“Oh, I missed you.” Kristin said, blushing from the unexpected public display of affection.
“I missed you too, babe.” Matt kissed her upturned nose, staying close to breathe in the scents of her shampoo and perfume. Eighteen hours on a plane worrying about sexually transmitted diseases and the ramifications of his actions had made him feel queasy and miserable. Upon seeing her, he felt a rush of joy that tempered his guilt momentarily.
On the way home, Kristin drove, and Matt insisted she stop at the grocery store. He ran in and returned with an armful of spring flowers and a bottle of cheap champagne.
“You must’ve really missed me.” Kristin joked.
“You have no idea.”
They stopped for take-out, but it grew cold on the counter when they got home. Sparing only enough time to drop his suitcases at the door, Matt turned to Kristin and kissed her, his hunger for his wife greater than any he’d felt since the early days of their relationship. A trail of clothes led to the bedroom where they made love with a fervor he’d feared was long gone. No thoughts of ovulation schedules or low sperm counts marred the act as they found culmination in one another’s arms, once, twice and a third time. Exhausted, they drifted off together and slept a deep, dreamless slumber.
* * *
Matt sat on the couch, his hands hanging between his knees. Kristin sat beside him, kind of. She seemed to hover above the cushion, her whole body a vibrating mass of nerves. He glanced at his watch. One more minute and they would know.
Things had been going pretty well over the last few weeks. Since his return from Thailand, their love-making had reached new levels of comfort, and Kristin seemed to finally be relaxing a bit about making a baby. He knew she still wanted it more than anything; her posture at the moment left little room for doubt, but gone were her obsessive details and regimens. Matt was sure this time would be it. What they had needed to do was just relax. The books she read about conception all said that stress could inhibit the body’s ability to conceive.
His guilt was still there, but with things being as they were, it had started to diminish. He would never be one of those serial cheaters, and could forgive himself, eventually. He felt awful about it, knew he had failed his wife and marriage in a way he could never undo, but she need never know about it and he certainly never planned to do it again. From then on, business trips would be just that, business. In a way, it may have been good for them. Unbeknownst to her, his indiscretion had helped remind him of what she meant to him, and made him realize how close he’d been to throwing it all away. Matt wasn’t even sure it would’ve happened had she not been pressuring him so much, to such a degree that he felt like a failure every month when she got her period. The situation she had fed was definitely part of why he’d gone through with it at all. He’d pushed the memory of the prostitute with her dark eyes and amber pendant to a secret chamber of his mind, one he rarely opened. He tried to pretend that it hadn’t happened at all.
Yeah. He was sure she was finally pregnant this time. She’d been feeling lousy for the last couple of weeks and her period was late. There had been times when she’d been as many as three days late, only to be crushed when her period came hours after the negative test. But this time was different. This time she felt sick. And they’d waited a full week before giving in and buying another test. Matt was confident they wouldn’t need another.
“You want to look, or do you want me?” Matt smiled, his hand resting on her knee.
“I don’t know. You do it. No, wait. I’ll do it.” Kristin’s eyes filled with tears. She glanced toward the closed bathroom door, then back at him. Her face was pale and drawn. “What if, what if…”
“I can do it if you want.” Matt stood, but her hand gripped his.
“No.” She drew a shuddering breath. “I’ll do it.”
“Let’s do it together.” Helping her to her feet, he hugged her, holding her until she nodded. He kissed her gently and they walked together to the bathroom, their hands linked. He stopped her just outside, his heart hammering in his chest. This is it. He thought and for a second considered going back to the couch, turning on the television and ignoring it. They didn’t have to know.
“Babe.” He said, stroking her face with his free hand. “Either way, I love you.”
Kristin nodded, her chin firm, but her eyes cloudy with unshed tears. She turned the knob. At the last second he held back, not stepping into the room until he heard her anguished sob. He stood very still, watching as she threw the test into the trash and collapsed upon the edge of the tub, her face in her hands.
