discharge.
Xanthe spent childhood as a big girl. Drowning her memories of the neighbour’s wandering paws in grease had been her only escape.
One time, her mother caught her covered in dog food in a backyard paddling pool. She claimed she had been eating it, but really her neighbour had forced his Rottweiler to lick it off her. The dog’s snout had penetrated her anus, resulting in a shart which he filmed. Videos like that attracted big bucks on the black market.
X didn’t think any of the activit
ies with the VIP were filmed, but it didn’t make the experiences any less humiliating. No one at the theatre had made her eat dog food until she puked yet, like her mother had done. She shuddered beneath his probing fingers at the memory of lapping up the puke as her mother laughed. She’d even invited the neighbour over for a cup of tea and front-row viewing.
He slapped her skin. For loose bits, it had a lot of nerve endings. She knew better than to cry. She’d learned that lesson long ago. Tears only brought out anger in those around her.
“Hold yourself apart, you stupid whore.”
X obeyed, finding the flaps of her vagina and all the excess skin they hid behind and pulled them apart until her clit and hole were kissed by cold air. She focused on the noise outside her dressing room.
“Who was it?”
Fast-moving footsteps echoed out there, taking her to a different place as the VIP risked a lick. X could kill him now, could let her skin fall and hand the victory to Xanthe. Someone was already dead, if the shouting was to be believed. Another person wouldn’t matter. But this person was a patron. She would lose her Dragons along with her job and the cheering crowd that filled her up.
Her former neighbour was still out there somewhere, probably forcing dogs to lick food off her mother. She should save her loose skin for him. If anyone deserved to die between her thighs, it was him.
The VIP paid for the privilege to do as he wished. His fingers were so cold that if they hadn’t been stained with monthly blood, they would have probably been blue. X could feel a circulation problem. She inhaled to stop from flinching against them.
He inserted another before pulling out and deciding his fist might be better able to determine where she was in her cycle.
“When was your last period?”
The sound of his voice came beneath the echoes from outside the door.
“Answer me.”
He punched her cervix.
“You fucking junkies are all the same, why can’t you stupid hoes keep yourselves clean.”
He punched her again. It took all of X’s willpower to stay standing. Xanthe peeked out of her box, checking to see if the coast was clear. Xanthe took the additional punches without a murmur. She didn’t want X to lock her away again. She would save them both.
The door to the dressing room opened.
“Everyone needs to be accounted for. On the stage now.”
Xanthe grabbed X’s dressing gown. She would scrape back all the lost dignity and shove it down the VIP’s throat with such force that he would also end up belly down in the lake. Xanthe had no great fear of it but some of the more superstitious performers did. Subterranean lakes were creepy. That was a fact. But their natural creepiness didn’t produce the element of the supernatural, only fear did that.
It wasn’t possible for her vagina to feel more open after her first three months with the company. Fisting was part of the game. Her cervix didn’t appreciate the punches. It gave her a stagger as she walked.
The VIP stopped her from stumbling. As they walked he lifted her dressing gown and drooping skin. Xanthe sighed with the thought of more humiliation until the kiss of the needle and the warm embrace of heroin coursed through her again.
Xanthe faded into the background of her mind and let X have overall control. The theatre, the drug, the sex—it was X’s world. If Xanthe had remained free, she could have made a run for it, dragging X kicking and screaming into the arms of a cold-turkey withdrawal.
The VIP carried her. With all the weight loss, she was considerably lighter, but the skin would have made it difficult. It was her responsibility to have it removed but the theatre didn’t pay her. It was impossible to do something like that without money. Even backstreet plastic surgeons required it.
The next thing X/Xanthe was aware of was waking up on the cold, hard surface of the stage. Her dressing gown was gone. Once again, people surrounded her. This time, however, they were all men. With her skin rolls on display, she must have looked inviting.
Everywhere there were raised arses, with penises shoved violently in them. Xanthe sunk down into the depths of X’s mind where she couldn’t see or feel. X could handle it. This was her world, her dream; the sacrifice made for stardom.
“Who died,” she whispered.
The man sweating into her shoulder and dripping warm sticky drool onto her chin heard.
“No one knows.”
He went back to her pumping action. People tried to join the company every day, despite there never being an audition. Some new hopeful must have broken in and had an accident in the lake. Xanthe piped up then from the place she was hiding, you know that’s not what happened. X’s eyes went wide with understanding.
Her skin was heavy with cum shots. She wondered how many she took while she’d been passed out and how many more were to come. There was a party around her, past the pumping men. No one would miss her once they were bored with her skin rolls. X laid back and took the spunk.