“Maybe the test was bad. Expired or something. We can try again tomorrow.” He knew it wasn’t true as he said it, and it did nothing to lessen her grief. Matt pulled her into his arms and carried her to the bedroom.
In bed, he held her until her sobs quieted into an uneasy rhythm of sleep, and then he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. He couldn’t ignore it any longer. Kristin wasn’t the only one who was feeling ill. He’d blamed the sore feeling and redness on the increased activity in the bedroom, thought the ache deep in his groin was from overexertion, but he wasn’t so sure anymore. What if that whore gave me something and I brought it home to Kristin? Oh God. What if I made her sick?
After a while he drifted off, his sleep troubled and uneven. He awoke hours later from a nightmare, a scream trapped in his throat. In the dream, the prostitute knelt before him where he sat on the couch, his own couch in their living room. He buried his hands in her coarse black hair, moaning as she worked him with her mouth. The woman looked up at him and he caught sight of the amulet, hanging between her small, firm breasts. As he watched, the stone grew, and he grabbed it in both hands, feeling as it swelled and became warm. In the lamplight he could see something trapped within its confines, and he drew it close to his face. Captured within the ancient amber was a fetus. Small, but perfectly formed. Their fetus. Its lidless eyes shifted, staring up at him, accusing. He sat up in bed, the sheets soaked with sweat, Kristin a dark lump snoring beside him.
Matt decided he would go to the doctor in the morning.
* * *
“So what brings you in today?” The doctor was an older gentleman, maybe in his mid-sixties, with bright blue eyes, which looked tired.
“Stupidity,” Matt said, elaborating when a raised eyebrow was the only response. “I messed up. I had an affair. And I’m afraid I may have caught something.”
The doctor nodded, and if he was passing judgment, it didn’t show on his face.
“Did the woman tell you she had anything specific?”
“No. I’m just having problems. It’s sore and red. I feel achy all over down there.”
“Discharge?”
“No. Would there have to be? I’m really nervous because I was in Thailand when it happened and who knows what it could be.” Matt was suddenly very conscious of the crinkly paper covering the exam table he sat on, and the thin cotton gown that stopped short of covering his legs. He inspected the nails on one hand, not wanting to look the doctor in the face.
“Ah yes, black syphilis. You’re probably lucky they even let you back in the country.”
Matt’s head snapped up and his wild eyes met the doctor’s. The other man chuckled and patted him on the shoulder.
“Just kidding. It’s a myth. There is no black syphilis, or any other sexually transmitted diseases in the Orient that you can’t get here. That’s just an urban legend they tell the military boys to help keep them in line and out of the brothels. We’ll get you checked out and see if there’s anything real to worry about.” The old man chuckled to himself as he set about pulling medical supplies from a glass cabinet above his desk.
Matt was not amused. He had spent the whole morning at work barely able to concentrate as he imagined the results, and how he would tell Kristin. Terrible scenarios unfolded in his head about how she would react, all of them ending in divorce, except the one culminating in her stabbing him in his sleep. He�
��d driven all the way into the city, taking an extra-long lunch break so he could go to a different clinic, not able to face his regular physician with his problem, and now he was stuck with this joker.
“Okay. We should be able to get the results back on these in a day or two, but an AIDS test can take considerably longer.” The doctor said, sliding his hands into a pair of powder blue latex gloves.
“That’s fine.” Matt couldn’t take his eyes off the swab as it appeared from within its packaging. Though considerably thinner than a standard Q-tip, the thing seemed at least a mile long. And it was about to disappear into his package. He felt beads of cold sweat pop out on his forehead.
“This will be unpleasant. You may want to hold the sides of the bed.”
Nodding his head, Matt squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the bedsides. He groaned as the swab entered his urethra, certain he’d throw up from the searing pain as it travelled in and back out of the tip of his enflamed penis.
“Hmmmm. That’s different.”
The doctor’s voice jolted him and he opened his eyes, expecting to see blood dribbling out of his dick, but what he did see confused him. The swab was in the doctor’s hand, several inches away from him, but a shiny filament was attached to it, the other end disappearing into the opening of his urethra. The doctor tugged slightly and he felt the pull as the thread stretched, but didn’t break.
“What the hell is that?” Matt watched as the doctor touched the delicate strand, testing the tension and strength with a gloved finger. It stuck to the latex, but once again didn’t break.
“I’m not really sure.” He reached into a desk drawer without looking, fishing around for a moment before producing a shiny pair of scissors. He snipped the thread and held the swab up to the light, his eyebrows raised, mouth set in a grim line. “Wait here a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Matt watched in astonishment as the doctor left, his eyes darting between the closed door and his exposed penis. With the string hanging out of it. What is it? Oh Lord, what could it be? The moment began to take on a surreal feeling, a dreamlike quality that made him almost believe he would wake in a few minutes, grateful to be delivered from the nightmare. He pinched his bare thigh and winced. It wasn’t a dream. Damned dirty prostitute. What the hell was I thinking? And damn those GI’s too. I was happy enough at that little hotel bar before they dragged me off to the karaoke lounge and the whore house. The anger caught him off guard, boiling in the pit of his stomach and bringing up memories he’d been trying to bury.
Something buzzed loudly from within the pile of his clothes on the chair and Matt jumped, his heart racing as he realized it was his cell phone. He stood to retrieve the phone from his pocket, his legs still shaky from the pain of the invasive testing, his brain still shocked by the fact of this clear strand dangling from his penis. Oh Christ! It was Kristin. He thought about ignoring it, letting it go to voicemail, but he answered anyway. She never called him when he was supposed to be at the office. It must be important.
“Hello.” His voice sounded strange, like it came from far away rather than his mouth.
“Oh my God! Oh my god! Help meeeeee!” Kristin was shrieking, her voice shrill and piercing.
“What is it, babe? What’s going on?” Matt sat again, all the strength leaving his legs at the sound of her terror.
“Oh please. No! No!” she wailed into the phone, the panic in her voice cutting into his nerves, destroying every last bit of emotional control he’d tried to keep over this situation.
“WHAT IS IT?” he yelled, not aware that his voice carried far beyond the thin walls of the exam room, causing patients and nurses to startle in other rooms.
The hand holding the phone went numb and Matt felt it slip away, hitting the floor with a crack. He could still hear Kristin screaming, her voice far away, but still wailing about spiders. Keening and screeching about the spiders. So many spiders. Inside her.
Another voice, exotic and husky, spoke up in his head and he reeled. You will have babies. He saw her dark eyes and the golden amulet with black flecks. Insects, spiders, trapped inside the amber a million years ago. Kristin still screamed her throat raw from somewhere far, far away, but all he heard was the whore’s prediction over and over as he watched the delicate thread, the web, disappear up into his penis an inch at a time, the creator slowly reeling it back inside.
Lauren
Cameron Trost
Lauren was sucking her bottom lip in anticipation as she watched the barman mix her cocktail. It was a ritual for her to get the ball rolling on a Saturday evening with a Lucille at the Bowery, just as it was becoming a ritual for her to only ever pay for that first drink of the night. The barman looked up for an instant and shot her a tantalising smile. He probably recognised her but she couldn’t say for sure. She wondered what he thought of her, if anything at all. The smile had probably meant nothing. She hadn’t failed to notice that he was generous in that regard. Every half-decent looking girl got one. There was no reason to read anything into it.
The Bowery was a classy little bar and Lauren always came with the intention of meeting an equally palatable young man. She wasn’t interested in drunken bogans or blinged-up wankers, so she never went near the Royal George or the Bank. She didn’t go for punks or any other kind of rockers either, so she kept away from the Zoo. Nor were hipsters her thing, so the Alhambra was out of bounds. Apart from the Bowery, the only other bar she frequented was Cloudlands with its spacious mezzanine and chic jungle atmosphere. It wasn’t as intimate as the Bowery though, and its barmen didn’t please her as much. The Bowery’s fine specimens were enough to make even the most level-headed girl swoon. They were all handsome devils and were dressed to impress in sleek white shirts, black braces and smartly cut trousers. Most importantly, they all knew how to mix a killer cocktail.