Xanthe didn’t want to let her in. There were plenty of dark spots in her mind to hide, blasted holes left by memories blown away by heroin.
X’s eyes opened to the catwalk above. She was sure to project everything she saw into Xanthe, along with the warm sperm looking for an exit from her skin folds and the explosive display of diarrhea from the night before. Someone, most likely the theatre director, had pulled the body out of the lake and strung it up there. X had learned to never question and always accept early in her career. Existence was easier that way.
The body’s glassy eyes stared back at her. It had a bloated stomach and death’s erection. Xanthe closed her eyes but X could reach right into the centre of her brain to give her a taste. Even in death, the man could be used. Nothing went to waste in the theatre.
Fluid from above dripped on her. It seemed cold. Xanthe piped up with declarations of the chill being her imagination—the fluid could very well be warm cum and the cold of withdrawal.
X knew better. She watched the drop fall from the man’s nose. Another came off his belly and yet more from his cock. Whoever had strung him up, facing the stage, hadn’t bothered to dry him off. X supposed he had been hung to dry.
Another man joined the circle fighting for a place to fuck her skin. The smell from the new guy travelled through X’s nostrils and straight to Xanthe. It transported her back to the smell of rain-soaked dog and the cackle of her mother’s laughter. X was just a figment of Xanthe’s imagination back then. She could be turned on and off. It wasn’t until the heroin that she took over.
The man didn’t fuck, he licked and nuzzled, pulling Xanthe out of her hole. X immediately filled the spot, leaving Xanthe to confront her past head on. She looked out of X’s eyes, not feeling the withdrawal of heroin. The men around her looked up from their skin fucking, sensing something was different.
Xanthe couldn’t force the shakes. They noticed. She could feel it coming out of their pores and the cocks of those who came. They didn’t stick around for round two (or possibly three or four). There were plenty of other things to do on the stage. Xanthe could hear the noises.
She tried to focus on the girl screaming and the body above her. Anything to rid her mind of the man wearing socks over his ears like puppy-dog ears. His eyes peeked above a plastic snout. They had the penetrating glow of all she’d tried to run away from.
She banged on the door to X’s cell demanding to be let in. X opened the window to flip her off before slamming it shut again. Xanthe needed to face her demons for them both to be free.
It didn’t seem possible for it to be a coincidence. Her mother was of the sort to sell her secrets to the company. The other men finished up, covering her in semen.
“Come back, please come back.”
Xanthe’s voice sounded foreign to her own ears and small. Even her VIP with his crimson fingers had left her alone with Dog-Boy.
She thought she heard barking but that could have been a backing track blaring from the speakers beneath the stage, put there by her mother.
She couldn’t see out into the auditorium past the golden circle. There were many shadows for her to watch, and to be watched from.
Cold, wet meaty chunks were dumped on her. The smell of dog food embraced her. Tears streamed down her face.
“Now, now beautiful Xanthe, don’t cry.”
She cringed against his touch on her cheek.
He shouldn’t have been able to get it up any longer, but she could feel his erection pressing into her skin folds.
The shakes and stomach cramps of withdrawal reached Xanthe. She’d been the first one to take the drug. She needed it now.
A drop from above landed on her forehead and dripped down, mixing with her tears. The dead guy was better than Dog-Boy. Withdrawal was better than Dog-Boy.
He held something in his hands and affixed it to her ears. When he glued rubber to her nose, the outside scents were dulled. The result was dizziness.
She focused on the dripping body’s dead erection and bloating stomach. She thought she saw a cockroach crawl across him. That might have been her imagination conjuring something to distract her mind, if not her body. Stress and withdrawal were never a good combination. She thought, what with the body hanging belly-down, it would have made more sense for the cockroaches to crawl across his back.
Dog-Boy was turning her into a dog. Her stomach wouldn’t be able to handle a doggy-style pounding. Dignity meant nothing to her if by shitting herself she wouldn’t have to feel him inside. Her stomach stopped turning with the thought. Typical—just her luck.
“Why are you crying sweet Xanthe?”
She didn’t respond to stupidity.
He licked meaty chunks from her pale body. Some sank into her folds of skin and wouldn’t be seen again. The smell would remind her when they began to rot. He went in for a kiss, still with a mouthful of dog food. She threw up in her mouth but that didn’t put him off.
He looked up and noticed the body for the first time. Xanthe held the vomit. She was waiting for the best time to spit. Dog-Boy stared at the corpse. She wanted the puke to hit his eyes. The sounds of fucking reached through her muffled ears, along with Dog-Boy’s panting breath.
Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 3 Page 12