Just as the barman was putting the finishing touches to his work of art, Lauren noticed a young man slide up beside her. He inserted himself like a coin into a slot between her and a tall blonde who was sipping a Singapore Sling. She twisted towards him and, as she reached into her handbag to get her purse, glanced at him for a fraction of a second. They made eye contact.
As brief as it was, the moment was enough to confirm what she had been hoping. It wasn’t the blonde in a red dress so short that the lower part of her perfect, tanned buttocks were displayed to the public who interested him. Lauren was the one who had caught the attention of this handsome fellow with dark hair, meticulously groomed moustache and hungry eyes.
He spoke gently but confidently as his right hand reached out towards the barman with a twenty dollar note.
‘I hope you don’t mind.’
As a matter of fact, she did. It was more than a little presumptuous of him. He should have offered first. But she didn’t refuse, and anyway, the barman hadn’t even waited for her permission to accept the payment.
‘Thanks,’ she whispered.
‘I’ll have a Scottish Delight,’ he told the barman without taking his eyes off Lauren. She wasn’t the most beautiful girl in the joint but she was certainly sexy in an offbeat kind of way and, more importantly, he felt sure that he could manage to end up taking her home with him. He could practically smell the promise on her, as though her flowery perfume was incapable of hiding the less innocent odour that her skin was giving off. Despite her elegant green dress and modest make-up, he knew that she was nothing but a horny little bitch that would do anything he wanted if he just bought her a few drinks and treated her like a lady for an hour or two. He also knew that she knew that he thought this.
She looked at him in a way that was simultaneously coy and provocative. She wanted to play at being a man-eater, and he was fine with that, but he wondered if she really knew what he was thinking about doing to her.
He studied her tight little body. It was clearly defined by her kinky green dress. He admired her legs without any sense of shame, the way a supermarket shopper might appreciate the allure of a well-packaged rump
steak just before picking it off the cold shelf. They were covered in black stay-up stockings and ended in a pair of shiny green high-heels that seemed to have been tailor-made to match her dress – or was it the other way around?
She wasn’t watching him though. Lauren was looking at the hot blonde behind him. It was obvious that she was jealous that he’d chosen Lauren over her. An expression of exaggerated surprise covered her heavily made-up face. Lauren winked at her and then stuck her bottom lip out in a gesture of mock sympathy. The skank then turned her back and Lauren could have sworn she started pressing her almost bare arse up against him – whatever his name was.
‘I’m Lauren, if you’re not too busy drooling over my legs, maybe you could have the decency to tell me your name.’
He looked up at her face but, instead of appearing embarrassed, smiled in a way that made her feel moist in her knickers.
‘My name’s Alex. I’m sorry. I hope you don’t think I’m rude. It’s just that you’re so beautiful, I couldn’t help myself.’
Lauren sighed as the barman slid Alex his Scottish Delight. ‘You can cut the crap, Alex. I think I liked you better before you opened your mouth. I’m not some dumb blonde bitch who will give you head because you’ve memorised a book of crappy pick-up lines.’
She wondered if her harsh reaction would make him walk away but was pleased to find that he wasn’t going to give up so easily. He just grinned at her as he raised his glass. He found her attitude a massive turn-on.
‘Cheers!’ The rims of their glasses gently kissed. ‘As much as I’m enjoying having that gorgeous creature behind me rub her firm arse against mine, how about we find a spot where we can sit down and talk a little?’ he suggested, loudly enough for the blonde in question to hear. She promptly turned around and glared at them both.
Of Devils & Deviants: An Anthology of Erotic Horror Page 17
